Episode 975: Reviews of the M5 Max MacBook Pro and M5 MacBook Air

Introduction

0:00unscripted unfiltered unafraid welcome to the macro podcast my name is Michael Simon and I am joined by my colleague Jason Cross good morning and our producer Roman Loyola oh hi there I like to say your name a little different each time Roman Loyola I'm waiting for you I've been called Roman Crayola before oh that's good that's a good uh I'm sure you love yard yeah schoolyard

0:31Laloia Laloia I once got uh when I worked at Mac user I got you know we used to get mail if people don't know you get paper like actual letters yeah real letters and somebody addressed it as Rugen Lutula wow totally butchered way to end and so that's a good one yeah so one of the editors would call call me Rugen all the time so back in the days when you used to get mail back in the physical magazine and mail days did you get a lot of mail from inmates yes like that was a thing

1:07it was yeah yes that was because because back when back when I worked at a a magazine magazine that computer games magazine like way back year 2000 time and yeah we used to get physical mail and a lot of them from inmates because I think back then what most prisons didn't have like email access and stuff and they had libraries just full of magazines of books and stuff so they they'd read about stuff that they could not access and they'd write us about it well if you are listening to this

1:40from prison send us a message because I'd love to know what our uh what our whatever our listenership

Episode 975

1:47is that in the in the in the prisons around around the U.S. um anyway this is episode number 975 and today we're going to catch up on all the products that we didn't get to last week because we basically devoted the whole show to the MacBook Neo and which feels like it feels like that thing came out like months ago and it's been like two weeks but it's been such a whirlwind month for Apple like that feels like it was forever ago to me it feels like it's still not out like it feels like it's on pre-order and people don't have them yet yeah I've seen I've seen like a bunch of people

2:21yeah and they're they're all back ordered and hard to get the citrus is the hardest one and stuff but and I've seen like social media posts but it feels like the MacBook not that it's old news but that it's like been at been out for so long but anyway so we're going to talk about the air the pro the displays and you know get into all that stuff uh we'll have a couple segments what we're watching uh Apple history this week in Apple history and we will close with our comment corner speaking of comments you can contact us through blue sky facebook threads search for macworld look for

2:52the blue mouse logo send us an email at podcast at macworld.com send an email to one of us comment under a video comment under a post send us a letter from prison I don't even know if we have address anymore but we probably do Roman I'll put it in the show notes if we do but um yeah get in touch with us and we will talk about it in a future episode okay before the review stuff

Apple's 50th Anniversary

3:15let's talk about Apple's 50th anniversary which isn't until April 1st and you know everybody knows like it's not a secret and Apple's kind of like there's been like like Tim Cook has talked to like employees and be like yeah we're gonna make sure that it's a thing but like it's really a thing like last week Tim Cook posted a letter called um 50 years of thinking different which as Jason points out should be differently but that's not how it does it it just doesn't sound good to say

3:46think differently you know yeah right it's not as cool of a slogan but it was you know like a whimsical kind of you know Apple Apple's great and products are great and the people that use them are great and we love you and I mean you love us and you know it's uh he he closes by quoting the crazy ones which was the poem that uh Steve Jobs didn't write that right does anyone know like the no I don't they just used that in the original think different ad campaign right I think it was

4:17written by Chiat Day the the advertising campaign people yeah you know it was a nice letter and we were all kind of wondering like it was it was on I think Thursday about two weeks or a little over two weeks or three weeks actually before Apple's anniversary you know it was interesting and then

Grand Central Station Apple Store

4:36on Friday they shut down the Grand Central Station Apple store in New York City and Alicia Keys did like a little concert and Tim Cook was there and John Ternus was there and you know so they're really going on all out with this thing they posted a bunch of pictures to their website and they said they're gonna have like global happenings they call them you know yeah to kind of celebrate Apple so you know it's a fun time 50 years is is is impressive and it kind of it kind of matches up with um

5:07with Macworld even though we didn't start in 1976 but we started in 84 covering Apple so we've been there for a lot of it yeah with the Mac yeah uh the Tim Cook is doing his interview rounds he's he was

Tim Cook Interviews

5:21on Good Morning America and stuff and of course everyone's asking him the same stuff and he's giving the same kind of answer non-answers to not answer you know are you retiring and what about tariffs and what about AI and stuff like that we're gonna see you're gonna see a lot more of that because he's gonna do more interview rounds they're all gonna ask him the same thing and he's gonna have the same answers um yeah don't expect any big news to drop in any of these interviews with with Tim Cook yeah I mean Apple people particularly the high level people are really skilled at giving these

5:55interviews where it feels like they're giving you a ton of information and they're really not like they're all great at that um but this kind of feels like it could be a little bit of a Tim Cook retirement tour like there's a bunch of stuff released the MacBook Neo is obviously a defining product whether it's a success or not and I think it will be but it's it's a it's a monumental product that's under Tim Cook's watch it feels like like a final thing and you know the 50th stuff and he's he went to New York for this thing he was at um not he but uh Turner's was at the thing in in uh in New

6:29York a couple weeks ago and gave the intro which was not quite passing the torch but it was a very public appearance for John Turner's which he doesn't really do those things so it kind of feels like maybe you know he's being groomed to take over and Tim Cook is you know having his last little you know that little his his his last big kind of whirlwind tour it'll he'll come out with the iPhone fold at the end of the year and then maybe you know maybe that'll be it yeah I think I think

7:00the good the good sprint across the finish line for Tim Cook was would be you know fix Siri and iPhone fold and you know explode the Mac market but the by a year from now with the the when he would retire that you'd be able to say you know MacBook Neo has you know made so many more Mac users this many million more Mac users and stuff so I think um like that would be a good that'd be a

