MacBooks, MacBook Pro, and what Apple's launching in March, on the AppleInsider Podcast

Hello and welcome to the Apple Insider podcast. This is your host Wesley Hilliard speaking. Our sponsors this week are Squarespace and Nord Security. And if you don't want to hear about sponsors, there's Apple Insider Plus. This week, William and I are going to be talking about Apple merging iPad and Mac. How would they even do that in the first place? Why should they do it or why should they not do it? We'll get into it there. Obviously, you probably know my opinion by now, but we'll dive in after the credits. So, William, how are you doing? Oh, well, actually, I'm at war with Deliveroo. Do you have Deliveroo in the States? It's like Uber Eats sort of thing. Is it known in the US? I do believe we have it, and I think it retains the name Deliveroo because I've heard other podcasts talk about it. It also retains money when it doesn't deliver things. That's the current problem. And I'm being told I do not qualify for a refund, even though they didn't deliver and they did take the money. It is ridiculous how heated this is getting. But, you know, other than that, I would like to take refuge now in exciting Apple news because I know there is loodles of it, isn't there? See, this isn't quite as fun as Tim Cook tweeting a photo of an iPad mini, but it's pretty close. He's been doing this thing where smaller releases, at least, he gets out there and says things about it that kind of reveal more than what we already knew. And this time, a big week ahead, it all starts Monday morning. And it's an image of someone kind of hand-waving a Apple logo into existence. It's a cute little thing. It's probably meaningless. People automatically go to the most recent rumor of a touchscreen MacBook. that is not this event or this week. Oh, to nurse, that never occurred to me. I thought it looked like the back of a Mac, and I did not make it, but now I'm convinced. Okay, sorry. Yeah, okay. Yeah, the only thing that comes close is just creativity. I mean, we're getting iPads, MacBooks, iPhones. Those are all in the range of possibility. So we'll get into that in a second. But yes, Tim Cook shared this tweet. it's funny because up till now we only had speculation from like just not even hints of little birds just literally i have no idea what's coming but i think it's this from several people i think john gruber was one of them and now we have confirmation of starting monday we're going to get a release probably monday tuesday wednesday i doubt there will be anything thursday friday This is what happened before. Apple said, a week of surprises awaits you, and it was three days. So, cute. Yeah, so I'm going to go ahead and say iPhone 17e is one of the days. It could be day one. Very minimal MacBook chip updates. We're going to get M5 Pro, M5 Max, and possibly Mac desktop stuff, Mac Mini and Mac Studio. people are also of course this is going to be the catch-all everyone's like okay the low-cost macbook the studio display with oled and pro motion and uh hopes and dreams and world peace are all going to come next week so okay hmm i gotta say i i'm so wary of how everything is coming out at every release that I don't mean that I pass every word Tim Cook says. But I noticed last year or the year before, whenever they did this week launch, he just basically said this week. That was it. Now he's practically effusive about it. But he still doesn't say what's happening, except he did do hashtag Apple launch. So something is definitely launching. I was a little wary. There you go. Could even be that. from the center of Apple Park, like in Thunderbirds. Apple Park is the spaceship. It's going to take off. Okay, that seems fair. It's a UFO. So the event itself, or again, it's an experience. So Wednesday will be the conclusion of the announcements, and there will be a hands-on area for press in three cities around the world, uh which is really funny because the um event is taking place at like 10 p.m uh china time but in any case i guess they just wanted to be simultaneous like a fun thing um it'll be fine i i what i need right now is apple tv and home pod mostly i really want the ipad mini with OLED. None of that is next week, I believe. That could come any time between now and WWDC, but from what Mark Gurman said in his newsletter on Sunday, is we can expect five products. So, cool. I think that's two MacBooks, an iPhone, and two iPads. We have the base iPad and the iPad Air. That should be the week, I think. You don't think it's possible that it's, here's the better improved Siri? No, I think that is, well, this is tricky. That can just be mentioned at any point. This is one of those things where maybe that's the Thursday thing, right? This is not going to desire or need a hands-on we we we got a really weird beta cycle here okay so normally 12.4 or i mean 26.4 normally this .4 release is a long cycle this is when we start getting to the eight or nine beta cycle at the end of a release we got beta 2 in a week so that that tells me that we're probably going to see 26.4 relatively soon and maybe even the week after this little event roundup right it's got a lot of stuff in it but nothing ground shifting so i think and from what i've heard it's fairly stable i think maybe this could just be a here you go release very quick uh we could we could be talking about it again the week after this little launch week so this might be a silly question but i noticed uh because i did update i had to write about something in it so i didn't accidentally update this time i chose to update and it did seem to take a very long time compared to my accidental ones is that just that i was you know kettle boiling thing i was watching it or is this somehow a bigger release than the last one depends on the device which update you're on before we're seeing anywhere between nine gigs and 20 gigs of data goodness um it's a it's not small but also it could contain the release bundle itself doesn't usually contain um ai model updates that's done after the update uh and fetched from the cloud basically that's why sometimes if you update apple intelligence won't be immediately available um and certain functions won't be there so we'll see this is this is a switch they can flip at apple park at any time i don't know again I've already explained before this whole delay theory thing. I'm not really buying it. I just think that Kerman got it wrong. It was never 20. It's either, it's one of two things. It's either it is 26.4 and it's going to be revealed. And then the very next beta will get it. It's like beta four. Or it was never 26.4 and it is the spring and it's going to be 26.5, which will be out in April, which better fits Apple's usual launch timeline. So whatever the case, Apple clearly has to announce it before we see it. They're not going to release a beta experience and not have announced it yet, so don't expect that kind of weirdness. Any day. Next week, sure. Apple could throw it in there as a press release. They could have a little video or they could get this release window out of the way and then somewhere in the middle of March, end of march have a big keynote video thing published to youtube and say here it is here's our fancy new thing that's coming in 26.5 um do you so where are you on this are you disappointed are you excited do you think apple's doomed i'm kind of perennially disappointed as we've talked before in the past about how you're somehow fine with siri but i have found it demonstrably worse on things it used to be good at, and I still cannot grasp how it could be made worse. Not better, yes, of course. Not do extra things, obviously, but what it already does, made worse, I think it's actually affecting me more than delays. I feel like, well, if you didn't notice you made it worse, how can I trust you're going to make it better? And you forget how much you rely on Siri until you can't do it, And then things that just became a simple thing are an annoying chore for it. And I know this