Upgrade - 611: Drain the Bin

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

From relay, this is Upgrade, episode 611 for April 13th, 2026. Today's show is brought to you by Century FitBard Express VPN and Mercury Weather. My name is Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow. Hello, Mike Hurley. I have a Snow talk question for you and it comes from Darren who wants to know. As is well-known, Jason is a fast typist. But how fast.

It's what I'm known for. You are. primarily known for that. How fast? What is your word per minute? How did you learn to type? Did you do a class, games, or did you practice at home? With some kind of transferred or similar skill like piano, or does it just come naturally? Oh, so I told, I've told this story a lot, but that's okay. How fast? So you found us doing a typing test live, right? Yes. And I put a link in the show notes, which should be timestamped, to me and you, racing each other, even though I knew it was pointless to do so, and you clocked in 140 words per minute, which was the fastest time,

the fastest or like the highest amount that you clocked in in this video. We did a few of these, and 140 was your highest. Yeah, I'm all over the place. I usually quote 120, but I can get up to 140. Yeah, that was on like monkey type or something. so fast. How did I learn it? It's funny because we're talking about our origin stories and all those things.

I learned to type on a computer, not on a typewriter, and I did it because the first computer I had, you know, back in those days you had basic, and there were magazines, computer magazines, and I had one of them, I got one called Compute Magazine. And they would put basic programs in the magazine. for you to type in. And if you can imagine how that works,

you very quickly learn how to use your eyes to look at the page with the program on it and type with your hands, not looking at what you're typing. So you learned to touch type. This is how I learned it because I wanted to enter in those programs. And the most efficient way to do it was you get faster and faster,

but you're also not looking at your fingers. You're not hunting and pecking. And those things all put together leads to me typing fast. And then it just kind of accelerated. But it was always, I was typing fast pretty early because, you know, I started using a computer in what? Fifth grade when I was 10? So like pretty early.

And I needed to be able to type that type stuff in like that. And a lot of them also I'm really good or I used to be good. I don't even use them anymore. at the numeric keypad because those, a lot of those, those programs had data entry fields at the end where they had a bunch of data that, you know, these days you'd probably just load it off a disc, but in those days it was, the data was in the program. And so you'd have all these strings of numbers comma delimited.

And so I really got good at like, didlil-l-l-d-l-dil-d-lid. Like all of the little numbers. That's it. I mean, that was, for me, perfect bootcamp for learning to type fast. Now, I taught myself. So my, I think we did this at some point too. If you look at my hands on the keyboard, it's clearly self-taught. I am not using the traditional home position or whatever.

I have found whatever works for me to be most efficient. Yeah. In the video that I've linked, you do actually show your hands while you're typing, and you can see that you have a non-traditional method. Shocker. Like me. A non-traditional method, self-taught. Yeah, so that's the, that's the story.

It's not games. It's not practice other than entering, it's home practice in the sense of the practice of typing in computer programs from magazines. I would say number one on the list. And then over time, when I started writing essays for school and stuff like that or writing short stories or whatever it was, then you've got more and more reasons for that. And then you go online and then you're chatting with people.

And so you're typing really fast for that. And it just kind of like snowballed from there. I think it's funny because I complained to my piano teacher when I was a kid about how I felt like I couldn't do the piano because I struggled to like get the finger placements and all of that. And I think about it now and I'm like, what, I mean, that's not true. You just didn't like doing the piano because if we know anything, we know that my fingers are pretty good at, at putting, pushing keys down. Like, come on. I probably would have been pretty good at that if I had cared about it, but as a 14 year old or whatever, I didn't like do it. it. And so that was an excuse that I had, but it was very clear that that was not the case. So yeah,

that's my that's my story. And as somebody who is a writer, it serves me well. Because when I get on a role, I can just get the thoughts out as they happen, which is really nice. If you would like to send in a question for us to open a future episode of Upgrade, please go to Upgradefeedback.com and send in your Snelltalk question. We have some follow-up. As expected, Apple executives, the posted on X, congratulating the Artemis astronauts for their safe return, and have also, of course, highlighted that they used the iPhone 17 Pro to take photos on board. So I'll put a link in the show notes, so Macrums article where they're talking about this. It's, you know, obviously Apple would love to try and use this imagery, I think, but I don't know if they will be able to. It would be interesting

to see if they can't. I think NASA imagery is free for all, I believe. Even the phone, like the photos take on on the personal phone. Yeah, I think, well, I don't think those were personal phones. You know, yes, they're not like personal personal. They were given to each person, weren't they? As part of the thing. Yes, and that's part, one of NASA's rules is like everything that is collected is actually public. Interesting.

So maybe we will see a billboard with those. I just wondered if like, because putting it on a billboard, I just don't know if if the, I think they can. They can. I mean, they got to, right? They've got to. You would think. Or at least it will be part of the iPhone keynote or something, you know, like in their opening package, you'd use it.

Obviously, you know, the Artemis mission is over now. Do you have any little thoughts that you wanted to put in to kind of like, because I know we spoke about it last week. They came back safely. I wasn't sure if you had any further reflection on it. Well, I've seen a bunch of stories where people are trying to, to spin this as sort of like, well, they took pictures of things on the moon, but we've already taken pictures of them with probes.

So what does it matter? And like, I mean, first off, Everybody's got their own access to grind. But what I would say is, yeah, I mean, of course, the point of what they did that is unique is that people saw it with their own eyes. And people chose to take pictures of things based on the input from their own eyes. And that's interesting. But to say, let's judge this as a pure science mission and compare it to a robot orbiter that can go around.

and take pictures of the moon for ages. Like, no, of course not. But, you know, human spaceflight is, is, is not about that. It is, it's different. And this is a goal here is to get people down on the lunar surface. And when you've got a human brain immediately controlling what goes on on the lunar surface, it's different from remote controlling a robot from a distance. And, and having, and they leaned into it with the human experience part of it.

which is, if you watched any of the video as they flew by the moon, like part of their job was expressing in words the feelings and nuances of seeing it with their own eyes, because that is the unique thing, as human beings are seeing the moon with their own eyes. And that is, I think, interesting. There are plenty of arguments to be made about investment in human spaceflight between investment in non-human robotic spacecraft. I think both have value. I think the values are different.

I think the truth is that having people do adventurous things gets more people engaged than having a robot take pictures. I think that's just the truth. And that's unfortunate because a lot of the stuff the robots do is amazing. But I think that's just the truth of it is that having people involved changes the game and reaches people who might not otherwise be reached. And then the only other thing I'll say very briefly is I saw some commentators say something about how maybe we shouldn't do anything in space until we cleaned everything up on Earth.

And it's just one of the most ludicous things I have ever heard. It comes back again and again. It's like we can do more than one thing. The amount of money being spent on NASA compared to the waste, the absolute waste being spent on just about everything else that our government does, it's not even close. It's not either or. Like, this is how many minutes of bombing Iran? Yeah. Just say it that way.

How many minutes is it? It's not even hours. It's minutes. So, like, we can make choices about where we spend our money. It's not an either or. Either you go to space or you solve all the world's problems. We got lots of things we can put our money on. Having something that's optimistic and makes us think maybe better about humanity than

humanity deserves right now, I think that's a pretty good investment. I agree. Last week we mentioned that delivery times for the Mac Mini and Mac Studio were being pushed way into the future for some configurations. Well, now there are several models showing as currently unavailable on the Apple store. Basically, the higher RAM units are just not available at all anymore. So this includes products like the M4 Mac Mini with 32 gigabytes of RAM and the studio of 128. This is coming from 9 to 5 Mac and I went and looked as well this morning. similar thing. These products are, I think, for multiple reasons it would seem, I would assume,

hard to get a hold of now. I think number one is these are configurations of products that are going to be replaced with M5 versions. Yeah. Yes. So the last thing they want is to build more of these and then just replace them. Yeah. Right. So I think this is, I think this is a drawdown of M4. and emphasized by the RAM pricing thing. So they'll keep it around in some configs, but those higher-end configs, I feel like they're just like, we don't want to build any more of those. Because they know, they may be done building.

They probably are. M4. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And so, you know, those things go out of stock because they are out of stock because they're going to get replaced by something else. Now, what those things, what those configs are and what they cost and all that is TBD.

but it feels to me like that is one of the primary drivers here is just you know maybe if RAM is cheap you're like yeah we'll make some more we want to keep the sales flowing but RAM is not cheap and they're going to be doing an M5 turnover it feels like a perfect storm of things

which is RAM prices the fact that they have new ones on the horizon and they sold more of them than they thought they were going to in the last few months because people were using headless Macs for AI stuff and I think that combination Yeah, that combination means that they've sold out quicker

than they were hoping for. It could literally just be that when they stopped making M4s they thought they had enough and then there was a huge run on high RAM M4s and they're like, well, we're not going to make more so we're just going to have to push those and then they do the Apple thing

where they're like, oh, you order it now and you'll get it much later and the truth is well you won't because they'll be a new model by then they'll be an M5 by them. But it's curious that because that's what they said last week, right? Oh, there'll be new ones by then, so that's why. But now you just can't buy them at all. You just can't. Yeah. They know they aren't going to be able to,

I would say, they know they can't fulfill them because they're going to go to a product transition to something else. And yeah, I think that's, I think that's where they've gotten now is, first off, it was like, it'll take this long and now it's like, well, they're none. They're not going to be any. But I wouldn't, I wouldn't freak out too much about it. I don't think this is a policy decision. I think this is a product turn. It's curious. I mean, I think it does indicate that, because I think it was tapping out kind of like June July time, so

previously, so maybe we're going to see maybe around WBC, we'll see this, you know, you can imagine the studio they would do them. Or they could do it in the next six weeks. I mean, like, they could do it, they could do it any time. I'm always hesitant to say hardware

announcements at WWDC because they're not required, but it gives them a venue. So if they're like super proud, for example, if they're super proud of Mac Studio Performance and you could even say with Mac Mini Performance and selling it as a development tool,

which is sort of what's been going on. Yes. They could put that in the conversation at WWDC if they wanted to, but they could also very easily do a press release product launch in early May and mid-May.

