Episode 993: Big changes in store for the Mac lineup

Back to School

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Macworld Podcast Introduction

0:30Un-scripted, unfiltered, unafraid, welcome to the Macworld Podcast. My name is Michael Simon and I am joined, as always, by my colleague Jason Cross. Good morning. And our producer, Roman Loyola. Ahoy there! This is episode number 993 and Roman is going to miss 94 and 95. Yep. Because he's going to Iceland, if you can believe it.

1:02I'm going to Iceland for 10 days. Is it like a bucket list, like, I've always wanted to go trip, or is there some other reason? So, August 12th is a solar eclipse, and it goes directly over, or mostly over Iceland. Oh, that's neat. And my wife and I, there was an eclipse in 2024 that we missed, and it came over to the United States.

Solar Eclipse

1:26Yes. Yeah. It came over to the United States, and, like, we were totally kind of oblivious to it. And we were like, that was a missed opportunity. And I was like, first, I initially said, you know, we don't have any other reason to go to Greenland, but the eclipse in 2026 is going over to Greenland. There's our excuse. And then Greenland, we looked, and Greenland was already all booked up. Oh, no way. Okay. Yeah, because of the eclipse followers. Yeah. But not Iceland?

1:57Iceland was not totally booked up, but it was getting there. So, but because I think it covers more of Greenland than it does some of Iceland. Greenland isn't really built for tourism, so there's nowhere to stay there. You have to stay at A, Airplane Bs, and stuff like that. So, we were like, well, then let's go to Iceland. Because why else are we going to go to Iceland?

Apple Upgrade Program

2:20Not that there's anything wrong with Iceland, for our Iceland listeners, but it was an excuse to go to Iceland. So, that's why we're going to Iceland. Yeah, I saw the eclipse in 2024. We were in Pennsylvania for a Pittsburgh Pirates game. And so, we got to stand. There's like a bridge that connects the city to the little area where the field is. It's a really nice area. And, you know, it was cool. A bunch of people there, and I had my little glasses. And, you know, I mean, it's like two seconds. I bet it's gone.

2:51It'll be cool. It'll be cool in Iceland. No, I'm quite sure. Yeah. You'll have nice scenery, and, you know, like, the skies will be all purpley and green and stuff. Anyway, you'll be missed, Roman. Well, if any listeners have any tips for Iceland or tips for the eclipse, send an email to ourloyal.com. You need one of those 3D. Yeah, we're going to get, we got, I bought some of them.

3:17It's kind of, they're bizarre because they're totally black. You put them on, and you can't see anything. So, anyways, hopefully I won't damage my vision by. Well, just don't look at it directly with other things.

3:35Anyways.

Leasing Program Details

3:36Well, have a good trip, Roman. Thank you. You'll be missed. But when you get back, there'll only be five episodes left before our thousandth, which means we had to start planning our thousandth because we haven't. We just keep talking about it. You keep mentioning it, so you're building it up, and now the pressure's on to leaking. Right. Everyone expects this big thing, and we're like, we have five weeks now. We'll figure something out. But today's show is number 993, and we're going to, today, we're going to talk about the Mac. I know we said maybe we talked about the iPhone last week, but a report from Mark Gurman of Bloomberg came out in the middle of last week that kind of outlined Apple's entire Mac strategy for the next, like, 12 or so months.

4:18So, there's a lot coming, so we decided to talk about that this week instead of the iPhone. We'll push the iPhone off to, you know, next week or the week or whatever. We're going to talk about what we expect to get over the next, it's about a year, maybe like 18 months. It'll be the rest of this year and all of 2027. So, what's coming, when it's coming, what the new chips are going to look like, what it'll cost, and, you know, whatever else you want to talk about. And we will do this week in Apple history, and we will close, as always, with our comment corner.

4:49Speaking of comments, you can contact us through Blue Sky Facebook or Threads. Search for Macworlds. Look for the Blue Mouse logo.

4:57Send an email to podcast at macworld.com. Send us a personal email, comment under a post, comment under a video. Get us your thoughts, and we will talk about them on a future show. But Roman will not be collecting them next week, so I'm curious to see what Jason and I come up with. We'll see. We have access to the email account. We'll get people's responses.

5:23If you want to say something about Roman while he's not around, we'll definitely do that. Yeah, this is your moment. Send that to me directly. Michael underscore Simon at foundryco.com. That will definitely do. We could make a whole show about that if we get enough of it. There you go.

New Apple Upgrade Program

5:40All right. So before we talk about Macs, this morning, today is Tuesday, July 28th. And this morning, Apple announced, it's rumored, it was only rumored last week. We talked about it last week. But last week, a rumor came out that Apple was going to come out with a new upgrade program, and today it came out. It's called Apple Upgrade, which makes sense. And it's essentially a leasing program. Actually, Apple actually says lease a bunch of times in its stance, like marketing language and the footnotes and stuff. And you can lease an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch.

Program Pricing

6:15Just real quick, I'll run down just like the overview and then we'll talk about it. 12 or 24-month lease for iPhone or Apple Watch. 24 or 36-month lease for iPad or Mac. The prices vary depending on what you're getting because the price of the thing varies. But it doesn't include AppleCare. You got to get that separately. And you don't pay the full price of the device. So the iPhone Upgrade program, which is now gone, what Apple did there was you took the price of the device,

6:46the price of two years' worth of AppleCare, split it up over 12 months, and then you paid it. After 12 payments, you could upgrade if you wanted to. Otherwise, you pay it off and it's yours. Now, you were taking out a lease on... It's kind of an arbitrary amount. Like, for example, the MacBook Air is $25 a month, which is about $900-ish. So you're getting it for a little less, but you don't own it. At the end of the term, you can either choose to buy it for the remainder of the price,

7:20the original purchase price minus what you've paid so far, or you can upgrade, which is why it's called AppleUpgrade because Apple expects everyone to say, well, I don't want this anymore. I want the new one. Is that what the upgrade price is? Is it the original purchase price? Well... Because by then, you know, it's two years old. You're paying more for it's years old.

