When all is said and done, I doubt anyone will cite 2025 as a key year in the history of Apple. The company admitted that it couldn’t deliver on a promise it made back in 2024, and it shipped a bunch of impressive but incremental improvements to its existing hardware devices. The iPhone Air is a fun product, but is hardly setting the world on fire. 2025 was, above all else… a year.
On the other hand, 2026 feels like it will be momentous for Apple in numerous areas. After a few years of calm, it feels like the storm is upon us.
Here at Apple, we don’t like looking back—only ruthlessly forward. But certain milestones demand recognition, which is why we’re taking a hard look in the mirror as we prepare for our imminent arrival at the half-century mark.
In just three short months, Apple will turn 50. Hard to believe: the life expectancies of many of our contemporaries was often measured in months or years, not decades. Some vanished. Some were acquired by bigger companies. But Apple has persisted. And we’ve seen tremendous rewards, because in this business you either die the ignominious death of the foolhardy or live long enough to see yourself become the hero. Pretty sure that’s right.
But in recent quiet moments, when we’re doing a mindfulness exercise or heeding the Apple Watch’s reminders to breathe, we find our thoughts wandering backwards through the past and wonder what the Apple of today really has in common with Apple of 50 years ago?…
In a special year end installment of our Unwound segment for all listeners, Mikah and Dan talk about tech impressions from 2025 and what they’re excited about for 2026.
Once again the year draws to a close and so we are forced by contractual obligation to tell you, dear readers, about our favorite things from the last arbitrary period of time. I’ve assembled (arbitrarily) my top three picks across several different categories, just to pull out some things I really enjoyed which, who knows, you might like too.1
New Apple Features
Wi-Fi password filling — I only noticed this somewhat recently, but if you log in to a captive Wi-Fi network in macOS Tahoe (and, I assume, other Apple 26 platform updates), it will offer to fill in the Wi-Fi password for you. I’m not sure why this was never a feature before, but I absolutely love it.
Preview app on iOS/iPadOS – The Quick Look option previously offered by Files was fine for doing exactly what it said on the tin, but for anything more in-depth, the shortcomings of smushing PDFs into the Files app became quickly apparent. Fortunately, after only eighteen years, Apple finally shipped its own PDF viewer on both the iPhone and iPad, and it’s really improved the experience of dealing with PDFs on those devices.
Sleep Score – Continuing this year’s theme, which is apparently “arbitrariness”, yes, the idea of scoring one’s sleep on a 100 point scale seems ridiculous, but I’ve found that since starting to track my sleep with Apple’s Sleep Score feature, I get antsy when I don’t do it. Yes, there are other apps that take more direct health metrics into account, but Apple’s scores being potentially more inflated do weirdly make me feel better about my sleep? So I guess that’s something.
Apps
Nike Run Club – I got back into running for several months this year, though the cold weather has recently put paid to that. However, I still really appreciate the Nike Run Club app for its Guided Run feature, which provides an audio accompaniment to your workouts, often in the form of the very cheerful “real life Ted Lasso” Coach Bennett; it puts Apple’s soulless Workout Buddy feature to shame. Having a Watch app that lets me download the audio guides to listen to locally, and therefore not require me to bring my phone along, is an added bonus.
Dark Noise – Speaking of sleep, I’ve gotten more into using white noise this year when I wake up in the middle of the night, and Charlie Chapman’s Dark Noise app has become my weapon of choice. Great assortment of sounds, easy to use, and it lets you make custom mixes of your sounds. (My personal favorite is a mix of Airplane Interior with Green Noise. Puts me right out.)
Wipr 2 – I retired 1Blocker this year in favor of this little indie app by Kaylee Calderolla. It’s a universal app across all of Apple’s platforms, easy to set up, and does its job without ever getting in your way. Best of all it’s a paid app that doesn’t require a subscription! Buy once and you’re done.
