Apple’s been making interesting tweaks to its operating systems after the release of the 26.0 versions in September. Back in October, the 26.1 beta cycle brought Slide Over back to iPadOS, a feature that’s now released for everyone. We’re now three betas into the 26.2 beta cycle, and this week brought interesting new features for both Mac and iPad users.
On the iPad side, Apple continues to tweak the edges of its new multitasking model, most notably the reborn Slide Over feature. This week’s feature updates all seem to be focused on kicking off multitasking functionality by dragging apps out of the Dock while in multi-window mode.
While the new Slide Over still doesn’t offer a built-in app switcher like the old one (which, personal opinion, still seems like a bridge too far and a metaphor too mixed), in 26.2 beta 3 there’s a new way to quickly replace which app is in Slide Over: You just drag an app’s icon out of the Dock and drop it on the Slide Over spot. That’s it. The app you dragged replaces the app that was there.
In 26.1, you could kick an app into Slide Over via the menu bar or by tapping and holding on the Stoplight buttons or via a keyboard shortcut. The 26.2 beta brings the Dock into the mix: if you drag an app icon out of the Dock and drag it to the left or right edge of the screen, you can drop it and it’ll be added to Slide Over.
Finally, if you’re in multi-window mode and you drag an app icon to one side of the screen, but not to the edge, the preview of the app window will change from more horizontal to more vertical (when holding the iPad in horizontal orientation, anyway), and an arrow will appear on the edge of the screen. These are both indicators that if you drop the window, it’ll automatically be tiled to that half of the display. So it’s a quick gesture to add a window already in one half of Split View.
Meanwhile, Apple has made good on some of its M5 chip speed claims that were previously hard to verify because they relied on pre-release software. Apple’s open-source MLX frameworks now support the M5’s Neural Accelerator, which enables dramatic speed improvements.
Federico Viticci of MacStories was also able to test the pre-release MLX frameworks on an M5 iPad Pro and reports some pretty spectacular results. Obviously, these are the earliest days, and it’s a prerelease framework, but it seems like the 26.2 updates will unlock a lot of the promised horsepower of the M5—at least on the AI-related GPU front.
Another Apple update in 26.2 will enable even higher-speed Mac performance in clusters of Macs. This new feature uses the 480Gb/s of the Mac Studio’s six Thunderbolt 5 ports to run shared workloads across (for example) multiple M3 Ultra Mac Studios, creating AI clusters that have enormous processing power while using potentially an order of magnitude less electricity than a more traditional processing cluster.
I have no idea how practical that is, but it’s clear that Apple sees a place where high-end Apple silicon Macs can play in the AI space, and it’s moving further in that direction with these 26.2 updates.
All of this stuff is in beta right now, but you should expect 26.2 final to ship before the end of the year.
Veteran TV critic Alan Sepinwall joins Jason to discuss the current state of TV criticism, the future of scripted TV, why streamers can’t make sitcoms, the difference between recaps and reviews, and the best shows of the year.
A new iPhone accessory available in the U.S. Apple Store prioritizes accessibility for users with a variety of physical and motor disabilities.
The Hikawa MagSafe Phone Grip and Stand functions as both a stand for the phone, and a tool for gripping it, for users with limited muscle strength or ability to hold a phone independently.
The silicone grip and stand snaps onto any MagSafe-capable iPhone, and works in portrait or landscape mode. It’s available in chartreuse and crater – a recycled colorway exclusive to Apple’s U.S. Online Store.
The grip and stand was created by Bailey Hikawa, a Los Angeles-based designer who has also designed iPhone cases. It sells for $69.95.
Black Friday tech deals we’re eyeballing, Meta features that should go retro, whether decentralized internet was better, and how we troubleshoot tech issues.
Tim Cook’s succession planning hits another gear, Tesla may be embracing CarPlay, Apple shifts its iPhone release plans, and Jason considers the place of the iPad Pro today after traveling with it for a week.
It’s the milestone 10th anniversary of the iPad Pro. iPadOS 26 has dramatically improved the iPad’s power-user functionality. And the new M5 iPad Pro has brought unprecedented power to the platform. With all that in mind, I decided to revisit one of my old experiments and travel (to London, for a week) with only an iPad Pro and without my Mac.
