It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple. The whole idea here is to get a broad sense of sentiment—the “vibe in the room”—regarding the past year. (And by looking at previous survey results, we can even see how that sentiment has drifted over the course of an entire decade.)
This is the eleventh year that I’ve presented this survey to my hand-selected group. They were prompted with 14 different Apple-related subjects, and asked to rate them on a scale from 1 (worst) to 5 (best) and optionally provide text commentary per category.
I received 56 replies, with the average results as shown below:
Since most of the survey categories are the same as in previous years, I was able to track the change in my panel’s consensus opinion. The net changes between 2024 and 2025 are displayed below—you’ll note that scores were down in 11 of the 14 categories:
Read on for category-by-category grades, trends, and select commentary from the panelists. (You can also read the entirety of panelist commentary—all 32,000 words—if you are so inclined.)
Every year, we ask a collection of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people for their opinions about how Apple fared in the year just gone by. You can read our 2025 report card for the average scores and some juicy quotes. But if you want to read the whole thing—all 32,000 words of it—who are we to stand in your way? They wrote it, you read it. That’s how this works.
After my article on 2nd-generation AirTag compatibility issues a few weeks ago, in which I explained that the 26.2.1 or later release of each of Apple’s operating systems was required to pair and view the revised tracker, my friend Adam Engst posted a question about compatibility, and Six Colors member Scott wrote in with a related query.
If you can’t use a 2nd-generation AirTag with an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch—because you can’t upgrade the device to its respective 26.2.1, or have chosen not to—does that mean that this newer AirTag model is invisible to those devices when reporting its location? And—me partly extrapolating a related question—does this prevent anti-stalking features, created by Apple and by an Apple/Google industry initiative, from “seeing” an unwanted AirTag 2?
Fortunately, the ability to pair and track a 2nd-generation AirTag is distinct from participating in Apple’s crowdsourced Find My network, allowing its encrypted, privacy-protecting broadcasts to be recognized by all generations of Apple hardware. And the new AirTag doesn’t create an accidental loophole in deterring and detecting unwanted tracking—in fact, it might even be a better “citizen” due to its ability to emit a louder noise and its longer Bluetooth range.
Think quick, hot spot! Which one of these AirTags is first-generation and which is second? The AirTag 1 is at left, with upper and lowercase type on its back plastic battery panel; the AirTag 2, at right, is all uppercase and calls out the IP67 water resistance. (Images: Apple)
Find My network counts on you
When you’re within Bluetooth range of an AirTag (either generation), a third-party Find My tracker, or a device with one embedded, Bluetooth lets you find your devices. This includes most Apple and Beats audio hardware and Apple’s Internet-connectable hardware.
But outside that range, the Find My network kicks in. It relies on crowdsourcing. When your “device” (iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch) lacks an Internet connection, it begins broadcasting over Bluetooth using a network name that contains encrypted information. Audio hardware not near a paired device does the same, and AirTag and Find My items broadcast all the time.
This signal is picked up by any nearby iPhone, iPad, or Mac with an Internet connection. It takes the encrypted Bluetooth identifier, which reveals nothing to the device’s owner, packages it with the currently derived location (using a combination of GPS, cell tower finding, and Wi-Fi positioning), and uploads it to Apple. Because the data is uploaded, only a device registered to the same Apple Account can download and decrypt it, which is why native Find My apps are required on each major device platform.
The 2nd-generation AirTag broadcasts the same kind of information as the 1st-generation model. In fact, due to a newer Bluetooth chip, it will likely be picked up at a greater range than its predecessor, making tracking more likely.
Unwanted tracking
Technology is always turned to dark ends, and it’s our job, as people who buy, make, or critique devices, to appreciate the good uses and to mitigate or eliminate the poorly developed ones. So far this century: Bad work, everyone!
The AirTag is a great case in point. Before it existed, Tile offered trackers that worked within Bluetooth range and had developed a crowdsourced passalong technology, but needed a vastly larger installed base to make it valuable—and dangerous. Besides Tile, if you wanted to track something (or someone), you had to get a GPS tracker with cellular connectivity, which could be expensive and have relatively short battery life.
