00:00:00 ◼ ► All right, Christina, it is good to see you. Good to have you here. And for the first time,
00:00:11 ◼ ► And I'm wearing no hat. I should have a Yankees hat on to celebrate opening of the baseball season.
00:00:24 ◼ ► Did you watch the Netflix broadcast of the, so the, sometimes I think what they used to do is
00:00:30 ◼ ► they'd have opening day and all across major leagues, like at one in the afternoon, all the teams would
00:00:35 ◼ ► play. And now they're doing a thing where there's like one opening night game. And this year it was
00:00:44 ◼ ► I did actually, because I wanted to see like how much they're, I guess, live streaming stuff has
00:00:49 ◼ ► improved for sports stuff. I thought it was great, actually. I thought it did a good job.
00:01:00 ◼ ► But the actual telecast was horrible. The score bug in the corner was so big as a rectangle,
00:01:07 ◼ ► but yet used fonts that were like 12 point type. You'd have to be two feet from your TV to see it.
00:01:18 ◼ ► Yeah, that's a good call. I think I actually, I think I watched it on my iPad. So I was probably part
00:01:25 ◼ ► The outfield camera, the one that shows like over the pitcher's shoulder to home plate,
00:01:29 ◼ ► the one that you typically see while the pitcher, you know, it's like the main camera for seeing
00:01:34 ◼ ► the at-bat was foggy the whole night. It was like a cloudy image. And I wrote about it on Daring
00:01:41 ◼ ► Fireball. And that one guy said, I was in the ballpark and it was a beautiful night. Like it makes
00:01:47 ◼ ► Well then that's wild. Okay. That's interesting. Cause I just assumed that it was the conditions. I mean,
00:01:55 ◼ ► actually, I mean, I tuned in, I didn't watch the whole game. I tuned in like mostly just to be
00:01:58 ◼ ► like, okay, well, how are they handling like live broadcasting? Cause they're starting to do more
00:02:03 ◼ ► of that. And that's interesting to me to see how they handle the load of all that stuff. But I am a
00:02:08 ◼ ► little bit surprised that like, they didn't just use the typical MLB setup that they would use for all
00:02:14 ◼ ► I mean, it wasn't, I don't know. It just shows that they don't broadcast baseball regularly. And I
00:02:19 ◼ ► think it's sort of, I don't know, expect better. What was the other thing? Oh, the other thing that
00:02:22 ◼ ► they screwed up was this year, there's a new rule for anybody who doesn't follow baseball. They call it
00:02:27 ◼ ► ABS automatic ball strike. And on every pitch of the game, the umpire still calls the balls and strikes,
00:02:34 ◼ ► but each team gets, I actually forget the exact rules. I think you get like two a game, maybe
00:02:40 ◼ ► something like that, but the batter can tap his helmet. If he doesn't like the call, if he like
00:02:44 ◼ ► takes the pitch and the umpire calls it a strike, but the batter thinks no way that was a ball.
00:02:49 ◼ ► They can ask, ask for a quick review and they go to a computer and it shows, and this is the first
00:02:56 ◼ ► year they've got it in major league baseball. And the first time it happened in the game, you know,
00:03:02 ◼ ► is it that the biggest moment in baseball history? No, but it is the first time that this rule has
00:03:07 ◼ ► ever been used. And in the meantime, the sideline reporter is interviewing the giants manager while
00:03:12 ◼ ► this is happening and they don't talk about it. And it's like the cameraman for Netflix and whoever
00:03:18 ◼ ► the director is, they cut away and you could see that the umpire and the batter for the Yankees are
00:03:24 ◼ ► talking about it and this is going on. But meanwhile, all you hear is this stupid interview with the
00:03:29 ◼ ► manager where they never say anything interesting. And so you don't know what the hell is going on.
00:03:33 ◼ ► And then they come back and they missed it. It's terrible. But anyway, the Yankees won. So I don't
00:03:40 ◼ ► No, it gets good. No, because it is one of those things, right? I mean, I think this shows actually
00:03:45 ◼ ► like this is an interesting conversation, even in the context of Apple stuff, right, is that the tech
00:03:49 ◼ ► and stuff is interesting and that's part of it, but it's the execution that will make or break an
00:03:53 ◼ ► experience. And exactly. And so if you don't have the experience doing live switching, if you don't
00:03:59 ◼ ► have the experience knowing how you want your lower thirds to look and you don't know who to go to and
00:04:05 ◼ ► what types of content to have, what you're showcasing, then it's not going to have the same sort of feel
00:04:12 ◼ ► Yeah. I did think in Netflix's credit, I thought they did a good job with the football last year.
00:04:18 ◼ ► I did too. That was a thing. Yeah, they did a good job with football. Amazon, I think, has actually done a
00:04:23 ◼ ► great job with the football. But again, like I'm, I'm a person who I'm like a fair weather fan for sports.
00:04:33 ◼ ► That's reasonable, though. No, that's a good way to be a sports fan. You waste less time.
00:04:38 ◼ ► Before we get into the meat of the show, how are you feeling? You had what, back surgery a month ago?
00:04:43 ◼ ► Yeah. So it was like seven weeks. So I had artificial disc replacement. So I had neurosurgery,
00:04:48 ◼ ► actually, between C6 and C7 on my cervical spine. So like where your neck connects to like your main
00:04:54 ◼ ► spine. And I like woke up one day in like early November, and I thought that I'd slept on my shoulder
00:05:00 ◼ ► wrong. And I was like, man, this really hurts. This is really bad. And after about like, I got into
00:05:06 ◼ ► a spine, like a sports medicine guy. And he was like, this is what I think it is. I was like,
00:05:11 ◼ ► okay, so am I going to get like imaging? What are we doing? He was like, no, you're going to do PT.
00:05:16 ◼ ► And I was like, no, I'm going to get an MRI. And when I finally got the MRI, it turned out it was
00:05:21 ◼ ► worse, like it was a herniated disc. It was worse than what he had thought. And so I wound up then
00:05:28 ◼ ► having to get scheduled. So basically, they go in through your neck, they cut your, they go through like
00:05:32 ◼ ► the front of your neck, they shove your front of your neck, they go into the front of your neck. Yeah.
00:05:36 ◼ ► And so so they and they show your larynx and like your esophagus aside, then they like burrow back
00:05:41 ◼ ► down to where your spinal cord is. And they dig out the bad disc, they take that out. If you have a
00:05:48 ◼ ► fusion, then they'll fuse to the bones together. In my case, I had artificial disc replacement, which
00:05:53 ◼ ► should be better for my outcome. They put like a titanium replacement, then they shove everything
00:05:59 ◼ ► back. And so you back up. Wow. It went well. It went well. I mean, recovery has been okay. I had
00:06:06 ◼ ► some kind of a reaction system. I said weird, like, just withdrawal stuff from some of the medications
00:06:12 ◼ ► that I've been on before the surgery. But yeah, I was in some pain afterwards recovery. I think
00:06:17 ◼ ► I was more optimistic about what it would be like, which is stupid when I then describe like what the
00:06:23 ◼ ► surgery is. You're like, yeah, of course, this is going to be like a major thing. This is not minor
00:06:26 ◼ ► surgery. They keep you overnight and stuff like that. But yeah, I'm doing pretty well. And the good
00:06:30 ◼ ► news is the reason I had it is that in addition to the pain, like that could have been surmountable,
00:06:35 ◼ ► although it sucked. But the disc was sitting on one of my like nerves, like spinal cord. And I
00:06:46 ◼ ► And so before or after before. Okay, okay. That and that was why they like moved me into like the
00:06:52 ◼ ► surgery position as early as they did, because I didn't have feeling in my hands. Like it felt like
00:06:57 ◼ ► you were to sleep all the time. Very scary. And my neurosurgeon's fear, he was like, we could give you
00:07:02 ◼ ► shots, we could do other things that are not surgical. My fear is that if this goes on, it could take
00:07:18 ◼ ► Hey, I'm through it, right? It was one of those things like people like, well, was there precipitating
00:07:23 ◼ ► event? No, he said, like, in probably like, you know, 50% of the cases, it's not like a thing where
00:07:29 ◼ ► you fall off a ladder or whatever. You just people just wake up that way. And there you go.
00:07:36 ◼ ► In some ways, it's, I'm laughing because it's like, in some ways, you really do want the
00:07:42 ◼ ► precipitating event. And it's like, you know, like you said, like falling off a ladder, it's like,
00:07:46 ◼ ► you know what, I'm just going to stay away from ladders. I'm going to pay someone to do all my ladder
00:07:50 ◼ ► work. And then this won't happen to me. And when it's Nope, you just woke up wrong. It's like, I can't
00:07:57 ◼ ► avoid waking up, you know, and you have no control over what stupid positions you get into when you're
00:08:03 ◼ ► sleeping. So but it is funny. I mean, I don't know, it's easier to laugh because it was a good outcome.
00:08:12 ◼ ► All right, let me take a break here. And I'm going to thank our first sponsor, knock it out. It's our
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00:10:18 ◼ ► follow that link or use the code TALKSHOW get 80 bucks in Sentry credits. 80 bucks in Sentry credits
00:10:25 ◼ ► just for going there. My thanks to Sentry. All right, what a month March has been for Apple.
00:10:30 ◼ ► Crazy. I can't remember, like, I mean, yeah, I'm trying to think, like, when we've had a non-kind of,
00:10:37 ◼ ► I mean, maybe some of the M-series launches, but I can't think of anything. It's certainly not a new
00:10:42 ◼ ► product. This has been one of the strongest product months they've had off-cycle that I can recall.
00:10:46 ◼ ► Yeah, definitely. I knew. It's like, it wasn't, because it wasn't even at the beginning of the
00:10:52 ◼ ► month. It's like, it was on March 9th when I published my 17e review. So it wasn't even, you
00:10:57 ◼ ► know, it was second week of March already, but it feels so long ago that I was writing about the 17e.
00:11:04 ◼ ► And I guess, you know, let's go in chronological. I mean, the two big products I want to talk about,
00:11:09 ◼ ► and I think that you have opinions on, are the 17e iPhone and the MacBook Neo. There are new iPads,
00:11:20 ◼ ► Well, that, which is kind of the problem, right? Yeah, there's new iPads. And then the new regular
00:11:26 ◼ ► Mac Pros, right, the Maxes and whatnot, which are screaming and, like, seem like they're incredible
00:11:30 ◼ ► machines. But the ones that I think are interesting outside of the norm are the E and the Neo, of
00:11:38 ◼ ► course. Right. And I think that they are clearly, and I tried to write about it, but I feel like this
00:11:45 ◼ ► is their theme for the show, and I feel like you are the perfect person, guest, to come and talk
00:11:49 ◼ ► about it, to sort of see it. They are like sibling products. I mean, they could call, I love the name
00:11:56 ◼ ► Neo, especially now that it's sort of sitting on my tongue for a couple of weeks after they've
00:12:00 ◼ ► announced it. I think it's a great name. And I kind of feel like they could rename these
00:12:04 ◼ ► E phones, the E phones, the Neos. Yeah, actually, I think you're right. Like, I wonder if they had
00:12:10 ◼ ► been able to, like, if they hadn't launched the 16E, if they had, you know, called it, like, the 16 Neo
00:12:16 ◼ ► or something. Like, that would, because I think you're right. Like, they fit, to me, they fit the
00:12:21 ◼ ► same spot in the market, which is, this is a really great value product, which Apple has never really
00:12:27 ◼ ► done before, that is very ideal for first-time Apple users. Yeah. Or, yeah, first-time, limited
00:12:34 ◼ ► budget kids, you know, which is sort of a limited budget scenario, right? Like, maybe the parents have
00:12:42 ◼ ► MacBook Pros and iPhone Pros and stuff like that, but it's, you know, a 12, 13-year-old kid getting
00:12:48 ◼ ► their first new iPhone, get them the 17E, right? Totally. I mean, like, I think with the E, what's
00:12:54 ◼ ► interesting about it is that, A, how much stronger it is over the 16E, which I didn't have a problem with.