Clipboard History on macOS: Two years ago, a question from a reader led me to ponder what stones Apple had left unturned over four decades of Mac development. My conclusion was that the lack of a clipboard history feature was a gaping hole. Somehow, in macOS Tahoe, the hole was filled. Apple added a clipboard history feature that might not satisfy power users of Pastebot, but will work pretty well for general use. My only real complaint about Apple’s implementation is that it requires two keystrokes—Command-Space to invoke Spotlight, and then Command-4 to enter Clipboard History mode. I’ve wired that sequence to my old LaunchBar clipboard history shortcut (Command-backslash), but users should be able to set that shortcut without needing a third-party tool.
iPad Multitasking: They finally did it. Apple got over all of its hang-ups over not making the iPad too much like the Mac, and just went for it: iPadOS 26 multitasking is full, no-compromises Mac-style windowing. Put a window wherever you like, drag ’em around, do what you want. And because the feature is hidden behind a mode toggle, people who don’t want to use the feature will never see it. If I had any quibbles about Apple’s implementation, they were mostly about Apple ignoring some unique utility users found in Split View and Slide Over, two old-school iPad multitasking features that didn’t make it over in 26.0. Fortunately, Apple added most of the missing features back in 26.1 and 26.2.
Private Cloud Compute in Shortcuts: Say what you will about Apple’s AI models, but the 26 OS updates gave every user access, for free, to Apple’s private cloud models via Shortcuts. Being able to pass steps of an automation to an LLM unlocks a lot of functionality, and I’m happy to do that all in a private environment and without setting up and paying for an API key from a third-party AI company. Next up: Apple needs to keep improving its models and start offering a way for third-party apps to hook into Private Cloud Compute. But this is a great start.
Some shiny app favorites
Over the decades, I’ve built up some intricate workflows based on apps I’ve been using forever. I try to remain open to new apps and new ways of working, but there’s a high bar to clear there. As a result, most of my time is spent with old favorites like BBEdit, Fantastical, and Safari. On the iPad, I’m still using 1Writer for writing, though I am constantly scanning for other apps that combine my preferred style of Markdown editing with an appropriate level of automation support.
Still, there are some apps that I want to single out.
Mimestream continues to be my Mac mail app of choice. It only supports Gmail, so your mileage may vary, but I’m a Gmail user, and this is the Mac Gmail client of my dreams. I can’t wait for the iOS (and, hopefully, iPad) version.
I got to use Final Cut Camera this year for a few multi-camera recording sessions for Upgrade, and came away very impressed. The integration between Final Cut Pro for iPad and Final Cut Camera on iPhone is solid, making it super easy to capture multiple camera angles and then put them all together later. My only real complaint is that there’s no way to use Final Cut Pro on the Mac to do the same thing. That makes about as much sense as the fact that Final Cut Pro for iPad still doesn’t support the background export feature in iPadOS 26 that was practically written for it.
Callsheet by my pal Casey Liss has only become more firmly ensconced in our everyday lives, as we watch movies and TV shows and wonder who that actor is and what else we’ve seen them in, or how old they were, or what the age difference is between that older actor and his much younger co-star. I’m so glad to never have to visit IMDB again.
Numbers is this obscure app from some fruit company in Cupertino that’s in the esoteric genre of “spreadsheet” apps. Anyway, in the last few years, I finally stopped using Excel, because I’ve discovered that I’m more comfortable in Numbers and Google Sheets. The end of a decades-long relationship is admittedly weird, but the more I dig into Numbers, the more I appreciate it. This year, with the help of a few readers, I managed to completely revamp how I generate financial charts using Numbers formulas I had never seen before. I still use Sheets a lot because it’s a lightweight answer to basic collaboration, but Numbers is an increasingly large part of my life.
ChatGPT and Claude aren’t great Mac apps yet, but the more they properly integrate with the Mac, the more promise they show. ChatGPT gained the ability to look right into specific windows on my Mac, and Claude’s support for MCP servers and AppleScript creates some delightful synergies. I firmly believe that most AI discourse is hype, but that there are also genuinely useful applications for the technology underneath that giant hype bubble. Last week, I got Claude to grab text from BBEdit, proofread it, and insert the result back into a new BBEdit window. Just amazing—but of course, the Claude app isn’t automatable, and there’s no way to “save” a Claude prompt for re-use later. You have to laugh—this technology is so remarkable and so primitive at the same time. Given OpenAI’s purchase of Software Applications, a startup from the creators of Shortcuts that aimed to fuse LLM technology with the Mac interface, this is an area worth close attention in the next few years.
