What the Heck Is Apple Doing With Its Hardware and Software? – Intego Mac Podcast, Episode 386
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Kirk McElhearn
Apple’s latest bevy of hardware releases feature processor upgrades and some processor naming confusion. The new iPhone 16e is Apple’s least expensive iPhone, and it just may be all the phone you need. And why do the new iPads not support Apple’s most advertised feature?
- Apple introduces the new MacBook Air with the M4 chip and a sky blue color
- iPod+HP — How Steve Jobs Fleeced Carly Fiorina
- Apple introduces iPad Air with powerful M3 chip and new Magic Keyboard
- Apple unveils new Mac Studio, the most powerful Mac ever
- iPhone 16e Review: An iPhone That’s Good Enough for Most People
- ‘Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ to debut in March for Mac and iPad
- Our eight-year-old daughter spent £8,500 on the Apple app store
- Apple announces M3 Ultra—and says not every generation will see an “Ultra” chip
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Transcript of Intego Mac Podcast 386
Voice Over 0:00
This is the Intego Mac podcast—the voice of Mac security—for Thursday, March 6, 2025. This week’s Intego Mac Podcast security headlines include: Apple’s latest bevy of hardware releases feature processor upgrades and some processor confusion. The new iPhone 16E is Apple’s least expensive iPhone, and it just may be all the phone you need. And why do the new iPads not support Apple’s most advertised feature? Now here are the hosts of the Intego Mac podcast. Veteran Mac journalist Kirk McElhearn and Intego’s chief security analyst, Josh Long.
Kirk McElhearn 0:45
Good morning. Josh, how are you today?
Josh Long 0:47
I’m doing well. How are you, Kirk,
Apple’s New Air-Related Products
Kirk McElhearn 0:50
I’m doing fine. Is it true? There’s something in the air?
Josh Long 0:54
Well, that’s what Tim Cook said on Monday. And it looks like we got some new “air-related” products this week.
Kirk McElhearn 0:58
Air-related products. I like that. Yeah, they are. Apple has several air related products. They have the iPad Air, they have the MacBook Air, they have the Mac Studio air. No, the Mac Studio is not an air but it’s kind of funny, because the air name was used originally for the MacBook Air in 2008 and then it was used for the iPad Air years later. When you look at the MacBook Air now, it’s not, I want to say it’s not very airy anymore, because even the MacBook Pro is relatively thin. The whole point of the MacBook Air, for those who are old enough to remember when there was the MacBook, the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air, the MacBook was the cheaper one, the MacBook Pro was the pro one, and the MacBook Air was in between in price, but it was thinner and wider, and we no longer have that. We just have the air and the Pro and it kind of feels it’s not airy anymore.
Josh Long 1:49
That’s a good point. Yeah, I do wonder why Apple decided to stick with the air name. The whole point was it was thin, like it was thinner than the others, and now we just kind of have two, and it doesn’t feel the same.
Kirk McElhearn 2:03
I think it’s still a little bit thinner than a MacBook Pro, and it’s less expensive than the MacBook Pro. Anyway, they came out with a new MacBook Air, and it is an update to last year’s MacBook Air. I think less than a year, I think may, it came out in May, it has an M4 chip. Last year’s MacBook Air had an M3 chip. There might be a couple of other new features. It starts with 16 gigs of RAM, but I think they already started that last fall with the M3 air that comes in a sky blue color, which actually, actually, I’m making light of that, but I would buy a sky brew. I would buy a sky blue MacBook Air. If I was going to buy a new MacBook Air, I currently have whatever Apple called the black color of the M2 MacBook Air, midnight, or deep space, or whatever it is, and the idea of a blue MacBook Air, I think that kind of attractive.
Josh Long 2:52
Yeah. You know what it almost kind of reminds me of. Do you remember iPod plus HP? It’s almost that color, wow. HP once had had, I know this is a deep cut, right, yeah, but Apple once partnered with hp, so that HP, Hewlett Packard could sell its own branded special color of iPod, and it was kind of this, like, sort of sky blue, ish, like kind of different color from the rest of Apple’s product line.
