Episode 982: Mac mini shortage and the status of the iMac

unscripted unfiltered unafraid welcome to the macro podcast my name is michael simon and i am joined by jason cross good morning and our producer roman loyola oh hi there welcome back to the continuous united states roman he was in hawaii last week yeah we all felt bad for him yes so now i'm back to the grind yeah and in a horrible california this is episode number 982 hate is oh no that's not true is it i was gonna say like will a thousand be like right around the iphone event or am i am i missing a month for a 12 not not quite close though it's gonna be like 995 or something yeah yeah we might be short of that yeah I think it's gonna be like 996 unless we skip there are they are just labels so yeah yeah but a thousand is such a nice number so I'm just saying we could jump up to a thousand whenever we feel like it right this is episode 999 A Someone out there is keeping Episode 999B Are we sure that they've This was before I got here Probably before all of us got here Who started the counting and are we sure It's accurate I can reassure you That it is not accurate Yeah I was going to say there's no way I think Back in the day When we had Macworld Expo They used to release the sessions as podcasts. Okay, well, it's still accurate in the sense that it's a different episode. Yeah, not all of them, but several of them. I don't think they did as many as 20, but it's possible that we're past 1,000 already. Those episodes kind of got lost in the whole part of, you know, Macworld has this history of transitioning websites and stuff like that and hosting services and other things like that. And a lot of episodes got lost. Do you know when the first, like when did we start this podcast? Like 2003 or something or four? I want to say 2001, but that might not be correct. Like immediately? I mean, podcast wasn't a thing in 01. That was the thing. We started the podcast before it was a thing. And it was started by Cyrus Favrevar. I've never been able to say his last name. Cyrus was, I think he was an intern at the time here, and he's gone on to bigger and better things. But he's the guy who started the Macworld podcast. So it was like we had a podcast before the iPod was a podcast. 2005. It started in 2005. And it wasn't called the Macworld podcast back then. It was called Geek Factor. Oh, wow. That's interesting. But I think he called it Geek Factor for like 12 episodes, and then it switched to the Macworld podcast. How about that? And 21 years later, we're at episode number 982. Today we're going to talk all about the iMac and where it's at, where it's come from, where it's been, where it's going, and anything else that comes up. Before that, we're going to talk a little bit about the Mac Mini because Apple made some news late last week, some quiet news that, you know, is an interesting little thing, but not a full show, but I do want to talk about it. And then we'll have this week in Apple history and we will close with comment corner. Speaking of comments, you can contact us through Blue Sky Facebook threads, search for Macworld, look for the Blue Mouse logo, send an email to podcast.macworld.com, send an email to one of us, comment under a post, comment under a video, get us your thoughts and we'll talk about them on a future show. So, yeah, before we get to the iMac, let's talk about the other desktop or the other affordable desktop, which is the Mac Mini. Yeah. I mean, basically. Slightly less affordable now. And also slightly less, like you can't get them. Like even for a while, either out of stock or. Many configurations are out of stock. Yeah. either out of stock or like if you order it today you'll get it sometime in like mid-july because um i guess it was a couple months ago like they became like an ai thing where people who run these agents all the time realize that the mac mini is super cheap and efficient and can run these things you know even on 16 gigs of ram which is what the base model has for at the time 600 bucks and And Amazon always ran sales. You can get them for $500, maybe even like $480. Black Friday, they were down to like $475. But Amazon doesn't have them anymore. If you search for Mac Mini, you're going to get a bunch of old refurbished products because they're just completely out of stock on Amazon. And last Friday, Apple didn't really announce it, but it just decided to stop selling the 256 gigabyte model that was $599. It's just gone. So it starts at 512 gigabytes of storage for $799. Yeah. 200 bucks more. Yeah. For. Right. And it's one of those, it's not a price increase, but it's really a price increase. Yeah. It's, they, they, they took the floor out. Like the minimum price you can pay is now higher. even though it's the same price for the same configuration it used to be. And they've sort of pulled this before on some things. Everyone's kind of wondering why they don't announce it. There's no press release. They don't say why. It's just one day that configuration's gone. Usually when they do this, what makes it so unusual is typically when they do this, it's when they introduce a new product. Right. Right. I did that with the MacBook Pro a couple months ago. Yeah, it's whenever, when the new M5 version comes out or something, they'll say, it starts with double the storage, but the price went up also, right? They'll just leave that part out. And they've done that in the past. This is a product that's out there. There's no new version or configuration. They just took the bottom config out and said, no, you have, basically they said, you have to buy the 512 gig upgrade. for $200. Like that's now required. And that's a lot of money for what it is. I mean, yeah, that's, I mean, we're talking about Apple. That's $10 worth of flash. Well, there's that, but it's also 30% more than it was. It's 30% more, even though you get double the storage. And, and the speculation is that in the RAM crunch situation that we're in where memory is so expensive. All chips have gone up, but memory especially. Apple's kind of offsetting that. This is one of the strategies to offset it is to do multiple things, but one of them being, well, kind of make people buy the upgrades that are massive profit centers. Like Apple charges egregious prices for additional RAM or additional storage compared to the cost, to the rest of the industry, anything. We've all known for many years that those upgrades are way out of whack with the rest of the thing. So if you kind of make someone buy that, then you can offset where you're losing money on the RAM here, you can kind of offset it. Maybe that's what's going on. Maybe it's just a supply issue. So maybe they're just going, boy, we don't have a lot of these. Let's just sell more expensive ones. Or, you know, we don't know. Right. The 256 gigabyte model has been out of stock for some time. They still offered it for sale. I wonder if like if you place an order, we should reach out to Apple and ask them this. If you place an order that was backordered, will they still fill those? by, I'm talking like they were pushed months away. Yeah, I've not heard that anybody's gotten an email or a notice saying your order has been canceled or