2026-03-12 07:17:18
Joe Rossignol: Apple's Upcoming Studio Display 2 Rumored to Have an Unusual Feature
The tipster believes that a 90Hz refresh rate would make sense due to bandwidth considerations. Thunderbolt 5 can support 5K resolution at 120Hz without any compression, but they think Apple likely wants to ensure there will be plenty of remaining bandwidth for connecting other devices and peripherals to the new Studio Display.
I drafted this a fe weeks ago, but because I'm so behind on posting, I never got this out. Now I just get to say, "nope, this one was wrong, and on the $1,699 monitor front, it's still just 60Hz."
2026-03-12 06:36:29
Steve Troughton-Smith on Mastodon:
A $499 MacBook Neo with the brains of a couple-year-old iPhone can run Xcode, Photoshop, Blender, Terminal, and pretty much everything else you can think of, yet your $3,200 iPad Pro, with a desktop-class chip, cannot 😑
What are we doing here?
I've been wrestling with similar thoughts over the past week since the MacBook Neo's announcement, and I'm sure later today when mine arrives, the feeling will hit even harder. How is it possible that this new laptop, which costs half as much as my iPad Pro, is more capable for me in basically every way?
Let me put this another way. Without even having the laptop in hand, I can already tell you that I will absolutely be able to do my day job, all of my side projects, including web development, app development, video editing, and podcasting, all from this new device. Meanwhile, I have a more powerful iPad Pro sitting next to me that literally cannot do most of those things, or if it can, it does many of them in a hacky workaround way that would be inconvenient at best.
I won't re-litigate this whole debate here, but I'm a product manager by day, and there is absolutely no way even a maxed-out iPad Pro would be as functional for me as even the cheapest, slowest Mac money can buy. Not video editing, not development, just a normal job that happens at a computer.
Of course, this isn't necessarily a new phenomenon for Apple fans. In the early days of my time with the Mac, which was the mid-90s, I think it's pretty fair to say that Macs could do fewer things than Windows computers, and that's certainly something that I felt as a young person who wanted to play games and use music-sharing apps. But people liked the Mac because of the experience and some of the specific software that they got to run on it. They were happy to spend a bit more to get something that didn't necessarily win the feature checklist battle.
From that perspective, I certainly don't have any ill will towards people who choose to use the iPad and who prefer it over the Mac. I have been you! Further, I was literally you from about 2017-2021, my iPad-only era, if you will.
I wrote about this in a members post over the weekend, but I really wanted to reiterate it here: choosing to buy an iPad as your main computer is hella expensive, and with the MacBook Neo, choosing to buy an iPad as a computer is now also choosing to spend way more money. Let's play this out…
I'm a parent looking to buy a computer for my teenage child. I want them to be able to use this for schoolwork, I want them to be able to use it for entertainment, and I want them to be curious about computers and experiment with what they find interesting. When I was a kid, using a computer lit up my brain in a way few other things did, and it got me going down the path that I'm on now. I'd want to allow my child to have that sort of opportunity as well. I don't need to get them a powerhouse of a device, but I'd like it to last a little while and be flexible. Looking at Apple's current offerings, the devices that stand out to me would be the MacBook Neo and the iPad Air. Technically, the base iPad could be in the conversation as well, but that's really low-end and doesn't really work as well as a laptop sort of device.
I will get the education discount here, so the MacBook Neo could cost me $499, but I'm going to spring for the upgraded model with 512 GB storage and Touch ID because they'll like that. This is a clamshell notebook, so obviously the screen, keyboard, and trackpad are all bundled together.
All in, I'm spending $599.
Again, browsing the education store. The iPad Air starts at $549, but I'm making some real sacrifices compared to the Neo: 1/4 as much storage, a smaller display, no keyboard or trackpad. In terms of advantages, I do get a faster processor and a nicer screen that supports touch, but yeah, some of those things aren't going to fly. Let's spec up to the 13" screen, 512GB storage, and I'll add a Magic Keyboard so they can write on it.
Lord have mercy, I'm spending $1,348, so more than 2.5x as much as the Neo.