00:13:00 ◼ ► Yeah. I felt like it was $100 too expensive last year. And I still feel like it's weird for them to
00:13:06 ◼ ► sell the 15 and the 16 while they're, like, last year, I thought there was no reason they should have
00:13:10 ◼ ► sold the 15 alongside the 16E this year. There's no reason to sell the 16 along the 17E. Like, that is
00:13:15 ◼ ► insane to me. You should never pay more money for these now, like, in every way, unless you're just
00:13:23 ◼ ► obsessing over the comparison sheet, a lesser phone. But I felt like, okay, it was maybe $100 more
00:13:28 ◼ ► expensive, and it lacked some things that really kind of, like, if you're going to give it up for the
00:13:34 ◼ ► cheap iPhone, which is what, like, the SE has been and whatnot, then it just felt like, for $600,
00:13:38 ◼ ► I was like, I don't know if I love this. But this year, because they brought in MagSafe,
00:13:43 ◼ ► because the chip is so good, because the other kind of refinements that they've made...
00:13:50 ◼ ► They added a color, which is, hey, you know what? Like, I'm not even going to be mad at it.
00:13:54 ◼ ► We get some little color love from Apple that, like, hey, let's do it. I feel like it's a much
00:13:59 ◼ ► better value. Like, I still feel like for most people, if you have the budget, especially if you're
00:14:03 ◼ ► going to be financing it over three years, a 17 is a better phone. It's got the better front-facing
00:14:09 ◼ ► camera. You know, it's got the dual lenses. It's going to be a little better performance, whatever.
00:14:13 ◼ ► So if you're paying for it over three years, and you're looking at, like, the $2 difference that
00:14:18 ◼ ► it might be per month, then 17 is great. But there are a ton of people who aren't, or to your point,
00:14:23 ◼ ► they don't care. They just need the cheapest phone. They're getting a phone for a kid. This is my first
00:14:27 ◼ ► phone. This is my work phone. This is something that I can only get if I'm on, like, a prepaid
00:14:33 ◼ ► plan. Like, this is a really, really good phone in its price. And it's a really big step up from what
00:14:43 ◼ ► Right. I personally, and I think this is to your point, too, as an enthusiast who is deeply,
00:14:50 ◼ ► you know, nerds out on details. And secondarily, I'm always, you know, for my whole adult life,
00:14:59 ◼ ► been a fairly avid prosumer photographer. I care about the cameras. I would love to talk
00:15:07 ◼ ► most people thinking about the 17E into spending $200 more into a 17. But it's their money, not mine.
00:15:16 ◼ ► And that's the one thing I try to be, you know, money falls through, flows through my hands, like
00:15:22 ◼ ► water through my, you know, like trying to hold water in my hands. I mean, I just, I can't hold
00:15:27 ◼ ► on to money, because I spend it on stuff that I want. But I realize it's other people's money. And
00:15:33 ◼ ► the priorities, you could just, whether I think about family members, I don't, I'm trying to think,
00:15:39 ◼ ► I don't know anybody in my immediate family with an E, 16 or 17E. But I know some people in my
00:15:48 ◼ ► haven't upgraded since these last year when the 16E came out. Right. And I know what they think about
00:15:56 ◼ ► a $600 cell phone, right? It's, it is for a lot of people, like going back in time to before the
00:16:04 ◼ ► iPhone and saying, Hey, how about a $600 phone? And it would be like, are you out of your frigging mind?
00:16:09 ◼ ► Right. And so we who are super nerds about all this, and me who buys the pro phone every year for
00:16:17 ◼ ► 11 or $1,200 or whatever it costs, I think 600 bucks, man, that's a pretty low price for a brand
00:16:23 ◼ ► new phone that has the A19 chip. And a lot of people out there, and I sympathize, I get it. And in some
00:16:29 ◼ ► ways, they have a lot more common sense than me, you know, that 600 bucks is a lot of money to spend on a
00:16:34 ◼ ► cell phone. It is, it is, it look, it objectively is. And I think that that's like, especially when
00:16:39 ◼ ► prices are the trend has been going upward, right? Like we had the subsidization era, then like the
00:16:44 ◼ ► high end, if it was unsubsidized, was like five or $600. Like that was a decade ago. And then we broke
00:16:49 ◼ ► that barrier, and it's not coming back. And there've been all these trade offs, if you've wanted to get
00:16:54 ◼ ► an iPhone, like you've had to go back multiple generations, or like the SE was a great phone,
00:17:00 ◼ ► if you got it, literally the second it came out, like if you bought the SE, the second it came out,
00:17:05 ◼ ► it was the best value you could get. But they kept the problem was they kept it on the market for like
00:17:11 ◼ ► And it was all over the place. Right. So I think four years, the one time, I think four years,
00:17:19 ◼ ► you're getting one of the best values in tech, but then it depreciates every single month that it's
00:17:29 ◼ ► which is like using like the binned, you know, chips, and like the the older, you know, bodies,
00:17:35 ◼ ► and like the different screens, and you know, making the trade offs that they're making to keep the price
00:17:39 ◼ ► that way, and they're going to come up with one every year, I feel like this is a very good option
00:17:44 ◼ ► for people who want an iPhone, who might not be in a position to be able to spend $1,000 on one,
00:17:52 ◼ ► who might not care enough about some of the features. And or again, like you need a secondary
00:17:57 ◼ ► phone there, there are a lot of variations. And like before what the option was, was to buy a refurb.
00:18:01 ◼ ► And like if you went on an iPhone, and this is better than a refurb on any level, unless you're
00:18:07 ◼ ► getting it directly from Apple, because if you're getting it from your carrier, or you're getting
00:18:10 ◼ ► it from like back market or those places, like, you know, you can't trust that stuff the same way.
00:18:18 ◼ ► Yeah. And I do think that it has kind of escaped attention. It's like the way we open the show with
00:18:28 ◼ ► talking about the Netflix thing. And it's like the thing that's on my mind are the things that annoyed
00:18:32 ◼ ► me and annoyances get your attention more than things that you're like, Oh, yeah, that's good.
00:18:38 ◼ ► You know, you're more likely to complain at a restaurant about a dish that was awful than you
00:18:44 ◼ ► are like, Hey, this was perfect. And you don't go to the manager after and say, you know, the steak
00:18:48 ◼ ► frites I ordered, they were absolutely perfect. You just don't, you know, you're more, you know,
00:18:52 ◼ ► you're going to have the niggles. Well, especially people like like you and I who like we're
00:18:55 ◼ ► enthusiasts, and we like these things. And we know what the other aspects I feel this way about the
00:19:00 ◼ ► Neo 2, right? Like I see, like the little things where I'm like, Oh, but if it just had this would
00:19:04 ◼ ► be perfect. But I try to take a step back and be like, No, but for what this is, this is really good.
00:19:09 ◼ ► The only problem I and I'm curious from your perspective, especially since you actually spent
00:19:13 ◼ ► time with a 17 E, the only area where I feel like here, the only area where I feel like,
00:19:25 ◼ ► want to discount that at all. But the only thing like I feel like holds back the 17 E at all in some
00:19:30 ◼ ► ways, is that I feel like this is the best base model iPhone that Apple has had in probably a decade.
00:19:38 ◼ ► Like I feel like that the 17 is a really, really strong phone, because I have a 17 and I have the
00:19:43 ◼ ► 17 Pro Max, I had to get a separate phone for work. And I bought a 17 in December. And I paid,
00:19:50 ◼ ► you know, $800 or whatever for it outright, I think I traded in my 12 Pro that I had laying around that
00:19:54 ◼ ► was unused. And, and it was, you know, so I got for like $600 or something. And that is such a good
00:20:00 ◼ ► phone with like the new, you know, front facing camera, which is fantastic. The rear cameras are
00:20:06 ◼ ► strong. The processor is good. You know, the weight and stuff is good. Like that's a really, really good
00:20:12 ◼ ► phone. And not every year, the base model phone isn't always good. Sometimes they're hot,
00:20:16 ◼ ► sometimes they lack other things. Like it had the promotion display now, like it really feels like
00:20:20 ◼ ► that gap is, is narrowed. So that's the only reason I look at the 17 E and I'm like, okay,
00:20:25 ◼ ► some model years, the E might actually, you know, be like the, the best kind of all around,
00:20:31 ◼ ► you know, winner this year. I feel like just only because the 17 is so strong, I still feel like
00:20:37 ◼ ► that's my MVP for like, if somebody is asking me what phone to buy, I'm going to tell them the 17.
00:20:42 ◼ ► But if somebody is going to tell me if you, if you want a pro, you know, you want a pro it usually,
00:20:48 ◼ ► but if somebody is going to be like a little more like budget conscious, or if again, you're getting
00:20:52 ◼ ► it for a kid or scenarios where it doesn't matter, then I'm like, yeah, the 17 E is for $200 less,
00:20:58 ◼ ► it's going to be really, really great. I'm going to answer your question, but I would like to first go
00:21:04 ◼ ► back to the thing that people complained about. And I think rightly so. And that has sort of escaped
00:21:11 ◼ ► attention is that in the Tim Cook era, which one way or the other is winding down, right? Yeah,
00:21:17 ◼ ► whether it's this year or next year, or soon, it's, you know, it's 65. It's sooner rather than later,
00:21:23 ◼ ► he's going to step aside as CEO. And one of the defining factors of the Tim Cook era, and it was
00:21:29 ◼ ► most prominently exemplified by the iPhone lineup, is the selling of year old and years old
00:21:45 ◼ ► And it became a defining characteristic of the Tim Cook era for a while. But they've kind of gotten
00:21:52 ◼ ► almost entirely gotten away from it. If you look at Apple's iPhone lineup, now the only old phone
00:21:57 ◼ ► is the iPhone 16, which is, which is should not be sold, should not be right. And I think though,
00:22:04 ◼ ► that they are click by there's only so much they're going to change year over year, you know,
00:22:09 ◼ ► that they've got everything on this annual schedule, everything just about. And there's only so many
00:22:16 ◼ ► changes they want to make year to year, I kind of wonder if this is the last year that they're going to
00:22:23 ◼ ► do that. Like I, yeah, and I think, and I think, to your point about the base, no adjective 17 being so good,
00:22:34 ◼ ► that that's why they don't want to move that down $100 next year, you know, because it has promotion display,
00:22:42 ◼ ► Oh, that's a great point. Because at that point, that is $100 upgrade over an 18e, in most cases,
00:22:48 ◼ ► like, because you're not going to notice the processor differences, you know, the cameras are going to be
00:22:54 ◼ ► I can't, you know, and again, this isn't any, you know, this sort of like how Apple strategizes that
00:22:59 ◼ ► type of product. I mean, nobody in the rumor market even tries talking about it. Everybody just wants
00:23:04 ◼ ► to know what the new phones are. Nobody really, Mark Gurman doesn't write reports, or Ming-Chi Kuo
00:23:10 ◼ ► doesn't have updates, like, how many years are they going to keep the iPhone 17 around. But I kind of
00:23:15 ◼ ► feel like strategically, that's the sort of thing that's interesting to me about Apple. And they used to
00:23:20 ◼ ► keep like two or maybe even three years of those phones around. And it annoyed people. And, you
00:23:28 ◼ ► know, I think rightly so. I don't know. I get it strategically. And I think Apple had sales data
00:23:34 ◼ ► to, I mean, I mean, because that's Tim Cook, right? Yeah, right. And they're like, yeah, but people come
00:23:39 ◼ ► in, and they're like, yeah, you can get this one for $100 less. And normal people come in, and you're
00:23:44 ◼ ► like, you get iPhone 12 or the 13. And they look at them, and they're like, then the 13 has better
00:23:48 ◼ ► battery life, blah, blah, blah. And you're telling them why the 13 is better than the 12. And meanwhile,
00:23:52 ◼ ► they're looking at the $100. And they've already, they're like walking towards the checkout. And
00:23:55 ◼ ► they're like, how do I check out an Apple store? And you know, now they're, they're just buying the
00:23:59 ◼ ► 12 because all they see is the $100. Yeah, that they're sort of moving away from that with everything.
00:24:05 ◼ ► And I think it's great. And maybe, you know, maybe it's the John Ternus influence. It does coincide
00:24:11 ◼ ► with him being elevated to the chief of hardware. Maybe it would have happened no matter who was
00:24:15 ◼ ► elevated to the chief of hardware. But I think it, it is a very interesting thing. And that's
00:24:21 ◼ ► the thing that ties the Neo, the MacBook Neo and the 17E together is that they are designed from the
00:24:27 ◼ ► ground up to be lower priced, but brand new. But brand new. Some things are brand new, like the A19 chip.
00:24:36 ◼ ► The chips are new. They're reusing other components. Do you want to know my theory on this?
