Macworld Podcast: The year in Apple hardware

In this episode, we take a look back at the major Apple hardware releases. What made an impression? What was a disappointment? Tune in and find out more!

This is episode 964 with Michael Simon, Jason Cross,  and Roman Loyola.  

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

This Week in Apple History 

On December 20, 1996, Apple announced that it would acquire Next Software for $400 million. 

Macworld Mailbag 

On a recent episode we talked about the Apple executive changes, and we broached the topic of the legacy of Apple CEO Tim Cook. People have plenty of thoughts on this. 

He’s already at a pretty low note with ios 26. 

johnnyfive_75 on TikTok

Releasing the Vision Pro flop, fumbling Al, releasing a meh OS reskin, and capitulating & cozying to fascists. That’s his legacy 

pattiestpower on TikTok

Tim Apple should have been replaced YEARS AGO. He may have kept the profits coming short term, but long term he did so much damage to the brand. 

chickenfriedsteak40 on TikTok

If you want to know what Tim Cook’s legacy is – continued growth and stability. Nothing more. 

Peter Windleon on FaceBook

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

Roman Loyola (00:00.548)
while recording but…

Jason Cross (00:00.824)
Let me make sure I’ve got it. Okay, I’m good.

Michael Simon (00:05.23)
All right.

Unscripted, unfiltered, unafraid, welcome to the Macworld Podcast. My name is Michael Simon and I am joined for the last episode of the year by Jason Cross.

Jason Cross (00:18.008)
Good morning.

Michael Simon (00:19.284)
And our producer, Roman Loyal.

Roman Loyola (00:21.636)
Ahoy there.

Michael Simon (00:23.694)
hold on, Roman. Did I miss? Did I update this?

Jason Cross (00:25.207)
You

Roman Loyola (00:26.384)
I was trying to get some energy up.

Jason Cross (00:28.182)
I know, hey.

Roman Loyola (00:29.978)
Hey, welcome to the podcast. Last one.

Michael Simon (00:33.706)
Uh, so we just recorded one like 10 minutes ago and was like, it was like an hour and a half and now we have a second one, but we’re pretending like it’s the end of the year and we have lots of energy. This is episode number 964. That’s right. Including the one we just recorded. All right. Episode number 964. And if you listened to last week’s show, you know what this one is. We’re going to talk about hardware, all the

Roman Loyola (00:36.752)
That’s I mean.

Roman Loyola (00:48.452)
Yes. That is correct. Yes.

Michael Simon (01:00.014)
stuff Apple released on the hardware side last year, last year, last week we talked about software. Everything, yeah, software and services. So everything Apple, everything Apple released on the hardware side of what we like, what we didn’t like, what it means, all that other stuff. Then we’re going to have a year-end version of the worst thing that happened this week, this week in Apple history and our reader mailbag. We’re going to zip through the show because the last one was like, was like three days long. So this was going to be quick.

Jason Cross (01:06.904)
Software and Services.

Michael Simon (01:29.848)
We’re not going to spend much time on the new iPhone, Speaking of reader mailbag, which I just said before I interrupted myself, you can contact us through Blue Sky, Facebook, threads, search for Macworld, look for the Blue Mouse logo, send an email to podcast.macworld.com, comment under video, tell us what you think about what Apple did this year. Tell us what you want Apple to do next year, whatever you want. We will get, look at those and we’ll get to them next year if…

First show will be on January 7th, 8th. We don’t have a show until January. Wow, we have like three or four weeks of no shows.

Jason Cross (02:06.904)
Ha

Michael Simon (02:08.846)
okay. Roman, forget three minutes. Give me a minute and a half to talk about. so, this is our last show before, 2026. So, happy holidays, Merry Christmas, happy new year, happy Hanukkah, happy whatever you celebrate. real quick, we’re off between Christmas and new years. Are you guys, doing anything fun?

Either of you know? Roman says no.

Jason Cross (02:34.86)
Nothing special this year. My wife and I usually travel for Christmas. We either go to her family or my family, both of which are a thousand, 2,000 miles from here. But this year we’re staying here.

Michael Simon (02:39.832)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (02:45.186)
Yeah. Where does, where does her, her family live? know you go to New Orleans. Is that her family or your family?

Jason Cross (02:50.04)
Kansas City, Kansas City, her, her mom and dad live in the middle of nowhere, Kansas, but her sisters, he has two sisters and they’re both married and they both live in Kansas City and we stay with them and her parents come up. So Kansas City.

Michael Simon (02:56.056)
Okay.

Michael Simon (03:04.654)
Do you ever see a terrorist who to travel is Kelsey walking around? Roman, you said, no, you’re not doing anything.

Jason Cross (03:07.904)
Yeah, all the time. They walk through the burbs of Kansas City like constantly.

Roman Loyola (03:17.744)
No, we had a big thing last year. So this year we’re staying home. yeah. In the interest of keeping this short, no, nothing.

Michael Simon (03:25.518)
Alright, well quiet. I, I…

Michael Simon (03:30.506)
Yeah, I don’t do much either. We host Christmas. My parents and brother come up for a couple of days. And then my parents come back for New Year’s and we spend New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. I hate like New Year’s. I don’t party or drink or anything. So my New Year’s Eve is very quiet. I watch whatever the ball drop show that my parents want to watch is and that’s about it. We don’t do much.

Jason Cross (03:57.624)
We have a pretty chill New Year’s as well. Usually, sometimes we can go over to our friend’s house or something, but no, the days of huge big parties are behind us.

Michael Simon (04:06.862)
Kinda, yeah. Like, we’re all too old for that stuff. There was a time. It ain’t now.

Jason Cross (04:12.726)
And it’s not about staying up late because I’m up past midnight every night. Like that’s just, it’s just my life.

Michael Simon (04:16.149)
Sure.

Michael Simon (04:21.522)
All good. That was pretty short, Roman, right? All right, so yeah, last show before the break, we’re talking about Apple hardware. And a lot of, it’s kind of like software was a bigger deal this year than the hardware was. Liquid glass, I think there wasn’t like a ton of, so they released a lot of stuff. Basically everything but a new iMac, Mac mini maybe, iPad mini, the mini stuff.

Jason Cross (04:25.496)
You

Michael Simon (04:51.384)
They didn’t do. But so they updated everything, but there wasn’t anything like that was like monumental. Like they didn’t have like a groundbreaking new anything this year. Right? Let’s not miss something.

Jason Cross (05:02.052)
I wouldn’t say groundbreaking. I think the iPhone is in the middle of like a three, two or three year shakeup. just started this year and we’ll get to that when we get to the iPhone stuff, but there’s some significant shakeup starting with the iPhone that will continue next year and the year after. but yeah, there were a lot of chip and chip, products this year, you know,

Michael Simon (05:10.285)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (05:26.286)
There were.

Jason Cross (05:29.26)
whether it’s iPhones, iPads, Mac Studios, MacBook Pros, a lot of stuff was just like, well, if it got a new processor and the processor’s great, but it didn’t get fancy new displays or cameras or anything else.

Michael Simon (05:46.412)
We got the three new generations. Roman, maybe I’m wrong, but is this the first time we ever got? So we got the M3 Ultra in the Mac Studio. We got the M4. maybe we got that last year. we did. Forget it. My thing is wrong. Right. Right. But we already had the chip. Yeah. So we got the M3 Ultra, we got the M5 later this year.

Jason Cross (05:56.151)
Mm-hmm.

Roman Loyola (06:03.504)
It’s confusing because the M4 MacBook Air becomes comes out, but the M4 comes out right.

Jason Cross (06:11.65)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Simon (06:16.142)
The iPad Air has an M3, like there’s a whole bunch of generations going on. The Mac Pro still has an M2 Ultra, which is just crazy. That’s $6,000 and you’re getting a chip from like three years ago. But yeah, there wasn’t, Jason said like the iPhone aside, this was probably the most meaningfully updated year for the iPhone in a while.

Jason Cross (06:36.536)
Yes.

Michael Simon (06:43.192)
But like Macs were like, okay, you know, the MacBook Air got the M4. Okay. I mean, it’s great. You know, they got a hundred dollar price cut, was nice. Everything has 16 gigs of RAM now, which is nice. Like all that, you know, it’s all good stuff. Like I’m not saying Apple didn’t give us interesting and, or not interesting, but it didn’t give us like viable products. It’s just like on the, on the exciting front. It kind of wasn’t there this year, which is fine.

Jason Cross (07:10.38)
Yeah. And there’s some, some stuff that was kind of rumored that not necessarily super exciting, but just didn’t get, we never got our home pad mini. mean, home pod mini too. we never got the new air tags, you know, those, things were like rumored to drop right at the end of the year.

Michael Simon (07:14.413)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (07:18.38)
Right. I’m pied mini. Right? Right.

Michael Simon (07:26.112)
Apple TV 4K like that hasn’t been updated in a couple of years. That was part of that.

Jason Cross (07:29.538)
Yep. I’m not sure it needs to be, but you’re right. It’s part of that group of like, yeah, sure. Before the end of the year, they’re going to drop these things. And to be fair, like they did this with the AirPods Max. They just slid into it. We all thought we weren’t going to get it. Then like late December, they’re like, guess what, you guys? And so it’s possible that.

