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Apple lets App Store developers drop Intel Mac support for macOS 13+ apps

Apple emailed Mac App Store developers saying universal apps requiring macOS 13 or later can now remove Intel-based Mac support entirely and build for arm64 only. This follows Apple's completed six-year transition to its own silicon and its earlier statement that macOS 26 Tahoe would be the last major release supporting Intel Macs. Rosetta, the tool letting Apple-silicon Macs run older Intel apps, will lose general-purpose support after macOS 27.

Perplexity launches Hybrid Compute to mix local and cloud AI processing

Perplexity has introduced Hybrid Compute, a feature that divides AI tasks between cloud-based models and models running locally on a user's device. It flags files or data containing personal information and lets users choose to process those locally while sending the rest of the task to the cloud, or send everything to the cloud. The feature currently works only in the Perplexity app on Apple Silicon Macs, supporting local models like Gemma 4 E4B and Qwen 3.6 alongside cloud options such as Claude Opus 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol.

Apple lets Mac App Store developers drop Intel support for macOS 13+ apps

Apple emailed developers announcing that universal macOS apps requiring macOS 13 or later can now be built as arm64-only, removing Intel compatibility. Developers must update build settings to arm64 and resubmit; Intel Mac users can still use the last compatible version of an app they already have.

John Ternus Steps Up as Apple's New CEO After 25 Years at the Company

Apple has named John Ternus as its new chief executive, ending Tim Cook's 15-year tenure atop the company as Cook transitions to executive chairman. Ternus, 51, spent 25 years at Apple, rising from a product design engineer to senior vice president of hardware engineering, where he oversaw AirPods, Apple Watch, Vision Pro, Apple silicon, and the MacBook Neo.

Developer prototypes a custom text editor after souring on Sublime Text and VS Code

Frustrated with the state of modern software, a developer decided to build their own text editor from scratch instead of relying on Sublime Text or VS Code's Monaco-based engine. Their first prototype rendered everything on an HTML canvas element, handling basic cursor movement, typing, and line highlighting, but lacked features like text selection, undo history, and scrolling. Realizing canvas rendering was inherently inaccessible, they pivoted to using a contenteditable div with plaintext-only mode as a more practical foundation.

Slotstream lets 48GB Macs run the 104GB Qwen3.8-Flash-Next model via SSD streaming

A new open-source tool called slotstream enables Apple Silicon Macs to run the 104GB Qwen3.8-Flash-Next language model even when the machine doesn't have enough RAM to hold it, by streaming weights from disk and dynamically sizing memory use, down to an 8.1GB floor. On a 48GB Mac it delivers about 12 tokens per second in warm decode with a roughly 3-second cold start, capping memory use at 32GB so the rest of the system stays usable. It requires macOS 14+, Apple Silicon, and about 110GB of free disk space for the one-time weight download.

Perplexity adds Hybrid Compute privacy feature to its Mac app

Perplexity has rolled out Hybrid Compute in its Mac app, letting its Computer assistant start tasks in the cloud and shift sensitive steps, like those touching personal files, to a local model running on the Mac itself. An on-device classifier detects personal details such as names and account numbers, replaces them with placeholders before any cloud processing, and restores them once results return. The feature requires Apple silicon, macOS 15 or later, and at least 24GB of unified memory, with 32GB recommended, and uses no cloud credits or API key.

Perplexity adds hybrid AI mode that keeps sensitive files on local Macs

Perplexity has launched a hybrid compute feature for its Computer agentic platform that splits AI tasks between cloud-based frontier models and smaller open-weight models running locally on Apple silicon Macs. Sensitive data is automatically routed to the on-device model via a locally-run 'Privacy Gate' classifier that detects personal information before anything reaches the cloud, without interrupting the task or losing context. The feature launches today for opted-in enterprise customers plus Pro and Max subscribers on Macs running macOS 15 or later.

Report: AI demand pushed Apple to announce Mac mini and Mac Studio updates early

Apple revealed refreshed Mac mini and Mac Studio models about two weeks before its September 9 event instead of unveiling them on stage. According to The Information, the company moved up the announcement because demand for these machines for AI workloads exceeded expectations, leaving some configurations backordered for months.

Apple's MacBook heat guidance: why shade matters more than temperature alone

Apple advises keeping Mac laptops in ambient temperatures between 50 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit, warning explicitly against leaving them in parked cars. That ambient limit refers to surrounding air, not the surface temperature a MacBook can reach when sitting in direct sunlight, which Apple doesn't separately quantify. Prolonged exposure above 95 degrees can permanently shrink battery capacity, with charging in such heat causing further damage.

Open-source vphone-cli tool boots virtual iPhones on Apple Silicon Macs

A new open-source project called vphone-cli lets developers create and run a virtual iPhone on Apple Silicon Macs running macOS Sequoia, using Apple's Virtualization.framework alongside infrastructure derived from Apple's Private Cloud Compute research VM setup. The tool automates the full pipeline of downloading IPSW firmware, patching the boot chain, restoring via DFU mode, installing a custom firmware variant, and launching the resulting virtual device, with commands also available to manage, clone, export, and import VM instances.

Apple's base M6 chip gains 'super cores' once reserved for Pro and Max models

Apple introduced the M6 chip, launching first in a new Mac mini, alongside the M5 Ultra. The M6 marks the first base-tier Apple silicon chip built on a 2-nanometer process and the first to combine three core types—two super cores, four performance cores, and six efficiency cores—a mix previously limited to the pricier M5 Pro and M5 Max.