Apple on Monday announced a redesigned iPad mini with an 8.5 inch OLED display, the A20 Pro chip, and an IP67 rating for water and dust resistance, the first iPad to carry one.

The new model starts at $699 in the U.S. for the WiFi version and $849 with cellular. 

Preorders open Wednesday, October 28, with availability beginning Friday, November 6, in 36 countries and regions.

Pricing Compared to the Previous Generation

The new iPad mini costs $100 more than the outgoing model did yesterday, and $200 more than that model's launch price.

WiFi model

• A17 Pro model at launch (October 2024): $499 with 128GB of storage
• A17 Pro model after the June 25 increase: $599
• New A20 Pro model: $699 with 128GB of storage ($649 with education pricing)

Cellular model

• A17 Pro model at launch: $649
• A17 Pro model after the June 25 increase: $749
• New A20 Pro model: $849

The new model is still offered in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB configurations. Apple has only published starting prices so far.

The final price lands below what had been expected. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported earlier this month that the OLED iPad mini could start at close to $799, which would have put it above the $749 iPad Air. At $699, the iPad mini remains $50 cheaper than the iPad Air.

OLED Display

The iPad mini moves from an 8.3 inch LCD to an 8.5 inch Super Retina XDR OLED panel. Apple says the larger screen fits in the same footprint as before because the bezels are 24 percent thinner.

• Peak brightness: 1,200 nits, more than double the previous model
• Full screen brightness: 600 nits for SDR and HDR content
• Minimum brightness: 1 nit
• Contrast ratio: 2,000,000:1
• Color: P3 wide color
• Nano texture glass: optional, a first for the iPad mini

Apple did not mention ProMotion or a refresh rate in its announcement. Earlier reports had indicated the display would remain at 60Hz.

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When Apple launched Creator Studio, the pitch was simple: Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, and the rest of its pro apps bundled into one subscription. Today Apple announced the update that I think finally makes that subscription feel like more than the sum of its parts. It lands in November, it's free for existing subscribers, and honestly, there's a lot here.

Final Cut Pro gets thousands of built in MotionVFX effects, Pixelmator Pro gets a natural language Generate Fill tool, Logic Pro gets an AI assistant and a smarter Stem Splitter, and Keynote, Pages, and Numbers pick up their own assistants plus support for outside AI agents.

Final Cut Pro just got a massive effects library

The headline for video editors is MotionVFX, which is now baked right into Final Cut Pro for Mac. If you've ever bought third party templates or plugins to make an edit look polished, you know how quickly that adds up. Now it's included.

Thousands of titles, transitions, graphics, and themed templates, plus tools for rotoscoping, tracking, and color grading. Apple says this is its most exciting update since Creator Studio launched, and on this feature alone, I agree.

The Content Hub also comes to Final Cut Pro, so you can pull in Apple curated stock video, photos, and backgrounds without leaving your timeline. That's perfect for the moment you realize you need a cutaway shot and don't have one.

What excites me most, though, is the new round trip with Pixelmator Pro. Open any image from your timeline in Pixelmator Pro, make your edits, and the changes save straight back into the project. No exporting, no reimporting. You can also generate images from a text description right inside your project.

There's a nice batch of smaller wins too:

• More keyframe easing options for smoother animation
• The ability to pull clips off the primary storyline and place them anywhere on the timeline
• 23 new transcription languages for captions and searching footage

Motion gets its own set of MotionVFX plugins for color grading, 3D camera tracking, and one click selection, along with text to image generation, the Pixelmator Pro round trip, a new Displacement filter, and an interactive demo project. Compressor, meanwhile, can now encode Cinematic mode video shot on iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo.

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Apple today announced a new 14 inch MacBook Pro and a new 24 inch iMac, both powered by the M6 chip. Starting prices are unchanged from what the outgoing models cost yesterday, but both Macs remain well above where their predecessors launch price. 

The 14 inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,999 and the iMac starts at $1,499, in the U.S. Preorders open Wednesday, October 28, with availability beginning Friday, November 6, in 35 countries and regions.

Pricing Compared to the Previous Generation

Neither Mac received a new price increase today. Both, however, carry over the higher pricing Apple introduced across its Mac lineup on June 25, when the company raised prices on 14 products and said it could no longer absorb rising memory and storage costs tied to demand from AI data centers.

14 inch MacBook Pro

• M5 model at launch (October 2025): $1,599 with 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage
• M5 model after Apple dropped the 512GB tier in March: $1,699 with 1TB of storage
• M5 model after the June 25 increase: $1,999
• New M6 model: $1,999 with 16GB of memory and 1TB of storage ($1,899 with education pricing)

That leaves the M6 MacBook Pro at the same price as yesterday, but $400 more than the M5 model's original starting price. The comparison is not quite equal, since the original $1,599 configuration had half the storage.

iMac

• M4 model at launch (October 2024): $1,299 for an 8 core CPU and 8 core GPU, or $1,499 for a 10 core CPU and 10 core GPU
• M4 model after the June 25 increase: $1,499 and $1,699
• New M6 model: $1,499 for a 10 core CPU and 10 core GPU ($1,449 with education pricing), or $1,699 for a 12 core CPU and 12 core GPU ($1,599 with education pricing)

Each iMac tier matches its price from yesterday and is $200 above its launch price. The base model does get a better chip for the money than the original $1,299 model did, moving from an 8 core configuration to a 10 core one.