Michael Simon (07:35.693)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (07:46.488)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (07:50.882)
That would be something if we got an air tag next week.

Jason Cross (07:53.644)
Yeah, that would be something, but weird.

Michael Simon (07:56.472)
Well, actually it would be last week at this point. wait, wait, hold on. Roman, what are you posting this? So it would have been last week if we got it, but we recorded this on the 16th. I don’t think Apple’s ever released anything this late into December. I might be wrong.

Jason Cross (07:58.776)
We were in the future.

Jason Cross (08:11.372)
Just AirPods bags.

Michael Simon (08:13.282)
That was when? was like the fifth or the eighth or something. I don’t think it was this quite this late.

Jason Cross (08:21.24)
I’m going to look up December 15th. It was the 15th. Yeah. wait. I announced on the eighth and then shipping on the 15th. So, so they, they, they had announced it by now. So, but that was also a new product. would announce air tags too. They would just be like, it would go up on the site with a splashy thing says like now longer range and yada yada.

Michael Simon (08:21.528)
But it was in December. wow. So it was yesterday. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So that was late. Yeah, yeah.

Michael Simon (08:38.837)
Right.

Michael Simon (08:43.296)
It seems strange that of all the products, AirTag, by all accounts, they’re done. They’re ready to go. There’s a new model somewhere and they just haven’t shipped it. don’t know. I mean…

Jason Cross (08:57.878)
And it’s, it’s the one that has the least. makes sense to wait for the HomePod mini because they’ve got the big new Siri thing come in and maybe they’re going to dump all the stuff that works on Siri. Like then, even if it’s ready to go and it’s be fine, they’re going to, but the air tags have none of that. The air tags are just, it’s just going to be like longer range, more tamper resistant speaker. Like it’s not, I don’t even know that they’re going to give it a name.

Michael Simon (09:05.335)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (09:18.636)
Right. It’ll look the same. You’ll still need a case to put them on a key chain. Right. Yeah.

Jason Cross (09:24.854)
Like they’ll put parentheses second generation where they have to on a support document, but it’ll just be like the new air tags and they’ll just be air tags and you’ll just buy your tags and they’ll be better now. So yeah.

Michael Simon (09:35.07)
AirTag is, that’s like the unsung hero of Apple’s lineup. Like they’re 20 bucks for the most part. You can get a pack of four for like 80 bucks on Amazon all the time. And they’re really frigging good. like, so my son has a graphing calculator. He’s in, he’s in ninth grade math and you know, they’re expensive. So I bought him a case. I popped an AirTag in there and he’ll know if he forgets it when he goes to class. It’s fantastic.

Jason Cross (09:44.13)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (10:03.64)
They’re like, they’re so good. It pops up on your phone. you you, you, you want, got, it’s got gotten that notification a million times. Like all my keys are behind or my, you know, Apple stuff has a built-in. So like, you forget your iPhone somewhere, it’ll tell you it’s, it’s good stuff. The air tag is, is fantastic. They should make it work with, maybe they do. They don’t work with their Android, right? There’s, there’s no app for that. Like, like you need, you need a iPhone.

Jason Cross (10:27.672)
They don’t, correct, there’s no, they don’t work properly with Android. have secure, they work together with Google on security stuff so that like if someone’s got an error in Android, they’ll still get that warning that an air tag’s following them. Like, so if somebody plants an air tag on you and you’ve got an Android phone, you’ll still get warned. They have that, but you can’t, there’s no way to like track your own air tag or anything.

Michael Simon (10:36.44)
Right.

Michael Simon (10:44.014)
The tracking stuff.

Jason Cross (10:57.324)
They did make it work with third party stuff, Find My, they opened Find My to third party stuff. And there’s now all of these like great like cards you could put in a wallet, like card shaped things and stuff like that. Other form factors than the little fat disk. That’s super helpful, right? And there are a lot of those out there now that are like 30 bucks or something. yeah, it’s just as, and those are great. Those are killer.

Michael Simon (11:00.654)
Fine by you.

Michael Simon (11:14.062)
Right.

Michael Simon (11:20.142)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Simon (11:23.746)
Yeah. So I don’t know if we need a second gen, we didn’t get one, but AirTag still, you know, like the value of Apple’s lineup.

Jason Cross (11:28.811)
Yeah, I-

It’s supposed to do a handful of things that I’m glad about like the precision finding, meaning the ultra wideband finding will have a longer range. That’s fine. Whatever you get close enough with the Bluetooth and then it takes over. does need the speaker needs to be harder to disable and they are doing that. So if the rumors are true and then it needs better reporting about how much battery life is left and that’s the other thing it’s supposed to be doing. Like right now it kind of don’t know.

It’s just it has battery and then it tells you it’s dying and then you’re like, but could you have warned me when I was at 20 %? Could I see the battery life level? They’re supposed to address some of that. So that’ll be huge. But yeah, these are nice little things.

Michael Simon (12:02.284)
Right. It tells you when it. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Michael Simon (12:17.762)
Yeah, Roman, you, we, we completely derailed the show like immediately. Like this is supposed to be looking like we’re, we, turned, started to do an air tag preview. This is what happens when we do two shows in a row. Like we’re now, we’re all off script here. all right. So let’s look at what they did. So we got, we got three iPads that were iPad air with an three and that was it. iPad with an a 16 and that was it.

Jason Cross (12:26.072)
Yeah, instead of talk. It’s well. But it’s it’s not a 2025 hardware, that’s for sure. All right.

Roman Loyola (12:27.492)
Well, air tags are hardware. They just aren’t this year’s hardware.

Roman Loyola (12:37.445)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (12:47.412)
and the iPad Pro just recently with an M5 and basically that’s it. Like they’re fine. Prices didn’t increase or anything. So, you know, it’s all good, but there’s not much in the way of like features other than the new processors. And, know, we’ve been through this before. Like iPads don’t annual processor updates. just, they just don’t. The differences between an M2 and an M3 and an iPad Air is academic. Like you’re never going to feel the difference in.

That performance, I don’t think.

Jason Cross (13:20.342)
Not for that product. No. I mean, the M5 was a surprisingly good jump from the M4 and it matters in the Mac. They updated the Vision Pro with it. they did that and they did a strap that also goes on the top of your head. They don’t even call it anything else. It’s just still the Vision Pro. It’s not like Vision Pro 1.1.

Michael Simon (13:25.974)
Yeah. Yeah. In the Mac. Yeah.

Jason Cross (13:46.296)
So yeah, a lot of chip and ship stuff. The chips are fine. The products are fine. I think all the excitement was in the iPhone this year and AirPods. AirPods Pro 3, mean, which was…

Michael Simon (13:57.612)
AirBuds Pro 3, but they were fine. We didn’t get the new chip that we thought we were going to get in the AirBuds Pro. You know, the silicon tips are nice and stuff, but it wasn’t really the update that we thought it was going to be. Yeah, right. It’s okay. It was like everything else. was okay. Like there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s still 250 and they’re better.

Jason Cross (14:12.492)
Yeah, foam infused silicone tips and true.

Jason Cross (14:23.766)
No, it’s an improvement.

Michael Simon (14:27.256)
but it’s not the leap that we thought AirPods Pro 3 were gonna bring.

Jason Cross (14:35.874)
But it gets interesting when we start going through the iPhone. Okay, well we’ll start.

Michael Simon (14:38.19)
All right. So let’s get to it. Cause that’s it. Like that, that’s, that’s the, that’s the big, the big event was the, there was only two events this year, WWDC and the iPhone event. So the iPhone event was like the big show.

Jason Cross (14:43.18)
Yeah, let’s.

Jason Cross (14:47.906)
Well, so.

that in the spring we got iPhone 16e right which was a big change they jumped they stopped they stopped doing SEs that they’re only gonna release every two three whatever years they went to a numbered release that’s the same as the current generation because 16 was a current generation at the time and presumably because they’re going to do this every year right so we’re gonna get a 17e and an 18e and we’re gonna get every spring an e of the current number we assume

Michael Simon (14:52.782)
right.

Michael Simon (15:19.19)
We should. I mean, we don’t know yet because there hasn’t been a second one, but we think so, yeah.

Jason Cross (15:20.418)
We should.

Right, right. That would be the point of doing this. It was a big improvement from the SE line, right? And it was the first one with their own modem. They introduced the C1, which turned out to be just fine, which is about the best thing you could say about Apple going in with a 5G modem because it’s really hard to make one. And so for them to release one and kind of nobody noticed, except for people like us who like literally test it, like everybody else is just like, yeah.

Michael Simon (15:37.538)
Yeah. Which is what you want. Yeah.

Jason Cross (15:52.728)
It’s a phone and it works. So they did that and it’s fine. Nobody’s going like, it’s too slow. Oh, I’m dropping calls. Big success for Apple. [iPhone] 16e we thought it was pretty good at the time. In retrospect now, I would never get one when the [iPhone] 17 is so good.

