Apple launches new MacBook Neo, Studio Display XDR, MacBook Pro, more

0:00Should we roll the intro music just to troll Mayo while he's on vacation? I can go get a guitar, even better. That's the running bit is that Mayo is the reason there's no music. And I am the reason there's no video, so make of that what you will. I'm here for a music and video, but this, you know, who am I to say? Well, welcome back to your show, Zach, filling in for Mayo while he is traversing Japan. Is it like riding a bike? It's like his first time ever off the show, I think, and that's a pretty cool reason to be off the show. And in terms of podcasting, is it like riding a bike? It's like riding a bike in that I recently bought a new bicycle and you don't forget how to ride a bike, but it's your good stuff, or you haven't for a while. Well, the good news is we have plenty to talk about and keep us on track for the week, because I think Mayo is also concerned that we're going to go off the rails a little bit, but he's probably not even going to listen to this for a few weeks.

1:02We're going to start with the M5 MacBook Air. This was the continuation of, I guess it was Tuesday morning, so after we recorded Monday night, Monday's episode, of course, we talked about the 17E and the new iPad Air, M5 MacBook Air, just a spec bump in one chip for Bluetooth 6 and Wi-Fi 7. Like all M5 processors, it has the neural accelerator for all the GPU cores, faster memory bandwidth, faster SSD. The base storage is now 512 instead of 256, and you can now go all the way up to four terabytes instead of two terabytes, and 32 gigabytes is still the max memory. I guess the most interesting part about the MacBook Air refresh is that the base price has increased, so it's no longer at that coveted 999 price point. It's now 1099, but at the same time, you get twice the storage. Yeah, I guess there used to be a $200 gap between the 999 model and then 1199 for 512 gigabytes instead of 256 gigabytes, so now you're getting, you know, if you were to buy the M5,

2:03when it comes, you know, now that it's available instead of the M4 for the same price, you get, well, for, you spend a hundred bucks more, but you get twice the storage and you would have before, so you kind of save 100 if you look at it that way, but if you're looking at it, it clearly is like, what's the cost to get a MacBook Air than the Niaz $100 more? And I think that was the price for the M2 MacBook Air when they redesigned it, and so it was sort of a, you know, more expensive version to make, I guess, for that felt a little period, but, so MacBook Air has gone from like a thousand to 1100 back and forth over the years, but, you know, that's reasonable if it was like a two-in-one price jump and they just get rid of the base storage and it'd be like, oh, that's steep, you know, confirmed for what it is, but yeah. I think that's, isn't that what Samsung just did with like the S26 funds where they just cut the lower tier off, but didn't compensate at all, and like, so it is effectively a price increase for those funds? I think what Apple has done here makes more sense, and I don't even really think it's a price increase just because you get this, you get more storage, all it does is,

3:04nothing has gotten more expensive, it's just the cheapest tier has gone, I guess, so. Yeah, I mean, if you look at it in absolute values, Apple does increase storage without increasing the price, like we saw that on the iPhone 17i where it's still 599, but it has 256 instead of 128, so in this case you go from 256GB to 512GB, you know, it's just even bigger jump there, and you do see a price jump, but it certainly helps Apple kind of hide the rising product, like maybe the higher build price that they have, because they get it protected margins, and if you look to the future, that's just something that you can't know until it happens, but there are rumors that what by the next MacBook Air that it goes OLED for the first time, and so I think easing into a price increase as the MacBook Air becomes more premium is better than saying we're replacing, say, the M5 MacBook Air or the M6 MacBook Air, and it has OLED for the first time, and now it costs $200 more at the door,

4:07you know, regardless of storage, so if you look at it that way, I think it's kind of such the stage for having a more premium MacBook Air with the OLED display in the future, but that's not this one, you know, of course, but also just prices go up and down for the MacBook Air, just even as specs improve, and the biggest change, like over the past three generations has been just getting rid of 8GB RAM at the base, because I don't know about you, chance, like as you're configuring them back, like storage is one thing, like it's a really clear thing, like either I can fit what, you know, all my files on this thing are not, it's kind of an absolute as well, RAM is iffy, like, I know I can do everything on the base RAM, and it's awfully tempting to be able to not have to order a special configuration or pay, you know, a few $1 more for like maybe a better experience that you really know is better for you, but you kind of want to also get a good deal, especially if it's a discount on sale or something, and so by not having those low-end, like,

5:07you know, 8GB options, then you just don't get it if you're shopping for the base model, and so, to me, that's like, if I look at it, zoom out, what's the biggest improvement to the MacBook Air Apples made in the last three years, it's been getting rid of 8GB RAM as even an option, so that I think is like what, say that to me, and so by doing that, by improving the base model, by getting rid of the 8GB of RAM and the 256GB of storage, even a few years, like, you know, five years ago, we were looking 820GB base storage, so it's really increased the base specs for a MacBook Air while keeping the price still around $1,000. I think it makes it easier just to tell somebody they can buy a MacBook Air with no asterisks associated, because for the longest time, basically since the M2 you'd say MacBook Air is great, but consider going for 16GB, then they bump the base to 16GB, you say MacBook Air is great, maybe consider going to 512GB of storage if you need it, and now you can just say walk in to an App Store by the MacBook Air, and there's

6:10no reason that anybody, most people anyway, need to go beyond that, I think. Yeah, when you do, you're kind of looking at, like, as you upgrade the MacBook Air, then you're looking at, you're getting closer at least to MacBook Pro prices, especially that the M5 MacBook Pro. The awkward MacBook Pro. I think it's a pretty cool MacBook Pro in that you get a better display than you get with the MacBook Air, and you get a different port situation. If you're trying to make your money go as far as it can without getting into like $2,000 plus laptop, then the M5 MacBook Air, that's not a M5 Pro. MacBook Pro, that's not a M5 Pro chip. I like that that exists, and it's not as bad as a situation. It's not anything like a situation several years ago where you had the Touchbar MacBook Pro that was not Mac safe yet, and it just made a bunch of different decisions than the, it wasn't like the current design. At a glance, it looks similar, and you can still get black, which I think is a really cool spec there for that MacBook Pro. But yeah,

7:16it's like the base MacBook Air is wonderful, and then as you can figure it higher, then maybe think about, what would it be better off if I had a MacBook Pro? What I like, these things about it better. But I mean, just in general, though, having this M5 MacBook Air be available, it's just like with the iPad Air that you guys discussed already, and then now the iPhone 17e, having regular chip updates, we're not skipping a generation, and you're not going like 18 or 24 months without an update in between. That feels great for these machines that aren't changing dramatically otherwise, but just getting better base specs and having the current generation chip in there is a lot better than the Intel days. You know what I mean? The before, the Switched Apple, so looking at it was like, is the MacBook Air going to go retina? It finally did around 2018 or so, but you know, that silver bezel version that wasn't even retina. I was still, I was really popular for a long time, even though it wasn't like a great Mac laptop. So that's the M5 MacBook Air available to order now,

8:20and the first orders will arrive Wednesday, March 11th. I want to say one more thing on the M5 MacBook Air. The colors are unchanged, just like on the iPad Air, and change there, and I, you know, as I was always thinking about the launch week coming, there's anything they do with the MacBook Air, maybe just saturate that sky blue a little bit more, because it's so subtle, it passes for silver if you're not looking at something else that's just gray, and they didn't do that, and the reason I thought maybe they would is because they did take a couple of versions of midnight to get that, that finished right, you know, it was so finger printing, and then they improved the coating on that before they got to where midnight is, but, but you know, same colors, they're not changed the sky blue. There's another colorful Mac now that we'll talk about later, but that which also has some of the saturation problems is the MacBook Air, but it's better. The same day, on Tuesday, we got the studio display, and what Apple calls the studio display family, so it's now a family, not just one. So there's the base, the vanilla studio display,

