The Future of Apple's High-End Devices: Risks and Uncertainties Ahead

As we approach the release date of Apple's latest high-end devices, there are several questions surrounding their capabilities and potential impact on the market. One such device that has garnered significant attention is the rumored M2 Ultra chip, which was originally planned for the Mac Pro lineup. However, with the cancellation of the M2 Extreme chip due to production costs, it remains unclear whether this high-end version will actually materialize.

The decision to cancel the M2 Extreme chip raises questions about Apple's willingness to invest in their premium products and their ability to meet consumer demand. The Mac Pro was supposed to be an M1 product, but it was pushed back to the M2 generation. Now, with the introduction of the M2 Ultra chip, it seems that Apple is trying to recoup some of the investment they made in developing this technology.

In contrast to the more affordable 15-inch MacBook Air, which will feature the M2 chip, there are concerns about the viability of the M2 Ultra chip as a mass-market product. With its higher power requirements and associated costs, it's unclear whether Apple can justify producing such a device at scale. Furthermore, the lack of clear demand for such a high-end product raises questions about Apple's ability to sell these devices to mainstream consumers.

Despite these risks, there are still many who believe that Apple will eventually release the M2 Ultra chip as part of their Mac Pro lineup. With its impressive performance capabilities and potential for further enhancements in the future, it's clear that this technology has significant promise. However, with production costs and demand uncertainty, it remains to be seen whether Apple can overcome these challenges.

Another area where uncertainties abound is the release date of the Mac Pro, which was initially expected to debut alongside the 15-inch MacBook Air featuring the M2 chip. However, given the ongoing development cycle for high-end devices, it's possible that this product may not arrive until later in the year or even beyond. With Apple's history of pushing back releases and making significant design changes, it's essential to remain cautious when speculating about future products.

In terms of Apple's broader strategy, the Mac Pro represents a crucial test case for their ability to innovate and adapt to changing market conditions. As a premium product line, it will provide valuable insights into consumer behavior and demand patterns. With the introduction of new chips like the M2 Ultra, Apple is pushing the boundaries of what's possible in terms of performance and power efficiency.

Moreover, the Mac Pro has historically been seen as a showcase for Apple's engineering prowess, with its compact design and impressive feature set making it an attractive option for content creators and professionals. However, with the increasing competition from rival companies like Dell and HP, Apple must carefully balance their focus on innovation with concerns about cost and practicality.

In conclusion, while Apple's high-end devices have a history of delivering exceptional performance and style, there are still many uncertainties surrounding the release date and viability of products like the M2 Ultra chip. As we approach the launch of these new devices, it's essential to remain vigilant and monitor developments closely to ensure that our expectations are met.

Regarding another product that has been discussed for several years, the Apple Silicon Mac Pro premium is indeed still in development. According to Mark, who was interviewed by Bloomberg, there were originally plans for two variations: an M2 Ultra chip and an M2 Extreme, double the performance of the M2 Ultra. However, due to production costs and concerns about demand, the M2 Extreme chip was ultimately canceled.

The cancellation of the M2 Extreme chip raises questions about Apple's willingness to invest in their premium products and their ability to meet consumer demand. With the introduction of new chips like the M3, it seems that Apple is focusing on delivering improved performance and power efficiency rather than introducing entirely new architectures.

In terms of the conflict with the Mac Studio, Mark mentioned that he believes there will not be an M2 Ultra Max Studio. This makes sense given the potential for a significant price increase, which could deter mainstream consumers from purchasing this product. However, it's unclear whether Apple will ultimately decide to release an M2 Ultra chip as part of their Mac Pro lineup.

Ultimately, with Apple's history of pushing back releases and making significant design changes, it's essential to remain cautious when speculating about future products. As we approach the launch of new devices like the Mac Pro, it's crucial to stay informed and monitor developments closely to ensure that our expectations are met.

In terms of updates on the Mac Pro, Mark mentioned that Apple is still working on this product and will likely release two variations: an M2 Ultra chip and possibly another high-end option in the future. However, with production costs and demand uncertainty, it remains to be seen whether these products will actually materialize.

The wait for the Mac Pro has been long, but with Apple's history of delivering innovative products, there is still hope that this device will ultimately meet consumer expectations. As we approach the launch date, one thing is certain: Apple's high-end devices will continue to push the boundaries of what's possible in terms of performance and design.