Michael Simon (16:14.85)
That’s well, that’s part of it. So it’s, it’s The 16e is $599 right? Right. it has a notch, not to, not the dynamic Island. It has an OLED display. It’s, what’s the size? Six point one, six point one inches. and it has an A 17 chip. it’s, it’s, it’s last year’s internal stuff, but only one camera. And a couple of years ago, screen tech.

Jason Cross (16:19.776)
Right. Yep.

Michael Simon (16:44.782)
has Face ID, like it’s a massive improvement over the [iPhone] SE. It’s also $200 more than the, or $180 more than the SE. And.

Jason Cross (16:54.712)
but it’s still $200 cheaper than the cheapest regular iPhone, you know.

Michael Simon (16:57.55)
That’s right. But as Jason says, they unveiled the 17 and it got a ton of upgrades. the 16e is in a weird position.

Jason Cross (17:04.631)
Yeah, so.

Jason Cross (17:08.438)
Yeah. So skipping forward to September, they changed up the iPhone lineup quite considerably. There’s no 17 plus and they replaced it with this iPhone air that has no number, which makes us all wonder what the heck is going to go on with it. yeah, which, which we can talk about that in a second, but the 17 got everything it has been missing for, for so many years. Like it got

Michael Simon (17:22.894)
Right. Right. If everything, yeah.

Michael Simon (17:32.3)
Right. Like literally everything.

Jason Cross (17:35.448)
Right. It promotion. It got always on. It’s got the dynamic island. It got a brighter screen. It’s the a 19 is quite a bit better than the a 18 was longer battery life. And they introduced to all the iPhones. Right? Yeah. The selfie cam that they put on all the iPhone 17 like line and the iPhone air is this big 18 megapixel square pixel square sensor thing that does horizontal or vertical without turning your thing and

Michael Simon (17:47.768)
Better selfie cam, better cameras, know?

Jason Cross (18:04.312)
stabilization. It’s like an actual and the quality that it shoots is better. Like it’s a finally a big upgrade to the selfie cam in iPhones this year. So all of that in the 799 model, I would not recommend the 599 model to anyone who just doesn’t really can’t afford the iPhone 17. I would tell anybody it’s well worth $200.

Michael Simon (18:11.662)
Great.

Michael Simon (18:26.22)
Yeah, I don’t disagree.

Yeah, if it was $499, I think so. Yeah. But like Apple is prone to do, the first generation, priced a little. So they did this with the iPad a couple of years ago. If you remember, it came out, it was $449. And we were like, it’s $50 too much. It’s really good and blah, But it’s like $449, the Air is only $599. And then they cut the price by a hundred bucks and it’s great.

Jason Cross (18:33.933)
yeah. Now you’re in a whole other rage. Yeah.

Jason Cross (18:56.439)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (18:59.566)
So if they come out in March and cut the price of the 17E to 499, all of a sudden it’s a great phone again.

Jason Cross (19:10.878)
Or if it’s still 599, but they do some of these other improvements, like it’s got a better display, dynamic islands, if they do some of these other things, it’ll probably have the selfie cam, but I don’t expect it’ll have any of the other stuff yet.

Michael Simon (19:20.28)
Sure.

Michael Simon (19:25.378)
I think it’ll still have a camera instead of two.

Jason Cross (19:28.79)
Yeah, one camera. It’ll have.

Michael Simon (19:30.06)
Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to get promotion. I’d be very surprised. Yeah.

Jason Cross (19:34.434)
Probably no promotion, probably no always on, probably no, it probably will have the new selfie cam.

Actually, and maybe probably the new selfie cam in Dynamic Island, because I don’t think the new selfie cams, that whole module fits up in that place.

Michael Simon (19:43.881)
I think so. I think it probably will.

Michael Simon (19:53.038)
Yeah. Yeah. We’ve heard rumors that it’s going to get the dynamic island, but so the, the, the, the 16 E was something that we were, we had heard about for a long time. The SC was on the market for three years or three years. So like we were waiting for it and we got it and it’s everything we wanted, except the price is just a little bit too high. 599 is just a little bit, a little bit too high. And you know, right.

Jason Cross (20:11.085)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (20:14.648)
Right. didn’t seem that bad then, but then the 17 came out and the value on the 17. Also, they doubled the storage to 256 on the 17. They did everything and they kept it at 799 and it’s the runaway hit of the year. It’s like the best iPhone in a long time. And then Pro and Pro Max, which are as expected. mean, it’s a pro version of the chip. It’s the better cameras. Other than that, it’s,

Michael Simon (20:22.306)
Yeah, yeah, everything, right?

Right. Yeah.

Michael Simon (20:38.882)
I do.

Jason Cross (20:42.764)
It’s the better cameras, it’s the pro version of the chip.

Michael Simon (20:43.34)
It’s a somewhat new design with that thing. The little thing below the cab or whatever you call it.

Jason Cross (20:50.168)
There’s a little area in the the back. the the the camera bump is now wide. It’s like all the width. The plateau.

Michael Simon (20:55.15)
The, the right, the big camera buns and then the smaller. Yeah. Right. And then the smaller thing below it. It’s, it’s all right. I don’t Roman has the, has the pro. are you, well, Jason, you do too, but Roman, what do you think of the, you, oh, you have the, right. You have the air and the other one, Roman, what do you think of the, uh, like the design now that you’ve had it for a couple of months.

Jason Cross (21:07.809)
I don’t.

Jason Cross (21:12.011)
of the air in the rig.

Roman Loyola (21:19.888)
The design’s fine. I’m not a big fan of the giant plateau, but I think it is.

Michael Simon (21:24.736)
Okay. You’d rather have a square one in the corner like I did before.

Roman Loyola (21:30.48)
I don’t know what I rather have because I don’t like the square either. I just feel like there’s a design hurdle that can’t be overcome there. The plateau is kind of better because when you put your phone down, it’s, you know, at least it’s on an even or not a, yeah, it doesn’t wobble. So I like that better, but I still don’t like it overall. But in general, the design, you know,

Michael Simon (21:33.006)
Okay.

Jason Cross (21:36.28)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (21:40.652)
Yeah, I agree.

Jason Cross (21:50.2)
It doesn’t wobble quite so much.

Michael Simon (21:50.2)
some way. It was a little bit.

Roman Loyola (21:58.832)
I like the orange and everything.

Jason Cross (22:01.794)
yeah. Cosmic orange was a big hit. and, and Roman mentioned this back when we had our iPhone show, like how much he, I mean, the cameras are great. The battery life is amazing. Like it’s, it’s, that’s what pros always were. Right. So the big, the big improvement was in the 17 and then the air was a big change this year. We, we, it’s been kind of panned for being too expensive with too many compromises.

Michael Simon (22:02.157)
Yeah.

Roman Loyola (22:11.63)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (22:31.288)
But it’s the first time they really did something new with the iPhone in like five or six years. Like an iPhone 16 and an iPhone 12 look pretty much the same.

Michael Simon (22:36.108)
It’s been a while, yeah.

Michael Simon (22:42.102)
And even like the mini and the plus, we’re just smaller and larger versions of the variations on a beam, if you will.

Jason Cross (22:47.66)
Right. Yeah. To have an iPhone where they said, like, it really pushed the thinness, like, super far, and then they totally changed the frame, and it’s weirdly super strong. Like, they made this thin thing, and it’s the strongest iPhone they make.

Michael Simon (23:07.054)
Which they, had to do it because people were like already saying that it was going to, Oh, there’s no way that this thing’s not going to bend. So I was like, well, screw you. We’re going to make it so you cannot bend it no matter what you do. Right.

Jason Cross (23:11.959)
Right.

Right. Right. It’s harder to bend than the regular iPhones. it’s, you know, but it’s a thousand bucks. It only has one camera. The battery life’s worse. It has the, it has the a 19 pro, but of a version of it, that’s no faster than the regular eight 19. Like it doesn’t really, why’d they do that? Like, I don’t know. so it would be a great,

Michael Simon (23:36.109)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Cross (23:42.84)
$800 phone. It would be great if you were choosing between Oh, do I want a second camera and it’s fatter and it has longer battery life or do I want to give up those things to have it be skinnier? If that was the choice, it would be amazing. But it’s that and it’s $200 more. And so that was Oh, I know you love it.

Michael Simon (23:58.774)
I’ve got on record. So I have the air. Yeah. I bought it. Like I happily like I didn’t, it’s not a review unit. I paid the thousand bucks for it. Yeah. I love it. And it’s one of those things where if that’s what you’re looking for in a phone, like I pick up my son’s 17 or I think my wife has, I think it’s 16 pro and it’s like, I it’s so thick and it’s so cumbersome.

Jason Cross (24:28.312)
the pro for sure. The pro is even more. Yeah.

Michael Simon (24:28.962)
And it sounds ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. Like it sounds absurd because it’s like, well, who cares? We’ve been saying that for years. Who cares how thin it is? I’m telling you right now, man, it matters. Like the way I’m able to hold it. And part of it is because it’s also a little bit smaller than the, than the, than the pro. It’s like, kind of like, has that like in between size screen. It’s six, six and a half. Right. The max. Yeah. Right.

Jason Cross (24:50.486)
It’s smaller than the Max. It’s bigger than the Pro and the regular, and it’s smaller than Max. That is the Goldilocks size. I love the size of it, because I find the Pro Max to be too big.