00:24:41 ◼ ► On the chips? All right. So my theory on the chips is that in terms of differentiation. Okay,
00:24:47 ◼ ► two things. One, I do think it's interesting to think about if they were to keep the 17 around,
00:24:50 ◼ ► what would that do to how they position the 18E? I hadn't thought of that. But that's a really good
00:24:54 ◼ ► point. But I think that one reason they might do, as you're saying, like just drop, like having that
00:25:01 ◼ ► $100 skew, which, which, you know, in most cases, you shouldn't have. I think it's coming down to
00:25:06 ◼ ► their chip production. There is so much competition right now from TSMC, from everybody else. Like
00:25:11 ◼ ► Apple used to be able to just buy up the supply chain, and they had the weight to be able to do
00:25:16 ◼ ► it. Apple has competition now to do that. Other companies are coming in and front running that,
00:25:21 ◼ ► the AI, Frontier Labs, you know, like NVIDIA, like the other manufacturers are all needing that time.
00:25:26 ◼ ► And so I think what you're seeing is that for higher volume products, so not the displays,
00:25:32 ◼ ► not the Apple TVs, you know, whatever, but for the high volume products, I don't feel like they
00:25:38 ◼ ► can continue to keep the manufacturing around to keep pumping out those old chips is my theory,
00:25:44 ◼ ► which I think is ultimately a good thing for consumers, right? I feel like that's why they
00:25:49 ◼ ► can use these binned newest chips in the phones. They can use last year's chips that they were shoving
00:25:54 ◼ ► in like the 16 Pros, whatever, into the Neo. They can save those off and know what they're going to do
00:26:00 ◼ ► in the future without having to keep up a separate line for a phone that if you're going to be selling
00:26:07 ◼ ► a 17, maybe you make enough of them in advance that you can still sustain another year of sales. But
00:26:12 ◼ ► what happens if your estimates are off? Are you going to reopen the line? Are you just going to cancel
00:26:17 ◼ ► that skew? Like, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. It might, but that might be a factor. It really
00:26:22 ◼ ► might. And I also, it's sort of a correlated point is I do wonder, because they are binned on the GPUs,
00:26:35 ◼ ► I do wonder how predictable that is. And therefore, like, how many of the 17Es are chips where one of the
00:26:47 ◼ ► GPU cores didn't fail testing and actually was either going to be discarded because it didn't
00:26:53 ◼ ► meet the specs for the phone that had all GPUs active? And how many are actually, like, crippled
00:27:05 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, well, NVIDIA used to do that, like, with their GPUs, is that you would have,
00:27:10 ◼ ► like, people, that's how people figure out, like, overclocks is that in some cases, it really would be
00:27:15 ◼ ► kind of like a bend with overclocks on the CPUs, too. But, like, people would figure out, okay, in some
00:27:19 ◼ ► cases, maybe you really do have a lesser chip. But in a lot of cases, it was an intentional thing
00:27:25 ◼ ► Yep. And, you know, and with PCs, where you can literally open the case, and, you know, you can access
00:27:31 ◼ ► stuff, and the software is all there for you to modify, you can do crazy things, like, add your
00:27:37 ◼ ► own cooling to the system, and enable disabled GPU cores, and take your chances. And you can't really
00:27:47 ◼ ► But I totally understand how, and you think, well, that sucks, though, if some of these chips could have
00:27:55 ◼ ► all GPUs enabled, but Apple is disabling one just for marketing, because it's going into a 17e,
00:28:04 ◼ ► which is advertised thus, they couldn't just leave it enabled. I mean, they could, but if they did,
00:28:11 ◼ ► then people would go nuts buying them, going home, seeing how many GPUs were active, and then returning
00:28:18 ◼ ► it until they get one that has all the cores active. So you kind of have to do it this way. If you're
00:28:25 ◼ ► If you're going to sell it, yeah, you have all of them have to be bent. Yeah, absolutely. And it
00:28:29 ◼ ► becomes, like, it would be interesting, I think, to know, to your point, like, how many of them are
00:28:32 ◼ ► actually bent, and how many of them are, okay, we're just using either extras or excess. And I'm sure
00:28:38 ◼ ► that this is where, like, Tim Cook, I'm sure that his, you know, predictions and whatnot are pretty
00:28:42 ◼ ► good. Like, they look at, okay, we know about how many we're going to have to sell, and if we have to do
00:28:51 ◼ ► Yeah. And, you know, I don't blame them. And I, you know, but I think overall, you know, so you can
00:28:58 ◼ ► complain about that. But really, that's not a complaint about Apple. It's a complaint about human
00:29:02 ◼ ► nature, right? Yeah. Human beings could not handle the fact that if you buy a 17e, you're getting a
00:29:08 ◼ ► lottery ticket as to how many GPU cores you're going to get. We just, I admit, I'd like to think that I'm
00:29:14 ◼ ► serene enough, you know, and above it all. But no, if I bought a 17e, and I knew some of them had six
00:29:26 ◼ ► I was going to say, I mean, people already do that. They play the panel lottery when they buy
00:29:29 ◼ ► monitors or, or like, you know, non Mac laptops, like people will literally buy six of them and
00:29:38 ◼ ► There was, I don't, it doesn't really matter which phone it was. But remember, there was one time where
00:29:43 ◼ ► there were some very earlier in the iPhone, there was like a chip that was made by Samsung, and then
00:29:49 ◼ ► one that was made by TSMC. Yeah, it was before TSMC's undisputed, yeah, undisputed dominance of
00:29:58 ◼ ► fabrication. And there were, you know, there were slightly different benchmarks, you know,
00:30:03 ◼ ► depending which one you got, even though you spent the same money, and it said it was the same phone.
00:30:13 ◼ ► Samsung still does that. Like they have their Qualcomm processors in the US, and they have the
00:30:17 ◼ ► Exxon S processors elsewhere. And they're different, they're different performances, you know,
00:30:23 ◼ ► but Apple, yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, there might have been like, yeah, it was just a country by
00:30:28 ◼ ► country thing. They're like, okay, we'll get within this realm. But it was one of those things you're
00:30:35 ◼ ► Yeah. So then returning to your point about the 17 being a really good base model, probably the best,
00:30:42 ◼ ► you know, probably the best, I would say almost without question, the best since they've split from
00:30:48 ◼ ► base and a one with the name pro in the in the name, I would say it's the best. And it's
00:30:54 ◼ ► the two things in particular are the promotion display, finally getting it. And I had been
00:31:01 ◼ ► wondering for a while, even though the rumors said it was going to get it a year ago. So I kind of was
00:31:06 ◼ ► like, okay, they're just going to they just waited. But I legit wondered if in Apple's mind, calling it
00:31:14 ◼ ► promotion meant it was only in products with pro in the name. So only iPhone pro will ever get promotion.
00:31:22 ◼ ► And I kind of I didn't spend a lot of time blabbing that theory because I thought that doesn't hold
00:31:28 ◼ ► up because eventually that's going to be table stakes, right? Right. Eventually, like the 20 E the
00:31:34 ◼ ► iPhone 20 E is going to have it, it's going to have it or the 20. I don't know what year but it one of
00:31:40 ◼ ► these years, it's going to happen. It's it's table stakes. But I thought maybe though, by the time they
00:31:45 ◼ ► do that, they will give it a different name. Like maybe it won't drop to one hertz, you know, it'll,
00:31:52 ◼ ► it'll go to the higher rates, but won't drop to one. I don't know. But it's they just gave it
00:31:58 ◼ ► promotion. And that's great. It's a much better screen. And it's a thing at these price points that
00:32:03 ◼ ► had stood out for as much as regular consumers maybe don't walk in, you know, not maybe almost
00:32:11 ◼ ► certainly don't really walk into the store thinking maybe this is a year I'll switch from Android to
00:32:16 ◼ ► iPhone or vice versa. I mean, people do switch, but it's, you know, not typical, but in our world
00:32:22 ◼ ► where people review it, at the $800 $900 price points, it was starting to stick out like a sore
00:32:27 ◼ ► thumb. It was that the iPhone was stuck at 60 hertz. Well, and I think the problem too, was that it was
00:32:32 ◼ ► actually hurting like, you know, if you're going to go to a pro, you're going to be getting a better
00:32:36 ◼ ► system. But say if you're not somebody who is ever going to be able to spend $1,000 $1,200 on a phone,
00:32:41 ◼ ► you're, I think in some cases, the screen can make a bigger impact than people might think because
00:32:46 ◼ ► they're looking at the two phones side by side, they have similar, you know, body designs,
00:32:51 ◼ ► they have similar lack of colors, they have similar camera systems. What you so you're trying to figure
00:32:58 ◼ ► out, okay, I've got a three year old phone, it's still really fast, because it's an iPhone,
00:33:01 ◼ ► should I upgrade to a new one? And there wasn't necessarily a push to spend $800 on a new phone,
00:33:13 ◼ ► this is going to have way better cameras, this is going to have the front facing camera is fantastic.
00:33:19 ◼ ► And it also now has this screen that I'm going to even if I don't recognize the difference between
00:33:29 ◼ ► Yep. And it is sort of fundamental to the Apple brand, especially from the less technical and either
00:33:39 ◼ ► an Apple customer or a potential new Apple customer is, it is almost primary to the Apple brand that Apple
00:33:47 ◼ ► stuff looks better. Both the heart, everything about it, the stores look better. They have the nicest
00:33:53 ◼ ► tables in the stores, they have nicer lighting in the stores, the actual aluminum hardware looks
00:34:01 ◼ ► better, the screens look better, everything is supposed to look that that's the Apple brand,
00:34:05 ◼ ► they design stuff. That's why all the way Tahoe looks like ass is so off off brand. Right? That
00:34:12 ◼ ► shit just looks better, right? And you can just go back to like the heyday of like the introduction of
00:34:18 ◼ ► the I work suite. And you you know, I know, like Excel versus numbers is a really interesting
00:34:24 ◼ ► comparison, because I totally get how if you're a spreadsheet nerd, you're like a few numbers,
00:34:31 ◼ ► I need this, that and the other thing that are technical things that Excel does, that numbers
00:34:36 ◼ ► couldn't handle. And the other side of it is Yeah, but just look at the two apps, just look at them.
00:34:41 ◼ ► All right. And it's like, this is a numbers is somehow makes a spreadsheet look used to at least
00:34:46 ◼ ► look beautiful, right? That's the Apple brand. And so like the 60 hertz thing is like off brand for
00:34:54 ◼ ► Apple at that price point, right? And I think it works at the new it with the current lineup in the
00:35:00 ◼ ► introduction of the 17e, I think it works where you could say, well, this is the base model, and you
00:35:04 ◼ ► don't get it. And I think they were like, maybe at least a year, maybe even two years late, but
00:35:10 ◼ ► probably about one I think I think last year's base iPhones probably should have had promotion.
00:35:15 ◼ ► I think they should have to because at that point, it had been stable stakes for so long. And again,
00:35:19 ◼ ► like to your point, people aren't coming in and being like, I'm going to switch from Android to iOS.
00:35:23 ◼ ► But it does kind of, you know, not you a little bit if you're like, okay, because the thing with
00:35:29 ◼ ► Apple is, you know, you pay a premium, but rarely do you feel like you're being nickel and dimed.
00:35:35 ◼ ► There are a few products in the lineup. And there are a few omissions that they've had over the
00:35:39 ◼ ► years where I will admit that I've been like, okay, now you're just nickel and diming me like
00:35:44 ◼ ► you're just holding things back, just so you will get me to spend the extra $200. And that felt like
00:35:51 ◼ ► that was one of those really like, egregious things. But it's interesting. It's like, at $800,
00:36:02 ◼ ► Yeah, it feels right. And then the other one, and this is where I first thought I got to get
00:36:08 ◼ ► Christina on the show this month is after I wrote my 17 E review, you sent me a very nice text message
00:36:14 ◼ ► where you didn't call me dumb. But, but I was I missed the one thing I did not put in my review
00:36:20 ◼ ► was to talk about the front facing camera. Yeah, which is a huge difference with the 17 E to the
00:36:27 ◼ ► regular 17. Where the regular 17 and this is another one of the reasons I call it the best
00:36:32 ◼ ► base iPhone is Apple introduced this all new front facing camera this year, where it's a square. It's
00:36:39 ◼ ► really interesting. And I think it makes so much sense that it's a square sensor. So no matter which
00:36:44 ◼ ► way you orient your phone, you can take a quote unquote, full frame image, or at least full width
00:36:52 ◼ ► image with the front facing camera. And in addition to the sensor size, which lets you rotate the phone
00:36:59 ◼ ► either way without cropping, it's just a higher quality front facing camera. It's fantastic.