Carrier Plans Comparison

7:43No, it's true. Let me see if Apple specifies that. I know that I priced out, for example, like, let's say you wanted to get a new iPhone every year. So I priced out like the iPhone 17 Pro, which is like $45.99 or something a month if you choose the 12-month plan. And that worked out to be like $550, like $551 or so.

8:08And, you know, it's a $10.99 phone. So that's kind of like saying, oh, if I bought the phone and then I got $550 on a trade-in, I'd be left with $550. So it's kind of like a zero interest payment on the phone minus a trade-in value. Not necessarily the world's best trade-in value, but, like, that's kind of what it costs to do this. It's not crazy. You know, $45 or $46 a month for 12 months isn't a bad price for one of these sort of

8:45lease deals. Like you said, you don't own it. At the end of it, you'd have to pay $550 or $450 or something like that to own it, you know? Yeah, I'm trying to find the exact, it's all kind of nebulous. It just says, do I own my device? No. You may return your device in good working condition. If you'd like to keep your device, you can choose to pay the purchase option fee through the Karna app to own it outright. Now, when you do it with a car lease, it's like a residual value thing.

9:18So it's not the price of what it would have been. So I wonder if that's the case here. Yeah, they don't say, I wasn't able to easily find what the purchase price was. And the fact is that they may not know until that time. The actual purchase price. Oh, wait, hold on. I think I found it. It says, if you decide to buy the device, the purchase option fee is the list price minus any lease payments you've made minus any remaining discounts or trade-in credit. So is that the list price?

9:48Yeah. Is that the list price when you bought it or like what if the price goes down? Yeah, that's what a list price is. Yeah. Yeah. Because a lot of these products, they won't even be around in two years. Right. Right. There won't be no list price. Yeah. So you got to pay the rest of it basically. Yeah. Yeah. Which is why I assume it's called Apple Upgrade because Apple is expecting most people who do this to basically pay them forever. Ever and ever. Yeah. These are very, very similar to the carrier plans, except you're not locked to a carrier.

10:21And most of the carrier plans, you can get those carrier upgrade fee plans through Apple and it's like they're a dollar or two cheaper, but you have to activate the phone on that network at that time. So on the iPhone, I did the, you know, like pretending to buy one and I did have to pick AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon. They didn't have the option of it unlocked. So you have to get it through. Yeah. I had to choose a carrier to enroll in any iPhone through the upgrade service.

10:55Wait a minute. I just did this this morning and the iPhone upgrade program was also the same thing. I'm going to try it. Let me see. iPhone. Yeah. iPhone upgrade program required a carrier. Let me go. iPhone 17 Pro by, I'm going to do it right now. While Jason does that, the iPhone 17 E is included in this, which is pretty cool because that wasn't included in the iPhone upgrade program. So I did, I did, I did some quick math. My son has the iPhone, the existing iPhone upgrade program for the iPhone 17 and I did

11:29the math and it worked out to like $30 more or something over the course of the 12 months if you include Apple Care and do the Apple upgrade, the new one and get the same phone. So it's, it's, it's essentially the same thing. It's just the old version was real easy. You picked what you wanted. You picked the Apple upgrade program. Apple Care was built in and gave you the thing. It lets you, this is requires a little bit more thinking, but it's, it's, it's not all that different for iPhones. Jason, what do you got? Yeah. It, you do have to choose when you do get an unlocked phone.

12:02Right. But you do have to choose a carrier. Right. Right. You can take it to another carrier. I don't think you're locked to that carrier for a year. Yeah. And then presumably when you go through it, it, it, it's going to ask you your number and you have to, you know, there's, there's a, they all have like a $40 activation charge and it's, it's, it's the standard U.S. carrier BS that they have. Right. Right. So carriers are the worst. The upgrade fees. I love to know what, like, what's the, that's like a hundred percent profit, right?

12:33Like there's not actually a fee that they have. The activation fees. Yeah. Like do the, do the carriers have to pay anything to activate your phone? No, it's their network. These, these major networks. It's, no, it's, it costs them. You're charging $40 a device is nuts. It's, it costs them like a dollar worth of some employees. It's time to type a, and eat a number into a screen and stuff. It, no, it's, it's pure profit. There's been congressional nonsense about it, about how they can't charge. It's a junk fee.

13:03They can't charge and all this, whatever. But right now carriers are the worst. I don't use one of the main carriers because I hate them.

13:12But, but yeah. Okay. So you do need to choose a carrier in the U S that's annoying. But as we said before, uh, this is for more than Apple watches. I mean, Apple, uh, iPhones, this is for Apple watches and Macs. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, Macs, Macs is the, is the best, I think, reason for this thing to exist because particularly after Apple raised prices by three to $500 across the board on Macs, um, you'll, you're, you're looking at three, three, $4,000 for like a, a good MacBook pro.

