Tech News Weekly 452 Transcript

Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on Tech News Weekly, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of The Verge is here, and we kick off the show by talking about Meta's huge settlement and its choices to restrict teen use. On top of that, we talk about Raspberry Pi finally leaning into the whole Cyberdeck craze, and an interview with D. Griffin Jones of Extra Ordinary, who walks us through Apple's product announcements and its upcoming September event. Stay tuned for this episode of Tech News Weekly.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:41]:
This is Tech News Weekly, episode 452, with Jennifer Pattison Tuohy and me, Mikah Sargent, recorded Thursday, August 27th, 2026: Meta's $18 Billion Social Media settlement. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking that tech news. I am your host, Mikah. and I am joined today by the wonderful Jennifer Pattison Tuohy. Welcome back, Jen.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:01:10]:
Hello, hello. Thank you. Happy to be here. Feels like it's been a long time. It's been a busy summer. It's gonna be a busy September too, so...

Mikah Sargent [00:01:18]:
Oh my goodness. Yeah, it just keeps going. It just keeps going and going. I can't believe August is almost over. Well, I think that we should get into the meat of the show, which of course means it is time for our stories of the week. These are the stories we think think are interesting and would like to share with all of you. So without further ado, let's kick things off with yours, Jen.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:01:44]:
Yes, yes. So this one is a big story, big story of the week. The news that Meta has settled a lawsuit that involved sort of— it's complicated, but ultimately involved like over 47 states and territories. And the lawsuit was about harms to children on its apps. And this is obviously something that's been an ongoing issue. There's been lawsuits before. And Meta decided to settle this one ahead of what was ostensibly going to be a very lengthy and very costly public trial. And the settlement includes a payout of just under $17 billion, which for Meta is not really a lot.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:02:25]:
But the really important key thing here is that they've agreed to significant changes to the way Instagram and Facebook work for teenage users. As a reminder, you shouldn't— you're not technically allowed on any of Meta's properties until you are 13. So this really— this only applies to teenagers. But the idea being that younger than 13, you're not on any of these services. Right. So the thing— the changes they've agreed to include independently tested age assurance standards, forced time limits, notification blocks, and an opt-in chronological feed. Access will also be blocked overnight and you'll be limited to 2 hours during the day with a couple of exceptions. There'll be productive pauses at certain periods when you've been using the app cumulatively over some days.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:03:20]:
And also they'll be giving you notice when you've been on it for 15 minutes. And then during the school year in the US, notifications are going to be muted by default between 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. and turned off also between 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. year round. And there's also more parental alerts. So you'll get alerts when your teens are potentially corresponding with suspicious accounts or if they open a Finsta, which is a perverted Insta, which is apparently a very popular thing.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:03:53]:
So, yeah, these are, these are all interesting, very strong parental controls. It is one of the biggest issues here, obviously, is age verification, which is a hot button issue in the online space. Meta has actually agreed to this independently tested age verification process that will— and it's agreed to at minimum a maximum of 3% false positive rate for its youngest users. So it's really going to have to come up with some impressive technology here. Slash, get a copy of your driver's license, which has— what are we not? Not driver's license, passport, birth certificate. Because if you're 13, you're not gonna have a driver's license. And Meta has sort of said, you know, We're going to need app stores to help with all of this. And that's something they've been pushing for for a while.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:04:44]:
This is also a huge privacy issue, though, having to put this type of data online. So, you know, that's, that's a big concern here. But the other thing here that is, you know, as a parent and I've talked about this on Twitter several times, it's, it's really interesting to see tech companies actually having to sort of step up and deal with these problems that their systems have created. The one thing here, though— so there are 2 issues that I see. The biggest one is this is all parentally accessible, so you can turn it all off. So none of this is like— it's default, but you can control it. And if you can control it, the chances are your kid's going to figure out a way to control it.

D. Griffin Jones [00:05:34]:
Pro tip.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:05:35]:
Put facial ID, a facial ID passcode on any app on your phone that controls these things, 'cause then your kid can't get to your phone and change it. But that's a—

Mikah Sargent [00:05:46]:
Could you actually repeat that? I want everyone, if you have, if you are trying to do that, what is your suggestion?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:05:54]:
Pro tip, if you are trying to control your kid's usage and you have the controls on your phone, Set a facial ID passcode to the app. That's something you can do on iOS. I don't know about Android because I don't use it. But if you set a facial ID passcode, they cannot open the app when you're not looking and get in and change your settings. Not that my children have ever done that, but this is just something to be aware of. It's a useful tool. Apple has also come out recently with more stringent and easier to use parental controls. And this is the one thing I really do like about all of this, it's, it's great to see these options out there.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:06:35]:
For years, there have been really limited, poorly implemented, difficult-to-use parental controls that require you to know a lot about technology to set anything up. And that's what I went through with my kids, who are now 15 and 18. So we're kind of coming out the other end here, although the 15-year-old is right in the middle of some of the worst implications of social media in terms of body image, those types of things. I have— she's never been allowed Instagram. On her phone. That's been a blanket ban for me. But yeah, that's definitely a real challenge for parents is managing the social media use, because compared to things like tobacco, drugs, alcohol, which have verifiably bad health impacts and that we have regulated and created laws against, social media is is more complicated. It's definitely been shown to be harmful.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:07:36]:
But there is a lot about social media that is positive for people, especially slightly more fringe groups that are not sort of mainstream. It gives people places to connect with people. My daughter grew up in the middle of the pandemic. It was one of the few ways she was able to sort of stay in touch with people. Facebook's Messenger Kids app came out around then, and her and her best friend were able to chat all night. Those type— you know, there are benefits, it's also difficult as a teenager to not be on Instagram.

