Apple Is the Most Repairable in 14 Years - DTNS 5226

This is the daily tech news for Monday, March 16th, 2026. We tell you what you need to know,

give you some important context and try to help each other understand today. The most

repairable MacBook since the Obama years is also the cheapest. It's the most repairable

since Gundam style came out as a matter of man. I'm Todd Merritt. I'm Rob. But I can ask it's been

that long since that song came out. I think I just heard it like the other day. I guess you

could start it. I'm Todd Merritt. Well, let's start with what you need to know with the big

story. I fix it gave the MacBook Neo a six out of 10. Now you may say six out of 10. How good

is that for a Mac? It's pretty darn good. And it's actually, you know, getting close to being like,

oh, that's that's fairly repairable. As we mentioned, most repairable MacBook in 14 years. The big

thing is they didn't glue the battery in. It's a battery in a tray with 18 screws. 18 screws is a

lot of screws. But those are 18 screws. You can easily take out rather than glue, which might

damage the battery and even risk some kinds of explosions or other damage. So it's very simple

to take out. You undo the screws. You take it out. I fix it suggests that they might be doing

this because the EU requires user replaceable batteries by mid 2027. So we might see this on

other laptops. But the Neo is the first. Apple also gives you a list of all the screw types used

inside the device when you open it up, which is something really good for recyclers. That might be

something they're trying to apply to their list of green credentials out there. But that's something

they're not mandated to do. I fix it also found no parts pairing issues. None of this situation where

you put in your own battery and it's like, whoa, you have an unauthorized battery. They also noted

easier keyboard replacement and generally a flat disassembly tree. That means that you don't have

parts stacked unnecessarily behind each other or behind glue and everything's fairly easy to get

out of there. On the downside, RAM is still soldered in. And there's a few other bits and

bobs that are a little more difficult than maybe they would absolutely necessarily be. That's why

you get a six, not a seven and eight or a nine. But Rob, I think a lot of people were very surprised

because they assume that Apple just doesn't care about repairability. And while some of this may be

mandated by following laws, they're making it for everybody and doing some things they wouldn't

have had to do either. Yeah, my gut tells me that Apple is doing this because the law is telling them to

in a place where they sell a lot of Apple stuff. So that's part of it. But it is also interesting.

It's very, very interesting that the the MacBook that literally cost half as much as the next MacBook

in the line is the most repairable. It's the one that you would think that well, this one is so

inexpensive in the in the range of MacBooks that you wouldn't care at all about fixing this one,

you just go get a new one. If there was a problem with it, but because probably of these laws and

the EU, it makes sense that they have to start thinking about when that law kicks in in 2027.

I have always been of the opinion that Apple did not actively try to make things unrepairable.

They just prioritized their own design sensibilities above it. So if gluing in a battery made it thinner,

made it fit the profile they wanted, then they would do that and not care. Maybe the law is nudging

them to get out of that mindset. I think you're right. But I also wonder if Apple may be saying,

you know, we could win over a lot of people, you know, to our to become our customers if we make

things repairable. And if we see as they have been saying for more than 10 years now that services

is the future of revenue for Apple, then you want people to not only buy your devices, but use

them for a long time because you'll you want to get that subscription revenue from them for things

like iCloud, Apple TV and music and all the rest. That actually makes a lot of sense because

if you can hang on to a device a little bit longer, then you ordinarily would have because you

can't fix it. It's like if this breaks for the battery needs to replace it and your only option is

just to go out and get a new device. When you go out and get a new device, there's the option that

well, you could go get a device that's not an Apple device. Now, we know that most Apple users,

once they're in that ecosystem, they tend to stay in it that Apple is very good about that ecosystem

lock in. But you at least if you are making it repairable, you are making people who would have never

bought your device, potentially take a look at your device. And you're also, you know, keeping,

you know, folks, you know, kind of happy that, hey, I don't have to go get a brand new laptop.

I can just replace this thing and it'll still give me another 18 months, two years out of it.

