By Jason Snell

April 30, 2026 6:53 PM PT

Apple results analysis: Net-net over the moon

Pretty soon, we aren’t going to have Tim Cook to kick around anymore. Or at least, when we kick him around, it’ll be a sort of executive chair kind of kicking. (Wait, I was told there would be no more kicking!)

Regardless of pending executive transitions, Apple released its corporate earnings for the second fiscal quarter of 2026, and Tim Cook got to bask in the sun — and dodge questions from analysts — for one of the last times.

The charts have all been generated, and Tim Cook hasn’t yet regenerated into John Ternus, so here’s a quick set of additional observations about what’s going on in the business of Apple.

A new definition of boring

Apple’s business has been very, very seasonal for a long time—certainly back to the introduction of the iPod, if not before. Apple sells a lot of stuff in the last three months of the year, not only because it’s the holiday season, but these days because it’s also new iPhone season.

Those holiday quarters are huge. They stand out on any chart you make. The other quarters, well, they’re the sag in the saddle. They’re important because you need 12 months to make a calendar, but they’ve never had the sizzle of the holiday quarter.

Which is why it’s so impressive that, for two successive “boring” quarters, Apple has generated more than $100 billion in revenue. In 2020, Apple’s “boring” quarters averaged $60.9 billion in revenue. That a company this large can still grow this much in five years is astounding. When I describe Apple as the world’s foremost machine that generates cash, I am not kidding.

Speaking of cash, back in 2018, Apple declared that its policy was to become “cash neutral over time,” because its cash flow had gotten so ridiculous that it was sitting on $163 billion in net cash. In practice, Apple attempted to spend its extra money largely through stock buybacks and shareholder dividends.

Eight years later and more than a trillion dollars of cash return later, things are changing, at least a little. “As we move ahead, we are no longer providing net cash neutral as a formal target, and we will independently evaluate cash and debt,” Apple CFO Kevan Parekh said on Thursday’s call.

Now, I’m sure there are a lot of complex financial reasons Apple has decided to back away from net cash neutral, and Parekh was quick to point out that Apple’s board had authorized $100 billion to be used in future stock buybacks. The company, he said, is still “very committed to returning excess cash to shareholders.”

The key concept here seems to be flexibility. It sure sounds to me like Apple wants the ability to, for example, stash a little extra cash away so that it’s capable of making big moves if it needs to. Maybe that’s capital expenditures involving AI stuff. Maybe it’s keeping enough cash ready to spring if there’s a company it feels like it can acquire, in whole or in part. (Apple’s cash flow is an enormous advantage should it come across a relevant company that’s in fiscal distress.)

I also have to wonder if the company might be considering larger investments to normalize its component supplies. Right now, RAM is at a premium, and Apple’s using every chip TSMC can manufacture for it. Maybe Apple wants the leeway to give billions of dollars to a partner to build a factory and pre-buy all the output of that factory for a certain number of years. Not cheap, but if you’ve got the cash, maybe a good longer-term investment.

We’ll see what happens. I just think it’s interesting that Apple went to the trouble of formally disengaging from its old monetary policy so it can get a little more room to maneuver. Usually, if you’re looking for that, it means you are thinking of maneuvering, right?

Memory costs are starting to affect Apple

Apple’s careful planning meant it could combat the rising cost of memory for a little while, but that time seems to be coming to an end. Here’s what Cook said Thursday:

In the December quarter, we really had a minimal impact due to memory, and you can kind of see that in the gross margin results. We said it would be a bit more in the March quarter, and we did see higher memory costs in the March quarter, and they were partially offset by benefits from carry-in inventory that we had. For the June quarter and what’s embedded in the guidance that Kevan went through earlier, we expect significantly higher memory costs. They are also partly offset by the benefit of carry-in inventory. And then, where we don’t give color beyond June, I can tell you that beyond the June quarter, we believe memory costs will drive an increasing impact on our business. And we’ll continue to evaluate this, and as we’ve said before, we’ll look at a range of options.

What are those options? Cook said he didn’t really want to go into it, but we can all probably guess: Lowering margins and/or raising prices. Apple tends to go about this in very careful ways—base prices may stay the same, with the cost of higher-end configurations seeing price increases. Its huge product margins give it room to maneuver, but Apple’s not ever going to want to give away margin. That’s not how it’s wired. Bottom line: Some Apple products are going to become more expensive in the near future, but it may be more complicated (and less obvious) than you expect.