would you like a whatever. It was pointed out that, hey, Apple sells this other inexpensive product, the MacBook Neo, and it starts at $256. and for it to go to 512 and get a Touch ID sensor is only $100 more. So why is this one $200 more? And the answer is because Apple's prices are not based around cost. They're based around the price that they want to sell it at, whatever price sounds good. So the MacBook Air went from 256 to 512 like a month and a half ago, and that's $100 more than it was. It went from $999. Now it starts at $1099 for double the storage. The MacBook Pro went from 512 to one terabyte, but didn't, that's $200. So they kind of play fast and loose with the rules when it comes to that stuff. And that MacBook Air update, it was also the update to the M4 chip. Or the M5 chip. M5, yeah, right. It all came at the same time, right? Yeah. This is the first time in a while that I can remember Apple just saying, like which is not offering that model anymore although they did i don't know three months ago maybe less they took away the 128 gigabyte uh ram option from the max studio which was a million dollars and no one bought well the people bought but i'm not buying it so like that is clearly related to like we this just this ram is too expensive we can't sell it for the price we were selling it so we're just not selling it anymore well i i think if you bought that update that upgrade it would be totally worth it like they would be well not anymore because i think the price of ram is so expensive like that to get that much ram i think i would have they'd have to maybe maybe i'm wrong no i mean they they charge way more than it costs them for that of course like like sky hot yeah i mean so i just think it was a matter of uh they didn't they i don't think it was just a very popular build to have that in that price and stuff but yeah this is the first time i can recall that that sort of mid-cycle without upgrading the chip or anything else they've just taken away the entry-level model right and and now there's a new entry-level model that's more expensive a lot more expensive 40 more expensive it went from 500 to 800 Oh, $5.99 on sale, $5.99 to $7.99. I'd say $5.99, $6. Yeah, so $6. But yeah, it's significant. Now listen, we used to always recommend, if you can afford it, to up the storage, even though it was too expensive because you can't do it after the fact. But to force people to buy a $7.99 device that was $5.99, you know, that kind of sucks. Yeah. And we don't know what the next steps are here. Like if you try to buy that 512 model now, you're not getting it to like mid-June. I just looked. Deliveries are end of May to June 5th or Pickle can store on June 5th. So, you know, they're about three weeks out. Okay. It looks like. Some higher-end configurations were like last time I looked like September or August. Oh, yeah. Like they're clearly having issues. If I just start clicking some updates here, it's going to say something else. 10 to 12 weeks is where if once I start just adding RAM and adding storage, it's higher than that. So, I mean, ABBA's probably shifting some things around to push the RAM that they can have or can get or do have to other products that aren't like, you know, I don't know how many people are buying a 64 gigabyte RAM Mac mini. so it's it's it's a balancing act and it's going to be a balancing act for a long time tim cook on the um earnings call last week basically said we're looking like at least six months maybe more that this is going to be an issue like a serious issue and we have to figure out what to do because yeah he um he said that there was um in the previous quarter not not the current quarter But the previous quarter, he had mentioned that the impact of all this Ram Crunch stuff was offset by the fact that they've got a bunch of stock. Basically, they have not really stock. It's not like a warehouse full of chips. They have purchase agreements with their suppliers to supply so many chips, and they're still in that. And that happened this current quarter, too. And it's going to still be true the next quarter to a small degree. And he said, we don't give guidance past the next quarter. June, the June quarter, yeah. The June quarter. But yeah, the June to September quarter. Like we don't give guidance past that. But beyond that, we don't have like inventory to offset the cost of these ships. So we're looking at ways to deal with it. And I think what's going to happen is Apple's probably going to do a bunch of stuff like this. targeted products are going to get certain configurations removed and, you know, and they're going to, they're going to do everything they can to just do a bunch of small things rather than just one. Everything's, you know, plus 20% for RAM, like, or whatever. Yeah. Um, we'll see how, how it, if it affects pricing. I mean, obviously the iPhone is the number one question and they have to secure that stuff for the next 12 months to cycle there there's a new model that iphone ultra is probably going to have uh 12 gigs of ram i would assume so they have to you know they can't just say oh well now the iphone starts at 9.99 and just deal with it like you know they they have to figure out how to cut those costs there's some there's some talk that the the base iphone might get a slightly different display or some different internal stuff like apple's really good at that stuff so they have to figure it out this is a bit of a landmine for john turnus to navigate like immediately but tim cook will be around that he'll and he'll help out but although most of these deals uh are and decisions are made like now like you're not made when you by the time we buy them they've already been in production for months everything's all these deals are worked out But he is going to have to step into a role where the immediate products that go on sale that September, that's all dealt with. But the products for the spring and beyond, there's going to be stuff with pricing and so on that's going to be tough for him to deal with. yeah we're all really hoping uh for a mac neo update next year with the next a series processor because that's a 12 that's like a 12 gig processor and now it's like oh now the mac neo with 12 instead of eight gigs that's really neat maybe that doesn't happen right right yeah he's gonna have some hard decisions maybe apple gets rid of one of its ipad lines maybe you know the i think there's there's decisions to be made that are, that aren't easy. And Apple is in a better position. We've written about this before. Apple's in a better position than most, but it's still, it's still tough as we saw last week by getting rid of that, that Mac mini. So Jason, do you think the Mac mini ever returns to five 99, a starting price of five 99 ever is a big word. I don't think it happens soon. I think when the M5 Mac Mini is announced, released, whenever, which may happen at WWDC and it may be later this year. But when they update it to the M5, it's not going to surprise me at all if it just starts at $512. But it's not $799, it's $699. Sure. That's what they did with the MacBook Air. So it actually more And this is what they done like you said the Air and other products