iOS 26 beta 9 has been released by Apple for iPhone, along with iPadOS 26 beta 9 for iPad, MacOS Tahoe 26 beta 9, and other OS 26 beta 9 updates for the rest of the Apple device suite. New betas typically arrive for developers first and the same build is released for public beta users soon after.
iOS 26 features a new translucenct and shiny interface appearance called Liquid Glass, new icon cusdtomizations, new wallpapers, a redesigned lock screen, new ringtone options, group chat polling and custom backgrounds in Messages app, Phone app improvements, enhancements to CarPlay, enhancements to Apple Intelligence, Preview app for iPhone and iPad, and more. iPadOS 26 includes the same features for iPad but also a new multitasking system and app windowing, a menubar, and the Phone app arrives on iPad too.
The final version of iOS 26 for iPhone and iPadOS 26 for iPad is set to be released this fall, according to Apple. Users who want to get an earlier experience with the new operating systems can install iOS 26 beta on iPhone or iPadOS 26 beta on iPad, but most people would be better served waiting for the final version to be released in the coming weeks.
Windows 95 was made widely available to the general public 30 years ago this week, on August 24, 1995. 30 years! It might not seem too thrilling today, but Windows 95 was a pretty big deal back in the day, being the first half-decent (ie: Mac-like) GUI to arrive on PC and a huge leap in usability from Windows 3.11. If you lived anywhere near a beige box PC in the mid-90s, you probably remember either running Windows 95 yourself or perhaps on a friends or colleagues computer. You got the Start menu, multitasking, a taskbar, and a much more user friendly interface that borrowed quite a bit from the Mac. Sure it might have crashed and given you a not entirely infrequent BSOD, but it was all part of the charm.
You might even remember when Bill Gates, Steve Balmer, and co, were dancing around on stage to the Rolling Stone’s song “Start Me Up” during the initial Windows 95 launch, here’s a short little clip of the Microsoft leadership team in action:
And what better way to celebrate than to run Windows 95 directly on your modern Mac, by simply downloading and launching a self-contained Windows 95 as an application that runs impressively well?
It’s a full Windows 95 installation and it runs great direclty atop MacOS, give it a try:
Celebrate even further by downloading this fun BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) wallpaper and setting it on your Mac, iPad, Windows PC, iPhone, Android, whatever:
Cheers to ex-Microsoft employee Brad Silverberg who reminded the world of the 30th anniversary of Windows 95 on X (the site formerly known as Twitter), we are over there too.
Today is the 30th anniversary of the release of Windows 95. It was a very memorable day. Special thanks to the team and all those who made it happen. pic.twitter.com/R8kCmKceuI
The Commodore 64 has been reborn from the dusty bins of nostalgia, with a slightly modernized twist. Retro computing enthusiasts and longtime computer users may recall the Commodore 64 as a fun way to tinker with tech, play games, and do some coding, and with the new Commodore 64 project you get all of that but with some nice modern amenities too, like HDMI output, wi-fi, ethernet, and USB. You can play over 10,000 original games. You can plugin your old cartridges, CRT screens, and disk drives. You can do a little coding with BASIC. The possibilities for retro computing fun are endless, it’s up to you to see where it takes you.
Amazon is taking $200 off the price of M4 MacBook Air models, with the 13″ starting at $799, and the 15″ starting at $999. With the powerful M4 chip with Apple Intelligence support, 13″ or 15″ LCD display (easy on the eyes for PWM sensitive!), all day battery life, Center Stage with FaceTime camera, backlit keyboard, MagSafe charging, two USB-C/Thunderbolt ports, dual display support, and more, these are fantastic and popular laptops for good reason.
VintageApple has long been a fantastic collection of retro Apple and Mac materials, including old magazines, catalogs, and user guides, and now they have added a whopper collection of over 150 vintage Mac programming books available for free.
If you’re a Mac user who installed a Safari beta version on a stable version of MacOS to experiment with beta Safari features, it’s possible that you might want to downgrade the Safari beta back to a Safari stable version. This can be tricky because if you install a beta version of Safari onto MacOS, it will default to overwriting the stable version of Safari on that Mac. So what should you do in this situation, how can you downgrade from a Safari beta back to a Safari stable build on MacOS? That’s what we’re going to address in this article.
