MacRumors

Apple today seeded the fourth beta of tvOS 27 to developers for testing purposes, with the update coming two weeks after Apple released the third beta.

The beta can be downloaded and installed through the Settings app on the Apple TV. A free developer account is required.

tvOS 27 has few new features compared to the other 27 software updates, but it does add a redesigned Podcasts app, options for larger text, and a more responsive Control Center.

AirPlaying to an ‌Apple TV‌ from another Apple device is faster, and apps and animations are smoother. You can also now see AppleCare coverage details in the Settings app.

More on the features in tvOS 27 can be found in our Apple TV roundup.

Apple today provided developers with the release candidate versions of upcoming watchOS 26.6, tvOS 26.6, and visionOS 26.6 betas for testing purposes. The software comes a week after Apple seeded the fifth betas. The RCs are the final version of the software that will be released to the public as long as no bugs are found during this final testing period.

The software updates are available through the Settings app on each device, and because these are developer betas, a free developer account is required.

There's no word on what's in the software as of yet. watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS often get few features in each new beta, with updates primarily focusing on bug fixes and performance improvements.

Four of Apple's retail stores in the U.S. are moving this month, although all of them will only be a short distance from their existing locations.

Apple Queens Center in Elmhurst, New York already moved to a temporary location in the shopping mall on Friday, July 17 while the existing store is remodeled. Apple did not indicate when the existing store will reopen.

Apple Renaissance at Colony Park in Ridgeland, Mississippi is moving to a new spot within the same shopping center on Friday, July 24 at 10 a.m. local time. Apple's new storefront will be located right in front of the Show Fountain.

Apple Briarwood in Ann Arbor, Michigan will be relocating to a new space at the mall on Friday, July 31 at 10 a.m. local time. The entrance to the new, larger store will be in front of The Lawn, a new outdoor space at the mall.

Also on July 31 at 10 a.m. local time, Apple The Promenade Shops at Briargate in Colorado Springs, Colorado is moving six doors down to the left.

Apple Sports was updated today with support for additional soccer leagues in Asia and Europe, plus the ability to see formations across most soccer leagues. The update arrives just one day after the 2026 FIFA World Cup final between Argentina and Spain.

The new leagues available in the app:

• Belgian Pro League (Belgium)
• Superliga (Denmark)
• Eredivisie (Netherlands)
• J1 League (Japan)
• Ekstraklasa (Poland)
• Scottish Premiership (Scotland)
• Swiss Super League (Switzerland)

In the latest version of the app, you can now view formations across most soccer leagues, making it easier to see the starting lineup for each match.

Apple Sports remains available on the iPhone only, with version 4.2 rolling out now.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says Apple's decision not to name its former design chief Jony Ive in its trade-secret lawsuit against OpenAI was likely a deliberate one, shaped in part by the company's relationship with Laurene Powell Jobs.

Apple's roughly 40-page complaint refers only to unnamed "former Apple leaders" rather than calling out Ive, even though he leads design on OpenAI's hardware lineup through his firm LoveFrom, built on the back of OpenAI's $6.5 billion acquisition of his startup io Products. The allegations instead center on former iPhone executive Tang Tan, now OpenAI's chief hardware officer, whom Apple accuses of coaching recruits to bypass security measures and bring Apple hardware into interviews for "show-and-tell" sessions.

In the latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman notes that Apple's decision likely reflects, at least in part, a genuine absence of evidence against Ive, who is reportedly not closely involved in OpenAI's day-to-day recruiting or engineering. He argues, however, that the relationship between Powell Jobs and Ive was also a significant factor. The two are described as close friends, with Ive having delivered a tribute at Steve Jobs' memorial service in 2011. Powell Jobs was an investor in io Products and remains a supporter of LoveFrom. According to Gurman, naming Ive in the complaint risked straining Apple's relationship with a figure who continues to carry considerable influence within the company.

Gurman cites Apple's June Worldwide Developers Conference as an illustration of that influence, noting that Powell Jobs sat in the front row alongside CEO Tim Cook and his successor John Ternus. He characterizes her placement as a visible show of support for Apple's leadership transition.

Gurman further suggests that the optics of naming Ive directly would have worked against Apple. Tan, he notes, is not widely known outside the industry, whereas Ive spent decades as one of Apple's most recognizable figures. Naming him could have generated public sympathy for Ive and invited criticism that Apple's lawsuit was motivated as much by past grievances as by trade-secret concerns. The lawsuit comes as more than 400 former Apple employees are now reported to work at OpenAI, whose first hardware product is expected to be a portable smart speaker aimed at competing with the iPhone in the long term.

