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OLED iPad mini review: A modern multitasker
My favorite thing about the iPad mini is that it’s easy to love in all sorts of different use cases. It can be an e-reader or a bedtime TV or pretty much anything else you can imagine, right up to being a very tiny productivity device. It’s whatever iPad you want it to be, and everyone who has fit one into their lives seems to love it.
The new iPad mini is like that, too. But it’s added a few new tricks that make it better at most of the tasks people already used the iPad mini to perform. It’s got power, a beautiful new display, and fits in even more places than before.
The OLED display’s the thing
With this update, the iPad mini joins the iPad Pro among iPads sporting OLED displays. While the iPad mini’s OLED is not as spectacular as the Pro’s tandem OLED Ultra Retina XDR, it’s still pretty impressive, with 1200 nits of peak brightness, more than twice that of the previous model.
As detailed in my interview with two Apple executives about the iPad mini, the entire product was built around the OLED display. And that decision has some nice knock-on effects: By replacing the old LED-and-backlight display tech with OLED, Apple also gains some weight and space savings, allowing the iPad mini to be thinner (only 5.4mm) and lighter (255g for the Wi-Fi model). And the display, which measures 8.5 inches diagonally, is actually a little larger than on the previous model, thanks to smaller bezels.
Apple’s also now offering a nano-texture option (a $100 upgrade, and only available on the two higher-end models) for the front glass, a coating that provides powerful anti-glare capabilities. Put together, the brighter display and anti-glare coating do make this the best iPad mini ever at numerous outdoor activities—including the one it’s perhaps best suited for, as an ultraportable reading device. Choose wisely, though—I found that the nano-texture glass did also deprive me of the blackest blacks that OLED can offer. If you don’t run into glare problems in using your iPad, it’s probably not worth the trade.
Alas, the display only refreshes at 60Hz, rather than at the 120Hz rates of Apple’s ProMotion displays. This will disappoint some people, though as someone with multiple ProMotion devices in my life, I didn’t really notice or mind on the iPad mini.
We have always been at war with ingress
This iPad mini is the first iPad ever to receive a rating against dust and water ingress: IP67. This doesn’t mean you can swim with the iPad mini, but it does mean that if your kid drops it in the bathtub or you’re using it on a utility pole in the middle of a dust storm, you should probably be okay.
For people using the iPad mini in a variety of environments, that will be a win. For people using it as an e-reader, it certainly means you can probably get away with using it in the bathtub or by the pool—a win of a smaller, but still important, sort.
As a part of the job of restricting ways water and dust can intrude on the interior of the iPad, Apple has removed the traditional speakers from this iPad mini and replaced them with something it’s calling the Acoustic Display. It comes in two parts: First, two ultra-small tweeters are tucked just at the two narrow edges of the display, right between the edge of the glass bezel and the metal that rings the device’s sides. You’d never even notice them if you weren’t looking for them. These provide high-frequency audio (and stereo effects if you’re holding the tablet in a horizontal orientation).
Second, there are drivers for mid-range and bass that are on the inside of the iPad, coupled to the display itself. The vibrations that comprise those frequencies move through the display glass, which transmits them into the air. Your whole iPad mini display becomes part of the sound system.
It works pretty well. No iPad mini ever will win awards for audio fidelity, but I was able to crank up “Atomic Blonde” and listen to some crunchy punching with stereo placement, and play “Norwegian Wood” and experience distinct stereo separation of sitar and guitar. Yes, when it gets loud you can feel the iPad vibrating… but I’m pretty sure that has always been the case when you hold a small device that’s making a load of noise.
More power than a MacBook?
A couple of months back, after the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo were introduced alongside the A20 Pro chip they both use, I mused about how powerful an A20 Pro-based MacBook Neo would be, while lamenting that we might not see one until 2028.
I still have no idea what Apple’s MacBook Neo plans are, but for fans of the iPad mini, there’s no wait required: That same A20 Pro chip is now installed in this new iPad mini. That means, yes, that the new iPad mini is more powerful than a MacBook Neo—and may remain so even when the MacBook Neo gets an update next year.
