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 masking among the lighter tales inside the Apple actuality distortion area 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 methods, 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 building. Again in March, iFixit mentioned the MacBook Neo was probably 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 very 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, individuals have been eager to experiment. Early makes an attempt included including thermal pads to enhance its capacity to chill down, which definitely helped, however now somebody’s upgraded the storage.
Certain, 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 need to 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 under no circumstances a straightforward sufficient course of for a typical consumer to undertake. Storage swaps have additionally been finished earlier than, with an identical stage of experience required.
All mentioned, it is usually a scenario that would’ve been made simpler by Apple itself.
We ran a narrative in January 2025 in regards to the slotted and upgradable SSD within the M4 Mac mini. It was potential for a consumer to open the Mac mini up, take away the outdated SSD, and insert a brand new one.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 on the spot swap like a SATA-based drive, so not likely usable by a typical finish consumer. Besides, it confirmed Apple might make storage upgrades occur.
The true query is why Apple has but to include this concept into its pocket book lineup. Possibly then, iFixit might stretch to provide Apple an 8 out of 10.
iPhone re-entry and a comparatively late acknowledgment
It has been a busy few weeks for house 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 secure and properly after a really lengthy journey.
Whereas NASA has been busy, in addition to journalists masking the monumental occasion, it was additionally a large boon to Apple. We talked final week about it being a incredible instance of an unintentional Shot on iPhone marketing campaign, because of sending a bunch of iPhones up for the astronauts to make use of.
As Apple’s advertising and marketing groups spend a while figuring out 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 in regards to the “profitable mission” and talked about the iPhone pictures at “new heights.” Advertising SVP Greg Joswiak joined in shortly after, being honored that iPhones have been taken into house and reposting NASA’s personal image-laden tweet.
My solely actual concern is the choice to attend till a secure 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 persona wants is to have an X publish related to an area mission that ends in tragedy. That definitely is sensible.
Nonetheless, they might’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 could be choices similar to posting condolences.
I perceive completely properly that you just do need to watch out about what you publish on-line, in case it will get misinterpreted or misused. However right here, it would not have damage Cook dinner and Co to take the extraordinarily reasonable threat and acknowledge the imagery sooner than they did.
AI and a ton of Mac minis
As AppleInsider usually studies on AI, we’ve 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 might use this to run an area mannequin on your personal personal ChatGPT, in addition to basic 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 function of Overcast.
That is fairly good, because it brings all the AI processing in-house as a substitute of paying for it to be carried out within the cloud. Apparently, cloud pricing would value hundreds of {dollars} day by 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 without delay.
However for an app developer with sufficient cash readily available and a probably excessive cloud processing invoice, this can be a fairly good funding. If the cost-saving is there, it is exhausting to not go down this route, because the monetary justification is there.
Final week’s Sunday Reboot mentioned worker reward baggage, the Apple Intelligence flub in China, and iPhones on Artemis II.