The result of the week says a lot about where the iPad Pro is, ten years on, and why it’s incumbent on Apple to figure out where it goes next.
Productivity capability
The truth is that, outfitted with a Magic Keyboard, my iPad Pro was able to do pretty much everything I wanted to do with it while I spent a few days working in Myke Hurley’s London studio.
Being in Myke’s studio means I didn’t need to bring any recording equipment with me, but iPadOS 26’s support for local recording means that I could’ve brought a microphone along and recorded podcasts on my own without any issues. As it was, after recording the Six Colors podcast on Myke’s Mac, I AirDropped the files to my iPad and edited the whole thing by hand in Ferrite Recording Studio. Uploading the final files and getting the podcast out took a little longer than it does at home, but that’s mostly down to my having built automations on the Mac that I haven’t bothered building on my iPad.
I was also able to use the iPad to do something that the Mac just can’t do: record a multi-camera project via Final Cut Camera from right within Final Cut Pro. Strangely, after a year and a half, that’s still an iPad-only feature. After having produced the video version of Upgrade that we shot in a Memphis hotel room in September, I was confident that I could edit the show on my iPad pretty easily, and I did. Exporting 90 minutes of 4K video did take a while, though—that was the moment when I missed the power of my M4 Max MacBook Pro.
There were a few side effects, though. We shot the entire thing using the standard camera settings—which meant 4K HDR. In Memphis, I was dissatisfied with how Final Cut Pro for iPad had exported my project in non-HDR format, so I decided to export it in HDR this time. In hindsight, that was a mistake—video versions of podcasts do not need that level of dynamic range, and YouTube viewers thought it was too bright. I also had the audio volume set a bit too low in the export. But given how long it took to export the file, I was reluctant to give it a second pass—and so we suffered with a less-than-ideal export. That wouldn’t have happened on a Mac, I think.
(Also, impossibly, Apple has still not updated Final Cut Pro to support background exports using the new feature in iPadOS 26 that was seemingly built specifically for Final Cut Pro. Myke and I spent quite a while just staring at the progress bar on my iPad as it churned through the export.)
I also needed to make an edit in the podcast after the fact, due to a portion of the show we decided to remove late in the process. You can use YouTube’s editing tools to make those sorts of edits, but those tools are on YouTube’s website, and while they’re accessible in Safari on an iPad, it felt very much like I was fighting Safari the entire way through the process.
In terms of writing on the go, though, the iPad Pro continues to be a dream—especially now that I can pop in and out of multi-window mode and write in one window while having a Safari or Preview window open for reference. I wrote a link post in the waiting area at Heathrow. I wrote an entire Macworld column sitting at Myke’s spare desk. That level of versatility and lightweight productivity is one of the reasons I enjoy using the iPad Pro to get work done.
Back in the day, those of us who tried to get work done with the iPad would end up hitting the proverbial brick wall—there were just some tasks that could simply never, ever be done on the iPad, and once you hit one, you had to give up or find a nearby Mac. (I was surprised on this trip to find that a specific charting feature in Numbers doesn’t seem to be available on the iPad—the first time I’ve hit a wall on the iPad in quite some time.)
Most of the brick walls are gone now: I can pretty much do anything on an iPad that I can do on a Mac. Unfortunately, many tasks just take longer on the iPad. In my lowest moments, it felt like I was operating machinery while wearing a pair of mittens. A lot of operations that feel like a single step on a Mac took multiple steps on the iPad. I’ll grant you, some of them might fall into line if I only ever used an iPad and optimized my workflow, but a lot of them are just the consequence of a more limited pool of software and more limited apps.
A few years back, Apple boasted about how it was bringing desktop-class browsing to Safari on iPad. And in many ways, today’s Safari is much more usable than it used to be. I uploaded a 40GB video file to YouTube via Safari, and it just worked! But when it comes to running web apps, too often Safari reveals itself to still behave more like the limited, weird version of Safari from the iPhone, rather than the one I expect on my Mac. Safari may be better now, but when the iPad is as capable as the modern iPad Pro is, the browser should be just as capable.
