Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says Apple's foldable iPhone is still "on track" for a September unveiling alongside the iPhone 18 Pro lineup. 9to5Mac reports: The report notes that Apple's stock took a hit earlier today after Nikkei Asia indicated the iPhone Fold was having serious production issues. Clearly, sources within Apple were motivated to share positive news via Gurman. Not long ago, Gurman himself said that he was expecting an iPhone Fold release date that was a little bit later than iPhone 18 Pro. That's still very possible, but it sounds like Apple is internally feeling optimistic about its targeted September launch.

The report continues: "While the complexity of the new display and materials may limit initial supply for several weeks, Apple is currently operating with a plan to put the device on sale around the same time -- or very soon after -- the new non-foldable models, the people said." Gurman adds an important qualifier: "Still, the release is six months away and production has yet to ramp up. That means the timing isn't final."

Valve has released a native Steam Link beta for Apple Vision Pro, letting users stream their existing Steam games onto a large virtual screen in visionOS. It supports up to 4K resolution and will let you dynamically adjust the curve of the display. The Mac Observer reports: Steam Link does not support VR titles in this beta, and Valve clearly states that the app is limited to 2D game streaming, but this still opens up a large library of games that users can play on a massive virtual screen inside Vision Pro.

At the same time, Vision Pro already handles 2D media very well, and this update builds on that strength by turning the headset into a portable gaming display that connects directly to your existing setup without needing extra hardware.

You can join the Steam Link beta through TestFlight right now, and this early release shows how Apple Vision Pro continues to expand beyond media into more practical and everyday use cases like gaming.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple earned the lowest grades in a report on laptop and smartphone repairability released today by the consumer advocacy group Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund. The report, which looks at how easy devices are to disassemble and how easy it is to find repairability information, gave Apple a C-minus in laptop repairability and a D-minus in cell phone repairability. For its "Failing the Fix (2026): Grading laptop and cell phone companies on the fixability of their products" report, PIRG analyzed the 10 newest laptops and phones that were available via manufacturers' French website in January. [...] Apple leads the list of laptop repairability losers, largely due to it having low disassembly scores. Apple, along with Dell and Samsung, also lost a full point for being members of TechNet and the CTA. Lenovo had the second-worst grade with a C-minus. Like Apple, Lenovo had low disassembly scores.

It also lost 0.5 points for failing to properly post PDFs explaining the French repair scores for some of its newest laptops sold in the region, as required in France. This is especially noteworthy because Lenovo got an F in last year's report for missing this information on at least 12 laptops. At the time, Lenovo director of communications David Hamilton provided a statement to Ars saying that the missing information was "due to a backend web compatibility issue that temporarily prevented the display of repairability scores on our Lenovo France website" that was "widely resolved." However, it appears that over a year later, Lenovo still isn't providing sufficient information to meet France's requirements

"While Lenovo has improved somewhat with their compliance with French consumer law by providing more repair score PDFs on their website, we urge the company to resolve this multi-year issue," this year's report says. PIRG's report concluded that "laptops are pretty stagnant in terms of repairability" across many of the eight most popular laptop brands in the US. However, Proctor noted to Ars that consumers' access to parts, tools, and information that vendors have has improved, but improvements around ease of disassembly "take longer to realize." He also praised vendors' efforts to release more repairable designs, such as Apple's MacBook Neo. For its repairability index, PIRG weighed physical ease of disassembly most heavily, while also considering the availability of repair documentation, spare parts, spare-parts affordability, and other product-specific criteria. It then adjusted company grades by deducting points for membership in trade groups that oppose right-to-repair laws and adding small bonuses for manufacturers that supported right-to-repair legislation.

Acer stood out as the only laptop vendor that avoided the 0.5-point trade-group penalty, since it was not listed as a member of TechNet or the Consumer Technology Association.

