Episode 1003: iPhone 18 Pro review

Welcome and California weather

0:00Welcome to the macro podcast. My name is Michael Simon, and I am joined today by Jason Cross. Good morning. And our producer, Roman Loyola. Oh, hi there. Roman, welcome back. Did you have a nice trip? You were actually here on the podcast, but we didn't see you for a few days. Yeah, I had a, I took a long weekend. It was my wife's annual, uh, family reunion. It was 107 degrees. Oh my God. I was watching the Dodgers

0:38game and like half the stadium was empty because nobody would sit in the sun. It was, it's, we're having weird second summer here in California. Yeah. Everyone, you know, the rest of the rest of the U S is, you know, summer's ended already here in the Bay, San Francisco Bay Area. And mostly, you know, this part of California, it starts to heat up during this time of the year. Even for that though, this is crazy. Like it's all of, all of California is for some

1:08reason cooking this year. Yeah. In October. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure it's fine. Nothing to do with the, you know, the world. Well, this is episode number 1003. And today we're going to talk about the iPhone, iPhone, specifically the iPhone 18 pro and pro max, which Roman and Jason haven't had a chance to play with for a bit. I'm sure Roman took it with him on his trip and took a bunch of photos. Um, so we're going to talk about your impressions

1:39of the phone. I haven't actually done anything with it. So I'm going to basically just ask questions because I haven't even been to the Apple store to look at it yet. Although it's the same. Yeah. Um, we'll talk about that AT&T recall over the weekend camera chip design, you know, whatever we want to talk about, maybe the duo and, you know, uh, we'll close with this weekend at the history and, uh, wait, no, then we'll have this weekend at the history and we'll close with, um, comment corner. Speaking of comments, you can contact us through blue sky, Facebook threads, search for macro, look for the blue mouse logo, send us an email

2:14to, um, podcasts and macro.com. Send us a personal email, comment under a video comment under a post, get in touch with us. Let us know what you think of the new phone. If you have it, or if you aren't going to buy one, or you are going to buy one, let us know. And, uh, we'll talk about your comment on a future show. Okay. So before iPhone, before iPhone 18,

Remembering Steve Jobs

2:35let's take a moment because, um, yesterday, October 5th was the 15 year anniversary of Steve Jobs's death, which just seems crazy to me. Like it's somehow both too long and too short because like so much has happened since he passed away. I mean, obviously Tim Cook's entire tenure came and went now and we got AirPods and we got, um, uh, Apple watch. I mean, there are

3:08things that didn't exist while he was alive, but it also seems like he was doing keynotes like last year because he's such a memorable figure in the Apple universe. To me, I don't feel that way. I feel like it's been, I feel like it's been so divorced from him for so long. And it's partly because he died. He didn't just quit or get ousted or any of that other stuff. And he, and there's no new Steve Jobs quotes. Like there's no new, he's not doing

3:40interviews. There's none of that. So he kind of only lives on in everybody's, what would Steve do mentality about Apple, which as time goes on becomes less and less useful because we don't know what Steve would have done. Right. You know, or, or, or, and that's also not necessarily the, um, yard yardstick to use. Like he made bad decisions too at times. Like, so, so yeah, I, to me, it feels

4:13like it's Apple's been Steve Jobs less for so long now. It almost feels like that's just this whole other era. It's almost like thinking about car companies like in the eighties or something like it just, yeah, I hear what you're saying. It's just that his shadow looms so large over everything Apple does. Like even with the duo, like the first thing people said was, Oh, Steve Jobs wouldn't allow the stylist to be supported on, on a, on an iPhone. And you know, what would, would, would he stand for

4:48this asymmetrical design and like, you know, people still immediately gravitate towards what would Steve Jobs do? And you're right. It's been so long. And Apple is such a different company from 2011 that it's, it's almost an exercise in, in futility because at some point, nobody's yeah. At some point you've got to stop looking at the car market and going, what would Henry Ford do? Henry Ford would never do this decision Ford of 2026 is doing like, come on. Like, you know,

5:21so like the world is very different. So many things. Are we ever going to ask what would Tim Cook do? Yeah. I bet that's, we're going to start seeing those headlines very soon. I think, um, it, depending on how in the press sort of Tim Cook remains, uh, how much sort of visible stuff he does. Um, yeah, I think people are going to do that. They're going to say Tim Cook would have never done this or, or, or, or the other way around. Tim Cook would have raised the price 40% or what we're going to

5:57hear, we're going to hear things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's an interesting time for Ternus to take, I mean, Tim Cook took over also in the fall. Like it was like late summer, I think when they, or maybe, maybe it was like spring when, when they officially named him as CEO, but you know, John Ternus, like I, this is somewhat unprecedented. He's taking over like right when the duo is coming out, we're supposed to be getting this, this new home hub thing, which we'll talk about, you know, next week or the week after, uh, this touchscreen MacBook prices have gone up outrageously. Like

6:31there's so much going on that he has to navigate. Yep. Not to mention just all the various legal and regulatory troubles Apple's having globally. Like there's almost nowhere Apple operates where they're not in some sort of trouble. Like, you know, uh, yeah, I think it's very, it's going to be interesting to see what happens over the next few years, because we're already hearing, of course, stories about how Ternus is doing things differently than Cook. Uh, and Cook is kind of famously, uh,

7:05he was the operations guy. He was the, he was the, the guy who put together all the supply chain stuff and everything like that was his expertise. And he was famously kind of hands off about design. He let Johnny Ivan, his team handle stuff. He checked in every so often, but he, software and hardware, just, that wasn't his thing. And it was very much Steve Jobs thing. That was a big change. Steve Jobs was in everybody's face about how little details about how this needs to be different. And,

7:36and now we're hearing that Ternus is kind of back to that because he, that's where he comes from. He comes from the product side. He comes from being a product manager and an engineer. And so he checks in all the time on the design stuff. Uh, sometimes they say several times a day, he's like in there, like looking at stuff. So I, it's going to be interesting to see how that impacts future products. The stuff coming out this month has been in the works for a long time, but right. You know, starting next year, the year after that, you know, are we going to start seeing

8:12more dramatic design changes, more attention to detail about certain things? You know, what, what are we going to see that's different because of the different way he operates? Yeah. And we really don't know how he, like what his personality is. Like Steve Jobs was a, was a famed tyrant. Like he'd be like, no, this is shit. Yeah. Redo it. We can't do this. Yeah. We don't know. Maybe, maybe Ternus is just going down there and saying, Oh, this is awesome. Oh, let me see you. Oh, that's so cool. Like, I don't know. So he's been there for a long time. And, and the, the, the things you read about him is that people

8:44like him and think he is easy to work with. Yep. Not necessarily a pushover or anything, but that he's likable and easy to work with, which is not something people said of Steve Jobs. No, they were, they, they did it more out of fear than, than, than, than love. But, but it is something people said about Cook. They liked working for Cook. Yeah. Yeah. And when Tim Cook took over for Steve Jobs, like the biggest fear was, is he going to get away from what we love about Apple? Is he too much an operations guy? Is he not a nudge into design? And

9:17you know, he, we got fantastic products, brand new products under Tim Cook. So, you know, Apple is Apple. Steve Jobs is absolutely entwined in the culture there. It doesn't really matter who the CEO is like Apple has a philosophy about design, about the way it crafts and builds its products. And yeah, it makes mistakes. And Steve Jobs made mistakes too, but it, they just approach the whole thing differently. And yeah, Ternus is going to be real interesting to see. Um, a couple of weeks, we're going to get some new stuff that's, you know, been in the works as Jason said, but yeah,