D. Griffin Jones [00:08:08]:
Right.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:08:09]:
I mean, my son's in college and all of his clubs— I mean, he's 18, so he's, you know, as I said, slightly beyond this— but all of his clubs, they all communicate through Instagram, they post through Instagram. My daughter, her school actually assigned assignments where she had to use Instagram to create social media posts. So like, it's Out there. And it's so, you know, so this is a societal issue, not just a Meta issue. But obviously Meta has the tools and Meta has been shown that it's known there's been issues and problems and hasn't— hasn't done what it should have done to help protect it. But the one thing to help protect children, the one thing I completely agree with Meta on in its response to this lawsuit is that it said if we're going to do this, YouTube and TikTok need to do stuff too. And I really think that's true. I want to see TikTok and YouTube give us these types of controls there, that there's a lot out there that needs to be done to give parents control because parents get blamed for this.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:09:10]:
You know, this is what I see in all the comments. You know, this is parents. This is your fault. You should be dealing with this, right? This isn't Meta's fault. I mean, but, you know, there's, there's a lot of culpability to Meta here, especially the feed. And that's one of the— I think the chronological option is a really interesting one. I often go into my daughter's TikTok. I do let her use TikTok, but it has decent parental controls.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:09:36]:
And I refresh her algorithm, which you can do, like, so that it starts again. So she's not sucked down too many rabbit holes.

Mikah Sargent [00:09:44]:
That is really— I think that should be something that, you know, everyone has access to.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:09:49]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:09:50]:
So we could all say, well, let's reset.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:09:52]:
Let's not start again.

Mikah Sargent [00:09:54]:
Does it, does it alert the person when it happens? Or does it happen? Do you know that? Like, does the child get a notification saying, hey, your algorithm's been reset? Or do you just kind of go in there and just do it at times? And—

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:10:08]:
Yeah, I don't know. I should ask her. She's never said. I just do it every now and then because I have control over, over her account. And I also have restricted mode and things on there. But yes. And so one of the— I think the key element in one of these restrictions, that is notifying parents about other accounts, because that is a problem I have come across. Like, I will think I'm monitoring one of my daughter's accounts and then it turns out she has another one.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:10:36]:
And I'm interested to see how they're going to implement that because that is tricky. You know, it's easy for the permanently online to navigate around a lot of these restrictions. So that's going to be— it's I don't know. It's a thorny situation. It's a thorny issue. There are a lot of competing ideas and arguments on either side here. But I think it's great that we're getting somewhere. And obviously Meta did this because the next step that they're probably terrified of is a complete ban, which is already happening all across the world for teenagers from social media.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:11:13]:
And we're seeing that in Europe and Australia and England. They're obviously— they've finally been forced to face this and do something. And that's good news in my book. But how effective it's going to be, the jury is definitely still out on that one. What do you think, Mikah?

Mikah Sargent [00:11:30]:
Yeah, because of course, one of the aspects of this is this idea of holding back some of the funds, right, to force YouTube and TikTok to do something. Yeah. And so What is the— it's not quite malicious compliance because it is compliance. And you're absolutely right that this feels like, oh no, we are seeing pushback against big tech, true pushback against big tech, not just slaps on wrists left and right.

D. Griffin Jones [00:12:04]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:04]:
And so now something does need to happen. We've got to make a change.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:12:08]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:09]:
So it does feel real in that sense. But it's the fact that YouTube and TikTok were mentioned in the title. It just kind of felt very— we're talking about like protecting teens, right? Does it not feel very middle school, high school, sort of angsty teen to be putting that in the title and being like, well, we're withholding money unless you do? I get that we can look at it from the positive. We absolutely can look at it from the positive and say, yes, those, those companies also need to have protections in place. And so Meta is a hero for essentially forcing it to happen.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:12:54]:
What I think— Hero may be pushing that a little bit. But yes, it's good. I mean, something had to be done. Regulation had to come in some form or another. And this is a first step. I think, you know, it's clear that there are harms from these platforms. I don't think it's clear that social media as a whole is harmful, but these platforms have not managed to stop the evident harm that— and they have not put anything in place prior. The biggest— the other big issue I see here, though, is these rules implement a reduction in use, but that doesn't necessarily impact your overall effect because it's the content that is making the impact as well as how much time you spend.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:13:43]:
Obviously way better to spend 2 hours a day on Instagram than 9. But, you know, so hopefully you're spending the rest of your time offline and experiencing life in real life and not online. But there are still a lot of negatives from the actual content you see online, and that is getting worse and worse. And I definitely see that through my daughter's eyes. And there's so many— we've just got to make social media a nicer place to be. And I don't know that that's something we can regulate or create laws for. And that's a societal problem. Um, so yeah, it's, yeah, it's, it's a tricky one.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:14:20]:
And I'm—

Mikah Sargent [00:14:21]:
It's rough.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:14:22]:
It's rough out there. And I— people who are blaming parents, if you don't have kids, you don't have an argument here.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:28]:
I 100% agree. I 100% agree. I think that It's easy to completely blame anyone, frankly, in these situations, but particularly the idea that it's just on the parents and that it's— for many reasons, that's the case. And it's just, you know, hindsight is always 20/20.

