Macworld Podcast: What to expect from Apple in 2026, part 1

2026 could be one of the most memorable years in Apple’s history. Here’s what to expect from Apple in the first half of the year.

This is episode 965 with Michael Simon, Jason Cross,  and Roman Loyola.

Tune in to next week’s show to hear about what Apple will do in the second half of 2026.

Watch episode 965 on YouTube

Listen to episode 965 on Apple Podcasts

Listen to episode 965 on Spotify

Apple in 2026 (January to Jume)

Click on the links below for more information on what was discussed on the show.

• Strap in Apple fans, 2026 is going to be a wild ride
• 2026 iPhone preview: 4 major changes that could transform Apple’s lineup
• Get hyped: 2026 will be a big year in Mac releases
• 2026 smart home preview: Apple to make a major push
• 2026 iPad preview: What to expect from Apple’s next tablet lineup

This Week in Apple History 

On January 6, 2004, the iPod mini was introduced at the 2004 Macworld Expo.  

Macworld Mailbag 

You are giving the iPhone 16e a very hard time. Reviewing it as a $599 device is not fair. This phone is often $99 or FREE on prepaid. It is essentially the affordable iPhone everyone wanted Apple to release.” 

Arian R. via email 

Your recent podcast discussion on a lack of future for the macpro was sad to hear but likely accurate. However I note as have some others that there could be a use for Mac Pros that were super powerful – as a ‘cluster’ tower. One Macpro tower could contain 4 ultra or max chips linked by thunderbolt 5 or using the Apple tech used to link two max chips into an ultra chip.  

Jeff C. via email

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Below is an AI-generated, uncorrected transcript of the podcast. The timecodes do not correspond to the published recording. Also, the text has not been edited or corrected, so it will contain improper grammar, misspellings, and other errors.

Michael Simon (00:01)
Okay.

Unscripted, unfiltered, unafraid, welcome to the Mackrow podcast. My name is Michael Simon. I am joined as always by Jason Cross.

Jason Cross (00:17)
Good morning.

Michael Simon (00:19)
and our producer Roman Loyola.

Roman Loyola (00:21)
Ohoy there!

Michael Simon (00:24)
This is episode number 965. Is that right? Okay, good. And happy new year, everyone. This is our first show of the new year. We actually haven’t recorded in a little while. And today we’re gonna do a preview of 2026. So we were just talking literally like five minutes ago. And we decided that we’re gonna break this into two parts because there was just so much stuff happening or expected to happen this year. So this is…

Roman Loyola (00:30)
You are correct.

Jason Cross (00:51)
There’s a lot.

Michael Simon (00:53)
The first, so we’re gonna break it into two halves. So this is gonna be like January to like June. We’ll end it at WWDC. And then next week we’ll pick up where we left off, because we try to be somewhat conscious of the length of the show, and if we did it all, it would be like two hours, and no one wants to listen to us speak for two hours. So ⁓ we’re gonna try to keep this one under an hour. Roman, that’s your job to yell at us if we’re talking too much. ⁓

Jason Cross (01:00)
Right.

You ⁓

We don’t want to talk for two hours.

Michael Simon (01:19)
And then we’ll do a segment on what we’re watching on Apple TV because I want to talk to Jason about Pluribus this week in Apple history. And we’re going to close with our reader mailbag. Speaking of that, you can contact us through Blue Sky Facebook or threads. Look, search for Macworld, look for the Blue Mouse logo, send emails to podcast at macworld.com. Tell us what you’re thinking, what you want to buy, what you’re looking forward to in 2026. Because like I said, there’s a lot of stuff. We’ll talk about the next, we’ll talk about the best.

Jason Cross (01:24)
All right.

Michael Simon (01:50)
not the best. We’ll talk about whatever you want to say next week. It doesn’t really matter. I always say the best, it’s not the best. Like who are we to judge? Whatever you want to say, we’ll talk about next week. All right, Roman, give me a couple minutes. We haven’t talked to you guys since December 17th, even though you might’ve listened later than that. So it’s been a while. ⁓ Anything interesting happened to y’all over the break?

or happen at all over the break.

Jason Cross (02:24)
Yeah, the week before Christmas at all hell broke loose around here. My wife got in a car accident that was she’s she’s fine. It’s not it wasn’t like ⁓ it wasn’t serious enough to be like, you know, life’s threatening in any way, but it messed up the car real good. And then we had to deal with insurance and we’re driving a rental and we’re still dealing with insurance because like, you know, the collision places and

weekends and then there’s Christmas and New Year’s and all this other stuff. So everything that already was taking too long is taking that much longer. And then the day after that our dog got sick and we had to rush it to the emergency vet. You know, it’s not we’re we’ve been dealing with that because it’s some it’s some GI thing that she’s got some GI inflammation and we’re not sure what’s causing it. But after all these tests, we know it’s her blood works good. She’s got no no disorder. 10.

Michael Simon (02:51)
Yep.

good, that’s good. How old is your dog,

Okay.

Jason Cross (03:20)
And this kind of thing happens and there’s a million things that can cause GI inflammation in dogs. It’s not that she went outside and ate a dead animal or something because she doesn’t go and we watch her and stuff like that. But it can be all kinds of things. And she’s a super nervous dog anyways. So it can be stress, it can be whatever. But we’ve been dealing with diarrhea and vomiting and then it was getting better and then I got…

worse again and we were making this new bland food for her. It’s been it’s been

Michael Simon (03:54)
It’s

like having a child. Who can’t talk to a heck of lot tell you what’s wrong.

Jason Cross (03:58)
Yes. It’s like having a child who cannot talk to you and it’s, yeah.

but she’s other than the obvious sort of food and intestinal problems and stuff like that, she’s been acting relatively normal now. At first she wasn’t, she was acting very lethargic and sick and, and she did again a week later when it, when it suddenly went all the way back to square one, but we’re still dealing with

Michael Simon (04:13)
Okay, that’s good.

Jason Cross (04:27)
All those things, she’s not back to normal yet. And yeah, and we don’t have our car, we’re driving a terrible rental Chevy Malibu that is just awful. I don’t even know if it’s, that it’s a Chevy Malibu or it’s like the cheapest worst three year old Chevy Malibu as well.

Michael Simon (04:35)
Ha ha ha.

Yeah, that’s probably what it is. I mean, don’t they make

Roman Loyola (04:46)
Thanks.

Michael Simon (04:50)
really low end cars strictly for rental companies? Like cars that people don’t even buy, they’re so bad.

Jason Cross (04:52)
Yes, they do. They do. I know, I know

the Malibu and if you rent an SUV, the Equinox are like all over rental car companies and almost nobody buys them. I was, my cousin used to work for Chevy dealer and I was asking her, do you know anybody who ever bought like a Malibu? And she’s like, she’s like, yeah, one of the guys that are, who worked for our dealership did, cause he had to make quota or whatever. And then he hated it and he sold it.

Michael Simon (05:03)
Right. Right.

Ha ha ha.

Ha

ha ha.

Jason Cross (05:22)
And

it, but it’s like, I think they’re manufactured mostly for big rental car companies. have big contracts with and they buy 10,000 of them at a time and stuff. ⁓ but we hate it and we just want it all to, we want to get on the other side of all this nonsense. So that, yeah, my, holiday has not been great.

Michael Simon (05:28)
Right. Right.

I’ve never had a good

rental car experience. So we went to Hawaii a couple of years ago and I rented a convertible. We were like, you know what, let’s splurge. And it was still crappy. It was like an old soft top Audi and it was just like this, no matter what car you get at a rental car, it’s never good.

Jason Cross (05:48)
Mm.

yeah, it’s a way, yeah.

I can’t remember what it was. We rented, we traveled to visit, we all went with her, my wife’s family to some theme park in Kentucky or something like that, I don’t remember. ⁓ And rented a house and we rented a car. We rented like a Toyota 4Runner or something there and that was fine. That was just totally fine. We’re like, it’s very snowy, we should get like an.

Michael Simon (06:20)
Right.

Right. Sure.

Jason Cross (06:33)
some kind of SUV. That’s what they had. was something with four-wheel drive just in case. you know, it’s also I think a four-runner is the top selling car in the world. So it’s not surprising, but

Michael Simon (06:35)
huh.

Right.

I went to visit my friend in Florida. This was a while ago. I think it like, like, like pre COVID. And it was, so I took like a, it wasn’t quite a red eye, but I got there like after midnight and I, you know, I booked the car and I show up and they’re like, we gave you an upgrade. It’s in, you know, spot, whatever. And go, great. And I, I, I walked to this thing. It is like a, it’s like an F 150.

Jason Cross (07:08)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (07:09)
I

think I need a class D driver license. I cannot drive this thing. You gotta give me something smaller. There’s no way. I don’t care if it’s an upgrade. It’s not happening.

Jason Cross (07:13)
You

Michael Simon (07:22)
Roman, did you have a nice vacation?

Roman Loyola (07:25)
Yeah, my vacation was compared to Jason’s was very uneventful. The most exciting thing I did was I watched the HVAC championships on television. It was the most exciting. Yeah, there are actually competitions where people were these HVAC technicians put together a system and they’re timed. Yeah, that was the most, well, that was more exciting than.

Michael Simon (07:29)
Well, all of ours was.

Any track like air conditioning repair?

No way. Get out of here.

And they broadcast

this?

Roman Loyola (07:55)
This was on the eight ESPN eight where they broadcast weird things. Yeah, the out show. Yeah. That was almost, that was more exciting, a little more exciting than the plumbing competition that I watched right after that. So I was, yeah. So I didn’t really do much to this holiday week.

Jason Cross (08:00)
The Ocho, I was on the Ocho, that’s awesome.

