I’ve been covering Apple financial results and earnings calls for a very long time, dating back to my time at Macworld when Steve Jobs would occasionally parachute into earnings calls presided over by, among other people, Tim Cook! This week’s earnings call was Cook’s 90th and final installment, and that’s probably the most notable thing about it.
Even the fact that it was a record third quarter isn’t that notable. It’s more notable when Apple doesn’t set a quarterly record, especially given economic changes and inflation.
Still, as always, the results and the earnings call provided a few things I thought were worth pointing out. And so, powered by my second cup of tea while I’m on a summer trip to visit family (that was a late-night flight!), here are some thoughts about financial things.
It’s not a chip shortage, it’s demand
Apple is having supply-constraint problems. Maybe you’ve noticed the lack of new Mac minis and Mac studios? The Mac is the hardest-hit product line when it comes to supply, but Cook said the iPhone has also been affected, and anticipates constraints on the iPad as well.
This isn’t the whole story, of course, but it is part of it—and a part that Apple wants to crow about. Apple is limited in how many Macs, iPhones, and iPads it can sell because they are all powered by systems-on-chips that are coming off of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor’s most advanced production nodes. Here’s how Cook put it:
The root cause of it is not a regular supply issue. It’s a demand forecast issue, to be candid, where the iPhone and the Mac are both doing remarkably better than we thought they would do. And we had high expectations, so it wasn’t that our expectations were low, but as you can see from iPhone’s growth being 22% and Mac’s growth at 29%… these are extraordinary numbers and the supply chain just has less flexibility in it than normal. So we’ve been pulling supply ahead, and at some point there’s a limit to that. And so we’ve got a quarter that we’re going to be scrambling on the supply side, essentially.
This isn’t a partner or supplier issue. This issue is an incredibly strong… iPhone and Mac product cycle that has really yielded a demand beyond our expectation.
You can’t argue with the strong iPhone and Mac sales figures, and Apple specifically called out the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Neo, which Cook said “has been especially popular” and suggested that the company is still struggling to make them fast enough.
It’s admirable (and sensible) that Cook isn’t pointing fingers at anyone but customers who want Apple products, but the key phrase in his statement is “the supply chain just has less flexibility in it than normal.” This is an acknowledgement that while in the past, Apple might have been able to boost chip production from its partners, today the chip industry is maxed out thanks to the wild building of chips for AI applications.
Still, I do take Cook at his word: Even in a normal world, there’s only so much TSMC could do to rapidly respond to a dramatic increase in chip orders from Apple. I’m sure Apple is kicking itself for not anticipating stronger demand, especially given how tight the whole industry has gotten. And Cook’s suggestion that Apple is going to be “scrambling on the supply side” because the impact will “increase significantly” (and Cook really emphasized that word!) suggests that this may get worse before it gets better.
Oh yeah, and this isn’t just about cutting-edge SOCs. It goes for memory too. According to Cook, the price Apple pays for memory just keeps going up, and the offsetting Apple has been able to do by using existing inventory is going to be less effective as supplies run out.
As an aside, Cook also alluded to reports that Apple has tried to get the U.S. government to authorize purchase of RAM from some forbidden Chinese chipmakers, which has aroused political ire. “Obviously if there were more suppliers, that would be good, and it would help us on the supply side and perhaps the pricing side.”
How does Apple increase prices?
One of the analysts on the earnings call asked a question about Apple’s recent price increases, which was a great opportunity for Cook to explain Apple’s pricing philosophy.
It started out pretty normal, with Cook pointing out the price increases were done “reluctantly” and only because it’s “a hundred-year flood on the memory pricing.” But then it got more philosophical:
In terms of our philosophy on dollars or percentages, we look at units, revenue, and margin, and then come to a business judgment as to how to handle that. And so it’s not a mathematical formula that gets us to a specific result or just looking at one dimension of that. We look at all three dimensions and think about it over the long term instead of a 90-day clock. Hopefully that helps.
Yep, that helps, Tim. Three-dimensional pricing. Imagine pricing as a cube, and you’ll finally see the Matrix.
Soft Services stories
Services revenue, while up year-over-year, was (shockingly?) not up sequentially for the first time in more than three years. Apple laid most of the blame at various foreign-exchange rate “headwinds,” but CFO Kevan Parekh also tried to blame the softness on a few other factors:
Theatrical gross from “F1: The Movie” last year
“Headwinds in mobile gaming”
Changes to the App Store business model worldwide, mostly driven by regulation
The U.S. court order allowing developers to link out of Apple’s payment model without penalty
It felt like a real stretch, and more of an opportunity to complain about the App Store being regulated and litigated. But I will admit that a softening in mobile gaming, which obviously drives a lot of App Store revenue, is an interesting data point. And it’s more interesting that Apple felt it was worth sharing.
But, Parekh went on to say, “Despite this, the App Store did set a June quarter revenue record.” So… maybe not the reason for the softness after all?
Apple is an EGOT
Did you know that Steven Spielberg just won a Grammy award, which made him an EGOT? Winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony is a pretty rare accomplishment that any individual should be proud of.
But did you know that large corporations are also keeping score? It’s true.
“It was wonderful to see Apple TV earn the industry’s top honors, adding Tony Awards this year to its Emmy, Grammy, and Oscar wins,” Cook said Thursday. “We reached that milestone faster than any streamer in history.”
I wonder which marketing person at Apple had the job of figuring out how quickly every other streamer became an EGOT. Also, thanks to cancelled series “Schmigadoon” for the Tony. Maybe do everyone a solid and bring it back?
This was Tim
Through the earnings call, financial analysts showed their softer side by thanking Cook for all his years of service and revenue generation. Cook made a point of thanking them all individually before answering their questions, which I thought was a nice, and human, touch. He also made a final farewell statement designed to warm Wall Street hearts:
Thank you to all of you, from our shareholders, particularly our long-term shareholders who have put their trust in us for so many years, to the analysts who have followed our company so closely. As you know, this will be my final earnings call, and John will lead these calls going forward. The transition is going seamlessly, and I am beyond excited for John to step into his new role and lead Apple into its next era. He is truly one of a kind and there is no better person to take the helm of the company.
Oh! The new guy! I didn’t even mention it, but John Ternus was on the call the entire time, and didn’t say a peep. At least, not until Wamsi Mohan of Bank of America decided to devote one of his two questions to him. He threw him a softball about how the competitive landscape is changing overall.
Ternus did not pick up the ball.
“Well, thank you for asking,” Ternus said, rousing from his call-long slumber. “I guess I would just reiterate what Tim said, there is so much opportunity for us with everything that’s happening in this space, and we’re just really focused on our plans and very excited about it.”
Deferring to the big guy and not letting Wamsi Mohan bait you into stealing Cook’s moment. That’s future CEO thinking right there, pal.
For the 90th and final time, Apple CEO Tim Cook hopped on a conference call with financial-industry analysts to detail the quarter gone by, give a peek at what’s to come, and maybe take one final victory lap. CFO Kevan Parekh and incoming CEO John Ternus were there, too.
This is Six Colors’s complete transcript of the call for July 30, 2026.
Tim Cook’s introduction
Thank you, Suhasini. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining the call. Today, Apple is pleased to report $109.4 billion in revenue, up 16% from a year ago and a June quarter record. We were able to achieve this despite supply constraints and sequential foreign exchange headwinds.
We continue to see enormous customer enthusiasm for our most popular lineup ever, with iPhone revenue growing 22% from a year ago to reach a June quarter record. We saw so much excitement around the best Mac lineup we’ve ever had, growing a strong 29% to achieve a June quarter revenue record. Services also set a June quarter record with $30.7 billion in revenue.
We achieved June quarter revenue records in every geographic segment. We were pleased to see strength across the board with June quarter records in the U.S., Latin America, Western Europe, India, China mainland, Japan, and Southeast Asia. We also achieved June quarter revenue records in both developed and emerging markets and saw double-digit growth in most emerging markets.
This year’s WWDC was a wonderful showcase of our latest innovations. We were tremendously excited to unveil the all-new Siri AI, a completely reimagined version of Siri that is profoundly capable, deeply personal, and integrated seamlessly across our platforms. And we’ve been absolutely thrilled by the response who’ve been using Siri AI in the developer and public betas. The reviews from early users have been phenomenal, and it’s been so wonderful to hear from people who are excited about the capabilities we’ve built. And it underscores our philosophy that building AI that is private and based on personal context can change how users find information and get things done with our products in a way that truly enriches their lives. We really couldn’t be more excited about it, and we are feeling incredibly enthusiastic about the impact it’s going to have.
At WWDC we also announced new tools to help parents keep kids safe online and we were pleased by the overwhelmingly positive reaction. New child safety features like Ask to Browse and Time Allowances will help parents encourage kids to develop healthy digital habits. These new tools integrate guidance from leading clinical and child development research, including the American Academy of Pediatrics. Our goal is to make it easier for parents to manage what their children see, who they interact with, and how and when they can use their devices. We’re looking forward to bringing these new capabilities to users this fall, in addition to amazing new updates across our operating systems.
Now let me turn to the results for the quarter, beginning with iPhone. iPhone revenue for the June quarter was $54.3 billion, up 22% from a year ago. We achieved June quarter records in every geographic segment, and set a June quarter record for upgraders. According to IDC, we gained share globally during the quarter. As I’ve said before, this is the most powerful and most popular iPhone lineup we’ve ever had. More people are relying on iPhone every day for AI, powered by the outstanding performance of A19 and A19 Pro. Across the lineup, iPhone continues to deliver the performance, battery life, durability, and camera capabilities that people count on every day. Whether it’s the extraordinary camera system of iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, the remarkably thin design of iPhone Air, the balanced performance and durability of iPhone 17, or the exceptional value of iPhone 17E, there’s an iPhone for every customer.
Mac delivered its best June quarter yet, with $10.4 billion in revenue, growing an impressive 29% from a year ago despite significant supply constraints. This revenue growth was driven by the incredible strength of our latest lineup, with MacBook Pro and the all-new MacBook Neo. According to IDC, we gained share globally. We also set a June quarter revenue record in developed markets and an all-time record in emerging markets with particular strength in Greater China, where we had an all-time revenue record. In addition, we achieved all-time records for upgraders and customers new to Mac.