Suddenly, a MacBook Air enters the conversation. 13" screen and 512GB storage, all for $999.
At this point, I'm flailing. My most expensive option is the iPad Air, which is $350 more expensive than an even faster and more capable MacBook Air. Let's explore the low end of the iPad.
We'll have to make several sacrifices here. This device is fundamentally slower with a several generations older chip. It also has nothing beyond a 10-inch display, and we're only going to upgrade to 256 gigabytes of storage this time. Also, the compatible keyboard isn't as good, but what are you going to do? We're skimping on this thing to save money, so what's the damage?
$658 to get a much worse, smaller screen, worse performance, half the storage, a worse keyboard and trackpad, and a less powerful OS. And all that's still more expensive than the MacBook Neo.
When Steve Jobs originally presented the iPad, he showed it off explicitly as a device that could live in between someone's desktop computer and their smartphone. As people have enjoyed the product, and as Apple has explicitly changed their marketing over the years to encourage more people to at least attempt to use iPads as their primary computers as well. And what we're seeing now is that, yeah, an iPad spec'd out as a primary computer is a pretty expensive investment, often more expensive now than even the equivalent MacBook in the lineup.
But if you do treat the iPad as a third device, then I think the pricing is much more compelling. You could get a base iPad Air for watching videos and doing web browsing, and you could more easily get by without a Magic Keyboard or the extra storage. And because it has an M4, which likely has way more power than you need today, you'll be able to go many years without even thinking about upgrading it. That's awesome.
But yeah, if you're looking for a primary computer in 2026, as odd as it sounds, you need to really want the iPad because you're going to pay extra for it.
2026-03-11 09:04:20
When I started doing YouTube in 2020, I was in the middle of my iPad era, and the only Mac in my life was a 2012 Mac mini. I don't remember its exact specs, but suffice to say it positively sucks by 2026 standards. And while it was very slow, it did technically handle everything I could throw at it, including photo and 4K video editing.
Also of note, this was a year before my switch away from the iPad-only lifestyle, and in retrospect, it was quite telling that I wasn't able to use my faster, much more modern iPad Pro to do this work. Anyway…
I bring this up because, of course, the MacBook Neo is able to run all of your professional apps, and I'm glad Tyler Stallman showed this off in his video. Consider how much faster the MacBook Neo must be than a 2012 Mac mini, and tell me that you can't do awesome, creative work on this thing.
Maybe there's something about the modern computing world of iPads and smartphones where we're used to professional features being gated by specific hardware classes, but that's fundamentally not how it traditionally works in computers. You can certainly spend more on a Mac, and tasks will complete more quickly. You'll have a nicer screen, and there will be other general quality-of-life things you might enjoy. But the work that a $600 MacBook and a $6,000 MacBook do is basically the same. Running large local LLMs is the only thing off the top of my head that's literally impossible on the MacBook Nano, but even then, you can run local models; they'll just be slower and less performant.
So if you're someone who wants to do creative work, even relatively high-end creative work on a computer, and your budget doesn't allow you to go past the Neo, don't worry. I promise you, you can do whatever you want to do. It'll just take a bit longer than doing the same tasks on a much more expensive Mac.
2026-03-11 08:48:41
ColorFlow is a really cool new wallpaper and animation generator from the folks over at ls.graphics, and it's pretty rad (and it's totally free).
2026-03-10 20:00:29
This micro app is pretty simple; it's just a nice, single-page website for uploading benchmark scores and getting nice-looking charts for them, like the one above.
The UI for adding tests and devices is simple, allowing you to create tests and add devices with categories, so that things like laptops and phones can be separated. You can also drag to reorder them or toggle their visibility.
There's a simple table for entering the scores for each device, and you can import or export the current page's values as JSON. All data is stored in your browser's localstorage and never leaves your device. Good for privacy, and good for my back end costs 😉
Benchmark Studio is available here, and you can see the full project on GitHub.
2026-03-09 05:57:38
Terraink is a cool new website that lets you create cool maps of whatever location you want to. That's it, and that's pretty rad.