MacRumors

Apple today provided developers with the fourth beta of an upcoming macOS Sequoia 15.4 update for testing purposes. The new beta is available a week after Apple released the third beta.

Registered developers can opt-in to the ‌macOS Sequoia‌ beta through the Software Update section of the System Settings app. An Apple ID associated with an Apple Developer account is required to get the beta.

‌macOS Sequoia‌ 15.4 brings Mail Categorization to the Mac for the first time, reorganizing the Mail app into dedicated categories like transactions, updates, promotions, and primary, a category that surfaces the most important emails first. The update brings a range of new emoji characters to the Mac.

For Apple News+ subscribers, there is a dedicated News+ Food section with recipes, articles about restaurants, and other related content. There's a new Sketch style in Image Playground, the option to create Memory Movies in the Photos app, and Apple Intelligence is expanding to new languages.

Apple plans to release ‌macOS Sequoia‌ 15.4 in early April.

Apple today seeded the fourth betas of upcoming iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 updates to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming a week after Apple released the third betas.

iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 can be downloaded from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software Update.

With iOS 18.4, Apple is adding the Priority Notifications Apple Intelligence feature, which is designed to determine which of your notifications are the most important, highlighting them in an easy-to-see dedicated section on the Lock Screen.

The update includes a new Apple News+ Food section for ‌Apple News‌+ subscribers, plus it adds the Sketch style to Image Playground so you can generate images that look hand drawn. ‌Apple Intelligence‌ is also available in more languages, including French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese (simplified), along with localized English for Singapore and India.

There are new emoji characters, and a dedicated Vision Pro app that allows Vision Pro owners to find and download content, manage the headset, control guest experiences, and more, right from the iPhone.

Mail Categorization has expanded to the iPad, and there's a new Ambient Music feature for playing relaxing music from Control Center. There are a number of other smaller features too, with details available in our iOS 18.4 features guide.

Apple plans to release iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 in early April.

Apple today provided developers with the fourth betas of upcoming visionOS 2.4, tvOS 18.4, and watchOS 11.4 updates for testing purposes. The software is available a week after Apple seeded the third betas.

The betas are available to registered developers, and can be downloaded from the Settings app on each device.

Of the three new software betas, the visionOS 2.4 update is the most notable because it brings Apple Intelligence to the Vision Pro for the first time. ‌Apple Intelligence‌ features available in visionOS include Writing Tools, Genmoji, Memory Movie, Image Playground, Priority Notifications, and ChatGPT integration.

The update will include a dedicated Spatial Gallery app, which will offer a curated selection of spatial videos, photos, and panoramas from artists, filmmakers, and photographers. Apple is also bringing a Vision Pro app to the iPhone for Vision Pro management, and it will let users find and download apps, add content to a watch list, and more.

With visionOS 2.4 and iOS 18.4, an ‌iPhone‌ can be used to set up Guest Mode on the Vision Pro, making it much easier to let people try out the headset. When a guest puts on the Vision Pro, a prompt appears on the ‌iPhone‌, and the Vision Pro owner is able to choose what apps the guest can use and can see what the guest is doing via AirPlay.

Apple plans to release visionOS 2.4, tvOS 18.4, and watchOS 11.4 in early April.

1Password has introduced new deals on a few of its plans this week, offering up to 50 percent off the password management app. With these sales you can get 25 percent off 1Password for Individuals and 50 percent off 1Password for Families.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with 1Password. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

The Individual plan is now priced at $2.24 per month with annual billing, down from $2.99 per month, and the Families plan is now priced at $2.49 per month with annual billing, down from $4.99 per month. Each plan comes with a 14 day free trial to 1Password.

These deals are available only to new 1Password customers, and the discounted prices are available only for the first year of your new 1Password plan with annual billing. Once the first year ends, the plans will return to their regular prices.

1Password is a password management app that is compatible across Apple devices, including iPhone and Mac. It allows you to create and store strong passwords across all of your most important online accounts, and alert you when your passwords are compromised.

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.

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In an investor research note today with British bank Barclays, analyst Tim Long said Apple's first foldable iPhone could have a starting price in the $2,300 range in the United States, which would make it by far the most expensive iPhone model ever.

If the first foldable iPhone starts at $2,299, that means it would cost nearly twice as much as the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which starts at $1,199.

Long shared this pricing estimate following a recent trip to Asia, where his team met with hardware manufacturers. He said there is increasing discussion within the supply chain about a foldable iPhone launching in late 2026 to early 2027, but he believes that the device's higher starting price would unsurprisingly limit sales volume.

