Tim Cook (tweet, MacRumors):
Fifty years ago in a small garage, a big idea was born. Apple was founded on the simple notion that technology should be personal, and that belief — radical at the time — changed everything.
[…]
At Apple, we’re more focused on building tomorrow than remembering yesterday. But we couldn’t let this milestone pass without thanking the millions of people who make Apple what it is today — our incredible teams around the world, our developer community, and every customer who has joined us on this journey. Your ideas inspire our work. Your trust drives us to do better. Your stories remind us of all we can accomplish when we think different.
Joe Rossignol:
Apple today announced that it will celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary over the coming weeks, but it has yet to reveal any specific plans.
Previously:
Anniversary Apple Tim Cook
Drew McCormack (February):
Had my Core Data sync framework, Ensembles, pretty much in maintenance mode. With Apple moving on to SwiftData, didn’t seem any point to modernizing the 15 year old ObjC codebase. But I had the thought to give Claude a shot at it, and in 2 days I’ve got a complete port: Swift 6, structured concurrency instead of OperationQueue. Even adding a bunch of new backends (Box, pCloud, S3). Will make it available as Ensembles 3 to subscribers soon.
Drew McCormack:
The core idea behind Ensembles is that sync doesn’t need a central server. Each device keeps its own copy of the Core Data store. The framework watches your saves, generates compact change logs, and when changes arrive from another device, it merges them in. There’s no server that understands your data model. No hosting costs. Each device is an equal peer.
[…]
More recently, the web community has started to embrace this approach and given it a name: local-first. I attended the inaugural Local-First Conf in Berlin in 2024, and gave a short talk about my journey with Ensembles — at that point more than 10 years old. It was good to see so much energy around ideas that some of us had relied on for a long time.
[…]
One thing that made this feasible: Ensembles had extensive tests. Without those, I wouldn’t have attempted it. When you’re rewriting a sync framework — where bugs mean data loss — you need to know things actually work. The tests were the safety net. Claude Code would produce Swift code, the tests would catch problems, and I’d fix things up. Without that feedback loop, this would have been reckless.
Ensembles 3:
Ensembles is the only local-first sync framework for Core Data and SwiftData. Unlike most sync frameworks, it requires no custom server — your data syncs as opaque files through storage your users already have: CloudKit, Google Drive, OneDrive, WebDAV, or any custom backend.
[…]
Ensembles 3 is a modern rewrite of the Ensembles Objective-C framework in pure Swift, with async/await concurrency and Swift Package Manager distribution. It is fully backward compatible with Ensembles 2 cloud data.
[…]
No vendor can inspect, lock, or hold your data hostage.
Unlike Apple’s own CloudKit-based solutions:
Full Core Data fidelity — ordered relationships work. Validation rules preserved. No model compromises required.
The tradeoff is that your objects don’t really live in the cloud where they can be searched or fetched on-demand. The cloud is treated as dumb storage, and you have to pull down a full local copy before you can really do anything.
The CloudKit backend is free. It’s $99/year for additional backends and encryption or $499/year for full source access and code-level support.
Previously:
Amazon S3 Artificial Intelligence Claude CloudKit Core Data Core Data Ensembles Google Drive iOS iOS 26 Mac macOS Tahoe 26 Microsoft OneDrive Objective-C Programming Software Rewrite Swift Concurrency Swift Programming Language SwiftData Syncing Testing
Wade Tregaskis:
Nobody else has even tried to make a bright 6k display – in fact, every non-Apple 6k display is outright dim by modern display standards – they’re barely brighter than the original 5k display in the 2015 iMac!
[…]
For the price of one Apple Pro Display XDR you can get four Asus ProArt 6k displays.
I suspect there’s only two 6k panel models in existence – the one used by Apple & Asus, and the one used by LG & Dell.
I did not realize that the LG and Dell displays actually have more pixels than the Apple and ASUS ones. I’m still surprised that Apple discontinued the Pro Display XDR without introducing a replacement.
Garrett Murray:
I am so disappointed Apple decided to discontinue the 32-inch Pro Display XDR. After so many years, I assumed Apple would at least maintain the product and push an update similar to the 27-inch version they just released, but obviously they didn’t see enough traction with this high-end, limited-audience display and just decided to scrap it entirely. As Wade said, while the new 27-inch Studio Display XDR features are welcome improvements, downgrading to a 27-inch main display is not something I’m interested in. I will likely just accept the lower brightness and contrast ratios of something like the LG UltraFine evo because, for me, the screen real estate and density are far too valuable.
Previously:
Display Mac Pro Display XDR Studio Display XDR
John Gruber:
By default, the MacOS accent color in System Settings → Appearance defaults to a color that matches the Neo’s hardware — a fun trick Apple has been using for decades.
David Deller:
This is the first I’m learning that System Settings sometimes has a special accent color only available to a Mac with a particular hardware colorway. (I’m boring and always buy silver devices, otherwise I think I would have noticed.)
I’m a bit annoyed that I didn’t know to test with these colors. I test with all the other colors.
Mahdi Bchatnia:
Accents is an app that lets you use the iMac/MacBook Neo accent colors on any Mac.
Marko Zivkovic:
The MacBook Neo ships with a special build of macOS 26.3, AppleInsider as predicted. All other Macs will need macOS 26.4 beta 4 to get the wallpapers made for the machine.
Previously:
Accents Color Design iMac Mac Mac App MacBook Neo macOS Tahoe 26 System Preferences Testing