Apple's AirPods Max 2 have hit $449.00 on Amazon today, down from $549.00. This sale is available in four colors and it's the best price we've seen on the headphones since Prime Day.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

Free delivery has the AirPods Max 2 arriving around July 25, but Prime members should see same-day delivery options in many locations. We haven't seen the AirPods Max 2 hit their all-time low price since June, so if you've been waiting for a solid deal, today's your chance to save on the headphones.

If you're on the hunt for more discounts, be sure to visit our Apple Deals roundup where we recap the best Apple-related bargains of the past week.

Apple's AirTag 2 is available for the all-time low price of $89.00 this week, down from $99.00. This sale is on the 4-Pack of the AirTag 2, and it's a match of the record low price we last tracked during Prime Day.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Amazon. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

The new AirTag is equipped with a second-generation Ultra Wideband chip, enabling the Precision Finding feature to work up to 50% farther away from an item compared to the previous-generation model.

If you're on the hunt for more discounts, be sure to visit our Apple Deals roundup where we recap the best Apple-related bargains of the past week.

Apple developed two Mac Pro models in recent years that never made it to market, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

In his latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman revealed that Apple internally developed two unreleased Mac Pro projects codenamed J170 and J190 before ultimately discontinuing the machine altogether.

As for new Mac Pro hardware, there were two additional models developed by Apple that never saw the light of day: J170 and J190. The former was a new Intel Corp. Mac Pro (yes, even when Apple was making its own silicon) to address certain uses. The latter was an M3 Ultra version that was supposed to launch alongside the M3 Ultra Mac Studio in early 2025.

J170 was apparently a new Intel-based Mac Pro, which is notable because Apple had already completed its transition to Apple silicon by the time the project was in active development. Gurman did not specify what "certain uses" the Intel model was meant to address, but its existence suggests Apple explored keeping an x86 option alive for specific professional workflows even years into the Apple silicon era.

J190, meanwhile, was said to be an M3 Ultra-equipped Mac Pro that was supposed to launch alongside the M3 Ultra Mac Studio in early 2025, but Apple shelved it before release. It would have paired the same chip found in that ‌Mac Studio‌ with the Mac Pro's unique-to-the-lineup PCIe expansion slots.

Neither model shipped, and Apple discontinued the Mac Pro entirely this year, ending its 20-year run. The Mac Pro had been left on the aging M2 Ultra chip from 2023 while the ‌Mac Studio‌ continued to receive refreshes, and it was priced roughly double that of a similarly configured ‌Mac Studio‌ despite offering essentially the same performance.

The J170 and J190 cancellations add to a growing list of shelved Mac Pro plans. Apple had also developed "Extreme" chip variants, processors with twice the CPU and GPU cores of Apple's Ultra chips, for a future Mac Pro before winding down those projects over cost and demand concerns.

Gurman said he does not expect Apple to bring back the Mac Pro "anytime soon — if ever." Apple is instead expected to refresh the ‌Mac Studio‌ with M5 Ultra chips as early as this fall.

Security firm Group-IB has identified a new piece of macOS malware in the wild that pressures users into surrendering their passwords via a barrage of fake system prompts.

Dubbed "ClickLock Stealer," the malware needs no exploits and no elevated privileges to work. Instead, the attack depends on the victim pasting a command into Terminal and running it. The command then executes a script, and everything else follows.

Group-IB did not directly observe how victims are lured into pasting the command, but based on the script's behavior, the firm believes it's served through a fake "ClickFix" page posing as a Cloudflare check or browser verification step. Such pages instruct visitors to copy a command and run it in Terminal as a supposed "verification requirement."

Once it's up and running, the script discreetly downloads several modules and shows a terminal-based loading animation mimicking a Cloudflare progress bar with browser verification. If a user declines the initial password dialog that appears, the malware starts locking system usage.

Specifically, the malware kills every visible app every 210 milliseconds while the password prompt remains on screen, and the rest of the desktop stays unusable until the victim gives in. Meanwhile, another loop suppresses macOS security notifications for roughly six hours.

If the user gives up and enters their password, a second, genuine macOS prompt is subsequently forced to the front, asking them to allow access to a Keychain item. Granting it hands over Chrome's "Safe Storage" AES key, which is what the browser uses to encrypt saved passwords and cookies.

With the login password and Chrome's encryption obtained, ClickLock then harvests browser credentials, Keychain data, password manager vaults, and any cryptocurrency wallets, and then sends it all to a Telegram bot. It also installs a hidden backdoor disguised as an iCloud process to give it continual access.

Group-IB says the campaign has been active since May 2026 and has targeted at least 100 victims across 33 countries. More than half of the victims were in Europe.

Apple has already updated macOS to try to defend against this class of attack before it can get underway. In macOS Tahoe 26.4, it added a warning that appears when the user attempts to paste a command into Terminal from a website, chat, or message, and blocks the paste until the user reviews it. (Opera browser also recently added a similar feature.)