Apple may have a supply problem on its hands with the MacBook Neo... The laptop reportedly relies on "binned" A18 Pro chips with one GPU core disabled, and demand is so strong that the supply of those cheaper leftover chips could run out before the next model is ready. That leaves Apple choosing between lower margins, shifting production plans, or changing the lineup to keep its $599 hit product in stock. MacRumors reports: The all-new MacBook Neo has been such a hit that Apple is facing a "massive dilemma," according to Taiwan-based tech columnist and former Bloomberg reporter Tim Culpan. [...] In the latest edition of his Culpium newsletter today, Culpan said the MacBook Neo is selling so well that Apple's supply of the binned A18 Pro chips with a 5-core GPU will "run out" before the company is able to fully satisfy demand for the laptop. Apple's initial plan was to have suppliers build around five to six million MacBook Neo units before ceasing production of the model with the A18 Pro chip, he said, but it sounds like demand is so strong that Apple might run out of A18 Pro chips to put in the MacBook Neo before the second-generation MacBook Neo with an A19 Pro chip is ready next year. Apple is unlikely to mark the MacBook Neo as temporarily sold out, so it may be forced to take action, but profit margins might be affected.

A18 Pro chips are manufactured with TSMC's second-generation 3nm process, known as N3E, and Culpan said TSMC's N3E production lines are currently operating at maximum capacity. As a result, he said that Apple may have to pay a premium to restart A18 Pro chip production for the MacBook Neo, which would lower its profit margins. Apple would have to disable a GPU core on these chips to ensure that they have only a 5-core GPU, like all other MacBook Neo units sold to date. Alternatively, Culpan said that Apple could reallocate some of its chip production that was originally planned for other devices, but he said the cost would still be higher than what it paid for its initial batch of A18 Pro chips.

Culpan speculated that Apple could also opt to discontinue the $599 model with 256GB of storage, leaving the $699 model with 512GB of storage and a Touch ID button as the only configuration available. This is unlikely to happen any time soon, in our view, given how heavily Apple has been promoting the MacBook Neo's affordability. Apple might also be able to move up the release of a MacBook Neo with the iPhone 17 Pro's A19 Pro chip, but that too would be a costlier option, at least until the company achieves a sufficient stockpile of binned A19 Pro chips with a 5-core GPU. In any case, Apple could opt to keep the starting price of current and future MacBook Neo models at $599 and simply accept lower profit margins on the laptop, especially given that it attracts customers to the macOS and broader Apple ecosystem.

11 days ago Apple launched device-level age restrictions in the U.K. There were some glitches, reports the blog 9to5Mac. For me, the experience was an entirely painless one, taking less than 30 seconds. All I had to do was tap a confirm and continue button, and Apple told me that the length of time I'd had an Apple account was used to confirm that I'm 18+. Others, however, experienced difficulties with the process timing out or failing to complete. We summarized some of the steps you can take to try to address this. Apple has since listed additional acceptable ways to verify your age. "You can confirm your age with a credit card, or by scanning a driver's license or one of the following PASS-accredited Proof of Age cards: CitizenCard, My ID Card, TOTUM ID card, or Young Scot National Entitlement Card."

If you don't verify your age, then you'll be treated as a child or teenager, meaning that both the web content filter and communication safety features are switched on.
Apple is continuing the roll-out in Singapore (population 6 million) and South Korea (population 52 million), the article points out, citing a new Apple support document.

South Korea's law actually requires Apple to re-verify someone's age annually.

Apple's 50th anniversary got celebrated in weird and wild ways. CEO Tim Cook posted a special 30-second video rewinding backwards through the years of Apple's products until it reaches the Apple I. Podcaster Lex Fridman noticed if you play the sound in reverse, "It's the Think Different ad music, pitched up." TechRadar played seven 50-year-old Apple I games on an emulator, including Star Trek, Blackjack, Lunar Lander, and of course, Conway's Game of Life.

And Macworld ranked Apple's 50 most influential people. (Their top five?)

5. Tony Fadell (iPhone co-creator/"father of the iPod")
4. Sir Jony Ive
3. Steve Wozniak
2. Tim Cook
1. Steve Jobs

One of the most thoughtful celebraters was David Pogue, who's spent 42 years of writing about Apple (starting as a MacWorld columnist and the author of Mac for Dummies, one of the first "...For Dummies" books ever published in the early 1990s.) Now 63 years old, Pogue spent the last two years working on a 608-page hardcover book titled Apple: The First 50 Years. But on his Substack Pogue, contemplated his own history with the company — including several interactions with Steve Jobs. Pogue remembers how Jobs "hated open systems. He wanted to make self-contained, beautiful machines. He didn't want them polluted by modifications."