Michael Simon (24:59.862)
Yeah. And they, they positioned the camera bump or the plateau at the top where like it doesn’t ever hit your hand. So it feels like you’re using an extremely thin phone and like the way I’m able to use it with, with one hand, the way I’m able to hold it without it. Like, you know, I had the pro, I had the plus the plus was kind of cumbersome and the pro before that, like it was, it was heavy. So like, it’s kind of like hits all the marks for me.

I would buy it again in a second for a thousand bucks.

Jason Cross (25:32.052)
I went, I had, I had the review unit and I used it for until last week. I used, I stuck with it until last week. Last week, I moved everything over to a regular iPhone 17. And every day, I love it more. literally every single day, I’m like, I’m so glad I can take a photo up close to this little piece of text I’m trying to take a photo of.

Michael Simon (25:47.064)
Mm-hmm.

Good.

Michael Simon (25:57.89)
Right. That’s the one thing I miss is the macro stuff.

Jason Cross (26:01.848)
It’s just as light. It’s just as one handle and that’s partly because it’s smaller. And I do love the slightly larger size of the Air more, but everything else about the regular iPhone 17, now that it has promotion and always on and the brighter screen and all the things, like every single day, I’m just like, if these were the same price, I would still choose this one. And I would definitely not pay $200 more for the Air.

Michael Simon (26:07.126)
A little bit.

Michael Simon (26:28.854)
Right. Would you pay $200 for it? like if that was nine, eight 99 and the air was seven 99, let’s just say I’m like an alternate universe. Would you still, would you still pay? Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Cross (26:36.136)
if it was swapped, would I pay more for this? That’s a good question. That’s a good question. It’d be an interesting choice if they were the same price. I don’t know that I’d pay more for the regular iPhone 17. Yeah, I don’t know. That’s a tough one. But it’s got the sound is better. I watch a video and I’m like, right. It’s supposed not supposed to sound like that.

Michael Simon (26:56.746)
Yeah, I’ll give you that too. I didn’t think when people were complaining about the lack of a stereo speaker, like I literally said, like, cares? It’s a phone. No, it actually does matter. the air, the three things that do, I won’t say bug me, but they do, I do notice on the air is the stereo speaker, the lack of a second lens, particularly for macro photography. And I do sometimes have to charge it.

Jason Cross (27:10.604)
Yeah, you hear it every time.

Michael Simon (27:27.308)
like at some point during the day, like a lot of the times, like if I use it for anything other than like a normal day, I’m going to have to plug it in. And it’s not a huge deal. Like I have them in my car. I got one on my desk. They’re like, they plugs all over the place, but I do have to do it. Whereas I’m sure Jason, don’t.

Jason Cross (27:42.626)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (27:47.458)
After not on the regular 17, I haven’t even looked at a charger. It’s funny how long the battery life lasts. I’m so used to using the pros and the larger phones because those were my daily drivers for a while. So going back to the small phone, it’s been a couple of years and they’ve improved the battery life a lot in the last couple of years. so, yeah, don’t even get…

Michael Simon (27:52.718)
You

Michael Simon (28:08.43)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (28:14.07)
I’m one those people who when I get to like 25 % I’m like, my phone’s almost dead. yeah, and I’m running and I don’t even get to that. The air I never, I never got to that point where every day I or like I had to charge it in the afternoon, like I, but it was right there. At the end of the day, it was always like right about to die. And I sat and I would look at it going like, well, in a year, this is not going to make it through the day. Like when this thing gets

Michael Simon (28:17.923)
Hahaha.

Michael Simon (28:24.781)
Okay.

Michael Simon (28:39.852)
Well, yeah, there’s that too. right.

Jason Cross (28:41.462)
When this battery degrades 5%, I will be charging this thing every single day, even when I just doom scroll on social media all day like this.

Michael Simon (28:49.838)
So mine’s at 63 % right now, which is pretty good. So it’s 3.30 where I am. But I also have been recording this damn podcast for four hours. So I haven’t touched it since like 11 o’clock. So let me look at my, assuming I have, it’s a hundred percent. Jeez, it better be. I’m just curious to see the battery health. Like it’s gotta be, right?

Jason Cross (28:54.85)
That’s pretty good.

Hahaha

Jason Cross (29:14.42)
if it says anything, if it was, yeah, would be weird.

Michael Simon (29:19.662)
Yeah, yeah, it’s 100. I was just curious to see if it degraded at all. Yeah, I probably won’t have it long enough because I do upgrade every year. So I’ll trade it in and they’ll give me $600 or whatever. But I love it. And I don’t care if I’m the only one who does.

Jason Cross (29:29.846)
Yeah, every year we’re getting a new one.

Jason Cross (29:39.8)
What’s interesting to me about the iPhone shakeup is that this is the start of about a three year process where they finally after it’s got to be six or seven years now really change the iPhone lineup. instead of small, big, probably we get, we’ve got this air, we’ll probably get an air to next year. We’re not going to get an iPhone 18 next year. That’s going to get bumped into the spring of 2027. We’re going to get the folding iPhone.

Michael Simon (29:46.958)
Great.

Michael Simon (29:54.018)
That’s what they’re saying, yeah.

Jason Cross (30:08.586)
Later in 2027, where we get this 20th anniversary iPhone that’s all glass, it’s all the way to the edge and like the, the dynamic islands practically gone, or maybe it is gone. Like there, there are big changes to not just what the lineup is, but when they release things and everything. And it’s taking, it’s going to take them from iPhone air to late 2027 to get through that. But we’ve sort of kicked off this.

Michael Simon (30:24.899)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Simon (30:28.749)
Right.

Jason Cross (30:37.752)
evolution of iPhone. That’s kind of cool to me because for year after year, it’s been like, well, the chips faster, the battery lasts longer, the camera’s better. And that’s what you get. There’s been all these other little things like faster wireless charging or what I put like the an iPhone at 11 and an iPhone 16 are the same.

Michael Simon (30:48.472)
Right. Yeah, I mean.

Michael Simon (30:57.442)
Yeah, essentially, yeah. This could be the last year where we get four models in the fall. They’re saying next year, just the pro and maybe the pro, but maybe the error, you know, like we’re not totally sure, but it’s definitely going to look different next year.

Jason Cross (31:04.61)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (31:11.734)
Yeah, it’s going to look different. It could be four because it would be the second air, which I think going to call it air to air second generation. What are you going to do? But like an updated air.

Michael Simon (31:19.5)
Yeah, that’s right. And maybe nothing, if it’s selling as poorly as people say, maybe they just scrap it and they say, you know what, it’s just not, it’s not worth it to us. We’ll just sell this one for another year. If anybody wants it, they’ll buy it. We’ll cut the price by a hundred bucks and see if anyone buys it.

Jason Cross (31:26.956)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (31:36.674)
But if they can improve the battery life a little and add a second camera, which is also rumors, then maybe it’s great to get, I don’t know. So Air, Pro, Pro Max, and the folding phone. So four, but four very different phones, right, than what we’re used to. And then two phones in the spring, know, the whole line-up’s getting shaken up. It’s pretty neat. And it started this year, yeah.

Michael Simon (31:40.462)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (31:50.87)
Sure. Yeah. Yep.

Michael Simon (32:00.354)
Yeah. Roman on the Mac front. Is there anything like? I don’t know. I don’t know what my question is, but I’m thrown it to you.

Roman Loyola (32:13.346)
It’s been pretty, well, I think that’s indicative of the year that the Mac had. It was pretty quiet. I mean, the only real noise was that the M3 Ultra came out. That kind of surprised everyone because it came out at the same time as the M4 Max. they decided to make the Mac Studio high-end, the M3 Ultra, not an M4 Ultra. So that kind of threw everyone off. But you know, the MacBooks,

Jason Cross (32:14.066)
Ha ha ha

Roman Loyola (32:43.152)
We only got one new MacBook Pro this year, the M4. We got the M4 or M5 and then the M4 MacBook Air back in March, I think. Yeah. That was basically it. It’s been pretty quiet.

Michael Simon (32:46.413)
Mm-hmm.

M5. Yeah.

Jason Cross (32:50.646)
We got the M5, sorry.

Michael Simon (32:55.212)
Yep.

Jason Cross (33:01.112)
there was that rumor about them making a sort of purpose-built, inexpensive MacBook that at first was rumored to come by the end of the year, but then that rumor kind of said, it’s going to be early next year. That’s really the most exciting thing going on in Mac land right now is that like, it’s not just going to be a MacBook Air that they sell cheaper. Like a cut down Mac would air. It’s going to have a, its own shell, its own body, you know, and it’s going to be made to be cheaper and it’s going to have an A series processor.

Michael Simon (33:07.285)
Right.

Michael Simon (33:17.059)
Yeah.

Roman Loyola (33:17.828)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (33:29.804)
Man, all that’s very exciting and it missed the window for 2025.

Michael Simon (33:35.458)
Right. Yeah, we didn’t hear any like credible reports in the sense that like, well, Mark Gurman is the one that is most, I guess, reliable as far as that stuff goes. But there were reports that said like, maybe it’s coming this year. I’m not convinced we’re getting it at all. We’ll see. Like, I hope so. I really do hope so. But it’s just all…

Jason Cross (33:54.138)
okay.

