Apple’s former hardware engineering chief John Ternus officially became CEO of the company today, with the change now reflected on Apple’s leadership page.
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Tim Cook is now executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors, after a 15-year run as CEO.
John joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 and became a vice president of Hardware Engineering in 2013. He joined the executive team in 2021 as senior vice president of Hardware Engineering. Throughout his tenure at Apple, John has overseen hardware engineering work on a variety of groundbreaking products and was instrumental in the introduction of multiple new product lines, including iPad and AirPods, as well as many generations of products across iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch.
John has led much of the company’s focus in areas like reliability and durability, introducing new techniques that have made Apple products remarkably resilient. He has also driven much of Apple’s innovation in materials and hardware design that have reduced the carbon footprint of its products, including the creation of a new recycled aluminum compound that has been introduced across multiple product lines, the use of 3D-printed titanium in Apple Watch Ultra, and advancements in reparability that have increased the life spans of several Apple products.
Prior to Apple, John worked as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
This feels like Apple really trying to remind us of a previous product-focused CEO.
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I would not have predicted this [reliability and durability] angle being so prominent, so I can only assume it’s something that’s important to Ternus.
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One of the key tenets of the Cook era was Apple making a series of environmental pledges. I am very happy to see this called out as something Ternus is interested in.
Apple has set new CEO John Ternus’ target compensation at $58 million, according to an updated SEC filing [PDF]. Tim Cook’s target compensation is $47 million in his new role as executive chairman.
The MacVoices Live! panel examines a class action lawsuit over Apple Photos facial recognition, debating whether on-device processing, user consent, and biometric privacy laws justify the legal action. The conversation moves to TV tracking alternatives after TV Time’s shutdown, then shifts to Bending Spoons’ acquisition of Airtable, exploring the company’s growing portfolio, its business strategy, and the future of database tools in an era of AI-assisted coding development.
Apple’s stock rebounds after recent product price increases, prompting a discussion of customer loyalty, upgrade timing, refurbished options, and long-term confidence in the company. Chuck Joiner, David Ginsburg, Eric Bolden, Jim Rea, and Marty Jencius also examine why advanced Home features may require a 2TB iCloud+ plan, then debates Apple’s rumored foldable iPhone, including price, […]
Mike Schmitz previews his Road to Macstock session on starting a YouTube channel in 90 minutes, emphasizing creativity, repetition, audience connection, and practical tools over perfection. Mike discusses handling harsh comments, finding personal value in publishing, and using AI thoughtfully as a creative partner. His goal is to help get anyone on YouTube that wants to be there.
Only a few hours after Apple’s WWDC keynote, members of the MacPaw leadership team sat down for a conversation about Apple Intelligence, and Siri’s renewed promise. Topics touched on included privacy, developer access to user context, hybrid AI processing, Setapp’s role, and how AI is reshaping app creation, customer support, and software strategy. Participants included Oleksandr Kosovan, Founder and CEO?, Sergii Kryvoblotskyi, Director of AI and Research, Dmytro Melnyk, Chief Product Officer and Grant Belaire, Chief Marketing Officer.
At MacPaw’s Flip the Script event following Apple’s WWDC 2026 keynote, MacPaw executives discuss Apple Intelligence, Siri AI, privacy, local-first AI, developer access to user context, and the company’s shift toward AI platforms. The conversation also explores hybrid AI models, European limitations, parental controls, Google’s role, Setapp opportunities, and MacPaw’s credibility with users and developers. […]
A wide range of tech stories get the MacVoices treatment, starting with the quick sellout of the Steve Jobs commemorative coin and what strong MacBook Neo demand may say about Apple’s pricing, chip planning, and enterprise appeal. Chuck Joiner, David Ginsburg, Marty Jencius, Eric Bolden, Brian Flanigan-Arthurs, Jeff Gamet and Mark Fuccio also discuss Apple updates unexpectedly changing settings, a Canvas ransomware disruption affecting schools, Chrome’s hidden AI download, Google’s Liquid Glass similarities, Digg’s AI-focused return, and safer lithium coin batteries.