The tech blog Daring Fireball notes that Pogue actually interviewed Scott Forstall (who'd led the iPhone's software development team) for his new book, "and got this story, about just how far Steve Jobs thought Apple could go to expand the iPhone's software library while not opening it to third-party developers." "I want you to make a list of every app any customer would ever want to use," he told Forstall. "And then the two of us will prioritize that list. And then I'm going to write you a blank check, and you are going to build the largest development team in the history of the world, to build as many apps as you can as quickly as possible." Forstall, dubious, began composing a list. But on the side, he instructed his engineers to build the security foundations of an app store into the iPhone's software-"against Steve's knowledge and wishes," Forstall says. [...]

Two weeks after the iPhone's release, someone figured out how to "jailbreak" the iPhone: to hack it so that they could install custom apps. Jobs burst into Forstall's office. "You have to shut this down!" But Forstall didn't see the harm of developers spending their efforts making the iPhone better. "If they add something malicious, we'll ship an update tomorrow to protect against that. But if all they're doing is adding apps that are useful, there's no reason to break that." Jobs, troubled, reluctantly agreed.

Week by week, more cool apps arrived, available only to jailbroken phones. One day in October, Jobs read an article about some of the coolest ones. "You know what?" he said. "We should build an app store."

Forstall, delighted, revealed his secret plan. He had followed in the footsteps of Burrell Smith (the Mac's memory-expansion circuit) and Bob Belleville (the Sony floppy-drive deal): He'd disobeyed Jobs and wound up saving the project.
In fact, the book "includes new interviews with 150 key people who made the journey, including Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Jony Ive, and many current designers, engineers, and executives" (according to its description on Amazon). Pogue's book even revisits the story of Steve Jobs proving an iPod prototype could be smaller by tossing it into an aquarium, shouting "If there's air bubbles in there, there's still room. Make it smaller!" But Pogue's book "added that there's a caveat to this compelling bit of Apple lore," reports NPR.

"It never actually happened. It's just one more Apple myth."

Apple's 50th anniversary is this week — and Fast Company's Harry McCracken just published an 11,000-word oral history with some fun stories from Apple's earliest days and the long and winding road to its very first home computers: Steve Wozniak, cofounder, Apple: I told my dad when I was in high school, "I'm going to own a computer someday." My dad said, "It costs as much as a house." And I sat there at the table — I remember right where we were sitting — and I said, "I'll live in an apartment." I was going to have a computer if it was ever possible. I didn't need a house.
Woz even remembers trying to build a home computer early on with a teenaged Steve Jobs and Bill Fernandez from rejected parts procured from local electronics companies. Woz designed it — "not from anybody else's design or from a manual. And Fernandez was one of those kids that could use a soldering iron." Bill Fernandez: The computer was very basic. It was working, and we were starting to talk about how we could hook a teletype up to it. Mrs. Wozniak called a reporter from the San Jose Mercury, and he came over with a photographer. We set up the computer on the floor of Steve Wozniak's bedroom.

Well, the core integrated circuit that ran the power supply that I built was an old reject part. We turned on the computer, and the power supply smoked and burnt out the circuitry. So we didn't get our photos in the paper with an article about the boy geniuses.
But within a few years Jobs and Wozniak both wound up with jobs at local tech companies. Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell remembers that Steve Jobs "wasn't a good engineer, but he was a great technician. He was pristine in his ability to solder, which was actually important in those days." Meanwhile Allen Baum had shared Wozniak's high school interest in computers, and later got Woz a job working at Hewlett-Packard — where employees were allowed to use stockroom parts for private projects. ("When he needed some parts, even if we didn't have them, I could order them.") Baum helped with the Apple I and II, and joined Apple a decade later.

Wozniak remembers being inspired to build that first Apple I by the local Homebrew Computing Club, people "talking about great things that would happen to society, that we would be able to communicate like we never did [before] and educate in new ways. And being a geek would be important and have value." And once he'd built his first computer, "I wanted these people to help create the revolution. And so I passed out my designs with no copyright notices — public domain, open source, everything. A couple of other people in the club did build it."