is like, you know, nothing is that difficult to do. But it's still, you had it, you took it away for no good reason. What are you going to do next? So every time I hear that it is here, it isn't here, I just think, yeah, right, okay, one day. The thing I'm looking forward to the most is the end of the silly headline, some company beat Apple to the punch. That's okay. On device, whatever, personalized, whatever. And then inevitably it does not work that way. And inevitably it's bad or wrong in some way. And nobody talks about it again after it was announced. But the announcement, that's the important one. It's, oh, they announced it. And then they gave it to testers and it was hot garbage. I mean, we saw this with Alexa Plus. We saw this with various other things. or Google announcing a bunch of features that wasn't released. And then the only place it is available is on like a single pixel device that you can go by. And it's running server side and not even on device. And people are like, look, they're beating Apple. And then Samsung, you know, has this, you know, new device. I guess it's the 26 Ultra or whatever. and they're like, look, Bixby or something. And I don't know. It's just, it's never what you think it is. This new system that's powered by Gemini on Samsung and I guess a Pixel phone, again, it lets you access a few things. It lets you order from Uber, I guess. But it's still being portrayed as this super big win. They're beating Apple to the punch. They got the thing out before Apple could announce it, but it's only on like two devices that are very expensive and niche in their own category. Yeah, Samsung is a global leader in smartphone sales. The Ultra is not the one getting them there. It's this J-whatever device that costs $200, right? And that's not the device that can do this. So I find all of these headlines very silly. Whereas Apple, when they do launch it, it's going to be on every single iPhone released in the last couple of years. True. And if you do that thing about ordering food, you'll go, not through Deliveroo, obviously, clearly. Something more intelligent there. Okay. So we've discussed all this before. We can do a whole show. It's just the whole rumor cycle, it's eternal. it runs on outrage and people tend to cling to the controversy more than they do um factual analysis and it gets really frustrating when you know big picture wise like because i'll see stuff all the time you know when's apple gonna finally get ai it's like it already has ai it may not be the version that you want but it's clearly running apple intelligence on the iphone and this kind of misinformation for our job is hard to cure because it confuses people and then you get all these silly headlines so it'll be interesting to see how this launch finally rolls out is it going to be a disaster does apple actually have something here that'll be useful to customers um i will be very happy when all of this ai nonsense dies out but yeah I have a question before we get into the thick of some of these devices being rumored Samsung just released a phone do do we care well I did notice you weren't I mean I think you got it right the name but you weren't absolutely 100% or no it's not you weren't that fussed whether you were right or not the detail was not grabbing your attention there so I only know about it Because I saw a headline that said Samsung's whatever it was gives us a preview of what Siri could be. And I didn't even read past that because one of the odds that it would. But it was interesting that it had to be framed in terms of Apple, even though here is Samsung, the biggest front phone in the world. We mention it every year. I realize that Samsung, because they do two phone drops a year. And every time they do, we kind of just shrug. i just i remember when samsung announcing something was busy in the apple sector people were rushing out to hear about the camera specs and what new gimmick was there this year the apple has to copy in which those headlines still exist and they're stupid um i saw one i don't i don't know who it was but uh shame on you it was um apple needs to steal this samsung feature today and it's this privacy screen cool um like it's it's clearly a gimmick um i'm very interested in seeing how it works how does it affect display quality is it like nanotexture in some way it's obviously not for um light as far as absorption but uh does it affect content seen through the nanotexture right uh so curious to hear about all that obviously the initial reactions are whoa this thing can't be seen from side angles which it's really funny to me that that's a feature when we used to pride ourselves on um angle of view yes displays i remember samsung even i think it was samsung saying you can literally lay the screen flat put your eyes up to the edge of it and see every every pixel lit up properly like it was a full 180 degree plus viewable zone. And now it's a feature that you can only view it within this five degree angle when it's directly in front of your eyes. And it's like, great! Isn't that just true? That's not Samsung. That's the world. The world has become more paranoid. Maybe that's... What are you doing on your phones that you can't let someone see your tweets in public? Whatever it is, I don't feel I can tell you. Yeah, no, it's just... I understand. Look, I'm very much a privacy advocate. And I love the idea of like Vision Pro because on an airplane, nobody can see the classified work that you're doing or something like that. But this feels like a step too far. If Apple does it, cool, I guess. We'll see what version they bring. But I just, again, the headlines are dumb. Well, actually, sorry, you're just saying that about Apple doing it. I remember reading patents in the last few years for Mac monitors that did things like that. They already have the nanotexture. I think it just means that one side of the nanotexture will be painted black so you can't see it from a certain angle. I don't know. But sure. It's just the same as every other Samsung feature. I remember automatic pausing videos when you look away from the display being a thing. Everyone was like, ah, Apple needs this so bad. And it was kind of a disaster actually if you put it to use because you could never look away from your phone without it pausing whatever you're doing. automatic eye scrolling and all that just anyway again tangents on tangents i wanted to emphasize the fact that samsung released a phone and nobody cares at least not in the way they used to i'm sure someone cares i checked in on over the fence and people are mostly meh they're like it's the same phone as last year um they're really upset that they got rid of the square corners which was a very identifiable design aspect of Samsung phones. Now from the head-on profile, it's even harder to distinguish from an iPhone, except if you know iPhone, iPhone has a much wider curve radius. This is a much smaller curve radius, but yeah, other than the camera arrangement, like it's just this flat slab. There's not really much imagination to it. And I don't know that people aren't buying them the way they used to. They're more focused on inexpensive competitors, Chinese imports. We're seeing, again, a lot of people just buying the cheapest Android handset that works versus these super premium ones. It's like every manufacturer in Android has carved out this very specific niche and then Apple has the broad appeal, which has not always been the case. It used to be the opposite. Apple was the niche and Android was the broad appeal. And somehow that's flip-flopped. I can't remember if this was last year or the year before, but when you said that about that the new one is hardly different to the last, I've heard that before. But I've also said it as a criticism of iPhones that there can be years when nothing very much happens. Isn't this going to be a case? If an Android user skips the last couple of years will they have noticed something appreciably better next year Or have we actually just reached