13:44And this brings down that cost considerably. I did, I, I, I ran through it, you know, when I was writing the article or editing the article and, um, you can, you know, save, you're not really saving anything cause you're not owning it, but you can end up paying about a thousand dollars less than you would if you purchased it outright through this upgrade program. And, you know, Macs, Macs will be good for three years, no problem. And then you can, you can start the whole thing again. But the, the other side of that, I mean, the whole point is that you just don't have

14:14to lay out much money at front, but if you bought a MacBook pro that costs $3,000 or something and three years later you wanted to sell it, you could get a thousand dollars for it. Yeah. That's a good point. You could easily sell it or trade it in or something for a thousand dollars. So it's not really saving you money except for that. You just don't have to chalk it up. It's the hassle. Three grand, right? It's the, uh, it's that entry level, it's that entry price, you know?

14:42So yeah, it's a pretty standard upgrade program. Really? It's the, I guess the, the, the fancy thing here is that it's straight through Apple, right? Yep. And you know, I think that they'll probably get a lot of people when you walk into an Apple store and you see a MacBook air and it's 10 99 or 11 99, like, Oh, well I only have to pay $25 a month. And I get like, they're going to, they're going to sell a lot of these programs, particularly this fall when we got the iPhone ultra, which is expected to cost like 2,500 bucks. We got the MacBook ultra, which is going to probably cost four or $5,000 that, that

15:19touchscreen prices are going to be real high this fall. And I think this is how they're going to make that fact. I, it wouldn't surprise me if during their event, um, in September, when they talk about these at the end, the slide and the time when they talk about the price, I would not be surprised if the full price of the device was in fine print and the big number was the starting, you can get it for just 24 99 a month. And that's the part that they say out loud.

15:52And then there's a little fine print that says it's 24 night, the iPhone ultra is $2,500, right? Yeah. That's, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if they did that either. If they, yeah, that's a sure. Cause the, the flash of a slide that says it's, you know, 22 99 is like, whoa, but if it's $52 a month or whatever that works out to be, you know? Yeah, exactly.

16:16Um, yeah, so I think, right. That's available now. Like that's just, that just started. Yep. So if you buy a new, a new Apple something between now and whenever, uh, oh, if you're on the iPhone upgrade program now, nothing changes until your next device comes around and then you have to choose Apple upgrade. Like you'll be kicked off of it. But for now you just make your payments and everything's the same. Right. Um, uh, I, this Apple upgrade, but I, so I think, I think I would do this.

16:49Like, I don't know if I would pay 22 99 for an ultra or, or 4,000 for it, but I think I would probably do the Apple upgrade program for a, for a device like that because it, you know, I would, I would like to, to, to own a folding phone. I just don't want to spend that kind of money, but I can do $60 a month or whatever it is. Yeah. I mean, you ultimately don't spend that kind of money presuming you trade it in at the end. Like you probably actually get better trading it in, but that's a lot of money to lay out

17:21at front for something like that, where we have no idea what its trade in value is. Right. It could very well be that after a year or two years, they have the next gen folding phone and it puts the new one in shame and nobody wants it. The trade in value is garbage.

17:36So usually for things like Macs and, and most regular iPhones, we have a really good idea of what the trade in value is going to be after a year or two. Right. So, but that, that would be a wild card and just real expensive. So. Right. And first generation, you know, there's a lot of reasons why you don't want to shell out three grand for that big up front. Yeah. Here's your report. Oh, thanks, Jane. I wish I could hire someone just like you. Try LinkedIn Hiring Pro.

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Mac Updates

18:45All right, so Macs, this ties in nicely because the whole bunch of Macs coming out over the next 12 months, 12 to 18 months. And, you know, this upgrade program definitely kind of, I think it's built for it, basically. It's really... Stick a bunch of stickers on your MacBook when you use the upgrade program. Everybody likes to put stickers on the back of their Mac.

19:16That's a good point. Yeah. So there is a whole... Like every page says it has to be in good condition. It has to be in good condition. So, yeah, they're going to charge you if you, you know, crack something, break something, or as Jason said, you know, put a bunch of stickers on it. You know, it's like a car lease. You know, they have a built-in, like, you know, scratch here, scratch there. Okay, but if there's something major, they're going to hit you. Yeah, so the new Macs coming out, we'll just start at the bottom.

19:47Or rather, no, I'll do it chronologically. All right. So this fall... That's a good idea. This fall. This fall. Yeah, so this fall, we're supposed to get the M6 14-inch MacBook Pro and the M6 iMac. It doesn't appear to be much in the way of changes beyond the iMac 6 processor. Yeah. Okay. That's what they're saying. They're going to skip the M5 on the iMac. Okay. Which they've done before.

20:19We didn't get an M2 on the iMac. They just don't often update the iMac in the fall, but it's kind of so random and sporadic. They did with the M3, 4, rather. They did update it with the M4, but yeah, you're right. It's kind of sporadic. But that's what German says. M4, M6 iMac, M6, 14-inch MacBook Pro. That's that base model that came out a year ago. And then this past March, we got the M4, M5. Yeah, M5 Pro and Macs versions.

20:50The M6 is going to just be the base model, not the higher-end ones.

21:00I don't think there's much else in the way of changes to that right now. It looks like same design, same screen, same internal stuff, same expansion, but a slightly faster processor. Yep. But iMac, I would like to see. Well, in the case of the iMac, it's a lot faster processor. Yeah, so that goes from M4 to M6. And Roman, like, they need to do something with the iMac, right? Yes. It was 2021 that came out, I think. Maybe 2022.