This was useful for expensive hardware, families of people with dementia or cognitive decline, and for stalkers, whether domestic (or former) domestic partners or others. But the cost, size, complexity, battery life, and other details put them out of reach of most people.
Apple shipped the AirTag, and it immediately changed the equation. Because an AirTag can rely on a billion pieces of Apple hardware already in the field, and because it has a lithium-ion cell that can last about six to 12 months, it’s a boon for making keeping tabs on our bags, cars, and bikes. But also a boon for the creeps and abusers of the world.
I won’t relitigate the critique Apple received for its initial settings, but the company made changes over time to make it more likely that we would become aware that someone was trying to track us without our knowledge. Here’s a rundown of the two main features and how the new AirTag improves discoverability:
Planted on you or your stuff: When an AirTag is separated from its paired device, it makes a sound when moved. Initially, the delay was three days; Apple reduced it to a random duration of 8 to 24 hours. Thus, if someone stuck a tracker in your bag while you were out and about, when you picked it up within a day, you’d get an audible alert. The 2nd-generation AirTag is 50% louder (according to Apple’s measurements) than the 1st-generation model.
Moving with you: In whatever fashion a tracker comes to be near you for a persistent period of time—Apple doesn’t disclose, but it’s likely 15 minutes or longer—you will receive an alert on your iPhone or iPad about it, and be able to play a sound on the tracker. It should appear when you arrive home or at a significant location, defined and securely stored locally on your devices, or by the end of the day if the previous trigger didn’t occur. The 2nd-generation AirTag’s 50% louder volume helps here, too. Apple and Google co-wrote a standard for anti-tracking that led both companies’ mobile operating systems to recognize each other’s devices as moving with you.
Google has adopted additional countermeasures that I wish Apple would consider:
Trackers’ locations are relayed only when they’re in “high-traffic” areas, like an airport, a path, or a street people commonly walk on. This prevents tracking in homes or when someone is out for a drive or bike ride. It makes it less likely to be useful for finding someone on their own, for sure.
If you mark your home address in your Google Account, this prevents any Android device from relaying trackers in or near that location. That can keep a stalker from knowing when you leave or return home.
A tracker’s owner is limited in how frequently they receive updates. Google doesn’t provide details says they “rate limit” and “throttle” requests, as most lost items remain in stationary locations.
Apple may have implemented some aspects of the above, but the company doesn’t disclose or document them.
For further reading
Since my last column, I’ve updated my book Take Control of Find My and AirTags to incorporate all the details related to the 2nd-generation AirTag and the new availability of Precision Finding for certain Apple Watch models.
[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use/glennin our subscriber-only Discord community.]
Your guess is as good as anyone’s as to what’ll be on the menu at this experience, but whether they are announced on March 4th or not, Apple is widely expected to be unveiling its new, low(er)-cost MacBook very soon as well as the iPhone 17e. On their own, those wouldn’t seem to warrant an event, let alone an experience, so expect something else to get unveiled. Likely something that needs some… experiencing to understand.
That could be intriguing or it could be extremely untriguing. John Gruber points out that the Formula 1 season starts on March 8th, raising the possibility that Apple’s experience could just be immersive F1 on the Vision Pro.…
Main Street goes bust, the Super Bowl soars, the Winter Olympics rule, and the Great Rebundling proceeds apace. Plus: our TV picks! [Downstream+ subscribers also get: Big changes at Disney, and the lastest on WBD/Netflix/Paramount.)
Whether we’d wear an Apple AI pendant, the vintage tech bringing us joy, how we feel about AI-generated playlists, and whether to buy an M4 Mac mini before the Apple event.
Earlier this month, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that Apple had scaled back its plans to launch a new Health+ service and was revisiting its entire health and fitness strategy.
While this could be seen as being another sign of trouble at Apple, as the company is currently mired in an ongoing narrative about its inability to ship AI features it promised nearly two years ago, I choose to see this as the opposite: A promising early sign that Apple’s executives are recognizing that its headlong charge into chasing services revenue might be coming at too high a cost.
The unlikely hero in all this? Apple’s services chief himself, Eddy Cue.