You’ve reached the base. What now?
The other day, David Pierce of The Verge wrote a think piece about the iPad Pro after a decade. The headline is kind of brutal (“a decade of unrealized potential”), but I share a lot of his sentiment. Thanks to iPadOS 26, we’ve reached the point where we can stop talking about Apple’s software letting down its hardware. It shouldn’t have taken a whole decade, and during a lot of that period, it felt like Apple had no idea what it was doing with the iPad, but it’s in a much better place now.
Still, that place is not the end state of the iPad: it’s the starting point. The iPad Pro has reached a functional, complete state, complete with background tasks and true multi-window support and support for local audio recording and all sorts of other esoteric stuff. So… what now?
As Pierce wrote:
The hardware, the operating system, the accessory ecosystem — everything is in place for this to be not just a full-fledged computer, but maybe the best computer Apple makes. Now Apple just needs to finally let it act like it.
This is the challenge the iPad Pro faces over the next decade. What is the purpose of this device? Is it just to be a more expensive version of the iPad Air that appeals to those who prefer to pay more to get a nicer product? Is it to continue down the path of being more Mac-like? (And how would that manifest?) Is it to be content filling certain niches that it’s very good at, while ignoring others that the Mac serves best?
I don’t know where Apple and the iPad Pro go from here. I’m sure there will be some tinkering and refinement around the edges—a “clamshell” mode that allows you to run the iPad attached to an external monitor without also needing to keep the main iPad display open seems like the next step—but unless Apple’s App store model changes dramatically (which, let’s face it, will require lots of legal intervention), things probably won’t change dramatically.
Maybe that’s okay. The iPad Pro is great for artists and writers, and even for podcast editors and many other professionals. It doesn’t need to be the equivalent of the Mac, just as the Mac doesn’t need to be the equivalent of the iPad. That all seems healthy, other than the fact that when I travel for work, it means I’ve got to bring both devices with me.
You may never have heard the term Extended Service Set Identifier (ESSID), and why should you have? It’s a mildly esoteric term in the Wi-Fi world for how multiple routers with the same name form an extended network. In fact, it’s not even a protocol; it’s just a name, which makes it even more confusing.
So why would I bring it up? Because the notion of an Extended Service Set affects how we connect to Wi-Fi networks, and why you sometimes have a rotten connection when you’re bathing in the soothing high-speed waves of a nearby router.
The problem is easily stated: your device connected over Wi-Fi has poor throughput, even though it’s close to a Wi-Fi gateway or extender, while other devices nearby experience terrific data rates.
I’ve got an explanation and some solutions that may help you overcome a common problem readers have asked about many times over the years, plus a question that is coming from inside my house.1
The name is the same
This question is brought to you by my spouse and her home office. Because we have an aged house—that’s pronounced EH-jed—it is nearly impossible to run new wires through it except at great expense. While having some basement renovation done a decade back, we managed to get Ethernet strung from one end of the house to the other and to our connection point, also in the basement. We should have done more!
Hold down Option and click the Wi-Fi menu to reveal a host of technical detail you definitely usually don’t need to know.
Due to a lack of network wiring, we’ve had to use powerline networking, which generally works fine, but can perform erratically at times because of some of the eh-jed electrical wiring in our home. Our kitchen was apparently accidentally (?) designed to be a Faraday cage, so we had to add a repeater in there over powerline.
We have wound up with an embarrassing number of Wi-Fi access points in the house: six, if you count the one that the ISP provided because of the fiber-optic setup they use; we only use that router’s Wi-Fi connection to check when something is wrong.2 (Did I mention our house is not a mansion, but a small two-bedroom?)
The way we unify a network like this to allow our devices to roam seamlessly is the same as in a million-square-foot convention center: all the Wi-Fi gateways or access points have the same broadcast name. Here’s where it gets a little tricky:
The broadcast or network name is the Service Set ID (SSID). It’s human-readable and meant to be seen in a list of Wi-Fi networks.