21:30No, I think 2021. And it's exactly the same as it was, except now it costs more because of all the RAM stuff. But it's exactly the same as it was, except it has a new chip. Like, give me new colors at least, right?

21:50Yeah, yeah.

21:56Yeah.

22:03Yeah.

22:08The screens at that size for an OLED display is a little tricky, especially at the specifications Apple wants, because they want their displays at 216 pixels per inch. Is that right? Or just points per inch. Anyways, it's 216 ppi. So it's a little, you know, niche isn't the right word, but it's a little more demanding than what most other companies want. Yeah, OLED's not as expensive as it used to be.

22:40I mean, there's gigantic OLED TVs for reasonable prices and stuff. Now, their pixel density is not the same at all, but, you know, there's desktop monitors that you can buy that are like OLED desktop monitors for less than $700 that are fairly decent and 24 inches and stuff, you know. So I think it's that that OLED iMac is not expected until question mark, but like late 2027 or 2028, like it's an out there thing after they do the MacBook Air and stuff like that.

23:16So I think there's a decent chance. The interesting thing there is that'll almost certainly be an HDR display, which they don't have on the iMac now. So they could easily make it promotion. Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see kind of what that version of the iMac is. But it's going to be a while before we get an update, like a real update that's not just a better chip. I wonder how many of those they sell every year. I can't imagine many. Yeah, I can't imagine as much. Yeah, so this upcoming iMac, the M6 is probably going to just be a new chip.

23:52You know, I don't I don't think there's going to be any other upgrades to it. That's not going to change the display. They're not going to change the form factors. The other thing that is that they do sell a lot of that may come out this fall is the Mac mini update, which is, again, just it's going to be M5 Pro and base M6. And the report said, hey, that that is really just dependent on memory supply. But it's kind of ready to go this fall together with the refreshed MacBook Pros and stuff like that.

24:25Like, it's just going to be about whether they have the RAM. That one's tricky because people are buying those up to do all these people who do AI development and want to run like local AI models are buying it up. Because you can load it up with this huge amount of unified memory that the GPU and the CPU have as access to. And it's great for like local AI models. Yeah, you can kind of blame the Mac mini for this whole situation where like three or four months ago, it just took off as this like AI agent, this localized AI agent machine.

25:00And perplexity and all these clawed and people were just buying them up like in like truckloads to run these personal things. And like right now, if you've tried to buy a Mac mini, you're not getting it to like October. So Apple has to figure out like, is the demand going to strip these to supply real quick? And can they afford to make enough of them? So yeah, we'll see what happens. It's funny, the Mac mini was always underappreciated and now like everybody wants one.

25:33Yeah, like small and has no display is exactly what people want because it's going to sit in a closet. And I'm going to, you know, most of the big people running, the things where people used to buy like hundreds of them and kind of run a little server farm of them, that's mostly moved off to people leasing time on like real servers with GPUs and stuff. But people are buying them to do like little home development. Because personal, yeah. Yeah, little, I have four of them in my closet running local AI agents and stuff.

26:05And that's, they all have, you know, 48 gigs of RAM and stuff.

26:11So that one's a big question mark. You know, if they don't have so much RAM, do they want to put it in a MacBook Pro or a Mac mini? Yeah, so you mentioned M6 and M5 Pro. And that's because German reports that we are not getting an M6 Pro or M6 Max chip. Right. And presumably M6 Ultra as well. Because Apple is going to, so they're going to release the M6 and then skip to the M7,

26:42which is going to be much more AI centric and have, you know, better neural engine and a lot of stuff. So they're kind of shifting their development to the M7 and they're just not going to bother. They're just scrapping the M6 Pro and M6 Max. Yeah, they've already kind of shifted their development. It's ahead of time and they just want to pull up the release. They want it to come out sooner. In that same boat with the Mac mini is the Mac Studio, where it's pretty much ready to go. It's going to be M5 Max and Ultra, which we haven't seen an M5 Ultra yet, but apparently that is sort of ready to go.

27:19It's just like a RAM situation. We haven't seen an M4 Ultra either. Yeah, they're not going to do. They skipped. The Ultra hasn't. We haven't gotten a new Ultra in years, a couple of years. Yeah, and that's really held back the Mac Studio. So Mac Studio is supposedly kind of ready to go. It could come out this fall. It really all comes down to RAM availability and what they decide to do. Same thing as the mini. Yeah, so the Mac Studio got hit pretty hard with the recent price hike. It's like over $5,000 now.

27:50Yeah, it's a lot. Because it has a lot of RAM and big SSDs and those are the two problem areas. For sure, yeah. So, I mean, those aren't nearly as popular as the Mac Mini because it's like 10 times as expensive for something. Or any time they're expensive. But yeah, that's the same situation is that Apple's obviously going to prioritize its RAM for MacBooks because that's where the money is and that's what people want. And it's going to be a real tricky.

28:20Apple's earnings are in a couple of days. And I'm really interested to hear if they give any insight into what's going to happen here going forward. So they raise prices. Macs are still really hard to get or desktop Macs are still hard to get. Even the iMac is a couple weeks out further than it usually is. And I just wonder, like, you know, how this is all going to shake down because it's not going to be cleared up in two months or three months or even 12 months. This is a problem for a couple years.

28:52So, John Ternus has got his work cut out for him.