Can’t sell ’em if you can’t make ’em

While having more demand for your products than you can fulfill is a good problem to have, it’s still a problem. Ideally, every person who wants to buy an Apple product would have their credit cards immediately charged and their product shipped. Unfortunately, we live in a world that suddenly has some dramatic tech supply constraints, and it bit Apple in the second quarter.

Oh, it’s the memory thing again, you might be thinking. But no! Apple’s current supply constraints are actually at Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC), which can’t make Apple’s key SoCs (Systems on Chips) fast enough to fulfill Apple’s demand. Apple uses TSMC’s most advanced nodes, and according to Cook, “we’re not at the point where we’re saying this is going to end anytime soon.” There’s no button to push to make the conveyor belt at TSMC run faster.

Who does Cook blame? Himself, more or less. “We just under-called the demand,” he said. This constraint is hitting the iPhone as well as the Mac, and especially the Mac mini and Mac Studio, due to increased demands due to Apple silicon being a pretty great platform for agentic AI applications.

The MacBook Neo was also constrained, which is interesting, since I’m not sure that’s a TSMC supply problem. But Apple rolled it into its description of all the other issues it’s having. “We were very bullish on the product before announcing it, but we undercalled the level of enthusiasm that would be with it,” Cook said.

Memory is going to hit Apple, yes. And this quarter was already a record. And yet… if Apple had correctly forecast demand and made sure TSMC was able to supply that demand, it would’ve sold more iPhones and Macs in the last quarter. As I said, as bad stories go, it’s got good roots—but it’s still not ideal.

Tariff Talk with Tim

During a complicated question from J.P. Morgan analyst Samik Chatterjee about product margins, Parekh unusually half-answered the question and then stopped and “turned it over to Tim” so that Cook could read an obviously prepared statement about tariffs, which included this bit:

In terms of applying for a refund of tariffs paid, we’re following the established processes, and we plan to reinvest any amount we receive back into U.S. innovation and advanced manufacturing. These would be new investments and would be in addition to our prior commitments in the U.S.

This is the sort of politics Cook will continue to be plying from the boardroom. Sure, Apple’s going to try to get its tariff money back. But it’s going to do so using the perfectly normal and established process, and if it does get billions back from the U.S. government, it double-promises to reinvest that money in the United States, above and beyond its already stated commitments. Trump Administration, take note.

Remember this moment with Bullish Tim

I’m going to miss Cook on these quarterly calls. He pointed out that Thursday’s call was his 89th, which, yes, predates his era as CEO. (Steve Jobs only attended the calls occasionally, leaving Cook to preside over them even as Chief Operating Officer.)

Anyway, one of Cook’s signature earnings call moves is being bullish on emerging markets. So a tip o’ the cap to Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers, who used his allotted two questions to ask Cook to play the hits—namely, to ask how he felt about Apple’s business in China and India.

After a few years in the doldrums, Apple’s last two quarters in China have been solid. Cook was quick to point out that the iPhone was the top-selling phone in urban China, the Mac mini was the top desktop in China, and the MacBook Air was the top laptop.

In terms of India, Cook got to point out (as he loves to do) that even with all of Apple’s growth there, it’s still got enormous growth potential:

It’s the second-largest smartphone market in the world and the third-largest PC market, and despite doing extremely well there for quite some time, we still have a modest share. And so I think that really speaks to the opportunity that we have…. Net-net, I’m over the moon excited about India.

I’m going to miss hearing from Tim Cook, the man who can generate the requisite enthusiasm about international business to use a phrase like “net-net over the moon.”

Some advice for John Ternus

During Cook’s introductory remarks on the earnings call, he allowed future CEO John Ternus to drop in and read a 250-word prepared statement. It was a necessary mutual-admiration society where Cook praised Ternus (“a brilliant engineer, a deep thinker, a person of remarkable character, and a born leader”), followed by Ternus immediately praising Cook (“one of the greatest business leaders of all time”). The whole point of this is to send the message to Wall Street that Apple’s got this and nobody needs to be worried.

What wasn’t quite as necessary was the door opened by Evercore analyst Amit Daryanani, who asked Cook if he could share any advice he had for John Ternus, given that Steve Jobs famously told Cook not to ask what he would do, but focus on doing what was right.