With the power of Apple Silicon, the Mac lineup delivers outstanding power-efficient performance, massive memory bandwidth, and next-level AI capabilities. Mac continues to be the ultimate AI powerhouse, excelling at high throughput, on-device inference, and creation across a broad range of AI workloads. And we’re seeing customers increasingly put those capabilities to work, from using Mac Mini as a powerful platform for agentic AI to deploying clusters of Mac Studio systems to run frontier-class models locally.
Across the lineup, customers continue to embrace the Mac family. MacBook Neo has been especially popular, with its distinct design and excellent value resonating with customers around the world, and we’re continuing to work hard to meet demand. MacBook Air, the world’s most popular laptop, continues to deliver the portability and performance customers love with M5. And MacBook Pro, powered by M5 Pro and M5 Max, remains a go-to choice for professionals tackling the most demanding AI, development, and creative workflows.
In iPad, revenue was $6.2 billion for the June quarter. iPad continues to be the ultimate go-anywhere, do-anything device for students, entrepreneurs, and creators of all kinds, thanks to its incredible power, portability, and versatility. The addition of M4 to iPad Air has made it even more capable, delivering a significant performance boost for everything from personal productivity and immersive learning to advanced creative workflows. Together with a remarkable performance of iPad Pro, the amazing value and versatility of iPad, and the ultra-portable iPad Mini, we’re offering customers our strongest iPad lineup ever.
Revenue for Wearables, Home, and Accessories was $7.9 billion, up 6% from a year ago. We grew in every geographic segment and achieved a June quarter record for upgraders for Apple Watch. Our Apple Watch lineup brings together the most comprehensive set of health and fitness features we’ve ever had. We’re delivering useful features backed by research to enable users to better understand their health and wellbeing. It’s gratifying to receive almost daily reminders of the meaningful impact Apple’s health innovations are having for users all over the world—changing, even saving lives.
Meanwhile, we continue raising the bar across our AirPods lineup, whether it’s the immersive listening experience of AirPods Pro 3, or the premium listening experience and exceptional active noise cancellation of AirPods Max 2. And with live translation powered by Apple Intelligence, people are crossing language barriers and connecting like never before.
As I mentioned earlier, we’re excited about the work we’re doing on the next generation of Apple Intelligence, including Siri AI and the AI features we’re developing across our platforms. These experiences are intuitive and useful, while also deeply integrated in a way that’s personal and private, with the latest models running on device and on servers using Private Cloud Compute. We began laying the groundwork for users to have the best possible experience with AI when we introduced the Neural Engine in 2017. Ever since then, we’ve innovated and invested deliberately in silicon, systems, and scalable unified memory architecture designed with AI at their core.
What sets Apple apart is the unique combination of massive unified memory bandwidth, industry-leading power-efficient performance, and deep on-device intelligence, all built around the customer experience from the ground up. The result is that Apple has created the world’s best hardware to experience AI, whether using Apple Intelligence, including Siri AI, or third-party offerings. That’s why developers and researchers are increasingly using Apple devices to build ever-more advanced tools and models.
Turning to services, revenue was $30.7 billion, a June quarter revenue record and up 12% from a year ago, despite significant sequential foreign exchange headwinds. We also set an all-time revenue record in developed markets and a June quarter record in emerging markets. Apple TV continues to leave audiences spellbound with new releases like Widow’s Bay and Cape Fear alongside returning favorites like Silo and Sugar. And next week, we’re excited that Ted Lasso is back for its fourth season.
It was wonderful to see Apple TV earn the industry’s top honors, adding Tony Awards this year to its Emmy, Grammy, and Oscar wins. We reached that milestone faster than any streamer in history. We’re also looking forward to this year’s Emmy Awards, where Apple has landed a record 89 nominations, leading all networks in both the major drama and comedy series categories with three outstanding drama series nominations and three outstanding comedy series nominations. Widows Bay also stands out as the year’s most nominated new program, earning 19 Emmy nominations. In the six and a half years since launch, Apple TV has earned more than 850 wins and nearly 3,800 nominations.
In time for the World Cup, we expanded Apple Sports to include more than 170 countries and regions worldwide and made it easier than ever for fans to follow every moment of the tournament from the opening game to the final whistle. At the same time, we’re halfway through an unforgettable year of F1, and Apple TV subscribers have been tuning in all season to follow their favorite drivers and teams.
In retail, we were pleased to announce Apple Upgrade this week for customers in the U.S. Apple Upgrade is a new hardware leasing program launched in partnership with Klarna and makes it even easier for customers to get their hands on Apple’s latest products with a plan that’s right for them.
In all of our work, we’re thoughtful and intentional in how we show up for our users and across our communities. That means innovating to protect user privacy with the next of Apple Intelligence or helping parents keep kids safe, as I mentioned earlier. In honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we unveiled new features to help users get more out of the products they use every day. New intelligent capabilities are coming to VoiceOver, Magnifier, Voice Control, and Accessibility Reader to make them more useful and intuitive. We’re also using on-device speech recognition to generate subtitles for video content without captions. And Apple Vision Pro is adding a feature for power wheelchair users to control drive systems using just their eyes. All of these features were born out of Apple’s longstanding commitment to ensuring that the benefits of technology are shared with everyone.
As we continue to develop new capabilities for users around the world, we’re also doing our part to invest in innovation close to home. Last year, we made a $600 billion commitment to the U.S. over four years, and now, as we said before, we plan to reinvest the tariff refunds we’ve received into the U.S.
We’re pleased with the progress we’ve already made advancing the American supply chain. Earlier this month, Apple announced a new agreement with Broadcom to design and produce custom silicon components and cutting-edge wireless connectivity technologies. The new, multi-year agreement with Broadcom, which is part of Apple’s American Manufacturing Program, is expected to exceed $30 billion. This marks our largest-ever American Manufacturing Program commitment. It’s also an important step forward in our work to build an end-to-end silicon supply chain here in the U.S.
We’re excited for the upcoming opening of the Apple Advanced Manufacturing Center in Houston. The center is located in a facility where we currently assemble advanced AI servers. Later this year, we’ll make Mac mini there, too. The center will teach students, supplier employees, and business of all sizes, the same innovative processes we use to make our products. The goal is to empower American manufacturers to take their work to the next level and strengthen the entire advanced manufacturing ecosystem.
We have an exciting fall ahead and an incredible future beyond. Our road map is phenomenal, and we are so excited about the way Siri AI will enrich our users lives. Throughout all of it, we will remain guided by our North Star: building the best products and services to enable people to do magical things. It’s a special privilege to be part of people’s lives in lasting and meaningful ways, helping them to create, connect, and experience the world around them. I couldn’t be more excited to watch our phenomenal story of innovation continue to unfold, and I’ve never been more confident that the best is yet to come. With that, I’ll turn it over to Kevan.
Kevan Parekh’s opening remarks
Thanks, Tim, and good afternoon, everyone. Here’s a quick rundown of our key financial metrics. Our revenue of $109.4 billion was up 16% year over year, a June quarter revenue record. We saw strong performance around the world with double-digit growth in every geographic segment despite supply constraints. Products revenue was $78.7 billion, up 18% year over year, driven by double-digit growth on iPhone and Mac, both of which set new June quarter records.
Our installed base of over two and a half billion active devices has reached another all-time high across all major product categories and geographic segments. Services revenue was $30.7 billion, up 12% year-over-year. We set revenue records in every Services category, including all-time records in cloud services and payment services. Company gross margin was 50.1%, up 80 basis points sequentially. This included a benefit from tariff refunds, which had a favorable impact of approximately two percentage points. When you remove this favorable impact, we would have been at the midpoint of the guidance provided last quarter.
Products gross margin was 40.1%, up 140 basis points sequentially. This also included a benefit from the tariff refunds I just mentioned, which had a favorable impact of over 2.5 percentage points. Services gross margin was 75.6%, down 110 basis points sequentially, driven by a different mix. Operating expenses came in at $19.1 billion, up 23% year-over-year, driven by investments in R&D. Net income was $29.8 billion. Diluted earnings per share was $2.02, up 29% year-over-year, and included 11 cents of favorable impact from tariff refunds. Operating cash flow was very strong at $34.4 billion. All three of these metrics set June quarter records, even when excluding the tariff refund benefit.
Now I’m going to provide some more details for each of our revenue categories.
iPhone revenue was $54.3 billion, up 22% year-over-year, driven by the iPhone 17 family. We grew double digits in the vast majority of markets we track and reached June quarter revenue records across both developed and emerging markets. The iPhone active installed base grew to an all-time high and set a June quarter record for upgraders. According to a recent survey from Worldpanel, iPhone was a top-selling model in the U.S., urban China, the U.K., France, Australia, and Japan. We were thrilled with the response to the iPhone 17 family. Customer satisfaction in the U.S. was recently measured at 99% by 451 Research.
Mac revenue was $10.4 billion, up 29% year-over-year, a new June quarter record, driven by the strength of MacBook Neo and MacBook Pro. We grew in both developed and emerging markets, with strong double-digit growth in markets like Latin America, India, and Southeast Asia. The customer reception to MacBook Neo has been incredible. We continue to attract new customers to the product around the world. As Tim mentioned, Mac had its best quarter ever for customers new to the Mac and for upgraders worldwide, including in the U.S., China mainland, and India. And in the U.S., customer satisfaction for Mac was recently measured at 95%.
iPad revenue was $6.2 billion, down 6% year-over-year, driven by the continued difficult compare against the launch of the A16 powered iPad in the prior year. At the same time, the iPad installed base reached a new all-time high, and over half of the customers who purchased an iPad were new to the product. And 451 Research recently measured customer satisfaction at 98% in the U.S.
Wearables, Home and Accessories revenue was $7.9 billion, up 6% year-over-year, driven by strength in wearables and accessories, and we saw growth in both developed and emerging markets. The wearables installed base reached a new all-time high. We set a June quarter record for upgraders on Apple Watch, and over half the customers purchasing an Apple Watch during the quarter were new to the product. And in the U.S., customer satisfaction on Apple Watch was reported at 95%.
