Episode 972: What to expect at Apple's March 4 event

unscripted unfiltered unafraid welcome to the macro podcast my name is michael simon and i am joined by my colleague jason cross good morning and our producer robin loyola this is episode number 972 and today is our big apple experience preview show uh we'll talk about what we expect what we don't expect when we expect it how we expect it um it's kind of an interesting new sort of thing so uh we'll go over all everything that we expect to happen next week and um then we'll close with this week in apple history and our comment corner speaking of comments you can contact us on blue size facebook threads look for um search for Macworld, look for the Blue Mouse logo. Contact us at macworldatpodcast.com. Contact us directly. Comment under a video. Comment under a post. Get in touch with us however you can. And we'll collect all those and talk about them on a future show. All right. I'm going to be quick here. Mike, let me correct you. That's podcast.macworld.com. You like to say macworldatpodcast.com. Does that go anywhere? I wonder. I'm sure it's a podcast.com. Yeah, who owns podcasts? Who owns Mac? Yeah. Hey, listen, if you're listening to this and you own Macworldpodcast.com, send us the comments you get, please. Podcast singular. Right. Podcast. Podcast at Macworld.com. Podcast at Macworld.com. And people do use that, so I'm sorry for screwing it up. All right, we're going to clear out a bunch of space for the preview, but first, let's talk about snow. You're getting a little bit of snow. On the East Coast, you're buried in. The Northeast, yeah. Yeah. You're right. The Northeast got slammed again. I know it's a little cold out where you guys live. Jason, you get wintery weather. Kind of. It's actually the last few days it's been warm. It's 61 right now. It's 1030 in the morning. It's weirdly warm. So it's unusually warm right now. Yeah. We don't get snow where I live. If you go an hour to the east, you're in the hills, the mountains. It snows all the time. You don't get it. You're in Sacramento. Roman, you're in San Francisco. You get cold but no snow. We don't get snow. Yeah, we get cold. That's about it. Where I live, I get fog. They get cold summer nights. It's weird. I haven't been there a long time, but back when I used to go, it was like august and it was like 112 degrees during the day and then it would drop to like 48 i was completely unprepared for both of them somehow i i was sweating and freezing because i didn't have the proper clothes that's san francisco there's that saying people attribute to mark twain or whatever what uh the coldest winter i ever spent was a summer in san francisco Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, New England, they say, you don't like the weather. But you just got like 14 inches of snow or some crazy stupid. So like two weeks ago, we got, I don't know, 15 to 20. Then it was like zero degrees forever. It just started to warm up in the sense that it was like 38, 42. And things started to melt. We maybe saw a little peak of grass in some places. And then we just got slammed again. And I'm looking out my window now. I don't see anything. It's all white. The whole thing is white. We got like a foot. But so the reason why I bring this up in relation to this is because next Tuesday is forecast for another massive storm. Again, we're a week out. It could change. But they're saying like 20 inches of snow on top of what we have. so this if so today's tuesday yesterday the city as in new york city which is where one of the events is happening was shut down yes so what does apple do this so this this the next door i mean shutdown shutdown as in there was a curfew they said they said yeah they said don't go out there's a curfew till like noon to let the plows they had the first real snow day with like no remote learning or anything they were just like it's it's it's new york is off so if that happens wednesday for the when the event happens or even the day before so nobody can fly in like the the airport shut down you got nothing what do they do right i don't know has there ever been and i i did some brief uh googling and i couldn't figure i couldn't find anything has there ever been an apple event that was postponed for like any reason i mean you're usually in california which you don't have to worry about stuff like this not not postponed on short notice the during the covid year they had the september events like a month late like during peak covid and everything but that was planned long in advance that wasn't like here said we're sending out the invitation and then like a couple days before just like whoops it's postponed or anything like that right so that's never happened I don't think they would do that. I don't think they can. I think it just wouldn't happen in New York because there's also one in Shanghai and there's also one in London. So it'll happen. Whatever they're doing is going to happen. But, yeah, there's a possibility that the New York one gets completely screwed up. Yeah, and I don't think there's any sort of live footage from these locations or anything going on. I think they're going to have pre-prepared videos and stuff on the website and stuff. And these locations are just for media and press and everybody to get hands-on with the products. That's what it seems like, yeah. So, yeah, they could just delay the New York one by a day or something. They could do that. And it would be okay. Or they could just say, like, we're not doing it, too. Yeah, right. If they don't have the event space the next day or something, yeah. The New York park could get all messed up. Yeah, I mean, presumably whatever they're announcing, they will. send out test units the following couple of days. So like there might not be a reason to have a hands on on Thursday, but whatever the case may be, like people are traveling from all over the country. There's nothing else in the U S. So if you're traveling from California to New York on the middle of a snowstorm, like that's, that's a nightmare. There's delays. There's, you know, it's just a, it's a logistical nightmare. So I'm just I'm interested to see what Apple does. This is not