Longplayarrived for the Mac this year, bringing its delightful album-oriented approach to listening to music over from iOS. I listen to most of my music while working at my Mac, so this is a great fit. I admire the developer’s commitment to automation hooks: he built in support for AppleScript, Shortcuts, and even control via MCP from AI apps. The real bummer is that it’s constrained by a macOS limitation that prevents apps from directly AirPlaying Apple Music tracks. Apple needs to fix that.
Superwhisper exemplifies the potential for good integration between our devices and AI systems that goes beyond chatbots. While I doubt I will ever be a voice-first user of computer interfaces, Superwhisper’s concept is flexible enough to impress even me. It will convert your speech into text, yes, but it can also process it through an LLM—and change how it processes it based on how you’re currently using your Mac. I really like the idea of a tool that knows that my text in BBEdit is not the same as my text in Mimestream or Safari. Superwhisper gets that.
Festivitas delighted me last year with its ability to string holiday lights across my Mac’s menu bar. For the Mac’s entire history, there have been “utilities” that don’t do anything useful, but provide delight, and this one fits right in. This year’s update added snowfall and, more importantly, support for automation via Shortcuts. I’ve spent the last month with a one-in-seven chance of a snowfall every 20 minutes, and it’s been delightful. I can not tell you how much delight about seeing those first flakes and saying to myself, “Oh, it’s snowing!” As someone who has never used a snow blower or shoveled a sidewalk, snow is a delightful effect that I generally only see in holiday-themed movies.
I sometimes think about what we lost along the way as Apple chased ultra-simplicity and luxury. Jony Ive spent a decade slowly removing any trace of personality from every product Apple released. Apple went from the original translucent-colored plastic aesthetic of the “Bondi blue” iMac G3 and the Power Mac G3 “Blue & White” to the more refined and unique design of the iMac G4 to… a bunch of aluminum rounded rectangles for decades. Chasing thinness, removing ports, simplifying everything down to metal and glass with no differentiation.
As Mantia wrote:
[Ive] and his team designed great products during the first half of his tenure at Apple. But as he became wealthier, he started to conflate good taste with luxury. Jony often described Apple products with words about craft, material, and precision, all things that appeal to a luxury market. Apple shifted away from making products “for the rest of us” and started making products that appealed specifically to rich people.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but they started making products that appealed to themselves. Because since Steve Jobs died, Apple, its executives, and its corporate employees got significantly wealthier. It wasn’t just Jony who took an interest in luxury. The whole company did. Anyone with even a little bit of power in the company started to dress more expensively. They all look like they could walk right out of a fashion advertisement.
In the wake of Steve Jobs’s death, Apple elevated Jony Ive to a position of total design authority as a way of signaling to the wider world that the company was going to be okay after losing its co-founder and leader. In that era, there was a genuine fear that a company led by an operations guy was not going to be able to keep the magic going. (Certainly, that’s a narrative that current and former Apple designers have been happy to push ever since.)
The more I think about it, the more this (perfectly reasonable!) tactical decision has come to feel like the original sin of the Tim Cook era. An unchained and elevated Ive sent the right message to the world, and Ive really is a talented designer who built beautiful things. But without Steve Jobs to rein things in, Apple’s design sense got more insular, more obscure, more minimal.
It’s one reason I’m so critical about Ive, his overlong tenure at Apple when he was obviously burned out, and the fatal mistake of placing software design in the clutches of him and his lieutenants: I just get the sense that those designers became untethered from the rest of us, chasing idealized product dreams based on the expensive luxury brands they wore, drove, and otherwise used every day. Not that Apple designs ugly stuff, but there is undoubtedly an antiseptic sameness to a lot of it that smacks of a design team that has disappeared up its own white void.
It’s time for the 12th Annual Upgradies! Myke and Jason discuss their favorites of 2025, take the input of many Upgradians, and hand out awards in numerous categories! Only the finest will walk away with the most coveted of titles: Upgradies Winner.
It seems like everyone—hackers, governments, corporations—want to track everything we do online and in the physical world. Apple has a multi-year history of rolling out new methods of deflecting, deterring, or blocking new forms of unwanted tracking. One that may have slipped under your radar could affect how your devices connect and stay connected over Wi-Fi at your home or office and while using hotspots on the ground or in the air.
