Apple’s RAMpocalypse, Data Centers Are Taking Over, Siri Failure Payoffs

0:00We didn't build it. We don't know who did. No, they were gone long before we ever got here. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. We're going to talk about Apple earnings this week. Is Apple Vision Pro dead? The RAM-pocalypse is affecting even more Macs like the Mac Studio, of course the Mac Mini. Everyone might get some money if they have an Apple Intelligence device because of the lawsuit. We actually have some data center news causing a kerfuffle. Claude made a deal with SpaceX, Mira Morati is testifying at the opening I. Musk trial, and a ton more.

0:30This episode is brought to you by NordLayer and CleanMyMac. And of course, all of you, the members who support us directly, one of your hosts, Stephen Robles. Joining us once again, developer Jason Aiton. How's it going, Jason? I'm grumpy, Stephen. Grumpy? Why grumpy? Because people keep calling me grumpy, and it's making me very grumpy. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't know, but the one way to make me feel grumpy is to call me grumpy, I guess. No, I'm fine. It's good. Yeah, yeah, it's good. No, no, I'm excited because, well, do you want to say, well, we want to say the status right now. Or do we want to wait? I mean, I did get my app reviewed once and rejected once.

1:01Everybody's got to get their app rejected once. I was just waiting for it. I would have actually been disappointed if it just sailed right through. I mean, nothing about it has sailed through. It's like every developer gets their wings when their app store gets rejected, right? I mean, at least once. I feel like that's probably true. So, I don't know. I've heard a lot of people talk about, like, the weird rejections. And it was very, like, it was good. I mean, the one rejection was useful. It's like I wouldn't actually want my app to have shipped with that particular problem. So, I'm glad. So, we're getting closer. I was really hoping I could be, like, it's available to people.

1:33Maybe you'll get the email while we record. You never know. And if I do, do I push it out immediately? Yes, you do. And it will be live on the show. Do you have any idea where that quote was from? It's a little bit obscure, but it's from my favorite movies. Okay. So, you told me it was from a movie. Yes. In my brain, I'm like, well, that was from Silo. That's 100% felt like Silo. It does, but no. So. This is from before 2000. This is from a sci-fi movie before the year 2000. What was that Amy Adams movie?

2:04No, it's not that one either. This is Jodie Foster. We don't know who did. They were gone long before we ever got here. It's Contact. Wait. What was the Amy Adams movie called that I'm thinking of? I have no idea. The Hulk? No. Sorry. That's. What was. What's I. Okay. Anyway, while you do that, let me do some five-star review shout outs. We have Game Man 114. Arrival. Sorry. What is it? Oh, Arrival. Yeah, but that was not before 2000. I know. I'm just saying Contact and Arrival in my brain are the same movie. So, that's why.

2:35Oh, my God. We can't even go there. We can't even go there. William would have some words. William Gallagher. He watches Arrival every year on Christmas, I think. He loves that movie. He loves it. I think it's a great movie. It's a great movie. It's a great movie. So, I got it wrong. Mark me down for being wrong. That was pretty obscure. It's a hard quote. Matthew McConaughey's in that movie, too. Contact. It's a good one. All right. Five-star review shout outs. Thank you for five stars. Game Man 114 from the USA. The Chris Chia from the USA stumbled upon us. We've been featured a lot in Apple Podcasts because we added video. And so, just maybe discovered us that way.

3:06Ashton McCance from the USA subscribed. Became a member. Very kind. Bob the Baldi. Fellow Baldi, maybe. From the UK. Not seen a double act of this caliber since Bert and Ernie. That's a high bar. I feel like that's high praise. Bert and Ernie. I think so. I think it is. But then the emoji makes me wonder. But that's okay. No, no, no. I think he was just laughing at his own joke. But anyway. Oh, hey. It's you from the USA. All five-star reviews. Thank you for those. And I want to give a shout out. We give shout outs to developers who make apps. We talked about Chess Peace last week.

3:36The listener listens. The developer listens to this show. And then John Gruber also featured him on DaringFireball.net for Chess Peace. P-E-A-C-E. But also, Ivan sent me an email. Listens to the show. And he made an app called BrewCard. It's actually a web app. BrewCard.app. Great domain grab there. This is something totally free. If you make coffee and stuff, you can design a card that is like your recipe for a specific kind of coffee. And you can download a P&G of that card if you want to share it maybe on social media.

4:08Or you can even share a link to it. And again, all this is free. You can download the stuff for free. Share it online for free. And if you make coffee, maybe you want to share your recipes. Or you have a coffee shop. And you want to be able to like post Instagram stories of your different drinks. It's just a free website. BrewCard.app. We'll link it in the show notes. Pretty cool. I like it. You actually, you took apart your whole coffee maker this past week, right? Because you broke it? Yeah. Apparently, you know, this actually happened one other time. But apparently, when you buy a bag of beans, there are other objects that could be in there that are the shape of a bean.

