00:00:01 ◼ ► Yeah, you too. Yeah. So what happened was, you know, last week, as I'm getting ready to do the Great Saunter, like the day before.
00:00:11 ◼ ► Yeah, the day before I wake up. I had a little bit of congestion for a few days, but it's also, you know, my car was also turning yellow last week because it's pollen season.
00:00:20 ◼ ► Right now, at this moment, for this particular six-month period, I don't own an ostensibly yellow car, but it happens sometimes.
00:00:31 ◼ ► Right, but this is not one of those times. So I figured, oh, it's just allergies. And then, you know, every day, the congestion gets a little bit worse. I'm like, oh, it's allergies.
00:00:37 ◼ ► And then the day before the saunter, I get a sore throat. Now, at this point, I was still telling myself, wow, the allergies are really bad right now.
00:00:48 ◼ ► To be so bad, it caused a sore throat. I mean, obviously, totally in denial, right? Because I was not going to be sick and miss the saunter after, you know, training for it for like, you know,
00:00:59 ◼ ► eight or nine months or whatever it's been, like, I'm not going to miss it. So I willed myself into thinking I was not sick. However, it became pretty clear, you know, a day later, two days later, like, oh, yeah, no, this is, I'm definitely sick.
00:01:18 ◼ ► It is the season. So it's funny you say that, because I'm sitting here doing some work in the evening time, which is unusual for me. But my boss is a jerk. So here we are. So I was doing work in the evening time. And I was sitting here and I was like, huh?
00:01:31 ◼ ► Hmm. Hmm. I don't think that's good. And I'm feeling like just the beginnings of like the, the, the, the zygote of a sore throat. You know what I mean? Like just the, the hideous littlest bit of sore throat. And I'm like, oh, yep. That's probably coming for me. Maybe tomorrow.
00:01:46 ◼ ► Certainly over the weekend. Cause the kids both had like colds and light sore throats. Um, Declan in particular is extremely susceptible to strep. And as far as we could tell, it wasn't that, but, um, yeah, it sounds like I'm coming down with a cold as well. I guess Marco and you and I shouldn't have been smooching over the last few days. That's really what ruined everything.
00:02:04 ◼ ► Well, with that in mind, let's just get started and start with some follow-up, uh, with regard to backblaze and cloud backups, Barry Rubenstein writes,
00:02:14 ◼ ► One of the best backup decisions I recently made was switching from time machine to carbon copy, cloner plus backblaze. It works seamlessly in the background, provides a ton of options to customize, uh, carbon copy cloner backs up all the major cloud file, file providers using, including, excuse me, Dropbox, iCloud, Google drive, et cetera.
00:02:32 ◼ ► It temporarily downloads only new or change files locally for backup and then quote unquote evicts those local copies. I back these up to a dedicated volume on my external backup drive and then have backblaze backup that drive.
00:02:48 ◼ ► Yeah. This is, uh, highlighting a backup strategy that I tend not to think about, but a lot of people find valuable. I'm always like, uh, just back up the whole, you know, the whole volume, like everything. Don't, don't pick and choose directories. But a lot of people know, like they have a habit where they're like, look, the only files I care about are here or in these two locations. And if that's the case with you, you can use lots of other solutions that are much more targeted. So this one, it's basically like carbon copy cloner, which carbon copy cloner does the whole drive to be clear. But, uh, if you only care about that, you know what I'm going to do with that.
00:02:52 ◼ ► A lot of people find valuable. I'm always like, uh, just back up the whole, you know, the whole volume, like everything. Don't, don't pick and choose directories. But a lot of people know, like they have a habit where they're like, look, the only files I care about are here or in these two locations.
00:03:06 ◼ ► And if that's the case with you, you can use lots of other solutions that are much more targeted. So this one, it's basically like carbon copy cloner, which carbon copy cloner does the whole drive to be clear. But, uh, if you only care about these specific directories, you could target copy those with arc or carbon copy cloner or whatever to another place. And, you know, again, given that it's, it's claimed that it's going to ask for them to be downloaded from the cloud service, back them up and then evict them. Assuming that all that works and is successful,
00:03:32 ◼ ► what you end up with is a target drive that just contain the files you want to back up. And they're just plain files. They came from cloud files, maybe in the source, but in their destination, they're just plain files. And then you point back blade with that back blades at that drive and it cloud backs up that drive. And again, all the files are plain files. There's no cloud anything. Uh, and as long as that drive is connect directly connected to your computer, back blades will back it up. So, uh, that is, sounds like a solution that works well for Barry.
00:03:58 ◼ ► Yeah. I was thinking more about this whole situation. And I, I realized like, you know, when we were first getting into Dropbox and then all the services that kind of followed in its footsteps, it was not cloud storage. It was sync. Like that was functionally what we were doing. We were taking a directory that was on our drives and we were syncing it between our computers.
00:04:18 ◼ ► The idea of cloud only files or like on demand files didn't come until I think years into this product being a thing. And of course that introduces lots of complexity. Like the file might not be there. You might not be able to get it there. Um, et cetera.
00:04:31 ◼ ► That's when the whole like file provider, you know, thing started becoming more necessary. That whole API, all the complexity behind that, all the problems behind that. Certainly I can see like today's world having back blades try to deal with what is really cloud storage now and not just synced local storage. That is a lot more complicated.
00:04:51 ◼ ► I don't think backblaze handled it particularly well in terms of messaging or, you know, warning or things like that. But I do kind of sympathize with the position they're in with the complexity of this.
00:05:01 ◼ ► Um, but I do think like what we are asking these tools to do now is, is no longer just take this folder on my computer and sync it. Um, that is how many of us choose to use it. Like, you know, I have mine set up to always keep everything downloaded. Like I never want a cloud only file on any of my computers, but I'm also only storing, I don't know, I think 20 gigs in my Dropbox. Like it's not a huge amount of data.
00:05:26 ◼ ► So I can kind of see why, you know, obviously this is not the common case for a lot of people, but I think another solution that might be relevant here is, um, back when I was using that third party program Maestral, which was a third party Dropbox open source client.
00:05:41 ◼ ► I haven't tested this, but I bet Maestral would be backed up by backblaze because I think it only supports downloaded files and it's just basically a, like a background process that's running, pulling the Dropbox API for changes.
00:05:56 ◼ ► And downloading those files to a directory on your Mac directly where it, where it appears to be.
00:06:01 ◼ ► So I bet there are things like that, or like accessing Dropbox through other like third party tools that can access it, that if you want Dropbox to be backed up by backblaze, maybe a third party tool like that could be a route that would work.
00:06:15 ◼ ► And speaking of ARC, Daniel Luce writes, here's how ARC handles cloud files along with the default setting.
00:06:19 ◼ ► And the screenshot is not spectacular, but it appears to read when a data list or cloud only file is encountered.
00:06:26 ◼ ► And then there's a dropdown and there are three options, report an error, ignore, or materialize.
00:06:32 ◼ ► So Daniel continues, if a file gets evicted after successful backup and never changes, ARC won't force it to be materialized back, nor will it error out.
00:06:39 ◼ ► Materialization or failure only occurs if ARC does not think it already has a backup of its current contents.
00:06:45 ◼ ► Again, ARC is also claiming to do the same thing as Carbon Copy Cloner, which is like, hey, we can pull down the file if you want, if we need to back it up.
00:06:54 ◼ ► And I think that's the route that backblaze is probably going to end up going down after this whole fiasco.
00:07:07 ◼ ► So last week's Overtime, we talked about, hey, should Apple do more MacBook Neo-style products?
00:07:19 ◼ ► Obviously, in the Overtime, we talked about a lot of different Neo ideas and decided if the products were Neo-able or not.
00:07:34 ◼ ► But obviously, in the past, we have talked about that, albeit not in the context of the Neo, which didn't exist at the time.
00:07:39 ◼ ► And the idea there is basically, I bet a lot of people want a Vision Pro because it's neat and cool,
00:07:44 ◼ ► but they can't pay that much money for it or don't want to pay that much money for it, just like the MacBooks.
00:07:51 ◼ ► It's like, hey, you wanted one of those really nice Apple laptops, but you didn't want to pay a lot?
00:08:24 ◼ ► Like, you know, there's been big markets for many years for laptops that were $900 to $1,200.
00:08:43 ◼ ► The Vision Pro is still in the $7,000 Mac Pro territory and with just nothing below it.
00:08:50 ◼ ► And the key thing about the Neo is you may be saying, well, there's all sorts of VR, AR headsets that cost way less money.
00:08:57 ◼ ► But the key thing with the Neo is the magic of providing, essentially, the experience that everybody wanted.
00:09:09 ◼ ► And with the Vision Pro, you can make a cheaper headset, but it won't give you the Vision Pro experience.
00:09:15 ◼ ► Not just, hey, you made a cheaper product in this category, but you made a cheaper product in this category that the people who buy it feel like they're getting away with something.
00:09:28 ◼ ► And, you know, if and when Apple comes out with cheaper, various cheaper glasses type products or whatever, we'll know if they match the Vision Pro in quality just because, you know, the screens have to become cheaper.
00:09:38 ◼ ► It has to be able to do all the things that Vision Pro can do, but, you know, way less or whatever, like, oh, and cost less money and all that other stuff.
00:09:46 ◼ ► But the technological progress on the underlying technology of the Vision Pro in particular has been really slow.
00:09:54 ◼ ► Like, it seems like nobody has Vision Pro quality screens at a massively lower price than Apple.
00:09:59 ◼ ► And obviously, Apple overprices a little bit with their very fancy industrial design and all sorts of other stuff and the cameras on the outside.
00:10:09 ◼ ► But Neo is not just like, oh, it's instead of a MacBook Pro, it's a MacBook Air, as we just said.
00:10:20 ◼ ► Like competing with those X-Real glasses, they're like a few hundred bucks or whatever.
00:10:46 ◼ ► The Vision Pro is giving people an experience that most people are not actually wanting and also at a very high price.
00:11:00 ◼ ► I think the whole idea of the Neo is it's for people who already wanted a nice Apple laptop and a Neo Vision Pro would be for people who already want a Vision Pro.
00:11:10 ◼ ► It's not, because it's not like the Neo suddenly made people who weren't interested in laptops interested in laptops.
00:11:24 ◼ ► Now, granted, that's a tiny group of people, but for those people, and they're just like, oh, I would love a Vision Pro, but $3,500, forget it.
00:11:31 ◼ ► It's like, well, what if I told you you could get something that you will think is just as good as a Vision Pro for $800?
00:11:37 ◼ ► That narrative makes a lot more sense if what we see from people who do have the Vision Pro is that they're using it all the time and loving it and getting lots of things done in it.
00:11:55 ◼ ► You have one, but it's not like you're dying for a cheaper Vision Pro because you just love the Vision Pro so much.
00:12:04 ◼ ► Price is a big one, but it has many more fundamental challenges that I don't think have great chances of being solved.
00:12:14 ◼ ► The next one that we didn't talk about that was suggested by a lot of people was the iMac,
00:12:19 ◼ ► which is an interesting case because, I mean, we did talk about the Mac Mini in overtime.
