512 Pixels

My pals Myke and Jason are launching a new project:

The two of us, Myke Hurley and Jason Snell, have been discussing Apple in depth every week for more than a decade on the Upgrade podcast. We want to go further, creating a podcast series that’s dedicated to telling stories from across all five decades of Apple history. This is a big reach for us, requiring a significant outlay of our time and the time of our audio editor. We have the knowledge and skills—but we need your help to make it happen.

Designed in California will consist of at least 30 episodes dropping over 12 months, looking at a wide range of Apple history, drawing from the best sources available.

Jason Snell at Six Colors:

We’re using Kickstarter for this project because researching and writing these scripts is quite labor-intensive, and I was hesitant to make that time commitment in the hope we would eventually build up enough of an audience to justify the large workload. We’ve set a goal that would allow us to generate thirty 30-to-45-minute episodes over the course of a year, with our first stretch goal to raise that number to a full fifty episodes in a year.

This is going to be very, very good.

That feeling when a tech support text turns into a podcast episode:

Stephen Hackett returns to the show to help me make sense of a problem that is hard even to describe, let alone solve, regarding Apple One, family sharing, a separate Media & Purchasing account, and iCloud storage space. Also: what we’re expecting from WWDC 2026.

Last night, the sky lit up over Florida’s Space Coast as Blue Origin’s big rocket — named New Glenn — exploded during an uncrewed static fire test at Launch Complex 36.

These tests are designed to test the rocket’s fuel system and motors by firing them when the rocket is clamped down to the launchpad. Thankfully, it seems that no one was hurt.

Eric Berger has more at Ars:

The company has launched New Glenn three times, during each of which the first stage performed well. The company had already demonstrated the ability to land the New Glenn first stage, and impressively reused it in April for the first time.

During that third flight, carrying the Blue Bird 7 satellite, an upper stage issue caused the mission to fail. However the company responded rapidly to the in-flight failure and returned to the launch pad in less than two months this week. The first stage for this mission, nicknamed No, It’s Necessary, was making its debut launch.

Prior to this launch attempt Blue Origin had in its inventory two first stages and about six New Glenn upper stages completed, and it was poised to break into a monthly launch cadence. By all accounts, the rocket was viewed as a major success for a company which, for so long, had seemed to plod along. New Glenn’s success catapulted the company to the upper echelon of spaceflight enterprises in the world. That Blue Origin was on the precipice of accelerating further makes this setback all the more painful.

It’ll take some time to learn what happened to this New Glenn rocket, but the impact of its failure may be wide-reaching.

This is a potential setback to NASA, which just this week announced Blue Origin will play a strategic role in its every-changing plans for a lunar return.

This is also a potential setback for United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, which uses the same BE-4 engines that may be at the center of last night’s disaster.

This week on the podcast:

Stephen has been blogging, Myke has been shopping, and Federico has been… CLI’ing.

There’s a lot of reporting pointing to a new high-end MacBook on the horizon, as Tim Hardwick at MacRumors writes:

Reports and rumors suggest the next MacBook Pro that Apple will release might not be a MacBook Pro at all. It could actually be something altogether new and more exciting – a “MacBook Ultra” – positioned above the Pro as Apple’s top-tier laptop, suggesting that the current M5 Pro and M5 Max models will remain on sale when it launches.

The MacBook would be just the latest Apple product to carry the Ultra name, which already spans the Apple Watch Ultra and CarPlay Ultra (not forgetting Apple’s top-end Ultra-designated silicon chips). This is likely to bring a markedly higher price point for the new machines. It fits into a broader trend at Apple, where the company is seeking to offer more models at more price points, such as the new MacBook Neo at an unprecedented $599 price point.

This could be a very exciting machine. It’s rumored to come with a Dynamic Island, a thinner design,¹ M6-class processors, and of course, a touch-enabled OLED display.

Mark Gurman reported on much of this back in March:

Even with the new display, Apple won’t position the MacBook Pro as an iPad replacement — or describe its interface as a touch-first experience. Instead, the idea is to let customers use the touch input as much or as little as they’d like, and blend it with the familiar point-and-click approach.

To that end, the new MacBook Pro looks similar to the current model, including a full keyboard and large trackpad. Still, the Mac will gain a refreshed, dynamic user interface that can shift between being optimized for touch or point-and-click input, said the people.

For instance, if users touch a button or control, the interface will bring up a new type of menu surrounding their finger that provides more relevant options for touch commands. The goal is to give users the controls that make the most sense based on whether they’re touching or clicking.

The software will also display the most appropriate set of controls based on users’ prior interaction. And if a person taps an item in the menu bar at the top of the screen, the set of controls will enlarge to be more easily selectable with a finger.

I cannot wait to see (and touch!) what Apple has been up to here. However, this machine is probably going to be more expensive than the current MacBook Pro models on sale, and it’s likely the MacBook Pro as we know it today will still be around.

That could lead to confusion. Imagine walking into an Apple Store or Best Buy or Costco and being confronted with two very different machines with the same name. That may fly with some other OEMs, but not Apple. Hence, the “MacBook Ultra” idea. Giving this new machine a new suffix would help clear things up.

But that leads to problems. Surely this machine’s OLED panel and other features will roll down to other machines in the future. Would Apple keep the Ultra around then, hopefully with even newer features? Does the name imply that the Ultra is more powerful than the Pro, leaving the latter with older or lesser chips over time? Does Apple really need a fourth laptop line?