This goes to perhaps the most important point when considering the iPad mini: Its ultimate strength is, as Apple says, its versatility—or to put it another way, the iPad mini is not a broken iPad or a baby iPad or half an iPad. It’s a whole iPad. That A20 Pro chip is powerful enough for all sorts of tasks. Perhaps with the exception of some esoteric high-end tasks that require the power of the M4 or M5 processors found in higher-end models, the iPad mini will do whatever iPad jobs you throw at it. It’s a complete, capable iPad—but tiny.
Not all iPad minis are made alike: The $699 (128GB storage) and $799 (256GB storage) minis actually use a five-core version of the A20 Pro, with two super cores and three efficiency cores. The $999 model (512GB storage) gets the same six-core (two super, four efficiency) A20 Pro as the iPhones. I’m not sure you’d notice, but there it is.
Every iPad mini gets to take advantage of Apple’s N1 chip, which brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 to the iPad, in addition to Thread. And cellular versions (an additional $150) will now use Apple’s own C2 chip.
This model also marks Apple’s final acceptance that horizontal is the best iPad orientation, completing the task of relocating every iPad’s Center Stage camera to the long edge so you can properly frame FaceTime calls in landscape mode. It’s just better this way. (Though, Apple, a product note: If I’m using my iPad horizontally and I’m talking to someone holding an iPhone vertically, maybe automatically adjust my framing and cropping so I’m properly oriented on their screen and not letterboxed?)
Not priced like a unitasker
These iPads are not as cheap as they were. (Though what is, right?) This new model starts at $699, and escalates rapidly from there. The model Apple sent me for review was the top-of-the-line 512GB storage model with cellular and nano-texture glass, which will set you back $1,249.
These prices are extremely high if you consider the iPad mini a unitasker. If you’re thinking about buying one to read ebooks, well, even a pricey Kindle tops out at about $320 and the excellent Kobo Libra Colour is $260.
This iPad mini is a full-featured product at a full-featured price. If you’re only going to use it to do one or two things, there may be better options. But the thing about iPads is that they are flexible and malleable, and you can use software and accessories to make them be what you want them to be. If you’re planning on using an iPad mini as an e-reader, but also an RSS reader and for light email and web browsing and maybe watching a TV show sometimes and in a pinch maybe editing some video… now you’re getting it.
Pair a Bluetooth keyboard and write with it. Add a trackpad and multitask with it. Attach it to an external display. Dress it up in the new (very nice) FineWoven Folio Case like it’s an iPad Pro wearing a little business suit. The value is in the flexibility.
The reason the iPad mini has earned the love and loyalty of a wide array of users is that it’s tiny, portable, and does everything an iPad can do—and that’s a winning combination. This new model has a great new screen, and is thinner and lighter than ever. It’s certainly not cheap, but there’s a lot of value packed in there—if you’ve got a plan to take advantage of it.
By Jason Snell
He admit it!: Notes from another record Apple quarter
Another fiscal year, another load of record quarters. Apple wrapped fiscal 2026 on Monday with a record fourth quarter and some banner sales for the iPhone and Mac. The iPad and wearables? Uh, look over there! It’s a tough compare!
Here are some quick takes on Apple’s quarter and what the company said on its quarterly earnings call.
Continue reading “He admit it!: Notes from another record Apple quarter”…
By Jason Snell
Hello, everyone, it’s John: Apple’s Q4 2026 earnings call transcript
For the first time as CEO, John Ternus joined CFO Kevan Parekh (and a surprise guest, COO Sabih Khan!) for the company’s quarterly earnings call, where they bent the ear of a bunch of financial-industry analysts to detail the quarter gone by and give a peek at what’s to come.
This is Six Colors’s complete transcript of the call for November 2, 2026.
Continue reading “Hello, everyone, it’s John: Apple’s Q4 2026 earnings call transcript”…
By Jason Snell
Apple announces record $114.5B fourth-quarter results
On Monday, Apple announced record fourth-quarter earnings, with total revenue of $114.5B, up 12 percent from the year-ago quarter. iPhone revenue was up 17.5%, Mac revenue was up 23.7%, and Services revenue was up 9.8%. Wearables revenue was down 7.9% and iPad revenue was down 10.4%.