7:32good way to end it so far the whole fixing Siri thing isn't going as planned so that's a big part of it but you know yeah I think that's but buttoning that stuff up that'd be a good place to hand it off yeah absolutely and you know we'll have plenty of shows devoted to Tim Cook before this all his 10 years over but you know it's ridiculously successful he might not be as iconic as Steve Jobs but he has done a ridiculously good job running this company for the last it's been about 10 years

8:05now so um but yeah it's you know it's it's it's fun to be a part of this we'll see what Apple has in store for the next couple weeks does is there will there be an event so April 1st is a Wednesday like an event event not not one of these many musical concerts around the world but like yeah

AirPods Max 2

8:23so we'll see um also quick just to catch up on news Apple released very surprisingly on Monday the AirPods Max 2 which is basically the same as the old one but has an H2 chip in it now um and those are we were just talking about this before the show started those are starting to ship at some point in early April like they didn't give us a ship date so that could indicate that maybe they're planning some stuff in early April so we'll see I think what happens is um

8:56all right you can pre-order them next Wednesday which is like the 25th yeah they this is now the the fourth or fifth product that had a preview I had a pre-order on a Wednesday which is yeah and but not even the Wednesday the week they announced it it's the next Wednesday uh I think they and they said it's coming early April because it probably will require iOS 20 well all the OS 26.4 updates and some firmware update that goes with it and for the for the

9:29AirPods some day one firmware or whatever uh and they don't have a date nailed down yet for that maybe not so that that would be my guess so they did one of the support pages footnotes it did mention iOS uh macOS whatever OS 26.4 so right um Jason's right about that and yeah maybe maybe maybe it's that it could be just something as simple as that but we like to look into the tea leaves and try to guess we we had about seven different dates that the MacBook Pro M5 Pro Max

10:02virgins were coming that we were certain that we were right and they yeah I love that we got a surprise release man uh they we never know we always know ahead of time even if it's like a week ahead of time and this was something that yeah there were rumors about this for a while then they ended and then it's like no they're working on something else and that just kind of went away and then all of a a sudden out of nowhere surprise these are up on the site go pre-order actually not pre-order but

10:32like news pre-order coming soon why didn't they release these a week and a half ago with everything else right like why or last holiday or whatever I don't know right or whenever right because they didn't obviously didn't take much to make them it's just a different chip all of the things that are new are related to the h2 chip yeah there's no new mic speakers the casing's the same the weight's the same the connection's the same colors yeah so anyway we'll be getting our hands on those and

11:05eventually um the same price they're you know still very expensive but they're you know they're iconic and they're cool and people like them and you know now they have a the better chip which is mainly for like future proofing it brings like live translation and voice isolation and stuff like that but the big thing is that it'll be they'll be getting updates now alongside the airpods pro 3 for a while so right linkedin is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business we cannot make your email response time faster we can help you sell market and hire in one place we cannot help you find

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12:15get a year of microsoft 365 premium and a year of xbox game pass ultimate with a custom color xbox wireless controller learn more at windows.com slash student offer while supplies last ends june 30th terms at aka.ms slash college pc okay i guess we should start i'm going to start with you roman

MacBook Pro M5

12:35so the macbook pro we've been waiting for a while for the m5 pro and empire max versions of the macbook pro it came out the m5 came out last october and it was good chip was good the graphics were especially good the ssd had a had a nice boost and uh so now we got the the higher end versions of those um roman give me your like readers digest opinion the tldr version yeah there you go so the yeah so

13:08i tested the m5 max macbook pro and it was a super loaded machine it had you know a four terabyte ssd it had 128 gigabytes of ram uh it had the maxed out 40 c gpu 40 core gpu so it was a it's it's the high end machine i forget how much it it costs it's a lot of money uh so i get very self-conscious when i carry it around but um but yeah i mean overall the cpu it's an incremental update i i that's the

13:45pattern we're on now with cpus it's yep you know 15 to 20 25 percent maybe in certain benchmarks increase from generation to generation that's what we're going to see i think for a while at least until some new technological breakthrough happens that's not bad right you know we don't actually need much more than that yeah the cpu is not the thing it's the gpu that's you know i think now has become kind of the thing and you know the gpu was you know provided a a nice a nice boost uh now i

14:21forget actually how much it was uh i have it up i can tell you what what what number you do you want i just wanted to love what was the overall uh well let's just we'll go geekbench compute even though that's not necessarily graphics it's it's more of a overall uh gpu parallel processing uh benchmark you know there was an improvement of that you know i wish i was more prepared and why wasn't i more prepared to do this um well i i did go to you earlier than i i i was gonna do i think all

14:55overall it's like 30 which is kind of what you see year from year you know now i remember the point i wanted to make the point i wanted to make was uh the m3 ultra used to be the fastest cpu chip right it's not anymore it is now the m4 max m5 max or m5 max i'm gonna do that a lot just to warn people i'm gonna do that a lot uh the m5 max is now the fastest cpu in terms of you know all the the chips that

15:25they've ever created but the m5 m3 ultra is still the fastest gpu but it's like an 80 core gpu right and they're 66 yeah just to clarify three maxes stuck together yeah for so listeners who don't keep up with all of these chips there is no m4 ultra apple did not right release one right we are expecting an m5 ultra at some point people are saying maybe this summer and that'll be like a mac studio update

16:00kind of thing and they're supposed to be using them in servers the m5 max beats the m3 ultra multi-core cpu score not by a lot but by a you know a measurable amount yeah which is impressive for a laptop because the m3 ultra is in the mac studio which is you know you know different cooling and you know all that stuff and it's two chips stuck together with each with their own ram uh pool of ram and ram bus and stuff like that and they do tunneling and all it's like crazy right so i can't