4:38But much more dense, like, you know, rocks. And my espresso machine passed a stone. Unfortunately, part of its guts did not survive. So I took the whole thing apart. And then I was like, well, this thing is like $1,000. And we use it four times a day. I think I'm going to just get the replacement parts and fix it. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. And I want us to do one other thing before we get to Apple earnings and Apple Vision Pro. We did get a shout out from Mr. Nilay Patel from The Verge Cast. I posted a clip of our Brendan Carr segment in last week's episode.

5:12And he and David Pierce, they were nice enough to reshare it. And so the B-C-I-A-D-C-U, the Brendan Carr is a Dummy Cinematic Universe, is expanding. I think it's podcast universe, but close enough. You know, podcast universe. The Brendan Carr is a Dummy P-U. There you go. Perfect. That's perfect. That's how this should work. That's it. All right. So Apple had their earnings right after last week's episode published. And, oh, can I just, I'm sorry, one piece of housekeeping. Because we've had a lot of people supporting the show, which we really appreciate.

5:44And there is some, just a bit of clarity. Unfortunately, in Apple Podcasts, if you subscribe to the show, there is no video. Because Apple Podcasts does not have video for subscribers. So don't subscribe for like video without ads. I'm sorry. That's not a thing that exists because Apple doesn't make that possible. And also remember, if you're watching and you really miss chapters, there's timestamps in the description in Apple Podcasts that you can tap and jump to a chapter. If you listen with any other app like Pocket Cast, Overcast, there are chapters like normal,

6:18even for the free version. So I just want to point that out there. Because we have people supporting the show and they're like, hey, I signed up. Where can I get the video? I'm sorry. And we have people who are super mad that we're apparently gatekeeping chapters, which is just not a thing. No one in the universe loves chapters more than Steven. If he could give them to you, he would just mail them to you with a t-shirt and a pin. Like it's like, without question, I'm giving him ideas. You're giving him ideas. We need a shirt with chapters. Oh my. I'll write it down. Don't worry. I've got to pause the show.

6:49Hold on. Yeah, write it down. Thank you. I got it. Shirt with chapters. Can I be honest, Jason? I've never gotten a tattoo in my life. Okay. But. On your butt? You have no tattoos? No, no, no, no, no, no. But, but I keep seeing the polar bear, the medieval knight riding the polar bear and like our unofficial logo. And I'm like, if I ever were to get a tattoo, I feel like this would probably be it. Can I ask you a personal question? I don't have any tattoos if that's the question. I was just curious. I was just curious. Just curious.

7:19And if I ever get a tattoo, it'll probably be, no, I'm not going to get a tattoo. We can get matching medieval knights riding a polar bear. That's not going to happen. I won't even wear my Vision Pro on an airplane. I'm not getting a tattoo of that. And you're going to be riding like 18 airplanes in the next two months, Jason. I might take it. We'll see. Please. You say that every time. Actually take it. Take the Vision Pro. I travel really light, to be fair. That's the part of the reason why. The Vision Pro is very light, Jason. It barely weighs anything. Yes, but it takes up like this much space.

7:50It takes up a lot of space. Too much space. All right. We're going to talk about Apple Vision Pro in a second. But first, Apple Earnings came out after last week. It was their second, a record second quarter earnings for Apple, $111.2 billion in revenue. So again, best second quarter ever. iPhone, still 51% of Apple's revenue. You can see I'm going to link Six Colors article with Jason Snell. They'll have all the pretty graphs talking about where the revenue and profit is. You can see gross margin going up. You can also see services revenue on that upward trajectory.

8:22Not a hockey stick, but it is going up every quarter. And of course, the products and services. And there's one product really setting apart these quarters from past years, which is the iPhone 17 Pro. That's like a big one. Yeah. I mean, it's like the most popular iPhone ever. And it's, you know, it's, I guess it's the orange. I mean, I didn't love it. I didn't love the orange. Although, do I have a water bottle that's basically the same orange? And that's fine. Oh, interesting. But yeah, it was a big deal. John Ternus made an appearance his first time on a earnings call.

8:53And he's basically like, hang on, BRB, just chill, you know, get to September or whatever. I'm not official yet. I don't think this will be the last earnings call because I think the next call will be Tim Cook's last one. Yeah. And so, but yeah, everything is going up. That's a good thing. There was a couple interesting things. One, you know, they, they basically were, I think the reason Ternus was there is to give people who care about the stock, like a little bit of assurance. Like, hey, here's the guy. Meet the new guy.

9:23He'll be back. He just wants you to get a feel for him. See, everything is going to be basically the same. It's like Tim and Tim extended version, Tim plus Max, whatever. Tim plus Max. So we just want you to know what's coming down the pike and things aren't going to change a ton, except there are a couple of things. One is like, it sounds like they're going to start holding on to cash again. There was a period of time when Apple had like more cash than all of the world's governments or something like that. It was ridiculous. Now that's, now that's Berkshire Hathaway, which literally has $300 billion of cash sitting in a pile somewhere in Warren Buffett's backyard, I guess.