Apple execs spent an hour on the phone with financial industry analysts. We’ve got our usual transcript. And I wrote a piece with my overall thoughts on the results and earnings call.
And now, to help you visualize what Apple just announced, here is our traditional barrage of charts and graphs:
Continue reading “Apple announces record $114.5B fourth-quarter results”…
By Glenn Fleishman
Siri Classic brings old things back to life
A lot of mythology swirls around the Coca-Cola Company's strange set of decisions in 1985 to release a reformulated version of its historic carbonated beverage in April—the so-called "New Coke"—then, a few months later, start producing the original flavor as "Coke Classic." Movies, books, and lengthy blog entries offer competing narratives about what actually happened.
In the end, Coke Classic won. People liked its taste better, and New Coke—renamed Coke II in 1990—disappeared entirely in 2002.1
You might think this is an analogy for Siri AI and the original Siri, which Apple has sort of dubbed "Siri Classic." I say "sort of" because you might not know Apple uses that name at all for the Siri-before-Siri AI.
And I don't think Siri Classic has the great taste we all missed with the release of Siri AI. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
This column is really about how you can turn off Siri AI and some Apple Intelligence features in the version 27 operating systems, even though you can't per se disable Apple Intelligence altogether.
Hidden uncanny valley settings
When Apple introduced Apple Intelligence, it appeared in Siri & Apple Intelligence in Settings and System Settings. If you so chose, you could disable Apple Intelligence and leave everything else on.
The release of iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 omitted that switch. You can still turn Siri on or off altogether, and some clever folks realized you could set Siri's language to one not supported by Siri AI and Apple Intelligence2 to disable it, although that choice can cause other inconveniences.
- It's a real sign of confidence when a product is renamed a few years after its introduction. That kind of renaming is used to escape the stank of bad decisions, like Philip Morris changing its name to Altria. ↩
- Apple just updated supported languages for Siri AI and Apple Intelligence; consult this press release. ↩
Continue reading “Siri Classic brings old things back to life”…
By Jason Snell
Inside the iPad mini: OLED at the center, versatility all around, and a… vibrating display?
In the midst of Apple shipping a foldable iPhone and announcing its first touchscreen laptop, you might have missed an oft-overlooked l’il gadget that also got a load of love last week: the new OLED iPad mini.
But I didn’t miss it. In fact, last week in Los Angeles I sat down with Apple VP of Mac and iPad Product Marketing (and friend of the show) Tom Boger and Apple VP of Hardware Engineering Dave Pakula to dig into the new version of Apple’s beloved small iPad.
Who is the iPad mini for?
I’ve always been struck by the level of enthusiasm iPad mini users feel for the device, but also by the diversity of use cases they bring to the party. Maybe those are connected, and the iPad mini is so intensely loved because it fits (metaphorically and literally) into so many different niches.
“What a lot of people don’t realize about the mini is, it’s used by an incredibly diverse set of users,” Boger said. And while the iPad is generally embraced for its portability, the iPad mini is the most portable of them all. “From the pilot who straps it to their leg in a helicopter, to a doctor who’s doing some serious stuff with an iPad mini that just fits perfectly in their lab coat, to field service technicians. And for them, something like IP671 is huge for them.”
(That’s the iPad mini’s dust and water ingress rating, a first for the iPad product line. It means there’s less concern about taking the iPad mini out into the field, whether it’s raining or dusty or—thanks to the new nanotexture display option—very, very sunny.)
But just to be clear: the new iPad mini is not meant to be a water toy. Boger said that someone he spoke with was excited about using it to read in the bathtub, and Boger’s expression as he told that story suggested a little unease. This is not a product meant to be dunked.
“Using it in the bathtub was definitely not a grounding recommendation for us,” Pakula said. “This is really just about giving people more confidence in the ways many of them already want to use their iPad today. You don’t need to have your iPad under the umbrella. You don’t need to worry about it if your kid spills a glass of water or if it gets a little bit messy while you’re cooking. But please don’t throw it in the pool.”
