It was a big year for Apple software and services. We talk about Liquid Glass, Apple Intelligence, Apple TV, and the other services and software that shaped the company’s year.

This is episode 963 with Michael Simon, Jason Cross,  and Roman Loyola.

Get info

Click on the links below for more info on what was discussed on the show.

• Code leak reveals A19 iPad, M4 Air with Apple’s N1 chip likely coming soon





• Leaked code spills details of mystery Apple smart home accessory





• Internal Apple code hints improved Siri will land next spring with ‘HomePad’ hub





• Apple’s next HomePod mini and AirTag upgrades surface in leaked internal code





• iOS 26 superguide





• Can’t read notifications in iOS 26? Here’s how to reduce the Liquid Glass effect





• macOS 26 Tahoe superguide





• How to reduce the Liquid Glass transparency effect in macOS Tahoe





• iPadOS 26 superguide





• watchOS 26 superguide

This Week in Apple History 

On December 21, 1994, Bungie Software released Marathon, a first-person shooter exclusively for the Mac. The original Marathon game trilogy is now an open-source project and is available to download for free on the Mac, as well as Windows and Linux. Check it out on the Aleph One Marathon Open Source website.  iPhone versions are available in the App Store. A modern-day Marathon is in the works, but it does not include Mac development. 

Macworld Mailbag

All we seem to hear about nowadays is AI and how it’s going to make life easy. But will it?

Do we really need Al in our life? We don’t trust the experts and human skills anymore?

Ozzy Ruiz via YouTube

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To find previous episodes, visit Macworld’s podcast page or our home on MegaPhone.

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Apple

Below is an AI-generated, uncorrected transcript of the podcast. The timecodes do not correspond to the published recording. Also, the text has not been edited or corrected, so it will contain improper grammar, misspellings, and other errors.

Roman Loyola (00:00 .316)
we are recording.

Michael Simon (00:12 .534)
Unscripted, unfiltered, unafraid, welcome to the Macworld podcast. I’m Michael Simon and I’m joined as always by Jason Cross.

Jason Cross (00:20 .123)
Good morning.

Michael Simon (00:21 .484)
and our producer Roman Loyola.

Roman Loyola (00:23 .819)
Ahoy there!

Michael Simon (00:25 .876)
Hold on. lost my tab. Okay. There we go. this is episode number 963. Do I have the right script here? look, I, so I said it’s unscripted, but I totally write a script for the beginning. Cause if I know it, I’m never going to be able to get, to get to like the part of the show, right? Mostly. so yeah, this is, we, we’ve reached nearly the end of 2025. So our last two shows are going to focus on Apple in 2025. You’re in review type stuff.

Roman Loyola (00:31 .819)
three.

Jason Cross (00:40 .322)
Mostly unscripted.

Michael Simon (00:55 .608)
This one’s software and services and next week, which we’re also recording today. So we’re going to be probably a little bit tired after this one is going to be all about hardware. And, you know, we’ll go through what we got, what we didn’t get, what we liked, what we didn’t like, what it means all, you know, whatever, wherever the conversation takes us. But today is going to be software and, services, which is, you know, mainly Apple TV, but probably some, little, a few other things, maybe, then we’ll have a special year-end edition of what we’re watching on Apple TV this week in Apple history, which I’m actually somewhat excited about because I don’t even really know what Roman’s talking about and our reader mailbag Speaking of that you can contact us through.

Roman Loyola (01:39 .511)
That’s not the first time somebody said they didn’t know what I was talking about.

Michael Simon (01:44 .174)
I mean, it’s not you personally, it’s the thing, the thing that you’re talking about. other, not knowing what you’re talking about is a whole separate issue. If you want to talk to us, you can contact us through blue sky, Facebook threads, search for Mac world, look for the blue mouse logo, send an email to podcast.macworld.com, comment under a video, comment under a TikTok or real or wherever you find us Facebook. we, we scour all that stuff and we will talk about the most interesting and, don’t know, exciting comments in a future show. Cause it won’t be next week. All right, Roman, three minutes I got, this is actually Apple, Macworld related anyway. I just wanted to give a shout out to our contributor, Felipe Esposito last week. so he got, he, I’m, I’m kind of learning about all this stuff as well. He got access to a like an early build of iOS 26. He said it was actually, it was so early, it wa