00:37:04 ◼ ► And it's I don't take tons of selfies. But I do sometimes, you know, and other people I know take
00:37:12 ◼ ► lots and lots of them. And it's just a much better camera. And it just is I my personal lack of selfie,
00:37:21 ◼ ► photography makes it a blind spot for me. But I just know that technically, it is a much better
00:37:28 ◼ ► camera. And it's really interesting that they put it in this non pro phone the same year that it came
00:37:34 ◼ ► out in the pro. Yes. And I do wonder to your point, maybe if they were that was kind of part of their
00:37:38 ◼ ► differentiation strategy, right? Maybe if you're thinking longer term, okay, we're going to stop
00:37:42 ◼ ► selling the prior year model at launch, maybe we'll let carriers continue to do that. But we're going to
00:37:48 ◼ ► only sell our kind of three main tiers in the store, not for which which I think is it would be neater
00:37:54 ◼ ► in any way, just for the lineup. But I wonder, like, if they're looking at that, they're going,
00:37:59 ◼ ► okay, we've got this new sensor, we know, and I think it's not just photos, I think video is actually
00:38:04 ◼ ► where a lot of people use this stuff. And, you know, for taking TikToks or Instagram reels and other
00:38:09 ◼ ► stuff, like a lot of people use this a lot. And this is where you really see the stark difference.
00:38:17 ◼ ► once you have MagSafe, once you have the chips that are fast enough, you know, once you have a good
00:38:22 ◼ ► enough rear camera, a promotion display is great. But the thing that you could see somebody being like,
00:38:28 ◼ ► okay, I will step up and pay the extra $200. Or even in this case, like I said, with the 17,
00:38:34 ◼ ► like why I think it was such a good base model phone is you're like, okay, this is leaps and
00:38:40 ◼ ► bounds ahead of my iPhone 13 or iPhone 14, right? Even if I had a pro, the base iPhone this year is
00:38:46 ◼ ► going to be better in most regards. So yeah, I think that that's a great, like to me, I looked at
00:38:54 ◼ ► the 17e and I was like, okay, that's their differentiator. They've gotten rid of the stuff
00:38:58 ◼ ► where I felt like they were cheaping out. Like last year, it really bothered me that they didn't
00:39:02 ◼ ► have MagSafe. I was like, this is a move. I think you and I talked about this on a previous
00:39:12 ◼ ► The floor mats. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And so, you know, like when you don't include the
00:39:15 ◼ ► floor mats with a car, like that's what this felt like. This felt like not including floor mats with
00:39:19 ◼ ► the car. But if you get past that, then I'm like, okay, I can understand why having to upgrade the
00:39:26 ◼ ► sound system or upgrade like the GPS system or whatever to be better than what it was. That's a
00:39:31 ◼ ► trade-off. And that's even a thing where I'm like, okay, well, this is the one I really want,
00:39:35 ◼ ► it doesn't feel like nickel and diming. Yeah, absolutely. And effectively you do get the
00:39:43 ◼ ► nicer screen and that's nice to have. It does make it look nicer. But I would say the main reason to
00:39:49 ◼ ► think about spending the extra 200 bucks is to get 200 bucks worth of camera that front and back
00:39:55 ◼ ► front and back. You get the second lens, the ultra wide, and you don't even get the second lens with the
00:40:03 ◼ ► 17E. And the 1X main camera is better. And it is very noticeably better in low light for sure.
00:40:10 ◼ ► Anybody could see it. If you turn off the flash and take low light photos, you don't even have to really
00:40:17 ◼ ► care that much about photography. And you could see the difference. It's really not subtle. You don't
00:40:22 ◼ ► have to zoom in. But all that said, the 17E 1X camera is really good for the price point. And other
00:40:29 ◼ ► than, and you know, people are like, I don't take a lot of pictures in low, like really dark rooms.
00:40:33 ◼ ► You know, I turn the lights on, you know, or I take them outside. And in good light, it is
00:40:40 ◼ ► surprisingly good. And often to me, as somebody who cares, surprisingly hard to tell the difference in
00:40:49 ◼ ► And I think it's just estimate how good like Apple's phones have been. And again, like I think that the
00:40:55 ◼ ► person who's buying this, like you might have people who are buying them for their kids, but a lot of
00:40:58 ◼ ► people are going to be people who had an iPhone 12 or a 13 or something like that. And at that point,
00:41:04 ◼ ► you're like, okay, this is going to be even with these comparisons, this rear camera, the single lens is
00:41:13 ◼ ► Right. And there are people who don't take a lot of pictures with their phone. And then they look
00:41:18 ◼ ► at the back of these iPhones and the camera units are getting bigger and bigger. You know, the plateaus
00:41:23 ◼ ► are huge on the pro now. And then you look at the 17 E and if you don't really care about the camera
00:41:29 ◼ ► and you're like, yeah, once in a while I take a picture and it's like, you look at the back and
00:41:33 ◼ ► yeah, that's what I want. It's just a lens that sticks out of my way. Like the side, it's like the
00:41:38 ◼ ► sticks out about as much as a dime, but it's smaller than a dime. And that's it. It's just the lens
00:41:43 ◼ ► that sticks out. And if you're like 95% of the people and maybe even higher for the 17 E market
00:41:51 ◼ ► who put a case on their phone, then the case doesn't have a lip around the lens because it
00:41:56 ◼ ► doesn't need to because the lens sticks out so little that the thickness of the case actually
00:42:02 ◼ ► is higher than the surface of the Sapphire or the lens. So you don't even need that. And so with the
00:42:07 ◼ ► case, it just sits flat and it does, it is a great look. And it is, in my opinion, the best,
00:42:15 ◼ ► second best feeling iPhone. The Air is obviously the best hand feel. But I just had the compare page
00:42:21 ◼ ► open. The weight of the Air is 165 grams. The weight of the 17 E is 169 grams. It's just like
00:42:32 ◼ ► one tenth of an ounce. So it's almost the same weight. It's obviously the Air is going to feel
00:42:37 ◼ ► better because it's the higher quality materials and like the Air does feel like a great. Yeah,
00:42:41 ◼ ► but it's a great feel. But that's awesome. Yeah. There's no camera bump up there for your fingers.
00:42:47 ◼ ► It's really great. And the MagSafe thing, I totally agree. It's a good segue into talking about the Neo.
00:42:54 ◼ ► So yeah, I'll say this. It was honestly, in hindsight, a mistake in the 16 E to not have MagSafe. It just
00:43:02 ◼ ► felt really cheap not to. It did. It felt spiteful. It felt punishing. Yeah, exactly. It felt punishing.
00:43:07 ◼ ► That was the thing, right? The fact that people were having to buy cases or put on like magnetic things.
00:43:12 ◼ ► Exactly. Right. Just to do it. And you're like, okay, but like, and you know, and the fact that you
00:43:17 ◼ ► can get it, every other phone would have that. That was the problem. Right. And if the charging rate was
00:43:23 ◼ ► still as low as it was in terms of, oh, you only get 7.5 watts of charging speed or whatever the
00:43:29 ◼ ► limit was, but just put the magnets in there. So it sticks to the thing in your car or sticks to the
00:43:35 ◼ ► thing that you could, the tripod mount you could put on your desk for using your phone for video
00:43:40 ◼ ► calls or any of the zillion other weird things out there. The 10,000 things you can buy on Amazon that
00:43:53 ◼ ► have MagSafe and it's like, and I know USB-C is universal across all devices, but it's like,
00:43:59 ◼ ► if you go back to like the lightning era, it's like all the iPhones had the same charger. So it's like,
00:44:03 ◼ ► if anybody had lightning and say, well, then, you know, if you check into a hotel and there was a
00:44:07 ◼ ► lightning bedside charger in the hotel, it didn't matter which phone you had, you just stuck your
00:44:13 ◼ ► phone on it. And that's like what MagSafe is. And it just felt so like this is this one had like a bad
00:44:20 ◼ ► smell to it aspect of the 16E. They fixed it. That's great. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. Up the base
00:44:26 ◼ ► storage. And that was huge too. That I was actually shocked on. And that again, like that was the thing
00:44:32 ◼ ► where like, again, like you, you look at like the, why is the 16 still being sold? Because I think that,
00:44:37 ◼ ► I think that one's still being sold at 128 gigs of storage and you're like, okay, why is this still
00:44:43 ◼ ► here? What are you thinking? Do you think I'm thinking that Apple intelligence might be driving
00:44:48 ◼ ► this a little like where they want to comfortably have a fair amount of storage that they can take
00:44:53 ◼ ► up for local models? Like, yeah, I wonder, I don't know. Maybe it's that I think maybe they finally
00:45:01 ◼ ► like the bullying worked and like us complaining about, you know, the base storage has finally kind
00:45:05 ◼ ► of gotten to them and they've kind of realized it might also just be a matter of again, like with when
00:45:09 ◼ ► it comes to supply chain stuff might be like the chips. It's like, it's cheaper for us to just buy,
00:45:13 ◼ ► you know, the 256 NANDs. Yeah. And I don't focus on Apple's financials. That's not really my beat,
00:45:20 ◼ ► but their margins continue to inch higher, not lower. And part of that is that the mix that is services,
00:45:27 ◼ ► which is the highest profit margin segment of Apple, but their overall company profit margin is inching
00:45:37 ◼ ► higher than services alone. Like their margins on hardware are inching higher too. And so I think
00:45:43 ◼ ► that's part of it where it's like, man, we are really firing on all cylinders and we're in the low 40s
00:45:48 ◼ ► on margin quarter after quarter. Whereas for years, it was an enormous feather in Tim Cook's hat that they
00:45:56 ◼ ► were in the 30 high 30s, you know, for years. And it's like now they've gone even higher. And in a businesses
00:46:05 ◼ ► like PCs and phones where the competition is in this cutthroat low margin territory for the most part,
00:46:12 ◼ ► that their margins are so good that they really can afford to not skimp on base storage. And it's like,
00:46:20 ◼ ► okay, fine. Thank God. Right. But it's great. All right, let me take a break. And I'm going to thank
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00:48:57 ◼ ► say, Oh, I see. Here's where people are going. That whole section of the site, nobody's going to Oh, here's where
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00:49:41 ◼ ► Squarespace for their continuing support of the show. All right. So that brings us to the Neo. I love the Neo. I gave it, I think, for me, a rave
00:49:51 ◼ ► review. But the problem I see talking about it in the same month back to back with the 17 E is that the 17 E is so much
00:49:59 ◼ ► better than the 16 E. And I can't help but feel that the Neo to next year is going to be a lot better than this
00:50:05 ◼ ► year's Neo. Yes, I feel the same way. I feel the same way. I like I love the Neo. Like my I was critical about the Neo when
00:50:11 ◼ ► it came out on like the things that you and I would be critical on. And I want to be clear my critiques are I
00:50:16 ◼ ► think it's a great product. I love that Apple is entering into this market segment, which they've, you
00:50:20 ◼ ► know, like, for various reasons not wanted to get into maybe they didn't have the margins or whatever. I feel
00:50:26 ◼ ► like it's really good. I love the colors. I like the positioning. I like the tick tock ads. But we look at
00:50:32 ◼ ► the 17 E and we're like, this is so much better than the 16 E. I don't know if I could definitively say
00:50:40 ◼ ► across the board that the Neo right now is better than the MacBook Air M1. And like, I realized that
00:50:50 ◼ ► it's a better performer, but it's close. And that was selling for the same price at Walmart. Whereas next
00:50:56 ◼ ► year, if they are following these trends where they're going to be using the cut down chip that's
00:51:00 ◼ ► been, if it has 12 gigs of RAM, but it has other stuff, like then you kind of like set yourself up
00:51:06 ◼ ► to this position where you're like, I'm not going to tell anybody not to buy it. But it is one of those
00:51:10 ◼ ► things where I'm like, man, you can almost see where the tea leaves are going. It's like, okay, the next
00:51:14 ◼ ► one is going to be like the one. Yeah. And again, they are like sibling products where the iPhone 16 E a
00:51:22 ◼ ► year ago had this one glaring, everybody's going to notice it omission, which was MagSafe. Right. And to me,
00:51:30 ◼ ► with the MacBook Neo this year, that one thing that everybody notices is that dud of a second USB-C port
00:51:38 ◼ ► that's only at USB-C two speeds, right? Yeah. You've got one full speed USB three port. And then the
00:51:47 ◼ ► second port is only USB two speeds. And it's like, ah, that sucks. And Apple's story, which I give them
00:51:54 ◼ ► credence to right at the New York event, they had it ready to go, which is that this is the first
00:51:59 ◼ ► product they've ever sold with an A series chip that has more than one USB port. And it was an
00:52:06 ◼ ► engineering challenge to add the second one, even with the USB two speeds. What they mean by that,
00:52:13 ◼ ► what they leave out is the engineering challenge of doing it at these price points, right? Like,
00:52:18 ◼ ► obviously, if they wanted to sell it at a higher price, they could have done it. And the proof of
00:52:24 ◼ ► that is the developer kits for Apple Silicon in 2020, which were, what was the hardware shape? Was it a
00:52:32 ◼ ► Mac mini or a Mac studio? It was a Mac mini shape, I think. It was a Mac mini. Yeah. Right. With the A12Z
00:52:39 ◼ ► chip, which was previously, the Z chips were for iPad pros for a while before that's right. Before
00:52:46 ◼ ► M series chips existed. And by definition, the developer kit in 2020, when they first announced
00:52:52 ◼ ► the move to app, the transition to Apple Silicon, wasn't going to have an M series chip yet, because
00:53:03 ◼ ► had multiple USB-C three ports. And I don't, they might've even had Thunderbolt. I think it was
00:53:11 ◼ ► Thunderbolt, but I was trying to remember that too. Like it might've been Thunderbolt three actually,
00:53:14 ◼ ► but it was definitely USB three. It was, it was definitely, and it was, it was, yeah, it was
00:53:19 ◼ ► multiple ports, multiple. Yes. And, and an HDMI port out. And obviously what they did is that the whole
00:53:27 ◼ ► system, you know, they call these things SOCs and like the A12Z was a system on a chip. And as
00:53:33 ◼ ► it stood, it was the whole system in the iPad pro that it was in, what they did for the developer
00:53:40 ◼ ► kit was obviously add parts of the system that weren't on the chip. Yes. Right. It's that there
00:53:46 ◼ ► was more computer in the developer kit than just the A12Z system on a chip. There was parts of the
00:53:53 ◼ ► system were outside, which added costs and they never sold those things. They never sold it. It was,
00:53:57 ◼ ► there was one-offs, right. They've been like paid people to like, okay, you're going to put that under
00:54:01 ◼ ► deposit. Please send this back. Cause I know people wanted to keep them. And yeah, exactly.