Michael Simon (08:00)
yeah, yeah, the Ocho, yeah, yeah.

⁓

up clearly. You could have watched something

better than that. I mean, I have my issues with with Pluribus, but it was certainly better than an HVAC competition.

Roman Loyola (08:23)
Yeah, I

did finish Ploribus and I finished Slow Horses. I purposely saved those for the break week and I’ve watched those, so which we can talk about later.

Michael Simon (08:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, we got our Apple TV segment. I’m so glad we don’t have to call it Apple TV Plus anymore. All right, Roman, that’s three minutes, right? Jason. ⁓ That’s close. Well, Jason, I’m sorry you gotta deal with all that stuff. I hope it all sorts itself out in due fashion, but insurance is just a pain.

Roman Loyola (08:43)
Yes, a little more than that. It’s always more than that. It’s, quote unquote, three minutes.

Jason Cross (08:45)
I think, yeah, it’s always more.

It is.

Michael Simon (09:01)
So all right, well, if this was Roman’s show, he would say, speaking of 2026 or something like that. So like I said, we were just talking about this show. So we always do a preview show every January, at least as long as I’ve been part of the podcast, probably as long as we’ve been doing the Mackerel podcast, all 965 episodes of it. Every year we do a preview. And every year it’s, you know.

Jason Cross (09:08)
Hahaha!

Roman Loyola (09:09)
You’re a transition there.

Michael Simon (09:29)
is a couple of new iPads, a couple of new Macs. This year is crazy with the amount of just new stuff that Apple is reportedly going. There’s like four like brand new or three or four brand new products, some serious updates, a shakeup of it. There’s all sorts of stuff going on. So we’re gonna focus on, we’re gonna go month by month and focus on the first half of the year.

And I didn’t take any notes, Jason. I don’t know what the heck is due in each month. So we literally just decided this like 10 minutes ago. So my notes are not month by month. But I think I can figure it out. So we’re in January. We’ll start there. ⁓

Jason Cross (09:58)
Right.

Yes.

Michael Simon (10:17)
iOS 26.3, maybe, probably, possibly.

Jason Cross (10:21)
Right. ⁓

Yeah, usually comes out the dot three. I looked at the history for the last several years worth of that. It usually comes out like sort of last week of January, sometimes just into February. ⁓ But yeah, and 26.3, you know, the beta’s out there and there’s just kind of special in it. That’s not the special. There’s not, don’t get excited. ⁓

Michael Simon (10:43)
Yeah, it’s there’s not much.

Jason Cross (10:49)
It’s really nothing’s gonna happen in Apple land in January or February. Well, that’s not necessarily true. I guess we should start, I guess the first product we should say is the rumors say early 2026 and we don’t know what that means, but it could be before March-ish is that inexpensive MacBook, right?

Michael Simon (11:12)
Yeah.

right. Wait, pause on that one. So at the end of 2025, we heard rumors and rumors and rumors and rumors of a new AirTag and a new Apple TV 4K. Do you think, does either of think that we’re going to get that at some point, just as like a wake up one morning and the website’s refreshed with like a new AirTag or a new Apple TV, or are they going to push that to some point down the line?

Jason Cross (11:15)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

I think we’re gonna get that, but I think we’re gonna get that in like March or something.

Michael Simon (11:46)
So like as part of the larger event thing.

Jason Cross (11:49)
As part of some larger event or some larger, even if they don’t mention it at the event, they’ll probably refresh that and that new HomePod mini that they were talking about that again, it’s also it’s a chip upgrade. Those are all chip upgrades. Yeah, yeah, I think they’re just waiting to build them into the air tags, the wild card, because like, what’s that waiting on? But I think everything else it’s like they’re waiting on new Siri and all that stuff, you know.

Michael Simon (11:57)
That, right, that too, right. Yeah, so like, by all accounts, those are done, like getting ready to go.

Okay.

Right, Maybe, yeah,

maybe. ⁓ So we have gotten like random announcements in January before HomePod 2. Most recently we got MacBooks, MacBook Pros, was that last year Roman or the year before? That came out in January or maybe the Air last year, I don’t know. But like occasionally Apple will drop something in January. So it’s not out of the question that we could get one or all of those things that show up.

Jason Cross (12:20)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Simon (12:43)
next Wednesday or something, you know, at eight o’clock in the morning and just like, look, there’s a new Apple TV and it’s the same thing with a new chip or whatever.

Jason Cross (12:51)
There’s like five products that are essentially ready to go that could drop before the spring or later, right? And it’s like the Apple TV, a new Apple TV, a new HomePod mini, new AirPods, this inexpensive MacBook, whatever that is, right? ⁓ And was there one more?

Michael Simon (13:05)
Right.

Well, the MacBook Pro, the M4 Max and Pro MacBook Pro, we’re not really sure if those are ready. Right, M5, because we got the M5 MacBook Pro in October and suspiciously absent was the Pro and Max. So like, presumably they’ll come out sooner than later. And then I don’t think Apple is gonna wait all the way into the fall to release the variants for that.

Jason Cross (13:21)
Yeah, changing the M5s.

No.

No, no, that’ll be first half of this year’s supply.

Michael Simon (13:45)
Right, so that could come out at any moment as well. There’s a lot of like, and that’s not even the big stuff. These are also, all so the Jason’s MacBook Pro, or the new MacBook, that’s a big product. That needs an event. If they’re gonna release that, whenever they release that, that’s gonna have its own dedicated thing.

Jason Cross (13:58)
Yes.

I would think so, yeah.

It makes sense to release it later. we just mentioned all those things that are basically just chip upgrades. The MacBook Pro getting the M5 Pro and Macs would be kind of the biggest deal of those because they’re supposed to be the M5 Pro and Macs are rumored to be kind of special with how they deal with RAM or whatever. And the 16-inch MacBook Pro didn’t even get an update because it doesn’t have a basic M5 model.

Michael Simon (14:14)
Yeah, those four. Yeah.

Right.

Right,

that’s true.

Jason Cross (14:34)
Like it only has a pro

and max, right? So it’s still on the fours. So that would be the biggest of those, but the rest are just, you know, that new air tag, it’s supposed to have better range and better battery reporting be harder to. Yeah. It’s like harder to dis to, to, mess with the speaker on it. Like that’s, I don’t know why they’re not out except that maybe Apple has a warehouse full of air tags. need to move first.

Michael Simon (14:45)
It’s bizarre that we haven’t gotten that yet.

Right.

They might, because Amazon’s been

selling them for pretty cheap. But yeah, something like that, that’s a security privacy thing. It’s surprising that Apple didn’t update it a year ago. But yeah, we’re still waiting for the second gen.

Jason Cross (15:02)
Yeah.

And those are

huge during the big travel season, which we’re just on the other side of now. Like that was all the holidays. So yeah, that was weird. Any of that could drop. I guess when we get into the spring stuff, it gets really big. And I feel like the spring event, I feel like there’s gonna be a spring event this year. We’ve had a lot that are just drops, but.

Michael Simon (15:14)
Yeah. Right. Right.

Yeah, think so too. If

we could put money on, what’s that website where you could bet on things happening? Like bet on a, yeah, yeah, polymarket. Bet on an Apple spring event, because it’s almost certain to happen.

Jason Cross (15:35)
there’s a bunch like polymarket or something. Will there be a full spring event?

Because there’s kind of two big things going on. One is new Siri and the other is the affordable products, is which would be this new affordable MacBook, this iPhone 17e, right? Like there’s like the inexpensive push, you know.

And I think that could make a good holistic event, you know, for Apple.

Michael Simon (16:08)
So you think 18.4. So 18.4 is the one that’s rumored to, it’s 18, what am I talking about? 26.4, thank you. It’s supposed to bring the new series that we’ve been waiting over a year to get.

Jason Cross (16:12)
26.4.

Yes, ⁓ that was the rumor. There’s been no changes in those rumors. They’ve been pretty consistent. ⁓ As far as we know, it is a completely new foundation for Siri, built on a new large language model. is allegedly Google’s Gemini technology.

Michael Simon (16:26)
So probably March.

Jason Cross (16:46)
But it’s not just Gemini, it’s customized for Apple. It’s gonna run on Apple servers. It’s gonna have all of Apple’s privacy protections. It’s gonna have some different, and it’s gonna do all that stuff on your phone that they promised that never got delivered. All the app integration stuff, personal, yeah, the personal context stuff, the understanding what’s on your screen, all those kinds of things. It’s bringing all of those features and just.

Michael Simon (17:00)
Right. The iPhone 16 stuff. Yeah.

Jason Cross (17:14)
when you’re not using those features, just all the regular series stuff is just gonna be built on a new foundation. ⁓ I am very, very interested, but my expectations are measured. Like I’m, at this point, I mean, they really have to hit it out of the park at this point, and we’ll see. I think they know that, but God.

Michael Simon (17:25)
Sure, as they should be. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think they know that. I think that at this point,

yeah. It’ll be interesting. So 18.3, if we get that in like three or four weeks, that first 18.4 beta, assuming it’s, why am I saying 18? What the hell’s wrong with my brain? It’s not even like, I could say 19 would make sense. Why am I stuck on 18?

Jason Cross (17:41)
26.3.

I don’t know. Yeah.

We just, we just came

back from holiday and none of us are back into the swing of things. ⁓ yeah. The 26.4 beta. I don’t know if it’s going to be in that or what, like, I don’t know if it’ll be.

Michael Simon (17:59)
26 for beta. Right, so that was gonna

be my question. Do you think Apple will out itself or will they hold back?

Jason Cross (18:09)
My guess is

that people who dig into the code will find references and all this stuff, but it’ll be disabled on the server side until some kind of event or whatever. Because I feel like they need to get out there and say, hey, here’s the new Siri and all it can do and set expectations and all that kind of stuff.