00:12:28 ◼ ► But the problem with the iMac is like once you swap out the SoC for like an A something SoC,
00:12:33 ◼ ► it's really difficult to push that price down because the screen just dominates the price and everything else about it.
00:12:42 ◼ ► And you can't like the iMac screen is fine, but it's there's not a appreciably cheaper screen just waiting to be switched to.
00:13:10 ◼ ► Could you do a little bit of different stamping instead of machining to take a little bit off?
00:13:14 ◼ ► It's similar to the Mac Mini case, except that in the case of the Mac Mini, we came at it in the overtime.
00:13:25 ◼ ► And the other is taking the MacBook Neo and chopping off all the parts until it's a Mac Mini.
00:13:30 ◼ ► And seeing what you end up price-wise, and I don't know how much you can chop off of the iMac,
00:13:34 ◼ ► especially since I think the current iMac should have an adjustable stand already, and it doesn't.
00:13:53 ◼ ► And the iMac seems kind of unbudgeable, but we may talk about, we will talk about, I think, the iMac later in the show.
00:14:01 ◼ ► So just on the iMac, on a Neo iMac, or iMac Neo rather, the monitor, yes, the screen is an expensive component.
00:14:10 ◼ ► It might even be the most expensive component, even though screen tech has gotten really good,
00:14:19 ◼ ► I bet even today, like, you know, how much do you think the iMac screen panel actually costs?
00:14:33 ◼ ► Like, and that's a complete monitor with the whole case and everything and ports and everything around it.
00:14:38 ◼ ► So, like, I don't think we're talking about more than probably a $200 part on Apple's standards.
00:14:54 ◼ ► You figure there's probably about $100 to $200 more stuff in there than a decent monitor would have.
00:15:04 ◼ ► I mean, you've got to also do the keyboard and mouse or trackpad, which the Mac Mini doesn't come with, obviously.
00:15:09 ◼ ► But I think you're looking at, I think they could make an iMac, you know, right now it's $1,300.
00:15:26 ◼ ► I think that's the next biggest place where the money is has got to be the case, right?
00:15:40 ◼ ► Well, but with the Neo, what they showed is that they could still make an aluminum case.
00:15:56 ◼ ► Now, that being said, I don't think the iMac is a high volume enough product for them to care that much.
00:16:03 ◼ ► Like, I don't think, like, we knew there were, there's a million, there's a billion people wanting to buy a cheaper Apple laptop.
00:16:16 ◼ ► I don't think that many people are dying to have an all-in-one desktop and saying, you know what?
00:16:28 ◼ ► I think most people who buy iMacs are doing it for, like, aesthetic reasons in an office.
00:16:32 ◼ ► And most people, most consumers who are price sensitive probably aren't looking at a desktop.
00:16:51 ◼ ► But I think just that the iMac, like a lesser case of the Vision Pro, it's like, to what end?
00:17:02 ◼ ► William Moran writes, I am very senior in tech at one of the firms that has access to Mythos and Nightwing.
00:17:08 ◼ ► What is significant about it compared to previous LLMs like Sonic 4.6 or Opus 4.6 is not the ability to find bugs.
00:17:22 ◼ ► And to recap the context on this, Mythos was the LLM that's so amazing at finding security flaws that Anthropic didn't want to release it to the general public yet because it would be too dangerous.
00:17:32 ◼ ► They just wanted a select set of security researchers to have access to it so they could shore up their software.
00:17:36 ◼ ► And of course, it probably leaked due to Anthropic's own security flaws and everyone has access to it.
00:17:45 ◼ ► Then with regard to the preview and some new stuff from ChatGPT, Kyle Orland at Ars Technica writes,
00:17:54 ◼ ► New research from the UK's AI Security Institute, or AISI, suggests that OpenAI's GPT 5.5, which launched publicly last week, reached, quote,
00:18:02 ◼ ► a similar level of performance on our cyber evaluations, quote, as Mythos preview, which the group evaluated last month.
00:18:10 ◼ ► On the highest level expert tests, GPT 5.5 passed an average of 71.4%, slightly higher than the 68.6% achieved by Mythos preview, although this was within the margin of error.
00:18:20 ◼ ► GPT 5.5 also matched Mythos preview and its progress on an AISI test range set up to simulate a 32-step data extraction attack on a corporate network.
00:18:40 ◼ ► The new results for 5.5 suggests that when it comes to cybersecurity risk, Mythos preview was likely not, quote,
00:18:45 ◼ ► a breakthrough specific to one model, quote, but rather, quote, a byproduct of more general improvements in long-horizon autonomy, reasoning, and coding, AISI writes.
00:18:55 ◼ ► Yeah, so William was saying that what makes Mythos special is that it can chain together vulnerabilities, and this test was a 32-step chain that no model had ever passed, but now Mythos passes it, and so does GPT 5.5.
00:19:14 ◼ ► Anthropics' latest model and OpenAI's latest model both are way better at this than past models.
00:19:19 ◼ ► Additionally, Daniel Stenberg, I can read, I swear, Daniel Stenberg writes with regard to Curl,
00:19:26 ◼ ► I complained and I complained about the high-frequency junk submissions to the Curl bug bounty that grew really intense during 2025 and early 2026,
00:19:51 ◼ ► Here's my summary of this blog post, which you can read in full because it'll be linked in the notes.
00:19:55 ◼ ► They're getting more security and bug reports than ever, driven by AI, but now they're much higher quality than they were last year.
00:20:06 ◼ ► It was like, this is wrong, and this is wrong, and this is wrong, and you'd waste your time looking at it and be like, no, it's not wrong.
00:20:10 ◼ ► These stupid AI reports are coming in, they're just flagging stuff that's not actually bugged and it's wasting all of our time,
00:20:18 ◼ ► But apparently since March of this year, suddenly now they're getting tons of submissions, and the quality is really high.
00:20:28 ◼ ► And so Daniel was early on, on the Curl is a library that does HTTP requests, essentially.
00:20:40 ◼ ► So obviously security flaws there are really pivotal, because if you find a security flaw there, it affects so much software.
00:20:50 ◼ ► And he's, you know, finding bugs is valuable to him as the maintainer of this project, but the slop reports were terrible.
00:21:07 ◼ ► I think the theory is that eventually this will sort of die down more, because there's not an infinite number of bugs in code.
00:21:18 ◼ ► And when you found, not that you're finding all the bugs, but eventually it becomes much harder to find bugs when you've found all the quote-unquote obvious ones.
00:21:25 ◼ ► But we'll see, you know, as evidenced by both Mythos and GPT 5.5, these tools continue to rapidly advance.
00:21:32 ◼ ► So it may be a while before we feel like we've got all the low-hanging fruit and all the libraries that we're using.
00:21:43 ◼ ► Nearly every Linux distribution released since 2017 is currently vulnerable to a security bug called CopyFail
00:21:52 ◼ ► The exploit uses a Python script that works across all of the vulnerable Linux distributions,
00:21:56 ◼ ► requiring no per-distro offsets, no version checks, no recompilation, according to Theore, the security firm that uncovered it.
00:22:05 ◼ ► CopyFail was identified by Theore's researchers with assistance from their XINT code AI tool.
00:22:10 ◼ ► Yes, I don't know what XINT is based on, but anyway, people are just pointing these tools at just existing code bases
00:22:16 ◼ ► and finding just really embarrassing, really like obvious in hindsight, really dangerous security flaws.
00:22:43 ◼ ► So, you know, people, these tools exist and people are using them and they're finding problems.
00:22:51 ◼ ► And then with regard to AI ruining everything from a hardware perspective instead of software,
00:22:56 ◼ ► Joe Rosignal at MacRumors writes, Apple has stopped offering the 256 gig storage option for the Mac Mini worldwide.
00:23:02 ◼ ► The Mac Mini now starts at $800 with the M4 chip, 16 gigs of RAM, and a half terabyte of storage.
00:23:07 ◼ ► Whereas it previously started at $600 with the M4 chip, 16 gigs of RAM, both the same, and 256 gigs of storage.
00:23:16 ◼ ► Yeah, this is – my overcast Mac Mini has continued to appreciate an aftermarket value.
00:23:25 ◼ ► I did a quick eBay search earlier today for the sold items for my configuration, which was the former base of 16-256 regular M4,
00:23:43 ◼ ► I didn't save this link, but I think, what was it, Paul Haddad of Tapbots posted some eBay listings for Mac Studios
00:23:51 ◼ ► with the big RAM configurations that Apple no longer sells, and some of them are going for $35,000.
00:24:06 ◼ ► You used to be able to buy them for what we thought was a huge price, but now you can't get them at any price.
00:24:12 ◼ ► And you can kind of understand, because, like, suppose you're a business and you need that for something.
00:24:18 ◼ ► Suppose, you know, you're, like, you know, maybe a post-production house, you need more workstations, or, you know,
00:24:22 ◼ ► like, the kind of business that actually needs high-end computers and, like, bills out client fees that can pay that kind of price.
00:24:32 ◼ ► And so it actually is potentially worth it for you to get one for $35,000 that, you know, if you have the alternative, is not getting it.
00:24:45 ◼ ► I would imagine it would be some AI company with a huge and existing investment, and to them, this is peanuts, and you've got to spend that VC money somehow.
00:24:51 ◼ ► But, yeah, well, I mean, to be fair, I believe these were listings and not completed sales, so I'm not sure what they're actually going to sell for.
00:24:58 ◼ ► But the bottom line is, the supply and demand curve on Macs that Apple no longer sells, that Apple used to sell with a lot of RAM, is looking rough these days.
00:25:07 ◼ ► Yeah, listings don't matter, but you've got to scroll down and check that box that says sold items.
00:25:15 ◼ ► I do have some saved eBay searches for really weird stuff, like the bent piece of metal that holds the hard drives in my Mac Pro.
00:25:31 ◼ ► And I've left it running because I'm like, surely at some point, this stupid bent piece of metal for this obsolete computer, like, it's going to come down in price.
00:25:40 ◼ ► And I can tell you, as of, like, this afternoon, they're still going for hundreds of dollars.
00:25:47 ◼ ► But I do think, though, like, the situation we are in now with component shortages, there is not a clear end in sight.
00:25:58 ◼ ► It already has been, but it's going to continue to be very disruptive that I think many products are going to be delayed.
00:26:10 ◼ ► You know, like, I think one of the things that kind of strained NVIDIA's gaming business is that as the rise of AI started up, you know, first, you know, I know Bitcoin miners ruined GPUs for gamers first.
00:26:23 ◼ ► But, like, it became not necessarily that worth it for NVIDIA to serve the gaming market that much because they were having all these giant orders for their giant chips for their other stuff.
00:26:36 ◼ ► Because in the entire industry, the entire components and hardware business, it's worth it for them to serve the very high-priced AI customers right now and the very high-priced data center customers right now.
00:26:48 ◼ ► And all of us on the consumer side, we're going to get squeezed in a bunch of different unpleasant ways, Title.