Here was Cook’s response:

I think Steve’s advice to me lifted a huge burden, and so that advice did well for me over the 15 years. For John… what I’ve told him is that one of the most important decisions he’ll make is where to spend his time. And I would spend it where the greatest benefit to the company and the users are, and never forget the north star for the company. We’re about making the best products in the world that really enrich other people’s lives, and if you keep focusing on that and make your decisions around that, it will produce a great business, and we’ll be able to build more products and do it all over again.

Now don’t get all misty on us, Tim. There’s still your 90th analyst call to come, sometime in late July. I hope someone remembers to bake a cake for that one.

By Jason Snell

April 30, 2026 2:24 PM PT

This is Tim (and John and Kevan): Complete transcript of Apple’s Q2 2026 financial call

Every quarter after releasing financial results, Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Kevan Parekh hop on a conference call with analysts to detail the quarter gone by, give a peek at what’s to come, and maybe brag a little about setting an all-time record or two. And oh, who’s this?! It’s future CEO John Ternus joining as well!

This is Six Colors’s transcript of the call for April 30, 2026.

Continue reading “This is Tim (and John and Kevan): Complete transcript of Apple’s Q2 2026 financial call”…

By Jason Snell

April 30, 2026 1:38 PM PT

Apple announces record fiscal second quarter

On Thursday, Apple announced record second-quarter earnings, with $111.2 billion in revenue, up 17 percent year-over year. The company said it grew double digits across every geographic segment.

Just after results were released, Apple execs spent an hour on the phone with financial industry analysts, and we have the complete transcript. And at 4pm Pacific/7pm Eastern, we’ll offer our own live analysis on YouTube.

And now, to help you visualize what Apple just announced, here is our traditional barrage of charts and graphs:

Continue reading “Apple announces record fiscal second quarter”…

By Jason Snell

April 30, 2026 8:56 AM PT

Apple to announce Q2 fiscal results later today

Last week it was a new CEO. This week for Apple, it’s probably going to be the usual quarterly report of record revenues and profits.

On Thursday afternoon, Apple will announce the results of its second fiscal quarter for 2026. Last quarter was an all-time record, but that was the holiday quarter, which is usually Apple’s biggest. This quarter will be smaller, but Apple projected that revenue would grow by 13% to 16%. That means Apple expected this quarter’s revenue to be between $108B and $111B. This would mark only the second time—after last year’s fiscal fourth quarter—that the company surpassed $100B in revenue in a non-holiday quarter. It’s a sign that maybe $100B quarters are… just routine for Apple now? Astounding.

As usual, Six Colors will be here to report on the whole thing. Around 1:30 pm PDT, the company will release its financial reports and we’ll be on the scene with a load of charts and some analysis. At 2pm PDT, there will be an hour-long phone call with analysts that we’ll also transcribe. At 4pm PDT, Dan and I will stream live on YouTube with analysis, including discussion of all of those charts!

This should be an interesting one, in terms of how Apple characterizes the CEO transition, what it might say about early sales of the MacBook Neo, and the lingering concern that RAM shortages are going to impact Apple’s sales and bottom line. And of course, Wall Street will be closely awaiting Apple’s projections for how Q3 will go.

By Dan Moren

April 30, 2026 6:53 AM PT

The Vision Pro: Not quite dead yet

The Vision Pro may very well be the Rasputin of Apple products. Ever since its release, it’s been plagued with reports of being a flop, doomed, dead on arrival. But as the dust clears, many of those reports have proved to be, in that time-honored expression, greatly exaggerated. The Vision Pro soldiers onward.

The latest is a story in MacRumors from Juli Clover, which makes the straightforward claim that “Apple Has Given Up on the Vision Pro After M5 Refresh Flop“:

Apple has all but given up on the Vision Pro after the M5 model failed to revitalize interest in the device, MacRumors has learned. Apple updated the Vision Pro with a faster M5 chip and a more comfortable band in October 2025, but there were no other hardware changes, and consumers still weren’t interested.

Now, I’m not privy to MacRumors’s sources but I’m going to say that I’m skeptical of this pronouncement. And I’m not the only one: Jonathan Wight, who worked in Apple’s AR/VR group until 2022, disputed the report on Mastodon, and that jibes with what I’ve heard privately.

But I’m not surprised. The Vision Pro has always been ripe for this kind of commentary because Apple has taken a distinctly un-Apple approach with it, selling an extraodinarily high-priced device in limited volumes. That’s a contrast to most of its products, which operate in very high quantities. And given that one of Apple’s other high-price/low-volume products was recently 86ed, I can see the temptation to think that the company is taking care of all family business.