something they usually have to deal with unless there's like an earthquake. Like you guys don't have weather events in California. So. We'll see. We'll see what happens next week, but it's taking place on as it stands, Wednesday, March 4th at 9 a.m. this experience kicks off. And as Jason just said, I don't think it's like, if you're listening to this, I don't think there's going to be much that changes for you in the sense that there's no keynote to watch. Right. There might be a new product on the website, but we're expecting that to happen every couple of days next week. So that'll be, that'll be accompanied by a slick video and stuff. But the videos were like Tim Cook or John Turnus or something like staying there and tell you all about the why they did this and all that that they the things they do during wwdc or during you know uh september events like we're not expecting anything like that right so yeah it's it's it probably won't be marked at all on apple's website like it's not like right click here and watch the apple experience like they might have pictures of it the next day or something like that they do that sometimes like roundups but for most people The event is before 9 a.m., probably starting Monday. So the rumors are there's as many as seven new things, at least five, as many as seven coming out within the next, we'll say, week because it's possible that something lands on the website tomorrow. Today is Tuesday the 24th, so we could get something tomorrow and then next week. But it's looking like next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. So the products that we are expecting to see in some capacity is the iPhone 17e, the M5 Air, the M5 Pro Max MacBook Pro, the entry-level iPad, the iPad Air, this new budget, low-cost MacBook. Maybe the Mac Studio and maybe the Studio Display. Like that's a lot of stuff for any event, let alone something that doesn't have a keynote component. Was there a Mac Mini in that? Did you say Mac Mini? No. The studio – well, maybe the Mini. The studio is the one that people have talked about, like Gurman and stuff have mentioned. The Mini, we're expecting an M5, M5 Pro version of that at some point, but it hasn't really been like rumored. right they haven't been talking about it yeah so jason yes with you what do you expect to happen on monday like so the rumors are that there's going to be three days of press release announcements on apple.com right monday juesday most likely my guess is that wednesday the day that they have the hands-on things and all that stuff is going to be the low cost MacBook. They'll end, they'll end big, right? Sure. That's, and that's the new product category and all that other stuff. And I'm expecting to be, I'm expecting it to be $6.99, which is like the highest price that I won't be extremely offended by, but not the price that I want. $5.99 is what I want it to be. Sure. Or starting at $5.99. And then there's a $6.99 version that that's better, that has more storage. Yeah. With like more storage or whatever yeah more storage or whatever um so i'm expecting probably they're going to start with things like the iphone 17e and maybe the ipads the ipads are just chip and chip nothing's changed nothing's you know whatever all three of those could come out at the same time you know ipad air and the i the entry-level ipad could all happen right the same time yep and then the next day, the M5 Pro and Macs, MacBook Pros, or whatever other sort of big Macs they have, like maybe if they do a studio display or a Mac Studio or something like that, the big Macs would be another day. And then the third day, the Wednesday day, would be the low-cost, the new low-cost MacBook, whatever they call it, just MacBook, MacBook SE. We had a whole we had uh we talked about what are they going to call it last week we talked all about it last week and and did there were a million just macbook i said just macbook we we talked about macbook se a bunch of people on social media said macbook e we got a lot of replies with people just pitching their their name ideas yeah so so i you could swap those days but i think one day is going to be sort of the iPhone iPad stuff another day is going to be like the new high-end Mac stuff and then MacBook or whatever it is it will get its big day to itself on Wednesday I think that's probably that's probably accurate yeah I think the studio display in the Mac studio it's rumored for like soon but I I doesn't seem to fit this thing so I'm wondering if that's maybe a week or two down the road after all the dust clears with the new MacBook. We also haven't heard about stocks drying up like we have with the iPhone 16e. They're not replenishing stock and all that stuff. So that's coming right away. It's really hard to tell with MacBook Pros because there is an M5 MacBook Pro, just not a Pro and Max models and stuff like that. But generally speaking, when we're in a couple weeks of something, they stop replenishing stock of the old one. And we haven't seen or heard that they're doing that with studio display or anything. So my guess is those things are better. It's one of those things that they kind of come and go. Amazon will have it for $13.99, and then they'll be out of stock for two months, and then they'll go back. And so it's hard to track. and the macbook pro is like those things stick around for years sometimes like they're still selling the m2 max sometimes you'll see it like a new one like 800 off at bnh photo or something so like like those kind of hang around for a while so my guess is mac mac studio and the studio display my guess is like if they don't come in like i don't know uh next like not next month not uh, April or may or something, then it wouldn't surprise me if that was a WWDC thing. Right. They have the last couple of WWDCs. They haven't announced hardware, but they used to, and it used to be stuff for developers like the high end stuff. The 15 inch MacBook air was a WWDC. Uh, obviously vision pro was very WWDC. I think it was WWDC. Like they've done major ish hardware. and the m2 ultra the pro and the studio a couple years ago that was also and they used to announce like new macbooks and stuff like that that even