We may finally be getting a new A18 powered Macbook! | 293

Here's the link to HMNS Beyond Bones Podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/4XuipbRMTrJu9WH9Y8m6Ya?si=e7e2fee313d944de

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to the Geek Therapy radio podcast. You've got your
mental curator, Johnny Hamburger. I am still alive. I have
not recorded any new content for the show in actual,
literal weeks, and I've I've felt the tug. There have
been some things going on in the in the geeky
tech world that that got me excited. One thing in

(00:28):
particular that I will tell you about a potential new MacBook,
not MacBook Pro, not MacBook Air, but a old fashioned,
more affordable I will say, I was about to say budget,
more affordable MacBook like the outgoing MacBook twelve, MacBook twelve

(00:48):
inch MacBooks that man, they went away years ago, and I,
for one, have been just Jones. And since we have
not had a new MacBook, just a regular mac Book.
Since Apple transition to its own in house silicon, the
M one chip, since the M one ship, we have
not had a just bog standard MacBook. We've had M

(01:11):
one or empowered MacBook Airs, empowered MacBook pros. Of course,
all everything is powered by Apple's ARM processes now, which
is amazing, which is wonderful, which is beautiful, which has
been a boon for the tech world, the computer space,
especially mobile computers since then, but no MacBook yet. That
is about to change. There are very credible rumors from

(01:37):
several outlets and leakers who have seen Apple's you know,
internal code programming whatever. They see internal documents and they say, oh,
what is this This little id here within the code
or within this document that could mean and probably does
likely mean a MacBook is on the horizon soon. I

(02:00):
wanted to say real quick before we get into more
MacBook stuff, if you are trying to get more of me,
to hear me more often, very similar to geek therapy radio,
I record a podcast and produce a podcast at least
once a month minimum for the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
So type into your podcast player hm NS Beyond Bones

(02:25):
podcast and that is how you can hear me much
more often, at least once a month. In These episodes
of the hmn S Beyond Bones podcast are quite a
lot more in depth than geek therapy radio, where I
just get on here and kind of go off the
cuff mostly, but for the museum obviously it's much more

(02:46):
highly produced. It is still me in charge of everything
of that podcast. I host it, I edit it, I
produce it, I choose the subjects I schedule with guests
and experts. So if you want to hear me more
and just want to keep track of what I'm doing
way more frequently, subscribe to the hm NS Beyond Bones podcast.

(03:09):
Look for the purple color scheme. That is, the thumbnail
is purple currently. That is how you know you've got
the coreg podcast. There is an old version of the
Beyond Bones podcast and I think ended in like twenty twenty.
That's not it. That's a different host. That's my good
friend Craig Levati who hosted that podcast, and it may
have had a different host before then. But I'm just

(03:30):
telling y'all. If you want to get the HMNS Beyond
Bones podcast in its current form, type in HMNS Beyond
Bones Podcast in your favorite podcast player, Spotify, Spreak, your
Apple podcasts, wherever you listen to podcasts, it's in there.
I personally use pocket casts for Android. I'm sure you
can use iHeartRadio app all that good stuff. But I'll

(03:52):
of course put the link in the description of this podcast.
I'll put the Spotify link. If anything. You can just
kind of see, oh, that's what the thumbnail looks like. Anyways,
back to the MacBook. I don't want to call it
the twelve inch MacBook because it may not be uh
a twelve inch MacBook. I hope that it is. The

(04:14):
rumors now that are swirling is that it could be,
you know, it could be a twelve inch MacBook, which
I'm all here for, even with my bad eyes and
the kind of necessity at some points, you know sometimes
for me to need a bigger screen. I kind of

(04:34):
still am hoping that the uh mac the new MacBook,
the new a eighteen powered MacBook, would would stay in
that kind of twelve inch form factor. It's just I
also like small, sleek things, and that is I always
liked the form factor of the twelve inch MacBook. I
always love the form factor of it. Uh So we'll

(04:57):
see if the new MacBook is twelve inches or thirteen
point three inches. I lean towards. I lean towards thirteen
inches or thirteen point three inches. And a foreign factor
is that is not much bigger than the old, outgoing
twelve inch MacBook, which is totally fine with me. I'm

(05:19):
also totally fine with the inevitable reduction in the amount
of ports. I would not be surprised in this absolute
slightest if the new MacBook the A eighteen chip powered MacBook.
We'll talk about that A eighteen chip here in a minute,
But I would not be surprised at all if it's
just one Thunderbolt five port, or maybe even Thunderbowl four,

(05:40):
probably Thunderboil five, maybe not even thunderballl. Maybe it's just
USB Type C whatever, one port, one Type C shaped
port on the MacBook. I would be honestly, genuinely surprised
if it even has a headphone jack. And the thing
about the MacBooks is it's not that's kind of par