Kirk McElhearn 3:22
Okay, well, I’ll try and forget that now. No, but it’s true that I think it’s why not have some different colors? I mean, what else do you have to differentiate this? Yes, it’s got an M4 chip. Instead of M3 it’s $100 less the base price. It starts at 999, and that’s good. If you can go back to what was it? The M1 MacBook Air, which was 999 so that was the first one of the first Apple silicon Max, and dropping it down to 999 with 16 gigs of memory, it’s a pretty good deal. It’s actually a lot cheaper than mine. Is two and a half years old. You know, out of curiosity, I went to the Apple website where it says something like, for a limited time, get increased trade in values on your old Mac. So I say, Okay, here’s my old Mac. It’s 16 gigs of memory, 512, storage, and it’s actually the higher number of cores for the processor that I got at the time, 395, pounds. I mean, that’s embarrassing. Now, as you know, and I’ve mentioned many times, I’ve sold, I’ve traded in iPhones and iPads, and the price was always good enough to take out the hassle factor of selling on eBay. But for Max, it’s always insulting. In any case, if you need a new MacBook Air, buy this one, 999, I mean, come on, you know, with 16 gigs of RAM, so you don’t have to pay an extra $200 to increase the memory. Pretty good deal, don’t you think?
Josh Long 4:36
Yeah, actually, I do. This is a good price point. It’s actually a really good device. Shoot, I’m still using an M1 MacBook Air, and for most purposes, it still actually works pretty well. There are definitely some things that I use it for. The M1 is feeling a bit old, a little aged at this. Too many browser tabs, too many browser tabs. Yeah, that might be part of it.
Kirk McElhearn 5:01
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So the other Air was the new iPad Air, which comes with a powerful M3 chip. Interesting because when the iPad Air first came out, it had an M2 chip. So they’ve updated this, which came out in May, if I’m not mistaken, the same time as the iPad Pro with an M4 chip, and they’ve updated this to the M3 chip, and that’s about it. They have a new magic keyboard that fits correctly, and I’m underwhelmed by this. Now, to be fair, I think the iPad Air is a pretty good device. It’s a good compromise between the basic iPad, which we’ll talk about later, and the iPad Pro, which is much more expensive. The iPad Pro starts at 999, and this starts at 599 that’s big difference. $400 to be fair, I’ve got the 11 inch iPad Pro, and the OLED display on that is just wonderful. So I don’t think I could ever downgrade to an iPad Air without OLED. But for the difference in price, most people don’t need to pay $400 more for an iPad like this. So in the same press release, which we’ll link to in the show notes not mentioned in the title, Apple also updated the iPad. So the iPad, without any an additional word like air or mini or pro, is the basic iPad. It’s $349 and they updated it with double the storage. So it starts with 128 gigabytes, which is kind of nice, and it’s got an A16 chip. Now it kind of makes me think that the H 16 sort of can do a lot of things, but can’t do certain things. What am I thinking of here?
Josh Long 6:32
Well, I know one thing that it can’t do is Apple Intelligence, right? You can. You need at least an A17 chip in order to use Apple Intelligence, which is the whole reason why the iPad Mini now has an A17 chip, A17 Pro to be yes, exact. And for some reason, they decided to go with the A16 chip for the regular iPad, even though they just released an iPhone that replaces the SE right? And they made sure to include the current generate, not even the previous generation, the A17 Pro. They could have done that, but no, they had to go with the current generation of chip in the low end iPhone. But then the low end iPad now has something that doesn’t even work with Apple Intelligence, that’s from years ago. Well,
Kirk McElhearn 7:22
I guess they’re assuming that people that only pay $349 for an iPad don’t want to use Apple Intelligence. We’ll talk more about this later. Yeah, okay, we’ll talk about this later. I just want to mention it in the press release after they talk about here’s the new iPad. Then the next header is powerful and intelligent features with iPad OS. And the first powerful and intelligent feature that they mentioned is the calculator app.