the end of what phones can possibly do I think it's a difference of willingness to spend on research and development. Apple spends an ungodly amount of money, and I don't know what Samsung spends, but it's not as much as Apple. And it's also, again, people buy their phones. Like Korea buys Samsung because they're loyal to the brand, and that's a lot of their sales. Apple even ate into those sales, though, which is interesting. Even on their home turf, Apple was beating Samsung for a while. Again, I don't have recent numbers, so I can't speak to it. But it's just interesting watching this global phenomenon occur. When I entered Apple in 2014, it was a completely different universe we're talking about here. And I asked the question before, but I continue to ponder it. Is this a good or a bad thing? Well, that's an iPhone user. I'm fine with it. But yes, what am I missing out that better competition would get us? I see your point. Yeah. I've been saying it for years, and I think it's still true. Apple does not have a competitor. Not in the traditional sense. Like they're competing the way Netflix competes with hours in the day, right? Right. Netflix is competing with toilet breaks. Netflix is competing with the amount of time you spend scrolling on TikTok. Like they're competing with the external fact that you have to sleep. That is what Netflix is competing with. Or maybe YouTube. They're at each other's throats at this point. So you switch the name out, the same argument applies. But then you look at Apple, who are they competing with in terms of design and feature set and ecosystem? These other companies keep pretending to attempt it, and they'll make announcements making it sound like, oh, we're going to take Apple this time, the iPhone killer is here. And it's just another niche product in a wider Android ecosystem that is suffering from continued fragmentation across the line. when was the last time you heard about or uh anyone maybe again maybe i'm just ignorant to it so readers can write it or listeners can write into me when's the last time anyone talked about oh actually yeah uh samsung and google have promised users five years seven years of updates no but they mentioned that once in 2022 and it has never been brought up again i remember that thinking you don't get that already but i didn't realize they don't just quietly gone away okay yeah well no and i'm not saying that they stopped doing seven years of updates i'm just saying like that was their big look at us we're going to take on apple we win now and it's just like that's not what makes apple so good it's part of what makes apple good but all the pieces of the whole are what make apple good and again this isn't the podcast for that um we can have a separate discussion i just i am so fascinated by how things have moved in this space over time and when I ask people this question, they'll be like, oh, you know, um, Google pixel. And I'm like, yeah, but eight people buy those. That's not a competitor. Like it's nice. Right. But that's like saying, um, Lamborghini is competing with, uh, the Honda civic, right? Like they can, you can get some really luxurious Android smartphones with a lot of power that can run like PlayStation 4 emulation, right? There's some crazy devices out there. That's not what's driving the market. And Apple has done this really weird thing where they can be premium and for everyone. And I, people are going to be writing books about this. I mean, they already are, but this modern era of iPhone, the 2020s, as much as, you know, we hear about doom and gloom and Apple's lost its touch or whatever, it's killing it. And I really get confused when I see those doom headlines because it's like, literally, look at their sales, look at their income. Is that maybe, is that a bad thing for us? Because maybe it's boring, an old hat. I don't know. But we seem to take for granted what we used to talk about. And when I joined this community, it was all about you know market share and sales numbers and who's buying what how many how much how good the camera is and every time apple exceeds expectations in one of those discussion points people i guess look for another discussion point oh the paint it chips or something go buy an android not anyway it's it's not a competition in that way i just find it amusing and i and i desire rational conversation around it and it's hard to find okay following this through um yes you argue apple doesn't have any competition and you're very persuasive about it this means amongst other things there's nobody out there that apple is trying to beat or is beating Apple would that be why it's taken well so far seven years for Apple to do a folding phone would they have done it faster if somebody else did it well I was gonna say better but Samsung's been doing all right with them haven't they so no um question mark the they're actually Samsung may have pioneered it but there's um the names are escaping me but I believe there are other Android foldables that are doing better than Samsung, modern day anyway. Samsung folds are fine. The folding market, again, is fine, but I think it's something like 2% of the smartphone market, if that. It's a niche on a niche. It's, do you have a lot of money and do you want a device with an optimized software that not many developers are going to target because not many people are buying the device it's kind of the same question as apple vision pro um okay i'm sorry i cannot resist this that's a very persuasive phrase but let's just take that apart do you have a lot of money for something that doesn't have optimized software is there not a description of people who buy apple vision pro i just said that you just didn't hear me oh um sorry no yeah see i i heard you gearing up for it and then i said it only for you to say it but it's okay i agree except um one is a seven-year-old category that has never penetrated the market in any significant fashion and the other is two years old on the first generation model and is expected to change dramatically in order to penetrate the market the foldable device has reached maturity it has had seven years they have better hinges they have better displays they even have better software even in android they somehow figured out how to convince developers to somewhat adapt these dual screen environments and different pairing methods and stuff like that cool still nowhere near cheaper and and maybe this is a preview of the future of apple vision pro i'm willing to hear that argument i am not you know some sort of sycophant like i understand vision pro is in a delicate position right now and and needs to change in order to grow this could definitely be the future of that product line i i am not denying that uh where apple just fails to penetrate the market and then it just kind of falls to the wayside as a as a fad that is a possibility. I'm not seeing evidence of that yet, but it is early days. Foldables though, have had their chance. It's just not going to happen. And I think the reason why Apple hasn't released one yet is because what we just discussed, it hasn't happened. There's no real demand for it. Apple could be the company that creates the demand, but are they willing to take that risk on a new product line that they have to embarrassingly pack out of in a couple of years because no one's buying it? Or do they just keep experimenting internally until they perfect it and decide to release it? Or use the learnings that they got from testing all these devices on something better later? Because the reason why you bring this up, I have it in the notes. Where is this device? Well, you've made this point before that by this stage if it were to be coming out in september there should be some heavy clues from the supply chain and you're right there isn't and there do appear to be for the rest of the iphone 18 major at least the ones we think are coming out in september uh so i'll argue against that no you're right yeah we we got a camera component for the iphone 7 8 18 pro