00:54:04 ◼ ► It was not a mass market thing. And so I understand why the engineering decisions they could make for
00:54:10 ◼ ► that or why they are decisions they could not make for this product. However, it still sucks to have
00:54:17 ◼ ► a USB two port on a laptop, even a $500 laptop. If you're getting the student discount in 2026,
00:54:24 ◼ ► people say, Oh, it doesn't matter. And I'm like, but that's the only part of this whole thing
00:54:32 ◼ ► a $300 Chromebook has better IO than the MacBook Neo. And that's just true. The IO is better. Like,
00:54:39 ◼ ► I'm not saying that it's a better product at all, but I'm saying the IO that you get from those things,
00:54:43 ◼ ► they have HDMI ports, they have multiple USB C 3.2 ports. It's, it's better. Some of them have us,
00:54:48 ◼ ► you know, like, but it's, it's objective. It's not subjective. It really is. It's a little frustrating,
00:54:54 ◼ ► but not surprising that they don't label the two ports. They don't even use the, I hate that.
00:55:00 ◼ ► They don't use like, and again, I like, there's sort of an industry standard that you can use blue
00:55:08 ◼ ► plastic inside the port to suggest PD. What's that power delivery? Power delivery. Yes. Right. I guess
00:55:15 ◼ ► I'll make a note and put a link in the show notes, but I often recommend these Nomad slim chargers.
00:55:20 ◼ ► They have three, they've got like a 40 watt, 65 watt, and like a hundred watt or something.
00:55:26 ◼ ► It's the middle one that you want. In my opinion, the 65 watt Nomad slim charger, it's a flat charger
00:55:33 ◼ ► with a prongs poke out and it has two USB ports for the out from the charger. But one of them is blue
00:55:42 ◼ ► and one of them is black. It's a plastic inside. And the blue one is the one that if you plug two
00:55:47 ◼ ► devices in, that's the one you should chart, put, put the bigger device on like a laptop or an iPad.
00:55:53 ◼ ► And the other one is where you would plug in, you know, like a phone or headphones or something.
00:55:58 ◼ ► Apple doesn't do that. And what they could have done, and they're not going to go along with the
00:56:03 ◼ ► industry and make them all blue. Like, but what they could have done, they could have color match,
00:56:08 ◼ ► color match the actual device. I don't know what they would have done for the silver one.
00:56:12 ◼ ► I don't know, maybe make it black or something, but color match it, right? Put a citrus colored
00:56:16 ◼ ► piece of plastic in the good USB support. It really is frustrating that there's no marking at all.
00:56:23 ◼ ► And yes, it is nice that they updated the OS so that it'll say, Hey, that, and I tested it with a
00:56:31 ◼ ► couple of things. I tested it with a camera. I tested it, which the camera doesn't even work in the
00:56:37 ◼ ► slow port. And I tested it with like, uh, external hard drive or even a USB stick. Like I, cause I've
00:56:44 ◼ ► got a USB, a SanDisk one that is super high speed and it's, if you plug it in the dumb port, it'll say,
00:56:55 ◼ ► Right. And I'm glad that they do that. I'm glad that they do that. And they, they would have to,
00:56:59 ◼ ► right. Cause otherwise you're not going to notice, right. Cause it's one of those things. And look,
00:57:02 ◼ ► there are some accessories, the camera's not going to work, but a microphone would, um, you know, uh,
00:57:07 ◼ ► it's fine for charging, but, and I guess part of me, I've kind of gone back and forth on this
00:57:13 ◼ ► about whether they should have just included one port if they were only going to do this or not.
00:57:17 ◼ ► Like I don't know, this is better. This is better. This is better. This is better. But,
00:57:22 ◼ ► but it's still confusing in a way that doesn't feel like Apple where I'm almost like, I get why you
00:57:28 ◼ ► can't have the, you know, lightning, uh, you know, the thunderbolt icon. Cause that's not thunderbolt,
00:57:33 ◼ ► but could you have had a dot? Could you've done something? Cause it just, it just, cause it's just
00:57:38 ◼ ► like having to remember, is it the front port of the back one that's slow and yeah, your OS is going to
00:57:42 ◼ ► tell you, but if you don't see that pop up or whatever, I can just see scenarios. Like I can
00:57:47 ◼ ► just, you know, sense frustration from regular people. And this is the stuff that Apple typically
00:57:50 ◼ ► avoids, which is why I nitpick on it. Cause Apple is usually so much better than this, where you're,
00:57:55 ◼ ► you know, a teacher in a classroom or student in a classroom trying to give a presentation
00:57:58 ◼ ► and you have, you know, your, um, thing plugged into a dongle and, and it's connected to the TV
00:58:04 ◼ ► and it's the wrong port, you know, when you're having to kind of switch the back and forth and
00:58:09 ◼ ► you, you, you don't know by, by feel or by anything else. I don't know. Um, yeah. And it's,
00:58:16 ◼ ► I get it. Like I'll bet just hearing you make the case there, I'll bet it was a disc, a serious
00:58:23 ◼ ► discussion in Apple, whether they should just go with one and maybe they would have, if they hadn't
00:58:30 ◼ ► tried it before a decade ago with a, with the just plain MacBook, which the difference there
00:58:36 ◼ ► was that it was a 15, $1,600 starting price. Yes. And it felt like, Hey, how, how are you selling
00:58:44 ◼ ► a premium priced laptop? Like $1,500. And again, $1,500 a decade ago, not now. Right. No, it was an
00:58:52 ◼ ► expensive thing. And well, not only that, but it was, it was the replacement, the way that it was
00:58:56 ◼ ► positioned. And I've been in my review at the time where this is the future. And like, this is what
00:59:01 ◼ ► all laptops will look like. And that wound up not really being correct, but the USB-C thing was,
00:59:07 ◼ ► but like that, but it was in many ways, the, it was the replacement for the air. Like they,
00:59:11 ◼ ► they got rid of the air and that was, they never got rid of the air, but they kept it at a non-retina
00:59:19 ◼ ► and at one point even reduced it to 899, which was, you know, well, well, but by getting rid of it,
00:59:24 ◼ ► what I mean is they were literally when, before the retina air came out and that was a terrible
00:59:28 ◼ ► machine. Oh my God. But before that, like it was in when it was being sold in 2015, 2016,
00:59:35 ◼ ► it was like a 2012 or 2013 Intel chip. So it was years old. So it was, so, so by what I mean by
00:59:42 ◼ ► getting rid of it is like, yeah, they sold it, but it was not like they were not going to be improving
00:59:47 ◼ ► it. Like it was, they, they, they literally had the same hardware they'd been selling for,
00:59:57 ◼ ► a bigger Johnny Ive defender than a lot of people. And there are a lot of things that people say,
01:00:03 ◼ ► ah, Johnny Ive, the goddamn butterfly keyboards. And it's like, that wasn't Johnny Ive. That was
01:00:08 ◼ ► engineering and, and like Tim Cook and operations. And like, we think we could save money and wrongly
01:00:15 ◼ ► giving the butterfly engineering team too many cracks at it where they kept coming back and
01:00:20 ◼ ► they're like, we've got it this time. Version two is going to fix it. And they're like, then it didn't
01:00:24 ◼ ► fix it. And a single crumb underneath. It was worse. Well, what was actually worse on that? My
01:00:29 ◼ ► experience with the 12 inch Mac book, because I had one of those for a while, just as like a secondary
01:00:33 ◼ ► device. Cause it was rose gold. And I loved like the look, even though it was a objectively not good
01:00:38 ◼ ► machine. Um, that keyboard, even though the key travel, I didn't like typing on it. I never had any
01:00:44 ◼ ► issues with it. It was the touch bar models and I'm not sure what changed. That was the one that I had
01:00:49 ◼ ► to have one of them replaced by Apple three times. I think it was just bad luck, Christina. I really
01:00:54 ◼ ► do. Yeah, maybe, you know, but even anecdotally that we didn't ever see, and it might've also been a
01:00:59 ◼ ► volume thing. Like they sold far, far more pros than they did, you know, the 12 inch. But I remember
01:01:05 ◼ ► because the reason we were surprised is that no one, like I didn't even occur to me when I first
01:01:10 ◼ ► reviewed the touch bar Mac book, it didn't even occur to me that that could be an issue. I was
01:01:13 ◼ ► like, I don't love the key travel, you know, have to get used to it, but it's, you know, it's fine.
01:01:18 ◼ ► And then it was like, you know, a year later when Casey wrote her post, I think for the outline at the
01:01:22 ◼ ► time that kind of blew up the fact that everybody was having these issues that it was like, I don't
01:01:28 ◼ ► remember anybody ever having that with the 12 inch, the 12 inch seemed okay. And so I don't know if they
01:01:34 ◼ ► made modifications to like the design when they went to the pro and, and that made it even more
01:01:39 ◼ ► sensitive or if it was just the volume or what, I don't know. Maybe, I don't even know, but I don't
01:01:44 ◼ ► want to spend too much time, but maybe it was like, because it was so pristine and expensive that maybe
01:01:50 ◼ ► there was a higher tolerance of the aluminum around the keys. So there, it was the same mechanism, but
01:01:56 ◼ ► there was less of a gap for crumbs to get whatever. But here's what, here's where I was going with the
01:02:00 ◼ ► whole thing with going back to that model is where I will say it was clearly a Johnny Ive led decision
01:02:08 ◼ ► was the idea that the future of MacBooks was more like iOS devices where you don't use them plugged
01:02:16 ◼ ► in. Yes. That's, and that's why it had one port. It was a statement of intent of how their vision of
01:02:24 ◼ ► how MacBooks quote unquote should be used, which was like, and that's why even to this day,
01:02:38 ◼ ► they, even a $2,000 iPad pro comes with one USB C port, right? Right. Because that's the vision of
01:02:45 ◼ ► how you use an iPad pro, um, and that you don't use it plugged in. And that was the vision for the
01:02:54 ◼ ► MacBook. And I think that's as wrong a vision for a MacBook hardware as, as Tahoe is as a vision for
01:03:04 ◼ ► Mac software. No, I really do. No, no. I think, I think you're right. I think you're right. Um, I,
01:03:09 ◼ ► I think in a way that Alan Dye and his cohorts have no idea of the nuances of what Mac OS really
01:03:16 ◼ ► should be like software wise. I think that that was an area where Johnny Ive and his closest people
01:03:24 ◼ ► who designed that really were wrong about a huge swath. There are people who only use their MacBooks,
01:03:32 ◼ ► not plugged in road warriors, you know, whatever you want to call them, but there are so many people
01:03:36 ◼ ► who need to use them plugged in because of what they're doing and still need ports to plug in
01:03:40 ◼ ► drives or peripherals or cameras or microphones, right? How the fuck are you going to do a podcast
01:03:44 ◼ ► with one port? Well, well, right. You make, you make a great point. And so I'm glad they have two
01:03:49 ◼ ► ports. That is better than the alternative. It just sucks that one of them is essentially only able to be
01:03:54 ◼ ► used for charging. Um, but okay, fine. Fair enough. But you know what? Maybe I do feel confident that
01:04:01 ◼ ► like next year they will figure out that they will have designed things in the SEC in advance,
01:04:06 ◼ ► so that they can have the multiple things. And then eventually at some point it will happen.
