It's both a great and bad week for Apple. In this episode, we dive into Devindra's review of the excellent M4-equipped MacBook Air (and briefly chat about the new Mac Studio). We also discuss Apple's surprise announcement that it's delaying its smarter, AI-infused Siri, which may not arrive until next year. Did Apple over-promise last year, or is it wise to hold off on advanced AI features until they're ready? After all, Apple doesn't want a fiasco like Microsoft's Recall announcement.
Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!
Devindra: [00:00:00] What's up, Internet? Welcome back to Engadget Podcast. I'm Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar.
Cherlynn: I'm Managing Editor Cherlynn Low.
Devindra: Also joining us this week is podcast producer Ben Ellman. Hey, Ben.
Ben: Hello. I'm finally back from my dog sitting gig back in New York City.
Devindra: Dog sitting in San Francisco, which actually sounds like a pretty good gig.
Like just chilling out with a dog in that beautiful city this week, folks, we're going to be talking about the MacBook Air M4 once again Hey, I scrambled to review it really quickly at the beginning of this week. Also Steve Dent at Engadget reviewed the Mac studio. So we'll talk a bit about both of those systems, kind of what's working well, what isn't, and also not a great week for Apple in some respects too.
Cause they announced on Friday that they're going to be delaying the whole smarter Siri plan. That was the thing they showed off at WWDC. And that, I think. That was kind of like the linchpin. That was like the ultimate thing for Apple intelligence to get to. And at least Apple says it's come, it's coming in the coming year, which could be this year or it could be early next year for the fiscal year.
We'll talk [00:01:00] about what all of that means. And there's a bunch of news as well. If you're enjoying the show, folks please be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcaster of choice. Leave us for you on iTunes actually makes a big difference. And drop us an email at podcastingadget. com. We're not seeing enough emails.
I would love to. Answer questions. I would love to have a regular segment where we just answer simple questions. I'm actually considering if I ever get free time of just like signing up for volunteer hours at the library, you know, and just be like, Hey, bring me your tech questions. I'm just bored.
And I could probably help with something tech in your life. Let us do that for you folks, podcast and gadget. com. All right. The MacBook air M four. It's a good computer. What else do you want folks? It's a good fast computer. It's a good, I don't know what else to say. We're done. I think for a lot of those reviews, that's kind of how I feel because it's like, yeah, man the 2022 revision of the air, which was the whole new redesign.
And then the following year they gave us the 15 inch version. Those are really good computers. This is iteratively [00:02:00] faster because the M4 chip is less than 20 percent faster than the M3. It has a Lowr starting price, which I think is great. It's back down to 9. 99. The error actually used to be at that pre the whole I think the whole M1 scene, right?
There was a point where Apple had gotten the price back down, but it jumped up for 12. 99 for the re It was the M2 MacBook Air, the one they redesigned it. Now it's fully back down. I think that's pretty great. And it's a 1199 for the 15 inch. Good prices, good machines, good hardware. That's really fast and does everything you want it to do.
And the battery life is really good too. So it's this is such a no brainer computer for me. Like as soon as we filed this review, we made this our. Top recommendation for you know, what you buy for a laptop. Sherilyn, do you disagree? Do you have any thoughts on this?
Cherlynn: No, I mean, I think your review is pretty straightforward.
Laid it out very clearly. I think that the fact that it's a Lowr starting price is really good. And I mean, people in the chat, by the way Dpro9 says it's a good time to buy a used M1 or like a referred or what, yeah, a referred M1 or [00:03:00] something.
Devindra: So Walmart is selling the M1 at this like weird secret discount where Apple doesn't advertise it.
But Walmart has those old units for 6. 99, sometimes 6. 50 and below, I believe. I hear they're only the 8GB RAM SKUs. Oh. And also, Those things have terrible screens, like the screens are old. If you just need like a cheap computer for somebody, sure, I guess, fine. But you pay a little more, and you can get the used or refurbished M2, which is a much, much better screen and everything.
Right, right, right.
Cherlynn: So there's a screen tech, and then I think the webcam is also an improvement on this, at least on this model, compared to the older M1 model. And then you know, again, another tip from the chat, which I thought was a Good one or a good reminder anyways that like, as always, apple provides an education discount so like students can get it for I think 8 99 the MacBook four that we just reviewed, which makes it even more appeal 100
Devindra: off.
Yeah. Yeah,
Cherlynn: right. $100 off of, so yeah, basically exactly the SKUs that you choose to get, if you upgrade to more storage or more RAM than used to get just like a hundred dollars off, which is. Not that's a [00:04:00] good deal.
Devindra: Yeah, this is a reminder to by the way Like yeah, if you're in college, I don't think it typically hits High schools or things like that, right?
if you're in college your IT department likely has like Equipment that they show like this is how you get a discount on this because when I was in IT like I had to like Shout at kids. Hey we can get you Microsoft Office cheaper. We were selling Microsoft Office for 10 and I had a whole pile in my box and I just had to like force kids to come get it.
You can get discounts. Keep an eye on those things. Yeah.
Cherlynn: Yeah, I mean, I think that there's like a lot to say about how much these things cost. And also the fact that's the main thing for me to say about the Mac book that just went out that way. Yeah it's. Not exciting, but that's not a problem, right?
If there's not a lot of changes.
Devindra: They're just so good. Like I get that. Yeah. It's not exciting because not much of it's new, but it's also man, I don't think everybody sees like what the PC makers are doing out there. And it's a, it is sometimes rough. It is
Cherlynn: snapdragon laptop. Oh, [00:05:00]
Devindra: well, I mean, you can spend 2, 000 on the low end.
That's what I mean. Yeah, but yeah, I just reviewed the Asus ZenBook A14, which is a really cool laptop that tried to be a MacBook killer, but you always see compromises whenever somebody comes at Apple, right? So right now the MacBook Air, the 13 inches is actually close to a 14 inch screen, weighs 2.
7 pounds. Has a pretty decent power prices, not bad for what it is. So Asus comes in and is okay, we can make this a half pound lighter. LG does it too with their gram machines. I don't like those because those have always been slow and cheap feeling. But for Asus to do that half pound, they had to put in a really low power chip and it just benchmarked really low.