9:49as we're going forward, there's some really interesting things on the horizon glasses. Um, obviously the, the, the, the iPhone eventually will not be at some point, we're not going to have these little things in our, in our pocket. So, you know, we'll see. There's a, there's a, there's a lot of, there's a lot of head, but, um, you know, Steve Jobs, you know, I'm just a Apple fan, but I, I miss the guy. I miss tuning into keynotes and seeing him on stage. Like he was just such a, such a powerful, such a

10:21charismatic figure. That thing, that thing people say about like the reality distortion field that he was, he was one of those, there's every now and then somebody who just, when they're pitching you, when they're selling at you and talking to you, you just go into a fog. You just kind of come along for the ride and you go with it. Um, and it, it takes a certain kind of person to do that. It's, I don't think it's something you can just teach. I think it's just a thing, but he had, he had that, he had that ability. He, in some ways created it for the tech universe. Like

10:55those types of events were Steve Jobs events. Like he made him a thing. Okay. So from Steve

iPhone 18 Pro impressions

11:01Jobs onto iPhone, which is a good transition, you know, uh, Jason, you brought up Henry Ford and it sounds ridiculous, but I mean, Steve Jobs is the father of the smartphone. So as the further we get away from it, like to look back 20 years at the original iPhone, but that like that the model T Ford is the original iPhone basically. Yeah. In, in, in different ways and in different reasons, but like, yeah, there were, they, Ford did not invent the car depending on who you ask, uh, uh, Ben's did or something, but you know, um, it was, he brought

11:38it to the masses. Right. Was the thing. And it, through that it was about manufacturing and it was the iPhone. It was about interface and product design and stuff like that. But, um, but yeah, that was, it was the product that brought cars to everyone. And iPhone was very much that for smartphones. Smartphones were around, but iPhone was what made everybody have to get a smartphone. And you know, it's so crazy. Like the iPhone 18 pro, which we're talking about today, there's nothing special. There's nothing new. It, you know, as a color, same,

12:11almost the same exact design as last year. And by all accounts, they sold a ton of them. Yeah. I, I already see it. Jason's, Jason's holding it up now in that, um, burgundy color. Yes. This is the burgundy. It's, it's, it's, it's quite nice when it, when it hits the light in a certain way. It's a, it's a very nice purpley red. It's no cosmic orange, but right. Um, a photographer brought up that, uh, also if you ever take pictures out of windows, it, it doesn't reflect like the cosmic orange does. You got your orange reflection in the window

12:44a lot if you use that phone. So it's nice. But like, even on like TV and like, you know, I've been watching the playoffs. Like I see people with the blue one. I see people with the, like, they sold a ton of them. And there was a time not that long ago when, you know, people bought new Samsung phones, no Google phones. Now it seems like everyone just runs out to buy the latest iPhone every September. Like it's just, they don't have to do anything that new to sell. I don't know

13:16what, what the number is, but even with the duo, even without the iPhone 18 or the air, they're still going to sell a ton of these pros over the next, um, I wonder how many people know about the duo. It's not really, you don't walk by an Apple store and it's blasting in your face everywhere. Yeah. Not yet. Uh, it's not in the, um, I mean, not that many P normies as we would call them, like don't watch the Apple events. They it's not being advertised, but you go by any carrier

13:46store and they've, they want to get you into a brand new iPhone for free. Just sign all these things. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah. I mean, and that's not, that's not the phone that's going to sell to the masses to do. I mean, I think everyone who is an Apple fan is vaguely aware that there's an, there's a folding iPhone coming out sometime soon, but yeah, it's, it's, I mean, it'll sell out. It's going to sell out in seconds. Sure. It'll be pushed back to December and January,

14:18but, um, it's obviously not going to be a huge seller right now because it's $2,000 starts with $2,000. Yeah. Um, it just in terms of raw numbers, but right, but it'll still be a massive hit and it'll be, you know, people, it'll be a talking point and people will talk about when you see someone, oh, is that, yeah. Yeah. Um, all right. Where do you want to start Jason or Roman?

Camera controls and aperture

14:43Uh, I guess the camera is the best thing to start with. All right. Oh, no, you know what? I have a question. Okay. The smaller dynamic Island doesn't matter at all. I have to remind myself that it exists, that it's like smaller. You, if you queue up two different continual tasks, it's the same time. It'll show two. Now it'll show a left one and a right one. That's the only thing that's

15:13different. I don't do that that often. Right. And even when it happens, I, that's not like, Oh, thank God I can see both little tiny icons. I, I just, I do not care. It does not make a difference. It is not a big deal. I feel that way about the whole phone. The whole phone is, it's boring because it's just the iPhone 17 pro, but it's better. It's an, it's an S and S phone. It's an S phone. Um, and, and that's not exciting because there's not like it does this brand new

15:46thing. That's so special when we get to the camera, that's the, that's where the most new is. And even that's just not that special. Yeah. But yeah, the dynamic Island, uh, I forgot about it till you just said it and I've been using it this whole time. So, yeah, I mean, I remember when the geez, was it the 13 or the 12, one of those reduced the size of the notch by a couple of millimeters. And yeah, same thing. Like you don't, you don't, I don't spend a lot of time looking at the top of my phone. You're looking at the middle down, you know, you don't look up there. So, um, Roman, I use live

16:22activities almost exclusively to follow sports. And I'm assuming you do that as well at times. Does it matter with the two extra things? I, it, yeah, it does matter for me. So, uh, like I, like Jason said, I, you know, I didn't really notice the size difference of dynamic Island, but I noticed the functionality. So like, you know, when there are two different alerts that come up, so I have noticed that and that is more useful to me. It's nice to have that extra functionality. Um, at times when I

16:57had the, uh, previous iPhone, I did wish there were, was more to that, uh, to those notifications. In other words, I wished I could get more than one notification. So it is nice to have it, but it wasn't like a standout thing that I went, Oh, look at that. I, Ooh, I noticed that. Yeah. I need to buy that phone so I can get to right. Like dynamic Island. Do we know how the, how Apple's going to handle it on the duo? Cause there's no dynamic Island per se, or there's no

17:31face ID thing. Do we like live activities must be a thing, but I don't know how they're going to do it on the inside screen. Maybe they won't because the, the iPad doesn't really do that. Right. Like they just, they, they're in the notification place. We got to go to lock screen to get them, I think. Yeah. So I don't know if I've seen anyone like explore how that's going to work because at some point soon, the iPhone isn't going to have a dynamic Island. I mean, we see on the

18:02duo, they have that under display camera, which, you know, people say isn't great, but whatever, it's the first step towards putting everything under the screen and having it be high quality. So the dynamic Island is a, you know, it's, it's a cool little gimmicky feature that they did because they had to have that pill shaped thingy. So they turned it into something useful. Once that's gone, I don't know, like what are they going to do about these little live activities? My understanding for it is it's not going to be, there's not a dynamic Island, but they're going to, you know how there's a right hand bar now that's your navigation. So live activities

18:37are going to come up there. Oh, okay. That's, that's, I think the way it happens is that, and that also lets them, when you've got it open, you're in either orientation because it's kind of made to be used either vertically or horizontally as you open it, you know, once it's opened up. Right. And since it's got the same aspect ratio either way, and they're putting navigation stuff on the side, it's going to be in that side navigation bar. That's where live activities