Called Private Wi-Fi Address by Apple, it’s really just one example of a more generic kind of networking component that dates back decades, tracing its roots to Ethernet addressing over local networks. Network interfaces need a way to identify themselves, so that when one device wants to send information to another, it can stamp a data packet uniquely so that the recipient device will receive it.
A big MAC attack
On local area networks, or LANs, that method is a MAC: Media Access Control address. The MAC is one of several layers in a network model. The important aspect of this model is that each layer is “responsible” for a different task. The lowest layer in the simplest model covers the physical interface, like Wi-Fi or Ethernet, and how data packets are addressed to traverse that layer.1
Simplified mapping of services and protocols to the TCP/IP and OSI network layer models. There will not be a test. (Figure via Ardika6879, Wikimedia Commons.)
The MAC address—distinct from a Mac’s address—defines a network interface uniquely. If you have several interfaces on your device, like Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Ethernet-over-Thunderbolt, and so forth, each has its own MAC address.
For fixed devices, like desktop computers and routers, having an unchanging MAC address doesn’t give much away, because the MAC addresses can only be seen on a LAN. That address is stripped when traffic is routed over the Internet, which uses Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, which operate at a higher network layer.
The emergence of laptops and, more so, mobile devices like phones, tablets, and oodles of other gear that connects to Wi-Fi whenever they can means that it’s far easier for people and organizations to sniff the MAC address of a device. Whenever that device connects successfully to a wireless LAN (WLAN), its MAC address is exposed.
Now, that doesn’t sound so bad. Except that people with insidious goals—criminal or marketing—who have access in the LAN and to Web sites can associate your MAC address with certain activities you might perform. This requires the collaboration (or subversion) of companies offering Wi-Fi access with marketers who infer individuals’ identities by actions they connect. This might allow them to know who you are, where you are, and some of what you’re doing.
As Apple explains it, “If the device always uses the same Wi-Fi MAC address across all networks, network operators and other network observers can more easily relate that address to the device’s network activity and location over time. This allows a kind of user tracking or profiling, and it affects all devices on all Wi-Fi networks.”
Private Wi-Fi Address provides a deterrent effect by taking that fixed, unique MAC address, and changing it from time to time.
Long before Apple introduced this option—I think back in the early 2000s—I remember reading up on how Linux and Windows users had utilities that let them change the MAC address on their Wi-Fi adapters for improved anonymity. Having that process automated as a privacy feature feels like a big step up.
However, it can bite you, as you don’t always want to appear like a unique device every time the MAC address shifts over. Apple offers controls that can help.
Each network, a new MAC Address
For starters, with your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, Apple automatically generates a unique private MAC address for two kinds of Wi-Fi networks:
Networks with no password: These are typically publicly available ones that may be completely open, or require a click to agree to policies and join (or an email address or other personal information) or payment to use.
Networks with weak security: While the oldest form of Wi-Fi network encryption is essentially dead, a slightly newer form, the original WPA flavor, remains in use while having many weaknesses.2 WPA2 and WPA3 are considered strong.
A rotating private address changes every two weeks to try to deter unwanted inferential tracking.
This prevents tracking across networks that attempt to associate your behavior. In the two cases above, the default setting for Private Wi-Fi Address is Rotating: the MAC address changes about every two weeks. Apple offers Off, in which your actual physically assigned MAC address is used, and Fixed, which creates a MAC address for a network and then never changes it.
Because sometimes you want to keep the address the same over time, you might switch from Rotating to Fixed or even Off. Public networks often track you over time not for nefarious purposes, but because they’ve added your MAC address to their approved list and you don’t have to authenticate again! If you trust the network, you may want to change the setting for it to Fixed. I believe that some airline Wi-Fi is quite sensitive to MAC addresses, and setting those networks to fixed can keep you connected and prevent session expiration.3
Private Wi-Fi Address automatically obscures your hardware identity on exposed networks, but you can override it if useful.
Here’s where to make the change:
On a Mac, go to Apple Menu: System Settings: Wi-Fi. Click Details next to an active network or click the More… button next to another listed network and choose Network Settings. You can then choose Fixed or Off from the “Private Wi-Fi address” menu.