But intentions matter. From everything we’ve heard, the Vision Pro was never anticipated to sell in high volumes. Likewise, this report declares the M5 revamp of the Vision Pro a “flop” but from a macro perspective, replacing the M5 processor in the Vision Pro was less about making it more attractive to consumers than it was about the fact that it was ramping down production of the M2 chips in the existing model.¹ Heck, if Apple really was killing the Vision Pro, why would it update it in the first place?

Clover’s story goes on to say:

Apple has apparently stopped work on the Vision Pro and the Vision Pro team has been redistributed to other teams within Apple. Some former Vision Pro team members are working on Siri, which is not a surprise as Vision Pro chief Mike Rockwell has been leading the Siri team since March 2025.

These personnel moves feel like the germ of this story, and given that, I can certainly see why the natural conclusion would be to point to the Vision Pro’s demise. Especially when combined with recent stories reporting that incoming CEO John Ternus was “wary of the mixed-reality headset that became the Vision Pro”.² Surely he’s exercising his newfound power to kill this hated product dead!³

But that conclusion is hardly foregone. Look, it’s pretty clear that there are lots of other projects at Apple that are higher priority than the Vision Pro right now. That work on Siri is clearly incredibly significant, especially in light of promises that are now two years old and still haven’t shipped. Rockwell was essentially parachuted into the Siri role as a fixer: it’s no surprise that he would draw from a trusted pool of his reports to get the job done.

Likewise, Apple has reportedly accelerated work on its smart glasses product, mounting a somewhat late challenge to products from Meta and, soon, Samsung. Again, if Apple is prioritizing getting that product out the door, it’s not hard to imagine that the company might shift personnel to work on it—especially if we’re talking personnel who have experience with augmented reality.

I have no trouble believing that Vision Pro development is on the back burner. By all accounts the technology to get to the device that Apple really wants to make just isn’t here yet, and isn’t expected to be anytime soon. Could that mean the Vision Pro will eventually be killed? Absolutely. But not only is the Vision Pro still a genuinely technologically impressive device, but everything Apple developed for it will almost certainly inform future products—especially if the company is still trying to ultimately make a lighter pair of augmented reality glasses. The Vision Pro is fine where it is: even the original M2 model is still an incredibly capable device. Apple can continue as it’s doing now: building up a library of content for the device and working on pushing the envelope of its software capabilities.

Which leads me to my final point: if you want to know if the Vision Pro really is in trouble, then the clearest indication will come just over a month from now, at WWDC 2026. Apple will, presumably, take the wraps off visionOS 27 alongside the rest of its platform updates; look to see not only how much time it gets during the keynote, but, more importantly, the magnitude of updates (or lack thereof). Because the Vision Pro is a story about a platform, and just as macOS was not dictated by the success or failure of a single Mac model, the Vision platform is not merely tied to the Vision Pro as its exists today.

[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 next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]

By Glenn Fleishman

April 27, 2026 7:45 AM PT

Exploring the wide range of Find My-compatible devices

When the AirTag first shipped five years ago, I glommed right onto writing about it. I already had a section in a book on security and privacy about using the Find My device feature, enabled for iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple Watches. I was keyed up to understand where AirTag fit in. Recently, surveying the field, I found a shocking number of Find My network-equipped products, from an inexpensive flashlight to a $3,500 ebike.

Within the Apple ecosystem, it’s worth looking at what’s now available for those of us trying not to lose our things by misplacing them, forgetting to take them with us, or having them stolen.¹ Because more hardware now has effectively unremovable Find My tracking technology, it may be a more effective theft deterrent or way to recover an absconded item. (I’ve got an extra suggestion about that, too.)

A distinct itemization

AirTag introduced a new category: items versus devices. A Find My device can reach the Internet and report its position, and can use a native app to see other stuff via Find My; a Find My item just broadcasts over Bluetooth to any nearby listening iPhone, iPad, or Mac.²

An AirTag lets you track whatever it is attached to or inside by relaying its signal through other Apple devices. This offers something akin to GPS-based tracking without the need for constant battery recharging, while also finding its location and updating it when indoors. GPS works anywhere with a clear line of sight outdoors, while Find My crowdsourcing requires at least one nearby Internet-connected Apple device to relay its current position.

