Apple Can't Hold the Line on Prices Anymore

Tim Cook Says Apple Price Increases Are ‘Unavoidable’ Due to Memory Costs — MacRumors

“Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” said Cook. “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable.”

This is not looking good, and Apple is getting us ready for it.

Why I'm (Almost) Buying a MacBook Neo Before Paris

What if I don’t plan to use any AI tools? What if I don’t plan to multitask like crazy and focus, instead, for once? What if I don’t need the mightiness of my MacBook Air, yet a trustworthy ally? What if I don’t want to lose my Apple Pencil for a third time during this upcoming vacation? What if I want a small yet powerful Mac while on the plane?

After reading Matt Birchler’s blog post about the MacBook Neo being a great second computer five days before leaving for Paris, I’m considering getting one. It’s so cheap. I have 4 days to decide. My wife wouldn’t understand if I got one. 🤫🫣

Come On

Rewatching WWDC keynote and boy these constantly moving sequences of people talking are very annoying. And, how ironic is it when we know it was filmed with iPhone which comes with sophisticated image stabilization. 🤷🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

Apple First, Devs Later

Apple’s Private Cloud Compute Is Severely Limited for Third-Party Developers:

The bottom line is that — for the OS 27 cycle at least — PCC is primarily a feature for Apple itself to use in Siri AI. Granting access to PCC to any third-party developers at all is better than nothing, but this 2-million-download cap cuts off many developers who are in the Small Business Program. Apple should reconsider that. And I know there are a lot of developers who exceed the eligibility for the Small Business Program who would love to have access to the PCC APIs, even if access was paid. The lack of paid tiers says to me that Apple is worried enough about meeting demand from Siri AI users alone.

Expect this to change sooner rather than later once Apple introduces API consumption tiers for developers. Currently, Apple appears to be managing demand for its PCC infrastructure.

On *OS 27 Betas

I’ve been rather silent since the release of Apple’s latest major betas, except for a few reaction blips. While I love the new iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, I cannot install macOS 27 beta. Installation always fails at the very end of the download process. Go figure. 🤷🏻‍♂️

iOS 27 Liquid Glass is what it should have been from the start. Oh, and the speed and stability on my iPhone 15 Pro Max prove to be the best fest beta ever. I’m still waiting on the Siri AI waiting list.

Mac mini Canada: 52 configurations, one clear winner

If you’re shopping for a Mac mini in Canada right now, the Apple Store configurator is both powerful and opaque. It shows you one combination at a time, with no easy way to compare shipping wait times across the full lineup. So I decided to do something about it.

Using Claude’s browser automation tools, I navigated the Apple Canada store programmatically, cycling through every possible Mac mini configuration: all 52 of them, spanning two chips (M4 and M4 Pro), two CPU/GPU variants, two memory tiers, five storage options, and two Ethernet speeds. I captured the live price and shipping lead time for each one directly from the store. No guessing, no third-party data. Everything you see was pulled in real time from apple.com/ca.

The result is the reference table below. The headline finding is blunt: if you want a Mac mini without a long wait, your options are narrow. Only the base M4 model ships in 3 to 4 weeks. Upgrade almost anything (memory, storage, Ethernet, or chip), and you’re looking at 10 to 12 weeks. The Mac mini may be Apple’s most configurable desktop, but right now it’s also one of its hardest to get quickly.

WWDC26 Expectations

So you were expecting a long blog post about my expectations for WWDC26, right? Well, I don’t have a clue. I think it would be better to write what I want, not what I expect. Here’s what I want.

  • A slider-type control for toning down Liquid Glass. This UI must disappear somehow, to a degree.
  • A useful Apple Intelligence, requiring minimal third-party support in order to be useful. Apple’s relationship with the developers is at an all-time low; it’s not the right strategy to depend on them for basic OS feature support.
  • Speaking of relationships: I want Apple to care about developers, for real. Don’t pretend. Be honest. Be humble.
  • Finally, I want bug fixes, all sorts of bug fixes.

That’s it.