On an iPhone or iPad, open the Settings app, tap Wi-Fi, and then tap the info (i) icon to the right of a network in the main Wi-Fi list and change the MAC rotation from the Private Wi-Fi Address menu.4
Note that the Wi-Fi/MAC address appears below the Private Wi-Fi Address menu in each of these views. If you need to provide a MAC address to a network administrator, after setting it to Fixed, copy that address. If your address is set to Fixed on your own network, or you change it to Fixed, most routers let you use a MAC address to assign a specific local private IP address—or, for kids, control their access to the Internet!
For further reading
I address (sorry) private Wi-Fi addresses and many other practical and security issues in two books:
Take Control of Securing Your Apple Devices offers a broad overview of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS security largely from the perspective of protecting access to your physical devices and intrusion into them from people, apps, and Web sites, and protecting data at rest.
[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use/glennin our subscriber-only Discord community.]
There’s the simplified four-layer TCP/IP model, linked above, and a more general Open Systems Interconnection, created by the ISO standards group, with seven layers, teasing apart some functions into greater separation for clarity (see figure). In the OSI model, the bottom layer is physical (transmitting bits over hardware), and the next one up is data link (connecting two nodes). ↩
The first standard, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy), was meant to be a very thin protective layer, as the assumption was Wi-Fi would be used in offices and homes. It was broken within a few years, and WPA was a firmware-upgradable replacement for most older devices that provided far better protection, but is quite weak by standards of 20 years ago! ↩
I haven’t flown enough to test this rigorously, but I definitely had problems in 2024, where setting the airline network to Fixed appeared to solve the problem. It may have been coincidence. ↩
Only in iOS and iPadOS, you can tap Edit at the top-right corner of the Wi-Fi menu in Settings and then edit stored private address settings. You can click Advanced on a Mac in the Wi-Fi view and click the More icon, but it doesn’t reveal network settings. ↩
Rich person numbers can be hard to figure out so I wonder if that’s even enough to warrant putting under the tree or if Cook just handed it to someone and said “Put this in my stocking.”
The purchase had the effect of juicing Nike’s floundering stock price by between 2 to 5%. That may seem like a lot but I would like to note that my gift to my wife of a puzzle I had made of a picture of our dog boosted the market for puzzles made of pictures of our dog by 100%, so who’s the big-time market mover now?…
This display can only be used by its included Mac.
I’ve been thinking about Apple’s relationship with computer displays lately. Maybe it was the report that the iMac Pro might somehow return, combined with John Voorhees of MacStories detailing how he gave up the Studio Display for an ASUS monitor? And, of course, there’s the prospect that we may be seeing new Apple-made standalone displays in 2026.
I don’t want to go back to a world where Apple no longer makes standalone displays. But that said, I think the company’s approach to display technology needs a serious upgrade.
Let’s start with the entire concept of the iMac. Back in the day, you could repurpose a non-retina iMac as an external monitor via a feature called Target Display Mode. When the iMac went to 5K in 2014, that feature got dropped because a retina display has a lot of pixels, and we just didn’t have the technology to connect a 5K display to an external device.
But we do now. My MacBook Pro can drive an 8K display and two 6K displays at 60Hz. It can drive a 240Hz 4K display. It can drive three 6K displays and a 4K display at 60Hz. This is a solved problem. And yet modern iMacs still can’t be repurposed as external displays.
The Apple silicon era is great, but there is no doubt that a modern M4 iMac will become slow and outmoded long before its 4.5K display wears out. As I wrote a couple of years ago:
It’s already a little painful to think about how wasteful an all-in-one computer can be, given that displays can have lifespans vastly longer than the computers they’re attached to. Apple could assuage a lot of that frustration if it would engineer the iMac to double as a display for another device. Given the company’s commitment to the environment, perhaps it’s time to build a new Target Display Mode.
I’ll point out that the Studio Display, Apple’s nearly four-year-old 27-inch 5K display, is powered by an A13 Bionic chip running a version of iOS. Apple should absolutely be able to design any all-in-one Mac it sells with the ability to be placed in “display mode” and accept Thunderbolt input. Surely any modern Apple silicon processor could handle running the same software that’s in the Studio Display.
And as John Voorhees pointed out, the Studio Display itself is not so hot. Voorhees wanted a display that could do more than just display the contents of a Mac. His ASUS display might be a little lower-resolution than a Studio Display, but it accepts HDMI and DisplayPort input, allowing him to hook up a gaming PC, console, or Apple TV as well as his computer.