00:26:57 ◼ ► Like, actual shortages of computing equipment mostly haven't happened in our entire lives.
00:27:04 ◼ ► Well, the RAM market always has those things where they misestimate demand and RAM suddenly goes up and down.
00:27:11 ◼ ► It did, but it was, you know, oftentimes that was out of, you know, like some awful earthquake would hit Taiwan or something and, you know, that would crush RAM prices for a little while.
00:27:19 ◼ ► But, like, I don't think that wasn't really this big of a swing or for this long of a time or this broad of an effect.
00:27:25 ◼ ► In this case, what we are facing industry-wide here is significant shortages of lots of components for probably at least 18 months.
00:27:41 ◼ ► So I think that's going to create some strange and difficult dynamics that, you know, if we're not really planning for them, they might catch us by surprise.
00:27:49 ◼ ► I think, for instance, if you think you're going to need a computer this year, buy it right now.
00:28:04 ◼ ► The MacBook Pros, they just got their M5 update, and you can go today and order any configuration of MacBook Pro all the way up to the max 128 gig RAM, the max chips.
00:28:30 ◼ ► If you need a computer anytime soon, get it now while you still can, because in three or six months, you might be facing delays of three to 12 months to get that computer.
00:28:47 ◼ ► Businesses are going through the same calculus of, like, well, you know, if we need to, like, get a new laptop or whatever for everybody we hire, maybe we should buy a few in advance.
00:29:03 ◼ ► As consumers, you know, we are kind of last priority for a lot of these products, and there are shortages already, and they're going to get worse.
00:29:14 ◼ ► And so, you know, on the silver lining front, maybe having a direct, large financial incentive to eek more power out of the computers that we already have might result in another good effect in the industry.
00:29:38 ◼ ► We'll see, you know, those kind of effects might happen as a result of this, but in the meantime, we're all going to be crunched, and I think we need to be prepared for that, which is one of the strangest excuses I've ever given anybody to buy a MacBook Pro, but here we are.
00:29:54 ◼ ► This reminds me a lot of when you couldn't get a car or a new car anyway because of the chip shortage.
00:29:59 ◼ ► There's a chip shortage, you fellas, and, you know, you couldn't get a new car not easily and not quickly during, you know, the height of COVID, and I feel like this is that, but much worse and much more universally applicable.
00:30:12 ◼ ► Apple's considering dropping the cheapest MacBook Neo configuration as one possible response to the rising cost of building the popular laptop, according to Tim Colpan, a former Bloomberg reporter.
00:30:22 ◼ ► Shipping estimates on Apple's website currently set at two to three weeks across the lineup, following stronger than expected demand, and the company is said to have instructed suppliers to increase production capacity to 10 million units, roughly double the original forecast of five to six million.
00:30:40 ◼ ► Like, I mean, you can see why Apple would really not want to say anything negative or cause any negative press about the MacBook Neo right now because it's a hit.
00:30:54 ◼ ► And for the Neo to either have to, you know, cut its cheaper price option, which is one rumor that I saw blow by, or to have, you know, just extended wait times for it.
00:31:14 ◼ ► But I bet Apple would bend over backwards to avoid having to say or do anything negative about the Neo right now.
00:31:23 ◼ ► Tim Colpan adds in his own post, the renewed commitment to meeting demand means Apple must also ask TSMC for a hot lot of A18 Pro chips.
00:31:39 ◼ ► So maybe it's a term of art in the industry, or maybe it's just Tim Colpan being spicy.
00:31:47 ◼ ► Yeah, I also agree that one of the worst things that Apple could do to the Neo right now is cut the low-end model, because that's like, that's the whole point of the product.
00:31:55 ◼ ► But, yeah, I mean, as Marco said, a lot of the situation out there is that, like, suppliers are telling manufacturers, we don't have any more of these things to sell you until X number of months in the future.
00:32:25 ◼ ► I think Apple will hold the line on this one, because this is definitely the type of thing that Apple can absorb.
00:32:38 ◼ ► So capital expenditure is, or capital expense, is the money an organization spends to buy, maintain, or improve its fixed assets, such as buildings, vehicles, equipment, or land.
00:32:46 ◼ ► It is considered a capital expenditure when the asset is newly purchased or when money is used toward extending the useful life of an existing asset, such as repairing a roof.
00:32:54 ◼ ► Capital expenditures contrast with operating expenses, or OPEX, which are ongoing expenses that are inherent to the operation of the asset.
00:33:05 ◼ ► The difference between OPEX and CAPEX, or capital expenditure, may not be immediately obvious for some expenses.
00:33:10 ◼ ► For instance, repaving the parking lot may be thought of as inherent to the operation of a shopping mall.
00:33:15 ◼ ► Similarly, the cost of software for a business, either software development or software-as-a-service licensing, might fall into either OPEX or CAPEX.
00:33:21 ◼ ► That is, is it merely business as usual, or is it something new, an investment with multi-year return?
00:33:27 ◼ ► The dividing line for items like these is that the expense is considered CAPEX if the financial benefit of the expenditure extends beyond the current fiscal year.
00:33:35 ◼ ► So during my career having a regular jobby job for 25 years, whether or not the work that I was doing, software development, was considered CAPEX or OPEX, has changed several times in ways that has affected me at my job.
00:34:02 ◼ ► And the real answer is like, what do our lawyers slash financial people tell us we either have to do or we should do to optimize whatever the hell it is the CFO optimizes, tax burden or whatever, right?
00:34:14 ◼ ► So at various times it has been like, you're a software developer, you don't have to worry, you're pretty little head about this.
00:34:21 ◼ ► Other times it's like, log everything you do, because we've decided that we're going to count all software development of any kind as CAPEX.
00:34:30 ◼ ► And we need to have a catalog of it for tax reasons, because we've decided this is the way we're doing it.
00:34:48 ◼ ► Or is this like a new thing where like, you know, you're making the parking lot fancier?
00:34:54 ◼ ► I'm not interested in what goes into this, but I'm saying that it's not always cut and dry.
00:35:01 ◼ ► But like, the reason this comes up is I think this was a couple of shows back where we were talking about, I think it was probably in the, like, Tim Cook Turnus, like, turnover episode.
00:35:18 ◼ ► And one of the points it made was like, yeah, Apple burned a lot of time and money and people and goodwill on the car.
00:35:22 ◼ ► But now, nowadays, looking at the current landscape where Apple's, you know, peers in the technology market, they're spending so much money on AI stuff that everything Apple has ever spent on the car in the past decade is dwarfed by what people are doing with AI right now.
00:35:41 ◼ ► And to the people who are financial nerds who are into this, like this blog post we're about to read here, I think it's from M.G. Siegler, or eventually we'll get to it.
00:35:50 ◼ ► They've been looking at Apple and saying, hey, Apple, why are all your competitors massively increasing their CapEx on AI stuff?
00:36:12 ◼ ► We often have the, is Apple falling behind discussion in the realm of, like, consumer facing, why does Siri suck?
00:36:20 ◼ ► How can they not deliver the, the stuff that they announced in WWDC 2024, that type of thing.
00:36:26 ◼ ► But then the financial people are like, Apple, why aren't you doing the things your competitors are doing?
00:36:32 ◼ ► So I did pull out some info about Apple's CapEx to put hard numbers to the thing that I just vaguely alluded to in the earlier episode.
00:36:40 ◼ ► So Marcus Mendez writes at 9to5Mac, as part of its fiscal quarter two of 2026 results, Apple reported $11.4 billion in R&D expenses, up 34% from Q2 2025, making it the highest quarterly figure in the company's history.
00:37:03 ◼ ► And if you click down on those a step deeper and look at the R&D areas separate from SG&A, which is selling, general, and administrative, you'll find that R&D is even accelerating much higher than the company is.
00:37:17 ◼ ► Yeah, so this is talking about OPEX and SG&A is another one of those terms that comes up in your eyes glaze over about expenses.
00:37:25 ◼ ► But these are the numbers they're talking about and they're saying they're up 34% from Q2 2025 to $11 billion.
00:37:57 ◼ ► In 2026, with half the fiscal year in the books, Apple's on track to spend $9 to $10 billion on CapEx.
00:38:03 ◼ ► One could imagine a banker in Wall Street conjuring Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused.
00:38:17 ◼ ► But the dichotomy also keeps growing every single quarter as big tech keeps ramping CapEx and Apple stays the same.
00:38:27 ◼ ► So this chart shows 2020 through 2026 CapEx of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook.
00:38:38 ◼ ► And if you look at the dark blue bump, as TNC just read the text, the little dark blue bump in 2020, 2021, 22, 23, 24, 25, it's like the same.
00:38:50 ◼ ► The other lines in the chart, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook, go bonkers starting in like 2024, 2025, and 2026.
00:39:38 ◼ ► In the scope of what everyone else is spending on AI stuff and CapEx, money that they're laying out for things that are not just like ongoing expenses, but like we need to, you know, buy tons of GPUs, build new data centers, like new stuff or whatever, whatever rules they're using to consider it CapEx.
00:39:58 ◼ ► And there's, you know, we've had debates about this from, again, from the product perspective.
00:40:05 ◼ ► But on the financial side, this is the other side of it, which is like, is Apple investing versus is Apple smarter than everybody else?
00:40:15 ◼ ► And when the bubble pops, they're all going to be left holding the bag and they're just burning through cash.
00:40:18 ◼ ► And Apple is going to be sitting on the sideline going, we didn't have to do any of that.
00:40:33 ◼ ► We know that over historically, Apple is pretty stingy with how and where it spends money.
00:40:42 ◼ ► But and I would say like combining like referring to the car project here as as like, oh, it didn't matter.
00:41:16 ◼ ► And while some of it probably resulted in some things they could use after the car project was was killed.
00:41:27 ◼ ► Apple is limited way more by like talent and bandwidth, so to speak, than they are by money.
00:41:35 ◼ ► But I think if you can fault them for, you know, not having enough CapEx or, you know, whatever development, you know, R&D costs.
00:41:45 ◼ ► I think it's it's not necessarily that, oh, they wasted money on the car and then, you know, wow, look, A.I. dwarfs it.
00:41:57 ◼ ► And they also separately had a car project that drained a lot of talent and was a big distraction for a long time.
00:42:11 ◼ ► Like what I'm trying to say is that, like, again, if this graph was just Apple, you talk about the car project and you talk about the money wasted, the time wasted, the opportunity cost, all this other stuff.
00:42:20 ◼ ► You know, obviously it wasn't a successful product, although I still say it was successful and that they thankfully didn't ship something that they would be embarrassed by or whatever.
00:42:40 ◼ ► So even though over 10 years they spent billions of dollars, still generally dropping the bucket.
00:42:51 ◼ ► And essentially how it either looks like they all know something Apple doesn't or it shows that they are panicking and Apple isn't.
00:42:58 ◼ ► We'll find out which one of those things is true because I don't think they can both be true, right?
00:43:16 ◼ ► Like if you go back to any other trends or boom that Apple didn't follow, like everyone's investing in netbooks.