For example, lets say you installed Safari 26 beta onto MacOS Sequoia 15.6, but you find that Safari 26 beta is too buggy to use reliably, or you just don’t like it for whatever reason. But by installing the Safari 26 beta onto Sequoia, you overwrote the stable Safari build and now you’re stuck with the beta, right? Wrong! There are a few different ways to return the Safari stable version to your Mac, as we’ll show you here.
AirPods 4 feature the iconic earbud design, and have many great features like gesture support, spatial audio, voice isolation, water and sweat resistance, Siri support, and USB-C charging.
Apple has returned Blood Oyxgen monitoring to Apple Watch making it a great time to get a new Apple Watch. Get Apple Watch Series 10 for $299 at $100 off, or take $150 off the Apple Watch Ultra 2 for just $650 down from $799. With an always-on display, fitness and activity tracking, heart rate monitor, ECG, irregular heart beat detection, crash and fall detection, emergency SOS, ovulation tracking, GPS, one handed operation with pinch gestures, water resistance, voice control, Siri commands, and, again, the return of Blood Oxygen monitoring, and more, these are fantastic wearables.
The M3 iPad Air is continuing to be offered at a $150 discount by Amazon, with the 13″ version being available for just $649 (down from $799) and the 11″ version being offered at $449 (down from $599).
iPad Air 11″ from $449, 13″ from $649 ($150 Off MSRP)
M3 iPad Air has Apple intelligence support, 128GB storage, 12MP front and rear cameras, Touch ID, LCD retina display, great battery life, support for Apple Pencil Pro, support for Apple Magic Keyboard, and more. These devices pair great with Apple Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil Pro, which are also available at discounts.
Amazon is taking $200 off the price of M4 MacBook Air models, with the 13″ starting at $799, and the 15″ starting at $999. With the powerful M4 chip with Apple Intelligence support, 13″ or 15″ LCD display (easy on the eyes for PWM sensitive!), all day battery life, Center Stage with FaceTime camera, backlit keyboard, MagSafe charging, two USB-C/Thunderbolt ports, dual display support, and more, these are fantastic and popular laptops for good reason.
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Cancel your vacations, tell your boss you can’t come in that day, reschedule your wedding, whatever it takes, because Apple has announced that a special event is scheduled for Tuesday, September 9, in the year 2025. They are calling the event “Awe Dropping”, and while it’s a theoretical possibility that we could shift into an alternate dimension where Apple will unveil a pet cloned dinosaur or gravitic space travel to Alpha Centauri powered by Siri (oh no), what’s far more likely is that we will remain in the realm of our known reality and the September 9 event will be focused on launching a new iPhone, as is typically the case with September events announced by Apple.
The September 9 event is set for 10 AM PT, and you’ll be able to watch the event live online from the Apple website and probably YouTube too. This means you could disrupt your family vacation, gather the entire family around a device screen, and sit around it to watch the event together. Or maybe you have Jury Duty that day, but instead of missing the event you could share the amazing September 9 event with your fellow jurors, or even the entire courtroom! Think of the possibilities, and do not let anything get in the way of watching the most important event in the history of the world.
It’s likely that Apple will follow the tech giant corporate-cheesy post-Covid script of overly produced pre-recordered videos with lots of skits, presentations, and endless hyperbole about the new products being launched, so grab your cans of Cheez Whiz and add the event to your calendar. Will it be the best iPhone ever? The fastest iPhone ever? The (insert marketing gobbledygook lingo here) iPhone ever? The potential adjectives and descriptors for the new iPhone are limitless!
Current rumors and speculation, and historical precedent, suggest the September event will focus on the introduction of the newest iPhone lineup, assumed to be called iPhone 17 (though there’s a rumor whisper that says Apple will switch to year labels for iPhone too, making this iPhone 26 just like iOS 26 – who knows). This could include iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Air, the latter of which is expected to be a thinner and lighter device. And, as will surely be a huge shock to everyone on planet Earth, the next generation iPhone models will probably be better than the prior generation models with improved processors and cameras. I, for one, cannot contain my excitement.