Nonetheless, when I send an email in Mail app, from a non-iCloud account to an non-iCloud account, Mail immediately triggers an iCloud connection, as revealed by Little Snitch.
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What could Mail be querying and saving in CloudKit when I’ve disabled Mail in iCloud?
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As you can see in my screenshot at the beginning of this blog post, I have Contacts turned off in iCloud settings, so my Previous Recipients list should not be synced to iCloud. Nonetheless, I followed the commenter’s suggestion of logging in Terminal. I saw log messages that referred to com.apple.mail.recents, which might indicate Previous Recipients and would certainly explain why this happens when I send an email.
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I do object to notifying Apple that I’ve just sent an email. That in itself seems like a violation of my privacy.
The settings are confusing, even more so than with System Preferences. If you go to System Settings ‣ Apple Account, it shows a round rect that says Mail and shows the Mail icon. If you click this, it lets you uncheck Sync this Mac for iCloud Mail. This mirrors the iCloud Mail checkbox that you get when you click See All to see the full list of apps. I don’t like how the top-level name and icon suggest that you’re going to a settings sheet for the Mail app, but then it actually gives you iCloud settings.
Importantly, there’s also anotherMail checkbox in that list. It’s easy to miss because, first, why would you expect to see twoMail checkboxes?
And, second, it’s not obvious that there are actually three lists: a bunch of “favorite” system apps, in non-alphabetical order, for some reason including lesser ones like Freeform and Image Playground; followed by a second list of system apps in alphabetical order; and then a third list of alphabetical third-party apps.
Mail is in the second list, along with (to me) other top-tier apps like Books and Maps. Anyway, this second Mail checkbox controls the syncing of non-mail Mail data such as rules and smart mailboxes. But not, apparently, according to Apple, the previous recipients.
The way Apple combines work and personal iCloud accounts left some employees able to access confidential documents after departing the company, reports The Information. The site spoke to more than half a dozen former Apple employees who were unknowingly left with access to sensitive content.
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Apple told The Information that the OpenAI lawsuit is unrelated to any files left available on iCloud and that it does not pursue legal claims against former employees who accidentally have Apple documents in their personal iCloud accounts.
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In a now-settled legal dispute, chip company Rivos claimed Apple intentionally lets former employees retain access to files “as part of a planned effort to generate a pretextual basis to sue the employees and their new employer for ‘stealing’ Apple material.” In the Rivos case, an employee was targeted for keeping work files in his personal iCloud account.
The documents included confidential material such as plans for product launch events. The former employees said they made no effort to retain access and unexpectedly found the files mixed with their personal iCloud data.
The problem reportedly grew from Apple’s practice of encouraging employees to connect their personal Apple IDs to company-funded iCloud storage.
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Apple also relied heavily on iMessage for workplace conversations and file sharing before rolling out Slack around 2019. Former employees could retain old iMessage conversations and attachments, while Apple could terminate their Slack access when they left.
If you use your personal Apple ID, you get a magic “Apple Work” folder in iCloud Drive. When you leave Apple, that “Apple Work” folder disappears. But any other files or folders that were shared with you that were outside that magic folder are still in your iCloud Drive, because it’s still your personal iCloud account.
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You still have the same Apple ID account, even though you no longer have an employee @apple.com email account. Overall, this is a humane way of dealing with digital identity. Your Apple ID account is you, the person, not “example@icloud.com”, one specific unique email address. And you, the person, may well have multiple email addresses — all of which can be associated with your one Apple ID account. That makes Apple IDs more nuanced and complicated than a simple mapping of one email address = one account. And it obviously makes access restrictions more complicated.
Yesterday, OpenAI released messages to show that Apple employees (with permission) retained access to the departing employee’s personal iCloud account so that they could access work files that were stored there. It’s just a mess that both the software and corporate policy encourage mixing everything in one account.
