Amongst the many new products Apple introduced today, they also announced a new storage option called Fusion Drive. Apple's website describes how the drive works:
With Fusion Drive in your iMac, disk-intensive tasks — from booting up to launching apps to importing photos — are faster and more efficient. That’s because frequently used items are kept at the ready on speedy flash storage, while infrequently accessed items go to the hard drive. The file transfers take place in the background, so you won’t even notice.
Some thought the drive might be Apple's implementation of a Hybrid drive which uses SSD as a caching system, but it appears that Apple's system is distinct. The MacObserver digs into some details and clarifies:
To be clear, this is not a caching concept, at least not in the current use of the word. Cache would imply that the data on the SSD is duplicated, and it's not. If you have a 1TB mechanical drive paired with the 128GB SSD, you have a 1.12 TB storage platform. This truly is the fusion of all the space on two separate disks.
In a caching solution, like Intel's, files live on the hard disk drive and are temporarily mirrored to the SSD cache as needed. In an enterprise auto-tiering situation, and with Fusion Drive, the data is actually moved from one tier to another, rather than only being temporarily cached there.
The Mac Observer reports that there are two separate drives that appear as one logical partition. As a result, if your Hard Drive fails, it could be replaced with a 3rd party drive and reconfigured as a Fusion Drive.
Meanwhile, they note that all writes take place on the SSD drive, and are later moved to the mechanical drive if needed, resulting in faster initial writes. The Fusion will be available for the new iMac and new Mac mini models announced today.
Monday October 27, 2025 7:55 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more.
Below, we outline key details about iOS 26.1.
Release Date
Given that Apple has yet to seed an iOS 26.1 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, the...
Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:22 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple is about to drop iOS 26.1, the first major point release since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least six notable changes and improvements to look forward to. We've rounded them up below.
Apple has already provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 26.1, which means Apple will likely roll out the update to all compatible...
Monday October 27, 2025 4:51 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple is designing an updated version of the Apple TV 4K, and rumors suggest that it could come out sometime in the next couple of months. We're not expecting a major overhaul with design changes, but even a simple chip upgrade will bring major improvements to Apple's set-top box.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
We've rounded up all the latest Apple TV rumors.
...
Tuesday October 28, 2025 1:07 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate versions of upcoming iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, macOS Tahoe 26.1, tvOS 26.1, watchOS 26.1, and visionOS 26.1 updates for testing purposes. The RCs betas come a week after Apple released the fourth betas.
The new betas can be downloaded from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software...
Monday October 27, 2025 9:15 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple this month refreshed the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with its new M5 chip, and higher-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are expected to follow in early 2026. However, these machines will represent the final update to the current design, with Apple reportedly developing a completely new version of the MacBook Pro packed with next-generation hardware...
Thursday October 30, 2025 4:42 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models at the same time, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 18 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.
One thing worth...
Tuesday October 28, 2025 1:21 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of macOS Tahoe 26.1, which means the update will likely see a public launch next week.
The release candidate includes notes on what's in the update, so we have a full picture of the new features that Apple has included.
macOS Tahoe 26.1 adds AutoMix support over AirPlay, improved FaceTime audio...
Wednesday October 29, 2025 7:13 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Rumors are stoking excitement for the next-generation iPad mini that Apple is reportedly close to launching. So what should we expect from the successor to the iPad mini 7 that Apple released over a year ago? Read on to find out.
Processor and Performance
Apple is working on a next-generation version of the iPad mini (codename J510/J511) that features the A19 Pro chip, according to...
Tuesday October 28, 2025 5:27 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple is preparing to bring support for its digital car key feature to Jetour vehicles, according to evidence uncovered on Apple's backend by MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris.
Introduced in 2022, Car Keys allows an iPhone or Apple Watch to unlock a vehicle through the Wallet app. A digital version of a car key is stored in Wallet, and unlocking can be done by holding an Apple Watch or...
Personally, an SSD boot drive and separate large HD seems more practical. No need to "fuse" them into one volume. Just seems like asking for trouble.
The fusion drive is just software to automatically handle that. Most consumers probably don't want to have to deal with having a boot drive and a data drive. Some things can be tricky to get onto an external drive, like iTunes and iPhoto libraries.
