690: Turn Left at the Next Tree

What It Covers

Accidental Tech Podcast episode 690 covers the widening AI capital expenditure gap between Apple and competitors like Meta, Google, and Amazon, hardware shortages affecting Mac availability, AI models achieving breakthrough cybersecurity capabilities, cloud backup strategies for iCloud and Dropbox files, and rumors of Apple expanding its "Ultra" product naming across iPhone, MacBook, AirPods, and iMac lines.

Key Questions Answered

• •AI CapEx Disparity: Apple spends roughly $9–10 billion annually on capital expenditures while Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon each spend $150–200 billion in 2026. This gap widens every quarter. Consumers and businesses should understand that Apple's competitors are buying the hardware — GPUs, data centers, chips — that is simultaneously causing component shortages for everyone else. Apple's restraint may prove wise or catastrophic; the outcome remains unknown but the divergence is historically unprecedented.
• •Mac Hardware Shortage Action: Anyone needing a Mac in 2026 should purchase immediately rather than waiting. MacBook Pro M5 configurations up to 128GB RAM with Max chips are currently available with roughly two-week delivery windows. Desktop Macs face severe shortages. Component scarcity driven by AI infrastructure spending is expected to worsen over the next 18 months minimum, potentially extending delivery delays to three to twelve months for many configurations.
• •AI Cybersecurity Capability Threshold: Both Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview and OpenAI's GPT-5.5 now successfully complete a 32-step simulated corporate network data extraction attack — a test no prior model ever passed even once. GPT-5.5 succeeded in 3 out of 10 attempts versus Mythos's 2 out of 10. The UK's AI Security Institute concludes this represents a general capability leap in long-horizon reasoning, not a single-model breakthrough, meaning all frontier models are crossing this threshold simultaneously.
• •Cloud Backup Strategy for Evicted Files: Backblaze does not reliably back up cloud-only or evicted files from iCloud, Dropbox, or Google Drive. A working solution involves Carbon Copy Cloner or ARC configured to temporarily materialize cloud-only files locally, copy them to a dedicated external drive volume as plain files, then point Backblaze at that drive. ARC specifically offers a dropdown setting — report error, ignore, or materialize — controlling behavior when cloud-only files are encountered during backup tasks.
• •AI Bug Discovery Quality Shift: The curl project, a foundational HTTP library used across virtually all software, shut down its bug bounty program in February due to overwhelming low-quality AI-generated submissions. By March, submission quality reversed dramatically — AI tools now identify legitimate, high-severity vulnerabilities at high volume. Separately, a Python script called CopyFail exploits a privilege escalation bug present in nearly every Linux distribution released since 2017, discovered using an AI code analysis tool called XInt.
• •MacBook Neo Demand and Supply Pressure: Apple has instructed suppliers to double MacBook Neo production capacity from 5–6 million units to 10 million units following stronger-than-expected demand. Current shipping estimates sit at two to three weeks across the lineup. Apple is simultaneously considering dropping the lowest-priced 256GB configuration as a cost-management response. The former base model — M4, 16GB RAM, 256GB storage at $600 — now sells used on eBay for approximately $700, a 27% premium over original retail price.
• •Apple "Ultra" Naming Expansion: Rumors point to Apple applying the Ultra suffix across multiple product lines: iPhone Ultra for the foldable phone, MacBook Ultra for an OLED touchscreen redesigned MacBook Pro with potential cellular connectivity, and AirPods Ultra featuring outward-facing cameras feeding visual intelligence to Siri. The MacBook Ultra framing suggests Apple will maintain the existing MacBook Pro line at lower prices while positioning Ultra as a premium tier, potentially delaying OLED screen availability on standard MacBook Pro models by several additional years.