In conclusion, while uncertainties abound surrounding Apple's high-end devices, it's essential to remain optimistic about their potential capabilities. With the introduction of new chips like the M2 Ultra chip, Apple is poised to deliver exceptional performance and power efficiency. As we wait for the release date of products like the Mac Pro, it's crucial to stay informed and monitor developments closely to ensure that our expectations are met.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enforeign welcome back to another episode of the Mac rumor show I'm so excited mark you were like one of our first guests and it's been so long like a full calendar year and so Mark Herman everybody the the famous Mark German he's back uh we can talk about all the rumors and have the man the myth the legend himself comment on everything famous not so much but I'm uh I'm glad to be here I guess it's been one year since last time uh I'll see you again in a year after this or maybe sooner I don't know I'm very happy to be here I want to talk to you more let's make it sooner than one year but I mean you're probably one of the only guests that I don't need to really like go through the list of everything everybody knows who you are so you're good but we do have a ton of stuff to get into um so we're just gonna jump right into it uh there's a lot going on in in June early June as you might know WWDC um and this is finally the year where I am hoping that a lot of like platforms get the major boost uh you know the redesigns and the new features and stuff and so we'll start with W we'll start with the Apple watch um watch OS 10. you recently reported that there's some going to be some notable changes one of the biggest updates since what like forever hasn't the Apple watch looked the same for forever yeah I think this is going to be the biggest software update uh to the Apple watch since the first version came out you know they've made pretty iterative changes over the years they've added a lot of new health and fitness functionality uh they've really refocused around complications on the watch base uh notifications they downgraded or removed things that were in the OS at the beginning remember glances they got rid of those uh they've you know demoted things that were really core parts of the initial watch sort of remember you clicked the button on the side it showed you your friends list right in that Circle and then you can quickly message them send them your heartbeat and whatnot they've demoted that too but this time we're likely to see some pretty big interface changes so do you think that will be uh with regards to a sort of basic interaction with the device so we're talking about maybe the home screen or is how far is this sort of a way of reconsidering basic ways of actually interacting with the watch I guess would be my question yeah I think that this will reconsider basic ways of interacting with the watch I do think you're going to see notable user interface updates across the system I've got more coming on this and so you know look out for my article on this as well but you know to date you know what I've said is that this is going to be a pretty big update uh I'm not sure I would compare it to the transition from iOS 6 to iOS 7 in 2013 that was a pretty core revamp to the system end to end in terms of user interface design I don't think the core design is going to change but I think you're going to see many different ways of using the system and new types of interactions uh I've seen some rumors following what I put out there about what that would entail um I I you know I'm not sure about that I don't think folders would make much sense I'm just about to ask you about that I guess yeah I guess anything is possible I haven't heard one way or another okay um but certainly I'm looking forward to a medium to watch OS especially in the Apple watch Ultra it felt like they put that bigger screen in they put that bigger Hardware in but they really didn't revamp the watch faces uh or the user interface to really match that new design that bigger display the more room you have to work with and traditionally what we've seen from Apple is that the software is always like a year behind the hardware right we've seen this before and so I think that this is going to be you know the year hopefully where the Apple watch software catches up uh with the Apple watch Hardware now the other thing to note is traditionally in very very strong Hardware years for particular product you may see a light software here and in very light Hardware years you see a very strong software update and this is going to probably be uh the lightest year in terms of new Apple watch Hardware to date uh last year was you know fairly significant with the Apple watch Ultra it went pretty light with the series 8 uh and obviously the new SC was more of a production change in order to get the cost down for both apple and the consumer right they have that updated back that's cheaper to make than the glass back they used previous uh so I think that's how it's going to play out this year where the Big Apple watch news for the year is probably going to be on the software side and anything we see on the hardware side is going to be more uh spec bump s update so to speak so do you get the impression that watch OS is kind of going to steal the show in terms of software updates at WWDC well steal the show um if you're comparing watch OS to iOS and iPad OS uh and Mac OS I think yes certainly watch OS is going to be the most significant uh software update for existing platforms but I think the the show stealer is going to be uh xros and the reality headset as well as the 15-inch air right I think those are going to be the main things and I think that's what they're going to spend the most amount of time on uh certainly uh so I wouldn't say it's gonna steal the show but if you're talking about self-drivates to existing products I would say sure we'll get into those in a little bit that's for sure um but with watch OS Hartley did you have anything else before we moved on because you know he kind of allured to watch OS being the biggest thing but there is IOS 17 which was also apparently going to get some pretty big changes too most requested user can you can you explain what that might be a little bit more the highly requested features sure so when Apple set out to develop iOS 17 or I should say you know they work over they work overtime over a number of years on several different features and enhancements and they look you know every year prior to the year of the new release what features are ready to go what features we want to implement for this particular cycle right and so when they started off on the iOS 17 development cycle last year the idea was that we're going to go for sort of a Polish update we're going to go at people like to compare these types of things to snow leopard right a fit and finish update an underlying performance update having minimal changes now why did they want to do that one a lot of the resources were going towards xros but more importantly is that iOS 16 as you guys have written about many times has faced delay after delay after delay for particular new features right you've seen the Apple pay later implementation get delayed you've seen various features from 16.0 get pushed back a free form I believe was was one of them you also saw delays to iPad OS because of stage manager right iPad OS for the first time ever launched in October instead of September alongside iOS 16 so they uh they broke that into two separate release paths right and so there were so many delays there and so many functional issues with iOS 16 uh they felt that taking a step back would make sense this time around uh but that plan changed right at the end of last year and now they've been going Full Throttle on your standard array of uh updates right a 100 200 new feature standard iOS update I'm not expecting anything revolutionary I'm not expecting a a redesign uh there are changes coming across the system I certainly know what some of those changes are and I'll be writing about those soon uh but certainly I think it's going to be quite a significant update it's not going to be as significant as the hardware changes this year obviously the iPhone 15 Pro with the titanium back and some of the enhancements there is going to be quite significant but I think they are bringing enough new to the table that it's going to be a pretty interesting update I would probably compare it mostly to the update I think it was iOS 15 two years ago where it seemed like they added new features to every core app but they didn't do anything like over the top uh revolutionary right I don't think there's going to be a big standout new feature this year like we saw with iOS 14 with widgets or we saw with iOS 16 with the lock screen I think it's going to be core updates around the system so one change that you talked about quite a bit with regards to iOS 17 is side loading which is something that definitely has captured a lot of interest with regards to iOS 17. so I wondered if you could give us a bit of an impression of how you think Apple will handle that whether it will be a front and center feature or whether it's just going to be sort of pushed out uh in the side and not be part of the keynote or will it be a Europe only feature so first of all I think it will be a Europe only feature I think that they're not going to shoot themselves in the foot and expand this globally if they don't have to I think they're going to play it uh similarly to how they've played some of the other changes they made to the app store for legal reasons if you remember there was that change in the Netherlands around dating apps and the percentage there and so you have to install a special profile you have to go through some sort of groups to do it and it was very under the radar so I think they're going to push more in that direction I would be a bit surprised if they announced it at WWDC and made this a highlight consumer feature I think they want to sort of downplay it as much as possible at the same time uh I think that this has been a major undertaking inside the company this has been a exhaustive project across the board across several divisions across Services across software engineering across many departments at Apple legal marketing the App Store Department certainly and you know for that reason it's possible that they want to get the recognition for it but at the same time I don't know why they would because this is just going to cost them money uh my expectation at the same time as well it's going to cost the money they're going to charge developers uh to be part of this program and I I would assume they would call it some sort of special program that you would have to apply for a profile you'd have to pay for a profile and there'll be some sort of review process even though these apps would be installed outside of the App Store uh I think apple is going to you know go through the European regulations this is the digital markets act as it's called Uh and they're going to really stick to you know letter of the law here they're not going to do anything extraneous that would further hurt their grip on the App Store and quite frankly why should they right if you're thinking about the situation from their shoes uh they're going to just toe the line of what exactly is necessary and not do anything more to disrupt their existing infrastructure do you foresee the US ever kind of following suit and being in in kind of the same way like making them enable that now that they know that Apple will do it and can do it yeah well the U.S is certainly trying uh they've they've done actually two bills at this point they've never you know made it to uh you know actual law they've never been signed into law uh you know it's interesting that you bring that up Dan about how if they're able to implement it for Europe it seems pretty simple to implement it for other GEOS and so I think maybe the fact that they're going to do this is going to set a precedent there and maybe it'll drum up more bills that uh US government officials will try to push into law and so we'll see I don't think anything like that is imminent uh but what you've seen with this USBC situation is that this started off in Europe but you have other countries that are pushing for it now I even saw the state of California that's pushing for it too and obviously the USBC is a hardware feature and it would be next to well I wouldn't say it would be impossible but it would probably be irresponsible from a manufacturing and marketing and development perspective to sort of split the iPhone into the USBC and lightning models they're going all USBC I think personally Europe their implementation and their rationale uh for pushing towards USBC is probably not correct but from a consumer standpoint I think a move from lightning to USBC is very consumer friendly uh and I think it is a major Improvement given there already USBC on everything else right and so you'll see USBC iPhone 15 you'll see USBC uh airpods case uh and I think they've that those are the only two holes left there's the USBC uh transition that needs to take place in some of the Mac accessories as well but I think over time lightning will probably be phased out magsafe charger duo or whatever is still lightning I just used one like five minutes ago before this so that's the only reason why I remember that Max safe Duo is both underrated and overpriced yes like you would do it I like it a lot too but I don't know that I'd want to pay for it as much as it is either well you know sort of like they announced it at the event in September 2020. oh my God I need to get my hands on it and then they release it like three months later of course you're gonna just buy it right you're not gonna return it the one thing about that white material they use it's like mine's like ELO at this point and it's not like I've taken it through the mud or anything Apple needs to stop using that material and if you're going to keep using that material as much as I love the way the white looks you gotta stop using white uh because my my iPad Pro uh magic keyboard is horrendous uh and so it's just they gotta stop using that material I I cannot stand it but I am I'm debating whether I get the white magic keyboard or the black magic keyboard next time I get an iPad I have the black magic keyboard nothing's a disaster too I've had it since 2020 and it's sort of like tearing at the seams a little bit uh and the keys are all there's too much dust and dirt under them but like you partly love it hardly loves color options Hartley what are you thinking about the uh well I actually think that the the white one uh ages a lot better than the black one I think the black shows Greece and fingerprints way more than the white one that's right it's just that's right it's terrible wait yeah even the airports Max Smart Case is a particularly bad one see I'm getting markings from like other things in my bag like when I put them in my bag with something else it's like leaving black scuff marks and stuff do you want to get dirty or do you want to get greasy right yeah that's true well speaking of getting greasy can you give us any information on one little breadcrumb of a new feature something even if you're like I I don't have any concrete but I'm I'm I'm feeling confident in my own opinion that this is going to be uh you know an iOS 17 feature we've heard things about the locks or not the lock screen the control center do you know anything about that that you'd want to be able to do I'm trying I'm trying I'm trying to get something heard anything about the the control center or I have nothing to share I should say about the control center at this part but I think you'll see changes in uh wallet I think you'll see changes in uh find my and I think you'll see a bigger push on you know location and find my related things in addition to uh wallet and such some user interface tweaks and enhancements there um there's other stuff too though I'll let you know hey I mean if you you know at any point in time if you're like okay I'll give you one breadcrumb of a macramers exclusive here you just let us know like interrupt by all this hey I work I work for Bloomberg not Mac groomer so no no no no no no no no no no we understand we understand but uh no I appreciate it though yeah um so the other update that I really want to ask you about Mark was Mac OS because it's definitely in terms of the the sort of wider sort of number of reports and rumors that we look at it has been the quietest thing maybe other than tvos we've heard absolutely nothing really about what to expect from Mac OS next year and it feels like Mac OS has been really quite iterative and quiet for quite some years at this point I know Big Sur was a redesign but functionally there wasn't much going on with it and the same with Ventura so uh can you give us an impression of what to expect from the scale of this year's Mac OS update yeah I don't think Mac OS is going to be anything groundbreaking or significant certainly I haven't heard anything uh remarkable about Mac OS I think that they've basically moved to an idea where they're making the enhancements on iOS uh iPad OS watch OS and elsewhere and then they bake in support for those features right and connectivity to those features uh in Mac OS I think a good example of that last year was the stage manager uh built for iPad OS and then they had to sort of uh make a version of it for Mac OS as well because how can you introduce a enhanced albeit not great multitasking system that maybe some consider Superior on the iPad platform but I'll bring it to the Mac right uh support for things that they added messages on iPad OS and iOS they have to do it on Mac OS as well so I think you're going to see more of the same uh in in Mac OS this year so anything they add on iOS they'll replicate for Mac OS you know what always fascinates me about these OS updates or the naming conventions right and traditionally uh when they pick a city and then the follow-up version or pick a part of California and the follow-up version uh is pretty close to that original area if it's a minor update right they've done this in the past uh there was El Capitan so El Capitan right is located uh very closely to Yosemite geographically right so that made sense given lcap10 was a minor update um so Ventura right that is actually in Southern California it's a absolutely beautiful area beaches mountains places to hike it's awesome uh but there's one famous place in La uh that Apple has not named an OS after yet and if Apple were to go in that direction again of a minor update and they pick the closest city uh it would be Malibu Mac OS Malibu now I haven't heard anything about that but if I was thinking like Apple's marketers I would call it Mac OS Malibu if it was a minor iterative update over Mac OS and Torah uh given the history there of naming conventions we better get a beachy wallpaper with that one oh yeah and what kind a beachy wallet yeah that would be nice that would be nice um all right so before we move on to the hardware side of WWDC um we didn't really talk about iPad OS I'm guessing you're kind of expecting to just adopt some of the iOS 17 features that will come through but is there any chance in maybe this year maybe next year that we'll ever see these Pro apps that people have been clamoring for like logic and Final Cut Pro making its way I mean they've let Da Vinci be the star of the show when the iPad Pro come out uh came out uh with the M2 I'm so shocked by that because it's not like apple doesn't have its own Suite of apps that they could use for this and I'm just wondering if you have any any info on that or any thoughts I mean it seems clear to me that Apple I won't say has abandoned right but they've pushed a little bit away from those Pro apps right I know there were rumors that were completely made up a few years ago about Final Cut and logic and such uh coming to the iPad I certainly haven't heard anything about that um I'm seeing less and less work being done on those Pro apps at this point I know there has been a sizable amount of people who've been actually leaving uh those teams the head of marketing Xander Soren left at the end of last year he was involved in those creative apps as well so you know