if they were just a chip and ship model or something it's stuff that developers care about and they would announce it there so it would totally surprise me if we got like those things then and that's still yeah we like first half of the year we ran a story last week um our contributor felipe esposito discovered references to um a new studio display in i mac os 26.3 and so you know we ran an article kind of surmising maybe they're coming out soon that doesn't mean that you know a couple new ones was what was interesting is a couple new ones and we don know if that a studio display and a pro display xdr update or two different sizes of studio display or two different colors of studio display Like maybe they're going to do space gray too. Like who knows? But there are two different reference numbers for studio display. It's been a rumor for a little bit that there are two studio displays in development. And even Gurman has said, I don't really know what that is. Is it 34 and 27? Is it, as you say, silver and space gray? is it hdr and promotion and a regular one like there's there's we don't really know what that what that's all about but there has pro display pro two models studio display right pro pro max they do make the um pro display xdr but that's a different number it seems like that's not what this is i think so i don't think that's this but uh yeah i think that would be hilarious to have a pro studio display a studio display and a studio display pro max and it's like bigger and has hdr and stuff that'd be great is uh it's 27 inches too we're kind of veering off of the the event but it's 27 inches too small for a display these days? That's what I've been using, but it is out of band with the price that Apple charges for these things. At that price, you not only... At that price in the regular monitor world for PCs, you usually get something like OLED or something. You get HDR, you get a high refresh rate, you get a dynamic refresh rate, and they're generally 32 to 34. right if they're not some like lg or samsung or something like that yeah um so 27 it's not like it's quote too small but it's too small for this price so yeah i agree and a 32 34 would be great i doubt they changed the price no you know it goes if anything if it goes bigger it goes up right so okay monday so let's go day by day monday iphone 17e basically the same thing new chip probably not a dynamic island like we heard rumors that they were going to do that but it's looking now like it's going to be the same design with the notch yep uh a 19 chip which won't change much because it already had apple intelligence right still a single camera still black and white options maybe a third color there's some some rumors that like purple might make an appearance yeah um otherwise we're hearing basically four things it's it's a19 probably c1x not regular c1 okay yeah probably n1 networking for the Wi-Fi chip, Wi-Fi Bluetooth chip, and the better MagSafe. Or MagSafe at all. There's no MagSafe at all. That seems to be what it is. So imagine a 16e with those updates. Right, which won't be on that. Those are fine updates, but don't. No reason to upgrade from a 16e, that's for sure. And if you're buying a new one, you get a little bit better phone than you would have yesterday but you know not much to get too excited about um ipad entry level ipad i mean it's ridiculous to say but that's probably the biggest upgrade of the three because it will get apple intelligence because yeah it almost has to the ship it the chip it has is the is the one right before apple intelligence was supported so any upgrades we'll give it Apple intelligence. We'll give it 8 gigs of RAM and Apple intelligence support. Yeah. But we're not expecting any sort of design updates or compatibility with any kind of thing or whatever. You know, it's on the outside going to look just like the current iPad. Right. Same with the Air. There will be a new color. They haven't introduced a new color yet since its debut. So it's possible there's, I don't know, bright blue. I don't think it is bright blue already. Whatever the new color would be, they could. And the iPad Air is getting an M4. Yep. Again, same otherwise. Otherwise the same. Yep. Which is fine if you don't have an iPad Air, but if you have an iPad Air, the one you have is good enough. Right, even if you have an M2. Yeah. No reason to update. There's nothing new. From the M2 to M3 was just a chip. Yeah. So it's really been the same now for two. It'll be two generations where it's identical with the exception of some new colors. So but it's I mean, listen, the iPad Air is really good. There was an article a couple of weeks ago that Gurman wrote. We didn't cover it because it really didn't say anything. But it said, like, Apple is not planning on updating the iPad Pro for a while in a meaningful way. And it's like, well, yeah, because what? Right. What is there to do? There's there's no competition. Right. it's over. iPad has won the tablet game. And if they were really worried about everybody switching to some sort of Android tablet or something, they'd probably be pushing the envelope on some things. But they're not, and it isn't. And so the iPad is what the iPad is. And they're great. Even the $350 one is really good. We've been saying for how many years that the hardware is not the issue. It's always been the software. And they're getting there. This latest iPadOS 26 is the first time we feel like, oh, this is like an iPad-centric iPadOS. It's not a big iPhone. And so they're going in that direction. But it's all software. Software is what we need. Right. Right. So an M4 chip is nice to have. Yeah, it's good. But it's not going to make a difference. Even if you have an M1 Air, you're not going to notice the difference. maybe if you go back to like the a16 or whatever the one before that was like you might like oh this feels snappier when i open things but for the most part you know it's been great for like 10 years i have an ipad here this is if you can see it there's a home button on it this is how old oh yeah it's fine it's fine it's fine it's like a 12.9 inch from like i don't know 2015 or something and it like it's fine yeah there's no