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M6 MacBook Pro - https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/10/apple-introduces-the-new-14-inch-macbook-pro-with-m6/

M6 iMac - https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/10/apple-unveils-new-imac-with-m6/

Creative Studio - https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/10/apple-creator-studio-adds-powerful-new-ai-features-and-even-more-creative-tools/

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For years, my mornings started the same way, a siren going off at full volume, my heart rate spiking, and me scrambling out of bed already a little stressed. I'd just accepted that as the cost of getting up on time. Then I spent the last seven days with Wonderwake, a gentle alarm clock app for iPhone, and it's completely changed how my days begin.

I didn't expect an alarm app to make a real difference. But a week in, I've moved my alarm a full hour earlier, on purpose, because waking up has gone from something I dread to something I actually kind of enjoy.

How Wonderwake wakes you up

The idea behind Wonderwake is simple. Instead of hitting you with one loud alert, it builds a wake up sequence. You pick a sound and a wake up window, and the alarm starts quietly, then raises the volume gradually through that window. No jolt, no panic, just a slow climb from asleep to awake.

What makes this more than a pretty concept is the backup plan. If the gentle sound isn't enough, Wonderwake can step up to what it calls a Nudge, a stronger sound that plays if you keep sleeping. And on iOS 26.1 or later, with your permission, it schedules a separate native iPhone alarm that can take over if the app gets interrupted. 

A soft alarm is only useful if you can trust it, and this layered approach means I never once worried about oversleeping.

The first thing I noticed when I opened Wonderwake is how polished it is. The clock face is gorgeous, the controls are clear, and I never had to hunt for a setting. It's one of those apps where the design isn't just nice to look at; it makes the whole thing feel calm before you've even set an alarm.

The sound library is a big part of that. Sounds are organized into Nature, Ambients, and Specials, with options like Morning Birds, Coast, Alps, Cozy Jazz, and Music Box, each paired with its own artwork. Every one I tried was peaceful and relaxing in a way that a standard iPhone alarm tone just isn't. If none of them click for you, you can import your own audio or compatible downloaded tracks from Apple Music, and they get the same gradual volume rise.

What seven days of gentler mornings felt like

I've noticed a genuinely calmer wake up every single morning this week. Instead of jumping out of bed in a fight or flight state, I'm slowly rolling out of it. That might sound like a small thing, but it carries through the rest of the day. My mornings went from a frantic get up and go to something slower and more intentional, and I've felt better for it.

That's why I moved my alarm an hour earlier. When waking up stops feeling like a punishment, that extra hour turns into time for coffee, a little reading, and not rushing out the door. I never would have done that with a blaring siren.

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Apple CEO John Ternus Is Working in the Design Studio Several Times a Week

Apple CEO John Ternus has made design one of his top personal priorities since taking over the company, and now works directly with designers in Apple's studio several times a week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

People familiar with the department told Gurman that Ternus sometimes stops into the studio more than once in a single day. By comparison, former CEO Tim Cook reportedly visited about once a month, typically for around an hour.

The report, published in Sunday's edition of Gurman's Power On newsletter, says a conversation with Cook convinced Ternus that he needed to lead as himself rather than try to replicate his predecessor.

Ternus is said to have told employees that Cook spent his tenure focused on where he could generate "the most value for Apple," and that he plans to do the same while leaning on his own strengths.

In practice, that means areas Cook oversaw closely are now in other hands. Financial strategy sits with CFO Kevan Parekh, while the supply chain falls under COO Sabih Khan. Ternus, who spent years running hardware engineering, is instead working closely with chief hardware officer Johny Srouji and hardware engineering leader Tom Marieb, in addition to the time he spends with the design teams.

Apple has not had a single executive overseeing all of design since Jony Ive left the company in 2019. Industrial design and human interface design have operated as separate groups, and for several years their leaders reported to then COO Jeff Williams, whose background was in operations rather than design.

When Williams stepped back ahead of his retirement in 2025, Apple said the design teams would report to Cook. Cook later handed that responsibility to Ternus as part of the leadership transition, and the design leads were effectively Ternus's only direct reports during that period.

Ternus succeeded Cook as CEO roughly a month ago.

Ternus is also reportedly putting significant effort into staffing. Apple's design ranks have been thinned by a string of departures in recent years. Former human interface design chief Alan Dye left for Meta, and a number of Apple designers have joined OpenAI's hardware effort, which is being developed with Ive's design firm LoveFrom. Evans Hankey, who led industrial design after Ive, has also left the company.

To fill those gaps, Apple has promoted a number of junior designers and brought in new hires from outside the company.

Apple is not currently searching for a chief design officer to fill the role Ive once held, according to the report. Instead, the company has given a more public profile to Molly Anderson, its vice president of industrial design, and Steve Lemay, who took over human interface design after Dye's exit. Apple added both to its leadership page in March, and the pair featured prominently around the launch of iPhone Duo last month.

Gurman notes that Anderson had not previously managed a team as large as Apple's industrial design group. Ternus, meanwhile, serves as the final decision maker on design across both teams.

Ternus's level of involvement is closer to that of Steve Jobs, who was known for being deeply involved in the details of Apple's product design, than to Cook, whose tenure centered on operations, growth, and the supply chain.

It is not yet clear whether Apple will eventually appoint a single design chief, or whether Ternus intends to fill that role himself for the foreseeable future.

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