SoundByte 373 – March 2026

ChristopherNews, SoundByte

Welcome to SoundByte!

In this issue:

March Meeting – NewsByte Extra!

Join LMUG, next Monday evening, March 9 at 7pm GMT for a NewsByte Extra. It’s been March madness at Apple this week with a new announcement each day (until Wednesday at least). Let’s have an in-depth look at the new products and technologies revealed. What can they do and what does it mean (not least for your wallet!). Bring your own opinions to share!

Check the email this newsletter came in for the link to the Zoom meeting. You can also find the link in our Slack Meetings Channel. 

The most mini MacBook!

Apple has released an actual low cost MacBook! This is surprising because up to now, Apple’s position has been we don’t ship junk!

And yet Apple’s new laptop, called MacBook Neo, costs the same as a Mac mini with no screen – from £599! So did Apple ship some junk? No, it appears instead that Apple thought different and leveraged the power of Apple Silicon – too much power for most people, and reached down to make possible something much more affordable. And yet the Neo will still be much faster than low spec PC laptops. How? It’s because the A18PRO iPhone chip in this laptop might be tiny and cut down, but it has the same beating heart as the powerful M4 chip. And a sharp 13-inch Retina display with Spatial Audio speakers! That’s enough for say, your kids; students; parents – the rest of us? And it’s so cute – take a look!

And speaking of mini Macs, some news is that Apple is taking manufacturing of the Mac mini to the US. Have a look at what’s going on in the Wall Street Journal.

New MacBook Pros arrive with AI chops

Apple has also announced the awaited MacBook Pros with PRO and MAX M5 chips. What’s special with these chips is AI performance, made possible by new capabilities from the graphics chip. The rest of the improvements are more modest, unless you are upgrading from an older MacBook Pro. Here’s how Apple introduced it, showing the sort of things it’s optimised for – if you need it, you’ll know whether its worth investing in for your work. This is super high-end professional workflow below:

Gidee up, new budget iPhone drops

Great news for those wanting a cheaper iPhone. Apple announced the iPhone 17e. This budget version gets the current A19 iPhone chip as well as Apple’s latest cellular chip, a stronger screen and MagSafe. For most people, all the best iPhone features at a fraction of the price, £599. And it has double the storage: 256GB – WHAT! Many people will have been waiting for this one I think. Have a look at Apple’s intro video:

Do you see clearly now? New Apple Displays

Back to the high-end. Apple has brought the MacBook Pro Mini-LED screen technology to the Apple Display. There are now two new 5K 27-inch displays. The lower(!) cost one gains ThunderBolt 5 ports and better speakers with Dolby Spatial Audio, a versatile centre stage camera and the ability to daisy chain displays💸💸💸.

The higher priced XDR gains the Mini-LED with over 2,000 dimming zones, display reference modes for various professions, adaptive refresh up to 120Hhz for snappy graphics and it comes with that infamous tilt stand included – which cost nearly £1,000(!) when bought with the now discontinued 32-inch Pro Display XDR.

Prices are still quite high – from £1,499 for the lowest cost model and from a cool £2,999 for the top end XDR model. Again it’s going to be quite an investment decision for some or a must have it for others. And note that the XDR only works at full speed with powerful Macs from around the last 2 years (think M3PRO and later). I don’t see an Apple announcement video for this one, so here’s 9to5 Mac’s take:

Pass notes – other updates

  • The ever popular MacBook Air wasn’t forgotten. It gains a nice spec bump, up from the M4, to the new M5 Processor, 256GB base storage and WiFi 7.
  • The similarly popular iPad Air, also got a spec bump, from M3 to M4.

How to present like Steve Jobs

The late Steve Jobs really set the gold standard for what a good presentation looks like. It’s incredible to think about given everything else Jobs achieved, but you can see his style copied everywhere, mostly badly. Well it’s Spring, so maybe it’s time to freshen up on this particular skill. Have a look at Luke Miani’s video below to see Steve Jobs’ ‘secret’ to presenting.

AI + Final Cut Pro =?

Last month we saw Apple’s Creator Studio unveiled. We saw that for creators, depending on their circumstance, it could be an amazing good value. But it also promised AI optimisations. One of the main apps promising this was Final Cut Pro. Have a look at the super detailed review below of the new version 12 to see what’s in store should you get it:

If Jony Ive designed a car…oh wait!

Oh wait indeed. Jony Ive did design a car…interior but it’s a Ferrari. Oh well. But look at this touchy feely interface. Looks like Jony has given other car makers a lesson on how to make delightful and tactile car controls.

Intel gets it together, M5 still faster?

I’m done with the Future Shock series of articles. PC chip makers like Intel have clearly got the message and are trying hard now to catch up. This year brings Intel Panther Lake with some big performance improvements, now even when unplugged. So how does this powerful PC chip compare to the… base M5 MacBook Pro? Take a look at this comparison.

Sovereign technology is becoming a political imperative in many places. Sovereign means made and controlled in your own country, not someone else’s. As such, British readers may want to give a very interesting product a try. It’s a search engine. And it’s British 🇬🇧. [What? ED]. One feature seems to be the lack of tracking. That will be important for some privacy focused Mac users. It doesn’t depend on indexing from the other browser developers either, so its results might be different or just good enough? Here it is if you wish to try: https://www.mojeek.com – they suggest setting it as your home page in Safari if you like it.

Not even safe indoors🙄 – yet another Wifi risk

A distressing new cyber threat has appeared for those wanting to use wifi from a public location or even at home. Its reported here in alarming detail on Ars Technica, But a simpler explanation may be on this Nosilla Podcast – here, cued up the right spot, by committee member, Ferrers: https://overcast.fm/+BJFaJrH-04/32:24.

  • The main action is to check for updates for your Wifi routers and install them as it may contain a patch to prevent this. If your WiFI router is old with no updates, beware that it could be vulnerable – oh dear.
  • Use a strong Wifi password on your Wifi router, not the default.
  • Maybe disable guest Wifi if your router has that ‘feature’.
  • The best solution, especially for travelling, is likely to be to use a paid for trustworthy VPN.
  • iCloud Private Relay with Apple subscriptions is a sort of VPN, but not a full VPN with full protection – oh dear.
  • All this means be very wary now of Public Wifi – oh dear.

Lets hope software updates solve this instead…

AI slop put to good use

Someone has turned the tables on the purveyors of AI slop to lampoon the AI billionaires with a vision of the future you’d imagine they dream of. We’ll end with some dystopian fun, have a look.