Josh Long 7:42
Wow, that’s pretty powerful and intelligent.
New Mac Studio and new iPhone 16E
Kirk McElhearn 7:46
Okay, so we also have the Mac Studio that Apple has updated, and you can buy the new Mac Studio, which is an upgrade for the Mac Studio event for a few years, with either an M4 max or an M3 Ultra processor. And I don’t, I can’t remember in modern Apple, let’s say post Steve Jobs, Apple One Mac having a choice of processors from two different generations. M4 sounds newer, but M3 is ultra, and it’s actually the base model is twice as much for the M3 Ultra version as the M4 max version. Go figure. I want to talk about the iPhone 16E, which you think is overpriced, low end phone.
Josh Long 8:25
I think the iPhone 16E is a great phone. I think you’re absolutely right in saying that it’s the phone that’s good enough for most people and the one that most people should probably just buy. However, what’s really difficult for me to get past is how the entry level iPhone has has gone up so much in price. I know there’s been inflation. I know it has better features, but it’s, it’s frustrating to me that Apple couldn’t make it work. You know, they couldn’t have limited the hardware a little bit just to get it at that 499, price point to like, at least that would be better. You know, I understand maybe they can’t quite reach the 429 Mark anymore, right, but maybe 499 right? I feel like it would be more competitive with other phones on the market.
Kirk McElhearn 9:18
But they’re not competing with other phones on the market. They’re not competing with Android, although, although a lot of people they might want to get people to switch from Android to iOS with this phone. So this phone starts at $599 which is more expensive than the iPhone SE. It does have twice the storage, 128 gigabytes of storage the iPhone SE started with 64 and it was 479 with 128 plus it’s two years old, and then the version before that was two years older, and then the one before that was three years older. So it wasn’t even an annually upgraded phone, unless you bought it the day it came out. It was out of date.
Josh Long 9:52
So you actually got one of these for purposes of being able to write a review, and also, well, it’s a nice thing to be able to say that you’ve got. Got a special test device that you can always run the latest Apple betas on and not have to worry about running beta versions on your main device. So you’ve been playing around with the iPhone 16E I would really like to hear what has your experience been with it, and do you think this is a good experience?
Kirk McElhearn 10:17
So I got this on Friday, and I set it up as a new phone. I didn’t copy the data off my existing phone, and I downloaded a bunch of apps. It took me a couple hours to get all the apps and to get my home screen set up just exactly the way I wanted it. And by Saturday, I just used this exclusively for four days. By Saturday, I started to really like this phone, and there are a couple of reasons. It’s Yes, I’ve got a big phone, and this was smaller, and maybe it’s time for me to switch to a smaller phone. That’s another story. But it’s just as fast as my iPhone, 16 pro Max in pretty much everything. Camera is inferior, and that’s always one thing. If you want a good camera, you don’t go for the cheapest iPhone, but it’s snappy, it’s fast, it’s, you know, I don’t need a titanium phone. Aluminum is fine. It’s like the extra cost of some of the elements in an iPhone aren’t necessarily worth it. The iPhone 16E has an OLED display, which I’m which is surprisingly nice. A lot of tech obsessed reviewers have talked about how it doesn’t have promotion. So promotion changes the refresh rate anywhere from one frame per second, one hertz to 120 This is a 60 Hertz display. It doesn’t have always on. I didn’t notice it. After about 20 minutes, I got used to it. I haven’t done anything with this that made it feel inferior, to be honest, smaller, lighter, aluminum, but the screen is wonderful. Apparently, they say it’s, you know, sturdy Gorilla Glass or whatever. I’ve never broken an iPhone display. Here’s something that’s interesting. As I was using this without a case, I started thinking, You know what, I’ve got these big cases on my phones, and maybe I’m going to start working without a case, because it’s smaller without a case, right? It’s not as thick and all that. And now that I have a backup phone, if I break my iPhone 16 pro Max, I’ve got Apple Care Plus, and they’ll send me a new one, so I’m not too worried about it. So I’m not going to go caseless outdoors, because that’s too much of a risk. But I’ve gotten comfortable with a caseless phone. In recent months, I have taken off the smartphone from my iPad Pro when I’ve been using it in the house, because the smartphone makes it twice as thick and 50% heavier. But anyway, the 16E to me, is a fine phone for everyone. If you’re the kind of person who looks at the specs, it’s not for you, because already you’re aware of what it might be missing. A number of reviewers have pointed out that it doesn’t have mag safe. So mag safe is for charging on a mag safe charger, so the charger snaps onto the device, so the charging is aligned. It’s also for putting certain accessories on it. You know, there’s a workaround. You buy a case from mag safe, and it’s got the magnets and it works on the charger, and any accessory sticks on it.