16:35wait for them to do that with the m5 yeah like the m5 two m5 maxes you know next to each other with their own memory interface and everything that's going to be a very fast chip it's going to be stupid expensive but well i mean the be fun to see the mac studio the m3 ultra max studio costs four grand is that right jason they start at four grand the ultra i don't remember because i think the max starts at two and i think it doubles for the ultra which is yeah it's it's a lot but it's not max yeah it starts

17:09it starts at four grand so if that's that's with the that's with a cut back version of the chip of the ultra with the full chip of the ultra chip that's with the 28 cord 60 cord to get the full 32 cpu cores 80 gpu cores to get full full-sized chips uh is another 1500 dollars okay so you know to actually get the full chips is 5500 bucks so that's a lot that's a lot that's a lot yeah um and and the prices will probably stay the same they've been staying the same yeah just to

17:47correct myself so the m3 ultra has a 60 core gpu what i was thinking is that i think the projection is the m5 ultra would have an 80 core 40 and 40 gpu so see i'm stickling i'm being a trying to be a stickler on this because i got i got hammered on it when i was on the full nerd so it starts that the m5 ultra the m3 ultra starts with a 60 core gpu the full size chip is an 80 core right the m3 the full size chip is 32 cpu cores and 80 gpu cores so it's kind of correct so so the m5

18:25ultra it well i don't know but it'll be 80 will it be more than that what's what's an m max have 40 oh the gpu is 40 yeah yeah so it's probably still be it'll still be 80 then because the way they do the ultras it's two max chips um connected together this uh like these numbers make my head spin like whenever i edit romans and jason i know use like it's so hard to keep this stuff like in it's it's like mind boggling these numbers and it's and counting cores is so not

18:59useful not like a useful and productive way to measure performance it's yeah so right so the bottom line is the m5 max is is is very fast but so my question for you roman aside from all that the so there's a there's a new macbook neo at the very very low end when you were reviewing when you were testing the the uh the m5 max macbook pro does it change your does the existence of that machine kind of change your approach to the higher end and jason i'll ask you a similar question because

19:37it matters more for the air obviously but like now that you know there's a there's a 599 mac what does that mean for the for the for the macbook pro so i think this is basically the approach that apple has has done with the iphones whereas okay pro has become a lot more specialized a little more higher end because they've opened up the lower end a little bit you know with the neo yeah a lot of

20:07it you know yeah yeah try to think of a better analogy like lowering the bar and hiring hiring the bar in one end lowering the bar in one another so i think that's what it is is that the the pro especially the max models the are more specialized they're they're definitely pro machines yeah you know they're for people who are in industries that demand this not necessarily you know someone like me a max is overkill yeah maybe even a uh m5 uh pro is overkill you know i can be i'm fine with an m5

20:45i would i've been using the neo for the past week i've i've been happy with it so it's it's somewhat that's what it does it's it's somewhat humbling when you realize how like basic your computing needs are when you write for a living that's that's like the easiest thing for a computer to do right so like the hardest thing ours do is maybe some light video light video some light um photo editing

21:15every now and then running something like lightweight video editing like cap cut i know roman used premiere for the podcast stuff but it's they're simple edits you're not you're not editing high-res 4k loading up some luts doing all that you're not going crazy right plugins or anything like that yeah it's all pretty basic so like we like to think or at least i do like i have an m3 max i bought it i bought an m3 max because i thought i needed it and i don't think i do well there is the

21:46thing of future proofing yeah i mean you bought that m3 max and you can probably use it for the next seven eight yeah i'm not getting rid of it anytime soon and you know i got a yeah i got a uh a deal on it if you will through amazon yeah apple matched you know it was the whole thing but still you know i probably could have gotten away with at the time uh uh an air for i don't know whatever it was eight hundred dollars less whatever i paid for it so you know i think that what the macbook neo is going to do and and by the time you listen to this there will be an article on our site that uh

MacBook Neo Review

22:19roman just alluded to that he tested like you know treated the macbook neo in in a way that you probably won't need to to see how it performs and i'm not going to spoil it but go go read that because it's it's good and i think what's what the macbook neo is going to do i think there are a lot of people and i conclude myself amongst that crowd that gravitate to the macbook pro but don't actually need it and i think the neo is going to kind of shed a little bit of light on like what people need a

22:50mac 4 and right yes it will open up the the mac world to a whole new group of people but i also wonder if it's also going to pull people down to that level because it's you know it's the cool new thing there's been a lot of talk about how like the neo is going to cannibalize sales of the air and like the ipad air or ipad pro um and and certainly compared to an ipad pro once you get a keyboard and stuff like that i i realize they're not the same there's no touch there's no pencil blah blah blah

23:21but like if you're thinking like ipad pro is my computer like this is really compelling it's a lot cheaper yep it's cheaper than an air an ipad air with all the accoutrements you need the keyboard and all that stuff uh and you'll probably like it better because mac os is made for keyboards and mice right um and it's true i think those this the the sales of the neo will cannibalize some of the low end sales from that but but the majority of the sales are going to be people who were priced out

23:55of especially globally are going to be people who were priced out of apple laptops before and now aren't especially once they're on sale and student discounts and stuff like that you're going to see a whole bunch of these getting sold it like around the world you're going to see so many of these in emerging markets and stuff like that um but i was thinking about this what what is it what does the neo have to offer people who already are in the apple ecosystem who already have a mac who aren't