00:43:24 ◼ ► Like whatever the thing is, even if you went back and looked at it, like this is always funny when we talk about this number.
00:43:29 ◼ ► Like in the smartphone revolution, how much money was Microsoft spending on mobile devices versus how much money was Apple spending?
00:43:41 ◼ ► I think like the estimate I always see in those various stories about like how much money did Apple invest before they could ship the first iPhone?
00:43:48 ◼ ► It was like $150 million or something to get the first iPhone out the door, which at the time, you know, Ian, you're taking people off teams or whatever.
00:43:55 ◼ ► But like how much additional money did you have to drop in before you ship the first iPhone?
00:44:07 ◼ ► And I bet during that same time period, Microsoft probably spent more on mobile than Apple did.
00:44:17 ◼ ► But then like, again, those lines wouldn't show up on this graph at all because these are in billions, right?
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00:48:59 ◼ ► is when I see that little, you know, aluminum model in the hands of a person and they're,
00:49:09 ◼ ► and I've seen other people say this as well, this is kind of the spiritual successor to the iPhone mini.
00:49:18 ◼ ► Now, in one respect, Ultra will apply because rumors are that it will be ultra expensive because, hey,
00:49:30 ◼ ► And it's obviously expensive and fancy to make the folding screen and you got to make the sides thin and all, you know,
00:49:38 ◼ ► If you look at all the folding phones in the industry, they tend to be very expensive models.
00:49:42 ◼ ► Well, when I look at the actual phone, I'm like, oh, look, it's a phone for people who miss the iPhone mini because it's so small.
00:49:48 ◼ ► It's so short when it's, I mean, it's thick, it's fat, it's chunky when you have it folded up.
00:49:53 ◼ ► But one of the points that's made in the video is like, look how easy I can reach everywhere on the screen with my thumb when it's folded up.
00:50:03 ◼ ► So right away, I feel like this is a weird product to be called Ultra because when I was in, it was iPhone Ultra,
00:50:09 ◼ ► that term was being applied to phones many years ago, even before the foldable phone was a rumor.
00:50:15 ◼ ► And people were like, Apple's going to come out with another phone that's even more expensive than the iPhone Pro Max.
00:50:24 ◼ ► And there was like sort of a combination of the iPhone Air rumors with maybe the nascent iPhone folding phone rumors or whatever.
00:50:32 ◼ ► It's like, can you make a high end phone that's higher end than the Pro or Pro Max and you call it Ultra and you spend more money for it.
00:50:37 ◼ ► But the folding phone, other than the fact that it's going to be the most expensive iPhone ever,
00:50:47 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't, I, it doesn't quite fit the foldable for me if the rumors are correct about, you know, the size and everything.
00:51:01 ◼ ► Because first of all, like I took up that 3D printer model that I, that I have that everybody made a couple months back.
00:51:24 ◼ ► Also for what it's worth, Max Tech had said that the initial read on the Ultra was that it would be much taller than people are saying it is now.
00:51:34 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't know if it, like the model, the ones that he's got are the ones that they make when they're like, when they, like the case manufacturers use these like that.
00:51:44 ◼ ► Yeah, so the mini compared to this model, the mini is a little bit taller, but a lot narrower.
00:51:54 ◼ ► I mean, I don't think I have giant hands by any means, but they're not like tiny Trump hands.
00:51:58 ◼ ► But anyway, calling this an Ultra is a little bit of an odd move because, first of all, it is going to be very different than the others.
00:52:12 ◼ ► When you look at previous uses of the name Ultra, you know, the M-Chip Ultras and the Apple Watch Ultra, those are like, we took what was good about the thing before and just increased everything as much as we could.
00:52:28 ◼ ► The foldable is increasing some things a lot, like the unfolded screen size is going to be dramatically increased.
00:52:40 ◼ ► It's going to be questionable on things like how the battery life situation is going to work out, what other kind of limitations or sidesteps it's going to have, and other features.
00:52:54 ◼ ► You know, will it have all the other, you know, will it have like the heat management features of the Pro line?
00:53:03 ◼ ► You can look at the iPhone Air for, you know, a preview of probably what kind of trade-offs were required to get the thickness, you know, required in there.
00:53:14 ◼ ► I think it's also going to be, you know, it's going to be mini in some ways, sometimes, but one way it's not going to be mini is how it feels in your hand, because it's going to be not only wide, but I would also guess heavy.
00:53:34 ◼ ► I think it's going to be dense, and it's not going to feel mini at all, although it will feel ultra.
00:53:41 ◼ ► Yeah, so like, so I think it's going to be a bit of a sidestep, but what ultra tends to mean in Apple's usage so far is, we gave you the best and the most of everything.
00:53:58 ◼ ► Well, I agree with you about what ultra has historically meant, but I don't agree with you with the logic leap.
00:54:04 ◼ ► Therefore, that's not what Apple's going to do, because Apple does not care about logic or past patterns.
00:54:29 ◼ ► But he was like, you know, probably a year after the first time that was, name was connected with the phone.
00:54:43 ◼ ► People have basically been calling it the iPhone ultra when they didn't just call it the folding iPhone.
00:55:00 ◼ ► MacBook ultra, otherwise known as the M6 based OLED MacBook Pro with a touchscreen and dynamic
00:55:13 ◼ ► They're like, oh, I remember when it was like, and they're going to have the M6 MacBook Pros
00:55:18 ◼ ► I would say, I think we talked about this last episode, like based on the component shortages,
00:55:21 ◼ ► the having the M6 based MacBook Pros come out in calendar year 2026 seems vanishingly likely
00:55:34 ◼ ► We're like, oh, you can get the M5 ones if you're comfortable with the design again before
00:55:39 ◼ ► We're like, hey, if you just want something that's tried and true and tested and you know
00:55:53 ◼ ► It's going to be a new design for the case, which we haven't had in a long time, supposedly
00:56:03 ◼ ► But all of those rumors were kind of like, you know, we have the M5 based MacBook Pro and
00:56:19 ◼ ► But the current rumor is, oh, no, they're not just going to roll out this thing, this M6 OLED
00:56:25 ◼ ► base, blah, blah, blah, touchscreen, dynamic island MacBook Pro as the successor to the M5
00:56:36 ◼ ► The MacBook Pro has an M5, you see, and a non OLED screen and no touchscreen and no dynamic
00:56:57 ◼ ► But if you want a MacBook Ultra, which is somewhat disappointing to me because I just assume it's
00:57:10 ◼ ► Yes, they occasionally go through these, you know, redesign, revision things, but we don't
00:57:23 ◼ ► And when I see the name Ultra rumor for this, I think, well, they either want to or have to
00:57:31 ◼ ► Or they love the idea of having an even higher priced, higher margin model in the MacBook
00:57:37 ◼ ► Pro line so they can keep selling the MacBook Pro for the people who can't tolerate how massively
00:57:50 ◼ ► Newly redesigned thing, much better screen, touchscreen, the dynamic ion cellular, like these are all
00:58:02 ◼ ► But it pains me a little bit to see them trying if they assuming again, assuming this is even
00:58:06 ◼ ► true, trying to split the line in a way that I think is not justified by what I see as simply
00:58:18 ◼ ► See, I think this the the MacBook Ultra idea makes a lot more sense than the iPhone Ultra being
00:58:26 ◼ ► the foldable like this to me. It's like you want to you want to give everybody the most.
00:58:42 ◼ ► It was the one that was like if people want absurd battery life, much higher durability,
00:58:48 ◼ ► much brighter screen, much more depth rating, you know, all the different things the Ultra
00:58:52 ◼ ► gives you, you know, things like the siren and the speaker and the extra button and like
00:58:57 ◼ ► all this stuff. The Ultra was like, we are going to prioritize giving you the most that you could
00:59:04 ◼ ► possibly want out of this device. And we are that that allows us to make something that is thick
00:59:11 ◼ ► and blocky and has expensive metals in it and stuff like that. And that will that will help
00:59:17 ◼ ► achieve that goal because this product doesn't need to be the thin, sleek, mass market thing for the
00:59:22 ◼ ► more mass market targeted price. So when you take that attitude and consider how could you make a
00:59:28 ◼ ► MacBook Pro Ultra with that style so you can you can brainstorm things like, yes, it would have
00:59:34 ◼ ► the higher end component, the OLED screen. You know, maybe it has, you know, a higher end tier
00:59:41 ◼ ► of chips available. I don't necessarily. Oh, that's the other thing about it. Does that mean
00:59:45 ◼ ► the MacBook Pro is never going to get the M6? Or will it just get it like on a staggered pace? Like
00:59:50 ◼ ► right now, the MacBook Air has like a staggered CPU, you know, from the from the pro line. Maybe there
00:59:58 ◼ ► is another subdivision of chip. I don't know if the I don't know if it's feasible for the laptop
01:00:03 ◼ ► thermal envelope to include like the actual Ultra chip. That seems unlikely. Yeah, that's the only
01:00:09 ◼ ► thing I think would justify the Ultra Ultra name is if they actually did have an M6 class chip that
01:00:15 ◼ ► is unprecedented, like that is just bigger and hotter than has ever. But I don't think it's
01:00:20 ◼ ► going to be the case because again, the rumor is that the the rumored MacBook Ultra will be thinner
01:00:24 ◼ ► than the existing M5 MacBook Pros. Maybe they're achieving that through things like a more expensive
01:00:30 ◼ ► metal. Maybe they maybe it'll be titanium. I don't know. It's been done before, not recently,
01:00:34 ◼ ► but it's been and not without its problems. But you know, we have a different world now.
01:00:41 ◼ ► Yeah, like I don't know how it would work out cost wise. But but certainly like you can imagine,
01:00:46 ◼ ► okay, a MacBook Pro that has the best possible screen they can ship the fastest chip they can ship.