28:59Yeah, and this is still going to be, this earnings call is still going to be led by, I mean, he pulls in other people, but it's still going to be led by Tim Cook as going to be his last one. And, yeah, it'll be, it'll be, I'm really curious to see what they, when the investors get to ask a question, they never ask the questions we would ask, but I can't, I got to imagine at least one of them is going to bring up supply chain issues. Yeah, of course. It's going to affect Apple very deliberately and consistently tells you that it only makes predictions one quarter out guidance.

29:37It only issues guidance one quarter out. And sometimes not even then, but yeah. Yeah. Well, they do revenue guidance. They don't tell you how many units they're going to sell anything. They've got to have revenue guidance. But, yeah, they only do it one quarter out and that's not going to make people happy. So, I'm curious. I'm really curious. I'm even curious to see what that guidance is for the next quarter because, like, did these price hikes affect their sales? Is the iPhone going to be affected? Because that's now next quarter. Right. It's launch, yeah.

30:07It's launch quarter. All right. We got a little off track there. Sorry, everybody. Macs. Other Macs. That takes us through this year. There's a couple maybes and there's refreshed entry-level MacBook Pros, but not the higher-end ones. Right. And so, yeah, 2027 will bring, well, obviously, the MacBook Air at some point with an M6 processor. Nothing really special about that. Same thing as the 14-inch MacBook Pro.

30:39Yeah. It's a new chip. New chip. And highly anticipated the second-gen MacBook Neo, which will have, as expected, an A19 Pro chip. This current one has an A18 Pro chip. Right. And that's notable because the A19 has 12 gigs of memory, at least in the iPhone it does. Yeah. So that's 50% more memory in the second-gen MacBook Neo because we all know this one has eight gigs.

31:11I have to imagine. I mean, they already raised the price. I was going to ask you that next. Yeah. I wonder if they raised it at a level where they're like, well, we're going to raise this where we know we can keep this the same with the A19. Like, are they planning that out? I would assume. I would assume so. They raised it by $100, which that's on a $599 device. That's 16%, 17%. That's a lot. That's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. So I have to assume they can't raise it again.

31:46Well, they could. But it would be a bad look for Apple on a budget device to say, well, here's this brand new one that has more RAM. And then, oh, it's now $750. Like, I can't. I would be surprised if they did that. Yeah. Especially since this is not a product where we expect them to keep the old one on shelves. It's not like the iPhone where you can buy last year's model for a while. Like, they're going to, as it gets close to release, the inventory is going to start to dwindle away for stores and stuff like that.

32:19And then when they release the new one, whatever's out there is all you can buy of the old one. And they don't keep it around.

32:27It's notable that the Neo hasn't had anywhere any significant, like, discounts. Like, Amazon sells it for, like, $10 off or something. But, like, every other Mac goes on sale for, you know, MacBook Air will be $150 off. The MacBook Pro will be up to $500 off. Nothing. So that either tells you that the margins are very thin or they're selling enough where they don't have to discount them. It is relatively new. It's not. It hasn't been six months.

32:57But so is the M5 MacBook Pro. And that's the M5 Pro MacBook Pro. And that goes on sale all the time. They came out to save time. Didn't that come out last fall? No. Not the high-end ones. They came out, like, the day before the Neo. That's true. Right. But, as you say, it's a brand new product. It's a brand new product. Yeah. It's not even six months old. We'll see you this fall if they have any sales. I would have thought, like, Prime Day, they would have cut the price by, like, $50 or something. But they didn't do that. I wasn't expecting it. It was way too soon. Way too new. Yeah. They're selling out.

33:29Yeah. It's doing real well. So, that A19 Pro Neo, if you've been kind of kicking the tires, like, that's a good upgrade. It's not just a little faster. That 50% more RAM is fantastic, especially with the, you know, MacBook 27 and the Siri AI stuff. Like, 12 gigs of RAM is going to do wonders for that machine now and, like, two or three years down the road when you still have it. Yeah. So, I'm really curious to see if, when we test it, if there's anything else like that, does the SSD speed get better or anything?

34:01You know, I know they're not going to change any of the physical outward stuff. There's going to be no redesign. They're not going to change the track pad or anything. Like, none of that's going to change this year, but same display, all that. Yeah. And those things are fine, but I'm just curious if there's anything beyond just A19. Yeah, I wonder if the one question, like, Touch ID, does that come to the lower model or do they still keep that as an upgrade option? I think they keep it. Yeah. I think they're going to change anything but the chip. Yeah.

34:32What else is coming next spring? There's a few things, right? That's the new high-end MacBook Pro. Yeah. The spring event will probably be the iPhone 17, iPhone 17, 18. iPhone 18, iPhone 18e MacBook Neo. Like, we assume those are all going to come out at one big giant event or maybe a week of events like they did, like, this year, where it'd be, like, a week of releases or something.

34:58And also the MacBook Air with an M6. We assume all that stuff will come out together. Yeah. Gurman says, oh, no, that's the wrong thing. Well, the new redesigned MacBook Air, I mean, MacBook Pro, the new 14 and 16-inch redesigned. Well, I'm saving that for the end, Jason. That's the big, that's the big. You said you were doing chronological. I'm sorry. That's. I haven't got there yet. No, I actually. Yeah, you have. That's, that's could be end of 2026. That's the end of it. It's end of year to early next year is what Gurman says on that.

35:32Oh, no, you're right. I was, I was still saving that for the end. I just didn't tell you. Okay.

35:39All right. So we got, we'll just recap and then we'll, and then we'll do that one. Sure. Mac mini. No, that's wrong. 14-inch MacBook Pro, iMac, M6, probably October or something. Maybe the Mac mini with it. Maybe a Mac studio with it. Right. With a, with, with the new M5 Ultra chip. Yeah. Next year, um, MacBook Air with an M6, as well as a new Neo with an A19 Pro processor.