A design driven by OLED
This new iPad mini has a load of new features compared to the older model. Not just that IP67 rating, but a new audio system, an OLED display, the same A20 Pro processor found in this fall’s iPhone Pro and iPhone Duo… oh, and it’s thinner and lighter, too. It’s a wholesale change for a product that hadn’t been updated in two years and deserved some love and attention.
According to Boger and Pakula, the driving force behind all the design decisions this time around was the display change.
“OLED is unquestionably a better display experience than LCD in so many ways,” Pakula said. “You’ve got the incredible contrast ratio… We’ve got much higher peak brightness, going up to 1,200 nits. What I also really love about this display is that it goes all the way down to 1 nit.” That’s great for pilots in the cockpit at night, but also for people who want to read in bed and not disturb their partner.
That decision made, “from an integration standpoint, it opened up all sorts of really cool doors for us,” Pakula said. “We were able to make the product thinner because there’s fewer layers in the display stack and the OLED panel itself is thinner. We were able to make the screen go from 8.3 inches to 8.5 inches in the same footprint because of the narrower borders of OLED… Once we flipped the switch and said, we’re going to do this thing on OLED, it opened up a tremendous number of opportunities and everything got better because of it.”
For example: “There’s not a single use case that doesn’t benefit,” Pakula said. “Reading outdoors with 1,200 nits and nanotexture, reading in dark environments… watching movies with a high contrast ratio, everything gets better.”
Sounding out the Acoustic Display
One major change in this new iPad mini’s design is the fact that its two side speakers are gone, leaving long stretches of smooth metal around the frame that usually had speaker grille holes. Instead of traditional speakers, Apple built what it’s calling the Acoustic Display, which uses the iPad’s screen itself as part of the audio system. And while Apple makes water-resistant devices that still have traditional speakers, Pakula says that the whole journey started with that water and dust resistance in mind.
“That is a huge project,” he said. “There are thirty-five different seals we needed to manage and design and validate…. The first thing that we did, is you look at all the openings in the enclosure and you say, ‘Are there any of these we could get rid of?’ And we had some brainstorming sessions and one of the things that came to light with talking with the acoustic folks is actually that because of the very specific size of iPad mini, the cover glass and the enclosure actually resonate in the audible range, around mid-range frequencies, so you can get bass and mid-range acoustics transmitted through them.”
A larger slab of glass would’ve lowered the frequencies to inaudible ones, and a smaller one might have boosted them too high, but the iPad mini was in the sweet spot—so they went for it. “We built these special drivers that sit underneath the display and they couple through the display and transmit the mid-range and the bass directly through it without needing speaker ports,” Pakula said.
Unfortunately, higher frequencies wouldn’t pass through the display, so they needed an additional piece of hardware. “We designed these two little tiny tweeters, one at the top of the product and one at the bottom, and [there are] these little tiny hidden ports that are squeezed between the aluminum [frame] and the glass [bezel], you can’t even see them,” he said. “For a device of this size, it’s a surprisingly good audio experience.”
An iPad is an iPad
Every time I’ve reviewed the iPad mini, I’ve been struck most by how it is ultimately… just a small iPad. Apple refuses to build a device that’s only halfway an iPad, or is incapable of doing what the platform as a whole does. I have edited complex podcasts using Ferrite Recording Studio on the iPad mini, and it has never let me down.
“When we’re talking about the mini, the one way we like to describe it is, ‘It’s the full iPad experience in the palm of your hand,'” Boger said. Is it looking to attack specific use cases? “The answer is really no. The answer is this celebration of the diversity of how people use it. It’s so many different ways that people use it. And the trick is to enable as many of those capabilities as possible.”
He continued: “And if you kind of look across the industry, there’s nothing like the Mini, right? Anything that typically has been in that size form factor, it’s been very low-end, very just consumer oriented—watch some movies, throw it in the back of the car with your kids. The iPad mini is used by such a diverse group of people that it has to be incredibly capable. The hallmark of iPad in general, especially the mini, is versatility. And so this made it even more versatile. And any time we can make the iPad more versatile is a good thing.”
