By John Moltz
This Week in Apple: No pork for you
You’re going to have to wait a while to fold an iPad, Apple explores its AI options, and cheap MacBooks? In this economy?
Apple folds
Bad news for folding tech fetishists. (Weirdos.) While we are still expected to get a folding iPhone next year, its larger sibling will not be joining it.
“Apple’s ‘iPad Fold’ won’t be launching any time soon, per new report”
Only some analysts thought it would be coming in 2026, anyway, but now it seems clear it’ll be more like 2028.
Or 2029.
2030 is not out of the question.
Or never. Never is also a possibility.
No word yet on when to expect foldable iMacs or Apple Watches.
Forget AI, it’s stupid anyway!
Apple may be taking its AI ball and going home. Then puncturing the ball with a knife and asking if it can use someone else’s ball.
OK, the ball analogy may not have been the best choice but it’s too late now. Best to just plow forward. We have people coming over for the 4th soon and I’m making kalua pork.
No, you’re not invited. Not after last year.
You know what you did.
Apple’s AI team, meanwhile, knows what it did not do. Deliver.
“Apple might ditch internal AI efforts for Siri revamp, use OpenAI or Anthropic instead”
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple has asked both OpenAI and Anthropic to train customized versions of their large language models that could run on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute infrastructure.
Who among us hasn’t started a home improvement project and then, after hours of banging and sawing and yelling and some tears and finger-pointing, called in a contractor to finish it? It happens.
Not everyone loves this plan, however.
Morale has reportedly taken a hit among the Foundation Models team…
Why is management ordering delivery?! We have AI at home!
Even if Apple can’t get its own AI game going, it may be able to make some scratch off this technology.
“Report: Apple looked into building its own AWS competitor”
Executives believed Apple silicon could offer better AI inference performance at a lower cost…
If you can’t beat ‘em, host ‘em?
MacBook*
The rent may be too damn high, but according to this rumor the price of Apple laptops might not be, at least for much longer.
“Apple Planning to Launch Low-Cost MacBook Powered By iPhone Chip”
Maybe they could call it the M-Celeron.
The A18 Pro is certainly a capable chip and if its chief liability is not supporting Thunderbolt, it seems an eminently worthwhile trade since a lot of people think “Thunderbolt” is one-a-them-there superheroes what’s in the motion pictures nowadays.
Potential MacBook Buyer #1: “He the one with tha hammer?”
Potential MacBook Buyer #2: “Nah, he’s the one played by that ‘In Living Color’ fella.”
Potential MacBook Buyer #1: “Jed, your knowledge of superhero lore is matched only by your knowledge of large animal husbandry.”
Potential MacBook Buyer #2: “Mordecai, you are a gentleman and a scholar.”
[they proceed to fight]
As others have pointed out, Apple currently sells M1-based MacBook Airs through Walmart for just $650. That’s not Chromebook territory but it is pretty low and somehow the company seems to think it’s a good business, so why not take better advantage of it? One wonders how much the thunderless MacBook would go for.
The A18 Pro has fewer cores than the M1 but runs at a faster clock speed so performs better at single threaded operations, but worse overall. Still, as a chip designed for phones it uses very little power, meaning it could either have amazing battery life or a smaller form factor.
And that’s not all. According to Ming-Chi Kuo:
The more-affordable MacBook could come in Silver, Blue, Pink, and Yellow finishes.
Hey, baggy jeans are coming back. Why not candy-colored laptops?
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]