Especially for the Mac Mini in the Mac Studio. Of like products you could put on press release, like these are those. It's not a problem. Yeah, it's not a problem. Nathan, right, we've got a couple of questions about the Mac Pro. Nathan wrote in and said, I'm curious if you think Ram pricing pulled forward

the timing of the Mac Pro funeral. I, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, RAM and the Mac Pro, those are old chips. I think it's going to be about stock more than anything else. I think it's, I think it's stock. I think they realized that either they have finally sold out of their stock of it or they've just decided to write it off because the sales are so low. Is it possible that the RAM pricing did something to make them finally pull the trigger on it?

I guess. Something happened. I don't know what flipped that switch or whether it was literally an executive looking at and saying, look, it's time. This doesn't make sense for anybody. Or it's possible they're like, we're either going to have to reprice the RAM on this Mac Pro that we're selling, this M2 Mac. pro or we should just kill it. It's possible that that was what it is. This happens a lot where you get that, you get that final moment where you're like, you're thinking of doing something and it doesn't make sense and it doesn't make sense and it doesn't make sense. And then something

relatively minor happens and you think, oh, now I need to make a decision. And then, you know, this happens in life, right? You'll put things off and you'll be like, well, I probably don't want to, you know, put this off any longer, but like, well, I can put it off a little longer. And then there comes a moment where you're like, oh, now I need to decide. And then change happens. And I feel like that's what's maybe going on here. But it could have been the ramp pricing. It could have been something else.

But it's entirely possible that they, like, didn't have a reason to kill it until they did. Michael writes in and says, knowing what we know now about the Mac Pro, why do you think the Mac Studio wasn't just released as the new Mac Pro? was there no value in the old Mac Pro name? Okay, so I'm going to walk carefully here because since last week I have been, and I'm not trying to be mysterious here, but I also am trying to honor confidences.

I have a little more understanding of this situation than I did. And all I will say is the Mac Studio was not intended to be the replacement for the Mac Pro. It was its own thing. It has become the rest of, replacement for the Mac Pro. But my understanding is that it was not, it was not created as a

replacement for the Mac Pro. And that explains this, right? Is that they were, they were on separate paths and the Mac Pro kept happening and the Mac Studio happened. And then, so I think that's the answer, is that the Mac Studio emerged as the replacement for the Mac Pro. But when the Mac Studio was first conceived the Mac Pro was considered an ongoing project and it was not considered its replacement. More I cannot say, I wish I could, but I cannot because a friend told me some things surprising in confidence, but like suffice it to say Mac Studio did not emerge from a program to replace the Mac Pro. And I said that last week because that was based on all evidence you would think that they must have been doing that. It happened in parallel. So it's just more an average.

accident than anything else that it ended up replacing it, but it was not part of the replacement program. I guess that's the best way I could say it. While I believe exactly what you're saying, I would take a different approach as if we didn't have that piece of information or, you know, shrouded information. I would assume at that time they were not ready to get rid of the Mac Pro for the same reason the Mac Pro was introduced, which is I would believe they would. I would believe they would have been too nervous about the way it looked to people that really cared about this product to get to replace something so large with something so small again. Honestly, even though we pointed out that the choice to go to Apple Silicon in many ways

killed the Mac Pro, I think Apple wanted to put some distance between Apple Silicon transition and the Mac Pro. And that's one of the benefits of doing that Apple Silicon Mac Pro. is now they kill the Mac Pro and it's like, well, okay, we've been in the Apple Silicon era for almost like six years now. So we can draw the line,

but it doesn't feel like it was, hey, Apple's transitioning to Apple Silicon and also the Mac Pro is discontinued, right? In that same moment. So it has that benefit. Whether that was a calculated plan or it's just a side benefit, it is a benefit of it.

And it allowed the Mac Studio to kind of compete on its own terms, you know, if they would have said this is the new Mac Pro, the whole launch of the Mac Studio would have gone very differently than what it did, right? Like the launch of the Mac Studio was quite positive. People were very excited about that computer because it wasn't taking anything away from anyone. Indeed. Indeed. And that, and then, you know, yeah, because, and in fact, it feels good to think, well, the Mac Studio came from a different place, right? The Mac Studio was an Apple Silicon product and it came from a different place. It was not the,

replacement. It has turned into the Apple Silicon equivalent of the Mac Pro, but like it was its own thing. It felt like its own thing. It was the tall Mac Mini and all of that. I bought one. I loved it. Like, I still have it somewhere. Um, if, uh, yeah, so it's not plugged in right now, but I, I got to find something to do with it. Anyway, um, great, great computer. Great new Mac. We got the studio and the, and the MacBook Neo. New Macs from the 2020s is a wild idea on its face. So, so yeah, that's, I think that's the answer is, is, if they had it to do it over, maybe the Mac Studio would be the Mac Pro. But Mac Studio is a pretty good name, too. And it's just not how it worked out time-wise. They were on separate tracks. If you would like to get longer ad-free episodes of this show every single

week and tons of other fantastic benefits, you should sign up for Upgradeplus. Go to getupgradeplus.com. You can sign up. People can become a monthly member or an annual member. get a discount if you sign up for a year. This week we're going to share what we're going to be doing on next week's episode, which is one of our pieces of programming for our Apple at 50 coverage. We're going to have a fun wrap-up of our Apple 50 coverage with a fun exciting thing. This was one of the first things that we thought about. It's a very upgrade thing that we're going to do,

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So there's been a bunch of reporting going on over the last week or so. We'll start off with the sheriff, Mark German, who is reporting, in contrary to prior reports of his own and others, that the folding iPhone is now on track for a September debut. I will read from Mark's report at Bloomberg. While the complexity of the new display and materials may limit initial supply for several weeks, Apple is currently operating with a plan to put the device on sale around the same time or very soon after the new non-foldable models, the people said. So they've been reporting in previous weeks that it would maybe go on sale later in the year like the iPhone 10 did,

but now it looks like maybe at most you'd be waiting two weeks after your pre-order rather than one, provided that they're stock available to you. I'll just point out, because I like to point out, phrasing in Mark German's stories sometimes currently operating. Yes. I think this is important because this is one of those, like, so Niki says, oh, they're having problems. Mark German talks to sources at Apple, and they say, man, it's fine.

Yeah. Doesn't mean, right? Doesn't mean that there aren't problems. It doesn't mean that there aren't things that they, might have to delay the product for, but they don't currently think they do. And that is, that's good.

I will say Apple stock went down after that Niki report. Right. Which I mean, look, some of these news reports, some investors are so twitchy. They're so scared sometimes. Like, Apple stock went down like 5% or something like that because of it. Come on. Like, come on.

This, like, that it's going to be delayed. little bit like that the folding phone that is what whatever but if you're apple one of the things you might want to do is kick back at that if you don't believe that that report is accurate so i think this is interesting because this is this feels like a a non-official official official you know if this isn't an official statement to mark german it is at the very least as close as it's it's a statement that serves apples needs in a way that most conversations they have with Mark German do not serve Apple's policies and needs, right? Yes.

This is a useful one for Apple, whereas a lot of the leaks are not. So I think that's kind of fascinating. We'll see. I mean, like, I believe that it's possible that this is going to be a production issue. I believe that Niki is probably tuned in on production issues, right? That's not the same as them knowing what Apple's response is or the big. picture. They may just have a little bit of a hint. But at the same time, what Apple says is saying, no, no, no, no, no, it's going to be fine.

Like, that might be true. It might also just be trying to counter that report that hit their stock. But, you know, my, my guess is that this is where we are is literally it's hard. It might be delayed. They might limit initial supply, which is, if you think about how Apple releases a lot of these products, they make a lot of them for months in advance and then they ship them because they know that there's a peak demand when they announce the product. So limiting initial supply, one way that happens is that you can't make enough of them because you're having production

problems. And that means when you launch, your initial supply is low. Like, these things are not necessarily in conflict. So I'm open to the possibility that Apple is having some production issues with this incredibly complicated phone, the likes of which they've never manufactured before, while appreciating the fact that Mark German has gotten an executive at Apple to say, you know, anonymously to say, no, no, no, no, no, we're fine. Which they probably, I don't think that that's wrong. I think they probably do believe that. They currently have a plan to make this work, even if it limits initial supply.

I think that's undoubtedly where it is right now. And the question is going to be, where are they going to be in a month? One of the things that, I mean, we're in it now, right? This is when they are ramping up what they're going to be selling in the fall. So if there are colossal production issues that cause delays and things like that, we're in the season now where we would hear that in the next month or two. Yeah, I mean, because I'm trying to remember this,

but I'm pretty sure that Mark Gorman was one of the people that was reporting that it would come later. So some new information has come his way, as you say. So where is that information going to come from? I don't know. I mean, on sale around the same time or very soon after. Like, yeah, I mean, I guess what he's saying there is that it's, even if it doesn't hit the same on sale date, it's not going to be two months later on sale, but supply might be limited up front. And that is, yeah, that's actually better than the iPhone 10 kind of like, well, you know, you're not going to be able to order this one until November. which was where reporting was going. But we'll see.