Earlier this month, Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted that the first foldable iPhone would be priced between $2,000 and $2,500, so multiple analysts agree that the device will cost at least a few thousand dollars. Kuo believes there could still be strong demand for the foldable iPhone despite its higher price, however, provided that the device's quality meets expectations. For example, Apple releasing a foldable smartphone without a visible crease in the screen would be a major breakthrough.

Kuo said the first foldable iPhone would feature a 7.8-inch inner display, a 5.5-inch outer display, two rear cameras, one front camera, a Touch ID power button instead of Face ID, and a high-density battery. He expects the device to be as thin as 4.5mm when unfolded, and between 9mm and 9.5mm when folded. He expects the device to have a titanium exterior, but the hinge would use a mix of titanium and stainless steel.

Kuo said the foldable iPhone would enter mass production in the fourth quarter of 2026.

With the foldable iPhone at least a year and a half away, keep in mind that this pricing estimate is surely just an educated guess.

YouTuber Dave Lee of Dave2D fame has demonstrated how Apple's new Mac Studio equipped with an M3 Ultra chip can efficiently run a huge version of the DeepSeek R1 AI model locally, provided that users spec the machine with the maximum 512GB of memory.

According to Lee's testing, the 671 billion parameter AI model can be executed directly on Apple's high-end workstation, but it requires substantial memory resources, consuming 404GB of storage and requiring the manual allocation of 448GB of video RAM through Terminal commands.

The M3 Ultra's unified memory architecture is key to this performance, allowing the system to handle a 4-bit quantized version of DeepSeek R1 efficiently. The quantization slightly reduces accuracy, but it maintains all parameters and delivers approximately 17-18 tokens per second, which is sufficient for many practical applications.

Perhaps most impressively, the Mac Studio accomplishes this while consuming under 200 watts of power. Comparable performance on traditional PC hardware would require multiple GPUs drawing approximately ten times more electricity.

The capability to run such advanced AI models locally offers privacy advantages for sensitive applications like healthcare data analysis, where sending information to cloud services raises security concerns.

However, this performance doesn't come cheap – a Mac Studio configured with M3 Ultra and 512GB of RAM starts at around $10,000. Fully maxed out, an M3 Ultra Mac Studio with 16TB of SSD storage and an Apple M3 Ultra chip with 32-core CPU, 80-core GPU, and 32-core Neural Engine costs a cool $14,099. Of course, for organizations requiring local AI processing of sensitive data, the Mac Studio offers a relatively power-efficient solution compared to alternative hardware configurations.

Apple says the M3 Ultra is the fastest Mac chip it has ever released, thanks to its strategy of fusing two M3 Max chips together using the company's "UltraFusion" technology. This makes the chip's specs double that of the M3 Max.

Apple prototyped a larger ultra-slim iPhone 17 Air with a 6.9-inch display, but ultimately decided not to go ahead with the device because of fears that it could be susceptible to bending, according to a new report.

Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, writing in his latest Power On newsletter:

When it first started work on the phone, it prototyped a device with a 6.9-inch screen — matching the Pro Max. Apple pulled the plug on that over fears that a thin device with a giant screen would be susceptible to bending. The company suffered such a controversy in 2014 — "Bendgate" — when the iPhone 6 Plus would sometimes warp when in a tight pocket.

Earlier this month, we reported on a rumor out of China claiming that the iPhone 17 Air shares the same dimensions as the iPhone 17 Pro Max, with the only difference being in the thickness of the devices. It's quite possible the rumor had its origins in Apple's canned prototype.

Corroborating rumors indicate that the iPhone 17 Air that Apple will launch in September will feature a 6.6-inch display with 120Hz ProMotion support, a Dynamic Island, an A19 chip, a single 48-megapixel rear camera, and Apple's custom-made C1 modem. Gurman has been told that the device may start at roughly $899 in the U.S., which is the same price point as the iPhone 16 Plus that the ultra-thin device is believed to be replacing in Apple's smartphone lineup.

Audi has enabled support for Apple's digital car key feature in its latest A6 Avant e-tron model, bringing Apple Car Keys to the automaker's electric car platform for the first time (via Mac4Ever).

Car Keys allows an iPhone or Apple Watch with NFC capabilities or Ultra Wideband to unlock a vehicle through the Wallet app. A digital version of a car key is stored in Wallet, and unlocking can be done simply by holding an Apple Watch or ‌iPhone‌ near a compatible vehicle's NFC reader.

A tap on the door handle is enough to initiate an unlock. Face ID authentication is a security option, but Apple also offers an Express Mode that eliminates the need to authenticate for a faster unlocking process.

The Audi A6 e-tron is the second model on on Premium Platform Electric (PPE) platform. Audi shares its PPE with Porsche, and it is expected that all the next vehicles in the group will support digital car keys.