Our Services revenue reached a June quarter record of $30.7 billion, up 12% year-over-year, despite significant sequential FX headwinds. For the total services business, we saw a double-digit growth in the vast majority of markets we track. We set records in every category, with June quarter records in advertising, App Store, AppleCare, music, and video, as well as all-time records in cloud services and payment services. We are optimistic about the long-term future of our services business. With our large installed base of over two and a half billion active devices, we have an incredibly strong foundation for growth opportunities. Our services continue to attract more customers, and we have now surpassed $1.5 billion in paid subscriptions. Both transacting and paid accounts reached new all-time highs in the quarter, with double-digit growth for both in emerging markets. And we continue to improve and expand our services offerings, from powerful updates to Creator Studio to exciting new features we’re bringing to services later this year, like splitting bills with Apple Cash using Visual Intelligence.
Turning now to enterprise and education, organizations are using the Apple platform to drive AI innovation and empower the next generation of students. Starting with Enterprise, Morgan Stanley has deployed over 20,000 iPhone 17 devices globally as part of a shift from employee-owned to corporate-owned devices for liability and security. More companies are choosing Mac for on-device AI advantages, including lower costs, better performance, and enhanced privacy and security. At Disney, creative teams are increasingly turning to Mac for on-device AI workflows that reduce overall cloud token costs and keep their IP secure. And Credit Agricole, France’s leading retail bank, is using on-device AI and MacBook Pro to streamline regulatory workflows, reducing manual processing time by over 80%. Our newest addition to the Mac lineup, MacBook Neo, is reaching new enterprise users in many environments, from bank branches to retail storefronts.
In education, MacBook Neo continued to accelerate adoption of Apple products, with many districts leveraging Apple financial services to deploy at scale. Pinellas County Schools, one of the largest districts in Florida, is transitioning 25,000 students from Windows devices to MacBook Neo across its 18 high schools. In Washington, Peninsula School District 401 moved over 8,000 students from Chromebooks to MacBook Neo. And in Oklahoma, Midwest City-Dell City School District purchased over 6,000 MacBook Neos to become an all-Apple district for students. In fact, in the last quarter, about half of the MacBook Neo large purchases by U.S. education institutions displaced Windows and Chromebook devices.
Let’s turn to our cash position and capital return program. We ended the quarter with $147 billion in cash and marketable securities and $84 billion in total debt. During the quarter, we returned $33 billion to shareholders. This included $4 billion in dividends and equivalents and $25.8 billion in share repurchases.
As we move ahead into the September quarter, I’d like to review our outlook, which includes the types of forward-looking information that Suhasini referred to. Importantly, the color we’re providing assumes that global tariff rates, policies, and their application remain in effect as of this call, and the global macroeconomic outlook does not worsen from today.
We also expect our September quarter total company revenue to be impacted by two main factors. First, we expect foreign exchange to be a sequential headwind of about 2.5 percentage points to the year-over-year total company growth rate from the June quarter to the September quarter. Second, we expect the impact from supply constraints to increase significantly sequentially. The projected supply constraints in the September quarter affect iPhone, Mac, and iPad. As a result, we expect our September quarter total company revenue to grow between 9% and 11% year-over-year.
On iPhone, we expect to continue to see high levels of demand; however, we do expect iPhone revenue to be impacted by these foreign exchange headwinds and supply constraints. Therefore, we expect the September quarter reported growth rate for iPhone to be mid-teens year-over-year. For Services, we expect September quarter year-over-year reported growth rate to be largely similar to what we reported in the June quarter after removing the negative sequential impact of about two and a half percentage points from foreign exchange that we just described.
We expect gross margin to be between 47 percent and 48 percent. This includes an expected benefit of approximately one percentage point related to tariff refunds. We expect operating expenses to be between $19.1 billion and $19.4 billion. We expect OI&E to be around $350 million, excluding any potential impact from the mark-to-market of minority investments, and our tax rate to be around 16.5 percent.
Finally, today our Board of Directors has declared a cash dividend of $0.27 per share of common stock payable on August 13, 2026, to shareholders of record as of August 10, 2026.
Before we take questions, let me turn it back over to Tim.
A farewell from Tim
Thanks Kevan. Before we get into questions, I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you. Thank you to all of you, from our shareholders, particularly our long-term shareholders who have put their trust in us for so many years, to the analysts who have followed our company so closely. As you know, this will be my final earnings call, and John will lead these calls going forward. The transition is going seamlessly, and I am beyond excited for John to step into his new role and lead Apple into its next era. He is truly one of a kind and there is no better person to take the helm of the company.
As I’ve said, I couldn’t be more confident in his leadership, in our executive team, and in the extraordinary people at Apple who are determined to enrich the lives of our users all over the world. We have a bright future ahead, and I truly have never been more optimistic. So thank you all, and now Kevan and I will be happy to take your questions.
Analyst Q&A
Amit Daryanani, Evercore: Tim, best of luck. It’s been a pleasure working with you over the years. Maybe to start with, if I think about the 9 to 11% sort of growth that’s guided for September, it’s about a 500 basis points or so deceleration versus what we’re seeing really in June quarter, even through this year, I would say. Can you just talk about how much of this decel is really supply constraint versus other factors like FX? And if you could just flesh out what these supply constraints are, broadening beyond these advanced SOCs you talked about last quarter as well.
Kevan Parekh: Amit, this is Kevan. How are you doing? Why don’t I start with just kind of describing the sequential change, and then I’ll let Tim jump in for kind of a bit more color around the supply constraints. So I think as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we expect the September quarter total revenue to grow by 9% to 11% year-over-year, and then we expect that to be impacted by two main factors. So first, when we look at going from the June quarter to September quarter, we expect foreign exchange to be a sequential headwind of around 2.5 percentage points to the year-over-year company growth rate. And then the second impact is that the impact from supply constraints, we expect that to increase significantly when we go sequentially from June to September, and that projected supply constraint in the September quarter will affect the iPhone, Mac, and the iPad. And really, when you combine those two factors, we get pretty close to the June overall total company growth rate.
Tim Cook: Yeah, Amit, it’s Tim. First of all, thank you for your comments. During the June quarter, we did experience supply constraints primarily on the Mac and to a lesser extent on iPhone and iPad. These were driven by very high levels of demand, and as we’ve said before, we are seeing less flexibility in the supply chain than normal, and were primarily driven by the availability of the advanced nodes that our SOCs are produced on. If you look forward then into the current quarter, the September quarter, we continue to expect high levels of demand. However, with less flexibility in supply chain, we expect the impact from the supply constraints to increase significantly sequentially. The projected supply constraints in the September quarter, as Kevan said, affect iPhone, Mac, and iPad. And so, we’re seeing some very significant constraints currently, with limited flexibility in the supply chain to remedy it.
Amit Daryanani, Evercore: Got it. That’s really helpful. Thanks a lot for that. And then, Tim, I just have a memory question for you. Apple has historically, I think, done a really excellent job about delivering capability and utility to customers without really making them pay disproportionately more. The stagnant memory inflation seems to challenge that equation for you folks right now and there are reports that suggest that you’re seeking greater sourcing flexibility for memory. Can you just talk about, is this sourcing options really about ensuring that you have supply and it’s a way to mitigate memory inflation, or is more to preserve the value proposition for your customers. Just any light you could shed on this would be helpful. Thank you.
Tim Cook: Yeah, let me back up and talk about memory in general, ’cause I know this is a subject on many of your minds. As I’d said on the last call, we paid more for memory in the March quarter than the December quarter. And then, as I alluded to last quarter, we expected to pay significantly more in the June quarter than the March quarter, and that is what happened. It was partially offset by the benefit of carry-in inventory. For September, we expect to pay even higher memory costs. And we’re able to offset partly by a few factors, and let me walk through kind of what they are.
The first is, as you would expect, we have a benefit from some carry-in inventory in the September quarter. However, we believe this will see decreasing benefit from this over time, beyond the September quarter. The second is, we’re expecting lower costs on certain non-memory components that are in our BOM, and then if you look beyond September, we see the market pricing for memory continuing to increase, which could drive an increasing impact on our business, and we’re continuing to evaluate this.
In terms of the sources of supply, you know, primarily the DRAM market has three suppliers, and obviously if there were more suppliers, that would be good, and it would help us on the supply side and perhaps the pricing side. It’s unclear on the pricing side, but it could help on the supply side, and so, we’re evaluating all options.
Michael Ng, Goldman Sachs: Good afternoon. First, Tim, congratulations on the extraordinary run and [inaudible] on these earnings calls. In terms of my questions, I have two as well. First, on the Apple Upgrade program, could you talk a little bit about the expected adoption rates across your 2.5 billion device installed base in success? Do you see it shortening the replacement cycle for iPhone, or also having an equal impact to Mac and iPad, which may have not have benefited from device subsidies in the U.S. like iPhone has historically.
Tim Cook: Michael, first of all, thank you for your comments. I really appreciate that. If you look at the upgrade program, what it’s all about is making it easier for for customers to get their hands on our latest products with a leasing plan that’s right for them. And of course, as you know, the residual values on Apple products are generally much higher than the residual value on several of our competition, and so it’s a way to get into a product on a fairly affordable basis, particularly for those customers who want to upgrade on some kind of schedule, and so we’re very excited about it. It is offered in our retail stores, and so it’s not widely offered in all channels, and so we’ll see what the customer uptake is, but the early feedback on it is quite positive.
Kevan Parekh: Yeah, Michael, I just mentioned that it’s only available in the U.S. right now as well.
Michael Ng, Goldman Sachs: Great. Thank you. That’s very helpful, and then my second question, just on iOS 27 and Apple Intelligence. Went into public beta earlier this month. Could you talk about learnings from the public beta? Will the new Siri AI be a demand driver for iPhones this holiday? How does the Apple Intelligence usage to date in the open beta inform how you’re thinking about compute costs and the ability to recover some of those costs through iCloud Plus.