maybe they're taking some time to to do some sort of rethink right it's been about a decade since the big Final Cut Pro X uh rethink so maybe it's time for another one of those and maybe they're hard at work at that and obviously if they're going to do a full revamp to Final Cut Pro uh that would probably have the iPad and even the Apple headset in mind right and so I would imagine that would all be a cross-platform thing I mean the big push at Apple right now uh sort of behind the scenes is to get every app every feature to work across all of Apple's devices and integrate across all of Apple's devices sort of that continuity push and you know the dream scenario is that you own an Apple Watch an iPhone a Macbook an iPad and an apple headset right those five devices and all five of those devices are capable of doing all the same things just in different use cases and different times of your day and Apple's push and this has been uh pushed by marzipan or Catalyst starting in 2019 uh with the idea of running iPad apps on the Mac now you can run iPhone apps on the Mac and vice versa so the the core idea is having sort of like one universal binary per app and one main OS that runs on everything that's customized to the specific interface and input Paradigm of those devices so I think that is the big thing from Apple and I think you'll see them discuss that idea this year interesting I think it will be interesting to see personally whether any future update to those per apps is accompanied by a subscription model as well no no Hartley please for the love of God to not say that like right now it wasn't I know but right now it's like the best 300 you could spend if you are a content creator especially a student bundle producer oh my gosh it's uh yeah I mean you could do everything you need to do and not have to pay for Adobe apps uh and so do not bring that up uh I do not want to hear that Dan on on Final Cut after you use right yeah how often are they doing like fun fixes and software updates and enhancements to that not as often as not as often as you would like okay so I mean it seems like there's clearly something going on there I mean they're they're lately I would say over the last two years there have been some updates um but they and when they do come they are bigger updates but that's because they don't you know they don't address them for like six to eight months at a time and then it's just like whatever Buck you're dealing with you're dealing with it for a while so you better learn to work around it um yeah hopefully something turns around there soon because I'm getting lots of DMS and emails from people who use those Pro apps who are you know asking when is there going to be a new version what's going on with album Pro apps and uh it feels like when people really start complaining about that about five years ago Apple promised that one happened again so I would be shocked if they really Abandoned Ship there uh but clearly something's going on around going on behind the scenes you know they're very strapped for resources there um you know it's a very thin and mean organization and they have to prioritize certain things and things get lost when you're launching a new platform right there's a lot of resources across the company going into xrof and that reality headset so you know maybe it has something to do with that too and obviously you're seeing a big update to watch and you know everything else they have going on there so in terms of their revenue driven priorities Final Cuts probably pretty low on the totem pole but I know but but the part the point I was going to make is that that's the core core Apple audience that sort of leaves the discussion so you have to make those people happy and I think that sort of spreads to everyone around sort of like uh you know the center the center of a wheel right yeah um well speaking of the headset that is literally the next topic but you did mention the MacBook Air and everyone's expecting a new Macbook Air there's been a ton of topic around a 15-inch MacBook Air which I am super excited about if that's if that's happening uh but we did also see that it was going to be continuing on with M2 is that your expectations the 15 inch will come with M2 and not M3 yeah I wrote last week that the 15 inch air would run M2 and everyone else now seems to agree um the M3 is not going to be ready until end of the year that's a three nanometer design and tsmc is not ready to start popping out three nanometers at the quantity that Apple needs and at the yield rates that Apple needs until later this year so that 15 inch uh will be an M2 and I don't think that changes the purchase story I think people are going to line up for that thing uh maybe not literally but I think that it's going to be one of the most popular Macs ever people have been asking for a 15-inch MacBook Air for a number of years this is actually Apple's third attempt at launching the 15-inch MacBook Air they were going to do it as a follow-up to the 2010 redesign that ever happened uh they considered it in 2011 as part of that and then they were looking at doing it last year as part of the initial revamp MacBook Air for the Apple silicon launch uh no they're probably gonna do it and I think that's going to be a really hot machine I think a lot of people are going to like it it looks just like the current MacBook Air obviously just with the wider bigger display and I think it's going to be a really exciting product for a lot of people and obviously next year they'll follow up with an M3 version and later in the year we'll see probably an M3 version of the 13-inch MacBook Air and then at some point they'll get them on the same uh chip chip roadmap so that's really one thing that I was interested in getting your thoughts on there Mark is how the M3 plays into this so obviously at this point in the lineup a 15-inch model with M2 makes perfect sense because M3 just isn't ready but if we are going to get M3 chips in Max by the end of the year and by then the 13-inch model will have been out for well over a year will Apple um split these two machines in terms of Chip because it would seem odd to have an M3 and a 13 inch but an M2 in the 15 inch is this something that they will see as updating together and if so will that be updated perhaps on a slightly more delayed time frame going into next year I'm just trying to get a sense of how this works because the timing is a bit strange well the the issue is that they were wanting to release this M2 15-inch MacBook Air last year right and obviously resource strapped with covid not only in terms of engineering but production as well uh so they had to sort of hold their fire on the M2 15-inch MacBook Air and it's not as simple as swapping out a chip you can't just swap out the M2 with the M3 right the architecture of the chips are completely designed from the get-go uh with the machine themselves and it's all very integrated on the hardware side on the software side on the chip side so it's not as easy as swapping it out Max sales are down considerably they need something right so getting that M2 15-inch MacBook Air out even though it might be a bit outdated on the chip side in six to nine months from now uh is probably the right move people are still going to buy them up and I don't think it would be I think it would be odd certainly but I don't think it would be the end of the world obviously in the context that we're talking about um to have an M2 15-inch air and an M3 uh 13 inch air right you're still getting that big screen size boost and then in the following cycle they'll be able to get them both on the same uh platform the other possibility is that they launched the M2 15-inch MacBook Air in June uh and then they hold the 13-inch MacBook Air M3 update until spring next year and they launch uh the M3 uh 15-inch MacBook Air and M3 13 inch rapid Air at the same time next spring and the M2 15 inch air is on a nine month cycle uh a nine month Mac life cycle also wouldn't be unheard of so I think either where they play this it's going to be fine people are still going to buy them up maybe even me I don't know yet do it the MacBook Air is the best the math book here is the best laptop if you don't need tons and tons of crazy performance which even if you did you know every once in a while you can still get away with it depending on your configuration so highly recommend I've got the M1 Max bro because I really need well I really need the performance for Twitter and video calls and such so I I could make an argument that in you might you might actually really need that with the way Twitter is going these days and how many calls for Google Chrome honestly you might need an M2 Ultra with a terabyte of Ram uh to get Chrome running with more than five or six tabs open at once oh God I can imagine I can imagine what your your death what do you are you like how many tabs you have open at a at any given time oh it depends on the time of day um dozens hundreds thousands depends what I'm working on your M1 Max must be on fire always and you know I I use my laptop primarily but I have a desktop as well uh at my office and my phone or my Apple watch to traditionally leave the iPad at home there was a time where I was trying to do as much work as I can from the iPad because it was so convenient with the magic keyboard and how light it was and you know I had prior to this M1 16 inch I had the Intel 16 inch and that thing was awful the battery life was sub two hours it was always overheating you could click an egg on the back if you wanted on a cold day and so I mostly left that thing at home and used the iPad instead but now these Apple silicon chips are absolutely astonishingly incredible the battery life the speed it doesn't slow down you rarely have issues with these things and so you know I'm back to the Mac because of those chips but at one point it just got so bad with the performance of Intel and it's so obvious why they had to make this transition I'm looking forward to it I'm also looking forward to this damn headset I I really want to stop talking finally right I really need to stop talking about this headset at least the the speculation of it I just want to see it I can't believe it I have been writing about this thing since 2016 or 2017 and it's already 2023. there has been no Apple product that has taken this long other than the Apple car the Apple car is going to end up being let's see they started in 15. uh that's going to be a 15-year product right but the headset's pretty damn close and so I'm excited for the run-up the next two months are going to be exciting uh and I'm excited for this to finally get out the door and I can move on to the next topic well we're going to talk about it now so I know I know I know um back to the Apple car once WWDC hits yes um so the one feature we could talk about so much with this headset um there really was so much we could go into but one feature that you've reported on that definitely caught the attention of a lot of our readers was this uh in-air typing experience um because you didn't make it sound like uh it was too polished or that it would be something that would be uh a runaway feature um and I believe you said you weren't even sure if it would actually be in the final release version of the headset so I wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about whether this will be like a beta feature when it arrives or whether this will be front and center finished in the marketing materials we're seeing people typing away in the air uh I do think that it will be in the final release I do think it's going to be finicky and I do think most people will want to pair a Bluetooth keyboard right uh you also should be able to use your Mac keyboard or an iPhone keyboard sort of how you can use your iPhone keyboard to type into your Apple watch or to type into your Apple TV and so I think it's going to make for a cool demo but I'm not entirely sure if they're solving problems here with this headset right they're creating a new platform and Paradigm but they're not necessarily solving an issue that people have been asking to be solved right uh I think they've even are going as far as creating new problems for themselves things like inner typing right and taking people out of the real world is a real concern internally uh but I think the headset is going to be awesome it's going to be straight out of Science Fiction I think it's going to be a status symbol I think it's going to be the future of the computer I think it's going to be like an iPad for your face I think the people get their hands on it are going to love it initially it's going to be sort of the really really Niche like Tech focused crowd like the four of us or the three of us right uh but eventually you know this is where the world is going this is where the industry is going towards mixed reality and virtual reality and augmented reality uh and this is the platform to take apple in that direction it's going to be a very long timeline uh it's going to be extensive I think you're going to see frequent software updates I think you're going to see a lot of changes about the hardware and software over time and certainly they want to make this a core part of the company the one issue not the one issue but a core issue that they've run into is that I feel like meta has sort of soiled the market they've created this false promise of the metaverse and this false promise of mixed reality that they really failed on right and so they sort of soiled the public opinion on this type of technology and so not only does Apple have to sell a new type of technology to people but they have to sell new type of technology that people are already critical of right and already are skeptical of because of how the market has existed thus far they haven't had that challenge with prior product lines nobody was skeptical about smartphone phones before the iPhone nobody was skeptical about smart watches nobody was skeptical about tablets right those were all markets that it was extremely clear that there's extreme amounts of demand and understanding and desire for uh whereas on the Apple headset you're not seeing a market desire not seeing demand you're not seeing excitement you're not seeing understanding uh so from that perspective this is an extraordinarily risky launch for Apple uh the good news for them is that they have so much cash and uh they have enough bandwidth uh just enough bandwidth to almost take a risk with this type of product but I think it's going to play out similarly to the Apple watch and the iPad where it's going to start off you know a little niche and slow but over time it's going to explode right but let me rephrase that the iPad exploded pretty much from the get-go uh so maybe more so like the Apple watch So speaking about how this device will be targeted this has been something that has been we've sort of heard the rumors go back and forth on it in terms of uh it will be really consumer focused or it might be a little bit more developer focused or you know we've heard odd rumors about there being different prototype headbands specifically for developers and then consumers and all this sort of thing there's been this tension between how far it is meant for the average user and obviously the price point there is the big elephant in the room and one of your latest reports where you uh shed some light on some of the apps to expect from the headset really to me did make it seem like this is a much more consumer focused headset um than we were initially expecting so do you get the sense that apple is going to sort of present this as a tentative first generation device that is for enthusiasts or do you think they are going to just get up there on stage and say no this is for everyone it's got Pages it's got Fitness plus it's got meditation Apple's a very marketing driven company and the first rule of marketing and I'm not sure they teach you this in marketing classes in Business School uh because it's so obvious is don't limit your Market don't hold your product back don't do anything to intentionally shoot yourself in the foot I think it would be bizarre and short-sighted for Apple to do anything of the sort to portray this as a beta a developer focused prototype a device for enthusiasts I think that would be a huge mistake why would Apple do that right and so I think to your point Hartley they're gonna get on stage and they're going to say this is for everyone it has Pages it has iMovie it has GarageBand you can game on it you can uh work out in it you can watch movies in it you can do everything in it you can do anything in it and it's the future of the computer and the future of our ecosystem uh I think there's no way that they limit themselves with this device it would just be a mistake why why destroy your Market before it even exists I think that would throw away 10 billion dollars in r d you know billions more in marketing spend yeah that makes sense right they've never done that before yes I suppose it's just they've never they've never brought to Market a device at this price point um and sort of a device that at this price point a lot of people won't really know if it's them when they introduce the pro display xdr Apple was able to say you know this is uh this is competing with reference monitors that are more expensive in spite of its price point so I guess it's that tension with the price that uh yeah but I think the Apple perspective is if we're not going to drink our own Kool-Aid why should anyone else drink it right right and so I definitely think that in the case of the Apple headset despite the price it's gonna be portrayed as a product for everyone well internally understanding that it might not be perceived that way and that things are going to start off fairly slow right and there's plenty of people who think this should be positioned as a developer prototype but from a marketing perspective that's absolutely a mistake they're not going to get in the way of their own launch so I mean again my opinion is maybe that they should maybe they should portray it as developer prototype maybe they should hold it back a little bit maybe they should portray it as something more for enthusiasts or at the high end of the market but I don't think they will because I don't think they want to dump in front of their their own product yeah so so for those who are enthusiasts for us three who are most likely going to check it out what would you expect a typical day in the life check it out I'm gonna be first in line well you know what I mean I don't know about Hartley but maybe maybe I don't know it's much more responsible I need to see the uh the videos I need to if they get me Johnny ive's voice they get him back for that you know I'm I'm sold whose voice is it going to be who is going to do the introduction video you know he's still he's still you know on the he's still Apple fellow so you know what it would make sense Tim Cook should do this one isn't this kind of like his lasting like one last stamp on his legacy type deal this isn't the whole rumor that he wants to get out to get out after this shouldn't he be the one to introduce this I think it's going to be the car personally uh I think he's gonna stick around that long oh yeah oh yeah I mean look at Bob Iger he's like gonna be CEO of Disney's at least 73 or 75. but there was a point where he wasn't even though that was very sure how long ago that was planned out and what the idea was like I'm listen I'm gonna step away but if anything happens I'm few miles away just give me a call you have my number right um so yeah I think the car will probably be Tim's last thing uh fceo I would expect them to become chairman after and be involved with Apple for the rest of his life but eventually they will need a new you know leader on the ground um I don't know I mean the head of the project is Mike Rockwell right and he's sort of going to be the face of it not dissimilar to Kevin Lynch being sort of the early face on the Apple watch um Dan riccio oversees Rockwell uh in terms of headset development obviously Tim is the CEO then there's Greg joswiak who's out of Marketing so I think that's all possible um you know the head of design there is no new head of design at this point right all the designers just report to the CEO which obviously is odd so it's not going to be you know