Yeah, we'll see. Leek of Sani Dixon has posted some images of dummies for the iPhone lineup, showing the 18 Pro and Pro Max alongside the folding phone. Dixon has a very good track record of these kinds of things. I'm linking to The Verge in our show notes, so you can go and see the image if you want to. As you would expect, there's no real hardware change for the pro line. They look just like the ones that they're replacing when they're just a one little

slab of aluminium, which is just kind of like a dummy. A lot of these come to and via case manufacturers, right? Yeah, that's what I was going to say is that this would be a better story if the dimensions hadn't leaked and a bunch of people hadn't like made 3D models and printed them, because that's basically what we're seeing here. But these probably came to case makers from that leak or a different leak and the case makers are using this as their model to make their cases and then Sonny Dixon has those because these are you know I don't think these the providence of these is even said to be Apple these are from basically these are a fancier a fancier version of those 3D printed mockups we talked about a month or two ago looking at this image though right see you've got the pro

max on the left the pro on the right and the folding phone in the middle I continue to be very excited about how weird this phone looks. Like, both open and closed, it just looks incredibly peculiar. Like, it's like, I don't even, I can't even get a sense for what it would feel like to use iOS on that outer display. Like, can iOS work on a shape this weird, like a squat display size? I was thinking, how do you get the home screen? How do you get the apps and the home screen in here? Yeah, it's going to be a...

Like, how much at the display does the keyboard take up on that front screen? Like, how many messages will I be able to read when I'm trying to send a message? Very strange. This is going to... I can't wait. I cannot wait for this phone

because it's going to be fascinatingly weird to use. Mac Rumors is reporting on a Waybo post from Leaker Digital Chat Station saying that the name for the folding phone will be the iPhone Ultra. I like that name, but not for this product, if this is true. I mean, who knows? As we said before, I don't really trust names until right at the end.

I mean, I didn't trust Neo because it's like until the day it's shown, I don't trust it. But this phone to me does not feel like an ultra iPhone. Like, if it's going to have fewer cameras and touch ID, like this is not the ultra iPhone to me. Yeah, and I'm also just really dubious of reports that are coming, in this case, from, like, China saying about marketing names. Yeah. Because Apple can hold those really close and they can keep those in Cooperino for a very long time. Very long time.

Because it doesn't even have to be on the packaging. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe, I mean, it doesn't seem impossible. it's probably not the choice that I would make, but it's a valid choice. I think you're right that it would be weird

to call something Ultra when Ultra is not the thing that defines it, right? Like that it's more. It's not. It's weirder, but it's not more. It's not more cameras. It's not more sensors. It has two screens, I get, but it just doesn't feel like an ultra product to me.

It feels different. But if they wanted to, they could. Yeah. I mean, because they can find a way to kind of to make anything. anything, right? Like, it's like, what is pro, right? Like, the iPhone pro is not any more pro than any of the other products they call pro, right? But, but I, I would like a name that somehow references what this product is, that it is a phone with two screens, that it folds. Sorry, like, these, these names are more interesting to me than Ultra. I'll say that much. I agree. I agree. We also have a report from Mark German about smart glasses. So this is a longer report from him in his power on newsletter. So currently Apple is expecting to unveil their smart glasses at the end of 2026 or beginning of 2027, with the release currently expected in early 2027.

I would ask you, could you imagine a world in which they showed us off in September and ship it in January? Yeah. Yeah? like with a new product like this, kind of like what they do with the Apple Watch. Exactly. Yeah. If they think they can ship this early next year,

it lets them, you know, on that iPhone product stage, especially if they are not launching every iPhone on that stage. Oh, yes. A really good point. They have more time. They have more time.

Yeah. And yeah, I think this is like that stage is a huge place to launch a new product. That's why the. Apple Watch launched there, even though it didn't come out until the following April, right? So if they've got it and they've got confidence that they're going to ship it, because it's a new product and isn't cannibalizing existing products, they could absolutely launch that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it could be a really interesting time around then.

You know, we could be getting new home stuff. And like this September event could be huge if they're able to get everything lined up the way that they want. Sure. Sure. but it's all going to come back to what's powering it, right? Like everything here is gated by their voice assistant strategy, by their AI strategy, by Siri and what it represents and what it's capable of.

All of this, the home, people are calling it like a home pod, but it's not. It's really like a home screen that could also be attached to a speaker. It is a fixed iPad on a speaker, essentially, right? Or on your wall. Or on your wall. Yeah. So, like, all of these products, you know, you could, the funny thing is, I think if they had to do it over again, they wouldn't rely on Siri for their vision of the future Siri for all of this.

Because, like, AirPods also kind of rely on Siri, but you can just, it's fine. Well, you wouldn't do it unless, if it could end up being that it all works in the end. Yeah. Which would be amazing. But, yes, you know, if it does, then fine. That would be if they felt like because they had gone through the summer with their new OS strategy, with their new voice assistant strategy, powered, you know, at least in part by Gemini, if they get through that and they think like, we are doing great, there is nothing stopping them from either announcing at the iPhone event that they're also doing these smart glasses and they're doing the smart home product or having another event in like October where they talk about. these and some other stuff too. Like there's,

but they could really impress people by dropping a bunch of stuff and that they have been, you know, withholding for reasons. But like that, it comes back to their confidence in what is driving it, which is Siri, which is the AI functionality in, in,

in, you know, 27 OSs, I guess, I would say. So obviously this device, its intention is partly that, right,

talking to the more powerful Siri, but also, audio media playback, you know, music podcasts, that kind of stuff. These are AirPods, right? These are AirPods on your face? That's what they are. You take photos with notifications, yeah, all that kind of stuff. Imagine AirPods with the camera. But even notifications, even notifications is, yeah, it's AirPods with a forward facing camera, is what they are.

That you don't have to stick in your ears, you just wear them like glasses, but they are going to do all the things that AirPods do, presumably, one way or another. This product, along with the previously rumored AirPods with glasses and the AI pendant, are all designed around using cameras and computer vision paired with Apple intelligence. The expectation being that if the computer that you're wearing can see what you can see, it can offer better results to queries. And also, my assumption with this is like, and I feel like this has not been fully realized yet because people just haven't internalized it maybe. I believe that if this kind of product works and works well,

it does unlock the ability for users to be able to ask for things they would not ask their iPhone for right now. So you will have new kinds of queries that you can ask Siri than the ones we're currently asking. Yeah. And I think a lot of detail is being left out here because they're maybe shooting for more basic ideas now. But like, for example, you can pull your iPhone out and have it take a picture of where you are if you're in a, you know, in New York City somewhere where your phone can't see GPS.

And because of the, or San Francisco for that matter. And because it can see the buildings around you. It can it can geolocate you. And that is using the buildings and the camera. Yeah. Well, if you've got the glasses on, then it's always going to know where you are. And if your phone is in your pocket and you've got maps going on and it's giving you walking directions. It knows exactly where you are on the streets of New York and will tell you where to turn instead of it being kind of confused, which happens.

So that's one. Visual intelligence is another. That's not a very exciting feature. I never use it. But one of the ideas here is that you don't have to take your phone out of your pocket and hold it up and say, what kind of dog is this? Right. Where you could actually ask the person that you could literally just look at a thing and say, what is this? Or can you translate this or whatever and have that work?

And yeah, there are there are future features of this that could be interesting. Like, okay, so like, maybe it could read things aloud for you. If you have vision issues, even, you know, and it could read text for you. Maybe it could, you know, in the long run, if you've got somebody in your contacts list or whatever, it could identify their face when they will come up to you. You can't remember their name. like there are there are lots of I tried to not make that creepy of like I know there's no way there's no way he can't be though it's like well maybe not maybe it's just a person in your contacts sure but but what I'm saying is like devices are and AI power devices are going to be more powerful if they know what you're looking at and where you are

instead of being trapped in your pocket and so there's possibilities here right I'm not I don't want to overdo it because I think this could be really overhyped and make it seem much more more usable or useful than it actually will be. But it's, it's part of a structure that might give you better information because you don't have to take your phone out of your pocket and hold it up and ask it a question. This is a quote from Mark's article that made me chuckle. According to employees working on the project, Apple strategy is to outdo competitors by tightly integrating the glasses with the iPhone and offering a higher end build. It's like, yes. And I'm sure meta would love the opportunity to.

to tightly integrate with the iPhone. I mean, yeah, you can make the product a better iPhone companion if you control the iPhone. Like, I find it, like, this is a true statement, but I do find it quite frustrating that they still are doing this when there's all this litigation around. I mean, of course they're going to do it this way, but it is a bit like, it's annoying that you see that as your only competitive advantage. The red phone just rang in Brussels. It's like crank up the machine. Here we go, everybody. They're going to do this thing.

And I just want them to do stuff that is like good on its own. It's like, oh, our product's good because it can integrate with the iPhone. What I would argue it too is like if Apple is going to come out with their own glasses, then at that point they also need to let other glasses integrate in the same way. I don't think they necessarily need to build integration features for other people's products. But once they create a product in that category, they should all. also offer that integration to every other product in that category, right? They're going to do it better. I get it. It's their secret sauce. But yes, that is the, yeah, because we control the OS and the device,

we will have the best accessory for the iPhone. That, you know, it's like, oh, it would, it would, it would, it would, it would, yeah, we're not going to really be terrible if you didn't. Like, it would. Yeah, we're not going to really integrate it with the iPhone. We think the iPhone's kind of kind of dumb. We want them, we want this thing that's going to have. We're talking to the beats team. They're going to make it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's get it there. So, yeah, I understand that. It is, look, Apple wants to do this the Apple way. They want to really Apple this thing, right? That's the whole point is like, if we're going to do this, it needs to not just be another pair of smart glasses.