24:27needing to buy something more less expensive and i think to me what's kind of exciting going to be exciting to watch with the neo trend is apple sells they don't give the numbers but people do their analysis and the best ones i could find say apple sells between 230 and 250 million iphones a year yeah a quarter of a billion that's an insane amount of phones and they sell around and

24:57it's been pretty steady around 23 million macs uh the vast majority of those are macbooks right yeah um and that's like it's 10 to 1 ratio right if it's very very possible that apple will more than double their share of how many macs they sell a year by being in this completely different price band especially as everything else is getting a price hike everything in windows laptop land is getting

25:28more expensive because of all the like ram shortages and chip shortages and everything so if a year or two from now apple is selling a hundred million macs a year because they're in this price band where most laptops are sold most laptops are sold well under a thousand dollars in the in the world that's going to really change how much emphasis the company puts on the mac sure and mac os and

25:59everything else like we may all be the beneficiary of the macbook neo even if we don't want one just because it's going to make apple really focus on the mac a lot more if it becomes this huge thing that they have a hundred million customers a year yeah like that that's one of the reasons the iphone gets all this attention it gets all this new tech all the time it gets all this stuff is because they sell a quarter about billion of them a year sure i'm not going to do that for something that's a tenth as

26:29much so yeah i'm excited i would love to see it take off and do really well just because i want to see apple go like well the mac is going to be a a big concern for us from here on out like it's going to be no more coasting no more coasting on the mac every year something new and awesome right yeah and you know it wasn't that long ago when steve jobs was declaring the the post pc era had started the ipad is going to get rid of he did he did he called pc's trucks and the ipad a sports car or whatever

27:00because right sometimes you need a truck but most people don't need a truck and and the idea was that he saw a future where people weren't using max unless you had you know real high-end jobs or whatever or or or a warehouse whatever it was they were they were just sitting in a room somewhere and and everyone else was going out with ipads and that never really happened a lot of people have ipads apple sells a ton of them but they haven't replaced computers and this is like i think apple sat down at some point over the last you know two to three years and said hey there's a whole market

27:35of people out there that are buying crappy windows pcs and want a laptop they're not going to buy an ipad air they might use it right but they're not buying it to do the computing stuff and we need to attack that market and man it's crazy like to see them next to uh i went to uh uh where was i was i was costco they have a you know the neo on display and to see it next to like a like a windows stuff it's

28:05crazy what you get for yeah the cheap windows stuff yeah yeah what you get for 600 dollars in the windows land the specs look better but it's that it's you've never matter made it it's never been more clear that the specs don't tell the whole story that when you get next to those two computers and you feel like how cheap and flat like you pick up one of those it's not even a choice 600 windows laptops it's like it's flexi and it's plasticky and it bends and it's even just seeing the screens from a

28:36distance next to each other on display yeah it's like it's so obvious and you know i've like i don't know the numbers and i'm gonna say something that might be wrong but i feel like people switching from from pc to mac is more of a thing than people switching from mac to pc and i think that windows is going to lose a lot of people that don't come back i more or less agree uh in the sense that i think when somebody who has a mac and they it's usually a macbook because of people mostly buy

29:09laptops and they get a windows computer they get a they get a windows desktop for gaming or something right and it's like right along with their mac that's a different that's a different market completely right they don't get rid of the mac for a pc they get a pc as well or their work requires them to have a pc or something a windows pc or something and they don't get rid of their mac as well um i think that happens a lot more than like you said then the other way around completely like i i hate this macbook i want i want a pc like how do i just don't think that happens not a lot no and it happens

29:46more the other way because people are like well i have an iphone and airpods and you know all that stuff works with my mac right all my messages are there on this mac maybe i'll get a mac you know so yeah i think that happens more often um i'm i'm really excited i i wish we would know it's going to be months and months before we know if this is like a huge sales success unless they hit some milestone that they don't expect and they'll issue like a press release and say like we sold you know

30:1710 million already sold 10 million in two weeks or something like that there was a this this'll show how old i am i guess i remember when apple used to regularly do that like they would issue like we sold i don't know 250 000 ipods or we sold 2 million pre-orders for the iphone 6 or whatever it was like that was the thing that's 50th million download yeah yeah quarterly uh the quarterly financial uh statements used to include that to number sales of product categories and that's all gone

30:53so it's it's tough to see and it's going to be a while before we really know just just how successful it is but i think like you said i think it's going to be a hit because it's never been more clear just what the difference is right when you stop looking at spec sheets and you go see them in a store or something next to each other and it's just like oh well why is anybody going to buy this lenovo or something i don't care if it has 16 gigs or whatever look at it like yeah and they know they'll be copycats like lenovo will come out with a pink one or whatever but it's just they're just

31:26not going to be able to do it the same way i also think it doesn't help that windows has gotten worse like as somebody who uses windows every day uh windows 11 has like windows in general since they introduced windows 11 has increasingly added more like i don't call it spyware but like ways to like other microsoft features you can't turn off they're pushing one drive on you they're pushing

31:57all the the office the free office software on you there's a million settings now you have to turn off in order for to not scrape your personal information like weather widgets all this there's just more they're more and more trying to make windows into a way to monetize users and it's more and more frustrating and it's getting slower instead of faster it's just windows is not in a good shape right now so it's not helping our buddies over at pc world wrote a story a couple weeks ago i think it

32:29was last week amazon was selling a a 600 or 700 laptop that had quote 1.1 terabytes of storage but it was it was 128 gigs of of ssd and then a year subscription to one terabyte of of one drive which is just so sneaky yeah that's bs yeah yeah i mean apple only gives you five gigs free but at least they're honest about it yeah at least they don't call that the storage that the laptop has so yeah no so yeah