We discuss Apple’s struggles to ship an upgraded Apple Intelligence, prepare for a March 4 product announcement, and explain Apple TV going all in on “Severance.” Also, Jason answers your (many!) curling questions!
In the Apple Podcasts app, users will be able to switch seamlessly between watching and listening to shows, making the experience of discovering and viewing video podcasts as simple and enjoyable as listening to audio podcasts has always been. Users can watch video from within the app and move to horizontal full display, as well as download videos to watch offline. And automatic quality adjustment powered by HLS technology ensures smooth playback across network conditions, delivering the best possible experience whether listeners are on Wi-Fi or a cellular connection.
YouTube has become the most popular platform for podcasts period, and Spotify has been aggressive in integrating video content, so it’s hard not to see this as an attempt to make Apple’s platform more attractive for shows that broadcast in video. At the same time, the audio experience on the go for YouTube often leaves something to be desired, so this feels like Apple trying to thread that needle.
As with audio podcasts, Apple won’t charge creators for distributing video podcasts; however, the company is also enabling dynamically inserted video ads, and ad networks that participate in that will be charged a fee.
Interesting, you know what Apple doesn’t have? A podcast creation app in its brand new creative suite. Hmmm.
(Update: Apple Podcasts has supported video podcasts distributed the traditional way — a downloadable file — since pretty much the beginning. This change offers streaming video via HLS and lets users toggle between audio and video. Apple is relying on podcasters to pay for a video hosting service compatible with Apple’s platform. -J.S.)
I’ve written before about the concept of presence. This is the notion that in your digital life, you have many devices—sometimes several near you1—and when you get an alert, a phone call, or other call to action, you do not want every single piece of hardware to chime, shake, or grab you by the scruff of your neck.2
And yet. And yet. When you desperately want the digital jingle bell to sound off on a particular device, my goodness, what a fuss that might be.
Quick: Without picking up your iPhone, tell me how you configure an alarm in the Clock app to trigger on your Apple Watch when you’re wearing it? I can’t remember, and I just looked it up.
While Settings: Notifications controls many ways in which your iPhone lets you know something is up that you wanted to be reminded about—or a company wanted to tell you about—you will scroll through your app list in vain: there’s no Clock app listed or alarm settings.
Instead, naturally (?), go to Settings: Apps: Clock: Notifications. After my recent brain failure related to the Video menu in the macOS Phone app, I looked through the entire Settings: Notifications list. Nope, no Clock. Yet, Settings: Apps: Clock: Notifications.
Despite the Notifications label at the top, this is found only through the Clock app’s settings (left). At right, use the Watch app to set iPhone clock Push Alert sync. Got it?
And even when you arrive there, there’s no Apple Watch! So let’s visit the Watch app. One assumes there’s an easy way to figure out how to turn iPhone-set alarms on or off on your Apple Watch. In fact, there is, but the language is rather obscure. At Notifications: Clock, use the Push Alerts from iPhone control to turn this feature on or off:
When this is on, Apple Watch will alert you of Timers and Alarms you’ve set on your iPhone, so you can snooze or dismiss them remotely.
“Push Alerts” isn’t my first thought for syncing alarms and timers, but at least it’s there.
Just remember to keep your Apple Watch charged and unlocked on your body.
[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use/glennin our subscriber-only Discord community.]
You’re never more than ten feet from a spider, or one foot from an Apple device. ↩
Tim Cook’s strategy doesn’t appear to be paying off, Apple makes big entertainment plans, and enhanced Siri runs into some trouble.
Tim’s troubles
Congratulations to Tim Cook whose efforts to continually placate the Trump administration are working perfectly and it’s nothing but smooth sailing for Apple from here on ou-
It’s almost like no matter how much you suck up to bullies, their demands will never stop. Weird.
In the letter to Apple, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson wrote:
…multiple studies have found that in recent months Apple News has chosen not to feature a single article from an American conservative-leaning news source, while simultaneously promoting hundreds of articles from liberal publications.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the current state of conservative thought being so far off the rails that representatives of the sitting president are testifying that pedophilia is no big deal because the Dow is high.…
Through no fault of Apple, Face ID is having a moment — and not in a good way.
Sure, the biometric security feature works as well as it ever does, using a face scan to unlock your iPhone, confirm mobile payments and generally an extra layer of protection between your digital data and the prying eyes of the outside world.