9:54Sheesh. Don't go to Omaha looking for it. It's not there. Anyway, but he, they would basically, they started giving all the cash back to the shareholders doing buybacks and dividends and stuff. And they've said, we're going to continue to do the dividends and buybacks, but we are going to start holding on to cash a little bit more in excess of the amount of our debt because, well, really, they're like probably pretty bummed they couldn't buy Anthropic when they wanted to. Like, because they just didn't have that much cash sitting around. Actually, Apple didn't need the cash to buy Anthropic. Let's be honest. There's a lot of ways they can do this. But I think that John Turnus probably wants the flexibility for that.

10:28And then the other thing that was interesting is they talked about the tariffs. And basically, Apple said, if we get money back for the tariffs, we will spend it. We will add it to our investment in the U.S., which is actually a brilliant way of saying this because they're able to address Wall Street, who cares very much about Apple getting money back. Right. And Apple didn't pass the cost of tariffs on to consumers. Right. They didn't raise price specifically because of tariffs. It just got harder to get stuff. Right. And so they don't have to give refunds to people if that happens.

10:59But they're like, if we get the money back, we're just going to add it on to our RD, which is which is fine. Right. Like they're going to just can make it just makes them look very good. So if anyone is wondering what Apple is going to do if they get a bunch of money back for tariffs, you're not they're not sending us checks. We'll talk about the check. They might send you later, but it's not because of tariffs. And that's right. So anyway. No, that's good. And I wanted to I wanted to share this chart. This is from M.G. Siegler, his website, spyglass.org. And it's showing the capital expenditure of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta and capital expenditure is things not directly related to like products.

11:38So it might be a data center. They might be investing in R&D like for Apple. That could have been the car project, things like that. And as you can see this chart, but if you're listening, I'll put this as the chapter art so you could kind of see it. Every company, once AI started going big around 2022, every company ramped up their spending for capital expenditure except Apple. And you could just see the bar graphs going way up for all the other companies. And Apple actually spent less on capital expenditure this year than last year.

12:13And it's just Apple's not about that, which you could say maybe if they had spent a little more, Apple intelligence might be a little better. But I don't know. You know, I don't know what amount of money you throw at a thing makes it better per se. I mean, it's that you got the graph right there. The amount of money you have to throw at this thing to make it better is so far beyond what Apple would be willing to do. And Apple can't go from spending $11 billion to what Amazon said, $200 billion. Like, you can't. Like, seriously, do you know what that would have done to the stock if Apple had automatically done that? Even if they're like, well, we promise it's going to pay off 12 years into the future or whatever.

12:47No, there's just no way that they could do that. And I mean, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if Apple, it's hard to say if Apple's behind or if Apple's really, really smart and just letting everybody else, you know, spend all this money. And if this is a bubble that bursts, all that money they're going to have that they didn't spend on those things, they're going to just start buying them up. Like, it'll be, it's like the perfect play. It'll just be a flash sale. And there were rumors this past week that, you know, in iOS 27, the voice assistant, you'll be able to choose from ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, that all three of those extensions might be available just built into iOS 27.

13:23We know that they have a deal with Gemini, that that will be coming, that deal, it might be that Gemini is like on private cloud computer or whatever, and part of the models of Gemini, or it's not exactly Gemini. It's like an Apple flavor Gemini, and Apple's going to do some sauce to it or whatever. But they all might also put Claude in there. And like, honestly, that'd be pretty sweet. I mean, Xcode already has ChatGPT or Claude. And you can literally just log in with your account. You can have Claude agent running in Xcode. And it'd be nice to see that in iOS 27.

13:54So we'll see. Don't you think, though, the promise, though, here, like the approach for Apple in the best case scenario is that you just never have to think about it? Like, I don't know that they want an AI assistant with a ton of little fiddly knobs and you have to decide who you're providing, like all that kind of stuff. And as someone who has been thinking very hard about, like, how you build this into an app, like, it gets very complicated if you're like, well, you have to log into your account for this thing. Or if you get a different experience, if you don't have this account. Or what if the assistant, like, they just need Siri to be good.

14:25And however they do that is fine. And you shouldn't ever have to think about it. Yeah, but I think they could also do both. Kind of how they do now. Where you can ask the voice assistant. Hold on. I hope they do nothing kind of like they do now when it comes to this. Well, no. What I'm going to say is you can ask the voice assistant. And it will figure out whether it can handle it. Spoiler. It can't. And give it over to ChatGPT. Or just do the thing. And so maybe once they, you know, put Gemini and whatever server is that powering the voice assistant, it just can do the things at the first request.

14:55But then also, in the little fiddly Apple Intelligence Settings pane, where most people won't go, but those of us who want it, you can have, like, the Claw, ChatGPT, and Gemini sign-ins if you want to have that. And then, maybe, in shortcuts, there'll be some actions where you can choose whatever model you want, and that can be the fiddly part. And Apple doesn't have to – most people don't have to know about that. They can just watch my videos on YouTube, and I'll explain it to them. Perfect. You know what I mean? Perfect. All right. So, Vision Pro.

15:25There was this article that came out, again, after last week's show from MacRumors, claiming that Apple has given up on the Vision Pro after the M5 refresh flop. Given up are some strong words. And it was not a super long article, nor was it directly sourced. It was just saying that, apparently, Apple has stopped working on the Vision Pro, and the Vision Pro team has been redistributed to other teams within Apple. And so, the MacRumors article was making it seem like, whoa, they just broke up the team, and, like, it's dead?