before The minimum price goes up but they go but it's double the storage of before, you know, or whatever. Although, can they claim that now that they changed it? It's double the storage of what the M4 launched at. Yeah, but it's not what it was. But yeah, my guess is that they, quote, lower the price to $699, but it's still going to be more expensive than it ever was and give you that $512. Because Flash is under short supply and everything else too, but it's nowhere near what memory is. I was going to ask you that question. Storage is hidden. There's a supply crunch there as well, but it's not nearly there. Literally every chip. Anything made in a chip fab is right now under short supply. Because AI is gobbling up everything. AI servers. It's all for the AI servers. Yeah. And even like non-servers, like normal computers and laptops need a bunch of RAM just to run, you know, Gemini and Siri and Apple Intelligence. Like RAM is more important than it's ever been right now. And, you know, that's why we're in this ridiculous crunch. so if you want a mac mini uh i don't know go get one i guess because it's only gonna get harder it's only gonna get harder to buy if you can find a it is yeah take it by one go for 600 grab it you know if you see yeah it has become sort of it has sort of become the darling of like small businesses and hobbyists that want to run local models they they can because it has unified memory it's pretty inexpensive to get something with, say, 64 gigs of RAM. And it's really, really small, and you can have a closet full of them. And now run a bunch of local models or whatever. Virtual Macs, there's no Amazon web service to spin up a virtual Mac. When you do a virtual online Mac, it's like there's a Mac in a closet somewhere that you're logging into. so yeah so as jason said the the macbook neo comes in 256 gigabytes the other mac that is offered in that with 256 gigabytes of storage is the imac which doesn't seem to be affected as much buy this whole thing. Like you can go to Amazon and you can get one for $100 off like you always could. I wonder if that's... So the Mac Mini makes sense because the people who are buying that computer, they have a setup, they have a monitor. It's inexpensive. The iMac is a different animal because you're getting a keyboard and mouse display. It's the all-in-one. Yeah. so that still starts at 16 gigs of right by 16 gigabytes of ram and 256 gigabytes of storage it has an m4 right roman yeah it has an m4 um i wondered if apple just skips the m5 because they've done that before the imac has it yeah for example it went from m1 to m3 it didn't get an m2 i wonder if apple skips the m5 and uses those chips for the mac mini which is obviously more popular right now yeah i don't know if they have a shortage of m5 i don't know if m5 production is sort of short um and base m5 because there's no m5 pro like you can get an you can get an m4 pro mac mini like you can't get an m5 pro m4 pro imac um right yeah i wonder if the m4 pro mac mini has not changed in price because that one started at 512 previously yes um and i think it starts with more ram i want to say yeah 24 does it start with 24 um yeah so so i i have no idea if they're kind of short on the m5 chips compared to demand but i do know that um i would really assume that the imac is much less popular right than the mac mini laptops way outsell desktops and then when it comes to desktops on the on the apple side it used to be kind of iMac was really popular but now it's these mac mini being used for everything yeah right hold on i got a roman's raising his hand i've never seen that before i thought i'd chime in so my theory so i have a theory on this so i think apple wanted to have the iMac in a two-year cycle so they had the M1 that came out with the M3. But then if we remember correctly, if we remember back then, Apple wanted to move off the M3 as soon as possible. Well, that was our speculation, but yes. Yeah, that was all the reports, was that they wanted to move off M3 because M3 production was really expensive because it was the first, oh no, was it three nanometer? Yeah, it was the first. There's a more efficient and cost-effective three nanometer process being used for the M4. So the M4s are probably cheaper to make than M3s were. Right. And they did that with the MacBook Pro. I don't remember. They moved the M3 cycle. Yeah, the only M3 was the iPad Air for a while. And then there's nothing. Nothing uses the M3 anymore. Yeah. So my theory is the only reason why they went from M3 to M4 is because they wanted to move off the M3 process. That makes sense. So they have the M4. So that's why I think they're waiting until the M6 come out with an iMac. That's why we haven't really heard anything for a while because they weren't going to come out with an M5. We'll see if that holds true when they eventually do. Because they – I mean there was a report by – was it Mark Gurman who said that? Was it back in March when he said that they're coming out with new colors, but that's about it? You think they were coming out with new colors without upgrading the chip? Maybe. They did it for the AirPods Max. That's true. Yeah, the thing is this whole supplier thing now throws a whole new wrench into the thing. So who knows if Apple's going to stick with their preferred production cycle. Who knows? I mean, I think the iMac is fine for what it is right now, but it's not a very future-forward machine. Even as a budget, all-in-one, your first Mac kind of thing, it definitely needs a larger display. And I really want them to be able to offer something that's also a higher-end. Either at least let them put the Pro chip in it like they do the Mac Mini, or offer a whole pro model that's got a better display and also the pro max like the equivalent of a macbook pro but for the imac and i wonder how many people would buy that but i think it's because you know all the ones aren't what they used to be yeah back in 2017 i want to say roman can correct me if i'm wrong on that they apple came out with the imac pro which was 27 inches uh really cool looking it was only available in space black had black accessories it was awesome but they never updated it after its original release and i it was kind of like an olive branch to like higher end mac people because they were still fixing the well it's like you know fixing the mac pro which was that yeah mac pro was taking too long right and they were coming out with the the the reintroducing the the tower so the irony is they created the most closed system in the world and and said here here's your here's your stopgap but it was cheaper than the the mac pro and uh you know it was very cool very fast you know gorgeous i just i wonder how many of those they sold because normal people like me weren't going to buy one. At the price, probably not a lot. It started at like five or six grand. It was expensive. And pros aren't necessarily looking for an all-in-one. Right. That's what I was, you know, when they came out, we're like, yeah, this thing's cool, but I don't know if anyone's going to really buy it. And then it went away, and they haven't offered an iMac that large since. the current model which came out in 2021 is a 23 and a half they call it 24 but it's 23 and a half inch four and a half k display it's it's nice but as jason says you know it's it's a little small for 2026 it's not you know 24 inches is you know when you have tvs are 85 inches and I mean, even cheap... 