19:08pop up. Okay. I don't know how they look or when you tap on them to expand them, like I understand how that works in a dynamic Island. I don't know how that works in the duo, but that's supposed to be the live activities like area is in that side navigation bar. Yeah. I'm looking into not a ton of activity activity. I'm reading about activities. There's not a ton of information. Jason's right on the, on the cover screen. It is on the, on the right side there. Yeah. I don't know

19:41where, what happens when it's open. Maybe there's nothing when it's open. I don't know. It depends on how, how it handles the side navigation stuff depends on what you've got open. So if you've got, whether you've got a, um, an old app that hasn't been optimized for the 18 or, or a big one, but it does side navigation, uh, when it's open, it's on that side. That's still. Okay. So I think that's where it's going to, I think that the intent is that's where it still pops up. Okay. Um, anyway,

20:15so the verdict is that you don't need to upgrade from a 17 to an 18 just to get the smaller dynamic. No pro that is not even right. Right. Um, I Roman, I'm going to ask you since you just went on a, uh, trip and you've, you've talked previously about the telephoto camera and how it's important to you. Is there anything about the 18 pro that kind of opened your eyes and like, Oh, well this, like, I, I did, I, I wish I had this feature before. Cause it's so great. Like

20:46the aperture or whatever you want to talk about. Yeah. I played around with the aperture and that was, I found it more useful than, than before. Um, I did find it more, uh, I did feel like it gave me more options and, um, it helped me get the shot that I wanted a lot better. So, um, that being said, a lot of the shots that I took this past weekend, I was on my, on my, uh, little trip,

21:19I still used a lot of automatic settings and they still worked really well. Yeah. Well, the, like the, the automatic settings, they give you different apertures, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I play around with those a little bit. Yeah. So, yeah. To, to a minimal degree. Yeah. They do. Yeah. Okay. The thing about the aperture setting is number one, it's just the main camera. So as soon as you get into the telephoto or the wide, it's not there. The other is that's F4 is just not a very big range,

21:51like F1.5 to F4 that the low, the really wide opening to F1.5, that only really happens automatically anyway, in really low light, because when you get your aperture that wide, it tends to be less sharp. You get, you get less focus and the focus is so shallow that it's hard to even have one object fully in focus. The back of the object is out of focus from the front, which is why they don't choose that as the one fixed aperture for all iPhones. It's better for low light, but

22:27everything's less sharp. So it kind of gives you that option to be a little better in low light with a little worse focus. But F4 is just not on the other end. It's just not very stopped down. Most, if you just grab a DSLR or something like a regular prime lens or something, it's going to go all the way to F16, 18, 22, you know, something like that. So in terms of having a small aperture, this is just not all a huge difference. You do have some control and there's some difference,

23:01but that's just not like F1.8 to F4 is just not a massive. Is it like the, the restraints of the phone, do you think why Apple only went to four or is it just because of the, like it's expensive to parts are expensive to go tire? Yeah. I think it's, I think it's that, I mean, just making, making it, making the whole go even smaller and let even less light through. It's just, the sensors are really small. You get up getting into like crazy

23:33long shutter speeds and stuff. It's just, it's just not very practical. And it just changes in F-stop make a less dramatic difference, the smaller your sensor is. So when you have a regular full camera with a full frame sensor, even this same range, like F1.5 to F4 would make a more dramatic difference. Okay. That's just, it's just geometry of lenses and stuff like that. So I found the aperture, the least interesting part of all the camera changes and all the other

24:09pro controls in the software were the bigger deal to me. Like being able to, to manually set shutter speed, pull up a histogram, all the, the, they did some new stuff with like photographic styles where you can adjust the amount of texture so that people don't look so plasticky and shiny and stuff. Like those things made a much bigger difference than being able to choose this really narrow aperture range on just one camera. Right. Just sometimes. Um, does the, I know it does for presets and there are, um, there's already, um, I think, uh,

24:46I think it's halide the camera app. They let you, they let you switch. Does that matter at all to you? Like the granular controls versus the preset controls? Uh, it doesn't matter to me. I don't, I won't speak for Roman, but it, there's so little difference between them that I can't imagine going like, Oh, I really need to get between F 2.5 and F 4. I really need to be at F 3.2, you know, uh, I like to see the little, uh, animation.

25:18It is really wild just to see the little, those little blades open. Um, I am disappointed that these, the pro camera controls with the exception of changing the aperture are exclusive to this camera. They didn't bring it to other pro cameras. There's nothing about setting the white balance or the shutter speed or showing a histogram or anything that you could do with third party apps, right? Right. Right. So it's really frustrating that Apple didn't bring those controls to at least

25:48the other pro iPhones, like older pro iPhones. There's no reason for that to be an 18 exclusive feature. Cause some of those are really cool. Like, I don't know, Roman, if you've, uh, messed with the manual focus distance, but it like highlights the edges of where it's in focus. So you can, as you move it, you can see like edges of objects light up to where it's focused. Like it's a very nice interface for that. It's pretty cool. It's a good interface. There are times when I want to like

26:19take a picture of something up close and I just want to very, be very sure that this part's in focus. So, you know, it's nice to set that. I just don't know why I need the new $1,100 iPhone to do it. I wonder if they're going to bring it to the 18 when it comes out. Uh, we're assuming March, March, next March. I wonder if, or if it's just going to be an 18 pro feature. Yeah. They call it pro camera controls. So my guess is not, my guess is the 18 is going to be,

26:54I'm guessing the 18 is going to be a huge disappointment. I'm thinking it's going to be in the same way that this is just like the regular, like, like the 17 pro it's going to be like the 17, but with even less like, uh, improvement in the chip improvement in the camera. It's not going to have the pro camera controls. It's not going to have the aperture stuff. It's the chip's not going to be that much faster. I think it's going to be a real, uh, very boring S model. Yeah. We have a,

27:27we have a bunch of time to talk about that and we will, but yeah, I wonder what, there's always like a flagship, something or other. Yeah. Usually point to, and this last one, the 17, there were so many, like we, we talked about this ad nauseum, like it was the greatest, like base model iPhone upgrade we've gotten in a long time. Yeah. I don't know what's left really for the 17 and for the 18 versus the 17. I mean, it's not going to get a telephoto lens. It's not going to get, um, any of like the vapor cooling or the things that the pro won't even get

27:59the 20 to a 20 pro processor. So yeah, it'll have a 20 non pro which will be not that much faster. Mildly faster. Yeah. Now it was longer battery life, I guess, because I guess it'll probably have the smaller dynamic island, but as we said, Oh, I wonder because to do that, they move the infrared led lamp. Right. And sensor under the display on the side. And that requires them to have kind of a different OLED display with some pieces missing. I wonder if that's just expensive

28:35and they're not going to do that. That's a good point. I wonder it's a good, there would be something they could do, but yeah. Yeah. I wonder.

A20 Pro chip performance

28:47Speaking of the chip, the chip for me was the big surprise. Okay. The a 20 pro is amazing. Okay. It's, it's a shame that it's there. It's not, it's not used for anything that there's no amazing new feature that requires all this power, but it is so much faster than the a 19 pro. It is way more than we normally see in a year's generational leap. I was shocked at just how good it is.

29:20So, I mean, we'll talk about benchmarks in a second, but is it something you noticed like just actually using the phone? Yeah. That's the unfortunate part. No, because an a 19 pro like ever opening any app doing it, you just, it's all so fast. So unless you play like a really high end game where you're like, you'll, you definitely notice like a big improvement in frame rate. Like other than that, everything scrolls and opens and goes, it's so fast anyway. Like you can't notice that.

