Amazon is back offering $150 off the new M5 MacBook Air 15″, a fantastic large screen laptop that is incredibly powerful, lightweight, and versatile. Why pay more than you have to? Check out the deals below, in all available color and configurations:
The latest iOS versions for iPhone include a custom gradient wallpaper generator, allowing you to make some nice looking wallpapers of your choice, but many users are likely to miss the feature because it’s tucked into the LGBTQ Pride wallpaper collection on the iPhone.
Want a multicolor gradient blue wallpaper? A greyscale gradient? A gradient of greens? Gradients of the entire rainbow? The new Pride wallpaper allows for complete color customization, offering an easy way to have a unique wallpaper designed just for you, with whatever colors you’d like to see.
You must have iOS 26.5 or newer on your iPhone to have this gradient wallpaper generator feature available to you. Once your iPhone is up to date, making your custom wallpaper is easy:
Apple is launching a promotion whereby they will give you $250 in cash back for signing up for a new Apple Card credit card and buying AirPods Pro 3, but there’s a bit of a catch and series of hoops you must jump through.
To get the full $250 cash back, you must buy the AirPods Pro and then make 10+ purchases a month for the next year to which will be rewarded by $25 increments, effectively making the AirPods Pro free over the year.
“For a limited time, earn back the cost of AirPods Pro 3, up to $250 total Bonus Daily Cash. Get a new Apple Card and buy AirPods Pro 3 at Apple by June 15. Starting July 1, each month you make 10+ purchases you’ll earn $25 Bonus Daily Cash, through April 30, 2027.*”
There’s a lot of fine print, so you’ll want to review all of that carefully, before signing up for the Apple Card (or any credit card for that matter). Given how catastrophic high interest debt can be, this offer should really only be considered by individuals who can responsibly manage credit card usage, ideally by paying off the card balance in full every month to avoid high interest payments.
Basically this means if you do not yet have an Apple Card, and you’re responsible at managing credit and don’t mind making many purchases with the card every month for a year (which is fairly easy to accomplish if you use it as your primary card), you will be able to sign up for the Apple Card and receive a free set of AirPods Pro 3, but again, as long as you meet all the required terms and conditions of the card and promo.
Apple Card offers 1% cash back on standard purchases with the physical card, and between 2% and 3% cash back on purchases made with Apple Pay. Those who have an Apple Card can also open an Apple Savings Account which offers a reasonably high yield of 3.5%, which the cash back can be deposited directly into.
Apple rarely offers promotions, discounts, or freebies, so this is somewhat unusual.
If you’re the tech tinkerer type and you don’t mind potentially voiding your MacBook Neo warranty, you can perform a little quick modification to your Neo that can make it perform up to 20% faster under heavy workloads. This is a pretty simple mod that aims to reduce thermal throttling behavior of the CPU, and it’s achieved by adhering a thermal pad to the A18 chip that allows it to dissipate heat through the aluminum enclosure on the MacBook Neo.
About 10 minutes of your time to have the mod installed and ready to go
The upside? Performance gains by reducing CPU throttling under load, reported online at up to 20% improvements under heavy load, and 10-12+ FPS higher frame rates in games.
The downside? Your MacBook Neo bottom case is going to get a lot warmer, since the thermal pad is now dissipating heat to the aluminum chassis. Oh, and it’s likely this voids your MacBook Neo warranty, and it might reduce battery longevity as well since batteries do not like heat.
The MacBook Neo is a phenomenal laptop for most users but if you want to push it a bit further while keeping costs low, and you have a tinkerer mindset, the thermal mod might be something you’re interested in. Thermal throttling is completely normal behavior for every modern device and computer, but for fanless Macs like the Neo and Air, these thermal mods can boost their performance a bit further.
If you’re a Mac user of the Chrome web browser, as many are, you might be interested to know that the latest versions of Chrome default to downloading a large local Gemini AI model that can take up around 4GB of storage space.
While some users may appreciate and use the local Chrome Gemini AI model, which is used for things like autofill suggestions, scam detection, web page summaries, and writing tools, other users may find it either unnecessary because they don’t use AI, use another AI agent like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, a local model like LLama, or perhaps because they already have Apple Intelligence on their Mac to perform similar tasks.
