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.
According to Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter, Apple is planning no sort of Vision Pro refresh in 2025. He mentions that it’s possible that Apple could theoretically unveil a headset ahead of a release next year, but all signs are pointing to new Vision Pro hardware launching in 2026 instead.
On the other hand, he reports that Apple’s more “urgent goal” is to create a cheaper headset, and Apple is ‘ramping up’ development for that headset.
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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.
Univershuffle is a new music discovery app that shuffles all of the songs on Apple Music, completely at random – no AI or algorithms involved. It offers the ultimate experience for finding new music, so long as you’re willing to sort through a ton of songs.
The app is available for free in a limited capacity, though you’ll need to link an Apple Music account to listen to songs in their entirety. It launched on the App Store this week.
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According to Bloomberg, Apple is working on a second generation version of its popular and affordable item tracker, the AirTag, which initially debuted in 2021. Here’s everything what we’re expecting Apple to deliver with AirTag 2 later this year.
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For a limited time, Apple is offering (at least) two new sign up bonuses for Apple Card. Apple Card typically comes with no sign up bonus, unlike most rewards credit cards. If you’re interested in Apple Card, this could be worth jumping on!
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Mark Gurman from Bloomberg recently reported that Apple will be redesigning the Magic Mouse – for the first time since its introduction in 2009. In the mouses over fifteen-year history, the design has remained mostly the same, besides the switch from AA batteries to Lightning in 2015, and Lightning to USB-C in 2024.
However, that’ll soon be changing.
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At CES 2025, Anker unveiled a couple new charging products for Apple users. They have a new 140W charge brick with a built in display, perfect for 16-inch MacBook Pro users, as well as a very compact 25,000mAh power bank with support for fast charging. Both of these products are available for purchase now.
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At CES 2025, MacPaw unveiled a new version of CleanMyMac for small and medium businesses. You interact with it differently than traditional CleanMyMac, but you still get the same suite of tools to help maintain your Mac. CleanMyMac Business focuses on affordability, ease, and transparency.
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OhSnap, a company behind many iPhone cases and MagSafe accessories, just unveiled MCON at CES 2025. It’s a new slim MagSafe accessory that slaps on the back of your iPhone, then folds out to unveil a fully featured game controller, making it incredibly easy to play games on the go.
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At CES 2025, UGREEN announced a vast array of new products, including new Thunderbolt 5 docking stations, and a new 6-port 500W desktop charging hub. All of these products will be available in the coming months.
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MacPaw, the company behind many great Mac apps such as CleanMyMac and Setapp, unveiled Eney at CES 2025. It’s an all new AI assistant for your Mac, aiming to simplify your digital life. Eney will help you complete tasks quickly, effortlessly, and with ease.
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At CES 2025, MOFT unveiled a new MagSafe wallet, compatible with Apple’s Find My network. MOFT has been developing great MagSafe accessories for a little while now, and this one takes things up a notch.
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At CES 2025, ESR unveiled the new Geo Digital Pencil, an affordable iPad stylus. It supports the Find My network, allowing you to locate your pencil virtually anywhere if it gets lost, similar to the new Apple Pencil Pro unveiled early last year.
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ShiftCam, a company behind many great iPhone accessories for content creators, unveiled PLANCK at CES 2025. The company calls it the world’s smallest portable SSD, and it’ll be great for helping you record large videos on your iPhone.
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At CES 2025, Hyper unveiled the HyperSpace Trackpad Pro – a first of its kind. Apple’s Magic Trackpad, so far, has been the only good external multi-touch trackpad on the market. Hyper aims to change that with this new product, and unlike the Magic Trackpad, it’ll also work super well for Windows users.
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Belkin unveiled a number of new products at CES 2025, including new MagSafe/Qi2 wireless chargers, all sorts of new USB-C charging bricks, and a new 20,000mAh power bank that’s still relatively compact. They also have new pairs of headphones, and announced an all-new creator bundle. We got to go hands on with it all at CES Unveiled last night.
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There’s been a lot of talk about augmented reality tech lately, especially with the unveiling of Snapchat Spectacles and Meta Orion. Those are both highly expensive and unobtainable to consumers – but there is a growing market of affordable glasses, that provide some of the benefits of AR glasses at a much more palatable price tag. The RayNeo Air 2s’ are one of them, and I’ll be providing some of my thoughts.
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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.
Sonuby is a different kind of weather app, designed for users who often partake in outdoor activities. For example, if you often snowboard, you can have a weather forecast that places snow conditions front and center. Weather needs can be very individualistic, which is why Sonuby allows you to tailor the app to what you care about.
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With iOS 18, Apple introduced support for RCS messaging, a new protocol that enhances the texting experience between iPhone and Android users. Unlike SMS, you can see read/delivered receipts, send larger files, and have typing indicators, features that were previously missing. At first, only the big three carriers supported RCS messaging. Since then, a lot more have joined in on the fun.
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Mark Gurman from Bloomberg recently reported that Apple will be redesigning the Magic Mouse – for the first time since its introduction in 2009. In the mouses fifteen-year history, the design has remained mostly the same, besides the switch from AA batteries to Lightning in 2015, and Lightning to USB-C in 2024.
However, that’ll soon be changing.
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Now that the iPhone 16 lineup has been released to customers, some people might be thinking about what’s next for the iPhone. However, it isn’t the iPhone 17, and it’s just a few months away.
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Apple’s had a very eventful fall, with a jam packed September event, an iPad mini 7 launch in mid October, followed up by an “exciting week of announcements” at the end of the month.
With all of those new product announcements, there were also a number of discontinuations of older products, meaning they’re no longer available to purchase from the Apple Store. However, there’s still good deals to find on last gen products from third parties.
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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.
Type is a minimalist note taking app for your Mac, allowing you to easily capture notes and keep them organized – all from a simple keyboard shortcut. It’s the best way to jot something down in a pinch, without any of the potential distractions.
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Apple Card passed its five year anniversary this year, and I’ve recently been thinking about whats next for the credit card. With Apple Card not being super profitable, combined with the fact that Apple wants to grow its services revenue among declining hardware sales, I think it could make a lot of sense for Apple to start offering a higher end credit card.
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From now through December 24th, Apple will be offering free two-hour delivery from your local Apple Store for last minute holiday gifts. This offer went live yesterday.
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