by Six Colors Staff

March 24, 2026 8:35 AM PT

Apple announces Apple Business, ads in Maps

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced Apple Business, a new all-in-one platform that includes key services companies need to effortlessly manage devices, reach more customers, equip team members with essential apps and tools, and get support from experts to run and grow efficiently and securely. Apple Business features built-in mobile device management, helping businesses easily configure employee groups, device settings, security, and apps with Blueprints to quickly get started. In addition, customers can now set up business email, calendar, and directory services with their own domain name for seamless and elevated communication and collaboration.

This new offering actually consolidates three existing Apple products, Apple Business Manager, Apple Business Essentials, and Apple Business Connect, and offers mobile device management for free, which will save some existing customers money. There are also some new API functions for larger organizations, and Apple is offering businesses access to Apple-hosted email and calendaring for the first time. The new Blueprints feature will make it easier for administrators to assign configurations and apps.

Also announced today is something that has been widely expected: ads in Maps in the U.S. and Canada. We now know those will arrive this summer. Apple provides additional details further on:

Ads on Maps will appear when users search in Maps, and can appear at the top of a user’s search results based on relevance, as well as at the top of a new Suggested Places experience in Maps, which will display recommendations based on what’s trending nearby, the user’s recent searches, and more. Ads will be clearly marked to ensure transparency for Maps users.

Again, it’s not a huge surprise to see this—Apple has been working on bolstering its ad business in the past few months. But it does mean that once this feature is enabled, you’ll have to scroll past an ad to see results when you search for stuff in Apple Maps.

Ads or no, companies that use Apple Business will also be able to edit their metadata and upload pictures directly into Apple Maps.

It’ll take some time to digest these changes, but it seems like this is a simplification of Apple’s business offering, and making MDM free will be a win for smaller organizations. Unfortunately, Apple’s still only offering 5GB of free iCloud data on managed accounts, and it’s hard to think that any business should rely on Apple’s notoriously unreliable email platform.

by Dan Moren

March 24, 2026 7:15 AM PT

Are orbital data centers economically viable?

From Eric Berger at Ars Technica, the first of a three-part series about orbital data centers. This first part focuses largely on economics, but also touches upon issues of the environment, the obliteration of the night sky, and more. It’s a really fascinating read.

“This is not physically impossible; it’s only a question of whether this is a rational thing to scale up economically,” [engineer Andrew] McCalip said. “The answer is it’s really close. And if you own both sides of the equation, SpaceX and xAI, it’s not a terrible place to be. I wouldn’t bet against Elon.”

Yet betting on Elon also requires a giant leap of faith.

The third part of this series will dive deeper into detailed cost estimates, but in terms of round numbers, the bare-bones cost of deploying 1 million satellites is more than a trillion dollars. SpaceX’s two biggest previous projects to date, the hyper-ambitious Starlink and Starship programs, each required on the order of $10 billion up front. So in terms of scope and cost, orbital data centers are two orders of magnitude larger.

The part that has me curious, but isn’t really addressed in the story, is future-proofing. Companies like Nvidia are kicking out new chips at such a rate that the processors you send in to orbit will almost certainly be outdated by the time they’re operational. Will that be enough to offset the perceived gains? Are we constantly going to be launching new satellites? What happens to the old one? What if the AI bubble bursts? All fertile ground for a near-future sci-fi story, methinks, if not near-future non-fiction.

by Dan Moren

March 23, 2026 12:20 PM PT

Apple sets WWDC 26 for week of June 8

Collect your meager Kalshi and Polymarket winnings, I guess: Apple has officially announced that its 2026 Worldwide Developers Conference will kick off with an in-person event at Apple Park on Monday, June 8.

As in recent years, the event will run for the week, starting with the Keynote and Platforms State of the Union on Monday, followed by video sessions and labs. Videos will be accessible on the Apple Developer app and website, as well as YouTube.

Those who attend the in-person event will be able to watch the Keynote and state of the union, as well as participate in other activities throughout the day. Attendees will be determined by random selection, with invitations sent out by the end of the day on April 2. You must be a member of the Apple Developer Program or Apple Developer Enterprise Program, or a winner of the 2026 Swift Student Challenge to apply. Additionally, 50 “Distinguished Winners” of the challenge will be invited to a three-day experience that includes Monday’s special event.

There are, as usual, lots of eyes on WWDC, where Apple traditionally announces all its big platform updates for the year to come. This year we’re expecting the “27” year updates, but there are big questions marks hovering around some features, like the much-delayed Apple Intelligence offerings. We’ll find out that and more on June 8.

by Jason Snell

March 22, 2026 9:16 AM PT

Missing the point

Matt Birchler sort of doesn’t like the MacBook Neo:

Because this is a Mac, it can do effectively anything you want to throw at it. I have been editing video on it and doing web and Xcode development with very little issue. Yes, my Xcode builds take longer than they do on my M4 Pro Mac, and rendering video runs slower too, but it can do it. If this is the computer your budget allows, don’t think that you can’t.

