Report: Apple’s Private Relay may not be as private as thought

A story by 404 Media’s Joseph Cox, who last month broke the news about a flaw in Apple’s Hide My Email feature, is now back to report that iCloud Private Relay, a feature that is supposed to obfuscate users’ IP addresses, may not be so private: A series of issues in Apple’s web browser engine — the tech underlying all browsers on iOS — means that Apple’s iCloud Private Relay tool, which is supposed to hide a user’s IP address, in many cases doesn’t actually work. Instead, the issues mean a malicious attacker can set up a website to learn...

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Review: “Ted Lasso” returns, refreshed, to the pitch

Tanya Reynolds and Jason Sudeikis in “Ted Lasso.” “Ted Lasso” is back on Apple TV, which was no sure thing after the series more or less wrapped up in May of 2023. But it’s back for a fourth season, in which—after an episode-long visit to Ted’s home of Kansas City—the football-turned-soccer coach returns to Richmond, where—as teased at the end of season 3—a new women’s team is launching and just might need a coach. I’ve seen the first half of the season, and I’m happy to report that though the teams have changed, this is still “Ted Lasso” through and...

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Soulver 4 casts a wider calculating net

The almost-natural-language notepad calculator Soulver’s latest release adds better tools for calculating durations or intervals between dates and times, planning travel itineraries, tracking inflation, finding distances, performing bandwidth math, and splitting restaurant bills or other expenses. That’s not all, but a good starting list. Should it do all these things? A point we could argue about! But many of the features it offered in the past, and several of the new ones it provides, previously required one or more web searches to find a tool or to pull together disparate information. That’s welcome. Soulver 4’s release comes at an interesting...

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OpenAI: “Apple is getting this wrong”

From an un-bylined post on OpenAI’s site: Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction is both based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets. We’re much more interested in building innovative products and technologies that push the frontier. The post itself includes numerous transcripts of message conversations1 and emails that supposedly bolster OpenAI’s case that it studiously avoided using Apple information. This is, as The Verge’s Jess Wetherbed notes, a pure public opinion play. Because if they have evidence, the only correct answer is “we’ll see you in court.” What...

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Preparing for next year’s Rosetta 2 demise

The reckoning is coming. Apple has done it before, and it’s doing it again. After macOS 27 Golden Gate, you will no longer be able to run legacy Intel apps using Rosetta 2. After the 26.4 update in March, when running any affected app in macOS 26 Tahoe, you see a notification banner when you launch affected software or a background component launches that uses Intel code: Support Ending for Intel-based Apps. This version of “[App Name Here]” will not open in a future release of macOS. Learn how to update to an Apple silicon version. [Learn More pop-up menu]...

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This Week in Apple: The show goes on

Apple Upgrade pencils out, Tim Cook signs off, and Apple TV turns on. That print is fine This week, just as the seers predicted through the scrying of the entrails of a trash can Mac Pro, Apple announced that it was sunsetting the iPhone Upgrade Program and unveiling Apple Upgrade, a lease-to-buy option for Apple products. While Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman had claimed cheaper products would not be eligible, it appears that God has yet to make a revenue so small that Tim Cook would not want to smooth it. Much of the week has been spent trying to find the catch […]

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Q3 results: 3D pricing, EGOT timing, and underestimating demand

I’m still the boss, kid. I’ve been covering Apple financial results and earnings calls for a very long time, dating back to my time at Macworld when Steve Jobs would occasionally parachute into earnings calls presided over by, among other people, Tim Cook! This week’s earnings call was Cook’s 90th and final installment, and that’s probably the most notable thing about it. Even the fact that it was a record third quarter isn’t that notable. It’s more notable when Apple doesn’t set a quarterly record, especially given economic changes and inflation. Still, as always, the results and the earnings call provided […]

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One last time, this is Tim: Transcript of Apple’s Q3 2026 financial call

Tim Cook signals for victory! For the 90th and final time, Apple CEO Tim Cook hopped on a conference call with financial-industry analysts to detail the quarter gone by, give a peek at what’s to come, and maybe take one final victory lap. CFO Kevan Parekh and incoming CEO John Ternus were there, too. This is Six Colors’s transcript of the call for July 30, 2026.