01:04:11 ◼ ► Two ports, same speed would be great. And I think what it'll eventually happen if they,
01:04:15 ◼ ► what I hope is that they will do these on an annualized update. And, and part of me hopes
01:04:20 ◼ ► they'll do that just based on like the chips they're using. They're going to have to continue
01:04:23 ◼ ► to make new chips. They might as well update things is that we have Thunderbolt, you know,
01:04:28 ◼ ► in the iPad pros that is eventually going to come to the iPhone pros. And when it does,
01:04:33 ◼ ► that would be a really nice thing to be able to drop in to a Neo, right? Like even if it's a couple
01:04:39 ◼ ► of years down the line, like that's not a thing that people need, but that would be nice just to
01:04:44 ◼ ► be able to have that at your entry level base, you know, Mac. Yeah. Yeah. And it is an interesting
01:04:50 ◼ ► difference between the two that the iPhone, obviously the iPhone 17, he did not get the
01:04:57 ◼ ► 19 a 19 pro chip because it is, you know, it's a six month, five, six month old chip and it's got
01:05:03 ◼ ► the current generation, but it's not the pro and the Neo is a brand new Mac book and it is using a
01:05:09 ◼ ► quote unquote phone chip, but it's using the pro variant of a year and a half old chip. Each one of
01:05:15 ◼ ► those devices got the best chip we could hope for, for Apple to provide. It is totally fine for a brand
01:05:24 ◼ ► new Mac book Neo to have a year and a half old phone chip because it's the pro variant. But I do think
01:05:30 ◼ ► it's, I mean, I would bet money. I wouldn't bet the house, but I would bet money that the, that next
01:05:36 ◼ ► year's Neo, I would a bet a fair amount of money that there will be annual updates to the Neo and I
01:05:43 ◼ ► would bet a little bit less, but I would bet that it'll have two ports and they'll both be USB C3
01:05:49 ◼ ► in the same way that I kind of thought this year's 17E would have MagSafe. It's like, come on,
01:05:54 ◼ ► you're going to listen to this. Yeah, totally. There are so many things that the Neo gets right
01:05:59 ◼ ► that I think that this is like, we're, we're, we're quibbling, but it's just, especially like
01:06:04 ◼ ► what I keep coming back to is like for all of my niggles and I have them is that the operating
01:06:10 ◼ ► system that it ships with a side, like this is, you cannot get, well, and even comparatively,
01:06:21 ◼ ► Yeah, it really is. And I don't know. I mean, and I don't know why, I guess I shouldn't be
01:06:27 ◼ ► because my son is still in college, but I haven't used education pricing, I guess, since he went to
01:06:32 ◼ ► college. I mean, his, you know, the stuff he has was all purchased with the education discount,
01:06:37 ◼ ► but you know, it's, it's really easy to use an edu, you know, in the United States, there's no
01:06:44 ◼ ► verification, right? Everyone can be a lifelong learner. Everyone can be buying something for a
01:06:48 ◼ ► homeschool thing. Like there's literally just a link that you need to go to. Right. And as a percentage,
01:06:52 ◼ ► you know, like the hundred dollar discount for education is kind of standard, but when you look
01:06:57 ◼ ► at it as a percentage of the price, it's enormous for a $600 device, a $600 device, $100. That's a
01:07:06 ◼ ► 16.666, 17% discount. That's huge. Just for saying, yes, I'm a teacher or I'm a teacher or a
01:07:13 ◼ ► student, or I'm buying this for a student, whatever the case may be. Right. Which there's been a lot of
01:07:17 ◼ ► talk about whether this will be a thing that will finally get Apple back in education. Like, I think
01:07:22 ◼ ► I really do. I, in a way, not like a, we're taking over the market, but like, I think it will put them
01:07:29 ◼ ► in the conversation. I think that unfortunately, when they made the decision again, about a decade
01:07:34 ◼ ► ago to push the iPad as their education experience, Google doubled down on the Chromebooks in not so
01:07:41 ◼ ► much for the cheaper hardware, but in the management of the devices. And that's the area where it just,
01:07:47 ◼ ► I don't know if you overcome that, right? Maybe for your high schools, again, like private schools.
01:07:52 ◼ ► I think that what I do think this will do though, is that if you were a parent who, okay, my kid has a
01:07:57 ◼ ► Chromebook at school. I know that it sucks, but it's locked down and this is what they want. I need to buy
01:08:02 ◼ ► them a laptop at home. You now have, you know, if you have a $500 budget, you now have a really great
01:08:09 ◼ ► option. Whereas before you didn't have anything, you could find things on sale. You could get the M1
01:08:15 ◼ ► MacBook Air if you got it at Walmart. Like there were some other deals that if you were a smart
01:08:20 ◼ ► shopper, you could get, but you were realistically looking at about $700, $750 to get a MacBook Air.
01:08:26 ◼ ► And again, going back to like the 17E discussion, $200 or $250 can be substantial for people,
01:08:34 ◼ ► especially if you're buying a laptop for, you know, a kid at home. Now, would I encourage somebody to
01:08:40 ◼ ► take this to college? I'm going to be honest and say no, but, uh, but, but, but I, but I think like,
01:08:46 ◼ ► if you're buying this, like, this is my kid's first laptop that we need a laptop at home and I need to
01:08:50 ◼ ► buy them one, or I need to buy one for a parent who, you know, doesn't do much. And, you know,
01:08:55 ◼ ► I need to, or I need to just recommend, you know, to somebody else who like an iPad's not going to cut
01:09:00 ◼ ► it for them, but they need a computer. And I don't want them to be, you know, dealing with like the,
01:09:12 ◼ ► Yeah. And it's, it's also further interesting to me and I'll call the claim chowder on myself.
01:09:17 ◼ ► When Jason Snell was on the show a month ago, both of us thought, you know, this was before the Neo
01:09:22 ◼ ► was announced that our guests for the starting price was like $800, you know, $600 with a hundred
01:09:30 ◼ ► dollars for education is way lower than I would have guessed. I'm happy to be wrong. Super happy to be
01:09:35 ◼ ► wrong. Yeah. Yeah. I, I was hoping that this is where they would be. Um, I, I've been, I think
01:09:41 ◼ ► the, the Ram is the only area where I have, and again, like if they do continue just the pro chips,
01:09:47 ◼ ► it'll be so much better next year with 12, it'll be 12. Yes. Cause that's the weird thing. We already
01:09:53 ◼ ► know the specs of the chip. We already know the checks. Exactly. And like, I feel like for, for now,
01:09:58 ◼ ► you know, um, Apple, it'll be fine. Eight gigabytes is fine. I feel like my only thing when I kind of
01:10:04 ◼ ► thinking about this longterm is that if you're buying this computer and you're expecting to use it for
01:10:07 ◼ ► five years, this first Neo, yeah, that's where I'm like, eh, I don't know, man. I don't know. But again,
01:10:14 ◼ ► it's $500. Yep, exactly. And again, in the same way that a hundred dollar discount is as a percentage
01:10:21 ◼ ► way bigger for a $600 device, um, go to, you could still say, well, 12 megabytes of Ram kind of sucks
01:10:28 ◼ ► still it's 1.5 X exactly. Right. It's, it's, it's, it's a game changer in those regards. Right. Cause
01:10:35 ◼ ► and people like, Oh, well, you're only going on the web. I'm like, yeah, but have you seen how huge
01:10:38 ◼ ► web pages are? Right. And, and it's just, it's one of those things. I get it. Yeah. It's the main
01:10:45 ◼ ► reason. Uh, my main machine is still the M one max MacBook pro from 2021, where I maxed it out with
01:10:53 ◼ ► then the maximum amount of Ram 64. And when I check activity monitor, I've got so many goddamn
01:10:58 ◼ ► tabs open. I almost never see swap, but I get close. Occasionally. Yeah. I had that exact same
01:11:03 ◼ ► MacBook pro and then I upgraded to the M three max and I got 128 gigs so I could do local LLM stuff.
01:11:09 ◼ ► And I usually don't run into that, but yeah, you know, it's one of those things. Like for me personally,
01:11:14 ◼ ► I'm like, yeah, I don't feel like I could ever buy a laptop with less than 32 gigs of Ram
01:11:19 ◼ ► for any use case, but 12, I would be, I'd be no problem recommending people, especially for people
01:11:25 ◼ ► who've never had a laptop. It's one of those things where it's hard to go back. And, you know, I'm still
01:11:29 ◼ ► using my Neo review unit and it's like the more I, you know, if I open, start opening a lot of tabs,
01:11:35 ◼ ► it's not that it slows down. I don't see the spinning pizza of death cursor, but I, you know, I can sort of
01:11:41 ◼ ► feel it, you know, I can. Right. And, and, and again, you know, because you're used to it, but like for
01:11:45 ◼ ► people, if you're coming from a Chromebook, if you're coming from an older windows laptop, heck,
01:11:49 ◼ ► if you're coming from a Mac book air from the Intel era, right? Like this is going to be a really,
01:11:54 ◼ ► really big upgrade. And I think that's the thing, right? Is these are either like Tim Cook said,
01:11:57 ◼ ► best week for first time Mac buyers. I would also bet that you have a lot of people who are buying this,
01:12:02 ◼ ► who have older Intel Macs. And I hate that the Intel era of the Mac stuff ended the way that it did,
01:12:09 ◼ ► because I think that it unfairly overshadows how important that transition was for Apple,
01:12:14 ◼ ► because I think that that was like a genuinely like necessary and amazing thing, but Intel was
01:12:20 ◼ ► doing so poorly. And then Apple didn't help buy their thermal designs. Like the last couple of years
01:12:25 ◼ ► of Mac hardware on the Intel era, they were not good. Yeah. I never thought about that, but that's an
01:12:32 ◼ ► interesting point, Christina. With the other transitions, Apple didn't leave with a bad taste in
01:12:37 ◼ ► the mouth. Like with the 68,000 to power PC, the quadras were great machines, the 68040 chips,
01:12:45 ◼ ► they were really good machines. And there were certain things that were still better on a quadra
01:12:51 ◼ ► because of the software, because of software that hadn't been updated. And the power PC to Intel thing
01:12:58 ◼ ► was such a surprise. Right. And I remember I shot my mouth off when the rumor came out,
01:13:05 ◼ ► like, and it kind of did drop as a surprise. Apple, it like the Wall Street Journal, I believe,
01:13:09 ◼ ► had the scoop, like the Friday before the Monday WWDC keynote that Apple was going to do it.
01:13:16 ◼ ► And I, you know, I didn't say, I think that's bullshit. I was like, ah, this seems hard to believe
01:13:21 ◼ ► because X, Y, Z, right? Like this is, if it's true, it's a big surprise. And it was a big surprise.