However, you’ll notice I’m not including any benchmarks in this review. I don’t think benchmarks properly express the experience of using a computer, particularly on the lower end of products. On the high end, when everything basic is child’s play, benchmarks can be helpful to understand differences at the margins. But one of the charts I’ve been seeing go around since this was announced was Geekbench single-core performance, which showed the Neo as effectively as fast as an M4. Let me tell you, if you’re using that chart to understand the performance of this computer, you are being misled.

You certainly are, if your definition of ‘use’ is Xcode builds and video editing. Matt is not technically wrong when he suggests later in his post that, in workflows requiring lots of RAM and speedy disk access, even the oldest Apple silicon MacBook Air will perform a bit better than the MacBook Neo.

When performance is in the ballpark of a five-year-old computer, you have to consider what this machine costs compared to refurbished models from that era…. I can get a refurbished M2 MacBook Air with 512GB storage and 16GB RAM for $50 less than the maxed out MacBook Neo. That M2 Air gets you significantly better performance, a better screen, a better trackpad, better USB-C ports, MagSafe, and faster SSD speeds. I feel very confident saying that the M2 Air is a meaningfully better computer the Neo.

Again, Matt’s not wrong. If you are a savvy shopper with a very limited budget and need that push beyond what the MacBook Neo can give you, you are probably better off searching for a used or refurbished MacBook Air. Last week on MacBreak Weekly, Christina Warren made a strong case for picking up a refurbished or used M3 or M4 MacBook Air, which would cost slightly more than a MacBook Neo but far outclass it in terms of features.

But this entire conversation misses the most important thing about the MacBook Neo: It is sold in every Apple Store, on Apple’s website, and in every Apple sales channel. Most people won’t think to cruise for a refurbished Air—they will just go down to their local store, or pop onto Amazon, and shop for a computer. That’s why the MacBook Neo is important. It’s available to everyone, everywhere, and Apple will stand behind it as a new product.

by Jason Snell

March 22, 2026 8:51 AM PT

Dreaming of an ultralight Mac

David Sparks appreciates the MacBook Neo, but he’d like something smaller:

Think about it. Apple has covered the pro market with the MacBook Pro lineup. The Neo is about to cover the mainstream and budget-conscious buyer.

But there’s a gap at the top. A premium ultralight for people who travel constantly, who want the absolute minimum weight and footprint, and who are willing to pay for it. A MacBook that weighs two pounds or less, with a stunning display and all-day battery life. Not a compromise machine. A showcase.

I would question the premise that you can get “the absolute minimum weight” along with “all-day battery life” (depending on how you define that)—but I do not doubt that Apple could create a laptop with M-series performance and good enough battery life, but with an emphasis on compactness.

But is there enough of a market for a fourth class of MacBook? As someone who has known and loved the 12-inch PowerBook, 11-inch MacBook Air, and even the 12-inch MacBook, I am sadly not convinced that this is a big enough segment for Apple to target when the MacBook Air exists.

And here’s the biggest reason I think a smaller laptop may never happen: Over the last decade, everything in macOS has gotten a bit bigger—not just OS elements, but even fundamentals of app design. When I was still using an 11-inch Air, I would often discover apps that couldn’t be resized to fit on my screen. The same happened with the retina MacBook. I’m afraid that the 13-inch display in the MacBook is probably as small as modern macOS and today’s Apple will reasonably go.

by Jason Snell

March 19, 2026 3:45 PM PT

That time I got to touch the original iPhone

In the aftermath of an Apple product briefing for the original iPhone at Macworld Expo 2007, here’s what I wrote:

Yes, I’ve touched it.

Although the undisputed winner of the most-talked-about product award at this year’s Macworld Expo is Apple’s new iPhone, it’s actually quite a rare commodity… I don’t have an exact count, but as far as I can tell there aren’t very many real iPhones out there in the world. (And since the iPhone is still six months away from its arrival, that’s not too surprising.) And it’s too bad… let me tell you with personal experience, it’s much more impressive when it’s in your hand—or more to the point, when your finger’s running across its multi-touch screen….

I can admit that I found it quite difficult to form complete sentences while I was holding the iPhone. In terms of sheer gadget magnetism, its power can not be overstated.

I’ve always wondered what my contestant-interview anecdote would be if I were ever a contestant on “Jeopardy!”. This one would make a pretty good one, I think.

by Dan Moren

March 18, 2026 1:46 PM PT

Apple Photos’s concert identification seems to play more misses than hits

Technology professional Chris Devers¹ has taken a close look at Photos’s concert feature, where it tries to tag pictures you take at musical events with the name of the show. Unfortunately, it’s a feature that’s rife with inaccuracies. Here’s just one class of example:

Apple’s software struggles with understanding who the headline act is in a multiple-band lineup.