Michael Simon (18:17)
Sure, yeah.

That makes sense.

Cause it’s not the kind of thing that.

Right.

There’s not much developers could do to help them test it. Like it works or it doesn’t. Like it’s not like they can say, well, there’s a bug here or a bug there.

Jason Cross (18:42)
Yeah, no,

there should be a ton, right? Because this should bring those hundreds and hundreds of app intents that developers need to hook into. ⁓ But they could maybe enable that for developers, but it’s just not going to be all the serious things. So I don’t know.

Michael Simon (18:50)
Well, yeah, that’s true. ⁓

have they haven’t released

that apps intent API yet?

Jason Cross (19:04)
They have a very small handful of them and have had for years and that let you do things like say play this on Spotify and it plays on Spotify or play this audio book. So there’s a very narrow selection of them right now and this is supposed to blow it up to hundreds and hundreds of things that go into every photo app and all kinds of stuff. But they need app updates to work.

Michael Simon (19:06)
Okay.

Right, right, right.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Cross (19:32)
the apps need to be updated to use these things. And either that or maybe they won’t. Sometimes Apple does this stuff where they work in private with a handful of big companies. They’ll work with Instagram or something like that. So they have something at launch and it’s not until after launch that everybody else gets the new developer kit and gets to build updates and stuff. I don’t know how they’re gonna handle it.

Michael Simon (19:49)
Right. Yep.

Jason Cross (20:00)
but it’s definitely supposed to be coming. We haven’t heard any word that it’s not. Apple hasn’t announced any of this, but like the rumors haven’t said like, no, but slipping until.

Michael Simon (20:06)
Right. Yeah. Usually

Yeah, so German last year, Mark German from Bloomberg last year reported pretty early on that there were problems with Siri and that it was delayed. And then Apple came out a couple, like a month and a half later and say like, yeah, it’s going to be pushed back to some time in this year. Well, they said this year and then it’s that it turned out to next year. But yeah, so we haven’t gotten that report. If there were problems, we would know, I think. I think we would know because if it’s due in

Jason Cross (20:29)
We don’t know. Yeah.

Michael Simon (20:42)
eight weeks, like they gotta be pretty far along and pretty happy with the development by this point. Yeah, you would hope. Yeah.

Jason Cross (20:46)
Right. You would hope. You would hope. Yeah. Of

course, right Murphy’s law is we the second we stop recording this podcast, there’s going to be some news report today saying like, you know, series delayed until I was 27, you know. Yeah.

Michael Simon (20:57)
Hahaha.

Yeah, that’s

true. If you’re reading that on our site, ⁓ right, we recorded this on Tuesday, January 6th at 2 p.m. Eastern time.

Jason Cross (21:11)
So,

but that’s a big deal. And that’s gonna be probably March or April. Usually the dot four comes out in March. That’s been the history for a while.

Michael Simon (21:23)
So will that,

right, will it be tied with an event? Or will it come out and then the event will happen or vice versa? So the low budget, the low end budget stuff that you were just talking about, the iPhone 17E and this ⁓ iPhone chip powered MacBook, they don’t necessarily need the new Siri to be great.

Jason Cross (21:32)
That’s a question.

Yeah, so it did.

Mm-hmm.

Correct.

Michael Simon (21:53)
Like they are what they are. But there are some products that do, a couple of them we were just talking about. Maybe there’s that HomePod with the display thing. That’s another thing that could come out in the first half of 2026. That’s a brand new product. I don’t think there’s ever been a year of Apple where there’s so many things that could come out that are brand new.

Jason Cross (21:55)
Yes.

Thank

There. So that’s the first there’s two things sort of targeted for early this year slash spring or something. One is that a Mac book that is engineered and designed to be well under a thousand dollars never happened. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Six hundred. God, they’d sell a lot.

Michael Simon (22:32)
Right, well under, like maybe 700 or something, or maybe 600, we don’t know, but yeah.

Very affordable by Apple standards.

Jason Cross (22:40)
Right. And the other is the thing you mentioned that is waiting on this new Siri by all accounts. This thing is kind of ready to go by all rumors and stuff. Yeah. Right. It was supposed because the new Siri was supposed to come out a year ago. It was supposed to come out last year and it’s waiting on the new Siri and this thing people some people call it home pad or whatever but it’s essentially supposed to be a tablet. ⁓

Michael Simon (22:49)
Right, we’ve read that it was delayed because the new series was delayed.

Jason Cross (23:09)
form factor device that is kind of square-ish. It’s not as wide as like an iPad. Something about is like a seven inch display or something like that. Seven or eight inch display. know, kind of think of it more like a more square iPad mini. ⁓ And it is their answer to Google Nest Hub or Alexa or Echo Show. ⁓

Michael Simon (23:14)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, they’re saying, know, something like that.

Echo Echo Show you.

Jason Cross (23:37)
It is meant to be a smart home command center. It’ll do FaceTime. It’ll cue up music, but it does not have an app store. It’s not an iPad, right? ⁓ And it will have its own custom sort of interface. So that is, and you’re supposed to be able to hang it on a wall and it’ll be battery powered or you can plug it in or whatever. And then,

Michael Simon (24:00)
If we could

hang it on a wall, Ben and I would have a cable hanging from it. I hate those. Those pictures where people show these things and they’re lovely and then you get it and you’re like, wait, it needs to have a plug going down to the wall. So they need to not do that.

Jason Cross (24:05)
Well, the idea is that it’s supposed to be.

Yeah.

I the rumors is supposed to be battery powered. But for how long? Like how long do you have to if you’re going to hang it on the wall? Like am I going to charge it every day? Like I don’t know. But I can see it being something that you put on a stand or you keep down and then you put it on a wall to have a FaceTime call while you do something somewhere and you move it around. And that might be something they talk about of it being is something that you move around. And it is.

Michael Simon (24:21)
Yeah.

Right. Every 10 hours I got to recharge. Yeah.

Jason Cross (24:45)
One of the rumors is it doesn’t have an integrated, big integrated speaker like the Nest Home Hub or something. It’s gonna dock onto a new HomePod. Like there’ll be a new full-size HomePod that you just kind of dock it onto. It just sits on there. Probably, know, Apple loves their magnets. It’d be some magnetic snap-on thing, which I think would be great. And that’d be a great sort of new HomePod design. So that all…

Michael Simon (25:05)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jason Cross (25:14)
could just drop in March with the new Ziri.

Michael Simon (25:16)
Right. Again,

that’s another thing that needs its own event, seemingly separate from the iPhone 17e slash cheap MacBook of that, because there’s someone unrelated. But maybe not. Maybe it’s just one massive. God, I hope not. If that’s the case, I’m taking the week off, because that is a ton to write about. But that’s two brand new categories. The smart home hub, yes, they exist, but Apple hasn’t done it yet. And.

this low-end MacBook, which sounds like, a big deal, but it is a big deal because Apple’s never had anything under $999 for a Mac. It doesn’t exist. It has never existed.

Jason Cross (25:55)
Yeah. Although it is, it is

just a Mac. So it’s not like there’s new features to talk about or write about. So I can see them talking all about the new Siri and all about their new home stuff and everything like that. And then saying, and it’s, can get into it more affordably than ever. Here’s the iPhone 17 E and this low cost Mac book. And then they don’t have a lot to say about those because they’re not

Michael Simon (26:02)
Right. Right.

Sure, that’s not bad.

Jason Cross (26:23)
Like both of them are cut down versions of things that exist. They don’t have new features or whatever. ⁓ So the iPhone 17e, we expect it to be.

Michael Simon (26:27)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s, that’s going to

be different. Yeah.

Jason Cross (26:36)
Yeah, it’s the same playbook as the 16E last year. People are saying that you expect one camera, expect it to have the latest chip, but maybe running a little slower, less storage. And it might have Dynamic Island this time. That’s the change, no notch. But very much the same. It will be to the iPhone 17 with the iPhone 16E was to the iPhone 16.

Michael Simon (27:03)
Yeah, my question is, will the 16E stick around at $100 less? Because if it does, that’s way more compelling than it is now anyway. Yeah.

Jason Cross (27:07)
That’s a good question, yeah.

I think so. Yeah.

I almost feel like they’re not going to do that for that reason. It’s too inexpensive and too compelling. But who knows? Yeah.

Michael Simon (27:18)
Maybe. Yeah. Yeah.

So yeah, all right. So January, iPhone, iPhone. My head is a mess right now. January, you know what? Like I have all these notes and I can’t use them because they don’t make sense to me. So January, iOS 26.3, no big deal. February maybe like AirTag and HomePy, we’ll see. March, I think is when you really have to start looking out for the first of several.

Jason Cross (27:44)
Yes, not that big a deal now.

Mm-hmm.

Michael Simon (27:57)
major announcements, March, April. So we’ve gotten spring events in March before, March like 20-ish. And we’ve also gotten spring events in April. And we’ve also gotten, had one last year or the year before, the year before in May, that iPad event. the iPad Pro event, M4 iPad Pro event was in May. So it could be any of those months. My money is on April, like early April, which sucks because my kid’s off of school.

Jason Cross (27:59)
Right.

Okay.

Michael Simon (28:25)
And I have a trip planned, so we might have to figure something out for that. But I’m going to say, I’m going to bet, hold on, let me bring up the calendar. Take notes, audience, because I’m going to predict April.

Jason Cross (28:25)
Hahaha!

Yeah.

Michael Simon (28:45)
21st is my prediction for when the, yeah, later in April for this like big, when did the 16E come out? That was in March, wasn’t it? It was pretty early. They don’t need an event for the 17E. mean, they could just drop it. In fact, they didn’t have an event for the 16E and that was totally new.