50 is small. Even really cheap desktop monitors, and there's not a lot of all-in-ones in the market, but other cheap, really cheap all-in-ones, much cheaper than iMac, they're all 27 inches. So that feels like that should be the bottom. And of course, that's what studio displays are. So it feels like that should be the minimum size, and then just add features or performance from there. But that's... That's right. I'd like to see them offer that. And I don't think it's coming this year, but that would be a good one for next year. You know? Yeah. Before the, before this model, Apple offered a 21 inch and a 27 inch. So this was like right in between. And back in 2021, it was like, all right, you know, that's a, that's an okay compromise. It was a slight, I guess a pretty major redesign. It was the same. it's the same kind of look like it's a it's a rectangle with a little bit of a chin and you know yeah but it was a little bit bigger than the 21 inch it was the similar price 11.99 it started at 11.99 you know it's a it's a decent mac you're getting the the keyboard the mouse and you get a you know it's a really good display even if it's a little bit too small you're getting a you know an m4 display and you know it's like the camera and it's it's it's a nice machine the camera's a little old that could use an update to you know just there's just a bunch of stuff that could use a refresh but i think it's very low priority because i just don't think it's a big seller yeah that's what i'm wondering like how many people are going into an apple store looking at all the options and deciding on an imac yeah nobody there i can tell you they're buried way in the back or sometimes sometimes they're off on the side because they're big and they don't want to obscure the tables with other stuff and everything. But yeah, people buy laptops. It's, you know. Yeah. And, you know, I don't think they could just get rid of it. You know, the iMac is Apple. Like it was the machine. Well, actually going to talk about it later. 20, no, yeah, 28, 27, whatever, years ago, So they came out with like the iMac came out and it completely transformed not just Apple, but the computer landscape as a whole. Like it was a bombshell announcement. That was the first big product after Steve Jobs' return. And the thing where they turned around Apple and they got rid of all these other products they were making from printers and all the other stuff. And like 6,000 variants of Macs to try and sell to businesses and everything. They're like, no, no, no. This is collapsing it all down to this is the thing. And the heart and soul of the Mac from the first one is it's a single box that's got everything, right? Like that was what was unique about the Mac compared to the original Macintosh compared to everything else. It's like one thing. You plop it on your desk, and it's the computer and the monitor, and the disk drive is in there. Back in those days, disk drives were often separate and connected with a cable. so so i mean and that's the current iMac is just the continuation of that thing even though people don't buy that the all-in-one they buy now is a laptop they're like throw a battery in there right and apple apple came out with the iBook and stuff over the years you know like it oh yeah they the iMac gave birth to all these things but the iMac has been the thing that you know is synonymous with apple everyone makes laptops nobody nobody makes a an all-in-one like apple does yeah i mean we could have i guess we could argue the iphone is what's synonymous with apple but um but it was even the start of the whole eye branding right that was the first eye something yep um and and they carried that forward for years and years to all these things to the to the apple watch right um it was the first time they everyone was expecting it to be i watch yeah and uh and that's what i all there's all these articles before it was announced about the coming i watch and everything and surprise we use apple now yeah and you know it's a little sad as a i'm not like a a veteran like roman is for apple but you know like i grew up around i i never had a a g3 iMac i had the g4 iMac but like the iMac was the thing that that brought me to the store that when when that g4 iMac came out that sunflower thing in 2000 or whatever year it was or nine 2002 was it was it after the ipod it was after the ipod was it oh geez i don't remember roman when did the g4 iMac come out but i had to go to the apple store to see one as did most everyone who saw it. Not the Apple store, but whatever, whatever, whatever they had at the time. Oh, right. It was CompUSA or whatever. Right, right, right. Circuit City or something, you know, there's all those things that no longer exist. Yeah. It was 2002. Oh, two. Okay. So a little bit after the iPad. I remember my mom had to have one. She was, she was a big Apple user. They have for a long time offered deals for teachers. And she was always an Apple user through all this time, even when I wasn't. But I remember going with her. She was real excited to go get that Bondi Blue iMac. And her old computer needed to go anyways. but yeah and it's like i said it's sad that the iMac is just not it's fine like this it's it's it's okay it's good if you gave me 1200 right now i wouldn't i wouldn't buy an iMac and i just wonder how much longer it has left before it's gone yeah not without doing something unique and special I was going to say that's a good transition for last week's email. Okay. Yeah, if that's okay. David C., he had told us about how he's had IMAX from the great color one to the current M Series. But he was asking what would be a reasonable replacement for about the same cost. Right. That's a tricky question when you consider what's going on with the Mac Mini right now. Mac Mini was $599. Now it's $799. You have less to spend on a display. Yeah. So I was thinking maybe it's a MacBook Neo and you can buy an external display for it. There you go. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've always recommended that people get that storage upgrade anyway because, like you said, you can't expand it. And on a desktop computer, after a couple of years, you're going to be like, oh, gosh, 256 was not enough. But, yeah, that's a tough one. And it's hard to recommend an Apple display to go along with any of this because the cheapest one is so expensive. $1,600. Yeah, because the cheapest Apple standalone display is, I don't know, $300 more than an iMac. Yeah. It's crazy. So just get like a regular, you know, just any other monitor, any other. Yeah, like a 4K. like you know the imax four and a half care but 4k is good a 4k monitor will cost you uh three hundred dollars maybe less depending yeah even even a really good one could be you know six or seven hundred dollars you know yeah so yeah that it it hard to say like for somebody who wants a desktop computer and has to to spend it hard to tell them like well what do you get in the Apple universe for that Right. Especially if you need a display, if you need all the things, you know. Maybe Roman's right. Word's fine. Like for $600 or $699, both of which are less expensive than the Mac Mini right now, you can get a Neo, which, you know, arguably a lot slower than the Mac Mini, but still pretty good. And, you know, it's a laptop, so you can take it wherever you want. And then when you plug it in, like I have, and you guys have, I'm sure, I have a PowerBook. I call it a PowerBook. I have a MacBook Pro plugged into a couple monitors so I can take it into the dining room and to an office if I have to or sit down at my desk here and plug it in and I have a whole setup without having a stationary Mac. I mean, I don't have that kind of setup, but a lot of people do, especially. An official dock would be something that Apple should sell, I've thought, for a while now. Yeah. Yeah. but no i mean i don't have a mac studio that stuff right you have a studio jr roman you have a external display hooked up to a laptop at work so is that your setup yeah yeah and it works you know you can close it if you want you can keep it open have a second screen whatever whatever you want to do and it's just you know you're done with your day you unplug it and you walk away you're not tied to the desk like an i'm like like you are with an iMac so in that sense i understand why the iMac has declined in popularity and apple's attention however it would be so cool if they just went crazy and just came out with like a brand new ridiculous design that like the iMac g4 that people have never seen before if they came out with like a retro g4 that would sell out instantly. Yeah, I mean, it would sell out its small limited run numbers to nostalgia enthusiasts. But, I mean, its display is really tiny and it's big and deep because it had a CRT. So if they made something look like that, it wouldn't necessarily work. No, the Sunflower one I'm talking about. Oh, the Sunflower. Even so, that's a really small display. I don't care. That's a tiny one. That's an iPad. 15 inches is fine. It's a laptop. I use a 14-inch MacBook Pro half the day. Yeah, it's a laptop you have to sit back from. Yeah, but you can move it around. It was so cool, and it's so funny that they went from that to you can't move it. You can tilt it, and you can't move it at all. Yeah, and they really kept that design since. I know. So the iMac G5, which came out in, Roman, you can help me here, but I want to guess like 2004 maybe, was basically a big giant monitor with the computer behind it, which at the time was pretty cool. You know, it was novel. But as Jason said, like the iMac G4 could literally had, I don't know, two million different configurations. You can put it wherever you want it to. Just move it around, up, down, left, right, circular. and the new one that they came out with an 04, which is the one they still use, it just tilts and that's it. Yeah, doesn't even go up or down. Yeah. And they're all too low. Everybody who's got any kind of Mac display or iMac or anything since that time has it sitting on like two reams of paper, of like printer paper. Or like a whole cottage industry of like shelves. Risers, yes. That match the iMac aesthetic and everything. I used to have one, yeah. But, yeah, it's just funny to do it that way. Yeah, so iMac G5 and then the Intel one and then the newest one is the Apple Silicon. And it's similar to that one. I mean, obviously it's skinnier and, you know, a little more svelte. Yeah, nice colors. But it's basically the same design from 2004 or 2005, whenever it came out because they just stopped really devoting attention to it. Like Johnny Ivor used to be his like playground Mac, and now they stopped really putting all that attention into it. You know, they're still nice. You know, they're colorful and cool and all, but I just don't know if we're going to ever see a new one other than, you know, here's a slightly different shade of orange or purple. I don't know if Apple's ever going to bother releasing a completely redesigned iMac ever again. Yeah, one wonders. Yeah. There are a couple other rumors we could cover really quickly. One rumor, these rumors came out late last year. One is that Apple was working on an OLED iMac. Yeah. But, yeah, the report went on to say that if it was going to come out, it's not going to come out for a couple of years. Yeah, and we don't even have a – we have no OLED Macs yet. Like not really yet has come out. Yeah, and they're going to choose the one with the largest display to be the – no, it's not going to happen. The other report was that Apple had in-house an iMac equipped with an M5 Max chip. It showed up in the Mac OS beta code or something like that. But, you know, Apple has a lab that they put together these kind of prototypes and stuff. And so whether that Mac actually seized a lot of day, we'll know sooner or later, I guess. Apple could make, like they can make them just for their employees. They don't have to sell them. They used to make that back when the G3 iMac was discontinued, they came out with an education model that was eventually the eMac, and they did offer it for sale. But, you know, it's not out of the realm of possibility that there's like a 27 or a 30-inch iMac floating around somewhere in Apple and someone's just using it every day and they're never going to sell it. Right. Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if Apple did offer the Pro variant, whatever, M5 Pro, just like they do with the Mac Mini. Once you get to the Max and Ultra variants, you need a significant more cooling. That requires probably a different redesign than what they've got currently with the iMac. But maybe that comes with an iMac update. There's been rumors for a while now that, oh, maybe next year or so, there's going to be an iMac refresh and then a new iMac Pro that's bigger and has the higher-end chips in it. And year after year, that doesn't come to pass. So I don't know that's ever going to happen. Yeah, Roman, you wrote an article last week about basically just pining for an iMac Ultra. So Apple later this year, we reported last week, Felipe Esposito reported that the iPhone and the MacBook are going to get the ultra treatment. The iPhone in a folding form and the MacBook Pro in a touchscreen new OLED format. So, you know, Roman, you know, started dreaming of the possibility of an iMac Ultra. If that machine were to come out, would you really buy one, Roman? because it would be like $2,500, maybe more. Yeah, it would be really tempting to buy one. Yeah, I think I would think about it because, yeah. I mean, I think about them all the time. I'm not really saying anything right now. But I don't know if, you know, like for instance, right now I am using an iMac and I am using an iMac G4 that's set up as our podcast station here at the office. I don't know. You're talking about an M4, I hope, because if you're using a G4, we got problems. I'm an M4. I'm using a G4. Yes, it's overclocked. That's the biggest fan you've ever seen. No, it's an M4. I don't know if the all-in-one format is the format I want. Yeah, I don't know. I do like how it's like, it