- IP67 means complete protection against dust over extended time and protected against short periods of immersion in water while under pressure between 15cm and 1m. ↩
By Philip Michaels
The Back Page: Putting the ‘Apple’ in Apple TV
The latest season of Ted Lasso on Apple TV divided opinion. Some enjoyed the return of their old TV show friends, laughing and learning as they have in the previous three seasons. Others may have appreciated the introduction of new characters like Tanya Reynolds’ Alice Chilton, but were disappointed with uneven storylines for the returning cast. And still others — the wisest, you might say — gave Season 4 a pass entirely, figuring that three seasons of Ted Lasso had wrapped things up very nicely, thank you very much, and that extending the show’s run would only lead to diminishing returns.
But there is one thing these warring parties can agree on about Ted Lasso, Season 4 — it contains an instance of Apple self-promotion so audacious it should be studied in schools. Long-time TV critic Alan Sepinwall took to Bluesky to call it “the most egregious bit of Apple product placement I’ve ever witnessed on an Apple show.”…
This is a post limited to Six Colors members.
By John Moltz
This Week in Apple: Pro devices at Pro prices
Apple announces things and responds to things and AI has another great week.
If you have to ask, you can’t afford it
Apple’s “Pro and Tell” week started on Monday with the announcement of a brand-new iPad mini at a brand-new price point! How exciting! Let’s just take a look at that new price and…
AAAAAIIIIIIEEEEEE!!!
Please, everyone, this was just Monday. I’m going to have to ask you to hold all of your price-based screaming until all of this week’s new prices have been announced.
The new A20-based iPad mini starts at $699, or $82.24 per diagonal inch of screen.
Or $2.74 per gram. Or $5.50 per GB. Or $82.92 per cubic inch. Or half a cent per cubic millimeter.
I just provide those statistics in case they’re valuable for decision-making. Personally, I decide based on the device’s aura as indicated by my personal mystical advisor, Count Morgo the Unfathomable.…
This is a post limited to Six Colors members.
Sponsor
Filmlog: For the love of movies, now on the Mac ↦
My thanks to Filmlog for sponsoring Six Colors this week.
Filmlog is the app for movie and cinema lovers — personal, offline and ad-free. Built by one person since 2013 and paid for by the people who use it, it arrived this week on the Mac as a native app, joining iPhone, iPad and a watchlist companion on Apple TV. The new Mac app is not a phone app in a window; it’s the real deal. It’s got a sidebar for your sections, a detail pane beside the list, menu commands for what you do most, and keyboard shortcuts for the rest. Soundtracks play right inside Filmlog, and your watching habits come to the desktop as widgets.
Search 315,000 movies, 464,000 people and 58,000 cinemas offline, follow new theatrical releases, plan with your watchlist and challenges, listen to soundtracks from Apple Music, and keep a personal diary of what you watched, with whom and where. The catalog goes deep: find a movie by who’s in the story and where it’s set, by the book it was based on and what it’s about. Follow the people you care about, and their upcoming movies appear in your releases.
The watchlist, the diary, soundtracks and export are free; Filmlog Plus adds the full search and releases, multi-device support, statistics and widgets, the Claude Desktop extension, importing your history, watchlist and ratings from Letterboxd, IMDb, Filmtipset or any CSV, and more. Subscription or one-time purchase; every plan includes Family Sharing.
For the love of movies. Get Filmlog on the App Store.
By Philip Michaels
App Report: Picture perfect
Let’s set aside the Mac this week and turn our app spotlight to the iPhone… and a more specific part of the iPhone at that — the camera.
A few of the following apps promise to extend the capabilities of your iPhone’s cameras, even if you haven’t paid up for the more sophisticated setup found on the Pro models. As for the rest, they’ll help you manage the photos you wind up taking and storing on your phone.
Do you have an app you’d like us to take a look at? Send an email to apps@sixcolors.com with a brief description — the app’s name, what it does and what it costs. We consider every app tip we receive, though due to the heavy volume, we won’t be able to respond to each and every email.