Yeah, I get I don't know that that's what they're doing. I'm sure a few of you are scoffing loudly

at the idea that that's what they're doing, but but it could be it would be smart to do because

you keep a happy customer. You keep them as a customer. Well, Tom, I don't know what they're doing,

but do you know what I'm doing? Can you guess what I'm doing? What you're doing? Yeah, I'm excited

I am going to be on that vaccine. Neal right there. Neal that I just picked up I think I picked it up

Friday. I am fortunate enough to live 1.6 miles away from an Apple store. It's in walking distance.

So I will be unboxing this. And you know, the first video will just be just me taking the out of

the box. Here's what's in it, that kind of stuff. And then I will do like an initial impressions,

but the reason we have this is that I'm not a Mac user have I have not used a Mac since the

PowerBook 520C back when I was in college in the 90s. So we're we're going to live with this

for a I don't know the month or six weeks or so. And then come on and you know and do a full

Rob has lived with this for a while. And I think one of the reasons why it makes sense for me to do

it is because I'm not a Mac user. This is not a Mac for you, Tom. It's not a Mac for Sarah. It's not

you know, for anyone who uses a Mac that is significantly higher in than what this is,

this is probably not the device for you. But for someone like me who doesn't have a Mac, I don't

I don't know where I'm starting. This is something I can I can honestly give it an opinion based off

of what it is a $490 or $599 piece of hardware that I just picked up at the if the new hotness store

right around the corner from the house. Now, the clickbait headline is Windows Hater Tries Mac.

You're not a Windows or where Apple Hater Tries Mac. You're not an Apple Hater. But like said,

you have not lived in that universe. So I think this is a great test of like, okay,

if Apple wants to bring people over from Android and Windows ecosystems into their system,

is the neo a good entry way to that. I love that you're doing right. So you get so you guys,

you got to tune in to live with it to find out. Like said, can't tell you exactly when an episode

is coming out because I need to live with it first. But yeah, I want to put the thing through the

paces and we'll see how it fairs out for a like, do you have enough use cases for a lighter,

lighter performance laptop like that? Yes, because my $3,500 Dell XPS is sitting here. This is what

I paid for back in 2019 is humongous and it's heavy. Yeah. That don't want to care. I remember

back at CES. I was trying not to bring my laptop with me. I was like, let me just see if I can do

things on my tablet and that actually was. I was not using when we were doing our live show

from the four of CES. I wasn't using a laptop. I was using my tablet. And so this is a full Mac.

It is significantly more capable than a tablet would ever be because it's got the full Mac operating

system on it. We'll just see what can it do with the eight gigs of memory. And once again,

I'm not coming from a place of where I already have a MacBook Pro with 32 gigs of memory in it

that I am using DaVinci Resolve to great 6K video. I'm not doing that. This is just a new piece of

hardware that I'm picking up and I want to just put it through the paces and see how it works for me

from someone who's coming from Windows to Mac for the first time before in a long time.

It's been a while since I've been in a while, been a minute. Well, yeah, folks, keep an eye on

live with it. You can find it on our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash daily tech news show or

just get it as a podcast if you want as well. And keep an eye out for when Rob shows up to follow

up on that. I'm looking forward to it too. BTS has made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to

Carmen Bailey, Chris Benital, Jeffrey Zilx, and our new patrons, Keloi, Roy, Joy, and Kenny,

and we're returning patron bill. And we got to raise from another bill in Lawrence.

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everybody.

There's more we need to know today. Let's get to the briefs.

OpenClaw is continuing to have an effect on device makers. AMD wants to create a new product

category called the agent computer meant for people who liked to run agents locally. These

are defined as systems using AMD rise in AI max plus processors, including the AI max plus 395

with 128 gigabytes of unified memory. AMD's agent computer for Windows lists include systems

from ASUS, framework, Kunlun meta, Lenovo, HP, and more. Meanwhile, Alibaba launch a mobile app

called JVS call for Android and iOS. It helps you install and deploy OpenClaw.

Tencent mini max and by dance are all developing their own OpenClaw focus products as well.