The stuff we track is more likely to be lost inside than outside, I’d wager, with exceptions for stolen bicycles and cars. Or when you park your car in a vast lot and forget where it is. Find My items benefit from relaying through Apple hardware that uses a combination of Wi-Fi positioning, cell tower locations, and GPS and other satellite-positioning networks, as available.³

The short battery life for a GPS-based tracker hands an advantage to the Find My network. While GPS trackers have become progressively more efficient over the decades, they still need to be recharged frequently—every few days to a few weeks, depending on battery capacity and how often they report location. That’s because they typically have both satellite receivers and cellular modems: the GPS location is derived and then transmitted over the cellular network. Find My items typically last at least a year, after which their batteries need to be replaced or recharged.⁴

Apple announced Find My licensing to third parties alongside the AirTag release, and products appeared soon after. These were mostly trackers that cost less, had a slightly different form factor, weighed less, offered rechargeable batteries, or fit better in a wallet.

It took some time for more variety to enter the Find My item market, and I frankly lost track of the sheer diversity of what’s out there. With Find My now built into a wider array of products, you might want to stick a third-party item into something you own, or replace a device with one that has Find My support.

Getting lost in all the Find My items

I set out a few weeks ago to compile a list of all items with certified Find My. Friends, I thought it would number between 20 and 30 items. It started to become unmanageable, so I built a site—FindYourTag—both for my own reference and because why not share it? Reaching over 50 items, I started to get emails and social media replies asking, “Why didn’t you include product X?” Indeed! I didn’t know about product X, but now it’s in. The database now lists 73 devices,⁵ though some are close variations of a single product.⁶

Some of these products have the attribute of supporting two or three kinds of alarms or tracking: some let you pair to both Apple Find My and Google Find Hub; a few expensive items also have their own proprietary movement alarm, managed via an app.

Here’s what I’ve found.

If you want a wallet tracker, you have a lot of choices. Apple has chosen to offer a single AirTag model. Baffling, because why not tap into the wallet-sized market? Apple’s absence is good news for third parties, because 14 different companies make a total of 18 wallet-insertable cards.

They’re all thin, though some are thinner than others. About half are rechargeable, though most of those require a unique magnetically coupled adapter that you are sure to lose unless you have a special place you keep odd adapters. Other cards advertise long battery life (two to three years) and have a discount program on replacing after that point if you return the battery for recycling.

If you’d prefer a wallet with built-in tracking, instead of a card you insert—well, there are eight of those, including the Nomad Leather Mag Wallet (Jason has one) that can hold up to four credit cards, and attaches via MagSafe to your iPhone.

Apple does offer a MagSafe-attached wallet, the FineWoven Wallet with MagSafe (holds up to three cards), but it features a Find My “lite” variant Apple doesn’t license: when removed from its paired iPhone, it only shows the last known location at that moment in Find My—it lacks the crucial ongoing crowdsourcing component.

Stuff you probably will leave behind accidentally. There’s a whole shaggy category of things that you have left behind and aren’t a Kindle that you wished you were alerted about leaving behind (a Find My feature) or could track later. This includes:

• Power adapter: Finding out that Twelve South has a line of four different PlugBug models with Find My built in made me wonder why Apple doesn’t include Find My as a default feature on its adapters? The matrix of the four models is you can choose 50 watts and two USB-C jacks or 120 W and four USB-C jacks; either wattage charger can be purchased in a travel edition, which comes with the full array of adapters for worldwide plugging in.

• Keys: The Ekster Finder Tag ($39) is a key-holding clip with the Find My item in the middle.

• Glasses case: Satechi has the right idea here with its FindAll Glasses Case ($50). I left my distance glasses somewhere in the greater Boston area in March, and, wow, is replacing your glasses with prescription, transition lenses expensive. Oof. Ouch. Get me a Satechi, and send it back through time! (Did I mention they’re vegan, too?)

• Flashlight: Cheap flashlights are now absurdly bright—probably FAA-rules-violatingly bright if pointed upward—but how many flashlights have you lost? The $25 Footnote FlashFinder is compact, recharges via USB-C, and has Find My.

• Camera: Insta360 makes a lot of different camera models. On two of them, the GO 3S ($295) and GO Ultra ($450) are both tiny, making them prone to loss, and trackable.

The expensive stuff that you would highly regret having stolen and being untrackable. You can add a Find My tag in a lot of ways to a bike or scooter, but they typically have to be located in some external location that a thief could remove or cover with foil, blocking the signal. For instance, I have a Knog Scout ($65) which uses a special drive⁷ on the screws you use to attach it to the standard water-bottle mount holes found on most bikes.

