This is Technology Bytes, episode 191 for November 1, 2026.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
Apple has had quite a week and released a lot of different products.
The interesting thing is that sometime in the last end of the week before or something like that, Apple sent out an email that said, Hey, we’re going to do this pro until, you know, I say event, but it’s really just a certain set of people that are invited.
And so there’s been some speculation that this event was happening and what it was going to introduce, and a lot of the things that were speculated were actually what was introduced.
But the interesting thing about it is that they didn’t do it all at the event on Wednesday.
They kept dropping products all throughout the week leading up to Wednesday, all throughout the week, so Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
And so I’m just going to walk through a little bit about what they’ve released and some general thoughts.
On Monday, iPad dropped the new iPad Mini, and that was expected, I guess, at some level.
And I think that many of the things that they talked about were not secret, I guess.
And so it’s got an OLED screen, it’s got an A20 processor, and it is, by all…
Intense and purposes, just a small iPad Pro, I think.
Now, the storage at the beginning, at the starting price is a 128.
I think one of the people that I listened to said, Yeah, it starts at $699 or something like that, but don’t look at it for too long because the price goes up very quickly from there.
And it really was talking about adding memory or storage space or adding a nano texture screen.
Is that this one?
Oh, probably not.
Anyway, it really builds from there based on what you want and what you need in your iPad Mini.
So all in all, it’s a really good machine.
And some of the people that I listened to say, Isn’t there room for Apple to make an iPad that’s not this capable and is at a far lesser price?
And the challenge with that for Apple, I guess, is that with the new introduction of the S lady in AI mode, they want all of their products to be able to access that artificial intelligence.
And to do that, they have to be what looks to be overpowered at this point.
But it’s a good machine, a good product.
We used to like the iPad Mini.
My wife liked that, but it hasn’t been updated in quite a while, so we ended up moving her to the iPad Pro 11 or maybe the iPad Air.
But anyway, a good machine, a good drop, and a lot of people are excited because they love the iPad Mini.
Then Tuesday rolls around and Apple releases a MacBook Pro 14.
Now this is really the entry level of the MacBook Pro line.
It has just enough in it for it to be called a Pro with fans and connectivity and those type of things.
And it does have the M6 processor, which is the latest, and it is a good— Jump from where they were, and it is the MacBook Pro that is the most affordable.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it cheap because that’s not true, but it is under 2,000 at the starting price.
And it really is for people who want a MacBook Pro but don’t need the high end of the other things that they will release later.
Spoiler alert, I guess.
But anyway, they release it.
It’s not—there’s no new things in its design.
It just has a new chip, and that’s pretty much it.
And that is available for people who want to jump into the MacBook Pro line as a starting point.
On the same day, they released the new iMac, still a 24-inch with the M6 processor.
It almost felt like an afterthought along with the MacBook Pro.
But those are the two Macs that are getting the base model M6 processor, and so it kind of makes sense to release them together.
I use an iMac.
I think mine is an M4.
I don’t think I will be upgrading anytime soon.
The prices are pretty high because of what they call it, Ramageddon or whatever.
But my iMac is doing well.
But I always liked the iMac.
It’s a neat machine.
The fact that they still release it in colors is pretty cool.
So I don’t know that they’ve made any real significant changes in the iMac either, except for bumping it to the M6, which is a big jump in processor.
That M6 is a powerful chipset.
And so those two things released on Tuesday.
Then Wednesday rolls around, and this is the day that Apple said, Hey, we’re going to release something, and they named the event Pro and Tell.
And so this was now just the focus of the MacBook Pro 14 and 16 with an OLED screen, a redesigned body, although it doesn’t feel like it’s all that much different.
And also the fact that Apple has now released their first touchscreen MacBook, and that’s something that people have had out for some time.
And most of the people that I listen to are like, We don’t need this device.
I don’t know why Apple is releasing a touchscreen MacBook Pro at this point.
They haven’t released one for a long time, and is it really necessary?
And then other people are saying, Well, it may just be part of the process, and the fact that the screen they want, which is an OLED screen, comes touchable, I guess, for maybe the same price.
That’s a thought that I’ve heard bantered about a little bit.
And so why not just have it be touchable if people want it?
And so it is that.
And maybe that’s not the biggest thing.
The OLED screen may be a little bigger, a little bit more redesigned, a little bit better battery life, a little bit lighter.
It comes in the 16-inch and the 14-inch version, still with the same processor as the last MacBook Pros, which is the M5 Pro and the M5 Max.