01:00:56 ◼ ► what if it's only available in 16 inch, and that gives them a few more options of the configuration
01:01:05 ◼ ► you know, better battery life than all the other ones, because it's a little bit bigger,
01:01:08 ◼ ► a little bit heavier, but it's Ultra, it's allowed to be. There's a lot of freedom that's
01:01:13 ◼ ► offered by the concept of making something of having an Ultra line. And I think the Apple Watch
01:01:18 ◼ ► Ultra, I think has been a big success in in a lot of those ways. So hopefully, there is something to
01:01:25 ◼ ► that besides just a higher price. Yeah, I think if the Ultra actually was like the watch where it was
01:01:30 ◼ ► actually bigger, thicker and had higher specs in all regards, I would accept it. The thing that
01:01:34 ◼ ► burns me up about this, though, is that I feel like the MacBook Pros are overdue to have OLED
01:01:38 ◼ ► touchscreen is not a high end feature. It's on $300 laptops, right? The dynamic island is not
01:01:43 ◼ ► so amazing that you need to have be the high price thing. And I don't think they're going to put a
01:01:47 ◼ ► bigger, faster, hotter chip in it. I think it's just going to have the same chips. It just it just
01:01:51 ◼ ► kind of annoys me to like, essentially fence off what used to be like we used to when the new MacBook
01:01:56 ◼ ► Pros came out, they got the the the the pro and the max version of the plane, the pro and the max
01:02:02 ◼ ► version of the latest M chips. And that's just what we accepted. And now it's like, okay, well,
01:02:06 ◼ ► now there's this staggered thing. Only the ultras get the latest version of the pro and the max chips,
01:02:09 ◼ ► you got to wait for the other ones that trickle down. And by the way, this is an excuse for us to
01:02:17 ◼ ► we have to have a somewhat they try to have a somewhat sensible line where the higher end ones
01:02:22 ◼ ► have options lower end ones don't, which is why the non pro phones took so long to get promotion
01:02:27 ◼ ► because it was just a differentiator for the pro phones. What this would mean is that don't hold
01:02:32 ◼ ► your breath for the MacBook Air to get an OLED screen because that's like a 2029 product. I forget
01:02:36 ◼ ► what the rumors are for that. But it's like, that's got to trickle all it's not even going to go in the
01:02:39 ◼ ► MacBook Pro. It's only going to be the ultra pros still don't get it. Then eventually it has to
01:02:45 ◼ ► trickle down to the MacBook Pro when they go fine, it's not going to be exclusive to the ultra in this
01:02:49 ◼ ► third generation of the ultra product. Now the MacBook Pro will get it. And then you got to wait
01:02:52 ◼ ► another three years for to say, fine, a MacBook Air can have an OLED screen. And that's how Apple
01:02:57 ◼ ► essentially gets embarrassingly behind on technology that is found in commodity products where the OLED
01:03:02 ◼ ► screen, the price of OLED screens, one of the few components that is not going through the roof
01:03:09 ◼ ► effects, but like screen prices do go down. Screen quality does get better, but Apple just holds the
01:03:14 ◼ ► line and says, no, OLED is an ultra feature only. And it has to stay that way for years. And that
01:03:20 ◼ ► just, that annoys me. So I'm, I'm not happy about this rumor if it turns out to be true.
01:03:27 ◼ ► Yeah. That's the other thing you think like, oh, we want cellular so much. Guess what? Your only
01:03:30 ◼ ► choice for cellular, which is like, again, a thing that you can get on like a base level iPad,
01:03:35 ◼ ► right. Your only choice is the three starting at $3,000 MacBook ultra or something that that feels
01:03:40 ◼ ► gross too. You know, it's funny when I bought my current computer that I'm using to speak,
01:03:45 ◼ ► you speak to you right now, which is an M three max MacBook pro with an, with a M three max in it
01:03:51 ◼ ► and 64 gigs Ram eight terabytes of storage. I thought it'll last me a year or two, which has been
01:03:56 ◼ ► typical for me for the last several years. And now I think three years in, uh, I'm expecting that I'm
01:04:03 ◼ ► going to hold onto this until the MacBook ultra or whatever they call it is something less than
01:04:08 ◼ ► your Mac pro in terms of expense, because it's going to be a doozy, particularly if Ram and SSDs
01:04:14 ◼ ► are still incredibly expensive. Next on our list, AirPods ultra or otherwise known as AirPods pro with
01:04:20 ◼ ► cameras to feed visual intelligence to Siri. And there was some news about this just earlier today.
01:04:24 ◼ ► In fact, Mark German writes the earbuds, which rely on cameras to see the space surrounding a user and
01:04:29 ◼ ► provide information on advanced testing. Cameras essentially act as eyes for the Siri digital
01:04:34 ◼ ► assistant and aren't designed to take photos or video. These components located in both the right
01:04:39 ◼ ► and left earbuds allow the device to capture visual information in low resolution. Other than longer
01:04:44 ◼ ► stems to accommodate the cameras, the product will resemble the AirPods pro three. The idea is to let
01:04:49 ◼ ► users ask questions about an item they may be looking at. For instance, they could be facing food
01:04:53 ◼ ► ingredients and ask what they should cook for dinner. The device could give the wearer a reminder based
01:04:57 ◼ ► on something the camera sees, or it might use external visuals to provide more advanced turn by turn
01:05:02 ◼ ► directions. The AI could cite specific landmark ahead when telling users when they should turn. The new
01:05:08 ◼ ► AirPods aren't designed to support hand gesture controls. They do have a small LED light in the
01:05:14 ◼ ► earbuds that will turn on when visual data is being fed into the cloud. Apple's planned, had planned for the
01:05:19 ◼ ► earbuds to go on sale as early as the first half of this year, but the launch was postponed after delays
01:05:23 ◼ ► to a revamped version of Siri. Everyone take a shot. While the hardware is nearly ready, concerns about
01:05:29 ◼ ► the AI elements could further hold back a launch if Apple isn't pleased with the quality of the visual
01:05:35 ◼ ► So this is a weird one. They're applying ultras to the AirPods with cameras in them, which again is a long
01:05:39 ◼ ► rumored product. Do you stick ultra on these? Well, it's surely differentiated from the AirPods Pro. This is
01:05:46 ◼ ► not just like the next logical revision of the AirPod Pro to stick cameras on them. I don't think that
01:05:51 ◼ ► follows. Like we've had AirPods Pro, AirPods Pro 2, 2.5, 3. Cameras were not really on anyone's list of
01:05:57 ◼ ► things that everyone else is doing on their earbuds that surely Apple will have to do, but this is
01:06:03 ◼ ► apparently their plan. So if they want to stick ultra on this one, I give them a pass because
01:06:07 ◼ ► I mean, they're not AirPods Pro and sticking a camera on something that didn't previously have
01:06:12 ◼ ► one, it sounds pretty ultra. Whether or not this will be a good product or work or ever shipped because
01:06:17 ◼ ► they can't get their Syriac together, we'll see. But I, you know, I could see, and obviously it's
01:06:21 ◼ ► probably going to be more expensive too because you're adding cameras to things that didn't have
01:06:24 ◼ ► them and there's not a lot of stuff on AirPods to begin with. So the addition of a camera is a
01:06:29 ◼ ► significant addition to the parts that you need to make an AirPod. But if you're trying to make a family
01:06:35 ◼ ► of products with ultra suffix, this is, and it's the same question I said before, if they don't call
01:06:39 ◼ ► these ultra, what do you call them? Yeah, I guess because they already have Pro. AirPods camera? Or it could
01:06:45 ◼ ► just be, well, it could be AirPods vision, but it was, or when they did the iPod photo, they just put
01:06:49 ◼ ► stuck photo right in the name. I mean, you could just make a, this is what we were just talking about
01:06:55 ◼ ► with regard to the MacBook Pro versus MacBook Pro Ultra, but it could just be the new AirPods Pro.
01:07:01 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, they would, they would just make it four, I guess. Like when they're up to three and
01:07:07 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, yeah, I don't know. I mean, this, this is not a product I'm particularly excited about,
01:07:12 ◼ ► but we'll see. Maybe, maybe it'll change my mind. But honestly, I, I still am not good with the
01:07:19 ◼ ► AirPods Pro 3. I still use my 2s the vast majority of the time because I still find the 3 is
01:07:23 ◼ ► uncomfortable. Sorry. Even with the tips, you went through the whole different tip things?
01:07:26 ◼ ► Yeah. I went to the comply tips and they're, they're less uncomfortable, but they're still
01:07:30 ◼ ► uncomfortable really after a long time. And I still use the 2s the vast majority of the time.
01:07:37 ◼ ► Yeah, it does. But yeah, I think that, you know, we, we went through the pro-ification of their product
01:07:42 ◼ ► line over the years and now everything has a pro. And so if they wanted to go higher than that,
01:07:47 ◼ ► ultra is the word they tend to use. So yeah, I think that's very likely to be used here.
01:07:53 ◼ ► Well, just to briefly kind of echo what Marco said, I don't feel like I need cameras in my AirPods.
01:08:01 ◼ ► However, this is one of those things where I would be very unsurprised to see, oh, Apple came up with
01:08:10 ◼ ► It's not the hardware though. It's like any other AI type thing. It's like you need the sensors there
01:08:15 ◼ ► to provide input, but it lives or dies entirely based on these much smarter thing living either
01:08:22 ◼ ► on your phone or in the cloud or both that does something with those. Because as this, this rumor
01:08:27 ◼ ► says, the cameras aren't going to be like good camera. I mean, it's an AirPod. What do you think
01:08:30 ◼ ► you can fit in there? It's not going to be, it's going to be a low resolution camera from which you,
01:08:35 ◼ ► the user will probably never see any output. You will never see what these cameras are seeing.
01:08:39 ◼ ► It's probably some just garbage thing, but it's input to what you hope is some kind of smart thing
01:08:45 ◼ ► that can say like, now, now we can see what's around you and maybe we can do useful stuff with
01:08:49 ◼ ► that. Like I said, directions, turn left at the next tree or whatever. Like when you're walking
01:08:54 ◼ ► around, like if the thing at the other end of this is smart and useful, it's not the cameras that are
01:08:59 ◼ ► doing it. It's the smart and useful thing. And it's just like, just, it just needs access to some
01:09:02 ◼ ► cameras. And these are already in your ears and they have a pretty good view depending on your
01:09:05 ◼ ► haircut. Um, so yeah, there are challenges here, but like, as the end of this says, uh, there are
01:09:11 ◼ ► concerns about the AI elements that could further hold back and watch if Apple isn't pleased with the
01:09:15 ◼ ► quality of visual intelligence features. Yeah. Uh, apparently they haven't been pleased with any,
01:09:19 ◼ ► any of the AI features because they haven't shipped them and they continue not to be pleased. And so I'm
01:09:23 ◼ ► not optimistic Casey that, uh, that Apple is going to bring you around on these are, I'm not even that
01:09:28 ◼ ► optimistic. They're going to ship anytime soon because so many things have been delayed.
