New M4 MacBook Air, Mac Studio M4 Max vs M3 Ultra, is Mac Pro DEAD?

I'm giving her all she's got, captain. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. All the news this week is Apple released new MacBook Air, updated Mac Studio, iPad Air, regular iPad. We're gonna talk about all of that, what it means for dub dub DC, and will we see an updated Mac Pro at some point? Plus things about tariffs, Skype, a little memoriam for them, Apple versus The UK, and special bonus episode about that Sigma b f camera that everyone's saying it's the one Apple would make.

I'm good. I I'm trying to decide which of us has a better reason for only having a few hours of sleep. I was driving home from the airport because my flight was so windy through, like, most of the country that my flight both to where I went yesterday and so I flew somewhere. Yeah. I flew to Nashville. I posted that so I can say that.

Right. You can

say that. Back. Yesterday, and it was so windy that flights were delayed like ours. And then I got to the airport in Detroit, and I bought the cortado. Do you know what a cortado is? It's three shots of espresso with a little bit of steamed milk.

Wait. Wait. Wait. What time did you buy that?

It was, like, 09:00. And normally, I don't think it would bother me. Yeah. But Then it did. I didn't go to sleep until very late. And so

And you historically get up at 5AM and immediately immediately dawn the Apple Vision Pro. That's that's

your routine. Just done that, and everyone in my family would have just thought I was working, and I could have taken a nap.

And and I just wanna be clear. You still have not yet used an Apple Vision Pro on a plane.

Take it on the plane yesterday, but here's my reason why insane. I flew there and bat would you how am I gonna take it if I all I had was one back.

In a backpack. Backpacks exist, Jason. For not having a lot of sleep, I feel like we have a lot of energy. You know what I mean? This is good. We gotta it's gonna expend it all

right here. We're giving it all we got, Steven.

We're giving it all we got. Oh, you know what movie that's from, obviously?

Isn't it from Star Trek, but it's a movie?

It's all it's from all the Star Trek.

Okay. I'm sure it was from Star Trek. Trek,

but It's I know the the Scotty and the Chris Pine Star Treks. He says it at some point, and then anyway. I don't know how many Trekkies we got out there, but alright. Quick. Five star reviews, and then we got old tech, and then we're gonna jump into all the Apple news, which is just wild this week.

I'm gonna say Dirajera

he actually sent us a voice memo years ago it's Dirijueira

no that's definitely

It's, it's for my key. Anyway, and then Bob sixty three ten from The USA, battery on, battery percentage on, right rear pocket, a rear pocketer. That's kind of a wild card in our listenership. And then finally Matthew g sent us an email he wanted to share some of his old tech which listen this is an ongoing segment now just send us your old tech he's got an original iPod nano first generation he said it still turns on works perfectly but someone set a volume limit on it and locked it with a pin so all the songs are super quiet oh

that's that's like advanced data protection for your iPod

this is the first advanced data protection you lock your volume with a pin He said, does anyone know how to fix this? So I'm asking the community. If anyone knows how to help Matthew g unlock the iPod Nano, I guess you can you factory reset those?

I mean, do you have a device you can plug it into at this point? Because it's got a 30 pin. Right?

It's a go it got a 30 pin. You gotta go on eBay, buy the 12 inch PowerBook g four from 2,005. I don't know. But it looks cool. It looks great condition. I gotta say. So anyway.

Yeah. So, hey. One thing I'm sorry. One thing about the reviews. Okay. I was reading Bob six three one zero's review, and I just wanna ask Bob, and there's no shade. And we don't know his real name. But have I read that? I feel like the prompt was write me a review for my favorite tech podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But even if that's true, I wanna just call out this is my favorite line from the whole thing. It's a cornerstone of my tech information diet, and I love it.

Well, we're not automated. We we don't want one of those review farms. Not saying like that.

I mean, find all your friends. Send them Chad GBT proms. But it says four years, and I think I've only been doing this for, like, fourteen months.

I I see. Yeah.

But thank you. I'm not really I don't mean any, like, disrespect. Thank you for the five star review, but I did read it and I thought,

Yeah. I I saw that and I was like, well, technically, I guess 2024 and '25. I guess you could say four years, but

I love it.

But Jono twenty four's review was very kind too. That that seemed, human written. Human written or chachikite written. Go get a get a review and go to have a podcast, five stars, paste it in there. We would greatly appreciate it.

Absolutely.

Apple released 1,000 products this week, Jason. So we gotta jam through it. Okay.

Let's

go in order. It was one it was reminiscent of, like, years ago. There was that week where Apple had, like, three press releases three days in a row.

Wasn't it last year? They had Mac week or whatever it was.

Oh, yeah. That that they do it first. Why didn't okay. First of all, before we even get into it, why didn't they do an event? Why do you think they didn't just do one event? Like, this is an event.

Well and I think that they did the hands on thing because there are hands on impressions. So they did bring some people somewhere.

I didn't see a It was

not Nashville. I was not there, just to be clear. That's not where I was. I was

not there either. I would've posted. I saw Andrew Edwards. I saw k Digital Studio with the iPads. I saw a couple other creators, but it was very, like, the first The Verge

had the the Verge had the m four MacBook, the sky blue MacBook Air.

So like they were showing off the sky blue of all the things, and the iPad Air is what a k Digital Studio had. But it just seems so strange. Like, they Apple has done events in March and April. I remember it was, like, the event for the original redesigned iMac AirTag and, iPad something. Like, Apple would do an event even if it's just a virtual event. Why do you think they chose to do it this way? I mean, they're not doing many events.

I think well, I think it's partially because when you look at the like, they're always gonna do an iPhone event.

Right.

And these are all just and these are just updates. And I don't think that based on what like, last year, they did the iPad event sort of. I mean, they sort of did an iPad event where they did the iPad pro with

Yeah.

Yeah. With the m four. But that was a pretty big difference because you had the tandem OLED screens. You had them they finally moved the camera to the right spot and they were able to make a bigger deal. I actually think I I've been, I actually thought about this a lot and I actually think that apple is just trying different things.