There are also rumors, coming deep from the seedy underground layers and global secret meeting rooms of the Apple Rumor Mill Illuminati Masters of the Universe, of new Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3 launching at the event, with some speculation suggesting those devices might get a modernized redesign, and more features as well. And there might be new AirPods coming as well. Those devices, if updated, would also be expected to be improved from the ones they are replacing.
We will also likely discover the precise release dates of iOS 26, ipadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, tvOS 26, and watchOS 26. Typically the newest iPhone ships with the newest iOS version, so that could be as soon as September 12, or the following week.
As for reading the tea leaves of the Apple event logo, some tea leaf rumors suggest the iPhone 17 Pro series might include a thermal camera feature, and if you’ve ever seen the 80’s action flick Predator, you already know the potential there, but like all rumors and speculation, it’s just that – rumors and speculation.
Stay tuned, we will all discover the latest and greatest from Apple soon! And don’t worry, by the time I’m writing about the actual unveilings of the event, some of my obnoxious snark may dissipate, if I don’t get fired before then for writing this.
Apple has released the fifth public beta versions of iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, tvOS 26, and visionOS 26. The new builds match the just released 8th beta versions aimed at developers.
The primary focus of the entire OS 26 suite is the introduction of the new Liquid Glass interface appearance which features more translucency and shininess throughout the interface, along with new wallpapers, screen savers, lock screens, and myriad other new features and changes to the operating system.
The M3 iPad Air is continuing to be offered at a $150 discount by Amazon, with the 13″ version being available for just $649 (down from $799) and the 11″ version being offered at $449 (down from $599). These prices are available for a limited time of unknown duration, so if you’re in the market for a new powerful iPad, these are sure to fit the bill. Separately, Amazon is also offering nice discounts on the base model iPad, and iPad Mini too.
iPad Air 11″ from $449, 13″ from $649 ($150 Off MSRP)
M3 iPad Air has Apple intelligence support, 128GB storage, 12MP front and rear cameras, Touch ID, LCD retina display, great battery life, support for Apple Pencil Pro, support for Apple Magic Keyboard, and more. These devices pair great with Apple Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil Pro, which are also available at discounts.
The Apple Pencil Pro is compatible with the M3 iPad Air series as well as the M4 iPad Pro models, whereas the Apple Magic Keyboard is only for the iPad Air. Yes the iPad accessories compatibility situation is wildly confusing and Apple needs to simplify it.
Apple has released iOS 26 beta 8 for iPhone and iPadOS 26 beta 8 for iPad. The new beta build has arrived to developers first, and a public beta version is likely soon to follow.
Separately, Apple released MacOS Tahoe 26 beta 8 along with beta 8 for the rest of the OS 26 suite. The 8th beta is historically often the final beta version in major system software testing cycles for Apple before a release candidate build, and it’s possible this applies here too. Apple has previously stated that iOS 26, and the rest of the OS 26 lineup, will be released this fall.
iOS 26 includes a new shiny and translucent Liquid Glass interface appearance scheme that offers new icon customization options along with new wallpapers, a revamped lock screen, custom backgrounds in Messages app, group chat polling in Messages, Phone app improvements, CarPlay enhancements, imporvements to Apple Intelligence, new ringtone options, Preview app, and more. For iPadOS 26 all the same is included, along with new multitasking capabilities and windowing of apps, along with an iPad menubar that is Mac-esque.
MacOS Tahoe 26 beta 8 has been released by Apple, the new beta build arrives for users enrolled in the beta testing program first, and is typically soon followed by the same build being made available to public beta testers (update: public beta 5 is out).
Apple also issued iOS 26 beta 8 for iPhone and iPad, watchOS 26 beta 8, and tvOS 26 beta 8. Historically, the 8th beta build is often the final beta version for a major system software release from Apple, so it’s possible these 8th betas are what will be released to the general public in the near future. Apple has previously said that macOS Tahoe 26 will be released this fall, along with iOS 26, ipadOS 26, and the rest of the OS 26 suite.
