Apple 2025–2026: what happened and why it matters

The business reached a high point. Apple reported the best quarter in its history, with about $143.76 billion in revenue, roughly $85.3 billion of it from the iPhone and services up 14 percent to about $30 billion. In parallel it prepared a handover: planning for the exit of Tim Cook, more than 14 years as chief executive, accelerated and John Ternus is the favorite with no final decision.

Services also changed hands and scale. The Apple Card moved from Goldman Sachs to JPMorgan Chase, which would take about $20 billion in balances at a $1 billion discount; and Apple will pay $750 million for exclusive Formula 1 streaming in the United States from 2026. Wallet is growing with digital passport IDs for TSA checkpoints.

Pressure on the App Store was constant. Japan set December 18, 2025 as the date to open the iPhone to alternative stores, and iOS 26.2 beta already allowed them. Italy fined Apple $115 million over the double consent request in its app tracking policy, introduced in 2021, which hurt smaller developers.

Apple answered with adjustments of its own: a mini-apps program with a 15 percent fee instead of 30 and a web version of the store that allows browsing but not downloading. Separately, a German court barred it from advertising its watch as carbon neutral, after an environmental group objected to the forest offsetting.

In artificial intelligence, Apple appeared to admit limits of its own: a report says it will adapt a Google model, on its private cloud, for the next Siri, after comparing with Anthropic, whose offer was seen as technically better but less attractive financially. Local AI helped sell machines: the entry Mac mini rose from $599 to $799 because AI demand emptied inventory.

Hardware had highs and lows. The iPhone 17 Pro review valued its camera and battery, and Garmin got ahead with a satellite-connected watch days before the expected Apple Watch Ultra 3.

The 26 generation of its operating systems brought a visual overhaul and some controversy. macOS Tahoe forced app icons into a common shape, with criticism over lost identity, and the Macintosh HD disk icon, in place since 2000, was replaced by one that evokes an SSD.

Apple also backed down when usage demanded it: after complaints about the disappearance of Slide Over in the iPad's new multitasking, it restored it in the second beta of iPadOS 26.1. That adjustment suggests the company listens to heavy users even on major design changes.

The year piled up warnings. Apple patched an actively exploited zero-day in ImageIO in August; in September a variant of XCSSET was detected attacking Xcode projects and stealing browser data and cryptocurrency; and in March a fake npm package posed as an installer to steal credentials on macOS.

Other cases touched trust in the service: the Podcasts app opened by itself with titles containing code, and a developer lost access to his account over a compromised gift card. In June, usbliter8 revealed an unpatchable flaw in A12 and A13 chips.