But Woz and Jobs had even tried pitching the computer as a Hewlett-Packard product, Woz remembers: Steve Wozniak: I showed them what it would cost and how it would work and what it could do with my little demos. They had all the engineering people and the marketing people, and they turned me down. That was the first of five turndowns from Hewlett-Packard. Steve Jobs and I had to go into business on our own.
In the end, Randy Wigginton, Apple employee No. 6 remembers witnessing Jobs, Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne the signing of Apple's founding contract, "which is pretty funny, because I was 15 at the time." And it was Allen Baum's father who gave Wozniak and Jobs the bridge loan to buy the parts they'd need for their first 500 computers.

After all the memories, the article concludes that "Trying to connect every dot between Apple, the tiny, dirt-poor 1970s startup, and Apple, the $3.7 trillion 21st-century global colossus, is impossible." But this much is clear: The company has always been at its best when its original quirky humanity and willingness to be an outlier shine through.

Mark Johnson, Apple employee No. 13: I was in Cupertino just yesterday. It's totally different. They own Cupertino now.

Jonathan Rotenberg, who cofounded the Boston Computer Society in 1977 at age 13: People want to hate Apple, because it is big and powerful. But Apple has an underlying moral purpose that is immensely deep and expansive...

Mike Markkula, the early retiree from Intel whose guidance and money turned the garage startup into a company: The culture mattered. People were there for the right reasons — to build something transformative — not just to make money. That alignment produced extraordinary results...

Steve Wozniak: Everything you do in life should have some element of joy in it. Even your work should have an element of joy... When you're about to die, you have certain memories. And for me, it's not going to be Apple going public or Apple being huge and all that. It's really going to be stories from the period when humble people spotted something that was interesting and followed it

I'll be thinking of that when I die, along with a lot of pranks I played. The important things.

Apple unveiled new device-level age restrictions in the UK on Wednesday. "After downloading a new update, users will now have to confirm that they are 18 or older to access unrestricted features," reports Gizmodo.

"Users will be able to confirm their age with a credit card or by scanning an ID." For those underage or who have not confirmed their age, Apple will turn on Web Content Filter and Communication Safety, which will not only restrict access to certain apps or websites, but will also monitor messages, shared photo albums, AirDrop, and FaceTime calls for nudity. Apple didn't specify exactly which services and features are banned for under-18 users, but it will likely be in compliance with UK legislation...

The British government does not require Apple and other OS providers to institute device-level age checks, but it does restrict minor access to online pornography under the Online Safety Act, which passed in 2023. So far, that restriction has only been implemented at the website level, but UK officials have been worried about easy loopholes to evade the age restrictions, like VPNs.

The broader tech industry has been campaigning for some time to use device-level age checks instead in response to the rising tide of under-16 social media and internet bans around the world. Last month, in a landmark social media trial in California, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also supported this idea, saying that conducting age verification "at the level of the phone is just a lot clearer than having every single app out there have to do this separately." Pornhub-operator Aylo had advocated for device-level restrictions in the UK as well, and even sent out letters to Apple, Google, and Microsoft in November asking for OS-level age verification...

The most obvious question: Could this be brought stateside?

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: ClickFix attacks are ramping up. These attacks have users copy and paste a string to something that can execute a command line — like the Windows Run dialog, or a shell prompt.

But MacRumors reports that macOS 26.4 Tahoe (updated earlier this week) introduces a new feature to its Terminal app where it will detect ClickFix attempts and stop them by prompting the user if they really wanted to run those commands.
According to MacRumors, the warning readers "Possible malware, Paste blocked."

"Your Mac has not been harmed. Scammers often encourage pasting text into Terminal to try and harm your Mac or compromise your privacy...."

There is also a "Paste Anyway" option if users still wish to proceed.

A workplace-device study says Windows PCs crash significantly more often than Macs, lag further behind on patching and encryption in some sectors, and are typically replaced sooner. TechSpot reports: Omnissa's 2026 State of Digital Workspace report outlines the IT challenges that various organizations face from the growing use of AI and the heterogeneous deployment of enterprise devices. The relative instability of Windows and Android is a recurring theme throughout the report. The company gathered telemetry from clients located across the globe in retail, healthcare, finance, education, government, and other sectors throughout 2025. The data suggests that IT administrators face frustrating security gaps due to inconsistent patching across a diverse mosaic of devices and operating systems.

