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Tech News
Apple unveiled its first touchscreen MacBook Pro alongside new touch-specific features in macOS 27 Golden Gate, including enlarged traffic light icons, larger context menu items, and on-screen trackpad gestures like three-finger swipes and pinch-to-zoom. Developers also gain the ability to fully navigate the iOS simulator using touch instead of trackpad workarounds.
Apple has released a MacBook Pro featuring an OLED 'PROLED XDR' display and, for the first time, touchscreen support, running macOS 27 Golden Gate. The touch functionality lets users tap and swipe the screen, with some UI elements in certain apps magnifying or expanding slightly in response, while mouse and trackpad input remain fully functional.
Apple's Shortcuts automation tool, available on Mac since macOS Monterey, gains a new AI feature called Describe a Shortcut in macOS 27 Golden Gate. The feature lets users type out what they want a shortcut to do and have the app assemble the actions automatically, rather than manually selecting and linking each action.
Apple's upcoming macOS 27, codenamed Golden Gate, will only run on Apple silicon Macs, cutting off every Intel-based MacBook. The cutoff includes 2020 MacBooks except for the M1 chip versions of the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, meaning most MacBooks from 2021 onward remain supported. Users can check their chip type via the Apple menu's 'About This Mac' option.
Apple has publicly released macOS 27 Golden Gate, following months of beta testing, adding Apple Intelligence features throughout its built-in Mac apps. Photos gains Spatial Reframing, Extend, and an improved Clean Up tool, Safari adds tab grouping, a Notify Me alert feature, and a natural-language extension builder, and Shortcuts now lets users create and refine automations using plain language descriptions.
Apple released TestFlight version 4.4.0, adding landscape orientation on iPhone and support for the resizable iPhone Mirroring window in macOS 27 Golden Gate. The update also switches TestFlight's app list to a two-column layout in landscape and rearranges app detail screens to use extra horizontal space. The update follows Apple's rollout of resizable iPhone Mirroring aspect ratios in macOS 27 Golden Gate.
9to5Mac's Jeff Benjamin previewed macOS 27, showing Siri deeply integrated into Spotlight search rather than tucked away as a separate function. The beta lets users choose between traditional search and asking Siri directly from the same Command+Space interface, with responses drawing on personal context while Apple emphasizes on-device privacy.
Apple's iPadOS 27.2 beta introduces a Siri icon that appears when text is selected, mirroring a feature already in macOS 27 Golden Gate. Hovering over the small icon with a connected trackpad expands it into an 'Ask Siri' text box, offering a quicker way to query Siri without leaving the selected text. Without a trackpad, users still get the standard edit menu with a Siri option, but the hover shortcut only works with pointer input.
Ars Technica's review of macOS 27 Golden Gate reports that Apple has removed the option to disable Apple Intelligence, eliminating the toggle that once let users skip downloading its AI models. The release also ends support for Intel-based Macs entirely, running only on Apple Silicon, while bringing design fixes and performance polish to areas criticized in macOS 26 Tahoe.
9to5Mac's daily podcast episode for September 16, 2026 rounds up the day's top Apple stories, including discussion of features expected in the next macOS release, internally referred to as 'Golden Gate.' The episode is distributed via major podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, and Google Play.
The Ulysses writing app has been updated to align with iOS 27 and macOS 27, adding Siri AI integration for writing, rewriting and proofreading text, along with a fully customizable toolbar. The release also introduces project templates with pre-built groups and sheets, new group icons, and accessibility improvements, though Siri AI features are excluded for users in the EU.
AppZapper, the veteran Mac utility for thoroughly removing apps and their leftover files, has relaunched as AppZapper 3000 after a long absence. The new version keeps its signature zap sound effects but adds a playful blaster-style cursor animation for deleting app remnants. It's free to try with three zaps included, after which a license costs $18.