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John Ternus is officially set to take over as Apple CEO on September 1. Ahead of that, he’s shaping the team around him and has brought back a key hardware engineering executive who retired several years ago.

Apple today officially announced its Apple Upgrade leasing program, and it works in the way we expected. While it does make products more affordable on a monthly basis, it leaves people at risk of being trapped into a never-ending lease cycle.

That’s because, unlike the iPhone Upgrade Program it partly replaces, you don’t own the device outright at the end of the term …

Apple today officially launched its new Apple Upgrade leasing program, covering iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac.

As part of this launch, Apple has also discontinued the iPhone Upgrade Program. Here’s what that means for current users.

Apple has officially announced Apple Upgrade, a new product leasing program available starting today in the United States.

Apple Upgrade, which is backed by Klarna, lets users lease iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac, and iPad purchases, with the option to easily upgrade at the end of the lease term. Here’s how it works.

Update, 6:15 p.m PT: Apple says all the problems previously listed on its Developer website have been resolved. All of the outages listed on its consumer System Status page have also been fixed.

Apple says that a number of its services are down this evening. This includes Apple TV, Apple Podcasts, various aspects of the App Store, and more.

The exhibition space in the Apple Park Visitor Center at Cupertino has been temporarily closed.

The company hasn’t revealed what form the improvements may take, but the current use of the space does seem to be very inefficient …

Apple will reportedly launch a new “Apple Upgrade” leasing program next week. As part of that, the company is reportedly planning to wind down its existing iPhone Upgrade Program.

Apple will launch a new “Apple Upgrade” leasing program later this month in the US, according to a new report from Bloomberg. It marks “one of the biggest-ever changes to how the company sells devices,” the report says.

Here’s how it will work.

Apple’s hardware price increases in June were costly and unwelcome. They were also just the start of a wave of higher prices on Apple products and services. Over the last few weeks, Apple has been raising prices in all areas for different reasons.

Update: 10 days later, Apple and Nvidia have once again swapped rankings with $AAPL overtaking $NVDA. Apple has yet to cross the $5T market cap threshold, though intraday trading has the company around $4.944T.

Apple has officially reclaimed the world’s most valuable company title based on market cap. The company overtook Nvidia during intraday trading on Friday with its stock up 17 points this week.

Apple and its carrier partners have closed a workaround that let shoppers buy an unlocked iPhone with carrier financing. The change appears to have gone into effect this month.

An online safety regulator has said that tech giants need to do more to combat sextortion (sexual extortion), naming Apple, Meta and Google among the companies who need to do better.

Victims of sexual blackmail tend to be younger, including children below the age of 16 …

Apple filed a blockbuster lawsuit against OpenAI on Friday, accusing the company of trade secret theft. There are a lot of interesting tidbits throughout the initial filing, but one stat in particular stood out to me: the number of former Apple employees now working at OpenAI.

Intel in the U.S. is expected to make at least some upcoming Mac and iPhone chips for Apple. That recent development may have been the key to a major tariff exemption on semiconductors Apple received almost a year ago.

Apple has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI today, accusing the company of trade secret theft. Specifically, Apple alleges that its former employees have stolen trade secrets “for the benefit of OpenAI.”

“This case is about Apple’s former employees stealing Apple’s trade secrets for the benefit of OpenAI. Apple brings this suit to put a stop to it,” the lawsuit says.

Apple recently increased the prices of most of its products, from the Apple TV and HomePods through iPads and Macs to the Vision Pro. iPhones have so far escaped the increases, but that will likely change in September.

You’d think that would be bad news for the company, reducing demand – but ironically, increasing memory costs might actually end up boosting iPhone sales …

The next generation of Apple radio chips is expected to debut in the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Ultra, but a new deal suggests the company doesn’t expect to complete a switch to its own cellular modems before 2031.

The company has committed to retaining and expanding its partnership with radio chip maker Broadcom through 2031 …

Last week, Apple announced dramatic price increases on Macs, iPads, and other products due to rising component costs. As a result, Apple’s stock price took a dive. As we head into the holiday weekend, however, $AAPL has rebounded with a 5% gain today.

Britain’s antitrust regulator has proposed forcing Apple to allow developers to link to third-party payment options to purchase apps and subscriptions outside of the App Store.

The proposal would specifically ban Apple from using the same forms of “malicious compliance” it has tried in both the US and EU …

We learned yesterday that Apple is trying to persuade the Trump administration to allow it to buy memory chips from two Chinese companies blacklisted by the Pentagon, CXMT and YMTC.

Apple previously sought permission from the Biden administration to do the same thing back in 2022, and that did not go well – despite promising to use the chips only for iPhones sold in China …

Earlier this week, I outlined three reasons for agreeing with Mark Gurman that the Apple price increases could be imminent, and that indeed proved to be the case.

iPhones have escaped the increases, but they are otherwise both broad-reaching and pretty dramatic. But perhaps the most surprising thing is that the MacBook Neo has been included …