15:56Like, dead on arrival or on whatever? And so, it felt weird. It also felt very final with not having much sourcing. And we haven't heard something like this from Gurman, specifically. But then John Gruber wrote out to Daring Fireball, like, probably not. Like, the Vision Pro team was already split off into, like, the Vision product group and another technology development group. And so, saying the Vision Pro team was just kind of, like, broken up and put other places, it's like, well, they were split up into similar groups, still about Vision and maybe AR, VR-type devices.

16:33And, as far as John Gruber knows from his contacts, that they are still working on Vision devices. It just might not be the Vision Pro that we know it today. And so, Gruber was saying they are still working on immersive-style devices where it would be full-on headsets. Maybe it's cheaper headsets. Maybe it's something just very different from the Vision Pro we see today. And also, maybe, like, AR glasses and things like that. So, I don't think the Vision Pro is dead, as much as that MacRumors article seemed to imply.

17:03It's just going to be different. Yeah, this just sort of feels like someone got reassigned and told someone else about they got reassigned and that person told someone. And they're like, oh, my gosh, everyone from the team is leaving and there's no more Vision Pro. It's like, there's a lot of leaps and assumptions you have to make just from one piece of information. And even in the MacRumors article, I feel like they made, and I think Gruber points this out, it's like, they made, apparently stopped work on the Vision Pro and the team has been redistributed to other teams within Apple. Apparently stopped work.

17:34Like, there's no report that that's actually happened other than Mike Rockwell has been moved to a different team. Like, whatever, right? And so, I don't know. I just think that it's, I also think it doesn't really matter because I think we've already reached the point where the Vision Pro, Vision Pro was not going to be the next platform of computing. Like, it's fine. Like, even if AI had not come around, I just don't think this was going to be the thing. But I think that, I think it's probably entirely true that the people who were working on headset might not be working on glasses or something else.

18:07But I think we knew that was always going to be, like, the Vision Pro was always meant to be filling a gap between your phone and whatever the long-term thing was going to be. Yeah, and I think it's also clear the Vision Pro is not selling, like, hotcakes, as they say. You know, it is not a high-selling device. But they're not, like, totally doing away with any kind of Vision device development. Sure. That's basically what I'm saying. So, anyway, yeah, that felt a little weird. I don't think Vision Pro is dead yet. Do you still use it pretty often?

18:37All the time. Really? Yeah, I was trying to figure out how to make a Vision Pro app for my app. I'm probably not going to. Yeah, I was going to say. But I think I might try to make a Vision Pro app. We'll see. I might, maybe I could, I think my app would lend itself to Vision Pro. We'll talk about it. Anyway. Anyway. The RAM-pocalypse is coming for all. And it has now come from Mac Studio. If you were trying to get a Mac Studio with a ton of RAM, the M3 Ultra now only has the 96 gigabyte of RAM configuration.

19:09You used to be able to get it up to, like, the 512 gigabyte. There was the 256. They're all gone. And now you can only have, there's only one RAM configuration. This is the shortage. This is because TSMC is making all the stuff for NVIDIA. And we're going to talk about data centers in a little bit, which sounds boring. But it's actually going to be a pretty wild segment. But, I mean, this is the RAM-pocalypse. It's coming. And, you know, there was also the news. I think it came after last week's episode. But, like, the base Mac Mini is no longer available.

19:40So, like, if you go to apple.com slash Mac, there used to be a 599 Mac Mini option. And that option no longer exists. I was curious if they changed, actually, this main page on the website. Yeah, now it says from 799. And that used to say from 599 because the lowest RAM you can get is, or the lowest memory. Storage, right. Storage, I'm sorry. That's what it was. It used to come with 256 gigabytes of SSD storage standard. Now the base is 512. But on the Mac Studio, let's see.

20:12There was one Mac Studio on, like, B&H with, like, all the RAM. And it was, like, 14 grand. And I don't know why, but I was tempted to get it. But I did not get it. Because that would have been absolutely insane. Go really good with that video streaming device you have. Exactly. So if you get an M3 Ultra, there is one memory option. That looks crazy on this site. This is Apple Store page. If you go with the M4 Max, you only get 64 or 96 gigabytes of RAM.

20:43That's it. That's all you get. Oh, man. Can I be honest? I mean, I was not some kind of, like, futurist when I bought my Mac Studio. But now I'm kind of glad I got my Mac Studio when I did. Because I got the 128 gigabyte RAM version. So I have more RAM than you can buy new now. That's crazy. Do we think that this is going to continue? So, like, when they do? Well, two questions. Yes. Do we think that there's M5 versions of these two devices coming soon? That's the first question. Second question, when those devices come, do you think that there will still be a long delay to get things?

