mac

Memory Is the Machine

It is late April 2026. If you want to get a Mac you want, you cannot go into any Apple Store and pick the Mac you want.

A Mac mini with 64GB of RAM, ordered today, ships in sixteen to eighteen weeks. A Mac Studio with 256GB of RAM ships in four to five months. The 128GB and 256GB Mac Studio configurations are listed as “currently unavailable” on Apple’s online store. Apple removed the 512GB Mac Studio option entirely earlier this year. As of last week, even the base $599 Mac mini is sold out.

Have you wondered why?

The easy answers include a global memory shortage thanks to the AI boom. And that Apple has devices that are good for AI work.

Both are true. And yet, that is not the whole story.

For instance, if you want a maxed-out M5 Max MacBook Pro with 128GB of RAM and

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Technology
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Mac Finder Redesign? Snooze

The Mac old timers have been up in arms about the beta one of macOS Tahoe switching up the colors of the “Finder” icon. Dark blue on the right side. In Beta 2, the dark blue side is on the right side of the “Finder” icon. Whew! Not that normals noticed.

This is a classic example of long-time Apple followers and their navel-gazing. It’s not even the first thing I notice about the new Tahoe OS—actually, I don’t notice it at all. Finder and its look is the least important thing for me. When I look at the betas, what stands out are the small but meaningful improvements in visionOS 26.

They make me confident that Apple’s AR glasses, when they arrive, will be more than competitive. Same goes for improvements in iPadOS. If there’s any valid criticism to make about Apple right now, it’s how poorly AI has been integrated.

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Notes
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Where did Mac’s Resale Value Go

I have been an Apple customer for about two decades. I have owned most of their notebooks and loved even their most quirky machines. I loved the Cube. I adored the table lamp style iMac. I love the Powerbook Duo. The first MacBook was all I could think about when in the intensive care unit, fighting for my life. And every 18-months, I upgraded. It was not a tough decision — a year or so later, the machine lost about a fourth of its value — and it allowed me to buy the newest model.

Not anymore. I had bought a brand new 16-inch MacBook Pro at the end of 2019. I wanted a photo editing machine, especially for use when traveling to far off destinations. It is a pretty fantastic photo editing machine. However, it sucks when attached to Apple’s XDR Display. In a quiet room, MacBook Pro fans

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Technology
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Importance of a tagline

In a recent article, Adweek proclaimed that taglines are dead. Steven Milunovich, UBS technology analyst and a veteran of Wall Street (I met him around the same time I met Bill Gurley) disagrees and in a note to his clients this morning he defended and outlined the importance of tag lines. It is just such a wonderful essay, that I felt compelled to share bits of wisdom, especially useful for startups and founders who try to stand out in this sea of competition.

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Musings
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