reason to get a new one so so yeah so let's say that's monday yeah tuesday the least exciting day the least exciting day full of like chip and chip it's the same as this year's only with a slightly faster the only thing that would be newsworthy is if they change any of the prices in either direction but we're not expecting that we're not expecting that so yeah tuesday a little more excitement with m5 pro at max which that's the big one curious to see yeah it's right we're curious to see what the a what the delay was if if we can kind of like glean why they waited so we talked about this they didn't they didn't wait any more than they waited last year the first m4 product was six months before the m4 pro and max yeah it It was an iPad, not a Mac, but it still – there was the M4, then six months later, M4 Pro and Max. They're doing the same thing. I don't think it's a delay, but we saw really good uplift in performance between M4 and M5. And so extending that to the Pro and Max chips, those are going to be pretty fast computers. Those are going to be pretty good. We're happy about that. there could be some new customization options where you can split like GPU and CPU and get like different configurations. Probably the – well, actually, we don't know. Will it have the N1? We don't know. The M5 does it, right? We did this already. The M5 MacBook Pro does not have the N1. It still has Wi-Fi 6E. Correct. Correct. No MacBook laptops have gotten the N1 yet. Right. And I would flip a coin about whether they do. It's kind of, yeah. Yeah, same screen size, 1416, same screen as far as the specs of it. Design isn't expected to change yet, maybe later this year, but right now about the same. But if you're looking again, I'm assuming the prices are the same. I mean, it should be a pretty big upgrade over maybe not the M4, but probably, but definitely M3, M2, certainly M1. If you have an M1 MacBook Pro, this is going to be a nice jump from, what was it, four years ago. So that should be a pretty decent day. The Air is going to get the M5 as well, which, you know, it's good. like it's a it's a good chip but it's not gonna it's it's not gonna be groundbreaking in any way i don't think um design should be the same stuff you know the air is good like so that's another interesting thing like will apple change any of the prices for these models there's there's that whole uh ram memory crunch going on in the industry now so the couple years ago the macbook air got a price cut from $10.99 to $9.99. Right. Would they go back to $10.99? Maybe put $5.12 in there, start it at $5.12. Yeah. Gigabytes of storage and jump it. We kind of have no way of knowing at this point. Right. I'm just spitballing here. Yeah. Right. um the so like raising the price of the macbook air would accomplish a couple of things one it would give up a little bit of cushion against the ram stuff it would also put more space between it and whatever this low-cost macbook is 699 to 999 is a lot different than 699 to 1099 even just that psychological barrier of the four digits so they could put 512 started at 512 gigs or started at the higher m5 right now the 999 one has has one core missing so there's a few things that they can do to give it that extra value and also charge a higher entry level price for the macbook and then like i said it wasn't it was 1099 not that long ago the m2 was 1099 with eight gigs of ram mind you right they bumped the ram and they lowered the price in i think it was 2023 if they do both i won't be too mad if they are if they give you the full m5 chip and the the bigger ssd yeah i agree then then i won't be if they do both of those at 1099 i won't be too upset if they basically just take away the essentially yeah because if they take away the cheapest price option and just give you one of those just take away the cheapest price i hate when they do that I hate when it's not really a price hike. They just stopped selling the cheapest configuration. I'm like, oh, stop doing that. Apple's already got margins are already the envy of everyone. They don't need to be doing this. And everyone's already being squeezed right now. That's kind of why we're so excited about Wednesday, right? Because a purpose-built, affordable MacBook has – this is – We've needed one forever, but there's never been a better time. It's never been. The cheapest MacBook Apple – well, it's still $9.99, but Apple used to hang on to older models and cut the price of them. Right. They did it with the iPad 2. They did it with the MacBook M1, and that was their budget line. Yep. You can have it for a little cheaper if you're willing to get last year's stuff. this what we hear is going to be as jason just said a low cost macbook designed to be low cost right there are uh according to the rumors the process they use to make the casing the which will still be aluminum it's not gonna be plastic but like they have a whole different process for that that is faster and cheaper than what they do for the unibody macbooks now right and everything So it's like they've thought through the product. It's not just like, oh, how can we take a MacBook Air and slap in a cheaper chip or something like that? It's like, no, they designed a product to be affordable. They needed to do this for so long. And the last few years between inflation and rents and everything else, pay not going up and everything, there's never been a time when people need a good deal more. So it would kill our business, especially since the educational discount is usually $100 less. If you're a teacher, if you have an EDU email address, if you're a college student, or if you're buying in bulk as a school. So if it's $6.99 and the educational discount is $5.99 for it or something, I could see schools buying a bunch of these instead of Chromebooks. like yeah it costs more than chromebooks but it's not a chromebook it's like it's a it's a mac you know yeah apple apple's whole education arm has basically become ipads now because they're the cheap they're cheaper than max but we've gone through this before you don't get a keyboard you know it's it's not the full experience it's it's one app at a time essentially like it's a very different thing