D. Griffin Jones [00:14:54]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:55]:
And being outside of a thing and being able to look at something Objectively instead of subjectively is also a 20/20 position to be in. And you just don't know until you know. And it's also possible that you may do a better job at it than other people, but that doesn't mean that these tools can't or shouldn't be improved so that it's much easier for everyone.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:15:24]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:15:24]:
Yeah, it's wild.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:15:25]:
And it's been lacking. The tools have been lacking for far too long. And yeah, whilst this is certainly not perfect, one of the things I think is really good about all of these things is they are on by default. So if you don't want them, you can go turn them off. But at least you, you get them and you can have that experience and see whether that's what you want before moving to. And if you do want to get rid of them for whatever good reason you might have, I mean, because obviously this is up to parents to how they want to control it. The flip side being though, as I said, it's gonna be a lot. If there are ways around it, kids are gonna find ways around it.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:00]:
Absolutely. I mean, I did when I was young, found ways around what we had at the time, MAC address filtering and all sorts of stuff. Yeah, so exactly, there will be ways, but it's good to have more tools. And in particular, some of the stuff that you talked about that I actually didn't know was, you know, was possible right now. We do need to take a quick break and then we'll come back with the Next story of the week. Uh, it's about having fun and making things. All right, we are back from the break, and it's time for my story of the week. If you out there have spent any time on TikTok in the last year, then you've probably scrolled past someone building sort of like a tiny computer.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:45]:
It could be inside of a purse or inside of a jewelry box. It could be inside of a lunchbox. I don't know, maybe I'll make one inside of a bread basket. They're called cyberdecks. They're homemade portable machines usually built around a single board computer, and usually— this is part of it— designed to look nothing like anything you'd buy at a store. Now, the company that makes the board that's at the center of many, if not most, of these builds has finally decided to stop pretending it isn't happening. Stevie Bonifield at The Verge reports that Raspberry Pi has published its own official Cyberdeck tutorial, complete with a parts list and a step-by-step set of assembly instructions. And the timing is interesting because, of course, we know that Raspberry Pi, like many hardware companies, has raised its prices several times this year due to the RAM shortage.

Mikah Sargent [00:17:40]:
That's a $100 hike on the board that this guide calls for.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:17:45]:
So Oh my God, is that Angelina Jolie? And oh my goodness, look how young they look. Sorry. Great picture Stevie chose there.

Mikah Sargent [00:17:55]:
And so, I mean, yeah, let's kind of get into it. First and foremost, I was curious, have you heard at all about cyberdecks?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:18:05]:
Well, only through you and Stevie. But it's fascinating. I'm very excited. Like, I've been delving into it this morning since you shared this. my daughter would love to do something like this.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:20]:
Yeah.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:18:20]:
Some of her gear. So it's, it's such a neat subculture that's going on here. And it's great to see Raspberry Pis sort of being more, not mainstream, but being in a new stream.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:32]:
Yeah.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:18:33]:
Like very much for, very popular in the smart home space. But also, you know, it's, it's a great sort of tinkerer tool. But seeing these like 16, 17-year-old girls creating computers out of— that look like mermaid purses is just awesome.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:49]:
Yeah, I think it's so great.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:18:50]:
See, this is the good stuff about social media.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:53]:
That's so— that's why I was really excited whenever you said that, because I thought, ooh, we're about to talk about something that is, I think, part of it. So yeah, I, the— I had heard this fly by a couple of times over the past few months, and then I knew it was real when my— one of my friends who is not techie texted me, or maybe even when we were just talking, but in any case said, Mikah, I would love your help building a cyberdeck. And I said, oh, in my mind, oh, it's entered the mainstream. It is. I love this idea of kind of, well, A, the personalization factor is cool. I remember growing up being on sites like Xanga and MySpace. And that's how I learned to do web development at the time. Like, I learned to code because of those sites and, well, web code.

Mikah Sargent [00:19:53]:
And I took that and turned it into so much more of what my interests were at the time that led me into what I do today. And so that sort of tinkery, make-it-yourself thing is very core to my interests. And I love this idea that Because there's so much, um, everything is, is, is, you know, very thin glass and, and metal, and it's all very polished. And, you know, arguably that led to a period of time where we had terrible repairability because everything was being prioritized for that. So then to flip that on its head and say, I'm going to make this, A, personal to me, but also cool, um, And also, I'm going to figure it out. I was just looking at one of the videos and the person was saying like, oh, I really need to work on the software still. The software is giving me headaches. But this— and I thought it is so cool that that person is learning how to install open source software.