Tim Cook: Yeah, thank you for that. First of all, we are off the charts excited about Siri AI. We had a great reception from WWDC. We released the developer beta immediately after the keynote. The developer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The feedback from reviewers and so forth have been overwhelmingly positive. We released it to the public for a public beta a few weeks ago and the continued feedback is really, really great. I think it’s a very big idea have AI that’s private, that’s based on your personal context, and that’s integrated across the operating system, and so we couldn’t be happier with how things are going. In terms of what it means for compute cost, it’s obviously early going for us, and so I don’t want to say that we have a complete plan for that. We do believe there will be people that want to use it a lot, and so we will have some kind of upgrade possibilities on iCloud Plus where people can buy up the stack on iCloud Plus, and we’ll see how the pickup for that is. But we could not be more excited about where the product is.
Ben Reitzes, Melius Research: Hey, guys. Thanks a lot for the question, and obviously, Tim, known you a long time, I’ll really miss you. I wanted to ask about the supply constraints again, and I think people are just trying to make sense of it a little bit this way, is that the Street had you at 12% growth for the quarter of September, and so you could argue that to get to the 10% you guided, that’s just the FX, and then in the first quarter, which is December, the Street has been decelerating quite a bit, to like 8% to 9%. So I think what we’re struggling with after hours here is how much these supply constraints really hit you in December and impact that because, you know, the Street did a pretty good job of taking that number into the higher single digits. You know, is there any guidance you can give us there as you see it, Tim? And we’d really appreciate it. Thanks.
Tim Cook: Let me talk about the constraints a little more and then Kevan can weigh in on the guidance for revenue. As I had mentioned before, the primary issue is advanced nodes that we run our SOCs on. That’s the primary supply constraint now, and the root cause of it is not a regular supply issue. It’s a demand forecast issue, to be candid, where the iPhone and the Mac are both doing remarkably better than we thought they would do. And we had high expectations, so it wasn’t that our expectations were low, but as you can see from iPhone’s growth being 22% and Mac’s growth at 29%, and the iPhone is 22% year to date as well, that these are extraordinary numbers and the supply chain just has less flexibility in it than normal. So we’ve been pulling supply ahead, and at some point there’s a limit to that. And so we’ve got a quarter that we’re going to be scrambling on the supply side, essentially. And Kevan, you want to add on the revenue guidance?
Kevan Parekh: Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Tim. Ben, let me jump in here. The dynamics Tim mentioned combined with the foreign exchange impact I mentioned earlier sequentially is really what’s built into the 9 to 11 percent guidance we’re giving for the September total company revenue year on year growth rate. Beyond September, we’re not providing any color. At this point I think you mentioned December, so we’re not providing any kind of color or guidance beyond the September quarter.
Ben Reitzes, Melius Research: Ok. And then, if I could just ask, and you guys know what’s in the press all the time. But there’s this little company that is also building a fab in Arizona that you guys have been speculated you guys could work with that could potentially alleviate some, at least your silicon constraints. Is there any possibility that you guys broaden out your silicon providers in a reasonable time frame to alleviate these so we feel better about supply?
Tim Cook: Yeah, let me stress again, this isn’t a partner or supplier issue. This issue is an incredibly strong… it’s a great issue in some ways. It’s an incredibly strong iPhone and Mac product cycle that has really yielded a demand beyond our expectation. In Arizona, we do source over 100 million components this year out of Arizona. And so, it is part of our $600 billion commitment to the U.S., and we could not be more pleased with how that fab has ramped and is producing for us.
Eric Woodring, Morgan Stanley: Thanks so much for taking my questions, guys, and Tim, just echo what everyone is saying, it’s been a pleasure working with you. Hope to still talk to you in the future. I want to maybe focus on pricing here, Tim, and kind of unprecedented for you to take pricing in the ways that you have. I guess two related questions… Is it your intention to pursue some of these multi-year LTAs with your suppliers just to ensure access to supply at pre-agreed prices? And when you approach product pricing in this environment, is it your intention to protect product gross profit dollars? Is it your intention to protect product gross margins? We’d just love the kind of thought process behind the pricing.
Tim Cook: Yeah, on the pricing front, we reluctantly raised prices, I would say. And we did it because we’re in, what I would characterize as a hundred-year flood on the memory pricing with exponential increases in memory prices, and so that was the rationale for it. In terms of our philosophy on dollars or percentages, we look at units, revenue, and margin, and then come to a business judgment as to how to handle that. And so it’s not a mathematical formula that gets us to a specific result or just looking at one dimension of that. We look at all three dimensions and think about it over the long term instead of a 90-day clock. Hopefully that helps.
Eric Woodring, Morgan Stanley: Yeah, yeah, no, that does help. Thank you, Tim. And then just maybe a quick follow-up. I guess, Tim or Kevan. 12% services growth was just a bit below your guidance. I imagine FX maybe played a role there. I think the fiscal 4Q guidance assumes another deceleration. I think the math would imply below 10% year-over-year as reported. So can you maybe just help us understand the kind of function factors underlying that deceleration? And if that’s App Store, which I think some third-party data sources would suggest, is that a function of AI maybe reprioritizing time away from parts of the App Store? I just want to make sure we understand the moving pieces on services, please. Thank you so much.
Kevan Parekh: Hey, Eric. This is Kevan. I’ll take that one. So, let’s walk from kind of the 16 percent in our fiscal second quarter to kind of the 12% that we just talked about in the June quarter that you referenced, and we look at that, relative to the March quarter, foreign exchange was the main driver for the change in the year-on-year growth rate sequentially, and also a couple other factors to keep in mind. One is we had the theatrical release of F1, which is one of the highest grossing sports films in history, and this year we didn’t have a theatrical release. So that had a favorable impact on both the June quarter and also the September quarter in the year ago. We also had some factors that impacted the performance of the App Store. We did see some headwinds in mobile gaming, and then keep in mind, we also made some changes to the App Store business model in certain countries, and in the U.S., we do continue to operate under a court ruling impacting the link-out transactions. But we’re pleased the Supreme Court will hear our appeal. Despite this, the App Store did set a June quarter revenue record. So if we take a step back, there are several positive trends in the services business, and during the June quarter, we saw strong double-digit growth in categories like cloud services, video, payment services, and advertising, and we set revenue records in every category, with June quarter records in advertising, the App Store, AppleCare, Music, and Video, where Apple TV viewership reached an all-time high in the quarter. And then we also set all-time records in cloud services and payment services, where Apple Pay saw a record level of users in both developed and emerging markets. And services also had a June quarter record in emerging markets. And as we outlined in the prepared remarks, you know, our services continue to attract more customers, and we now have surpassed one and a half billion in paid subscriptions, and our transacting and paid accounts hit an all-time high, with double-digit growth in both those two and emerging markets.
So I think when I step back, if I look at, you know, kind of how we landed versus our expectations that we had outlined in the March quarter, for the June quarter, I would say that we roughly met our expectations, but we did see a bit more softness on mobile gaming in the App Store. As we go into the September quarter, what I would say is we expect foreign exchange will continue to be a headwind, and in fact this is a theme that’s impacting the services business moreso than the total company. We expect foreign exchange to drive about a 5 percentage point headwind to the year-on-year growth rate from the March to September quarter. So if we look at the sequential change from the June quarter, the 12% services we reported, to what we’re guiding for the September quarter, we are going to see another 2.5 point sequential headwind.
Aaron Rakers, Wells Fargo: Thanks for taking the questions and also best wishes, Tim. I guess I want to… maybe it tethers with the memory pricing dynamic, but as you look at the demand that you’re seeing right now, I’m curious of how you assess whether or not you’ve seen any pull forward of demand either from the consumer or even the enterprise and education markets, and whether or not you’re factoring that into your views as we look forward at all.
Tim Cook: You’re talking about on iPhone, I assume, in general. We’ve been running at this 22% growth rate for the last while, for this cycle has been a 22% increase year to date, and so it’s not obvious in the data that what you’re asking is true. Obviously, we’ve now had to increase prices on iPad and Mac, and the price elasticity there, it’s just too early to come to a definitive conclusion of what happens there. Because it takes a little while for the channels to adjust since there’s channel inventory and it takes a while for the consumer to respond, and so we’ll understand that more in the weeks ahead.
Aaron Rakers, Wells Fargo: Very helpful, and then as a quick follow-up, maybe more longer-term thematically, as AI proliferates towards the edge and more consumers utilize AI, I’m curious, Tim, if you see AI opening up additional opportunities. I can appreciate that you’re not going to give us specifics, but do you see other kind of addressable markets evolving from AI over time?
Tim Cook: Yes. I think there are enormous opportunities for Apple moving forward in AI. And I’m so excited about Siri AI and kind of where it is and where it’s going, and I’m excited about the feedback that we’re getting there, and of course, the ability to run some percentage of requests on device is also very strategic and sort of a competitive weapon, if you will. So I could not be more excited about the opportunities there.
Wamsi Mohan, Bank of America: Yes, thank you. Tim, first, congrats on your tenure as CEO. You joined back in 2011 when Apple reported $108 billion in revenue and you just delivered a quarter of $109 billion. So just an amazing journey.
Tim Cook: Thank you for that, I really appreciate it.
Wamsi Mohan, Bank of America: Yeah, sure, Tim, it’s been a pleasure. For my question, first on Siri AI, Do you expect that Siri AI would change the capital intensity of Apple, despite the fact that you have the ability to do so much differentiated workloads on device and you have this distributed compute? You do have some requests that go into the backend, both in your own first party cloud as well as third party. So is it right to think that the capital intensity of Apple will change in the future because of Siri AI?
Tim Cook: We use a hybrid model, as I know Kevan has reviewed with you earlier, and so we use some third-party cloud and we do our own data centers, and so there will be a mix. But generally speaking, as you know, we have been growing our OPEX and spending more in AI in general. Quite a bit more. And there are other locations on the P&L other than OPEX, like OCOGS, et cetera, that also have AI expenditures, and so we’ll see what Siri AI does from the cost side of it. But there’s also the ability when people use it a lot for them to move up on an iCloud plan as well, and so what the balance of that is, is a bit uncertain at the moment.
Wamsi Mohan, Bank of America: And John, since you’re on the call, congrats on the new role. I’d love to get maybe just a high-level take from you if you think that the competitive landscape here is changing, especially as you hear about, potentially, companies like OpenAI building an AI-enabled competitive device or SpaceX AI potentially having a phone that could bypass some of the typical carrier tax. Just would love your high-level thoughts on how you see the competitive landscape evolving and Apple’s position there.
