Accidental Tech Podcast

706: No One Is Getting a Good Deal Tonight

August 27, 2026 02:37:41 • Download (152 MB)

M5 Ultra and M6, new Mac Mini and Mac Studio, John's new app, and yes, even a new Polishing Cloth.

Pre-show: Marco’s casement windows
- Screen clips
- Screen clips, installed (white prototypes for visibility)
- TPU for AMS
🗣️ New Member’s Special: ATP Movie Club: Nausicaä and the Valley of the Wind
Follow-up:
- macOS 27 UI tweaks
  - Redesigned stoplights in β6
  - macOS 27 got the new Preview icon
- LLM determinism when temperature = 0
  - Write-up by Horace He
  - IEEE standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic
- 𝓍OS 27 Photos Shared Album gotchas
  - See also
- Other people’s phones
  - Not sped up! All 1×!
  - i vs. I
Apple iPhone event announced
New Mac mini and Mac Studio
- Core size comparison
- SME replaces AMX in the M6
  - Exploratory Github Repo
  - AMX instruction set
  - SME Introduction
  - Hello SME
  - Longhorn Toot 1 and Toot 2
- Marketing page section (via Daniel Luz)
- High Yield diagram
- M3 Ultra vs. M5 Ultra vs. M5 Max
- Mac mini
  - Video support summary from Tim Hardwick
  - Mac mini pricing history
    - …inflation-adjusted
  - Apple Upgrade program lease [un]availability
  - Gruber on pricing
  - Advertisement
    - Behind the scenes
- Mac Studio
  - Gruber on pricing
  - Advertisement
John’s purchasing journey
- The thing John mentioned that’s a spoiler
- The accessory that’s also a spoiler
New […ish] keyboards!
- MacRumors coverage
- Apple Part Number: MJM4LL/A
- Previously: MXK83LL/A
- John’s keyboard (previously)
  - MMMR3LL/A
  - A2520
New polishing cloth!
- MacRumors coverage
- Copland Supply
Post-show: John’s new vibe-coded app
Members-only ATP Overtime: Is macOS slower than Linux when performing file system operations?
- Theo Browne: Your Mac Isn’t Actually Slow, It’s MacOS Fault
- Benchmark 1
- Benchmark 2
- Linus Torvalds on using C (timestamp link to 22m7s)

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ATP Movie Club: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

August 26, 2026

In this special members-only episode, we watch and discuss "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" (1984).

This episode is exclusive to our members. Join now to listen!

705: Relentless in a Gentle Way

August 20, 2026 02:30:22 • Download (145 MB)

Marco launches Unforgetful, John launches into a diatribe or two, and Casey launches himself down the street.

Pre-show: Marco may have to dance with the devil
- Daikin
  - Home Assistant integration
- Home Assistant Green
Follow-up:
- The OpenAI doughnut
  - What if it’s an eye? (via Elijah Yap)
  - Or perhaps red blood cell shaped? (via Chris Lawrence)
    - Biconcave disc
- Time Capsule was to solve the laptop-backup problem
- Multiple Apple IDs with the same number (via Adam Wunn)
- RAMageddon
  - Apple gets lower display prices
  - Apple raises trade-in values
🎉 Unforgetful is out! 🎉
AI watermarking
- Steganography
- How Claude’s text watermark works
- Pseudorandom number generator
- A wonderful visual guide
- Some 3Blue1Brown homework
  - LLMs explained briefly
    - Next-word prediction probabilities
  - Transformers, the tech behind LLMs
    - Temperature gives more weight to the less-probable
    - Image
- Gruber’s take
- Some responses to Gruber
  - Dan Moren
  - Daniel Jalkut
- Gruber’s reply to the rebuttals
- Dithering, 14 August: “Watermarks”
  - I Made This
Post-show: Casey has news
Members-only ATP Overtime: Other people’s phones (based on Stephen Robles’ video)

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704: Past the Ternus Horizon

August 13, 2026 02:08:25 • Download (124 MB)

Apple Watch overhaul rumors, beta icon updates, Mac backups, and the app with John's favorite login system.

Pre-show: Marco has a rose and thorn
Follow-up:
- Marco’s favorite feedback (about Myke) was from Analog(ue) 😬
  - SQLite bug write-up
  - Blackbird
- Post-show Neutral
  - Professional negotiators / “headhunters” are very much a thing
    - CarEdge (via John Siracusa)
    - Delivrd (via Roger Coxon)
      - Wall Street Journal (News+ link)
    - The Car Chick (via Juan Boyce)
      - The #1 trusted automotive expert for women and smart men
    - Your Car Buying Advocate (via Ian McCullough)
    - Two options from Colin Macdonald
      - Automatch Consulting
      - Insight Auto Consulting
  - Casey makes some discoveries over the last week
    - Justification from the midwest dealer
    - Ventilated seats
    - Laser headlights
  - Marco takes a spin as well
- John’s passwords pro-tip
- Codex Micro (via St. Chris)
  - Icon keys
- John and Casey weep for a while about Verizon CableCARDs 😭
- Backups
  - Time Machine has a fatal flaw (via Jonathan Dechko)
  - …but also a workaround (via Eric Jacobsen)
    - Transcend JetDrive
    - BaseQi Adapter
  - Are backups even necessary? (via Mustapha Hamoui)
- Apple Upgrade
  - Lease agreements are between customer & financier, not the retailer (via Patch)
  - Apple Card also has 12 months interest-free (via Andrew Haglund)
- RAMpocalypse
New macOS & iOS 27 β5 icons
- Siri
- Chess
- John pours one out for his homie
- Keir’s observation about icon composition
- Safari
- Preview
- Settings
Apple Watch overhaul rumors
- The Casio watch everyone has (it’s small; here’s a bigger one if you want, or a more modern one with step-counting)
John’s Passwords pro tip
Post-show: John’s macOS update woes
Members-only ATP Overtime: More AI hardware rumors
- Is OpenAI making a hockey puck or a doughnut?
- Anthropic will design its own hardware to power Claude

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Claude: Ready to tackle bigger problems? Get started with Claude today.
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703: Part of a Healthy Breakfast

August 6, 2026 02:32:25 • Download (147 MB)

Overcast's busy betas, SuperDuper 4, Apple Upgrade, the worst power cables ever devised, and some totally very patient car-shopping.

Pre-show: The Overcast “kicking machine”
- Adam Wunn’s blog post
- Previously in ATP #324: Automatic Kicking Machine
Follow-up:
- Marco gives John the gift of transcript search in build #1169 [The system works! — Ed.]
  - Build #1172 includes ~~Siracusa~~ Replay Mode
- Be wary of Sonos + Pi-hole or other ad blockers (via Will Smidlein)
- Ubiquiti High Availability
  - Redundant Power Supply USP-RPS
  - SmartPower Cable USP-Cable
- “Odd” RAM amounts (via Joe Lion)
- Multiple Apple accounts (via TJ Usiyan)
- Some science about Sony’s axe of PlayStation discs
SuperDuper 4
- Previously in the SuperDuper blog…
Apple Upgrade Program
macOS 26.4 adds Battery Charge Limit
Ask ATP:
- What are good backup strategies? (via Todd Vaziri)
  - Backblaze (former sponsor)
  - Tailscale (former & future sponsor)
- What the heck is a Docker container? (also via Todd Vaziri)
  - Wizard zine
Post-show: Casey is car shopping again
Members-only ATP Overtime: OpenAI hardware progress
- Codex Micro
  - Gruber
    - Quinn’s take
  - Stack Overflow keyboard
- Rumored speaker

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