21:17So is this A, we just aren't going to continue making M4 things until we only have certain configurations left? We're only going to sell those. And it's not cost effective. And reducing them or lopping off the bottom means that, you know, because the difference is, what, $200? But it does not cost Apple $200 to stick $512 instead of $256. So they're just increasing their margin on what they have left. They just want to only sell things that are going to make them more money. And actually, they're not going to sell it to you. They will take your money, and then you'll get an M5 when they'll ship. Like, you're never going to get an M4 Pro Mac Mini at this point.

21:50So do we think they're coming soon? And do we think that there will be long delays once the M5? Because the other M5 devices, like the MacBook Pros, seem to be shipping fine. That is true. So one of the things, we didn't mention it, but on the earnings call, Tim Cook did talk about the memory crunch because he was asked about it. And I'll put this link to the CNBC article. But he said that we'll continue to evaluate this because we, this was Tim Cook saying, quote, we believe memory costs will drive an increasing impact on our business.

22:23Seems like going forward, it will have an impact. I think two things. I don't, I think if they launch an M5 Mac Studio and or Mac Mini, they want to offer it with as many configurations as they can. And it seems like right now in this moment that that's not feasible. Like, I don't think they would have raised the Mac Mini price unless they had to. And I understand it's not raising the price. It was eliminating the base configuration. But, and there's also a demand part of this.

22:55Like, everyone is wanting a Mac Mini and or Mac Studio to run their AI agents and stuff. So it is kind of this, like, dual pressure. There is the RAM-pocalypse. And there is people wanting a bunch of Mac Minis to run Claude Cowork or whatever and Claude Code. I think they are going to figure it out and then launch. So while an M5 might be ready now, I think the RAM thing is going to, they're going to wait. Like, I don't even think at WWDC we're going to hear about an M5 Mac Studio or Mac Mini.

23:27It'd be nice because I know a lot of people like David Sparks of Mac, oh, here's my host. He's, he's wanting to buy a new Mac Studio and he's waiting to see what happens. I think it'll be the fall. I think October, November, they'll announce the M5. It'll be longer than they would have wanted to. But hopefully by then, there'll be all the RAM options and people can get either 512 gigabytes of memory in their new Mac Studio if they want it. Because they don't, I don't think Apple wants to release an M5 Max, an M5 Ultra Mac Studio and then only offer 96 gigs of RAM.

23:58No, but you can get all the configurations in a MacBook Pro right now. And you can get 128 gigs in a MacBook Pro with an M5 Max right now. And those are available. And you can actually walk into an Apple store and buy several, I just was checking, several configurations. All of the base configurations of the M5, the M5 Pro and the M5 Max are available to be delivered tomorrow. So like it is not a shortage across the line. It is an M4 specific shortage, which, and it's not even a RAM shortage because you can get a MacBook Pro with more memory than you can get on a Mac Studio. So I think that this is as much an end of life M4.

24:31They're phasing all the M4s out. They don't, it is too costly right now to get TSMC to be fabbing these chips that have the large amounts of memory on them because it's hard to get. So it's more expensive. But I just think it's also like Apple's never going to say, yeah, we're actually not going to ever ship these devices anymore because we're about to release new ones. And I know there have been some rumors that the new ones might come in, might not come until the fall. But I don't think it's tenable for Apple to continue with this happening. Also, Apple doesn't want to just not take people's money.

25:02Yeah. They want to take your money. And the M5 seems to be available much more readily. Now, there are a couple of configurations of the MacBook Pro that are like two to three weeks delivery time. Which is not bad. But you're going to get it in two to three weeks. It's not like they're going to not ship it to you. Could that also be, though? So the MacBook M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro, those were available in March. So about two months ago, they were available to purchase. Because wouldn't, I mean, Apple probably built many of those configurations or had the chips in hand before that.

25:34So couldn't it be like they're still able to sell the chips and MacBook Pros they had as they were like leading up to the launch? Whereas they couldn't do that kind of preparatory work for a new Mac Studio Mac Mini? Because like if you order an M5 Max MacBook Pro right now, it's not like they're going to start building it in the factory tomorrow. Like that computer is probably already configured. It just has to like get over here. They don't carry much inventory. I mean, that's the whole Tim Cook thing.

26:06Okay. I mean, they have inventory of like circuit boards and stuff. And I think they get a stuff. I don't understand all the intricacies of it. But Apple's whole thing is like zero inventory. They don't carry inventory. The true test is you can get basically every configuration you can possibly imagine from B&H of a MacBook Pro right now. And they're all in stock there, which tells you they have easy access to all of these things. And so all I'm trying to say is I don't think there's something unique about the Mac Mini and the Mac Studio, except that they're still on the M4 and in some cases M3 generation chips.

26:39And those are just no longer being made. They're no longer really available. I guess there's the iMac. What's the availability on an iMac? That's a good question. I think you can get any configuration of an iMac too. But it's also the amounts of RAM because you can get a 96 gigabyte RAM Mac Studio right now. Well, you can't. You can order it. You can order it. But you're never going to get it. But it's the 128, 256, 512, those much higher, which are not available on the MacBook Pro. I think the most you can get on the MacBook Pro is the 256, 512.