01:09:32 ◼ ► And it's especially for something like this, where it's like the only purpose of these cameras is to
01:09:37 ◼ ► feed some smart thing. That's going to do stuff with them. It's not going to take pictures. It's
01:09:40 ◼ ► not going to take video. You're not going to see the output of these pictures. According to this
01:09:44 ◼ ► rumor, its whole purpose is to hook up to that smart thing. And if the smart thing's not smart enough,
01:09:49 ◼ ► don't ship this product weight. And it sounds like from this rumor, like the people who did the
01:09:53 ◼ ► hardware is twiddling their thumbs. Like, yeah, we, we delivered the hardware on the schedule that
01:09:56 ◼ ► you said you wanted it. And now it's just sitting there waiting for the software people
01:10:01 ◼ ► to get their act together for years. Yep. All right. Next on our list, iPad ultra or otherwise
01:10:08 ◼ ► known as the 20 inch foldable OLED iPad, which has been reportedly shelved. Yeah. We talked about this
01:10:13 ◼ ► on several shows ago. The rumors about people didn't know whether it was going to be Mac or whether it
01:10:17 ◼ ► was going to run Mac OS or iPad OS or whatever. And then there was a rumor a while ago that I think
01:10:20 ◼ ► we also reported on. Oh yeah. They've decided not to do this one. Basically this is like, imagine
01:10:25 ◼ ► a foldable phone, but massive and presumably running iPad OS. It's like an iPad that I, you know, you can
01:10:31 ◼ ► fold it out and the screen is really big and I guess you can make it in like an L shape and it could have
01:10:35 ◼ ► a, an onscreen keyboard to be kind of like a laptop. Like it was, this rumor was always just
01:10:39 ◼ ► going all over the place. But yeah, the rumor is that they've decided for now not to do this one,
01:10:45 ◼ ► but had they done it, it might've been called iPad ultra. And this is another one where I think
01:10:49 ◼ ► the ultra name fits. Cause it's like massively expensive iPad. That's way bigger. That can
01:10:54 ◼ ► bend in half, which is the thing iPads can't do. Uh, that one definitely. Well, they can Marco did it
01:10:59 ◼ ► once. Yeah. I did not do it. Excuse me. There was a butt in the household that did it, but it was not
01:11:05 ◼ ► Marco's, but that's correct. Uh, yeah. Yeah. All right. Apple watch ultra four. Uh, what do we think
01:11:10 ◼ ► about this? John has already got the name ultra and this rumor is the worst. Cause they're like,
01:11:13 ◼ ► maybe there's an eye. Presumably there will be an Apple watch ultra four, but like they're up to
01:11:21 ◼ ► but like maybe the rumors are so bad about like, maybe it will have newer updated health sensors.
01:11:26 ◼ ► Maybe we'll have a redesign case. Maybe it'll have touch ID on the side button and maybe it'll have
01:11:32 ◼ ► a new S 12 SOC, but none of these, none of these, these maybes about the Apple, like, like the fact
01:11:38 ◼ ► that there will be an Apple watch ultra four, I would put money on, but the fact that nobody can come up
01:11:44 ◼ ► with anything that they're willing to say, yeah, it'll probably have this feature. And it's just like,
01:11:47 ◼ ► what could they do for an Apple? They could do all these things, but it doesn't seem like any of them
01:11:51 ◼ ► are even rumored. It just seems like people are guessing based on like, well, if they do make
01:11:54 ◼ ► one with the four, it probably has to have this stuff. So this is only in here as a courtesy because
01:11:59 ◼ ► it's already got the name ultra. And it is as far as I know, the only product, obviously the,
01:12:07 ◼ ► Apple watch ultra was out there with the ultra name out ahead of everybody else being all ultra
01:12:11 ◼ ► ultra and, uh, they keep making them and, uh, they've been getting better a little tiny bit,
01:12:28 ◼ ► Yeah. They were both, they were both the same year. They're both 2022, I believe. But yeah,
01:12:36 ◼ ► Yeah. I was thinking product, product, not chip, but that is a fair point. Nevertheless,
01:12:39 ◼ ► uh, John is still in the bargaining phase with regard to his, uh, Mac pro bargaining. I'm just,
01:12:46 ◼ ► I'm just, I'm just saying Mac ultra question mark. And John himself has put an upside down
01:12:52 ◼ ► smiley in our internal show notes. Because honestly, you know, what kind of Mac would you put a name?
01:13:01 ◼ ► I know we've been talking about the Mac book pro ultra, right? But like, what about a Mac,
01:13:05 ◼ ► which means desktop Mac, because the laptop ones are called Mac books of various kinds.
01:13:09 ◼ ► What would a Mac ultra be? Yeah. I think we know the answer to that question. Apple does not want
01:13:16 ◼ ► to make it, but I'm just saying Apple, if you're going to put ultra on all your products, I hope
01:13:20 ◼ ► someone in some pitch meeting says, Hey, what if we made a Mac ultra? And then someone, someone wearing
01:13:25 ◼ ► one of my shirts just glares at them. So his name was stampy. You loved him. That's a Simpsons
01:13:32 ◼ ► reference Casey. Nope. I actually got that one. Mac ultra. You can rename it someday. The case for
01:13:39 ◼ ► true Mac ultra successor. I don't know. Mac ultra. Just going to leave that out there. Let's move on.
01:13:44 ◼ ► I mean, I think, I think there, there is room for Mac ultra, but I don't think it's ever going to be
01:13:52 ◼ ► the form that you want it to be. Well, like I said, I'm not married to the form as I've made the pitch
01:13:57 ◼ ► in the past several episodes, more transistors, bigger, hotter, more heat dissipation in exchange
01:14:03 ◼ ► for more computation. That's, that's, there's a lot of flexibility within that framework. A lot.
01:14:08 ◼ ► Yeah. I think if such a thing were to exist, it would be another tier of the Mac studio in this,
01:14:16 ◼ ► in the similar way that like when we had the iMac pro, it was, you know, externally, it looked like
01:14:22 ◼ ► a 27 inch retina iMac, even though internally it was very different and, you know, had much higher
01:14:28 ◼ ► end components, totally different cooling, et cetera. But it was, it was like a pro form of a product line
01:14:35 ◼ ► they already had. I think if they're ever going to do a Mac ultra, uh, it would, it would be
01:14:41 ◼ ► basically a pro, a pro edition, like a higher, a higher end edition of the Mac studio or something
01:14:48 ◼ ► that looks very similar to the Mac studio, but they'd call it the Mac ultra. They wouldn't call
01:14:51 ◼ ► it the Mac studio. Right. And they probably wouldn't call it the Mac pro because that name is now
01:14:55 ◼ ► tarnished forever. Yeah. I mean, it seems like they're moving towards ultra as their high end name
01:14:59 ◼ ► and leaving kind of pro as the middle, kind of what they did with the, uh, actually with like the,
01:15:03 ◼ ► uh, super cores and the medium cores and stuff like that, you know, by all means feel, I have
01:15:08 ◼ ► quibbles about which particular products they put into these slots, but if they want to change their
01:15:11 ◼ ► naming and make ultra, the new top pro, the new middle, and then I guess a four level one, which
01:15:15 ◼ ► is like Neo air pro ultra. And then somewhere in there is the non suffix ones somewhere in between.
01:15:21 ◼ ► Like it's that anyway, I'm fine with them going through that, but yeah, whatever they make, if they were to
01:15:27 ◼ ► make a Mac, the whole idea is a Mac that can do more than the hot current highest end Mac studio, because it has
01:15:32 ◼ ► more transistors, uses more power, like a desktop Mac, right? It, you know, it's plugged into the wall. You
01:15:36 ◼ ► don't have to worry about battery life on a thing. You're only using 300 Watts. Now take some of those excess
01:15:43 ◼ ► Watts and turn them into computation because, Hey, we have this, you know, there's plenty of things
01:15:48 ◼ ► people want to use computation for even more so now than there has ever been. Please use that please.
01:15:54 ◼ ► You know, and if you can fit it in the same Mac studio case and call it the Mac ultra with using
01:15:59 ◼ ► the special metal or some fancy heat sink, fine. But if you have to make a bigger case, a taller
01:16:03 ◼ ► Mac studio, whatever, I'm not tied to the form factor. Again, the trash can was not, you know,
01:16:08 ◼ ► if they hadn't been able to scale that, it would have been great. Like I like the idea of a chimney
01:16:12 ◼ ► thing. There's lots of directions you can go, but like Mac ultra, like speaking of like me being like
01:16:18 ◼ ► in a morning period, I feel like there is a, I don't know, a latent period or something. There is,
01:16:22 ◼ ► there's necessarily going to be a multi-year gap before Apple even looks in the direction of
01:16:28 ◼ ► anything resembling a Mac ultra simply because they just finally got the, you know, the will to can
01:16:35 ◼ ► what was everyone was, it was a dead product, the Mac pro. So you got to wait many, many years
01:16:40 ◼ ► for them to revisit this. If they ever revisit it, it's not even clear that they ever revisit it,
01:16:45 ◼ ► but I do think the odds of them revisiting this in many years is increased. If they actually do
01:16:51 ◼ ► this rumored sort of ultra, uh, you know, what's essentially a marketing rollout of like, Hey,
01:16:57 ◼ ► we're, we're defining a new tier of product that was pioneered by the, uh, the Apple watch ultra,
01:17:02 ◼ ► which is our existing products with ultra on the end, which are more expensive, fancier,
01:17:06 ◼ ► better, more blah, blah, blah things. If they do that, it's inevitable that in five years,
01:17:10 ◼ ► someone is going to go up to the whiteboard and write Mac ultra question mark with an upside down
01:17:18 ◼ ► Uh, I Mac ultra. I, I am not in the market for this, but I love this idea. Uh, reading from Mac world,
01:17:25 ◼ ► uh, Roman Loyola writes of all the desktop Macs, the iMac is the most likely candidate for an ultra
01:17:30 ◼ ► version. Would it be the fastest, most powerful Mac available? No, but Apple isn't necessarily
01:17:35 ◼ ► defining ultra that way. Ultra applies to the product in a particular line that goes above
01:17:38 ◼ ► and beyond a typical feature set in some way, like an iPhone that folds or a Mac book with
01:17:43 ◼ ► no led touchscreen and iMac ultra could have a six K 32 inch display and a pro or max chip to set it apart
01:17:48 ◼ ► from the standard model. I don't think they would sell any of these. And I still think they would do
01:17:52 ◼ ► it to the issue to do it because it would be awesome. So if it's not time to look at the Mac
01:17:55 ◼ ► ultra because it's too soon, I think it's about time to look at the iMac. It's been a long time
01:18:00 ◼ ► since the iMac pro. And, uh, you know, again, Roman putting his stake in the ground of what he thinks
01:18:04 ◼ ► ultra should mean. And I would question again, that just because you, your definition makes sense
01:18:09 ◼ ► doesn't mean Apple will do it. In fact, it may be the opposite. The more sense it makes less likely
01:18:12 ◼ ► Apple is to do it. But anyway, that is a valid definition of ultra based on history and logic to say,
01:18:18 ◼ ► we're not, you know, the, the, whatever ultra is not the best, whatever Apple sells. It's just the
01:18:23 ◼ ► best, whatever within that line. So the iMac ultra would be a bigger, more powerful iMac that has a
01:18:30 ◼ ► bigger screen and a faster CPU and dissipates more heat and blah, blah, blah, blah. We've already done
01:18:35 ◼ ► this. It was called the iMac pro. It was great. It was incredible. Yeah. And Apple decided a long time
01:18:40 ◼ ► ago. Now they're not interested in pursuing that, but I feel like the time enough time has passed for them
01:18:45 ◼ ► to at least consider, Hey, this ultra thing is going great. If it turns out that essentially
01:18:50 ◼ ► we're able to drive wealthy people up market and get more money from them, like that, but this boils
01:18:54 ◼ ► down to from a products perspective is like, yes, we're making cooler, better products. And I'm not
01:18:58 ◼ ► setting that aside because I like those products, but also as you go higher end, isn't it nice that
01:19:03 ◼ ► you get nicer margins to, you know, like you get, you get much lower volume, but you do get higher
01:19:07 ◼ ► margins. So like, that's the, that's the play here. Like all for all their product lines, they want to
01:19:11 ◼ ► have a good spread. They don't, you know, they want to go down low with the Neo's and make sure
01:19:14 ◼ ► they're selling as much volume as they possibly can. And they'll also go up high to some degree
01:19:19 ◼ ► to try to get, to see how much money there is to extract from the market. Right. They've always
01:19:23 ◼ ► done that. So, yeah, I, again, I don't, I don't see because desktop maps are so our max are so
01:19:27 ◼ ► unpopular, relatively speaking, this doesn't seem likely. Uh, I know there are people who would love
01:19:33 ◼ ► this product. Uh, but I don't know if there's enough of them for them to develop it, especially
01:19:37 ◼ ► since the only product in the iMac line currently is the iMac. And it is extremely unfriendly to
01:19:44 ◼ ► ultraing in its current form, which is so thin. You can't even put an ethernet port on it. Right.