32:59there's a lot of um a lot of sneaky things that go on particularly at the at the range of the neo like the cheaper you go in windows the more stuff you get in pre-installed because that's how they make the their their money yeah yeah there's going to be an antivirus there's going to be an antivirus program installed but that's going to pop up nagging things asking you to subscribe 30 days for free and then it'll stop yeah yeah a premium antivirus thing and they're going to push a vpn on you as well and then you know it's all this nonsense in every place and that doesn't help at

33:32all right and yes you can remove all that if you know what you're doing but how many people in the 600 laptop market know right how to how to spend 30 minutes uninstalling all the crud and it's not even as we all have families we know that doesn't happen yeah and like on a mac you just draw you drag it to the trash can that's not the case with windows you got to uninstall it right it's all these well and it's not stuff and you know yeah and it's not they're not doing that i mean apple includes

34:02their apple programs but they're not all background resident things popping up garbage at you all the time and everything you know and they're good like they're generally good even if you don't use them they're still generally good yeah you're you're not going to delete messages especially if you have an iphone or photos that's it's you're gonna you're gonna open you're gonna like oh all my iphone stuff is here right just automatically that's awesome as great as the neo is the one place where it can't keep up with the macbook pro is the ssd yeah yes i was gonna ask that at some point i had

34:35it written down the ssd and the m5 macbook pro it it basically doubled its speed over the m4 max and it's what roughly nine times faster than the neo yeah yeah uh 14 14 or 15 gigabytes a second something crazy it's an unfair comparison because they're two different computers but it's just uh well it just illustrates what the what the uh pro is is we'll give give we'll give a little tease to your article like so you used it for a week is that difference tangible for the stuff that you

35:11were doing for the stuff i was doing it wasn't tangible okay so i'm not doing a lot of disc based tasks and things like that so it's it wasn't tangible for me but i can see if somebody who's you know working in 4k video or you know um doing a lot of stuff like that copying or uncompressing a large file right things like that working in databases or something like that where they want that ssd throughput so when i was at the event in new york um they consist apple like all the people that i

35:45talked to like they consistently hammered home the point that they looked at the type of work people would do on this machine and like spec it accordingly so that's obviously a place where they're saving a little bit of money on the ssd because yes you know they're like someone doing 4k or or the things you were just describing like they would go to an air or they would go to a pro and you know you could get frustrated but that's not for them i saw someone do some tests and it's even

36:15the ssd on the neo is the storage performance is even slower than it was on the 16 pro max phone oh so it's not just that it's associated with the a right 18 pro chip or something they they literally put it a slower drive because you save money or like a slower storage um i've been using the air that's the other thing we've got to review out on there at the m5 macbook air there's not a lot

M5 MacBook Air

36:46to say about that because it is exactly like the m4 macbook air which is exactly like the m3 macbook which is exactly uh last year they updated the thunderbolt ports to like thunderbolt 4 and they improved the camera to like the new desk view camera that was last year so this year they didn't there's nothing even there it's literally just m4 to the m5 just that you get the speed from going from m4 to m5 we reviewed the macbook pro with m5 last season you know what that is they did double the storage performance again though it's it's not what the macbook pro is it's about

37:23half of that but it's double what the m4 macbook air was so storage performance gets much better jason do you have any insight like is it just a new part that they're using like a like a new a new drive or is it some like like connector thing that's better it's probably both it's probably it's probably one new flash storage chips that are faster but also the interface is probably faster they don't break it down right in terms of but there's probably a tear down somewhere that

38:00could give insight but i haven't read them like you don't get to see it and because they're it's it's they're like soldered in and they're not connected to like a plugged in interface and stuff anymore like the way windows laptop is but on in the windows pc desktop space there's this transition they're going through now from the pci gen 4 to pci gen 5 pcie 5 i mean um and pcie 5 is where you get the speeds that you see on the macbook okay pro those 15 gigabytes of second speeds and stuff like

38:33that so there may be that kind of thing like it is under the hood and you don't get to see it pci gen 5 you know but it's also you require new flash storage chips to make that happen and all right um i went i went back and looked and apple's storage performance has been kind of flatlined since like m2 or something for the last four years it's been four years ago you would look at their their storage performance and say man apple don't mess around their storage performance is great and then it didn't change for four years and now it kind of got behind the times and now they doubled it and they're back to just

39:07holy crud this is fast they just all at once they just caught way up and just doubled everything after instead of getting like 10 faster every year uh speaking of storage they also they also they doubled the the base storage that you get in all of these so the macbook pro has now started a terabyte and two terabytes with a 16 and the macbook air starts at 512 which is you know that's good we've been criticizing that stuff for a while um they increased the prices a little bit but it's a

39:37better it's better to get 512 for a hundred dollars more than 256 and have to pay yeah the pricing on the air has been a yo-yo it's been literally like it was it was 999 they introduced one that was like 1199 and then it immediately dropped to 1099 and then there was it was 999 for the next year and now it's back up to 1099 so like the entry level air has been bouncing up and down yeah um it's currently 1099 the version we reviewed has that's with an 8 core gpu the 10 core gpu version the full m5 is

40:15what we reviewed plus a terabyte so that's a 1299 setup i think i still think this is the best computer apple makes overall like price performance capabilities like it's the sweet spot i still think it's the best computer for most people i also think that like a lot of people can't afford a 1200 computer and you could get two neos for this like i there's it's not lost on me that the neo is going to be the entry level point for a lot of people who don't have but i think this is the one

40:45in terms of like you want to buy something that's going to last for years it's going to run everything everything but gaming it's going to do really really well unless you are editing hdr video and need an hdr display and all that it's going to do great all the things you do does the existence of the neo at 599 kind of change the position of the air so the air was the entry level mac now it's the mid-level mac does it kind of change yeah the same it's the same question you kind of asked rome yeah