a designer so you know I'll probably be a mix of people I think with Mike Rockwell at the Forefront all right so when they when they do the video and the whoever's mythical voice is is you know telling us about this how do you expect people to use this when they buy it they get home they unbox it what do you think is the first thing they're gonna do when they spend all day messing around with it like what's going to be the Marquee thing oof the Marquee thing well I think the FaceTime Communications uh is going to be cool now the question is let's say you buy one how many people do you know who are also going to have one or are you going to be able to test this one I honestly I might be I might be FaceTiming with you guys right that's why I haven't video it in a year right and so they'll be that uh I think you're going to see a lot of web browsing on it I think you're going to want to see people sort of replace their day-to-day you'll be messaging in it right you'll be uh emailing it you'll be doing your documents you'll be doing your tweets and Twitter and such and it right and so I think it's just going to be a replacement for your day-to-day uh workflow I think that's the idea my concern is the battery life situation right if you have to swap out that battery pack that's the size of an iPhone every two hours how much are they going to charge for battery pack how many battery packs is it going to come with and is it going to be annoying to try to swap that thing out every two hours so I'm interested to see how they play that battery life thing uh when the Apple watch came out it launched with uh you charge it every night right you use it all day that was the goal that has not changed except for the Apple watch Ultra but that took 10 years I think once they make a decision on the battery life they're gonna stick to it and I think instead of trying to eventually move to an internal battery design they'll maybe try to improve the external battery life pack while adding new features to the device itself so I would expect a external battery pack situation to last for for many generations of this product uh maybe up until they get the actual glasses rolling I feel like each battery is going to cost like five hundred dollars there's no way that would be crazy I would guess I would guess a hundred dollars that would be great if it's 100 bucks I could see people buying multiple ones I think it would be worth if you're really using it for that long I mean you probably shouldn't but if you're going to be using it for maybe one other battery makes sense but hours is not a long time I would get if it were me obviously it'll come with one I would get a second one for sure I don't know people are gonna buy four or five of them that would be ridiculous but the other hope would be maybe over time they have larger battery packs or maybe it comes with a two hour battery pack and then you could buy a jumbo pack that you carry I this is a joke but like you carry in a wagon or your backpack or something right uh but this is it's it's gonna be very powerful with the M2 and that's gonna require a lot of battery life right a lot of RAM and uh it's gonna be pretty high tech and amazing and I'm looking forward to trying it out but I am skeptical I think it's extremely risky I think it's not going to appeal to mass consumers I think it's not solving a problem that people are asking to be solved I'm not sure it's even solving a problem uh and I think they're gonna have a difficult first couple years with it and I think they're not even sure of how well this is actually going to go or what people are going to want to use it for so I'm extremely interested to see how this plays out and I'm extremely interested to report on how this goes so just before we let you go Mark I have one last question that I am desperate to ask you which is Mac Pro because this is also another product that we have been hearing about for such a long time the Apple silicon Mac premium we were talking about this from what 2019 was when these discussions really started and we were thinking about the transition to Apple silicon um but it just seems like the product that's never coming and you've talked a little bit about the conflict with Max studio as well um and you've talked a bit about how the Apple dropped this chip this high-end chip that they had planned for it so could you give us a little bit of an update on where we are with Mac Pro yeah the Mac Pro they were originally going to do two variations they were to do an M2 Ultra uh and an M2 Extreme as I call it and the M2 extremely double the M2 ultra's performance they cancel the M2 extreme chip because of cost in production and you were making so few of them anyways it would cost so much to actually produce them and is it really worth taking all those resources up to produce something that's going to be so so neat even more Niche than the M2 Ultra and the other question is would people be really willing to even pay for an M2 extreme right and so that's the conflict that existed there I believe it is still coming this year right and I think part of the reason why you're seeing these M that 15-inch MacBook uh air being an M2 and then the M3 coming later is because you don't want to launch an M3 before you launch the M2 Ultra chip coming in uh the Mac Pro and then in terms of the conflict with the Mac Studio uh what I believe is we're not going to see a new map studio until the M3 generation at the earliest so I don't believe there'll be an M2 Ultra Max studio it would not make sense to have an M2 Ultra Max studio uh and an M2 uh Ultra Mac Pro just like it wouldn't make sense to have an M1 Ultra Max studio and an M1 Ultra Mac Pro remember the Mac Pro was supposed to be an M1 product and that got pushed back to the M2 generation I just they brought it up so once once Apple says something about it they're on the hook now that it's like air power it did bring it up for another day they didn't say if that would be another day in 2022 2023 2022. or Another Day In Another Universe that's not existing but I'm pretty confident that's coming so yeah I mean you know it's always possible they pushed it back to the M3 generation the M3 Ultra right we shall see I don't think it's coming in June though I don't think it's gonna get that oh that's a shame I know I'm bummed but hey we got a lot we got a lot of WWDC though we've still got two months to figure out what's coming so I'll keep you guys updated awesome mark thank you so much for those who want to be updated go you know subscribe to the power on newsletter follow them on Twitter mark is there anything else that you want to say before we let you go no thanks so much both of you for having me you can subscribe to power on at bloomberg.com power on uh on Twitter twitter.comerman uh you can turn notifications on to get my Lakers tweets and any new articles so I'll see you later except for the Cavs yes and thank you both for having me and I do hope to come on uh sooner maybe I come back after the headset comes out we can talk about Impressions and such absolutely absolutely that would be great awesome thanks Markforeign welcome back to another episode of the Mac rumor show I'm so excited mark you were like one of our first guests and it's been so long like a full calendar year and so Mark Herman everybody the the famous Mark German he's back uh we can talk about all the rumors and have the man the myth the legend himself comment on everything famous not so much but I'm uh I'm glad to be here I guess it's been one year since last time uh I'll see you again in a year after this or maybe sooner I don't know I'm very happy to be here I want to talk to you more let's make it sooner than one year but I mean you're probably one of the only guests that I don't need to really like go through the list of everything everybody knows who you are so you're good but we do have a ton of stuff to get into um so we're just gonna jump right into it uh there's a lot going on in in June early June as you might know WWDC um and this is finally the year where I am hoping that a lot of like platforms get the major boost uh you know the redesigns and the new features and stuff and so we'll start with W we'll start with the Apple watch um watch OS 10. you recently reported that there's some going to be some notable changes one of the biggest updates since what like forever hasn't the Apple watch looked the same for forever yeah I think this is going to be the biggest software update uh to the Apple watch since the first version came out you know they've made pretty iterative changes over the years they've added a lot of new health and fitness functionality uh they've really refocused around complications on the watch base uh notifications they downgraded or removed things that were in the OS at the beginning remember glances they got rid of those uh they've you know demoted things that were really core parts of the initial watch sort of remember you clicked the button on the side it showed you your friends list right in that Circle and then you can quickly message them send them your heartbeat and whatnot they've demoted that too but this time we're likely to see some pretty big interface changes so do you think that will be uh with regards to a sort of basic interaction with the device so we're talking about maybe the home screen or is how far is this sort of a way of reconsidering basic ways of actually interacting with the watch I guess would be my question yeah I think that this will reconsider basic ways of interacting with the watch I do think you're going to see notable user interface updates across the system I've got more coming on this and so you know look out for my article on this as well but you know to date you know what I've said is that this is going to be a pretty big update uh I'm not sure I would compare it to the transition from iOS 6 to iOS 7 in 2013 that was a pretty core revamp to the system end to end in terms of user interface design I don't think the core design is going to change but I think you're going to see many different ways of using the system and new types of interactions uh I've seen some rumors following what I put out there about what that would entail um I I you know I'm not sure about that I don't think folders would make much sense I'm just about to ask you about that I guess yeah I guess anything is possible I haven't heard one way or another okay um but certainly I'm looking forward to a medium to watch OS especially in the Apple watch Ultra it felt like they put that bigger screen in they put that bigger Hardware in but they really didn't revamp the watch faces uh or the user interface to really match that new design that bigger display the more room you have to work with and traditionally what we've seen from Apple is that the software is always like a year behind the hardware right we've seen this before and so I think that this is going to be you know the year hopefully where the Apple watch software catches up uh with the Apple watch Hardware now the other thing to note is traditionally in very very strong Hardware years for particular product you may see a light software here and in very light Hardware years you see a very strong software update and this is going to probably be uh the lightest year in terms of new Apple watch Hardware to date uh last year was you know fairly significant with the Apple watch Ultra it went pretty light with the series 8 uh and obviously the new SC was more of a production change in order to get the cost down for both apple and the consumer right they have that updated back that's cheaper to make than the glass back they used previous uh so I think that's how it's going to play out this year where the Big Apple watch news for the year is probably going to be on the software side and anything we see on the hardware side is going to be more uh spec bump s update so to speak so do you get the impression that watch OS is kind of going to steal the show in terms of software updates at WWDC well steal the show um if you're comparing watch OS to iOS and iPad OS uh and Mac OS I think yes certainly watch OS is going to be the most significant uh software update for existing platforms but I think the the show stealer is going to be uh xros and the reality headset as well as the 15-inch air right I think those are going to be the main things and I think that's what they're going to spend the most amount of time on uh certainly uh so I wouldn't say it's gonna steal the show but if you're talking about self-drivates to existing products I would say sure we'll get into those in a little bit that's for sure um but with watch OS Hartley did you have anything else before we moved on because you know he kind of allured to watch OS being the biggest thing but there is IOS 17 which was also apparently going to get some pretty big changes too most requested user can you can you explain what that might be a little bit more the highly requested features sure so when Apple set out to develop iOS 17 or I should say you know they work over they work overtime over a number of years on several different features and enhancements and they look you know every year prior to the year of the new release what features are ready to go what features we want to implement for this particular cycle right and so when they started off on the iOS 17 development cycle last year the idea was that we're going to go for sort of a Polish update we're going to go at people like to compare these types of things to snow leopard right a fit and finish update an underlying performance update having minimal changes now why did they want to do that one a lot of the resources were going towards xros but more importantly is that iOS 16 as you guys have written about many times has faced delay after delay after delay for particular new features right you've seen the Apple pay later implementation get delayed you've seen various features from 16.0 get pushed back a free form I believe was was one of them you also saw delays to iPad OS because of stage manager right iPad OS for the first time ever launched in October instead of September alongside iOS 16 so they uh they broke that into two separate release paths right and so there were so many delays there and so many functional issues with iOS 16 uh they felt that taking a step back would make sense this time around uh but that plan changed right at the end of last year and now they've been going Full Throttle on your standard array of uh updates right a 100 200 new feature standard iOS update I'm not expecting anything revolutionary I'm not expecting a a redesign uh there are changes coming across the system I certainly know what some of those changes are and I'll be writing about those soon uh but certainly I think it's going to be quite a significant update it's not going to be as significant as the hardware changes this year obviously the iPhone 15 Pro with the titanium back and some of the enhancements there is going to be quite significant but I think they are bringing enough new to the table that it's going to be a pretty interesting update I would probably compare it mostly to the update I think it was iOS 15 two years ago where it seemed like they added new features to every core app but they didn't do anything like over the top uh revolutionary right I don't think there's going to be a big standout new feature this year like we saw with iOS 14 with widgets or we saw with iOS 16 with the lock screen I think it's going to be core updates around the system so one change that you talked about quite a bit with regards to iOS 17 is side loading which is something that definitely has captured a lot of interest with regards to iOS 17. so I wondered if you could give us a bit of an impression of how you think Apple will handle that whether it will be a front and center feature or whether it's just going to be sort of pushed out uh in the side and not be part of the keynote or will it be a Europe only feature so first of all I think it will be a Europe only feature I think that they're not going to shoot themselves in the foot and expand this globally if they don't have to I think they're going to play it uh similarly to how they've played some of the other changes they made to the app store for legal reasons if you remember there was that change in the Netherlands around dating apps and the percentage there and so you have to install a special profile you have to go through some sort of groups to do it and it was very under the radar so I think they're going to push more in that direction I would be a bit surprised if they announced it at WWDC and made this a highlight consumer feature I think they want to sort of downplay it as much as possible at the same time uh I think that this has been a major undertaking inside the company this has been a exhaustive project across the board across several divisions across Services across software engineering across many departments at Apple legal marketing the App Store Department certainly and you know for that reason it's possible that they want to get the recognition for it but at the same time I don't know why they would because this is just going to cost them money uh my expectation at the same time as well it's going to cost the money they're going to charge developers uh to be part of this program and I I would assume they would call it some sort of special program that you would have to apply for a profile you'd have to pay for a profile and there'll be some sort of review process even though these apps would be installed outside of the App Store uh I think apple is going to you know go through the European regulations this is the digital markets act as it's called Uh and they're going to really stick to you know letter of the law here they're not going to do anything extraneous that would further hurt their grip on the App Store and quite frankly why should they right if you're thinking about the situation from their shoes uh they're going to just toe the line of what exactly is necessary and not do anything more to disrupt their existing infrastructure do you foresee the US ever kind of following suit and being in in kind of the same way like making them enable that now that they know that Apple will do it and can do it yeah well the U.S is certainly trying uh they've they've done actually two bills at this point they've never you know made it to uh you know actual law they've never been signed into law uh you know it's interesting that you bring that up Dan about how if they're able to implement it for Europe it seems pretty simple to implement it for other GEOS and so I think maybe the fact that they're going to do this is going to set a precedent there and maybe it'll drum up more bills that uh US government officials will try to push into law and so we'll see I don't think anything like that is imminent uh but what you've seen with this USBC situation is that this started off in Europe but you have other countries that are pushing for it now I even saw the state of California that's pushing for it too and obviously the USBC is a hardware feature and it would be next to well I wouldn't say it would be impossible but it would probably be irresponsible from a manufacturing and marketing and development perspective to sort of split the iPhone into the USBC and lightning models they're going all USBC I think personally Europe their implementation and their rationale uh for pushing towards USBC is probably not correct but from a consumer standpoint I think a move from lightning to USBC is very consumer friendly uh and I think it is a major Improvement given there already USBC on everything else right and so you'll see USBC iPhone 15 you'll see USBC uh airpods case uh and I think they've that those are the only two holes left there's the USBC uh transition that needs to take place in some of the Mac accessories as well but I think over time lightning will probably be phased out magsafe charger duo or whatever is still lightning I just used one like five minutes ago before this so that's the only reason why I remember that Max safe Duo is both underrated and overpriced yes like you would do it I like it a lot too but I don't know that I'd want to pay for it as much as it is either well you know sort of like they announced it at the event in September 2020. oh my God I need to get my hands on it and then they release it