29:52And Apple didn't do any features that made you go like, Oh, definitely needs the a 20 pro for this. Like there's no, the Siri stuff all works on the a 19 pro. The only new real software features for this on this camera things, which we just said could very easily be on any pro iPhone for the last several years. Like those aren't contingent on the a 20 pros, massive performance boost.

30:22So yeah, it's kind of disappointing that it's like so good and there's really just nothing for it. It'll be great when it comes to the MacBook Neo. I wonder if maybe they'll skip the a 19 and bring it and bring it next year to the Neo. It's possible. So that, I mean, obviously that would be great for consumers, but I can't imagine that's economically like a good choice for them. It's, they've got to be expensive to do and they still need them for the iPhones, right? They're still putting them. That's one reason there's a step back on those

30:57Neos is they're no longer producing those chips for iPhones. So I think we're going to get it in the Neo in 2028. Yeah. Third gen. But I mean, that'll be based on what your numbers are. And like you, you wrote that it's in some ways as fast as an M4. Yeah. Mac mini, which is wild. It is. It is absolutely as fast as an M4 in all ways, but one, it is actually faster than an M4. Crazy.

31:28Uh, single core performance and multi-core performance is 25 to 30% faster. You don't see that. No, no. Then, uh, then last year's, then last year's, then the A19, then the A19 pro. Uh, you don't see that increase in a generation in one year. That's, that's so rare graphics stuff, because they increase the memory bandwidth by 50%. And that's graphic stuff tends to be very

31:59bandwidth limited. So not only does it have more GPU cores and a new GPU core generation and stuff, but also more memory bandwidth. So we saw things that are like really intense graphic stuff anywhere from 40% faster to sometimes twice as fast, literally twice, like in a year. That's just, it was already wicked fast. Sure. It's not like this is a sore spot for Apple and they've corrected it. It was already wicked good. So yeah, it's just, and then they doubled the,

32:32just like they did the M6, they doubled the neural engine cores. Actually, they, they did a weird thing where there's two 16 core neural engines. It's bizarre instead of one 32 core neural engine. I don't know why, but, um, and that's made all that AI stuff that runs on the neural engine 40, 50% faster. Yeah. Just, just bonkers fast. Do you have any indication as to how, like, I know it's, it's the first two, two nanometer chip and you know, that's a fairly big deal,

33:04I guess. Um, yeah. Do you have any idea like, like how, or, or, or how able, how, how Apple was able to get these generational speed boosts? Well, I mean, yeah, it gets really complicated, but like, uh, bigger things like L1 caches, load store buffers, wider execution units, in some cases, like narrow execution units, but like a deeper pipeline to produce higher clock speeds. And

33:34like, there's, there's like a, there's 40 different really down in the weeds things that go into how do you design a CPU core that's hundreds of millions of transistors big? Like it's, it's, it's a, it's, these aren't easy decisions. These are really complicated, incredibly granular engineering challenges and dozens of them stacked on top of each other. Because if it was as simple as saying like, oh, they made the L2 cache bigger, everyone would do that. Anyone could do that. Like it's all

34:06really down in the weeds stuff about how many instructions the core can decode at one time. And you know, how many it's translation, look aside buffer. And it's like all this really incredibly nerdy stuff that about keeping instructions flowing through that CPU core quickly, making sure that you can get it. But I think a key thing though, is that they went from a 64 bit memory bus to a 96 bit

34:39memory bus. They literally increased memory bandwidth by 50%. It can read and write 50% more data to the RAM at a time. And that's huge. You know, getting data in and out of the chip is a big deal. So I'm looking forward to when they finally do that with the M series chips, they've got the same memory bus. Yeah, I would assume so. They've been at 128 bit memory bus since M1. Okay.

35:12It's time. It is, I mean, they, they keep putting faster RAM in, but that's the only way they get more memory bandwidth. It's time to make a wider memory bus. I hope they do because it'll go so fast. It's, it's, it's someone under or unappreciated by the public who don't, don't understand. I mean, I don't understand 90% of what Jason just said, but most people don't even know that there's an Apple chip inside it, their iPhone. Yeah.

35:43It's such an underrated advantage that Apple has that they not only design their own chips, but design like the best mobile chip that's out there. Right. That they are so good at this. Right. Like, like they're better in certain areas of chip design and stuff like that. They're beating not just Qualcomm, but, and, and, uh, Huawei and stuff, but they're beating Intel and AMD and just like, like they are top of the game. Yeah. Like if they wanted to, they're extremely good.

36:15If they wanted to pivot their entire business to being a, a, a semiconductor, they could do it and be really successful at it. Like a fabulous semiconductor company like AMD, they don't manufacture their own chips. They just design them and sell them. Yeah. They could be pretty successful at that. It's, you get a lot more money selling the device it goes in. So that's why they don't, but which is why Qualcomm isn't worth what Apple's worth, even though they sell a lot more chips. Right. Those, those companies, they deal in patents and, you know, things like that.

36:48Right. Well, when they sell chips, they, that it's a, it's a part of a product and it's, the margins are small, you know, it's instead of the thousand dollar product with 20% margins, they're selling a $50 chip with 10% margins. So, right. And we were talking about Steve Jobs earlier. Um, the, the iPhone four was the first Apple processor. That was the A4 chip, which he, so he was, he didn't see any of this. Like he, you know, he obviously spearheaded the idea like,

37:22okay, we need, we can't rely on media tech. We need to make our own chips. But I, I wonder if he, like had any clue how good Apple could get at it and how it would, their own chips would power everything that they make. Yeah. That they would, I don't know. Obviously they were working on this while he was still around because it takes a long time to make sure. Yeah. Well, the A4 came out before, so he was alive. Yeah. That was the iPhone four. He, he announced that chip. They didn't make a big deal out of it when they did. It was in the iPad, the, uh, the original iPad and the, um,

37:58the iPhone four had to have the A4 chip and you know, it was just Apple was like, it was just part of the announcement. It wasn't like our breakthrough anything. It was just, we're making our own chips now. Yeah. And they didn't even make their own core designs. They use a arm cortex a eight was the core design. They would license that they licensed the power of VR's GPU design. It was, they were just taking the core designs and kind of designing their own chip and manufacturing their chip out of it.

38:28Um, over time they started to make their own CPU core and then make their own GPU cores and all that other, make their own media engine and all that. And so that came over time. Uh, right. I'm just looking, yeah, the first gen, I'm just was double checking my math. The first gen iPad introduced the A4 and then it came to the, um, the iPhone four a couple of months later. Um, but yeah, it's chip business is it's, it's incredible what it's been able to do in, in 15

Cellular chips and AT&T issues

39:01years, 16 years. If I could still segue, um, speaking, speaking of that, now they're, now they're doing their own networking chips. They have the end one, which is fine. They have this, the C series, the C one and now the C two. And it's pretty interesting that the C two cellular chip is in this iPhone 18 pro, but it's not in Romans iPhone 18 pro max in the U S only that the pro max has a Qualcomm chip. The, uh, yeah. And the snapdragon X 80 internationally, they have the C two and then

39:39all the regular non max iPhone 18 pros have the C two and guess which model phone has cellular problems on AT&T. That was a masterful transition. Yeah. I find it interesting that the one device where they're not making the chip is having problems with that chip that they're not making. So what Jason's talking about over the weekend, well, it's been, we've been hearing about this for, for ever since it launched AT&T users, subscribers have had issues with the eight iPhone 18 pro max,