But we live in a time of increasing unrest, and with it comes a concern about biometric security features in general. Run afoul of what purports to be law-and-order these days, and your own face can be used against you by police who can compel you to use Face ID unlocking against your will. A security writer at PC Mag goes so far as to suggest you should stop using Face ID entirely.
I’m not sure I want to take that drastic a step with my own iPhone. While concerns about biometric locks are certainly valid, I find Face ID pretty convenient to use when I’m out and about and my phone remains firmly in my possession. Glancing at my iPhone to unlock is certainly quicker than tapping out a passcode every time, and I like using Face ID to lock down everything from health data in my health care provider’s app to images I’ve got stashed in separate Photos folders.
That said, when I attend a protest (and it seems like I’m showing up at a lot of those lately), I do disable Face ID before heading out. The protests I’m attending haven’t ever gotten out of hand, but better safe than sorry, I reckon. While there’s not much stopping law enforcement from making you use your face or thumbprint to unlock a device, you aren’t compelled to share your passcode if you’re detained.
Turning off Face ID requires you to dive into the Settings app, tapping the Face ID & Passcode menu and then entering in that passcode when prompted. Only then can you toggle off the feature. And while that’s simple enough to do, it’s not a feature you can turn off discreetly or quickly should you remember that Face ID is enabled as someone’s approaching you with ill intent.
There’s a shortcut of sorts: Just press and hold the side button on the right side of your iPhone at the same time you press and hold the volume-up button. iPhone veterans will recognize this as the button combo that brings up the Slide to Power Off command, which is exactly what will happen. As a neat bonus feature, you’ll even get some haptic feedback to let you know that the Slide to Power Off screen has appeared, allowing you to discreetly pull off this manuever without even looking at your phone. (You can also tap the sleep/wake button five times.)
“But I just want to shut down Face ID, not power off my iPhone,” you may be saying. And my friend, shutting down Face ID is exactly what you’ve just done.
Tap the Cancel button on the Slide to Power Off Screen, and you’ll bring up your phone’s lock screen. Only now, the only way to unlock your iPhone is to enter a passcode. Face ID remains disabled until the next time you unlock your phone, giving you some measure of protection from having the Face ID feature used against you.
Apple should do more
As a workaround, the Slide to Power Off move will do in a pinch. But I’d like there to be an even easier way to turn off Face ID, whether that’s through a Shortcut or with the help of Siri.
Poking around the built-in Shortcuts app on the iPhone, you can find pre-populated controls for silencing your phone, adjusting connectivity or the iPhone’s display, and more. But if there’s a way to quickly access the Face ID & Passcode menu in the Settings app, I couldn’t find it. (You can use Shortcuts’s Open URL action and the URL pattern prefs:root=PASSCODE to create an action that opens it, but you’ll still need to enter your password and flip the switch manually.) Likewise, there’s no tappable shortcut in the Control Center, which would seem like a natural place for a quick on-screen way to turn off Face ID. (You could even put the shortcut right there on the lock screen now that we’re firmly living in the brave new world of iOS customization.)
Likewise, Siri is no help when it comes to handling Face ID management. In the current version of iOS 26, a simple “Turn off Face ID command” will have Siri apologetically telling you that it doesn’t understand what you’re talking about. Perhaps that could be some of the smarts Siri is supposed to pick up in a coming update to iOS 26.
And really, this is the sort of thing Apple should add. The company makes the privacy features of its products a central part of the case for why you should buy Apple, with most of the recent TV spots focusing on keeping your browsing data private. But I would contend an even bigger privacy concern would be having everything that’s stored on your iPhone—text messages, emails, photos—made available on command to a some mask-wearing federal agent just because you’re using a biometric feature as intended.
The central role that phones play in our lives coupled with uncertain times at home and abroad have people rethinking how they should approach Face ID. Apple needs to be doing the same.
[Philip Michaels has been writing about technology since 1999, most notably for Macworld and Tom’s Guide. He currently finds himself between jobs, so if you need someone who can string a few sentences together (or make your sentences read a lot better), drop him a line.]