9:22that has gotten an update, but it's basically the same as the old studio display. It's the 27 inch screen 5K, 600 nits of brightness, 60 hertz refresh rate. The updates to that model are basically better speakers. Apple says 30% deeper base than two Thunderbolt 5 ports, two USB C ports, improved image quality and support for desk view with the camera that it now has the A19 chip inside instead of the A13. The worst part about the base studio display refreshes that, well, A, the panel hasn't changed at all. It's still that same panel that Apple's been using since the red and iMac in 2015 or whatever, but the price also still hasn't changed. So it's 1599 with the tilting stand, 1999 with the tilt and height adjustable stand. Yeah, the Apple studio display, the plain one, it's a really good product, it's a really good monitor, if you can kind of hold your nerves with the price, or if the price is just not an issue for you, it's not a great value, that's for sure. I mean, it wasn't a great value when it first was

10:23introduced, you know, you're like, ah, it's not mini LED, it's not OLED, so the contrast, like, that's the biggest thing is if you're looking at blacks, they're not deep, deep blacks, they're fine, the contrast is fine, but it's not, if you're using it with a MacBook Pro, there's a gigantic difference between the contrast, the deep blacks and just how much it pops, so for a $1,600 box, that's pretty tough, you know, the refresh rate was already like a sticking point originally, and now all these years later, same price, same refresh rate, you know, and at the announcement is also like, you've kind of got to dig in, like, they don't advertise the chip improvement inside, right? You said A13 to A19, that's something you've got to dig in, you know, through Xcode, firmware files, to even discover the speaker improvement, that's cool, it's, they've got great speakers anyway, so that's, that's nice. To me, if I'm thinking about this thing, and just trying to summarize it in my mind, like, what's different this time around, it's, oh, Max have moved to Thunderbolt 5, you know, especially the MacBook Pros have moved to Thunderbolt 5,

11:24and so this is the Thunderbolt 5 version, instead of the Thunderbolt 4 version, right, and they've got that one little dot in the back to distinguish the two, the poor thing, like, for upstream and downstream. Yes, upstream and downstream, but then the non-labeled ones are just the plain USB-C ones, I think. Yeah. I think with the first version of the studio display, it very much felt like something Apple was launching almost out of spite, because everybody was so mad that there was nothing better on the market. So on one hand, it's nice to see it get an update at all, but on the other hand, it's like, is that really all you could do? A chip update that nobody cares about, and nothing else that anybody would notice on a day-to-day basis, really, maybe the speakers? I think we all just expected more from the base studio display, or at least the price cut, and we got nothing. Yeah, I mean, when you compare it to the years where there was no Apple display at all, it's the Apple monitor that's not the higher end one, and, you know, before this new version came out, it was the one that wasn't the super expensive, produce-play XDR version. So,

12:26it's like you've got a Mac laptop or a Mac desktop, and you want to have an office environment with a display from Apple as well, and this is the one that you pair with it. It feels more like a company monitor or like a business monitor than it does like a consumer monitor. If you're in business for yourself as a client creator, then this is the price of the price, but if you're just trying to, you know, have a good 5K resolution, 27-inch, you know, retina display for your Mac laptop, the good news is that there are alternatives now that are $1,000 brand new on the market from companies like BenQ and others, both in matte panels and glossy panels now, and so that helps a lot ease the fact that this is a, you know, it's a premium build, but it's pricey for the specs, and then just in general, if you're judging this as a product, I mean, it's a good product on its own, it is a good, they're good monitors, they feel very

13:27nice, it doesn't feel like Apple's, they're cutting corners, except for like the display part, I mean, the build quality that we're talking about, the display part, yeah, it could be better, but on its own, you know, it's a good product and to be able to, the fact is, this week, they improved it in ways, you know, and in ways instead of letting it languish or discontinuing it altogether, and so, compared to Apple's history of getting in and out of the display game at different times, you know, relying on others to fill that hole, then this is better than that, it's just, it does, you know, that's also the reality that we're judging like Apple's display moves against, they're not participation in the past. That's what I mean, it's like, they made it initially because we were all mad, and now it's like, okay, I guess to keep it updated, but don't do anything else, unless you want to add a new higher end here, that's what they've done. So the studio display XDR also still 27 inches at 5K, but up to a thousand knits of SDR brightness and 2000 knits of HDR, mini LED panel that has 2,304 dimming zones, which is much better than

14:35the Pro Display XDR, actually, which had 576 and 120 Hertz refresh rate. This is an excellent display by all indications, with the exception of it's using the XDR name, but it's 27 inches instead of 32 inches, which yeah, I mean, this display, the studio display XDR is, oh, I like the studio display build quality, but I wish the display was better, you know, and yeah, you know, it is the studio display, Vanille, like the plain one, a good value at $600, probably not compared to the competition. Well, if you want it to be even better, then it's definitely not a value, but you're at least getting the specs. I mean, that's, that can be the first race, and sometimes is when, you know, you're like, money, notwithstanding, like, like, I want, I want these specs, you know, let me just pay, let me pay you Apple for these specs, and before today, they didn't do 120 Hertz refresh rate on an extra display that was only in a MacBook laptop, right? And so, so now you can do that on display, you pay for it, and it's not a one-to-one

15:42replacement for the Pro Display XDR, but I think if you're looking at the Pro Display XDR from years past, you know, if you wanted to replace it for that, you're like, I want a 32-inch, but I want it to be in a 6K, but I want it to be 120 Hertz, like, they didn't make that, but they did do 120 Hertz, which if you're wanting a display that's the same refresh rate, and display technology as your MacBook Pro, that you've probably paid, you know, 2500 or 3000 or 4000 or even like $7,000 for, then there is a display now for a Apple that matches that, and doing 27-inch 5K instead of, instead of 32-inch 6K is a choice, but it feels like this is a product made for that MacBook Air scenario more than how the Pro Display XDR was, you know, it's the same exact design language as the Mac Pro, and it's really like that high-end use case. The Pro Display XDR was so over-engineered compared to what people wanted at the time,

16:42because again, 2019, there was nothing else out there, so they made a 32-inch 6K display. They didn't add a camera or speakers to it because they thought it would be used, and like, reference, like security conscious environments, they made it $5,000 plus $1,000 for the stand. When in reality, a lot of the people who were stupid enough to buy it were just people with a Mac who wanted an external display, speaking from experience, like they grossly misunderstood the market for that. So the Studio Display XDR is an acknowledgement of that to a degree, because from a physical perspective, it's not a direct replacement of the Pro Display XDR, but the Pro Display XDR is dead now. This has replaced it. It's just that 32-inch 6K versus 275K, dilemma that a lot of us are going to find ourselves in now. Yeah. The sort of, like, weirdly frustrating thing here is that there's no 27-inch iMac, or, you know, definitely not a 32-inch iMac, not that Apple isn't doing a 32-inch display monitor. Yet, this thing has what the

17:43A19 Pro chip inside. And then, you know, as we'll discuss later in the show, like, Apple's running a laptop now that has an inferior chip to even that. And so, these don't do anything with MacOS. They're not Macs at all. They're just monitors for Macs, but they've got, you know, crazy processing power inside. And that was the case before. And also, like, one thing that's nice about Apple Launch Week is you finally get to see what gets delivered versus what's rumored and what's, like, being maybe considered along the way. And rumors and considerations can always be grander than what ships. But I think there was talk about, you know, the possibility of could Apple make this also an airplane display when it's not being used as a Mac monitor. And there's also that wish-casting factor of, like, Samsung makes their monitors that are comparable, sort of smart TVs when they're not attached to a computer. Apple's got this, you know, pure focus of this is just a computer monitor, whether it's for an iPad Pro or a MacBook Pro. It's just a