Code changes discovered last October by MacRumors in Apple's Wallet app backend indicated that Apple has been preparing support for digital car keys for certain Volvo, Polestar, and Audi vehicles.

Apple introduced ‌digital car key support‌ in 2022, and select car brands like BMW, BYD, Hyundai/Genesis/Kia, Lotus, Mercedes-Benz, and RAM have implemented support for the feature‌. Apple maintains a full list of vehicles that support ‌car keys‌ on its CarPlay model availability webpage.

Apple's manufacturing partner Foxconn plans to begin assembling AirPods at its factory in Hyderabad, India in April, the Press Trust of India said today.

The report did not indicate which AirPods models will be manufactured in India, but it did say that all units produced will be exported to other countries.

In 2023, Foxconn agreed to start assembling AirPods in India, and it is now ready to start.

AirPods production in India will further diversify Apple's supply chain. The company and its manufacturing partners have been gradually assembling more products in countries such as India and Vietnam in recent years, including select iPhone and Mac models.

Even with the push into additional countries, Apple still heavily relies on China and Taiwan for manufacturing.

Apple's first two foldable devices recently entered the New Product Introduction (NPI) phase at Foxconn, according to analyst Jeff Pu.

In a research note today with GF Securities, Pu said mass production of the foldable devices is slated to begin in the second half of 2026.

The analyst believes the foldable devices will enter an early prototyping stage this April.

Pu did not provide any specific details about the two foldable devices. He is likely referring to Apple's first foldable iPhone, which is rumored to have up to an 8-inch inner display, along with a foldable iPad with up to a 19-inch screen.

Pu said the iPhone shipment outlook in 2025 is expected to be "lukewarm," due in part to Apple delaying personalized Siri features until some point "in the coming year." Looking ahead, he expects the foldable devices to boost Foxconn's business in 2026.

Rumors about foldable iPhones and iPads have been circulating for many years, and it appears that the devices are finally getting closer to launching, barring major setbacks. Depending on exactly when mass production begins in the second half of 2026, the devices could launch either later next year, or at some point in 2027.

Australian tech enthusiast Sonny Dickson today shared photos of dummy models for all four iPhone 17 models launching later this year.

Dummy models are often based on leaked designs and dimensions, and they allow accessory makers to prepare cases for upcoming iPhone models.

In line with previous rumors, the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max each have an elongated rear camera bump, housing three camera lenses, an LED camera flash, and a microphone. The so-called iPhone 17 Air has a similar rear camera bump, but with only a single lens. Last, the regular iPhone 17 has the same design as the iPhone 16.

These designs are starting to look like the real deal, based on several reports, mockups, leaked CADs, and dummy models over the past few months.

Notably, these dummy models reveal a few potential features for the iPhone 17 Air that we had yet to hear about, including MagSafe and the Action button. There were some concerns that the iPhone 17 Air might lack MagSafe due to its ultra-thin design, but it appears the device will offer the feature after all, if these dummy models are accurate.

The inclusion of an Action button instead of a Ring/Silent switch is not much of a surprise, but it is still good to see the first evidence of this change.

A report earlier today said the iPhone 17 Air will also have a Camera Control button, and the dummy model reflects that.

A side-by-side view of the dummy models reveals that the iPhone 17 Air will look noticeably thinner than the other three iPhone 17 models.

As usual, Apple should announce its new iPhone lineup in September.

Apple today shared a trailer for Someday, an upcoming short film by Spike Jonze. The full-length video will be available to watch on YouTube starting on Tuesday, and it serves as an ad for the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation.

The film stars actor Pedro Pascal, who is known for his roles as The Mandalorian in the Disney+ series of the same name, Joel Miller in the HBO post-apocalyptic drama series The Last of Us, Javier Peña in the Netflix crime series Narcos, and more.

AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation launched in September.

Apple is rumored to be planning a second-generation Studio Display with mini-LED backlighting for release later this year, or early next year. That monitor is codenamed J427 within Apple, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

In his Power On newsletter today, Gurman said that Apple seemingly has even bigger plans in regards to external displays.

Specifically, he said that Apple is working on an additional monitor, codenamed J527.

However, he is not sure what this additional monitor will end up being, so it is a mystery for now. He speculated that Apple could be developing two different second-generation Studio Display models, and will eventually choose which one to launch. Alternatively, he guessed that the J527 model could be a second-generation Pro Display XDR.

The current Pro Display XDR launched in 2019, and the Studio Display followed in 2022.

Apple is planning some of the "biggest iOS and macOS redesigns in its history," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

In his Power On newsletter today, Gurman reiterated that iOS 19 will have a visionOS-like design with more transparent interfaces:

The new interfaces will adopt the design principles introduced in visionOS, the software for Apple's Vision Pro headset. That includes greater transparency and new types of windows and buttons — and that should make all Apple devices feel more consistent and familiar.

iOS 19's more transparent design has already been leaked for the Camera app, and the new look will likely extend to notifications and more.

