Michael Burkhardt

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.

one sec aims to help people reduce mindless scrolling on social media, requiring users to make a conscious decision on whether or not they want to actually open that app every time. It’s very configurable, so you can customize one sec to meet your needs.

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.

According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal this morning, Apple is working on two new foldable devices for 2026 and beyond. The report also provides some details on the rumored ultra-slim iPhone 17 model.

With iOS 18.2, Apple introduced an all new Mail app. It introduced mail categorization, a fresh coat of paint, contact photos/business logos for conversations, a new system for grouping emails, and more. All of that sounded nice when it was unveiled back at WWDC, but now that I’ve actually spent some time using it, I’m having some doubts.

For the longest time, we’ve heard rumors about Apple developing some form of AR smart glasses. Nothing has come to light of that, though we do now have Apple Vision Pro, which has a number of similarities with potential AR glasses, albeit in a much bulkier form factor.

However, despite companies like Meta and Snapchat showing off cool demos of augmented reality glasses, Mark Gurman from Bloomberg reports that Apple is around 3-5 years away from “getting the approach right.”

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is aiming to release its first foldable in 2028. Gurman describes it as “something akin to a giant iPad that unfolds into the size of two iPad Pros side-by-side.”

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.

TechniCalc is a fully featured calculator app, with all of the advanced features you’d need – but without a clunky or outdated UI. It focuses on being clean, easy to use, while being good for mathematicians. It’s available for iPhone, iPad, Mac.

Apple transitioned the Mac lineup to Apple Silicon starting in 2020, and they completed the transition in 2023. Since the transition started, Apple quickly started dropping support for Intel Macs on newer versions of macOS. That raises the question: how much longer will Intel Macs receive software support?

According to recent reports from Bloomberg, Apple will be releasing another iPad Air with “internal improvements” as early as spring 2025.

The iPad Air was just refreshed with M2 in early 2024, meaning there’d be around 12 months between refreshes, rather than the typical 18-24 months between iPad Air refreshes. With such a short turnaround time, it leaves you wondering: what will Apple actually be updating in these iPads?

Apple today announced that it would be expanding its retail presence in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with the online store opening in 2025, and physical stores opening in 2026.

Seemingly, for the first time in forever, Apple will be updating every single Mac with an M4 chip, presuming rumors hold correct. There have been a number of times where this has been close, but it hasn’t happened anytime in the past decade, at least.

According to Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter, Apple is planning on supporting typical VR game controllers on Apple Vision Pro, and has apparently approached Sony to get going on this. This will hopefully make Apple Vision Pro more appealing for gaming, something that the product doesn’t currently do super well.

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.

Griply is an all-in-one app that brings together your goals, habits, and tasks – making them easier to accomplish, and keep track of. It helps people turn big goals into daily actions.

Apple has been internally working towards developing new 5G modems for the longest time, and we’re finally expected to see them debut in the iPhone SE 4 next spring. However, a new report from Bloomberg yesterday provides a much more detailed roadmap on Apple’s modem plans, and it includes cellular coming to a couple new products, including Apple Vision Pro.

Rumors have long suggested that Apple will partner with other AI chatbot companies in the future to support Apple Intelligence features. Apple already partnered with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to iOS, and that integration is now here in iOS 18.2, which is expected to release to the public next week.

Although Apple typically follows a two year cycle with process nodes, with the 7nm and 5nm processes lasting two years each – it seems highly likely that Apple is about to use the 3nm process for a third year in a row with the upcoming iPhone 17 lineup. There are a number of reasons for this, which we’ll be delving into.

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.

Minizones is a sweet and simple Mac app that allows you to glance at varying timezones across the globe, right from your Mac’s menu bar. It’s a nice tool if you work remotely and have to communicate with coworkers across the globe, or regularly need to communicate with people in varying places.

In recent past, Bluesky has been growing substantially. It quickly ballooned to over 20 million users, and at a point, the service was adding over a million users a day. Between the ban on X in Brazil earlier this year, as well as the results of the 2024 US presidential election – a large group of people have been choosing to leave X.

But, they’re not leaving for Meta’s Threads, the more popular X alternative at the time – they’re going for Bluesky instead.