like three months later of course you're gonna just buy it right you're not gonna return it the one thing about that white material they use it's like mine's like ELO at this point and it's not like I've taken it through the mud or anything Apple needs to stop using that material and if you're going to keep using that material as much as I love the way the white looks you gotta stop using white uh because my my iPad Pro uh magic keyboard is horrendous uh and so it's just they gotta stop using that material I I cannot stand it but I am I'm debating whether I get the white magic keyboard or the black magic keyboard next time I get an iPad I have the black magic keyboard nothing's a disaster too I've had it since 2020 and it's sort of like tearing at the seams a little bit uh and the keys are all there's too much dust and dirt under them but like you partly love it hardly loves color options Hartley what are you thinking about the uh well I actually think that the the white one uh ages a lot better than the black one I think the black shows Greece and fingerprints way more than the white one that's right it's just that's right it's terrible wait yeah even the airports Max Smart Case is a particularly bad one see I'm getting markings from like other things in my bag like when I put them in my bag with something else it's like leaving black scuff marks and stuff do you want to get dirty or do you want to get greasy right yeah that's true well speaking of getting greasy can you give us any information on one little breadcrumb of a new feature something even if you're like I I don't have any concrete but I'm I'm I'm feeling confident in my own opinion that this is going to be uh you know an iOS 17 feature we've heard things about the locks or not the lock screen the control center do you know anything about that that you'd want to be able to do I'm trying I'm trying I'm trying to get something heard anything about the the control center or I have nothing to share I should say about the control center at this part but I think you'll see changes in uh wallet I think you'll see changes in uh find my and I think you'll see a bigger push on you know location and find my related things in addition to uh wallet and such some user interface tweaks and enhancements there um there's other stuff too though I'll let you know hey I mean if you you know at any point in time if you're like okay I'll give you one breadcrumb of a macramers exclusive here you just let us know like interrupt by all this hey I work I work for Bloomberg not Mac groomer so no no no no no no no no no no we understand we understand but uh no I appreciate it though yeah um so the other update that I really want to ask you about Mark was Mac OS because it's definitely in terms of the the sort of wider sort of number of reports and rumors that we look at it has been the quietest thing maybe other than tvos we've heard absolutely nothing really about what to expect from Mac OS next year and it feels like Mac OS has been really quite iterative and quiet for quite some years at this point I know Big Sur was a redesign but functionally there wasn't much going on with it and the same with Ventura so uh can you give us an impression of what to expect from the scale of this year's Mac OS update yeah I don't think Mac OS is going to be anything groundbreaking or significant certainly I haven't heard anything uh remarkable about Mac OS I think that they've basically moved to an idea where they're making the enhancements on iOS uh iPad OS watch OS and elsewhere and then they bake in support for those features right and connectivity to those features uh in Mac OS I think a good example of that last year was the stage manager uh built for iPad OS and then they had to sort of uh make a version of it for Mac OS as well because how can you introduce a enhanced albeit not great multitasking system that maybe some consider Superior on the iPad platform but I'll bring it to the Mac right uh support for things that they added messages on iPad OS and iOS they have to do it on Mac OS as well so I think you're going to see more of the same uh in in Mac OS this year so anything they add on iOS they'll replicate for Mac OS you know what always fascinates me about these OS updates or the naming conventions right and traditionally uh when they pick a city and then the follow-up version or pick a part of California and the follow-up version uh is pretty close to that original area if it's a minor update right they've done this in the past uh there was El Capitan so El Capitan right is located uh very closely to Yosemite geographically right so that made sense given lcap10 was a minor update um so Ventura right that is actually in Southern California it's a absolutely beautiful area beaches mountains places to hike it's awesome uh but there's one famous place in La uh that Apple has not named an OS after yet and if Apple were to go in that direction again of a minor update and they pick the closest city uh it would be Malibu Mac OS Malibu now I haven't heard anything about that but if I was thinking like Apple's marketers I would call it Mac OS Malibu if it was a minor iterative update over Mac OS and Torah uh given the history there of naming conventions we better get a beachy wallpaper with that one oh yeah and what kind a beachy wallet yeah that would be nice that would be nice um all right so before we move on to the hardware side of WWDC um we didn't really talk about iPad OS I'm guessing you're kind of expecting to just adopt some of the iOS 17 features that will come through but is there any chance in maybe this year maybe next year that we'll ever see these Pro apps that people have been clamoring for like logic and Final Cut Pro making its way I mean they've let Da Vinci be the star of the show when the iPad Pro come out uh came out uh with the M2 I'm so shocked by that because it's not like apple doesn't have its own Suite of apps that they could use for this and I'm just wondering if you have any any info on that or any thoughts I mean it seems clear to me that Apple I won't say has abandoned right but they've pushed a little bit away from those Pro apps right I know there were rumors that were completely made up a few years ago about Final Cut and logic and such uh coming to the iPad I certainly haven't heard anything about that um I'm seeing less and less work being done on those Pro apps at this point I know there has been a sizable amount of people who've been actually leaving uh those teams the head of marketing Xander Soren left at the end of last year he was involved in those creative apps as well so you know maybe they're taking some time to to do some sort of rethink right it's been about a decade since the big Final Cut Pro X uh rethink so maybe it's time for another one of those and maybe they're hard at work at that and obviously if they're going to do a full revamp to Final Cut Pro uh that would probably have the iPad and even the Apple headset in mind right and so I would imagine that would all be a cross-platform thing I mean the big push at Apple right now uh sort of behind the scenes is to get every app every feature to work across all of Apple's devices and integrate across all of Apple's devices sort of that continuity push and you know the dream scenario is that you own an Apple Watch an iPhone a Macbook an iPad and an apple headset right those five devices and all five of those devices are capable of doing all the same things just in different use cases and different times of your day and Apple's push and this has been uh pushed by marzipan or Catalyst starting in 2019 uh with the idea of running iPad apps on the Mac now you can run iPhone apps on the Mac and vice versa so the the core idea is having sort of like one universal binary per app and one main OS that runs on everything that's customized to the specific interface and input Paradigm of those devices so I think that is the big thing from Apple and I think you'll see them discuss that idea this year interesting I think it will be interesting to see personally whether any future update to those per apps is accompanied by a subscription model as well no no Hartley please for the love of God to not say that like right now it wasn't I know but right now it's like the best 300 you could spend if you are a content creator especially a student bundle producer oh my gosh it's uh yeah I mean you could do everything you need to do and not have to pay for Adobe apps uh and so do not bring that up uh I do not want to hear that Dan on on Final Cut after you use right yeah how often are they doing like fun fixes and software updates and enhancements to that not as often as not as often as you would like okay so I mean it seems like there's clearly something going on there I mean they're they're lately I would say over the last two years there have been some updates um but they and when they do come they are bigger updates but that's because they don't you know they don't address them for like six to eight months at a time and then it's just like whatever Buck you're dealing with you're dealing with it for a while so you better learn to work around it um yeah hopefully something turns around there soon because I'm getting lots of DMS and emails from people who use those Pro apps who are you know asking when is there going to be a new version what's going on with album Pro apps and uh it feels like when people really start complaining about that about five years ago Apple promised that one happened again so I would be shocked if they really Abandoned Ship there uh but clearly something's going on around going on behind the scenes you know they're very strapped for resources there um you know it's a very thin and mean organization and they have to prioritize certain things and things get lost when you're launching a new platform right there's a lot of resources across the company going into xrof and that reality headset so you know maybe it has something to do with that too and obviously you're seeing a big update to watch and you know everything else they have going on there so in terms of their revenue driven priorities Final Cuts probably pretty low on the totem pole but I know but but the part the point I was going to make is that that's the core core Apple audience that sort of leaves the discussion so you have to make those people happy and I think that sort of spreads to everyone around sort of like uh you know the center the center of a wheel right yeah um well speaking of the headset that is literally the next topic but you did mention the MacBook Air and everyone's expecting a new Macbook Air there's been a ton of topic around a 15-inch MacBook Air which I am super excited about if that's if that's happening uh but we did also see that it was going to be continuing on with M2 is that your expectations the 15 inch will come with M2 and not M3 yeah I wrote last week that the 15 inch air would run M2 and everyone else now seems to agree um the M3 is not going to be ready until end of the year that's a three nanometer design and tsmc is not ready to start popping out three nanometers at the quantity that Apple needs and at the yield rates that Apple needs until later this year so that 15 inch uh will be an M2 and I don't think that changes the purchase story I think people are going to line up for that thing uh maybe not literally but I think that it's going to be one of the most popular Macs ever people have been asking for a 15-inch MacBook Air for a number of years this is actually Apple's third attempt at launching the 15-inch MacBook Air they were going to do it as a follow-up to the 2010 redesign that ever happened uh they considered it in 2011 as part of that and then they were looking at doing it last year as part of the initial revamp MacBook Air for the Apple silicon launch uh no they're probably gonna do it and I think that's going to be a really hot machine I think a lot of people are going to like it it looks just like the current MacBook Air obviously just with the wider bigger display and I think it's going to be a really exciting product for a lot of people and obviously next year they'll follow up with an M3 version and later in the year we'll see probably an M3 version of the 13-inch MacBook Air and then at some point they'll get them on the same uh chip chip roadmap so that's really one thing that I was interested in getting your thoughts on there Mark is how the M3 plays into this so obviously at this point in the lineup a 15-inch model with M2 makes perfect sense because M3 just isn't ready but if we are going to get M3 chips in Max by the end of the year and by then the 13-inch model will have been out for well over a year will Apple um split these two machines in terms of Chip because it would seem odd to have an M3 and a 13 inch but an M2 in the 15 inch is this something that they will see as updating together and if so will that be updated perhaps on a slightly more delayed time frame going into next year I'm just trying to get a sense of how this works because the timing is a bit strange well the the issue is that they were wanting to release this M2 15-inch MacBook Air last year right and obviously resource strapped with covid not only in terms of engineering but production as well uh so they had to sort of hold their fire on the M2 15-inch MacBook Air and it's not as simple as swapping out a chip you can't just swap out the M2 with the M3 right the architecture of the chips are completely designed from the get-go uh with the machine themselves and it's all very integrated on the hardware side on the software side on the chip side so it's not as easy as swapping it out Max sales are down considerably they need something right so getting that M2 15-inch MacBook Air out even though it might be a bit outdated on the chip side in six to nine months from now uh is probably the right move people are still going to buy them up and I don't think it would be I think it would be odd certainly but I don't think it would be the end of the world obviously in the context that we're talking about um to have an M2 15-inch air and an M3 uh 13 inch air right you're still getting that big screen size boost and then in the following cycle they'll be able to get them both on the same uh platform the other possibility is that they launched the M2 15-inch MacBook Air in June uh and then they hold the 13-inch MacBook Air M3 update until spring next year and they launch uh the M3 uh 15-inch MacBook Air and M3 13 inch rapid Air at the same time next spring and the M2 15 inch air is on a nine month cycle uh a nine month Mac life cycle also wouldn't be unheard of so I think either where they play this it's going to be fine people are still going to buy them up maybe even me I don't know yet do it the MacBook Air is the best the math book here is the best laptop if you don't need tons and tons of crazy performance which even if you did you know every once in a while you can still get away with it depending on your configuration so highly recommend I've got the M1 Max bro because I really need well I really need the performance for Twitter and video calls and such so I I could make an argument that in you might you might actually really need that with the way Twitter is going these days and how many calls for Google Chrome honestly you might need an M2 Ultra with a terabyte of Ram uh to get Chrome running with more than five or six tabs open at once oh God I can imagine I can imagine what your your death what do you are you like how many tabs you have open at a at any given time oh it depends on the time of day um dozens hundreds thousands depends what I'm working on your M1 Max must be on fire always and you know I I use my laptop primarily but I have a desktop as well uh at my office and my phone or my Apple watch to traditionally leave the iPad at home there was a time where I was trying to do as much work as I can from the iPad because it was so convenient with the magic keyboard and how light it was and you know I had prior to this M1 16 inch I had the Intel 16 inch and that thing was awful the battery life was sub two hours it was always overheating you could click an egg on the back if you wanted on a cold day and so I mostly left that thing at home and used the iPad instead but now these Apple silicon chips are absolutely astonishingly incredible the battery life the speed it doesn't slow down you rarely have issues with these things and so you know I'm back to the Mac because of those chips but at one point it just got so bad with the performance of Intel and it's so obvious why they had to make this transition I'm looking forward to it I'm also looking forward to this damn headset I I really want to stop talking finally right I really need to stop talking about this headset at least the the speculation of it I just want to see it I can't believe it I have been writing about this thing since 2016 or 2017 and it's already 2023. there has been no Apple product that has taken this long other than the Apple car the Apple car is going to end up being let's see they started in 15. uh that's going to be a 15-year product right but the headset's pretty damn close and so I'm excited for the run-up the next two months are going to be exciting uh and I'm excited for this to finally get out the door and I can move on to the next topic well we're going to talk about it now so I know I know I know um back to the Apple car once WWDC hits yes um so the one feature we could talk about so much with this headset um there really was so much we could go into but one feature that you've reported on that definitely caught the attention of a lot of our readers was this uh in-air typing experience um because you didn't make it sound like uh it was too polished or that it would be something that would be uh a runaway feature um and I believe you said you weren't even sure if it would actually be in the final release version of the headset so I wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about whether this will be like a beta feature when it arrives or whether this will be front and center finished in the marketing materials we're seeing people typing away in the air uh I do think that it will be in the final release I do think it's going to be finicky and I do think most people will want to pair a Bluetooth keyboard right uh you also should be able to use your Mac keyboard or an iPhone keyboard sort of how you can use your iPhone keyboard to type into your Apple watch or to type into your Apple TV and so I think it's going to make for a cool demo but I'm not entirely sure if they're solving problems here with this headset right they're creating a new platform and Paradigm but they're not necessarily solving an issue that people have been asking to be solved right uh I think they've even are going as far as creating new problems for themselves things like inner typing right and taking people out of the real world is a real concern internally uh but I think the headset is going to be awesome it's going to be straight out of Science Fiction I think it's going to be a status symbol I think it's going to be the future of the computer I think it's going to be like an iPad for your face I think the people get their hands on it are going to love it initially it's going to be sort of the really really Niche like Tech focused crowd like the four of us or the three of us right uh but eventually you know this is where the world is going this is where the industry is going towards mixed reality and virtual reality and augmented reality uh and this is the platform to take apple in that direction it's going to be a very long timeline uh it's going to be extensive I think you're going to see frequent software updates I think you're going to see a lot of changes about the hardware and software over time and certainly they want to make this a core part of the company the one issue not the one issue but a core issue that they've run into is that I feel like meta has sort of soiled the market they've created this false promise of the metaverse and this false promise of mixed reality that they really failed on right and so they sort of soiled the public opinion on this type of technology and so not only does Apple have to sell a new type of technology to people but they have to sell new type of technology that people are already critical of right and already are skeptical of