so yeah a 699 macbook like i think that's probably an accurate guess it seems right to me that's i mean as jason said 599 will be a little bit better but you're going to be able to get it on amazon in three months for 599 like they yeah they'd be yeah and that's a that's like a like a straight up game changer if you have a choice between a a plastic chromebook for 450 or an aluminum macbook for 599 uh and black friday or whatever they like right that's not a choice in my mind Yeah especially since they probably be even if you just need a new laptop for most people for what they do with their laptop just like my parents or whatever If they need a new laptop getting this Step Up 1 version the version that has a bigger SSD or whatever it's going to be at least as fast as this M2 MacBook Air I've been using every day for the last several years. It's going to be fine. It's going to be great. I got to tell you, 256 for most people, that's plenty. I don't think it'll start at 256. I think the – I have – you think it'll be 128? Like I bet. The starting price one I think will be 128 for sure. I definitely could. That could be. They could do – so, all right. A19 Pro, I think we're pretty sold. It's either an A18 or A19 Pro chip. It's either A18 Pro or A19. Oh, non-Pro. I don't think it's A19 Pro. I think it's either an A18 Pro or an A19. All right. How much RAM do you think? Eight? Eight. Is there any configuration there or that's it? You just get that? The only way it's 12 is if it gets an A19 Pro, and now you're talking more money, and we have the RAM crunch and all this other stuff. I don't think there's any configuration. I think it has the RAM. Here's a question. I think it's going to get eight. will they even advertise how much ram it has like you don't get the only the only the only mac that oh i'm sorry the only ipad that gets like the ram listing is the pro like are they just going to say it's this processor and that's it but all the macs get their um ram listed max so yeah it i don't think it'll be on a configuration page or anything like that but i think if you hit the tech specs page in there okay that was an iphone too like apple doesn't advertise how much ram an iphone have we know they have to dig in and find out do yeah um so uh they're saying colors which would be the first time since like the ibook that it was anything other than silver and gold and yeah quote fun colors is what we callers that was the quote yeah which to me sounds It's very much like the iMac. Like the iMac has what I would call fun colors, like bright, bold, lots of colors, you know. Yeah. So the Mac – I misspoke. The MacBook Air does come in that blue, but it's barely blue. It's basically silver with a blueish tint. But they do have color on the MacBook. Yeah, yeah. But so they're saying – so if you looked at – if you've seen the Experience Invitation, it's an Apple logo with like a spirally thing. but there's like bright, bright yellow, bright, like almost neon green, and like a little bit of like bright blue at the bottom. And people are saying that kind of is meant to, you know, give you a hint. Yeah, those three or four colors is the colors. And then you also get silver. And hopefully it would be awesome if there was some sort of space grayish color as well. But there'll be plain silver and then those three or four colors. Yeah. um uh screen size like they say a little under 13 i don't know what that 12.9 they will call that 13 they will it could be it could be an ipad air display which is which is basically 12.9 inches that they call 13 you know you flip that horizontally right um would you buy one jason like just no yeah this is like i i'm i'm not looking to spend seven or eight hundred dollars so like but if i was in the market for a macbook like yeah because i don't need i don't need a macbook to edit video and all this other stuff like i you know i and i don't use it to watch apple tv on or something i don't i don't care that much i don't care enough about hdr to jump all the way to a MacBook Pro. I would probably just go, yeah, I'll buy the one that has more storage, whatever's the $799 one that has more storage or something. And that would probably be good enough for me for what I use laptops for. I'm a big desktop fan. I do all the heavy lifting on a desktop with a big display, and that's the way I like that. Yeah. Roman, what's your input here? Would you want one? Are we all off-base? Does it not really matter for the MacBook? No, I think they'll sell a lot of them. I wouldn't personally buy one only because I like MacBook Pros. Specifically, I want the video codecs on the chip. You use a 14 or a 16? I'm using a 14 right now. But I don't think there's anything wrong with the specs on that low-cost machine, or the rumored specs at least. It's just – but I would at least want a MacBook Air, and I prefer a MacBook Pro because I want the heftier chip. That's all it is really. I would just – my only worry about the specs is that – and again, the rumored specs. I'm guessing it's going to be eight gigs and no option for more, and I think that's going to be okay this year. But I don't know that that's going to be okay when you've owned it for three years. Like if you buy one now, then in 2028, are you going to be like, I can't do all this stuff because I only have eight gigs. True. So that would be my concern. I really love that this is not just a stripped-down MacBook Air. I love that they have purposely designed, top to bottom, a low-cost MacBook. Because that, to me, says that this is going to get updates every year, maybe every other year. But this is a new category that they plan to be in long-term. And it's a category Apple has not been in and needs to be in. So, yeah, I mean, it was like a what was that thing called way back when they made like a little tiny, tiny email or something like back in like the mid 90s. Yeah, that doesn't like this for education market, but nothing recently. All right. Will it have a notch? Here's my question. Will the screen have a notch? Yes. Yeah. OK. Yes. I'm going to go. Just play devil's advocate. and I'm going to say that it's going to be slightly bigger bezels than we have on the Air now and they