Underlying the SSID is a Basic Service Set ID (BSSID), which is a unique numeric tag that is the same format and used in the same way as in Ethernet. Called the Media Access Control (MAC) address—an unfortunate overlap—it’s is a series of six two-digit hexadecimal numbers separated by colons.3 The uniqueness allows a bazillion devices to be on the same network without fear of collision, or two devices having the same network ID.4
Now, you wouldn’t want to select a Wi-Fi network by MAC address; even if you did so, you wouldn’t want to be stuck associated with that base station when you were moving around with your mobile device. You would like the device to connect to the best signal it can find.
And that’s the problem: Mobile devices define what’s they think is the “best signal.” Apple offers a full description of how its devices make this decision,5 but we have no control over that process. I can, however, give you advice for troubleshooting and improving your setup if you find yourself having poor throughput when you know you could do better.
A slow, strong connection prevails
Any device that uses Wi-Fi swims in a sea of BSSIDs. We see just the tip of this, even when it seems like we’re drowning in Wi-Fi names. You can get a better sense by examining a WiFi Explorer Pro scan from my home Mac, where my network and some near me have many base stations.
Open up WiFi Explorer Pro, and see the hidden Wi-Fi environment around. Particularly note how one network name, like Portage Airbasestation, can have oodles of networks in multiple frequency bands.
Each device you use has a unique formula for selecting among available BSSIDs that share the same network name. That’s true of a home sensor, like an alarm component, or an iPhone, Mac, Android, game platform, or other devices.
Generally, the strongest network signal with the highest data rate gets picked. If you’re relatively near within a building or have a good line of sight to an access point, the 5 gigahertz (GHz) or 6 GHz band is chosen. These bands can carry hundreds of megabits to multiple gigabits per second due to the breadth of frequency available.6 Modern Wi-Fi devices have a variety of tricks to work around overlaps in usage in the same area that produce high throughput rates even in crowded environments.
However, the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands have relatively short wavelengths—the “length” of the signal. They can be readily absorbed by walls, ceilings, and floors, as well as other materials. (This is why you shouldn’t put a Wi-Fi router inside cabinets or behind furniture, as you’re decreasing range.)
When a high-frequency network can’t be used at its higher speeds, your device may opt for 2.4 GHz, the original “home” of Wi-Fi. With narrower ranges of frequencies and heavier use, 2.4 GHz nonetheless penetrates objects better, and thus can have a higher net throughput at a distance than the comparable 5 or 6 GHz network.7
As you roam around, your device may choose to maintain a lower-speed connection with a more distant or more obstructed router, even as you approach or are standing next to one that could offer 10 or 50 times as much throughput.
You can improve the situation, typically only in three ways:
Check your routers’ channel/band/signal strength configuration. Every router is different, but many let you pick preferred channels or use a reduced signal strength. Read up in the manual on whether a particular channel or setting will help increase range or tune performance.
On your device, turn Wi-Fi off and back on. You can use Settings/System Settings > Wi-Fi, and toggle the switch. (Airplane Mode on an iPhone or iPad won’t necessarily work because you can set it to leave Wi-Fi on.)
Break up one big ESSID into two or more smaller ones, either by location or by frequency band.
Toggling Wi-Fi causes your device to evaluate its network environment afresh and typically makes the “right” choice. It’s the least-frustrating option, but it gets old.
Reconfiguring your network requires some planning. I recommend this only when you’re having persistent problems and can’t move routers to improve roaming. If that’s the case, one of the following could help:
Create zones: Name routers the same in clusters. Maybe you have one set downstairs and another upstairs.
Separate by band: Most routers have at least two separate radio systems, letting you name 2.4 GHz and 5/6 GHz networks separately. Some have three bands, separating 5 and 6 GHz or offering two distinct 5/6 GHz networks with differently configurable features. This lets you force some devices onto slower but more reliable networks if they have weak radios or are far away from an access point.
Add specialized guest networks: Most routers let you set up additional network names under “guest networking.” You can keep these networks’ traffic private from the rest of your network, or allow it to bridge, so the guest networks just work like additional networks.