Roman Loyola (33:59.184)
Save that for the next podcast.

Michael Simon (34:00.984)
Yeah, you’re right. We keep veering into 2026 territory. Yes, I know. Particularly when I get like, as we started, like it wasn’t really an exciting hardware year. What’s your favorite Mac of the year, Roman? Do you have?

Jason Cross (34:01.321)
Yeah, yep.

next year. It’s hard not to look ahead and be excited about what’s coming.

Roman Loyola (34:09.582)
Right, right, because this year was kind of quiet.

Roman Loyola (34:19.28)
The ones I tested, well, I’ve been using the M5 MacBook Pro. It’s a nice machine. The speed’s fast. The one thing that I think you guys are kind of sliding is the 40 watt dynamic power adapter with 60 watt max.

Michael Simon (34:20.298)
Of the ones you tested I guess.

Michael Simon (34:37.582)
How did I know you were gonna throw a curveball there?

Roman Loyola (34:40.272)
Well, that’s how quiet it has been in terms of hardware.

Jason Cross (34:41.688)
That’s true, it’s a game changer.

Jason Cross (34:48.044)
Yeah. I mean, yep.

Michael Simon (34:49.326)
Uh, Jason, do you say that plug in it’s it kind of doesn’t really do anything. Just a plug.

Jason Cross (34:54.936)
It’s basically a 60 watt power adapter that really only guarantees that you’ll get 40. It will give you 60 until it gets too hot or the device. Every device is dynamic. All the plugs will sync to the device. So the device is like, can’t take it this much wattage and they’ll step it down. It gets really technical like they use a different thing that

Michael Simon (34:58.636)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (35:07.426)
But don’t all plugs do that?

kinda.

Jason Cross (35:24.17)
steps down in finer increments and more frequently and all that other stuff. But also if the plug itself gets too hot, it’ll step down to 40. That’s why they call it 40 with 60 watt max. But it’ll stay at 60 watts for at least 15 minutes. And usually whatever you’re charging will step down the wattage before that anyway. It’ll use lower voltage by then. So it’s basically a 60 watt power.

Michael Simon (35:51.832)
Right.

Jason Cross (35:54.008)
plug. It’s it’s it’s fine. It’s great little tight. It’s very compact. It’s cool. But I kind of still love the little dual charger that Apple makes. And a million a million other companies make these little dual chargers but

Michael Simon (36:05.366)
Yeah, that’s the best one.

Michael Simon (36:09.58)
Yeah. The 35, it’s only 35 Watts. right? 45 Watts. The dual one. Yeah. think it’s 35. But yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s really perfect for like an iPad and iPhone and a Mac book air or something. It’s great. Apple watch. Did we talk about Apple watch yet? Yeah.

Jason Cross (36:14.944)
What? Apple dual one? Yeah, something like $235.40.

Roman Loyola (36:18.724)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (36:22.786)
Yeah. There’s the I was gonna say it’s been such a slow year. We just skipped over Apple Watch because Apple Watch series 11 is the same thing as the series 10. Like what’s different? Like and then Ultra three, you know, these were the states you got space black, right? That was it. That was it. All right. You’re right.

Michael Simon (36:30.786)
Meh.

Basically,

Michael Simon (36:43.982)
Not even. Like I think they had that last year.

The Ultra 3 got satellite networking, which, you know, okay, it’s good, I guess, and it got better battery life. It has like 40 something hours of battery now. But the Black Titanium was, I think that that was the two, the update for the two.

Jason Cross (36:53.665)
Right.

Yeah.

Jason Cross (37:09.312)
You’re right, I think that was an update for the two.

Michael Simon (37:11.234)
But yeah, like as Jason said, nothing, I mean, they’re good. The Apple watches are great. Like we do this a lot when we talk about the Apple watch. And I don’t know what Apple could really do to make it like radically different or better. I’ll tell you what’s impressive is that we’re 12 generations in and the bands still work on every model. Like that’s cool.

Jason Cross (37:20.056)
Yeah, skip a year.

Michael Simon (37:37.986)
But the watch is great. Like, there’s not a ton that could change.

Jason Cross (37:38.136)
I feel like that’s.

Jason Cross (37:42.04)
I feel like that’s what they’d have to do to make it an interesting change is change the shape incompatible bands like make a round one and the bands with a different set of bands and you’re going to keep them for 10 years this other band design or something like that. You can make bands that are smarter. They have like some communication when you link them in but then you have to that’s tricky to do with the water resistance and stuff but like you know there’s some stuff that potentially could be done but

Michael Simon (38:06.125)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (38:12.214)
I mean, the one thing that everybody wants is multi day battery life just like, let the let the battery last for four days like

Michael Simon (38:16.674)
Yeah. And they’re close. The Ultra, the Ultra can do multi-day, but it’s big. And the Series 11 now they got up to, they rated for 24 hours. So it’s at least a full day. And depending on your use, so you can probably get it to most of a second day. But yeah, it’s going to take some battery, something breakthrough, efficiency chip breakthrough to really get to like.

Jason Cross (38:22.583)
Yeah, it’s.

Jason Cross (38:42.23)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (38:44.482)
Like realistically, you need it to last like three days. So you can take it out on a Friday, come back Sunday night and not have to worry about it.

Jason Cross (38:51.244)
Yeah, if you go on an overnight trip and you forgot your watch charger, it’s going to be fine. Like that’s what you want. yeah, display tech, the display uses a lot. The chip uses a lot. They’re getting there on the chip. can just, they can just stop making it faster. Just use all these new chip manufacturing technologies to make it.

Michael Simon (38:54.444)
Right.

Michael Simon (38:57.973)
Exactly.

Michael Simon (39:04.844)
Yeah, of course.

Michael Simon (39:11.758)
Yeah, the chip this year’s chip based on, actually Apple said it itself. Like it’s the same as last year. Usually they give it a new name, but it’s the same chip this year. They actually said, know what? It’s still the S10. We’re not going to lie to you. It’s the same chip. they, um, the, we we did get a new se, se three, which is really good. It got an always on display, like the iPhone 17. That was like the theme of the year, uh, adding things that were missing.

Jason Cross (39:19.416)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (39:26.22)
You

Michael Simon (39:39.406)
So it gave you got the always on display that you didn’t have. Um, it has 5g now it has the S 10 chip and for 250 bucks and sometimes 200 on Amazon, it’s a really, really good entry level or maybe not even entry level. It’s just a really good smartwatch for that price for any price. Yeah, it’s good. Even if you pay 250 for it, it’s excellent.

Jason Cross (39:56.557)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (40:00.138)
Like it’s missing the EKG or ECG and blood oxygen, right? Is that it? Essentially, like that’s the main. So yeah, I get an SE for most people. But it was a slow year for that. So it was kind of slow year for Apple hardware in the sense that we’ve got a lot of stuff.

Michael Simon (40:05.954)
Yes. Yeah. Those two things.

Michael Simon (40:14.988)
Yeah, for sure.

Michael Simon (40:23.626)
It was, we got a lot of stuff, but I was going through it, preparing for the show and I was like, like there’s nothing like.

we could hold up and say, we got this thing. Like last year we got Vision Pro, or the year before we got, I don’t know, something. But it was quiet.

Jason Cross (40:35.392)
outside of the…

Jason Cross (40:42.296)
Outside of the interesting iPhone developments, it was a very Chip It and Ship It kind of year. And then I think that is because they had plans for things that were very reliant on new Siri. And when they decided to punt on new Siri and it wasn’t even going to make it in the fall, everything was there’s a lot of stuff that’s almost ready to go. You know, and it’s all very new Siri dependent.

Michael Simon (41:08.366)
Right. Yeah, well, our next show will be right when the new year happens and we’ll talk about 2026. yet next year could be, and we say this a lot, but this one, like maybe, like it looks like there’s gonna be a ton of new stuff, like new, new stuff, not just like a M5 MacBook Air.

Jason Cross (41:18.648)
We say this a lot.

Jason Cross (41:23.168)
I mean, we look.

We literally said at the start of this year, this year is going to be big because there’s the new Siri and there’s all this home stuff that’s going to work on the new Siri. And then it got delayed. So, you never know. But yeah, there’s a lot of stuff coming. There’s a lot of stuff right now kind of like pegged for next year. That’s very interesting.

Michael Simon (41:29.422)
Probably.

Michael Simon (41:34.05)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (41:38.988)
Right, you never know.

Michael Simon (41:47.136)
Yeah. All right. Good. I’m going to stop right there because that was a good little wrap up because we’re to talk for another 15 minutes. Otherwise. All right. Worst thing that happened this year. I don’t think we have any like parameters here, but you know, apple related, I guess.

Jason Cross (41:51.831)
You

Jason Cross (42:04.856)
yeah, we normally do like the worst thing that happened this week. Well, not normally when we do this segment. And since it’s the year end wrap up, we’re going to go for the whole year. And, I want to hear what Romans is Roman. was the worst thing this year? Is it that, is it that K popped?