18:48computer display and it's not a standalone product despite having processing power that competes with laptops, you know. There were also the rumors that I guess we're opposite of wish-casting that it might only be 90 hertz. Sure. And I guess it's good that the XDR version is 120 hertz, but maybe the better balance would have been the cheap models 90 and the expensive once 120 and many LED. But ultimately, like, my dilemma right now is whether I'm going to buy this thing. And Mayo is going to tell me no, but should I buy it? Okay. It just comes onto the refresh rate. The 120 hertz refresh rate is that worth the pain and suffering of having to offload your Pro2XDR or keep it around and deal with having different specs in terms of screen size and refresh rate. Because adding this doesn't make your Pro2XDR 120 hertz, like you're still going to be like a note that that's not 120 hertz. So you want to offload that, I think. You want to get it off your desk. And financially too. You want to extract some value

19:51out of that as well. And you know, for the preservation of your of your marriage, you'd also want to do that. And so in a lot of ways, you still have the best monitor that Apple's made in the last decade. That is my thinking too. And I've said before that I think ProMotioner, I guess this isn't technically called ProMotion because it doesn't go all the way down to one hertz, but 120 hertz is less noticeable. The bigger the screen gets, if that makes sense, like I noticed it most on the phone. I could not stand looking at a phone that didn't have that did not have ProMotion. I noticed it on the iPad Pro. And I noticed it on the MacBook Pro, but it's not like every time I go from using my XDR to my MacBook Pro and proper laptop mode. I'm like blown away. Yeah. I noticed the mini LED, but the ProMotion is not, it's there, but it's not like life-changing on a laptop, I think. Yeah. Factors that matter to me, like Brightness is a really big one, because if it's not bright enough, then that's that stuff frustration. If it's not high enough

20:53resolution, then it's fuzzy and it's blurry, you know, then that's no good. And then it's also screen real estate. You know, you've got more screen real estate with the ProUSBXDR than you'd have with this. You give up some of that. Now for me, like, you know, we'll talk more about this later, but even on a 5K 27 inch monitor that I'm using, I've got a lot of space around the active windows that I'm using because I kind of need to fit my focus on a laptop screen. And if I go to a desktop screen, I want to have it be really similar to what I'm looking at on the laptop. And so for that reason, like the way that I'm used to overlapping windows and having things arranged, even 5K, you know, the screen real estate part of it, I've got more space than I have to have. So if you've got a lot of extra space that you're not using and you feel like you could extract some value out of that ProUSBXDR and selling it and cutting, I mean, the new thing that is the sort of replacement is $3,300 new. You kind of really want to get a chunk of that, you know, like I'd want to knock off like 2000 from that, you know, by selling the other monitor,

21:56if I were going to that one to feel, feel good about it. It's, you know, that you can buy a nice MacBook Pro for that. But you're looking on eBay, like I've been impressed my entire ProUSBXDR ownership at how well resale values have held. And I know like our colleague and friend, Jeff Benjamin has bought and sold a ProUSBXDR like at least five times because he keeps selling it and wanting to go back. But looking at eBay right now, I would think I could get at at least $2,500 for this thing. Okay. Probably a bit more. But I don't know. My instinct right now is now I'd rather have 32 inches at 6K and I don't want to be a two monitor person or anything. Like that messes with my focus having two big displays looking at me. You've got the the the Ted Lasso villain head coach monitor, the one that, you know, that was, oh yeah, the second season I think and there's like, what's the bad guy's monitor going to be on his desk? Oh, it's a ProUSBXDR because it looks villainous. Like they haven't replaced it. They haven't made a better version of it. They've made closer to what people wanted out of the ProUSBXDR. But yeah, I know if it were me

23:02and I'm like, I just want to I want to focus on like I think there's two aspects of it. It is upgrading and really an upgrade or is the side grade. I think probably side grade. Oh yeah. And then also even if it were $0, would the the effort of having to to sell it and deal with the seller and and ship it and yeah, shipping this gigantic thing. Yeah. Now if one falls in your lap and you're like, what do I choose? That's that's more interesting. It's like, oh, yeah, I've got these two things that are both available to me to use. Which one do I do I pick? I think that's a more interesting question, you know, because I don't know. Like I'd probably lean toward the studios play XDR just because it's like them. It's more modern now than this at this point. But if you're looking at what you already have, then yeah, there's I'm pretty biased toward keeping on with what you have and getting the full product life out of it. Have you purchased? When did I think about this thing in 2021? So been five years at this point. So longer than I've held any other Apple product, which speaks to the benefit of using a Mac with an external display

24:04versus the all in one iMac form factor, because I'd love a pro and iMac pro with all of the bells and whistles. But I've gone through multiple multiple Macs since I got this thing, but the display has remained the same. So that's I'm a big fan of the modularity. Good. So studio display XDR, as we said, $32.99 and with that price, you get the stand included and it's the tilt and height adjustable stand can choose nano texture for $300 more dollars, I think. And it is available to order now with first orders arriving on Wednesday. Is your produce likes your nano texture? No, it's not. Okay. The MacBook Pro I have is, and I like it on the MacBook Pro. Remember when we and you were, were we in Cupertino for like WWDC? Didn't we look at nano texture on the Pro Display XDR not like it? I can't remember. My determination was that nano texture is not eagle everywhere. It's distributed and that it's superior on the Pro Display XDR, that's the best version. I mean, it costs more to add that to that monitor than it does.

25:08To at the time, there was also the iMac that had the Intel iMac had texture as an option. And that was just vastly inferior in terms of, you know, what are you looking for for nano texture? It's matte finish. You don't have reflections and glare and gloss. It's matte. But what you have to deal with is like the refracting of light creates that rainbow effect and that rainbow effect is like almost, I mean, it's virtually non-existent on the Pro Display XDR where the nano texture was introduced. On the iMac at the time, it was just, you could see it, you know, maybe if you're at a distance, it's not as bad, but just at like a side-by-side comparison, you're like, okay, these are not the same thing. They're the same name and the same idea, but there's a reason that one, you know, was just a lot more of it upgrade than the other one. I think it was like several hundred dollars, which is a few hundred dollars difference. And on the studio display, it was the same situation as the iMac that came before that where it's like, okay, this is not the thousand dollar upgrade or whatever the price was for the Pro Display XDR to start to go nano texture. This is, you know, what eventually comes, you know, I think even on the iPad

26:12Pro nano texture has a better look to it in terms of not having that rainbow effect. Although the Apple store across from Apple Park is a tough environment because it's like the most sunny environment in the most bright LED lights above your head versus what you might have in like a home office environment where there is some shading unless you're, you know, cooking in the sun. Yeah. And I wonder, you know, that raises the question, what will the texture situation be on the studio display XDR? I think probably not that we're not in the $6,000 plus dollar monitor space. It's we're looking more like what the iMac and the studio display before, you know, already have. It's that like pretty good, but not blown away by what the comparison to the part of the XDR version was. Happy hour this week is sponsored by BenQ, the makers of Mac ready monitors designed to look just like your Mac. If you want your external display to actually match your MacBook, this is the one to get. BenQ's Mac colors technology makes the MA series look

27:12identical to your Mac's built in display with the same vibrancy color accuracy and no fiddling you also get USB-C one cable connectivity so your MacBook charges and connects with a single cord plus BenQ's display pilot to software for quick control of brightness, volume, resolution and smart features like focus sync that syncs focus mode between your Mac and the monitor. The stand is fully adjustable with height tilt swivel and even full 90 degree pivoting and the nano glass panel delivers premium glossy design that Mac users love. You can check out the full lineup by hitting the link in the show notes. BenQ is also running a giveaway, no purchase necessary. You must be 18 or older and a resident of the continental US, Alaska, Hawaii or Canada excluding Quebec. Full details are in the show notes. Again, my thanks to BenQ for sponsoring the show. Happy hour this week is sponsored by Quince. Check them out at quince.com