I think it's weird to provide you OpenClaw in a cloud source with the high kind of the whole idea

of OpenClaw is that you are able to run it yourself. We'll see we'll see. Alibaba's got to try

some stuff like that. But it is interesting to see all these companies start to look at the

craze around OpenClaw and figure out how they can be a part of it. Now, when we first talk about

OpenClaw, I think the very first time that I talked about it, I thought that the cloud play

would be the way that people would do this, almost like a like a managed services for this,

because it's cool to put it on your own Mac mini or something like that in the house.

But if you're going to be using this for work, it's a lot cooler to put it into a cloud door. You

don't have to worry about backups. You don't have to worry about, you know, did it reboot if you

weren't home. Yeah, you know, that that managed solution seems like this is something that could

take off for this. Yeah, you're right. You're right. I'm underplaying the number of people who

are running it in the cloud already because it gives you some security advantages as well. So

and I think, you know, the knock on OpenClaw at the beginning was that it was very insecure.

But honestly, you know, we're seeing that that security is getting better. It's still

insecure if you don't know what you're doing, but I think they've done a decent job of

hopping on bugs and squashing them. So yeah, I think we're going to see more of that.

A browser-based operating system called Ether, A-E-E-T-A-G-R has launched using the

AT protocol. The AT protocol is an open protocol that BlueSky uses. It is similar to

what they use on mastodon, but just a different protocol. It includes 42 applications. The Ether OS

does, including task managers, video editor, text editor, and of course a BlueSky client called

Deckard. The aesthetic is very retro cyberpunk. You got a lot of black and glowing green in there.

And there's not a lot of documentation yet. So this is not going to be for everybody. We don't know

what all the ins and outs of it are. I don't think there's an easy way for you to have a saved

session since it's running in a browser tab, but I don't know. There may be workarounds for that.

If any of you are playing with it, let us know what you think. FeedbackDailyTechnosho.com.

A browser-based operating system. That could be a thing. Now, they've got to get figured out.

It needs to be persistent. I need to be able to turn my computer off and come back to it and

continue the work where I left off. But it's amazing how powerful the laptops and the PCs that we

are now using and just how powerful the browser, we don't think of a browser as a tech-heavy

application because they don't have to be if you're only running one tab. But the fact that you

could run an entire operating system just in a tab is really pretty impressive for what that

browser is ultimately doing all the things it has looks into. Yeah, I think this is an alternative

for Chrome OS. So let's say you can run it locally, which I can't imagine you won't be able to do.

Put it on an old device. You're running it. You're using your blue sky credentials

as you're log in. So you've got cloud credential management, but it's from a decentralized system,

not a centralized system. So it's not somebody who's trying to monetize your personality.

And you're able to do an open source Chromebook style operating system. Again, lots of things

to work out here. But I think it's an interesting project for sure. Yeah, I absolutely leave also

that it's got over 40 applications now. That number is just going to go up if this thing gets.

So this will be something that we'll have to come back and take a look at and see how it does.

Yeah, and again, if any of you are playing around with it, please, please let us know.

Thanks to Moteng for noting this on our subreddit. Google Microsoft LinkedIn, meta,

Amazon, OpenAI, Adobe, and Match Group have all signed the online services accord against scams.

The companies agree to cooperate on several measures, including new fraud detection tools,

better user security features, and more robust verification for financial transactions.

Companies will also agree on best practices for scam detection, prevention, and reporting.

They'll also share information on criminals with each other and law enforcement.

And they also plan to lobby governments to make scam pretension even a priority. So they're doing

a lot here. Yeah, and it's worth noting like there's no penalties for them not doing this.

But this is more like an industry standards organization. And it's one of those things that's

in their best interest. They lose money. Their customers get hurt. This is not just PR.