It needs to be the Apple take on this product. And that cuts across, that cuts across iPhone integration. It cuts across the functionality that's built in in terms of like Apple intelligence the Siri and design. Like, all of those things tie in. Speaking of design, Apple's design team has whipped up at least four different styles

and plans to launch some or all of them as well as many color options. The latest units are made from a high-end material called acetate, which is known to be more durable and luxurious than standard plastic used by many brands. Acetate glasses are very

regular. Anyway, here are the designs in testing, says Mark. A large rectangular frame reminiscent of rebound wayfarers, a slimmer rectangular design similar to the glasses worn by Tim Cook, larger oval or circular frames and a smaller, more

refined oval or circular option. So they're going to offer, in theory, multiple designs with multiple colors. It feels like a nightmare. Like a nightmare. Like the Apple Watch. The Apple Watch logistically is very clever because they offer

the watch itself and then the band comes separate, right? Like you get them in the two boxes. You can't do that here. This feels, they're going to do this. I mean, one, I do believe that this is actually what they have to do.

They have to offer different styles and colors. Maybe not four, but definitely they need to offer different styles. But it feels like a lot, like a lot. It does. I mean, they can do it. That's the thing is all they have to do is want to do it. It would be complicated.

but they can absolutely do it. Like you've really got to believe that you have a good winning product if you're going to add all of these product options into your stores. Like this is a lot. Like this is going to take up a lot of space in the Apple store, right? I think, I think that, yeah, yeah, but maybe that's a good thing. And I also think that Apple, like Apple, I think it's smart to not do the, you know,

you can have any color as long as it's black kind of approach with something that you're going to wear on your face, right? You need to provide options. When I get new glasses, oh my God, how many frames are there in that store? Hundreds, hundreds of different frame designs, right? And they're like, well, you know, four, well, better than one. That's good. And again, they are coming into the market to offer a product that on paper is as good as what meta offers.

And meta have lots of options now. Sure. Like across multiple brands in the Luxottica portfolio. So, you know, and Google, they haven't got anything yet, but they announced with multiple companies who are going to have multiple frame types of Google, like the Google assets of Google XR what they're calling them. So like, if Apple was first, they could have AirPods did it, right? Where it's like, here's one. Sure, here's one. Enjoy it.

You can't do that now. You can't do that now. No, but I think three or four, you know, it's not. I think they can do it. And I think they have to do it to a certain degree. right. They have to provide people with options or they're not going to like it's it's already bad enough with AirPods. And people are like, oh, it doesn't fit my ears very well. And it's like, you know, they're trying, but they have like one AirPods pro shape. And it either fits you or it doesn't to a certain degree. So four at least gives people more of a chance to say, okay, I could wear these instead of it being like, oh, Apple's glasses came out and they look stupid on my face. So I won't wear them anymore. They give them, you know, four more, three more chances above that. But then there's this statement from Mark.

As of AirPods and the Apple Watch, the goal is to create a design that is instantly recognizable. Apple refers to this as the icon internally. I, look, I can't, I can't square both of those things together, right? They're like having multiple options but wanting to create, like... I can. Yeah, go on. I can. Read the next quote from this report and I will put it together.

One notable detail under consideration is the camera system. vertically oriented oval lenses of surrounding lights a departure from the circular design seen in Metas products. So when they talk about the icon, I think what they're really meaning is like what's the part of this that when you see it,

you realize it's AirPods. Right, right. So I read this and said, the camera housing on these things will look different from everybody else's and you'll know that that's the Apple one. And it will be because it'll be a shape, the lens and light

configuration, whatever they do there, I think what they're trying to do is say, you'll be able to tell that it's the Apple one because of some aspect of the design. And if there are four different frame designs, it can't be the frame design that is the, you know, they're not going to just do John Lennon glasses. And like everybody's got to wear John Lennon glasses.

They can't do that. So they're not going to do that. Well, I wouldn't mind. So what are they going to do? You know I wouldn't mind that. I know you wouldn't mind that. Steve Jobs wouldn't mind that either. they so how do you do it? Well, this could be one of those ways is just as the, just as the camera bump on the, sorry, the iconic plateau, it's iconic, the iconic plateau on the back of the iPhone.

This would be an iconic camera sensor area on all of these that would be the same and it would nobody else would have it and it would be the one that says this is the apple. And like literally to the point where they could draw a little cartoon of glasses with that little oval thing. and you'll be like, oh yeah, those are the glasses because, and they can use that in like support documents and stuff because it's the thing that identifies what the Apple glasses are.

So I think that's what this is getting at is the idea that they're trying to create an aspect of these glasses and it can't be the glasses themselves because there are going to be so many different frames that is identifiably the Apple one. And I think the camera system is what they're talking about there based on this report. I just

I really don't think I want my glasses to be instantly recognizable as the Apple product you know what I mean like it's not yeah I get it

I get that there is a desire in people to have their products be recognizable the ones that they wear it's like it's why meta won't with Rayban because people

know the Wayfarer look and it's like oh that's a pair of raybands but I just don't think I want my glasses to remind everyone that I'm wearing a computer. But I also don't think I would wear these every day.

I can't imagine it anyway. Like I can imagine I would get these to replace my meta raybounds, which I wear only as sunglasses. So I can imagine that. I can't imagine wearing these all day, every day, as my only glasses. Because I just don't think they're going to make a product that's going to look the way that I want in the glasses that I wear.

That is going to be the challenge, right? I actually think one of the reasons that using the raybans and sunglasses is such a, you know, smart move is this probably has more utility when you're out and about, right? Yeah. Than when you're at home. Yes. So having it be your outdoors glasses, because I have a pair of sunglasses and I have a pair of glasses. And so I could see them filling in that role of sunglasses when I'm out of the house. usually wearing sunglasses. I live in California. But even like when it's cloudy, like the sun's

out there. It might get you. I don't know. I think that's one of the great mysteries of all of this. We've seen more backlash against these kind of products in the last six months. And maybe maybe it being Apple and not meta will help that conversation or maybe it won't. I don't know. Yeah, I think some of that backlash is coming from the company behind the product rather than the product. It is. It is. But there's also kind of a tech backlash and an AI backlash going on. I don't know. I don't know. I think, I'll tell you this,

given all of that, I'm sure that Apple is preparing a privacy story here. And I think that's going to be important, right? I think they're going to need to say, say, you know, the light comes on when it's in use.

It can't be disabled by any means. You know, everything is going on your phone. Things are anonymized, blah, blah, blah. Like, I think they're going to have to tell that story. But the question is just do people want this kind of product or not? I don't, I don't know. That story will be told. I don't know if it were really hit. Like, you know, people think that their iPhones

listening to them. So I know. Well, you can, you can only do so much. Yeah, you can try. You can only do so much. Yes. People are convinced that when your iPhone is in your pocket and you mention a product and then it shows up in your Instagram ads that it's because Apple conspired with meta to listen to you while the phone was in your pocket and right like they when in fact it's probably a signal you sent while you were on a website or on Instagram but people like to believe things

about their phone that aren't true and there's only so much you can do about that but Apple you know I feel Apple Apple knows that it's incumbent on them to try and to sell that that's why they do all of the privacy branding is right like they're fighting against it they can't necessarily win all those arguments but they can fight against it and that's what they're trying to do

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Once again, that is FitBod.combe for 25% of your membership. Our thanks to FitBard for their support of this show and Relay. In his newsletter, Colpium, Tim Colpin, that's a great name by the way. Colpium, brilliant. Tim Coppin is reporting that Apple is facing an issue with the MacBook Neo. It's too popular and they're running out of chips.

As a reminder, Apple is using a bin version of the A18 Pro chip that has a five-core GPU instead of the six-core version that can be found in the iPhone 16, I think it is. It's where the A18 Pro is. We can expect from this that Apple decided that they would use these chips that were otherwise unusable in the MacBook Neo to help bring the cost of the product down, as potentially these chips were going to be otherwise wasted or put elsewhere.

But the MacBook Neo seems to have exceeded Apple sales expectations, and they are now running low on these bin chips. So Colpin says that Apple asked its suppliers to build between 5 to 6 million units of the 18 Pro version of the Neo, assuming that once this amount was sold, they would be ready for a revision, but it's now clear to Apple that they're going to exceed this number

before the second generation of the product would be ready for next year. Yeah. So some assumptions here. Apple has asked its suppliers to build between 5 to 6 million units of the 18 Pro version of the Neo, assuming that once this was a amount was sold,

they would be ready for a revision. Okay. First question is, is 5 to 6 million the number that they thought they would sell or the number of the chip bin chips that they've got? I don't.

Right? The odds that I could be both. But you don't want to build, if you're not sure of how many you're going to sell, and you've got 12 million bin chips, you might not build 12 million Mac MacPoomino's, right? You might build five or six million of them and hold the rest. So there is an assumption here that they're going to, because the question is like... But I think actually it's fair to say based on this situation is that they did only have five to six million. It didn't matter how many they thought they were going to sell because now they're running out, right?

It's possible. Yeah. It's possible. I mean, I guess what I would say is it's possible that there is a difference between the number that they built and the number of been chips that they've got. But the question is, what happens now? Because Apple either needs to buy, get TSMC to make more of these chips that are off, like they're offline, basically. at prices that even if it's possible are not going to are not going to help the margins of this product at all, right?