01:13:26 ◼ ► And part of it was just that the power books and the power Macs were in pretty good shape. And yes,
01:13:32 ◼ ► there was the whole G5 power book that never came. Right. Because they couldn't hit it in the
01:13:37 ◼ ► thermal window. But the G4 was still a great machine. Right. And if anything, they were selling
01:13:42 ◼ ► because the iPod Halo was real. Right. Like, I had just started college at that point and people were
01:13:47 ◼ ► finally, like, showing up to school with Macs. Right. Whereas the last few years of Intel Macs,
01:13:53 ◼ ► everybody was like, hey, this sucks. You know, like, these things are hot. These things aren't
01:13:58 ◼ ► getting updated on a regular basis. You know, there was, if we could talk about the Mac Pro being
01:14:03 ◼ ► discontinued yesterday, quickly. Yeah, yesterday. Yeah. You know, the Mac Pro, even at every end of the
01:14:10 ◼ ► spectrum, it was bad. Right. It was bad. It was, you know, there were no mobile chips. The one port
01:14:16 ◼ ► MacBook was incredibly slow with the Atom processor. They got the thermals. They optimized
01:14:22 ◼ ► for thermals. It was Intel's M-series ships and they were awful. Yeah. And they put that in the
01:14:27 ◼ ► Retina MacBook Air, which I bought for my mom and I'd hoped they'd kind of, you know, fix things.
01:14:32 ◼ ► She'd have like a 2010, 2011 MacBook Pro and I got her the Retina MacBook Air and that was an awful
01:14:38 ◼ ► machine. I got her an M3 MacBook Air for Christmas last year. And I almost like felt like apologizing.
01:14:46 ◼ ► like, I'm very sorry that I, you know, bought you this $1,500 laptop, you know, that looked beautiful,
01:14:51 ◼ ► but was not a good performer. Yeah. And I think that it's a mix of the different places Apple was at
01:15:01 ◼ ► and wanting to, it's like that old adage that you should measure twice, cut once. That when they
01:15:09 ◼ ► clearly could have moved the Mac to Apple Silicon years, not just a year, but years earlier,
01:15:17 ◼ ► like the performance was there. And I, when I wrote about the Neo, I even wrote, went back to like old
01:15:23 ◼ ► reviews where I noticed when the single core benchmarks for phones had passed the MacBook Pros or getting
01:15:30 ◼ ► close. And it's like, and you know, you can add more cores in a bigger machine. It's the single core
01:15:37 ◼ ► thing really shows you what the potential is. And it's like, Hey, this is already there and you get
01:15:43 ◼ ► way better performance per watt. And I think, you know, I'm not saying they, they should have done it
01:15:49 ◼ ► earlier. I think, cause I think the way that Apple Silicon launched at the end of 2020 with these just
01:15:55 ◼ ► mind blowing reviews, like this, these machines seem impossible was the way to do it, to just come
01:16:01 ◼ ► in with overwhelming advantages. But that meant that those final years of the Intel era on the Mac,
01:16:09 ◼ ► Apple was sort of like, we're done with these fuckers. You know, we're not going to, we're done
01:16:14 ◼ ► with this. We're not even going to update this shit. And it's like, you know, we're done with your
01:16:19 ◼ ► terrible price performance ratios or performance per watt ratios. And, but then in the, you know,
01:16:30 ◼ ► Well, right. That was the thing. Like, like I, I bought and I did it knowing cause they'd already
01:16:35 ◼ ► announced the transition, but like I, I bought the 2020 iMac, the 27 inch iMac. And I did it because
01:16:41 ◼ ► I knew it would be the last until, you know, Mac I would ever buy. I went in wide eyed. I put 128
01:16:46 ◼ ► gigs of Ram in it. It had like the, uh, you know, the, the, the 10 core pro. No, this was the,
01:16:52 ◼ ► this was the, but it was more powerful than the pro. It was actually more powerful than the pro.
01:16:56 ◼ ► By the time it came out, it had like a 16 gig GPU. It had, you know, 120 gigs of Ram. It had,
01:17:02 ◼ ► you know, like the, the, the 10 core processor, very good performing machine, but even that one,
01:17:07 ◼ ► cause it didn't have the iMac pros like a extra fan, you know, it gets noisy. And, and I frankly
01:17:14 ◼ ► bought it cause I knew the transition would take some time. And I was like, I'm going to need
01:17:16 ◼ ► something to run Docker containers. I'm going to need to be able to run Intel stuff. But I was in
01:17:21 ◼ ► that like weird position in 2020 where they denounced that the new ones are coming. I don't know when
01:17:26 ◼ ► that's going to be. I need a new computer. And like, you, what are, what are you going to do? I wound up
01:17:32 ◼ ► getting the M1 max the following year, but I did buy that final generation Intel. The people I feel
01:17:38 ◼ ► for like them killing the Mac pro it's effectively been dead since 2013, if we're all being honest
01:17:43 ◼ ► with ourselves. But the only people I feel like really got screwed. Like if you bought the M2 Mac
01:17:49 ◼ ► pro that's on you, like you made that decision for whatever reason, probably cause it was a tax write
01:17:54 ◼ ► off and it didn't matter. But you really needed the IO, whatever. But the IO wasn't even that good. It was
01:18:00 ◼ ► like one of those things, like I, there are so few scenarios where you would need to have that many
01:18:05 ◼ ► SSDs on board where a separate appliance would not fit. I just feel like people just bought it because
01:18:11 ◼ ► it was a tax, you know, they could business expense or whatever. But the people I do feel for were the
01:18:17 ◼ ► 2019 Intel Mac pro buyers, because even though we knew they were working on things, we didn't know when
01:18:24 ◼ ► we didn't know how quickly they would abandon stuff. We didn't realize that like Apple was going to
01:18:28 ◼ ► basically not continue to release GPU or other add on stuff. And it was like, okay, if you spent $10,000 on
01:18:35 ◼ ► that machine in 2019, which a lot of people did, my god, and those were good computers, but like, it's
01:18:43 ◼ ► going to be EOL, you're not going to get software updates on it after the fall. And like, that sucks.
01:18:50 ◼ ► Well, maybe they would have been better off if they got cut it off it last year with Sequoia.
01:18:57 ◼ ► Maybe I haven't updated my Intel Mac to Tahoe and I won't and it's that's actually kind of it feels
01:19:04 ◼ ► like the whole Intel thing again to kind of go back, it feels like it just ended on a sour note,
01:19:07 ◼ ► because I'm like, I can't even update the latest security stuff because I'm not willing to put this
01:19:13 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we'll stick with the Mac Pro. But I was like, I went back and looked at the timeline.
01:19:22 ◼ ► And it's like, I even had to update my post from last night, Marco Ahmed texted me overnight and said,
01:19:27 ◼ ► like, hey, because I said, like, the the first Intel Mac Pro, if you know, there was Power Max before then,
01:19:34 ◼ ► went to Intel, they renamed it Mac Pro came out with new in 2006, I guess, the canonical the best known
01:19:43 ◼ ► case, tower case, the cheese grater. And then they had 2000, you know, speed bumps every year for a
01:19:49 ◼ ► while then to 2010. And then there was an update in 2012. But it really was a weird update where they
01:19:55 ◼ ► kind of just sort of, they didn't really update the specs, they got rid of the base model and made
01:20:02 ◼ ► like a mid model, the new base model. So it was sort of more of a price reduction than it. And then
01:20:08 ◼ ► but there was like a new high end config, but without new chips. So it really, in some sense,
01:20:14 ◼ ► you could go back to 2010 was the last real speed bump for it. And then the trash can was a one off in
01:20:20 ◼ ► 2013. Then they went all the way to 2019. And the Intel new tower with the fancy drilled holes
01:20:28 ◼ ► was a one off. And then the M two in 2023 was a one off. So they had three one offs, the trash can,
01:20:38 ◼ ► the 2019 Intel that never got a speed bump, and the M two ultra in 2023 that never got a speed bump.
01:20:46 ◼ ► That's in 15, arguably 1415, maybe even 16 years, if you go back to 2010, that there were only three
01:20:53 ◼ ► updates, never with a speed bump. And the good news is the Mac Studio kind of is the new Mac Pro.
01:21:00 ◼ ► Oh, it is. No, that's great news. I mean, I know some people are upset about the death of the Mac Pro.
01:21:04 ◼ ► And I'm like, you needed to come to terms with this years ago, because as soon as they announced Apple
01:21:08 ◼ ► Silicon and the way that they do IO and their integrated systems, which works for them, the appeal
01:21:13 ◼ ► of the Mac Pro goes away immediately. And a lot of people bought them because it was very PC like,
01:21:20 ◼ ► but you could run Mac OS on it. Like that was a big part of the appeal. When that goes away,
01:21:24 ◼ ► when the performance and the other stuff is nearly identical, and you're just paying an inflated price,
01:21:30 ◼ ► you're like, okay, this is even data centers, I promise you that the one that Apple has, like,
01:21:35 ◼ ► I can't imagine they would have the Mac Pros and they're because it's all the same chip,
01:21:39 ◼ ► they're gonna shuck those things out of the cases and like, you know, put them in custom racks,
01:21:42 ◼ ► I'm sure. They're using Mac Studios. So it's a shame, except that what they've replaced it with,
01:21:49 ◼ ► I feel like is much better for where the market is. And so they weren't committed anyway.
01:21:55 ◼ ► I can't help but think though, that they were unsure. That's why they did the M2 generation.
01:22:00 ◼ ► And that's why they only canceled it now in March 26. And the big tell for Apple is that
01:22:11 ◼ ► even if they go a long time between updates, and they sold the trash can all the way up until 2019.
01:22:24 ◼ ► we don't have anything else. Like they had that roundtable with you and Lance and a couple other
01:22:28 ◼ ► people. And like their response to that was, okay, we'll just make a few modifications to the iMac
01:22:48 ◼ ► where they actually disappeared the HomePod one. And then they came out with the HomePod mini,
01:22:53 ◼ ► which was weird, because there was a mini version where there wasn't a full size version.
01:22:57 ◼ ► And they did come out and they still sell the HomePod too. And yeah, it and I think that was
01:23:03 ◼ ► the only time there they ever stopped selling an old device, but weren't done making it. They just
01:23:09 ◼ ► ran out of the old one didn't want to produce more. And there was like a weird thing with the original
01:23:16 ◼ ► HomePods where people who looked at the serial numbers and like the copyright dates on the boxes,
01:23:21 ◼ ► by all accounts I've ever seen, there was only ever one production run of them, you know, and it was
01:23:27 ◼ ► expensive. Yeah, right. If you have a HomePod one, it was all from the first production run.
01:23:32 ◼ ► And something must have happened where they it took them longer to get the HomePod twos out than they
01:23:39 ◼ ► expected. But they didn't want to restart production of the HomePod one. So they went like a year or close
01:23:45 ◼ ► to a year without having a HomePod in the lineup. But other and I think that was just a weird
01:23:50 ◼ ► circumstance for a very, a very niche product still to this day. But for the most part, if they intend
01:23:57 ◼ ► to replace a product, they'll just keep the old one for as long as it takes, which is what they do,
01:24:02 ◼ ► you know, best exemplified by the trash can Mac Pro, which was still there in the lineup in 2018 and
01:24:07 ◼ ► early 2019. Six years old at the same five or six thousand dollar price with a chip from 2013 and
01:24:15 ◼ ► an underpowered GPU from 2013. Kind of ridiculous, but it was their way of signaling we are going to
01:24:23 ◼ ► have a new one. And so there was hope to hold on to that there would be a new Mac Pro up until
01:24:29 ◼ ► yesterday. Up until yesterday. No, there was hope for that. The only other thing you're talking about,
01:24:33 ◼ ► like the HomePod, the Apple TV, I think maybe the original one, like I don't think there was a break
01:24:38 ◼ ► in sales, but again, that, and that felt kind of like the HomePod. Obviously the design was, was
01:24:42 ◼ ► different, but that felt like they did take like almost a deliberate pause. And it was like, okay,
01:24:46 ◼ ► this, this first one, and even the take two software didn't work. Now we're going to actually make this,
01:24:51 ◼ ► you know, much more appliance like, whereas before it was much more, you know, Mac like.
01:25:02 ◼ ► but the Mac hardware lineup remains in the best shape it's ever been in company history.
01:25:08 ◼ ► I was going to say, I'd be more upset if like the Mac studio was not so good. The Mac mini wasn't so
01:25:14 ◼ ► good, right? Like I think that pros would be too, like what happened before with the trash can. And
01:25:19 ◼ ► even after that was that you had people where that was the highest in Mac you could get and you might
01:25:24 ◼ ► have needed it for some purposes, but it wasn't good enough. Yeah. And now it's like, you don't have
01:25:29 ◼ ► that same problem. Yeah. Presumably there are new Mac studios coming with M five chips.