Josh Long 12:58
I’m glad you mentioned that in your article, because I wasn’t even aware that there were such cases where you could basically just add MagSafe to a device that doesn’t have it. So who cares? Then, if you don’t have mag safe built in, even if you want to use mag safe accessories, just get a little thin case that adds, effectively adds mag safe to it.
Kirk McElhearn 13:17
Yeah, it charges slower than a proper MagSafe device, but for most people, well, you stick the USB C cable in Apple has said that most people don’t use mag safe, and I trust that they have the data about how many people use this device. One real question here is, who’s the target demographic for this? And when you go on the Apple website, you can compare the iPhone 16E to the iPhone 1112 or the last two iPhone SE models. So that’s 245 year old phones. And so basically, this phone is designed for people upgrading from a phone that’s years old, and they’re saying how much faster it is, how much more battery life, etc. I also think this phone is designed for businesses who buy lots of phones, because if you’re buying 1000 iPhones, you’re saving $200 by buying an iPhone 16E instead of a normal iPhone 16, that’s $200,000 that’s a big saving. My conclusion of my review is it’s certainly not the best iPhone, but it’s pretty darn good. I don’t see that people who don’t pay attention to specs would look at this iPhone and criticize it. The people who do criticize it are either people interested in the camera or who know all the specs of the standard iPhones?
Josh Long 14:25
Well, you’ve almost convinced me to downgrade to an iPhone 16E Well, I’m probably not going to do that, but because I do like having the better cameras, I don’t actually use my cameras all that much. But when I do need a camera, I want to make sure that I’ve got the best thing in my pocket. So for that reason, I’m probably going to stick with a pro. But you know what? I think the 16E is actually a pretty nice phone. I again, it’s, I worry kind of more about Apple not being able to as easily, potentially bring people into the Apple ecosystem. On the on the low end, I think there are going. Be scenarios where somebody opts to buy an Android phone because they’re just like, Why do I want to spend $600 on a phone?
Kirk McElhearn 15:07
Okay, let’s take a break. When we come back, we’re going to talk about some news, and then we’ll get to our sort of main topic where we’re going to rant a little bit about Apple hardware and software.
Voice Over 15:16
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Assassin’s Creed: Shadows released simultaneously on Mac, iPad, PC, and consoles
Kirk McElhearn 16:28
We were trying to think the last time that this happened, that a major game is released on the Mac and the iPad at the same time as on Xbox PlayStation, PC, etc, Assassins Creed, shadows, which apparently is another version of the Assassin’s Creed game where people kill other people, is coming out in March, on the Mac, on the iPad, on the PC and on consoles at the same time, we couldn’t come up with a game that came out simultaneously on the Mac and on other platforms. And this is kind of interesting, because we Apple has for decades, they’ve tried to market the Mac as a gaming device. And I remember there would be Apple keynotes at the Mac world expo, where they would invite people from gaming companies, and they would demonstrate games. And it has never taken off. Maybe finally, you know, they’ve convinced the game Studio to release a game on the Mac and iPad at the same time as all the other devices.