Anyone who has tried to use the Studio Display for literally anything other than hooking it up to a Mac or iPad will tell you that it’s a nightmare. Why is such a display—still too expensive, and long surpassed in specs by numerous other displays—so inflexible? I’d be much more inclined to buy a new Studio Display if I knew it could be used by other devices. Or if it supported AirPlay. (Yes, you can AirPlay to a Mac—but that’s a really limited use case.) If these displays are going to be powered by iPhone-class processors, they should be more capable!
I’ve bought two Studio Displays. There are a lot of advantages to using an Apple display. But this is an area in which Apple is doing its own brand dirty. The next Studio Display needs to be more flexible, and if Apple introduces a big-screen iMac that can’t ever be used by any device other than its own embedded, non-upgradeable Mac, that will be a tragedy.
Think back to the end of 2024. It was a more innocent time. Sure, after unveiling Apple Intelligence with great fanfare at WWDC in June, it hadn’t actually shipped much (other than a raft of TV commercials featuring nonexistent features). But surely the company wouldn’t let us down. 2025 was truly going to be the year Siri got fixed and Apple Intelligence took flight.
‘Tis the season to be harried. There’s a work thing, a friend thing, some poor sucker has a birthday in December, shopping for food, shopping for presents, donations, shopping for food again because you forgot something… The list of things to do is endless. So when you do get a gift lined up for a loved one, and it’s something from a premium electronics brand like Apple, you might feel like you’ve done your job. The recipient will be so excited to open that new Apple Watch for the holidays, but remember that they may not really be prepared for a multi-part setup process.
I’ll share a slightly cautionary tale of giving myself an Apple Watch Series 11 as a combination Christmas and “It’s too bad my birthday is close to Christmas” gift.
The battery on my Apple Watch Series 7 was no longer lasting the day, and that is the primary reason to upgrade an Apple Watch these days. Whomever you’re gifting an Apple device to is probably in a similar situation, where it’s mostly the battery or physical damage, so it seems like a straightforward gift.
First of all, the new Watch paired with my iPhone just fine, but it needed to download and install watchOS 26.1. That took forever, and it lacked an accurate estimate of when user intervention would be needed again.
Sure, there are several spans of time that are mentioned, but it might as well be a random number generator. I just kept checking my iPhone over and over by unlocking it, and waiting for the interface to refresh to tell me what cryptic step it was on.
That’s a really crummy experience, since the iPhone and the Watch need to be near each other, and the Watch needs to be on a charger. Keep in mind that a charging cable is included with the Watch, but there’s no power adapter. You might want to have a charging block on hand, and potentially the means to keep their iPhone charged, too, if you don’t want to have to keep leaving your holiday celebrations to check on the installation, pairing, and restore process.1
Don’t merely hand a boxed Apple Watch to your loved one before you walk out the door, or they hop on a plane. Part of your gift is this annoying setup.
Second of all, after watchOS 26.1 was installed, the pairing process froze. I needed to back out of it on my iPhone, complete with a dire warning that my Watch would be reset to factory settings. There was little choice, so I resigned myself to it. This got the iPhone in a state where the Watch app said it was unpairing with my Watch for about 10 minutes. Once that was finished, the iPhone and Watch were able to start the pairing process again, but did not have to redownload and install the latest watchOS. In total, this was an hour and a half of my time.
Third, even though it’s supposed to migrate your data and settings from your old Watch, it doesn’t do that in its entirety.
Reauthorizing credit cards for Apple Pay means taking out each credit card and entering the security code information. Also, as it turns out, you need to make sure the default credit card for Apple Pay doesn’t get changed, and confirm that express transit is set to the correct card. Neither was correct for me when I upgraded from Series 7 to Series 11. I spent a couple of days using another card that was the same color as my default card before I realized it was wrong.
There’s no way to skip some of the helpful onboarding dialogs, even if the person is migrating from a recent Apple Watch. My old watch was running watchOS 26.1, but I still got the whole walkthrough about how the Digital Crown works, and the Workouts app still wanted to explain the “new” Workouts app I had already been using. These are minor annoyances that require no guidance from you, but rest assured that Apple just doesn’t care if someone has already gone through these steps.