The visionOS-like design changes have been rumored by three sources so far, so there is a good chance that this rumor is true.

Similar design changes are coming to the iPad and Mac with iPadOS 19 and macOS 16, respectively, according to Gurman.

He previously said the iOS 19 design changes will be the biggest since iOS 7.

Apple should announce iOS 19 at WWDC 2025 in June, with the first developer beta to follow shortly after the keynote. The software update will be released to the general public in September, alongside the iPhone 17 series.

When will the iPhone get under-screen Face ID? Rumors continue to surface.

In April 2023, display industry analyst Ross Young shared a roadmap showing that iPhone 17 Pro models would feature under-display Face ID. In May 2024, however, Young said he heard this change had been delayed until 2026. If so, that means that under-screen Face ID could debut on the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max next year.

In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman offered a similar timeframe. He said that by 2026 or 2027, the Pro models should have a smaller Dynamic Island, as a result of Apple moving more components within it to under the display.

iPhone 18 Pro models with under-screen Face ID would presumably still have a pinhole at the top of the display for the front camera, similar to newer Android smartphones like Google's Pixel 9 and Samsung's Galaxy S25.

In the past, Young has said that he expects iPhones to eventually have both under-screen Face ID and an under-screen front camera. If so, the iPhone would finally have a true all-screen design, as Apple's former design chief Jony Ive dreamed of.

Apple considered launching the iPhone 17 Air without a USB-C charging port, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

In his Power On newsletter today, Gurman said that while Apple ultimately decided against making the iPhone 17 Air its first iPhone model without a charging port, the idea is still on the table for future iPhone models.

He said the iPhone 17 Air will "foreshadow a move to slimmer models without charging ports."

"The iPhone 17 Air represents the beginning of a sea change for Apple," he wrote. "Apple executives say that if this new iPhone is successful, the company intends to again attempt to make port-free iPhones and move more of its models to this slimmer approach."

Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted that the first iPhone without a charging port would launch all the way back in 2021, but that did not happen. Apple has shifted from its custom Lightning port to the universal USB-C port on iPhones over the past few years, but the wait for an iPhone without a charging port at all continues.

P.S. Hopefully the iPhone 17 Air will support MagSafe, unlike the iPhone 16e.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman today shared some new details about the rumored iPhone 17 Air.

In his Power On newsletter, Gurman said he was told that the device may start at roughly $899 in the U.S., which means that it would occupy the same price point as the iPhone 16 Plus. This would make sense, as it has been widely rumored that the Air model will take over the Plus model's spot in the iPhone lineup going forward.

Despite its rumored ultra-thin and lightweight design, Gurman said the iPhone 17 Air will provide battery life that is "on par with current iPhones," although he did not mention any specific models. Presumably, this means that the device's battery life will be equal to the lowest-end iPhone 16 model, at a minimum. That would be surprisingly good.

Gurman said Apple has made hardware and software optimizations to make the iPhone 17 Air more power efficient. There are three rumored features for the iPhone 17 Air that should contribute to the device offering longer battery life than one might have imagined, including a higher-density battery, Apple's power-efficient C1 modem, and the lack of an Ultra Wide camera providing more internal space for a larger battery.

Gurman said the iPhone 17 Air will be equipped with the Camera Control button that debuted on all iPhone 16 models last year. This is the first time that this feature has been rumored for the device. The button provides quick access to the camera and related settings, but some people find it to be a nuisance and disable it.

He also revealed that the iPhone 17 Air's bezels around the screen will apparently be around as thin as the ones on the iPhone 16 Pro models.

A few other iPhone 17 Air specifications that he mentioned had already been rumored previously, including a 6.6-inch display with 120Hz ProMotion support, a Dynamic Island, a standard A19 chip instead of an A19 Pro chip, a single 48-megapixel rear camera, the C1 modem, and the lack of a physical SIM card slot seemingly worldwide.

Unsurprisingly, look for the iPhone 17 Air to launch in September this year.

Amazon this weekend has major discounts on a few AirPods models, including all-time low prices on the AirPods 4. You can get the base AirPods 4 for $99.99 on Amazon, down from $129.00.

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.

Amazon also has the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation for $148.99, down from $179.00. We did track these at a lower price during the 2024 holiday season, but that deal never returned and today's is the best we've seen so far in 2025.

Additionally, you can get the AirPods Pro 2 for $169.99 today on Amazon, down from $249.00. This is the lowest price we've tracked so far in 2025 on the AirPods Pro 2, and it's an overall solid second-best price.

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.

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