36:09That's pretty much around March-ish. Right. Around March-ish. Uh, this, this year it came out on, I think March 4th. It was early. I went to the New York, I think it was, it was like the first week of March. Yeah. Um, so that's pretty much like guaranteed. If, if you're looking to buy a Mac, you don't absolutely need one now or back to school, you know, wait a little bit. And all those are coming in three to six months. The, the big one that Jason spoiled my surprise. I was going in order. You said go in order.

36:40The, um, the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro is supposed to get a complete redesign, um, next year. When the M, uh, M6, so we, what would usually be the M6 Pro and the M6 Max won't be. They'll still have M5 Pro and M5 Max chips like the current models, which I assume will, will remain on, on sale. Because this new one will be redesigned with a first of its kind, never had it, didn't ever think we'd see it,

37:15touchscreen display that runs MacBook, that runs MacBook, that runs Mac OS. Yeah. It'll be a tandem OLED like the iPad Pro. Like the iPad. So it'll be really bright and great colors and stuff. And it's not just the display that's supposed to be there. It's supposed to have Dynamic Island. It's supposed to be thinner, uh, in some ways, which makes me worry about battery life. Yeah, I agree. It's pretty damn thick. Who knows what they're doing inside? Right. Um, yeah. Is it going to be as thin as a MacBook Air? Like, and then, you know, I wonder about some things.

37:47I wonder if they're going to have Face ID or something. Rumor is no. Rumor is they're still, but they are redesigning the Face ID module for the, uh, for the new Air 2, or iPhone Air 2, you know, to like fit the other camera and stuff. So maybe there's room now. I don't know. Uh, but this, this is the first time the Mac, God, when was the last time the MacBook Pro was actually redesigned? Yeah. When they added the touch bar, like. And then took it away.

38:18Right. And that wasn't even really a redesign. That was just. I mean, it was like, when it got the notch, I mean, that was the closest thing we've got to a redesign, but it was, it didn't look that much different. Yeah. And that wasn't really different. I still don't know why we had that notch. I'd love to know like what Apple's thinking was. It's a design language thing. It's weird. It's very strange. And then the iPhone doesn't even have it anymore. Yeah. It doesn't need to be there. I don't know. It does not. It does not. Well, yeah. The only the 16E has it. Like, I don't know. It's. Yeah.

38:49We digress. Anyways, it's going away. They're going to do dynamic island stuff and touchscreen, which means whole new ways to interact with your Mac. Like, I'm curious if it's going to support Apple Pencil. That would be amazing. Yeah. That would be really cool. I would love that. Is it going to be like a convertible situation or is it just going to be like it is now, but you can touch it, but you can, or can you flip it all the way around? I, we've, we've heard nothing to suggest that they're going to have, it's going to be a flip all the way around convertible tablet situation. So I don't think probably not that probably it's just a touchscreen,

39:21but how is Apple going to market and sell this as a thing you need to be able to do? Like that you really need to be able to touch your Mac screen. Especially since they told us for like a decade that we shouldn't. Yeah. I mean, not in their marketing. You have to be kind of into Apple to really know that they've said that. They've just ignored it for the public, but for the public, like how are they going to sell? Oh, touching your Mac enables all these wonderful things that you. That you couldn't do before. Couldn't do before. Yeah. I don't know.

39:52What, like, what is your guess on what this thing starts at? Cause so the, the current 14 inch MacBook pro starts at, well, the M5 pro, the pro version starts at, I think 2499 or maybe 2299. Yeah. And I think you can easily add 500. Yeah. I think you can. Yeah. So we're talking about three grand. Yep. That Apple update program is going to come in handy. 99, 99 a month for, you know, they're going to do something like that.

40:24Seriously. It's going to be, that's why they have this upgrade program. Uh, but I'm just excited to see them do something new with the Mac, not just a redesign, but redesign and touch means like they're doing new software stuff. They're doing a lot. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount, safe driver discount, uh, new vehicle discount, storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply.

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41:26Yeah. Roman, you're, you're a, you're a, I won't use the word old. You're a veteran, Mac using. Seasoned. Uh, what's your, what's your, what's your take? Is this sacrilege or are you excited about it? What's your, what's your take on a touchscreen, Mac? Uh, I've been totally indifferent about it because I've never sat there and go, oh, I wish this was a touchscreen. I agree. And it's the thing where there's nothing about Mac OS that makes you go, you have to use the touchscreen to interface with it.

42:00So that's why I'm kind of like, yeah, it's not, it's there. I probably will use it every once in a while only because I'll sit there and go, I have a touchscreen. I should use it every once in a while. And because of what I do for a living, I should know how to use it and stuff. But I, I don't think of it as sacrilege, but I'm also not, I'm just kind of nonplussed about it. Just like, yeah, it's there. Yeah. I'm shocked. To me, something like a, something like a Apple Pencil support would be more, feel more like something that I would need in a Mac than, than touching and pinching with my fingers and stuff.

42:40Like signing a PDF or opening Photoshop and just wanting to do something precise on the screen instead, or I don't have my mouse on, you know, there, there just feels like more of the creative applications that the MacBook Pro is always pitched as being for and everything really lend themselves to the Apple Pencil. So I'm really curious if they, if this thing has Apple Pencil support. We haven't heard either way. I haven't heard about it. I mean, the iPad obviously supports it, but the iPhone doesn't. So just because it has a touchscreen doesn't mean that it's naturally going to support Apple Pencil, but that same screen technology in the iPad Pro, that the tandem OLED design that they have for that is supposed to be the same sort of thing.