At one point, I discovered that some of my smart home devices that were limited to 2.4 GHz networking were having trouble consistently connecting. I realized they were often choosing a more distant access point, which caused their connections to drop. To fix the problem, I set up a 2.4 GHz guest network on the router closest to all of them and had them connect to it.
This is a lot of work to get consistent Wi-Fi. However, if you’re like those of us in our home, the frustration of having to manage and tinker with your device’s connection is enough that some rethink of your configuration could make for a happier household.
For further reading
Would you imagine I wrote a book about Wi-Fi? Yes! In fact, I’ve had at least one Wi-Fi book in print for over 20 years, since Adam Engst and I wrote The Wireless Network Starter Kit. My latest up-to-date title is Take Control of Wi-Fi Networking and Security.
[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use/glennin our subscriber-only Discord community.]
I’m writing this just before Halloween. By the time you read it, that will just sound weird. ↩
The fiber-optic terminal requires a modem that handles VLAN tagging and PPPoE. The former used to be an expensive option, and they gave me the modem at no cost when I signed up. ↩
The Wi-Fi Alliance, the trade group that came up with the Wi-Fi moniker and handles certification of devices complying with the industry’s IEEE 802.11 set of standards, was originally called the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance due to its close relationship to Ethernet (IEEE 802.3). ↩
Some operating systems, like those from Apple, let you create “private” MAC addresses on each Wi-FI network, which are randomly generated MACs that prevent third-party software operating on a given network from associating you across sessions in different locations. ↩
Only a network engineer can decipher “For macOS, the candidate BSS needs to have an RSSI that’s 12 dB stronger than the current BSS, whether the Mac is idle or transmitting data.” That RSSI is the Relative Signal Strength Indicator, a formula that provides a basis for comparing strong and weak network signals. ↩
Like broadcast TV channels, Wi-Fi and all wireless gear are designed around ranges of frequencies. Roughly speaking, with the same amount of signal power, the wider the range of frequency, the greater the potential throughput. I’m leaving out lots of provisos! ↩
Companies testing Wi-Fi penetration may use sacks of tubers to simulate human beings. That led to one of my all-time great headlines for an article I wrote for the Economist about tests Boeing was doing: “Coach Potatoes.” The illustration was also excellent. You’re welcome. ↩
[sound of thousands of ball bearings spilling out of your ears and bouncing on the floor for 15 minutes straight ]
(Everyone knows the brain runs on ball bearings. Read a science-type book before you @ me.)
The Pocket was announced on Tuesday, meaning people have had three whole days to make iPod sock and Borat mankini jokes, so you may be wondering why I’m even bothering to bring it up in this column.
I am doing so because I take my job very seriously, OK?…
My thanks to ZenStand for sponsoring Six Colors this week.
Zenstand is the artisan wireless charger made for where you actually charge most: the bedroom.
A genuine walnut base blends in with your furniture; every piece has its own natural grain, no two are alike. It also has two MagSafe-compatible pads, so two phones can top up at night without juggling. No RGB glow. No whiny fan. Just quiet and calm charging.
MLS and Apple have agreed to alter the partnership agreement at the end of the 2025 season, multiple sources told The Athletic. MLS Season Pass will no longer exist, and all MLS games will be available on the Apple TV streaming service. (Apple rebranded Apple TV+ to Apple TV.)
It’s an important change for the MLS-Apple deal, which put every MLS game behind a paywall that cost fans for $14.99 per month or $99 for the season. While the streaming service provided a far better broadcast experience than the local TV deals for diehard MLS fans, it also made it much more difficult for the league to reach new fans.
This mirrors Apple’s recent deal with F1, which will also be available to all Apple TV subscribers. It enhances the value of the base Apple TV service and broadens the potential audience for MLS games.
In related news, Tenorio reports that MLS is rejiggering its season schedule to play through the winter beginning in 2027, matching international soccer leagues:
The plan is for the MLS regular season to span from the middle of July to April, with playoffs staged in May. A winter break would take place in December and January. Games would likely pause from around the second week in December through the first or third week in February. MLS understandably is trying to avoid restarting the league on Super Bowl weekend.