40:16where they couldn't do anything outside of wifi. They couldn't make calls. They couldn't call 911. They couldn't access data. Not everybody, but it was large enough where it was filling up forums and Apple was getting calls and AT was getting calls. So they issued a software update last week, iOS 27.0.1 that fixed a couple of like early bugs. And it was supposed to also fix that AT&T is also releasing a carrier settings update, which you can occasionally to also address the issue. However, we learned on

40:50Friday, Apple responded to us and a bunch of other media outlets that if your phone is experiencing the issue, like if you actively have that problem, the software updates, it, it's not going to fix it. You have to get a new phone with 27.0.1 and the carrier update installed in order to ensure it isn't going to happen to your device. Right. Yeah. Oops. Yeah, no, that's, it's a, I mean, it's a small

41:21number of iPhones, as they said, because it's a one carrier and be one phone and be a subset of all that, but still it's a phone. It's a pretty major thing. That's a pretty major thing not to work is the cellular connection. Right. Yeah. Um, and, and not just sometimes and in some ways, but like you said, like it's just dead to the cellular network if you have that problem. So yeah. And it appears to happen randomly. We actually got an email from someone who works. I'll say they're, they're familiar

41:53with the issue and they said, people have come in, we've replaced the phone and then they come back and they're like, yeah, it happened again because it just kind of happens randomly. If again, 26 point, 27 point, 0.1 and the carrier update, those two things ensure as best as we can ensure these things that it won't happen. But there are people who have said, yeah, my phone was fine for 10 days. And then all of a sudden I tried to use it and it didn't work. Yeah. It's just, it just, and it has

42:27to be, as Jason just said, I mean, Qualcomm hasn't said anything. Apple hasn't said anything. It's got to be related to the, to the, some kind of interconnectivity with the operating system and the modem and it has to. Right. It's only happening on the device that that, that has that one modem, the one device that has the one modem. So, but I, I do find it interesting that that's just another area. It took a long time. They were, Apple was years behind their proposed schedule for getting their own modular modems. They bought Intel's modem business and then it's, it still took years

43:02after that. Yeah. I didn't know it was 2016. Yeah. Let me double check that. It was a long time ago. And that was after Intel had spent years. Right. Working at the problem. Oh, 2019. I'm sorry. Everybody thought, oh, they'll have it in about two more years. It'll be, and it took a long time. Yeah. But by all accounts, it is, it is fine. Like you said, people don't know. You don't know what's one's in it. There are, if you benchmark, there's minor speed differences. Um, you see the

43:35reports from like the speed text guys, UCLA, I don't know how you pronounce their company name. I think that's right. They, they, uh, they crowdsource millions and millions of tests from lots of, so eventually they, they put out a report after a couple of months of worth of data. Um, and they tend to show that Apple's, uh, the C, the C one was a little slower than Qualcomm's the C one X when that came out in the air was, um, about on roughly on par, but it was really good at poor when there was

44:13a poor connection when there was a week and poor connection. And that seems to be where Apple is targeting. They're targeting reliability of poor connections and power utilization and not top end. How many bits can I download two gigabits on when I have an ideal connection? That's not really their main concern. So they seem to be doing it. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I think nobody cares that you're just that you got 800 megabits instead of 400 megabits. Nobody cares. People care when you

44:49have a bad connection, whether or not you can download that thing or, or play your game or just access the internet at all. Yeah. Forget downloading, just get open a webpage. You know, there are plenty of times when I'm somewhere and I'm like, Oh, I can't get this thing at work. You know? Yeah. Um, the C2 modem notably also brings a millimeter wave coverage, which it didn't have before. Um, millimeter wave was in the U S I was, everybody was like, we were like, Oh, this is the most amazing thing ever. I was brought out to, uh, some Verizon. I forget. I think it was

45:22in Massachusetts. Like they were like, like random spots. They're still, yeah. And like when you hit one, it's like, Oh my God, this is incredible. Like, it's like, like, you know, two gigabits a second. Um, yeah. Wireless speeds. There's, they're still as rare as they were back when they, when they announced it, like they never invested in the infrastructure to bring that worldwide, uh, countrywide. It's economically not a good idea, right? It's, it's the range is so short. It doesn't penetrate through walls and stuff like that. Yeah. Glass walls.

45:58Um, uh, and, and nobody needs that much more speed on those kinds of devices. Like I can't wait for my phone to get a notification for a text message at two gigabits per second. Like nobody cared. Like it doesn't matter. Uh, it does matter for fixed wireless stuff where

5G promises and reality

46:19like, um, it allows them to put a cell and then reach a bunch of people in a building for like home internet. Right. But then you have weather issues and stuff like that. So the, the benefits of 5g have been all about serving more customers and better connecting more people in the other bands. Like all the marketing was on millimeter wave and how fast gigabits and cause speed sells and stuff. But the real benefit has been that you can connect more than 10 times

46:53as many people to a cell in your regular low band stuff. Right. I still get, I think 5g is a big giant scam of a promise because I still go to baseball games or, uh, just events with a lot of people. Yeah. And I still get locked up networks where I can't send a text or I, that was the big promise of 5g is that if you're in a stadium with 25,000 people, it'll be just like your home. That's not the case. Yeah. It, a lot of that takes a lot of other updates. Like there's so,

47:29there's still not done rolling out 5g, like there's all these pieces. And so it has to be like, did they update that tower to what they call a standalone or non is it still a quote, non standalone network? You know, there's just so much, it was way over promised. I can't believe people are already trying to like talk about 6g. It's, uh, just bothers. Yeah. We haven't even right. Let's get 5g back to what was promised first. But to bring it back to the iPhone,

47:59the C2 is in all but one particular model in one particular region and Apple's Silicon. They're doing great. They're just killing it on every, nobody's having problems with the N1 chip. It, the things that it's in the wifi and Bluetooth works fine. Like nobody it's, it's just for liabilities. Great. So the, um, there was a time not too long ago when people reported that Apple's modem dreams were dead. Like they weren't going to be able to do this. It took,

48:32they, they, they can't figure it out. Qualcomm is the leader and that's, and now, you know, uh, and I don't know what their, how long they're licensing with Qualcomm is. I'm assuming that's why it's in the 18 pro max because of whatever deal they had, they got to deliver a certain number of, of modems per year. But as soon as that's up, like they're gone because they, they got it. They figured it out. Yeah. And they have all this, they've done all this patent licensing too. There's like different multiple layers of licensing. Are they licensing chips? Are they licensing

49:06designs? Are they licensing patents? So they, you know, they're doing all this. They just renewed a bunch of patents, but they don't say what they were. Right. Yeah. Not patents licenses from Qualcomm, but they don't say what they were. Um, I can understand why they said that though, because a lot of people tried to make good cellular chips, including people like Intel and failed. And then Apple did it. And then after a couple of years, they weren't able to get their modem off the ground and had to go back and re up their licenses for billions of dollars to Qualcomm

49:37and rebuy a bunch of modems. So yeah, the reason why they bought Intel was because Intel promised to Apple that they were going to make a 5g mobile modem or not. It wasn't 5g at the time. It was just a, it was just a mobile modem. It was an LTE. And they tried and tried and tried. They had this partnership and they didn't tell it just gave up. They're like, we can't do it. Take, take all this stuff, get it off our hands because we're not doing this. Yeah. They actually, there was one, I don't remember which iPhone it was, but one iPhone had an Intel modem in it when you bought a certain model. It was, you had to get the unlocked model or

50:18the other way around. You had to get that. That was back when they had different models for different carriers and stuff. One of them was an Intel modem. It was more or less fine, but that was, they couldn't, Intel never could, could get a really well working 5g modem off the ground. Yep. Yep. Um, all right. Modem, what do you think of the blue color?