27:11They want to probably offer those tiers because once that M5 Mac Studio goes on sale, they want to be able to sell like the most expensive model. And maybe there's an issue with that. I don't know. That's some spanking. I just think it has more to do because you can buy an iMac maxed out right now and it'll come next week. And that's an M4 based thing. So I think it is just a function. I'm not saying the RAM shortage doesn't have anything to do with it. What I'm saying is it's a specific RAM shortage on chips that are basically end of life. Not end of life, but like terming out of the cycle. And I feel like that's probably the thing here.

27:43And you can probably and you can get an iPad M5 iPad Pro probably like tomorrow. Absolutely. You can probably go get it today. Just go to Best Buy. Yeah, just go to Best Buy. That's all it is. All right. And speaking of money, though, that you might get from Apple. Speaking of money. Apple Intelligence. So there was a class action lawsuit where it was basically a false advertising type lawsuit because once the iPhone 16 launch, Apple really pushed Apple Intelligence super hard. So much so that they had put up videos on their YouTube channel with Bella Ramsey talking about Apple Intelligence features, took some of those videos down, specifically the personalized Siri type ones.

28:18And now this class action lawsuit, Apple has settled with $250 million saying that if you bought devices in the period where they were advertising, this would be between June 10, 2024 and March 29, 2025. Those devices would have been the 15 Pro and Pro Max and the entire 16 lineup. If you bought any of those devices, you might be eligible. This is like one of those like medication commercials, like you might be eligible for a pad.

28:48You might get money from Apple. The payout will be $25 per eligible device. The maximum payout might be 95, but it depends how many people file claims and want money from the device that they bought. So the more people want to make this claim, the less money everyone will get. But yeah, Apple's going to have to pay out for false advertising for Apple Intelligence. And there's like two features specifically that was under this heading. And basically the personalized Siri was the big one because there was actually videos on that, like on Apple's YouTube channel.

29:22There were commercials run on TV for that personalized Siri and they're going to have to pay $250 million. They're paying nothing, Steven. It's not that much. Yeah, I know it's not that much. Tim Cook could literally just write this off of his taxes personally. Like this is so nothing. Also, this paragraph is, the editor in me is dying here. I'm sorry. Who wrote this 9 to 5 Mac article? It was Chance. It was Chance Miller. Listen, Chance, I think you're amazing. And I don't think this is your fault because I think this is the way it's been explained.

29:53The payout will be $25. But that number could vary. If a large number of people, it might be lower. Or the maximum is $95. Then what is the, no one knows. I don't know. What does the $25 even mean? It's like Schrodinger's payout. Anything from $1 to $95 is what we're basically saying. Again, this is not Chance's fault. But I'm just like, and the $250 million settlement includes attorney's fees. This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Like no one bought one of those devices just because of the promises of Apple intelligence.

30:23Literally zero people should be getting this money. And if you, I mean, whatever, get your money. It's fine. It's fine. But it is so dumb because this is actually costing Apple nothing. It is just a way for a bunch of, somebody saw those ads and was like, I'm buying another house. I'm super buying another house because I'm going to find a bunch of people and I'm going to start a class action lawsuit. And I just think this whole thing is so dumb. The lawyers are basically going to make more money than any individual. Absolutely. They'll get a third of that. Right. Right. Exactly. So the lawyers found a way to make a bag.

30:55And then, you know. And Apple's like, whatever. For this amount of money, will you just go away? We know Siri sucks. Because it sucks way more than $250 million bad. Like, come on. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Do you, are you going to file the claim? Are you going to get your $95 to $25? I'm sure my wife will be like, you're filing the claim, honey. Really? Because she's using the 16 Pro right now and she's really real mad about the Apple. No, I'm just kidding. I was going to say, is she really? She doesn't even know that Apple intelligence is a thing that exists in the world.

31:26That's hilarious. All right. We need to talk about some data centers. Because I keep, there have been some wild videos on social media about data center in Utah and people protesting that. Then there's the data center in Tennessee that a friend, Stephen Hackett, is writing about. And Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank fame. I don't know if it was his first day on the internet, but he did not have a good video. So we're going to talk about all that. But before we do, we're going to thank our sponsors. The first one, CleanMyMac. I've been running CleanMyMac on my MacBook Air and it has been great.

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35:12A lot of them are Snazzy Labs, who I believe Quinn Nelson lives in Utah. And there is a massive data center that's going to be built in Utah. I'll link the Axios article, which does not seem to be behind a paywall, which is nice. You can just read about it. But this data center is going to use twice as much energy as the entire state has been using. Okay? And there is much consternation because, one, it's going to take up a huge amount of space or whatever.

35:44But the way this is going to be powered has been very contentious. There's been, like, videos on X. And I'll actually link a couple posts that Quinn Nelson has been, like, commenting under. But they were going to vote. The commissioners were going to vote on this data center this past Monday. And they had to delay it because just massive protests, people shouting down these meetings. And one of the biggest issues is the investors and those wanting to build the data center are saying it's going to be powered by different kinds of energy.

36:15It's going to be wind and solar. And it's going to be cleaner-ish energy. And even Kevin O'Leary, which we'll get to in a second, who's, I guess, an investor in this data center, is talking about how it's going to be clean energy. But there's been several sources that say 100% of the power will come from natural gas. And so that is going to create emissions. And, again, using more power than the entire state of Utah. Like, the equivalent is, I forget, I can't find the number exactly.