Mikah Sargent [00:20:57]:
And yeah, so I think it is a really cool learning thing that also happens to involve so much individuality and support for that that I think is just really neat. Yeah, I know.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:21:09]:
It's, it's great to see. It's interesting to see how accessible this tech is becoming. I'm excited that Raspberry Pi has decided to put this together in a package you can buy, though. How much is it now? Because having Raspberry Pi has got a lot more expensive. Everything's got a lot more expensive.

Mikah Sargent [00:21:26]:
I'm not sure what the current price— I should have looked that up because I'm not sure what the current price is for a Raspberry Pi. But they added $100 to the cost. And so the cost has certainly gone up. Before, before Gen AI even took off, I bought a just last model Raspberry Pi that now runs my Homebridge server. But I had one before that that's currently not being used for anything at all. And I've been thinking about making my own Cyberdeck.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:21:57]:
That'd be a fun crafting corner.

Mikah Sargent [00:22:00]:
Yes, it would. Wow, Jen.

D. Griffin Jones [00:22:02]:
Wow.

Mikah Sargent [00:22:03]:
Wow. I want to ask you, If you were building your own cyberdeck, first I'd love to know if you had a theme in mind for yours, if it would be a mermaid purse or a chicken coop or something else.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:22:22]:
Ooh.

Mikah Sargent [00:22:22]:
And then—

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:22:23]:
You're giving me ideas.

Mikah Sargent [00:22:27]:
What would you want it to be in terms of sort of, is it an old school emulator of games?

D. Griffin Jones [00:22:35]:
Is it a local AI?

Mikah Sargent [00:22:35]:
Yeah, what would you do with it? Do you think?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:22:38]:
Yeah, I liked the idea that a lot of people were using these for like offline experiences with something that they perhaps would've had to use a smartphone or a regular computer for, but then they could just set this up to be like a single-purpose device for, for doing one specific thing. I think that's, it's great to have that. So, because the problem with most of our devices these days is you may sit down to do one thing and then you're distracted by 15 other things on, on that you can access through the device. Um, so I think what I would love to do with— I've mentioned my daughter, so she's in a fashion design program at school right now, and I think it would be really cool to sort of fit this somehow into her next outfit design. Like, um, maybe like a— it's like sew it into—

D. Griffin Jones [00:23:25]:
Yes!

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:23:26]:
Her clothing.

Mikah Sargent [00:23:27]:
Oh my goodness, that would be so cool because you could have like a keyboard on your— sort of underneath your wrist.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:23:34]:
Yeah, that would be fun.

Mikah Sargent [00:23:36]:
Oh, that's so cool.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:23:36]:
Like the Star Trek thing that they have.

D. Griffin Jones [00:23:39]:
Yes!

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:23:40]:
The wrist thing. Sorry, I keep hitting my, uh, my mic.

Mikah Sargent [00:23:43]:
Oh, I do that all the time too.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:23:45]:
Yeah. But yeah, that would be fun. She could sort of, yeah, build it into an outfit. Um, she's really into the kind of Gothic, sort of Victorian thing right now. So that's a lot of fabric and voluminous. So we could definitely kind of hide it underneath some There's room for it, right?

D. Griffin Jones [00:24:02]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:24:02]:
Oh my goodness, that's super cool. Yeah, I— the— it's odd in a really cool way how from multiple sides of things, people are learning about and appreciating the open source community, right? Because we have a lot of people who are getting into generative AI and, you know, making their own little tools and stuff that they use that are running on open source software in many ways. And then to have also these, these folks making these cyberdecks that are learning about open source software for the first time. Yeah.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:24:46]:
And tailoring it to yourself and your personality and your personal interests. It's like, I love that way that technology kind of can merge into what you want it to be as opposed to forcing itself well, forcing yourself to fit around it. I think that's really neat. Like none of the— I think the whole idea behind these, right, is that they shouldn't look like tech at all.

Mikah Sargent [00:25:05]:
Exactly.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:25:06]:
And that's something as a smart home reviewer, I'm always on about. I'm like, I don't want any devices I put in my home to look like technology. I want them to feel like they're part of my home. So I think, yeah, I think this is great. And the open source side, especially with how much easier it is to do now, if you have access to things like Claude and ChatGPT to help with coding and creating what you actually want from these devices. It's opening such a big world of possibilities for people that I think is really exciting.

Mikah Sargent [00:25:36]:
Absolutely. Well, Jen, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us today, for talking about some great stories. If people would like to stay up to date with the great work that you're doing, where should they go to do so?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:25:50]:
Yeah. You can follow my work at theverge.com. I'm also on the socials @SmartHomeMama. And next week is the IFA trade show in Berlin where I will be. So there'll be lots of content from me around all the cool new gadgets coming out of that show. So be sure to, yeah, keep an eye on my author page at The Verge and my socials, and there'll be some fun stuff coming.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:16]:
Awesome. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:26:19]:
Thanks.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:20]:
All righty, folks, let's take a quick break before we come back with the interview this week. All right, folks, we are back from the break and that means it's time for my interview today. You may have heard that Apple had some announcements, and if you did, well, don't worry because we're going to talk about exactly what the company unveiled and what's coming down the pipeline. Joining us to talk about all of this is the extraordinary D. Griffin Jones. Welcome back.