01:25:35 ◼ ► And I think they've surely made this decision that the Mac pro was going to be end of life
01:25:41 ◼ ► a while ago, you know, and it was just a matter of when to announce it. And I think strategically,
01:25:47 ◼ ► it's kind of interesting that they decided to make the announcement, not coincident with the release of
01:25:54 ◼ ► the M five generation Mac studios, but rather in the wake two weeks later of the introduction of the
01:26:03 ◼ ► Mac book Neo, which is the furthest product in the line is possible, right? It's a laptop, not a desktop.
01:26:11 ◼ ► It is literally is using an iPhone series chip. It only comes with eight gigs of Ram, you know,
01:26:18 ◼ ► et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It introduces, it breaks, shatters the pricing barrier of a Mac,
01:26:29 ◼ ► But it is symbolic of, Hey, this platform is in better shape than it's ever been. The whole
01:26:36 ◼ ► overall, it's, it's about the overall platform, the overall ecosystem, not the status of pro desktop
01:26:42 ◼ ► hardware. Like Marcus Brownlee, like he had commented a couple of times, like on his M five, like max
01:26:47 ◼ ► reviews that like those were outperforming his M two Mac pro. And so I feel like that's honestly,
01:26:52 ◼ ► I feel like the way that they just kind of quietly removed it from their lineup is a real kind of almost
01:26:57 ◼ ► like flex to be like, yeah, because within three years, the chips that, that we are selling now
01:27:03 ◼ ► in our consumer laptops are outperforming our $10,000 Mac pro machines, which is wild, right?
01:27:11 ◼ ► I expect probably around WWDC, we'll see a Mac studio revision, which will be even more powerful.
01:27:17 ◼ ► And like, that will be the one that if you really need to do all the work and you want something
01:27:25 ◼ ► Yeah. And I think strategically, this does makes it intuitive sense to me that you make this sour
01:27:32 ◼ ► note announcement in the wake of this universally hailed. Yes, there are gripes about the ports in
01:27:39 ◼ ► the price and the Ram of, but it, the whole idea of the MacBook Neo is that this is going to be a smash
01:27:45 ◼ ► hit deservedly. So announce this Mac pro thing. Now let all the griping and consternation and hand
01:27:51 ◼ ► ringing and pouring one out happen now. And then when the Mac studio does get its bump to the M5,
01:27:57 ◼ ► that's all out of everybody's system. It's just celebration. And it can just be concentrated on
01:28:04 ◼ ► what's good about the new Mac studios and not, but where's the Mac pro? Yeah, no, totally. I have a
01:28:10 ◼ ► feeling that after the 2019 kind of rug pull, as I think about it, and I don't think it was intended to
01:28:14 ◼ ► be that way. It's just how the hardware cycles happened to turn out. I feel like if you bought
01:28:18 ◼ ► a 2022 Mac pro, you knew what you were doing and you knew what those risks were. And so I don't feel
01:28:25 ◼ ► like bad for anybody in that regard. And even then, I think everybody's kind of assessment was even
01:28:29 ◼ ► Apple's kind of thing. If you did the comparison, it was like, there's almost no reason, unless you
01:28:34 ◼ ► were in an infinitesimal part of the populace where you should ever buy this one versus this one.
01:28:43 ◼ ► grieve and get it out of their system. You can't complain that like the, to your point,
01:28:47 ◼ ► like the hardware has never been better. Like the Macs that you can go to the store and buy today
01:28:51 ◼ ► are better than what we could get at any time in Apple's history. So I, I'm also sad that the X-Serve
01:28:58 ◼ ► was, was killed a million years ago, but, but, but you have to make, it's like part of us,
01:29:02 ◼ ► like we complain that Apple has too many choices and then we complain when they take one of the choices
01:29:11 ◼ ► 48 Mac minis into a data center. It's like, I understand why. And it's like, boy, it would
01:29:17 ◼ ► be something if they still sold X-Serves though, that were meant to go into data centers.
01:29:20 ◼ ► But yeah. Yeah. Well, at GitHub, what we do is like, again, like we buy Mac minis and then
01:29:28 ◼ ► Yeah. No, genuinely to take them out of like the, you know, casing and whatnot. And then they
01:29:32 ◼ ► have like custom power supplies and stuff and IO things and put them into custom server racks
01:29:41 ◼ ► Oh, it is. Well, that's the thing, right? Cause you can store way more of them. You know,
01:29:45 ◼ ► if you get rid of the enclosure, it's the very nicest, but hardest to open unboxing ever.
01:29:50 ◼ ► Yeah. All right. Last question. Revisiting the 17e versus Neo. The other difference is the Neo comes in
01:30:00 ◼ ► three fun colors and one boring color. And the 17e only has one fun color, the blush. I kind of feel
01:30:08 ◼ ► like that's where the Neo should catch up next year to the 17 to the e phones is by getting rid of the
01:30:16 ◼ ► biggest shortcoming, which would be the port differential. I feel like the 17, the 18e phone
01:30:22 ◼ ► should catch up to the Neo and come in like at least two fun colors every year, black, white color,
01:30:30 ◼ ► Yeah. I would agree with that. And, and I have to think like, um, I, you know, obviously we,
01:30:35 ◼ ► Apple will never break this out, but just from anecdotally what I'm seeing, like I have the orange
01:30:38 ◼ ► iPhone pro and, uh, and I love it. Like orange gang represent. And I, I loved that they were that bold
01:30:44 ◼ ► with it. Right. Like it's not even like my favorite color, but I was like, there's no way I'm not buying
01:30:50 ◼ ► Same. And so part of it is it's the signifier. It's the new one, but you could also tell it's new based
01:30:57 ◼ ► on like the new camera array. But I think that like, I really hope that this, the success of this stuff
01:31:02 ◼ ► maybe encourages them to be like, yes, let's take more experience with colors again. Cause like, that's
01:31:06 ◼ ► what was great about the iBook, the first iBook that was, what was great about the iPod mini and,
01:31:10 ◼ ► and the nanos like was the colors. It's people like to have built like personalization of stuff.
01:31:16 ◼ ► It's like, yeah, people put skins on their laptops or whatever, but man, I mean, I can, I'm just
01:31:21 ◼ ► imagining myself being like in middle school and like, how cool would I feel like going to school
01:31:25 ◼ ► with the pink Mac book or, or even the citrus one or whatever. Right. Like they're all great. I mean,
01:31:30 ◼ ► so I honestly, and I am a very boring person, color wise, wardrobe wise. I mean, what am I even
01:31:36 ◼ ► wearing today? I'm actually colorful. I have a tan shirt on. Honestly, I just, I, knowing we were
01:31:43 ◼ ► going to record today, I went into the Apple store yesterday at the end of the afternoon with good
01:31:47 ◼ ► light coming in and looked at all four Neos again. I've still, I've got my review unit of citrus,
01:31:53 ◼ ► but I hadn't seen the other ones since the New York event. And I looked at them again. I love the
01:32:02 ◼ ► I really like it. Um, and I really like now, now that I'm really thought about it because it was
01:32:07 ◼ ► such a surprise at that event in New York that the keys were color matched to the hardware. I really
01:32:13 ◼ ► like the way they did it with the indigo one too. It's really, really neat. I can totally see how the
01:32:19 ◼ ► pink one is citrus is. I talked to somebody at the Apple store and they said that citrus is the best
01:32:25 ◼ ► selling and pink is second best selling citrus sold out right away. Like as soon as they came into stock.
01:32:32 ◼ ► It's again, it's the most, it's like the orange, it's the most striking, like, like it's, it's the
01:32:35 ◼ ► most different. Um, and then, and the pink, cause I looked at them in the store too. And the pink,
01:32:40 ◼ ► unfortunately, I wish they'd had a little more saturation cause it, it looks too much like
01:32:44 ◼ ► silver. I do too. Right. But with the indigo and the citrus are the ones where like, you won't
01:32:49 ◼ ► mistake those for other colors. It's not like the blue MacBook air where that might as well have been
01:32:59 ◼ ► Yeah. And you know, that Apple thinks about such things the way that they have them set up on the
01:33:03 ◼ ► same table. There's four MacBook Neos on a table side by side on the left is the citrus. And on the
01:33:11 ◼ ► right is the indigo, which I think are the two best colors, but then back to back on the left side with
01:33:18 ◼ ► the citrus facing each other is citrus and pink, which is maybe the two more female colored ones.
01:33:28 ◼ ► And then on the other side, back to back is silver and indigo, which is the more boring colors. But
01:33:36 ◼ ► then I also think that part of the reason they have that in the arrangement is that when you're facing
01:33:41 ◼ ► the pink and the silver silver, they look too similar. Well, no, they it actually makes the
01:33:47 ◼ ► pink look pink, right? Okay, got it. Oh, that's what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they're left
01:33:51 ◼ ► or right. Because I think that if the pink was side by side with that. Okay, that's how I was
01:33:57 ◼ ► thinking. If they were side by side, I think it'd be hard to tell. But yeah, but if they're back to
01:34:00 ◼ ► back, yeah, yeah, it pops more. Yeah. But I do. That's the thing. But who am I to say that it is the
01:34:06 ◼ ► second best selling model. And I do think for everybody who just wishes, why don't they make
01:34:10 ◼ ► it like super, super saturated, like the IMAX? I wish that someone at Apple would just come out and
01:34:16 ◼ ► fucking say it in an interview that yes, we've tried it. And it actually looks bad to have super
01:34:20 ◼ ► saturated colors on a laptop. And if you look at the IMAX, which have those much more saturated colors,
01:34:27 ◼ ► they're only on the back. It's only on the back. Exactly. It's it's the bezel. All right. On the
01:34:34 ◼ ► chins, they drop to very pale colors. And I think it's because when you're looking at the screen,
01:34:40 ◼ ► you don't want like bright orange or saturated orange in front of, you know, skewing your eyes
01:34:47 ◼ ► perception of color on screen. But nobody at Apple will just come out and say it looks bad.
01:34:59 ◼ ► rose gold MacBook Pro, like that looks great. And so I wish that we had a little more like that.
01:35:05 ◼ ► I feel like they could have just tweaked it a little bit more. And I can't help but think
01:35:14 ◼ ► Like citrus, I think is perfect. And again, that indigo, I actually think looks really good.
01:35:18 ◼ ► I was on MacRick Weekly this week and Stephen Hackett was showing his off. And like that,
01:35:22 ◼ ► that indigo, again, like it doesn't look like the midnight, like it, it looks very distinct.
01:35:27 ◼ ► It looks great. Right. And I think the color matching, I had the same reaction in the store.
01:35:31 ◼ ► I was like, oh, the color matching on the keys here, you can really tell they have the light blue
01:35:39 ◼ ► So I don't know, maybe for next year, I hope that the success of these things will encourage
01:35:43 ◼ ► them to be like, look, people are not going to freak out if you just increase the saturation just
01:35:48 ◼ ► a tad, or, you know, do what they've done with the iPhones, you know, and, you know, give us a
01:35:53 ◼ ► different color way every year, you know, have your core ones, but like swap citrus out for something
01:36:00 ◼ ► And I wonder who the silver is for. I wonder, like, is that what like education's doing? Because
01:36:07 ◼ ► Oh, that's a great call. Yeah, actually, that's a really good call. Because I had been thinking that
01:36:11 ◼ ► too. I was like, well, yeah, you just buy a bunch of the whatever. No, the kids would be because
01:36:15 ◼ ► everybody would be, I know that I would be as a kid, I would have been so pissed. If somebody had like
01:36:20 ◼ ► the fun color, and I'm stuck with the boring one. Oh, heck no, you know, and I'm not too proud to
01:36:26 ◼ ► admit that when I was like 11 or 12, I would not have wanted the pink one. I wouldn't. Oh, absolutely not.
01:36:31 ◼ ► No, I would have. But no, but you can't get the pink one. Like, that's gonna be very gendered.
01:36:35 ◼ ► Everybody's gonna be fighting. And the thing is, the other ones, like, we don't know how these
01:36:39 ◼ ► things are going to hold wear at this point, right? Like, are they gonna scratch? Are they gonna
01:36:47 ◼ ► Buy the silver and suck it up. You're in school, kid. Anyway, Christina, thank you for being on the