Okay, so that's part of the problem. Other part of the problem is this report that says they don't think it's going to, they're going to run out before the second generation of the product is ready. And this is what I would say about that, which is, I think I don't believe it. I think I don't believe it. I don't believe that they are going to run out

before the second generation of the product that they're ready. I don't think I believe it. And the reason I don't believe it is Apple doesn't design computers on the fly. By the time we saw the MacBook Neo, the A-19 Pro MacBook Neo was already being designed, right? Sure. Come on. Of course it was.

Yeah. you always, Apple's always working ahead and always thinking about what's next. And even if they were like early on in that process. And I mean, I guess if you're at Apple, I don't know, send me a signal message or something. I don't know. Send us an anonymous upgrade feedback.com. I don't know if this isn't the case. But like I'm going to assume that the fallback here, the failsafe for this has always been if, well, what if this is a huge hit and we run out of bin chips?

Like you don't go into that being like, nah, this. product we're all really excited about it's not going to be that successful, right? You have to have a contingency plan for if you sell through your lot of chips. And I can't see how that contingency plan isn't. We just released the A19 Pro version. I mean, that could be the contingency plan, but the expectation could have been that the timeline for that would be significantly longer than the one that we're in. Like, I don't think Apple was expecting the MacBook Neo to generate that statistic

that Tim Cook posted. Oh, I do. Do you think that they thought for this? More people than have ever switched to the Mac? Yeah. Okay.

It would be, I do not believe the narrative that Apple is surprised by the MacBook Neo's success. I think, how could they be? We've all been talking about it

and thinking this would be huge. I cannot imagine that Apple didn't believe it. Now, it's possible that they took a chance because they do have a limited number of these bin chips that they can use. And they're like, well, if it's a hit, we're going to have to do something.

But again, that's what I come back to is I'm not saying that they knew it would be a hit. I'm saying that there was like a bracketed range of what it was going to be. And I cannot, why would you even do this product if you didn't think it was going to be a hit? I think they knew, I think they strongly suspected,

we'll say it was going to be a hit product. So there has to be a contingency. Yeah. For what happens if it's a hit product. Even if it's a runaway hit product, there has to be a contingency. Now, maybe, maybe there are weird chip contingencies we don't know.

Maybe there are other chips and other bins that could be put into it in the midst of this. Maybe they have a deal with TSM or something. I just, I'm dubious. that they're going to make more chips for the MacBook Neo. I think it's more likely that the contingency,

to me, the most likely contingency is like there's no reason the MacBook Neo has to stay on sale at A18 for a year. There's no reason for it. I have to think that the number one contingency for this product was, once we run out, we announce the A19 Pro version. Done.

Yes. Okay, so I am agreeing with you. I think that that is the case. but let's just imagine that they run out of these in three months. That's too soon, right? Like, you wouldn't have the A19 Pro version come that quickly. Why not? Well, because somebody who bought it six weeks ago,

then now, like, we're going to announce the product at the same price, and now it has 12 gigabytes of RAM in it? But that always happens. Yeah, but there's always... That fast, though. Like, if you buy a computer from Apple within the first month, you think you've got at least 11 months

with that product of that configuration. You know, first off, I'll say it's $5.99 and it's not getting worse. And if the alternative is that your hit product can't be sold, you just do it. I mean, if you're Apple, you just do it. You just do it. I know, look, people are going to complain about everything. Is it ideal? No, but like not selling it is less ideal. Not selling it is a worse idea here. So you just do it. And you say, good news, everybody. It's been a huge hit and we're going to, and now here's the A19 version and you put it. out in January or in November or whenever. Like, I, what's the alternative? Like, killing your margins isn't a very good alternative. I mean, short, again, short of like some other weird bin we don't know about that's full of other weird chips that are of similar or higher performance that they could put in here.

Yep. You know, and I don't know what that would be. Is that like an M2? Do they have any M2s rattling around that can throw in here for a while? They also could have been holding A18 pros for a smart product, right? They could have these allocated for other future devices that then they need to work out a different scenario for. Yeah, pull those out of that. Yeah, this is the bin for the smart screen or for the whatever and we'll pull that out.

These were for an Apple TV or something like that. Yeah, it's possible. Let me read from Tim Copper because Tim does actually like, he's, he's, he kind of gives these contingencies, right? But I think Akisha's viewing it of like none of these are really that great. So this is a quote from him. MacBook Neo's A18 Pro was built on TSM's 3 nanometer process. That node is now hugely popular and effectively sold out.

Apple could in theory beg TSMC CEO CCWA for a few hotlots, which is paying a premium to jump the queue, but that would almost certainly kill profits on the low-cost laptop. alternatively, it could crib from its own wafer allocation originally planned for other devices, but the cost would be higher than what it paid for the first batch of A18 Pro Wafers and initially higher than quote-unquote free. Yeah, because if you're taking them out of a bin, they're not free, you already paid for them, but they're free in the sense that you haven't used them in any product and they're sitting in a bin.

And like, you know, clearly I think, like essentially the MacBook Neo became a product because they were like, hey, we can use some of these. chips that we were otherwise maybe not going to use or that they were going to sit on them for a long time for something else? Well, and it's a combination of like, we have a lot of extra bin-a processors and we know that the Mac, we could make an A-series Mac and isn't this a great? This solves both of these problems. It's true.

And I'm more open about the idea that if this is an enormous hit product, it changes the dynamics of their chip ordering for the iPhone. But I'm not that open about it because of this, which is the scale of iPhones is so much greater than the scale of Mac sales. And a huge hit Mac still doesn't sell even a fraction of what an iPhone sells. So there's always going to be more chips there. What it could do is change the way in which the bin chips are allocated, more than it changes how many iPhone chips they're ordering, as you're saying, right? Whereas like, clearly Apple have become very efficient over time of using, of binning, right? We see it across everything.

They've been Mac chips into iPads. They've been iPad chips into other iPads. Like, they're binning things all over the place, right? They are. And they're even, like, the MacBook Pro has a binned chip of the other MacBook Pro. Like, they're doing this all over the place. Yeah. They've become, this has become a very, very clever strategy, right?

They're binning iPhone chips into displays, right? Like they're just moving stuff around in places that may not make sense. Like the display is hilarious, right? That they put so much RAM in a display that probably doesn't need it, but it's just the chip that they have. And so like they're doing this, but what it maybe does is like, oh, that smart product that we were expecting to put this chip in in the 19,

maybe we can't do that or we need to adjust that a little bit because the MacBook Neo is a more popular product than we expected from the rest of what we had left over. I mean, that's them searching their couch cushions for chips, right? And they may be searching their couch cushions. Like, I have no idea. How many, how many bin chips does the iPhone create? Like, I don't know. I don't know either.

And that, I think, so these are my core questions. One is, one is, how many 18 pros do you have? Yeah. right how many because it's not saying they they built five or six million macbook neos like i said it doesn't mean they don't have more it means they would need to drain the bin that might get them a longer runway i don't again i don't know enough about this but it strikes me that it would be very weird if apple said let's build let's use every single single chip in the bin to build MacBook

Neo's. It strikes me as being a little weird. And if you do that, then you know you're on the Razor's Edge, right? And that's why I have a hard time believing that there is not a contingency plan. Apple, of all companies, has to plan for upside. Apple believes

every product they do is going to be a huge hit. They have to believe in the upside of products they release. Which means when they put out the MacBook Neo, I just don't believe that they're surprised at the demand. Maybe it's higher than forecast, but to be so surprised that you don't have a contingency plan, I have a hard time believing that. Now, what that plan is is the question, to me, just iterating,

you know, to get that 18, A19, look, the A19 Pro MacBook Neo is not going to look any different from the A18 Pro MacBook Neo, right? It might, they might have wanted to do different colors, but maybe not even that. You design, I know every computer is different. but like it's got to be designed to be pretty modular in terms of the little the one little you know motherboard part of it the logic board that drives it as a computer that's got the a 18 on it like to replace that with the version that does the a 19 and just keep shipping it i'm not saying it's not hard i'm saying i have a hard time believing that that's not their contingency plan is literally the moment we sell out of these we just flip it over to a 19 and we're

we continue to sell it. Or better, we bring out the A19 as quickly as we can, make it the 699 model, put the rest of the A18s in the 599 skew, which creates a differentiation between them and gives us more runway with the cheaper version. Because now the cheaper version is using the worst chip than the higher end version is. And you're further incentivizing the upgraded version. and providing differentiation. Like, Coppins says they might get rid of one version for a time.

Like maybe just drop the cheap version, make it... You could, but then you'll lose your $599 if you do that. Yes, which is the whole standing point. I will say as well, like, this is a very good conversation, it's a very good point you're making. Well, the way that I read this article, it's like Copeland doesn't know what Apple's contingency is, but it's like talking to the supply chain

and seeing like, well, they're running out. And it may well have been that Apple was like, our contingency, at least for this first one, is if we are lucky enough to sell all that we think we're going to sell, we will lose our margin on the first year, right? Like, we will lose it because we'll have to pay more for this or do it for that. And it's just like maybe it seems from the outside, the idea that they would be willing to lose margin on this product is bananas.

But that it may have just been that the contingency plans that they laid out, it's like, we're going to try this and see if it works. If it does work, we have other options available. to us which changed the economics a bit, but then we'll know and then we can model it out for the future. I don't know. It's possible, although the idea of

when we say changing the economics of it, like paying TSM to make more A18 pros seems kind of bananas to me. That seems like the way less likely of every single scenario. I imagine them to release a revised version of this before they would

have more chips made. Like, for sure. That's just, that's just, just my, yeah. Maybe they should raise the trade-in price on the iPhone 16 pro. Pop them out instead. And refurb those babies.

