Soundbyte 379 – September 2026

ChristopherEvents, Meetup, News, SoundByte

Welcome to Soundbyte, in this issue:

Its iPhone time – Watch Party

Join us from 5:45 on Wednesday, September 9 to watch Apple’s latests announcements in a live watch party. We’re expecting new iPhones*, but there are all sorts of scurrilous rumours about breakthrough products, so this one might be one to watch together!

Here’s how it works. If you join the Zoom meeting at 5:45, we’ll be there in the Zoom chat, but you should watch the presentation direct from Apple at 6pm – check Apple’s link above. Then come back to Zoom after for a post-Keynote debrief and chat.

We will use the same Zoom link as for our regular meetings (members should look for the link for the September 14 meeting in your calendar and click that to join the meeting). The link is also in our LMUG Slack #meetings channel.

We look forwards to seeing as many of you as possible!

*Random fact – did you know that recent iPhones use 9 LEDs in its torchlight? Now you do.

September Meeting – What’s new from Apple?

Via Geeky Gadgets

Joins us again on our usual schedule, Monday, September 14 at 7pm BST to discuss all the recent announcements from Apple. We’ve seen new Macs, and we’re going to see new phones (or more). Lets discuss what we think and who’s getting new tech as a result.

We’ll start the evening with Newsbyte as usual. 

Members should have the link to the meeting in their calendar. If not, please check your email for the LMUG Announcement, which includes how to join our meetings.

Mac Desktops refreshed!

Apple has upgraded their desktop lineup with new versions of the Mac mini and the Mac Studio. The Mac mini gets a bump from the M4 to the new M6 chip (and an M5 Pro option), while the Mac Studio gets the M5 Max and new M5 Ultra chips. Both new chips are huge upgrades despite the muted launch.

There was no presentation for these updates, instead, here is Apple’s intro to the Mini:

And here for the Studio:

What’s the story for these upgrades? Let’s get the price out of the way first. We have lost the £599 Mini. It now starts at £899! The cheapest Mac is now the Mac Neo starting at (an elevated) £699. We were warned on these pages of the coming price increases way back in May. They are now here and the memory production crisis is affecting all tech companies.

One interesting detail is that the M6 has gone into the Mini and not the Studio. But it isn’t unusual for the Mac mini to get the newest chip first (it got the M1 first). What’s different is that the new generation of Apple Silicon (M5, M6) tends to go into the iPhone first (A19, A20 – unannounced) and then other devices later. But if Apple felt the need to release these Macs to the market now, so be it. There’s no rules. For the same reason, we don’t need to worry about the more powerful chip in the mini being the M5 Pro. Despite being last years chip, the M5 Pro has many more cores and more powerful graphics than the M6, so its much faster.

Apple Silicon is so fast now at productivity, photo and video processes that only the highest-end users and those running the biggest workloads may notice a big difference from the new chips. Apple has focused here (M5 Ultra and M6) on increasing the performance of very demanding on-device AI models. They have done so without sacrificing Apple Silicon’s energy efficiency. I do wonder about the implications for all the multi-trillion dollar AI (cloud) datacenter investments. The implication could be that more AI will done on your own Mac in future rather than on these proliferating data centres.

Whether or not these AI Data Centres could be white elephants, the reaction to the new mini and Studio has been big. Enterprise customers want them, now. This means, if you want one, you might need to wait! We await the reviews later this month. In the mean time, here’s a quick tip on how to get your Mac to open Apps from outside the Mac App Store, and here’s a recent comparison of the M5 Max, now in the *base* Mac Studio, against a powerful PC laptop doing developer/AI tests.

New accessories from Apple

If you can’t afford the new Macs, maybe give your Apple screens some love instead with the latest version of the Apple Polishing Cloth. This is no joke. If you have an expensive Apple Display, this could help keep everything clear. And for this new Apple product (yes really, it’s different) there is a price cut [faints, ED] to £9.

Transition

via Apple

August 31 is the end of Tim Cook’s leadership of Apple as CEO. As of September 1, it’s long live Jon Ternus! According to Mac Rumours, Tim Cook released a message to Apple Staff. In unrelated news, he’s made way by clearing out some older Macs that members may still be using (!) to the obsolete list [horrors -ED]. These are Intel Macs from 2017/18, read more on Mac Rumours.

Phil Schiller, is rumoured to be taking another step back at the same time (from running the App Store), and with scurrilous reports of certain layoffs, we shall see what strategic changes the new broom brings in [looking at you Vision Pro -ED].

Sort out your life with an iPad

The iPad is not just for consumption. As a user since 2011, I know it really can mostly replace a PC. But how to do it? Have a look at the video below of how to use Apple’s apps in concert to get your work and life in order (especially with IOS27 coming in September). These tips will be useful for any user of iPads, and I guess we’ll see on the 9th if it applies to anything announced there.