because of how the market has existed thus far they haven't had that challenge with prior product lines nobody was skeptical about smartphone phones before the iPhone nobody was skeptical about smart watches nobody was skeptical about tablets right those were all markets that it was extremely clear that there's extreme amounts of demand and understanding and desire for uh whereas on the Apple headset you're not seeing a market desire not seeing demand you're not seeing excitement you're not seeing understanding uh so from that perspective this is an extraordinarily risky launch for Apple uh the good news for them is that they have so much cash and uh they have enough bandwidth uh just enough bandwidth to almost take a risk with this type of product but I think it's going to play out similarly to the Apple watch and the iPad where it's going to start off you know a little niche and slow but over time it's going to explode right but let me rephrase that the iPad exploded pretty much from the get-go uh so maybe more so like the Apple watch So speaking about how this device will be targeted this has been something that has been we've sort of heard the rumors go back and forth on it in terms of uh it will be really consumer focused or it might be a little bit more developer focused or you know we've heard odd rumors about there being different prototype headbands specifically for developers and then consumers and all this sort of thing there's been this tension between how far it is meant for the average user and obviously the price point there is the big elephant in the room and one of your latest reports where you uh shed some light on some of the apps to expect from the headset really to me did make it seem like this is a much more consumer focused headset um than we were initially expecting so do you get the sense that apple is going to sort of present this as a tentative first generation device that is for enthusiasts or do you think they are going to just get up there on stage and say no this is for everyone it's got Pages it's got Fitness plus it's got meditation Apple's a very marketing driven company and the first rule of marketing and I'm not sure they teach you this in marketing classes in Business School uh because it's so obvious is don't limit your Market don't hold your product back don't do anything to intentionally shoot yourself in the foot I think it would be bizarre and short-sighted for Apple to do anything of the sort to portray this as a beta a developer focused prototype a device for enthusiasts I think that would be a huge mistake why would Apple do that right and so I think to your point Hartley they're gonna get on stage and they're going to say this is for everyone it has Pages it has iMovie it has GarageBand you can game on it you can uh work out in it you can watch movies in it you can do everything in it you can do anything in it and it's the future of the computer and the future of our ecosystem uh I think there's no way that they limit themselves with this device it would just be a mistake why why destroy your Market before it even exists I think that would throw away 10 billion dollars in r d you know billions more in marketing spend yeah that makes sense right they've never done that before yes I suppose it's just they've never they've never brought to Market a device at this price point um and sort of a device that at this price point a lot of people won't really know if it's them when they introduce the pro display xdr Apple was able to say you know this is uh this is competing with reference monitors that are more expensive in spite of its price point so I guess it's that tension with the price that uh yeah but I think the Apple perspective is if we're not going to drink our own Kool-Aid why should anyone else drink it right right and so I definitely think that in the case of the Apple headset despite the price it's gonna be portrayed as a product for everyone well internally understanding that it might not be perceived that way and that things are going to start off fairly slow right and there's plenty of people who think this should be positioned as a developer prototype but from a marketing perspective that's absolutely a mistake they're not going to get in the way of their own launch so I mean again my opinion is maybe that they should maybe they should portray it as developer prototype maybe they should hold it back a little bit maybe they should portray it as something more for enthusiasts or at the high end of the market but I don't think they will because I don't think they want to dump in front of their their own product yeah so so for those who are enthusiasts for us three who are most likely going to check it out what would you expect a typical day in the life check it out I'm gonna be first in line well you know what I mean I don't know about Hartley but maybe maybe I don't know it's much more responsible I need to see the uh the videos I need to if they get me Johnny ive's voice they get him back for that you know I'm I'm sold whose voice is it going to be who is going to do the introduction video you know he's still he's still you know on the he's still Apple fellow so you know what it would make sense Tim Cook should do this one isn't this kind of like his lasting like one last stamp on his legacy type deal this isn't the whole rumor that he wants to get out to get out after this shouldn't he be the one to introduce this I think it's going to be the car personally uh I think he's gonna stick around that long oh yeah oh yeah I mean look at Bob Iger he's like gonna be CEO of Disney's at least 73 or 75. but there was a point where he wasn't even though that was very sure how long ago that was planned out and what the idea was like I'm listen I'm gonna step away but if anything happens I'm few miles away just give me a call you have my number right um so yeah I think the car will probably be Tim's last thing uh fceo I would expect them to become chairman after and be involved with Apple for the rest of his life but eventually they will need a new you know leader on the ground um I don't know I mean the head of the project is Mike Rockwell right and he's sort of going to be the face of it not dissimilar to Kevin Lynch being sort of the early face on the Apple watch um Dan riccio oversees Rockwell uh in terms of headset development obviously Tim is the CEO then there's Greg joswiak who's out of Marketing so I think that's all possible um you know the head of design there is no new head of design at this point right all the designers just report to the CEO which obviously is odd so it's not going to be you know a designer so you know I'll probably be a mix of people I think with Mike Rockwell at the Forefront all right so when they when they do the video and the whoever's mythical voice is is you know telling us about this how do you expect people to use this when they buy it they get home they unbox it what do you think is the first thing they're gonna do when they spend all day messing around with it like what's going to be the Marquee thing oof the Marquee thing well I think the FaceTime Communications uh is going to be cool now the question is let's say you buy one how many people do you know who are also going to have one or are you going to be able to test this one I honestly I might be I might be FaceTiming with you guys right that's why I haven't video it in a year right and so they'll be that uh I think you're going to see a lot of web browsing on it I think you're going to want to see people sort of replace their day-to-day you'll be messaging in it right you'll be uh emailing it you'll be doing your documents you'll be doing your tweets and Twitter and such and it right and so I think it's just going to be a replacement for your day-to-day uh workflow I think that's the idea my concern is the battery life situation right if you have to swap out that battery pack that's the size of an iPhone every two hours how much are they going to charge for battery pack how many battery packs is it going to come with and is it going to be annoying to try to swap that thing out every two hours so I'm interested to see how they play that battery life thing uh when the Apple watch came out it launched with uh you charge it every night right you use it all day that was the goal that has not changed except for the Apple watch Ultra but that took 10 years I think once they make a decision on the battery life they're gonna stick to it and I think instead of trying to eventually move to an internal battery design they'll maybe try to improve the external battery life pack while adding new features to the device itself so I would expect a external battery pack situation to last for for many generations of this product uh maybe up until they get the actual glasses rolling I feel like each battery is going to cost like five hundred dollars there's no way that would be crazy I would guess I would guess a hundred dollars that would be great if it's 100 bucks I could see people buying multiple ones I think it would be worth if you're really using it for that long I mean you probably shouldn't but if you're going to be using it for maybe one other battery makes sense but hours is not a long time I would get if it were me obviously it'll come with one I would get a second one for sure I don't know people are gonna buy four or five of them that would be ridiculous but the other hope would be maybe over time they have larger battery packs or maybe it comes with a two hour battery pack and then you could buy a jumbo pack that you carry I this is a joke but like you carry in a wagon or your backpack or something right uh but this is it's it's gonna be very powerful with the M2 and that's gonna require a lot of battery life right a lot of RAM and uh it's gonna be pretty high tech and amazing and I'm looking forward to trying it out but I am skeptical I think it's extremely risky I think it's not going to appeal to mass consumers I think it's not solving a problem that people are asking to be solved I'm not sure it's even solving a problem uh and I think they're gonna have a difficult first couple years with it and I think they're not even sure of how well this is actually going to go or what people are going to want to use it for so I'm extremely interested to see how this plays out and I'm extremely interested to report on how this goes so just before we let you go Mark I have one last question that I am desperate to ask you which is Mac Pro because this is also another product that we have been hearing about for such a long time the Apple silicon Mac premium we were talking about this from what 2019 was when these discussions really started and we were thinking about the transition to Apple silicon um but it just seems like the product that's never coming and you've talked a little bit about the conflict with Max studio as well um and you've talked a bit about how the Apple dropped this chip this high-end chip that they had planned for it so could you give us a little bit of an update on where we are with Mac Pro yeah the Mac Pro they were originally going to do two variations they were to do an M2 Ultra uh and an M2 Extreme as I call it and the M2 extremely double the M2 ultra's performance they cancel the M2 extreme chip because of cost in production and you were making so few of them anyways it would cost so much to actually produce them and is it really worth taking all those resources up to produce something that's going to be so so neat even more Niche than the M2 Ultra and the other question is would people be really willing to even pay for an M2 extreme right and so that's the conflict that existed there I believe it is still coming this year right and I think part of the reason why you're seeing these M that 15-inch MacBook uh air being an M2 and then the M3 coming later is because you don't want to launch an M3 before you launch the M2 Ultra chip coming in uh the Mac Pro and then in terms of the conflict with the Mac Studio uh what I believe is we're not going to see a new map studio until the M3 generation at the earliest so I don't believe there'll be an M2 Ultra Max studio it would not make sense to have an M2 Ultra Max studio uh and an M2 uh Ultra Mac Pro just like it wouldn't make sense to have an M1 Ultra Max studio and an M1 Ultra Mac Pro remember the Mac Pro was supposed to be an M1 product and that got pushed back to the M2 generation I just they brought it up so once once Apple says something about it they're on the hook now that it's like air power it did bring it up for another day they didn't say if that would be another day in 2022 2023 2022. or Another Day In Another Universe that's not existing but I'm pretty confident that's coming so yeah I mean you know it's always possible they pushed it back to the M3 generation the M3 Ultra right we shall see I don't think it's coming in June though I don't think it's gonna get that oh that's a shame I know I'm bummed but hey we got a lot we got a lot of WWDC though we've still got two months to figure out what's coming so I'll keep you guys updated awesome mark thank you so much for those who want to be updated go you know subscribe to the power on newsletter follow them on Twitter mark is there anything else that you want to say before we let you go no thanks so much both of you for having me you can subscribe to power on at bloomberg.com power on uh on Twitter twitter.comerman uh you can turn notifications on to get my Lakers tweets and any new articles so I'll see you later except for the Cavs yes and thank you both for having me and I do hope to come on uh sooner maybe I come back after the headset comes out we can talk about Impressions and such absolutely absolutely that would be great awesome thanks Markforeign welcome back to another episode of the Mac rumor show I'm so excited mark you were like one of our first guests and it's been so long like a full calendar year and so Mark Herman everybody the the famous Mark German he's back uh we can talk about all the rumors and have the man the myth the legend himself comment on everything famous not so much but I'm uh I'm glad to be here I guess it's been one year since last time uh I'll see you again in a year after this or maybe sooner I don't know I'm very happy to be here I want to talk to you more let's make it sooner than one year but I mean you're probably one of the only guests that I don't need to really like go through the list of everything everybody knows who you are so you're good but we do have a ton of stuff to get into um so we're just gonna jump right into it uh there's a lot going on in in June early June as you might know WWDC um and this is finally the year where I am hoping that a lot of like platforms get the major boost uh you know the redesigns and the new features and stuff and so we'll start with W we'll start with the Apple watch um watch OS 10. you recently reported that there's some going to be some notable changes one of the biggest updates since what like forever hasn't the Apple watch looked the same for forever yeah I think this is going to be the biggest software update uh to the Apple watch since the first version came out you know they've made pretty iterative changes over the years they've added a lot of new health and fitness functionality uh they've really refocused around complications on the watch base uh notifications they downgraded or removed things that were in the OS at the beginning remember glances they got rid of those uh they've you know demoted things that were really core parts of the initial watch sort of remember you clicked the button on the side it showed you your friends list right in that Circle and then you can quickly message them send them your heartbeat and whatnot they've demoted that too but this time we're likely to see some pretty big interface changes so do you think that will be uh with regards to a sort of basic interaction with the device so we're talking about maybe the home screen or is how far is this sort of a way of reconsidering basic ways of actually interacting with the watch I guess would be my question yeah I think that this will reconsider basic ways of interacting with the watch I do think you're going to see notable user interface updates across the system I've got more coming on this and so you know look out for my article on this as well but you know to date you know what I've said is that this is going to be a pretty big update uh I'm not sure I would compare it to the transition from iOS 6 to iOS 7 in 2013 that was a pretty core revamp to the system end to end in terms of user interface design I don't think the core design is going to change but I think you're going to see many different ways of using the system and new types of interactions uh I've seen some rumors following what I put out there about what that would entail um I I you know I'm not sure about that I don't think folders would make much sense I'm just about to ask you about that I guess yeah I guess anything is possible I haven't heard one way or another okay um but certainly I'm looking forward to a medium to watch OS especially in the Apple watch Ultra it felt like they put that bigger screen in they put that bigger Hardware in but they really didn't revamp the watch faces uh or the user interface to really match that new design that bigger display the more room you have to work with and traditionally what we've seen from Apple is that the software is always like a year behind the hardware right we've seen this before and so I think that this is going to be you know the year hopefully where the Apple watch software catches up uh with the Apple watch Hardware now the other thing to note is traditionally in very very strong Hardware years for particular product you may see a light software here and in very light Hardware years you see a very strong software update and this is going to probably be uh the lightest year in terms of new Apple watch Hardware to date uh last year was you know fairly significant with the Apple watch Ultra it went pretty light with the series 8 uh and obviously the new SC was more of a production change in order to get the cost down for both apple and the consumer right they have that updated back that's cheaper to make than the glass back they used previous uh so I think that's how it's going to play out this year where the Big Apple watch news for the year is probably going to be on the software side and anything we see on the hardware side is going to be more uh spec bump s update so to speak so do you get the impression that watch OS is kind of going to steal the show in terms of software updates at WWDC well steal the show um if you're comparing watch OS to iOS and iPad OS uh and Mac OS I think yes certainly watch OS is going to be the most significant uh software update for existing platforms but I think the the show stealer is going to be uh xros and the reality headset as well as the 15-inch air right I think those are going to be the main things and I think that's what they're going to spend the most amount of time on uh certainly uh so I wouldn't say it's gonna steal the show but if you're talking about self-drivates to existing products I would say sure we'll get into those in a little bit that's for sure um but with watch OS Hartley did you have anything else before we moved on because you know he kind of allured to watch OS being the biggest thing but there is IOS 17 which was also apparently going to get some pretty big changes too most requested user can you can you explain what that might be a little bit more the highly requested features sure so when Apple set out to develop iOS 17 or I should say you know they work over they work overtime over a number of years on several different features and enhancements and they look you know every year prior to the year of the new release what features are ready to go what features we want to implement for this particular cycle right and so when they started off on the iOS 17 development cycle last year the idea was that we're going to go for sort of a Polish update we're going to go at people like to compare these types of things to snow leopard right a fit and finish update an underlying performance update having minimal changes now why did they want to do that one a lot of the resources were going towards xros but more importantly is that iOS 16 as you guys have written about