In cases where macOS detects known malware, the paste is blocked outright with no override. Still, it should go without saying that no legitimate website will ever ask a user to paste a command into Terminal.

A new iPad mini coming by October will deliver a "major processor leap," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Previous rumors have indicated that the next iPad mini will be equipped with an A19 Pro chip or an A20 Pro chip, up from the A17 Pro in the current 2024 model. Other rumored features include an OLED display, a vibration-based speaker system, and increased water resistance.

Apple appears to be testing a hidden popover interface for Siri AI in the macOS 27 Golden Gate beta that surfaces Writing Tools and contextual actions whenever the user selects some text.

Spotted by a member of Reddit's r/MacOSBeta community, the floating icon appears at the top-left of the selected text, expanding when the pointer hovers over it to a compact popover of the tools and actions.

Currently, the popover offers the tools Rewrite, Proofread, "How does this sound?" and "Edit with Siri," plus options for creating key points and summarizing text. The contextual actions are based on the content selected, including things like adding contact details, composing a message or email, creating a calendar event, showing a location in Maps, and tracking flights or packages.

The Siri popover is disabled by default in macOS 27 developer beta 3 and public beta 1. Beta testers found it can be switched on through a private feature flag, but the feature is clearly unfinished. Some of the actions don't respond, suggesting Apple is still building out the underlying functionality.

Adventurous beta users can try it with the following Terminal command, followed by a restart:
sudo mkdir -p /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain && sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/WritingTools LightweightUI_macOS -dict Enabled -bool true

And to disable the interface, use this command followed by a restart:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/WritingTools LightweightUI_macOS -dict Enabled -bool false

Note that the UI's behavior is inconsistent, and there's no guarantee the interface will make it to the final release of macOS 27 Golden Gate this fall.

Apple is testing a new AI-powered "Live Notes" feature that can transcribe conversations between Genius Bar employees and customers at some of its stores, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The system is currently opt-in, meaning it is only active if both the employee and customer agree to use it.

"The transcript is then added to the employee's iPad as part of the record of the repair session," he said. "The goal is to save workers time and let them focus more on the customer, rather than taking notes throughout the appointment."

Apple once developed "M2 Extreme" and "M3 Extreme" chips for the Mac Pro, but it decided not to release them, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. He first reported on this topic in 2022, and he touched on it again in his Power On newsletter today.

"Extreme" chips would have had twice as many CPU and GPU cores as Apple's "Ultra" chips.

"The idea was to offer twice as many graphics and main processing cores as that chip," he said. "In the past, I've called this proposed processor the 'Extreme' chip, which to me is the most sensible Apple marketing name for something above Ultra."

Apple decided not to release the chips due to concerns over higher production costs and limited demand for the Mac Pro, according to Gurman.

Not only did Apple ultimately scrap the "Extreme" chips, but it discontinued the Mac Pro entirely this year following a 20-year run.

After raising prices on all Macs and iPads worldwide last month, Apple increased prices on more products and services on Friday.

Apple has raised prices on Apple Music and Apple One plans around the world, iCloud+ plans in eight countries, and on iPhone models in Japan.

• Apple Music Now Costs $11.99 as Apple Increases Subscription Prices
• Apple Raises iCloud+ Prices in 8 Countries
• Apple Raises iPhone Prices in Japan

In the U.S., only the prices of Apple Music and Apple One increased on Friday, with iCloud+ plans and iPhones not affected in that country for now.

Apple's retail store at the Briarwood Mall in Ann Arbor, Michigan will be relocating to a new space at the mall on Friday, July 31 at 10 a.m. local time, according to a notice on the store's page.

The entrance to the all-new, larger store will be in front of The Lawn, a new outdoor space at the mall.

Amazon today has the AirPods Pro 3 available for $199.99, down from $249.00. This is the best price we've seen on the AirPods Pro 3 since Prime Day ended last month, coming in around $20 higher when compared to that all-time low price, and it's accompanied by a solid deal on the AirPods 4.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

This model of the AirPods Pro launched in September 2025 and has 2x better Active Noise Cancellation than the previous generation, better audio quality, a revised fit that's meant to improve comfort and stability, Live Translation for in-person conversations, and heart rate sensing for workouts.

You can also get the AirPods 4 for $99.00, down from $129.00. This is a second-best price on the AirPods 4, which is the base model without Active Noise Cancellation. Amazon provides a July 24 estimated delivery date for free shipping, with faster delivery options for Prime members.

Additionally, you can get the AirPods 4 with ANC on sale for $144.99 right now on Amazon, down from $179.00. Similar to the base model, we haven't tracked a record low price on the AirPods 4 with ANC in months, making today's deal a solid second-best option for anyone shopping for AirPods this summer.