01:19:49 ◼ ► So I, you know, it, unlike was the iMac pro had the advantage. They could take the existing case and
01:19:55 ◼ ► make it a darker color and stick better internals in it. And it was done. You can't do that with the,
01:20:00 ◼ ► uh, with the current iMac case, they would have to make a new case. And then that basically kills
01:20:03 ◼ ► the project. Cause you're like, no, it's, you know, or a 32 inch screen is like you've just
01:20:07 ◼ ► killed the project. Cause we're not making a separate case, separate, bigger case with better
01:20:11 ◼ ► cooling just for this product. That's no one's going to buy. That's not even going to be the
01:20:14 ◼ ► fastest Mac. Cause the Mac studio will still be faster. So sorry, Roman, I don't think this is
01:20:19 ◼ ► going to happen, but I think it is about time for Apple to consider this before deciding that they
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01:22:19 ◼ ► Let's do some Ask ATP. And Pat Murphy writes, I got a new laptop, an M5 Pro, 4TB SSD. I usually start a
01:22:29 ◼ ► new time machine backup with a new machine. Do you have an opinion on how big of a time machine drive
01:22:34 ◼ ► to get? I used to get a time machine drive 2X or 4X, the size of the drive it is backing up, but the
01:22:39 ◼ ► current costs are making me pause. The price of a 4TB external SSD micro center is about $1,100 for the love
01:22:46 ◼ ► God. Just three years ago, that drive was 200 bucks. Yeah, I would generally say get at least
01:22:53 ◼ ► as big, if not 2X, the size of your drive. But in this case, I would do one of two things. I would
01:22:58 ◼ ► either get a 4TB drive and no bigger SSD, that is, or just get a spinning disc. It's fine. For a time
01:23:07 ◼ ► Not really that fine. I wouldn't recommend that. But here's been my philosophy for time
01:23:11 ◼ ► machine backup drives. It's always been my philosophy, and it's just served me well for
01:23:14 ◼ ► multiple reasons, one of which is sad. Get a time machine drive that's the same size as a driver
01:23:20 ◼ ► backing up. And I know you're thinking, that's not going to work. What about, like, because there's
01:23:24 ◼ ► overhead for the backups themselves and everything, and I want to have multiple versions, multiple
01:23:28 ◼ ► backups, not just one backup, yada yada. But here's the thing. First of all, you shouldn't
01:23:32 ◼ ► actually be filling the drive you're backing up to, like, the brim. It should have less,
01:23:38 ◼ ► your 4TB drive should have less than 4TB in it. Like, not, you know, a reasonable amount
01:23:44 ◼ ► less. Because macOS flips out when there's no free disk space, okay? Bad things happen.
01:23:49 ◼ ► Do not fill it as much as you possibly can. Which means that you're not backing up 4TB of
01:23:58 ◼ ► over stuff. You know, like the read-only system volume and crap like that. I forget what it
01:24:01 ◼ ► skips over these days. I don't know if it's doing the whole system volume or not, but like,
01:24:05 ◼ ► but it's not getting everything. So, my point is that your 4TB backup drive should handily hold
01:24:11 ◼ ► a complete backup of the data that's actually on your 4TB disk that you're backing up, plus
01:24:18 ◼ ► a couple days, weeks, months of churn, depending on how often you change files. And also, my practice
01:24:25 ◼ ► has been to get the biggest drive that I can afford as my main drive, which means that I can
01:24:30 ◼ ► probably barely afford to get a drive that's the same size. The reason you don't get 2X or 4X the
01:24:35 ◼ ► size is like, wouldn't that be great? I could have years and years of backups because I've got my first
01:24:39 ◼ ► backup and then just all these iterative diffs for the subsequent backups. I could have huge backup
01:24:43 ◼ ► history. The reason you don't do a 2X or 4X is because time machine will corrupt itself long before you
01:24:49 ◼ ► were able to fill a 4X the size drive thing. Because time machine is reliable for spans of a year or two,
01:24:57 ◼ ► but eventually it will say, oh no, your time machine backup, like it's corrupt in some way,
01:25:03 ◼ ► there's no real error, your only recourse is to erase the drive and start over. That happens to me
01:25:08 ◼ ► every few years. So, I think before you're able to fill certainly a 4X size drive of the one you're
01:25:15 ◼ ► backing up, time machine will be corrupted. As for spinning disks, these days, especially with APFS on
01:25:20 ◼ ► the spinning disk, it's just too slow. Setting aside the noise and everything, it's just brutally slow
01:25:26 ◼ ► because APFS is not optimized for spinning disks in any way whatsoever. And time machine does lots of
01:25:33 ◼ ► little IOs and it's just, I do not recommend it. Where I know it's cheaper to get the storage,
01:25:38 ◼ ► use that storage to hold your massive video files. Backing up, you know, 50 gig Blu-ray rips that are in
01:25:45 ◼ ► single MKV files, great for spinning disks. Backing up the tiny little files that make up a time machine
01:25:51 ◼ ► backup of your active main system drive, not a good use of this. So, my recommendation, get a drive
01:25:58 ◼ ► that's the same size as the one you're backing up or maybe a little bit bigger. Getting something even
01:26:03 ◼ ► 2X is big is probably too aspirational with respect to the historic reliability of time machine.
01:26:08 ◼ ► Yeah, I would also say definitely get the one that is the matching size. That's how I've operated my
01:26:16 ◼ ► time machine disks for over a decade and it's been totally fine. I've never had a problem with it.
01:26:22 ◼ ► And as for spinning disk versus SSD, man, those prices hurt. I don't, I don't, I don't feel for
01:26:33 ◼ ► the choice you have to make on this. Go back in time and buy the SSD when it was 200 bucks.
01:26:37 ◼ ► Yeah, like, like John is right that spinning disks are really slow by today's standards. That being said,
01:26:43 ◼ ► time machine is one place where as long as you could tolerate the, the, the noise, you know,
01:26:51 ◼ ► potential of where it is. That's a, that's a place where I would say it doesn't matter that much for
01:26:57 ◼ ► the speed. Exactly. But it, but it does though, because you think it doesn't matter because you're
01:27:01 ◼ ► like, I don't care how long the backup takes. I'm not waiting on it or anything. Here's the problem.
01:27:04 ◼ ► It will take so long that if you tell it like it's scheduled to like backup every hour, forget about
01:27:10 ◼ ► that. A single backup is going to take many hours and you will get to the point where a single backup
01:27:14 ◼ ► takes more than 12 or 24 hours. So now you're not getting good backups because, oh, I modified that file
01:27:20 ◼ ► an hour ago. Let me get it from time machine. Sorry. It's still running the backup that it
01:27:24 ◼ ► started at noon yesterday because this, and I know this room because I used, come on. I, I'm telling
01:27:29 ◼ ► you, I used to have spinning disks inside, directly attached inside my Mac pro that I was using as my
01:27:34 ◼ ► time machine volumes. That's how I know this is the case. It's so bad with APFS and time machine
01:27:40 ◼ ► on spinning disks, like that bad where I'm backing up a four terabyte SSD to like whatever it was,
01:27:46 ◼ ► an eight terabyte spinning disk. It was just brutally slow such that, first of all, it was
01:27:51 ◼ ► never not doing a time machine backup, which was bad, right? Because it's just, and it's not like
01:27:55 ◼ ► it's swamping my main drive with IO because it's so stupid slow, but it's just, it's always doing it.
01:27:59 ◼ ► And the, the interval of my backups, like how, how many different versions of this file that I've been
01:28:04 ◼ ► working on for the past two days, can I get out of the backup massively spaced out because it just took
01:28:09 ◼ ► so darn long. It is the close to the worst case scenario for spinning disks. Like I said,
01:28:13 ◼ ► spinning disks are great. Use them to store giant media files. Don't use them for time machine if you
01:28:18 ◼ ► can possibly help it. Now it could also be that I am stressing these drives more. Again, I will say
01:28:24 ◼ ► the, uh, the two underscore separated words that everyone knows node underscore modules. How many
01:28:31 ◼ ► files can you create, create how quickly and how quickly can they churn and change over the course of
01:28:34 ◼ ► doing development of a week of work? Node underscore modules directory will really abuse your time
01:28:41 ◼ ► machine backups. It's easy to end up creating and modifying and deleting literally millions of files
01:28:47 ◼ ► on a daily basis that will brutalize your time machine drive. If you limit yourself to excluding
01:28:52 ◼ ► certain drives or folders or whatever, maybe you can help, but you know, I'm still saying that like,
01:28:58 ◼ ► it's, I know the cost feels bad, but, uh, I don't know. Try, try for yourself again. Maybe I'm a
01:29:03 ◼ ► pathological case, but I had, I've had many years experience in this 2019 Mac pro backing up to time
01:29:08 ◼ ► machine and a spinning disk and I do not recommend it. That's just because it's a piece of crap Intel
01:29:12 ◼ ► computer. That's why it was a fast internal bus. It was fast, a good, fast, uh, drive 7,200 RPM,
01:29:18 ◼ ► high quality, you know, it's just spinning disks plus tiny files plus APFS equals sadness.
01:29:23 ◼ ► Mm-hmm. Thanks to our sponsors this episode, factor and delete me. And thanks to our members
01:29:29 ◼ ► who support us directly. You can join us at ATP.FM slash join. One of the many perks of membership is
01:29:36 ◼ ► ATP overtime, our weekly bonus topic. This week we're going to be talking about Adobe's, um, let's say
01:29:43 ◼ ► they have recently forgotten to make good software UIs, especially. Um, so we're going to be talking
01:29:49 ◼ ► about that over time. You can join to listen to at ATP.FM slash join. Thank you everybody. And we'll
01:30:09 ◼ ► John didn't do any research. Margo and Casey wouldn't let him. Cause it was accidental.
01:30:34 ◼ ► So that's Casey Liss. M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T. Marco Arman. S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A. It's accidental.
01:30:59 ◼ ► Marco, you are in the office in your home. Did you walk into the office or did you get,
01:31:09 ◼ ► So I've mentioned in past shows that I was training to do a very long walk called the Great Saunter.
01:31:18 ◼ ► This is a once a year walk organized by the group called Shore Walkers around the perimeter of Manhattan.