John Ternus: Well, thank you for asking. I guess I would just reiterate what Tim said, there is so much opportunity for us with everything that’s happening in this space, and we’re just really focused on our plans and very excited about it.
Samik Chatterjee, J.P. Morgan: Hi, thanks for squeezing me in here and Tim, best wishes from my side as well. Maybe just for my first one, if I go back to WWDC when you announced Siri AI, you also did mention along with the rollout that probably we won’t have the initial rollout in China and Europe, so just wanted to get your thoughts on that front and any more color in terms of what hurdles you need to cross to be able to launch it in those regions.
Tim Cook: Thank you. Yeah, thanks for the question. Let me take them individually. If you look at the EU, we’re working closely with the Commission. Obviously, our complete desire is to launch everything everywhere at the same time. That’s always the philosophy that we have. We have not been able to do that in the European Union, but we’re working closely with them to try to get to something that would allow us to offer Siri AI there. It is offered, or will be offered for the Mac there, because the Mac is not covered by the same regulations as the iPhone and the iPad. So, net-net, we’re working with them, and hope to reach some sort of solution. If you then look at China, last week we received approval to ship sort of the original features of Apple Intelligence. Things like Clean Up and so forth, and so we’re working now through the rollout of those, and there will be more work required down the road for Siri AI, but we’re at the front end of that.
Samik Chatterjee, J.P. Morgan: Follow-up, Kevan, just not to beat sort of this FX thing to death here, but if I look at the gross margin, you delivered 48% in the quarter without the tariff refund benefit. You’re guiding to like 46 and a half. Any way to walk us through the sequential driver there and how much of that is FX impacting it versus maybe like increased commodity costs that’s driving that sequential moderation because it does seem a bit more atypical than your normal sort of years.
Kevan Parekh: Yes, that’s a good question. So let me walk through kind of what’s impacting our gross margins. We look at our gross margin change from the 49.3% we had a total company level for the March quarter, and as you mentioned, the 48.1% adjusted for the tariff refund in the June quarter, that hundred and twenty basis point change, if you look at the drivers of that, more than 100% of that can be explained by the memory cost change that Tim outlined. While FX was a factor, really the main driver was really the memory cost impact, and as Tim outlined earlier when we talked a bit about the dynamics around the memory cost, is we did see some partial offsets from things like the benefit of carry-in inventory, reduction in non-memory component costs, and some favorable mix. We are seeing the same dynamics when you go from the 48.1 that we printed in the June quarter to the 46.5 midpoint you referenced of our range without the tariff refund impact. That 160 basis point change is also… more than that is explained by the change in memory costs, and we had partial offsets, again, from things like the benefit of carrying inventory, lower cost and non-memory components, and as well favorable mix. I think that FX was a pretty minimal impact when you look at that versus the memory, and so generally, the sequential change from the March quarter to the 46.5 you referenced is really driven by memory.
Samik Chatterjee, J.P. Morgan: Great. Thank you both for taking my questions. And congrats again, Tim.
Tim Cook: Thank you so much for saying that, I appreciate it.
On Thursday, Apple announced record third-quarter earnings, with total revenue of $109.4B, up 16 percent from the year-ago quarter. iPhone revenue was up 22%, Mac revenue was up 10.4%, Services revenue was up 12%, and Wearables revenue was up 6%. iPad revenue was down 6%.
Shortly thereafter, Apple execs spent an hour on the phone with financial industry analysts, and we’ve got our usual complete transcript, including many farewells to Tim Cook.
And now, to help you visualize what Apple just announced, here is our traditional barrage of charts and graphs:
On Thursday afternoon, Apple will announce the results of its third fiscal quarter for 2026. It will presumably be the last appearance of Tim Cook on the post-release earnings calls, which he’s been doing for ages. In fact, today’s call will be his 90th. That’s more than two decades of talking on the phone once a quarter to financial analysts. He’s probably earned a break.
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 our usual load of colorful charts and some analysis. At 2pm PDT, it’s that hour-long phone call with analysts that I’ll also transcribe. Due to summer travel, we’ll be foregoing our usual post-results live stream (and there’s no Six Colors podcast this week, either), but you can tune in to the Upgrade podcast on Monday, where Dan will join me to break down all the results.
Back in April of this year, I suggested that the MailMaven email app for macOS might become my new best friend. Months later, with continuous minor and major improvements, the friendship has only grown richer. MailMaven 1.1 in April added POP support for those people who rely on the ancient email mailbox protocol. But MailMaven 1.2, out last week, packed more punch: fully realized AppleScript support coupled with the open standard Model Context Protocol (MCP) to allow large language model AIs to engage with MailMaven. Michael Tsai evaluated the AppleScript support and wrote that it is “really impressive.”
Support for MCP via AppleScript means that you can have AI agents communicate directly with MailMaven to improve spam detection, recognize important messages, collect order or financial information, or perform an infinite number of other tasks in which your incoming or outgoing email acts as the hub of knowledge. SmallCubed, the app’s developer, has created a basic MCP server for Claude as a working example. You can write AppleScript from scratch using its terse, thorough guide, or point a code chatbot at the page to write AppleScript for you. I currently have a few nightly scripts that collate book sales and archive the day’s email by digging into MailMaven’s database; I need to rewrite those to use AppleScript instead!
Ted Lasso’s return and Apple TV recommendations, a year of Apple Journal on Mac, our tech cleaning and maintenance habits, and old technologies we’ve fired up just to learn or relive.
(Left to right): Annotate, Kickabout, and Undolly.
For the most part, I’m going to focus on Mac apps with these columns, because that’s where the action seems to be these days. But iOS remains a vibrant platform, too, and every now and again, we’ll look at some of the interesting apps being created for iPhones and iPads. This is one of those now and agains.
Want to see your app included in a future round-up? Get in touch at apps@sixcolors.com with a brief description of your app, and you just might make the cut.
Kickabout
The World Cup is just a memory now, but if you’re missing the daily infusion of soccer (or football, depending on what part of the globe you’re reading this from), Kickabout brings the action back to your iOS device in a very condensed form.
Kickabout will be immediately familiar to anyone who’s ever gathered around a foosball table in a rec room, with a look that will bring a smile to the face of Subbuteo tabletop football aficionados. You take charge of an 8-player team, with players only free to move about certain areas of the pitch. (No length-of-the-field Maradona-esque wonder golazos for your squad.) You use your finger to drag your players around, swiping any which way to boot the ball toward the goal as you look to rack up the most goals in each 2-minute match.
Goals and shots off the post earn you points, which translates to tickets that you cash in to collect various national teams, from the U.S. all the way to newly minted world champion Spain. You can also buy gear, including stands for your virtual stadium. It’s a fun element that adds to Kickabout’s replayability as you try to assemble your own World Cup field.
Kickabout has both single-player and dual-player modes, though I found the latter to be a little cramped for my iPhone 17 screen. I imagine head-to-head matches are much more enjoyable on the iPad. Still, Kickabout offers plenty of fun even for single players, as you try to master the game’s different difficulty levels.
Kickabout is free to download, and a $3 in-app purchase gets rid of any ads.
Undolly
The Photos app has a built-in tool to weed out duplicate images, but if you find yourself taking a lot of photos, Undolly brings a whole suite of tools that promise to bring order to your iOS device’s photo library. Besides getting rid of duplicates, the mobile app also lists large videos taking up space in your library, rounds up any screenshots you may have stashed somewhere and keeps tabs on other potential space-takers like RAW, timelapse and animated images.
The value of Undolly will depend heavily on how you use your photo library. For instance, I take a lot of screenshots for articles that I don’t always remember to delete, and the app helped me track down some that were three to five years old. I also appreciate Undolly’s swipable comparisons of similar shots, so you can see for yourself whether the images differ enough to keep. Undolly’s algorithm also rates images by their framing, quality and expressiveness of subject to better help you determine the shots that deserve a place in your library.
While it’s free to download initially, you will have to subscribe to Undolly to use its features, with a free three-day trial letting you get the lay of the land. After that, a monthly subscription costs $4, while annual and lifetime payments go for $15 and $40, respectively.
VWLSS
Nearly five years after Wordle first appeared, we’re still living in a golden age for daily word puzzles. Add VWLSS and its daily serving of mobile word play to the pile, though there are some unique iPhone elements that could help this free offering earn a place in your regular rotation of gameplay.
You have eight words to guess, each tied to a specific category and with all the vowels stripped out. It’s up to you to figure out the actual word, which you can do either by typing in the answer or using a handy speech feature. I prefer talking to typing, though I’m still sore that my guess of “Bob Barker” in the game show hosts category was misheard as “Bob Parker.” Revenge will be mine tomorrow, I guess.
Annotate
Between Notes and the still-new-to-iOS Preview app, you’ve got more than a few built-in tools for marking up documents and images on your iPhone or iPad. The Annotate app looks to expand on that with 17 tools that allow you to crop, blur and add notes to your heart’s content. If you find yourself making a lot of the same annotations, the app lets you create and save templates and there are shortcuts for watermarking and auto-redacting faces and phone numbers.
You can download Annotate for free and export up to five annotated photos and documents. After that, you’ll need to make a one-time $10 payment to use the app. Annotate works well enough on my iPhone, though I suspect iPad users will get more out of using this app’s many features on their larger-screen devices.
Back in February I wrote about an Apple-related revelation I had while washing my hands on vacation:
We stayed at a nice hotel rather than the less-nice-but-cheaper VRBO condo rental we usually do. Because I’m me, I started thinking about Apple. Like Apple, the nice hotel’s brand promise is that it’s a nice hotel. If the hotel didn’t clean its rooms well, didn’t provide soap that smelled nice, didn’t maintain the in-room refrigerator, didn’t clean the swimming pool, it would probably decrease its expenses and increase its profit margin. But over time, it would lose its niceness and become a lousy, overpriced hotel.
Earlier this month, John Gruber wrote about how he hopes incoming Apple CEO John Ternus can perform a bit of a reset on Apple’s advertising strategy. In recent months Apple has announced that it’s adding ads to Apple Maps, and (as John has documented) it’s allowed incredibly low-quality, scammy ads to infest Apple News.