keeps my desktop clean. I didn't think that was a big deal about, you know, desktop clutter. No, it's a big deal. It is a big deal because I reconfigured my desk at home and I was like, oh, all these cables. Oh, it's awful. I do that like once every two years and it is such a process. Yeah. I was like, where do I put this box? I don't know where to put this box. This cable is not long enough. This one's too thick for the house cable. So it is kind of a big deal. And then, you know, when it's all set, like I look at, I'm looking at my desk now with the iMac podcast station. I'm like, I like the fact that there's nothing else under my iMac. What color do you have? This one's the blue one. Okay. But I mean, that's all aesthetics because then, you know, once it's all set up, I don't have to deal with it anymore. You can't even see the nicer colors on the back. I've always been so. Right. Like you put it against a wall or somewhere and you can't even see. I never understood why they made the front a duller blue or every other color than the back. I don't quite understand why they did that. I never understood why they don't have the Apple logo on front. I kind of wish it had the Apple logo. Yeah, that too. There's more than enough room. Yeah, because it's just a blank slate. and I don't know, I guess more room for, well, I can always put my Post-its over the logo too. I don't know. I'd have to think about that some more. Price plays a lot into it too. Yeah. So you opined about like a 30-inch screen and an M5 Pro or Max processor, you know, the things that you would expect from a pro iMac. Right. Yeah. The question I have is, would Apple ever bring... So the rumor is that the MacBook Ultra is going to bring a touchscreen, which we'll have to talk about that on a future show maybe next week because I don't think we're properly giving it... That's a big deal. I think that's a bigger deal than the folding iPhone to bring a touch-enabled Mac interface that they have resisted forever. could be arriving within a few months. But regardless of that, so you're using an iMac now, Roman. Is it close enough to you where touching it would be comfortable? No, no. Like right now, I'm reaching out to it and I can't. Me too. Like I would have to reach like a foot and a half. It's also those big displays. Like you said, it's a reach. you have to move your arm a lot. Like laptop displays are small. You're moving a little bit. Like to scroll a page, you're like moving your arm a whole bunch. Yeah, so it's not – during the early days when people were – HP and everybody else was making all these all-in-ones, you know, 10, 15 years ago, and all touch was new. Windows 7 was – or Windows 8, I mean, was bringing all this touch stuff and everything. They made all these touch all-in-ones, and they were not popular. I mean, people bought them, but they didn't use the touch at all, partly because the touch was like they used crappy digitizers and stuff, and it wasn't really performant and sensitive and stuff like that. But also, it's just not a good experience on those all-in-ones. I think the exception is the computer, the touch desktop that I always thought Apple should have made was Microsoft came out with that Surface desktop. It was like a big... It was like a huge thing. It looked like an Apple product. It was very, very streamlined and simple. And it tilted down to like a 30-degree drafting table kind of thing. And you could work on it with a stylus or touch or anything like that. And it immediately to me said, this is a product Apple would have made. This is for visual artists, It becomes a drafting table that you can directly work on with a stylus and everything. Everybody who makes digital art would love this thing if it was a Mac. I actually wrote that Surface. I called it the Big Surface Studio because I didn't know what it was called. But I wrote it down. It was just the Surface desktop. Yeah. It was super cool. I remember one of our colleagues, Melissa Riofrio, had one, and I got to check it out. and it was just it was like like jason said like like like an apple designed kind of like the imac g4 but way more practical in the sense that like it actually came down to let you not just position it but actually work in a different way yeah it was like it was like 20 000 or something or 10 000 it was a lot of money surface studio is what it was called yeah that's what i thought to every studio. Yeah, it was a really cool thing. And that was the kind of thing I could imagine an iMac Pro being. Like, if you want to do iMac Ultra, they're building touch into macOS. So maybe it's an iMac that is big and lowers way down to a drafting table and has Apple Pencil support. And it's a giant Wacom tablet you walk on. You know, it's awesome. Like, I can see that being a product that Apple could sell as opposed to just like a big touchscreen iMac. We don't know if we're getting a new one this year. Roman says no. I tend to agree with him. Yeah, I think I agree. And so, on that note, let's go backwards 28 years to this week in Apple history. 28 years ago on May 6th Apple revealed the iMac the what everyone calls the Bondi Blue iMac the one that if everyone remembers the picture of Steve Jobs with the iMac on his lap yeah when did all the fruit colors come out was that one year later or two years later I think it was one year later the grape and tangerine and all those other And then I think the year after that was like the Dalmatian and. Yeah, they did a couple of the Flower Power one. Was either of you working like covering this stuff back then? I worked for PC Games magazine, so no. At that time, I was at a, what's it called? A B2B Windows magazine. Because I'm wondering, was it a surprise in the sense that did anyone have any idea that Apple was releasing a new computer or did they know they were coming out with something big? I don't know. Right. I don't know. My sense of it is it was a surprise because nobody was watching Apple the way they do now. That's true. For sure. Apple was 1 50th the size that it is now. Like it wasn't even, they were selling a few million computers a year and all. And everyone knew that when Steve Jobs came back, they were going to, he was shaking things up and they were going to work on something new. But nobody knew what it was. Nobody knew it was this. They didn't know it was going to be called iMac. The whole point of it, the whole reason it was called iMac is because this is just when everyone was getting on the internet. It was just like we were getting past free AOL discs in everyone's mailbox and getting to like internet access really matters. And the modem was built in and everything. They had all those commercials with Jeff Goldblum. There's three steps, but like there's no step three, you know, because you just plug it in and turn it on. And that's it. You plug in the power cord, you plug in your phone line, and you're good. Yeah, there was the whole thing there. There is no step three. That was like their big commercial. Yeah. In a sense that there was just two quick ways to get to the internet. And it stood for like- You just plugged your phone line straight into it and you good to go Like individual I forget there were four I It was like individual and iconic or something or whatever But yeah Yeah they never actually I don think they actually like defined what it stands for You know, there's no official, what does the I stand for? No, there was, hold on. This is the internet. Roman, what's the... I always thought that it was like an implied eye. There was a thing. Hold on. I got to find it. Like when they introduced it, there was like a thing where he said. Individual, instruct, inform. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There it is. And inspire. But like that's just, yeah, that was just Jobs going like, oh, it represents all these concepts and stuff. But none of them were like the official meaning of what the eye is. That was just Steve Jobs being a marketing guy. No, no, yeah, I get it. It could mean whatever you want. It's kind of like how people think Wi-Fi actually stands for two words when it doesn't. People kind of apply their own definition. Yeah, wireless fidelity or something. I don't know. It stands for wireless fidelity, but it doesn't actually stand for that. I think the iMac was kind of the same way. It was like this amorphous eye. Yeah. issue. I'm looking at the Macworld article from May 6, 1998, written by Andrew Gore and Anita Epler. Do you guys know who they are? Yes. And I don't think the article says what the I stands for. It doesn't actually. That's what I was looking for. It does say, the most shocking part of the iMac isn't what it offers, but what it lacks. The iMac has no floppy drive and And no SCSI ports. That was a big deal? Yeah. That was less of a big deal. I mean, the people who had an investment in Apple accessories were upset about that. Yeah, right. That it's USB only? How dare you? Because USB, this is just when USB was taking off. But I can't plug in my big Apple printer. And I have this hand scanner that's SCSI and all that stuff. My ADB. Right. ADB was the thing. Apple desktop bus. So the article says at the time of the announcement, there were no USB Mac peripherals because USB-C, USB-C, USB on the Mac wasn't really a thing. But that changed pretty quickly. Yeah. When are you going to make a USB laser writer? Surprise, we're not. We're not making printers anymore. Right. But even like third party, like there weren't any for the Mac, but they quickly, you know, followed the tide to the iMac because USB on Windows didn't really take off until the iMac, you know, came around and people started using it. Yeah, it was right at that same time. Yes. They were all, everyone was trying to push it, and Apple just took that leap of going, like all the Windows computers had like USB, but also all these other, all your old keyboard connector, your little round thing with all the pins in it, all that other keyboard and mouse connectors. And so, yeah, they kind of forced the industry forward a little when their hot new popular thing would only be USB. Yeah. That really kind of gave everyone else license. That was kind of part of Steve Jobs' genius with the iMac is that it was forward thinking in both design and in technology. And it really was like, listen, if this thing is going to be a success, it has to be future-proof. And it's going to drag people kicking and screaming into this new age of the internet and USB-C. USB-C, I keep seeing USB-C and USB. the last line of this MacRod article is somewhat telling it says will this latest chapter in the Macintosh saga be Apple's success story at last only time will tell and well it turned out that it was turns out to the list one last thing about Apple history is I'll just mention that it came with the infamous little puck mouse because the lore behind And that is Steve Jobs used to sit on top of his desk, like cross-legged style, and use his mouse like this because he wasn't at a desk. That's allegedly how that mouse came to be, which makes sense because it's terrible ergonomically in any other position. All I know is Apple has a storied history of making terrible mice. and for a company that understands ergonomics so well, it's shocking to me how they have never made an actual good mouse. I agree. The trackpad is amazing. So is the Magic trackpad. Yes. Right. Amazing trackpad, fantastic keyboards. How are you making the worst mice in the industry? I don't understand it. You'd probably agree. It was the ProMouse that was kind of clear and black. Oh, the best Apple one. But even that wasn't good. Even that wasn't great. The standards of its time. Yeah. Yeah. So let's move on to comment corner. So we've got a bunch of emails. The first one, we were just, you guys were talking about the Mac mini. David Kaye wrote an email that said, $200 is not just a little more. And while we're at it, why not start telling the truth? Apple is actually in the RAM and storage business, not the computer business. I mean, I don't know. Apple's in the phone business and increasingly in the service business. Yeah, if they were in the RAM and storage business, they'd sell them to other people. They are using them for their own products. Yeah, now it is where the profit center is. The margins are in those upgrades big time, but let's not kid ourselves. like the money Apple makes from iPhones and increasingly services makes the Mac look like. Yeah, they made 30 billion services just last month. That's wild. Yeah, that's growing. That includes all the ads they sell. That's part of it. It does. During the iMac segment, we talked about the article I wrote about the iMac Ultra and Gunter H via email wrote that my article almost brings tears to his eyes. It describes exactly the Mac that I have actually been desperately wanting for years. Also because I only have limited space available on my desk. I've never been able to make friends with cigar boxes like the Mac Mini or the Mac Studio as they require an external display. So Gunter really wants an iMac Ultra. We got this email in response to an article that Jason wrote about ads coming to Apple Maps a while back, and he wanted to thank Jason for calling a spade a spade. He wrote, everyone in the industry will benefit if more respected journalists like yourself have to guess to call out company executives throughout the electronic industry. Wait, do I have a gold star reaction button? I know. I can do this thing. I'm just going to copy paste that on my annual performance review. There you go. Yeah. So he appreciates. It's a good reminder that, you know, people think that we, I probably even should get out, shouldn't get on this soapbox, but in Glossom anyways, people often think that we represent Apple, but we, we believe that we represent Apple users. Yes. and we try to try to speak for what's best for the user and not necessarily for Apple. My parents don't think I work for Apple. My relatives think I work for Apple. People who need tech support do, that's for sure. People who need tech support send us things like bug reports all the time. Like, this is broken. I'm like, there's a feedback app on your phone. We're not Apple. They probably pay as much attention to that as they do us. But there is sort of this thing lately where if you are a fan, people are fans of brands and companies. And there's this thing where