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Apple announces record Q3 results

On Thursday, Apple announced record third-quarter earnings, with total revenue of $109.4B, up 16 percent from the year-ago quarter. iPhone revenue was up 22%, Mac revenue was up 10.4%, Services revenue was up 12%, and Wearables revenue was up 6%. iPad revenue was down 6%. Beginning at 2pm PDT, Apple execs will spend an hour on the phone with financial industry analysts, and we’ll provide our usual transcript. And now, to help you visualize what Apple just announced, here is our traditional barrage of charts and graphs:

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Apple to announce Q3 fiscal results later today

On Thursday afternoon, Apple will announce the results of its third fiscal quarter for 2026. It will presumably be the last appearance of Tim Cook on the post-release earnings calls, which he’s been doing for ages. In fact, today’s call will be his 90th. That’s more than two decades of talking on the phone once a quarter to financial analysts. He’s probably earned a break. As usual, Six Colors will be here to report on the whole thing. Around 1:30 pm PDT, the company will release its financial reports and we’ll be on the scene with our usual load of colorful […]

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MailMaven adds POP, AppleScript, and AI interaction

Back in April of this year, I suggested that the MailMaven email app for macOS might become my new best friend. Months later, with continuous minor and major improvements, the friendship has only grown richer. MailMaven 1.1 in April added POP support for those people who rely on the ancient email mailbox protocol. But MailMaven 1.2, out last week, packed more punch: fully realized AppleScript support coupled with the open standard Model Context Protocol (MCP) to allow large language model AIs to engage with MailMaven. Michael Tsai evaluated the AppleScript support and wrote that it is “really impressive.” Support for...

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App report: Kicking my World Cup withdrawal

(Left to right): Annotate, Kickabout, and Undolly. For the most part, I’m going to focus on Mac apps with these columns, because that’s where the action seems to be these days. But iOS remains a vibrant platform, too, and every now and again, we’ll look at some of the interesting apps being created for iPhones and iPads. This is one of those now and agains. Want to see your app included in a future round-up? Get in touch at apps@sixcolors.com with a brief description of your app, and you just might make the cut. Kickabout The World Cup is just...

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Always choose the good soap

(Angelo D’Amico/Shutterstock) I’ve been thinking about soap again. Back in February I wrote about an Apple-related revelation I had while washing my hands on vacation: We stayed at a nice hotel rather than the less-nice-but-cheaper VRBO condo rental we usually do. Because I’m me, I started thinking about Apple. Like Apple, the nice hotel’s brand promise is that it’s a nice hotel. If the hotel didn’t clean its rooms well, didn’t provide soap that smelled nice, didn’t maintain the in-room refrigerator, didn’t clean the swimming pool, it would probably decrease its expenses and increase its profit margin. But over time, it […]

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Unlock or recover your Mac using a special boot volume

Several years ago, Apple began hiding disk partitions and volumes on the startup drive. The first was a secret volume with a tiny operating system on it that would let you boot from it, after which you could restore from a Time Machine backup, run First Aid in Disk Utility, or reinstall Mac OS X or macOS. Over the years, Apple has multiplied those hidden locations and added more sophistication to what they offer. These boot volumes are: recoveryOS: The current name and form of the special volume described above, which boots into the Recovery Assistant “app.” You can run Disk […]

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Upgrade downgrades and a tiny e-reader

New podcast: The future of the iPhone Upgrade Program is in question, and the details matter; Dan reviews a remarkably tiny new e-reader and laments the state of ebook DRM. [We’re off for summer vacation. The podcast will be back in two weeks.]