We’ll show you how to stop the Google Chrome browser form downloading a large local AI model on your Mac (and this applies to Windows too if you have a PC using Chrome too).
The latest versions of iOS and iPadOS support a feature that allow you to easily see who and what devices are using data on Personal Hotspot. This is particularly useful if you find yourself using Personal Hotspot often, and perhaps find yourself hitting overages or getting throttled from Personal Hotspot data usage over cellular.
By checking device specific Personal Hotspot data usage on your iPhone or iPad, you can take the guesswork and mystery out of what connected device is consuming data, and, take any appropriate action based on that information.
You will need to be running iOS 26.4.1 or newer to have this feature on your iPhone, and of course you will need to have Personal Hotspot feature active on your iPhone or cellular iPad.
If your iPhone suddenly starts recording a voice message seemingly at random while you’re in the Messages app, you’re probably unintentionally triggering a feature called Raise to Listen. This feature is part of the iOS Messages app, where lifting the iPhone to your ear can automatically start to play or record an audio message. The trouble is that this feature is not well understood, and is often triggered in situations where you’re not holding the iPhone up to your ear at all, resulting in random voice and audio recordings, sometimes of personal or embarrassing situations. Some users may find the recording of voice messages to happen spontaneously when they’re exiting a text message conversation thread or tapping on the back button in Messages, others may find it activates seemingly so at random they can’t determine any consistency into why their iPhone is randomly recording them.
For some iPhone users who understand and use Raise to Listen the feature is helpful and convenient, but for others, it can be very confusing, frustrating, or invading, especially when the iPhone is unexpectedly recording audio.
We’ll explain what is happening, why the iPhone is recording audio and voice messages seemingly at random, and how to turn this feature off to fix the problem if you don’t want to accidentally record audio again when using the messages app.
The M5 MacBook Pro is available with up to a $200 discount on Amazon right now, and $150 off other models too. If you want the most powerful portable Mac there is, these are the machines for you:
Apple has released an array of new system software updates for older model iPhone and iPad hardware, alongside the iOS 26.5 update for newer devices. These updates include important security fixes, and are therefore recommended to install onto your eligible devices.
The updates arrive as iOS 18.7.9, iPadOS 17.7.11, iOS 16.7.16, and iOS 15.8.8, each with their iOS/iPadOS equivalent, and are available for various model iPhone and iPad devices that are not eligible to run iOS 26.5.
Specifically, you will find the following system software updates available, and for these particular devices:
iOS 18.7.9 and iPadOS 18.7.9 for iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, iPad 7th generation
iPadOS 17.7.11 for iPad Pro 12.9-inch 2nd generation, iPad Pro 10.5-inch, and iPad 6th generation
iOS 16.7.16 and iPadOS 16.7.16 for iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, iPad 5th generation, iPad Pro 9.7-inch, and iPad Pro 12.9-inch 1st generation
iOS 15.8.8 and iPadOS 15.8.8 for iPhone 6s (all models), iPhone 7 (all models), iPhone SE (1st generation), iPad Air 2, iPad mini (4th generation), and iPod touch (7th generation)
Again, these updates are separate from the freshly released iOS 26.5 and iPadOS 26.5 updates which also include the same security patches, but for newer model iPhone and iPad hardware.
Apple has released MacOS Sequoia 15.7.7 and MacOS Sonoma 14.8.7 for users who are not running or interested in updating to MacOS Tahoe 26.5. The Sequoia and Sonoma updates include security patches only, and no other changes or features are along for the ride.
Curiously, the versioning is MacOS Sequoia 15.7.7, and MacOS Sonoma 14.8.7, but there was never any MacOS Sequoia 15.7.6 or MacOS Sonoma 14.8.6 update, suggesting that perhaps those were interim updates that got skipped for one reason or another. Whatever the case, if you are confused by the jump directly to .7 and skipping of .6 for Sequoia and Sonoma, you certainly aren’t alone.
MacOS Tahoe 26.5 has been released by Apple. The MacOS 26.5 software update is available for Mac users running the Tahoe operating system and includes a handful of changes, bug fixes, and security patches.
Mac users not running MacOS Tahoe 26 will find security updates available to MacOS Sequoia 15.7.6 and MacOS Sonoma 14.8.6.