it's like, if you're a fan, you stand them no matter what. You're right or die. They can do no wrong. And it's like, no, no. If you're a fan, you want them to do better. You want them to be better. You need to have it. Because you want to continue being a fan. Yeah, and you want other people to be fans of the thing you like and stuff. So you should have within you that ability to do tough love and say, like, nope, they messed up here. This mouse sucks, and they shouldn't put ads in maps. Like, you need to be able to say. Roman, if we had more time, I'd tangent onto the San Francisco Giants and Boston Red Sox. But we're running out of time. I got two more emails. This is in reaction to the CEO news. William L. wrote, after listening to the WWDD discussion, even though Tim would say, now here is so-and-so to talk about the latest whatever, the lower third graphic gave the presenter's full name and job title. So it will be interesting to see if John Ternus is still titled as hardware chief. Well, we know the answer to that, and he's not the hardware chief anymore. Johnny Surugi is now the hardware chief. Is he immediately the hardware chief? Yes. He was immediately named hardware chief. Okay. So, yeah, are they going to put him there and say, you know, CEO to be or something? Coming soon. CEO elect. CEO elect, yeah. So, Ternus is kind of, I guess, unofficially, officially in some sort of limbo in terms of his title. Yeah. I don't know. I wonder. Yeah. On Apple's investor relations, no, yeah, on their, like, leadership page, Surugi's listed as senior vice president of hardware technologies, and Ternus is listed as senior vice president of hardware engineering, for whatever that's worth. Yeah, and I don't know if that's their titles. I also don't know if it's been updated. Maybe it hasn't. Yeah. For some reason, I thought I had read that it was immediate. Yeah, effective immediately, Johnny Suruji will become chief hardware officer. Right. Yeah. But it's technology versus engineering. It's like a different. They just have an update. Yeah, they haven't updated the website. So I don't know. Who knows? I will say this. John Ternus absolutely has a CEO mugshot. Like all those leadership pictures are really good. But he looks like a total CEO. And our final email is from Jeff Dean. And he wrote, do you think Ternus will take Apple in a different direction when it comes to video games? I know he's a hardware guy, but given his age, he grew up in the 80s and 90s. And video games most likely played a bigger role in his life than it did with Tim Cook or other older high-level execs. This is my wheelhouse, you guys. And the answer is no. No, I have seen no, we don't know a ton about Turnus, but I have not seen any indication that he is like a gamer or that's a hobby that he engages with other than in the same way every Apple executive already has in which like you've got an iPhone with some, you know, mindless iPhone games on it. I think it's going to treat gaming exactly the same as all the previous CEOs have been. Uh, I don't see a difference in that in him. And you're starting to hear things about him. Like he's a huge racing fan. He goes out and races. He has a Porsche that he takes to the track and does racing and, and he's super into F1. So he's like going to really keen to expand the F1 partnership and stuff. And he's really into sports. That's not hearing anything that makes me think suddenly he's going to get it when it comes to games in a way that previous. execs haven't. So sadly, that's where we are. I mean, this is for another show probably, but is there anything John Turnus himself could do that's not going to take a decade to get Apple back into gaming or into gaming? I mean, it's a massive undertaking at this point. Yeah, like really doing it will take a lot of years, but there's some stuff that would take just a year or two in terms of hardware priorities, In terms of where do we take the next Apple Silicon chip and now do we start reaching out to developers and do we build Mac OS to have really low latency input from gaming mice and stuff like that? There's some stuff that could be short term and then there's some really long term stuff that they have to do in regards to working with publishers and distribution and all that other stuff. in my opinion what what apple would need to do is they would need to pay the hot the a developers to make their develop the games for the mac that's what they would have yeah that's that's one of the short-term things they can do they can open up the checkbook to the big publishers and say hey the hot game that you have that's like a year or two out we're going to pay you to make a Mac version that releases at the same day as the hot PC. That's one thing, but they need to do stuff on the hardware side as well. They need to do stuff on our Mac OS side. There's layers. And unfortunately, I don't see any. If you're into that stuff, I don't see any indication that any of that stuff is going to move at a different pace than it has been. Because they make inroads at a slow pace now, and I think that's just going to continue. I'd love to be wrong wow I'd love to be wrong alright that's it right Roman are we done? we're done what are we going to talk about next week we have to figure that out usually I wait until the comment corner but we didn't have anything we'll figure it out probably one more week before the WWDC preview probably one more and then WWDC for your... We could probably split that into two shows because there's so much. There's just so much. Right. Yeah. Okay, that does it. Four, this week. No, that does it for the... Yeah. Are you ready to screen it up? That does it for this week's episode of the Macro Podcast, episode number 982. Thank you, Jason. Thank you. Thank you, Roman. Thank you, sir. And thank you, audience, listeners, for tuning in. listeners that's better Roman I'm going to change your audience one but some people watch oh that's true too we've had this whatever it is you can consistently say Mike is good you can subscribe to the macro podcast and the podcast app on Spotify with video or on YouTube at the macro podcast channel or through your favorite podcast app if you have any comments or questions contact us at Blue Sky Facebook threads search for macro look for the blue mouse logo send us an email at podcast.macworld.com send us a personal email um wait there's one more thing oh comment under a uh a video or or post or whatever uh get us your comment and we will talk about it on a future show and you can join us in the on you can join us next week for something that we're going to talk about on the next episode of the Macro Podcast. Hold on. Join us. I swear to God, I think I changed this to be worse. Join us. Our audience should know. This totally happens. I really do work on this every week. He does. I'm not even. This is not an act. It's not an act. Jason and I sit there going, is it going to happen? We both have this look on our face like. get it right he's almost there he's almost there i'll get it right i'll do it perfect for episode number a thousand number a thousand um anyway you can join us next week uh that's it see you bye We'll see you next time.