So I don't know why you would get that versus just a MacBook Air. The only thing I think stopping people at this point is like, yeah, not everybody knows how to use Macs. That is still a thing. Speaking of.
Cherlynn: I mean, look, one of the cons you put in your review was like, it's still a challenge to learn Mac from Windows.
And I almost was like, when I was looking at that con, Davindra, I was like, should [00:06:00] we be listing that as a con? Isn't that kind of for granted? But there is something to be said about The fact that we're all moving to ARM based architecture, and Apple is a superior one in this case, and that might convince some Windows people to switch.
And in that case, it is a huge pain in the butt. But, remember last week when I was like complaining?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Cherlynn: Okay, I am very sad to announce. That I have discovered two things I prefer on MacBooks than Windows PCs. One is not super surprising or new. I think the trackpads just, now that I've gotten used to it, is better.
I miss my three finger gestures and everything on Windows. At least, I miss how they work. I have those, but it depends on the Mac OS. It's full screen, then yes, three fingers. is swiping between the instances of an app, but if not, then you have to rely on command, whatever. I think
Devindra: you can actually find third party apps also remap some of those for you, Sherilyn.
Right. I meant I
Cherlynn: guess I meant baked in the OS without me having to do too much, right? Windows is really baked in. You don't need to think about it. It just all works across all the things. You are the only person I've heard, [00:07:00] Sherilyn,
Devindra: who has ever talked about multi finger gestures in Windows.
Listen, listen.
Cherlynn: That's how much of a power user I was, okay, or am still. Here's the thing, I use so many I'm the person I might be the only person I know who uses the right control key as a shortcut as part of my shortcuts in my workflow. That is
Devindra: madness. Yeah, it's so good when you're typing
Cherlynn: and you're like, just control backspace or control delete.
The right one works really well for a control backspace.
Devindra: Okay.
Cherlynn: All right. Okay. Anyway, the second thing I've discovered that I like on a MacBook, at least the MacBook I have versus my Windows PC experience, man, that fingerprint sensor. Sheesh. It's listen, I like I'm the sort of person that washes my hands about 17 times a day and they're often like just a little bit moist or like just lotioned up and like the windows pc will never recognize my finger in those instances but the macbook is like you a little wet i got fam it's all right i can handle a [00:08:00] little moisture
Devindra: it's a I mean, it's usability stuff.
It's like when you bring up the trackpad, I'm like, Apple has had the glass trackpad, the whole thing, like they've locked that down for, I think at least a decade now. Like these trackpads have been great. Everybody's been chasing it with what do they call it? The the precision windows, precision, like various companies are trying to do that.
You can get close to it, you can get close to it in Windows, but it always comes down to the fact that it is a third party company making the trackpad, it is Microsoft producing the software, it is a PC laptop maker who's implementing all these things together, and you, there's a discernible lag sometimes.
So I feel like it just never feels as smooth on Windows. The other thing, Sherilyn, like if you lean more on Macs, you'll learn is that I think the standby times. Or also rock solid, like when you close the lid, you can leave that thing in your bag for a while. Different.
Cherlynn: The ones I've been using. So that's one drawback of MacBook, at least the one I have, which I believe is an M1 MacBook Pro, by the way.
It [00:09:00] is a, it just go, it's sapping. while lid is closed. So the thing I don't,
Devindra: that is weird. That is weird, which
Cherlynn: might be like specific to this machine, which by the way, I love that we're like, okay, so for the last two weeks, like various Mac users on our team have had to be my tech support. I've been yelling into various voids on Slack, just being very angry.
And I've been like, why do I have to press three buttons to do one screenshot? Or like, why do I have to like, you know, so I've learned a few things along the way that have made me a lot less angry as a person. Number one, maybe.
Devindra: You, you learn things. Listen, my, and it's sometimes it's just what, you know, and it's hard to learn new things, which is why I listed that as a con.
Like I bought the MacBook Air, the one of the cheaper, the discounted ones over the holidays for my wife. And she is, she knows how to use computers, but she is. So hardcore Windows, right? So it's like I'm giving her a Mac and it's taking her time. I'm surprised she hasn't been
Cherlynn: like, you gave me a Mac.
You're sleeping on the couch.
Devindra: Well, there are some of that. I'm like, yeah, [00:10:00] well, this is so much faster than that Dell laptop that I got her a couple of years ago. That Dell laptop. Yeah, it's a, it was a, it is an XPS and you know, it's just, it is not like Dell laptops also don't last for that long. Like after two, three years, you will start to feel the build issues and stuff, but it's just one of those things.
I feel like this is the point where it's like somebody wants to buy a laptop. You really should consider jumping to Mac if you haven't yet, it's less a problem. I think for the younger generation, like for kids going in, a lot of people are exposed to Macs in many different scenarios. But yeah, I have a lot of people aren't as well.
I,
Cherlynn: one last thing that I will say that is like a bit off topic is that like I was chatting with a friend in the gym. And they're like young, like Gen Z, like 23. Right. And they were like, I was like, Oh, so what tips do you need to learn about tech, blah, blah, blah, trying to like source ideas for any stories we can write.
And they were like, I would love to learn how to create a folder on my Mac book. And I was like,
Devindra: yeah, [00:11:00] just basic stuff. So this is
Ben: wait, this is like getting to the idea of anyone younger than what? Like they don't know born, yeah. Born after 1997 can't use a file directory. All they know is,
Devindra: I have seen such bad and lie so many examples of this.
And I think there, there are a lot of tick talkers out there who are like, you know, life is hard for millennials. And I actually think some of it is just like whinging, but some of it is like, it is true. Like we kind of, you got to be tech support for your parents. You don't understand the technology and also tech support for the young kids.
We were
Ben: just talking about this like two episodes ago. We're stuck between the boomers and the iPad babies.
Devindra: Basically. So sorry if that is a repeat topic, but I keep seeing examples of this. Anyway, MacBook Air, good computer, learn Macs. I think you will be better off, especially if you have an iPhone.