Josh Long 17:20
Yeah, this is what is considered in the gaming industry to be a triple a title like this is, this is the the cream of the crop, one of the, the best games, like highly anticipated from a major Studio, and it’s actually coming to Mac and iPad at the same time as all the, you know, as PC and all the gaming consoles. So from that perspective, I think this is pretty, pretty impressive. Now, I’m not the kind of person who’s going to play this particular game. Assassin’s Creed, it is not really appeal to me, but I do find that pretty impressive, that Apple’s got the hardware. Remember this, this is built into even an iPad, even even an M3 or M4 Mac Can, can use all the hardware, Ray tracing and everything that you basically need a really good, high end graphics card to do something like this in a PC. This is, this is functionality that’s built into recent Macs, like that’s pretty impressive.
8 year old racks up thousands in App Store purchases
Kirk McElhearn 18:16
And recent iPads that don’t even have fans in it, so it’s not even going to overheat, which is actually impressive when you see gaming PCs with their huge water cooled things and all that. So yeah, I’m not gonna play the game either, but I think it’s worth noticing, and we’ll pay attention if any other games are released at the same time on Mac and iPad as other platforms. Article from The Guardian that came out a couple of days ago, our eight year old daughter spent 8500 pounds on the Apple App Store. We don’t have enough details about what happened, but somehow their HSBC debit card had been linked to her iPhone, and they had no idea that she could spend the money so easily, and people befriended her on Roblox and an attempt to make more money from her. And this all sounds like a scam. What really worries there’s a few things are wearing me here. Why didn’t the bank react when it saw all these payments? Why didn’t the Apple App Store react when it sold these payments? Why didn’t these parents check their you know, banking app or statements? Did they have enough money that 8500 pounds wasn’t a problem for them?
Josh Long 19:15
Clearly, there were certain things that could have been done better. First of all, an eight year old should not even be able to have an Apple account, this was parents choosing to basically pretend that their child was older than eight years old so that they could have their own Apple account. My guess is that this probably wasn’t part of a family sharing group, because all of this stuff is much easier to manage with family sharing. You can choose to have your child set up as kind of a sub account on your family group, and then you can have them request to make a purchase or in app purchase. It’s not an automatic thing that is just linked to a credit card, and they can make a purchase anytime they want. So. So clearly, this is something that these parents either weren’t aware of or chose not to set up for some strange reason, and well, that’s how they ended up with this 8500 pound charge over 90 days. So it’s a good reminder that if you are going to give a device to a small child, even if it’s temporary, even if you’re handing a device to a child temporarily, whether it’s your kid or your grandkid, maybe they want to play a game on your iPad or something, make sure that it’s set up. So in app purchases are disabled, so they require authentication before you can make an in app purchase. If you have a family sharing group set up, the feature is called Ask to buy and it’s called require purchase approval. Then that’s the name of the toggle switch, and as long as that’s on, they won’t your child will not be able to buy something without it sending you a request to your phone, so it’ll it’ll give you a notification on your phone that says that your child is requesting to make this purchase or download a new app or whatever it might be.
Apple’s Hardware and Software Strategy
Kirk McElhearn 21:08
According to an Apple support document about this, it’s on by default for children under 13, and it’s an option for children between 13 and 18. So yes, if you have a child using your device, make sure you check this and check your bank statements, because this is a lot of money that went out without someone paying attention. So our main topic is, what the heck is Apple doing with its hardware and software? And we alluded to this earlier, a new iPad that can’t use the marquee feature that Apple is advertising everywhere, including on YouTube ads and TV ads. And didn’t have Super Bowl ads, I think, for Apple Intelligence. And every single Apple device, with the exception of the Apple Watch, has Apple Intelligence, except for, of course, this new iPad, the cheap iPad.
Josh Long 21:52
Well, and the HomePod too. I guess HomePod Still doesn’t.