max which clearly shows that the face ID sensors are going to go under the display and we're going to get a smaller dynamic island. Great. That confirms that rumor. The reason why we haven't seen much chassis leaks is because it's an identical external chassis and it's going to maybe have different colors, which is why we're getting the color rumors because that is what they're doing right now. They're doing the pre-production test phase where they're making sure they can do mass production on this stuff. And when they do that, they're going to test the colors, which is why they'll leak. nothing has leaked about this iphone fold not a piece of hinge or display or camera or chassis nothing and we have had sporadic leaks of this is the specs it's going to have this is the measurements it's going to have i'll give you that but that's the stuff you can get from dvt testing, right? Design validation testing. That is not the leak. We should have already had those leaks months ago. What we had on iPhone Air, do you remember in February of last year what had already leaked of iPhone Air? Oh, yes, because I wanted it to be called the iPhone 17 Slim or something like that. Or not thick. Some phrase like that that I tried to trademark. Yeah, I'd forgotten that. I remember at the time actually thinking it might or might not be true, and then it turned out to be right on the money. And yet there is nothing like that now. Yeah, we had component leaks in early February, CAD designs. We had entire photos of probably DVT because it wasn't the right colorway. But there was a lot of evidence the iPhone Air with a camera bump was in the pipeline or the camera plateau. And the reason why those things leaked is because it's a brand new device, so the brand new form factor, it's easier to spot. The people working on these lines will see because, you know, you won't always know what you're working on, but if you get a device in your hand with an Apple logo or you know that your supply line is working for Apple and you see something you've never seen before, oh, that's the new one. And if you're a leaker, you're going to leak it and probably get a couple bucks for it or something. I don't know what they do over there, but there seems to be something happening to cause that. We even had dummy models by the 1st of March, right? So we're in that window, and I will see the fact, I could be totally wrong, and Apple has just done a really good job keeping this thing secret, and it launches in the fall, fine. I'm not going to be upset if this thing releases. I'm just reporting on what information we have and saying, look, we should already know more than we know. We should already have more than we have. What's going on here? Is it going to come out in October? Even then, we should have seen it. The only thing that we have seen is what we just got a rumor about. We just got a rumor about the production testing for iPhone 18, which is not going to come out until next spring. We got that rumor for the iPhone Fold somewhere around June of last year, which was actually a little early compared to where it should have been so apple maybe was testing earlier to make sure they got it right but since then we should have gotten much more and have got nothing all right um let's come september october time and there isn't an iphone fold well you would have been right and that's very good but will because there's so much as presumption that it's coming, will it actually be a PR failure for Apple that they don't? It will be written that way. I have no doubt that this is going to be another Apple car situation where everyone, the rumor mill has shown everyone that Apple is working on these devices and that they're coming. And for Apple to back out at the last minute and say, nevermind, they're not going to see it as pragmatic they're going to see it as a failure and they're going to they're going to paint it as such just like with apple intelligence if apple had released a broken version of those features the pr would have been a thousand times worse apple can't do broken bad experiences and when they do and we have seen it they're not infallible it's terrible for them people still talk about butterfly keyboards that's true yes and and and only nerds really because even the people involved barely knew that that was a thing at the time but it was a zeitgeist in the space but yes i think it will be a pr annoyance that we can overcome but it's just again I'm waiting for it Mark Gurman newsletter Apple fails to perfect iPhone fold, gives up in silence, fires everyone and is sad whatever the usual catchy headline, yes Tim Cook's last attempt at relevance fails better headline but still harsh, very harsh yeah because again it's not his this is he does this his his when we look back on tim cook he's going to be supply chain and health that's his legacy and i don't want to hear anything else about it but um anyway yes this will failure sells people love a salacious headline but hopefully if you're listening to apple insider podcast you know a little bit better and you understand that Apple's doing fine. They're doing better than they've ever done, financially speaking, and population speaking. More people have their devices than ever and their quality hasn't dropped in any significant way. There's going to be opinions about that. I know. People are like, oh, liquid glass, whatever. It's fine. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. I was just looking to update my own website. And I admit, I wasn't actually looking all that hard because it did seem like a big task. Yet I'm doing it now with Squarespace and finding that Squarespace is so comprehensive, such a complete platform that actually I'm now working through so much more than just a better look for the site. Although, come on, a better look for the site is pretty important. And even though actually there is such a lot more to Squarespace, it is this cutting edge design that I like most. Well, I say that as if it's singular. There's so many cutting edge designs available. I keep changing my mind. OK, and funny, another option, right? Oh, even more. But then there are these other tools, other options, immense list of features that help you stand out online. Not as incredibly lazy, OK, but for one example, I never used to bother checking my analytics to see how many people reading my site. But now the information is just there. It's right there. I can see it. And then I said I've been looking beyond a new paint job for the site, but I'm specifically looking at reviving my old email newsletter by doing it through Squarespace's tools. And I have so many videos on YouTube that are not on my site. And yet I could now put them on so easily. Listen, just go to Squarespace dot com slash Apple Insider for a free trial. And then when you're ready to launch, use the offer code Apple Insider to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash Apple Insider, then the coupon code Apple Insider. And in both cases, Apple Insider there is in uppercase. And thanks to Squarespace for supporting the Apple Insider podcast. I want to get to a couple of other rumors real quick before we get into the end of the show, because we're only like a half hour in, so we're doing well today. The base MacBook. Tell me about this device. It might come in many different colors. I shouldn't focus on that. I think the king about it is that this is the one that will run on... I nearly had it. I know it's an iPhone processor. I can't remember if it's the A19 or the A18. A19 Pro. Ah, thank you. This means, for whatever reason, because they make more of them, they're a few spare. It's a lot cheaper than an M-series processor. So, therefore, the MacBook ought to be cheaper, although in the last few days we've heard of other component costs perhaps rising. So, I mean, anything with Apple. Apple will never do budget-conscious. It will certainly never do cheap. So, whatever it is, it will come out, and it will be more expensive than we expect, but it