Welcome to 995 Mac Daily for Wednesday, August 20th, 2025.

I'm your host, Chance Miller.

We are sponsored this week by Backblaze.

Leading off today, it's been several years since Apple dropped leather and replaced it with fine woven for its iPhone and Apple Watch accessories.

Then, last year, it mostly dropped fine woven, particularly for iPhone cases, over customer

feedback. A new leak this week says that Apple has yet another alternative ready to go,

essentially a take two, for the iPhone 17 cases. To recap, Apple stopped selling all leather products,

including iPhone cases, MagSafe wallets, and Apple Watch bands, in an effort to be more eco-friendly

and achieve its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030. The replacement for leather was

fine-woven, and the response to fine woven from consumers

was quite disappointing. The iPhone cases in particular were criticized for being expensive

and prone to damage and stains. This new material coming for the iPhone 17 lineup, according

to this rumor, will be an alternative to leather made from a new

synthetic fabric with a more technical and less luxury vibe. The rumor says we can expect a visible

textile texture in colors including green, orange, blue, and purple. The goal of the new synthetic

fabric is to be more durable than fine woven,

while also still meeting Apple's eco-friendly goals. The iPhone 17 cases from Apple are also expected

to have an integrated lanyard loop so you can attach a lanyard and theoretically carry your phone

around your wrist. You can hit the link in the show notes to check out a couple images of Apple's alleged

new cases for the iPhone 17.

In other news today, we've talked multiple times about Apple's efforts to obtain more rights

to MLB coverage for Apple TV Plus.

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