will put the camera in the bezel. No notch. But it's going to be thicker, like twice as thick as the Air. Okay. Yeah, the bezels around the screen, I think so. I think they'll be bigger, but I think it'll still have a notch. All right. What do you guys think? How many ports will it have? Yeah, that's a good question too. I think two. Yeah. Two USB-C and a headphone jack. One on each side. Right. Instead of two on one side, it's going to be one on each side, USB-C, no Thunderbolt of any kind. I don't think it will have Thunderbolt. Yeah. I'm going to go with one because I'm going with that precedent. They already did this, and they got slammed. Yeah, they got slammed last time they tried this. And I don't think Apple learns from that. I think they're going to. I'll give you this. MagSafe, though. If it has MagSafe, it could have one port. Yeah. I'm not including MagSafe. I'm just including, yeah. I don't think it will have MagSafe. But if it does, then MagSafe, it's either MagSafe and one USB-C port or no MagSafe and two. I guess it depends. Is it an iPad logic board or is it a Mac logic board? Because the iPad only has one. I think it's a totally new logic board. Yeah. I think it's a logic board made for this product entirely. thicker than a macbook air or thinner i'm gonna call it a wash i'm gonna think it's gonna be similar yeah like you know if it's thicker or it's thinner it's by a half a millimeter or some it's it's yeah it's not noticeable yeah it's not gonna be like you you look at a macbook pro it's definitely thicker than a macbook air you know it's not gonna be noticeable like that it's gonna be just a little bit yeah uh yeah over under uh so the macbook air m4 weighs 2.7 pounds under over under the beach is lighter yeah it's smaller it's a little bit smaller a little bit smaller display yeah um yeah uh they're gonna skimp on a couple other little things like the keyboard won't be backlit or something like that you know they'll have little little things like that like they're gonna they're going to find a couple of other little places to that would that would actually that might prevent me from buying one i love that i i like it too but it's a it's a good place to save a few bucks you're right though you're you are right that that is a spot where like it wouldn't be a game changer for most people and right um like the thunderbolt thing like you know usbc is going to be fine for most people for this thunderbolt for sure i i'm with roman like that's an easy way to just skip out because most people who buy it, if not all people who buy it, aren't going to care if it has the Apple. Any new features? Like, I don't know, like something that works with the iPhone or something that is specific to this thing? Or will Mac OS have some special feature? Probably not. I don't think it's going to have anything any other MacBook doesn't have. And it might even have things like a slightly smaller trackpad. If the screen's bigger, they could make the whole unit smaller if they had a smaller trackpad because there's some space on the sides of the keyboard as it is, right? So they could squeeze them in. They're going to have a little bit different keyboard. So I think so. and my final question would it be is it insane to think that it might run ipad os and yes it is insane i think that they would if it did they wouldn't call it a mac okay well maybe they won't we don't know that's true but uh no this is absolutely getting mac os i think this is their way of getting more people into macOS. I think this is the thing. They've already got the iPad market wrapped up. They've got the iPhone market wrapped up. What they don't have is people using Mac computers enough. And it's in part because they're too expensive. We should move on because we've got about 20 minutes. True. True. Well, okay. So Monday, this is our prediction, and I think it's pretty safe to assume. Monday, iPhone 17e plus iPad M4 Air and entry-level iPad with an A19 processor or A18, whichever. Tuesday, MacBook Pro, M5 Pro Max, and the M5 MacBook Air. And Wednesday would be this budget, low-cost MacBook. And that's a pretty good week. And I feel like you could maybe flip that Monday and Tuesday, but I think those are the days, right? Like those are the lineup. Yeah. I think they're going to dump all the MacBooks on Monday and then all the iPhone and iPads on Tuesday, and then that's it. Okay. Well, we'll revisit this next week and see who's with it. Okay. So, yeah. That's it. That's the event. It's not an event, but that's the week of announcements. I'm curious to see when Tim Cook or Craig Federighi or someone, Jaws, is going to have a tweet that says, get ready for a week of announcements. Someone always does that. Will Apple put it on their website because it's a bigger thing? We'll see. But stay tuned because it's going to be a fun week. All right, Roman. This Week in Apple History is also event-related. Yes. So, This Week in Apple History on February 22nd, 2001. So, that was a couple days ago. 25 years ago? Yes. Apple released the Flower Power and the Blue Dalmatian iMacs. um so i i remember these i i had to look these up i forgot about these entirely i i remember them but i i don't think i actually saw them in person right so yeah at the time i wasn't at a mac macworld tokyo for yeah uh for anyone keeping score right at the time I wasn't at a Mac publication, so I wasn't involved in the coverage of it. They were very psychedelic, for lack of a better word. Yeah, it's the plastic part that was on the back. There was a flower power and a deep blue dimension. They also still had a couple of colors. They had indigo and graphite. They had gotten rid of some of the ruby, and there was a green sage color and stuff like that. They got rid of some of the colors, and they replaced them with these pattern things. But it was the standard G3 MacBook. I mean MacBook. I keep saying MacBook. G3 iMac thing with the – I mean, for me, it's like it's Bonnie Blue or nothing. Like where's my – I like the OG Bonnie Blue iMac G3. So I looked it up. This was before I was covering Apple. but what made these also interesting was that these were the first iMacs to come with the CDRW drive and