If you have an iPad, I don't want to sound like an Apple shill. There are still so many. good uses of Windows. I'm sitting here in front of a Windows desktop. I love a PC. I spent the last day like jamming my fingers into motherboard [00:12:00] stuff and plugging in hardware because I love having that ability to build a computer.
And I showed it to my daughter. I was like, this is what an open computer looks like. And she's can you build me one? And also, can I play Minecraft on it? That was her first. Her first thing, I was like, yes, actually, you could play the best Minecraft. You could play realistic shaders. Like she, we see these videos sometimes where people are playing with like extremely hardcore shaders on Minecraft using like crazy video cards.
It looks like you're playing in real life. So she wants in on that. So we're going to, we're going to be gaming side by side. Not too long from now, but that's the MacBook Air M4. It's pretty good. But also if you want a cheaper MacBook Air, look out for deals. I would not go down to the M1 just because that design was basically a decade old when they stopped, when they like gave up on it, when they upgrade to the M2.
So the M2 one, the M3 one, you will see discounts on those. Look at refurbished sellers be careful on eBay and stuff, but yeah another good one for Apple. And we also see other upgrades that they [00:13:00] announced the max studio. Which now has the M4 Max chip and the M3 Ultra, which is a really interesting twist that they did there.
Steve Dent did that review for us, and I really wanted Steve to review it because he is a video guy. He produces his own videos. He was able to put 8K workflows on this thing and gave us some like really good insight into like how powerful it is versus his M3 Pro MacBooks and also some scores we had from the M2
Cherlynn: Ultra.
Devindra: It was the M2 Ultra, yeah, and I think the M3 Max.
Cherlynn: Oh, M3 Max, yeah, the M3 Ultra is the new chip. Yeah, from last year. Yeah,
Devindra: gotcha. Yes, also very confusing. And Nate Ingram reviewed the new iPad Air, which is, it's an iPad, guys.
Ben: We talked about that last week. Yeah, well, we
Cherlynn: talked about the news last week. The review went up on Monday, and the Avengers review went up Tuesday.
Steve's review went up yesterday, I believe. Did I get it up yesterday? I think so. It's all melting into one big fondue. That was yesterday. This week has been [00:14:00] apple fondue week for me, but this week we, there's one more Apple review that is coming from us. At least we're doing some longer term reviews.
And also recontextualizing some products. So today and the rest of this week, you'll see some like reviews of maybe some older Apple products, but with the lens of Now that I've spent a long time with this, is it better than the experience out of the box? Or now that it's 2025, is this still worth a good buy?
Like this two or three year old product that Apple is still selling? It's been a bit of an Apple mixture for me. Like I've been in an Apple jam, which is why if I get my dates of published wrong, I apologize. But Yeah.
Devindra: It was supposed to be all good news for Apple, but something weird did happen last week after we basically after we recorded on Friday, Apple sneakily, like just put out a little bit of a negative news.
They shared a statement with John Gruber at Daring Fireball. And I think a couple other places, I think Reuters got the statement to basically saying, Hey that Siri. We showed you all that [00:15:00] really cool Siri that could read your email and also give you contextualized information stuff.
They showed it off at WWDC. That's going to take a while. And the specific quote is, We have also been working on a more personalized Siri giving you more awareness of your personal contacts as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps. It's going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate them rolling out in the coming year.
And there have been a lot of discussions about this. First of all, Apple giving people an actual statement on the record, because normally when you talk to Apple, they're like, here is a gun to your head. You can't say that Apple told you this. You can't say the names of anybody. That's just how they work.
And it's it sucks. I hate talking to companies that way. They gave an on the record statement to Gruber, who is a very well known Apple fan, Apple commentator. You know, he has actually run podcasts at and meetings at Apple's campus during WWDC. He is fully working together with the company.
But he is also somebody that I've seen has [00:16:00] taken He seems really offended by this news. Almost like the fact that Apple seemingly lied to us, they showed us a shiny new version of Siri. They never actually demoed it at WWDC last year, Sherilyn. And that is notable that we only saw it on the video. We never, sometimes Apple brings us to rooms and here's somebody demoing this technology.
That's how we saw the initial Apple intelligence features showed off. They never did that for the Siri. That's probably a bad sign. If Apple can't do that at WWDC, there's probably, they're probably a long way off from actually shipping that. And yeah, is this a sign that Apple is failing?
Cherlynn: I don't know.
Right. Like I think. Siri has like historically been one of the, oh no, my, my phone just reacted, but thankfully didn't try to respond to me saying the hot word. Anyway Apple's assistant has historically been one of the like less smart ones, right? Between when I used to switch between Android and Apple more often, I would notice the Google version [00:17:00] was a lot smarter at least in the early days of the assistant wars.
And then now we're at a point where you know, Google's so far ahead with Gemini, right? And S the S assistant is barely there and can't even get off the ground. I don't know that. Apple is doomed per se. I think Apple is clearly going to have to tap the help of like open AI or Google S has done in the past with, which they've done with things like visual intelligence and so on.
But I mean, it's clear and I feel as if the visual intelligence thing, the fact that they've integrated chat, GPT and Gemini. Or Google search within the visual intelligence feature is actually a tacit like acknowledgement that we need to make this feature available. And yet we don't have the, you know, algorithms or software that the engineering behind it yet.
And so we're going to partner with these people who are obviously so much better at it than we are. And they haven't come out and said it, but it is like basically that I will point out. And one thing that I wanted to [00:18:00] say when I saw that this topic was one of our you know, on our list Alexa Plus, for example.
Oh, crap. Hey, everybody mute your speakers. It's fine. It's
Devindra: fine.
Cherlynn: Amazon's A Word Plus is Was announced last month. We talked about it and it's coming and it was Set that it would be available this month. I saw recently on my Amazon app that now I am able to waitlist, right? It's join the waitlist to test it out So to be clear though because someone in the chat this morning asked whether a word plus is that much better To be extremely clear again.
We never saw this new A word assistant Amazon assistant for ourselves. We watched a lot of canned rehearse demos. We saw a lot of
Devindra: but they at least demo live and Apple didn't even live.
