Paul Ford, in an op-ed for The New York Times (gift link):

All of the people I love hate this stuff, and all the people I hate love it. And yet, likely because of the same personality flaws that drew me to technology in the first place, I am annoyingly excited.

Hartley Charlton, MacRumors:

Apple invited select members of the media to the event in three major cities around the world. It is simply described as a “special Apple Experience,” and there is no further information about what it may entail. The invitation features a 3D Apple logo design composed of yellow, green, and blue discs.

It is notable that Apple is specifically using the word “experience,” rather than “event.” Unlike a full live-streamed event from Apple Park, the March 4 event in other cities is likely to be smaller in scale.

Among the products expected soon — either by annual schedule predictability, or via the rumor mill — are the iPhone 17e, an updated iPad Air (going from the M3 to M4), an updated base-model iPad (going from A16 to A18), updated MacBook Pros with the M5 Pro and Max, updated MacBook Airs (going from M4 to M5 — the M4 models were released in early March last year), and, per Gurman, the long-rumored new lower-cost MacBook with an A18 chip (a “MacBook e”, if you will, although I certainly don’t think that will be the name — my guess is Apple will just call it “MacBook” without an adjective).

What strikes me is that March 4 — the “experience” day — is a Wednesday. So my spitball guess is that they announce all these products via Newsroom press releases, day-by-day. Like, say, the iPhone 17e on Monday, new iPad(s) on Tuesday, and new MacBooks on Wednesday. And then the “experience” will be a hands-on thing with in-person demos. Spread the announcements out across a few days, but then have in-person events for members of the media to get a hands-on experience with all of them, station-by-station, without needing to produce an Apple Event keynote film.

Juli Clover: Starting with iOS 26.4, Stolen Device Protection will be enabled by default and turned on for all iPhone users. […] Stolen Device Protection requires additional authentication through Face ID or Touch ID to access certain iPhone features like the Passwords app, Lost mode in Find My , Safari purchases, and more. Some features […]

Tim Hardwick: Apple’s iOS 27 update will prioritize cleaning up the operating system’s internals, with engineers making changes that could result in better battery life, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The effort is said to be similar to what Apple did with its Snow Leopard Mac update years ago, and will involve removing old code, […]

Howard Oakley: [Y]ou’ll then be invited to choose from the available diagnostic suites according to your Mac’s hardware, from: Mac Resource Inspector, to test the main Mac hardware over a period of 1-7 minutes; Display Anomalies, for any built-in LCD panel; Keyboard, only when built-in; Trackpad, only when built-in; Touch ID, for any built-in Touch […]