43:22That doesn't mean they're going to have a digitizer that supports Apple Pencil, but they can, they easily can put it on a 12.9 inch Mac, uh, iPad Pro. So it could, it could totally be there. Totally. Um, I'm with Roman. I have never sat down at my Mac. In fact, the Mac is the device I go to when I don't want to use a touchscreen. Yeah. Like I've never sat at my Mac and said, I wish I could touch the screen. My son does it all the time. Well, not anymore, but when he, when he was little, he would constantly try to touch my Mac.

43:55Yeah. No, it doesn't work that way because that's what he was learned. That's what he learned on. But I, I, I, I just wonder if, so two things, one, am I going to, is, is like, is my muscle memory going to change enough where I do both? And two, is it going to be, is there going to be, are there going to be features or things that it can do that I like, oh, I didn't even think of that. Like, yeah, I had to get this now because I want to do that thing that I can't do now.

44:26Yeah.

44:28If it's just the things that you can do with trackpad gestures, your pinch to zoom and the two fingers scrolling, I can scroll on the thing. If it's just those things, I just don't see, I definitely don't want to mark up my screen for that. I'm one of those people who. That's the other thing. I hate smudges on my glasses. I have a whole time. I have a whole box of those, those lens cleaner things and I'm always cleaning my Mac screen. And, and if I get, when I get smudges on my MacBooks, my MacBook Air display, as soon as the light is at the right angle that I can see it, I'm like, oh, I got to get that, you know?

45:01And so I don't want to be touching it all the time, messing it up. And West, there's a really good reason, like a really compelling software reason. Although on the iPhone, I'm not so crazy about this because of the coding and it's like, they don't show up like they do on, on the Mac screen. So maybe they'll, yeah, they'll do something like that. I don't know. Yeah. I'm, I'm very, very intrigued. I wonder if they're going to have a whole separate event for the Mac stuff in the spring, because there could be several things. Like there could be several springtime Macs.

45:35They could do this, this high end. There's the MacBook Air. There's the mini or studio could end up coming at that time, you know? Uh, and they're trying to pull M7. We haven't really heard about what the M7 things are, but they're trying to pull that in, right? Sooner. So it's like toward the end of 2027. Yeah. Well, no, that's when it would be. That's when it would be anyway. That's true. They're, they're trying to pull the regular M's.

46:05That's when the pro and Macs are supposed to come out. They're trying to bring them out either WWDC or even earlier in the spring. So we haven't heard what those devices will be, but the regular M7 devices, now we've got a whole thing because you need to go over all the touch features in Mac OS and stuff like that. You know, I, we might get a real event for the spring and not just a week of press releases just because they have a lot to show. Although, uh, you know, if they were able to announce the MacBook Neo without like an event, like they had an event type thing.

46:37Yeah. So, um, I don't know. It's weird. The spring event is always that thing. Like I remember they had one a couple of years ago for the iPad pro, that M5 iPad, M4, my iPad pro. And we all thought like, we didn't really need this. Yes. The Neo, which I thought did need one. They didn't do one. So like, who knows what Apple thinks, like that spring event is, is, is very much how they feel. Now, notable Ternus is going to do things differently than Tim Cook did things. So there's that too.

47:08Ternus, if you're listening, bring back live events, get on stage, live events. Come on. You can, you can throw it to a video and come back to the stage and throw it to a video and come back to the stage. That's fine. But we could give us live stage events. Come on. I think, I think live events are gone. I do too. But I think live events are gone forever. The one thing I miss as a, as a Apple writer was when they used to do the demos and I would get like a moment to breathe and write a little bit because they were, they would take five minutes to like, oh, look at this cool thing.

47:41And they don't do that anymore. Now it's just like announcement after announcement after announcement after announcement. So yeah, I too would like live events, but I don't think we're ever going to get them again. Oh, so anyway, bunch of, bunch of new Macs come in.

Comments Corner

47:54Um, you know, as always, these are all, these are all rumors and stuff. So, so who knows? Yes, Roman. Can I say one thing about the price? Of course you can. You know what I think is going to happen? Because everything's going to be, we're expecting these new Macs to be more expensive. I think one way Apple's going to soften the blow is they're going to push the Apple upgrade thing and say something like, so-and-so is $32.99. Yeah. Or it's $100 per month through Apple upgrade. I was going to say, I don't even think they're going to say it's $32.99.

48:26I can see that too. I think they're going to come straight out and say, and it's $100 a month with the Apple upgrade program. And there'll be little fine print saying what the full price is on the screen. I, I, you know, yeah, because I expect outrageous prices for these things. Yeah. Yeah, right. You buy this in the ultra, you're, you're at like eight grand. Yeah. If you have a MacBook pro and an iPhone ultra, like just getting sort of the high end Apple gear is about to become a way more expensive property.

48:56And that's not even counting like something like vision pro. Like we haven't even. Oh yeah. We, we, we don't even count that, but that, that also exists. And then, you know, AirPods with the cameras in them and all the other nonsense they're going to push out there. That's more expensive. Yeah.