Jason Cross (28:47)
late April, okay.

Alright.

March, yeah.

Not for that alone. ⁓ And things like the AirPod. ⁓

Yeah, they just had a neat website. ⁓ Yeah, and they could do the same thing. There could be some stuff that comes out in March and then they have an event in April. We’re in this weird thing where we don’t know what Apple’s timing for releases are. It’s kind of like, here’s everything coming by the spring. And it’s like 10 things that could drop at any moment.

Michael Simon (29:26)
Yeah, right, right. The other thing is

like Apple events aren’t really what they once were in the sense that, they’re not live. like we’ve had over the, like the Mac mini was a huge redesign that didn’t get an event. So this new MacBook, it could just be a website thing. They don’t need to do an event every for all these products anymore. So.

Jason Cross (29:36)
Great.

Absolutely.

Yeah,

they’ll do this thing where they’ll do a new just direct to web website release like every day of the week for a week.

Michael Simon (29:59)
Yeah. Right. And they’ll

tease it, like an event, but they won’t have a 10 AM video. Right. Right.

Jason Cross (30:04)
Yeah. Like a big hour long video with a big intro

and stuff like that. And that could, could very well handle it that way again.

Michael Simon (30:12)
Yeah, they did that last year with the MacBook Air, the iPad Air releases, the M3 iPad Air, which, you know, they were, you know, minor refreshments, but still, you know, MacBook Air people pay attention to. that’s an omnis- Right, there’s more stuff in the first half of the year, right?

Jason Cross (30:24)
Speaking of iPads, that’s another thing we expect to have.

Yep, so regular iPad and iPad Air are due for their updates. ⁓ And then maybe a mini, maybe not. Probably not. Yeah, probably not.

Michael Simon (30:34)
Right, so they got updated last year. Maybe a mini, maybe a

bigger than usual mini based on some reports, but all right, so we’ll backtrack a second. The iPad and iPad Air were just updated in March, February? February, March, I don’t know. Sometime in 2025, yeah. Just minor updates. the reports say that this one won’t be much.

Jason Cross (30:47)
Mm-hmm.

last last spring. Early spring. Yeah.

Michael Simon (31:03)
different M4 probably for the air, The iPad will probably get a bump to the A18 or A19 processor, which will allow it to run Apple intelligence, which is fine. But otherwise, know, just their iPad. I mean, Honestly, there’s not a whole lot Apple could do. If I was an iPad engineer, I would be like, what am I supposed to do with my job? Because like, it’s basically perfect in the sense that the form factor can’t change much. That it’s thin, it’s light, it’s portable.

Jason Cross (31:03)
Just to, yep.

Hmm?

Yeah.

Michael Simon (31:33)
has a fantastic display like what am I supposed to do every year to make this thing better other than give it a new chip which it doesn’t need.

Jason Cross (31:37)
Yeah, they keep trying to make it.

They keep trying to make them thinner. Like the pro just got really thin, but yeah, the regular, mean, the next step is just like, when is it economical? When is it economical to make them have OLED displays? That’s the next step. And it’s that’s about economics. That’s not an engineering hassle. They can’t do right. That’s just like, when is the, when’s the price right? So yeah, that’s what they’re waiting on.

Michael Simon (31:43)
Sure. Yeah, yeah.

It’s not like it’s thick.

Yeah.

Right.

Jason Cross (32:07)
That’s where we’re at.

Michael Simon (32:09)
And so there’s talk, some rumors that the iPad mini of all things would be the first iPad, the first non-pro iPad to get that OLED display that Jason was just talking about.

Jason Cross (32:18)
Mm.

⁓ Yeah, but that’s not supposed to happen until next year. It’s supposed to go.

Michael Simon (32:28)
Well, we

don’t, maybe, but it’s possible that it happens this year. it’s in the rumors.

Jason Cross (32:31)
Right. I mean, that’s what the rumors are saying. The rumors are saying it

goes next up is the big MacBook Pro refresh, maybe late this year, maybe early next year, and then iPad mini. So it would be the next iPad mini refresh. If an iPad mini refresh happens like this spring, then it’ll probably just be a chip.

Michael Simon (32:54)
The mini was, when was the mini, the current mini was introduced in 2024, right? Yeah.

Jason Cross (33:00)
Yeah, two years ago. And it probably

won’t be an update this spring. It’ll probably just get a chip upgrade in the fall and then an OLED upgrade, like the bigger upgrade, like the next year, so late 2027 or something. Yeah, they could just skip it.

Michael Simon (33:14)
Or they could just skip the chip. They could skip the Mini altogether this year. They’ve done that before, where

people who buy the Mini aren’t buying it to do high-end tasks. It’s like an e-reader and portable video DVD player. right. So like the chip it has, runs Apple Intelligence. It’s plenty powerful. The screen’s good. So yeah, they could. But that is in the works, allegedly, in OLED Mini, which would be, I don’t know.

Jason Cross (33:29)
fine for what it is, yeah.

Michael Simon (33:42)
That’s nice. That’d be nice. I don’t think it would make much of a difference at that size.

Jason Cross (33:43)
Yeah, but we’re talking 2027 and

if our show here is first half of this year, we shouldn’t expect.

Michael Simon (33:53)
Okay, I’m gonna write that down. on. Jason says no iPad mini. No, hold on, I’ll me. All right.

Jason Cross (33:55)
for an OLED one. Yeah.

No OLED iPad, Benny. If

there’s an update, it’s just going to be a chip. I don’t even think there’s even going be an update. Regular iPad, iPad Air. Yeah.

Michael Simon (34:06)
They might not be.

Why, here’s a question just for anybody who’s listening, why does Apple update the iPad every year and usually the iPad Air, but not the Pro and the Mini? What’s the difference?

Jason Cross (34:22)
I don’t know. The Pro makes more sense to me why it’s a challenge because they get high-end series processors now and it’s like maybe there’s a cooling challenge or a power delivery challenge. They have to adjust more. The regular iPad, it’s just swapping out that. It’s such an easy chip swap.

Michael Simon (34:23)
Right.

Right.

Right. And that’s

the least of Apple’s products that needs an annual.

Jason Cross (34:47)
Right. It doesn’t need it. That’s what gets me. I mean, it’s kind of like the Apple watch at this point where it’s like, you don’t get anything more from a one year newer chip. Like you don’t in terms of just updated every other year, they sell a ton of them and they would still sell a ton. Even if the chip inside was just like, it’s a 14 month old chip. Let’s just, it’s fine. Just

Michael Simon (34:54)
Yeah.

Right.

I don’t even

think people who buy it even pay attention to what the chip is. Right. Right.

Jason Cross (35:14)
They don’t, can’t, I can’t imagine.

Michael Simon (35:18)
So anyway, all right, that was an aside. Roman, what do we have? Like a half hour-ish? So we got, all right, so we still got WWDC, but before that, the MacBook Pro, the M5 Pro and Mac’s MacBook Pro also have to come out at some point. Apple almost has to have two clusters of releases here. One, probably an event.

Jason Cross (35:22)
You

Michael Simon (35:47)
and one like a bit of a stretch of website announcements because there’s just too much stuff to cram into one event. And they all need like a little bit of attention. Like as Jason said before, the MacBook Pro, it’s not just, here’s the M5 Max. The reason, the allegedly the reason why they waited is because the M5 Pro and Max processors are going to handle graphics and RAM differently.

which will allow people to kind of mix and match what they want. So if you want 32 gigs of RAM, but 30 core GPU or whatever, like you’ll be able to have a little bit more control over how you build your machine, allegedly. So.

Jason Cross (36:20)
Yeah, maybe. Yeah.

Yeah.

even if that part of it doesn’t end up true, they are using a new process that builds the RAM in closer to the CPU. Like it builds it on the same substrate and stuff like it’s like a new packaging technology from TSMC. So that just takes more time to manufacture and test and stuff than the older, but that could just all be part of them having more memory bandwidth and it’s faster. And you know, these are the great.

Michael Simon (36:49)
Mm-hmm.

Right, and the M5 is already really good. It’s a solid upgrade. So the M5 Pro and Max, they’ll be excellent. I have an M3 Max MacBook Pro I’m considering maybe. I’ll upgrade. But as we’ll talk about next week, there may be an even better MacBook coming out in October. So like I said, it’s a crazy year for Apple.

Jason Cross (37:04)
Yeah, it’s really great.

Hahaha

Right.

Yeah, I almost feel like they can have.

Michael Simon (37:28)
This like Tim Cook might be like, know what,

this is like my send off. I’m getting through this year and then I’m out of here.

Jason Cross (37:36)
Yeah. And then,

um, then there’s a few little maybes. There’s, there’s some wild cards this year that we don’t know if they’re coming, but like the ones that come, this may come the first half of this year are they’re working on a new studio display. There’s actually two, there’s actually two registration numbers. So that could just be two different models or it could be two different sizes.

Michael Simon (37:55)
right. That too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Jason Cross (38:03)
⁓ We’re not sure, but that and they need to update the Mac Studio and the Mac Mini to M5. They’re not expected to have really any other things except moving to the M5 generation. But ⁓ and those all feel like they should go together, right? It’s obviously a new monitor and the new display list Max, right?

Michael Simon (38:04)
Right.

With M5, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, the original.

The original studio display or the current studio display came out with the Mac studio back in 2022. So yeah, they kind of go together. And then there’s also that pro display that’s like $6,000 or $5,000 that also hasn’t been updated in even longer.

Jason Cross (38:38)
Right.