We're trying to prevent scams like they really do want to they have a vested interest in reducing

this. So so I feel like these are companies that say we're we're going to be better at fighting this

if we work together. And there really has been a lack of attention on the fact that that these kinds

of scams are flourishing in in kind of rural war zone area places where they can abduct people

and force them to work on this stuff, along with the ability for LLMs to make it easier and easier

to fool people. So I am glad to see some firepower being brought against this, especially to get

governments to say like, Hey, you're talking about a lot of BS out there that that gets you votes,

but doesn't really make a difference. This can actually make a difference in people's lives.

And one of the things here is that when you why are they doing this? Because as you said,

it is for their better interests that it behooves them to make these things more safe for the

users that are on them. But also if you leave it to the government, the government is always

way behind where the technology is. These companies, if they all get together and say, Hey,

we know how our stuff works and we see what's coming and they work on it collectively,

that's better than almost any type of government instituted here. Here's a law that you must now

follow because what ends up happening is that this is what you wrote in the law. This is what we do.

That's not necessarily what's best for the users. That's just best for them to meet the compliance

of said law or regulation that came into place. So the fact that they're working on this independently

of that I think is a really a good thing. Yeah. And then we might actually get a law passed if you

get some, you know, bipartisan support from people who actually know how to prevent spam or prevent

scams. You know, I know it's crazy to say that anything could get done in the current political

climate, but you know, this has a better chance than some other. Yeah, because no one likes spam.

I don't think that is a one side of the aisle type of thing or the other. No one wants this. So

if they can make it, that's nobody wants scam. So you can make it better, make it better.

Bloomberg has an interesting article on the effects of the war against Iran on ship manufacturing.

Not something I'm hearing a lot of people talking about, but right now companies like TSMC

and even Foxconn say they're fine, but analysts and investors are concerned that if the war continues,

it'll start to disrupt ship making in Taiwan, China, and elsewhere in Asia. Why would that be?

Here, I'll take it through some of the highlights, but it's worth reading the article yourself.

Chip making components could be reduced. So a third of helium is processed in cutter.

And there are drones battering cutter and cutter is having a hard time getting shipments out.

Sulphur is generated as a byproduct of oil and gas refining. So if you have less oil and gas

refining going on at the moment, you have less sulfur. There are other ways to get it, but it gives

you a temporary reduction in it. And I think this is the bigger one. A third of the fuel used in

Taiwan's electrical grid comes from the Middle East, whether it's liquefied natural gas or crude oil.

TSMC makes about 90% of the world's most advanced logic chips. So if they have a hard time

powering their factories or the power they need to power their factories rises and cost,

that's going to affect chips. Disruption would raise prices not only if components already

under price pressure, but it would affect other components as well. I mean, we have all this

increased demand because people are building data centers. Now you're going to make it more

expensive, potentially, to make that stuff. Taiwan says it has enough liquefied natural gas

and crude oil to last through April. They are very dependent on shipments, but they say they've

stockpiled enough to last their April. So if supplies start to loosen up by then, they should be okay.

But yeah, this would cause chip makers to prioritize the highest margin chips, Rob, which are not

the chips that go in the devices you and I know. So here's the thing. They have enough,

they have enough supply to work through next month. But the thing we know about wars is that they

don't generally take weeks. They take many months, if not years, to get, yeah, to get sorted out.

And what we learned during the pandemic is that it only takes a feather to completely disrupt

its supply chain. You know, it's a cascading effect. So if you can't get this and you can't get

that, then we can't do this. We can't build this. And if you can't build that, then these other

things can't happen. It's almost like a Dr. Seuss book, but it doesn't take a lot to disrupt

the supply chain. So although we believe that you're going to be fine for the next month or six weeks

or so, depending on how long the the turmoil that we have going on in the world last could really,

you know, make, you know, these companies have to think about how do we, you know, how do we work

in a world where we can't necessarily get the supplies that we need from the places that we

used to get them from. You cannot change supply chain overnight. So can you get it somewhere else

in the world? Yes, but that's, that is a significant undertaking to make that happen. That doesn't

happen in days or weeks or even months. It could take many months to see supply changes shift.