Just, you know, no, no reason. Just we like them. Bring them back. We'll pay you. We'll just give you a free upgrade to the 17 pro is.

Come on. Yeah. So, yeah, I just, I, what I like about this story is, it's an interesting manufacturing story for Apple.

It's a problem of, of success being like a, you know, success based on a limited supply. So now what? I just, I'm not saying that Apple's perfect. I am saying that Apple of any company, first off, I am sure they're incredibly disciplined about their scenario planning. They don't, they're not going to put out a product and not have thought of what happens if it's successful, especially Apple, which I think culturally always thinks they're going

to be successful. wildly successful even. So there is a contingency plan. We just don't know what it is. My money, if this is true, that's the other thing is like, if this is true, if there really aren't any other A18 pros

that are binned out there, it's possible that they've withheld some A18 pros that are, that are binned in a better way or in an inconsistent way where they would need to deactivate other cores or whatever,

where there's a little more cost or a little more complexity to it. It's possible that this is, you know, that there's an idea that is not as, has not been thrown around. But like, to me, just as an Apple observer, I believe two things, which is, one is Apple absolutely has an upside contingency. And two, I, I just think that slip streaming in the next chip is the most likely scenario here.

With a caveat that, like I said, if you could do it in a way where that becomes the 99 model and it gives you more base A18 pros to keep the low end model around a little longer and then you sell through those and then that one ends up getting the A19 at that point. Like,

I think that's the most likely scenario if all else is the same, which is like surely they have been planning for the next upgrade of the MacBook Neo for ages and they know what it's going to be and it's, I doubt it will be particularly different than what's

there and they should just be able to say, well, now it's got an A-19 in it. And maybe not even make that big a deal about it, especially if it's the more RAM is in that more expensive configuration. You don't even need, we also are assuming like it's a big deal that all the Apple nerds are like, oh, second-generation MacBook Neo. But Apple could just like super quietly just say, yeah, it's got the A-19 now at the high-end configuration. It's got more RAM on that configuration. And not make a big deal out of it because the people who are buying this product aren't paying attention to those kinds of announcements. And it doesn't change their messaging about the MacBook

Neo at all. So they just kind of slip stream it in there. And then, you know, 9 to 5 Mac has their little thing that goes off that goes, boop, boop, a configuration changed. And they go to the page and they're like, whoa, did you see this? But it might not be anything that is

interpreted as a big deal. They might just slide it in there. I got what I would say, like, you know, you're talking about their forecast then. We know that they're not perfect. Right. Like in the iPhone, they're not perfect. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not really saying that they're perfect. I'm saying I have to imagine that they have upside scenarios. Yeah. There has to be, yes, because they would have a downside scenario as well. Right. Like, you have to. I believe that

the MacBook Neo, I will go with it. I believe the Macwood Neo is selling better than they thought. Yes. I don't believe they're surprised. I just think that they made a forecast. Yeah. And they said, this is how we think it's going to sell. And they're picking the, they're picking the, they're picking the, not the midpoint of number, the midpoint of probability. It's like, let's just say it's going to sell X million. And then they get the initial reports and they're like, oh, it turns out that it's in the, you know, 80th or 90th or 100th percentile of what we projected.

And, and like, it's a hit, but I just, that's the part that I don't believe is, I don't believe that they didn't say, what if this is a huge hit? Yeah. I guess the thing that is different. about this product is what I find so interested about this story, is that it would appear that this product, they had to make a bunch of decisions to get it to be as cheap as it could possibly be. And now they're left of a scenario where it was very successful,

and they may need to make decisions that change the margins, but they were already trying to get them as low as possible. Like it's just like a very interesting kind of like thing to have happened to this particular product and maybe happens to lots of their products but is less of a story because it's less of a problem when your margin is bigger to begin with. Right. Because I've got to assume the margin is different on this product. Like I can't imagine a while in which it is not. No, I mean, clearly they're eating some amount of their usual margin at least at the start. over time that changes.

I'm sure that the dynamic of this product is different. That's why I am less likely to believe that they're going to order up some things that change the margin balance of this product because I don't think they want to do that. Just to keep it, even if it's just to keep it rolling, it's like, okay, well, all the MacBook Neos we sell the second six months of its existence,

we're going to take a loss on or we're going to break even on. I just don't believe it. Unless they're super desperate. right? Like maybe, but again, I just, I can't believe that that would be the contingency that they would have. This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. Going online without ExpressVPN is a bit like leaving a laptop unattended at a coffee shop where you run to the bathroom. Most of the time you're probably fine, but why would you take the risk? When you're connected to an unencrypted network in cafes, hotels, airports, your online data isn't secure. Someone in the same network could gain access to your personal information, maybe passwords or bank logins or credit card details, other things you wouldn't want in someone else's hands. And unfortunately, personal data, it's valuable. People can make thousands of dollars selling that kind of information.

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Secure your online data today by visiting expressvPN.com slash upgrade. That's EXP, r-es-svpn.com slash upgrade to find out how you can get up to four extra months. That is expressvPN.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for the support of this show and all of Relay. So for a few weeks, I've been wanting to talk to you about your new smart lock that you've got. You wrote about it on six colors. Finally, that's literally a post that I wrote. I started writing in January and finished in March because everything that happened in between,

but I did finally get it out. Which is also why we haven't spoken about it. I mean, you had it as some notes in the show notes a long time ago, and we never got to it. Long time. Right up instead. What product did you get? And tell me a little bit about what you like about it. Well, it's one of yours, because I know you love Akara.

I do. And it's the U-400 UWB Smart Lock, which is the first shipping. Lots of people have announced them. This is a very CES kind of product. Hey, UWB Smart Lock. And then they don't ship for a while. But this one shipped in January. It was the first one that I could find that was actually available for people to use.

And it has every possible unlocking mechanism built into it. So Smart Lock, in this case, it goes on a deadbolt. So my front door has a latch and a deadbolt, and they're separate. So this is the deadbolt. It is, it does everything. So it has a keypad that will light up that lets you put in a code. so like the lady who has it's for us she just has a code um it has a fingerprint reader which i did set up for me but you have to go into the akara app and it's a little weird but it does have a fingerprint

reader it has nfc so if you've got a uh an apple watch or an iphone or any other device that does an nfc unlock you can do what my old lock did which is hold your watch or phone up to the door uh to the lock and then it will unlock like apple pay touch essentially it's got a lock and key you can like pull this little door down and there's a key which is nice right like if all else fails you could hide a key somewhere and come and unlock the door

and most importantly for me it has ultra wideband support ultra wideband Apple has supported this for a little while now it's in a bunch of Apple devices and the reason it's important is smart locks were dumb about unlocking Like first off, the Bluetooth-based ones,

the problem is proximity isn't enough to unlock a door because if you walk toward your front door, if somebody knocks on your door and you wonder if it's a serial killer and you walk up to the door, you know, and so you've got to look and see, do they have a machete? Don't go look would be my, well, I would say.

Oh, I mean, you could, or use your doorbell cam if you have one, but I don't have one, so I have to look out the window. So you walk up to the door, and your lock is like, oh, you came near the door, I'll unlock the door. You don't want that. If you're on the inside, you don't want it to auto-unlock the door, right? You don't want that. That's a bad idea.

No. So the Bluetooth solution was that you, it would not, because Bluetooth isn't directional in that way, it would wait for you to leave and not, and like literally their app on your phone would see your location as being not in a radius that you set of your house.

At which point the lock is told next time you see me, now you can unlock, because I'm not in the house. So it was a real hack, and it worked okay. NFC is better, right? You've got to put your watch

or phone right up to the lock, but then it unlocks. It's like Express Transit or anything like that. Yeah. You can set it as your home key. It works. UWB, ultra-wideband is directional.

It knows where you are in 3D space. And so you can set UWB lock. to unlock as you walk up to the door. So literally, in my review, there's a video that I took. You literally, as you walk up to the door, generally you get a couple steps away and your door unlocks, and you walk in, which is pretty sweet.

How close, like, is that, it's like a couple of steps in both directions? Like, when you're inside and outside? Is that how it works? If you're inside, it doesn't unlock because it knows you're inside. Okay. Okay, I see.

Machete. The guy outside might have a, That's why you don't want that. That's why you don't want that. In fact, it's got a very interesting feature that it lets you choose where people might approach your door from. And this is important because I realized, think about it, I am working directly to the, I mean, it's to my right is my front door. Yeah, you're pretty close to it. I'm pretty close to it.

And in fact, I'm a little bit ahead of it. So one of the things you can do with this lock is, say, in my case, it's people will approach my door from the front and maybe from the right, but not from the left. And that's good because if I'm walking around my garage and I go, I go past the door, it doesn't unlock the door. Because it knows that if I'm over on this side, I'm in the house. That's very clever. That's very clever design. They've really thought that to think of that. Right. Because I, because I, can get way ahead of my front door in the garage and then walk toward the door and it won't

unlock because it's like, no, no, he's over to my left and he's not right in front of me. Whereas if I come from the other side, which is outside, it will unlock. And obviously the most common is just I straight directly address the door. And yeah, sometimes you walk up to the door and then a second later, the UWB flashes and it lets you in. But most of the time, I'm still in stride and I don't need to break stride. I basically walk right up to my door and press the latch and enter my house, which is pretty sweet. So I think that's pretty great. Every other smart lock I've ever had has had AA batteries.