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29:15of thought and care into both the fit and the quality. Right now go to quince.com slash happy hour for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to build your wardrobe and love it and you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Again, that's quince.com slash happy hour q u i n c e dot com slash happy hour for free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com slash happy hour. My thanks to quince for sponsoring the show. Next up the m5 pro and the m5 max chips. So these are debuting in the MacBook Pro. Apple says the new pro and max chips were built with a fusion architecture that combines two dyes into a single chip that includes a CPU the scalable GPU media engine unified memory controller neural engine and Thunderbolt 5 capabilities. This fusion architecture to me it suggests that these chips and presumably

30:16going forward they're more module than they used to be which could bode well for the future of an m5 or m6 ultra and maybe eventually the resurrection of the quote unquote extreme rumor that hung around for a while early in the apple silicon days but the fusion architecture would suggest that these chips have been re engineered so they can be more they can be kind of subtracted and added on to easier than before. Yeah, hopefully my like view of the pro and max and even ultra chips at the m1 max studio desktop computer because it was just really tempting when it first came out I was like here's this whole all new Mac that didn't exist before and you could get that with what the m1 max as an option in it and so as the base and so I had that m1 max chip but I didn't end up holding onto that for more than a year before selling it and deciding like you know I'm a laptop person and and I'm perfectly my my needs are met by by even like the MacBook Air for example

31:19and so any of the m2 or later pro max ultra chips like they're all sort of just beyond my needs and just everything is like more you know what is the fastest apples doing what is like the latest and so when I see stuff like apple design fusion architecture it's all theoretical to me and and it's all like a zoom you know I have a zoomed out view of it which is that okay it sounds like apples is not just revving chips they're they're continuing to rethink what does it mean to be a pro and a max and an ultra chip you know in the Mac line and I do see the m5 pro and the m5 max chips is very important because if a look at the Mac the MacBook Pro is not a one size fits all machine but it's a pretty good thing to point to as like what's the best apples doing but isn't niche test tops like what's the mainstream pro and that they're doing and that's what that's think where the MacBook Pro exists and also look at these chips and say like oh you know the thing the

32:20thing that I think about him is like for for customers is like finally in five pro and in five pro Mac so we can we can move on to the m6 because of the redesign stuff that's going to be with that MacBook Pro in the future when we get to the Mac Pro topic but but yeah any of the performance stuff for me is just a little bit is over my needs and so I just look at it as like is apple doing well you know are they really kind of stalling out here and no they're not even stalling out they're they're still delivering and they're also you know with the fifth generation of this of this chip they're still rethinking what does it mean to be a pro and a mac chip and how do they how they architect it is cool and one of the ways they're rethinking it now is that they vent they've kind of read adjusted the naming scheme so there's now performance cores and super cores so the m5 pro and m5 max have an eight 18 core CPU architecture and that consists of six super cores which apple calls the world's fastest CPU core plus 12 new performance cores which are optimized for power efficiency and multi threaded workloads this is all a bit confusing as it

33:23stands right now but on the MacBook Pro with these pro and max chips what they've done is there is no more efficiency core it's just performance and then a step up from that is the super core the efficiency cores remain a thing on the base model m5 chip so that's the m5 chip the cheaper MacBook Pro the MacBook Air the iPad Pro and the vision pro so those have efficiency and super cores but no performance cores my interpretation of this is basically that apple was tired of people assuming that the efficiency chips weren't used for much or weren't powerful enough to do anything like it and it makes more sense that the smaller thinner lighter less powerful chips would need the efficiency cores for battery life and optimization but when you're buying a workhorse m5 pro or m5 max chip there's a certain connotation of saying I bought a $4,000 computer that has efficiency cores versus having quote unquote super cores and performance cores this seems more marketing than just about anything else at least right now it also does give them

34:27headroom in the future it's definitely a changing of the rules of like the language you're on how you talk about apples chips even retroactively I mean from from the press release they say the industry leading super core was first introduced as performance cores in m5 you know right there they say we've introduced the m5 already that was last year now we're doing the m5 pro with super cores and did you know that there were super cores before already well they didn't use that language at the time not now they you know they've read jiggered to me and there's super cores on the m5 on the m5 plane so yeah you know there's a challenge of like learning the new rules of the language around apples chips once you you know read the rules you're like okay this is this is now what they mean by this then going forward think that the benefit is it it adds some precision in language and what you're talking about you know just having three degrees of of chip sort of like you know utility is good you can be more precise and like what is what is this one meant to do what is this woman to do you know and as a sort of Mac user that I am like efficiency cores are important

35:27because I don't want to have the most like blazing fast part of the chip running will only be available because to me like the coldness of the machine we're not having a you know if there's no fan involved I don't want it to be hot and I don't want it to be I don't want it to be like fast and hot and not efficient at things that can't take advantage of of multi core anyway so that there's you know there's there's a user base that like super and performance aren't appealing because you know for everything because so much of what you do and like you you you want to have something that can be cool and and and not battery hungry you know cool like cool to touch like you don't want your machine to be on fire and you don't want your battery to to deplete faster than it needs to for the kind of task that you're doing and so you know again you know my zoomed out of you here is like I like that there it's confusing it's tricky anytime you change the language around something especially as like you retroactively change the language around a chip you already introduced yeah but but that they're going forward and even presently there's benefit and having more more

36:30precision and how you refer to chips it is all marketing speak and so it does benefit Apple to be able to say like you know performance super it helps Apple tell its story to but and just was like a fan you know like centered all of this like we're just interested in this stuff from this stuff kind of excites us like you know in a way and so it is interesting that they they decided now of all times like now we need to change how we speak with these marketing wise like super core sounds cool you know it isn't like efficiency performance and like mega performance just like you know super it's clean it's a it's a good good way to do that so none of it like touches the machines that I'm using except for maybe you know if I'm on an M5 it does because they're they're bringing you know retroactively doing that they kind of retconning what what is a super core but this will always be the time when that changed for Apple so I think the important distinction is that the super cores are not new right right the super core is what was formerly known as the performance core what's new and what's the allegedly new CPU core design is that

37:34center performance core so even though it has the same name it's the new version which makes it all them were complicated right now and I think we don't know much about this yet like I'm sure somebody once these machines come out will take like the fancy die shots and show what exactly both the fusion architecture and the new performance versus super cores look like but I think it was ours Technica who said the performance cores use designs similar to the super cores but they prioritize multi-threaded performance rather than the faster single core performance yeah and I guess that's similar to what like AMD is doing in some of its chips and it's just like it's the retconning and it's the how much is actually marketing versus how much has changed but it does sound like there are material differences to that now middle tier performance cores yeah I do kind of like that you know what's good but our best 10 years later you know that the best thing 10 years ago is like can be terrible today like it can be like the good version today and as Apple

38:38increases performance and they change how they even get there in the first place then you know like redefining what is performance and and especially as you see like apples top in stuff come to like mid-level products or low like low power products it doesn't make sense to to change the language up a little bit and so you know I think apples made some like goofy marketing choices in the past that feel unfair or forced or just to benefit like the pitch and I'm not like invested enough in this to feel like one way or the other but it just out of general level it feels pretty fair what they're doing here then these chips as I said are debuting in the new MacBook Pro so M5 Pro M5 Max versions of the MacBook Pro what five months after the first M5 base MacBook Pro these get the N1 chip for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 the same increase in SSD performance and memory bandwidth battery life is about the same I think it's identical on the M5 Pro configurations but a bit longer on the M5 Max one thing that stood out to me in the press release for both the chips