It hasn’t been updated and

we don’t have as the solid rumors where people have like code numbers and stuff for a replacement. So maybe that’s not happening. The new studio display is supposed to have HDR and promotion, which would be huge improvements. And I’m sure they’ll have like the speakers are better and all, you know, other things too. So all of those go together. There’s rumors of an iMac Pro that could launch in the first half of this year.

Michael Simon (38:59)
Right. Right.

Yeah.

Jason Cross (39:15)
So all this stuff could launch anytime up to and including WWDC.

Michael Simon (39:19)
The iMac Pro would be a pretty big deal. I’d be surprised if Apple just crammed that into like, oh, by the way, here’s this thing you’ve been asking for for 10 years.

Jason Cross (39:23)
Yeah, it would.

Exactly. Yeah.

So yeah, just all that just goes to say like they could just have a Mac event that is all of this Mac stuff. There’s so much Mac stuff that could land in the first half of this year that they could just have a Mac only event.

Michael Simon (39:40)
They could.

And like early Mac stuff, usually

Mac is like October, November time. all they released last year was the M5 MacBook Pro. So there’s all this Mac backlog of stuff. Like the Mac Mini still has an M4, as Jason just said. The iMac, even without the Pro version, the iMac still has an M4. That could get a new one. that design is now five years old. They could get a new one. There’s so much little stuff.

Jason Cross (40:03)
Mm-hmm.

so much.

Michael Simon (40:14)
Like that

would normally, in a normal year, that would be like, cool, there’s all this stuff. Like that’s like second, like that doesn’t even matter compared to the other stuff coming out. So by April, by May we’ll say, we could have a new MacBook Pro, ⁓ a new low cost Mac.

Jason Cross (40:23)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (40:41)
⁓ iPhone 17e. ⁓ smart display thing.

Jason Cross (40:49)
Yeah, home hub thing, yeah.

Michael Simon (40:51)
Home

hub, home pad hub, whatever. A new series, the new series that we’ve been waiting two years for. And maybe Apple TV, AirTag, HomePod mini, iMac and Mac mini. Before June, before WWDC and the MacBook Air somewhere in there too. And Mac Studio and a studio display. It’s absurd. Right, it’s absurd. Plus we didn’t even talk about the MacBook Air was gonna need an M5 at some point too.

Jason Cross (41:05)
and and max and max studio and max studio and iPad and iPad and iPad air. Yeah, now like like three quarters of these are

yeah, three quarters of these are just ⁓ straight up chip chip and chip things, but there’s still new products, right? And then that still leaves quite a number of products that aren’t that are actually like

Michael Simon (41:29)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (41:34)
new or have new features or some special thing. yeah, it’s a massive. Yeah.

Michael Simon (41:39)
crazy. Like it’s crazy.

that’s like, and next week we’ll do the second half of the like we haven’t got so we’ll do WWDC right right now. But the second half of the year is just as big as the first half of the year. It’s it’s it’s crazy how much is rumored like credibly rumored to be coming out from Apple this year. So WWDC is probably going to be June. I don’t know what what is it the second second Monday or something.

Jason Cross (41:50)
Okay.

Yeah.

It’s always first week of June, swear.

Yeah, it’s always like the first week of June.

Michael Simon (42:09)
The first week is, so June 1st is a Monday. So we’ll say like maybe June 8th or probably June 8th, right?

Jason Cross (42:13)
⁓

It

could go either way when it’s like that. ⁓ So it started June, WWDC. The last few WWDCs have not had hardware releases, but before that it was really common for them to drop some stuff that developers like, like Macs. So there could be some Mac releases or something. Some of these Mac releases we mentioned could come at it. It did. It didn’t ship.

Michael Simon (42:20)
Yeah. But one of those, one of those two Mondays it’ll be WWDC.

Yeah.

And Vision Pro also got its debut at WWDC a couple of years ago.

Jason Cross (42:45)
but they showed it off, yeah. ⁓

Michael Simon (42:47)
Right. Yeah, we’ve gotten

MacBook Airs, we’ve gotten MacBook Pros, we’ve gotten Mac Pro, we’ve gotten Mac Studio, all those things have happened at WWDC. So it’s also possible that these things that are in the last segment, some of them get moved to WWDC. ⁓

Jason Cross (42:52)
Mm-hmm.

especially

things that developers like, Mac Studio, Mac Mini, Studio Display, you know, these are developer kind of focused items. ⁓ Those would drop, you know, dropping those at WWDC. Other than that, it’s the big 27 updates and we don’t know much about them yet. The rumors are, you know, UI refinements, of course. ⁓

Michael Simon (43:20)
It’s all of the operating systems, yeah.

Jason Cross (43:34)
and additional Siri and Apple intelligence features. We don’t know what, just additional Apple Siri and Apple intelligence features.

Michael Simon (43:41)
Yeah,

mean, 2025 was kind of light on Apple intelligence, new Apple intelligence stuff. I think we’ll get a handful of new, so once they get the new Siri out of the way, there’ll be like a handful of new stuff that they talk about. Right.

Jason Cross (43:56)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it’s about improving that and adding

features to that. And there’s one rumor that says that Apple is considering giving Siri sort of a personality, like making it have like a visual identity and personality. They’ve even gone so far as to say, like, if you look at the Mac Finder logo, that’s kind of what they’re talking about, like an animated version of that, like something cartoony and friendly and have a personality.

Michael Simon (44:12)
Right.

Jason Cross (44:27)
And that might even be part of the 27 updates. ⁓ There’s a big service update coming this year where Apple is supposed to be taking Fitness Plus ⁓ and health and expanding health and giving it AI features and calling it Health Plus and then wrapping up the Fitness Plus stuff into that. It won’t be Fitness Plus anymore. It’ll all be part of this new Health Plus service.

Michael Simon (44:46)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Cross (44:56)
That’s to me that sounds like something that’s gonna be part of the 27 updates. Like they’re just gonna announce that at WWDC. There’ll be a big segment on it and you know.

Michael Simon (45:08)
Yeah, basically taking the existing fitness plus, which was just updated last week with some new stuff and adding a bunch of health stuff to it, maybe increasing the price by two or three bucks a month or something and cramming that onto Apple One, which we’ve seen them do that before.

Jason Cross (45:25)
Yeah,

yeah, they’re the service supposed to be called health plus ⁓ and it’s will all this stuff live in the health app will be separate apps still I mean we don’t know it’s that’s not really the point. The point is I don’t think a lot of people are using fitness plus so they’re going to.

Michael Simon (45:29)
Yeah.

Great.

I was

so over the break, There was like an Instagram tease that Apple did before all the new stuff [on Apple Fitness+.] So I wrote a short little story, and I was looking at the comments on the Instagram post. And I was surprised. There was quite a few people who use it and are excited about it and like it. So I think maybe it has more users than we think. I mean, I don’t think it’s as many as Apple Music. But it does have its followers. People do use it.

Jason Cross (45:44)
Hmm?

Yeah, and it’s in Apple one, so you get that. ⁓ But yeah.

Michael Simon (46:11)
Yeah. And you get a couple months free when

you buy a new Apple Watch and iPhone stuff. So yeah, it’s

Jason Cross (46:17)
So I think

that’s the thing. They’re gonna wrap that into a whole new service called Health Plus. I don’t think that’s coming before the 27 updates. I think that’s gonna be part of the 27 updates, yeah. With a whole new design and AI features and all that other kind of stuff.

Michael Simon (46:27)
That would make sense here. So that’s fall. Yep,

yep.

And Mac OS, iPad OS, ⁓ Vision OS, know, Vision OS is another thing. Like we’re not even going to really mention that, but there’s the off chance that we get like Apple glasses because we’re in like that kind of nebulous time that…

Jason Cross (46:39)
Yep.

I was going to save that for, we, if we talk

about all that stuff, I that, if any of that happens, it’s going to be the second half of the year. So we’ll save that for the next show. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Simon (47:01)
It would probably be fall. Okay, good. Cause we’re like at an hour already and we still got, I still

got to, got to complain about pluribus. all right. So, so that brings us to June and that’s, that’s, that’s where we said we’d stop. I promise you next week we’ll be more organized because I’ll be prepared for this month by month thing that I wasn’t prepared for. ⁓ but, so yeah, so all right, we, we, we, we’re not going to run down all of the things again, but

Jason Cross (47:10)
Yeah, so let’s talk about.

Michael Simon (47:31)
HomePad, low-cost MacBook, like two new products, two huge new products could arrive within the next six months, along with a slew of other smaller updates. And again, that’s only half of that. We’re still climbing the roller coaster of 2026. There’s a lot.

Jason Cross (47:54)
And new Siri is it’s a big deal, man. It’s that’s that’s could be. It’s kind of make a break for.

Michael Simon (47:56)
And New Siri, yeah. Yeah,

when I was preparing this, kept thinking that it was, it was announced two years ago. Like it is so late.

Jason Cross (48:07)
Yeah.

in WWDC

2024.

Michael Simon (48:13)
Yeah. Okay. So stay tuned to next week where we’ll do, you know, false stuff, iPhone, Mac. Like there’s a lot there too. All right, good. Okay. Let’s start with, so what we’re watching on Apple TV, I watched and I think we all watched the full series of Floribus. Like, so the finale was right before Christmas. I think it was on the 23rd or 24th. Yeah, right.

Jason Cross (48:38)
Yeah, just skip ahead 10 minutes if you’re no one spoilers.

Michael Simon (48:42)
Right, so

it aired, think we’re safely out of the like the jerk, jerky spoiler zone, but yeah. If you haven’t seen it and you wanna be surprised, yeah, do your little thing and skip forward a bunch. Or if you’re on.

Roman Loyola (48:58)
We’ll have the time

codes in the description for the.