I have the Tips app set to never, ever, ever give me tips about anything, and yet that was reverted to helpful pings about how Apple Watches work. If the person you’re gifting an Apple Watch to finds these useful, then that’s fine, but if they don’t, they will really appreciate it if you dig into the Watch app’s notifications tab for them.
After the watch was allegedly ready to go, my Modular watch face was missing all of my complications, and there didn’t seem to be any way to force it to reload them. They did appear when I checked again an hour later, but nothing is reassuring about it. If you notice something is missing, then preemptively tell the person that you’ll leave it on the charger for a little bit and wait for it to finish doing some background tasks. Again, adding to that hour and a half to two hours you might have already spent.
The final thing that will spring up on their new Apple Watch are permissions authorizations. Those are not restored from the old watch, and they don’t happen during the setup process. They reveal themselves only if something is invoked that requires those permissions.
For example, when I got into the car and used Siri to pull up directions in CarPlay, my wrist buzzed that Maps wanted access to my location information. It was not safe for me to fiddle with my wrist watch while I was driving on the freeway, so I didn’t get any of the helpful little wrist buzzes for turns. It’s not a huge deal, but maybe just pop Maps open for them before they go out into the world.
Remember that as a technology enthusiast, your gift giving is not the money you spend on the gift, or physically wrapping and handing them a box, but in supporting them to actually enjoy their present instead of being frustrated by some of the technical hiccups. If you’re not ready to go through with helping them set up Apple products, maybe get them some pears from Harry & David instead?
Or maybe you do want an excuse to leave your holiday celebrations. Your secret’s safe with me. ↩
[Joe Rosensteel is a VFX artist and writer based in Los Angeles.]
With the release of iOS 26.2, iPadOS 26.2, and macOS 26.2, Apple has tweaked its AirDrop protocol once again, adding an additional bar to sending items to other people through this wireless service when you are not in their contact list. Instead of just tapping or clicking, you must exchange a code. The new AirDrop code provides more privacy (and security), and even creates a temporary contact entry for a party agreeing to receive material.1
AirDrop lets you send all manner of things, including a link to a Web page.
However, it makes it even harder to use AirDrop in an ad hoc fashion—sending or receiving items quickly with another person a single time or a few times when permission is granted.
How did we get here? And how does AirDrop code work in practice? Let’s dig in.
I will turn this plane around
Apple had a problem with AirDrop. Even as the company made the proximity-based protocol for sending files, links, and images work consistently—after years of complaints—people persisted in using it for harassment or trolling. If you left AirDrop’s receive setting tuned to Everyone, you might get unwanted images, including photos of private parts.2
In 2022, a Southwest Airlines pilot told passengers he was going to return the plane to the gate if they didn’t stop using AirDrop to send unsolicited nude pictures. “Whatever that AirDrop thing is — quit sending naked pictures. Let’s get yourself to Cabo,” he was recorded saying on a TikTok video.
Possibly in response to that, and possibly due to reported but unconfirmed demands by the Chinese government, Apple changed the iPhone and iPad receiving option “Everyone” to “Everyone for 10 Minutes.” After 10 minutes, the setting reverted to Contacts Only. (You can also disable receiving items via AirDrop entirely.)
That 10-minute period ostensibly let you provide an opening for someone else to transmit something to you via AirDrop without providing a longer time period in which you might receive unwanted images. (I have to expect that most trolls and creeps using AirDrop to send such stuff gave up on it when there wasn’t a massive list of available destinations anymore.)
(In iOS 17, Apple also added a way to verify that two iPhones can exchange AirDrop transmissions by holding them next to each other. That proximity generates a bubbly visual effect and grants permission for a transfer, so long as you have Start Sharing By Bringing Devices Together turned on in Settings: General: AirDrop.)
With the introduction of AirDrop codes in the 26.2 releases last week, the AirDrop verification process has changed further. Instead of a recipient enabling Everyone for 10 Minutes on an iPhone or iPad or Everyone on a Mac and then being able to accept items one at a time after that, you have to take an additional step to send or receive material.
One more step in the permissions dance
An AirDrop code effectively prevents an unknown party from sending without authentication, as the code is now required for any attempt to transmit an item to someone who doesn’t have the sender in their contacts.
A recipient gets this prompt when a sender not in their contacts attempts to send them an item over AirDrop.
The requirements for an AirDrop code are as follows:
Both parties have a 26.2 release installed.