Oh, yeah. Well, it was it was last week for the,

For the 16 e.

For the 16 e. Yeah.

Yeah. And so they're doing a bunch of different things, I think, and just trying to see, like, what gains traction, what because if you just do the same thing all the time, especially for products like this, I mean, the MacBook Air is they're probably next to the iPhone and the AirPods gotta be like their best selling product.

I don't

like, or it's definitely the best selling Mac. They make no qualms about telling you that every time that they talk about it, it's the world's most popular laptop. And, and, but the Mac studio is a pretty low it's an exciting thing because it's like this thing's

I mean, they announced a new chip with it. It was a new chip and everything.

It was it was new versions of two existing chips.

Fair. Yeah. That's fair. So Well, speaking of how they're doing things differently, Tim Cook, now the last two weeks has teased both things. You know, he teased the iPhone 16 e by saying, welcome to newest member of the family.

Okay.

There's a bunch of quotes he's being like, is this how Apple is doing it now? Like, Apple has fallen off whatever, which I don't know I don't know how you can read that into a tweet. But also

I wanna I wanna know from that picture, Steven. Pull that picture back up. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you're if you're listening to this, you can't tell what this picture is.

It'll be it'll be the, it'll be the chatbot.

Picture of an iPad Air on

one of

the new magic keyboards.

Right.

There's an Apple Pencil that was literally just attached seconds before they took this picture because you can see the drop down Apple Pencil charging indicator at the top.

But wait a minute. But wait a minute. Wait a minute. Listen. Every time

It's going the wrong direction.

Hold. Everybody stop. Every everybody stop. Everybody stop. Basic Apple guy sent me literally, screenshots of every product marketing image of the new iPads when they came out earlier this week showing me the Apple Pencil direction.

That's actually not why I did that. It's just I think it's funny that they literally just snapped it on immediately before taking the picture because it's still showing up up there. But but if you look at that, they could have taken that picture two and a half years ago. What is,

yeah, I mean, they could have taken it in 2018 if the color was a little different.

Well, I mean, I'm just like, what is about that that tells you that that's the newest iPad Air? Literally nothing.

Even even the wallpaper is kind of where the anyway, alright. Let's talk let's talk about let's talk about each product. I'm just so I'm so excited that I'm I'm not vindicated. I also wish these, these guys, namely I say these guys, like Apple's SVPs, like Greg Joswiak and Tim Cook, why don't they post the stuff on Blue Sky and stuff? Like, I understand I understand the meta issue.

Well, they have a partnership with x. Right? So they actually, like, so

I don't wanna get it.

No. I'm just saying, like, the the reach and the volume that they would get on Blue Sky is pretty small. And the reason they're not gonna post links to things on Meta is that Meta literally deprioritizes that stuff.

Well, and he wasn't posting links anyway. Like, he was

On that one, it was just a photo. You're right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, anyway, alright. Let's talk let's talk about the first thing Apple announced, which is the iPads.

Steven, this wasn't even supposed to be the most confusing part of this episode, but I I'm using well and I I asked and the new magic keyboard yes is backwards compatible and if you have an old one you can continue using that. So that is actually nice. You can buy a new ipad air and you don't have to buy a new magic keyboard if that's the thing that you want to use, which was obviously not the case for the ipad pro. It's like buy our most expensive thing and then buy all the most expensive accessories. You're gonna need a new one of everything.

have a special

for your $999 mat or iPad Pro is $2,000, and you didn't even get to upgrade the storage. You're like, what is even happening?

Right. But speaking of storage, the other thing Apple introduced was the new base model iPad, and, honestly, I was more excited about this than the new iPad Air only because I don't know if my kids are listening to this, but I would consider upgrading them to this one because the base model iPad Air now comes with a 28 gigs storage standard. They have the same colors. You get the blue, red, yellow, whatever, but a 28 gigs as, like, the base model storage, that feels like a win, honestly, and the the price has stayed the same. We're gonna talk about tariffs after the break.

hard hitting podcasting right now.

Yeah. But even with all of that going on, Apple kept the price for the base model iPad the same, lowered the price of the MacBook Air we're gonna talk about, and the storage starts at $1.28 gigs. This feels like a win if you were in the market for a base model iPad Air or a base model ipad. So

yeah. And it was interesting because when they, you know, they did them in the same press release. Right? And it was sort of like what actually happened here. And the reason it got confusing is they have now officially dropped the there's no tenth gen. This is not the eleventh gen iPad. This is just iPad parentheses a 16 close parentheses. Like that's just how they did. They denote these things now. Yeah.

It's not a bug. It's a

feature. It's actually fine for this particular device. I was having a conversation with someone and, you know, you have to ask yourself like because this was just yesterday someone was asking me about like, well why wouldn't they put the a 17 pro into this device? And I think the answer is actually really simple because the ipad mini has the a 17 pro. Everything else about the iPad mini is just a smaller version of the iPad, which means you can't charge whatever $500 for it.

No. Well, and also, the other iPad mini feature, which is the one reason why I would struggle to buy this base model iPad is the wireless charging Apple Pencil. Because if you get the base model iPad, you have to charge with the USB c cable. And, sure, maybe it's not a big deal, but it's just annoying. And, like, it would be really nice to have a wireless charging pencil especially because I have, like, a couple around, especially, like, with the older iPads that I can't use anymore because the new iPad Pro has the different magnets.

The ace well, I was just saying they they had to keep that price differentiation. They put the a 17 pro in the iPad mini, and it seems pretty obvious that next year we're gonna see an iPad. It's actually really interesting to hear Apple try to talk about these things because they don't call it the base iPad. Right? Like, they they that's not the name of this product. It's just iPad. And it's not even the iPad or iPad. It's just iPad. And so this I

kinda I wish there was some moniker after that because it gets really hard because you have iPad Pro, iPad Air, iPad, that not the same with the MacBooks there used to be a time when there was a MacBook with no moniker it was just MacBook but, like, with the iPad, it is is difficult. But anyway Yeah.