Head to our full Deals Roundup to get caught up with all of the latest deals and discounts that we've been tracking over the past week.

While the monthly and annual prices of AppleCare+ plans for Macs and iPads received a slight increase this week, AppleCare One continues to start at $19.99 per month in the U.S., making the multi-device plan even more valuable.

Launched in July 2025, AppleCare One allows you to cover up to three devices as part of a single subscription for $19.99 per month, and additional devices can be added for $5.99 each. AppleCare One offers repairs for accidental damage, 24/7 priority tech support, and theft and loss protection for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

If you have an iPhone 17 Pro, a MacBook Air with an M5 chip, and an iPad mini with an A17 Pro chip, for example, AppleCare+ plans with theft and loss coverage where applicable can cost up to $26.97 per month for those devices in total. As mentioned, AppleCare One still costs $19.99 per month, so you can save $6.98 per month in this scenario.

Notably, you can add Apple devices that you already own to an AppleCare One plan, so long as they are in good condition and less than four years old. A diagnostic check and/or inspection may be required to verify a device's condition.

AppleCare One remains available in the U.S. only.

Following through on its promise of a July release, Apple delivered the first public betas of iOS 27, macOS Golden Gate, and more this week, opening up testing to a broader audience.

This week also saw Apple's annual Back to School promotion go live in a number of countries, ongoing fallout from Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI alleging theft of trade secrets, rumors about Apple's iPad lineup, and more, so read on below for all of the details!

Top Stories

iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 Now Available to Public Beta Testers

Apple this week released the first public betas of iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27 Golden Gate, and more, allowing anyone with a compatible device to download and test the new software. The public betas come after roughly a month of developer beta testing as Apple heads toward an official launch in the fall.

If you're looking to test out the new public betas, check out our install guides for iOS 27 and macOS Golden Gate, and then take a look at our guides highlighting the best features to test out on iOS 27 and macOS Golden Gate.

Apple's 2026 Back to School Offer Goes Live in the US: Up to $150 Gift Card With Mac or iPad

Roughly a month later than in recent years, Apple's annual Back to School promotion is now live in the United States and many other countries.

The exact promotion varies from country to country with some offers including bonus Apple gift cards and others including a free accessory with the purchase of a new Mac or iPad.

In the U.S., education customers can receive a bonus $150 gift card with the purchase of a new MacBook Pro or a $100 gift card with the purchase of a new MacBook Air, iPad Pro, or iPad Air. The MacBook Neo, all desktop Macs, the iPad mini, and the entry-level iPad are not included in the promotion.

Apple Sues OpenAI for Stealing Trade Secrets to Build AI Hardware

Apple last week filed a blockbuster lawsuit accusing OpenAI of stealing Apple trade secrets in its efforts to recruit Apple employees and build its own AI-driven hardware.

Apple accused OpenAI leadership of creating a culture of hardware theft, and said OpenAI's hardware business is "rotten to its core" because of its reliance on information stolen from Apple.

OpenAI quickly responded to the lawsuit to state that it has "no interest in other companies' trade secrets," later stating that it is "not aware of any evidence that this complaint has merit."

New iPad Mini With Four Upgrades Reportedly Launching by October

Refresh timing for Apple's iPad lineup appears to be coming into focus, with Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reporting that Apple is aiming to introduce a revamped iPad mini with an OLED display and additional upgrades by October of this year.

The rest of the lineup, including updated entry-level iPad, mid-level iPad Air, and high-end iPad Pro models, should follow in the first half of 2027. Gurman says Apple is also working on two new Apple Pencil models to replace the existing lower-end Apple Pencil with USB-C port and higher-end Apple Pencil Pro.

Apple's 2026 Smart Home Lineup: New Apple TV, HomePod, and Home Hub

Now that Siri AI is ready to launch in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 Golden Gate, Apple can finally introduce new smart home products built to work with the smarter version of Siri.

Apple has multiple new home devices in development, several of which are rumored to launch before the end of the year. so check out our overview covering a new version of the Apple TV 4K, a smart home hub, a new HomePod, and a new HomePod mini.

Here's Why Apple is Reportedly Skipping M6 Pro and M6 Max Chips

Last month, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported that Apple is seeking to accelerate its M7 family of chips. It's a move that will see the company forgo releasing Pro, Max, and Ultra variants of its upcoming M6 family, leaving only a base M6 chip that will be quickly followed by an upgraded M7.

Gurman this week provided a bit more color on the situation, describing how significant advancements to AI-related capabilities have long been on Apple's roadmap for the M7 family and that the company wants to bring those to market as quickly as it can.

The M7 Ultra chip in particular is said to be a beast for AI tasks, and could be used by Apple internally to power Apple Intelligence servers. The chip could support up to 1.5TB of unified memory.

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