It turns out that Apple solved this 14 years ago when it rolled out a machine many of us came to love:

Apple today unveiled an all new 15-inch MacBook Pro featuring a stunning Retina display, all flash storage and quad-core processors in a radically thin and light design. Measuring a mere 0.71 inches and weighing only 4.46 pounds, the completely redesigned MacBook Pro sets a new standard in performance and portability for pro users

“The MacBook Pro with Retina display pushes the limits of performance and portability like no other notebook,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “With a gorgeous Retina display, all flash architecture and a radically thin and light design, the new MacBook Pro is the most advanced Mac we have ever built.”

The MacBook Pro with Retina display had a wordy name, but the strategy worked. Shopping for a MacBook Pro in the summer of 2012 was pretty simple:

The system continued to work into the fall when the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display rolled out:

I don’t know if Apple will look to its past to solve this problem or not. Calling this machine the “MacBook Pro with Touch” — or something better that Joz comes up with — would work long enough for every MacBook Pro to become a bit more ultra.

Ferrari has unveiled its new four-door EV, designed by Jony Ive. It’s a quad-motor monster, clocking in at 1,035 horsepower, a mere 757 more than my used Toyota Tacoma.

I like some things about the exterior design, even if the profile has huge Magic Mouse energy. There are little nods to Ferraris past in the design, but there’s no doubt its a big change from its predecessors. Even the interior is wildly new. This car has seen a lot of hate online, but I don’t think it is as bad as most folks do, it seems.

MKBHD got to take a closer look:

With an eye-watering $600,000 price tag, this video may be as close as I get to a Luce, at least until Doug DeMuro gets to review one.

Jony Ive’s involvement is super interesting, given that 1) he’s the most famous designer in the world and 2) Apple’s car project never saw the light of day. Cleo Abram got to interview him and Ferrari Chief Designer Flavio Manzoni about the Luce:

It’s already been fixed, but this story is properly funny.

Update: Well, kinda fixed.

This week on the podcast:

Apple has announced new accessibility features coming to iOS, Google has announced … a lot of things… at IO, and Federico has announced Shortcuts Playground. (Myke and Stephen don’t have anything to announce.)

CNBC is breaking the prospectus down, but a few things jumped out at me right away.

First, this bit from Lora Kolodny:

The company breaks down its business into three units: Space, Connectivity and AI. Connectivity includes the Starlink satellite internet service, which is sold directly to consumers, as well as to government and military agencies.

According to the filing, Starlink generated $3.26 billion in revenue in the latest quarter, accounting for 69% of the total. The company now boasts about 10.3 million Starlink subscribers.

Connectivity is also the only profitable part of the company. The space business lost $619 million in the quarter on an operating basis, and AI unit lost $2.5 billion. Connectivity recorded a profit of $1.19 billion.

Ashley Capoot has more about how Memphis plays a part in this:

Anthropic will pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through May 2029 as part of the compute deal the companies announced earlier this month, according to the filing.

The AI company will use all of the compute capacity at SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee, the companies announced previously. Anthropic will get access to more than 300 megawatts of compute capacity, and also “expressed interest” in working with SpaceX to develop multiple gigawatts of capacity in space.

Depending on how the IPO goes, the combined enterprise could be worth trillions of dollars, even though it lost a casual $4.9 billion last year. Those are not even the wildest numbers in the paperwork, as spotted by Thomas Ricker and Emma Roth:

It’s also telling them that SpaceX has “identified the largest actionable total addressable market (TAM) in human history,” potentially worth $28.5 trillion, with $370 billion from space, $1.6 trillion in connectivity with Starlink Broadband and Starlink Mobile, and $26.5 trillion in AI, which includes AI infrastructure, subscriptions, advertising, and $22.7 trillion in enterprise applications.

Asa Fitch at the WSJ:

The number isn’t too far off from the U.S.’s gross domestic product last year and would be about a quarter of 2025 global GDP.

Maybe after going public — as soon as next month — SpaceX could afford to restart that water treatment plant that xAI promised to build.

The folks behind the Pocket 8086 are back with a new machine:

The BOOK II is a portable Apple II (Plus) compatible computer, redesigned using standard TTL chips and equipped with ROMs from early Apple II compatibles or clones. Beyond its core Apple II functionality, it integrates several built-in enhancements: an 80-column video card, a 16KB Language Card, a Z80 Softcard, a printer controller, and a Disk II compatible controller.

As a portable computer, the BOOK II features a built-in lithium battery, an RGB LCD, and a low-profile mechanical keyboard. It supports original Apple Disk II floppy drives as well as floppy drive emulators.

Oh mama:

The feature list is pretty great:

• CPU: 6502
• SRAM: 48KB (+16KB)
• Z80 Softcard
• 80 Column Video Card
• 16KB Language Card RAM
• Disk II controller
• Printer Interface
• RGB Display
• Mechanical keyboard
• Lithium battery (4x18650)
• Expansion Bus Support (Slot 5)

At $550, this is an expensive little machine, but one that I very much want.

Yesterday, I joined Jason on Upgrade to talk old Macs, binned chips, and Apple AI. Then Jason discusses the darkest part of Steve Jobs’s career with the author of " Steve Jobs In Exile", Geoffrey Cain.

My copy of the book arrives today and I couldn’t be more excited to read it.

This week on the podcast, Gurman has details on iOS 27, Google has new laptops, and Myke has an obligation to skip the third topic.