Now let’s turn our attention back to the big picture of this week’s camera-focused apps.
By Philip Michaels
iPhone 18 Pro Review: Highest Pro price ever poses a challenge for upgraders
Apple doesn’t roll out new iPhones every September because it’s fond of fall colors. In fact, if you’re a fellow old like me, you might remember the days when models like the iPhone 3G or iPhone 4 hit stores in the summertime. It wasn’t until 2012 and the iPhone 5 that Apple settled on fall release dates for its main models.
The fall rollouts are timed so that retail shelves are packed with new models just in time for the holiday shopping season. That way, people pressed for new gift ideas can always grab the latest iPhone model, and Apple’s financial division can celebrate a merry Christmas indeed toting up the sales figures.
A glance at the calendar right at this moment reveals that we find ourselves in that sweet spot right between the September release of the new iPhone 18 Pro models and the time when people start stampeding to stores, online or otherwise, looking for gadgets to buy ahead of the holidays. And that means deciding whether the latest iPhones should replace whatever phone you happen to be carrying around at the moment.
Of course, early adopters are going to take the plunge right away. But for the rest of us, deciding whether to upgrade to a new iPhone takes time, with that go/no-go decision hinging on exactly what the latest model can do that our current phone cannot.
I feel like I’m well-positioned to answer that question, having handled every iPhone since the first one came out in 2007. And, more germane to the issue at hand, I’ve also had a chance to spend some time using the iPhone 18 Pro to see just what’s different with Apple’s latest phone and how it builds upon what’s come before.
Continue reading “iPhone 18 Pro Review: Highest Pro price ever poses a challenge for upgraders”…
by Jason Snell
Typo found on 42-year-old spaceship
Jason Torchinsky at The Autopian joins me in shock at the revelation that the Helvetica S on the space shuttle Discovery is upside-down:
Wait, what? Discovery has an upside-down ‘s’ in its name? How the hell did that happen? Discovery was usually considered, by astronauts and NASA people, the jewel in the Space Shuttle crown. It was recognized to be the most reliable and best-performing of all the orbiters, and had the most missions and time in space. Since it was first launched in 1984, Discovery completed 39 missions, spent in total a full year in space, and traveled 150 million miles.
The thing flew for 27 years, and somehow nobody noticed that the ‘s’ was upside down on the starboard side name text?
[Via Paul Lukas’s Inconspicuous Consumption.]
by Jason Snell
‘A Mac for the iPad Generation’
At MacStories, Federico Viticci processes his feelings regarding Apple’s new MacBook Pro1, which has a touchscreen:
Steve Jobs was right about many things, but I’ve long disagreed with his take on the “terrible” ergonomics of touchscreen laptops. Sure, you don’t want to be forced to interact with a laptop display that sits perpendicular to the keyboard at all times. But for the occasional interaction that benefits from direct manipulation of content – whether that’s zooming on a picture or rotating a 3D object or game character with your fingers – it’s nice to have a secondary input method that does not rely on a UX abstraction such as a trackpad. Think of it as motion controls on a Nintendo Switch: you primarily play games with a controller and physical buttons, but, sometimes, it is nicer – and easier – to rely on the gyroscope for motion controls.
One of the great traits of Steve Jobs was that he held on to his opinions lightly, and once convinced he was wrong, he would quickly drop them and shift to the other side. Today touching a screen is second nature to a generation of computer users. Apple needs to support that, but nobody at Apple or elsewhere is saying that you should stop using the keyboard and trackpad and just touch the MacBook Pro’s screen. That’s not what this is about. It’s silly to act as if it’s otherwise just to score points—on a 16-year-old quote from a man who no longer has the luxury to change his mind.
- Federico wrote some of this piece while sitting right next to me, which may be the first time that’s happened for one of these link posts. ↩
by Jason Snell
Designing Mac apps for touch and multitouch
Via Jeff Nadeau on Mastodon, Apple has posted three videos detailing how apps can support touch interactions on the new MacBook Pro.