39:40themselves and the laptops was that there were a lot more direct comparisons and performance to the M4 family than there have been in recent years because we've seen throughout the Apple Silicon transition it was like the M1 chip is 10,000 percent faster than the previous MacBook Air with the Intel and then M2 is a little bit faster than they start going like M3 is faster than M1 and Intel they stop doing the year-over-year comparisons but with the M5 Pro and Max it seems like they're they've made big enough strides that they're able to give impressive numbers even just comparing to the same chip in the previous family I think is 20 is more than 20 mentions of M4 Pro or Matt you know M4 in general in the press release like you mentioned so yeah there's a lot of year-to-year direct comparison and again like I kind of you know touched on earlier like to me the story of these MacBook Pros is this is the one before the rumored shift to you know A

40:40and you design B OLED which you know many LEDs wonderful I think OLED will be will be better and then C touchscreen for whatever that's worth it's going to be the one that went touchscreen first before you know maybe it eventually moves to other laptops and apples you know line and there's some parts for this like if you don't want those things you're nervous about a redesign because in the past Apple MacBook Pro redesigns have been turbulent at best then maybe this is like the one to get before that that happens but if you're someone who's like really went OLED or really went touchscreen then you then you wait for this one and there's times in the past where Apple has done two MacBook Pro releases in one year and I think this March release time frame doesn't rule out like a November release for that redesign machine we'll also talk about price but this is more expensive than the version that replaces they did the same thing with storage where you get a better base storage amount so it helps you know kind of hide the price increase

41:45but I can also imagine that m6 pro version redesign whatever it is you know being even more expensive because of OLED and touchscreen and the fact that it's a new design so you know as I think about this round of MacBook Pro revision and I think about it in the context of all of that you know what is it on and so and plus what is it compared to what's coming that was one of the things I was going to ask you is who should buy this and I think you're exactly right and it's also one of the things about the Apple Silicon just air in general is that we're seeing Apple just ship things when they're ready even if that leads to awkward timing even if that leads to a chip coming to the iPad before anything else like they just ship things when they're ready and it's I'm glad that we have what is like I said the M5 chip the M5 pro chip which is seemingly a big upgrade over the M4 they've shipped it in the MacBook Pro and now this model that's being sold right now can be like the hallmark the perfection of this era of MacBook Pro design and this era of MacBook Pro ideology so it's there for people who want it and then they can really take things to the next level

42:48this fall yeah like this is the pinnacle I also like if I were betting money on it I would bet against there being I mean I know the reports right now like especially Mark Roman and Bloomberg it hasn't changed yet that the expectation that there's the redesign this year could also I think that the counter that is like man it felt like the M5 pro and M5 max chips took longer than expected you know the gap between the M5 and the M5 pro took a while so if that took a while then the I think like the recency bias makes you want to think oh well then then then they'll take even they'll take a while too will take like an equal amount of time or you know or even a normal amount of time to get to the M6 version but it's kind of the thing I'm referencing is is it was the M2 pro and M2 max MacBook Pro that came out it was announced in January 17 2023 and then nine months later the M3 pro and M3 max MacBook Pro replaced it October 30 2003 so that's two releases now you know first week of March is a whole whole you know calendar month and a half later than January

43:54so that would be more aggressive so you know I think if I were betting like is it a replacement for this version that just that is you know just now coming out releases on Wednesday or is it adding to it if it's a replacement then it feels like that's going to be a 2027 product if it's a higher-end version then feels like okay October you know announcement of release that would be even more aggressive you know than the nine month turnaround but it's not I'm probably precedent it as an idea of something that could happen we're not there yet like there's no change in like Mark rim is reporting and saying like coming this year even with the current knowledge of now is when these MacBook pros with the M5 pro launch but you know what do you think about that do you think that we're still in track for the release this year or does it feel just too much grapple to do right now if I was a betting man I was still bet on this year because German has one of the things he's reported most recently is that the M6 is coming sooner than you think so I think it's it seems clear that the M6 is probably a not as big of a revamp

44:59as the M4 to the M5 like it's not going like the M4 to M5 had this fusion architecture they did this performance versus super core versus efficiency core kind of rearranging so now that was the bigger chip update and now the M5 to the M6 is going to be a rethink of the form factors in which those chips appear starting with the MacBook Pro and then eventually like the OLED MacBook Air which I don't think we know anything about the design of those computers yet whether it's just the same form factor with OLED or whether it's a broader reimagination but right now all indications are and what I would predict is that these touch screen OLED MacBook Pros come out before the end of the year do you think that they'll replace the M5 pros and cost you know within a hundred dollars with the same price or do you think they coexist and cost a lot more I think they're going to replace everything and I but I don't think I think there will still be that base model get your foot in the door MacBook Pro that won't have any of that stuff it'll be the same for sure like at the $1,700 price point

46:02that's just the base M6 chip yep for sure and then the M6 Pro and M6 Max will replace the current models and have touch screen OLED thinner design all that stuff but we'll see and then you touched on it a little bit but the price of these machines so the 14 inch M5 Pro starts at 2199 up from 1999 and the 16 inch starts at 2699 instead of 2499 again but you get one terabyte of base storage instead of 512 and Apple has also kept the upgrade prices for RAM and other storage configurations the same so they aren't really there's no direct example of them passing off we're paying this much more in RAM or storage because of the industry and passing that on directly to the consumers so again I don't necessarily view this as a price increase so much as just raising the floor the difference between this and the MacBook Air though is that the MacBook Air at 256 I always felt obligated to tell people about that the MacBook Pro at 512 like 512 gigabytes was a perfectly acceptable starting point

47:07so it's good that the base is one terabyte but it is a little bit more to this point you know the floor has been raised than it is on the MacBook Air I think yeah 2016 when that that touchbar MacBook Pro came out I opted I upgraded that machine and I opted for one terabyte and I thought like man this is a lot for me but this is worth it one terabyte and I'm in a laptop that you know just just going from gigabytes to terabytes was big and now that's the floor and of course like maybe it should be this is this is 10 years later of course it should be the floor now but you know that's that's the that's the march of time you know happy hour this week is sponsored by one password check them out at onepassword.com slash happy hour unfortunately it's not just big companies that are targets of cybercrime teams of any size can be a target and criminals know that lean smaller teams often lack resources to prevent or respond to a breach but that's where one password comes in they offer simple security to help small teams manage the number one risk

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51:21kind of warehouse style building i think it was in manhattan i don't know enough about new york geography to know for sure but it's Chelsea different than manhattan i don't know is Chelsea different than manhattan i bet it's like a neighborhood or something let's see Chelsea is a neighborhood on the west side of the borough of manhattan in new york city cool those are definitely words that mean something but the big warehouse style building we walked in we were taken to the standing room only kind of stage set up a very makeshift stage set up and then john turners came out and he did like a probably three four-minute recap of everything that has been announced up until that point so 17 e ipad air macbook pro studio display all of that stuff and then he said we're excited to introduce what's next and that is the macbook neo and he did a little spiel leading up to before he just played the video that everybody else saw that essentially explained almost half of people buying a mac today are new to the mac and that there

52:22have historically been barriers to making that transition from the pc world to the mac world and he had a line that i really liked which is like life is just better when you're using the mac so the idea of them to introduce something that lowers the floor to get people into the mac and the broader apple ecosystem and that's something too that i heard a lot of people both apple executives other people at the event talk about which is that there's an expectation that this macbook neo will not just be some people's first mac but perhaps their first apple product period which is an interesting way of looking at it because historically i know i've always operated under the assumption that people buy an iphone then they buy a mac and an ipad or historically know they bought an ipod and then they bought a mac or they bought an iphone they're banking on this macbook neo being so enticing that somebody with an android phone or whatever will say you know this seems like the best value computer you can buy so a hit play on the video and we saw

53:22the macbook neo a 18 pro chip as we expected eight gigabytes of ram with no upgrade options storage options are 256 or 512 it has a 13 inch screen with that kind of i think awkward resolution a bit of 2408 by 1506 two usbc ports they're on the side of them the one on the furthest away from you and you're using it that's the usb 3 one and then the one closer to you is usb2 which this is a whole thing because why are there no labels on those ports like how is somebody supposed to know which is labels are ugly and you shouldn't have to think about it but on the studio display has the dots like we talked about like yeah if it's in the back in dots or subtle but yeah there's a lot more service area there but no you're right you're right this is awkward and didn't you point out i think it was grubber or somebody who had apple confirmed that there is like a software affordance for that yeah yeah i mean the the the back port is the usb3 speed port