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This Week in Apple: Siri, play my entrance music

Apple is sticking it to us again, vibe coding hits the App Store, and Apple Maps comes pre-loaded. Downgrading the upgrade program Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says get ready because Tim Cook’s about to reach into your wallet again. At this point is it even your wallet anymore? Tim would like to think not. Apple is set to announce that the iPhone Upgrade program is being replaced with a lease-to-own model that will be available for iPhones, Macs, iPads and Apple Watches, with the exception of the cheaper models. Not everyone is happy about this. In fact, seemingly no one outside of […]

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Apple tech will underlie Ford’s EV platform

Apple Newsroom: Apple and Ford today announced that Apple Maps will be integrated directly into Ford’s upcoming Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV) Platform through Apple’s new MapKit for Automotive SDK. Coming to Ford’s UEV Platform in 2027, this integration will deliver a beautiful and easy-to-use navigation experience powered by Apple Maps directly to the vehicle’s displays. Road-level Maps information will also enable Ford’s Latitude AI team to build a seamless hands-free driving experience. This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise: Ford CEO Jim Farley has been bullish on CarPlay and the UEV project was previously headed up by Doug Field1, who...

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Review: Xteink X3 is the little e-reader the world’s not quite ready for

An e-reader magneted to the back of a smartphone, just as the prophecy foretold. The market for small e-readers has been booming lately. Earlier this year, Jason took a look at the Xteink X4, a pint-sized reading device that was about as light and small as they come. But those maniacs at Xteink weren’t done yet: they followed it up with the $79 X3, which is unbelievably even lighter and smaller. I wouldn’t blame you for wondering if there’s such a thing as too small and light—at 3.84 inches by 2.51 inches (and just 0.2 inches thick) the X3 is...

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Apple’s reported upgrade program revamp could be a big downgrade

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple is set to announce a new “Apple Upgrade” program (paywalled) next week to replace both its existing financing offerings and the iPhone Upgrade program. Details are still vague at present, but it will supposedly offer lease-style arrangements for not just iPhones, but Macs, iPads, and Apple Watches as well. I’ve been in the iPhone Upgrade Program since Apple debuted it more than a decade ago. There have been plenty of ups and downs over that time—especially in the early years, when Apple was still figuring out how the whole program worked, but more recently...

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Origin Story: ‘Rage Against the Machine’

The season finale of Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey’s excellent Origin Story podcast is about the Luddites, and why the name doesn’t mean what you think it means. It’s really about people reacting negatively to new technology that threatens their jobs, and therefore their livelihood. This might be extremely relevant to some modern technology topics, come to think of it. (Available on Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Overcast, YouTube, and everywhere else.)

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When Find My doesn’t help with separation anxiety

I dispense what might be called valuable insight to my friends, as well as in this public forum. My friends know the danger: they might become the topic of a column, which is true for my buddy Jeff, who left a bag containing his passport behind at a hotel. Fortunately, he had an AirTag in his bag. That was, however, just the beginning of the journey. (Jeff gave me permission to share his story.)1 To avoid suspense, I’ll tell you that Jeff doesn’t have his bag back, but will soon. Grate news Jeff was out of town on business for...

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This Week in Apple: Saving the best for last

Apple sues OpenAI, ships betas for the rest of us, and sells some iPhones. Late to breaking news Shortly after this column went to bed last week, Apple rudely made a late Friday afternoon news dump, in which it announced it was suing OpenAI, alleged the company stole its intellectual property, and said they were, generally, just a bunch of real goobers (the latter part is implied). “Apple accuses OpenAI of using stolen trade secrets to create its upcoming AI gadgets in new lawsuit” Apple’s charges against at least one individual are somewhat eye-popping as they detail the kind of brazen […]

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App report: Adding a shelf to my Mac

Just ahead of WWDC 2026, Jason Snell noted that he gets a lot of pitches about Mac apps, attributing the sudden boom in macOS offerings to vibe coding aided by artificial intelligence. Regardless of how apps are getting built — be it with AI tools or the more conventional developer kits that Apple offers — it’s certainly true that a lot more macOS apps seem to be popping up, extending the capabilities of your hardware. And some of those apps deserve a little extra attention. And that’s what I’m hoping to do with these app spotlights for Six Colors. We’ll profile […]

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Public betas and trade secrets

New podcast: There’s some good stuff in those public betas, including Siri AI and Photos updates; Apple sues OpenAI and makes some juicy allegations.