First, it’s Cas Lemmens discussing designing for touch on macOS:
Then, Raleigh Ledet details how developers can bring touch to their macOS apps:
And finally, Jonathan Tilley shows off the Live Activities interface, which appears on other Macs in the menu bar, but appears in the Dynamic Island on the new MacBook Pros.
While adding touch to macOS hasn’t radically changed the interface, there are definitely some different wrinkles Apple has added to make the touch experience better.
By Jason Snell
Quick thoughts about the new MacBook Pro
Hello from Los Angeles, where I’ve gotten a first look at the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display. This is an all-day event, so I expect to learn much more as we get going, but the hands-on area is completely backed up, so I’m going to put some stray thoughts here right away.
It’s not the MacBook Ultra
I was standing right next to John Gruber when John Ternus announced on stage that we were about to see the new MacBook Pro, and he gave a shrug of resignation. John had come around to thinking that it might be called the MacBook Studio. I didn’t think Apple would go there, and I guess I was right?
In the long run, technology introduced at the high end comes down to the lower end eventually. Creating a whole new line of MacBooks above the MacBook Pro would imply that Apple is more or less permanently committed to having an additional differentiated product line. I didn’t think it would go that far, when presumably all Mac laptops will get touch and OLED… eventually.
However, these new laptops are still a cut above when it comes to what they cost… and as a result, Apple is still selling the older MacBook Pro M5 Pro and Max models as well. This is very much what the company did when the first Retina MacBook Pro models hit the scene—and were so expensive that it needed to keep the more affordable non-retina models around. For a while.
But again, inevitably, every MacBook Pro and then every Mac became a Retina Mac. And so it didn’t really make sense to create a new category of MacBook, nor does it today.
An unusual upgrade
Usually, a new MacBook Pro brings powerful new chips—but not this time. These new laptops have the same M5 Pro and M5 Max chips that are in the still-available previous models. According to reports from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, that’s because Apple decided not to release M6 Pro and Max chips and instead jump straight to M7 next year.
So… no new chips. But the body design is entirely new, something that happens only once every few years. In addition to that PROLED XDR display (it’s a pun and all in caps and I don’t know what to think about the name?) that is a real touchscreen, the big change is that the new laptops are appreciably lighter—about 15% lighter. The 14-inch model weighs 3.0 pounds (1.38kg), compared to 3.5 pounds (1.60kg) on the previous models. The 16-inch model goes from 4.7 pounds to 4.0 pounds. The new 14-inch model is closer to a 13-inch MacBook Air in weight than the older 14-inch MacBook Pro is.
It’s also almost imperceptibly smaller—hundredths of an inch thinner, less than a tenth of an inch wider, and about two-tenths of an inch less deep. So, smaller, but not so much that you’d notice. Obviously the priority was getting the weight down.
You know what weighs the most in a laptop? The battery. And Apple’s claiming 22 hours of battery life (24 for the 16-inch model) on these systems, which is unchanged from the older ones. That’s good news in that they managed to be lighter without sacrificing battery life, but it’s bad news for anyone who was hoping for Apple to maybe stretch battery life a bit more.
Minor touch affordances
Another question I had coming into this event was just how much effort Apple would make to adapt the macOS interface for touch. The answer is: A little, but not a lot. When you touch the screen, the interface makes subtle adaptations—more spacing in menus, more feedback when selecting and dragging items—but what it doesn’t do is flip into some new Touch Mode that looks and behaves totally unlike the Mac.
Not surprising, really—this is a conventional laptop with touch, not a convertible with a fold-back or flip-around hinge that makes it into something more like a big tablet. If Apple wants to make that laptop in the future, it can—and it can add a more complex touch mode then. Instead, this interface strikes me as Apple doing right by its own MacBook Pro users by making the touch interface nice, but also acknowledging that for most people, touch will be an additive part of interfacing with their Mac, on top of keyboard and trackpad.
That said, one portion of Apple’s intro video showed a developer using Xcode to test an iOS app, and they were touching the app in the iOS simulator. That… is a really cool use case. For the first time, developers will be able to touch their apps right on their laptop screen during development.
Apple sees the light
“I think you’re all really going to like this,” Ternus said on stage as he revealed the light-up Apple logo on the back of the new MacBook Pro. Spoken like someone who has been at Apple for many years and remembers the Old Ways.