many times has faced delay after delay after delay for particular new features right you've seen the Apple pay later implementation get delayed you've seen various features from 16.0 get pushed back a free form I believe was was one of them you also saw delays to iPad OS because of stage manager right iPad OS for the first time ever launched in October instead of September alongside iOS 16 so they uh they broke that into two separate release paths right and so there were so many delays there and so many functional issues with iOS 16 uh they felt that taking a step back would make sense this time around uh but that plan changed right at the end of last year and now they've been going Full Throttle on your standard array of uh updates right a 100 200 new feature standard iOS update I'm not expecting anything revolutionary I'm not expecting a a redesign uh there are changes coming across the system I certainly know what some of those changes are and I'll be writing about those soon uh but certainly I think it's going to be quite a significant update it's not going to be as significant as the hardware changes this year obviously the iPhone 15 Pro with the titanium back and some of the enhancements there is going to be quite significant but I think they are bringing enough new to the table that it's going to be a pretty interesting update I would probably compare it mostly to the update I think it was iOS 15 two years ago where it seemed like they added new features to every core app but they didn't do anything like over the top uh revolutionary right I don't think there's going to be a big standout new feature this year like we saw with iOS 14 with widgets or we saw with iOS 16 with the lock screen I think it's going to be core updates around the system so one change that you talked about quite a bit with regards to iOS 17 is side loading which is something that definitely has captured a lot of interest with regards to iOS 17. so I wondered if you could give us a bit of an impression of how you think Apple will handle that whether it will be a front and center feature or whether it's just going to be sort of pushed out uh in the side and not be part of the keynote or will it be a Europe only feature so first of all I think it will be a Europe only feature I think that they're not going to shoot themselves in the foot and expand this globally if they don't have to I think they're going to play it uh similarly to how they've played some of the other changes they made to the app store for legal reasons if you remember there was that change in the Netherlands around dating apps and the percentage there and so you have to install a special profile you have to go through some sort of groups to do it and it was very under the radar so I think they're going to push more in that direction I would be a bit surprised if they announced it at WWDC and made this a highlight consumer feature I think they want to sort of downplay it as much as possible at the same time uh I think that this has been a major undertaking inside the company this has been a exhaustive project across the board across several divisions across Services across software engineering across many departments at Apple legal marketing the App Store Department certainly and you know for that reason it's possible that they want to get the recognition for it but at the same time I don't know why they would because this is just going to cost them money uh my expectation at the same time as well it's going to cost the money they're going to charge developers uh to be part of this program and I I would assume they would call it some sort of special program that you would have to apply for a profile you'd have to pay for a profile and there'll be some sort of review process even though these apps would be installed outside of the App Store uh I think apple is going to you know go through the European regulations this is the digital markets act as it's called Uh and they're going to really stick to you know letter of the law here they're not going to do anything extraneous that would further hurt their grip on the App Store and quite frankly why should they right if you're thinking about the situation from their shoes uh they're going to just toe the line of what exactly is necessary and not do anything more to disrupt their existing infrastructure do you foresee the US ever kind of following suit and being in in kind of the same way like making them enable that now that they know that Apple will do it and can do it yeah well the U.S is certainly trying uh they've they've done actually two bills at this point they've never you know made it to uh you know actual law they've never been signed into law uh you know it's interesting that you bring that up Dan about how if they're able to implement it for Europe it seems pretty simple to implement it for other GEOS and so I think maybe the fact that they're going to do this is going to set a precedent there and maybe it'll drum up more bills that uh US government officials will try to push into law and so we'll see I don't think anything like that is imminent uh but what you've seen with this USBC situation is that this started off in Europe but you have other countries that are pushing for it now I even saw the state of California that's pushing for it too and obviously the USBC is a hardware feature and it would be next to well I wouldn't say it would be impossible but it would probably be irresponsible from a manufacturing and marketing and development perspective to sort of split the iPhone into the USBC and lightning models they're going all USBC I think personally Europe their implementation and their rationale uh for pushing towards USBC is probably not correct but from a consumer standpoint I think a move from lightning to USBC is very consumer friendly uh and I think it is a major Improvement given there already USBC on everything else right and so you'll see USBC iPhone 15 you'll see USBC uh airpods case uh and I think they've that those are the only two holes left there's the USBC uh transition that needs to take place in some of the Mac accessories as well but I think over time lightning will probably be phased out magsafe charger duo or whatever is still lightning I just used one like five minutes ago before this so that's the only reason why I remember that Max safe Duo is both underrated and overpriced yes like you would do it I like it a lot too but I don't know that I'd want to pay for it as much as it is either well you know sort of like they announced it at the event in September 2020. oh my God I need to get my hands on it and then they release it like three months later of course you're gonna just buy it right you're not gonna return it the one thing about that white material they use it's like mine's like ELO at this point and it's not like I've taken it through the mud or anything Apple needs to stop using that material and if you're going to keep using that material as much as I love the way the white looks you gotta stop using white uh because my my iPad Pro uh magic keyboard is horrendous uh and so it's just they gotta stop using that material I I cannot stand it but I am I'm debating whether I get the white magic keyboard or the black magic keyboard next time I get an iPad I have the black magic keyboard nothing's a disaster too I've had it since 2020 and it's sort of like tearing at the seams a little bit uh and the keys are all there's too much dust and dirt under them but like you partly love it hardly loves color options Hartley what are you thinking about the uh well I actually think that the the white one uh ages a lot better than the black one I think the black shows Greece and fingerprints way more than the white one that's right it's just that's right it's terrible wait yeah even the airports Max Smart Case is a particularly bad one see I'm getting markings from like other things in my bag like when I put them in my bag with something else it's like leaving black scuff marks and stuff do you want to get dirty or do you want to get greasy right yeah that's true well speaking of getting greasy can you give us any information on one little breadcrumb of a new feature something even if you're like I I don't have any concrete but I'm I'm I'm feeling confident in my own opinion that this is going to be uh you know an iOS 17 feature we've heard things about the locks or not the lock screen the control center do you know anything about that that you'd want to be able to do I'm trying I'm trying I'm trying to get something heard anything about the the control center or I have nothing to share I should say about the control center at this part but I think you'll see changes in uh wallet I think you'll see changes in uh find my and I think you'll see a bigger push on you know location and find my related things in addition to uh wallet and such some user interface tweaks and enhancements there um there's other stuff too though I'll let you know hey I mean if you you know at any point in time if you're like okay I'll give you one breadcrumb of a macramers exclusive here you just let us know like interrupt by all this hey I work I work for Bloomberg not Mac groomer so no no no no no no no no no no we understand we understand but uh no I appreciate it though yeah um so the other update that I really want to ask you about Mark was Mac OS because it's definitely in terms of the the sort of wider sort of number of reports and rumors that we look at it has been the quietest thing maybe other than tvos we've heard absolutely nothing really about what to expect from Mac OS next year and it feels like Mac OS has been really quite iterative and quiet for quite some years at this point I know Big Sur was a redesign but functionally there wasn't much going on with it and the same with Ventura so uh can you give us an impression of what to expect from the scale of this year's Mac OS update yeah I don't think Mac OS is going to be anything groundbreaking or significant certainly I haven't heard anything uh remarkable about Mac OS I think that they've basically moved to an idea where they're making the enhancements on iOS uh iPad OS watch OS and elsewhere and then they bake in support for those features right and connectivity to those features uh in Mac OS I think a good example of that last year was the stage manager uh built for iPad OS and then they had to sort of uh make a version of it for Mac OS as well because how can you introduce a enhanced albeit not great multitasking system that maybe some consider Superior on the iPad platform but I'll bring it to the Mac right uh support for things that they added messages on iPad OS and iOS they have to do it on Mac OS as well so I think you're going to see more of the same uh in in Mac OS this year so anything they add on iOS they'll replicate for Mac OS you know what always fascinates me about these OS updates or the naming conventions right and traditionally uh when they pick a city and then the follow-up version or pick a part of California and the follow-up version uh is pretty close to that original area if it's a minor update right they've done this in the past uh there was El Capitan so El Capitan right is located uh very closely to Yosemite geographically right so that made sense given lcap10 was a minor update um so Ventura right that is actually in Southern California it's a absolutely beautiful area beaches mountains places to hike it's awesome uh but there's one famous place in La uh that Apple has not named an OS after yet and if Apple were to go in that direction again of a minor update and they pick the closest city uh it would be Malibu Mac OS Malibu now I haven't heard anything about that but if I was thinking like Apple's marketers I would call it Mac OS Malibu if it was a minor iterative update over Mac OS and Torah uh given the history there of naming conventions we better get a beachy wallpaper with that one oh yeah and what kind a beachy wallet yeah that would be nice that would be nice um all right so before we move on to the hardware side of WWDC um we didn't really talk about iPad OS I'm guessing you're kind of expecting to just adopt some of the iOS 17 features that will come through but is there any chance in maybe this year maybe next year that we'll ever see these Pro apps that people have been clamoring for like logic and Final Cut Pro making its way I mean they've let Da Vinci be the star of the show when the iPad Pro come out uh came out uh with the M2 I'm so shocked by that because it's not like apple doesn't have its own Suite of apps that they could use for this and I'm just wondering if you have any any info on that or any thoughts I mean it seems clear to me that Apple I won't say has abandoned right but they've pushed a little bit away from those Pro apps right I know there were rumors that were completely made up a few years ago about Final Cut and logic and such uh coming to the iPad I certainly haven't heard anything about that um I'm seeing less and less work being done on those Pro apps at this point I know there has been a sizable amount of people who've been actually leaving uh those teams the head of marketing Xander Soren left at the end of last year he was involved in those creative apps as well so you know maybe they're taking some time to to do some sort of rethink right it's been about a decade since the big Final Cut Pro X uh rethink so maybe it's time for another one of those and maybe they're hard at work at that and obviously if they're going to do a full revamp to Final Cut Pro uh that would probably have the iPad and even the Apple headset in mind right and so I would imagine that would all be a cross-platform thing I mean the big push at Apple right now uh sort of behind the scenes is to get every app every feature to work across all of Apple's devices and integrate across all of Apple's devices sort of that continuity push and you know the dream scenario is that you own an Apple Watch an iPhone a Macbook an iPad and an apple headset right those five devices and all five of those devices are capable of doing all the same things just in different use cases and different times of your day and Apple's push and this has been uh pushed by marzipan or Catalyst starting in 2019 uh with the idea of running iPad apps on the Mac now you can run iPhone apps on the Mac and vice versa so the the core idea is having sort of like one universal binary per app and one main OS that runs on everything that's customized to the specific interface and input Paradigm of those devices so I think that is the big thing from Apple and I think you'll see them discuss that idea this year interesting I think it will be interesting to see personally whether any future update to those per apps is accompanied by a subscription model as well no no Hartley please for the love of God to not say that like right now it wasn't I know but right now it's like the best 300 you could spend if you are a content creator especially a student bundle producer oh my gosh it's uh yeah I mean you could do everything you need to do and not have to pay for Adobe apps uh and so do not bring that up uh I do not want to hear that Dan on on Final Cut after you use right yeah how often are they doing like fun fixes and software updates and enhancements to that not as often as not as often as you would like okay so I mean it seems like there's clearly something going on there I mean they're they're lately I would say over the last two years there have been some updates um but they and when they do come they are bigger updates but that's because they don't you know they don't address them for like six to eight months at a time and then it's just like whatever Buck you're dealing with you're dealing with it for a while so you better learn to work around it um yeah hopefully something turns around there soon because I'm getting lots of DMS and emails from people who use those Pro apps who are you know asking when is there going to be a new version what's going on with album Pro apps and uh it feels like when people really start complaining about that about five years ago Apple promised that one happened again so I would be shocked if they really Abandoned Ship there uh but clearly something's going on around going on behind the scenes you know they're very strapped for resources there um you know it's a very thin and mean organization and they have to prioritize certain things and things get lost when you're launching a new platform right there's a lot of resources across the company going into xrof and that reality headset so you know maybe it has something to do with that too and obviously you're seeing a big update to watch and you know everything else they have going on there so in terms of their revenue driven priorities Final Cuts probably pretty low on the totem pole but I know but but the part the point I was going to make is that that's the core core Apple audience that sort of leaves the discussion so you have to make those people happy and I think that sort of spreads to everyone around sort of like uh you know the center the center of a wheel right yeah um well speaking of the headset that is literally the next topic but you did mention the MacBook Air and everyone's expecting a new Macbook Air there's been a ton of topic around a 15-inch MacBook Air which I am super excited about if that's if that's happening uh but we did also see that it was going to be continuing on with M2 is that your expectations the 15 inch will come with M2 and not M3 yeah I wrote last week that the 15 inch air would run M2 and everyone else now seems to agree um the M3 is not going to be ready until end of the year that's a three nanometer design and tsmc is not ready to start popping out three nanometers at the quantity that Apple needs and at the yield rates that Apple needs until later this year so that 15 inch uh will be an M2 and I don't think that changes the purchase story I think people are going to line up for that thing uh maybe not literally but I think that it's going to be one of the most popular Macs ever people have been asking for a 15-inch MacBook Air for a number of years this is actually Apple's third attempt at launching the 15-inch MacBook Air they were going to do it as a follow-up to the 2010 redesign that ever happened uh they considered it in 2011 as part of that and then they were looking at doing it last year as part of the initial revamp MacBook Air for the Apple silicon launch uh no they're probably gonna do it and I think that's going to be a really hot machine I think a lot of people are going to like it it looks just like the current MacBook Air obviously just with the wider bigger display and I think it's going to be a really exciting product for a lot of people and obviously next year they'll follow up with an M3 version and later in the year we'll see probably an M3 version of the 13-inch MacBook Air and then at some point they'll get them on the same uh chip chip roadmap so that's really one thing that I was interested in getting your thoughts on there Mark is how the M3 plays into this so obviously at this point in the lineup a 15-inch model with M2 makes perfect sense because M3 just isn't ready but if we are going to get M3 chips in Max by the end of the year and by then the 13-inch model will have been out for well over a year will Apple um split these two machines in terms of Chip because it would seem odd to have an M3 and a 13 inch but an M2 in the 15 inch is this something that they will see as updating together and if so will that be updated perhaps on a slightly more delayed time frame going into next year I'm just trying to get a sense of how this works because the timing is a bit strange well the the issue is that they were wanting to release this M2 15-inch MacBook Air last year right and obviously resource strapped with covid not only in terms of engineering but production as well uh so they had to sort of hold their fire on the M2 15-inch MacBook Air and it's not as simple as swapping out a chip you can't just swap out the M2 with the M3 right the architecture of the chips are completely designed from the get-go uh with the machine themselves and it's all very integrated on the hardware side on the software side on the chip side so it's not as easy as swapping it out Max sales are down considerably they need something right so getting that M2 15-inch MacBook Air out