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From 9to5Mac:

>The Mandalorian & Grogu director Jon Favreau was interviewed by Matt Belloni during CinemaCon in Las Vegas recently.

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>During the interview, Favreau named Apple Vision Pro as consumer technology used by him to help create the latest Star Wars movie. 

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>Specifically, Favreau highlights the benefits of using consumer tech to create movies because of the rate of innovation compared to more niche technology:

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>"There’s a lot of great gaming tech that’s being innovated. There was so little innovation around motion capture because there was only a handful of us using MotionBuilder. The doors flung open with gaming."

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>"When you visited our set, we were using gaming hardware to drive a pre-production mo-cap splash pre-vis pipeline. Because now those are consumer-facing products, you see tremendous innovation in them. Just like we use the Apple Vision Pro on set."

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>In the case of Apple Vision Pro, the mixed reality headset is basically the director’s sole viewpoint into framing up shots for IMAX from the set.

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>"So I’m making an IMAX movie and I’m looking at a TV screen. No matter how big your TV screen is, it’s not an IMAX screen. We built software so that I could pop on my Apple Vision Pro and be sitting in an IMAX movie theater and see the full aspect ratio when you’re lining a shot up."

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>"I could watch that take and see what people will see. That’s a piece of technology that existed without us. We did a little bit of a software build on top of it, but we’re leveraging in an industrial capacity consumer facing tech."

From 9to5Mac:

> To put it simply: Apple Silicon is impressively optimized for running local AI models. And the data is clear: people care about this. Mac Studios are widely sold out, and Mac minis are impossible to find. There’s a variety of reasons for this – like OpenClaw and other computer-use agents. But there’s also a group of people buying up high-end Macs with swaths of unified memory, which are incredible for running local LLMs.

> Apple’s WWDC 2026 teaser provides a glimpse of the revamped Siri interface coming in iOS 27. Also: Memory shortages could at least slightly delay the latest Mac Studio and touch-screen MacBook Pro models, and a new Home Screen customization feature is coming to iOS 27.

See the link for a full list of eligible accessories.

From the Newsroom:

> Celebrating Earth Day by Recycling with Apple > > As part of Apple’s Earth Day celebration, customers who recycle an eligible Apple product at their local participating Apple Store from now until May 16 can receive 10 percent off Apple AirPods or accessories. Products brought to Apple for free recycling undergo thorough screenings, and eligible devices are sent to Apple’s advanced recycling systems, including Daisy and Cora, for further processing.

> Claire Lomas, a British paraplegic known for overcoming medical trauma to participate in the London Marathon, was being filmed for an Apple immersive Vision Pro video when she crashed an aircraft in the Jordan desert two years ago.

>Apple retail locations and Apple Authorized Service Providers will soon be able to restore Apple Watch software in-store without needing to send an Apple Watch to a service center, according to a retail source that spoke to MacRumors.

> Production on the iPhone Fold is behind schedule, but the device is still slated to launch in fall 2026, reports DigiTimes. The site says that production has been pushed back by "roughly one to two months," but Apple has not communicated any launch delays to suppliers. Apple is still planning for a 2026 launch, which suggests a tighter production schedule.