D. Griffin Jones [00:26:55]:
Good evening. Thank you for having me back.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:57]:
It's good to have you here. So Apple woke us up on, on a morning this week and had some announcements for us. Can you tell everyone what Apple unveiled? And then we'll kind of dig in and take a look at what's going on.

D. Griffin Jones [00:27:17]:
Just before Apple announced that they have the iPhones coming in September, which we all knew was coming every year— every year, it's like clockwork— Apple cleared the decks with a bunch of Mac announcements in advance that I guess they didn't want overshadowing the iPhone event, or they didn't want it to be a part of that September event. They want to keep the message very clear, keep all these boring Macs out of their big September event. They announced the new M6, or sorry, yeah, M6 Mac mini and M5 Pro Mac mini and the new M5 Max and Ultra Max Studio. And that announcement came along with the announcement of the M6 chip and the M5 Ultra chip. So there's a lot to unpack here.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:03]:
Absolutely. Yes. So first and foremost, as you said, the, the sort of hardware announcement that did not come with an event usually is a bit of a situation of, hey, we got some stuff We got to get out there. Let's clear the plate and, and, and be ready for what's next. Um, so starting with the Mini, before we get into the Mac Studio, can you tell us a little bit about what's going on in the new Mac Mini and what chips it features? And then maybe you could give us a little bit of an understanding of what the What changes have taken place from the last model to this one? Because there's a lot of comparison to earlier models and earlier performance, which makes sense. But for someone who maybe has a Mac Mini right now, do they need to get this new one?

D. Griffin Jones [00:28:58]:
So the new Mac Mini, uh, I mean, right at the top, we've all seen these price increases and the desktop Macs more than any other Mac, like the greatest proportion of their price is defined by their storage and memory. And so we're really seeing that with these. New announcements. The new Mac Mini starts at $899. And for an M6 chip, like we'll get into the M6 chip in more detail later, the M6 chip is an excellent chip. I mean, it was the case with the previous Mac Mini. Like when I reviewed the M4 Mac Mini, I described it as incredible power at an unbelievable price. And that was, that was still a steal at like $600.

D. Griffin Jones [00:29:34]:
And I'd say an M6 chip for $900 is also a really good value. I mean, these are Incredible chips. But at $900, you really want more than 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage. I fill up 256GB on a review unit Mac really quickly just by installing Final Cut and Xcode and loading on a few little projects on there. All the pro apps, they will fill that up. Yeah, you do get great performance out of that entry-level M6 model. But I mean, what are you going to do with it is an open question. There wasn't really room for a desktop version of a Mac Neo below a $600 price.

D. Griffin Jones [00:30:22]:
But now that the Mac mini starts at $900, I can see an argument for a hypothetical product like that existing now. The M5 Pro Mac mini is—

Mikah Sargent [00:30:32]:
Mm-hmm.

D. Griffin Jones [00:30:34]:
It's also an excellent computer. It starts at a higher price at $1,700. That comes with 24 gigs of memory and 512 gigs of storage, which I think is the minimum of what you want. I think the sweet spot is 32 gigs of memory. But on the M5 Pro, the tiers go 24 gigs, 48 gigs, and then 64 gigs.

Mikah Sargent [00:30:55]:
Wow!

D. Griffin Jones [00:30:56]:
Those aren't slots that you're used to seeing in the rest of the PC industry. Only does multiples of 8. But 24 gigs, I mean, that's, that's a solid amount of memory. And these, and these computers are very memory efficient. 48 is, I think, sufficient for someone with a pro workflow. Of course, as someone with an older Mac Mini like yourself, I think mine's a generation further back. I have the M2 Pro Mac Mini.

Mikah Sargent [00:31:19]:
Yeah.

D. Griffin Jones [00:31:19]:
And the first thing I did was I just went to apple.com and priced out if I were to If my Mac Mini just exploded or caught on fire and I needed to replace it tomorrow, and I got the exact same specs, how much would that cost? The binned M5 Pro chip, 32 isn't an option anymore, so I'd have to go up to 48, 2 terabytes of storage space, 10 gigabit Ethernet. I bought that for $2,200, and now that is $3,200.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:31:51]:
Wow!

D. Griffin Jones [00:31:52]:
Full $1,000 more expensive. Now, when I tend to upgrade a computer, I tend to wait until I can get roughly double the amount of specs that I had before for about the same price, between $2,000 to $2,500. That is the wrong direction for prices to go. You don't want them to be more expensive for the same product.

Mikah Sargent [00:32:17]:
Yeah. It's rough. The price jumps are rough, and I think that they have kind of made people clock in a little bit about where things are, that, you know, everything is being impacted by this. When it comes to Apple's sort of positioning on the Mac mini, if someone is not familiar with this device, Where— because let me, let me sort of give context here in the sense that when I would first hear about Mac Minis before I really got into Apple and knowing about their products, it was always like an, uh, an engineer who had a little server situation running where they had a bunch of Mac Minis and one of them was their, uh, home theater system. And one of the— Is the Mac Mini still this sort of DIY makerspace device, or can it be also the, you know, family computer? Or is that still the iMac line? Where do you feel Apple is positioning the Mac Mini these days in its lineup?

