On this week’s “Sunday Reboot,” a storage improve for the MacBook Neo, an excuse to purchase many Mac minis, and the iPhones come again to Earth with a late congratulatory message.
Sunday Reboot is a weekly column protecting among the lighter tales throughout the Apple actuality distortion discipline from the previous seven days. All to get the subsequent week underway with an excellent first step.
This week, researchers managed to get round Apple Intelligence safety measures utilizing immediate injection strategies, a repairability report panned Apple’s {hardware} once more, and Apple’s lawsuit with Epic Video games over the App Retailer continued to roll on. There was additionally a bug discovered to interrupt Mac networking each 49 days, 17 hours, two minutes, and 47 seconds.
Upgrading the unupgradable, once more
The MacBook Neo has already been the recipient of nice press relating to its development. Again in March, iFixit mentioned the MacBook Neo was the most repairable Apple pocket book since 2012, giving it a rating of 6 out of 10.
Sure, 6 out of 10 appears “low,” however that is fairly excessive relating to Apple’s merchandise. The iPhone 17 Professional managed 7, and that is the best Apple has managed to get.
Element from the YouTube video displaying the MacBook Neo’s NAND storage – picture credit score: dosdude1
Clearly, with such a low-cost product, folks have been eager to experiment. Early makes an attempt included including thermal pads to enhance its potential to chill down, which definitely helped, however now somebody’s upgraded the storage.
Positive, 256GB or 512GB of capability is not a lot for a contemporary pocket book, however Apple would not present any higher-up capacities for the Neo. If you need extra, you’d should pony up for a MacBook Air or MacBook Professional, or use exterior drives.
Cue YouTuber dosdude1 whipping out the soldering iron to modify the 256GB SSD within the MacBook Neo for a 1TB model.
Whereas this labored, it’s on no account a simple sufficient course of for a typical person to undertake. Storage swaps have additionally been accomplished earlier than, with an analogous degree of experience required.
All mentioned, it’s also a scenario that might’ve been made simpler by Apple itself.
We ran a narrative in January 2025 concerning the slotted and upgradable SSD within the M4 Mac mini. It was potential for a person to open the Mac mini up, take away the outdated SSD, and insert a brand new one.
Once more, this was numerous work and wasn’t an prompt swap like a SATA-based drive, so probably not usable by a typical finish person. Besides, it confirmed Apple may make storage upgrades occur.
The actual query is why Apple has but to include this concept into its pocket book lineup. Possibly then, iFixit may stretch to offer Apple an 8 out of 10.
iPhone re-entry and a comparatively late acknowledgment
It has been a busy few weeks for area followers, as Artemis II took off, flew across the Moon, and landed again on Earth. The minivan-sized capsule has splashed down, and everybody’s protected and nicely after a really lengthy journey.
Whereas NASA has been busy, in addition to journalists protecting the monumental occasion, it was additionally an enormous boon to Apple. We talked final week about it being a incredible instance of an unintentional Shot on iPhone marketing campaign, resulting from sending a bunch of iPhones up for the astronauts to make use of.
As Apple’s advertising groups spend a while figuring out learn how to capitalize on the occasion, there’s one factor that’s nonetheless puzzling: Apple’s personal delayed response to the affair.
The Artemis II crew, shot on iPhone – Picture Credit score: NASA
CEO Tim Cook dinner made a publish to X concerning the “profitable mission” and talked about the iPhone images at “new heights.” Advertising and marketing SVP Greg Joswiak joined in shortly after, being honored that iPhones have been taken into area and reposting NASA’s personal image-laden tweet.
My solely actual challenge is the choice to attend till a protected splashdown earlier than both government commented on the mission in any respect. For your complete ten-day jaunt across the Moon, neither of them posted about what was occurring.
There’s an apparent little bit of optics at play, since the very last thing a public character wants is to have an X publish related to an area mission that ends in tragedy. That definitely is smart.
Nonetheless, they may’ve been braver and complemented the imagery a lot earlier, even when the pictures began to unfold on-line. In the event that they did that and the worst factor occurred to the crew, there can be choices reminiscent of posting condolences.
I perceive completely nicely that you simply do should watch out about what you publish on-line, in case it will get misinterpreted or misused. However right here, it would not have harm Cook dinner and Co to take the extraordinarily reasonable danger and acknowledge the imagery sooner than they did.
AI and a ton of Mac minis
As AppleInsider commonly stories on AI, we’ve got seen numerous tales involving the Mac mini. Partly, it is as a result of it is a perfect platform for issues like OpenClaw.
However then there’s additionally the subject of clustering, in utilizing Thunderbolt 5 and RDMA help in MLX to unfold work throughout a number of Macs.
Whilst you may use this to run a neighborhood mannequin in your personal personal ChatGPT, in addition to normal AI analysis, there are another sensible makes use of.
Rack-mounted Mac minis. Picture credit score: Overcast
On Tuesday, Marco Arment confirmed off his personal enviable assortment of Mac minis. A rack of 48 of them, all getting used to deal with the transcription characteristic of Overcast.
That is fairly good, because it brings all the AI processing in-house as an alternative of paying for it to be carried out within the cloud. Apparently, cloud pricing would value 1000’s of {dollars} every day, versus the one-time value of a bunch of Mac minis and setting them up.
There are additionally the continued prices of electrical energy and Web entry, although the excessive performance-per-watt of Apple Silicon will definitely assist with the previous.
This is not essentially a undertaking that everybody will discover a use for. Not to mention the preliminary value of shopping for so many Mac minis directly.
However for an app developer with sufficient cash available and a doubtlessly excessive cloud processing invoice, it is a fairly good funding. If the cost-saving is there, it is onerous to not go down this route, because the monetary justification is there.
Final week’s Sunday Reboot mentioned worker present luggage, the Apple Intelligence flub in China, and iPhones on Artemis II.