When all is said and done, I doubt anyone will cite 2025 as a key year in the history of Apple. The company admitted that it couldn’t deliver on a promise it made back in 2024, and it shipped a bunch of impressive but incremental improvements to its existing hardware devices. The iPhone Air is a fun product, but is hardly setting the world on fire. 2025 was, above all else… a year.
On the other hand, 2026 feels like it will be momentous for Apple in numerous areas. After a few years of calm, it feels like the storm is upon us.
The beginning of the end
The death of Steve Jobs was a dangerous moment for Apple. The company needed to show that it could still thrive without its co-founder and longtime CEO. As a result, it elevated Jony Ive to a position of even greater prominence, giving him control over all Apple design. It also entered a remarkable era of growth and executive stability, which soothed any questions Wall Street might have had.
But Apple is now stocked with long-term senior managers who have made enormous amounts of money in Apple’s rise to all-time highs, and many of them are nearing retirement age. Things remained relatively static until 2025, when a few key executives began to cycle out. Those departures weren’t the end of the story, they were the start of it. Next year will see the beginning of the exit of the old guard and the debut of a bunch of new faces (most of whom have actually been working in obscurity at Apple for a decade or two).
Apple Tim Cook won’t step down in 2026, but the preparation for his successor will be in the works.
Apple
It all starts with Tim Cook. Cook just turned 65, and we live in an era where that’s hardly retirement age. Still, it’s hard to imagine that Cook will want to stay at Apple for a long time. Many accounts suggest that the company has stepped up its succession planning, and I would expect that there’s nobody more in favor of that than Cook. Consider: Cook got the job of Apple CEO thrust upon him due to Jobs’s illness, and never really got to use Jobs as a sounding board after he became CEO.
I don’t think Cook wants to do that to his successor if he can help it. So while I’m not outright predicting that Cook will step away from his job as CEO, I do think he’ll begin the public process of transitioning to a new role. I fully expect that Cook will follow in Jobs’s footsteps to become the chairman of the Apple board, and then, at a future date, he’ll resign as CEO and appoint his successor. The result: Cook gets to provide extended oversight and guidance that Jobs sadly wasn’t able to provide to him. As chairman, Cook can also focus on international politics and trade, giving the new CEO time to settle into the business of keeping Apple operating smoothly. It’s the careful and conservative move, which fits Cook perfectly.
We’ve already seen the start of it, but with Cook cranking up the engines of succession, I expect many other Apple executives to begin their own exit planning. They may not all leave–Phil Schiller’s continued presence at Apple suggests that it’s very hard to say goodbye–but I expect many of them to shift into new roles and let trusted lieutenants take on more prominent titles and responsibilities.
In five years at the most, Apple will be run by people who were not key players in the Steve Jobs era. Time marches on.
The Mac Pro was last updated in 2023. That was likely the very last update.
Foundry
The Mac: Expect the unexpected
After a few years of continuity, I expect some big changes when it comes to the Mac.
Rumor has it that we might see the very first touchscreen Macs this coming fall, with the debut of the M6 MacBook Pro. I think that’ll happen (though they may be delayed until early 2027), but I don’t expect major interface changes in macOS. I can’t imagine Apple will expect a Mac touchscreen to be anything but an additional, secondary input device–for quick taps and scrolls, not for detail work. You can do that without a revamp of the Mac interface.
I’m also willing to bet that something unexpected will happen when it comes to pro-level Macs. The Mac Pro has never really made sense in the Apple Silicon era, when the Mac Studio has taken the crown as the high-end Mac of the moment. My gut feeling is that the Mac Pro is going to be discontinued. It can’t soldier on as it is, so it’s either going to get an update (which would also be surprising!) or it’s going to reach the end.
For several years, there’s been a rumor that Apple is planning on releasing its lowest-priced Mac laptop ever, one based on an iPhone-level chip. I think that will finally happen this year, and while it won’t really compete with Chromebooks, it will give Apple access to customers that it’s never been able to reach before. I’d like to believe that new MacBook will cost $599, but even if it’s $699, it’ll be a lot cheaper than the MacBook Air, which retails for $999. And discounts will push it cheaper. That price, for M1-level performance? Seems like a steal.
Siri won’t be completely updated in 2026, but it’ll show singns of true progress.
Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd
The iPhone: Now it gets interesting
After whiffing on the idea that Apple would get its AI story straight in 2025, I’m reluctant to predict that it’ll sort out Apple Intelligence and Siri in 2026. But I do think it will have a better year than it did in 2025, and that Siri and Apple Intelligence will end the year more functional and useful than they entered it. I doubt any new-and-improved Siri will be as good as we dream it might be, but I think it’ll be appreciably better than it is today. (And the arrival of a better Siri will unlock Apple’s ability to ship new smart home products, which the company has been itching to do for at least a year.)
I don’t expect Liquid Glass to be rolled back under Apple’s new head of software design. That ship has sailed. But I do think we will see Apple continue to polish Liquid Glass, addressing design deficiencies and offering more flexibility for users who feel that it harms usability and legibility.
But the big news of the year will be the release of Apple’s first folding phone, which will set a record for the price of a new iPhone–I’m predicting at least $1,999–and will rapidly become the best-selling folding phone of all time. But despite that, it will be only a tiny part of Apple’s overall iPhone sales, and the more standard iPhone Pro models will sell much better.
As for the standard iPhone models, I do believe the reports that Apple is going to split its iPhone releases in two, and that the standard iPhone 18 won’t debut until 2027. In 2025, Apple released five different brand-new iPhone models, and there are likely six models in the works for the next product cycle. They don’t all need to ship during the middle of September–and so they won’t. Apple will announce the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and iPhone 18 Fold in September, and advertise them everywhere, and the lower-priced models will wait for the spring.
Between a folding iPhone, a touchscreen Mac, and some big changes in the highest ranks of Apple management, 2026 is shaping up to be a memorable year. And hey, if they finally make Siri a bit better, won’t that be a nice cherry on top?