(06:00):
for the course that it's kind of accepted. I love
having all the ports in the known universe on my devices, obviously,
but with something like the MacBook that is supposed to
be stripped down, slim down, small, ast possible, cheapest new
product possible from Apple as far as portable computer, as
far as a laptops at least or notebooks are concerned,
I just wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if it's

(06:22):
just one single type SEE port. Whether that's Thunderbolt five
or Thunderbolt at all, I don't know, but it's not
a deal breaker for me and I'll say right now,
I depending on the price. If I am, I am
very interested. If Apple releases this, have I make no

(06:43):
shame about it. This If you've followed me on social
media at all over since twenty seventeen, since I started
geek Therapy Radio. If you follow me at all, you've
heard me say or you've seen me write from time
to time, but multiple times over the years. Hey, Apple,
please bring back the MacBook. In fact, this is a

(07:04):
good segue to talk about the A eighteen chip. I said,
I asked Apple into the I threw my voice into
the ether. I said, Apple, take any M one chips
you have left over, even the bottom of the barrel,
lowest bind M one chips with only a seven core
GPU as opposed to an eight core GPU for the

(07:24):
higher bind M one chips. Take all those low bind
M one chips and just toss them in a twelve
inch MacBook or thirteen inch MacBook. Revive the MacBook and
just put the old put the M one processor in
there easy, and then sell it for six seven hundred
dollars whatever the final price point may be. You know

(07:45):
you've got extra M one chips laying around the low
bin chips. Just toss them in there. You're still putting
out through Walmart. They still sell M one powered MacBook
airs at Walmart. You can, for in the United States,
you can go to walmart dot com and buy new
MacBook airs with the M one ship in it. So
they still have the M one ships. I don't know
if they're still producing the M one ships, but they

(08:07):
still have M one ships either way. It's four generations
old by now, but it's still an absolute kick a chip,
kick ass chip. So my vote was in what I've
said through the years, tweeting out to Apple, just put
those bottom of the barrel low bind M one ships
in a new MacBook twelve inch or thirteen inch and

(08:29):
we'll be happy. We'll be right as rain. So the
A eighteen ship, this is what would be going into
the MacBook. It gets confusing because it's the technical name
for the chip is the A eighteen Pro. So it
would be an A eighteen Pro MacBook. And tell me

(08:51):
that's not the most confusing, confusing combination of letters and
words possible to introduce into a MacBook lineup. Oh, do
you have the MacBook Pro? No, I have the A
eighteen Pro MacBook what does that mean? So anyways, I
don't know if it's gonna be called the A eighteen
pro MacBook. They might even call the chip inside there
something completely different by the time this if and wind

(09:13):
comes out. But it is looking very likely that this
will come out. I'll be surprised if it doesn't come out.
They're saying by late twenty twenty five, early twenty twenty six.
Apple has been missing a a more affordable I hate
to say budget. You're gonna see the word budget all
over the place in terms of a MacBook. The word

(09:35):
the two words apple and budget only makes sense at
the grocery store and the tech world. Apple and budget
is like oil and water. It doesn't make sense. The
only time you could even think about attributing the word
budget in the same sentence as an Apple product, as
an Apple computer at least, is if you buy a

(09:56):
used M one MacBook Air like I did. You can
get those between five and six in our bucks now,
and it's the deal of the century as far as
MacBooks are, as macs are concerned, because the M one
ship is still absolutely slays even five years after its release.
And I said that, I said that Mac the M
one is so good that it's going to be hard
to convince Apple customers to upgrade generation to generation because

(10:19):
they're going to sit on their M one or M
two and say this is almost as good as an
M three or M four. So I think maybe I
cannot verify this. I just had the feeling that more
Mac owners, Notebook Mac owners, and even like Mac Studio
Mac owners period I think are in my opinion, I

(10:40):
wouldn't be surprised if they are waiting longer between upgrades.
I have my MacBook Pro sixteen inch with the M
one pro in there. I have my MacBook Air with
the bog standard M one in there, and they are
both absolutely stellar. The A eighteen chip, though it is

(11:01):
technically less cores than the M one, it still outperforms
the N one, and especially in single cores. The single
cores of the A eighteen pro chip are better than
the single core performance in the five year old M
one chip. In the A eighteen pro there are two
performance cores and four efficiency cores. The A eighteen chip

(11:27):
is in their flagship smartphones, so the iPhone, whatever, the
latest iPhone, it has the the A eighteen pro chip
in it, or the A eighteen ship in it at least,
So this is a that's a good point the A
eighteen chip. This is going to be the first Apple
laptop to use a mobile phone or a tablet processor.

