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Accidental Tech Podcast

681: The Price of Your Nightmares

05 Mar 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What health issues does the host mention at the beginning?

0.031 - 15.812 Marco Arment

All right, let me start by saying I'm a little congested, nasally, whatever. It's not because Marco screwed up the editor or anything like that. I'm just ever so slightly under the weather. It's fine. However, I will redeem myself by telling you two, and all of you who are listening, I have found the best website on the internet.

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16.18 - 18.483 Unknown

Oh, is this better than Million Dollar Homepage?

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18.843 - 22.187 Marco Arment

Yes, especially because I didn't earn a million dollars from it.

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22.207 - 30.637 Unknown

Of all the various internet clever things, what an amazing winner that site was. Oh, God, yes.

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Chapter 2: What is the best website mentioned in the podcast?

30.657 - 43.212 Unknown

Because it's the kind of thing like it only works once. Yep. And even if it could work another time, it wouldn't be cool if somebody did it again. It only works once. It only works for the first person to try it. And what a fun, weird idea that was.

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43.552 - 63.88 Marco Arment

Yeah, so for those that aren't familiar, what this was, and jump in and interrupt me when you're ready, but it was like each pixel or something like that was a dollar, and there were a million pixels on the homepage. So you could buy any number of pixels at a dollar apiece, and over the entire million pixels on the homepage, that's a million bucks. And it's still at milliondollarhomepage.com.

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64.261 - 67.926 Marco Arment

Incredibly good idea, and I'm really impressed by it.

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68.126 - 71.43 Unknown

It's so tiny on my big monitor now, my big modern monitor.

71.771 - 71.871

Yeah.

71.851 - 73.653 Marco Arment

Well, it's not that modern. We'll talk about that.

73.713 - 75.856 Unknown

This glorious one megapixel image.

76.997 - 101.469 Marco Arment

I found the best website on the internet. Before we started recording, I asked both the boys what model year their cars were. And I asked because I was looking at... What is the URL? autocatalogarchive.com So if you look in the chat, and I'll put it in the show notes... There, John, is the official brochure for the 2014 Honda Accord.

Chapter 3: What are the key features of the new M4 iPad Air?

861.108 - 871.965 John Siracusa

And then the 512GB is $100 less than the 512GB 16E was. Again, pre-order March 4th, available March 11th. Pretty good update to the e-phone.

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873.633 - 895.64 Unknown

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895.72 - 913.485 Unknown

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913.746 - 935.498 Unknown

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935.798 - 954.909 Unknown

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955.27 - 978.392 Unknown

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978.832 - 984.302 Unknown

Masterclass.com slash ATP. Thanks to Masterclass for sponsoring our show.

988.366 - 1007.507 Marco Arment

This is the point in which I, as the kids say, crash out a little bit. New displays. And actually, I think all three of us will be crashing out for different reasons, come to think of it. But Apple has released two new displays. They have the studio display, which is basically the same as the one that I'm looking at right now.

1007.948 - 1018.181 Marco Arment

It has a better center stage camera, quote, now with improved image quality and support for desk view. Cool. Also, apparently better audio, particularly 30% deeper bass.

Chapter 4: What are the performance differences between the M5 Pro and M5 Max?

4948.392 - 4960.571 John Siracusa

Like, it's very weird. I just, I don't quite understand. If they had changed the battery sizes, this would make sense to me, but it's, I mean... It's the same chip in a 14-inch and a 16-inch laptop, and it seems to get different performance.

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4960.591 - 4965.099 Marco Arment

All right. The environment story is largely the same as the M4 Pro and Max.

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Chapter 5: What environmental initiatives are associated with the new MacBook models?

4965.119 - 4978.902 Marco Arment

However, new is that it's made with 45% recycled content and manufactured, again, with 50% renewable electricity. The price for the M5 Pro and M5 Max starts at $1,700 for the 14-inch and $2,700 for the 16-inch.

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4978.882 - 4996.783 John Siracusa

I had to set check that like three times. I'm like, this has to be wrong. I must have the wrong windows open. How can the starting price for the M5 Pro and M5 Max be exactly the same? And the answer is, I think that they're just like, it's not apples to apples because they're, you know, different number of cores are disabled, different amount of RAM, like the base configs are different.

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4996.803 - 5004.973 John Siracusa

But I believe, I mean, triple check me. They both start at $1,700, whichever chip you pick, Pro or Max.

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5004.953 - 5008.557 Unknown

That does seem a little bananas to me. On the 16-inch, maybe.

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5008.577 - 5009.238 John Siracusa

On the 14-inch.

5009.639 - 5010.199 Unknown

Are you sure?

5010.219 - 5012.042 John Siracusa

Because I'm seeing it... Triple-check me.

Chapter 6: How does the pricing strategy reflect Apple's market approach?

5012.222 - 5012.883 John Siracusa

It might be wrong.

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5012.903 - 5024.537 Unknown

I'm seeing it say M5 Pro is from $2349. M5 Max is from $3749. Yeah, it's $3749. The M5 Max dramatically ramps up everything.

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5024.557 - 5030.564 John Siracusa

Let me see. Maybe I did it wrong. If I doubted myself, I'm going to double-check it right now.

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5031.125 - 5033.087 Unknown

It's like $1,300 more.

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5033.067 - 5033.811 John Siracusa

for the max.

Chapter 7: What are the main comparisons between the MacBook Neo and the M1 MacBook Air?

5034.576 - 5034.857 Unknown

All right.

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5035.038 - 5037.593 John Siracusa

Shop. I'm going to go 14 inch.

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5037.657 - 5066.314 Unknown

as casey was saying earlier like they really have restricted a lot of the high memory and ssd configurations to the max chip even like if you want the eight terabyte ssd you can't just get a max you have to get like the highest like it's just everything is like you you have to really max out the processor to get the most ram or yeah maybe i was just clicking on the wrong things all right set that aside that's not yeah all right well do we want to reboot this whole thing then

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5066.294 - 5080.61 John Siracusa

No, you can leave it in my mistake. Like I swear, I checked it like three times. You know what it is? They've changed the product configurator. There was a story about this a while of like how you don't pick like good, better, best. You just basically go into the configurator. But the way they've made like the clicking of like, you know, you have to like pick a color first.

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5080.63 - 5096.026 John Siracusa

So we won't let you pick anything else. Now pick a screen. We won't let you pick anything else. When you get down to the chip section, they have these sort of collapsing set of round racks. And I think they've bamboozled me because when you click on the chip, like there's another rectangle that appears where you have to pick like the number of cores and stuff. And I just think I got confused.

5096.066 - 5101.498 John Siracusa

My bad. Anyway, that's why we that's why I double check correct in real time. The max is super duper expensive. Sorry about that.

5101.85 - 5115.146 Marco Arment

All right. So, yeah. So, basically, the Max is, as you said, super-duper expensive. But the RAM upgrades seem to be priced same as before, same basic story as before. We don't need to enumerate them, but all the pricing doesn't really change.

5115.406 - 5127.3 John Siracusa

Like when you go to a higher RAM level, you're paying the same ridiculous prices you were always paying. They just seem less ridiculous now because RAM prices are really high everywhere. But the point is Apple didn't actually increase their RAM upgrade prices.

5127.28 - 5134.258 John Siracusa

They were so ridiculous, they were able to absorb the changes or they locked in their prices before and they're getting exactly the same margins they always did.

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