But wouldn’t it be better if you had Find My as part of the vehicle, making it effectively unremovable without destroying the bike or scooter? Several manufacturers agree.⁸ You can find Apollo, Segway, Specialized, and Velotric models with just that.⁹ For those serious about measuring their performance, you can even get a 4iii powermeter (the Precision 3+ Powermeter, starts at $335, several models) with integral Find My.

For further reading

I am a big fan of Find My for the obvious reason that it’s let me keep track of my stuff over the last several years. That journey includes pupping part of a Take Control book about security and privacy that had swollen with tracking facts into separate volume: Take Control of Find My and AirTags. If you’ve ever had a question about setting up tracking of your own stuff, locating people, or using the Find My apps, I have so many answers for you.

[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]

[Glenn Fleishman is a printing and comics historian, Jeopardy champion, and serial Kickstarterer. His latest book, which you can pre-order, is Flong Time, No See. Recent books are Six Centuries of Type & Printing and How Comics Are Made.]

By Jason Snell

April 23, 2026 4:16 PM PT

Introducing the Six Colors Audio Newsletter

Six Colors wouldn’t work without direct support from our members.

Over the years we’ve added a bunch of new members-only features to the site. Our weekly podcast has proven to be very popular, so much so that it made me realize that a lot of members are perhaps a bit more inclined to consume podcasts than reading what we write with their eyeballs.

As a result, I’ve built a new “Six Colors Audio Newsletter” podcast feed. Using the same logic as our regular members-only email newsletter, it posts an episode any day there’s at least one full story on the site. Any day we’ve got stuff on the site, a new Audio Newsletter episode drops, complete with introduction and chapter markers per story. Here’s a link to a sample episode.

The Audio Newsletter uses a high-quality text-to-speech engine, so it’s not a human reader, but I’m surprised at how good it is. I’ve spent a lot of time tweaking the script to make the output better, including alternating two different high-quality voices, using additional voices for lengthy quotes from other sources, calling out footnotes explicitly, and even switching to a “read every character” mode when stuff is posted in code font, which happens frequently in Help Me, Glenn! columns. And the refining of the script continues!

If you like reading our words with your eyes, thank you. But since I began quietly experimenting with this automated read-it-to-you podcast, I have heard from numerous members who say they just don’t have the time to read everything we write, but are happy to have integrated this podcast into their listening queue. I hope it’s useful for a subset of the audience.

If you’re a member, you can subscribe on your Memberful page.

And if you’re not yet a member, here’s a plug: when you join you don’t just support Six Colors, you get access to a weekly exclusive podcast with Dan and me, John Moltz’s This Week in Apple column, Dan’s monthly Back Page column, a full-content newsletter if you’d prefer to read the site that way, the new full-content Audio Newsletter, and access to a really good Discord community. It’s a lot!

And regardless of your membership status, thank you for reading this site. I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for eleven and a half years, but here we are.

By Philip Michaels

April 23, 2026 1:09 PM PT

Scoring the differences between ESPN and Apple Sports

In recent weeks, when I’ve fired up the ESPN app on my iPhone, an unpleasant sight has greeted me amid all the scores and upcoming games I’m trying to check in on. There, placed prominently in each entry for upcoming games, regardless of the sport, has been a big, ugly-looking block of betting odds.

Outside of friendly card games, I’m not a gambler and certainly not someone who wagers on sports. (If you take nothing else away from this article, “Never bet on anything that can talk” is a good piece of advice for anyone to live by.) I don’t begrudge your gambling fix if that’s where you find some joy in life’s slog, but I don’t want it consuming precious screen real estate when all I want to do is check a baseball score.

At some point, ESPN apparently updated its iPhone app, as the odds block no longer appears in the Scores tab, and there’s no mention of betting in the app’s preferences. If ESPN truly went in and fixed that part of the app, then kudos — but it hasn’t stopped me from exploring other alternatives to following my favorite sports, starting with Apple’s very own Sports app.

Apple released the Sports app a little more than two years ago, launching with the sports in season at the time and steadily adding more leagues and teams over time. These days, you can follow most of the same things in Apple Sports that you can via ESPN. Even better from my perspective, you can banish any betting info should you not wish to see it. In the settings of Apple’s app, there’s a toggle to hide betting odds.