(11:51):
And someone made a good point in one of these
articles that even for like the iPad pro, the iPad
pros use m chips in there. So this is kind
of it seems kind of like a weird move, but
it actually does make a lot of sense. It seems
like a weird move to put a phone or a

(12:11):
tablet processor in something like a small form factor laptop,
but it also makes all the effing sense in the
universe to do so. The eighteen chip with the two
performance cores for efficiency cores, and I believe it's six
GPU cores, is going it's still going to outperform at

(12:33):
least slightly all things considered, even video editing, and as
far as the GPU is concerned, it's going to be
it's going to still be a little bit better than
the M one ship. So the aighteen pro has six
CPU cores as opposed to the M one that has
eight CPU cores, but each core is newer. The A

(12:56):
eighteen cores are much newer, generations, different manufacturing process than
the old M one. So I've actually got some geek
bench scores pulled up right in front of me, and
I'm just going to compare the M one multicore to
the A eighteen multi core, because you know that the
M two, M three, and M four are going to

(13:16):
absolutely annihilate the A eighteen or the M one, So
let's just stick with the A eighteen pro versus the
M one in a geek Bench six multi core. So
the M one with eight cores in an eight core
eight core CPU, so that's four efficiency corps, four performance cores,

(13:37):
and then you have the eight core GPU in geek
Bench that scored an eighty four to fifty three eight
and fifty three points in geek Bench six. Going up
to the A eighteen pro with a six core CPU,
that's two performance for efficiency, and then the six core
GPU that's two less cores than the GPU on the

(13:58):
M one the eighteen pro. The A eighteen pro chip
scores eighty forty eight actually, So take that back according
to the geek bench and this geek Bench multi core,
the aaighteen uh performs less than slightly less than the
M one even with a lot less cores to work with.

(14:20):
The A eighteen pro in multicore is only slightly behind
the M one multicore even with the M ones more cores.
That's very interesting. And here one of my hopes is
that the MacBook. I know some might not be surprised.
I don't know. I would be surprised RAM. Let's talk

(14:41):
about RAM. That's what I mean getting at here. RAM.
I would be somewhat surprised if the new MacBook, A
eighteen powered MacBook only comes with eight gigabytes of RAM.
I I'd bet dollar you know, I might be a
little surprised if the base model MacBook, A eighteen powered

(15:05):
MacBook has sixteen gigabytes of RAM. I would be surprised
if it didn't come out like that. But at the
same time, I also wouldn't be surprised if the most
low tier model is only eight gigs. It just seems
like in the year twenty twenty five or twenty twenty six,
whenever this winds up coming out, that seeing a product
on a page that says eight gigabytes a RAM is

(15:26):
going to be kind of wow. It's gonna make people's
eye open. But here's the thing. M silicon the architecture
of current Max. It performs sorcery with the unified memory.
It's eight gigabytes for somebody just checking emails and doing
office work and spreadsheets and this and that. I think

(15:46):
a cores on a MacBook on M architecture is going
to be just fine for those low key tasks. Sixteen
gigabytes is obviously way better for more intense workloads like
video editing, like the M one chip current M one
ship in my MacBook Air, my thirteen inch MacBook Air.

(16:07):
The video editing performance I can only speak for da
Vinci Resolve because that's what I use most often, is spectacular. No,
it's not gonna be on part with my RTX thirty
ninety with twenty four gigs of v RAM, and no,
it's not gonna be on part with my M one
pro trip pro chip with more GPU cores. No, but
for getting things done, just kind of making edits and

(16:30):
even editing in four k sixteen gigs with an M
one chip or sixteen gigs with an A eighteen chip,
still is still gonna get it done. It is still
going to be more than good enough for editing on
the fly. The other reason why I'm excited for the
A eighteen pro chip in a MacBook is battery life efficiency.

(16:53):
I have no doubt in my mind that the MacBook
with an aaighteen pro chip is going to get simply
staggering battery life. I have no reason to believe that
it wouldn't be, that it wouldn't perform so so highly
in that regard. I think it's going to be a
lot of battery life. I think the base model is
going to be two hundred and fifty six gigs. I

(17:13):
don't think there's any way on God's green Earth that
they're going to offer a base model with one hundred
and twenty eight gigabytes or RAM. Then again, it's Apple,
they might. I would just be very surprised if that's
the case. So I'm very excited. I'm very excited for
the potential and very likely new MacBook that may be

(17:35):
coming out at the end of this year, or the
fourth quarter of this year, or the first quarter or
early on in twenty twenty six. The price point, in
my opinion, I believe will be between honestly between seven
hundred and specked up. Let's just talk base model. Let's
talk base model, because you can spec up anything to