Phone colors and cases

50:43Glacier? Roman has the, uh, yeah, the, the, the Glacier iPhone 18 pro max. Nice. And I would show it on camera, but I'm actually using the 18 pro max as the camera for this podcast. So I can't hold it up. Uh, it's, it's a, it's a pretty color. It's, it's very elegant, uh, sleek. I like cosmic orange. Okay. Yeah. I just like that. It's just, I guess I'm going

51:15through a phase where I kind of liked a louder color. Uh, it's, don't you have an orange car too? Everyone did. Everyone loved the cosmic orange, man. I have an orange car too. So, uh, but everyone who has seen this Glacier was like, Ooh, that's, that's nice. It is nice. You took some photos of it next to the cosmic orange and it looks really nice next to it too. Yeah. Like they kind of bring out both of their, their own like identities. Yeah. It's kind of like a yin yang thing. It's like, this is a, it's a complete one 80, you know, it's sweet. It's subtle. It's not the right word,

51:51but it's very, it's nice. I like it. Uh, but I liked the orange more only cause I, I don't know. The other thing too, about the color is that cosmic orange was kind of a flex. So like I'd watch YouTube videos and I go, Oh, that person's using an iPhone 17 pro cause you got the orange. And I don't know if that's so much more, uh, noticeable with Glacier or, or burgundy to me.

52:22Uh, but yeah, it's, it's a nice color. I recommend it. Well, I'll tell you when the cosmic orange, uh, when that phone came out immediately, everybody started making skins and copies and cosmic orange, like accessories and, uh, Android manufacturers made their own stuff that looked good. Nobody's doing that for burgundy or Glacier, right? They're nice colors. They look very good. I actually like the burgundy color, like

52:53in terms of it's like, it's very understated, but it still looks like a, you can see it on a desk. But, but that cosmic orange was a hit. Like everybody copied that and it was a thing. And there's just no, there's no replacement. There's no loud color this year. No. Right. And there wasn't one before that either. Like that one, that's, that's why it hit so, so hard because like, well, where did this come from? Like the year before we had like natural gray and like, you know, like subtle tan. And now it's like this big giant

53:27bright orange. I would have thought that after the success of that, they would have said every year we should like for the pros, we should have a loud color. And you see that I was just talking with a friend about, um, you see that with sports cars, but like the supercars and stuff, like the Lambos and stuff like that, they are no longer black and Ferrari red and stuff like that. That's not the trend. The trend is a bright lime green or a really bright orange

53:58or, or like a, a really shocking powder blue or something, you know, that's colors you don't see on other cars and you, and draws attention to, Oh, look at the Lambo. Right. Um, so it kind of fits to put that on the pro model, like have one of those colors, have a, a bright neon highlighter green color where would have been awesome this year. You know, that would have been a really shocking, bright thing. And it would have been, like you said, Roman,

54:29that that's the peacocking thing. That's the, let's everybody know you've got the newest, fastest phone. You can see it immediately. Yeah. I wonder like, they must have months of meetings to figure out what the colors are going to be. So I'd be curious to know why they chose cosmic orange and why they, as you say, chose to go so far away from it with the 18 pro maybe because they wanted, like it's the design is so similar that the cosmic orange was like this introduction of this new larger plateau and all

55:00that stuff. And now, you know, we can go back to the, the, I don't know, people are still going to buy Burgundy and, and, and Glacier because those are the new ones. The black's nice too. They didn't have black last year. So it's nice that it's back. That's true. It is nice to have that. They do. Otherwise they're so the same that a lot of cases work. The only difference is the little plateau is something like a half millimeter taller. So depending on your case design, if your case design overlaps that lip in it anyway, it's going to

55:33fit really kind of awkward and not fit flush, but a lot of cases just still work. That's a, that's how the same they are. Roman, you put the orange in the blue case or vice versa. I don't remember, but it looked pretty, that was a nice combination. It looked wrong. I put the, it's called, I think it's called cool, cool blue. Okay. Don't call it a glacier case. It's close. It's Apple's silicon case that matches the glacier. And I put the cosmic orange

56:03iPhone in it. And I put, there's a photo of it on our website. It, it, it doesn't look right. Cause it's the orange and the blue. It's just, yeah, but it fits. It fits. Um, and then I did vice versa. I, I had actually a clear case for the iPhone 17 pro max and it fit on this 18 18 pro max. So yeah. Yeah. It's all depends on your case design. Yeah. Some of them are like super form fitting and designed to be like, I don't know, rugged or whatever.

56:37So yeah, some of them might have issues, but, um, all right. Anything else? Does the vapor chamber keep things cooler? Like, is there anything we missed here? Uh, I mean, it, I was trying to do a little testing on that. It's very hard to test the, uh, cooling efficiency kind of stuff because you're not, you're not cooling the same thing. It's a different chip too. Right. So as far as I can tell, it does do a good job of like keeping performance up better

57:09than the 17 pro when you're doing something long, like a play the game for a long time, like a high end game or something like that. It keeps that performance up, but it's really hard to tell when the performance of the chip is different too. Right. Like, is it dropping just as much, but it's starting from a faster, I don't know. Uh, it does charge faster. Yep. That is true. We, we did the, um, we did some little bit of charging testing and from zero to 80 after 80%, they all charge at like 10 Watts or less. It kind of flattens off, but

57:43up to 80%, it charges a little faster. It doesn't make the world's biggest difference. Like, you know, you get to 50% a few minutes faster. Right. It's there. It is, it is faster, but you know, it's like zero to 80 in 40 minutes, something like that, which is pretty good. Yeah. You know, I remember the days when you have to get a carve out like an hour and a half to get to any usable amount for your iPhone. Yeah. It is all much better than it was even just a few years

58:14ago. That's the thing. When somebody gets a new iPhone after three or four years, there's the thing that's going to shock them besides the fact that the camera's different is, is that it's that the battery lasts a lot longer and charges a lot faster. Roman, any final thoughts? It's yeah. The Pro Max that I, I looked at, it's, it's a nice phone. I'll be using it as my daily for at least for a

58:45while. Um, if you had last year's phone or even maybe I will say a 15 Pro Max, I don't know if you need to upgrade. Um, it's a really good phone. It's a really expensive phone now. So that's why, that's the reason why I, you know, I used to say, you know, if, if you were two or three generations behind it, you know, seriously consider it now, now that it's a lot more expensive, you know,

59:17maybe four or five years away. Uh, the 15 pros got Apple intelligence and they get the new Siri. They don't get the new expressive voices. That's only the, the 17 pro and the air and this, but so you, you, if you get the news, if you have a phone where you can get the new Siri and stuff like that, it's really hard to tell people to upgrade at this point. It's with what they cost and what you get for it. It really feels like, ah, just wait a year, man. Yeah. All right. Well,

59:51that's the iPhone 18 pro and pro max. Um, as we've said, they're a little more expensive this year, 1199 and 1299. It's crazy. The 1300 bucks. I mean, remember when the original iPhone came out, it was 600 and everyone was like, wow, that's crazy. Like you can't pay that much money for a phone. Like now they're like twice that. Um, but yeah, they're, you know, predictably great. And, um, you know, if you want one, they're available. Check out Jason's, uh, full review on our website.