even though it might be a bit outdated on the chip side in six to nine months from now uh is probably the right move people are still going to buy them up and I don't think it would be I think it would be odd certainly but I don't think it would be the end of the world obviously in the context that we're talking about um to have an M2 15-inch air and an M3 uh 13 inch air right you're still getting that big screen size boost and then in the following cycle they'll be able to get them both on the same uh platform the other possibility is that they launched the M2 15-inch MacBook Air in June uh and then they hold the 13-inch MacBook Air M3 update until spring next year and they launch uh the M3 uh 15-inch MacBook Air and M3 13 inch rapid Air at the same time next spring and the M2 15 inch air is on a nine month cycle uh a nine month Mac life cycle also wouldn't be unheard of so I think either where they play this it's going to be fine people are still going to buy them up maybe even me I don't know yet do it the MacBook Air is the best the math book here is the best laptop if you don't need tons and tons of crazy performance which even if you did you know every once in a while you can still get away with it depending on your configuration so highly recommend I've got the M1 Max bro because I really need well I really need the performance for Twitter and video calls and such so I I could make an argument that in you might you might actually really need that with the way Twitter is going these days and how many calls for Google Chrome honestly you might need an M2 Ultra with a terabyte of Ram uh to get Chrome running with more than five or six tabs open at once oh God I can imagine I can imagine what your your death what do you are you like how many tabs you have open at a at any given time oh it depends on the time of day um dozens hundreds thousands depends what I'm working on your M1 Max must be on fire always and you know I I use my laptop primarily but I have a desktop as well uh at my office and my phone or my Apple watch to traditionally leave the iPad at home there was a time where I was trying to do as much work as I can from the iPad because it was so convenient with the magic keyboard and how light it was and you know I had prior to this M1 16 inch I had the Intel 16 inch and that thing was awful the battery life was sub two hours it was always overheating you could click an egg on the back if you wanted on a cold day and so I mostly left that thing at home and used the iPad instead but now these Apple silicon chips are absolutely astonishingly incredible the battery life the speed it doesn't slow down you rarely have issues with these things and so you know I'm back to the Mac because of those chips but at one point it just got so bad with the performance of Intel and it's so obvious why they had to make this transition I'm looking forward to it I'm also looking forward to this damn headset I I really want to stop talking finally right I really need to stop talking about this headset at least the the speculation of it I just want to see it I can't believe it I have been writing about this thing since 2016 or 2017 and it's already 2023. there has been no Apple product that has taken this long other than the Apple car the Apple car is going to end up being let's see they started in 15. uh that's going to be a 15-year product right but the headset's pretty damn close and so I'm excited for the run-up the next two months are going to be exciting uh and I'm excited for this to finally get out the door and I can move on to the next topic well we're going to talk about it now so I know I know I know um back to the Apple car once WWDC hits yes um so the one feature we could talk about so much with this headset um there really was so much we could go into but one feature that you've reported on that definitely caught the attention of a lot of our readers was this uh in-air typing experience um because you didn't make it sound like uh it was too polished or that it would be something that would be uh a runaway feature um and I believe you said you weren't even sure if it would actually be in the final release version of the headset so I wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about whether this will be like a beta feature when it arrives or whether this will be front and center finished in the marketing materials we're seeing people typing away in the air uh I do think that it will be in the final release I do think it's going to be finicky and I do think most people will want to pair a Bluetooth keyboard right uh you also should be able to use your Mac keyboard or an iPhone keyboard sort of how you can use your iPhone keyboard to type into your Apple watch or to type into your Apple TV and so I think it's going to make for a cool demo but I'm not entirely sure if they're solving problems here with this headset right they're creating a new platform and Paradigm but they're not necessarily solving an issue that people have been asking to be solved right uh I think they've even are going as far as creating new problems for themselves things like inner typing right and taking people out of the real world is a real concern internally uh but I think the headset is going to be awesome it's going to be straight out of Science Fiction I think it's going to be a status symbol I think it's going to be the future of the computer I think it's going to be like an iPad for your face I think the people get their hands on it are going to love it initially it's going to be sort of the really really Niche like Tech focused crowd like the four of us or the three of us right uh but eventually you know this is where the world is going this is where the industry is going towards mixed reality and virtual reality and augmented reality uh and this is the platform to take apple in that direction it's going to be a very long timeline uh it's going to be extensive I think you're going to see frequent software updates I think you're going to see a lot of changes about the hardware and software over time and certainly they want to make this a core part of the company the one issue not the one issue but a core issue that they've run into is that I feel like meta has sort of soiled the market they've created this false promise of the metaverse and this false promise of mixed reality that they really failed on right and so they sort of soiled the public opinion on this type of technology and so not only does Apple have to sell a new type of technology to people but they have to sell new type of technology that people are already critical of right and already are skeptical of because of how the market has existed thus far they haven't had that challenge with prior product lines nobody was skeptical about smartphone phones before the iPhone nobody was skeptical about smart watches nobody was skeptical about tablets right those were all markets that it was extremely clear that there's extreme amounts of demand and understanding and desire for uh whereas on the Apple headset you're not seeing a market desire not seeing demand you're not seeing excitement you're not seeing understanding uh so from that perspective this is an extraordinarily risky launch for Apple uh the good news for them is that they have so much cash and uh they have enough bandwidth uh just enough bandwidth to almost take a risk with this type of product but I think it's going to play out similarly to the Apple watch and the iPad where it's going to start off you know a little niche and slow but over time it's going to explode right but let me rephrase that the iPad exploded pretty much from the get-go uh so maybe more so like the Apple watch So speaking about how this device will be targeted this has been something that has been we've sort of heard the rumors go back and forth on it in terms of uh it will be really consumer focused or it might be a little bit more developer focused or you know we've heard odd rumors about there being different prototype headbands specifically for developers and then consumers and all this sort of thing there's been this tension between how far it is meant for the average user and obviously the price point there is the big elephant in the room and one of your latest reports where you uh shed some light on some of the apps to expect from the headset really to me did make it seem like this is a much more consumer focused headset um than we were initially expecting so do you get the sense that apple is going to sort of present this as a tentative first generation device that is for enthusiasts or do you think they are going to just get up there on stage and say no this is for everyone it's got Pages it's got Fitness plus it's got meditation Apple's a very marketing driven company and the first rule of marketing and I'm not sure they teach you this in marketing classes in Business School uh because it's so obvious is don't limit your Market don't hold your product back don't do anything to intentionally shoot yourself in the foot I think it would be bizarre and short-sighted for Apple to do anything of the sort to portray this as a beta a developer focused prototype a device for enthusiasts I think that would be a huge mistake why would Apple do that right and so I think to your point Hartley they're gonna get on stage and they're going to say this is for everyone it has Pages it has iMovie it has GarageBand you can game on it you can uh work out in it you can watch movies in it you can do everything in it you can do anything in it and it's the future of the computer and the future of our ecosystem uh I think there's no way that they limit themselves with this device it would just be a mistake why why destroy your Market before it even exists I think that would throw away 10 billion dollars in r d you know billions more in marketing spend yeah that makes sense right they've never done that before yes I suppose it's just they've never they've never brought to Market a device at this price point um and sort of a device that at this price point a lot of people won't really know if it's them when they introduce the pro display xdr Apple was able to say you know this is uh this is competing with reference monitors that are more expensive in spite of its price point so I guess it's that tension with the price that uh yeah but I think the Apple perspective is if we're not going to drink our own Kool-Aid why should anyone else drink it right right and so I definitely think that in the case of the Apple headset despite the price it's gonna be portrayed as a product for everyone well internally understanding that it might not be perceived that way and that things are going to start off fairly slow right and there's plenty of people who think this should be positioned as a developer prototype but from a marketing perspective that's absolutely a mistake they're not going to get in the way of their own launch so I mean again my opinion is maybe that they should maybe they should portray it as developer prototype maybe they should hold it back a little bit maybe they should portray it as something more for enthusiasts or at the high end of the market but I don't think they will because I don't think they want to dump in front of their their own product yeah so so for those who are enthusiasts for us three who are most likely going to check it out what would you expect a typical day in the life check it out I'm gonna be first in line well you know what I mean I don't know about Hartley but maybe maybe I don't know it's much more responsible I need to see the uh the videos I need to if they get me Johnny ive's voice they get him back for that you know I'm I'm sold whose voice is it going to be who is going to do the introduction video you know he's still he's still you know on the he's still Apple fellow so you know what it would make sense Tim Cook should do this one isn't this kind of like his lasting like one last stamp on his legacy type deal this isn't the whole rumor that he wants to get out to get out after this shouldn't he be the one to introduce this I think it's going to be the car personally uh I think he's gonna stick around that long oh yeah oh yeah I mean look at Bob Iger he's like gonna be CEO of Disney's at least 73 or 75. but there was a point where he wasn't even though that was very sure how long ago that was planned out and what the idea was like I'm listen I'm gonna step away but if anything happens I'm few miles away just give me a call you have my number right um so yeah I think the car will probably be Tim's last thing uh fceo I would expect them to become chairman after and be involved with Apple for the rest of his life but eventually they will need a new you know leader on the ground um I don't know I mean the head of the project is Mike Rockwell right and he's sort of going to be the face of it not dissimilar to Kevin Lynch being sort of the early face on the Apple watch um Dan riccio oversees Rockwell uh in terms of headset development obviously Tim is the CEO then there's Greg joswiak who's out of Marketing so I think that's all possible um you know the head of design there is no new head of design at this point right all the designers just report to the CEO which obviously is odd so it's not going to be you know a designer so you know I'll probably be a mix of people I think with Mike Rockwell at the Forefront all right so when they when they do the video and the whoever's mythical voice is is you know telling us about this how do you expect people to use this when they buy it they get home they unbox it what do you think is the first thing they're gonna do when they spend all day messing around with it like what's going to be the Marquee thing oof the Marquee thing well I think the FaceTime Communications uh is going to be cool now the question is let's say you buy one how many people do you know who are also going to have one or are you going to be able to test this one I honestly I might be I might be FaceTiming with you guys right that's why I haven't video it in a year right and so they'll be that uh I think you're going to see a lot of web browsing on it I think you're going to want to see people sort of replace their day-to-day you'll be messaging in it right you'll be uh emailing it you'll be doing your documents you'll be doing your tweets and Twitter and such and it right and so I think it's just going to be a replacement for your day-to-day uh workflow I think that's the idea my concern is the battery life situation right if you have to swap out that battery pack that's the size of an iPhone every two hours how much are they going to charge for battery pack how many battery packs is it going to come with and is it going to be annoying to try to swap that thing out every two hours so I'm interested to see how they play that battery life thing uh when the Apple watch came out it launched with uh you charge it every night right you use it all day that was the goal that has not changed except for the Apple watch Ultra but that took 10 years I think once they make a decision on the battery life they're gonna stick to it and I think instead of trying to eventually move to an internal battery design they'll maybe try to improve the external battery life pack while adding new features to the device itself so I would expect a external battery pack situation to last for for many generations of this product uh maybe up until they get the actual glasses rolling I feel like each battery is going to cost like five hundred dollars there's no way that would be crazy I would guess I would guess a hundred dollars that would be great if it's 100 bucks I could see people buying multiple ones I think it would be worth if you're really using it for that long I mean you probably shouldn't but if you're going to be using it for maybe one other battery makes sense but hours is not a long time I would get if it were me obviously it'll come with one I would get a second one for sure I don't know people are gonna buy four or five of them that would be ridiculous but the other hope would be maybe over time they have larger battery packs or maybe it comes with a two hour battery pack and then you could buy a jumbo pack that you carry I this is a joke but like you carry in a wagon or your backpack or something right uh but this is it's it's gonna be very powerful with the M2 and that's gonna require a lot of battery life right a lot of RAM and uh it's gonna be pretty high tech and amazing and I'm looking forward to trying it out but I am skeptical I think it's extremely risky I think it's not going to appeal to mass consumers I think it's not solving a problem that people are asking to be solved I'm not sure it's even solving a problem uh and I think they're gonna have a difficult first couple years with it and I think they're not even sure of how well this is actually going to go or what people are going to want to use it for so I'm extremely interested to see how this plays out and I'm extremely interested to report on how this goes so just before we let you go Mark I have one last question that I am desperate to ask you which is Mac Pro because this is also another product that we have been hearing about for such a long time the Apple silicon Mac premium we were talking about this from what 2019 was when these discussions really started and we were thinking about the transition to Apple silicon um but it just seems like the product that's never coming and you've talked a little bit about the conflict with Max studio as well um and you've talked a bit about how the Apple dropped this chip this high-end chip that they had planned for it so could you give us a little bit of an update on where we are with Mac Pro yeah the Mac Pro they were originally going to do two variations they were to do an M2 Ultra uh and an M2 Extreme as I call it and the M2 extremely double the M2 ultra's performance they cancel the M2 extreme chip because of cost in production and you were making so few of them anyways it would cost so much to actually produce them and is it really worth taking all those resources up to produce something that's going to be so so neat even more Niche than the M2 Ultra and the other question is would people be really willing to even pay for an M2 extreme right and so that's the conflict that existed there I believe it is still coming this year right and I think part of the reason why you're seeing these M that 15-inch MacBook uh air being an M2 and then the M3 coming later is because you don't want to launch an M3 before you launch the M2 Ultra chip coming in uh the Mac Pro and then in terms of the conflict with the Mac Studio uh what I believe is we're not going to see a new map studio until the M3 generation at the earliest so I don't believe there'll be an M2 Ultra Max studio it would not make sense to have an M2 Ultra Max studio uh and an M2 uh Ultra Mac Pro just like it wouldn't make sense to have an M1 Ultra Max studio and an M1 Ultra Mac Pro remember the Mac Pro was supposed to be an M1 product and that got pushed back to the M2 generation I just they brought it up so once once Apple says something about it they're on the hook now that it's like air power it did bring it up for another day they didn't say if that would be another day in 2022 2023 2022. or Another Day In Another Universe that's not existing but I'm pretty confident that's coming so yeah I mean you know it's always possible they pushed it back to the M3 generation the M3 Ultra right we shall see I don't think it's coming in June though I don't think it's gonna get that oh that's a shame I know I'm bummed but hey we got a lot we got a lot of WWDC though we've still got two months to figure out what's coming so I'll keep you guys updated awesome mark thank you so much for those who want to be updated go you know subscribe to the power on newsletter follow them on Twitter mark is there anything else that you want to say before we let you go no thanks so much both of you for having me you can subscribe to power on at bloomberg.com power on uh on Twitter twitter.comerman uh you can turn notifications on to get my Lakers tweets and any new articles so I'll see you later except for the Cavs yes and thank you both for having me and I do hope to come on uh sooner maybe I come back after the headset comes out we can talk about Impressions and such absolutely absolutely that would be great awesome thanks Mark\n"