Lighting up the Apple logo on the back of the display was always a fun feature. I’m sure there were all sorts of practical reasons why it made more sense to put a metallic laser-cut Apple or whatever back there, but not only did it feel less fun, it deprived the world of cafés full of little glowing Apple logos. Imagine the lost branding opportunities, Apple!
So… it’s back. I look forward to hearing Apple’s storytelling behind that decision, if there is any beyond the obvious, “why not?” But it warms my heart to see a glowing Apple logo and I hope that this retro design trend makes its way to every Apple laptop over time.
(Next up: Bring back the “breathing” sleep indicator.)
Our go-to note-taking apps, the chaotic ways we use our products like madlads, our predictions for Apple’s remaining autumn announcements and what caught our eye this season, and the silliest apps on our Macs or iPhones.
Apple begins a crash program to build a music player by the end of 2001, aided by a fortuitous discovery in Japan. Hardware chief Jon Rubinstein recruits a brash young product manager, Tony Fadell, to figure out how all the parts fit together.
By Glenn Fleishman
Sorry, new developers, it’s vibecodetown
If you're like me, you receive three to five emails each day extolling the virtues of a new iPhone, iPad, or Mac app. If you're like Jason, you get dozens of these emails. If you're lucky, you're like neither of us—in that one respect.
They're often written in a friendly manner. They start with a reference or two to something I've written, then describe how the developer had an itch to scratch that solved a problem mentioned in my column. (Or not—the emails aren't always on target.) So they wrote TextEdit Genius (a fake name), which dramatically expands the capabilities of TextEdit. Or a Notes exporter. Or an app that lets you frame photos. Or whatever.
Don’t get me wrong. As a long-time tech writer, I love emails from developers.1 However, these particular messages are obviously, or not so obviously, written by chatbots. Perhaps the prompt is, "Try not to sound like an LLM," and then the developers further edit so they have at least a smidgeon of a voice. The apps they promote are almost certainly vibe coded, a term I loathe that describes using AI to write software or help write it. But not all of those apps are vibe coded—and that's the problem.
If you're a serious developer, whether writing all the code by hand or using agentic assistance, with the intent to support and mature your app for years to come, how do you get the word out? How can you become a BBEdit, PCalc, or A Better Finder Attributes? In our current environment, how do you create an app that pierces through the fog?
- Some of my best friends are developers. Really! ↩
Continue reading “Sorry, new developers, it’s vibecodetown”…
By Jason Snell
Apple clears the decks ahead of its biggest announcement
Apple’s thunder keeps rolling this week. First it was the iPad mini, and now it’s a set of relatively minor announcements that would have just gotten lost in the anticipated introduction of OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro models on Wednesday.
Apple updated the base-model MacBook Pro from an M5 chip to an M6. This is the low-end model that basically exists to snag buyers who don’t want to use a MacBook Air. (To be fair, it’s got a much better display and active cooling, too.)
But don’t be confused: This is not Apple’s big MacBook Pro announcement of the week. What’s been abundantly clear is that whatever Apple announces Wednesday—whether it’s a set of replacements for the higher-end M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros, or an even higher-priced tier of OLED models above the existing high-end—will not impact the design or price of the $1,999 base M5 (now M6) model.
Apple also bumped the iMac to M6, retaining the existing design and colors introduced in the M1 model. There are some minor technical enhancements here, most notably Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, with 2.5Gb Ethernet (on models with the Ethernet power adapter). But Apple does not seem interested in altering the Apple silicon iteration of the iMac in any substantial way.
Finally, Apple announced a slew of Creator Studio updates, showing that the company is not going to stand still when it comes to advancing its new creative software suite. There’s new content in Final Cut, improvements to music creation and an AI helper in Logic, generative fill in Pixelmator, and a bunch of AI features (leveraging both Apple’s own models and ones from OpenAI) sprinkled throughout the bundle.
Busy week already! I’ll be in L.A. Wednesday for whatever Apple’s announcing, and will be sure to report back here.