D. Griffin Jones [00:33:35]:
I always see it as sort of a prosumer computer. I think it's really leaned into that middle space of, yeah, most of the time when I'm using my Mac, I'm just browsing the web or doing schoolwork. But I know that if I have to edit video, this can do it. Also, in the business sense, small businesses love the Mac Mini because they might not need a fancy Retina display in the office, but it's just a cheap computer that You can pair with anything. I mean, it's like the PC of the Mac lineup. It is just a desktop computer. You can swap it in. It can be like a good second computer on your desk.

D. Griffin Jones [00:34:13]:
Like if you have both a PC and a Mac, you don't want 2 separate monitors, keyboards, and mice, then it's just another option you can add to your KVM to switch between your PC and a Mac. It's the sort of every Mac.

Mikah Sargent [00:34:28]:
Now, Anything else about the Mac Mini that you'd like to talk about before we move on to the Mac Studio?

D. Griffin Jones [00:34:36]:
Yeah, well, the Mac Studio, we saw this with the prior generation, because the M3 Ultra took a long time to come out and they never had an M4 Ultra, like the Mac, the previous generation Mac Studio split between having an M4 Max chip and an M3 Ultra chip. So if you were in the market for a Mac Studio, you had to like, make the decision of what kind of trade-off do I want? Do I want the faster single-core performance of the M4 Max, or do I want, you know, more cores generally that are a little bit slower of the M3 Ultra? And if you were a professional buying a Mac Studio, if you're dropping north of $4,000 on a computer, that you understand your workflow and you know which decision is better for you. Now, The Mac Mini has that split. As I mentioned, it splits the M6 with the M5 Pro. That's forcing that kind of decision-making on the much larger prosumer market. Even as a prosumer myself, I edit video, I do podcasts, I do blogging, I do graphic design, sometimes all at the same time, but I don't honestly know which one I would choose if I were picking today. Which is why I'm very glad that I don't have to.

Mikah Sargent [00:35:53]:
That's, that's true. That's true. So moving along to the Mac Studio, I mean, obviously Apple in, if you go to Apple's website and you scroll through everything, it's very heavily focused on the AI of it all, being able to run local models and use What's that new tool? Draw Things, I think is what it's called, where you can make local photos and run AI to generate photos is what I mean.

D. Griffin Jones [00:36:30]:
Does—

Mikah Sargent [00:36:30]:
is this jump in Mac Studio processing solely based around its, you know, new performance in AI or Is it compelling to other groups who might use the Mac Studio, others in the creative space of, uh, you know, photography and video and, uh, yeah, I mean that.

D. Griffin Jones [00:36:52]:
Apple is really leaning into the AI and, you know, around now, based on their extremely long lead times of how long it takes to develop silicon, now we're starting to see the first generations of Apple Silicon that were designed like after the AI boom and even after Apple realized there was an AI boom. And so, you know, add an extra year into that. Like, we're seeing the M's— what we know is that the M6 generation that we're just starting now is going to be very short-lived because they're going to rush into the M7 generation, which is going to be even more focused on AI than the current— than what we currently have in the Mac Studio, the M5 Ultra and Mac. So, and that's not to say like the M5 Ultra is already an extremely powerful AI computer. Like it has so much memory bandwidth that even if you get the maximum configuration of 512 gigabytes of unified memory, the bandwidth is 1.2 terabytes per second, which means that you can read your entire pool of memory in under half a second. No matter which configuration of Mac Studio you have. And Apple keeps pushing the fact that you can, you know, link all of these together over Thunderbolt so that they can pool their resources. And, you know, have— if you have, you know, got 4 of them, then you have 2 terabytes of unified memory.

D. Griffin Jones [00:38:18]:
And, you know, that's what that bandwidth number is really for. That's what you really want. Like, and Apple's also really proud of the fact that, you know, these are These are all about performance per watt. So you have 2 terabytes of unified memory for running local AI models in this cluster of 4, and you can just plug them into like a regular power outlet strip and plug that into a wall, which is remarkable. Like, this is real workstation performance on these computers.

Mikah Sargent [00:38:45]:
Yeah, I mean, that, that part is incredibly impressive for sure. Um, let's kind of take a look at just sort of the, the whole, the whole lineup here, um, in terms of the new, the new chips and Apple's sort of iterative, uh, steps. And, um, maybe you could give us, uh, before we, we take a break, you could give us kind of where do you think someone should be in the Apple Silicon lineup for this to be a, an upgrade that makes sense and will feel different versus, you know, oh, if you have last year's model, it's not going to feel like that much of a jump?

D. Griffin Jones [00:39:32]:
I think if you're on an M1 generation chip, now would be a very good time to upgrade. Maybe if you have like an M1, you know, like that first 2021 M1 MacBook Pro, when they come out with the, you know, Then again, the problem is, Apple is moving to M6. If you have an early, lower-level M1 or M1 Pro computer, you can upgrade to any of these M6 computers that are coming out. However, as we know, the M6 is going to be short-lived. They're going to come out with an M7 chip early next year. We see this anytime Apple does a die shrink in a chip generation.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:40:10]:
Mm-hmm.