This has a rechargeable battery that looks like a power bank. It lasts forever. I mean, it's a very long life because it's a big phone battery. So it lasts. I mean, I don't know how long it lasts. I've had it since January, and it's just not been an issue. But you might be thinking, well, yeah, but how do you recharge it if it's in your, in your door? And the answer is you can take it out and then your lock doesn't work.

But it's got a USB, C, on the, on the lock. And in there, I thought this is so smart. They're like, here's what you do. Do you have a phone charger? Put it in, put it in like a shopping bag and plug it into the lock. Yeah, yeah. battery bank for your phone. Plug it in to the lock.

Put it in like a shopping bag and hang it over the doorknob. That's so clever. And then leave it there for like six hours and then your lock is charged again. So you don't have to like turn. You can charge it inside. That's right, because the housing is on the back of the door. Yeah. Yeah, I thought that was a really smart one.

And I love not going through double A batteries. Yeah. That's great. It's great. It's just a rechargeable battery. And the little motor that pushes the, lock is powerful, which I like, because I definitely had some, because my door isn't aligned perfectly. And I've definitely had some locks that really struggle. Like, if they don't strike,

the strike plate exactly right, they give up. And this one's just like, bruh, it's going to slam that thing in there. And you can see the door, sometimes the door will just go, it'll move. It'll actually move the door a little bit as a part of that process. So it's been pretty, and I'll say, if it fails to lock the door, it immediately makes a very loud noise, which is really nice. Okay. So all of this is good. It is, yeah, it's got home kit support. It's got thread and matter.

It'll work with matter controllers. I have the Akara camera, so it talks to it too. So it's like it's connected to everything. Truth be told, I don't need it to be integrated to anything in my home. But back when I had teenagers, one of the things that I did with my old smart lock is, I set up an automation so that if the smart lock unlocked after like 11 p.m., it turned on one of the lights in the living room. And that was literally like, well, if I've got a kid coming home, or I'm coming home, I guess, from somewhere late at night, I'll turn on a light in the house so that when they step in the front door, they can see what they're doing. So you can automate it that way.

I know you did this light. Hey. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's a log. I know you're out like. I can tell you. There's a camera. I mean,

I know, I know that. But like, just to be, just to be more useful, right? To be more helpful. Um, so yeah,

it's, it's good. It is, it's not for everybody. Like, I talked to Dan Moran about it. He has, he has one of those locks that,

uh, like the level, I think it is. Yeah. Where it's like entirely just in, it doesn't have anything. It doesn't look like a smart lock. It doesn't look like a smart lock.

It looks like a lock. But it's got all that stuff in there. Undoubtedly, those will come. This one, because this one's got the big black keypad. Honestly, I don't need that. I would be happy if it was more like a level lock. But I've got the space on it and I do have the lady who house sits and dog walks for us.

And she's not super technical. And I could set it up on her phone, but I haven't. I just, she's got a code. And she just puts in the code and it works. It's like these things are useful, but it's like, do you want your front door to look like an Airbnb front door? Because that's what it will look like, right? Like, because you've got the big, This one looks pretty good because it's a big black rectangle.

Yeah. And it doesn't, the numbers are only visible when you touch in the number area. But, but yes, in the end, it is one of those. And if you don't like that aesthetic, yeah, I could see it. Like, like I said, if I, I, I tend to buy the first one of these that comes out because I don't need it to be totally stealthly invisible. But if that was an option, I would consider it because I don't really need all these other things. I'm pretty happy with having a BWW. and a key and throw in NFC and then that covers almost any modern Apple device, which is good enough.

I don't need a fingerprint reader. That's silly. I don't actually need the numbers, although it doesn't hurt when you've got somebody like our house sitter. Yeah. Yeah. So it's great. I love it. And I can say because I started writing this article and then I got called to be on Jeopardy and then I got called by the Wall Street Journal and then it was Apple 50.

In the end, by the time I published the article, I had three months with it. So I'm able to report my delight of this watch, or of this watch, of this lock. And literally I walk the dog. I don't even bring my phone. It's just my Apple watch. And we walk up to the door and the door unlocks. And we go in.

And it's like, is it that much superior to me walking up to the door, holding my wrist against the door, having to go beep, and then unlock? No. Like, that's good. But what I say in the story is, this is the dream. The dream is a magic door that knows that it's me and unlocks because it's me and I'm coming home without me doing anything, just walking up to the door. That's kind of, I mean, the ultimate dream is a Star Trek door, but, you know, pocket doors are really impractical. So, you know, it's just, Star Trek doors just slide away.

Well, it doesn't do that, but it does the thing where I can just walk up to it and it unlocks, and that's pretty cool. And again, one of the reasons you get a smart lock, in my opinion, is things like if you leave home and forget to, lock your door, it's got a timeout, and after, you know, five minutes or whatever, you set it, 30 seconds, whatever it is. It locks your door behind you. So if you forget to lock your door, it will lock your door. And you can look on your phone and see, is the door locked? And it will tell you, yes, the door is locked or no, it's not. And these are reassuring things for people to have. Very nice. UWB is very impressive technology. Like some of the stuff that you can do with it. It's really nice. It's more powerful than I think I give it credit for.

It's going everywhere. And one of the reasons is because of the, because of the fact that it has 3D positioning. One of the motivators for it was for car keys. Yeah. Because with Bluetooth, what you can do is repeat. So like you've got somebody with like a Tesla and they've got their Tesla key in their phone. And it's Bluetooth.

And this is a thing that really happened. And so what you do. do is they're at a restaurant and you you stand outside their restaurant and identify their Bluetooth and you put you do a Bluetooth relay magnifier that that relays their Bluetooth signal and you direct it to their car and now their car thinks that the signal from the phone is so strong that they must be right next to the car and then you can open the door. With UWB you can't because it knows exactly where you are. It's using timing so that the actual, and this is actually how Apple Watch unlock works on the Mac too is, um, not UWB, but the timing thing, which is,

speed of light is a real thing and computers can actually measure it. And like, there's a timestamp attached. So like, you could relay the UWB signal to the, um, to the, the, the car to unlock it. but it will know how far away that is because of the speed of light. It knows that it took that radio wave a lot longer to get there than it should have if it was proximate. And that's how that works. So it's much more secure and it knows exactly where you are. And yeah, in the long run, I think a lot of smart home stuff is going to be UWB related because you will be able to do things like when I walk into this room. Like, if I'm wearing my Apple Watch

or I have my phone in my pocket and I walk into my garage, at some point, I will be able to automate that where I won't even have to press the button to turn on the light. It'll just turn on because I'm,

it knows I'm in the garage. Or after 30 seconds, or it knows I'm at my desk, right? Like, there are a bunch of automations that can happen when your home knows your absolute position. Well,

Akara is also doing a lot of stuff of millimeter. wave, which that is like, it knows if you're sitting down or standing up, like, not just where you are in position. So there's, there's even more interesting things. And they're integrating that into a bunch of their products now. I think they have a thermostat. I was just watching a video Stephen Robles made about this where like the thermostat also has the millimeter wave antenna in it. So it can like, it can tell where you are in the room and you can use that for different automations and stuff like that. So it's really interesting stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

I mean, if I'm in the bedroom or in the living room, I probably want parts of aspects of my house to behave differently, right? Yeah. And you could do that. Yeah. So that's it. It's all very interesting. But anyway, this is a, our smart locks necessary in life, they are not.

But they do make my life a little bit nicer and I enjoy having it. And the UWB is the best one yet. Very cool. All right. This episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Mercury Weather. Mercury Weather is a thoughtfully designed weather app that shows all the essential. weather details at a glance. It has a beautiful, colorful interface that dynamically adapts to the current weather conditions. So you would see maybe a warm, orangey palette on a sunny day,

icy tones on a cold day. I saw a lot of grey recently. I wonder why that might be. Or a deep blue on a rainy night. Mercury uses a glanceable chart layout to present the hourly and daily forecast in a way that feels intuitive right away. My first interaction with Mercury weather was when Jason came to visit me. And he had a widget on his iPad home screen. And I was like, what is going on in that widget? And then he got to tell me about Mercury's trip forecast feature, which I think you're very excited about now. It is so this is why I got Mercury Weather the first time is I was asking people, because when we went to New Zealand, I ended up writing a shortcut that gave me, because we had a whole two-week itinerary that would query Apple Weather and get me back the weather.

the weather in this city in these two days and then what was the forecast for the next two days in this other city and then what was the forecast for that and and somebody said have you seen mercury weather mercury weather has a trip feature so you put in and you can do a way in advance you put in i'm going to be in london these days and in its main view and in its widget it will show you you can see like a location or you can see where you are at on those days so like when we went up to to Oregon to visit our kids. I had a forecast for like the next three days in Mill Valley and then the three days we were in Portland and then go back and then back to Mill Valley. When my wife was going to Minnesota, like you're like, oh, the weather's really nice. Now it's very cold. Oh, now it's very nice again. And I love it. So when I went to London, I could put in my whole trip, I can do a way in advance. And then just as it got closer, suddenly my weather widget from Mercury was showing me not just what the weather was going to be. like where I was at home, but then, oh, like, and then you're going to be in London and here's what the weather's going to be like. I don't know. Like, this is such a good idea. I'm actually

surprised that it hasn't been stolen by everybody, but it hasn't. Mercury had it. And that is why I am a Mercury Weather subscriber, because it's so great to have that feature, especially if you travel a lot or if you're traveling to different places, because you can put them all in, you can put a little, give it a little icon. And, and then you, you're, you're going to, give it a little icon. And, and then, you you're looking at a personal forecast, not a forecast for a location. The location is you. It's super smart. I love it. Mercury also offers storm and hurricane tracking for when weather gets serious. It has maps, live positions, forecast path, cones and intensity. Plus widgets as well. I know. I don't even know what that means, but I know that you storm chasers do. Plus widgets as

well so you can keep track on specific storms or the closest one right from your home screen. Overall, it is a gorgeous interface. It is a delight to check the weather every day. even on gray and rainy ones like I have. The app's business model was simple. There are no ads. They don't sell your data. It's available on all Apple platforms except for TVOS. You can download it, use the standard features for free,

or upgrade to Mercury Premium to unlock everything. Go to Mercuryweather.com upgrade to download Mercuryweather Now. Use that link so they'll know that you came from this show. That is Mercuryweather.com slash upgrade. Try it out and get all the standard features for free, and there is a link in the show notes as well. Our thanks to Mercury Weather for their support of this show and all of Relay. Let's finish out with some ask upgrade questions.