will still probably be less than the MacBook Air. Although actually, there's a piece I'm really pleased about in Apple Sider Plus, comparing a little bit of what we expect to come now, but also how Apple has approached us in the past with the MacBooks rather than MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. And I hadn't appreciated that at one point, the MacBook was more expensive than the MacBook Air And although it had certain advantages it had certain disadvantages So I would have thought that it killed off the Air but no they killed off the MacBook then I believe it was $1,199 versus $999. Yeah. Oh, and there's this gorgeous moment, the very first MacBook. I had not appreciated this. It came out in white and black, and you wanted the black. I remember wanting the black. But it cost $400 more. almost entirely just for the color. Is this a black tax? Yes. There was a slightly bigger hard drive in it, but that was it. I was looking through all the specifications. Apple Insider published all of the specs for both of these models into, like, magnifying glass to find the difference that would account for $400 and color in a fractionally bigger hard drive was it. So, Eric, that was slightly off. I owned the MacBook Adorable, as ATP calls it. I do like that. That word, yeah. Yeah, it was bad. But I loved it. I was in love with the thing. It just could barely turn on and run Safari. But it was, you know. I would love, we're never going to get this. I would love that form factor with an M series or even A19 Pro. But what we're going to get is a 13-inch laptop with an A series processor. It's going to look like a 14-inch MacBook, but slightly smaller, slightly lesser display. It's going to run Mac OS and it's going to be fine. A couple of colors would be cool. Yeah. We keep hearing about colorful Macs. Jon Prosser has been wrong about this consistently for years. I don't know. We'll see. Who had the colors this time? That was a Weibo source, I believe. So we'll see. I am not in the market for a Mac. I had my Mac mini unplugged for like a week and didn't realize it. So, uh, like I love, I love me. Would you say that? But yeah, okay. I love, I love, I love the Mac. I will always need one around just for work reasons, not because I need it to do work, but because I need screenshots, I need references, um, simply for that purpose. But, uh, and I sometimes access, I usually access it through my Apple vision pro cause I have it connected to a five inch monitor, um, to keep my slack green dot on, I guess. But anyway, Macs are fun. I would be interested, I guess, in whatever this little MacBook is because they're just cute little guys. It'd be fun to go photograph it out in public somewhere. And I wouldn't use it for work. But it's cool. Let's see what happens. I don't know. So for the people I would think this device is okay for, I would tell to go get an iPad Air and a keyboard. So we'll see where this ends up in the line. College, obviously, education markets could definitely take advantage. But there's another MacBook due in 2026. This episode is brought to you by Nordsteller. Nordsteller is a threat exposure management platform for businesses of any size. It provides the four core solutions all firms need to protect themselves against cyber threats. So Nordsteller will detect leaked credentials and sensitive data. It will track any keywords so you can easily have it monitor the dark web to spot targeted attacks or impersonation attempts, whether they're against your company, your executives or your partner firms. Nordsteller brings you attack surface management. It finds external vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them and it detects cyber squatting where bad actors are again impersonating your brand. Plus, we do rather live in a social world. Optionally, Nordsteller can also be set to spot these impersonations across social media, across app stores, just across the web and have them taken down for you. Made by the team behind NordVPN, NordStella is about proactive protection. Do not wait until your company's data is already for sale on the dark web. Protect your business today with NordStella. NordStella has flexible plans at scale with your business size. And right now, you can unlock a 10% discount at nordstellar.com slash appleinsider. Get this exclusive offer. unlock your 10% discount on Nordsteller with the coupon code NordAppleInsider-10-Nordsteller. Just go to Nordsteller.com slash Apple Insider and tell Nordsteller where he came from. And thanks to Nordsteller for supporting the Apple Insider podcast. And it's not the M5 Max, M5 Pro, MacBook Pro. Are you? What is it then? I'm running through the list. This is, yeah, this is weird. But we've had this rumor for a while, and I kind of forgot about it until it was repeated recently. The M6 series MacBook Pros are expected to be fully redesigned with OLED and a touch-sensitive display. Oh, right. That again. Okay. And that's going to land winter, so that means like December, January. short cycled again when was the last short cycle that was m3 m4 i think so i remember one of those three was the spring that somebody would have just got it delivered by the time it was changed yes so okay this seems longer than m4 was the the entire chipset line launched in the fall of m4 yeah that was a short cycle for sure and i think we're gonna see it again uh It's not great for people who, like you said, just bought the M5 in the spring. Honestly, just don't release the M5 Pro Max. But whatever. Apple needs to make their money. And someone needs a new laptop, I'm sure. So even if it's only six months of sales, it's six months of sales. So we'll see. Also, those chips obviously would go on other computers. I just mean don't bother with the MacBook Pro version. Wait six more. I get it from a supply chain standpoint. I get it from a sales standpoint, price ladder, all of that. It's still unfortunate. But yes, this MacBook Pro revolution is potentially, we've heard it, it's not solidified. We're far enough away from it right now. Well, gosh, it is 2026, isn't it? We're not that far away from it, but somehow it hasn't solidified. So this is another iPhone fold situation. I have a feeling we're going to reach the inevitable conclusion. So take me down on this now. Go to, what is it, Polymarket? Place your bets. Yeah, betting is so bad in the US right now. I think this is going to be actually OLED MacBook touchscreen guy, spring 2027-ish. And, of course, that's going to be Apple fails to touchscreen or something. I don't know. Okay. But speaking of touchscreens, I am actually a little torn about this because quite a while ago I used a friend's PC that was a touchscreen, laptop, and fine. I just genuinely got a bit weary of reaching over the keyboard to the screens. But then pretty much every time I've been using an iPad all day and I turn to my Mac or my MacBook, I reach out to the screen. So am I missing? Where am I wrong about that? Are you a pro touch? if i use my apple vision pro for any length of time the minute i take it off i try to pinch the air and do something okay so this is just a natural phenomenon you get used to i mean this video games this is a decades-long problem of if you play a video game on nintendo the select button is on the right side right and if you play a video game on playstation the select bottom button is the bottom button and you will and but if you hit the right side button it's the cancel button and so if you switch between these consoles regularly you can find yourself accidentally pressing the wrong thing it's just your our brains love repetition they love consistency and so if you can touch your iphone if you can touch your ipad it automatically goes to i can touch this mac and people buy macs and touch it and they're like what just that nothing happened what's going on here i have a few issues with it from a just multiple places it's a nice to have people who buy macs tend to have iphones and ipads or smartphones and tablets first so they