While Apple can spin adding ads to Apple Maps as a revolutionary new way for businesses to be discovered, it’s telling that its initial announcement was hidden inside a press release about an entirely different product, and introduced as “Enhanced Discoverability in Apple Maps.” Those choices show that this isn’t something Apple is actually proud of—and that the people in charge of communicating and explaining Apple’s decisions to the world are at odds with those who are making the decisions about expanding revenue.
Apple also recently expanded App Store ads, creating more clutter at the top of App Store search results. It similarly pitched this as an opportunity for developers—but of course, it’s really an opportunity for developers to take a portion of the money they make from the App Store after Apple’s cut and hand it right back to Apple so that their apps don’t become invisible. What a racket.
But Apple’s approach to grinding out additional revenue doesn’t stop with advertising. The recent release of Apple Creator Studio should’ve been a highlight, because it groups a bunch of useful creative apps in one place for a reasonable price. Instead, its launch was marred by the inclusion of Apple’s free productivity apps in the bundle, requiring users to download new versions and (at least initially) display aggressive subscription promotions in the Numbers, Pages, and Keynote interface.
To this day, you’re confronted with an ad for Creator Studio every time you create a new document in those apps, and their default toolbars contain buttons that won’t work unless you subscribe to the bundle. As a result, Apple has essentially turned its free productivity suite—software that was designed to enhance the inherent value of Apple’s products—into a freemium package with upsell to a creative professional subscription bundle that’s irrelevant (and a terrible value!) for most of its existing users.
There are many more examples. Using notifications to promote subscriptions and badging the Settings app to push AppleCare plans are among the ways Apple has chosen to intervene in the user experience to drive revenue. I’m actually not opposed to the idea that Apple should communicate opportunities for its customers to get more out of their devices—but it should be careful not to cross the line into actively annoying those customers. If someone doesn’t want to see what you offer, you need to accept that and go away—not keep needling them. Apple often falls on the wrong side of that line.
Which brings me back to the hotel soap.
Apple’s most valuable asset is its brand. Not its real estate, not its intellectual property, not even any particular product. Even the mighty iPhone has no value if, over time, the traits that differentiate it from competitor products are erased. Apple’s brand has always stood for higher quality products—you pay more, but you get more. Apple has never wanted to be the low-price leader. It didn’t put stickers on the first Intel Macs to get some marketing dollars from Intel. It doesn’t load up new Macs with loads of lousy bundled third-party software like so many PCs do.
Those are choices Apple has made that cost the company revenue, but they’ve got a bigger purpose. They reinforce the brand.
Opting not to add more revenue to the bottom line is a difficult choice for anyone working at a profit-driven corporation. I used to be in that position at my former employer, defending the overall product against a constant stream of advertising and biz-dev deal proposals that would add incremental revenue. Believe me, arguing to corporate executives that we should leave money on the table is a deeply uncomfortable role to take on—but it’s vital if you care about the bigger picture.
How many companies out there have made the wrong decision, time and again, and taken the easy shot of increased revenue at the expense of their product?
It makes me wonder if the people making these decisions at Apple have lost track of the Apple brand and what it stands for. I know for a fact there are people at Apple who understand these points—the sheepish marketing we sometimes see from them is quite the tell—but clearly those people are not influential enough to counter those empowered to push these initiatives forward.
Nice hotels have lots of ways of generating revenue. They charge resort fees. They charge for parking and wi-fi. The drinks are expensive. The room service is expensive. But what those hotels have learned is that there is a fundamental level of quality that you diverge from at your peril. If you don’t buy the nice soap, the good shampoo, and the soft mattresses, if you don’t clean the rooms properly, if you allow your grounds to get shabby, you are in danger of losing your status as a nice hotel, and just becoming an expensive cheap hotel—and nobody wants to stay at one of those.
This is the opportunity Apple has during this leadership reset: To remind itself of what the Apple brand represents in the market. I’m not making an innocent touchy-feely request for Apple to just be better, gosh darn it! This is serious business.
People buy Apple’s products because they are nice and work well and are not lousy in a lot of ways the cheaper competition is. Apple’s revenue-grubbing approach to the user experience in its products and services threatens to erode the Apple brand, and once lost, it can be hard to recover. No amount of incremental revenue from lousy ads and nagging upsells can counteract long-term brand damage.
Always choose the good soap. And empower the people who will push back against those who want to tell you how much money can be saved by giving the customer cheap, lousy soap instead.
It’s a Summer of Fun takeover! Jason asks Myke about the state of his current workflows, and we both highlight our current Macs and current favorite Mac utilities.
Several years ago, Apple began hiding disk partitions and volumes on the startup drive. The first was a secret volume with a tiny operating system on it that would let you boot from it, after which you could restore from a Time Machine backup, run First Aid in Disk Utility, or reinstall Mac OS X or macOS. Over the years, Apple has multiplied those hidden locations and added more sophistication to what they offer.
These boot volumes are:
recoveryOS: The current name and form of the special volume described above, which boots into the Recovery Assistant “app.” You can run Disk Utility (and First Aid), reinstall macOS, launch Safari to access Apple Support pages, modify startup security settings (rarely required these days), and access Terminal. With Terminal, you can reset your macOS password. If your Mac can’t start up properly, it will try to launch the Recovery process within recoveryOS, which performs automatic repairs that Apple doesn’t document. If successful, you can then restart into macOS.
recoveryOS has many faces, including these four, here showing Activate Mac after it was unlock following a Find My lock.
Fallback recoveryOS: If recoveryOS is damaged—and that can happen—you can press the power button twice, quickly, and then keep holding it the second time. This fallback recovery volume can’t change startup security, but it can help you diagnose what’s going on. This is the duct-tape belt that helps if your pants come unbuttoned (macOS won’t boot) and your suspenders break (regular recoveryOS fails).
Repair Assistant: From a powered-down state, press the power button until you hear the startup chime, then press and hold Command-D. (On an Intel Mac, hold the D key at startup.) The Diagnostics app can run hardware tests that might help narrow down a problem before you bring in Apple Support, or they may ask you to boot into that mode and share the results of the tests they have you run. Repair Assistant can fail, too, if its volume is damaged. You may then have to perform a special “revive or restore” operation, which requires another Mac. Or you may need a full reinstall using a bootable macOS installer.
macOS: macOS is a sort of hidden boot volume for the last several releases. You don’t boot from the system; instead, a read-only snapshot of the system is mounted, and then booted from. This is part of Apple making system resources immutable through cryptography and at startup.
Besides using recoveryOS for the above tasks, you might also need to use it to unlock your Mac after locking it in Find My and to reset your password using a FileVault Recovery Key. Here’s how.
Unlock your Mac
When you lock devices in Find My, they appear with a question mark overlaying their icon.
While it’s not a common scenario, it could happen to you: you accidentally leave your Mac somewhere, or it’s stolen. Thinking quickly, you launch Find My on another of your devices or go to iCloud.com/find and log in. You then tap or click a few buttons to lock your Mac. If the Mac is connected to the Internet, it restarts and locks immediately. (Despite promising to display the message you entered when you locked it, macOS does not do so.) If it’s not connected, it restarts the next time it has Internet access.
The account used to lock the Mac is the only one that can unlock it, and you must be in front of the Mac to perform that operation. Apple limits each Mac to having Find My enabled from a single account. Here are the steps:
When you see the macOS Recovery title, click the account profile below it. Enter the account’s password and click Continue.
If you entered it correctly, “Authentication succeeded” appears. Click Restart.
The Mac restarts and shows Activate Mac after it boots up. This time, all the active macOS accounts are shown. Click one, and then enter its password. Click Next.
You now can choose to either use your Apple Account or a macOS password to continue. If you opt for the Apple Account, enter the full address or phone number as shown. Then enter the account’s password. Otherwise, you can click to enter the Mac password, which Apple says is the last one used to unlock the Mac in a regular session before it was locked. If you’re the only user on the Mac, that’s easy to figure out. (In testing with Golden Gate public beta 2, I wasn’t able to get the Mac password option to work, and I’ve had it fail in Tahoe, too.) Sometimes neither works. Choose Restart from the Apple menu in that case and try again.
On a successful entry, the Mac restarts yet again after a one-minute countdown. Enter your password when prompted to start up into a regular session.
Apple Pay will have been disabled, and your iCloud sync will probably be paused as well. When prompted after the macOS session starts, enter your Apple Account password (or passwords if you have multiple accounts linked to your macOS account).
If you try this too often, as I did while testing, or for other security reasons only Apple knows, your Apple Account may be locked. At step 6, I was told I had to reset my Apple Account password from one of my other devices; all four linked to the account were shown. I made that change. In the Golden Gate second public beta, clicking Unlock Account did nothing before or after changing. I was able to click Cancel, complete step 4 again with the new Apple Account password, and proceed to step 5 and restart.1
If your Apple Account becomes locked, you have to reset your Apple Account password on a linked device.
Years ago, when you locked your Mac, you had to set a passcode to unlock it. While that isn’t supported on M-series Macs or Intel Macs with the T2 Security Chip, the email Apple sends still shows an image of a screen where you would enter that code and says you can only unlock your Mac with that non-existent passcode.
Apple’s email after you lock your Mac shows an outdated image and provides outdated information about the unlock procedure.
Unlock via FileVault
If you try to log into your Mac and can’t recall the password or it isn’t accepted, you can use your FileVault Recovery Key to unlock the volume and reset your password. The Recovery Key is a long code that’s a last-ditch way to unlock your startup volume. It’s also a back-door way to help with a post-Find My lock operation if your password won’t work or you’ve forgotten it.
Here’s how to use your Recovery Key to unlock FileVault:
At the login prompt, click the ? icon to the right of Enter Password to bring up the Reset Password link. (This also appears if you enter your password incorrectly a few times.) Click Reset Password.
Your Mac restarts into Recovery Assistant using its Reset Password pathway. Enter your Recovery Key (see articles above). Click Next.
If you entered your Recovery Key correctly, you are prompted to enter a new password for the account you rebooted from, and confirm it. Do so.
When you restart, you can now enter the new password.
Enter your FileVault Recovery Key to then be able to reset your macOS password.