D. Griffin Jones [00:40:11]:
The M3 was the last time this happened. The M3 was the first first one to move to 3 nanometers. They replaced it with the M4 very quickly. Honestly, the M4 is where you saw most of the benefits of the die shrink. The first year, TSMC, which manufactures the chips, is still trying to work out the process. Honestly, I would wait for the M7 if you can, because the M7 is where we're going to see a lot of the major benefits of the die shrink. That's where Apple will take full advantage of a new technology that we're starting to see a little bit in the M6. If you pay attention to the M6 chip in Apple's press releases, they say that it has not just a 32-core neural engine, but they say that it has a dual 16-core neural engine.

D. Griffin Jones [00:40:54]:
That is a hint that Apple is working on a bit of technology called a wafer-level multi-chip module, or WMCM. A lot of words, basically, to say that Apple no longer has to fabricate the entire chip at once anymore. They can fabricate individual pieces that make up an M-series chip and piece them all together more dynamically. I think that means that when we see future higher-power versions like the M7 Pro, M7 Max, M7 Ultra, those chips might not just be strictly doubling what the lower-end chips were anymore. Apple might be able to design those chips much more intentionally in different ratios of CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine to make much better products tailored for different use cases.

Mikah Sargent [00:41:46]:
Yeah.

D. Griffin Jones [00:41:48]:
If you're on an early M1-series chip, I think you can comfortably upgrade to the M6, and you'll be very happy. Again, the base-level M6, the base-level M-series chips of any kind are all excellent. If you need that additional power, then I think the M7 is going to be very, very good for you.

Mikah Sargent [00:42:08]:
Nice. Apple didn't just announce new hardware, did they? They also said, we've got an event coming up.

D. Griffin Jones [00:42:14]:
Yes, this is the event where, as we are all expecting them to come out with the iPhone 18 Pro, the folding iPhone, which, as a brief aside, I think the name for that is iPhone Duo, but we'll see.

Mikah Sargent [00:42:27]:
Ooh.

D. Griffin Jones [00:42:28]:
The Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4. And that's all that we know for sure is coming at this event. As you may have heard, the regular iPhone 18 and either iPhone 18 Air or iPhone Air 2— we don't know how that's going to be named either— those 2 models anyway are coming the following spring. So this could either be a much shorter event than we're expecting in September, Or, we also have a slew of products that we know are on the horizon, but don't know when they're coming, that could see their debut. We've got AirPods 5, the new Apple TV, which might have a brand-new remote design, a new HomePod mini, possibly with Apple Intelligence support, the OLED iPad mini, and the smart home hub display thing.

Mikah Sargent [00:43:21]:
Wow. Like, is there room for all that?

D. Griffin Jones [00:43:24]:
Probably, you know, 2 out of the 5. We don't, we don't know which, which we're going to see, which is very exciting.

Mikah Sargent [00:43:31]:
Yeah. So which, if you had to guess what we will absolutely see, oh, what does your crystal ball tell you is, is, is like the lineup we should expect? And you would be shocked if blank was announced at this event.

D. Griffin Jones [00:43:50]:
I think the Apple TV and HomePod mini are probably going to make an appearance. We've heard about those products for a while. I think the OLED iPad mini, that sounds interesting, but we also know that there's going to be a bunch of Macs on the horizon. I'd expect the iPad mini to debut alongside those, probably at an October event, if I had to guess. There's also rumors— we're pretty sure we're going to also see, before the end of the year, A new iMac with refreshed versions of the 7 colors they come in, and the first touchscreen MacBook Pro, along with an M6 MacBook Pro, potentially. There's a lot of products on the horizon, but Macs and iPads don't usually share a September event with the iPhone. Those probably are going to be later in October. The smart home hub, those have supposedly just been sitting in boxes waiting to be flashed with the operating system, waiting to be shipped, waiting for new Siri for a while now.

Mikah Sargent [00:44:52]:
Really?

D. Griffin Jones [00:44:53]:
The hardware has been ready to go for a year now, but Siri has been holding that product back. But are they going to announce a brand-new product like that in September? I don't know. I think that could also be later. This is maybe the least we know about a September event. I was gonna say, yeah, that— Because we also know that the folding iPhone is coming, but there are a lot of details we don't know about that. Like, it's probably gonna have some manner of iPad-like multitasking on the internal screen, but will it support Stage Manager when you plug it into an external display? Will it support like an iPad does, or, you know, the freeform windowing when you plug it into an external display? Will you be able to like pair a keyboard and have like iPad Will it have iPad-style keyboard and mouse or trackpad input like an iPad does? Will it have any mode, kind of like how the Samsung phones do, where you can use both the front and the back screen at the same time? Can you hold it up in a tent? Can you prop it up like a laptop and have a screen on the upper half and a keyboard on the bottom half? There's a lot we don't know about any of these products. We don't even know what it's going to be called. have sort of settled on the name iPhone Ultra, but I mean, that's not the only name it could be.