(17:57):
anything on Apple's website. But the base model, I think
it's going to star art at six ninety nine. Between
six ninety nine and seven ninety nine is where I
think the new MacBook, the A eighteen powered MacBook, will
fall any higher than that and you start cannibalizing MacBook
Air sales. So I think it's going to be one
hundred dollars cheaper. It's most likely going to be one

(18:20):
hundred dollars cheaper than a base model MacBook Air. It's
just what I think. I don't know if that's actually
going to be the case. Will We will see about that.
All I know is this is going to be one
of the first you know, Apple keynotes or Apple events
whatever that I'm actually semi excited about since twenty twenty hours.
The last time I was excited about an Apple event

(18:42):
wasn't the Vision pro or anything like that. It was
twenty twenty when they officially announced the move to m Silicon.
That was amazing. I was. I was all about it,
very excited to see that and hear that. This is
the first time in five years that I'm excited to
see what Apple has up their sleeves for their next announcements.
I'd be very pleased to see a new MacBook reintroduced

(19:02):
to line up. It's a part of Apple's repertoire that
is not currently being utilized at the moment. According to
all these articles Mac Apples, they've sold less computers in
the recent years as compared to previous years when they
had more budget quote unquote models, more affordable models. So

(19:25):
they're trying to bolster their sales of their notebooks. You
know that it's gonna be have AI, this and that
and that's gonna be all part of the hype and
Apple AI and da da da da dah. Because you
can't do anything, you can't announce anything, you can't talk
about any new piece of hardware, computer hardware these days,
about throwing AI in there, throwing the word AI. So

(19:48):
I'm excited about it. I am very excited. Yeah, depending
on the price, if I'm all for it. Depending on
the price. It may go in the old uh Amazon
shopping cart. But if it starts outing like a thousand bucks,
which there's honestly no way it would because MacBooks have

(20:09):
always been the more affordable option from Apple. But if
it's too much, if like Apple, what are you doing
if you if for there's no there's no rule that
says Apple won't introduce an ultra sleek, ultra portable, super
tiny device and then add a little upcharge because of
its portability and this and that, uh start a thousand bucks.

(20:30):
I don't know. I don't want to say impossible for
Apple to do that. Apple can do anything, and you
know they're notorious for doing for kind of gouget on things.
Have you ever tried to upgrade? Go to the uh
little you know, spec out your laptop page of Apple
and see how much they charge for RAM upgrades and
memory upgrade and uh, I almost said hard drive upgrades,

(20:53):
storage upgrades. I think it's it's astronomical, it's it's highway robbery.
Even MKBHD and Linus Tech and all the big ones
say it's it's kind it's all borderline criminal. How much
Apple charges for these kind of very minor upgrades. If
you want to get a more powerful version of a product,
it's just like two hundred bucks for eight more gigabytes

(21:13):
a RAM. That is utterly insane. Anyways, the the other
thing I wish this is my last wish as before
I wrap up here, because I got to go pick
up my son. I wish Apple would in whatever product,
a MacBook pros, MacBook Air, or MacBook I'm totally fine

(21:34):
with a plastic option or carbon fiber. Carbon fiber would
cost a lot more money. But when I pick up
my MacBook Pro, my sixteen inch MacBook Pro, the aluminum
is beautiful. The machine aluminum is absolutely gorgeous. Obviously, that's
one of the aesthetics, is one of the things that
Apple is known for. But you know, there is a
monster amount of weight in that beauty. And I wish

(21:57):
that Apple would offer a MacBook Pro or a MacBook Air,
or even a MacBook with a plastic option, just with
a lighter plastic carbon fiber, even even if carbon fiber
costs more money, just having the option of a of
a of the of that weight savings, it would be
an absolute boon. And I probably am not the only one.

(22:17):
If you're listening right now, it probably makes a lot
of sense. Yeah, maybe plastic isn't as esthetic, doesn't look
as good or feel as good as the machined aluminum,
but the weight savings are worth it. I would buy
a plastic MacBook or a plastic MacBook Air or a
plastic MacBook Pro. The next time I'm looking to upgrade

(22:39):
that kind of hardware, I would go for the plastic
option because the weight savings is incredibly important to me. Anyways,
thank you for listening to this episode of the Geek
Therapy radio podcast. Check the link in the description for
the link to the podcast that I do much more
regularly for the Houston Museum and Natural Science, the HMNS
Beyond Bones podcast. And remember that you are worthy of love,

(23:02):
you're worthy of giving love, and you're worthy of receiving love,
and you're worthy of your own self respect. Thank you
so much for listening, and I'll talk to y'all next time.
PEACEA