Kirk McElhearn 21:56
Okay, every single Apple device with a screen, right, right? Well, Apple TV doesn’t have a screen. I was gonna say Apple TV doesn’t have it, but it doesn’t have it, but it doesn’t have a screen. So pretty much every Apple device except for this new iPad, it’s weird to have one device in a product line that’s brand new, that can’t do the features that you’re trying to sell people on, right? And one of the reasons why Apple updated the iPhone 16E with a brand new processor is to be able to run an Apple Intelligence. And whether there’s going to be A17 e or an 18 E, we don’t know, but having this a 18 chip in it means that it’s going to be good for several years right now. And then we have the Mac Studio with the two generations of processors, and the M3 Ultras better than the M4 max. And this is cognitive dissonance about this. If I’m looking at the two compared, I don’t know which is better until I read the whole thing about which is better. In other words, Apple has to tell me which is better. So why not change the naming so people can understand it?
Josh Long 22:51
Yeah, and a lot of people are trying to figure this out in the industry, especially that this whole like M4 Max versus M3 Ultra, this. This feels very weird to have both of those available on the same product, where the thing with the previous generation’s name is actually the better option or the higher end option. So Apple had told Ars Technica is Andrew Cunningham that not every generation of M series chips for Max will necessarily include an ultra chip? Oh, so that’s the answer. Is maybe part of the story. But does that? Does that mean, then, that we’re not getting an M4 Ultra chip? That’s kind of the implication here. And so maybe that’s the idea, is that we’re not gonna get an M4 Ultra, and therefore M3 Ultra remains the the high end slot. I It still feels very weird.
Kirk McElhearn 23:45
Okay, as a reminder, the ultra chip is actually two chips soldered together, right? So it’s like a double chip. We had an M1 Ultra and an M2 ultra. Now an M3 Ultra. They always came out later than the Pro and the max versions and God Apple. This naming just doesn’t make sense, but they didn’t come out at the same time as another processor with a max. This is a this is a mess. This is muddy. This is poor marketing. How is anyone supposed to understand this? Right? You look at the price, that’s all you need to know, right? The M4 max, max Studio starts at $2,000 the M3 Ultra starts at $4,000 so there’s obviously a difference of price. Also, the M3 Ultra starts with 96 gigabytes of memory, which is kind of stunning when you think about it. You know, we’re used to like 16 gigs or 24 or 30. It starts with 96 and it goes up to, like, 3000 gigabytes of memory, something like that. But add all this together, and it’s a bit of a cacophony of there were too many things we don’t understand. So we talked about the new Siri that was supposed to be part of iOS 18 and iPad OS 18, and it kept being pushed back. Now it might not come until iOS 19.
Josh Long 24:51
Well, yeah, and that one’s a big surprise, because, remember, we talked a week or two ago about how well it looks like it might be getting pushed back to the point five. Releases, so maybe they’ll come out just before WWDC, so they won’t have gone quite an entire year, like almost an entire year after the features were announced. But now it’s kind of looking like maybe the new Siri that Apple includes in their advertisements is maybe not even coming until 19. That would be that would be crazy. And who’s ever going to trust Apple again whenever they announce some new operating system feature if they didn’t deliver for an entire year and ended up pushing a feature that they announced to the next generation of operating systems like This is insanity.
Kirk McElhearn 25:37
So two words, bait and switch. This is my feeling on this, and I’ve mentioned this several times, that I feel cheated, that Apple indirectly forced me to upgrade from my iPhone 14 pro Max, because the only reason I did was to be able to write about all these Apple Intelligence features. I had an iMac that could do Apple Intelligence. I’ve got an iPad Pro that can do Apple Intelligence, so I didn’t need a device. But, you know, these things are different on the phone and the iPad, so I wanted to have it, and now there is literally no reason that I could have kept that iPhone for another year, and I feel cheated by Apple now. I mean, I know this is an edge case, right? I bought it because I write about it, but how many other people upgraded another older, say, an iPhone 13 Pro or something, thinking that they wanted to get this Apple Intelligence and they find that the few Apple Intelligence features they get are worthless.