These are both interesting moves that could improve viewership and interest in the league as North America prepares to host the 2026 World Cup.
The carmaker has started testing the capability internally, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the effort is still private. The CarPlay platform — long supported by other automakers — shows users a version of the iPhone’s software that’s optimized for vehicle infotainment systems. It’s considered a must-have option by many drivers.
Adding CarPlay would mark a stunning reversal for Tesla and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, who long ignored pleas to implement the popular feature. Musk has criticized Apple for years, particularly its App Store policies, and was angered by the company’s poaching of his engineers when it set out to build its own car.
With the evaporation of U.S. EV rebates, Elon Musk’s controversial political moves, and a generally stale product line-up, Tesla is facing a sales crisis. Meanwhile, new car buyers very much want CarPlay as an option. Adding CarPlay isn’t quite a cure-all, but it sure couldn’t hurt in giving potential Tesla buyers one less reason to shop elsewhere. (Tesla is not, according to Gurman, interested in anything like CarPlay Ultra—this is straight-up “CarPlay in a window” alongside Tesla’s own interface.)
Gurman says the rollout could happen “in the coming months,” but the plan has not been finalized. Of course, any mercurial executive at Tesla (who could that be?!) could pull the plug at any time. But if this ends up happening, it might be the first sign of car companies realizing that prioritizing their needs over your phone was a big mistake.
The first iPad Pro came out ten years ago. Last month, on the tenth anniversary of the announcement, I wrote about it at Macworld:
In a decade, the iPad product line has progressed to the point where the iPad Air can possess a load of features that debuted in the iPad Pro in a lower-priced, “mainstream” iPad. Meanwhile, the iPad Pro itself has shot into the stratosphere, with cutting-edge processors and an outrageously good display, not to mention the thinnest body in any Apple device ever.
Where the iPad Pro goes next is anyone’s guess, but it’s hard to deny that it’s changed the perception of what iPads are capable of. And thanks to the numerous multitasking upgrades in iPadOS 26, it feels like the iPad’s software has also embraced all the possibilities an iPad Pro offers.
It took a little too long, I think. But a decade on, it feels like today’s M5 iPad Pro is fulfilling the original model’s destiny.
My words would have been much more harsh were it not for iPadOS 26 and the M5 iPad Pro. (I just spent a week in London with only an iPad Pro. It was informative. More on that a little later.)
The iPad Pro isn’t a Surface. Instead, it’s a product that brings out the contrast between Apple’s mobile-device strategy and Microsoft’s… iOS is Apple’s flagship operating system, so rather than mash the Mac and iOS together, it’s decided to keep them separate. There’s no Mac compatibility layer, no requirement for Mac developers to recompile their apps to run on the A9X processor. The iPad Pro is unapologetically an iOS product….
If Apple made a Retina MacBook whose screen popped off and became an iPad, would I buy it? It seems like such a Frankenstein product, so inelegant a concept and so clearly not the way the world is going. And yet, I would be tempted. Not because it’s a bold direction forward, but because it’s a compromise that grants me some comfort in a time of change.
The iPad Pro does not exist to give comfort to Mac users.
Today’s iPad Pro resembles the Mac a little more closely, but it still isn’t a Mac.
If you suffer from that recurring nightmare that you’re at the airport but have forgotten your wallet,1 fret no longer: starting today, holders of U.S. passports can create a Digital ID in Apple’s Wallet app, which can be used at TSA checkpoints across the country for domestic flights—even if you don’t have a REAL ID-compliant state ID card or driver’s license.
First announced at this year’s WWDC, Digital ID is an iOS 26 features and works along the same lines as the various ID and driver’s license systems that Apple Wallet currently offers in 12 states, Puerto Rico, and Japan.
If you hold a U.S. passport, you’ll be able to add a Digital ID by first taking a picture of the machine-readable page in your passport (the one that contains your data and photo), confirming the information by scanning the chip in your passport, and then completing a few steps that help verify that you’re really you, including taking a selfie and then making certain face and head movements. Note that if you have a passport card, you can’t use it to create a Digital ID, as there’s no embedded chip like with a passport book.