Cherlynn: Right? And everything. It was going up on the stage, especially it seemed live and it was, you know, taking pictures of the audience and I saw myself in the picture and therefore it was able to still, you know, describe the audience [00:19:00] based on what appeared to be including me in it.
Right. Okay. So far, I don't know that there's that much better of a, an assistant out there that is not purely driven by. You know, something like an open AI, like a GPT O or like a chat GPT or a Gemini.
Devindra: There is nothing. There's Microsoft is trying to do that with Copilot, but Copilot is not even there either.
And I think so yeah, you're bringing up the fact that Siri has has had issues for a long time, Cherlynn. It's hard, it's actually easy to forget, like when Steve Jobs, I think, first announced Siri. This was like a big thing. It was a big thing because the iPhone is getting essentially a smart helper that could do all these things.
But that was really early days in terms of like conversational assistance. So it could do really basic things, but it could only do so much. And that was even before the very idea of transformer models was even discovered. Like we did not have that milestone that led to Gemini and a chat GPT and everything.
So what we're [00:20:00] talking about now. is a newer version of Siri that is based on all the stuff that's powering GPT and Gemini. And it just seems like Apple can't really do it yet. But also, I don't think, I don't think it's the worst news in the world. And I think a lot of these companies probably needed to do this as well.
Microsoft was so hardcore
Cherlynn: on
Devindra: teaming up with OpenAI. They brought you Yeah, they brought you to to Seattle, like you went there just to see them unveil. Let's be clear. They didn't bring me. They invited
Cherlynn: us and we paid our way. But yes,
Devindra: they pulled you there. They made you go there to go see it.
And then Copilot happened. And then like Copilot was in windows and it's everywhere. And they were like so gung ho because they invested tens of billions of dollars in OpenAI to make that thing happen. And I feel like they were just so relentless. And. What happened last year when they announced the whole Copilot Plus initiative, but also stuff like Recall.
We were so excited to announce Recall. It's look, we'll capture everything you're doing. The that one. We'll [00:21:00] remember everything. The instant backlash, the fact that they didn't fully think about it, the fact that these very obvious security flaws were not even really well considered at the company.
And I've had several conversations with Microsoft saying what the hell, what, how did you guys not see this? And they're like, we tested. No, in my recall we have done a lot of
Cherlynn: opinion. Microsoft has one of the worst cases of engineer brain with a lot of their products. Their testing is very tested on people who know how this works.
So know exactly what the limits might be and therefore have already like kind of restricted themselves based on that. So I think Microsoft is one of the the worst examples of that Google also does that to an extent. I think Google has learned in the past few years to broaden its testing, but. And also Apple has less of that, but Apple then actually doesn't have enough engineer brain in my opinion because it's not pushing far enough sometimes with the solving problems, right?
Either that or Apple is considering something that It's peers don't which is it might be trying to be as useful as [00:22:00] possible to as many people as possible Which is not a bad thing to do And that is why you and I think are in agreement that this delaying of the new smarter assistant It's not such a bad thing get it to a point where it works for 99 or 90 percent of the population.
The other thing that you're getting at, which like, by the way, I love that we're having this debate about assistants because clearly we're saying a lot and it's resonating also in chat. But the, one of the things that Amazon's executives said at that event about why, you know, they want to push towards this smarter assistant or this more natural language style with.
Talking and interacting with the assistants is this idea that like people have had to learn how to talk to their speaker, how to talk to their phone. Yes. And they didn't like that. And I'm like, well, now that I've spent 10 years learning how to talk to, you know, a word, it's, you are telling me how to like, relearn or unlearn that stuff.
It's a little bit annoying. Why not make [00:23:00] something that just. Works the way, I guess, I think that's the goal. They want to make it work the way you want it to, but it's not. We want to,
Devindra: we want you can finally
Ben: talk to it like a person. Yes. Like you wanted to. Def was about to say. Yes.
Devindra: Like you can talk to it like Star Trek.
Well, also it's a conversation where you're not like. constantly issuing commands. The thing with current assistance is that you have to, it's essentially programming, you're programming a computer, right? Do this for me. And you get a response. It's command response and not conversation. And I think we want the conversation when I've tested GPT stuff and even some copilot when you can actually talk to it and have a back and forth.
That's actually kind of nice. To what we were really getting at here, I think is that. So many people rushed out with all these AI features. Well, Google literally was caught flat footed. Like they rushed, they had a London event, right? To show off Gemini, like that was a disaster. All these companies have been pushing Wasn't Gemini
Ben: renamed from something?
It was
Devindra: BARD. It was BARD back then. Yeah, it
Ben: was BARD. That's right.
Devindra: But all these companies have essentially rushed everything out the [00:24:00] door to try to compete with whatever they assume OpenAI has already hit. And some of that stuff is impressive. It's cool that we can Talk to this thing and it can recall all this information.
It's cool. It can create documents and images and video and whatnot. Functionally, how it's actually making your life better. Sterling, when we were at WWDC, I think that was one thing we were saying, like Apple is focused on these features that will actually make your life. Maybe just a little easier.
Stuff like the writing assistant stuff within your apps. Technically the notification summaries were part of that too, which was kind of a mess for them, actually. Like they got in trouble. with bad summaries. They got in trouble with like them rewriting headlines and stuff. But when it's not terrible, I actually do appreciate the fact that it does compact a lot of different notifications into a small thing.
So yeah, if Apple takes a while, takes another year or so to make the Siri thing work good. I think that is ultimately a good thing, but. What happens is right now, the perceived problem is that oh, you're not hot, you're not [00:25:00] hot, like you're behind on AI, you're not as good as everybody, and I think that's all.
I'm gonna
Cherlynn: use Gen Z lingo here because I am so young.
Devindra: Let them
Cherlynn: cook! Let them cook! It's okay!
Devindra: That's not Gen Z lingo. Oh, not Gen Z lingo.
Cherlynn: So whatever lingo it is it's new to me. It is most often used by Gen Z. Let's be real. So it's okay to cook, right? I think the internet society agrees that it's okay to cook.
We just need to be patient.