41:19i mean yeah obviously it does like everybody who was stretching to buy a thousand dollar mac because that was the cheapest mac you could get has a much better option now yeah like if you if it was a stretch for you to spend a thousand dollars on a computer or if you were constantly trying to hunt down where's there a sale on a refurbished blah blah you know all these other things you don't have to mess with that anymore you can get a neo and be happy right um it's definitely that neo is definitely a lot slower and has half the ram and all that other stuff so it's not going to have the longevity

41:54that the air is going to have um and it's just not as nice and you get the you always get touch id you don't have to get the upgrade your touch id and all that other kind of stuff so like i still think the air is the best computer for most people but still it's over it's over a thousand dollars so yeah it's five hundred dollars more than the cheaper neo the cheapest neo yeah so yeah that's i mean i feel the same way about the ipad it's the the ipad air is really the best ipad for most people but i totally understand that for a lot of people who just want a device to keep their kid happy in the

42:29back seat and they don't want to spend as little as possible and just they just get the entry level ipad like who cares what it's missing just i feel like the the difference between the ipad and the ipad air is not nearly as stark as the air to the neo like the ipad yeah the kind of good the kind of software you run it makes much less of a difference whereas on a mac when you're you have a bunch of windows going you can download third-party software and background utilities and all those other kind of stuff um it makes more sense that you're going to notice it's got twice the ram it's way more

43:06powerful it's got way faster storage and more storage and all that you're going to care more yeah yeah yeah it's an interesting place that we're in now like you know 600 bucks is is you know like like a legitimate budget like it's crazy that they're making a macbook it's a real budget it's a real machine yeah we would always say that like the the se the phone wasn't really a budget phone because budget phones are 200 right like in the android world budget phones are 199 and 299 right

43:39and now it's even worse because the e phones are even more cost even more than the se did so they don't apple doesn't really sell a budget phone right the e phones are more affordable but it's not a budget phone they sell a budget mac absolutely yeah like absolutely but they sell a budget mac so yeah it's pretty incredible uh you could read all those reviews we also have to talk at some

Displays Review

44:04point about the displays but we're running out of time here so we'll get to those at some point yeah they're expensive okay probably not worth it but um uh you can read our reviews of all the new laptops on um on our site roman will put them down in the show notes and roman has been itching to talk about shrinking so we're gonna do a segment of of what we're watching um just real quick at the academy awards were on sunday apple won one sound editing or something award for f1 it obviously didn't win

44:37best picture like i don't think anybody would expected it to but um it got it got one award which is you know good good for apple and all right roman tell us tell us about your your views on shrinking i haven't watched the third season at all yet but i but i i do love the show i was itching to talk about it now i'm not so i'm kind of you missed your window yeah but i'm still i watched an episode last night and i just like the direction what they've done with the show they've you know the

45:07first couple seasons the the show focused mostly on uh jason seagal seagal seagal how do you say his last name seagal seagal uh his his character and the focus has kind of shifted more now towards harrison ford's character a little bit more they shifted it and i kind of like how they did that because it's it it broadens the show a little more it brings it makes the characters more dynamic um you're seeing more depth being brought to the to all the other characters as well

45:38i just like the way the show's developed now the thing that i've also noticed about this show is that it has become a little more um my wife put it ted lash lasso ish in terms of like the dialogue okay so like they're the quips have like it's too quippy it's become a little more quippy than it has before which is okay because the quips are actually quite good yeah yeah yeah they're not you're running you know they're kind of they're pretty clever but kind of after a while you kind

46:11of go okay can you tone it down a little bit in terms of yeah nobody talks like this nobody is this clever all the time nobody talks like they do and i understand that's that's kind of a thing that shows do now like my wife watches uh palm royale and i was like people don't talk like that like they do on palm royale but that's kind of it's a style thing it's a style thing of a show and like what uh gilmore girls was kind of notorious for that yeah yeah true and and that's more of you know that's more of a thing that they want to identify with the show so i'm okay with that but

46:46sometimes it does get a little like uh it is a little over the top it's a little too polished in that way uh especially when there are plot lines that i'm interested in and you know sometimes the quips you know the quips do try to help move the plot lines along but i am interested in the plot lines so you know what did you think of the way they handled the michael j fox appearance in this since you started season three here wait don't give me any spoilers if it's a spoiler talk around it

47:17because i haven't watched it i do know it's been weeks and i know you don't you don't get the card um i like the way they handle it i wish i wish there was more of it yes okay because he's good he's really good and he's really sincere if you're not caught up he does show up in a couple later episodes of this season so they didn't it's not just that first episode yeah right right so he does show up later but yeah i do wish they had more of him uh to your point like that how the shows evolved

47:49like the first couple seasons were about the overall theme was about overcoming grief and getting back into having a life right and then this new season is about how challenges the overall theme for everybody's character is like how challenges make you have to get out of your comfort zone and change right right right that's what everybody's dealing with it's one way or another getting out of their comfort zone and changing and stuff and so i do think all right i'd like to see more of

48:21michael j fox because like you said it's amazing how good he is it's amazing how like you just you see him on screen and he just uh he steals the scene still everything he's ever done he's just really good at acting yeah but he's sitting but he's sitting there next to harrison ford of all things and he's stealing the scene still yeah like so yeah there's that there's that famous thing where uh i think it was uh who was that eric eric stoltz i think was the original back to the future guy and