Because it's both the category name and a product name, sort of like Apple TV, Apple TV, Apple TV app, Apple TV plus. Like, it's Apple never does that. I don't know. Right.

That's why, like, I saw, is it Sigmund, on social media. He posts all about Apple TV updates, like, the OS and stuff, and then I saw Matthew Castanelli, and he was like, there's new shortcuts actions for Apple TV, and I was so excited. I was like, oh, I can do more with my physical Apple TV? I was like, no. No. No. These are shortcuts to change the Apple TV app settings on your iPhone. Oh, okay. Never mind. Lovely.

That wasn't actually the second announcement, but yeah. That's that's Wait, wait.

What was the second announcement?

The Mac Studio came first.

Sure. Sure. Yeah. If you go to the newsroom here, I'll go to the newsroom.

It doesn't matter.

I I know I was saving the Mac Studio for the for the last because it felt good, but, yeah, it was it was the iPads, then the m three ultra was the next announcement, and then five seconds later was the Mac Studio press release, and then the app and the MacBook Air. But anyway, but the MacBook Air.

Yeah. We can talk about the MacBook Air.

This is exciting. I'm excited about the Mac.

Listen. The first thing you need to know is that it was a really tough day for the copy editors because if you have to look if you have to write three product launches back to back like this, one of them is apple reveals, one of them is apple unveils, one of them is apple introduces. It's like this is a really rough day. Like how many different words can you use to talk about doing the same thing?

You know what I wonder in the in the m three ultra newsroom headline, it says Apple reveals m three ultra taking Apple silicon to a new extreme.

Mhmm.

Is that copywriter trolling the entire Apple press community because we've talked about the m four extreme chip Of course. Or whatever? Of course. That's pretty slick. Well, extreme chip Of course. Or whatever?

Of course.

That's pretty slick. Whoever wrote that, if you're listening, I like it. I like what you did there. That's pretty good.

Okay. So MacBook Air. Sorry.

No. MacBook Air, almost as long a headline as yours. Sorry. I had to blast you. I don't know. I

don't know what's wrong with long headlines.

No. It's great. I mean, you just wrap it. I mean, this is literally a one, two, three, four, five, six line headline, you know, with the, break. But anyway

To be clear, my headline was five things you should know about Apple's new MacBook Air and Mac Studio. That's it. That's my whole And

then you get a subline. You get a little but hold on. Hold on a second. Let me see. Let me see. What how one of the headlines got here? Okay. Three line, three line. Do you know do you like, when you write articles, do you purposely try to, like, keep it to three lines max, or do you have some kind

I could not care how many lines it is, but I do keep track of how many characters and words it is.

And what's the max characters you you do? When you're like, nah. This is too much.

Anything over a hundred, you start to lose the SEO, like, the Oh. And it starts to it starts to disappear in Google.

Okay. Well, I think Apple might have beat you with this.

That's about 400. No. I'm just kidding.

Apple has used a new MacBook Air. It lowered the price. The previous MacBook Air m three was $10.99 and even amidst all the tariffs or whatever, it lowered in price $9.99, has the m four chip, is an upgraded camera, I believe, correct? Isn't the fuck with upgraded? And new sky blue color, notably no more space gray color for the MacBook Air.

That's a bold decision. I would have thought that space gray was the most popular color of the

Probably, I mean the midnight is, you know, it's kinda like a grave in all the other lights, but anyway the MacBook Air I was very excited for this MacBook Air because I've been waffling about whether I want to try MacBook Air over my Pro and now being at $999 and base storage is well, you still got two fifty six base storage which is, you know, okay, but 16 gigs unified memory is the base and you quickly get to that five twelve SSD. If you wanted to spec this out, which I did, you can get you can get 32 gigs of memory, two terabyte SSD, and you're at $21.99, but that's that's kind of a nice computer right there.

Yeah. So first of all, this is the killer. This is the this is the best computer anyone should think about buying. But here's the funny thing. You you can go from $9.99 to $21.99, and there's literally only two things you can change.

Memory and store.

There's two choices. That's it. You only get two little clickies you can do, and suddenly you've added $1,200 to the price of this computer. Yeah. That's bananas.

It is bananas. The sky blue so I saw the press pictures that shared by, like, Andrew Edwards and stuff and obviously Apple's pictures here. This does look like one of those colors, like starlight and whatever, that you really gotta get it, like, in just the right angle to be able to see the blue part of the blue.

It's gonna be a lot like this, which is the m two iPad Air.

That's a silver iPad.

Nope. This is blue. This is blue.

I don't believe.

The way you know it's blue is because this is the color that they sent me of the thing.

Because of the packaging?

But yeah. I mean, if you look at it end on, you can see there's a little tiny, tiny, tiny drop

of blue

in there. So anyway

Tiny hint of blue. Well, you should match you should, try and match it up and see

I think I think I should get a blue one because the iPad mini that they sent me is also that same color. So I'm gonna rock sky blue everywhere.

Anyway, this is a great computer. 999, M 4, like, this is gonna do gangbusters as they say. I guess I also got one because Yeah.

What's your would you configure it as 20 to $199?

That's great.

Yeah. That's like, seriously though, like, so the m three MacBook air that I've been using was 24 gigs and two terabytes. And honestly, like, you never, like, need to upgrade that. Right? You know what I mean? You're gonna be able to use that for seven years and hand it to a child as they graduate from college and be like, here's a brand new Mac.

It's a brand new Macbook. So I a, so I have an m three pro MacBook Pro. I didn't upgrade to the m four version there. And I love the the Mac, that MacBook Pro. My biggest thing will be comparing the displays, which I know you're not gonna sit side by side with a MacBook Pro display and a MacBook Air display.

And

now that I got the Osmo Pocket three, I actually transfer footage just with the USB C cable anyway, so I never have to deal with the SD card. So I'm like, maybe now is the time. And I got the 13 inch, I think based on your advice, because, like, if you're buying a small computer to be a small computer, buy the small computer.