Ben: Well, yeah, but in a lot of cases when they say that, it's like you're already doing something. You're already like showing the results of your work. So let them keep going on showing the results of their work. We have not seen. Sort of,
Devindra: I think the way let them cook is usually uses like somebody is going off, right?
And you don't know if it's gonna be good or bad. You're like, let's step back. Let's let them go I actually feel like that philosophy actually applies more to what OpenAI and Microsoft is, and it's let them, let's just go, let's go. The investor is yes, money. Here's AI, do AI. Oh [00:26:00] my gosh, Lucky Dog.
They're like, let them cook. Lucky Dog's podcast in the
Cherlynn: chat is let them Tim Cook.
Ben: I mean, and that gets to the idea of maybe let them cook in the sense of let them give themselves enough rope to hang themselves.
Devindra: I guess.
Ben: Because. I think the synopsis, if we were to boil all of this down with some AI brevity, the idea is that you only get one chance for your new assistant to be good, and if people can talk to it conversationally like they want to, especially if the most Average user can do that, then they will continue using it.
But, if you need to talk to it in a specific way, if you need to talk to it like you're programming a computer or something, you're gonna lose some large percentage, probably 60 percent or more, of your users who would eventually end up maybe loving this as it gets better. If you only get one chance for it to be good, then maybe [00:27:00] keep it under wraps for a while.
Devindra: I feel like that's it. Let's while we're in Generations, I'm gonna, let's quote Millennial icon, Eminem. Because it really comes down to this. If you had one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip? Think about that.
Think about that. Now that's gonna be in your head all day. Mom's spaghetti. One shot. You got one shot, everybody. And I guess we'll see where this goes.
Ben: So I want to bring things back to the MacBook Air for just a second and kind of bring up like a audio flow chart or something for should you get a MacBook Air or should you get a MacBook Pro, especially if you're a student, because we talked about how MacBook Airs are great for students.
If you do not see yourself doing big computational work at all, ever, so I'm talking about you know, English literature, I'm talking about like studio art where most of the stuff you're [00:28:00] doing is you know, manipulating objects in the real world, absolutely go off and get a MacBook Air.
It's going to be everything you need and more. However, if you are an interdisciplinary sort of. Kind of interested in computer art, maybe using bigger AI models, or if you, for some reason, want to do some Beeple ass art, you know, very computer generated or something, you need the fans.
Devindra: You need fans. You need, yeah. So the MacBook air is fanless. It is just a little hot box basically.
Ben: Absolutely. Yes. So if you are an interdisciplinary artist, if you're doing anything in like blender or Maya or anything like that, you need. Like heat dissipation really badly. I think that's basically it. If you're going to be an engineering student, or if you're even kind of casually interested in eventually majoring in engineering, and you're going to be doing solid [00:29:00] works or something, MacBook Pro is where you want to go, not the MacBook Air.
Devindra: Yep. I feel like you would know it. You would know if you need these tools or not. This is more advice for like people going into college, people thinking about what to buy ahead. You don't know what, like what your workflow is actually going to be. Something we're thinking about. I'm thinking
Ben: about parents who don't quite know like everything, like all of the specs for these different machines.
They just know that like the MacBook Air is a bit cheaper, but it also has the top level chip right now.
Devindra: So I think your advice is pretty much right there, Ben. That's pretty much what we'd say. I will say though, like the thing about these M4 chips and Apple's chips in general is that they are really fast.
Like they are really fast. So if you are a visual arts student who does not need to do like hardcore rendering, but you just like drawing, like you just may want a 15 inch air plus a Wacom tablet or something. You will get faster processing with a pro for sure, but. If you're a college student, you may also want to prioritize just having a lighter machine to walk around with.
So I think that's where [00:30:00] some of that comes in. Some of the complaints I have from my review still hit the 60 Hertz screen looks good, but I would like a faster refresh rate. And that is something,
Ben: yeah, that's especially not good for art.
Devindra: I mean, it's yeah. Yeah. It's better to have something smoother for our, for artwork, but yeah, if you bump up to the 14 inch MacBook pro, which I've actually seen that thing is normally 1599, I believe, but I've seen it on sale for like close to 1400.
At that, if you bump up to that, you get more storage, I believe too, but you get more ports, you get a higher refresh rate display. And I think for a lot of people that will be a safer computer to last you your entire, like college career or professional career or whatever. That's the main thing to think about like the 14 inch MacBook Pro, don't be afraid of it, especially once you start adding hardware to the Air, that's where Apple gets you.
You know, you will spend 200 more to add more RAM or a harder, bigger hard drive or something like that. And also worth pointing out the 999 Air, the 13 inch has fewer GPU cores. I believe it's eight instead of 10. So that may also [00:31:00] be a downside for some people. For if you're just writing, if you're just doing productivity stuff.
You'll probably never even notice. So that's that good recommendations there, Ben, anything else you want to add to the show?
Cherlynn: No, I think we just have a lot of Apple products that we reviewed. We
Devindra: have a lot of Apple products. I mean, yeah. And also we talked about the series stuff. We will see where this lands.
Like we're going to follow this story, folks. I do feel like. This is one of those things, like it is a telling thing. I think Apple has lost a lot of trust, which is something John Gruber has been saying. Like typically we trust that if Apple says something at WWDC, we're like, okay, yeah, they will figure this out in time.
Right. And this was an example where they showed it on a video. They never demonstrated it live. And I think we never really had a sense that if they could actually do this. So I think after this, like there's justification to push Apple harder around this stuff. I really do hate sometimes talking to Apple reps because they are so media trained where like.
You ask them a question and what they give you is literally here is the copy from the thing you just read. [00:32:00] Yes, I will ask a specific question like, oh, how did you come up with this feature? They're like, this is the greatest feature in the world and everything I just told you I'm just gonna repeat back and It's not super helpful.
Ben: There is no war in Ba Sing Se.
Devindra: There's no war in Ba Sing Se tariffs are helping the economy. I mean, we just saw that today. So yeah, we will, we're going to push Apple harder. This is certainly, I think it's maybe troubling news, but also I don't mind if people delay AI features, get it good rather than, you know, announcing it and having it fail completely.