If you forgot or can’t enter a correct password for unlocking your Mac in step 1 in the previous section, you can click “Forgot all passwords?” This will launch the FileVault-based password reset, let you reset the password for that account, then proceed with unlocking.
Revisions of those two titles for the 27 series of operating systems are coming out soon. You can purchase either today and receive a free update to the new version when it’s out.
[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use/glennin our subscriber-only Discord community.]
In the screenshot, you’ll notice the title is Update Phone Number, even though I have no opportunity to do so. This may be fixed by Apple later, though I doubt it. ↩
Apple and Ford today announced that Apple Maps will be integrated directly into Ford’s upcoming Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV) Platform through Apple’s new MapKit for Automotive SDK. Coming to Ford’s UEV Platform in 2027, this integration will deliver a beautiful and easy-to-use navigation experience powered by Apple Maps directly to the vehicle’s displays. Road-level Maps information will also enable Ford’s Latitude AI team to build a seamless hands-free driving experience.
This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise: Ford CEO Jim Farley has been bullish on CarPlay and the UEV project was previously headed up by Doug Field1, who spent several years at Apple both on the Mac hardware team and, more significantly, leading up the abandoned car effort.
This integration is interesting, though, because of the lukewarm reception of CarPlay Ultra in the automotive industry. The new “MapKit for Automotive SDK”, which as far as I can tell is being announced in this press release, seems more like the Android Automotive approach of building in support at a low level, though here it’s predominantly focused on navigation rather than providing the full stack for the car. Here’s how Apple describes it:
This integration is made possible by Apple’s new MapKit for Automotive SDK, which allows automakers to embed and customize Apple Maps. The SDK also enables automakers to deliver a cohesive navigation experience for drivers that is consistent with the look and feel of their vehicles, and provides road-level information to help automakers build hands-free driving experiences.
I also appreciated this little tidbit nestled at the very end of the press release:
In addition to the integration of Apple Maps into Ford’s UEV Platform, CarPlay will continue to be available on Ford vehicles, providing drivers with a safe and smart way to use their iPhone in the car.
How much waterproofing matters in our tech and our riskiest water moments, the last time we changed our minds about a technology, how we buy our phones and thoughts on upgrade programs, and the recent tech purchases we feel guilty about.
An e-reader magneted to the back of a smartphone, just as the prophecy foretold.
The market for small e-readers has been booming lately. Earlier this year, Jason took a look at the Xteink X4, a pint-sized reading device that was about as light and small as they come. But those maniacs at Xteink weren’t done yet: they followed it up with the $79 X3, which is unbelievably even lighter and smaller.
I wouldn’t blame you for wondering if there’s such a thing as too small and light—at 3.84 inches by 2.51 inches (and just 0.2 inches thick) the X3 is still larger than, say, a credit card, but not by much. The screen itself measures just 3.7 inches, more than half an inch smaller than the X4’s 4.3 inch, but its 259 ppi resolution still makes it plenty easy to read on.1 At that size it’s little imposition to take it with you wherever you go. Easy to lose? Maybe. Easy to love? Yes.
For one thing, this small size unlocks at least one capability that the X4 couldn’t fully deliver upon—the ability to stick to the back of your phone. Like the X4, the X3 has a MagSafe-compatible magnet in its rear case and it fits just about perfectly on the back of my iPhone 17 Pro, nestled below the camera plateau.
However, the magnet is not particularly strong, and it lacks the secondary stabilizing magnet that you see on official MagSafe accessories, meaning it wobbles around a bit. I wouldn’t call it a super secure connection, but it’s pretty good if you’re just slipping it in and out of a pocket. Just be aware that it probably will come loose.
Like the X4 before it, the X3 features a pair of rocker switches on the front for a total of four possible buttons. But they’ve opted to skip the X4’s side mounted rocker switch in favor of a single buttons on each side. There’s also an on/off switch at the top (plus a recessed button used for resetting the device). And with all of that, they somehow managed to continue to fit a microSD slot in the top. The bottom left corner also has a little set of holes for a lanyard or wrist strap.
The X3 is about the size of just the display on the X4.
The one casualty of the smaller X3, however, is the port. The X4 was big enough to accommodate a USB-C connector, but the X3’s thin profile makes that impossible. Instead, there’s a pogo-pin USB cable that connects to four magnetic contacts on the reader. Is this a step back? Strictly speaking, yes. Using a proprietary connector is a bummer in the year 2026, especially because it means having to keep track of a single-use cable. That said, once you get the X3 up and running, the only real need for the connector is charging, and the battery on this thing lasts a very long time. (I’ve yet to run it down in several weeks of usage.) Just remember to make a note of where you stow that cable for the point months down the road when you do need to charge it and find yourself wondering whatever happened to it.
As with the X4, the X3 lacks any sort of screen lighting, meaning that it’s strictly a “read in bright light” device. But don’t worry, because Xteink has already unveiled a new X4 Pro with the company’s first lit screen.2
All in all, I found the X3 very comfortable to read on, whether attached to my iPhone or not. The side buttons work great as page-turners, and the screen is high-contrast and sharp enough to make text render very clearly. All in all, it’s a great reading experience—if you take into account one major caveat.
Soft where?
The elephant in the room for the Xteink X3 is the software. Xteink ships the X3 with its own built-in firmware which, by all accounts, has improved since the first version. But I can’t really tell you, because upon opening the box and powering up the device, the first thing I did was install Crosspoint, the open-source community-built firmware that has turned this device from a curiosity into a real contender.3
Unlike a lot of other firmware replacements, Crosspoint is super easy to install; you can do it right from a web browser. While it’s not fully free of technological hurdles, I’d say that most people comfortable using an e-reader or updating their iPhones will be able to handle the process with few problems. And the benefits are manifold.
Crosspoint is extremely configurable for all your reading needs.
Crosspoint goes beyond simply turning this into a functional device and into one that is actually fun to use. It’s got a straightforward, easy to navigate interface that makes it simple to do everything from reading to loading books (accomplished via a web-based interface). For those who like to tweak their reading setup, there are plenty of configuration options, everything from screen orientation to hyphenation and, yes, custom fonts loaded via the SD card.
Even the onscreen keyboard that you need to use for various configuration tasks is pretty solid for what’s available—on par with navigating via an onscreen keyboard with a game controller, in my opinion. I wouldn’t want to have to type in my Wi-Fi password every time—and you don’t, because it saves it for you—but one time was fine.
There are also a bunch of other features that might appeal to those who want to take reading to the next level. For example, support for Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS) standard means that if you want to host your book library on your own server, you can point your reader at that and download any of the books you already own directly to your device. There’s also support for KOreader sync to help keep your place between supported devices.4
Crosspoint has been so successful, in fact, that the team at Xteink has smartened up and started collaborating. (This after a brief moment when it looked like the company might try to firmware lock its devices.) Now, not only do the “developer editions” sold directly by the company continue to allow you to install the custom firmware, the company has been working with the Crosspoint team to make sure new devices, like the X4 Pro, will already be supported when they arrive. While Xteink hasn’t quite adopted Crosspoint as the default OS, it’s not far off.
The world is not enough
Given how positive I’ve been above, you might be all too tempted to run out and snap up an Xteink X3 for yourself. I don’t blame you! At $79 (and often discounted for less than that), it’s well positioned as an impulse buy. And while I don’t want to dissuade you, I have to note the biggest caveat of all: the world.
Just try to tell me this wee fella isn’t charming.
If there’s one thing that’s holding back the X3 and the X4 and, frankly, all the other wacky readers out there, it’s the market. The e-reader space is still unquestionably dominated by Amazon purveying its razors-and-blades strategy: buy the Kindle for cheap5 and the company earns it all back when you buy your books or sign up for Kindle Unlimited’s all-you-can-eat plan. Kobo, who makes the hardware that I prefer, is a distant second, and has some advantages, but operates on roughly a similar scheme.
Both of these companies benefit from lock-in in the form of Digital Rights Management. DRM is, of course, largely pushed by publishers, who insist upon cryptographic schemes to lock down the books they sell in order to nominally protect against piracy. Never mind the fact that books are still easily and widely pirated, the DRM is relatively simple to crack6, and many of those books have been vacuumed up by the boatload by an even more insidious thief in the form of AI training data.
I come at this, of course, from the perspective of both reader and writer. As a writer, I certainly want to be compensated for all the hard work I put in to create my books, but I also want people to read and enjoy them. That’s why you’ll find no stauncher defender of libraries.
Personally, I find the industry’s insistence on DRM misplaced, just as I did with the music industry two decades ago. The lack of these security features does not automatically turn people at large into thieves and it’s insulting to think that it would. In fact, the sci-fi publisher Tor, one of the biggest names in the business and a subsidiary of Big Five publisher Macmillan, has put out its titles without DRM for almost fifteen years and I haven’t seen any significant indication that it’s harmed their business. Many of my books are also available directly from my publisher without DRM, and I don’t think that’s put a dent in my bottom line either.
I would love to be able to easily load any book I’ve ever purchased onto my Xteink devices—or, for that matter, any e-reader or e-reading app of my choice. There are, of course, extensive repositories of DRM-free public domain books available. Amazon, to its credit, does now allow you to download DRM-free copies of any book that you’ve purchased.7 I argued a few years back that this is an opportunity for Apple to distinguish its stagnant ebook marketplace from the competition. But for first-run books, your options are currently more limited (and sometimes harder to suss out).
I’d also love to somehow see support for Libby, the popular library ebook borrowing app, on Xteink devices, though I don’t see that happening anytime soon. But in my opinion, the bottom line is that more ways to read makes more readers of books, which in turn makes more customers of books.
But I digress.
The conclusion
The other week I was riding the train with my kid, our usual weekend pastime. As he was enjoying looking out the window, I was reading a book on the X3, magneted to the back of my iPhone 17 Pro. As we neared a stop, a woman nearby caught sight of it and marveled over it. “Is that a tiny e-reader?”
I extolled its virtues for a moment before they got off at their stop. But it told me one important thing: there’s a hunger for these types of devices. Because people who self-select as readers in this day and age are, above all, passionate. You have to make a choice to be sitting and reading a book when you could be watching TikTok or Instagram or listening to music or a podcast, all of which are constantly at your fingertips.