As with the existing ID cards in Wallet, using Digital ID does not require you to unlock, hand over, or even show your phone to the requesting entity. For example, at a TSA checkpoint, you’ll double click your phone’s side button to bring up Wallet, then hold it over the scanner as you would for an Apple Pay transaction. The phone will tell you what information is being requested and you’ll have to authenticate with Face ID or Touch ID to then provide that information. Once you’ve set up a Digital ID, it will also be available via Wallet on the Apple Watch as well.
Apple, as usual, stresses the security and privacy of this feature. Your information is encrypted on your device and protected with your biometric information (preventing somebody who knows your passcode from presenting or even viewing your ID card), and Apple does not itself know anything about where, when, or what information is presented. Additionally, because the Digital ID is essentially a digital version of your passport, when that document expires, the Digital ID expires as well, at which point it is automatically removed and you would have to manually add your new passport.
The system is also designed with privacy in mind, so that the least amount of necessary information is provided. For example, if you were to use your Digital ID to verify your age, the only data that would be provided would be your ID picture and a simple “Yes” or “No”. Other information, like your name or birthdate, wouldn’t even be given. That is, in some ways, an advantage over handing over your physical ID card which can not only include those, but other sensitive information like your address.
The Digital ID should be accepted starting today at more than 250 airports in the U.S., though certain specific checkpoints within those airports may not yet have been updated to support mobile IDs. Though Digital ID is based on ISO standards for personal identification and mobile documents, it’s not currently valid for international travel or border-crossing as there is not yet an international standard in place for using mobile IDs for those purposes. However, that’s not to preclude it from happening in the future, should such a standard be adopted.
While air travel is the first place you’ll be able to use your Digital ID, further applications are in the works. Apple provides APIs to allow verification of both identity and age, allowing third parties to implement these features in their apps or on the web. (Many states have already rolled out age-verification apps to work with the mobile ID standard.)
The addition of Digital ID is a clever move. Apple’s been working with states for several years to add mobile IDs and driver’s licenses for several years—the first state, Arizona, rolled out in 2022, and while adoption has been steady, it’s been a slow trickle. Using a federal document allows the company to make an end-run around states dragging their feet2, helping drive adoption of the feature and hopefully encouraging lagging states to get onboard.
Updated on 11/13/25 with more details about passport cards and passport expiration.
[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.]
In an interview with Screen International, Apple’s Eddy Cue directly addressed reports that the company might launch a tier of the Apple TV streaming service with ads. His response was:
Nothing at this time…. I don’t want to say no forever, but there are no plans. If we can stay aggressive with our pricing, it’s better for consumers not to get interrupted with ads.
This is making the rounds as evidence that Apple’s not going to do an ad tier. And sure, I don’t think anything is imminent. But “nothing at this time” and “there are no plans” are also things you can say when you think you might do it but haven’t got anything to announce or haven’t made your complete plan yet. “I don’t want to say no forever” is also what you say when you think you may very well say “yes” in the near future.
I pay for the ad-free tier on every single streaming service I subscribe to. I am not cheering for Apple to launch an ad tier of Apple TV. But as I wrote in 2023, I do think they are inevitable in the long term for a few reasons:
Every other streaming service has them at this point, and they have been remarkable revenue generators across the board.
Once a streaming service offers an ad-free tier and calculates out the average revenue per user (ARPU) on that tier, they realize that they make more money from those people than from the people at their higher, ad-free tier. This is why the ad-free versions of these services cost more now—because they were underpriced relative to the ARPU.
Apple’s raising of prices on the base Apple TV service gives them more room beneath which to launch an ad tier.
Apple loves services revenue and this is a way to increase it nicely.
Apple TV is one of the least-viewed streaming services around, and offering a low-priced ad tier would be a way to get new viewers in the Apple ecosysyem.
Apple has executives devoted to ad sales and it’s their job to put ads everywhere they’re allowed.
I suspect that if Apple did offer an ad tier, it would probably be the most tasteful and elegant set of ad prerolls and breaks in the business. But I think that in the end, it won’t be able to resist the pull of video ads.