I’m sure it doesn’t help that the listings for these shows are a metadata mess, with the names listed in seemingly any order: the headliner might be at the top of a sign, at the bottom of a poster, or in a big font on the middle of a web page.

In any case, mixing up an opener for the headliner is a common mismatch in Apple Photos concert event tagging.

For the first example, in what will become a theme, getting the tagging right for Pixies concerts seems to be a chronic problem in my Photos library. In this case, Franz Ferdinand opened for them, but FF gets top billing according to Apple Photos.

Chris has the receipts, including plenty of pictures with incorrect captions. The problem isn’t limited to confusing headliners and openers: music festivals are incorrectly labelled as a single artist, concerts are confused with shows at nearby locations or even venues with multiple rooms, and photos taken on the same date are assumed to all be at the same event, even when they’re not.

I confess this is a feature I rarely think about because I don’t go to that many live concerts. Searching my Photos library (which you can do specifically for “concerts” to see the images it’s tagged) did find a correctly identified Guster concert from June 2023—though it doesn’t mention that they were playing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra—but the vast majority were wrong, including several pictures of the Relay 10 celebration in London in July 2024, which were identified as a “Liang Lawrence Concert.” (That concert appears to have taken place the same night at a nearby venue).

All of this certainly feels like a machine learning feature just making its best guesses based on the information available with no way to determine whether something is true or not, an all-too-common occurrence. Ultimately it’s just not doing it well enough to be—stop me if you’ve heard this one before—reliable or useful. To my mind, though, the real failing—as Chris points out—is that Apple doesn’t provide any way for you to fix this. You can’t manually re-tag or even simply remove the incorrect tag. That feels like a real oversight and turns this feature from half-baked to totally uncooked.

by Shelly Brisbin

March 18, 2026 1:27 PM PT

AppleVis releases its Vision Accessibility Report Card

AppleVis released its fourth annual Vision Accessibility Report Card, a survey of visually impaired Apple users inspired by the Six Colors Report Card:

This year saw our highest level of survey participation to-date, as well as our highest-ever level of engagement thus far with the low vision-specific questions.

Our survey results indicate that across almost all categories, satisfaction with Apple’s accessibility offerings for blind, deafblind, and low vision users decreased when compared to 2024.

For VoiceOver and Braille users, dissatisfaction with software quality and the presence of long-standing accessibility bugs were overarching themes throughout participant comments. For low vision users, participant comments show that Apple’s 2025 liquid glass user interface redesign had a significant negative impact on the user experience for many.

Overall, AppleVis readers gave Apple a B (3.7 out of 5). That score is down slightly from 2024’s 3.9. The survey asked readers’ opinions of VoiceOver, Braille and low-vision broken out by platform, along with scores for their overall impression of new accessibility features. Respondents also rated user experience with each OS platform and accessibility category.

iOS and iPadOS scored highest in most categories, including VoiceOver features, Braille features and low-vision features, with a 4.2 average for each. iOS and iPadOS user experience also netted 4.2 ratings.

AppleVis users believe Apple continues to struggle when it comes to fixing bugs in VoiceOver and Braille, giving the company a C – a 3.0 rating – in this category, which covers all platforms. Also at the bottom of the ratings were macOS VoiceOver user experience, with a 3.1, and three tvOS categories, which scored between 3.2 and 3.5. Low-vision features in tvOS took the greatest ratings tumble, from 2024, slipping from 4.1 to 3.2.

As usual for this survey, the comments section features a lot of strong opinions.

by Jason Snell

March 17, 2026 9:40 AM PT

MacBook Neo shows how Apple outplayed Microsoft

Former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky, in a post reviewing the MacBook Neo, makes this observation about how Apple got the ARM transition right and why Microsoft got it wrong:

Apple’s software secret was this constant upgrading of the OS and the ecosystem (from drivers up). Microsoft’s secret was “run everything forever”. As is almost always the case in business and product development, your greatest strength (in any of the 4 Ps) becomes your greatest weakness. The pull and push of forever compatibility was not just “Windows DNA” but it was the soul of what made Windows successful and was sacred. But it was obvious then and now that it was the part that needed to change. 

This is absolutely right. It’s not that Microsoft didn’t know where it needed to go with Windows and PC designs—it absolutely did. For years, you could watch what it was doing and see it trying to push things forward—only to be dragged backward by its entire business being built on stability, legacy, and compatibility. The thing that made Windows so sticky also made it almost impossible to effect real change.

Apple, on the other hand, has never shied away from pushing compatibility changes and breaking old software and forcing users to new OS versions. That can be annoying, for sure, but it’s also gotten the Mac to where it is today, with Apple silicon in general and a product like the MacBook Neo in particular.