Let's move on to some other news. Briefly, we saw some rumors coming out of out of Microsoft and around Xbox stuff Windows Central reports that the Xbox handheld that has been talked about and discussed could come at the end of the year and it likely won't be built by [00:33:00] Microsoft, which is actually fine because we've spent the last few CESs looking at all the portable gaming hardware from Asus and everybody else.
It could be a company like Asus building whatever the Xbox handheld is actually don't think that's a bad idea. Like a handheld at a decent price. It has access to game pass is a really compelling product. The more interesting thing that Jez Corden over at windows central report is that their next generation consoles are targeted for 2027, which is only two years away.
Goddamn. 2027, new consoles that would feel I think the thing is they feel, they would feel more like Windows PCs. And if you remember what I said, I think it was last year, I think when Jess was on here and we were discussing whatever the future of the Xbox was, I was like just make it a Windows box, man.
Just make it to make up small Windows mini PC that you put to your TV and the people who don't need that can bring it to a monitor and play games on their [00:34:00] monitor. But it's just a Windows box. Let's stop overthinking all the Xbox stuff they had to do for consoles because they were never very good at it.
Microsoft has failed more than often, more often than not, when it comes to Xbox stuff. The original Xbox burned billions of dollars to get that thing. That was a failure. The Xbox 360 succeeded because they had a good strategy. They did a lot of things earlier. But the Xbox one, that whole platform the everything now the series X, it's the same problems over and over again, where Microsoft is facing against Sony and Nintendo Sony, who is so good at the closed console market and knows how to produce killer games.
Nintendo, who is just like off in la land doing whatever, like they don't need to even play this game at all. Nintendo can just survive selling Zelda and Mario with unique hardware all the time. And Microsoft, I think it's taken Microsoft a long time to realize we make. PC software. Maybe we should be selling people PCs and the consoles themselves right now are running AMD CPUs.
They're running AMD GPUs. They are [00:35:00] essentially computers. So I feel like the next logical step would be here's an Xbox handheld. That's great for a lot of people. And maybe you can dock it. Here's a powerful 500 to 600 mini desktop that can sit by your TV. You'll have an Xbox interface to play the games you're used to, but also.
It's a Windows box, so let it run Steam, let it give you full access to Game Pass. I wonder if Microsoft is brave enough to do something like that, because you give people an easy way to put Steam on their TVs. The hardcore players will love that. I'm actually thinking about, I have some spare PC hardware now.
I'm like, I should just put, rather than string a 100 foot HDMI cable from my office to my TV or projector. Should just build a little box because all I need is 4k at 60 hertz if that really to power a tv thing And I think that's going to be a compelling option for a lot of people. I don't know trillin ben any thoughts on this Just make yeah
Ben: Dev, can you give [00:36:00] me like a capsule history, like five sentences or less, about why we're seeing so many new Windows gaming handhelds now?
Devindra: I mean, the history is the hardware got good. The portable hardware got good enough that we could do this, and
Ben: But is it the batteries? Is it the video stuff? It's everything! Is it the processors? It's the GPUs. Okay.
Devindra: It's a chip, it's a GPUs. It's the fact that Nintendo has been writing switch hardware since 2017, like 2016 era switch hardware is ancient, but it can play a game like Zelda tears of the kingdom and it's selling, it's still selling a ton.
People are buying those games. I think we're at the point where the graphics rat race is just like. Not everybody needs it, right? I think few people can really see the difference between a PlayStation 5 game and a PlayStation 4 game. Okay, we're scaling back. Now you can do some pretty good gaming on a handheld form.
Maybe the games themselves are less demanding, but the hardware has gotten there. Nintendo kind of proved that. Even Sony themselves kind of proved that with the [00:37:00] PlayStation Vita, which was a great piece of hardware that they gave up on because the ecosystem wasn't fully there for it. But yeah, there are rumors that Sony's going to go back to it as well.
Handheld gaming hardware is great, and it's better than ever because of all the advancements we've made in CPUs and GPUs and display technology and everything. Yeah.
Cherlynn: I mean, we saw the Lenovo Legion Go at CES. That one's coming out with SteamOS later this year. And we've seen a proliferation of Windows gaming handhelds.
Ioneo is one of the makers of many of them. But there's others Pretty sure Ace, not Ace, is it the ROG Ally X that is a Windows one?
Devindra: Yeah. So lots of people are making
Cherlynn: these Windows handhelds, and I think And the
Devindra: experience isn't great. Exactly. I was gonna say, the
Cherlynn: problem is the software. The problem has always been, it's such a pain in the ass to use Windows OS on such a tiny little screen that's a touchscreen, which we've lamented for years that just Windows doesn't work as a touchscreen interface.
And that is the problem.
Devindra: This may be like, I feel like this is warning [00:38:00] signs, not just Microsoft go all in on AI. Hey, Microsoft, people want to play games while using your platform in this form factor. Do something about it. Like chase that. Make let's strip Windows down to the point where we can make it easier to work with.
Cherlynn: Yeah, make a version. I don't,
Devindra: I don't trust. I don't trust. I don't even when
Cherlynn: you ask me my thoughts. And yeah, when you ask me my thoughts about this is what I wanted to say, right? Which is that gaming handhelds, we've seen them. It's not like we haven't seen the windows gaming handhelds by third parties.
And for Microsoft to try to do this, it would need to see what valve is doing and try to do better. I think that's what's going to happen. Just make
Devindra: Windows itself I think just make Windows itself better. I don't trust Microsoft to make an offshoot thing, because whenever they've done Windows RT, or was it the, I think the 11X or 10X or whatever they were considering for foldables or something they were Whenever they start to offshoot windows, like it just becomes a mess.
Just give us a box, man. Consoles are just PCs now. Give us a box, let people do what they want with them. And I think that [00:39:00] would actually be a really compelling thing for a lot of people, especially if you just sell it. It's Hey here's a game pass box. You pay 30, 40 a month. We will give you a box that will sit by your TV and it just plays game pass things.
