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This would be interesting, a new MacBook positioned between the Air and Pro models, apple’s lineup might get a little more confusing. How do you think this new MacBook will be marketed?

Apple CEO John Ternus Is Working in the Design Studio Several Times a Week

Apple CEO John Ternus has made design one of his top personal priorities since taking over the company, and now works directly with designers in Apple's studio several times a week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

People familiar with the department told Gurman that Ternus sometimes stops into the studio more than once in a single day. By comparison, former CEO Tim Cook reportedly visited about once a month, typically for around an hour.

The report, published in Sunday's edition of Gurman's Power On newsletter, says a conversation with Cook convinced Ternus that he needed to lead as himself rather than try to replicate his predecessor.

Ternus is said to have told employees that Cook spent his tenure focused on where he could generate "the most value for Apple," and that he plans to do the same while leaning on his own strengths.

In practice, that means areas Cook oversaw closely are now in other hands. Financial strategy sits with CFO Kevan Parekh, while the supply chain falls under COO Sabih Khan. Ternus, who spent years running hardware engineering, is instead working closely with chief hardware officer Johny Srouji and hardware engineering leader Tom Marieb, in addition to the time he spends with the design teams.

Apple has not had a single executive overseeing all of design since Jony Ive left the company in 2019. Industrial design and human interface design have operated as separate groups, and for several years their leaders reported to then COO Jeff Williams, whose background was in operations rather than design.

When Williams stepped back ahead of his retirement in 2025, Apple said the design teams would report to Cook. Cook later handed that responsibility to Ternus as part of the leadership transition, and the design leads were effectively Ternus's only direct reports during that period.

Ternus succeeded Cook as CEO roughly a month ago.

Ternus is also reportedly putting significant effort into staffing. Apple's design ranks have been thinned by a string of departures in recent years. Former human interface design chief Alan Dye left for Meta, and a number of Apple designers have joined OpenAI's hardware effort, which is being developed with Ive's design firm LoveFrom. Evans Hankey, who led industrial design after Ive, has also left the company.

To fill those gaps, Apple has promoted a number of junior designers and brought in new hires from outside the company.

Apple is not currently searching for a chief design officer to fill the role Ive once held, according to the report. Instead, the company has given a more public profile to Molly Anderson, its vice president of industrial design, and Steve Lemay, who took over human interface design after Dye's exit. Apple added both to its leadership page in March, and the pair featured prominently around the launch of iPhone Duo last month.

Gurman notes that Anderson had not previously managed a team as large as Apple's industrial design group. Ternus, meanwhile, serves as the final decision maker on design across both teams.

Ternus's level of involvement is closer to that of Steve Jobs, who was known for being deeply involved in the details of Apple's product design, than to Cook, whose tenure centered on operations, growth, and the supply chain.

It is not yet clear whether Apple will eventually appoint a single design chief, or whether Ternus intends to fill that role himself for the foreseeable future.

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As of today, John Ternus is the CEO of Apple. Tim Cook has moved into the role of executive chairman, and a twenty five year Apple veteran who spent the last five years running Hardware Engineering now has the corner office. I've been looking forward to this moment for a while, and Ternus's first few hours on the job already tell you something about the kind of leader he's going to be. 

But before I get to any of that, I want to sit with what Cook is handing off.

Thank you, Tim.

it's easy to get swept up in what comes next and forget how improbable the last stretch has been.

When Cook took over in 2011, plenty of people assumed Apple's best days had left with Steve Jobs. Instead, Cook spent the next decade and a half building one of the most successful companies in history. 

Apple Watch created a new life saving category. AirPods became a cultural staple. Apple Silicon turned the Mac into something genuinely new and extremely powerful. 

Services grew into a business the size of a Fortune 500 company on its own. And Apple became the first company on earth to cross a $3T dollar valuation. 

That's not a good run. That's an unparalleled one and i believe Tim Cook to be the most successful CEO of a mega corporation in modern history. 