Apple doesn’t make formal product announcements or discuss future product plans during its quarterly financial results announcements. But every once in a while, it shares some details that offer a peek at what’s coming.
During Thursday’s Q3 2026 financial call, Apple indicated the higher iCloud+ tiers could be on the way. While it has already said it will offer some kind of iCloud+ tie-in to accommodate heavy AI usage, when Goldman Sachs’ Michael Ng asked about Apple Intelligence and “compute costs and the ability to recover some of those costs through iCloud+,” Apple CEO Tim Cook had this response:
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+ where people can buy up the stack on iCloud+, and we’ll see how the pickup for that is. But we could not be more excited about where the product is.
Details about the “upgrade possibilities” weren’t provided, but Apple’s plans aren’t a surprise. At WWDC26 last June, Apple demonstrated several AI features and noted that there would be daily usage limits, which expanded access available through iCloud+. But at that time, no further details were provided.
Apple is expected to officially release iOS 27 in September, around the same time the company unveils the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Ultra. Apple will likely announce these new iCloud+ plans at the same time. It’s unclear as to what Apple will offer to accommodate AI usage; iCloud+ currently offers 5GB of free storage, with upgrade plans up to 12TB, though other AI companies offer storage up to 100GB. It sounds like Apple will explore these higher storage options for iCloud+ plans primarily built for AI use.
Apple is planning to let users pay to increase their AI limits, with upgrade possibilities available through iCloud+.
During today's earnings call for the third fiscal quarter of 2026, Apple CEO Tim Cook said it's early, but the company expects to offer options for people who want to make heavy use of AI services.
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 we will have some kind of upgrade possibilities on iCloud+ where people can buy up the stack on iCloud+. We'll see how the pickup for that is.
At WWDC, Apple said there would be daily usage limits on features like Image Playground, but increased access would be available through iCloud+ plans. Cook's comments today suggest there may also be iCloud+ add-ons specifically for AI usage.
Apple hasn't offered any details on what it might charge to increase AI limits, and that's information that we might get when iOS 27 launches in September. Features like Siri AI are expected to remain free to use.
In an era where social media seems to be doing more harm than good, the Minimal Phone 2 seems like a really good idea. Billed as a distraction-free device, it’s a mobile phone with a physical keyboard that offers no social media access and only basic apps, including the ability to send and receive messages.
However, it’s still an Android phone, so when you send a chat message from the Minimal Phone 2, it naturally appears in a green bubble on an iPhone. As silly as it sounds, there’s a stigma that some iPhone users attach to Android phone users because iOS displays chat messages from Android phones as green bubbles instead of blue ones, the telltale indication that a message came from an Apple device.
There’s a fix for that, though, in case you’re worried about being a social outcast by your iPhone buddies. Andre Youkhna, the founder of The Minimal Company, points out that the Minimal Phone 2 can run OpenBubbles, which means messages for the phone appear as blue bubbles on iPhones. It even has a blue blinking indicator light on the front to let you know when one arrives.
OpenBubbles is an app that basically spoofs a Mac or iPhone that you can access, so that an Android phone can access Apple’s Messages, FaceTime, and iCloud Shared Albums (though it’s not clear if the latter two can be accessed by the Minimal Phone 2). If you don’t have an Apple device to spoof, you can sign up for OpenBubbles Hosted, which is $16.99 per month.
Doesn’t OpenBubble sound like something Apple would disapprove of? OpenBubbles has been around since 2020, so Apple would’ve sicced its lawyers on the company by now if it cared at all. Learn more about OpenBubbles. If you want to jump on the waitlist for Minimal Phone 2, you can sign up on the Minimal website.
I know there are options out there like Paddle, FastSpring, and Lemon Squeezy that have worked for many apps like mine over the years. But I also wanted something simple for my users. Not to mention Apple Pay was a must-have.