54:23so that's 10 gigabits per second i think it's a transfer speed versus 480 megabits per second for usb2 that's the the not back port the one that's next to it and they're both for charging there's no max save for charging it's just just usbc and now you know if i think of like what what port is the charging port it's like the back port because that's what max save always is so like you kind of want to like you know you might instantly charge the back one and then use the other one for data transfer but you shouldn't because it's so much slower and can't do display the i i i haven't thought about display port being a spec in the usbc port like you know whole it all the time but but there's no display port in the usbc port on the mech of neo so it won't do a display through that one it's just the usb3 one the one in the back so the back one is like your fastest data and display and then the front one is like charging if you're also doing data transfer with the other one you know if you're not doing any transfer doesn't matter you charge how you're recharged but but yeah there's i mean there's that awkwardness to it uh and and right

55:24you know group or head ask and apple had said that there'll be a warning and macOS and software that'll say you know it'll it'll you know the system will be intelligent enough to know that you're trying to display a port you know you didn't display port but this port can't do that so unplug it and plug up the other one and then like once you do that one or two times then i guess you know just use the back port you know if you're like powered delivery from a display then that's that's that's fine and you just like using that one you know that a lot of displays are like have hubs too and and you get more ports from the display itself too but this is not a strong display story for this machine you know one one of the ways I put it in my story was like the mech neo is a great laptop if you mostly use it as a laptop and don't think about displays which is sometimes like i can go months without using a display at all and then sometimes i'm like i i'm just much more comfortable with the display you know in a two-winded situation and you know two two monitor situation or even just like turn my my MacBook into a desktop situation yeah one comment i want to make is like viewing the quote-unquote experience you know the not

56:27live streamed event that involved john ternis at that location in the warehouse where you were and visually like because like people who were there like tweeting it out before it happened and there was no live stream like apple's done events before long time ago where there were announcements but no live stream the most recent being like a a base model ipad so not a big deal but like the usage that used to be the norm was like you know we're doing an announcement and there's no live stream because of like we're not there in technology yet this was like semi like that where like there was like you know an element of it it's like you kind of want to see what happening i felt useful as finally being able to like relay information yeah you don't feel very useful when you're in person that an iPhone event because you're just watching with everybody else until the hands-on experience right but it felt like secret concert vibes because it was a small the least way it looked from the pictures like it looks like a narrow room and it had that like you know not to be cliché but like hipster vibe to it where it's like there's definitely been secret concerts held in that room right it looks like oh you know you found the past code to attend

57:28the secret concert of the band that like would never you know they could sell out in arena but they're actually doing it in this little little hall right here like it had that neat look to it which felt a bit like you know of course John Ternis is the hardware person of course he's going to be the one doing this presentation but there wasn't a temp book like you know there to say right like to say like handing it over to John you know it was like this is John Ternis' thing to handle and as the expectation is he becomes the next Apple CEO in the future as a leading candidate for that job it felt like a little hybrid event a little uh a little live stream thing that you know could have just just well been a press release and all the videos and a hands-on you know experience that Apple Park but or even like you know see it out the units and the kind of thing like this felt like more than the bare minimum in terms of presentation and that secret concert vibe to it made it feel neat in a way that just press releases are not but MacBook Neo yeah during the experience I did there was Ternis was there Greg Joss who act was there Phil Schiller was there I didn't see anybody else than I know in Shanghai it was Bob Borscher's who has been

58:32in Apple forever he's is he in marketing and some for his in marketing I think he's like what Greg Joss reacts jobs yes to be worldwide product marketing yeah and then I never did figure out who was in London like VP instead of SCP level yeah yeah me neither with London I assume it was mayo yeah that's actually what he's doing it's where he is but yeah back to the computer itself so the ports we talked about then side firing speakers so it's like historically MacBook speakers like face towards you these face off to the side which sounds weird but in my time with this computer so far it sounds surprisingly good like you don't really notice that it's not firing at you so it's an interesting design affordance that they didn't really explain why they had to do it I don't know it was probably a cost thing or something with this re-engineered aluminum shell process yeah but it kind of an odd decision and it looks kind of funky I saw multiple people thinking the side firing speaker cut out was for an SD card which it is not just shaped very similar the headphone jack is right next to that yes it's like it's if you're looking at the laptop

59:36the base of it is like two halves front and back it's closer to the front than the back which is odd and yeah like my my reveal of this machine the MacBook Neo was the the confirmation from the room that you're in MacBook Neo is a name okay and then there was one of the accounts online that a bunch of but proper around is but I think it goes by Dwayne maybe in order to talk about yeah they tweeted out as the name wasn't like confirmed in the room the promo video but it wasn't in English and so I could scrub through as I'm writing the story okay 13 inches is the display because it has 13 and liquid glass in English that's so it's not a 12 they're not marking there's like 12 something okay there's I think battery life is like 16 they had you know but I couldn't read everything that was being presented in the video and um it's like oh what are the oh that's the headphone jack that's what what is that slot next to it oh there's one the other side of it oh now there's doing a game these were speakers so that speakers in the speaker situation on MacBooks has always been like a playground for Apple because you've had like the grills on

1:00:37the either side of the keyboard we're like that's the speaker yep you've had bigger grills if it's 15 or 16 instead of 13 or 14 the idea I think has been like coming from behind the keyboard under the keyboard and then like with the MacBook Air the current design there's there are no grills which is why that 15 inch looks so funny on the MacBook Air because you it's just plain yeah it's just empty space yeah all right uh and the grills are like a little problematic because they can get dirty or like dust can get in there and then it can be visually ugly but I think instead of like under the keyboard it's behind the hinge or like between the the base and the display and then this is like a whole other idea which is along the sides and in your right like as long as you've got stereo then that's what creates the illusion of like on either side of you I mean if you're on if you're at your desk and you've got speakers you know either facing you or even like angled a little way it can sound like they're coming from the center in front of you because they're stereo and that's the effect that they create with your ears and everything and so I imagine this is the same way where it's like even though they physically face out you know left and right of you before they were facing up anyway yeah or and it still creates long as it's symmetrical the illusion

1:01:43of stereo coming from the center of you so yeah colors are blush citrus indigo and silver and so the keyboards are color matched so across all four of those colors the keyboards are white and they're supposed to be color matched to the color of the aluminum so the blush which is like a pink the keys should be matched to that same blush color same for indigo and citrus then silver is silver white keys but there's no color matching really yeah this was a whole big controversy because everybody's pictures from the hands-on area looked different just because that's how these colors are I would say the color matched keyboard the effect of that is most noticeable on the indigo like you can actually tell that the keys are slightly blue and it looks pretty cool but on the blush and the citrus it is hard to tell maybe once we get these things outside of the hipster rave lighting and it's very very yeah it'll be easier to tell but the colors themselves of the aluminum I think are pretty cool it's just the color matched keyboard that's a bit of a letdown and that's new

1:02:44for a mac laptop they've color matched with the keyboards at least for the iMacs or the keys color match as well the keys are not nope so this is the first time they call them as the keys on a mac laptop or general but especially on a mac laptop the feet or color match as well which is like a subtle subtle touch and it's always just awkward talking about feet in general to me but just writing about it is like the feet or color match on the neo and they're black on the air and pro they're not color matched so details the bezel is still like it has a black bezel and there's no notch and it's a uniform bezel and it's marketed as liquid display because it's got the rounded corners I think probably the overall bezel is thinner than like the notch on the MacBook air for example then like the notch itself but yeah of course the bezel and total is thicker than like the bezel on the MacBook air because that's where you get the nicer look and on the pro there especially especially thinner the neo itself too is like thick it's the same weight as a 13.6 inch MacBook air even though it's 13.0 it's think is like 2.7 pounds so it's not