The recipient has enabled Everyone for 10 Minutes/Everyone.
The sender is not in the recipient’s contacts by the identity used with AirDrop.
You cannot disable the use of an AirDrop code.
After clicking or tapping Get AirDrop Code, a code appears as a notification.
Here’s how the process works:
The recipient sets AirDrop to Everyone for 10 Minutes (on iPad or iPhone: Settings > General > AirDrop) or Everyone (on Mac: System Settings > General > AirDrop & Handoff). (You can also use Control Center’s AirDrop widget.)
A sender tries to send a file, image, or other item over AirDrop to the recipient.
The recipient has a notification appear on their device. Tap or click Get AirDrop Code. To turn down the request, tap the X close button on an iPhone or iPad, or click Not Now on a Mac.
If you chose Get AirDrop Code, the recipient sees a six-digit code appear with a message that lists the other party’s name as it’s shared. The recipient provides that code to the sender to proceed.
The sender enters the code (or taps or clicks Cancel to exit). In testing, I was able to get a Mac to accept a code generated on an iPhone, but no matter what I did, the iPhone would not accept a code generated by the Mac; I assume this is either particular to my system or a bug soon to be fixed.
Once the code is accepted, the normal Contacts Only style of AirDrop ensues, where the recipient must accept or deny the incoming item.
The sender gets the code from the recipient and enters it on thir device to proceed.
With the process successful in step 6, the sender is added for 30 days to a Other Known list within contacts, allowing future AirDrop transmissions within that period when the recipient’s AirDrop is set to Contacts Only. This list includes any contacts in FaceTime, Messages, or Phone that you’ve marked as known from the Unknown Callers/Senders or Spam categories.
To remove the contact before 30 days is up, go to Settings > General > AirDrop and tap Manage Known AirDrop Contacts or System Settings > General > AirDrop & Handoff and click Manage next to Known AirDrop Contacts.
Extra friction in a service designed to be smooth
Adding friction to AirDrop seems to run counter to the simplicity of how it is supposed to work. For sending in circumstances like protest rallies or other semi-anonymized gatherings, it definitely provides more grit, something desired by authoritarians. Is this another potential nod by Apple to repressive governments? There’s a case to be made, though the 10-minute limit already restricted AirDrop’s utility in such cases tremendously.
Because this code method allows 30 days of sending after using a code, it offers some balance between unwanted contact and persistent availability in the vast majority of cases in which AirDrop is used.
[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use/glennin our subscriber-only Discord community.]
Apple’s first pass at the documentation of an AirDrop code is incomplete and, in some places, inaccurate. The company also left errors in place, such as using Settings instead of System Settings for the macOS notification for a generated code (see below). ↩
One Six Colors staff member reports receiving a photo of Dick Van Dyke via AirDrop as a gentle nudge to close the wide-open door to AirDrop transfers. ↩
After whipping through a bunch of segments in order to play as many jingles as possible, Myke and Jason celebrate the festive season by aesthetically judging the new icons of macOS Tahoe. Happy holidays to all who celebrate!
Matt Haughey wanted just the right Volkswagen ID Buzz, and (despite living in Oregon) he found it in Texas:
The dealer quoted me $2,200 to ship it back to Oregon, but it would take a couple weeks and I figured I could drive that distance in just a few days for less money, plus, what better way to get to know a new car than to spend half a week in it?
This is a great post about shopping for an EV, the current stage of EV charging in the U.S., and how Volkswagen has unfortunately managed to overemphasize touchscreen interfaces while also relying on capacitive touch controls.
Still, I love the look of that car. And I love the idea of getting to know a new car with a road trip.
New Macs are in the pipeline, Japan gets alternative app stores, and Apple deigns to give someone back their iCloud account.
Things to come
Good news, everyone! Apple is working on new Macs! Thank goodness. For a minute there I thought they were done. That would be very concerning because I use Macs and hope to continue to use them in the future.
And what form will these future Macs take? How ‘bout the return of the King? Of 2017.
Yes, last seen sporting an Intel Xeon processor, dressed in space gray, and listening to Ed Sheeran, a new M5-based iMac Pro has been spied in leaked debug code that fell off a truck or something. I don’t know how computers work.
Somehow they read a thing and it has a code in it and they can tell by the code what the unreleased Mac will be.…