The other day, while watching an episode of “Animal Control”1, I realized that I have been writing about technology so long that I can’t even turn off my brain to stop from shouting troubleshooting advice at the made-up people on my TV during a half-hour of light comedy.
Here’s the scenario: Our hero, Seattle Animal Control Office Frank Shaw (expertly played by Joel McHale), has been roped into ferrying around his arch-nemesis, a Cesar Millan-esque dog whisperer played by guest star Ken Jeong. (Kudos to you if you immediately picked up on this mini-“Community” reunion.) Joel McHale’s character has recorded a video on his phone of Ken Jeong having an encounter with an aggressive dog that will cause the latter no small amount of professional and personal embarrassment.
Ken Jeong manages to guilt Joel McHale into deleting the video from his phone by spinning a sob story that (if you know the kinds of characters Ken Jeong plays) is completely made up. But Joel McHale falls for it and deletes the video, only to have Ken Jeong turn the tables and cause McHale no small amount of professional and personal embarrassment. Joel McHale is left to fume about his missed opportunity.
“There’s gotta be a way to recover lost footage,” he says, while impotently turning his phone’s flashlight on.
And where other people might chuckle at this little interlude, a person in my position finds himself shouting at the screen, “There is! There is, you big galoot!” as if Joel McHale is going to answer back.
We do not have to guess as to what phone Joel McHale’s character is using — it is very clearly an iPhone. Given the camera array that I spotted when reviewing the footage with the same frame-by-frame intensity that JFK conspiracy theorists study the Zapruder film, I’d suggest that it’s an iPhone 16 Pro, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, Frank is using a recent iPhone, so we’ll assume the on-board software is relatively up-to-date.
Everybody who’s used any piece of tech for any length of time knows that nothing’s truly deleted — at least not right away. In the case of photos and videos that you remove from your iPhone, by default they sit in a folder for 30 days before they disappear completely.
In the case of this particular “Animal Control” episode, all Frank would have to do to get that damning video back would be to fire up the Photos app on his iPhone, tap on the Collections tab and find the Recently Deleted folder tucked away in the Utilities section. Frank would tap on the deleted video, select Recover, and sit back and smile while that nasty Ken Jeong finally gets what’s coming to him.
Near as I can tell, there’s no way to disable the Recently Deleted folder feature so that deleted photos and videos go directly to that big trash can in the sky, nor is there a way to extend the stay of execution beyond those 30 days.
Frank could also avoid these kind of situations altogether by backing up his photos and videos to a third-party cloud service. (iCloud wouldn’t work in this case, as deleting things off your phone removes them from Apple’s syncing service.) But considering his tendency to repeatedly turn on his iPhone’s flashlight, that might be a backup best practice beyond his skill set.
It’s a fun little workplace comedy—it’s not going to reinvent the genre or anything, but it’s a pleasant enough way to spend half an hour each week, and if you need a laugh or two these days, “Animal Control” is worth checking out. ↩
[Philip Michaels has been writing about technology since 1999, most notably for Macworld and Tom’s Guide. He currently finds himself between jobs, so if you need someone who can string a few sentences together (or make your sentences read a lot better), drop him a line.]
The other day a Slack pal wondered aloud if there was a way to remove a previous recipient from a family member’s iPhone. The address wasn’t in their contacts, but it kept showing up in the autocomplete for the recipient line.
This tickled something in my brain and sure enough, I wrote about this very topic more than a decade ago—but I only covered how to do it on the Mac. Which got me wondering if it was possible to do on iOS.
Sure enough, it is, but you’d be excused for not finding it, since it’s a bit buried.
First, start typing the address in Mail’s To field until you see it show up in the dropdown menu. If it’s not in your contacts1 you’ll see it has a little “i” icon next to it. Tap that to bring up a screen where you can add it to your contacts or, more relevantly, scroll to the bottom and you’ll find “Remove From Recents.” Tap that and it should banish it…well, at least until you send them another email.
So there we are, only eleven years later. And, if you’re wondering, the macOS instructions above still work, even if the UI looks a little different these days.
If the email address is in your contacts, you’ll have to delete it first before you can do this. ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the sci-fi spy thriller The Armageddon Protocol, is out now.]