I believe all the services he mentions do support Apple Pay.
RevenueCat serves as the source of truth for whether or not a customer is licensed.
I create RevenueCat customer IDs from local iCloud identifiers (more specifically, calling userRecordID() on my CKContainer in CloudKit).
When the user makes a purchase, they earn an entitlement that I look for in Arborist to grant them a license.
He doesn’t need to run his own server, and the purchases are automatically tied to the user’s iCloud account, so there are no e-mails or serial numbers to deal with. On the other hand, well, it’s all dependent on the Apple Account.
The app, which helps manage Git worktrees, is shipping now.
As part of the upgrade, the Home app uses AI to generate summaries of motion alerts from compatible HomeKit Secure Video cameras.
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Apple likely requires the 2TB iCloud+ tier because HomeKit Secure Video already relies on iCloud+ storage tiers. The 2TB plan supports a larger number of cameras, and AI-generated video descriptions would add to Apple’s cloud processing costs.
That makes sense, but it seems odd because the iCloud tiers are named based on storage amounts, yet the feature isn’t tied to how much space you’re actually using. A lower iCloud plan with tons of free space doesn’t get the features, yet a nearly full 2 TB plan does. There are already restrictions where supporting more cameras requires higher plans, but that is at least quasi related to storage.
I reluctantly upgraded to a 2 TB family plan within the last year or so. We don’t store many files in iCloud, messages are set to auto-delete after a year, and I manually offload photos older than a year (except for hearted favorites). It’s hard to believe given how I remember the original 5 GB free tier once being sufficient, but staying under 200 GB became untenable without a lot of extra work. It doesn’t help that Live Photos sometimes gets inadvertently turned on, so that we’re storing all these little videos without realizing it.
In a significant victory for Apple, a U.S. federal judge has dismissed a proposed class-action lawsuit accusing the company of failing to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) through its iCloud storage service. The ruling relies heavily on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields online platforms from liability for user-generated content.
U.S. District Judge Noël Wise in San Jose, California, issued the decision late Monday, agreeing with Apple’s position that it is immune from the claims. The plaintiffs alleged that Apple did not take sufficient action to stop images of their childhood sexual abuse from being stored and shared on iCloud.
Key Details from the Case
The lawsuit, filed in 2024 by two plaintiffs using the pseudonyms Amy and Jessica, represented a class of 2,680 individuals with similar claims. It sought up to $32.8 billion in compensatory damages and a court order requiring changes to iCloud.
Judge Wise ruled that the claims treated Apple as an online publisher responsible for user content, placing them squarely under Section 230 protections. She emphasized, “Nothing in federal law requires Apple to proactively utilize available technology or develop new technology to identify and report child sexual abuse material on its cloud platform.”
In a notable statement, the judge added, “Lawmakers can fix this problem that is contributing to the exploitation of children. This Court cannot.”
The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning the plaintiffs cannot refile it.
Background and Apple’s Position
The suit claimed Apple knew about CSAM issues on iCloud, but chose not to deploy available detection tools. It referenced Apple’s 2021 announcement of the NeuralHash program for identifying such material, which was later abandoned in favor of end-to-end encryption—making detection more difficult. Apple has maintained that it has worked diligently to combat CSAM while prioritizing user privacy and security.
James Marsh, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said they are considering an appeal and exploring other legal avenues. He noted, “While the plaintiffs disagree with the judge’s conclusion on the law, we agree with her conclusion that Congress should do more to protect children online and address the skyrocketing harms from online exploitation.”
Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Broader Context
This ruling highlights ongoing debates over Section 230 and tech companies’ responsibilities regarding harmful content. Apple faces a similar lawsuit from West Virginia’s attorney general, described as the first of its kind by a government agency targeting iCloud’s role in CSAM distribution.
MacDailyNews Take: For those unfamiliar with the NeuralHash debacle, over which we were vehemently opposed, more here.
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