36:48Oh, Utah's annual average consumption is 4 gigawatts. And at full capacity, this data center will reach 9 gigawatts of power. So more than double the amount of power that the entire state uses. And so Kevin O'Leary, he was like, if you're not familiar, he's Mr. Wonderful, quote, unquote, on Shark Tank. And he posted this video on X. This is, again, it feels very tone-deaf. But he starts by saying, quote, this is his tweet, I'm the only developer of data centers on Earth that graduated from environmental studies.

37:24I'm pretty aware of what these concerns are. They are around air, water use, heat, noise pollution, and yada, yada. And then he has this long video. It's like a minute, almost two minutes long. I don't know if he had no coaching or if he just didn't care. The whole video is weird because he's sitting in a car looking, like, off camera. Like, not once does he look at the camera. He's just, like, seemingly talking to the driver, I guess. And he's basically saying how everyone's making a big deal about this, but nobody knows what they're talking about. The reader context, there's, like, multiple links to the Axios article

37:55and others talking about how what he's saying is not right, and Quinn Nelson's right there underneath it. This feels like, one, an inflection point of companies and the need of the infrastructure to support all the AI usage is now hitting, like, real people, and people are not happy about it. And they are protesting, and they're like, we don't want this massive data center in our state probably affecting water sources and pollution and all of that.

38:29And you have the one side, Kevin O'Leary, saying, like, I just don't know what to talk about. He's the only one on Earth. Maybe he is the only one on Earth that's graduated from environmental studies. I also don't think he's, like, a developer of data centers. Like, that's a, I don't know. Also, what does that mean? He graduated from environmental studies. They did an environmental study on him, and he made it out. Like, I don't even know what that means. Is that what his degree is in? Like, what does it mean to say you graduated from environmental studies? He graduated from college with a degree in, I don't know.

39:00Steven, this is not going to happen. This is what you do so you can raise a bunch of money to build a big data center, because this is the thing right now that everyone is talking about. But we don't need a trillion dollars of data centers right this moment, right? And how much solar do you think it will take to power this data center? Too much. The entire state of Utah would have to be covered in solar panels to power a nine gigawatt data center. Like, I don't understand this, Steven. Yeah, and this was the, I'll put a link to this X post.

39:33It's a video, and it's actually showing, like, the meeting, and just people yelling. It's got, like, 10 million views here on X. It's two and a half times the size of Manhattan, 40,000 acres. That's how this big, this massive data center would be. And Kevin O'Leary also claimed in his video that they were busing people in for these meetings to try and make a stink about it, which is something we have heard of in the past of, like, I don't know, trying to whatever. But there's a ton of people also here on X being like,

40:04no, we've not been bused in. Like, I live here. Here's a picture from, like, my house. And, like, we don't want this data center. And this is also why you hear, like, CEOs and people talking about data centers in space or whatever is so that they can do whatever. There's no protesters there.

40:22No one's protesting the space data center. But just insane. Just insane. And so that's that data center in Utah. You're saying you don't think it's going to happen. You think this is going to be voted down. I mean, do you think that OpenAI is building $3 trillion with the data centers or whatever insane number they said that they're going to do? No. You say these things, like, what's his name? Mr. Wonderful. He doesn't. Kevin O'Leary. He doesn't have the whatever $12 billion. I don't even know what this thing's going to cost. He doesn't have that money. I mean, the guy's got a lot of money,

40:54but he doesn't have that kind of money. So he's raising money for this. This is not about data centers. It's just a business. It is literally an opportunity to seize the moment. He has enough capital and enough credibility that he can get other people involved, put a bunch of money together to start a project. But by the time something actually gets built, it's not going to be this. That doesn't mean that the people shouldn't be protesting if that's how they feel. I personally don't think that we need massive data centers everywhere. I just don't think that's the quality of life that any of us wants. But I think it's Neelai that talks about software brain, right?

41:27This is a perfect example of that. People in Utah would much rather go outdoors and see Utah than to go outdoors and see data centers everywhere, right? And it's like we don't want to live on ChatGPT or Claude. Like it's really useful, but I would rather be able to go outside. And someday, you know, I've been to Utah a couple times. Someday it's like fun to go outdoors and see things. It's like, yes, it is good to go outside. And so I think that people are like, yeah,

41:58like you're so AI pilled that you think a better use of this land is to build a massive data center two and a half times the size of, I guess that's the entire facility. I don't think that's the building itself, but like two and a half times the size of Manhattan. Like it is such a weird dichotomy of like people who don't live in the real world, but can just say things and get people to give money towards something because right now that seems okay or like seems like the hot new thing. But this, I mean, Stephen,

42:29we haven't talked about it in a while, but I mean, this kind of feels like a bubble.