I don't know. That could be a solution there. I would love to know what you folks think. Podcasts and gadget. com. We've got a lot of news to run through. We're just going to blow through some of this stuff. Some of which is disheartening and some of which is just yeah. Interesting point out here.
There have been a couple things happening with Tesla. There have been widespread protests around the country. I love that Alex winter of Bill and Ted fame is now like one of the most visual, like most visible antagonists against Tesla. Like he has been leading the charge on protests, I think around Los Angeles.
There's like widespread consumer reaction to this protesting Tesla's because of what Elon Musk is doing to the American government to this cuts to his like chainsaw antics. As part of that, apparently like one way to counteract that [00:40:00] is Elon Musk and Donald Trump turned the White House into a Tesla dealership.
And Donald Trump's bought a Tesla and the one, the red one of the white house. I don't know. Sure. Whatever. He's not the red one, but he bought a Tesla. What was the quote? Everything's computer. He sits down, everything's computer. But I
Ben: pointed out that the European New Car Assessment Program actually wants things to be less computer if you want the maximum safety rating from them, and it totally makes sense.
I have never rented a Tesla. I've always kind of wanted to rent a EV. Actually, when I was in SF last week, I Happened to walk by a Rivian dealership. This is my first time ever really a Rivian dealership And I was like I need to go in I need to touch this car and It has the same problem big screen.
No, I hate it.
Devindra: I hate it. Give me buttons
Ben: there is a small margin for error if I want to [00:41:00] change a setting or something where In every other car on the market, all of the internal combustion cars, I can just kind of randomly feel around like on the console area and figure out what I need to press just by the shape of the button.
Devindra: You can build muscle memory based on button placement and shape and everything. And you cannot do that with the touchscreen. I think Volkswagen is saying now like they're going to go back to at least buttons for climate controls. And I think everyone's seeing the folly of just Hey, it's a big ass tablet.
It was cool when Tesla first did it in the early 2010s, because nobody was doing that. But I think the usability problems became evident. Anyway, I don't want to laugh too much at everything's computer. Like it has become a bit memish, but also that whole situation is such a disgusting, scenario where yeah, of course, Donald Trump is basically acting like a used car salesman right now, right down to having sales pitch notes on his notes. Just to refer back to
Ben: there was a [00:42:00] what was it? White House press pool photographer took a picture of the, I love everybody does papers he was holding and it was literally Just like a list of Tesla specs.
And
Devindra: it's easy to do that too. I feel like that's a photographer's duty now because we all know that Donald Trump needs large typeface notes, so it's very easy to zoom in and get a picture of exactly what he's holding. But I think that is, you know, that's him directly helping Elon Musk and trying to give Tesla a boost, but also signs that the protests are working.
There are so many other things too. You had brought up, Ben Doge reportedly has a chatbot that's going to automate some government tasks. And I feel like that is such, it cuts to the core of like how dumb and broken this whole efficiency seeking initiative is. Like they want to offload stuff to AI.
We've spent the last hour. Talking about how dog shit, a lot of AI is you can't do that. It's never going to work. So I feel like that's just never going to work out for them, but yeah, that's, so that's our check in into exactly what's happening here. We're going to keep an eye on this. Like the tariff stuff will [00:43:00] also directly involve the technology industry and consumers and what you can buy and how much it's going to cost.
So I would love to have a discussion with that with somebody who knows economics and somebody who can really explain a lot of this, but it is, I look not so great. Folks, so you know briefly mentioning researchers also are saying that Musk's been there was a story about X being down for, I think, a day or so.
Over the weekend, on Monday or something. Yeah. Researchers are not buying his explanation that it was a cyber attack, so there'll be more to see there. There is a book coming out from a former Facebook executive, Sarah Wynn Williams. She's been written up by the New York Times and elsewhere talking about like just how kind of disgusting Facebook is at the corporate level, at the executive level.
And
Cherlynn: the courting of China.
Devindra: Yeah. And now apparently Meta is trying to stop sales of that book. So that's a good look. That's a clear sign that you've done nothing wrong. And they scored a victory
Cherlynn: last night, right? Like yesterday. So that's what the development is. We, A, discovered that Meta was trying to stop them, but B, that this past, and it's just a funny story.
I've read the arbitration, it [00:44:00] was really funny to read. I would
Devindra: love Meta to look up the Streisand effect and to see what's going to happen now. Yup. Exactly. Like literally the people who are going to ignore this book. But now
Cherlynn: everyone's talking about it. It's great.
Devindra: Yeah. The book Meta doesn't want you to read.
That's great. Let's move on to some stuff from around and gadgets. Some great coverage this week Sam, Mr. Sam Rutherford got to play with the ninja swirl by creamy. He calls it the ultimate home ice cream maker. This thing looks beautiful. So the ice cream looks beautiful. Totally get that. The ice cream looks beautiful.
I have one of the ninja dual toaster reverence for Lynn. Let me tell you I, I hesitate to recommend. A gadget to Cherlynn that could potentially catch fire, or cause things to catch fire. But a toaster oven is key. Does this have a danger? If you want, this one, any of these things can catch fire. But the toaster oven is key.
I'm going to write that up at some point too. But it's two compartments. Like you can cook stuff on the top and cook stuff on the bottom. I've made whole dinners for our entire family just on that little device. So
Ben: that's
Devindra: great.
Ben: It's also really funny how the Ninja Creamy is [00:45:00] probably a really desired review among Engadget staff.
Like everybody outside of the tech journalism space is Oh wow, you get to touch like all the new tech, that's got to be so cool. People inside Engadget are like, you get to make ice cream for work. That's awesome.
Devindra: Ice cream. Sam also loves the kitchen gadget. So I love that he gets to play with those.
Mr. Daniel Cooper also loves routers. He likes playing with routers. So he reviewed the Eero Pro 7, which kind of, kind of middling. Like he says, good performance and everything, but Eero. Which is owned by Amazon, right? They are trying to keep a lot of basic features behind the monthly fire monthly subscription.
And to me, that seems like a bad thing for a router. It
Cherlynn: was hard for me when editing this to Hey, can you bring up a comparison that a company that doesn't do this, that doesn't charge for all these fairly basic features. And the tricky thing is that Wi Fi 7 routers aren't It's not like you can just pick up the same exact version or a counterpart from Google or [00:46:00] TP link or Netgear.