49:13All right. So yeah, lots of new Macs underway. Roman, we have a Mac in this week in Apple history. So this week in Apple history, July 19th, 2000. So it's actually last week in Apple history, but the thing is, August is kind of a slow month. Yeah, not a lot happens. It's July and August. Yeah. But July 19th, 2000, the Power Mac G4 Cube was released. Coolest Mac. I was, did I go to the New York event?

49:43I think I might have, but that thing was so damn cool when that, when that came out. You think so? I, I thought I was nice, but I also thought it was kind of over produced over engineered. Is it the right word? Cause it was properly engineered, but do you know what I mean? This was before the days when everyone had a hot take on social media, like instantly. Right. So I think how you felt about it was really, um, colored by like the people you were around and with at the time, because for me, like people loved the lampshade mat, right?

50:19They loved the robotic arm mat. Then this came out and people were like, it's a tissue box. They were so like, uh, it was like slick, clear. People loved to, this was the clear acrylic phase of consumer electronics, but yeah, people thought it looked like a toy. It looked like a tissue box. I heard that there were, there seemed to be reports that they would crack. Yeah. The heating and cooling was wrong and they would crack. There were definitely issues with it.

50:51Yeah. The outer casing was made of acrylic, I believe. So it was a clear plastic essentially. And sometimes it would crack. I mean, the engineering of it was pretty cool, but I was just kind of like, I don't know. I don't, I didn't, I guess that goes to show that this was kind of a polarizing device. Some people really thought it was cool. Some people like me were just kind of like, I think it speaks to how cool you, you, you are. How I was, how cool I was.

51:22They, this was really an era where they were leaning hard into this like clear acrylic, like the display had a clear acrylic thing. They sold these speakers that, um, was it JBL? Oh, JBL Bose, something. JBL sound sticks. They were like clear pods. Well, they had the sticks with those, the sticks look so dumb to me. And they had those little round pods and they, everything was like clear acrylic. There was a subwoofer too that came with it. So I had, I had those, I had those little monster, I think they're called monster, uh, speakers,

51:54whatever it was. I had the studio display, but so I was, um, I was, I was pretty young at the time. I was working summers at a, um, at an appliance store installing air conditioners in like 90 degree heat and I, I saved up, I was saving up my money to buy this thing. This was in, um, 2001 and they, they stopped selling it in July. Like I'll never forget that July of, of, of 2001, not even a year later, the, they stopped

52:29selling them. Like people didn't buy them. There was all these problems with it. And that was it. Like you couldn't get them anymore. Yeah. Um, here, I just pulled out the press release. July, there are two dead, two, then I won. Apple today announced it will suspend production of the Paramount G4 cube indefinitely. The company said there was a small chance it will reintroduce an upgraded model of a unique computer in the future, but there are no plans to do so at this time. And as we know, that never happened. What was the successor? Did they just kind of not do anything? I mean, they had the towers. Oh yeah, the, the Mac studio is the closest thing.

53:01People loved the towers. So what did it, did it, until they got the, the trash can Mac, the, like the, that Mac Pro, is that kind of the next thing that replaced it in however many years later? Yeah. They never came out with, um, like just that, you know, you could build the towers, really? Yeah. Right. That was it. And they still had the towers while this was going on, but they never stopped doing the, the Paramount G4 tower.

53:26Roman, did you try one? Did you ever have one? Um, I, it's funny because when it came out, I wasn't involved in like the review and stuff like that, but years later, because it's, it was, it's been sitting around the Mac world office. I, I never actually use it, but I've handled it a lot. I've actually, and I'll put this picture on the website, on our website. I, I wore it as a hat once. Great. And it, it was not, that was not a good idea.

53:56That was a bad idea. Cause it was very, it's heavy and it's hard on your neck and hard on the top of your head. So, but my head fit in, in the bottom of the case. So, uh, and I've, and I've actually taken pictures. Like when I reviewed the Mac studio, I forget when it first came out. I think I took pictures of the cube with the studio. Yeah. So I've never actually like really seriously used it. It's more, more of been like a prop, uh, than anything else.

54:30Yeah. I mean, I think that was the biggest problem with it was that it was marketed as a, as a, as a high end Mac and it wasn't really that. And it was, it was priced like a high end Mac as well. Yeah. And you know, it didn't deliver what professionals and power users needed. So it was kind of in between, like I liked it, but I wasn't, I didn't have the money to, to, to, to run out and buy it. And the people who did were like, well, I'm just going to buy a power Mac G4FQ because that's more of what I need. Yeah. They would want the tower, the tower you could spend, you could spend less and get more

55:03with the tower. Right. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So just to, uh, follow what Jason asked, uh, so the power Mac G4Q was replaced by the power Mac G5 tower. Yeah. Right. That's not really replacing. Yeah. Yeah. Whether it was replaced or not, I don't know. And yeah, I don't know if the G5 processor would have worked in the cube format anyways. So yeah. And then this was before Intel and then Intel happened and like, it would have. Right.

55:33Yeah. Right. But, um, it was, it was one of those rare Steve jobs swing and misses, but it was like before you dove into like what it could or couldn't do it, like just looking at the picture of it, it was like, Dan, that's cool. Uh, you know, I appreciate as much as I didn't like the G4 cube. I appreciate the, the, the thinking different and I appreciate that it took, they took a chance on it and that it, they, they tried something different. It's okay, Roman. You don't, you don't have to change your opinion of it now.

56:04Um, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of on Roman's side. I just, you know, but it was, it, it's one thing when they take a chance on something and it's, it's optional. Like there were other Macs, you could get the tower, you could get it. And if people, everyone loved it and it was great, they would sell a whole bunch and they