My thanks to Sentry for sponsoring last week at DF. Sentry is running a hands-on workshop: “Crash Reporting, Tracing, and Logs for iOS in Sentry”. You can watch it on demand. You’ll learn how to connect the dots between slowdowns, crashes, and the user experience in your iOS app. It’ll show you how to:

• Set up Sentry to surface high-priority mobile issues without alert fatigue.
• Use Logs and Breadcrumbs to reconstruct what happened with a crash.
• Find what’s behind a performance bottleneck using Tracing.
• Monitor and reduce the size of your iOS app using Size Analysis.

Lydia Mee, reporting for Motorsport:

IMAX has announced that a select number of races will be shown live in IMAX locations across the United States in 2026. The new fan viewing experience is part of a collaboration with Apple TV, which has taken over the broadcasting rights for the championship in the US on a multi-year deal from 2026.

“F1 is a rapidly growing force in sports and culture in the US, and by bringing F1 on Apple TV live to IMAX theatres nationwide, we’re delivering the energy and excitement to even more screens in a truly immersive way,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of music, sports, and Beats.

You know what would add even more screens in an immersive way? If Vision Pro users had access to the same live screenings on virtual IMAX screens.

A reader pointed out that the 2026 Formula 1 season starts in Australia on March 8. You will recall from October that Apple TV is now the exclusive broadcast partner for F1 in the U.S. Apple is already dabbling with live immersive sports broadcasting for VisionOS with a limited slate of Lakers games this season. If they have something planned for streaming F1 races live on Vision Pro, with some level of immersion, March 4 would be a pretty good date to demo that experience to the media.

It doesn’t even have to be live race coverage. Technically that’s probably impossible for this season. It would just be a sign of confidence and interest in the platform long-term merely to see some sort of immersive component to F1 on Apple TV, even if it’s not live. Like “ride the track” to experience the turns and elevation changes.

Could just be a total coincidence that the Formula 1 season is starting the weekend after this event. But it seems worth noting.

Paul Ford, in an op-ed for The New York Times (gift link):

All of the people I love hate this stuff, and all the people I hate love it. And yet, likely because of the same personality flaws that drew me to technology in the first place, I am annoyingly excited.

Hartley Charlton, MacRumors:

Apple invited select members of the media to the event in three major cities around the world. It is simply described as a “special Apple Experience,” and there is no further information about what it may entail. The invitation features a 3D Apple logo design composed of yellow, green, and blue discs.

It is notable that Apple is specifically using the word “experience,” rather than “event.” Unlike a full live-streamed event from Apple Park, the March 4 event in other cities is likely to be smaller in scale.

Among the products expected soon — either by annual schedule predictability, or via the rumor mill — are the iPhone 17e, an updated iPad Air (going from the M3 to M4), an updated base-model iPad (going from A16 to A18), updated MacBook Pros with the M5 Pro and Max, updated MacBook Airs (going from M4 to M5 — the M4 models were released in early March last year), and, per Gurman, the long-rumored new lower-cost MacBook with an A18 chip (a “MacBook e”, if you will, although I certainly don’t think that will be the name — my guess is Apple will just call it “MacBook” without an adjective).

What strikes me is that March 4 — the “experience” day — is a Wednesday. So my spitball guess is that they announce all these products via Newsroom press releases, day-by-day. Like, say, the iPhone 17e on Monday, new iPad(s) on Tuesday, and new MacBooks on Wednesday. And then the “experience” will be a hands-on thing with in-person demos. Spread the announcements out across a few days, but then have in-person events for members of the media to get a hands-on experience with all of them, station-by-station, without needing to produce an Apple Event keynote film.