Michael Simon (49:01)
⁓ look at that, see? Good job. So yeah, I do that. But okay. So before I give my thoughts, I want you guys to give your thoughts on just the whole series, the finale and where we end. So there was only nine episodes, which I thought was weird. Usually there’s like 10, but ⁓ okay. What do you think?

Jason Cross (49:03)
Right.

Yes.

it, I mean, it was very much ended with the knowledge that there’d be a second season. Like this, has no, even though it wasn’t like officially greenlit for a second season until it started airing already. And maybe they had a different ending filmed or something like that. It, it’s completely unresolved. There’s just see you next season ending, right?

Michael Simon (49:37)
Well yeah, that’s for sure.

Mm.

Yeah, the-

The way they built the show, it was impossible to wrap anything up on episode nine.

Jason Cross (49:59)
for sure. Yeah.

You know, a lot of drama happens as we get to episode nine stuff. But to me, I mean, I love it, but I’m in for a Vince Gilligan experience where there’s these moments of big drama. There’s these moments of like, I don’t call it excitement because it’s not like action necessarily, but like, I mean,

Michael Simon (50:26)
It’s not. There’s no action whatsoever.

There’s some. No, I’m kidding. I’m, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I’m being glib, but.

Jason Cross (50:31)
You know, they blow up a hand grenade and stuff like that. There’s, there’s, there’s some things and

right. And she almost kills, ⁓ Zoja and stuff like that, you know, you know, there’s, there’s, and then everybody leaves her entire city. You know, there’s, there’s things, but then they’re separated by long periods of slow like character development stuff. And that’s very Vince Gilligan. That’s like better call solace like that.

Michael Simon (50:41)
Sure.

Yeah, things happen.

Yeah.

Jason Cross (51:01)
Breaking Bad is that we kind of forget because there were also these high light moments, but we forget that he had a 10 minute sequence of Mike Armintrout disassembling a car to look for a bug. And we sit there and we watch him for an entire commercial break length, like an entire thing, taking apart a car and not saying anything. It’s just like a sequence. And it’s to me, it’s kind of gripping because it’s like, it just shows you get to know these characters in a way.

Michael Simon (51:14)
Right.

Yeah, no, I know that

Jason Cross (51:30)
and you get to care about them in a way that you don’t when things move really quick. But yeah, there’s a, go ahead.

Michael Simon (51:36)
Sure, but I don’t think I would have, I don’t think I

would love Breaking Bad as much as I do if the entire series was him, you know, dismantling a car. That’s the problem I have with Ploribus right now.

Jason Cross (51:45)
But I don’t think that’s true of of Pluribus. I

don’t think that’s I don’t think it’s like that at all. I can’t remember his name. Is Argentinian the guy who drives up to see her? Yeah. Manosas. Peruvian. He’s Peruvian. Yeah. Like, you know,

Roman Loyola (52:00)
Monoces? Monoces. It’s Peruvian,

Michael Simon (52:01)
Peru, he was Peru, Peru Peruvian.

That was like an episode

and a half of him traveling.

Jason Cross (52:12)
Well, there was that whole episode where it’s kind of him traveling and then Carol by herself in the city. And she doesn’t even really say anything the entire episode because who’s she going to talk to? So she hits golf balls into skyscraper buildings and stuff like that and goes out to dinner by herself and all these other kind of things. ⁓ But, you know, he almost dies in the forest and he gets stabbed and he tries to cauterize his wounds and he gets

Michael Simon (52:21)
Yes.

Right. Yeah, right, buildings and stuff, yeah, sure. Right, right.

Jason Cross (52:40)
septic and he gets airlifted out and stuff like that. Like that. I don’t know. I consider that high drama action the stuff like

Michael Simon (52:41)
Yeah, there’s no, yeah, right, right. So let’s talk about that.

fine but nothing happened.

Yes, it was dramatic in the sense that he falls backwards and he has to think. And then they take him and they bring him to the hospital and then he leaves the hospital and that’s it.

Jason Cross (52:58)
Yeah,

which he didn’t want. And then he, yeah, he, and then he steals the hospital and he steals an ambulance. Yeah, which he needs to do. ⁓ I like a lot of how the characters interact. I feel like it’s very true. Like it feels very real to me. I, and like when he, like when he meets Carol, how distrusting they are of each other and he tries to take her phone and.

Michael Simon (53:01)
Fine, nothing changed.

Right, right, sure.

I agree with that. It’s genuine. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Cross (53:25)
There’s a lot of funny gags with the phone translating while they yell at each other and stuff, you know. Yeah. I feel like the show’s full of those good scenes. I like it, but I didn’t expect it to go. I disagree with that so much. I couldn’t possibly disagree with that more.

Michael Simon (53:28)
Sure. I totally agree. That was a good scene. That whole bit where he gets there was good.

Sure, but nothing happens. Nothing happens.

Give

me your favorite thing that happened and affected the direction of the show.

Jason Cross (53:53)
What are you going to have to define what you mean by affected the direction of the show? Because

Michael Simon (53:57)
meaning that it took

us in a different direction than we were going originally.

Jason Cross (54:01)
Well, so for example, ⁓ so Carol meets all the other, I don’t wanna call them survivors, but the other people and they all hate her. She finds out that they eat people. She… ⁓

Michael Simon (54:04)
Okay.

Yes. Yes.

Okay, which is fine, which

is explained away as being a okey-dokey. She’s not, but she comes to terms with it and she’s basically like, you know, like, yes.

Jason Cross (54:22)
It’s not fine. She said she’s not okay with it. And the other guys are not okay with it and stuff either. Right.

No, she, she, I don’t think she does. She’s

trying to end it now that stuff, but like, so you want to be big geraniac. The entire population of others leaves Albuquerque, and drives and it drives Carol insane.

Michael Simon (54:41)
Yes, yes. And if I had to hear that damn

recording one more time, I was going to turn the episode off.

Jason Cross (54:48)
I know. I feel like the first

thing she should have said to the phone is could you just not have the recording? Just I get it. Yes. I know because they have to make you as frustrated as she is to get her to stop.

Michael Simon (54:53)
Right. Like, I get it. I hear you. They played it in full every single time she called.

Yes, maybe so. And if that’s

the idea, then they’re doing a great job. Listen, I like Vince Gilligan. I think it’s very well written. think Rhea Seahorn’s fantastic. She just won ⁓ the Critics Award Best Actress, and she deserves it. She’s excellent.

Jason Cross (55:05)
It worked. It was great.

Okay.

Yeah. She almost kills. She almost kills Zoja and then like, and then she realizes that she actually, she realizes she, she actually loves her and stuff like that. And then that she can’t love her cause she’s still trying to change her. I feel like there’s complete, but the changes aren’t like, well, the whole world changes after the first episode of everybody gets taken over. the changes are all character changes. They’re all.

Michael Simon (55:18)
I want to sometimes just.

Yeah, yeah, I get it. Sure. Almost. There’s a lot of almosts in this.

Jason Cross (55:45)
people’s character arc changes, it’s not like the world becomes a different place other than, you know, after the first couple episodes of like, everybody gets taken over by the others, right? But I feel like there’s been a ton of plot development the whole season.

Michael Simon (55:58)
I feel like the premise.

The premise, the first pilot, or whatever you want to call it, the first episode was so intriguing. And then I don’t think we’ve advanced much beyond that.

Jason Cross (56:12)
I now I disagree so much. And we wasn’t even, it’s not like we found out they eat people then. Like that was a huge deal or that they can’t even pluck an apple off the tree.

Michael Simon (56:21)
But they don’t eat people.

They eat the thing that they, because they’re not allowed to, right. They’re not allowed to, they eat the thing that they, right, right. If they were killing people, then sure. But they also eat apples that fall off the tree. The reason why they’re eating people is because there’s more of them. But there’s so many, like why aren’t animals affected? like, I just, I have, what?

Jason Cross (56:27)
They eat people who naturally die. They do eat people. Right.

Right. They can’t even kill an apple. Like that’s an interesting. I don’t know. That’s interesting. Yeah.

I do want to know about that. It doesn’t

affect them. They’re not, they’re not people.

Michael Simon (56:52)
But you can’t just explain

it away like that.

Jason Cross (56:56)
I do want to know there I still have a bunch of questions about how this whole works and and they did start to explain some of that they explained a little bit like how they communicate and it’s and they’re getting into that it’s like almost radio frequency has to do with like our bioelectrical things and they’re talking about that like how they and it’s unconscious they don’t deliberately talk to each other they’re just you know they’re connected by the

Michael Simon (57:00)
with a year.

right.

I think it’s a very

interesting allegory for the world we live in, particularly now. It’s interesting that you could compare it to AI. You can bring in all these metaphors, and it’s fascinating. I don’t know if I want to watch three more seasons like this.

Jason Cross (57:24)
Yes.

Michael Simon (57:37)
I want to see more of me just in the sense that I want to know what happens, but I would be okay to fast forward to the last episode and then he could just wrap it up for me. I like Gilligan, I liked him as an X-Files writer. I loved Breaking Bad, my favorite show of all time. Same thing with Better Call Saul. I understand his way of directing. This has been excruciating. It’s 48 minutes and then it ends. I’m like, well, what? Like nothing happened.

Jason Cross (57:43)
Okay.

Michael Simon (58:07)
She, like, it’s all very interesting and the premise is fantastic. She’s great. I need something to happen in season two. Roman, what do you think? We’ve been talking the whole time. You watched it too.

Jason Cross (58:13)
Right. Okay.

Roman Loyola (58:20)
Yeah, no, I enjoyed it, but yeah, think the thing is it’s much more of a character study than I think some people anticipate for a show. ⁓ And the thing is, for most of the show, it’s only two characters. It’s her and everyone else that’s essentially one character. And then Minosus is in there and he’s kind of half a character.

