#apple

#apple

Apple has begun to set up shop at its emerging tech campus in North San Jose, an expansion that is poised to bring hundreds of workers to the city. The company moved workers into an office building at 2509 Orchard Parkway in late 2025 and has launched preparations to place more employees at a nearby office building at 2325 Orchard Parkway, the company told this news organization.

The iPad Mini is my favorite Apple tablet for its size. It is small enough to pack alongside my laptop and powerful enough to rekindle my love for photo editing. But over the last two generations, I've wished Apple would offer a better screen, as the smudgy LCD panel isn't ideal for reading or color accuracy. That could finally happen as soon as this year.

Apple's stock price has depended on a single thing. iPhone sales have continued to be remarkably successful. According to Counterpoint, Apple led the global smartphone market in 2025 with 20% share and 10% annual shipment growth. That was the highest among the top five brands. It topped rival Samsung, which had a market share of 19% and rose only 5% year over year. Counterpoint credits sales of the new iPhone 17 for Apple's success.

This has led tech companies to increase their investments in infrastructure upgrades to keep up with demand. While Apple was slow to jump on the AI bandwagon, it's now reported to be starting mass production of its own AI server chip this year. The word comes from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who said Apple's self-developed AI server chip is expected to enter mass production in the second half of 2026.

Shares of Apple ( NASDAQ:AAPL) plunged into correction territory on Thursday as the losing streak extended to a whopping seven sessions. Even as the market marched higher in the first few sessions of 2026, Apple stock has been gravitating lower. Alphabet ( NASDAQ:GOOGL) is now officially the larger company by market cap, and it's unclear if the iPhone maker can retake the lead, given the perception of being behind in the AI race might be weighing down sentiment again.

Alphabet Inc. has overtaken Apple Inc. to become the second-most valuable company by market capitalization, a reflection of how the Google parent has emerged as one of the most significant winners of artificial intelligence. Shares of Alphabet rose 2.4% on Wednesday, closing with a valuation of $3.89 trillion. That allowed it to surpass Apple, which closed with a market cap of $3.85 trillion on Wednesday, following a six-day slump that erased nearly 5% and almost $200 billion off its value.

Of course, perhaps investors are right to wait and see how the much-anticipated Siri update will fare, given how the initial launch of Apple Intelligence turned out and the aftermath that followed once many consumers felt that the Cupertino-based giant underdelivered after perhaps overpromising a bit too much. Going into the new year, the tides could turn, and Apple might overdeliver in 2026 after underpromising for most of 2025.

Tech companies may have already grown numb to Trump's unpredictable moves. Back in February, Trump warned Americans to expect "a little pain" after he issued executive orders imposing 10-25 percent tariffs on imports from America's biggest trading partners, including Canada, China, and Mexico. Immediately, industry associations sounded the alarm, warning that the costs of consumer tech could increase significantly. By April, Trump had ordered tariffs on all US trade partners to correct claimed trade deficits, using odd math that critics suspected came from a chatbot. (Those tariffs bizarrely targeted uninhabited islands that exported nothing and were populated by penguins.)

Indeed, given the company's market capitalization of more than $4 trillion, the directional moves Apple makes over any time frame will likely impact most investors, whether they hold this stock directly or not. That's because most investors now have some sort of exposure to index funds or exchange traded funds (ETFs), many of which are market cap weighted. Thus, Apple's performance is a key indicator of the performance of the broader market.

Apple just announced it will be integrating more ads into the App Store because our poor eyeballs must be assaulted at all times. The company plans on littering search results with advertisements beginning next year. Currently, the App Store only has one ad spot. That's at the very top of search results. If you search for something like Instagram it's likely that top spot will be filled with an ad for a rival social media platform. The new ads will appear further down the actual search results.

Apple announced it will allow alternative app stores in Japan and will permit developers to process payments for digital goods and services outside of its own in-app purchase system in iOS. The iPhone maker is not making these changes because it wants to be more open; it's being forced - in this case, to comply with the country's Mobile Software Competition Act (MSCA), which is now going into effect.

Most of the new devices referenced in these leaks are straightforward updates to products that already exist: a new Apple TV, a HomePod mini 2, new AirTags and AirPods, an M4 iPad Air, a 12th-generation iPad to replace the current A16 version, next-generation iPhones (including the 17e, 18, and the rumored foldable model), a new Studio Display model, some new smart home products we've already heard about elsewhere, and M5 updates for the MacBook Air, Mac mini, Mac Studio, and the other MacBook Pros.

Apple has found itself in the crosshairs of the European Commission many times over the past few years, and now it's also being investigated by the Swiss Competition Commission (SCC). This has to do with access to NFC on iPhones. Apple started to allow third-party access to the NFC chip last year, following an initial opening up in the EU.

If we didn't get paid, how are we going to pay back $15,000?

Apple has clawed back a bit of ground in its legal fight with Epic Games that could have wide-reaching consequences for all app developers. Today, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals mostly upheld a previous contempt ruling regarding fees Apple levied on third-party payment systems. However, the judges did decide to reverse the order that Apple cannot charge any commissions on those external payments, which was one of the company's main arguments in this ongoing debate.