Michael Simon (42:07.458)
Right. We do it, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Roman, you start. Is it going to be K-pop again? Was it so bad it got both shows?

Roman Loyola (42:21.904)
Yeah, I said mine last week. well, I think it’s pretty obvious. It’s the fact that Apple didn’t really make any progress in AI this year, because it helped. And like Jason just said, it’s kind of like it’s holding everything else back.

Michael Simon (42:38.668)
Yeah, literally zero progress. We’re exactly where we were this time last year with Apple intelligence.

Roman Loyola (42:40.367)
Yeah.

Roman Loyola (42:43.802)
Yeah. We’ve gone over it a hundred times before, so I don’t need to dive in deep in on that.

Jason Cross (42:46.252)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (42:49.26)
We have. But no, it’s important to keep bringing it up because it is. For one, it’s for a company of Apple’s size and stature, it’s notable. But it’s also like the entire world, Google, Samsung, OpenAI, like X has Grok, like AIs everywhere, except really on your iPhone.

Roman Loyola (43:02.864)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (43:09.64)
I, that was my worst thing was sort of the, the, the sort of iOS 18.4 debacle because they announced these new things and it really wasn’t, it wasn’t that they ever promised Siri was going to be a smart chat bot like chat GPT and Gemini and stuff were, but they announced these other features that sounded really amazing. Like it would build personal context about you so that it could give you understand what you do all the

Michael Simon (43:31.459)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (43:37.484)
day and give you answers that related to you. It would be able to understand what’s on your screen. So you would just be using your phone and looking at it and ask it something and it would understand, this is what’s on the screen. They’re talking about this. Right. And then the third was that we’re going to have this massive app intents for developer, like all these developer hooks so that companies can build apps where Siri could do stuff within the apps in the background for you, like work within other apps.

it very limited how it does it now I can queue up songs and your Spotify and stuff, but it can’t can’t do much more. And it and it’s not only like you said, they did ads and stuff. And then and then like March rolled around and everybody’s like, where’s the beta? Where is it? Where’s this thing? And Apple basically had to admit, like you said, officially, but not like

Michael Simon (44:21.08)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (44:34.168)
press releases and stuff. did it like interviews and everything that like, it’s not going to happen. We couldn’t make it work. It’s basically made Siri have two brains working at the same time that weren’t working. We’re going all the way back and we’re building one Siri based on a new large language model. And we later found out that they’re working with outside companies and they did a bake off with all the anthropic Google and all this other stuff. And we’re, finally going to hopefully get it this next spring. But Roman said it that

that put a delay on all kinds of products and stuff that that Apple was supposedly working on. And we’ve seen hints in the code and all this other stuff for all these like smart home products and this new home hub and all this other stuff. And it all got delayed by at least a year. And an Apple was already way behind everyone. So woof.

Michael Simon (45:07.426)
Yep.

Michael Simon (45:29.784)
To play devil’s advocate slightly, had they shipped Siri and any of these new products and it didn’t work, that would have been far worse. So at least they had the foresight to say, all right, we can’t, this is not good enough because I don’t think they recovered from that. If they do this and maybe the home pad comes with it and they have this whole push for look how great Siri is and it’s not, I think that’s worse.

Jason Cross (45:38.2)
yeah. True.

Jason Cross (45:56.984)
It definitely cannot be another Apple Maps situation, right? So yeah, hoping it gets there, hoping they show everybody, like we want it to be good.

Michael Simon (46:01.24)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Simon (46:08.844)
Yeah. Yeah. And in the meantime, chat GPT is better and Gemini is better and everyone is getting better while we’re waiting for Siri. I mean, we’ll see Apple has to know. Like everybody’s watching them. They’re not stupid. Tim Cook’s not stupid. So, it got about three months to polish this thing. It looks like March, April, and we’ll see. We’ll see.

All right. My worst thing is completely different than all that stuff. Um, I’m going to pick the vision pro because so the vision pro came out a year and a half or is announced a year and a half ago. Uh, no, was actually, no, that was two and a half years ago. Yeah. Uh, came out last February, had a whole type thing, you know, like, listen, it’s a new Apple product. was 3,500 bucks and they, they had a demo thing in the stores and they invited you to come try it.

Jason Cross (46:52.344)
Do it. Yeah.

Michael Simon (47:05.878)
I don’t know how many they sold, but I assume that many. then like nothing, like they kind of removed them from stores for the most part. They didn’t really promote it. They didn’t really do much with it. then this, so September or October, they released the de facto second generation model that has a faster chip and a better head strap, which you can also buy separately. So it did nothing to it at all. The M5, there’s no one who

was not gonna buy a Vision Pro. Didn’t say, like the reason why I’m not buying it is because the chip is too slow. And the headstrap is absolutely long overdue and the least it could do to make this thing wearable for more than like a half hour. But the worst thing about it, so that’s bad enough. We were waiting for the new, a cheaper model that hasn’t come yet. Maybe a price cut, we didn’t get that. But the worst thing is that if you bought a Vision Pro,

Jason Cross (47:52.876)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (48:06.632)
One, there’s no path to an upgrade unless you pay 3,500 bucks. There’s no trade-in. There’s no nothing. And that’s crazy because the people who bought that thing are Apple’s most loyal customers. And they basically said, sorry, you’re out of luck. You want a new one, you got to spend 3,500 bucks. So I had to assume they’re going to sell precisely none of these because…

Jason Cross (48:13.036)
Yeah, nothing.

Michael Simon (48:34.048)
I don’t know anyone who would upgrade the first generation to get this one because it’s not good. Maybe they’ll sell straps. People will buy the new head strap. I just don’t understand why, why bother.

Jason Cross (48:42.882)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (48:47.056)
There’s a few sort of enterprise applications where when they buy one, they’ll buy this one because it’s what’s there, but they would have bought the first gen because it’s what’s Apple’s doing a pretty decent job of building under the hood technology for Vision OS. They’re doing a good job of building all the stuff that goes on in Vision OS to make VR and AR apps, mixed reality experiences and stuff.

Michael Simon (48:52.898)
Yeah, okay. Right. Right.

Michael Simon (49:06.488)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (49:16.354)
They’re not doing a great job.

Michael Simon (49:16.706)
Like the frameworks and stuff, the foundation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Jason Cross (49:19.66)
The frameworks, the core technology, the eye tracking, all these things that are very, very hard, very, very behind the scenes. They’re not building a great OS on top of it. It’s okay, but it’s, you know, and they’re not building great apps on top of those. The only thing that’s really great are 3D video experiences, which you can’t do for very long.

Michael Simon (49:33.038)
Great. Great.

Michael Simon (49:44.206)
just a few and far between,

Jason Cross (49:45.912)
They’re few and far between. They’re really, really slick. can only do so much of those. They’re really trying to work to get kind of the live sports thing where you can be like your court side at an NBA game, but they have to upgrade some arenas and stuff to make that happen. Because it takes a lot of bandwidth and special cameras and all this other kind of stuff to do it live. They’ve done some of those things where it’s not live. And that’s all cool. It’s all coming. It’s all important work that will be.

Michael Simon (49:59.084)
Yeah, right.

Jason Cross (50:15.714)
taken advantage of when they get the more mass market cheaper product out. But God, we haven’t heard anything about that. We don’t know when it’s coming. It’s another like, well, maybe next year kind of thing. Maybe not. Yep. So yeah, the whole vision OS and spatial computing thing is stuck in limbo. And I think there’s just like a tremendous amount of really

Michael Simon (50:27.438)
Maybe not. Maybe 2027 at this point.

Jason Cross (50:42.434)
hard work going on behind the scenes. But from the consumer side, it’s in a terrible place for Apple, right?

Michael Simon (50:47.928)
Yeah. And we said when it came out, it’s kind of like a proof of concept, like they don’t expect to sell, but now we’re two years into it and they’ve released basically the same thing that they released two years ago. It’s like, what are we doing here? It’s, it’s outrageously expensive and I don’t think it’s overpriced. I just think it’s expensive because it’s so cutting age and it’s does, you know, the, the eight K and I try like, there’s a lot of high priced

expensive technology inside it and like technically advanced. But no one’s going to buy it. No one. Or as Jason says, maybe like some business that needs it for some application, but not regular people.

Jason Cross (51:29.922)
Yeah, there’s some like narrow enterprise things, but yeah, not regular people. that’s a tough thing for Apple to expect from Apple, especially after the big deal they made about it.

Michael Simon (51:38.072)
Like they could have at least.

Yeah, like they could have said, Vigin Pro is 24.99. Keep the first one around and cut the price by a thousand bucks. Maybe they’d sell a few. Instead they released the same price for a, and they can’t even, you can’t even upgrade your old one. So frustrating. All right. Roman, this week in Apple history.

Jason Cross (51:53.624)
I don’t know.

Jason Cross (52:01.496)
frustrating. Yes.

Michael Simon (52:08.504)
You’re muted,

Roman Loyola (52:11.792)
Sorry. Yeah.

Michael Simon (52:12.428)
See, that happens all the time. Like on your Zoom call yesterday, that probably happened, but we do it too.