The most significant change with MacOS Tahoe 26 is the new translucent and shiny Liquid Glass interface appearance complete with new icon customizations, new wallpaper options, new screen saver choices, and a boring new Macintosh HD icon design. There are also new features too, including a clipboard history feature included in Spotlight, Launchpad is removed directly but instead is available as an option with Spotlight too, and the Phone app and Journal app come to the Mac for the first time. There are also custom backgrounds and group chat polling in the Messages app similar to what WhatsApp offers, and Live Activities from iPhone arrive on the Mac too, amongst other smaller various changes and features. MacOS Tahoe is compatible with a variety of Macs and can be installed now by curious users as MacOS Tahoe 26 beta, though the beta experience is best reserved for more advanced Mac users.
Apple has a routine of opening new stores and celebrating those store openings with custom wallpapers, and they’re back at it again. This time around, Apple is opening a new store in Hebbal, India, and has released a nifty peacock feather Apple logo wallpaper to go along for the ride.
Click the image below to open the desktop version in full size at a whopping 6020 × 3911 resolution, or click the links below that to open full sized versions for iPhone, iPad, Desktop, and to visit the Hebbal store page on Apple.com.
If you’d like to check out more wallpaper posts go ahead and browse around, and don’t miss some of the other fancy store opening wallpapers from Apple too, like the nice tropical flora Miami wallpaper and more.
Running a Large Language Model (LLM) like ChatGPT’s gpt-oss locally can have multiple benefits, including providing offline access to an AI language model tool like GPT. If you’re a fan of LLMs, AI tools, and ChatGPT, you might be interested in running a local instance of gpt-oss, but even if you’re fairly new to AI tools it could be intriguing to you to experiment with. Additionally, if you’re one of the ChatGPT users who are not thrilled about GPT-5 and want to revert back to GPT-4, running gpt-oss on your Mac provides another avenue to do that.
We’re going to walk through a really simple way to get gpt-oss, ChatGPT’s open model, running locally on your Mac. (And yes you can run gpt-oss on Windows or Linux too using basically the same methods outlined below, but we’re obviously focusing on MacOS here).
Amazon is offering some really great deals on the pro model Mac laptops, with the M4 Max MacBook Pro and M4 Pro MacBook Pro models both deeply discounted in 16″ and 14″ display sizes, with the top-end models offering the biggest discounts.
Apple has issued important security updates for iPhone and iPad, versioned as iOS 18.6.2 and iPadOS 18.6.2. The security update addresses an actively exploited security hole pertaining to malicious image files, and given the huge number of people who share and receive funny pictures, memes, gifs, and other image files online, it’s a good idea to install this update as soon as you can onto your devices. With all that said, it’s unlikely that most people are impacted by this particular exploit, but nonetheless it’s still good security practice to install these type of updates right away when possible.
The same security patch is also available for older iPad users with iPadOS 17.7.10, along with Mac users versioned as MacOS Sequoia 15.6.1, MacOS Sonoma 14.7.8, and macOS Ventura 13.7.8.
No new features or other changes are included in the update, it is strictly security oriented.
Apple has issued macOS Sequoia 15.6.1 as a security update for Mac users running the Sequoia operating system. Apple says the update contains “important security fixes” and is therefore recommended for all users.
The particular exploit that has been patched pertains to malicious image files, and given that a huge number of people regularly encounter image files and share things like memes and funny pictures that are found online, it’s a good idea to install these updates as soon as you can on your Apple devices. While it’s unlikely that you have been impacted by this particular exploit, it’s still good practice to install these type of security updates onto your devices right away.
If you’ve installed the iOS 26 beta on your iPhone or iPadOS 26 beta onto iPad, and found it a little too buggy, unstable, or you’re simply not interested in iOS 26 any longer, you’re certainly not alone. While many adventurous Apple users jump onto the beta train to explore the new operating systems, it’s not unusual to discover that the experience isn’t always the smoothest ride, or that you have some critical incompatibility that makes the beta unworkable for you. Fortunately, it is pretty easy to downgrade from iOS 26 beta back to a stable release of iOS 18, as we’ll show you here.