Right.

No. No.

Don't buy the big version of the small computer of what you want as a small computer. Yeah.

Exactly. And so I'm very excited to try it. Yes. Of course, I got the the sky blue version. And, yeah. It's exciting. Now you had an article too, which I'll include in the show notes. Five things you didn't know about them.

I said five things you should know.

Oh, some of these you should know. Sorry.

You probably do know them all. It's fine. But I just, like, was was looking at, like, what were the highlights for someone who's just quickly wanting to know Yeah. What the differences are. And there's not a ton of them between the two. It's This one I learned.

I let I mean, I think I might have seen it in passing, but your article reminded me of it that it, supports Yeah.

Now you don't have to shut the display on the on your laptop to support two displays up to six k.

Yeah. Two six k displays from the MacBook Air. I did really for some reason, I had thought because of previous laptops that I've had that there were USB c ports on both sides, which is not the case, and I was like, oh shoot. Okay. You know, because charging wise sometimes it's just convenient. Charge for me to do. Sure. But Yeah. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. Hopefully.

Those braided MagSafe cables are they're flexible.

They can They're flexible. All I want Jason, I'll tell this, I'm hoping that the MacBook Air help provides this for me. I want an Apple device that can just sit there on standby for days and allow me to pick it up and use it without it being dead. And unfortunately, all of my portable Apple devices do not offer that anymore. My m4 iPad Pro I actually created a shortcut, believe it or not.

I think you're probably right. I was just thinking about the fact that you didn't do the shortcut for your Vision Pro because your notification center would just be constantly full of battery's dead, battery's dead, battery's dead. Yeah. That's You take it off and you unplug it and thirty seconds later, battery's dead.

Well, that's a you know, that's a good point because when you have a device that you just know is dead, then it's it's less of a stressor because it's like, I already I know my VisionPRO's dead. Like, I don't have to question it. But my iPad, it's like Schrodinger's battery. Like, is the battery is there battery? They're not battery.

Also, the Vision Pro, there's a lot more intentionality to I'm going to use this thing because you have to strap it to your face. Whereas an iPad, by definition, you wanna just be able to reach over, grab it, flip open the cover, and start doing something on it. So I I understand.

And my m three MacBook Pro m three Pro MacBook Pro is actually the same way. Like, I'll have it fully charged. I'll use it. It's at 90%. I put it away, and if I pick it up two or three days later, I mean, it's it's gone.

Those that's the thing. We didn't get the c one and we didn't get nano texture. Super disappointed.

No nano texture. And the c one, not even like in the iPads, you know, it seemed like that would have been a nice, but maybe it's too soon. Maybe they wanna see

how it goes. Yeah. And they so hard to know, like, the iPad air has to be the most popular iPad they sell to consumers as opposed to, like, to schools or whatever.

For sure.

So I can understand. I mean, do they even offer cellular in the in the base iPad? The iPad a 16? I don't even know if they offer cellular in that model. But In

the base model iPad let me see. You can get one twenty eight gigs. You can get the yellow, blue, and red oh, pink. Excuse me. You can get cellular in the base model iPad. It brings it it's a hundred $50 upcharge.

So so you really have to want it. But you know what? They did they've been doing like, okay. So we give Apple a really hard time about their upgrade upgrade prices. Cause they are ridiculous.

Which and that's why, like, I bought my kids the base model iPad, like, three or four years ago and it was 64 gigs of storage. They've they've filled that up already, like that's over. So they don't even update their operating system because they don't have a Mac to attach to it and they try to like delete things to have enough so anyway, that the 128 gigabytes storage alone plus the camera in the right place seems like a good good year for an Apple CoolS. Yeah. My son has been trying well this is I'll tease my video idea for the 16 e.

Yeah. And there's a lot of people who seem to really think that this phone doesn't make sense and yes, for you, it doesn't like for those people, it does not make sense. If you're not, If you are commenting on YouTube videos about phones, this is not the phone for you. That's no, that's seriously.

That's, that's a good metric.

It is. And it's like, why would you upgrade to this phone from, and it's like you would upgrade to this from the se or from an iPhone 11 pro, right? Like it's like, you just have to under like, no, no one is upgrading from the 15 to this or the 14 or the 14 pro. Like that is not why this device exists. Ensure you can buy a iPhone 15 still, but it's more expensive.

Well, you can get an iPhone 15 pro refurbished from Amazon for, like, $6.50.

So it's still technically more expensive.

It's $50 more expensive. Yeah. But, you know, you gotta we gotta talk about Mac Studio, but before we do, with all these new Apple devices, we gotta make sure they're secure. And in order to in order to secure them, you should use 1Password extended access management. Thank you all. Please hold the applause for that transition. I know I know I know you were probably just

I didn't even know what was happening right now.

Exact no. I know. I was trying to keep you guessing. I was trying to keep everybody guessing. Listen, here's the deal.

Which is we should talk about that, but k. Go ahead.

It's just funny because John Grouper has just been hammering him.

Well, he's not hammering Gurman as much as someone leaked an NDA briefing to Gurman.

There's just

a lot there's a lot of subtle stuff going on there. It's like someone Yes. Who signed an NDA would rather just

give it to

me good with Mark Gurman. Yeah. It's interesting.

Which yeah. And I was John Gruber had two articles about it yesterday. He was like, Mark Gurman, your source for leaks twenty four hours before they're announced. I was like, that's that's cold. But also, he went he went all the way back to Mark Gurman's prediction about the new base model iPad and Gurman was pretty much wrong about that.

What do

you use

all the other? What are you using USB a for?

Well, let me tell you, Jason. I have I don't

know, but that's fine. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.

I have my RODECaster Pro two in one thunderbolt port. I have my Blackmagic ATEM Mini Pro in a second thunderbolt port. I have my Studio Display in a third Thunderbolt port, and then I have a CalDigit, USB C Thunderbolt hub in the fourth one because then I have multiple SSDs and other, peripherals connected in that. I have it hardwired to Ethernet, one USB A port is for my mechanical keyboard, the second USB A port is for my Stream Deck, HDMI cable yes I have the studio display connected but I have the HDMI going to my Blackmagic ATEM Mini Pro so I can use the secondary display as an input then the headphone jack usually leaves empty but I can, you know, sometimes get the headset. I use every port, I use all the parts of the buffalo, you know what I mean?

