Quick Takes: Apple Celebrating Women's Week, The Road to Swift 5, and New macOS 11 Concept

In addition to our standalone articles covering the latest Apple news and rumors at MacRumors, this Quick Takes column provides a bite-sized recap of other headlines about Apple and its competitors on weekdays.

Thursday, March 1

Apple celebrating International Women's Day and Women's Week with in-store events: Apple Orchard Road in Singapore will be hosting Today at Apple sessions over the next week in celebration of women who inspire the community. Apple Marché Saint-Germain in France will be hosting a recruiting event on March 8, billed as an evening of inspiration, participation, and celebration.

apple team members
Commentary: International Women's Day is observed on March 8 to celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. Apple has honored the day in previous years with featured content in iTunes and Apple Music.

macOS 11 concept reimagines Apple's desktop operating system: Spanish graphic designer and University of Navarra student Álvaro Pabesion has shared a macOS 11 concept on Behance. The mockups visualize how Apple's desktop operating system could look with a simpler design.

macos 11 concept
Commentary: While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it's hard not to drool over the idea of a more systemwide dark mode and iTunes being easier to navigate. macOS last received a major redesign as part of OS X Yosemite in 2014.

"Apple Is Going to Be the First Trillion-Dollar Company": A bold headline from Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz, who believes Apple will achieve the milestone at some point this year. He considers share repurchases, continued investments from Warren Buffett, index buyers, and several new products being on the horizon as four factors key to Apple's continued upward momentum.

Commentary: Apple is certainly leading the race to a trillion dollar valuation, with a market capitalization hovering around the $900 billion mark. Google parent company Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft are next closest, each with market caps approaching the $750 billion mark. AAPL is down nearly two percent today.

Apple outlines release process for Swift 4.2, introduces SwiftNIO: Apple has shared a blog post that describes the goals, release process, and estimated schedule for Swift 4.2. Apple has also introduced SwiftNIO at a conference in Tokyo, described as a low-level tool for building high-performance networking applications in Swift.

swift banner
Commentary: A couple of notable items for developers who use Apple's open source programming language. Today is also the cutoff date for proposing ideas for Swift 5.0, expected to be released in late 2018.

For more Apple news and rumors coverage, visit our Front Page, Mac Blog, and iOS Blog. Also visit our forums to join in the discussion.

Popular Stories

Apple Creator Studio

Apple Introduces New 'Creator Studio' Bundle of Apps for $129 Per Year

Tuesday January 13, 2026 6:11 am PST by
Apple today introduced a new Apple Creator Studio bundle that offers access to six creative apps, as well as exclusive AI features and content, as part of a single subscription. In the U.S., pricing is set at $12.99 per month or $129 per year. Here are the six apps included with an Apple Creator Studio subscription:Final Cut Pro on the Mac and iPad Logic Pro on the Mac and iPad Pixelmator...
Verizon New

Verizon is Down: iPhones Show 'SOS' Mode Due to Network Outage [Resolved]

Wednesday January 14, 2026 10:18 am PST by
Verizon is experiencing a major outage across the U.S. today, with hundreds of thousands of customers reporting issues with the network on the website Downdetector. There are also complaints across Reddit and other social media platforms. iPhone users and others with Verizon service are generally unable to make phone calls, send text messages, or use data over 5G or LTE due to the outage....
iPhone Top Left Hole Punch Face ID Feature Purple

New Leak Reveals iPhone 18 Pro Display Sizes, Under-Screen Face ID, and More

Wednesday January 14, 2026 7:09 am PST by
While the iPhone 18 Pro models are still around eight months away, a leaker has shared some alleged details about the devices. In a post on Chinese social media platform Weibo this week, the account Digital Chat Station said the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max will have the same 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch display sizes as the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max. Consistent with previous...
iOS 26

Here's What's New in iOS 26.3 So Far

Monday January 12, 2026 1:15 pm PST by
Apple today seeded the second beta of iOS 26.3, nearly a month after the first beta. So far, the update includes a couple of new features for iPhones. iOS 15.3 through iOS 18.3 were all released in late January over the years, so it is thereby likely that iOS 26.3 will be released towards the end of this month as well. The update is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and newer. Below,...
airpods pro 3 design

Apple Releases New AirPods Pro 3 Firmware Update

Tuesday January 13, 2026 11:29 am PST by
Apple today released a firmware update for the AirPods Pro 3. The latest firmware has a version number of 8B34, up from the previous version 8B30. Apple has a support document for AirPods firmware updates, and it indicates that the 8B34 update contains unspecified "bug fixes and other improvements." No other AirPods models received firmware updates today. How to install AirPods Pro...

Top Rated Comments

pier Avatar
103 months ago
Removing the system bar on macOS would be a huge usability mistake.
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jgbr Avatar
103 months ago
He’s obviously not an OS X power user. Hiding the menu bar would be a stupid mistake.
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
apb89 Avatar
103 months ago
Why is the woman in the middle pictured wearing a fitbit? LOL gtfo fitbit
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
coolfactor Avatar
103 months ago
Removing the system bar on macOS would be a huge usability mistake.
He’s obviously not an OS X power user. Hiding the menu bar would be a stupid mistake.
Yes, he does not understand some of the basic reasons *why* the Mac menu bar is better than operating systems that attach the menu bar to individual windows. On a Mac, you just slam your mouse to the top of the screen and you can quickly get to the menu that you want. In that macOS 11 mockup, the menubar becomes a difficult-to-use widget separate from the geographic dimensions of the screen.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
0958400 Avatar
103 months ago
Love the concept of macOS 11.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DocMultimedia Avatar
103 months ago
I'm still pissed about the sidebar icons going grayscale. It used to be so much easier to pick things out. Now it's little icons that all look about the same. Downloads, Music, Dropbox,... All little gray things.

Says the old man.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)