And then you build it up from there.
You can get a nano textured screen on this device, and most people say if you’re buying it, you probably want to spend that extra $150 because that— Keeps the fingerprints from showing quite a bit, or from showing as much on that screen.
And if it’s a touch screen, there’s a chance you’re going to be touching it.
I don’t know.
I touch my iPad all the time.
I don’t have a nano texture on that, so I also am wiping it off quite a bit.
So the 16-inch version of the MacBook Pro, and probably with all devices, I mean, there are limitations to what you can do on the base model M6 as far as memory and those kind of things.
But, I mean, you can make that MacBook Pro very, very expensive.
And if you look at getting, you know, just some modest bumps, you’re running right into a $4,500 computer.
And then if you want to stretch it a little bit to use it for more of artificial intelligence stuff or whatever you want to use it for, then you can get really, really expensive.
I think they even offer like a 16 terabyte SSD.
That’s crazy, but maybe necessary.
I don’t know.
I can’t spend the kind of money that they have on this.
But I just priced out a fairly aggressive machine where I, you know, did the 16-inch MacBook Pro, I did the nano texture screen, I think I did 48 gigabytes of RAM and a 4 terabyte hard drive, and that machine was six grand.
So expensive.
You know, Apple’s products generally are maybe worth it.
They showed some ideas about why the touch screen would be useful and maybe playing instruments on the screen or doing some other things like that.
But— It’ll be interesting to see that.
So now I’ve got a couple reasons to go into the Apple Store.
One is to play with this MacBook Pro with the touchscreen, and the other is to look at the iPhone Duo.
It’ll be interesting to see on the MacBook Pro because everybody that goes to see it at the Apple Store is going to be touching it, and so it’ll be interesting to see what that screen looks like when I go look at this device in the store.
Then on a final side note, Apple released their latest version of the Mac Studio, and this one’s with 512 gigabytes of RAM.
Now, they had said this was coming out, but it was coming out, you know, sometime in November.
I don’t remember what exactly the days, but I think the days for all of these things being available is really this week, and so it ends up being into the November time frame.
But you want to talk about high-priced hardware.
If you get the Mac Studio, I don’t even know if you have to max it out necessarily, but you can get to a $30,000 machine without even trying.
And yeah, it’s just baffling to the mind what that even means.
And I think this device is for a certain set of people who maybe are running local AI and keeping it out of the cloud.
And I hear a lot about that.
I don’t know that it interests me.
You know, every day as I get older, and the interesting thing is people I listen to are tech people, but they are my age, at least some of them, and some not too much younger.
But so much talk about local AI and how you use AI and how you use the things like the Muse and Dots and Gronk, whatever that one is, you know, to just do things every day for you.
And I use AI at work.
I don’t really use it at home.
I use the S Lady AI as much as I can when I feel like I need to use AI just to see how it’s doing.
But all of a sudden with these personalized— AI engines, or whatever you want to call them, people feel like Apple has fallen behind once again after kind of catching up.
So it’s a constant chase, I guess.
The one thing that’s held true is that Apple is releasing some of the best hardware available for running local models at your own home.
Now, not very many people can afford that because it’s very, very expensive, but they still have that part of the AI world pretty much locked up.
That is the devices that they provide, and that’s the devices that they sell.
And now it’s a matter of how are they going to use AI in their own world to do things.
So I’ll talk more about that next week because there’s also some thoughts of the release of the next beta.
So rather than get into that today, I’ll just wait until next week.
So a lot of products were released, and some affordable, some more affordable than others, some out of this world expensive depending on how you want to configure them.
Most people that I know that do the configuration and then share that price are never going to buy that machine.
They just want to tell you how crazy Apple is for even making a machine that costs that kind of money.
But these are good products.
They’re very well built, as always.
They’re very thoughtful, as always.
They serve a purpose, as always, and they will sell, as always.
Not for me.
Not looking for products in this world.
I am super happy with the MacBook Pro—I mean the MacBook Air, the iMac, and the iPad Pro that I use.
All the same exact setup.
I think they’re all M4s and well into their lives by a year-ish or so, and super happy with their performance and don’t need more than that at the moment.
So that’s what they released.
That’s what’s available.
Knock yourself out and buy what you need.
And what you need is what you need.
And sometimes, if you’re like me, what you need is just what you want.
So, yeah, good products all around.
That is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes@merigfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together, taking another bite of technology.
