Michael is 9to5Mac’s Associate Editor, leading all of our Apple news coverage on Saturday and Sunday, and contributing to reporting from Monday to Wednesday. He got started in the world of Apple news during the pandemic, and it became a growing hobby. He’s also an indie iOS developer in his free time, and started the weekly Indie App Spotlight series, which has covered dozens of indie apps since it launched.
Ever since early 2021, Apple has been releasing new Black Unity bands for the Apple Watch. 2025 marks the fifth year of this tradition, giving a number of options to pick from. Among the five bands, Apple has released two sport bands, two sport loops, and one braided solo loop. All of them remain available for purchase on the Apple Store today.
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Despite the fact that you can still use the service, TikTok is still very much so banned in the United States. President Trump promised to not fine TikTok and its service providers for continuing to run the services, but that’s just a promise. He also signed an executive order officially suspending the ban, but there’s great odds that that executive order doesn’t actually hold up legally.
For one reason or another, Apple (and Google) have both decided that they don’t want to take the risk. If a court later decides that Trumps promises don’t hold up legally, Apple could be on the hook for up to $850 billion in fines. It just isn’t worth it for them.
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According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is planning on releasing iOS 18.4 in April. Apple hasn’t started the beta cycle for iOS 18.4 quite yet, but there are a handful of things we can likely expect with iOS 18.4 so far.
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Apple last updated the Apple TV in October 2022, introducing a new, smaller design, USB-C on the Siri remote, and a bump from the A12 chip to the A15 chip. The product is now over two years old, and rumors are starting to pop up about the next model.
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Apple has neglected their cheapest iPad for the past couple years, leaving it with the over four year old A14 chipset. They did lower the price earlier last year, from $449 to $349, but we should finally see a real refresh this spring. Here’s what we’re expecting with the iPad 11, the first refresh to Apple’s cheapest iPad in 2.5 years.
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Apple introduced iCloud back in June 2011, and since then, the free tier of iCloud has remained at 5GB. However, I’m not here to talk about that today. While 5GB of free iCloud is definitely too little for our needs nearly a decade and a half later, I think Apple has a bigger issue to address with iCloud: its paid tiers.
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At CES 2025, Belkin began shipping its new SoundForm Isolate headphones. They’re the first wireless headphones with active noise cancellation that Belkin has developed, and they come in at just $60 – making them incredibly affordable over-ear headphones.
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According to a tweet from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple will be performing some “merchandise/floor marketing updates” at its retail stores next week. While specific details aren’t confirmed, Apple is likely launching the new Black Unity Apple Watch band for 2025.
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Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.
Inscreen taps into Apple’s Screen Time API, and aims to help users be more mindful about the time they’re spending on their devices. Rather than forcefully blocking app access, Inscreen takes a different approach, and keeps you aware of how much time you’re spending on each app.
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Earlier this month, some sources begun to claim that the next generation iPhone SE, which is expected to debut this spring, won’t actually be called ‘iPhone SE’ at all. We’re now starting to hear that it’ll be called ‘iPhone 16E’ instead. This may be a weird rumor, but I think it actually makes a lot of sense, given what we know so far about the iPhone SE 4.
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Apple released the release candidate builds of iOS 18.3 earlier this week, meaning that we’re just days away from seeing that update ship to the public. That also means iOS 18.4 beta is just around the corner, which is widely expected to include some of the big Siri improvements with Apple Intelligence. Here’s what we’re expecting with Siri in iOS 18.4.
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Today, Meta is announcing Edits: a new mobile video editing platform. This comes just hours after TikTok (and as a result, CapCut) were banned in the US – though TikTok is currently being restored, at least temporarily.
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According to Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter, supply of the current generation iPhone SE, which debuted in 2022, is quickly shrinking. This is unsurprising, given the fact that we’re all expecting a new iPhone SE to debut in just a couple months. However, it is uniquely interesting, as it indicates that Apple likely has no plans to keep the current generation model around.
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According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple’s new Mail app is going to make its way to the Mac very soon, with macOS 15.4. Apple introduced the new Mail app to the iPhone back in December with iOS 18.2, but it hasn’t made its way to any other platform since.
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Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that the iPhone 17 Air will cost less than the iPhone Pro models, contradicting the long-standing expectation that the new ultra-thin iPhone would be even more expensive than the iPhone Pro Max models. With that being the case, the phone actually makes more sense than ever.
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Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.
PostPocket is a simple tool, aiming to help users keep track of various links, posts, articles, videos, or anything from across the internet. It allows you to save everything in one centralized place. The app also has categorization, allowing you to keep all of your links sorted. The app is available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
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In November, Apple announced some additional 3% cash back partners for the Apple Card, Booking.com and Chargepoint. Those were welcome additions, but one of the existing partners will also be going away in a couple weeks: that being Panera Bread.
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According to Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter, Apple is not working on a new version of its AirPort wireless router. However, they are working on something else that could potentially serve as a wireless access point, so don’t give up hope quite yet.
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In recent years, iOS and macOS have been closer than ever to having feature parity. Nowadays, macOS releases mostly bring features first introduced on the iPhone and iPad, occasionally adding a new twist. However, despite this feature parity, there are some gaps, mostly to do with customization. Here are a couple of recent customization additions that have been made on the iPhone and iPad that haven’t quite made their way to the Mac yet.
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While the MacBook Pro is the place to go for the latest and greatest tech, I’ve always been drawn to the MacBook Air for one key reason: portability. There’s just something really nice about the thinness and lightness of the MacBook Air, one that makes me willing to compromise on miniLED, ProMotion, additional ports, and so on.
The MacBook Air isn’t a perfect computer by any means, but there are some simple upgrades that I’d like to see Apple make with the M4 MacBook Air this year. Any of these upgrades would make it a much better package in my book.
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Last year, Apple unveiled the first Macs with the M4 chip: the MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac mini. That’s about half of the Mac lineup, leaving the MacBook Air, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro. Among the two remaining desktops, the Mac Studio is definitely the more popular one – though it’s a bit outdated, still sporting the M2 Max and M2 Ultra. Here’s everything we’re expecting with the next Mac Studio, though it is a bit light.
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According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the next generation entry-level iPad will sport the A17 Pro chip. We always expected the iPad 11 to support the Apple Intelligence feature set, though it was unclear which chip Apple would end up putting in the lower-end device.
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According to Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, Apple will be launching a new Apple Watch SE later this year, as well as introducing refreshes for Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3. Based on today’s rumors, it’s sounding like it’ll be a big year for Apple Watch.
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According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the new Apple smart home hub, which some refer to as ‘Apple command center’ or simply ‘HomePad’, might ship a little bit later than anticipated.
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