Michael Simon (58:31)
Yeah.

Yep.

Right, I get it.

Roman Loyola (58:46)
So then the interactions are limited so that I can see why it’s kind of frustrating. Cause I kind of got frustrated. was like, it’s just these two people all the time. just kind of, you know, I can understand that. The thing that I wanted more of, I’d like the show, but I wanted more, ⁓ I need more of a reminder that Carol for the most part is still grieving and you know, and that drives a lot of her character.

Michael Simon (59:11)
Yeah.

Roman Loyola (59:14)
And I think I need more reminders of that. They do that every once in a while. Like there was the one shot where Minosas meets Carol and they, and he sees Helen’s grave. So it’s kind of, that’s kind of a reminder. I need more small reminders of that. Cause I think that would help understand Carol a little more and why she’s a little, ⁓ manic’s not the right word, but she’s sort of extreme in terms of like her behavior. That’s because she’s still trying to figure out what she’s doing.

Michael Simon (59:14)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (59:18)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Michael Simon (59:25)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Cross (59:40)
Yeah.

Roman Loyola (59:43)
with herself.

Michael Simon (59:44)
Yeah, it’s the…

Jason Cross (59:44)
She kind of was

to begin with, she was sort of depressed and a problem to begin at the, before she lost Helen, then she lost Helen. They give us the little timestamps. And I think by the time Minosus meets her near the end of the season, it’s about, what is it? 78 days or something like that after the thing. And it’s like, yeah, to what degree she’s still grieving. I think there was a big, it was unspoken, but this whole thing with Zojia being practically designed to be her.

Roman Loyola (59:47)
Yeah!

Michael Simon (59:58)
It’s yeah, a couple of months.

Roman Loyola (59:59)
Something like that, yeah.

Jason Cross (1:00:13)
perfect person. this whole having her the reason she decides to end them all again is she had a heartbroken again. Like she was left alone for so long. After grieving, she feels I can’t take this. She says come back, they come back and she spends all this time with Zoja and she thinks, I can actually have a relationship with this person. I’m getting her to say I am hearing about her as an individual. But it’s all it and then she realizes it’s all an act and they want to change me instantly. They just want to

Roman Loyola (1:00:14)
Right.

Yeah.

Right, right.

Jason Cross (1:00:42)
they’re gonna force me to change the second they can. They’re not even gonna ask. ⁓ And yes, she feels completely betrayed again and left alone again. And now she’s like, give me the nuclear bomb and I’m…

Roman Loyola (1:00:42)
Right, right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Simon (1:00:56)
The scene that was fascinating to me the most was when there’s a young girl in some, I don’t know, country, they don’t really say, and she gets the thing, the misty thing that transforms her from a into, or a thinking human into the other. And they show her fears and they show her trepidation and the people around her. And then as soon as she turns, it’s like,

Jason Cross (1:01:07)
Mm-hmm.

Roman Loyola (1:01:10)
right.

Jason Cross (1:01:11)
Mm-hmm.

Roman Loyola (1:01:15)
One of the others. Yeah.

Jason Cross (1:01:19)
She joins, yeah.

Michael Simon (1:01:26)
Like we are, like nothing matters anymore. She abandons her pet goat and they go off and they do this like, you know, this communal living. you know, I get all the metaphorical stuff. just, I, has to happen.

Jason Cross (1:01:29)
Yep.

You just described something happening. I don’t know what you’re waiting for to happen. I feel like that’s something happening.

Michael Simon (1:01:45)
But sure, was

an interesting scene. I knew how it was gonna end up and it did. It was cool to see it. I need something to happen that’s, so maybe I need to be surprised. Yeah, maybe I need to be surprised.

Jason Cross (1:01:50)
Right?

Okay. All right. You want a more of a surprise. You wanted her to die from it or something and

then that would have been like, God, it didn’t work. There, you know, there’s something right.

Michael Simon (1:02:05)
Yeah, all right, fine. Yeah,

that would have been good. Maybe I’m just a simpleton. I don’t know. But I need something to happen in this show. I did watch the, what was it called? ⁓ Begonia with Emma, what’s her name? my goodness. Begonia, it’s a movie that’s, it’s not related to Pluribus, but it’s.

Jason Cross (1:02:11)
Hahaha.

I don’t know anything you’re talking about. None of these words.

Okay.

Michael Simon (1:02:35)
It also involves alien beams. Emma, no, no, no, not Emma Thompson. Emma Stone, Emma Stone. That was excellent. And if you watched it, I guess you’d understand why I want something to happen in porn.

Roman Loyola (1:02:37)
Emma Thompson, is that?

Jason Cross (1:02:38)
⁓ okay.

Roman Loyola (1:02:40)
Emma Stone,

Michael Simon (1:02:52)
Anyway, all right, let’s move on. Clearly Jason and Roman are more intellectual studies than I am.

Roman Loyola (1:03:01)
I

like Proliferous a lot more than the HVAC championships.

Michael Simon (1:03:05)
you

All right, Roman, got, ⁓ this week in Apple history is.

Roman Loyola (1:03:14)
So this week in Apple history, the on January 6th, which is actually today. So 22 years ago [on January 6] the iPod mini was introduced. at the 2004 Mac world Expo So the big thing about the Mac, the big thing about the iPod mini when it came out was the initial response was that’s pretty cool.

but man, it’s pretty kind of expensive. ⁓ Yeah, was 250 when it came out. ⁓

Michael Simon (1:03:44)
Yeah, it was what 250 was that is that what I remember? Yeah, so the

Jason Cross (1:03:45)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (1:03:51)
iPad was 400 399 for the bigger the bigger I buy 1000 1000 song to the pocket. Yeah, the mini had it was obviously mini was smaller. But

Roman Loyola (1:03:53)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (1:03:54)
The iPod, yeah.

Roman Loyola (1:03:56)
The big iPod.

Michael Simon (1:04:06)
It didn’t affect sales at all. Like it blew up the mini. The mini was one of the reasons why the iPod became so popular. It was about two years after the iPod came out and I mean, it sold like crazy. They were colors.

Jason Cross (1:04:19)
Yeah, it really did just

get into another price bracket. ⁓ To me, I didn’t like it. I didn’t think it was a good product. because for me, first of all, going all the way from, think iPods were, was the smallest iPod at the time, 20 or 40 gigs. I don’t remember.

Michael Simon (1:04:36)
Yeah, that’s that sounds right. It started at five minute double then so probably 20. Yeah.

Roman Loyola (1:04:36)
I think it was 20, yeah.

Yeah.

Jason Cross (1:04:40)
But

I think at that time it was 20. So like to go from 20 to four, I was like, well, that’s not going to hold my whole music library. I guess people didn’t care, but that’s what I liked about the iPod. It’s like, I can just put everything I have on there. ⁓ the other thing is it, It was smaller, but not in a way that mattered at all. Like an iPod was a size of a deck of cards. This was smaller, but you still, there was no pocket. I could put it in that I couldn’t put an iPod in. It wasn’t like,

Michael Simon (1:04:51)
Right.

Jason Cross (1:05:08)
It was lighter, but it’s not like an iPod’s heavy. It’s like they’re all one hand operation things. And it wasn’t like the shuffle where you could just clip it on your clothes or something like that. You had to use it the same way. ⁓ And so to me, it was like, well, it definitely got you in a different price bracket, but it’s like, well, now I have to, now I’m selecting what songs do I want to put on my iPod and I’m syncing it all the time. was way better to me to just have an iPod and just be like, it’s everything I have.

wherever I am, if I get the urge to listen to something, it’s right there. Of course, everybody has that now because of cellular and streaming, but back then you didn’t, and so that was so cool.

Michael Simon (1:05:38)
Yeah.

Yeah, right. I tell you, man, if I

had Apple Music when I was growing up, I can’t even fathom how much money I would have saved on buying CDs. ⁓ So the iPod Mini was my wife’s first iPod. Well, at the time she was my girlfriend. But so she didn’t care. She didn’t want the, I had an iPod. I had the first iPod and maybe the second. so for her, the iPod was.

Jason Cross (1:05:57)
yeah. Yep.

Michael Simon (1:06:16)
a little bit too clunky and she didn’t, but the mini visually, like that’s what appealed to the rest of the people. It didn’t look like, yeah, it came in colors. It was smaller and had that like glittery metallic look to it. It was, you know, it was, and you know, you’re right in the sense that 249 didn’t seem cheap, but it didn’t matter.

Jason Cross (1:06:23)
Yeah, it was colorful too. They did colors.

True is very metallic.

Michael Simon (1:06:42)
Everyone thought like 199, like we were expecting 199 because the original was 199, but they saw the ton of them. Like a ridiculous amount of them. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Cross (1:06:49)
Yeah, it’s still a big gap from $399 to $249. So you can see why

it got a lot of people into iPod.

Michael Simon (1:06:59)
And it was the first variant iPod and then a ton of them. got the shuffle and the Nano and the Classic and the Video. Within like three years before the iPhone came out, there were a ton of different ones. the iPod was such a funny thing. I still remember that day. think, Roman, we’ve talked about this. Were you there in 2001 when the iPod came out? Did you go to that event?

Jason Cross (1:06:59)
But for me, it was not a great product.

yeah.

Yeah.

Roman Loyola (1:07:27)
I did not go to an My wife went to that event. she worked. Go ahead.

Michael Simon (1:07:30)
Right, I knew there was some connection. So, but like, that

was such a weird time. so it was like a month after 9-11. And it was Apple’s first non-Mac ever, not ever, but in a long time, since like the Newton. And they released an MP3 player that was $400. I was like, what on earth are they doing? And it just took the world within two years.