expect it to be there and they're confused when it's not there so having it is a quality of life thing but i also think that once you add it and people realize it's there and everyone celebrates around the world, they will promptly forget it ever existed and continue to use the trackpad and keyboard. I was thinking, I can't imagine using my fingers on Pixelmator Pro, but actually I do on the iPad. So, yeah, Apple Pencil for Macintosh. No, I don't think that's going to happen. There's the potential for a Mac Studio display getting Apple Pencil support and this like drawing tables thing that, you know, Windows did for about eight minutes and then gave up on and everyone's like, Apple should do this. Yes. So, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm really on it today because the headlines have just been maddening lately. Anyway, the thing is fine. Only if you're not sacrificing that display. it's a high quality it's thin the lid isn't it's impossibly thin but is apple about to compromise that lid thickness for touch that's the question if it's a micron thicker you're gonna know one of the things i think it must have been steve jobs was so proud of is that you could lay your MacBook on a table, hook your finger into the lid, and lift it one-handed because of how thin and light those lids were. Are you going to now need two hands to open your MacBook? But I'm trying to work out how thicker, say, an iPad Pro is compared to the lid. It must be thicker, but it doesn't feel it. Much thicker. Like, it's the infinitesimal space of the lid versus the thickness of the iPad is like you start getting to an asymptotical curve. I'm exaggerating. It is a very thin lid, and the iPad Pro is definitely much thicker by comparison, even as thin as the iPad Pro is. when I had a 14-inch MacBook Pro, I photographed it with my iPad Pro and a Magic Keyboard. It's incredible, the difference, because all of the weight of the iPad is in the top, and all the weight of the MacBook is in the bottom. And the thickness of the iPad has nothing to do with touch, right? The touch displays are incredibly thin these days. I really have no doubt you should be able to fit one in that lid, but everything else. And now we're also getting a cut out with dynamic island in macbook as well i say i was i have a 14 inch m1 macbook pro which i think was one of the first to have the notch and i found infuriating that people would say apple has cut into our screen with a notch when actually what they've done is they've raised either side of it you were getting full so i was half empty yeah i was fine with it i like it but Yeah, more display, smaller area. So what wasn't rumored, notably, even as we talk about Dynamic Island, now, to be clear, you can get live activities in macOS currently, but they go to the menu bar. There's no cutout for the Dynamic Island to rest on. So this new Mac would have a Dynamic Island for the live activities to go to. That's the difference, in case you're confused. Okay. But the thing that was not rumored, interestingly, Face ID. Oh, good, good. I didn't even notice that wasn't rumored. I think I'd prefer Face ID than Touch. Well, yeah, and we still do not have any Mac, not a One, with Face ID. What about the studio display? Does that have a Face ID? Nope. That would be interesting, but nope. It would need a secure enclave if it had Face ID. Yeah, I was just thinking that's true. But we are rumored a new display any day soon. If that thing got Face ID, it would be useless because already my iPad is at eye height. I barely, like, I don't even have to turn my head. I, like, turn my eyes to the iPad and it authenticates and then I look back at the display. Like, that's how good Face ID is on iPad these days. You can just look shifty and it still knows it's you. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Because you have to look at it. It has attention detection is the word. Anyway, so this is an interesting product choice. This is what Apple Insider Plus is going to be about. I've seen some interesting comments from, I think it was Matt Bertzler who wrote a blog post of how Apple's most definitely, like he was very assertive, going to kill iPadOS. It was for shock, I'm sure I disagree, but we'll get into it in the after show, of course, where we're going to talk about if Apple was to merge Mac and iPad, how would that even work? And does it need to happen? That's going to be our topic today. This is an interesting product. We're going to get to it more. There's time. I mean, again, winter at the earliest. I still think we're going to get the inevitable spring pushback, something or other. We also have a lot of weird industry problems right now. chips and batteries and even display. It's just really hard to get anything right now. And tariffs are back on, if you didn't hear. So things are really weird. So we'll see how these launches all go this year. I mean, let's just get through next week, which, funny enough, the next episode we'll have all about. So that's fun. We'll have a whole week of launches and something to talk about. Unless Apple actually works a full week for once. and is still going into the Friday and thinks we might have to do an extra special addendum and also the car or something. So I have a couple little things here that can kind of be rounded up into one little segment here at the end. But I wrote, I could have swore I might have mentioned it last week, but I wrote a story that was released Friday about Apple and privacy. Yeah. um because this was brought on by we talked about it um rings plan to turn your doorbells into a surveillance network uh it starts with dogs but that's not the plan their plan was people um that was leaked internally facebook wants to make a smart watch which is just a privacy nightmare waiting to happen in addition to their glasses which a developer is working this is new news the developer has made an app that is available via github and android coming to iphone eventually that will alert you if it thinks smart glasses are nearby and in use it looks for specific signals oh bluetooth or something yeah like it's got a specific channel being used i suppose somewhere it's obviously communicating and it's going to probably send out a device identifier uh i mean i don't there's a lot of talk there i don't know if companies see the need to privatize those um but yes there's a lot of radio waves you can sniff and find information about and i guess this app just says hey someone is potentially wearing glasses uh it could error out and actually it'd be a vr headset but i mean how many people are in public wearing vr headsets um interesting app i think this is one of those um things that good on the surface probably potentially bad because this could be used to target individuals wearing smart glasses uh just because you bought these glasses and gave meta money for some reason doesn't mean you're a bad person um so humanity i don't know there's no solution that's gonna appease everyone but it's still an interesting idea that exists in the world now but i wrote to remember uh very recently someone coming out with a conference an app i think it's actually a device for this it was for people use something like airbnb you go to a place you don't know that it would detect whether or not you're being filmed there and i don't know how that would work um sniffing out wi-fi is that possible infrared i think uh so a lot of a lot of cameras focus using um ir blasters goodness and so you're probably just trying to detect if there's a blaster in the room right back in 1960s sometime the first episode of thunderbirds had a camera detector on thunderbird one and i thought what an insanely stupid idea i would great for the plot ridiculous imagine how you do it and now here we are I was wrong. Okay. So I wanted to write about privacy because of the, again, it's always a threat. It's an increasing threat. Meta will do everything it can to get every piece of data it can. OpenAI wants your health information for no good