I’ve been spending the past couple of weeks taking a second look at Apple Sports to see if the app’s improved any since its 2024 launch. And rather than kick ESPN to the curb, I’ve kept using this old, familiar score checker, comparing what it offers to Apple’s effort. My goal: find out which app is the better fit for my fandom and make it my permanent app of choice for staying on top of sports from my iPhone.

ESPN vs Apple Sports: Customization

Both the ESPN and Apple Sports apps place a premium on letting you follow your favorite teams and sports, though they take very different approaches to how those favorites are displayed. In ESPN’s case, your favorite teams appear at the top of the top of Scores tab, followed by the leagues those teams play in. The rest of the Scores tab includes other sports, with ESPN highlighting the biggest news of the day — or at least the news related to sports it has the broadcast rights to — in the app’s Home tab.

In contrast, Apple’s Sports app is all about your favorites. Nothing appears on the Home screen unless you put it there. That goes for teams as well as leagues, which can require a little extra work on your part.

Say your favorite team is the Detroit Tigers — and why not? Thomas Magnum rooted for them. Once you mark the Tigers as a favorite, all their games will wind up in your Sports feed… but if you want other Major League Baseball scores to show up, you’re going to have to designate MLB as a favorite, too. It seems like that should be self-evident — who follows a team in a vacuum? — but as far as hoops to jump through, it’s a relatively minimal one.

I’m torn as to which approach I prefer, though there’s a lot to be said for the stripped-back style of Apple Sports. If I’m just interested in finding out what the teams I follow are up to, Apple provides me with that. I think that gives Sports the edge over ESPN, even if it’s a slight one.

That said, sometimes it’s good to be aware of what’s happening beyond your silo of interest. If an NBA game broke out in my kitchen, I’d want to know why LeBron James wasn’t chipping in his share of the mortgage, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate seeing the NBA playoff results in the ESPN app, if for no other reason than to feel slightly more informed about the wider world. I can find those results in Apple Sports — just swipe right from the Home screen, tap on NBA and voila — but as with setting up favorites, it’s an extra step or two compared to ESPN.

I should also note that ESPN’s list of sports and leagues to track is a little more extensive than what Apple offers, even after two years of expansion on Apple’s part. I’m a fan of the Oakland Roots, a soccer team that plies its trade in the second-tier USL. I can include the Roots among my favorites in ESPN’s app, but not Apple’s. Similarly, the US Women’s National Team is MIA from Apple Sports, though presumably that changes when the 2027 World Cup gets closer. All of this is more of a Me Problem, but I’m the guy trying to find a sports app that best suits his needs.

ESPN vs Apple Sports: Information

Sometimes I want to know more than just the score — I want some sense of how the game went. Both ESPN and Apple Sports let you tap on a particular game to get the who, what and how much, though that information gets displayed in different ways.

Let’s look at an in-progress event using a Tigers-Brewers game as our point of comparison. Both apps give you the basics — the score, the inning, who’s pitching and who’s batting, plus an inning-by-inning line score. But even that info comes across in different ways.

Apple Sports seems to take a backward approach, putting the name of the batter and pitcher above the logos for their respective teams; in ESPN’s view, the logo appears next to the scores, making it much easier to see who’s winning and losing at a glance.

ESPN also offers a more expansive view when presenting a lot of the same information you see in Apple’s app. The pitcher and batter appear, but you also get images, including a pitch-by-pitch breakdown of balls and strikes in ESPN’s default view. You can also see who’s on base in the ESPN app.

Weirdly, Apple believes that team stats showing the number of hits, strikeouts, walks and more should be the key data you see first. If you want team box scores, you’ve got to scroll down. That information is easier to access with ESPN.

Apple’s approach to including details about baseball games makes no sense to me as someone who’s followed the sport for most of my life. It gives the impression that no one employed by Apple has spent much time poring over box scores in the morning paper, and that Apple decided to shoehorn baseball into a template designed for a different sport.

Apple continues to shortchange fans once the game ends, at least when it comes to baseball finals. If you want to find out who the winning and losing pitchers were, you’ll have to scroll down to the box scores in the Sports app. That information appears prominently in ESPN’s end-of-game report.

In fairness to Apple Sports, other end-of-game reports are a little better organized. A soccer box score at least shows me who scored, whether I’m looking in Apple’s app or on ESPN. With ESPN, I do get a written match report, though.