I mean, I don't know, but I'm on a simplify it for you.

Please.

The numbers mean nothing. The only thing means anything is max and ultra at this point. Right? That's what you need to decide. Do you need the max computer that you can possibly get or do you actually need more than that?

Right?

It does. It just makes sense. And so I think the only people who really need that M three ultra are if you need that memory bandwidth if you want to be able to put five twelve gigs

of memory

memory into it. I did see if somebody posted that this is the first Mac where you can spec the memory and the storage to be the same configuration.

I think that was Eric Wielander, which

is hilarious. Just

It's perfect. Because I did see multiple times, like, five twelve gigs, and, like, your brain does that, like, double take of, like, wait a minute. Five twelve is that? That's too. Or does that mean? Why would

I ever do 512 oh, memory. Okay.

Which you can't configure it this way, but it would be hilarious if you could configure it with a five twelve SSD and five twelve memory. It's, like, what memory would swap where? Yeah. What would swap in what direction?

Just store your hard drive stuff. You just I just wanna install Final Cut and the in the memory, please. The whole thing.

Yeah. So one of the things that Apple did say in the press release is, like, yeah, you can run LLMs completely in memory. Sure, I mean you have that much memory. So you can customize this multiple ways, it's it's a little confusing. If you went with the m four max chip, you have the choice of 14 core CPU, 32 core GPU, or 16 core and 40 core, And when you do that, you the memory options will gray out and enable depending on which chip you get.

I'm gonna tell you that you had to, like, choose several options in that chip.

That chip.

You changed all of the other options.

That that's right. The chip is a big difference. But that m three ultra, you can get a 28 or 32 core CPU and a 60 core or 80 core GPU. Uh-uh. Listen, I'm gonna be I'm gonna be real with everybody. I I edit videos, but I'm not doing three d animation. I'm not doing cinema four d or whatever. I understand that this computer is not for me. I'm I'm not so arrogant to think that I needed an m three ultra maxed out for my workflow. I literally could do my workflow on my iPad probably as far as power.

I mean you do half of your workflow

on your I do I do edit the audio version on my iPad. So like I totally I totally get it, but I would love to see what it's like to export a video on that maxed out Mac Studio and run some like AI transcription stuff on that Mac Studio because I'm just I mean, that has to make it go faster. Right? Because that stuff is, you know, especially if you have the LLMs on the thing. I don't know. Wouldn't it that would expedite all that.

Well, I mean, yes. But it's just math. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. So anyway, do do you have any thoughts about these? I mean, they're it's exciting. I don't I don't know what to buy. I don't know if I should buy. I literally never want for speed on my m one Max Mac Studio, so I literally have no reason to upgrade. I probably won't.

Yeah. I mean and I'm sitting here with an m four Pro Mac Mini, and I can't imagine a scenario where I where where anyone would need this. Like, the people who need this, again, are not the people leaving YouTube comments on our videos. It's like, but in the other direction. Right?

It did everything. None of

my devices had to do anything. It's like fine. I don't need 80 GPU cores and five twelve gigs of unified memory. It's like although about the unified memory I wanted to say one thing. I love this. I love that Apple talks about it is having the most unified memory ever on a on a desktop computer, which fine. It's also one third of the RAM you used to be able to get on the Intel Mac Pro.

Because you get 1.5 terabytes. Right?

Yes. But that was only Ram. It wasn't unified memories. It was not graphics memory, but I just think it is always interesting when they're like, how could we make this the best? We're going to call it this, you know, it's unified memory.

Listen. And here's the last thing I'll say because I was I was seriously considering, like, do I wanna get something right now? And so I read it I'm trying to read on their product pages and in the newsroom article the comparisons, and may I don't know if it's just me, but the comparisons just seem so, like, I don't know how to think about it. It will so it says, the m three ultra delivers two times faster performance than an m four max quote in in workloads that take advantage of high CPU and GPU core counts. Okay.

I think that was llama, but yes. Okay.

Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, llama. Yeah. 2.6 times faster scene rendering and maxon redshift. Do you

know what that is? Have you ever heard of that? Have you ever seen those words before or could that have just been made up?

I I have seen Maxon Redshift. I think it's a video application. I don't know what it does.

Scene rendering performance is what it does, Steven.

Oh, that's right.

That's what it says right there. But but my point is none of the 1.1 x faster base calling for DNA sequencing, and this computer is not for you, friend.

That's what I'm saying. That's what the next one was DNA sequencing in Oxford Nanopore Mino. I don't know what that is.

Not real. Not true. I'm sure it is real.

And then up to 1.4 times faster, eight k video rendering. I don't have an eight k camera. So okay. That help that helps me. The m three Ultra, as much as I would love to get one, It's not for me. It's not for me.

I mean, it's sort of like saying this thing, if you buy a rocket, will power you to the moon. And you're like, well, I'm not going to the moon, and I don't have a rocket. So I don't think I need this

I just wanna go to Publix. Is this something that's a Publix fashion?

Help me? Yeah. No. It will.

You'll get there way faster. I mean, I don't know.

You could just anyway, but I don't so, like, I just think it's kind of, like, it doesn't matter. But my question for you is

Yes.

Is the Mac Pro dead?

So this real this week, while early, feels like Apple was clearing the decks for Dub Dub. And Apple last Dub Dub wait a minute. Was it last Dub Dub? They didn't release any hardware at last Dub Dub. Correct?

Correct.

The year before, it was the Apple Vision Pro and the m two Ultra 15 inch. Mac Studio.

The 15 inch MacBook Air, I think. Wasn't that at the year before at Dub Dub?

Right. Yes. But I think the Apple Vision Pro year was also the m two Ultra Mac Pro and Mac Studio or something like that. Anyway, any So it seems like they're clearing the decks. What products do we have left that they would upgrade?