reason. It's really bad out there these days. And I felt like I just wanted to remind everyone where Apple is. We don't hear about it a lot lately because it's just taken for granted. and apple i think should probably do a better job of pushing it and i know they already have ads and billboards but still it feels like it's fallen to the background of the discussion and i want it pushed back forward apple is still the only choice when it comes to privacy i know you someone going to tell me i can buy a Linux computer thing and do this I don care That not what I talking about I talking about you buy an iPhone you open it up, you take it out of the box, and it is by default, by design, the most private device you can own on the planet, period. Obviously, yes, you can go buy a, again, caveats and pedantics aside i'm talking about normal human beings not people collecting groundwater to avoid paying city water right like i'm not talking about the cave dwellers escaping from the mass surveillance i am talking about your aunt who post minion memes to facebook if she's out here buying a smartphone and she walks into a verizon the best choice is an iPhone. I haven't really heard a good argument otherwise, and I'm always happy to hear arguments, but it's wild, the technology, that we have seen emerge. And when I was thinking about this story, it kind of dawned on me, this wasn't always Apple's stance. Do you remember when this emerged? I still remember Steve Jobs making a statement about it. I want to say 2010, but that feels too late. Maybe even 2005, there was some conference, one of the ones beginning with a D, like D5 or something. That's the first time I was aware of it. Is that what you're thinking? So, yes, you're right. There are markers in Apple's history. It's 50-year history. Jeez. There are markers throughout its history of Steve Jobs and various individuals talking about privacy, security. Usually security more than privacy, but one begets the other. But it was, and I do believe you're right, like Steve Jobs had a privacy thing in the 2000s, but it did not become a part of Apple's identity, a core tenant, a tentpole feature, until about, there's probably evidence of it somewhere earlier in the iPhone cycle, but really, the iPhone 5S. Oh. All I remember about the 5 range is that I think Siri came around then, and there was the color versions, the 5C. I didn't remember there being anything particularly special about it otherwise. Well, the 5S did launch with the 5C, you're correct. But do you remember the distinction between the two other than plastic? And the colors? No, I don't. What was the difference? touch id oh really was introduced with the iphone 5s and it it for some reason my brain wants to say oh iphone 4 no iphone 4 was the redesign from the 3gs iphone 4s was siri iphone 5 was the taller but not wider if you remember that one um and better cameras and such iphone 5s was touch id so this is when we got there so many things happened at this event william it's wild that was when we shifted to 64 bit only that was then wow and got touch id and got the secure element all in the same event so vividly remember every other manufacturer you don't need 64 bits in a phone and we'll have it soon ourselves this was 12 years ago 2014 this is this is actually right when i joined the apple ecosystem and it wasn't this event in particular that pushed me over the edge i did buy this phone i owned every iphone from the iphone 4 at some point um i was just back and forth on i would buy iphone android iphone android for a couple years um six months apart yes i know i'm stupid uh had too much military money but then the 5s really it just it hit me passcodes are stupid and slow like so much just dawned on me all at once this is where it began the this is where they emphasized our device is encrypted and your passcode protects that But now your fingerprint can. And this is when they go on all this detail. You can add up to five fingers. It was such an interesting keynote to go back and watch, reflecting on where we are today. But that is where the privacy aspect began. 2019 is the beginning of the privacy that's iPhone campaign that we see today, but this embedded it. And the reason why this is such an important milestone is because San Bernardino was only a year and a half or so later where a shooter killed some people. It was tragic, but he had an iPhone 5C, William. People forget this. It was not a 5S. and even so apple refused to crack the encryption of the device and the fbi failed to follow their instructions which would allow them to unlock the phone if they were in a known wi-fi network it was a lot of weird stuff but apple then put out a letter saying privacy is a fundamentally human right and it is up to apple to stand up to governments when they ask for the impossible I actually read that letter on the 10th anniversary the other day, but I hadn't appreciated. I appreciate what a big step it was, but not that it was quite so early. And this all came about because of Touch ID and the secure element. So the reason why I bring this up is because from that, you can follow a straight through line today. We have – people forget about this one, but there's Safari's tracking prevention, right? That was the first big one. Facebook took out ads on television saying that small businesses would be damaged by Apple's tracking prevention in Safari. then we got app tracking transparency which is when apple forced developers to share when they were doing what and with what data they were gathering what they were doing with that as well and then we so it's crazy to look back that far this is when cambridge analytica was happening if you don't know what that is we do not have time to get into it it's a whole facebook deal they a lot of weird privacy violations um but yes like privacy was on people's minds so apple sold the iphone as a privacy device and now today we are talking about headlines where a journalist was saved from persecution because they had lockdown mode turned on on their device on their iphone yeah right and the fact that that same technology is available to the journalist on the ground in a war zone or your aunt attending a protest like that is powerful and that's what I wanted to write about so it's just really interesting thinking about how in this day with so much going on in the world there's only one real answer I know you can get an android phone And you can break it down and install these things and encrypt it and make it be better. But that is not the experience out of the box. And it's just interesting to me that no one else has bothered with this. Google and Samsung and others have, there's a word I'm looking for, but they've spoken about privacy. But they've never really acted on it in any real significant fashion. Lip service, that's the word I was looking for. There are people that aren't that fussed about privacy, and I suppose you can understand it. But the thing that intellectually I got is that I don't want people having my data. But the thing that nailed it for me is what you mentioned then about app tracking transparency, as well as companies have to report what they do. They have to ask you to allow them to track it. And because of that, Facebook in the next year announced a $10 billion shortfall in their revenue. If you're making $10 billion out of people's personal data, you're not selling devices or services, you're selling people. At one point, Facebook was able to make as much as $12 per user, and it's one of the most popular platforms on earth. So this is one of my things. If I can't make you care about privacy, I'm failing at my job. right like i have had people tell me well i have nothing to hide right i've had people tell me i don't need a face id that just gets in the way um when i've had people tell me face id is how the government gets you okay that one's new all right yeah yeah that they're collecting your face so i've heard it all and i've had these conversations and i always find it interesting