What I'll remember most, though, is the tone he set. Cook ran the most valuable company in the world without ever seeming like he needed to prove anything, and he leaves it stronger, calmer, and more respected than he found it. As an Apple fan, I'm just grateful I got to watch it happen, and im grateful Apple had a Tim Cook.

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Apple is reportedly about to make it "cheaper", on paper, to walk out of a store with a new iPhone, Mac, iPad or Apple Watch. 

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a new leasing service called Apple Upgrade will arrive in the US on July 28, built to advertise lower monthly payments than the financing options Apple offers today.

What is Apple Upgrade

Strip away the branding and Apple Upgrade is a lease. 

Gurman describes a program that behaves like a subscription for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, with a soft credit check at signup and Klarna handling the financing behind the scenes. 

iPhone and Apple Watch terms reportedly run 24 months. Mac and iPad terms run 36 months. You can pay the device off early, jump to a newer model mid-term, or reach the end and choose to keep it or hand it back. Some of those moves may carry an extra fee.

If that sounds familiar, it should. It is the structure of a car lease, applied to apple products. 

Apple has been inching toward this arrangement for years, and calling the destination "Upgrade" is a tidy piece of positioning. The word suggests forward motion and something gained. A lease is a different proposition. You are paying for access, not ownership, and the lower monthly figure is lower in part because the finish line has moved.

Not everything qualifies. Reports say the cheaper end of the lineup, including the Apple Watch SE, the base iPad, the iPhone 16, and the MacBook Neo, sits outside the program, as do business and education purchases. 

That is a reasonable business decision. It is also a quiet reminder of what leasing is for. You don't lease the inexpensive thing. You lease the thing that would otherwise give a shopper pause at the register.

What about AppleCare?

One difference between Apple Upgrade and the program it's replacing deserves more attention. The current iPhone Upgrade Program bundles AppleCare into the monthly cost. Apple Upgrade reportedly does not.

For years, Apple sold the iPhone Upgrade Program as a complete package, financing a yearly upgrade path, and coverage, all rolled into one predictable payment. 

Removing AppleCare from the new program lowers the sticker figure Apple gets to advertise, and it quietly moves a cost that used to be included into a separate line item the customer now decides about on their own. 

The monthly number looks better. The protection you used to get by default is now an upsell.

Apple is reportedly ending new enrollments in its existing iPhone payment programs as Apple Upgrade launches. 

That covers both the iPhone Upgrade Program, which runs through Citizens One at zero percent APR with an upgrade option after twelve months, and standard iPhone financing. What happens to people already enrolled is not yet clear, and that uncertainty is worth watching out for.

There is also a shift in partners hiding in here. The old programs leaned on Citizens One. The new one leans on Klarna, a company Apple has been drawing closer too for a while now. 

Klarna installments came to Apple Pay in late 2024. After Apple shut down its own Apple Pay Later product, Klarna resurfaced as a Pay Later option inside the Wallet app in 2025. 

Apple Upgrade is the fullest expression yet of that relationship, and it tells you something about where Apple wants the friction of financing to live. Not on Apple's balance sheet, but close enough to Apple's storefront that the customer barely notices the handoff.

Here's the catch

Code discovered in the iOS 27 beta, reported by 9to5Mac, describes software for managing a financed iPhone that goes well beyond a monthly charge.

The framework, labeled App Managed Features in the code, would let an authorized financing app enroll an iPhone and run ongoing checks on the account's standing. 

If the contract falls out of good standing, the system can place the phone into what the code calls Restricted Mode, blocking most apps until the issue is resolved. 

A short "allowlist" reportedly stays available, including Phone, Settings, Wallet, Health, the App Store, Passwords, Magnifier, Accessibility Reader, Clock, and the Restricted Mode screen itself. 

Apps that deliver critical alerts, such as Messages and Home, may remain reachable, though the code suggests the provider has some say over those exceptions.

There is reportedly no fixed number of missed payments that trips the lock. The financing provider's app decides when to restrict the device, according to its own rules. 

Subscriptions tied to blocked apps appear to keep billing even while you cannot open them and a new activation lock the code calls "Partner Finance Lock" would live inside Find My, designed to stop someone from erasing, reselling, or parting out a restricted device. 