D. Griffin Jones [00:46:08]:
Right.

Mikah Sargent [00:46:09]:
And I love the— because this is something that I've always liked about the iPhone event is that typically there's some software thing that isn't revealed until the iPhone event that is for the newer iPhone. And so an example of that was the, um, Dynamic Island, which yes, it's partially hardware, but it required software, you know, changes. And so Dynamic Island being one, there's always something. And I think in the past there have been like a few camera features that didn't come out until the new iPhone did. And that tends to be where the secrets get kept since hardware can be so hard to keep secret. And so I have been looking forward to learning what is going to be, uh, in, in this category for sure. And like what new things would be announced that we have no idea about, but you're right. When I think about it, we, this is a relatively unknown event because there's so much rumor around it, but the rumor isn't enough to know what Apple will actually pull out of its pocket.

Mikah Sargent [00:47:24]:
When this this event takes place, which of course we call it the iPhone event, we know that Apple has an iPhone event every September, but Apple itself does not put it out there that it's the iPhone event. Are we bracing for not just high prices because of a potential folding phone, but high prices because of RAM shortages or? Is there talk of Apple maybe putting any subsidization into the phones?

D. Griffin Jones [00:47:56]:
That could be the real surprise and shine of this event, and not a happy one. A theory that I read online that I think I can see happening is, we all know that when Apple introduces new phones, they keep the old ones around for a year. the iPhone lineup starts with the— oh, what is it called now? Not the SE, but the— oh, yeah, the 17e. That's where it actually starts. So, they have the 17e at one price point. $100 more, you get the iPhone 16. Then, $100 more, you get the iPhone 17, and so on and so forth, scaling up. But if they're not coming out with the entry-level iPhone, 18 yet.

D. Griffin Jones [00:48:42]:
And my guess is maybe they keep the lower end in place, you know, 17e, 16, 17. And then when they come out with the iPhone 18 next spring, that's just $100 more on top of all those other ones, and they just like stay around at the same price.

Mikah Sargent [00:49:02]:
Because it's like you've just gotten used to it. Oh dear. Well, I'm not excited about that part of it. I guess the last thing I'll ask you before we say goodbye, I'm curious if there's anything that we have not mentioned yet that, you know, you're looking forward to or anything that you're maybe, you know, worried about that we'll see at this upcoming event.

D. Griffin Jones [00:49:32]:
Well, first of all, it'll be interesting seeing John Ternus' first event that he's hosting almost entirely himself. Tim Cook's last day is, I believe, next Monday or Tuesday. This will be an all-John Ternus event, all Ternus all the time. I wonder how much of the event he'll host. Tim Cook relegated a bit of the hosting duties to some of his peasants below him.

Mikah Sargent [00:49:58]:
Right.

D. Griffin Jones [00:49:59]:
But John Ternus is a bit more capable charismatic, maybe he'll take on more of the hosting itself. The event artwork I also want to touch on briefly. Previous years of events almost always have some kind of hint towards an iPhone feature, some kind of clue. Sometimes it's only obvious in retrospect. This one is not entirely obvious. Surprise and Shine, the artwork is a bright blue sky with a sun shining and a lens flare.

Mikah Sargent [00:50:23]:
Yeah.

D. Griffin Jones [00:50:23]:
I don't know if there's an obvious connection there. Maybe it'll just be like the sort of visual motif of the event and it doesn't mean anything, but maybe it's a, maybe it's a clue to a feature that we don't know is coming. Who knows?

Mikah Sargent [00:50:35]:
iPhone and shining. What could be shiny? Maybe you can take photos of the sun. There's a new filter on the lens.

D. Griffin Jones [00:50:46]:
Uh, it's a solar eclipse camera.

Mikah Sargent [00:50:48]:
Yeah, exactly. Um, well, as I always say, when it comes to rumors in tech, we will have to wait and see, but we will be seeing Well, we, uh, when, when we're done waiting, uh, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today and walk us through A, what Apple has announced, and B, what Apple may soon announce. It is always a pleasure to get to chat with you. If people would like to keep up to date with the work that you're doing, where should they go to do so?

D. Griffin Jones [00:51:15]:
My blog is dgriffinjones.com, where you can find my writing on Extraordinary. And I have a new podcast that just launched earlier this week called Friends of Griffin.

Mikah Sargent [00:51:24]:
Friends of Griffin. So search for that wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe, and we will include a link in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for being here.

D. Griffin Jones [00:51:36]:
Thank you. All right, you are my friend as well, so I should have you on the show at some point.

Mikah Sargent [00:51:41]:
Yay, I can't wait! I was about to do a heart, and then for some reason my hands went out here into like jazz hands, but then it looked a little bit like guns, and then it also reminded me of Project Hail Mary, but then it also is like, what if it looks like I'm saying loser, which I'm very much not saying? Anyway, panic. Uh, thank you for being here, uh, and we will see you again soon.

D. Griffin Jones [00:52:01]:
Thank you.

Mikah Sargent [00:52:02]:
Alrighty, folks, it is time to say goodbye. The show publishes every Thursday at twit.tv/TNW, which is where you can go to subscribe in audio and video formats. If you'd like to follow me online, I'm @micasargent on many a social media network, where you can head to chihuahua.coffee: that's chihuahua.coffee where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Be sure to check out my other shows on the network, including Hands-On Tech, uh, iOS Today, and, uh, Hands-On Apple. All of that here on the TWiT Network. Thank you so much and goodbye.