1:00:23We have a link. That's why we're doing this today. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Uh, should we move on to,

This week in Apple history

1:00:32uh, Apple history? Yes. Let's, let's do that. This week in Apple history, uh, on October 4th, 2011, Apple introduced the, or introduced the, uh, iPhone 4 S and it had a new feature called Siri that, um, Scott Forrestal, who did the introduction at the time. Oh, shoot. I had the quote up here and then I, and then I, you're doing my, you're doing my thing. Yeah. He called, he described it

1:01:07as Scott Forrestal described it as quote, your intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking. And Scott Forrestal no longer works at Apple. Yeah. He was, he was a Scott, Scott Forrestal was good. He was a bit of a controversial figure within Apple and people fought with them. Yeah. But, uh, you know, he, he was also responsible for a lot of the iPods stuff. He was, he was a big figure back then. Yeah. Um, that, that event is notable. Well, for Siri, but also it was the day before Steve jobs passed away. Right. And, um, if you rewatch

1:01:43that keynote, you'll see they pan every few minutes or so to a seat in the first row. I think it's the front row, the, the, all the way on the right and the front row. And it just says reserved and it's empty. And like, I, we didn't know, but clearly Apple knew that Steve jobs was going to make it much longer. Yep. Or at least not make it like he, he couldn't even attend the event. Right. Right. Like he was in such shape that he's not even going to be there. I, I never read,

1:02:14but I was wondering like if he saw it, like, saw the event or saw the phone. Oh, he saw the phone because he saw it months and months before, but like, yeah, I wonder if he saw that event. Yeah. That's a good question. I don't know. Uh, yeah. Not to be morbid about, but, uh, knowing how the process goes, the death process goes, I wouldn't be surprised if he was aware that this was, if that was going on. Right. So yeah. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so the forest came out with a,

1:02:53a five chip. It was, uh, you know, the second chip, the second series. Yes. Uh, it had a same three and a half inch display as the four. So nine 40 by six 80 retina display. So it's so quaint to say that now that's, um, it also had a, they were calling it a new wireless system that, you know, offered faster upload and download speeds. And then it had some camera improvements. Uh,

1:03:30it's funny also, you know, the camera, another quaint little thing is, you know, it had a eight megapixel sensor here. Oh, wow. Shot 32, 64 by 24, 80, 24, 48. Yeah. Uh, Phil Schiller, you know, this is a funny quote. He said, you can print out an eight by 10 glossy photo. That's pixel. Perfect. Hmm. Wow. Because people still printed photos back then. Yeah. That's, that's still my favorite generation of phone. The four in the forest though that when that arrived

1:04:04with the, with the metal and the glass body and Oh my God, it was so freaking cool coming from the, the, the, the, the 3GS was fine. The 3G, you know, with plastic and it was curved and this thing was just like a work of art. Like that phone was so cool. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, the big thing was Siri. Uh, and everybody was kind of like in awe and felt like they were, I think I was at that event when they were introducing it. And I remember it felt

1:04:34like you were, you were seeing the future, you know, it almost felt like how was coming to life, so to speak. Uh, and then 15 years later in retrospect. Yeah. The, um, there was a, there was a video that recently made the rounds of, uh, of C of Steve Jobs talking about Siri before the phone. So Siri wasn't Apple's name. It was a nuance. Right. Right. About that company. Yeah. There was an app for a while. So for some, so they bought this, this, um,

1:05:09so the whole thing really. Yeah. About the company. Yeah. It was like a dictation speech, speech to dictation thing. And Siri was the name that, that, that nuance. He was an Apple just ported it over. Um, but this quote that he's talking about, so they ask Steve, why would Apple be interested in, is this a search play? Cause you know, are you looking to take on Google by getting this technology? And he said, no, this is an AI play, which is crazy to hear back in 2009. Talk about, and we we've, we've talked about this forever, but man, Apple

1:05:46was so far ahead of everybody with this stuff. And then they just let it sit there for, for years. And they're finally kind of, they're, they're kind of back, but man, they could have just lopped everybody. If they would have kept developing Siri from that first day to now, it's wild what it could have been if they didn't just let it sit for so many generations. Right. Yeah. The, the, the investment in Siri, there was always a Siri bit in the new phone

1:06:17marketing videos and stuff like that about some new thing. And it was always something really minor. It's always like they weren't investing in it as like, we need to continually develop generational new technology. Right. It didn't get the kind of, uh, emphasis that say the camera did or whatever. Uh, and then, and Google was, Google was, you know, first everyone had to catch up to Siri, but then they kept investing at that pace and they so

1:06:47quickly left them behind. Apple missed the boat on famously missed the boat on all the generative AI stuff that powers, not just Siri, but just other things as well. Yeah. I mean, Siri could have been catching up to you before that existed. Yeah. Yep. So yeah, that was, they were, it's kind of funny how, like what a missed opportunity that was. Right. And instead they were building a car. I mean, we laugh, but it is a little

1:07:20true. It's very true. Yeah. Yeah. The investment that got in terms of hiring talent and money spent and time spent like that was huge. And in hindsight, of course, everyone's hindsight is good, but imagine if they spent that on Siri. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they'd be worth $7 trillion today. Yeah, I know. Poor Apple floundering around. Yeah. All right. Let's

Comment corner on Mac prices

1:07:49move on to comment corner. So are we really over an hour into this thing? I just looked at hour over an hour, but that's what happens when we review major products. So that's what I don't, yeah, it's not a big deal. Not that big a deal when we do, although the kind of segues into last week we talked about the Mac mini Mac studio. We didn't even reach an hour. True. But those were chip and chip updates. Yes. Yes. I mean, you don't, you don't, you don't take the Mac mini with you and like use it like you do the iPhone. It's just take it

1:08:21with you. You just have to find a way to power it. You have to carry a giant battery. But both of those were really, it was a new chip and that was what they were. Right. But as not inconsequential, but as, I guess as plain, I know what the word I'm looking for. I can't think of it right now. Sorry. It's been an hour. It's been an hour. So last week we talked about the Mac mini and Mac studio reviews. We got a lot of, we got a bunch of feedback

1:08:53about those two particular Macs on YouTube. Pro Audio Musicians said, I have been running an M4 Mac mini that I paid $499 for through education pricing. The 16 gigabytes of RAM is killing me. Apple is offering $565 in trade, making the M5 Pro with education pricing $1039 plus tax. You can't buy a 24 gigabyte or upgraded SSD on an M6 in store. They are BTO only. You

1:09:32have to buy it and wait. So for some of us, the M5 Pro makes far more sense. Yes. Okay. That makes sense to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to, if you want to, if you want it now, you want to get it in store, something like that. That guy's getting, how much is that guy getting in trade? That's almost what it costs. That's funny. It's, he's offering, well, I think he might, yeah, it's $565 in trade. Wow. And he paid $499 for. That's sold for $599 without the education discount. So that's like a $30 depreciation.

