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Michael Burkhardt

mbrkhrdt

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.

Connect with Michael

Connect with Michael Burkhardt

Indie App Spotlight: ‘one sec’ helps you reduce screen time on your iPhone

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.

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RCS messaging on iPhone has expanded, here are all of the supported US carriers

RCS iOS 18 iPhone

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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iOS 18.2’s new Mail app is nice, but I disabled one of its main features

Mail iOS 18.2

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.

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Apple’s AR smart glasses likely aren’t being released anytime soon, sadly

Meta Orion Smart Glasses

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.”

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Indie App Spotlight: ‘TechniCalc’ is a comprehensive calculator with a clean interface

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.

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Next-gen iPad Air: Here’s what to expect this year

iPad Air on blue background

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?

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Indie App Spotlight: ‘Griply’ is an all-in-one planner for goal setting, task management, and habit tracking

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.

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Apple is reportedly exploring cellular connectivity for Vision Pro, and that’s a great thing

Vision Pro

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.

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Here’s when you can expect 2nm chips to come to iPhone, iPad, and Mac

Apple reportedly agrees with TSMC chip price increase after saying it wouldn't

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.

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Indie App Spotlight: ‘Minizones’ lets you quickly glance at different timezones from your Menu Bar

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.

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Bluesky’s rampant growth has once again proven that competition is a good thing

Threads now rolling out Custom Feeds in its mobile app globally

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.

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