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Unauthorized AI biographies are all over Amazon

Writing at The New York Times, tech reporter Kashmir Hill tells the strange story (NYT gift link) of coming across an AI-generated biography of herself on Amazon. To me, the sobering part is when Hill, unable to track down the source of her own biography, talks to an “author” of hundreds of AI books: Mr. Johns, who has long curly white hair and the bronzed skin of someone who spends a considerable amount of time outside, retired in 2024 from his work as a cybersecurity consultant. Divorced and living alone with two Shih Tzus, he suddenly had a lot of...

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Apple TV is “essentially dead”? No, long live Apple TV.

Analyst Dan Rayburn, on (sigh) LinkedIn: Going forward, Apple TV hardware is now essentially dead. Last month, Apple raised the price of its Apple TV 4K Wi-Fi (64GB) from $129 to $199, while the Apple TV 4K Wi-Fi + Ethernet (128GB) now costs $249, up from $169. That’s a major increase for hardware that hasn’t changed since its 2022 debut…. I don’t envision anyone in the market spending $200 on a streaming device. Leaving aside Rayburn’s bizarre complaint about Apple TV audio format support (which reflects nothing I’ve seen and sounds more like a user grinding a personal axe), this is […]

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First Look: iOS 27 Public Beta

By now you’ve probably heard the promise of iOS 27: it’s a Snow Leopard-like year where Apple spent a lot of time not on big marquee features, but on smaller fixes and enhancements throughout the operating system. And that’s largely true—and largely to the benefit of the platform—but it’s also not the whole story. Because there is, of course, at least one major feature that comes to iOS 27 (and Apple’s other platforms) this year, and it’s a doozy: Siri AI. The result is an OS that feels like a marked improvement over its predecessor, in everything from design to performance […]

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First Look: macOS Golden Gate Public Beta

Let’s just get this out of the way: I liked macOS 26 Tahoe. I liked it because it marked the first time in years where Apple seemed to embrace the fact that Mac users deserve productivity improvements, not just syncing up with whatever (often useful, yes) new features were being introduced to iOS. I didn’t like the interface changes, especially the way the redesign handled toolbars and sidebars. It actually felt like macOS dodged a bullet by being treated as an afterthought, because pouring more Liquid Glass atop macOS would have made the situation even worse. But over the last summer, […]

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Pulling the Thread to know if my garage door is closed

I had a simple task that involved Apple Home. If you use Apple Home, you know what happened next. Tears, frustration, the arrival of batteries, paperclips pushed into hard-to-reach holes, many online searches, and—if you are lucky, as I was—success. Siri, am I lazy? My goal was straightforward: can I know if the garage door is open without going to look? Early in the pandemic, we occasionally forgot to close it. While there was a locked door between the garage and the house, it still felt like we were playing with fire, as someone could steal a bike or other...

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Apple sues OpenAI, alleging trade secret theft

OpenAI has not been shy about teaming with former Apple employees. Back in May, OpenAI was rattling its saber about thinking about talking to lawyers about possibly considering a lawsuit against Apple for not treating it right when it came to ChatGPT integration. What a misdirection! Instead, Apple has sued OpenAI—and it’s alleging that the hardware program it’s been building with Jony Ive and company is being fueled by the theft of trade secrets. Here’s the statement Apple supplied to various news outlets on Friday: At Apple, our teams are constantly developing breakthrough technologies to create the best products and services […]

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