I just, I really want people to understand that this stuff is important. Having unique passwords for every account in a password manager is important. You may think it's silly. You think it's nerd stuff, but I promise you it will save you in the long run. And if you're the nerd in the family, it's important for you to have these conversations with your family because they'll never understand until it happens to them. and they're phished or identity is stolen or any number of terrible things that can happen when privacy is violated. Or simply just using your iPhone again, it reduces the amount of information these companies, these data brokers have about you. There was a point in time I remember studying this. if you went to the same route every day to work and you stopped and got coffee and then you pumped gas in your car and then you grabbed breakfast and then you went to work and then you stopped at a friend's house on the way home eight different companies would know everything that you just did because they would be able to they would be able to buy the purchase history from the credit card company that you use. Walgreens has an identifier attached to that credit card number knowing every time that you return to that store. And you may even have an account at Walgreens, which can connect to your Apple health data and know what blood pressure you have. And use that information to advertise on Amazon blood pressure pills. And then if you visit your friend for too long, they'll know that your friend likes shopping at Hello Kitty and will advertise to you through an email blast because your email that you provided to buy your a father's day gift from a facebook ad right it just goes on and on it's disgusting and it's invasive and apple has done a lot of work to make sure none of that technology is functional to the to the hatred of these other companies but i encourage everyone to understand that this is not just simply ooh, I'm getting an ad, it's so much worse than that. So actually, by the way, what you're saying, Apple has put so much effort into privacy that this is why we don't have a folding iPhone yet. I hear you, yeah. Well, to conclude, because I wanted to mention this, because I know we're on that hour mark. So there has been some concerns about Apple violating this trust of privacy. They haven't yet. There's no signs that there will. and but people think that this is a sign i don't i don't think so that apple's breach into advertising is going to be the downfall of this privacy mantra that now understanding how apple advertises is very important because what i just described is not what apple is doing right in the app store apple is using the search term that you typed in and the history of your downloads what apps you've got that you've previously purchased in the App Store. That's pretty much it. They might have a little bit of demographic data, but again, none of it's tied personally to you, and it's just helping the auction process of showing an ad at the top of your search results or showing an ad in the Today view. The same thing is happening in the Apple News app. They're using a very light aggregate of what news you've clicked on or read or disliked before to help the voting process. And someone will tell me, that's how Google ads work on the web. Kind of. This is lemonade stand versus surveillance capitalism. Right? Little Susie didn't need to know what toothpaste you just bought to know that you want lemonade on a hot day in your neighborhood. Right? Okay. That's the level of data Apple has on you, right? They just happen to set up a stand in a neighborhood full of people on a hot day where they know lemonade will sell. That is – it's no better than really a billboard. I've talked about how I feel about billboards before. I think billboards are fine. versus Google having a drone follow you around and taking photos of what you do all day in order to know exactly which flavor toothpaste they should be selling next or whatever, right? It's very, very different. If you look at it at the lightest of terms, you can say, oh, they're the same. It's just not. It's not. And I don't think Apple's violating anyone's privacy doing this. I wrote a story at one point if you remember um the f1 uh ticket pop-up won't hurt you but it might save you ten dollars oh yes i remember that i should get around to watching f1 i really should but okay yes so this this is the conclusion conclusion apple is doing f1 this year uh they're ramping up their synergistic integrations which i always find amusing as an apple fan i love when they do this. Other people feel icky. I think it's fun. I want it. Give me the F1 Apple Maps. Give me the F1 Podcast and the Apple News category and Apple Music playlist section. They do this sometimes with MLB and MLS. It's fun. I think it's cool. Take advantage of all the junk that you have in your ecosystem. Well, totally. I have zero interest in anything you've just mentioned, but the fact that they can and do all this if you love something it's fantastic to have all this stuff just curated and handed to you yeah great no no so so watch me plug this last link that i have that we didn't touch on today because this is masterful right all right so which is why people people's um worry around advertising and maybe having uh f1 shoved down their throat is why they might be considering iPods. iPods? Oh, right. Yes. So there is a younger generation who is obsessing over cassette tapes and iPods. Are they mad? Digital cameras from 2012 that you could buy at Walmart. The list goes on. Gadgets, gadgets all the way down. They're a little mad, And it's definitely a fad, but it is significant because it is the TikTok generation being fatigued by being too online, too surveilled, too analyzed. Every second from the time they came out of the womb, this is Gen Z and younger that I'm talking about. From the time they were born, they were being categorized and photographed and analyzed. They're tired of it. Which brings me full circle to if you really want to get away from all that junk, there's only really one choice in the consumer marketplace these days, and that's iPhone. So, William, where can people find you on the internet? At the moment, they can find me scaring my office to find my old iPods to sell to somebody. Or williamwithalphinsider.com. And, oh, actually, I might as well say it here. 58 Keys, I mention this occasionally. Throughout, hang on, where are we at? March is the next one. Throughout March, 58 Keys is a Scrivener special. That's fun. Scrivener's definitely interesting. I've never delved into it myself, but that would be a fun series to watch. well you can get me at hilly.tech um blue sky hilly tech on mastodon uh then i have my blog that i'm posting to regularly that's been fun uh trying to find new topics i wrote about um kiki's livery service coming to imax and i think soon i'm going to publish something about uh sleep sounds uh ambience music and automating that kind of stuff in apple music getting people away from needing a YouTube playlist that is on a forever loop. You know what I mean? So just little things like that, just things I like to experiment with outside of Apple Insider has been fun. But yes, you can reach me email westappleinsider.com. And I'm always happy to hear from people. I've been getting some interesting emails and I want to hear what you guys think about Apple Insider Plus, which today we're going to be talking about whether or not Apple should merge iPad and Mac or iPadOS and macOS. How would that even look? What would happen there? We'll get to it. Stick around. If you are a paid subscriber, if you're not, you can get that by paying in Apple Podcasts or Patreon. We have a Patreon if you want to go that route. That way you can get a feed you can plug into your favorite podcast player of choice. And I would like to, once again, thank our sponsors, Squarespace, Nord Security. And we'll be back next week with more, hopefully, some fun information about an Apple experience.