Roman Loyola (52:18.0)
Oh yeah. On December 20th, 1996, probably one of the most important dates in Apple history, Apple announced that it would acquire Next Software for $400 million. And you know.

Michael Simon (52:35.118)
Do you remember, so December 20th, that’s like your year is winding down in like tech journalist land. That’s a pretty monumental announcement that happened five days before Christmas. Do you remember like what you were doing, where you were working or were you working?

Roman Loyola (52:40.772)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Roman Loyola (52:49.904)
I don’t remember what I was doing that day because yeah, because 1990, was it? 1997 was, was that the year? Oh, I can’t remember now. Was 1997, the following Mack world the year that where like Steve Jobs took the stage and then Bill Gates came on and da da da and all that stuff? think, yeah, cause that.

Michael Simon (53:15.63)
Maybe. I don’t know.

Roman Loyola (53:19.342)
So I don’t remember another, well, I’m trying to jog my memory, but I can’t remember where I was or what was happening when that announcement was being made. I was working for Mac User Magazine at the time, so I have no memory.

Michael Simon (53:34.254)
Steve Jobs’ Bill Gates was August 1997. So this must’ve been 1996, yeah.

Roman Loyola (53:38.296)
Okay, so was the following year. Yeah, so it was the following year. I remember that, but I don’t remember this announcement in particular. Yeah.

Jason Cross (53:38.53)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Simon (53:46.758)
All right. Maybe Jason, know, did, was it a shock or did people know when it just was like a press release that formulate, finalized it formalitized it. Formalitized that what I’m looking for. It’s been four hours of this people.

Jason Cross (53:58.508)
Formalized it formalized I honestly like so around that year. I was working for PC gaming magazines and stuff like I really wasn’t paying attention to the whole the whole jobless jobless era the whole job Steve Jobs free area of like I was not involved in Apple stuff like at all at that time. They killed off my beloved Apple 2 GS line.

Michael Simon (54:28.493)
haha

Jason Cross (54:29.328)
and went with Max and Max were like just black and white. They weren’t even gray scale. They were just black and white at first and then they started doing all these models and stuff. So I wasn’t paying that much attention. I get the, I seem to remember it was kind of a coup. Like that jobs is coming back, that they’re not just buying next, but they’re buying next and they’re kind of doing it in order to get jobs.

Michael Simon (54:35.95)
Yeah.

Roman Loyola (54:56.367)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (54:56.472)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Cross (54:56.498)
and the other Apple engineers and stuff that he took with him to go do next, Something like that.

Roman Loyola (55:03.588)
Yeah.

Roman Loyola (55:07.12)
I prior to the announcement, and I remember there were rumblings of it, but the thing I mostly remember was that Gil Amelio was the CEO, and everybody was like, my God, Apple needs to do something, do something. We’re crashing and burning, because before Gil Amelio, was Michael Spindler. Yeah, and there were a couple CEOs.

Michael Simon (55:16.738)
Right.

Jason Cross (55:20.856)
you

Michael Simon (55:33.037)
Yeah, I think so.

Roman Loyola (55:36.964)
You know, there was just this free fall and I mostly remember 1996 being, I better work on my resume because I don’t know if this magazine is gonna be around for the next year because Apple just isn’t, you know, they weren’t doing well. And then there were rumblings about it, but I don’t know if people were counting on, I don’t remember if people thought it was actually gonna happen or not. I can’t remember.

Michael Simon (55:46.584)
Hahaha.

Jason Cross (55:46.924)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (55:50.168)
Yeah, yeah.

Roman Loyola (56:08.272)
So, but yeah.

Michael Simon (56:08.526)
Okay. Well, it’s probably the most pivotal moment in not just Apple, like tech, like tech history was Steve Jobs. mean, think about all the things that wouldn’t have happened if that didn’t, if that deal wasn’t made and Steve Jobs doesn’t come back to Apple at that moment. It’s crazy to think about like how that impacted the shape of the tech landscape for decades to come. It’s crazy.

Roman Loyola (56:19.279)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (56:20.172)
It was a huge.

Jason Cross (56:26.468)
yeah.

Jason Cross (56:38.156)
Yeah, absolutely.

Roman Loyola (56:40.336)
Well, and I think there was still even some, even when they announced that acquisition, there was still some doubt as to whether to save Apple because, you know, next was this niche company. People were like, how is this going to translate? What does this all mean? you know.

Michael Simon (56:48.022)
I’m sure there was, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Michael Simon (56:57.836)
I mean, Steve Jobs didn’t become like Steve Jobs until the iMac and the iPhone and the iPod. Like he was obviously well respected and had done the Mac and you know, was the guy at Apple. But as you said, Dext was, know, it was there. I mean, no one really paid much attention to it. And he wasn’t seen as like the visionary computer guy until five, 10 years later.

Roman Loyola (57:01.424)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (57:08.277)
yeah.

Roman Loyola (57:21.84)
Right.

Yeah, I think.

Jason Cross (57:24.492)
mean, if you believe the Steve jobs, movie, the, not the, not the, not the Kutcher one, the other, the other one. if you believe that, yeah, no, the, the, the math fastbender one, that if you believe that movie, the next was pretty much.

Michael Simon (57:33.102)
The Ashton Kutcher one.

Roman Loyola (57:38.288)
That’s a Noah Wiley one.

Michael Fassbender.

Michael Simon (57:43.98)
Yeah, that’s better. Yeah.

Jason Cross (57:51.468)
The company existed to get acquired by Apple and get him back. Like when they kicked him out, he hatched a plan.

Roman Loyola (57:55.408)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (58:02.722)
What bugs me about those two movies is the Ashton Kutcher one. Like he actually kind of looks like Steve Jobs and acts like Steve Jobs, but the movie sucks. And the other movie that he looks, Fast Man, it looks nothing like Steve Jobs nor does he act like it, but the movie’s really good. So I have a hard time to parse those two. Yeah.

Jason Cross (58:10.658)
Yes.

Nothing. It’s a really, yeah, it’s much better writing.

Roman Loyola (58:21.84)
Yeah, so, you know, in the end, know, Steve Jobs ends up looking like this savior and this, and he, you know, and in many ways he was. I don’t mean that in like a, I don’t know, I guess a religious way or something like that, a deity way, but you know, he was a business savior for Apple. But yeah, those two years prior was really shaky and really, I think it’s hard to, that kind of gets lost in this whole thing.

Michael Simon (58:31.661)
Yes.

Jason Cross (58:35.778)
Ha

Michael Simon (58:35.854)
You

Michael Simon (58:39.554)
Yeah.

Roman Loyola (58:51.376)
was that Apple was really in bad shape. And it’s kind of hard to describe how bad a shape it was. It was.

Michael Simon (58:58.902)
The only thing I knew about Apple at that time was that Simpson’s joke with Nelson writes on his Newton to beat up Martin and it translates to eat up Martha or something. That was my only reference to Apple. And it wasn’t until the iMac that like it put it on my math and God knows how many other people like the iMac was the thing that

Roman Loyola (59:11.504)
Right.

Jason Cross (59:12.6)
Roman Loyola (59:19.439)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (59:25.582)
And Johnny, I’ve had a lot to do with that, of course, but Steve Jobs had the vision to bring it to market.

Roman Loyola (59:30.128)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (59:30.988)
We talked a lot about earlier this episode about how Apple had a lot of Chip It and Chip It products this year. like imagine if Apple had four years of that, like just more creating more and more products for more and more more price segments that are just the same thing, but just like a little bit better with a new chip. And that’s kind of where Apple is at. And that’s when they bought Nex and Nex came back. That’s what their roadmap was.

Michael Simon (59:37.624)
Yeah.

Jason Cross (01:00:00.022)
Like they didn’t have a war. This is not doing well. Let’s shake things up. Like now that it really wasn’t the plan. So it was jobs that came back and said, we got way too many products. We’re everything wrong. We’re not, you know, simplified double down on some narrow things. It really worked. yeah, it was, they, they really needed that. And they went through multiple CEOs in just a few years. Just.

Michael Simon (01:00:21.858)
Yeah. And you know, he…

Roman Loyola (01:00:25.413)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (01:00:25.518)
Yeah. And, you know, it was chipping and shipping for computers that nobody were buying for one. And, you know, you can say like Steve Jobs had this vision. also had carte blanche to do whatever he wanted because you just said the company was basically bankrupt. So he had to swing for the fences and, you know, he did, and he did a, you know, a ridiculously good job doing it.

Jason Cross (01:00:30.178)
Great. Yeah.

Michael Simon (01:00:50.478)
All right, Roman, the last reader mailbag of 2025.

Roman Loyola (01:00:52.688)
I’ll be back.

So we were just talking about legacy and last episode we were talking about, or not last episode, the episode before last episode, I think. Yeah. We talked about some of the management changes that were happening at Apple and the topic of Tim Cook’s legacy kind of came up.

Michael Simon (01:01:06.753)
I…

I think it was June was the last time before we started recording today.

Jason Cross (01:01:19.288)
Mm.

Michael Simon (01:01:23.843)
Mm-hmm.