48:53right like it's it's impossible that anyone could have pulled it off like michael j fax did he's just he's just really freaking good he's got a lot of charisma yeah i do want to see like my parents watch shrinking and they've told me like numerous times like oh you have to see how they handle you know like they're they're big fans so i i'm i'm gonna watch it uh soon i guess i don't know but yeah uh it's it's it's also really cool that he's still working despite his his you know it's clear

49:23struggles like he has like it's it's it's heartbreaking what he's going through but he's well the severe parkinson's is part of the plot for him being there so he still could be like i don't want to do this anymore i don't want people to see me like this i don't want to absolutely it's it's difficult i'm sure on a daily basis let alone in front of a camera right well now that you brought it up jason so the episode i saw last night okay spoilers people right well i'll try not to swear but it had michael j fox in it but now i think i need to re-watch it because i need there's a certain

49:59aspect of his uh presence on the show that i need to see if it jives with my thinking okay i'm trying not to spoil it well we'll talk about it after this show but michael's not on because i think i know what you're talking about so uh we'll talk about that after so anyways i'm really enjoying the show i hope people watch it uh i hope i i really sincerely hope harrison ford gets uh an emmy for the for this season because i think he's really good uh yeah in the first two

50:32seasons anyway it seems to be like the first time he's really enjoyed acting in a long time exactly it's it's amazing that like you can both say he's playing against type and also say well no he's playing a grumpy man like and it's like which is what he always does yeah like uh but it's but but yet not not at all what he normally is so right yeah i think it works it has been renewed for season four i wonder if there's going to be seven seasons to kind of mirror the seven stages of

51:06grief because that's what the whole show is about you know like the the big thing is in a way yeah mom died i wonder if there'll be seven seasons but it has been it has been renewed for season four so uh roman if you want to send a message to apple pr about the quips and tell them to tote it down that was your chance yes slightly less quippy yeah all right we're we got eight minutes to an hour let's see if we can get this done this week in apple history is i actually forgot i forgot i didn't

This Week in Apple History

51:34write it down i have last the 20th anniversary mac yes all right so on march 20th 1997 apple released the 20th anniversary mac now you're probably thinking wait a minute apple's celebrating their 40th anniversary now and it's 2026 50th 50th anniversary and it's 2026 right so wouldn't the 20th anniversary be 1996 so and wouldn't it be 1994 wasn't the mac introduced in 1984 how is this at all yes so

52:09what i've read now the funny thing is mac world the non-march 1997 issue which i'm holding up for the kept people on video has a feature on it that this feature actually posted i believe the day of the announcement or this issue came out around the same time that they made the announcement of of the of the uh machine i think because it's written as a kind of like sneak preview right so there are like some uh vague uh this is back when apple needed us they don't need us yes yes right like that

52:45like the like the price wasn't set during that uh feature and i i'll post that feature on our show notes if you're interested okay i scanned it and put it up that's cool but um doing the research on this what what people and i don't know if this was an official apple thing but what people figured out was apple became a corporation in uh 1997 97 so the tech or 1977 so apple became apple was founded in

53:191976 but didn't be officially become a corporation until 1977 so what i think happened was they were developing this mac for 1976 and it got delayed 96 i'm gonna stop saying dates because i'm not gonna get this wrong i got this wrong last episode we're gonna do this every week so you so you constantly screw it up yes this is all me conjecturing making stuff up now that i think apple was working on this

53:52machine and it got delayed and then they went oh you know what we didn't become a corporation until 1997 so here's our way around that 1977 so this is the 20th anniversary i will stop saying dates because i get them all wrong uh so i i'm making that up but i think that's yeah it could be what was happening yeah it was apple when it was incorporated yep yeah uh that was that's that's also the april 1st date is when they were incorporated so that's that tracks that they're

54:26you know but that's 1996 april 1st 1996 right but i'm saying that's where they get the april 1st from i think they were getting the 20 years after this who knows like you said just when it became a corporation or something that was way before my time but that that's that machine is still super cool looking like even from like where we are now with all the stuff we have it is such a wild thing because all right so this was it it has a big slightly curved flat vertical front surface with

55:01a monitor up top and like a front loading flat cd-rom in the front and tall speakers and there's like a bose subwoofer that comes with it and it's got leather accents and it's dark gray like it is the most weird looking computer it had a tv and fm tuner so you could watch tv but like not not while you did computer stuff like like separate you could just oh we'll watch tv on this thing it was wildly expensive like it was announced to cost nine thousand dollars which is almost 20 grand

55:35and then when it shipped it was 7 500 which is still 15 000 in today's money it was so much money didn't it like show up in like a limousine or something like someone like that's what i'm saying like when you order one you got concierge delivery service where an apple person would show up in a tux and white gloves in a limousine and deliver and set it up for you or in your office or your home um which that's how many they expected to sell so few that like we're going to send them to your homes in a limousine and everything and it also came out right when

56:10steve jobs came back is when it was uh released yeah it only stuck around for a year and then they got rid of it which is not that suspect because a lot of apple products are like that and it's a 20th anniversary model like it's not they're not going to keep making them forever but apparently steve jobs hated it yeah the price got cut by a ton before they got rid of it oh that's the other weird thing the price got cut all the way down to like three thousand dollars or just something like that and everybody who paid for full price for one got like a free ibook or

56:42something as as like compensation yeah it's just it's the weirdest wildest part of it's a kitchen sink computer yeah that has everything in it which no wonder jobs hated it but it was also just crazy expensive and they delivered in a limousine and it had a tv tuner what a wild computer what a weird thing this it was so uh steve jobs as jason said had nothing to do with it but johnny ive did very much so and it's it's interesting to like from a historical standpoint johnny ive is is held up in