The thing that makes me think it could be dead is that 16 terabytes of storage. Because literally the only thing you can do in Mac Pro with all that space is, like, stick fast storage.

Because you can't use g

some of these things. Use IO. Like, there's some IO stuff.

But Video component.

Thunderbolt five, I'm pretty sure it can handle all of that stuff. Right? You don't need I don't I don't think there's any of that I o that would tap out thunderbolt five.

I mean, there are cases like I've I've worked in places where I wanted a PCIe video card rather than a Thunderbolt cable between the video device and my computer. So I guess some people would prefer that. I'm sure Apple could very easily reason, like, no, no, no, thunderbolt enclosures all all day.

But I mean, is is PCIe faster than thunderbolt five?

Not that it's faster, but it's less points of failure in some people's minds. Like, if you let's say you had, you had to ingest SDI video, like in a professional video situation, which is what I did. Well, to do it with a Mac Studio, even the brand new one, I would need some kind of capture device, like a Blackmagic SDI to Thunderbolt capture device, and then the the Thunderbolt will go to the Mac Studio. Now I'm introducing a device, which technically you could say is the same as a video card, and a Thunderbolt cable with two ends. And I know that seems like asinine, but it's points of failure.

So because I was just thinking, like, you know, you're still connecting SDI cable to the back of that thing. And then the PCI and the use the thunderbolt connection points are very different, but they're serving the same purpose. And so my my my thought is, like, I think it's clear that the Mac pro as the top desktop computer that any human being would buy is gone, right? Like is the reason people would buy it is I want all those cores and I want to put GPU's in it and like no offense to John Siracusa, but, like, the reason he wants a Mac Pro is so he can put graphics cards in it and play Windows games.

Yeah.

That's debt. Like, that's not a thing. It's not gonna happen. There's do you think there's I think the probability of Apple allowing third party GPUs in any of its devices ever again is less than zero.

That I agree with. And that, like you're saying, then obfuscates the need for a device that can you can install third party GPUs in.

But but they they don't think so. Because you can get five twelve gigs of unified memory in 80 GPU course. And listen, I'm not arguing that that is for if you're running video games that are optimized with CUDA for NVIDIA graphics cards, like, no. It doesn't matter what Apple does to Apple Silicon, but Apple's like, we don't care. That ship is sale. Like, that's just go buy yourself a $1,200 ASUS gaming

Put all the stuff in your

wallet. Yeah. Do what you want.

Build your own PC. Yeah. Well, let's see. I'm gonna let's take a different points there. You say it's dead. Does that mean they're never gonna update it again? Like is that what you is that your prediction?

I will say that I think it is more likely than not that they don't do anything with it. That it's just like, it's just why would you continue? I just don't understand. Like, why does the studio exist if you're gonna do the Mac pro?

I think at the very least, they'll press release it and say m three ultra. Now, I think they'll at least do that.

Except, hear me out.

Yes.

Every time they do that, they just make more people mad.

That is that is true. That is true. Okay. Well,

So I'm just wondering like at some point it's just not worth it anymore.

And it is it is odd that the last time we got the m two ultra both computers were announced at the same time. The Mac Studio and the Mac Pro. And the Mac Pro was more expensive just because you had the slots even though the exact same configuration.

There was a lot of aluminum involved in that Mac Pro.

A lot of aluminum.

I I saw one of them in person at WWDC or whatever, and I'm like, wow. That's a beefy boy.

Well, Apple Store still

have space.

Yeah. Apple Store still have them on the tables. I mean, when I did the Miami World Store opening, like, World Center opening, the there were Mac Pros on the tables. But also, are we gonna see okay. Last question, then we'll move on. Are we are we ever going to see the displays updated? Are we gonna see displays? Dub Dub maybe.

Oh, I don't. So do you think I, I think they do like a max, they do a studio display. Yeah. And then a studio display air, and then maybe, no, I don't know. Like I just, I don't think they update that XDR. Like, what are they gonna do? They're not gonna make it they can't make it an OLED. That's the only other thing you and that would not be, I don't think, the right the right category of what they're trying to accomplish with that display. Like, just make the studio display better.

That's what I'm saying. I'm I'm hoping I don't know if this is gonna happen. I'm hoping for an updated studio display at Dub Dub. And last last thing, promise. So if they don't The

other last thing.

If they don't announce any macro or displays at Dub Dub, could it be, Jason, that they are wanting to have a redux on their vision announcement at Dub Dub and announce the next version of Apple Vision something like Apple Vision Air? Might we see that?

I mean, if they announced the apple vision air, they can't call it that.

What if it was an apple vision mini and it was a monocle? Okay. We're gonna move on.

I don't know. I'm just I'm just trying to think of like, what is there for them to do? They they're giving an Apple intelligence. It has an m two in it. It's basically an iPad pro on your face.

Yes. And maybe

this isn't the final form factor. And so the question is, like, there's I mean, no one is tapping out their vision pro. Literally no one. I use it every day. Super not tapping the thing out. Like, I'm just I every day, I wonder, like, why is there no Dropbox app on this thing? Like, it's useless to me without Dropbox.

There's still no Netflix. Still no YouTube.

I don't care about that because I can

do those with the browser. But still, like

But Netflix in a browser on a device like that is like, imagine having to use Dropbox. I might have just said Netflix, but imagine having to use Dropbox in a browser on your iPad. Yeah. No. What would

you even do?

Literally nothing. Like, look. There's all my files. I can't do anything with them.

I will say so when I I went for a briefing, for the 16 e, and it was at the Apple Store Mall at Millennia, which is, like, their big flagship Orlando store. Mall at Millennia is, like, the super fancy mall. And I did talk to one of the the staff there, and they said the Mall at Millennia Apple Store leads in Apple Vision Pro sales in Florida. Leads in Apple Vision Pro sales and I think it was like in the last month they sold like a dozen.

So right up there with the humane AI pen.