ESPN vs. Apple Sports: Extras

As you might expect, ESPN’s app offers a lot more than just scores, with news articles, video highlights and direct access to anything streaming through ESPN. That’s simply a non-starter for Apple, just as you wouldn’t be able to buy an iPhone or a MacBook Neo directly from Stephen A. Smith.

ESPN does a better job listing the channels where you can find broadcasts of games. Checking ESPN’s Premier League scoreboard, for example, I can see which matches are streaming on Peacock compared to which ones are on cable TV. If you want to find that info on Apple’s Sports app, you’ve got to drill down into the actual entry for the game.

However, in Apple Sports, you can jump to other apps that are streaming those games — something ESPN doesn’t offer for non-ESPN telecasts. So with Apple Sports, it’s ultimately easier to tune in on the action — unless, of course, we’re talking about the live sports Netflix is starting to feature more prominently.

ESPN vs. Apple Sports: Verdict

The ESPN vs. Apple Sports debate may be one of those instances where you wish you could pick and choose the best elements from either app to produce the ultimate score checker. Take the depth of ESPN’s information and the more sensible box scores and combine that with Apple’s customization features, and you’d really be on to something.

After giving both apps a try, I’m not sure I’m ready to abandon the Worldwide Leader in Sports, especially now that the ill-considered betting features that had me ready to dump ESPN seem to have been scrapped. But I’m keeping Apple Sports on my iPhone just in case, because in an age where sports gambling is everywhere, I know the value of hedging my bets.

[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.]

By Jason Snell

April 22, 2026 8:53 AM PT

I’m switching back from Spotlight, at least for now

As a part of the process of reviewing macOS Tahoe, I stopped using my longtime launcher LaunchBar and forced myself to use Apple’s new and improved version of Spotlight.

The surprising thing is, I never went back to LaunchBar. Spotlight in Tahoe was responsive, well integrated, and finally supplied me with the OS-native clipboard history feature I’ve wanted for years. While there were a few features from LaunchBar I missed—most notably, the ability to bring up an app in the launcher window and then drag a file onto it from the Finder—I was able to adapt quickly.

My friend Dr. Drang gave Spotlight in Tahoe a go recently and had a much worse experience, most notably reporting that it was terribly slow. He quickly retreated to LaunchBar (and, for clipboard history, Keyboard Maestro).

I have to agree with Dr. Drang here: I don’t know when, and I don’t know why, but over the last few months, as macOS Tahoe has gone from 26.3 to 26.4 to 26.5 beta, Spotlight has gotten progressively worse. It’s sometimes incredibly slow, making me wait to launch an app. Sometimes it misses entire categories of items. (I frequently launch items saved in my Safari favorites, and on several occasions, Spotlight just refused to show any of them.)

Also, my months of using Spotlight revealed another weakness: It’s just not as good as LaunchBar is at intuiting which items are more important to me. In Spotlight, if I type home and accidentally select an app like HomeControl or HomeBot instead of the regular old Home app, I am then prompted to launch that other app, seemingly forever. In LaunchBar, not only does it seem to recognize that the app I’ve launched hundreds of times is more likely to be my choice than the app I’ve launched once or twice, but LaunchBar will also let the user define a text shortcut that is hardwired to a particular item.

Spotlight in Tahoe will let you define text shortcuts, which it calls “Quick Keys”—but only for Actions, one particular class of item. Why that functionality isn’t available for all items is completely beyond me. But the result is that I end up launching the wrong thing, and I have no real recourse except to try to remember to launch the right thing again and again until it figures it out.

(A sad admission: On several occasions, I have renamed bookmarks and even deleted some installed apps just to stop Spotlight from recommending the wrong thing.)

In any event, Dr. Drang reminded me that there’s an easy solution to my quibbles about Spotlight: Just go back to LaunchBar.

One reason I had been willing to stop using LaunchBar was that it had been increasingly unstable for me, indexing files slowly after startup, failing to find recent changes, and throwing indexing errors. It also hadn’t been updated very much recently, making me wonder if the developer was more interested in its app Little Snitch and had put LaunchBar in maintenance mode. Fortunately, there was a substantial update in March, so maybe there’s life left in the ol’ girl after all.

So, for now, my dalliance with Spotlight is over, and I’ve returned to the familiar floating launcher window of LaunchBar. However, I’m going to keep an eye on Spotlight. If Apple can make it faster, more reliable, and a bit more customizable in macOS 27, it might be on to something.