Apple

The 2026 iPad Air M4: Early Impressions

I have been an iPad fanboy for a long time. I never leave my house without it (and the keyboard to go with it). I currently own an M4 iPad Pro (11-inch) which is really good for reading, writing, the Internet, email, Claude, a lot of Lightroom and watching YouTube. And of course, listening to music. You can find me sitting in some coffee shop or the other with one.

Yes I really do love my iPad Pro, and using it. Lately, I have been watching less video on the iPad (Vision Pro FTW), but it has replaced Kindle as my reading device. And whenever I am reading, I wish it was thinner, and lighter. I don’t dream of it being faster. I just want it to be lighter, so it feels weightless in hand.

My perfect iPad would be one with the innards, screen and oomph of the iPad

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What To Read This Weekend

It was Apple week and unsurprisingly even I got carried away and wrote a lot about Apple’s launch week. While the big high-end items were new MacBook Pros, the real story to me was the Fusion Architecture. But I am a chip-kinda guy. Sadly, Apple doesn’t give you the deep details, so one is left to postulate some well-reasoned ideas. So that is what I did.

Back in 2008, Steve Jobs said, “We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that.” That was then. This is now. The company knows how to do this, and do this well.

The real strategic story of the week was Apple pushing value. Thanks in large part to its ability to make high-quality things at scale, I am sure it is also preparing itself for whatever economic doldrums are

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The Great (ai) Game vs AI Theater

“The game is so large that one sees but a little at a time.”

To understand AI, its stakes and its long-term impact, you have to step away from the cacophony of headlines. And instead take the time to think of it as the Great Game.

The Great Game was the 19th century strategic rivalry between the British Empire and Russia over Central Asia. Subsequent versions of this have played out over control of oil, for example. Then there was the Cold War, arguably the greatest game, with global nuclear annihilation at stake.

The game changes. The playbook doesn’t.

Neither side wanted direct war. Both wanted dominance. So they competed through proxies, influence, positioning, and long-horizon maneuvering. It was about who controlled the board, not just who won the battle.

Great Game is how we describe any era-defining geopolitical competition where the stakes are civilizational, the timeline is generational, and

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With Neo, Apple Goes After Windows 11

It has been a long time since I used the words “cute” and “want” about a computer. Last time, I probably did when Steve Jobs (RIP) was trying to save Apple and introduced the iBook. Oh, baby, that was cute, cuddly and just different. Apple’s new “Neo” machine made me go cute. And the $699 (for the configuration and color) price tag didn’t make me feel bad to “want” one.

Of course, the market of one is a market of none. Apple needs to convince millions of people to buy this low-end laptop, and steal users away from Chromebook and Windows ecosystems. And hope that these switchers could eventually buy more things from Apple, especially those high-margin services.

Let me reiterate what I wrote earlier in the week. The timing for the launch of the new Neo computer is fortuitous. Microsoft’s ham-fisted approach to grafting Artificial Intelligence (AI) into Windows

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Apple Does Fusion.

For the first time in five generations of Apple Silicon, these chips are not a single piece of silicon. The newly announced M5 Pro and M5 Max use what Apple calls Fusion Architecture. This is a big structural change, with long-term implications. And you can see this at work in the newly announced flagship Apple laptops. On the surface these are two third-generation 3-nanometer dies, bonded together into one system on a chip. But dig deeper, and with this modular, scalable silicon approach, Apple is setting itself up to cash in on the computing needs of the AI future.

To understand what Apple launched today, we have to go back just over five years, when Apple launched the M1 in November 2020. I wrote then:

“This approach to integration into a single chip, maximum throughput, rapid access to memory, optimal computing performance based on the task, and adaptation to machine

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Apple Does Value (Week)

Tim Cook calls it a “big week.” I’d call it Apple’s “budget week.” Or value offensive. Either way, the first week of March 2026 is not about Apple introducing flagship devices. Instead, it is about Apple showing off its operational scale, taking on the value section of the market, and trying to suck up as much profit as it can to keep its multi-trillion dollar valuation intact.

Today Apple announced the iPhone 17e and a new iPad Air with the M4 chip. Tomorrow or Wednesday, we’ll get a low-cost MacBook, an M5 MacBook Air, and updated MacBook Pros.

Apple has decided that $599 is the new floor for a “real” Apple device. Not a hand-me-down, not last year’s leftovers. But a current-generation product with current-generation silicon. This is going to really put a dent in the phones in the pre-owned market.

To illustrate my point, the iPhone 17e gets the

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YouTube on Vision Pro! Finally!

Some days are just good for one thing—lying in bed and doing absolutely nothing. Today happens to be one of those days! I am just lazing here. I have a Vision Pro (version two) strapped to my face, and I am watching some of my favorite shows on YouTube in all their glory on the official YouTube app for Vision Pro.

For the past two years, I have been waiting for the official app to arrive. Can you believe it has been two years since Apple launched this “headphone for the eyes”? Watching YouTube videos via the browser was fine, but it was nothing like getting a 4K (or higher bitrate) stream. The app allows you to access standard videos, 180° videos, 360° videos, and YouTube Shorts. The M5 chip version allows you to watch YouTube videos in 8K.

This release has made me so happy. I use Vision Pro

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Our Crazy Unhinged Now

A confluence of events prompted me to quip on Twitter:

What amazing times we live in now. A $16 billion funding for @Waymo (congrats team, the product) is an afterthought thanks to the mega deal between @SpaceX & @xai It might be the smartest deal of the year or simply the best value enhancement since the Kardashian Clan discovered Botox. By the way, @Walmart is now a trillion dollar company. Go ahead and laugh now. Seriously, and be grateful for the amazing times we are living in.

I was being very ironic, sardonic even.

Waymo raised $16 billion this week. Sixteen billion dollars. At a $126 billion valuation. Those are some serious numbers. I have covered technology long enough to classify that as a jaw-dropping amount of funding raised by a company. Sixteen billion into a $126 billion valuation is roughly 13% ownership. That is a private equity-sized bite wearing the

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A CEO, Captured. 

I keep thinking about a line Lawrence Sanders wrote: a character asks whether money makes the world go round. The reply: “I do not believe it is money itself. After all, that is just metal and paper. No, it is the power money confers that makes the world go ’round.”

Power. Comfort. A seat at the table. Or, in this case, the crushing weight of a trillion-dollar valuation that demands constant appeasement. MG Siegler puts it plainly: Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, is captured. And so is the rest of the technology community. This is what happens when valuations trump values.

At a time when the nation is being ripped apart by the brutal shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, by ICE agents, Cook is facing criticism for attending the White House premiere of “Melania,” a documentary about the first lady. No one is questioning Jeff Bezos, who attended.

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