I still got mine on my desk right over here.

No. I'm just saying like that was the the rumor that I had heard. I have no idea if it's true. Was it they were sold, like, a dozen or two of Right. Right. Right.

So, you know, there's lots of people trying them. Lots of people trying them even in the mall millennial store, people doing the demos, but it's not sound.

Maybe the Vision Pro demos are like the iPod. They're like the lost like, the get people in the switchers. Get people in the stores to try it out, and then you walk out with a Mac Studio for $14,000.

Or MacBook Air. They just slide a sky blue MacBook Air next to you on that seat while you're in the Apple Vision Pro. You take it off, you're like, oh, what's that? That looks nice.

And also it's useful, and there's software for it.

And it's only $9.99. Would you like that? Yes. Yeah. That's alright. Real quick, lightning round. I just wanna mention, I watched the I well, tried to watch the Oscars last weekend, because, you know, it's the Oscars. I'm always curious to see what's happening. And I literally signed up for YouTube live TV just for this, which is basically what you told me to do, and I was like, maybe I'll keep this. No.

Yeah. And if you don't care about sports Yeah. Exactly. It's just it's not worth it.

Yeah. And I was like even the the YouTube Live TV app, I'm sure if you use it all the time, it makes total sense to you, but I installed it for the first time after signing up. The the Oscars are going. It was like I was just trying to catch the best picture announcement. Like, it was at the end of the stream.

get out of the way. How do

I get stuff and so I hit the menu button on the Apple TV. It goes back to the menu menu. And so I'm looking at all my apps. I'm like, that's not I don't want that. And so I try to go back in and I I just sat there with stuff overlaid on top of the stream and then eventually it went away. Like, ten to fifteen seconds later, I was like, that's a little, can we not do that anyway?

That's not how it's supposed to work. The crazy thing is I a % know what you mean. I never have the ex experience because I just motor memory know how to, like, get it. Right. But I couldn't explain it to you how.

Well, oh, no. That's that's what I finally figured out was I knew the Oscars were airing on ABC, and so I looked down in the channel listing to ABC, but it said American Idol on in the channel thing, and it's like, I don't know. I like, I don't wanna watch American Idol. But, eventually, I just went and clicked on American Idol, and then it loaded the Oscar stream because it was on it was the ABC. And then I was like, okay.

Well, it probably just means that we had gone long, which if you were watching on Hulu was a problem

Right.

Because they just cut it off. They literally and the reason was they just someone typed in, this will be over at 10:32, cut off stream. It's like, that's not how live TV works. And also, have you ever watched the Oscars? Yeah.

Sorry about that. Oh, our bad.

I wrote an apology for him in there. I I actually put in this what they should have said. Scroll all the way to the bottom. Yeah. Yeah. I, I wrote them. There you go. This is what they should have said.

We apologize for

the opportunity to watch the

Academy Awards presentation. We failed to live up to experience you expect for this is a good apology. You know what, Jason? You should be a writer.

I should.

You should be a writer.

They should hire me to write apologies for companies that screw up.

It's like the, what George Clooney did in up in the air, but just writing apologies for companies rather than

That yeah. You know what? They could fly me all over just to apologize to people. I'd be fine with it. You know? Because the thing about apologizing when you didn't do anything wrong is it cost you zero. It cost you zero.

That is that an industry? Listen. If you're if anyone Yeah.

It's called PR.

Literally, that's the industry. That's the industry. Oh, professional apologizers. PR. That's what it is.

But that has nothing to do with tariffs because we don't import them from China. But that's there's other reasons, but eggs are very expensive. Every time I pull up the thing of eggs, my wife, like, sends me a bill. Like, actually, Waffle House apparently added like a 25¢ surcharge or something like that for every egg, which is, I mean, they go through a lot of eggs, so I kind of kind of understand. Yeah.

Anyway, so my parents

are coming and things are gonna get more expensive.

Unless you wanna buy a base model iPad or MacBook air. Actually, you

should just buy them all now because, actually, there's a decent chance those might get more expensive too.

That's true. Yeah. That's true.

It is amazing that they lowered the price on I'm gonna write about that. They lowered the price on both of those things Yeah. As tariffs were about to happen.

That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying.

They're making up for it all in the 16 e.

Yeah. I did there were articles that were written the iPhone 16 e is like the first tariff iPhone, which we'll see what happens with the 17 lineup in the fall. I think that'll be telling, how how that goes. But real quick, I wanted to do a memoriam quickly for Skype. After its 20 after its twenty one year run, Microsoft is finally shutting it shutting it down.

Only when I recorded with you, like, one time.

We did. Yeah. We did. I was with the Apple Insider Podcast. I was using Skype and Ecamm Call Recorder, and it was listen for the at the time that it was a great tool and I actually used this in the travel industry when I worked there speaking with international people and, listen it was a it was the thing for a long time and I have fond memories of it.

You know, sometimes when I see a story like this, cause I wrote about this, and sometimes when I see a thing like this happen, I like to imagine that at some point in 02/2011, it was someone's job to knock on Steve Ballmer's door, who was the CEO of Microsoft at the time and said, I have an idea. We should spend $8,500,000,000 on Skype. Now I know that eBay bought them for 2,600,000,000.0 and had to write off 1,400,000,000.0 of that purchase because they couldn't figure out how to make it into a business, but we should pay three times that, and we should bring this thing in. And that's exactly what they did. They bought it, after eBay.

Sure.

Take that brand because they had a great brand.

The brand. It was

a way it was a way better brand than it was ever a product.

That is very that is very fair. There was also like a strange, like, sometimes you might have to pay a few cents if you wanted to, like Yeah. Call a phone number rather than a username. It was strange. But, I I didn't see you wrote an article, so I'm gonna put your article in the show notes if you wanna read about Skype, and, that'll be there. Also, lastly, The UK we covered with

How many types of that's gonna be the nickname for our podcast. Lastly. Also, lastly.