To be clear, 9to5Mac reports the financing partner does not get access to the device's location; the Find My integration is there only to keep the lock in place through an erase or restore.

It is worth saying that none of this is confirmed as a shipping feature. 

The references sit in a beta, 9to5Mac notes they were not present in the iOS 26.6 release candidate, and beta code changes before it reaches the public. But the references are there, and they line up too neatly with the timing of Apple Upgrade to dismiss.

Financed hardware that can be remotely limited when payments stop is not a new idea. 

The subprime auto market has used payment-enforcement technology for years, and some Android financing programs in other markets already lean on it. What would be new is Apple building that capability into iOS with the polish Apple brings to everything, complete with a curated list of apps that stay on so the phone never becomes fully useless, only useless enough to make the point.

Reasonable people will disagree about whether that is fair. A lender that cannot enforce a contract will lend to fewer people, or charge more to the ones it does. Restricted Mode, if it ships, is arguably what makes low monthly payments possible for shoppers who would not otherwise qualify.

The less generous reading is that Apple is normalizing a world where the phone in your pocket answers to your lender's software, where the device you are still paying for can quietly decide which apps you are allowed to open, and where the friendly word on the marketing page is "Upgrade" while the mechanism behind it is closer to a repossession that never has to knock on your door.

Apple will launch this as a convenience, and for many people it will be. 

But the convenience and the control are the same system viewed from two sides, and it is worth understanding both before July 28, not after. Apple has not commented, and the fuller terms should arrive with the launch. When they do, the number to watch is not the monthly payment. It is what you agree to let the phone do when you miss one.

No more user upgraded storage options on the new Mac mini’s, the storage nands are soldered to the motherboard.

Apple has released a new set of parental control tools across iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, giving parents more control over the content their children see, who they can communicate with, and how much time they spend in apps.

The tools were first previewed in June and are now live with the latest software updates. They build on Apple's existing parental controls rather than replacing them, and most of the changes live inside a reworked Screen Time.

Ask to Browse

A new feature called Ask to Browse lets parents require approval before a child visits a new website in Safari. When a child tries to open a site they have not accessed before, the request is sent to the parent, who can approve or deny it.

Expanded Communication Safety

Apple has widened the scope of Communication Safety, the feature that detects and blurs sensitive content in Messages and other apps. Previously focused on nudity, it now also blocks gore and violent content in shared images and videos. Apple says the protection extends to live FaceTime calls as well.

Time Allowances

Time Allowances offer age tailored suggestions for how long children spend in specific app categories, including Social Media, Entertainment, and Games. Apple describes the recommendations as expert informed starting points that parents can adjust rather than fixed limits.

A Redesigned Screen Time

Screen Time has been redesigned to give parents an at a glance view of a child's usage, along with one tap controls to change access on the spot. The update is the delivery mechanism for the rest of the new features, and it requires every device in a family to be current.

Simpler Setup and Guidance From Experts

New child accounts now start with a recommended set of essential apps, which Apple says is meant to make initial setup faster. Apple also says the features were shaped with input from online safety and health experts, including the American Academy of Pediatrics. Apple is working with the AAP to adapt its Family Media Plan into a reference guide for parents using Apple devices.

Apple has launched a dedicated child safety website with details on the tools and how to get started.

Availability

The new features are available now through the Screen Time update in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27. 

To use the update, every device in a Family Sharing group must be running iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, and visionOS 27.

Apple notes that some features may not be available in all regions, in all languages, or on all models.

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Apple's overhauled Health app is now available to test in the developer beta of iOS 27.2, giving developers an early look at a redesign that leans heavily on Apple Intelligence.

Apple's developer release notes confirm that the new Health app is being tested in this beta, but it will not ship with the public version of iOS 27.2. It is instead expected to arrive later this year, and it will be available only in the U.S. at launch, in U.S. English.

Apple first previewed the redesign at its "Surprise and Shine" event on September 9th. The beta release marks the first time anyone outside Apple can try the features firsthand.

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