The PowerBook line has received a lot of attention from a rumors/speculation standpoint during the past few months, primarily due to the fact that it is the oldest product in Apple's current product line... with an introduction date of April 2002.
April 29, 2002 brought us a top end Powerbook at 800MHz, pushing down the previous top-end configuration of 667 to become the low-end model. Before April, the previous two Powerbooks updates occured at 9 and 6 months intervals, respectively.
Following previous patterns, Powerbooks can be expected to be updated between October and January... which, conveniently corresponds to rumors circulating in the community.
PowerPage originally reported that new Powerbooks were not to be expected until MacWorld SF in January... with speed bumps and the addition of Bluetooth as a standard feature.
Astute readers, however, noted educational discounts for the Powerbooks that end on September 25th. This coupled with repeated reports of low supplies of reseller Powerbooks have added fuel to the fire.
MacOS Rumors and Spymac.com supply hints that Powerbooks will be coming prior to MWSF, but are unable to provide concrete dates. These hints are correlated by our own sources.
Kodawarisan provides the most definitive date, reporting that the 3rd week of October will bring us 800MHz/1GHz Powerbooks with an external Superdrive option.
The PowerBook is most certainly the next line from Apple to get an update. Based on the information available, pay attention to the coming weeks.
Thursday January 23, 2025 6:41 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 should be released to the public this week, following beta testing since mid-December. While the software update is a relatively minor one, it still includes a handful of new features, changes, and bug fixes for iPhones.
Below, we recap everything new in iOS 18.3.
Notification Summary Changes
Examples of inaccurate Apple Intelligence notification summaries
Apple Intelligence...
Friday January 24, 2025 1:55 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is set to release iOS 18.3 next week, bringing further refinements to Apple Intelligence features, a couple of neat new capabilities to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 devices, and bug fixes.
While not quite as packed with new features as Apple's preceding iOS 18 point releases, iOS 18.3 still introduces capabilities that aim to make your iPhone smarter and more intuitive. Below, we've...
Friday January 24, 2025 8:16 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 is expected to be widely released next week, and that means the first iOS 18.4 beta for iPhones should be just around the corner.
Apple has previously implied that iOS 18.4 will be released in April, as that is when it promised to make Apple Intelligence available in even more languages.
Below, we outline what to expect from iOS 18.4 so far.
Apple Intelligence for Siri
Siri ...
Thursday January 23, 2025 7:32 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Walmart still does not accept Apple Pay or other NFC payments at its more than 4,600 stores across the U.S., and it stood firm on its reasoning for that today.
A spokesperson for Walmart today informed MacRumors that its position on contactless payments has not changed since we last reached out about the matter in 2022. The big-box retailer said it remains focused on its own convenient...
Wednesday January 22, 2025 6:01 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
A new Apple TV is expected to be released later this year. In this article, we recap rumored features and changes for the device.
The next Apple TV will be equipped with Apple's own combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. He said the chip supports Wi-Fi 6E, which would be an upgrade over the current Apple TV's standard Wi-Fi 6 support. Wi-Fi 6E extends the...
Tuesday January 21, 2025 4:31 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 18.3 today, and with it comes release notes confirming what's new. While we knew about several of the features that are in the update, there are some lesser known tweaks and bug fixes.
The update adds new Visual Intelligence features for iPhone 16 models, it tweaks Notification summaries on all...
Friday January 24, 2025 9:09 am PST by Juli Clover
The upcoming iPhone 17 models that Apple plans to release this year will not feature a smaller Dynamic Island, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said today.
On social media, he said that he is expecting the size of the Dynamic Island to remain "largely unchanged" across the iPhone 17 lineup. His statement is contrary to prior rumors that we've heard about planned changes for the iPhone 17 models.
...
Sunday January 26, 2025 7:52 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple continues to explore the idea of releasing camera-equipped AirPods in the future, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman only briefly mentioned the possibility of AirPods gaining tiny cameras, as part of his Power On newsletter intro this week, focused on Apple's future wearables ambitions. He did not explain what the cameras would be used for.
The tiny cameras would not be...
Saturday January 25, 2025 5:07 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple's retail stores will be rolling out "merchandise/floor marketing updates" next week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman did not explicitly say if the store updates are related to any upcoming product announcements, but he did mention that next week is around the time that Apple rolls out its annual Black Unity watch band for the Apple Watch.
In each of the past four years, ...