kicked off Apple's rip mix burn campaign with iTunes Okay Specifically these I thought I thought you could get that It became a huge thing But at the time it was like what are you talking about? Ripping a CD was not a thing that people really did. I see. Because the years before that, when they introduced those other colors and the indigo and stuff like that in 2000, they had CD-RWs as an option. But I guess it was standard on this. I think it was CD-ROM drives. As far as I remember, they had CD-ROM. And then there was the MacBook – I'm doing it too now, Jason. The iMac DV had a DVD-ROM, but they were all read-only. This was the first that you could rip. It had the slot-loading drives. It was really cool. Back in the day, those slot-loading drives were awesome. You just kind of like the CD just kind of like it, like it, like it, like it, like grabbed it. But, um, yeah, these are the first four CDRWs built in and iTunes. So I'm looking at the press release. It says iTunes has been downloaded more than 750,000 times since its debut in January. So iTunes was only on the market for about a month. It must have, it must have been Macworld San Francisco. Right. I guess 2001, Macworld San Francisco was when iTunes came out, I guess. I think so, yeah. I'm assuming. Yeah. But, yeah. Matthew Honan wrote a hands-on of the Flower Power iMac for Macworld back in 2001. Matthew Honen, who is now the editor-in-chief of the MIT Technology Review, just to drop that. That's an upgrade. Yeah, it's a serious upgrade. And he wrote that he was, quote, horrified, unquote, to discover that the wallpaper on the desktop matched the outside of the Flower Power iMac. Wow. That would be a little distracting. But, I mean, it's the wallpaper. You can change it. Yeah, he immediately changed it. Right. He also said that the colors were a lot more subdued than he expected. Yeah, even looking online, it's not like a super-duper bright blue. No, it's like a... The archive one is cool. It's almost a blurry pattern. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a Gaussian blur of a few poppies or something. Yeah. But yeah, they're nice, and they were kind of like the iconic – as Jason said, Bondi Blue is obviously standalone. But these were – people weren't making computers with patterns on them. This was a change. They were sold for $899, which seems really cheap because I know the first iMacs were $1299. that i guess i guess those prices went down over time yeah i mean that was 98 that was a couple couple years a couple years later um that included a 400 megahertz power pc g3 64 megabytes of ram of 5 to 10 gigabyte hard disk and it's like oh no i'm sorry that was cd-rom so if you wanted a cd uh a rewritable it was it was 1200 okay so that one they sold is like a budget version of it and they had uh a few different chip speeds available i think it went up to 600 in that year the g3 right yeah it did and also the one i just said for 899 was not available in blue dollar nation or flower power this was just for indigo so uh it was like a basically what they used to do they sold an older stripped down version for cheap which uh is why we're so excited about next week's MacBook because they literally never done like as long as I've been following Apple like you can look at like the iPhone 5c or say the 16e but they're not really this one seems to be like all right let's figure out how to make a MacBook that's not you know a version that people don't want but that's several hundred dollars cheaper than the one that we sell now. I'm very interested to see how they sell it, what it looks like, how they present it, how they market it. It's fascinating. Yeah. I should also mention that on February 24th, which is the day we're recording this, that's Steve Jobs' birthday. It was born in 1955. It's also my mom's birthday. So happy birthday, mom, as you listen. He'd have been 71, right? Yep. He would have been 71. uh should we just jump into comment corner all right comment corner last week and on this show we talked about the cheap macbook and people have a lot of uh thoughts on this in response to our discussion of how much ram the laptop would have ivan marshall 9806 on youtube said why don't you connected experts remember that apple said that in their in the future their max will be capable of running Apple Intelligence, which they stated would require 16 gigabytes of RAM. I don't think that was said, was it? No, so I was looking this up. I couldn't find Apple saying what you needed to run Apple Intelligence. There's no way Apple would ever say that because why would you buy any gigabytes? Well, they did say that you needed 16 gigabytes of RAM to use Xcode with Apple Intelligence. Correct. Sure. So they didn't specifically say that the consumer needed 16 gigabytes. Well, listen, man, anyone's buying this to run Xcode, you got problems because they ain't going to run very well. Well, and also all the current Apple intelligence things like writing tools and cleanup and all that other kind of stuff do work on current 8 gigabyte Macs. Yeah. Right. So that's clearly not true. We have the thing. It's just that Xcode thing that required 16. Right. And then they kind of went the other way and scrapped that feature in favor of building hooks into cloud code and all this other stuff anyway. So that ended up kind of not really going anywhere. Yeah. Who's calling who a so-called expert? Well, then, how long ago was it when Apple updated the baseline to 16 gigabytes of RAM? Last year, right? Yeah, it was last year. Yeah, and we had been griping for a long time, even before Apple Intelligence came out, that they needed to do that. Yeah, separate from Apple Intelligence. We were mainly griping about the MacBook Pro. That was our main gripe, to say that you can't sell a Pro machine with 8 gigs of the RAM. I understood the error. I'll certainly understand this thing. I expected to have 8 gigs. I mean, even so, every other $1,000 notebook in the world had 16 gigs. So it was bad for the Air. It was really bad for the Pro. Right. They were charging two grand for eight gigs of RAM at one point. So, yeah. So it's good that they did that. I would understand eight. I would be worried about