Employee workflow disruption, often due to software issues, is one area of concern. The report found that Windows devices were forced to shut down 3.1 times more often than Macs. Windows programs also froze 7.5 times more often than macOS apps and needed to be restarted more than twice as often. Certain industries were also alarmingly lax in securing Windows and Android devices. More than half of Windows and Android devices in healthcare and pharma were five major operating system updates behind, likely leaving them more vulnerable to errors and malware. More than half of the desktops and mobile devices used for education were also unencrypted, putting students' privacy at risk.

Macs also last longer, being replaced every five years on average, compared to every three years for Windows PCs. Despite a recent backlash against Windows, driven by a push for digital sovereignty in countries such as Germany, Windows use on government devices actually doubled last year. Meanwhile, Macs using Apple's M-series chips showcase a significant thermal advantage, with an average temperature of 40.1 degrees Celsius, while Intel processors run at 65.2 degrees.

Apple has discontinued the Mac Pro and says it has no plans for future models. "The 'buy' page on Apple's website for the Mac Pro now redirects to the Mac's homepage, where all references have been removed," reports 9to5Mac. From the report: The Mac Pro has lived many lives over the years. Apple released the current Mac Pro industrial design in 2019 alongside the Pro Display XDR (which was also discontinued earlier this month). That version of the Mac Pro was powered by Intel, and Apple refreshed it with the M2 Ultra chip in June 2023. It has gone without an update since then, languishing at its $6,999 price point even as Apple debuted the M3 Ultra chip in the Mac Studio last year.

Apple reportedly has full access to customize Google's Gemini model, allowing it to distill smaller on-device AI models for Siri and other features that can run locally without an internet connection. MacRumors reports: The Information explains that Apple can ask the main Gemini model to perform a series of tasks that provide high-quality results, with a rundown of the reasoning process. Apple can feed the answers and reasoning information that it gets from Gemini to train smaller, cheaper models. With this process, the smaller models are able to learn the internal computations used by Gemini, producing efficient models that have Gemini-like performance but require less computing power.

Apple is also able to edit Gemini as needed to make sure that it responds to queries in a way that Apple wants, but Apple has been running into some issues because Gemini has been tuned for chatbot and coding applications, which doesn't always meet Apple's needs.

Apple is reportedly preparing to add search ads to Apple Maps, "and it could start to roll out to users by the summer," reports AppleInsider, citing sources from Bloomberg (paywalled). From the report: Apple will make an announcement as soon as March. This will bring ads to search queries within the navigation app, which will operate similar to Google's advertising system. Retailers and brands will be able to bid for ad spots located against search queries for specific terms, such as types of food or services. The winning bid will be able to show an ad at the top of the results, pointing to a related location for that business. Apple also announced in January that it would add more ads within the App Store, starting March in the UK and Japan.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the tech-news blog Neowin: Apple appears to have temporarily prevented apps, including Replit and Vibecode, from pushing new updates. Apple seems bothered by how apps like Replit present vibe-coded apps in a web view within the original app. This process virtually allows the app to become something else. And the new app isn't distributed via the App Store, but it still runs on the user's device... [S]uch apps would also bypass the App Store Review process that ensures that apps are safe to use and meet Apple's design and performance standards...

According to the publication (via MacRumors), Apple was close to approving pending updates for such apps if they changed how they work. For instance, Replit would get the green light if its developers configure the app to open vibe-coded apps in an external browser rather than the in-app web view.

Vibecode is also close to being approved if it removes features, such as the ability to develop apps specifically for the App Store.

BrianFagioli writes: A new iOS exploit chain called DarkSword shows how attackers can break into certain iPhones, grab sensitive data like messages, credentials, and even crypto wallets, and then disappear without leaving obvious traces. It targets older iOS 18 builds using Safari and WebGPU flaws to escape Apple's sandbox, which is pretty wild on its own, but what really stands out is how fast it works and how financially motivated these attacks have become. The takeaway is simple but important, update your iPhone ASAP and don't assume mobile devices are somehow safer than desktops anymore.