If, if there's a place in the world where you just can no longer get your supply or you can't

get it out or you can't get it to the people who need you to get it to. Yeah, that's why

getting those ships rolling through the Strait of Hormuz is so important. Justin Robert Young at

the politics, politics, politics, podcast doing a great job covering this, as well as the the

economist podcast is another great source of information I have on this. And right now,

it's not the danger of the drones so much as the insurance. There are companies that could,

there are boats that could go through there and probably make it through unscathed, just fine.

But if something were to happen, insurance wouldn't cover it. And companies don't want to risk that.

They, they don't want to be the one that has something happen. And then they lose out on the

insurance. And the insurance is saying, we can't tell you, we can't cover you if you go through a

war zone. So it is less about the reality of can you get a ship through there and more about

getting that whole insurance situation resolved so that they're, they're willing to put the ships

through there not to mention risking people's lives. I mean, yes, 90% of the ships might make it

through, but you don't want to be on one of the 10% of the ships that don't. So I understand why,

why the the ships themselves would not be wanting to go through there as well. So yes, far from

very complete in its resolution, but thought it was interesting to see the tendrils of this

starting to affect the tech sector. Absolutely. Well, folks, we want to know what you want to hear

us talk about on the show. And one of the best ways to do that is via our subreddit. So submit your

stories and vote on them at www.reddit. Excuse me. www.reddit.com slash r slash daily tech new show.

Yeah, just just reddit doesn't make it easy anymore. Just go to danger and go find daily

technician. All right, some quick headlines that are just good to know. It might make you look

smarter in the future if you know this stuff. Foxconn reports Q4 revenue rose 22%, but net profit

fell 2% due to higher tactics misses. Yeah, that's not tariffs either. That's just a kind of a

weird one-time thing. Thanks to Evelyn Cleed on our subreddit for reminding us that Nvidia's GTC

conference will see as the conference starts on Monday. We'll take a close look at what the

company announces in tomorrow's show, but expect some news about Nvidia's CPU strategy.

Meta sound a cloud computing agreement with Dutch company Nebius on Monday and related news

Reuters reports that its source of say meta is planning to lay off 20% of its workforce.

Both of those made its stock price go up. Apple announced the AirPods Max 2, a new version of

its over the year headphones. Not a big design change, but updated H2 chip in there lets you do

some things like live translation along with other improvements to noise cancellation and sound.

You can order them starting March 25th. They're the same price as the previous version, $549,

and they'll ship sometimes starting in early April. The team from GitLeaks has developed an

open source successor called the better leaks that can scan repositories for sensitive info

like private keys that shouldn't be in your code. Yeah, good news if you were a fan of GitLeaks

before. Samsung announced that market tracker future source determined that it had 21.7% of

the world's sound bar market in 2025. That makes Samsung the leader in sound bars for the 12th

straight year. I didn't realize they had been the leader for that. I didn't even know they

were the leader. Thanks to RwNash for noting on our subreddit that Microsoft is pulling back on

the number of features it identifies as co-pilot. For example, the Windows call pilot runtime was

renamed to Windows AI APIs. And I think this is because people are getting kind of tired of

co-pilot and AI being in everything they get. Yeah, exactly. Not so much redo. I guess they're

reducing a sum of the features, but just the names more than anything.

Hua Hong Group said that it's highly microelectronics chipmaking business is ready in a seven nanometer

process. That would make it the second Chinese chipmaker to be able to do its own seven nanometer

chips after SMICC. Open and I says ads and chat GPT will not roll out being on the US for the

time being despite language and its privacy policy that implies a wider roll out.

Mm hmm. And then dig announced it is laid off all but a small team as it reboots its

relaunch strategy. They were they were going to try to take on Reddit, but they have encountered

a bot problem. The the number of automatic bots, especially in this world of agents is bigger problem

than they had expected. So Kevin Rose is going to focus solely on dig. Try to figure that out.