it for the future. Like, I think it's going to run for what this notebook is. It's going to run everything this year fine. I'd be worried about it buying one of these. I'd be worried about its longevity if it only had eight gigs. But, hey, I mean, they're going to cut costs somewhere, and there's a RAM crisis and all this other stuff. Apple seems to have a lot of, I don't know if faith is the right word, but they have a lot of, they like to believe in their capabilities of using swap. Oh, yeah. So that was part of their reasoning for a long time for the 8 gigabyte limit. They were like, swap works fine. Swap works great in macOS. Yeah, listen, macOS does a great job of optimizing or whatever you call it or the word is compared to like similarly priced or similarly specced Windows machines. Like it's just macOS handles it better. It still needs a MacBook Pro needs, I'll say, at least 24 gigs of RAM to say I'm going to use this thing for the next five years. Yeah. Yeah. For a pro? Yeah. Yeah. On the naming of the new cheap MacBook, we got some suggestions on TikTok. Jason mentioned a few of these, like MacBook SE from – and I just picked this because I wanted to say the person's name. It's BleepBore7676. If I was going to like Polymarket, I would put money on the MacBook SE. Okay. colors and numbers on tiktok said ibook which got a lot of uh likes that would be cool tiktok people people would love that they're not going to do that but people would love yeah i don't think they're going to do that i think they're moving away from i blank yeah outside of like the iphone you know the ones that already yeah that yeah they haven't come out with an iproduct and Roman, did anyone say Apple Book? I did not see anyone say Apple Book. That's a good idea, too, with the little logo thing. Yeah, they do that. They're kind of moving in that direction on certain things. I'm going to shift my money from MacBook SE to Apple Book. Like with Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro and stuff like that. I haven't heard that rumor, but that makes a lot of sense. And it singles it out from the product line. It doesn't get lost. Yeah. But I do think they want to get Mac in there. So I still think it's going to be MacBook anyway. And Poppy Fizz Ball said MacBook parentheses. Can you say that again, Roman, please? I want to. Poppy Fizz Ball on TikTok says MacBook parentheses A19 parentheses or MacBook 2026. I mean that's kind of their traditional support document nomenclatures. Right. I like Apple Book. I'm on board with Apple Book. I think it would be cool, but I do think they want to get the word Mac in there. I don't know if they do. Maybe they don't. I don't know. Yeah, we could be completely wrong. And in regards to the price and how much you're willing to pay for the cheap MacBook, Kenneth Swift on Facebook said, When you have the MacBook Air for 999 pounds, he's in the UK, even cheaper in the sales, Christmas, New Year's, 850. This has got to be 599, not a penny over. The MacBook Air is the best MacBook. So I had a conversation with someone recently about this. So he's lowering the price of the Air without lowering the price of the other one. Right. You can't compare a sale price to a non-sale price. So the other MacBook will be on sale as well. You have to compare it to the MSRP. So you're talking about a $300 difference. You've got to slide those prices down. Right. Because it will be on sale. If one goes on sale, the other one goes on sale, right? Yeah. Or assume. Maybe not immediately. Maybe not for Labor Day or whatever. It's going to take six months. But by Christmas time, if they launch it now, fly back Friday, they will be – Apple will have a $50 gift card if you buy one, but like other stores, we'll lower the price probably $50, maybe $100. Maybe even like $100 or $150 on certain days, like Prime Day or something. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I think it's fair to say if you're going to cut $200 off the price of a MacBook Air, you've got to at least cut $100 off the price of this, assuming a sale. yeah and maybe the sales won't be as deep anymore for the air if this one exists like things change it's true you know right um that does it for comment corner all right good so under an hour next week is exciting um we will record the show at some point next week we're uh i don't know roman we're gonna it will almost certainly not be gonna get all these announcements tuesday Yeah, definitely not Tuesday. So we usually post on Wednesday. We record on Tuesday, post on Wednesday. So we're not posting on Wednesday next week. Probably Thursday. Because we want to do coverage after the event is done and everything. Right. After we're certain everything's been announced. Yeah. So stay tuned. It might be a day or so later than you're using. And there's possibly travel to and from the event. and there's a snowpocalypse coming and all this other stuff. So we're trying to figure out exactly when we're going to record it. Stop making me panic, Jason. I'm just glad I don't live in Vermont anymore. Okay, so that does it. For this episode, this snowy episode of the Macro Podcast, episode number 972, thank you, Jason. Thank you. Thank you, Roman. Thank you, sir. And thanks to you, the audience, for tuning in. You can subscribe to the Macworld Podcast on – no, in the podcast app on Spotify, at the YouTube, at our YouTube channel, our dedicated Macworld Podcast YouTube channel, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. If you have any comments or questions, contact us at podcastatmacworld.com or through Blue Sky Facebook threads. Search for Macworld. Look for the Blue Mouse logo. Comment under a video. Comment under a post. and send us an email, whatever. Get us your comments and we will talk about them on a future episode. And join us in one of those future episodes next week as we talk about the latest. Oh, did I write? As we talk about the latest in the world of Apple. See you next time. Hey, that was like naturally right. Like I didn't struggle. Like I just went right. We've got the reactions going. I think I got mine turned off. Yeah, I turned mine off too. All right, see you everybody. Bye-bye. dax dax