Right. But because wifi seven, again, is not something that, and if they have made a wifi seven router, it's a flagship router. So it's got bells and whistles that bring the cost all the way up to a thousand dollars maybe. So it was hard to be like, Oh, it does not justify it. But no matter what, I think we can all agree that asking you to pay a subscription for basic features like parental controls on your own network is ridiculous.
And so you'll see that in Dan's review.
Devindra: I hate it. I totally hate it. Do we want to do the question that came in, Cherlynnn, or do you want to save that for Let's
Cherlynn: save that for next week, Kevin. It was a very good question, though. Thank you. so
Devindra: much, Kevin. Thank you so much, Kevin. But we are running along.
Ben: Yeah.
Everybody else, send us more questions so we can do just a big, engaged mailbag. Ideally, not in the middle of recording. Yeah. You know, we do that sometimes, and we would really like it to happen, you know, at least every other week or so.
Devindra: Let's move on to what we're working on. Yeah, I'm testing the Ryzen 9950 X3D chip.
So that is fun running benchmarks and doing some more game testing on this thing. And hopefully that's not the [00:47:00] cause of like our stream hiccuping just now. And also I did a twit this week. I did this week in tech the episode is called chatting with Mr. Babyman. Which was just, that was a line from something we were talking about.
Mr. Babyman used to be the top dig user and I am currently in a group chat with him. So I remember that you remember him. So I talked to Mr. Babyman every day to chat with Mr. Babyman every day. And it's great. He's a good dude. Show in anything you want to mention.
Cherlynn: I mean, I'm digging myself out of the pile of Apple reviews and other types of coverage.
Next week, we've got some interesting events to look out for. DaVindra, I know you're on board to live vlog GTC for us, so that's exciting. And then, yeah, I'll be on another podcast this week as well. I don't know when it's coming out, so I'm not going to say what it is yet, but once I do know, I'll let y'all know.
Devindra: Keep keep an eye out on Trillian's socials, on PleaseGuy, and, you know, wherever's Any pop culture picks you want to talk about, Trillian?
Cherlynn: I don't know if it's pop culture, but I do want to shout out this app called Finch that our Cheyenne MacDonald has [00:48:00] Engadget. And I actually discovered this app when she filed her draft of it maybe about two weeks ago.
And I've been using it since. So it's been 15 days. I got my like 15 day streak of using the app notification today. It is a self care, like a mental health based app where basically by taking care of yourself, you are also taking care of this pet bird or whatever animal is really cute and it's helped me.
slowly regain some structure in my life and in a way that like feels non pressurizing. I love also that the subreddit of Finch users has got just the best vibes. Everyone's very supportive. It's no pressure. It's really it's designed for people who, you know, like tasks that you can complete are as simple as getting out of bed each day if you want to.
And you can reward yourself for getting out of bed. You can reward yourself for washing your face, brushing your teeth, drinking water. It's really nice and I actually recommend it to my friend for their kid a preteen kid. I think you need to be like age six and [00:49:00] up to be able to really reap any sort of use from this.
But it is such a great like thoughtful little app designed by two people who were like college buddies who really wanted to just help support each other. It's not very corporate and doesn't feel very money grabby which is nice too. A, check out Cheyenne's piece about it for more information on Engadget, and then B, Finch, an app.
I really quite enjoy it.
Ben: I saw that on the site and I was like, Cherlynn is going to love this. Nice to have some confirmation of that. It's
Devindra: like they've gamified to you, basically.
Ben: You are the Tamagotchi.
Devindra: It's, aren't we all? That's that life. That's the story of life, folks. Alright, thank you for that, Cherlynn.
I need to check that out, too. I want to shout out I am catching up on Severance. It is very good this season. And hoping, I'm hoping to have time to write something about it by the finale. Which I think is a couple of weeks from now or maybe next week, it's coming soon. So a lot is happening in that show.
I love how it's building on the themes of season one, but also not afraid to be weird, not afraid to be like the [00:50:00] very David Lynchian at times too, like we've lost David Lynch, but like his spirit will live on in projects like this. So kind of love that. Also want to shout out Mickey 17, the new film from Bong Joon Ho, who is one of my favorite working directors right now.
Robert Pattinson, multiple Robert Pattinson's dying over and over again. He's, I mean, he does funny voice, like everything he does now, it's like he's, if it's Batman or whatever, he will do funny voice. And I think you should check it out. It's definitely like zany sci fi stuff, but it's also in a very similar way to Severance.
It is ultimately about labor and the way that, you know, capital destroys the value of labor and the rich, will always take advantage of people. And I think it's a really fun, funny movie, maybe it runs a little too long, but it is, it's Bong Joon ho doing satire with sci fi in sci fi, and I just kind of love that.
I love him, love Snowpiercer as a host. Pretty much everything Bong Joon ho has done. But when he gets to be like full zany that's like my zone. I kind of love that. So I don't love this as much as Snowpiercer, but it's [00:51:00] still very good. If you could see it in theaters, definitely check it out. It's Mickey17, by Bong Joon ho.
Cherlynn: Well, that's it for this episode, everyone. Thank you as always for listening. Our theme music is by game composer, Dale North. Our outro music is by our former managing editor, Terrence O'Brien. The podcast is produced by Ben Elman. You can find Davindra online
Devindra: at Davindra at Blue Sky and all those fun places, Mastodon, you know.
And I'll spodcast about movies and TV at TheFilmCast
Cherlynn: you want to send me your favorite macOS shortcuts for the keyboard or the trackpad, you can please send them to me at, via email shirlin at Engadget. com, or on threads, shirlinstagram, C H U R L Y N S T A G H U R E. And then email us your thoughts about the show at podcast at inkadget.
com. Leave us a review wherever you're listening or tuning in, because that will really help this show get discovered and then subscribe on your favorite.[00:52:00]
Ben: Mom's spaghetti.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/engadget-podcast-macbook-air-m4-review-apple-delays-smarter-siri-113018766.html?src=rss