Jason Cross (1:07:50)
Right.

Yeah.

Michael Simon (1:08:00)
I remember they used to do those sales like, we sold, we sold a million, we sold 10 million, we sold 30 million. Like they just kept selling them.

Jason Cross (1:08:06)
Yeah.

That first model, was like, everybody was like, wow, I mean, it’s so wonderful to use, have all your songs, but five gigs and Firewire only, that wasn’t it. The second they got to that second generation, they improved the click wheel a little bit. It was USB. They brought iTunes to Windows and like all those things came together all at once and improved the storage and all that stuff coming together at once. It just like a hockey stick. The sales just shot up.

Michael Simon (1:08:36)
Yeah, yeah,

yeah. And you can argue like nothing came close. Like Microsoft made the Zune, but nothing even entered anywhere near the stratosphere that the iPad was. And Apple obviously marketed a great, those silhouette ads and the white plug. they were, was very good, but just the device itself was just like, it was just perfect. Just the perfect portable music device.

Jason Cross (1:08:44)
yeah, nothing came close.

yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Michael Simon (1:09:07)
So I think I still had that iPod mini. We found it recently. It’s somewhere in the house. I’m sure it still works if I have a 30-pin connector.

Jason Cross (1:09:11)
Somewhere in a drawer.

Yeah.

Michael Simon (1:09:18)
All right, Roman ⁓ Frieder mailbag.

Roman Loyola (1:09:20)
All right.

Yeah, so let’s move on to mail bags. So we’ve got two emails for this episode. Arian R, who is a big fan of the podcast, thanks for listening, ⁓ listened to our hardware wrap up ⁓ episode and said that we are giving the iPhone 16E a very hard time. Reviewing it as a 599 device is not fair. This phone is often $99. Yeah.

Michael Simon (1:09:32)
Thanks, Arian.

Jason Cross (1:09:44)
Go.

Michael Simon (1:09:48)
But that’s what it costs.

Roman Loyola (1:09:50)
is, well, this phone is off the $99 or free on prepaid is essentially the affordable iPhone everyone wanted Apple to release. That’s a good point. That’s, that’s one of the issues we have with reviewing phones is that, you know, everybody has these different purchasing plans and it’s hard for us to kind of like, you know, we have to figure, we have to decide on what point we’re going to evaluate in terms of price. And the easiest thing to do is to pick Apple’s.

Jason Cross (1:09:59)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Roman Loyola (1:10:20)
retail price.

Jason Cross (1:10:20)
Yeah,

because like you said, it’s it’s discounted on prepaid plans. The regular iPhone is discounted on postpaid plans to zero. So do we call it a free phone? Of course we don’t like even though it’s free for like in North America, at least the way people buy phones. ⁓ And none of these things are free. Nothing’s actually discounted. You’re just they’re just building it into everyone’s cellular plan price. So yeah.

Roman Loyola (1:10:35)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (1:10:50)
I get that point of like, there’s a whole class of customer that gets access to it that normally wouldn’t, but

Yeah, like you said, Roman, you got to pick a price.

Michael Simon (1:11:02)
I mean, yeah,

I mean, if Apple slapped a 299 price tag on the iPhone 16e, we would have given it five stars and said, go buy one. The fact of the matter is they charge 599. And if you’re getting it from some plan, you’re going to, you’re paying for it, right, Jason? Like you have a, like it’s built into something. Like you got to pay that price. You might not have any upfront costs, but you’re going to pay for it.

Jason Cross (1:11:17)
Hmm?

Yeah.

Yeah, like all those, the prepaid carriers and stuff like that, that’s the one that they like to discount and they make it $99 or they make it free. But it’s like, that’s just because you are paying for it in your plan one way or another, whether it’s marked out for you or not. It’s like, they’re not getting it for free from Apple and then passing it on to you free. They’re paying for it and they’re making you and everybody else who has Boost Mobile or whatever pay for it, right? So.

Michael Simon (1:11:51)
Right. Yeah, right.

Jason Cross (1:11:59)
Those costs are there. Nobody’s giving you a free phone of any kind anywhere.

Michael Simon (1:12:01)
I will, right.

I will agree in the sense that we do give the 16E.

should but it’s only because like we look at it like the 799 iPhone 17 versus the 599 16e like it’s just like it’s like we have to compare to what’s available if we were comparing it to a

Jason Cross (1:12:17)
Yes.

It was easier to like

the 16e before the 17 came out. The 17 ticked so many boxes without raising the price from previous years and everything. it’s just such a better value. especially if you keep your phone for a long time, it’s a real good, much, much better.

Michael Simon (1:12:28)
Yeah. Yeah.

That’s right.

Roman Loyola (1:12:46)
⁓ Jeff C sent an email that said, your recent podcast discussion on a lack of future for the Mac Pro was sad to hear, but likely accurate. However, I note as have some others that there could be a use for Mac Pros as a cluster tower. One Mac Pro tower could contain four ultra or Mac chips linked by Thunderbolt 5 or use the Apple tech used to link two Mac chips.

Jason Cross (1:13:10)
Mm-hmm.

Roman Loyola (1:13:15)
Max chips into an Ultra chip. You know, that sounds like really good ideas. I don’t think that would even end up as a product that Apple would sell. So maybe they would use it internally for their own, you know, server farms or whatever, but yeah.

Jason Cross (1:13:27)
Yeah, that’s like.

Michael Simon (1:13:27)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (1:13:34)
Yeah,

and then why would you even bother with the Mac tower, the Mac pro tower? You would have it in blade server blades, right? So yeah.

Michael Simon (1:13:41)
Remember there was a time

Roman Loyola (1:13:42)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (1:13:44)
when Apple made those things, like XServe and X-RAID. ⁓

Jason Cross (1:13:46)
Yeah. XServes.

Roman Loyola (1:13:46)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (1:13:48)
And by all accounts, are building the M5s, think, are being designed. Maybe the Ultra or something are being designed to be the server processors for their Apple intelligence private cloud stuff. Maybe it was the M4s. No, I think it was M5 Ultra. So it’s like that’s where they’re aiming that, building Blade servers.

Michael Simon (1:13:55)
their own stuff. Yeah.

Right.

Jason Cross (1:14:15)
Yeah, the the market for buying a big computer tower that is a multi processor workstation. I think it’s even smaller than the Mac Pro market already is. So I just can’t imagine that they’d want to many like bother manufacturing it. ⁓ It’s a cool idea. And I honestly, people kind of do this now where they buy, there’s these things where you can house like four Mac minis all

Michael Simon (1:14:26)
It’s very small. Great.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Cross (1:14:45)
clustered together or eight or whatever. So that kind of thing. But that almost makes more sense to me. Just buying mix and match Mac minis.

Michael Simon (1:14:58)
or like high-end Mac Studios or something, yeah.

Jason Cross (1:15:00)
Yeah, just as you go slot them into little some housing and just

Roman Loyola (1:15:06)
Yeah, cause Tahoe now has that support where you can cluster max together and create essentially a processing farm. Yeah, you know, and you know, AI development’s huge. It feels like there’s a market there that Apple could say, hey, you know, here’s a AI server, you know, you could, but Apple doesn’t seem to be interested in those kinds of sales or that kind of marketing or that kind of business it seems like.

Jason Cross (1:15:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, so cool.

Michael Simon (1:15:26)
Yeah, sure.

Jason Cross (1:15:35)
The ⁓ people, there’s just not a lot of people who want that locally. There are people out there and I’m sure we’re gonna hear from them, but most people are happy buying AWS cloud server space for their, if they wanna do a bunch of AI development, they do that in the cloud and where they can grow and shrink the amount of processing power they need and only pay for what they need as they need it.

You know, so local AI development is that you would need like a multiprocessor cluster for and stuff like that. What’s the size of that market? Yeah, I just don’t think Apple’s going to do that.

Michael Simon (1:16:19)
I just don’t want to know how many Mac Pros they sell a year. Is it in the single digits?

Jason Cross (1:16:22)
Me too.

It’s I can’t imagine it’s 10,000. It’s got to be less than 10,000

Michael Simon (1:16:30)
Right.

Certainly like last year, maybe when the M2 Ultra first came out, but like you gotta be crazy to buy one now. All right, we’re getting into, let’s end this. We’ll talk about the Macro next week. All right, that does it for this episode of the Macro Podcast, episode 962. No, it’s not 962. Roman, I forgot to change my outro.

Jason Cross (1:16:35)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Right.

You had it at start.

Michael Simon (1:16:58)
So I have it in two places on my little notes here and I only changed one of them. ⁓ That does it for this episode of the Macro Podcast, episode 965. Thank you to Jason Cross. Thank you, Roman. And thanks to you, the audience, for listening. You can subscribe to the Macro Podcast in the podcast app on Spotify, on YouTube, ⁓ at the Macro Podcast channel or…

Jason Cross (1:17:12)
Thank you.

Roman Loyola (1:17:15)
Thank you, sir.

Michael Simon (1:17:27)
any other podcast app. If you have any comments or questions, email us at macworld at podcast.com, contact us through Blue Sky Facebook or threads with Macworld and the Blue Mouse logo, comment under a TikTok video. In fact, Jason’s going to be posting maybe by the time you hear this or some point, a 2026 preview on TikTok and reels and stuff. you know, go find that, listen and respond and we’ll talk about whatever you guys want to talk about next week.

Jason Cross (1:17:50)
You

Michael Simon (1:17:57)
⁓ And next week will be the second half of this episode where we go to the rest of 2026. So join us in the next episode of the Macro Podcast where we talk about the latest in the world of Apple. See you next time. Okay.