1:03:44light not lighter and certainly not like light light it's also thicker than the MacBook air so it's like a chunk of aluminum in the same way like that you look at the MacBook Pro and it's like oh that's a chunk of a base on that thing which there's definitely a contingent of people who are hoping that this would be something close to like the 12 inch MacBook days and it's it's not 12 inch MacBook really in any way like visually it doesn't look that way they didn't go into the 12 inch territory I mean there are some like specs about like SRGB instead of P3 that's the same with the top but that wasn't like I mean what we liked about the MacBook you know it was just something that was about the MacBook and so Apple has just not gone into like what's the lightest thinnest you know thing we can do with Apple Silicon and I you know the more time goes by the more I think they're just not interested in that as a market maybe based on before their experience but I think before it was a confused experience where it was like meant to be maybe the MacBook air replacement it had higher specs it had you know it was $1,300 instead of $1,000 even though that was

1:04:44for twice the storage you know it was they just has not been in replacement for the 12 inch MacBook I don't think there's going to be any time soon as a new machine we've had new max for Apple Silicon we've had redesigned max we've had Apple Studio and we've had the redesigned MacBook Pro the redesigned MacBook Air Mac mini Mac mini got a really great redesign this seems like the next thing for the next few years like maybe like three years of what else can we do form factor wise for MacBook with Apple Silicon I don't think we're going to see anything like the 12 inch you know they're just not going there yet and it would need to be premium too like they would need to do the same playbook as before I think it's almost like the Mac or excuse me the iPad mini playbook where it's smaller but nicer it's smaller but more expensive smaller like you know higher performance and you're paying a premium for it being miniature but yeah I mean in the colors too like silver it's all neutral color it almost looks like the because it has the white keycaps like what if you took the standalone magic keyboard for Mac and you made it a whole laptop

1:05:48yeah because of the color scheme blush you know I like to translate these colors in my head as I'm writing the story to sometimes to be helpful and like blush you know you look at it's pink in to go I think about like Roy G bib rainbow like blue in to go violet okay so it's not blue and I kind of think of violet as purple so in to go in between those two is it more blue or purple I don't know probably more blue more navy but it's specifically in to go and then citrus as I'm writing the story I'm putting citrus down and I'm not translating it yet even in my head but I'm thinking orange because I think of citrus as orange yeah orange as citrus and then I'm like there's not an orange one this yellow that's the name of the yellow one okay citrus is yellow you know fair enough but not where I go too lately it only has the orange iPhone 17 pro and I told her that they made a citrus MacBook and her instinct was that it was orange and she didn't need it or care about it but she wanted it because it would match her iPhone nope sorry best I can do is tennis ball yes you've got to go for the m6 pro MacBook Pro to get an orange one yeah what do you think

1:06:56about the name for school it's cool yeah yeah I think it's really cool I think I think MacBook was the expectation and that's fair they've done they've done you know three MacBooks that I can think of you know in my time of use on the Mac at least and that's the the plastic MacBook you know whether it's black or white but polycarbonate MacBook my first Mac yeah and they made a rounder version of that that was white and then they got rid of it completely they also had a MacBook that looked like the 13-inch MacBook Pro when when aluminum but it was just oh yeah forgot about that yeah my college roommate had one and I had the MacBook Pro version with an SD card instead of a nesting card slot so but but same design though same design and then they they had the course of 12-inch MacBook that you and I are both big fans of and you know this could have easily been that but I think there is something you know Neo to me communicates new and different and the fact that this has you know I don't know if we talked about it but the A18 Pro chip inside which was first introduced in the iPhone 16 Pro it's a been version that has one fewer GPU core but

1:08:00for all intents and purposes this is the iPhone 16 Pro chip inside of an Apple laptop and it's not a weird you know Mac mini developer transition kit it's a shipping product that customers can purchase Neo communicates that it communicates you know this is not an older chip inside it's not intel it's not you know Apple is looking as we as the M chips you know it's something different and it's not just the chip and the power it's you know as you do a comparison with the $500 more M5 MacBook Air there is just you know dozens and dozens of differences in terms of like small niceties you know whether or not you think the notch is better not you know that's one thing but but the the webcam is better on the MacBook Air because it's at center stage and desk view the light indicator for when you're using the webcam being physical instead of in software backlit keyboard this is the first like not backlit keyboard I think in 16 years from Apple on a laptop it's been that way on some iPad keyboard cases but not on an Apple laptop and so if that's a big deal

1:09:01for customers and I will save it but it's so tough to argue with Mac Neo at 600 dollars you know that's 256 gigabytes there's no touch ID until you go to 512 gigabytes for $100 more then you get touch ID reasonable I think the consensus was probably 699 base maybe 799 and then put it on sale not $600 put it on sale so they they delivered I mean it's the same price as the iPhone 17 E same price as an iPad Air yep it's a dollar more than an iPad A16 with the magic keyboard folio like checkpad keyboard case and and that's an A16 $50 more than a pair of headphones which is yeah that Apple sell and the EDU price for this is 499 so you know you've got your second Mac in the lineup now that either educators or or students can purchase for $500 the other one being the M4 Mac mini which is a desktop you know you've got to bring your own display mouse and keyboard you get an M4 instead of an A18 Pro you get Thunderbolt 4 ports and USB C ports and you get HDMI

1:10:07Ethernet and you know but it's a small desktop and not a all-in-one laptop so if you're a laptop the iPad you know has has been like the thing that Apple's kind of shown PC switchers and students and like the sub $1,000 like actually like not 999 sub $1,000 market but actually like well below $1,000 iPad's been the way like it's been the answer from Apple and now they've got this MacBook Neo which is all new that makes a bunch of different decisions but just in terms of being you know the tried and true clamshell forum laptop you don't have to worry about fiddly accessories falling off and weird viewing angles and even the battery life is better at 16 hours compared to 10 hours on an iPad like this as a traditional laptop person versus iPad and a laptop keyboard person this appeals to me I know I couldn't like replace say my kids iPads that can attach to keyboard cases and have them be the plays because it's not touchscreen it doesn't run like iPad games in the same way this they wouldn't be happier with this but if you're looking for

1:11:08a laptop form factor then man this is a great this is a great value and and Apple not only met expectations but I think they exceeded them and then like the big question mark is going to be like just long-term performance you know how is this thing to use is it being faster I think you know in benchmarks and in M1 but having you know there's different ports and everything like just how is it to use as a Mac day-to-day gonna be for me like the one material difference I think that I would be challenged to do is like you can't do 5k 27 inch yep so if you've got like even those older LG ultra fine 5k monitors from a million years ago like you're gonna get 4K resolution at 60 hertz you can't you can't do you know more than that so that's like the but that also feels like a very specific thing and that's like the app the Mac user who wants the iMac written experience and an external display for their MacBook and if you're I think the vast majority of like just consumers that even use Mac are like because of what the market offers and

1:12:13because of just like what's practical financially like 4k displays are the norm 5k's are not the norm they're niche and so even even that aspect of it I think is okay one of the things that stands out to me about it in terms of the pricing is that they aren't just trying to make all of the margin by adding a ton of like different options like you can't there are two configurations of this machine the 599 256 gigabytes with no touch ID on the keyboard or 699 with 512 and touch ID those are your two options there's no mix and match there's no awkward middle tiers that you can't do at no touch ID keyboard but with more storage you can't do more storage but no touch ID keyboard there's two options very binary you can't upgrade ram at all yeah I think is a source that's not a yeah that's not ideal that's like the limitation of where we are with the 18 pro chip I think and I think if they do a rev next year or the year after then you automatically go to if you go to 819 pro then you get 12 gigabytes is an option yep the upgrade path is clear yeah