Additionally, Apple also released iOS 26.5 for iPhone, iPadOS 26.5 for iPad, watchOS 26.5 for Apple Watch, tvOS 26.5 for Apple TV, and other system software updates as well, including for older model iPhone and iPad devices.
Apple has released iOS 26.5 for iPhone, along with ipadOS 26.5 for iPad. The new software updates include bug fixes, security patches, and a few new features, including encrypted RCS messaging on supported carriers (basically for encrypted texting between iPhone and Android users), a new customizable Pride wallpaper, and “Suggested Places” in Apple Maps.
Separately, Apple has also released macOS Tahoe 26.5 for Mac, watchOS 26.5 for Apple Watch, tvOS 26.5 for Apple TV, and a variety of other software updates for their various system software versions. Be sure to check your devices for any available updates, because even older model iPhone and iPad devices that do not support iOS 26 have updates available for them.
Full release notes for iOS 26.5, as well as IPSW firmware file download links, are further below.
Remember the good old days of dial-up internet access? Where you’d connect your Mac (or PC) to a modem, then the phone line, and your computer would then dial into a number to connect to the outside world? Maybe you’d be dialing into AOL, CompuServe, eWorld, Netcom, or any of those now defunct ISP’s, and that’s how, once upon a time, we all got online. Those days may be gone thanks to the conveniences of broadband, wi-fi, and high speed cellular like LTE and 5G, but if you long for the glory days of dialup, you’ll find this project from Jeff Geerling to be up your alley; with a Raspberry Pi and the right tools, you can make your own dial-up ISP!
A second release canndidate build has been released for iOS 26.5 and iPadOS 26.5 (but not for MacOS 26.5 which is still the original 26.5 RC build). Participating beta testers can find the latest RC build to download on their enrolled devices.
Typically a second RC build is issued if there was a last minute bug or security patch applied, or perhaps a last minute feature added. Regardless, it’s likely that the final versions of iOS 26.5, iPadOS 26.5, and MacOS Tahoe 26.5, will be released next week to everyone.
iOS 26.5 will include support for encrypted RCS text messages, a new multicolor Pride wallpaper, and support for “Suggested Places” in Apple Maps.
If you’re looking for a new unique way to spruce up your Mac desktop visual experience, you might enjoy trying out live wallpapers with a free Mac app called Wallpaper Reactor Lite. Live wallpapers are much like they sound like; active moving wallpaper images rather than a single static image. It’s a neat visual effect, though it may be distracting to some users, depending on the wallpaper you pick.
Amazon continues to be one of the only places to get the wildly popular MacBook Neo at not only a small discount, but also with rapid shipping, arriving as soon as the next day for many color and storage configurations. This contrasts to Apple, where delivery estimates for MacBook Neo is several weeks out due to immense demand and popularity.
The menu bar on a Mac tends to fill up with clutter and icons over time. Between system icons like Spotlight, the date and clock, wi-fi, third party apps, various utilities, and popular tools, it’s quite easy for the menu bar to become a crowded strip of icons that’s distracting and harder to interact with.
The cluttering of the Mac menu bar is particularly a nuisance on modern Mac laptops with the annoying display Notch that cuts directly into the menu bar, because not only does the Notch cut down into the screen, it also ends up obstructing menu bar icons that end up hidden behind it and completely inaccessible.
Fortunately the latest versions of MacOS give the user some options to declutter the menu bar and remove and hide icons easily, allowing you to quickly improve your menu bar experience.
The Apple laptop lineup recently expanded with the all new MacBook Neo, an entry-level Mac laptop aimed at students and more casual everyday users, while the MacBook Air recently got upgraded with the powerful M5 chip, making it more capable than ever before. This is leading many Mac shoppers to ask the obvious shoppers question; should I buy a MacBook Neo? Or should I spend more and get a MacBook Air?
Both the MacBook Neo and MacBook Air are lightweight, silent and fanless, both run the latest MacOS, and both computers are more than capable of handling every day computing tasks. But there are important differences between the two Macs, in price, performance, features, and long-term compatibility.
If you’re trying to decide between the Neo and the Air for general use, studying, light gaming, word processing and spreadsheets, occasional photo editing, and more, here’s how they compare.