Also, lastly. That's pretty good actually. Before we get to our personal tech and bonus episode, we've been talking about the battle between The UK asking Apple to build a backdoor to advance data protection and iCloud encryption and The US's response to that last week. Well, now Apple is pushing back. Apparently, Apple has filed an appeal with the investigatory powers tribunal.

That is the people who investigate the this it does actually sound like something from, like, X Men. Right? I

know. That's what I'm saying.

This is definitely what they were trying to do to shut down the, you know, the mutant university or whatever child.

That's right.

Yeah. Your school. Yeah. No. Well, this is part of the law was that the company can appeal to this. They can't not comply while they're appealing. So that's weird. That's probably why they pulled advanced data protection at the time to sort of buy themselves some time. Good. I'm glad Apple's appealing to this. I'm sure they're gonna lose, but because The UK doesn't care, they're gonna just do this thing and I don't know what's gonna happen.

And also in the verge article, the UK government is still not confirming or denying the existence of the order, which is something.

Which the interesting thing about that so, like, play that out. Apple should just be like, oh, sweet. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. If you're not gonna confirm that it exists, you can't, like, prosecute us for it because I think you have to confirm it in order to do that.

That would, by nature, require.

Sweet. We'll just it's Schrodinger's letter.

Schrodinger's encryption. Schrodinger's but whatever. Anyway, alright. I wanna talk about the Sigma camera with you in the bonus episode because everyone's talking about it, and you're a photographer, and I wanna get your your take on it. For our personal tech segment, let's talk about browsers. So exciting.

So Just think about how many browser tabs you're going to be able to have open if you put 512 gigs of unified memory in a Mac Studio.

That's a lot of browser tabs. That's a lot of browser tabs. I use Safari by default as my browser. I use Brave to record in Riverside because Safari doesn't have the APIs for that kind of stuff. But I use Safari by default. I like Safari. I like tab groups, which I use for this podcast specifically. I'll even show you behind the scenes if you're watching, youtube.com/@primarytechshow. Let's get to 2,000 subscribers over there. Go ahead and do that.

Somehow I knew that this conversation about Safari was gonna end up talking about shortcuts. I just I knew that was gonna be the case.

Cannot not. Cannot not. Listen, shortcuts helps me do all these things. I You

have a whole YouTube channel that you can talk about it. I want to say shortcuts safe

I'm just here

we go.

I've I just wanted to mention, that's one some of the many reasons I like Safari. I like the UI. Most of the time, it's very fast. Right before we recorded this episode today, I was trying to load all the websites that we were gonna talk about, and I was on the last two. And for some reason, I kept pasting the link, hitting it return, it did not load the page, would not load the page, closed the tab, new tab, nothing.

It has been I've stopped using Safari. Like, I have just I mean, I will occasionally open it. I use Brave as my default mostly because I have there are several things I have to do just like Riverside that Chrome you just have to be using your Chromium browser, and I'll Yeah. Never use Chrome. So I'm using Brave because it's like the Chrome for people who care about their dignity. And so I just use Brave instead. It's fine.

I it always surprised me. I don't know. Listen. If you were playing a drinking game for for how many times we say the word Syracusa, I'm sorry because you're dumb. You've already got We're

just trying to we're just trying to get him to notice us, apparently.

No. No. He he sees me on Mastodon. I'm not worried about it. But I know he he uses Chrome, which is surprising because

Yeah. I I

don't know. And I understand in a lot of workplaces and people's jobs, you probably have to use Chrome by default. It is I mean, all the other browsers are built on Chromium, but they were just, you know, news from several years ago about, like, the passwords that get saved into Chrome and those being whatever, used in weird ways. And so I I don't prefer using Chrome either. I I use Brave, and I'll use a Chromium browser all day, but but not Chrome itself.

It's okay. So I had this issue. Let me say one more thing about Brave because there's so many people who are listening to this. They're gonna be like, but isn't Brave the weird browser with all that crypto stuff? Yes. Just turn you gotta turn if you download and install Brave, there's, like, six things you have to turn off. Just turn them all off, and then it's it's awesome. You gotta just get rid that stuff. Yeah. And then it's fine.

And that is even when earlier before we recorded, I restarted my Mac. I went to settings, system settings, iCloud settings, private relay, and it showed as toggled off, but it was because it was in just a minute.

It was not working. And so what and what happens is if you have it toggled on and it is not available, it eliminates all your browser activity.

But and and it it showed as toggled off even after I restarted my computer, but that was not correct. So I toggled it and then toggled it again, and then I got the pop up that said, do you really wanna turn off Cloud Private iCloud Pro Relay? I said, absolutely. I would like to turn this off.

Yes, please. I'd like to use the Internet. Thank you. I'd like

to use the Internet. And I I also have experienced this sometimes on my iPhone even with iCloud Private Relay where Safari will just like not be doing anything, and so it's a problem. I should the right thing to do probably to file a feedback, but this is my method of feedback. I make a podcast. Yep. Hope Apple hears it, but

if you have issues about it. I'm filing my version of a feedback. You're gonna

write an article about it.

Word articles.

So, if you experience issues with Safari not loading stuff, it's probably because iCloud private relay and try disabling it. You might have to restart your computer first or your device and then, it's been working. So, yeah, I'm gonna turn it off for now and, we'll see what happens but I still like Safari. I don't know. We'll see.

It's like Well, it's because your Mac is authenticated.

I know.

I know. Mac is giving you that six digit code for your browser. Yeah. Exactly. Right.

But But

people are very confused about that.

It it is a little confusing, but that's why. It's because your browser Brave is asking for the six digit code and your Mac is providing it, and it looks like it's happening in the same window and it's just kind of a weird thing. But once you do that, then you can use Apple passwords, pass keys, everything in Brave. That's what I do. I don't have Brave or any other browser save my logins and passwords.

hear that. I have thoughts.

You have thoughts. So we're gonna record a bonus episode and here's what you do. I've had a lot of people reaching out recently, who support the show and love the bonus episodes so thank you for that. If you wanna listen or watch the bonus episodes, support the show at primarytech.fm. Click bonus episodes.