42:34Well, that, yeah. A 40,000 acre bubble. So, okay. Well, we're going to talk about the second data center too and maybe that lends itself to it. I do want to mention one other thing. The physicist Robert Davies from Utah State University, he did say a natural gas powered data center of this size would raise Utah's current total like greenhouse gas production by about 50%. Whether you feel like that's bad or not, like that's a significant difference. Like one data center in the state. So that's the Utah data center. And again, like if you watch the videos,

43:05like these people, they feel very strongly about it. As you would, like if you lived in that town and they're about to build it, I totally get it. Then there was another deal. This was announced by Anthropic. They phrased it or pitched it as like higher usage limits for Claude. Like they're going to raise the usage limits if you're on the Pro or the Max plan. They're going to take away some of the peak time limitations because of a compute deal with SpaceX. And the crux of this is XAI was building a data center in Tennessee

43:37and it was going to be a massive data center. XAI is calling it Colossus One or SpaceX. This is, sorry, another thing. Elon Musk, he's saying SpaceX and XAI are not going to be two different things or XAI is not going to be a separate thing anymore. It's just SpaceX AI. It's just one word, one company. Okay, cool. So they were planning, XAI was planning on building this data center in Memphis. Colossus One, which I do have to give them credit.

44:07The Colossus is like a cool name, like for anything. I mean, I don't know if it's cool to call a data center that, but it's one of my favorite X-Men. I'll just say that. Anyway, this is going to be the, it's going to feature over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs. You know how much money just the GPUs would cost? I don't know, but this is why you can't buy a Mac Mini right now. This is why you can't buy a Mac Mini or Mac Studio. So Stephen Hackett has written about this, and I will link his article.

44:38But this massive data center, it was being built by XAI, Colossus One. But guess what? They don't need it because they don't have use for it. XAI is not that demanding of all the data. And so they are licensing it to Anthropic, and Anthropic will use this entire data center. So Claude is going to be, this is why they'll be able to raise the limits. And this is a facility, I believe, that's already built, correct? And Colossus Two is up and running, and Musk says XAI no longer needs the first site. So it's like this is a data center that's already built,

45:11and this is happening now. And, I mean, Stephen Hackett, he lives in Tennessee. And, yeah, he has covered this data center as well. It's not super great. Yeah. There's so many different things here you could spend a lot of time thinking about. We won't spend any time on really any of them. But the most interesting thing is, like, they built a data center and they can't use it because no one's using XAI. No one's using GROC. And so we're actually going to just say it's the AI from SpaceX, which what part of launching a rocket into space

45:43in satellites is AI exactly? I don't fully understand how that all works still. Again, was it in the pre-show we were talking about the pockets? Because this is just more pockets, Stephen. It's more pockets. Yeah, it's just moving money around to different pockets. Like, I don't have any money in this pocket, but I have a bunch of money in this other one, and I need some over here, so I'm just going to move it around. Like, I don't know. Yeah. I don't – hopefully our entire landscape doesn't become data centers. That's all. Let's not do that. And I know, you know, the U.S. has a lot of land. I mean, I understand that. I've driven through some of those middle states, but we also don't need to have huge states.

46:13Listen, we don't like to be talked about as the middle states. Can I just say, I saw a map of someone, like, showing, like, what the Midwest is, and, like, the states that are claimed to be Midwest, and how many are neither west of the center line nor, like, south. It's just, like, I don't know. Yeah, the Midwest. We live in the Midwest, but really we're just slightly west of the East Coast. It's fine, but I just think that – I just feel like you call us the middle states.

46:44There's this famous, like, west wing quote where he's, like, something – he's, like, I don't know how we're going to reach the flyover states, and the other guy's, like, well, you could start by not calling them the flyover states. Right, exactly. Listen, everything west of New York is the Midwest, because I grew up in New York. No, I'm just kidding. If I made you mad, I'm sorry. That was a joke. I'm not mad. Pennsylvania is not the Midwest, though. Yeah, Pennsylvania is not the Midwest. But isn't, like, Ohio is the Midwest? Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri. Not even close to being the west side of the United States.

47:14But the west is, like – it is sort of – well, we're not. We don't have time. Anyway, leave us a five-star rating and review. Let us know. Where does the Midwest start? What state starts the Midwest? All right, the OpenAI-Musk trial is still going on, and Mira Morati took the stand. She was the – she is the former – or was the former CEO of OpenAI. She was super briefly the CEO. She was CEO for, like, five minutes. They needed a CEO because they booted Sam Altman, and so they needed a CEO, and she became CEO, and then he came back, and then shortly later she left.

47:45Yeah, so she was super quick. But – and some of the rumors swirling around that departure of Mira Morati was like, is Sam Altman not a good dude? And so on the stand, Morati testified that Altman falsely stated that OpenAI's legal department determined a new AI model did not need to go through the company's deployment safety board. And so they asked Mira Morati, as you understand it, was Mr. Altman telling the truth when he made that statement to you? And Morati answered in the deposition, no. So she just made it clear that Sam Altman lied about some of the safety measures

48:17that they were supposedly taking when they were putting these models. And remember, this case, this is Elon Musk trying to make Sam Altman look like a really bad dude, and then it's Sam Altman trying to make Elon Musk look like a really bad dude, so neither of them have to, like, give up anything or pay any money.