Josh Long 26:30
That’s, you know, I’m also in that boat. Now, again, I’m not the person who’s actually writing a product review for it, but I wanted to be able to get all the Apple Intelligence features that were announced again getting close to a year ago, and that includes some of the things that they showed off last year, including the things that they’re now showing still in commercials that are available online, where you can ask Siri who was that person that I met A week or two ago at this particular place. Oh, that’s what that was so and so. Well, you still can’t do that with Siri. And this is one of those things that, like, may get pushed back to now iOS 19, and that I agree with you, that feels like a bait and switch, like, and I could have, I normally upgrade my phone every four years, I went two years, you’re a cheapskate. Yeah, I am. I am a super cheapskate. Like, I will use my phone until, like, I feel like, oh my gosh, this thing, I really need to replace it at this point, right? And I chose not to do that this time, partly because of the promises that Apple made about what we were getting in Apple Intelligence, supposedly in iOS 18, and so for them to actually Yank some of the potentially now, we don’t know, you know, this is just rumor now, but again, Mark German usually is a good source of information on this stuff, and so if he’s hearing that these things now might not be happening until iOS 19, that’s pretty concerning.
Kirk McElhearn 27:59
Yeah, I’ve mentioned many times that I’m the guy who sells the old device on eBay and buys a new one and it comes out in the wash when I do that, generally. But I wouldn’t have minded keeping the iPhone 14 pro Max another year, because it was in excellent condition. And nothing I do taxes the processor of an iPhone. You know, even a five year old iPhone, it would be fine. We’ve gotten to the point where the processors are so powerful that you’d have to, like, need hardware ray tracing for Assassin’s Creed, for your device to be sluggish. And you know the kind of things I don’t do. So, yeah, I’m disappointed by this and this whole lineup of things we’ve got here, and I pay they can’t do Apple Intelligence, the Mac Studio, that’s not very clear, Siri, there are just too many things going on that we don’t understand. Your idea for the iPad not having Apple Intelligence is that it’s for the education market, and maybe teachers don’t want Apple Intelligence, but you can always turn Apple Intelligence off in the settings anyway.
Josh Long 28:58
Well, true. And this is something that if you’re managing devices that you’re deploying to students in an organization, you can have a setting that remotely disables Apple Intelligence, right? You don’t have to have that feature enabled for everybody, but this still might be one of the reasons why, again, like for that particular demographic, right? That Apple is probably selling these cheap models of iPads to is probably education market, and it’s a little bit easier if they can just say this device does not support Apple Intelligence, just like your teachers want, right? Like teachers are concerned in many cases about they don’t want their students to quote, unquote, teach by using artificial intelligence to help them write papers or whatever it might be. And so just being able to say this does not include Apple Intelligence right off the bat, is is a clearer way to market this product than to say, well. You know, if you deploy it through a managed suite and everything, then you can just turn off the feature. It’s just really clear right from the get go. Funny, that Apple’s clear about certain things and really unclear about other things.
Kirk McElhearn 30:16
Okay, I don’t think we’re gonna have any new Apple products next week. I don’t think we’re going to see anything new for a while. Actually, we’re coming up to this period. So many things have been updated. The Mac Pro hasn’t been updated for a while, so maybe that’s going to get a new processor, but that would be around the worldwide developer conference in June. So this has been a busy week, and last week with new products until next week. Josh, stay secure.
Josh Long 30:39
All right. Stay secure.
Voice Over 30:42
Thanks for listening to the Intego Mac podcast. The voice of Mac security with your hosts, Kirk McElhearn and Josh Long. To get every weekly episode be sure to follow us in Apple podcasts or subscribe in your favorite podcast app, and if you can leave a rating, a like or a review. Links to topics and information mentioned in the podcast can be found in the show notes for the episode at podcast.intego.com. The Intego website is also where to find details on the full line of Intego security and utility software. intego.com.