The relaunch of dig, the timing of when it happened with all this going on with the bots is just

it's just unfortunate. The information reports bite dance as pause plans to launch its seed dance

video generator globally as it deals with copyright infringement accusations. Microsoft pulled

the Samsung Galaxy Connect app from the Microsoft store temporarily while it resolves a bug that

caused the app to block your C drive on some Windows 11 systems. Not a good thing to get a little

bit problematic. Yeah. Peloton introduced a bike and treadmill for commercial users aka gyms

in Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany and the UK and US. I have seen a lot of like hotel gyms

have Peloton's, but they're always just regular Peloton's that they bought and I guess they're

going to make it easier to manage these sort of things. Finally, LG announced it will develop

home robots using Google's Gemini and Nvidia's Isaac platform. Go go. We in every episode of

DT nestles from share perspectives today. Paul shares his perspective on anthropics fight with

the US Department of Defense. Yeah. So Paul is writing in response to our discussion on DT nest

live on Thursday hangout. Paul says, I think Rob came very close to the crux of the argument for me.

Let's turn the question on its head. Should companies be allowed to tell their customers how their

product can be used? The DOD is essentially saying that license agreements do not apply to them and

they can do whatever they want. This could be very self-defeating for the government and may limit

who is willing to do business with them in the future. Thank you for the excellent discussion

and keeping me informed. I get where Paul's going. I don't think the DOD is saying license agreements

don't apply to them. I think what the DOD is saying is they would like a different license agreement.

They would like a more permissive agreement, basically. But I do appreciate Paul saying in very

few words that I probably took an awful lot to say less effectively. But this is an issue.

As someone who came from a software developer background, someone who spent most of my adult career

working for large software companies, you do want to be able to say this is how you use our software

in your license agreement. Because if you don't say this is how you use it and then somebody uses it

in a way that you didn't say that they could use it and something breaks somewhere in the world,

then who are they going to look at? Not the person who did the thing that broke the stuff.

They're going to look at the company who created the stuff. So I am on the side probably biased

because I come from a software development background. But if I create something, I want to put the

here is how this is to be used. You can't do something that we didn't intend to do and then come

back and blame us for it. That's perfectly sensible. But it's also the same justification John Deere

uses to stop you from preparing your track. That is true. There's a line in there. And I think

honestly the answer is that there is a way to come to an agreement to say, all right, you can use it

that way. But you have to make it very explicit that we're not liable for those uses or something

like that. That's not really what's going on here. Anthropic just can't communicate with the

department of defense. The communication broke. No. Anthropic. They really would love to say we

would love to give you these features. If you give us buckets of money, we would like to do that.

We're just not there yet. And that's where they are. It's like, this is something they actually are

trying to do. They just aren't there yet. And I think that that's once things broke down in the

conversations, it just really went left. And this conversation, we have been talking about this

now. I think we're in with three week three week four of this saga. It's not going anywhere

just because there's so many ramifications for, you know, if Anthropic wins on everything,

what the government can say. And if the government wins on, you know, what they can do to any company

that is the type we don't like you that much right now. Yeah, I mean, it's easy to get these two

topics confused as well. And I have to keep reminding myself as well. There is the very

understandable disagreement about the use of the product and the terms. And then there's the

declaring Anthropica supply chain risk, which I'm on record thinking that that is

that's crazy. It's hard to argue that there is supply chain risk. And I think that that is

on top of you said this many times, they could have effectively done this without saying any words.

Just yeah, we're not working with Anthropic. That makes everybody think, well, why couldn't it?

You are already in the government, Anthropica. Why couldn't you get the deal done? That that

effectively does the same thing, but they went nuclear option. You can't do business on earth.

Yeah, which which then causes a bunch of people to jump to its defense, including

every technology company filing amicus briefs on Anthropics. And they're not doing it because

they love Anthropics so much. They're doing this because we don't want this to happen to us if

we get on the wrong side of what the, you know, the Department of Defense wants.

Yep, or folks, what are you thinking about? If you get some insights into a story, share it with

us at feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Yeah, big thanks to Paul for contributing to today's

show. Thank you for being along for daily tech news show. You're the folks who keep us in

business. Keep those supports coming. You can subscribe to us at dtns.substac.com or patreon.com

slash dtns the dtns family of podcasts helping each other understand