Roman Loyola (01:01:25.078)
and people have plenty of thoughts on this. I like to say that before, I preface this by saying that people tend to be negative on the internet in terms of posting comments, in case you didn’t know, in case you didn’t notice that. with that in mind, Johnny Five underscore, yes, please don’t take it personally, Tim.

Michael Simon (01:01:40.728)
yeah? I had it.

Jason Cross (01:01:42.616)
I hadn’t noticed that, yeah.

Michael Simon (01:01:48.568)
I apologize to Tim Cook before we start this segment.

Roman Loyola (01:01:55.152)
but johnny5 underscore 75 on TikTok said, he’s already at a pretty low note with iOS 26. Pattyist power on TikTok said, releasing the visual pro flop, fumbling AI, releasing a meh OS reskin and capitulating and causing the fascist, that’s his legacy.

Michael Simon (01:02:20.75)
I mean, that’s all happened in the last like three months.

Roman Loyola (01:02:24.503)
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Cross (01:02:25.4)
That was sort of our point was that like, and there’s all these people leaving, this is the turning point. either ends, his story either ends with that reputation or it ends with a revitalization of Apple. The next year really kind of writes how Tim Cook’s story ends.

Roman Loyola (01:02:28.772)
recency biased.

Roman Loyola (01:02:40.666)
Yeah.

Roman Loyola (01:02:47.152)
Chicken Fried Steak 40, I never thought in my career I’d be like saying, you know, I always thought I’d be saying actual name. Chicken Fried Steak 40 on TikTok said, Tim Apple should have been replaced years ago. He may have kept the profits coming short term, but long term, he did so much damage to the brand. And Peter Wendelin on Facebook said, yeah.

Jason Cross (01:02:54.264)
Chicken Fried Steak 40.

Michael Simon (01:02:57.486)
You

Michael Simon (01:03:15.028)
statement. Chicken fried steak for you.

Jason Cross (01:03:18.092)
I know.

Roman Loyola (01:03:20.57)
Peter Wendlin on Facebook said, if you want to know what Tim Cook’s legacy is, it’s continued growth and stability, nothing more. That’s true, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Michael Simon (01:03:29.058)
I mean, that’s true.

Jason Cross (01:03:30.264)
That’s right. mean.

Michael Simon (01:03:32.332)
You know, depends on what kind of Apple you want.

Roman Loyola (01:03:35.704)
Right, that’s true.

Jason Cross (01:03:36.472)
He really did build Apple from the company that was this underdog. Like it’s popular as it was, it wasn’t huge. was the underdog. It was big, but it was.

Michael Simon (01:03:43.855)
Yeah, right. It was big. It was pretty big. It wasn’t this big by any stretch, it was like the iPhone was rolling. The iPad was rolling. Like they were doing quite fine in 2011, I think it was.

Jason Cross (01:03:57.4)
iPhone was rolling like like 10 million units a year 15 million units a year like they self they sell 70 million iPhones a quarter now like it’s you know, so he 10x to the company like and he built it from the company that was always the underdog to the IBM that they were always really gets like the big dog of tech that even if they’re not the richest company, I mean in videos rolling an AI money like

Michael Simon (01:04:01.262)
Yeah, OK. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael Simon (01:04:06.486)
Right now I know.

Michael Simon (01:04:16.696)
Great. Great.

Jason Cross (01:04:25.97)
Among the richest, a multi-trillion dollar company that is definitely the most influential.

Michael Simon (01:04:28.696)
Yeah.

Michael Simon (01:04:35.032)
Yes.

Jason Cross (01:04:35.884)
Like regardless of, could say more Windows laptops are sold, but people do what Apple does with the MacBook. Everyone follows Apple.

Michael Simon (01:04:48.78)
Yeah. Yeah. That comment that said, you know, listed off all the things. I know one before that about all the things that his legacy is his legacy is this, know, they’re to announce their earnings in about a month and a half. And I guarantee you they’ll break. It’ll be the highest quarter they’ve ever had ever. It’ll be like $120 billion or something in revenue. I guarantee you now. So when does that.

Roman Loyola (01:04:53.392)
chicken fried steak.

Roman Loyola (01:04:58.287)
Patty has power,

Jason Cross (01:05:13.132)
Yeah, probably. Yep.

Michael Simon (01:05:18.444)
Now going to the one after chicken fries, the short-term legacy. Like when does the short-term profits end? Because I do agree with that in a sense. At some point that growth is going to reach a cliff because as we just talked about for the last hour, a lot of Apple is in cruise control and not all that cruise control is heading in the right direction. And you your steering is a little…

Jason Cross (01:05:21.889)
You

Michael Simon (01:05:48.415)
Not a lot, but a little bit. And does Tim Cook stick around long enough to steer it back? Or does he just say, know what? I did what I was told to do. I did what I promised I would do and I’m done.

Jason Cross (01:05:49.72)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jason Cross (01:06:00.586)
yeah.

Do we need somebody else? Do we need, as we talked about Steve Jobs, do we need somebody else to come in and say, although they’re in a very different position, like you said, they’re wildly profitable now, but do we need somebody else to come in and shake things up in order to continue to grow or get into new areas? People don’t give Tim Cook credit for expanding the areas in which, not just their profitability or size, but like Apple watches Tim Cook, AirPods is Tim Cook.

Michael Simon (01:06:25.015)
sure.

Jason Cross (01:06:32.556)
These are massively these products. Sure. I’m just saying just products like the AirPods is a Fortune 500 company on its own. Just AirPods. Like, and that’s a Tim Cook thing like that. So yeah.

Michael Simon (01:06:34.286)
as well as privacy and accessibility and all the things that they do, yes.

Michael Simon (01:06:43.672)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Jason Cross (01:06:53.792)
It’ll be interesting. Like you said, we’re in a world right now where there’s just a lot of chip and chip it. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when we get over this AI hump. If we do and get into the other products that we keep hearing they’re working on, you know, I’m that thing that like the robot lamp with a personality thing that we showed off and it won’t be a lamp. It’ll be a screen, but like, man, I want that. That’s a whole new product. That’s a whole new genre of thing. Right.

Michael Simon (01:07:02.818)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Simon (01:07:17.794)
Yeah, sure. For sure. Yeah.

Jason Cross (01:07:22.69)
So we’ll see, we’ll see what they get to market out of this.

Michael Simon (01:07:28.14)
Right. You know, just to put one more period on this, like Steve Jobs did a lot of great things. We just talked about next and coming back. The last great thing he did was to promote Tim Cook to CEO because he knew trying to replace him was an impossible thing. He’s not going to find someone that had the same charisma, the same vision, but Apple was on this

presidents, like Jason said, you know, they weren’t, they weren’t, they weren’t a massive company, but they had, they certainly were looking up and Tim Cook was the perfect guy to bring him to this level. And now maybe we need someone that’s more like Steve Jobs and can see a vision and could take some risks, maybe a gamble or two and, really take Apple into the next, you know, whatever 25 years.

Jason Cross (01:08:12.204)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Cross (01:08:20.062)
Yeah, one could argue the vision pro was their attempt at a gamble that was the completely wrong way to go about it. Right? That’s Yeah.

Michael Simon (01:08:24.75)
It’s too, yeah, it’s just too expensive. mean, they have to, they must’ve known they’re not going to sell many of them. It could have been the greatest thing ever made. Like that’s just too much. The iPhone was 600 bucks and people said it wasn’t going to sell. mean, you know, that’s a ton of money, even in 2025 money. That’s a lot.

Jason Cross (01:08:31.479)
Right.

Jason Cross (01:08:37.88)
Right.

Michael Simon (01:08:44.686)
All right. That’s it people. 2025 is done. We’re closing the door. uh, Roman I screwed up. I I screwed up my number. Uh, this is number 964. Um, yeah. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy whatever you celebrate. Uh, new year, happy new year. All those things. Thank you, Jason.

Jason Cross (01:08:54.134)
Have a great holiday. We’ll see you in a few weeks.

Jason Cross (01:09:09.548)
Thank you, Mike.

Michael Simon (01:09:10.676)
And thank you, And thank you. I’m sorry, Roman. I didn’t give you a chance to say anything. And thank you, dear listeners, for tuning in. This was a fun year. We rebooted the podcast. Things are a little different. This was fun. You can subscribe to the Macro Podcast to listen to us all throughout 2026 in the podcast app on Spotify, on YouTube, at the Macro Podcast channel, or through any other podcast app.

Roman Loyola (01:09:15.15)
Okay.

I’ll just wave.

Michael Simon (01:09:39.424)
If you have any questions or comments about what we just talked about and what we’re gonna talk about in 2026, contact us through Blue Sky Facebook threads. Search for Macworld, look for the Blue Mouse logo, send an email to podcast at macworld.com, comment under a TikTok video, comment under a YouTube short, real whatever. Just got in touch with us in some way. And that’s it. We will see you for the next episode of the Macworld podcast next year as you talk about everything in the…

Jason Cross (01:09:59.736)
You

Michael Simon (01:10:10.03)
I screwed it up one last time before the year was up. Join us next year in the, All right, right, hold on. I’m gonna rewind and start this whole thing. Join us in the next episode of the Macro Podcast next year as we’re talking about the latest in the world of Apple. See you next time.