01:31:24 ◼ ► It is one day. You walk about 32 to 33 miles around the perimeter all, you know, from like 7 in the morning until, you know, 7 to 9 ish PM, depending on how quickly you walk it.
01:31:38 ◼ ► This is, I've never done any kind of like extreme, if you could call it that, extreme athletic event before any, really any athletic event longer than a 5K run.
01:32:02 ◼ ► Here's the recap. So first of all, if we can go on a brief aside, just for a minute, bikes and pedestrians should never share the same paths.
01:32:22 ◼ ► Cars can't coexist with bikes gracefully because of the inherent differences in their size, their speed, their physical needs.
01:32:51 ◼ ► But between cyclists and pedestrians, these two modes of transportation do not share the same path well.
01:32:59 ◼ ► I've been training for this walk for about, you know, seven or eight months, something like that.
01:33:02 ◼ ► I have had cyclists scream at me, threaten me, come within inches of hitting me at very high speeds, intentionally at least once.
01:33:22 ◼ ► So my view of cyclists, having now done a lot of long walks on shared paths, is now, I think, similar to the view that cyclists have of car drivers.
01:33:31 ◼ ► Not every cyclist is a problem, just like not every car driver is a problem to cyclists.
01:33:37 ◼ ► But there's enough bad cyclists that they pose a menace to pedestrians when they're in shared paths.
01:33:50 ◼ ► And they have no concern for pedestrian safety or the fact that we tend to have the right of way.
01:33:56 ◼ ► Again, this is not all cyclists, but there's enough that are like that, that it's a problem.
01:34:00 ◼ ► Interestingly, when you posted your first Instagram picture about this, and it showed the big, like, crowd of people walking, and then to the right, there were, like, two cyclists.
01:34:09 ◼ ► I think I commented to my wife, I'm like, boy, I bet these cyclists love this day of the year when their bike path is invaded by a gigantic crowd of people walking along it.
01:34:20 ◼ ► But, look, I want bikes out of my walking paths just as much as they want me out of their bike lanes.
01:34:38 ◼ ► And it is best for everyone's safety and happiness for motor vehicles, bikes, and pedestrians to each have dedicated spaces that are not shared with the others.
01:34:50 ◼ ► And sorry to all the good cyclists out there, but the bad ones of you are a menace to pedestrians.
01:34:58 ◼ ► Again, not to the same degree of life-threatening that cars are to you, but definitely physically threatening to a point where, I hate to say it,
01:35:20 ◼ ► I am advocating for bikes, cars, and pedestrians to all have separate spaces wherever possible.
01:35:37 ◼ ► Every once in a while, pedestrians and bikes have a shared space, which is what you're currently complaining about.
01:35:42 ◼ ► But the utopia of cars, pedestrians, and bicycles have each having their own separate place.
01:36:00 ◼ ► It's just we have consistently done everything we possibly can to prevent this from happening.
01:36:09 ◼ ► So going into this, a few weeks back, I did two walks in consecutive weekends that were each about 22 miles.
01:36:33 ◼ ► In the middle of that walk, I got significant pain in my left rear end, and it progressed as the walk went on into significant problems with my left ankle.
01:37:17 ◼ ► And that combination really inflamed my left side, and especially for the following couple of weeks, my left ankle.
01:37:26 ◼ ► So I went to a physical therapist and got some advice and got some stretches and stuff like that.
01:37:33 ◼ ► But what it basically boiled down to is for me to get through the Great Saunter, I had to take extra care for my ankles, especially the left one.
01:37:43 ◼ ► And so what I did, based on everyone's advice and a couple of tests, I had these little like heel cups that you put in the shoe that are like little squishy wedges so that it cushions the heel.
01:37:54 ◼ ► The problem is it slopes the foot more forward as a result, which I knew going into it, this is going to make it more likely that the front of my toes might hit the front of my shoes and get blisters.
01:38:11 ◼ ► And so I thought – and based on every – you know, everyone agreed, like all the physical therapists and the doctor, everybody agreed, like, okay, yeah, this is what you need to do to get through it.
01:38:39 ◼ ► This has happier news, but I did have a really hard time getting through the last 10 miles.
01:38:47 ◼ ► It was just the hardest, like, mental pain endurance activity I've ever had to do because it was literally 10 miles of every step hurting very painfully because of significant blisters.
01:39:01 ◼ ► So I got through it, and there were a few nice things along the way that I wanted to mention.
01:39:14 ◼ ► Well, rather, I should say Cloud Code made a Saunter map app based on about four prompts that I gave it.
01:39:20 ◼ ► The great Saunter published an online map and a GPX file, and you could use the web app.
01:39:28 ◼ ► But I'm like, you know, I would like to have this as a native iPhone app for lots of reasons.
01:39:32 ◼ ► I think I could make it work a little bit better, and also be able to do things like estimate my finish time because, you know, we were targeting, like, we want to finish by about 9 p.m.
01:40:03 ◼ ► And I said, you know, basically, like, make an iPhone app that has this map in it that puts my location on the map wherever I am, estimates the distance to the end and how long that will take at the given pace.
01:40:14 ◼ ► And, you know, make a drop down to pick the pace and show the points of interest as little descriptions that pop up and tell me where, you know, the next bathroom and next refreshment stops are.
01:40:40 ◼ ► So I'm like, all right, a first-time submission of an app, of a Vibe-coded app that requires location access.
01:41:01 ◼ ► And I'm like, all right, well, I could plug your phone in and add it to my developer account.
01:41:23 ◼ ► I had to answer all the questions about whether it's designed for kids and how much data it collects.
01:41:44 ◼ ► And I emailed the Sontor organizers just to say, hey, I put this up in case you, you know, want to tell anybody, feel free.
01:42:05 ◼ ► Which, for a one-day event that no one knew about the app, and it was only existing, like, you know, like 12 hours before the event started.
01:42:36 ◼ ► This was never going to be worth me taking time to spend, you know, three or four days making this app.
01:42:43 ◼ ► Especially, and there were some parts of it, like, you know, the source is a GPX file, which is basically a series of points on the map and lines between them.
01:42:59 ◼ ► There's a certain amount of math you have to do to figure out, like, okay, well, what is the point on the route closest to where the person is actually standing?
01:43:20 ◼ ► And if I was making this map myself, I would have had, I would have spent three days on it at least.
01:43:26 ◼ ► And so it would never have, not only would it not have gotten done on time, but it's also something I shouldn't have spent three days doing.
01:43:47 ◼ ► I didn't ask you this before, and I'm kind of afraid of the answer, but who made the icon?
01:44:13 ◼ ► But you spent more time putting two SF symbols on an opaque background in some arrangement.
01:44:32 ◼ ► Like, I'm sure there's a million things, but like, I don't use those things for my own BS.
01:44:36 ◼ ► And so, I, but I hate doing screenshots because inevitably, like, whatever device or simulator
01:45:05 ◼ ► And it told me, oh, this is, what you want to do is use the iPhone 13 Pro simulator or whatever
01:45:18 ◼ ► Yeah, like, I'm taking screenshots in, using the simulator, I'm taking screenshots because
01:45:23 ◼ ► So, I was using the simulator to take screenshots, but then iTunes Connect or App Store Connect
01:45:27 ◼ ► is like, no, these are the wrong resolution for the, you know, the 6.5 inch screen size
01:46:07 ◼ ► I think it was a really fun experiment for me of like, if I like literally don't have time
01:46:22 ◼ ► Obviously, it's not going to work for all app types, but I was very pleased that it worked
01:46:44 ◼ ► So I had mentioned on this show months ago, one of the reasons that I wanted to do the Great
01:46:59 ◼ ► hops last summer, I wanted to kind of honor him by having like a big walk because I was
01:47:16 ◼ ► At the beginning of the saunter, when everybody was like, you know, picking up like their, you
01:47:20 ◼ ► know, hats and stuff like that and maps and everything like where everyone gathers at the
01:47:23 ◼ ► beginning, a fan of the show just came up to me and said, hey, man, let's do it for hops.
01:47:58 ◼ ► And, and the people I was with, I told them about it and they were, they were also like,
01:48:23 ◼ ► Finally, for the technology side of things on, on the watches, the stats, it was 33.7 miles
01:48:44 ◼ ► Um, the, uh, the battery life at the end, uh, on an Ultra 3 in low power mode, uh, was still
01:49:34 ◼ ► Like, you know, like Tiff was trying to install a pedometer on her watch, but she didn't actually
01:49:40 ◼ ► trying to get an Apple watch to do, to install new software when it's not on wifi, uh, is
01:49:49 ◼ ► Um, so, uh, it was difficult to have all that tech, uh, work for other people who hadn't
01:49:55 ◼ ► But because I had done all these practice walks, I wasn't really trying anything for the first
01:50:06 ◼ ► So I can strongly recommend pedometer plus plus for these amazing, you know, long hikes or even
01:50:17 ◼ ► Uh, it's the, it's the kind of their smaller one, but it was, even it had ultra level battery
01:50:38 ◼ ► Um, if it was always going to be like that at the end, no, but I know from doing the 22
01:50:51 ◼ ► So I know that I can walk 22 miles on a pavement with, you know, these shoes, these socks, this,
01:50:58 ◼ ► Like I know what, I know a way that it works that ended up, ended up working way better than
01:51:07 ◼ ► So I think if I can just keep my ankle in good enough shape during training, I can avoid
01:51:12 ◼ ► I can avoid needing those heel wedges and then have a much better outcome with the shoes.
01:51:22 ◼ ► I mean, the only downside with, with training for something like this is that walking is
01:51:30 ◼ ► Like if you want to walk 22 miles in a day, that's going to be most of what you do that
01:51:37 ◼ ► You're basically, it's like, you know, every Sunday you're taking a giant walk somewhere.
01:51:58 ◼ ► If you're young and if you don't mind things like maybe losing toenails afterwards, um,
01:52:06 ◼ ► The, the training, the training method, uh, tends to have significantly better outcomes,
01:52:16 ◼ ► Like, I think if you, if you walk it straight at our pace, which our average pace was around,
01:52:28 ◼ ► So, you know, if you don't stop, you can do it like, I don't know, an hour and a half faster
01:52:33 ◼ ► Uh, but, but we, you know, we, we stopped to like, you know, 10 minutes here and there,
01:52:38 ◼ ► even simple things like, you know, there are certain spans where there are not that many
01:52:55 ◼ ► Um, but yeah, there, there is, there is some stopping, but it's not, you're stopping for
01:53:26 ◼ ► There's the documentary, an older documentary about that, that I think you can find on YouTube.
01:53:30 ◼ ► And there's a bunch of newer videos on YouTube about the newer iterations of that race.
01:53:51 ◼ ► Like that's, I don't really have any interest in doing, you know, marathons, ultra marathons,
01:54:18 ◼ ► You know, like there's, there's parts of most exercises that even if I could train myself
01:54:45 ◼ ► If you haven't seen it, it's enjoyable to watch even if you're just sitting on your couch.