John asks, do either of you think that the Siri brand has been so tarnished and associated with failure after failure that when Apple finally gets Apple intelligence together, they should just go with a new name? I don't. In for a penny and for a pound. Let's get it right. It's, you know, I'd say it's easier to rehab a known brand than it is to. create a new brand. Yeah. I think that people are forgiving,

believe it or not, I think that all you have to say is we've got a whole new Siri and it's way better than the old one and people are like, oh, I'll try the new Siri. I don't think anybody's like,

I won't try anything called Siri because Siri wronged me. I just don't think that's a voice that I tried. I just don't believe it. Mr. Burns. I just don't believe it. I think Siri is a known name

and the most important thing is that it's known. And it hasn't committed crimes. It's just not been that great, but like it's known. and all they have to do is say we made Siri way better. That's all they have. So I just, I don't believe it.

I know that there's this narrative out there that is like, oh, the Siri brand is so tarnished. I think most of that is among people like us who pay a lot more attention to it than the regular people in the real world do. I think people make jokes about it, right? Like you see jokes about it on TV. But I think in that regard,

then your kind of level of expectations so low that all you have to do is make it a little bit better and everyone will say, hey, Siri's really good now. And it might be still not as good as you would want it to be, but you can kind of, you get that rub. I would also say that all of these voice assistants have bad reputations to a certain degree because they've all been bad.

Yeah. But like, I just think it's branding 101. Apple has spent, you know, whatever, 15 years branding Siri. You know the name. That's the most important thing. It is, that is it. That is it. You can rehab that brand.

All you have to do literally is say, hey, we made Siri great. It's better than it's ever been before. Try it. That's all they have to do. If they can, then it has to work. You actually do have to. Yeah.

You can't just say it. You actually do have to have done the work. I'm not a believer in throwing it away and coming up with a new. I just don't, I just don't think that makes sense. Jeremy says, do you think we'll be able to rotate an open, folded iPhone so that the screen is tall. It may be a nice way to get long scrolling lists of what seems like an otherwise squat phone. So if you turned it to its side, will it do the

screen flipping like an iPad does? I don't know. Maybe, although my guess is probably not because of the crease in the center having to be horizontal. Why would that matter? I don't know. Let's not even go there. Because here's the bottom line for Jeremy. which is it's a four by three display on the inside. Rotating it gets you nothing. It makes it very slightly taller. It's not a long display.

It's basically a square display. So I don't think it's going to get you what you want. Maybe. Maybe the question is how it's all ergonomically, you know, like if you hold it sideways, it flips closed or something. You're like, oh, no, I got a mastodon, right? Yeah, yeah, but this is what I'm saying is it's not going to get you a lot. And it depends on how Apple implements it.

But like if holding it that way is kind of awkward because it's sort of like, then you're putting pressure in places where it's like going to try to close or something. I don't know. I don't know. But I just, maybe it'll help a little bit. But I think the message that I want to send here is turning four by three into three by four is not going to get you a lot. Okay.

What is the iPad? It's not. Is that four by three? Pretty, if it's not, it's pretty close. Four by three is the traditional iPad. It's not the aspect of ratio of every iPad now, but most iPads. are in that ballpark. Because I feel like an iPad,

you turn it like that. It does, like you've been reading a book or whatever. It feels more natural to have it in a portrait than a landscape. I don't know. If you're reading a book

on the foldable iPhone, I think you probably want like two pages, right? Oh, yeah, actually. Oh, yeah. That's probably what you want. I'd love that. I'm rounding in on Apple and China now,

by the way. I'm like, not very far away from the end. I was reading every night when I would kind of like give the baby a bottle to sleep, but I've stopped doing it. now, so I now need to find other places in my day to read the book. But I'm at the part with the iPhone 10R when the iPhone 10R kind of like falls apart.

That's a blast from the past. I love that. Yeah. Great book, man. Oh, my God, it's so good. It's a good book. While we're in this random aside, I don't remember if I shared this if you are not, but there's a chapter called Red Apple.

And I'm convinced that was the original title for this book, because that's too good. The name is too good. But I think it's not as discreet. as Apple in China. But I think if you've ever come up with the name Red Apple, like that's the name of the book unless they tell you it can't be,

surely. It's like a perfect name for this book. Anyway, coming back to the show, Stephen says, probably a weird thought, but considering the M1 Pro and Max chips were released in 2021,

how many years do you think we can expect Apple to keep supporting them with new OS features? I was considering picking up an M1 Max MacBook Pro as a second computer. So I looked this up today.

Tahoe, because it's as a refresher, Tahoe is the last Mac OS version that will support Intel. So the next version of MacOS, the lowest kind of system, or like the intro system spec will be the M1. So then it's like, then how long after that? Is it another two years?

Is it three, four years? But yes, this is the, Tahoe is the last operating system that will support any Intel computers. So we don't know, but what I will say is I expected to be a long time. Yeah.

I expect Apple to support Apple Silicon for a very long time because it's their chip design because there are lots and lots of M1s out there. Yes. Because Apple was selling new M1 MacBook Airs

this year. Oh my word. Because Apple is still still selling, just started selling a MacBook Neo that is using, that is using a very low-powered Apple silicon chip.

I think Apple's silicon strategy, eventually they will drop support for older chips. I think it's going to be a really long time. I think they will maybe drop features, new features. Maybe there will be some new features that do not go back that far, right? Maybe. It's hardware, but like just how the, the studio display XDR doesn't support certain Apple Silicon Macs at full frame.

Yeah, like they're already doing that, right? There's some like gaiting there about what some chips can do. That's probably based on the Thunderbolt more than the chip, or it's based on the chip, whatever. I think there will be more software features like that. But my gut feeling is that Apple is going to keep support for Apple Silicon Max on MacOS for a very long time. And that when they do give it up, they'll probably give it up piecemeal. Well, they'll say, well, it'll still run. and you'll get our security benefits,

but this feature won't be there. They did that a little bit in the Intel era. I think they're going to be very motivated to keep Apple Silicon Macs on the current version of the OS for as long as they can, magnified by the fact that, again, the M1 MacBook Air was being sold this year,

and the MacBook Neo is not that different than the M1 MacBook Air in a lot of ways. So that leads me to believe that it will be supported for a long time, because that's the thing. Like, these are all Apple chips. So it's like, can I boot it up and run the Apple chips? I don't see why Apple wouldn't try to keep that window open as long as possible.

And if there's anything that doesn't cross the quality bar or whatever, you just make that feature not available on an older system. I feel like that's what they're going to try to do for a long time. I could be wrong, but like, I just don't see it. I just don't see Apple in two years saying no more M1 support, especially since you'll have a relatively recent M1 air that you bought. And where does that leave in MacBook Neo? I feel like when they make those commitments to sell those products,

they are committing to those systems for a while. Again, I could be wrong, but I just, since they control everything here, and since Apple Silicon has so much kind of good about it and is custom built to run these operating systems, I am skeptical. But, you know, they do it with the iPhone. in the iPad. Those all fall off eventually. So maybe it will with macOS, but I'd be surprised if it

wasn't several years out now. And Nick writes in and says, about two and a half years ago, we got my high school daughter a refurbished M1 MacBook Air with 16 gigabytes of RAM and a 256 gigabyte SSD. She uses about half of this space. She's currently a senior and I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford to get her a new machine for college in the fall. My question, if I want to get her something that will last four years, am I better off getting a? a Neo or a MacBook 5, M5 MacBook Air. I'm tempted by the shiny new Neo, but I'm

thinking the air might be better long term. What do you think? I'd say it kind of depends on how she uses it. Yeah. I gut feeling for something that'll last four years and you're fortunate enough to be able to afford to get her a new

machine, I would look at the MacBook Air. I think so. I would look at the M5 MacBook Air. I would also look and see if there are any discounted M4 MacBook Gears floating around because or even a refurb because like the M5 is nice but you could probably save a little bit of money

on an M4 and M4 is great too and is going to be way more powerful than the Neo anyway but depends on how she uses it I mean if she's not really pushing it the Neo is probably fine but if you really wanted to be something that's going to take her whole college career

and you have the, you know, you're able to afford it, as Nick's message writes, I would say look at the air, look at the M5 and the M4 that might be discounted, because I have every confidence that those computers will be perfectly fine in four years. The Mac with Neo, you know, in four years it may be showing its age, we'll see. I mean, look, if you said I don't have the budget for anything more than now, Neo, I would say the Neo would be fine. But if you've got a little more budget, you can get a lot more with an air.

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Bye.