1:10:05He bought it for $499 with the education discounts. And Apple's going to give him almost $506, $70. Wow. Yeah. There must be some sort of disconnect between Apple's trade in and knowing that you bought it through education. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like they don't know. When you're trading it in, they don't know that you bought how you bought it. They're just telling you this is what it's worth. Yeah. Right. Right. So MF Mays via YouTube said, no way I will buy the M6 Mac mini. It is way too expensive. I'm staying

1:10:41with my M4 mini. Plus Apple removed all the ways for users to upgrade the mini. And what he means by that is that it used to have a SSD that you could remove and they didn't, they're not doing that anymore on the mini. Yeah. It's funny. The M1 and M2 didn't. And then the M3, the M4 did. And then the M5 doesn't, M6, sorry. It doesn't. Yeah. And it was even kind of unofficial. Like you could technically do it, but like, it's not like they sold that

1:11:13thing. It didn't use a standard N.2 drive. He couldn't, you had to like find a way to get that drive and replace it and voided your warranty and all this other. Right. Yeah. Roman, I'm sure you remember the days when you had that iMac, you would just twist off the back and like, those were the days, man. Yeah. Stingy Geek via YouTube said, on the refurb... Well, he's definitely not buying one. I know. The M4 Mac minis are very poorly

1:11:44priced, at least in Australia. Actually, the refurb store is generally very, very poorly priced. And I think that's, that's kind of true if you compare it to like third parties and stuff. I guess someone must be buying stuff there. I don't, but I don't know why if I could avoid refurb, I could spring the extra for new and, for new and newest model. There's a, there's little incentive to go to the refurb store. That's true for a lot of... Specifically in Australia? Yeah. It might be...

1:12:16Yeah. I haven't checked Australian pricing, but... I don't either of you.

1:12:20You know, I, I, there are times when like, I'll see an app, an Amazon deal and then I'll check on the refurb store what it is and the Amazon deals better and it's a new device. So yeah, sometimes the Apple refurb store is not as good a deal. It's, it is a good place to go to find that configuration that you can't get anywhere else or, you know, like maybe like for instance, a Mac that never goes on sale on Amazon. I'm thinking of like, I

1:12:54think maybe like the iMac rarely goes on sale. So you might be able to get a better price deal, but it's also good. You get a full year warranty and it's through Apple, you know, that's a benefit. And it's not just a used product. They, they, they usually put it in a new enclosure. They give you a new battery, all that stuff's warrantied. It, they, they look new. I mean, it's like getting a new one when you unbox it. Yeah. Um, there's it, the refurb store is great when you're not buying the standard model, when you're buying for, for Macs, you're buying

1:13:29last year's or the two year ago model, but like the upgraded version of it, the version with a little more RAM or a little more SSD. Like when you compare that to getting whatever that same thing is in today's model, even on a Amazon, sometimes you can get a lot more. You're like, Oh, the chip's a little slower, but I'm getting way more RAM or a way bigger SSD. You have to price it out. Yep. A couple more comments. Billy mania 11 on YouTube said,

Consumer tech market trends

1:13:57I think the consumer market will go into hibernations for, for a while. No reasonable person will buy a computer at these prices. We'll keep our old stuff, come up with innovative ways to reuse our old hardware. That may be, may be a good thing. Yeah. I'm going to be, maybe not this quarter, but the next quarter, it's going to be interesting. to see what Apple's results are. Cause it's going to show a trend, I think on what people are doing, what, how people are shopping. Yeah. I feel like, well, I'm looking at the

1:14:31M5 ultra Mac studio, which I, which I look at every now and again. Yeah. And that is back ordered to hold on. The, the top end version is backward. It says 15 to 17 weeks. That's like five months. Now they might not have made many of them, but people are buying them. Well, I think we're never going to get a clear answer because I think this guy's right. The consumer market is going to be like, I don't need it. It has to at some point.

1:15:01But why I mean, I think it kind of already is, but Apple's Mac minis and Mac studios are really good for AI development. Yeah. You just get the, they get the Ram upgrade and they have this big, huge chunk of unified memory. They have a good neural processor. Like they're right. So companies doing this kind of development are snapping up as many as they can get. True. And they're linking them all together with Thunderbolt and they're using them to make. So I, I feel

1:15:32like they have something satisfying their demand, but it's not consumers anymore. Right. Right. Um, uh, so that they're going to sell their Apple sales figures for these Macs are going to look good, but it's because they're selling them by the thousands to companies doing AI development. They're not selling it to us. Yeah. I mean, the other thing to think about is everyone's expensive. Like I read a story yesterday or the day before that there's some

1:16:03school in, I don't know, Minnesota or somewhere. And they just switched to MacBook Neos because the cost to fix Chromebooks was so outrageous. It just wasn't, it wasn't worthwhile for them anymore to do it. So it's like, it's affecting all walks of tech. And if you compare, so right now, Amazon, it's, it's prime day. It, it, sorry, it won't be when you're listening to this probably, but right now the MacBook Air is 1099, which, you know, that's not bad compared to, if you look at, you know, a comparable Dell or something, you know, it's, it's, it's,

1:16:36they're, they're going to be about the same price. You get 16 gigs of RAM, you get support for five years or so, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The M6, M5 processor, like, you know, if you compare apples to oranges, no pun intended, you're, you're still getting a better deal with the, with the Mac. Right. Value, not, not deal. But still just because, because like you said, they're all more expensive and so is everything else in your life. Uh, right. That's so much more expensive. I just think, yeah, that the consumer tech market is going to drop out and what you're getting is infinite investment

1:17:11in AI. So like, not just at the server side, but in people who, companies that are specialized in trying to do other AI work where they don't, that aren't just, you know, huge data center stuff. So I think, um, I think Apple's going to sell plenty of Macs and it's going to look really good, but they don't break down the models and where they sell them and how. So things like Mac mini and Mac studio are going to sell really, really, really well. And things

1:17:41like MacBook Neo, it's tough. Prices went up. I wonder how many people are selling now. I mean, it was, they were blowing them out the doors. That's the start, but they went up 20% or whatever. Yeah. And then everything got more expensive. Yeah. Well, I can see the Neo actually selling really well because comparatively it's cheaper than everything else. Do you know what I mean? Not because it's a better deal, but because it's just much cheaper. It's the cheap thing. Yeah. It's the cheapest one. This is what people can fit in their budget. So. And you can get it in,

1:18:15uh, in citrus. That's right. You can get it in citrus. Uh,

Sign off and next week

1:18:20one last, this is a question from blog glass, uh, via YouTube. Uh, they ask, is the studio allowing for third party SSDs? I see the mini has shut that down. The Mac studio still allows for user replaceable SSDs. Correct. Yeah. You can, you can actually upgrade that. Yeah. Yeah. Apple published a support document that shows that it is user replaceable. Yeah. I had to assume that that stays like, there's no reason why Apple

1:18:55wouldn't allow that in that machine. It's already $3,000. I mean, the people who buy it need to access the SSD to update it, you know? Yeah. So, and that does it for comment corner. Hey, that was good. Thanks for the comments. People see that if you talk about, I say it, but it's true. If you reach out and talk about the show, we will talk about them on a future show. That was, that was like one of our best comment corners. I loved it. All right, Roman, let's end this thing. Uh, land the plane, Michael. Oh, I didn't update the number

1:19:33again. I suck at this so much. I still have my name in this. We even talked before we started recording. So I have it in two spots. So I always remember the first. So the first, the top of the thing that I, I have a completely scattered script with notes and nonsense, but I have a couple of things that I say every week. So I do at the beginning, I'm going to forget. So I put the episode number and I always forget to change it. And I don't really need to say it at the end. I

1:20:05only had this because Roman used to do it. And he's, he's, he's the one who's sabotaging the end of this episode every time. But this is episode number one thousand and three. Um, and next week we're going to have on, um, David Price to talk about the Apple watch review. And I've got to tell you, Roman, I wasn't looking forward to that episode because I didn't think there was going to be anything to say about Apple watch, but his review, um, go read it and brush it up. Cause it was, it was fascinating to read. And I, and I'm, I can't wait to talk about it now.

1:20:38So, um, Jason, you get the, you get the week off next week. Nice.

1:20:44And, uh, we will see you then. We'll see you then.