57:16this in this great you know pantheon of apple but without steve jobs like he needed that editing to you know he needed steve to keep that kind of rein him in he was a he was brilliant he's still you know he's a brilliant designer johnny ive yeah but without without like look what he's done post apple like he needs someone to to kind of rein him in and someone needs to tell him no right like what's that a thousand no's for every yes i'm sure 800 of those were johnny ive ideas

57:46yeah i mean we we never know what apple corporate was really uh demanding of this that this computer be either it may this may be a toned down and restrained version of what they wanted but it it's just such a it's just such a standout product in the apple history because it's not like any of the others right it really does visually and just conceptually this idea that we're just gonna put everything in it i mean it was it was so far ahead of its time like you could literally like they could have

58:18released it now and it would still be kind of cool like it's a it was wildly futuristic i also think it kind of looks ugly it's not weird to have like things with like built-in speakers and it has this weird vertical face and stuff but it's just it's just nothing like any other mac it's so weird yeah well uh like i wonder like apple's 50th like we'll we'll we'll we'll write about these things as we get closer but i'd love for apple to like one day just change its website

58:51to show like some of these old products that people you know people have no idea exist oh yeah for sure there's so many of these i mean this one stands alone roman you weren't this is before you were covering this stuff right actually jason too i guess like you like you guys oh yeah weren't around like you didn't deal with this stuff back then or or did you i was in college you were you i i was at mac user which was mac world's rival magazine at the time and um i re i vaguely

59:23remember we didn't get one um because mac world had the exclusive as i you know in the magazine uh i i've never used it i've seen it um i mean it looks like a bang and olsen kind of product i mean the speakers were yeah it looks like that kind of you know you've seen the bang and olsen uh cd player vertical cd right yeah yeah so it almost has a similar design to that so uh but yeah i i never

1:00:00i've never actually used it um but and i've only i've only seen it in like i at the computer history museum and so i yeah i've never seen it up close so for comic corner we got we've got we have two comments jason posted a uh video short about the new facetime camera in the new studio display compared it to the old one jaya on youtube said it's criminal that they would put such garbage in the first one when they already had this technology readily available and it kind of is that's why i

1:00:32don't disagree with that yeah uh subum m on instagram said it's interestingly both are pretty disappointing quite surprising compared to like an iphone sure um uh uh it is an improvement right righteous i mean we'll get into the display more in depth but yeah in in that video i had a fairly low light conditions yeah um and you said it is a dramatic improvement but that's as much because the old one was bad as it is the new one's good the new one is a perfectly good fine

1:01:08serviceable webcam but they do better these days and what they should have put in it is the front facing camera the selfie camera from the new iphone 17s the square sensor one because it would be so awesome to let you shoot vertical from your desktop monitor i mean that's a thing now that's what people post vertical videos like you know so yeah that would have that would have been the way to go they didn't do that but it is it's a massive improvement over the old one but it's crazy from

1:01:39terrible to okay like good b plus maybe yeah when i when i saw jason's original comparison picture it's just like i cannot believe apple was charging sixteen hundred dollars for this like two weeks ago it is it's so bad yes yeah and granted that's low light conditions if you brighten it up a lot it improves a lot but still it was bad and when it shipped when the studio just the originals it was even worse there was a software problem it was even worse and they shipped a software update in a hurry to make

1:02:12it better and it made it better but it was still great uh and our one we got one comment on facebook from thomas s about the ssd speed improvement in the uh m5 max macbook pro thomas said who needs this no one i mean i guess but you're not paying any more for it right i thought it was a curious uh comment that that he made um i does that apply to like like does that ideal apply to everything

1:02:46because yeah there's plenty of stuff like how old a computer is he using because at some point at at every point something was faster than you needed and then the years went on and it became too slow so yeah yeah no it's just good it's more speed is better and it future proves your computer i mean i think on the on the timeline of useful upgrades ssd speed is is is pretty close to important man storage performance is is always huge that's one of the few things you two things you literally wait for

1:03:22on your computer like you watch a progress bar go is something storage limited and something internet limited those are those are your speeds that need to get like a hundred times faster everything else kind of happens immediately you know unless you're rendering out a big long video you're either waiting on storage speed or you're waiting on internet speed and so yeah right yeah more storage speed let's go yeah so to answer the question everybody needs this i mean i would yeah who needs

1:03:53this everybody i want of all the things in the world to complain about this isn't one of them apple isn't charging a premium i mean it isn't if you it's the same price it has it as or i guess the better way to phrase it is the faster ssd did not affect the price of the macbook pro at all right right because you could say it is more expensive well yeah because the pro is more expensive than the air than the knee in terms of the whole unit so but it's the same as it was with the slower ssd so

1:04:25right right all right is that it that is that does it for a comment corner and that does it for this episode of the macro podcast episode number 975 i wrote the number down correctly i actually just edited it while you were talking i had it wrong thanks to jason cross thank you thank you uh wait hold that i wrote that rugin latula if you listen to the whole show that's a that's a callback thanks to you the audience for tuning in you can subscribe to the macro podcast in the podcast app

1:05:02on spotify on youtube at the macro podcast channel or through any other podcast app comments or questions contact us on blue sky facebook thread search a macro look for the blue mouse logo um send us an email at podcast at macro dot com comment under a post comment under a video uh just get us get us a a comment and we will talk about it on a future show join us in the next episode of the macro podcast as we talk about hold on as we talk about the latest in the world of apple see you next time

1:05:32i'm getting i'm getting closer so close i'm so close i thought i wasn't gonna say anything i was like is he gonna do it because you the rest the rest of the ending you were like you were just like as soon as i get to that last line is he gonna get it was blank meet the new i sims the single talent acquisition platform that's fully future ready it works

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