That’s where the X3 (and the X4) deliver. A Kindle or Kobo isn’t exactly bulky, but they’re not pocketable either. Being able to take your e-reader with you just as we stuffed mass market paperbacks in our back pockets in days gone by is freeing and fun. Now if the world might just shift a little bit more to meet us, maybe we could free ourselves a little further.
Fun fact: the X3’s display is 0.2 inches larger and has almost 60 percent higher pixel density than the screen on the original iPhone. ↩
Did I buy one? Yeah, I did. Because apparently these guys have my number. ↩
I should say that there are many other custom firmware projects for Xteink’s hardware, but Crosspoint is indisputably the most prominent and best supported. ↩
If you’re not familiar with KOreader, it’s an open source reading app that you can install on Kindle and Kobo, as well as other platforms; one of the features is its own syncing system. ↩
Though, to be frank, not as cheap as it used to be. ↩
Not unlike in music, the problem is that in order for someone to actually to consume your music or books, they must possess the means to unlock it. ↩
With some caveats. For example, if you’re in a household with someone else who’s purchased a DRM-free book, you can still read it on your Kindle, but only they can download the DRM-free version. ↩
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple is set to announce a new “Apple Upgrade” program (paywalled) next week to replace both its existing financing offerings and the iPhone Upgrade program. Details are still vague at present, but it will supposedly offer lease-style arrangements for not just iPhones, but Macs, iPads, and Apple Watches as well.
I’ve been in the iPhone Upgrade Program since Apple debuted it more than a decade ago. There have been plenty of ups and downs over that time—especially in the early years, when Apple was still figuring out how the whole program worked, but more recently it’s been pretty smooth.
And, I have to say, effective: I’ve had a new iPhone every year, without fail, and I’ve ended up paying only about half of what I would pay for a new phone outright.1
I do, however, have some concerns about the details Gurman does report. For one, the involvement of Klarna. They’re best known for their buy-now-pay-later service—a realm Apple was prepared to play in but ended up quickly abandoning. At the time I wondered if part of that about-face was Apple “perhaps not wanting to be in a business that can feel a bit troublesome.” But the company still subsequently partnered with other companies that offer that feature, like Affirm and, yes, Klarna.
Unlike the iPhone Upgrade program, this new offering will also reportedly not include AppleCare, meaning that you’ll have to shell out to protect the device you are leasing from Apple. There’s more than a whiff of “services revenue” around that, AppleCare now being somewhat more expensive than it was. No doubt some will choose not to go through the hassle and additional cost of purchasing it, which means a subset of those people will invariably damage their phones and incur additional payments to Apple. AppleCare as part of the iPhone Upgrade Program was fundamentally a good deal because it insured devices that Apple was probably getting back, whether for eventual refurbishment or just for parts.
Additionally, this part of Gurman’s story made me hesitate:
The Apple Upgrade service will work like a subscription and users can pay off the device early during their term, upgrade early to a new model or keep it at the end of the leasing period. In certain cases, those transactions will incur an additional fee. Like a car lease, it can also be returned at the end of the term. [emphasis added]
The iPhone Upgrade Program was, by comparison, straightforward. The cost of buying your phone was divvied up into 24 payments; after 12, you can upgrade. Loans were backed by Citizens Bank, but there were no interest charges or other fees. Hence it probably wasn’t a big money-maker. I don’t know what Apple’s deal with Klarna will be, but I’m skeptical that it’s going to be as consumer-friendly.
Finally, the other questionable part circling this is this report from 9to5Mac’s Marcus Mendes that code in iOS 27 suggests Apple will be able to restrict features of devices that fall behind on their payments:
The code describes a system called App Managed Features, which allows an authorized financing or provider app to enroll an iPhone and perform ongoing status checks.
If the contract is no longer in good standing, Apple’s system services can place the iPhone in “Restricted Mode,” which blocks access to most apps until the payment or contract issue is resolved, while keeping a small set of apps available.
Forget paying for heated seats, imagine if your car just decided not to offer CarPlay or, I don’t know, climate controls if you fell behind on your lease payments. This just feels, for lack of a better term, gross. Certainly predatory on lower income consumers who are most likely to take advantage of such a payment structure to buy an expensive phone.
As I said, details are still not concrete, so it’s always possible that this won’t be the exact situation. But if it is, I can say with some confidence that my days in Apple’s upgrade programs are at an end, and I certainly would be loath to recommend them to anybody.
How that compares to if I’d re-sold or traded in my old devices is, of course, an open question. But I avoided the hassle of having to do any of that. ↩
The season finale of Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey’s excellent Origin Story podcast is about the Luddites, and why the name doesn’t mean what you think it means.
It’s really about people reacting negatively to new technology that threatens their jobs, and therefore their livelihood. This might be extremely relevant to some modern technology topics, come to think of it.
While OpenAI readies a familar-sounding smart speaker, Jason and Myke break down the public betas for macOS, iOS, and watchOS, including Siri AI and new Photos features.
I dispense what might be called valuable insight to my friends, as well as in this public forum. My friends know the danger: they might become the topic of a column, which is true for my buddy Jeff, who left a bag containing his passport behind at a hotel. Fortunately, he had an AirTag in his bag. That was, however, just the beginning of the journey. (Jeff gave me permission to share his story.)1
To avoid suspense, I’ll tell you that Jeff doesn’t have his bag back, but will soon.
Grate news
Jeff was out of town on business for a few days—he’s one of those nearly extinct creatures called a “full-time technology reporter“—and was carrying his passport to Texas not because it’s another country (it hasn’t seceded yet), but because he lacks a Real ID-upgraded driver’s license. He had a small bag with a few items, including the passport and an AirTag, that he didn’t need to carry, so he used the hotel safe. There have been many articles written about how unsafe hotel safes are, but it feels as if you’re in a decent hotel, it’s still another bar for someone to get through to steal your stuff.
Leaving in a bit of a rush, Jeff didn’t retrieve the bag from the safe. When he realized it wasn’t with him, thousands of miles later, he was peeved. Shouldn’t the “left behind” feature in Find My have alerted him? Find My showed the bag’s location, however. For some reason, it appeared as if it were in the hotel parking lot. I catastrophized with him, assuming it was stolen. He called the hotel, which said it wasn’t in lost and found.
Jeff’s bag is in the parking lot, according to this map.
A staff member went out, looked in the parking lot, and said the rough location was a grate—perhaps the bag had been stolen and someone had found the AirTag and dropped it through the slats? Which would imply that a hotel employee or a thief had managed to get into Jeff’s room after he left, open the safe, leave the hotel, and rummage through the bag in the parking lot before absconding.
That wasn’t the case (or valise). The hotel called back the next day. The previous staffer didn’t know, for some reason, that valuable left-behind items were tagged and placed in a safe in the basement, presumably below or near the parking lot. His bag, containing his passport and other items, would be sent back to him.
Jeff’s experience reveals several aspects of the Find My tracking system that you can take advantage of in advance or use if you’ve lost something or left it behind.
Don’t leave me!
Jeff had the option enabled to know when he left his AirTag-equipped bag behind.
Every device and item you have can be set to alert you when you “leave it behind.” I believe this setting is enabled by default, though Apple’s documentation isn’t clear on this point. All of my devices and items have it enabled, and Jeff found it was turned on for all his gear. Here’s how to check:
In a native Find My app, select the device (like a Mac) or an item (an AirTag or other Find My network item) in the list of such things.
On an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, the action sheet appears. On a Mac, click the info (i) icon next to the item’s name on the map. In the upcoming version 27 operating system releases on all platforms, tap or click the More (…) button that appears when you select the device from the list.
Tap or click Notify When Left Behind, which should already show On. (In the 27 releases, tap or click When Left Behind.)
If disabled, turn it on.
Here’s a crucial detail: examine the “Notify me, except at” list. You can manually add to this set of locations (tap or click New Location). However, it primarily grows when you’re notified by an item or device being left behind, and then you tap or click in the notification to ignore it at that location. You are presented with the option to just exclude that item or device from that location or all of your equipment.
It’s very easy to approve that exclude-all button. (Jeff did not; his list didn’t include the hotel.) This can be convenient when you’re at a hotel, a friend’s house, or another location for a few days or frequently, and sometimes leave Find My-tracked stuff there. But once you ignore the location, you won’t get notified in the future. You can modify the list by hand, too.
Jeff may instead have been tripped up by the safe acting as a Faraday cage—a metal mesh or box that shields electromagnetic signals from passing through. The AirTag and other Find My items use Bluetooth to broadcast a rotating identifier at regular intervals.2 If the safe blocked that signal, Jeff’s iPhone lost contact with the AirTag the moment the bag went in—a few days before he left. With no fresh separation between the phone and the item at departure time, the alert may have lacked the necessary trigger. Jeff was on the verge of sharing the location with the hotel when they found it.
You can mark an item or device as lost, then share contact information, and a URL that someone else can use for a limited time to also find the hardware.
Apple says this takes longer than the few days Jeff was on his trip: “You can see its last known location for up to seven days in the Find My app.” After seven days, the device or item’s location will appear as “No location found” or “Offline.” Jeff could see the item’s location, which made the lack of notification seem like a bug.
Now for the grate part (not great part): once Jeff’s bag was removed from the safe in his former room, it would have been carried through the hotel and detected by every iPhone, iPad, or Mac nearby. When it reached the hotel’s lost-and-found safe, the rough location would likely still be relatively close before it entered that particular Faraday cage. At which point, when Jeff looked at Find My, he saw it at (or under) the parking lot.
Sack attack
The hotel works with a service that handles the return. Jeff paid both a whopping and reasonable $60 to have it sent two-day air back to him. Fair enough! Unfair enough, days after he paid, the bag is still at the hotel (as I write this). Jeff will, of course, follow its progress via Find My.
[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use/glennin our subscriber-only Discord community.]
Just so he doesn’t feel bad, I’ll note the time back in the day of paper airline tickets when I couldn’t find my tickets and had to rush to a United counter (in a hotel!) to get them reissued. When I came home, I put them in the secret place where I keep all my important stuff, where I also found my original “lost” tickets. ↩
The identifier is broadcast as the Bluetooth network name. To avoid being associated with an individual, Apple frequently rotates or changes the name. ↩
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