1:13:15and that's also exciting because you know MacBook Neo was like a one and done thing you know that's too bad but even if it's like a every three years thing that's kind of boring like you know because they didn't go with the latest a 19 pro chip that they have in the iPhone 17 pro they did the last years version and and I've been diverse with evident and that's like that's you know why but because there is that clear upgrade path for like what the future of this thing can be we got three versions of the 12 inch MacBook I think it was like you know it was like Intel Core yeah yeah yeah before in series my chips but each because it was so performance constrained each new version I think was was like vastly better in terms of what performance you were going to get like from the floor of the floor you know the performance so there's that same kind of this is constrained in a lot of ways but they can make a new version next year or 18 months and you can see how it will be you know suddenly you're like oh they're not they don't do a gigabyte RAM anymore in max you know and it's too bad that we can't just say like all max now come with 16 gigabytes of RAM but I also lived on a gigabyte of RAM for a long time without issue it's just nice

1:14:20should have more if you're doing a bunch of like Safari tabs or a bunch of different apps at the same time one of the RAM questions is what happens with Apple intelligence eventually right because the floor for Apple intelligence right now is eight gigabytes but if they ever start shipping these higher personal context features then at some point there's going to be a cutoff and at some point this will get cut yeah the personal context stuff too I think it's more fleshed out on iPhone and iPad than even on Mac like I don't even know what it looks like on the Mac because the way that they show they they showed serial personal context is in the context of the iPhone and then you I think as you assume that it goes to the iPad as well because this is kind of the same thing but on the Mac I don't even know what that looks like series always been a different beast on the Mac even with Apple intelligence there on the Mac were up were that Apple intelligence RAM limitation becomes relevant to me is they played around initially with some of the X code stuff requiring 16 gigabytes that's right and then and then backpacking back to eight gigabytes but of course you're going to have a better experience with more so this is not like the X good machine now

1:15:26I mean you can get your foot in the door like you could yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna vibe code I'm gonna you know play with playgrounds or vibe code or you know whatever and then and then you know maybe you want to graduate but I think even as that process happens the Mac need to become more capable because we'll probably get to 12 gigabytes of RAM next year we'll probably get to 16 gigabytes within a few years and suddenly you know that you've got all the on device hardware that you need for like the floor of that experience and I think also the reality is like the the relevant AI tools that people are using even consumers like even on a phone or an iPad happens in the cloud and servers and it's and it's not happening on the device even if you've got like the 7,000 on MacBook Pro you've you've got to go out of your way to have that experience and take advantage of local hardware so in that regard like I don't think that's changing as I'm soon MacBook Neo is like you're gonna have the same chat gbt app experience or like you know cloud app experience I mean one of the examples they showed during the video was just the chat gbt app on the Mac running like yeah

1:16:28they they know and during the demos like at the experience they were showing the foundation model stuff running on device and various different third party apps that have integrated that they know basically one of the things that they talked about to the press was at what point where is the line for people deciding between this versus a MacBook Air versus a MacBook Pro the example that they give was if you're going to be working in a lot of creative apps doing a lot with Final Cut and Logic Pro that's probably when you make the jump to the MacBook Air as the baseline if you want to get into doing on device high powered AI stuff running local LLMs that's when you make the jump to the MacBook Pro but one thing they also emphasize is that all three of those these computers have overlap in what they can do and the goal part of the goal with the MacBook Neo was to bring the very basics of everything you can do on a Mac to that 599 price point yeah and it seems like I mean we haven't spent extended time with this computer yet but it seems very

1:17:28much like that's what they did and the old like adage of predicting an Apple price you take your prediction and you add a hundred dollars to it that was not true with this it's more the opposite like Mayo was saying 799 or 899 for this thing yeah he was wrong and this is going to be just be so many people's first Macs and I think a lot of people listening to this podcast a lot of people in the Apple community like we all remember when we got our first Mac and how cool of an experience that was and how for a lot of us that pushed us into whatever career we're in now it had a big influence over like our lives it's it is that much better of an experience than a lot of other things out there so for this to lower the floor of the barrier of entry to 499 or 599 I'm very excited to see people get their first Macs and I think this is an excellent first Mac for a lot of people yeah for me going to college was the like that was the bridge to getting my first Mac because it was like required for for what I was studying and say for me this and it's like

1:18:35look it says it right through on paper I have to have this so that was the reason but yeah having having this thing be 599 can change that I think in the way that like even for me as a parent like my I first introduced my kids to the to the Mac like is like this is not just my Mac that you're using this can be like you're just like the Mac mini and that's just not the same experience as a Mac book as a laptop I think where there's some like like fuzziness is is that they have had the M1 Macbook Air for everything originally it was 689 and then 649 and then on self or 589 so that's that's kind of been been there and then how discounted the Macbook Air can be like you can see the M4 Macbook Air of you know it's going away now but like you can you can find prices for like 799 that gets pretty close and I think that's like it just depends on your needs but but you've also got to look at it as like what is just the retail price and then and then also consider this thing going on sale to the education price there's a lot of different

1:19:36always to look at it but you know just fun this and joy and like the pleasure of it as well it just seems like a big part of the story because the Neo is a fun name the colors well like there wasn't an orange or a green or like a vibrant blue or red there's a lot more they can do here that would make it like oh man I want to use like a you know different machines we get this you know there wasn't that it it's still like there it's nice when you compare it's like plasticky notebooks and we compare it's a I think the one thing that like a lot of people that are looking at laptops you can see it's not touch screen though and like every PC and Chromebook is touch screen it feels like the laptops you know and you can find something or not but I think that's probably like that's kind of a thing and it's just that just hasn't been a Mac thing and it isn't yet anyway and so like we're for my from my kids for example like you know the iPads the superior product for them still there's there's no desire for them to be like I want to have a clamshell thing that I don't have to worry about like tilting and you know how does how do you prop it up and and all that like

1:20:36oh the viewing angle is kind of annoying and it falls off the thing sometimes it's magnetic like they don't have that appeal so the iPads there for them but um this looks like fun like you're not going to have a bad experience I don't think with this unless like and there's probably a lot of overlap with like mechbook air users in this in this machine the mech video yeah I think they knocked it out of the park for the most part and I think the long-term limitations the things people run into are ram probably the ports but otherwise I think there's enough to every aspect of this machine that people will be fine to use it for multiple years once it comes out or once they get it yeah and and at five ninety nine you know base price four ninety nine education price and they don't verify for education either by the way just go and buy it anybody can be an education customer it's a website on apple.com it's a linky click which is funny during one of the because either during the ternis thing or during a briefing or something they're like for verified educators or something it's like no that's not they try to do that once remember they added like the yeah what uhs unit days or whatever that

1:21:42third-party student verification thing is they added that to the education store and people revolted and then they removed it so yeah yeah more important for services where they really care about the recovery revenue there to verify that they don't one time hard group purchase but that is the mechbook neo five ninety nine available to order now and we'll ship or arrive next Wednesday all right i think that does it for this week you can find us on apple podcasts where you can leave a rating and a review find an ad free version of the show at nine to five mac dot com slash join for five dollars a month or fifty dollars a year send us feedback happy hour at nine to five mac dot com i am on threads and elsewhere at chance h miller and zack what about you i'm on nine to five mac this is the first configuration of this podcast i've done hundreds of these episodes with been mayo but i don't think i've ever done one with you chance despite us doing have we never okay see that he never he never leaves the show he doesn't know or work like either you or i you know walk around it but not this configuration of of mayo is left the he went on our continent

1:22:48he's left the hemisphere it's never on our card comment to be clear but yeah he has been on our continent we just you know like he's been there he's haven't seen him you know allegedly we were like 13 years ago he was in California once i think all right thanks for filling in absolutely