Apple’s New M5 Gear. Will It Make You Upgrade? - DTNS 5125

0:04Oh, this? This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, October 15, 2025. We tell you what you need to know. We follow up on context. We help each other understand. Today, Apple drops new stuff with the M5. Should you upgrade? Maybe. I'm Tom Merritt. And I'm Sarah Lane. Let's start with what you need to know with that big story. This is the new way, I guess, huh? Apple just puts a press release out. It was like, hey, we got some new stuff. It was quite the release. Yeah, yeah. But no live stream, no hoopty hoop. This is the October announcement, I guess. No Apple TV either. Apple announced new MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro, all with the M5 chip inside.

0:48So the announcement is really about the wider deployment of the M5 chip. If you don't know it already, the M5 is a 3-nanometer chip with up to 10 CPU cores. That's four performance and six efficiency cores. And a 16-core neural engine. Each GPU core on the M5 has a neural accelerator, so it gets even more improved AI workloads. It has a third-generation ray tracing engine, which is good for your video games. And the unified memory bandwidth rises to 153 gigabytes per second. If you know, you know. If you don't, that's 30 % better than the M4. So it's going to be a little faster. For anybody who's sort of like, well, but I don't do AI development.

1:31Is this for me? Yeah, this is going to help you with executing AI programs as well, right? Sure. Yeah. And people are going to be doing that more and more. Yeah, exactly. More people are using it. So it helps with that as well. The new iPad Pro with the M5 looks the same. No big style change. Also comes with the N1 chip, which brings Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and threads connectivity. The models with cellular data use the Apple C1X modem. That's the one in the iPhone Air. That gives you improved power efficiency. Has 12 gigabytes of unified memory, fast charging, and can power external displays with up to 120 hertz refresh rate.

2:14The 11-inch model starts at$99, 13-inch model at$1 ,299. The 14-inch MacBook Pro also gets the M5 along with a faster solid-state drive. and now you can configure it up to four terabytes of storage. I mean, for anybody who is into local storage, this is going to be tasty. Yeah. And then, I guess relevant to your interest as an Apple Vision Pro owner, the Apple Vision Pro is out with an M5 chip, pretty much the same as the other one, just with an M5 chip. Apple says it should have sharper, crisper text, more detailed images, refresh rates up to 120 hertz. Also, a little bit better battery life, two and a half hours for regular use, three hours if you're just doing video, and no price change.

3:04It's the same$3 ,499 you paid for the other one. Well, I would say I'm excited about that, but$3 ,500? I'll stick with Gen 1. I saw somebody online who said something like, Apple's going to sell like eight of these. They just don't want to admit that people don't want the Vision Pro. Now, I don't think that's true. If you're a developer, there are many people who do want this and are excited about being able to play around with the M5 version. But again, it's a niche market. Yeah. And it does seem like the only success Apple is really having is in Enterprise. You know, they'll sell a dozen or more at a time to workplaces that say, oh, it's a perfect fit for us, which reminds me, quite a bit of Google Glass, which is probably not a comparison Apple would like me to make, but there you go.

3:55You also get a dual-knit band, which is a little more comfortable, a little more adjustable. That comes with the new Apple Vision Pro. However, if you have the older model, you can get the new dual-knit band for$99. $100 for a new band? For a new band. Listen, I understand that the Vision Pro is heavy, the model that I have, the first gen, but it's not that bad. It just depends on what you're using it for. It's not$99 bad. But Apple is just great at this, being like, we have the most comfortable band ever,$100. And compared to$3 ,500. Right. What's another$100 at that point? You can also pre-order the Logitech Muse Digital Pen, which is built for 3D, so for use with the Apple Vision Pro.

4:47That works with either Apple Vision Pro. That is$130. All of these things, the iPads, the MacBook, the new Apple Vision Pro, the dual knit band, and the Logitech Muse Digital are available for pre-order now, shipping October 22nd. However, the Vision Pro is still only available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, the UAE, the UK, and the US. And if you're saying, wait, I can get one in South Korea and Taiwan, you will get the M5 version later. They haven't given us a date for that. I would love to know what Scott Johnson thinks about this digital pen. Because that's one of the things with the Vision Pro is like, it's all very gesture-based, right?

5:31You know, you're not holding, well, we'll get to that in a second. But, but you're, you know, you, you, you don't have kind of your, your, uh, what do you even call them? Controllers. Yeah. Yeah. Your keyboard, mouse, but it can be a little, it can, and it works, but it can feel strange. Like I can see somebody saying, Oh, the pen, you know, having a pen to be able to like do cursive in the air is really helpful. You know, maybe we could, if you could live without it, we could send him yours for a short period of time and see if he wants to try out the digital pen. We should chat with him about that.

6:08Also, Apple's going to start selling the PlayStation VR 2 Sense controllers and charging station at Apple stores in the U.S. starting November 11th. That's Veterans Day. Which means we'll see support turned on in the Apple Vision OS before then. If you already own VR2 Sense controllers or you want to buy them somewhere else besides an Apple store, they announced at WWDC that they would support them, but they hadn't yet turned on the support in the OS yet. So that's coming soon as well. As somebody who is very, very fond of my various quests that I have, I really think the controller is – it's not necessary 100 % of the time, but it really helps with a lot of stuff.

6:50So I think Apple will get a win on this one. While we're talking about Apple, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Apple will have its security cameras and home control display built in Vietnam. BYD is going to do that with them. It also plans to manufacture iPads and its tabletop robot arm that everybody's been hearing about for years with BYD in Vietnam. Those will not be released until 2027. and Apple Senior Vice President of Services, Eddie Q, came on The Town podcast as seen in the studio. So maybe that's how they got that deal. It dropped, anyway, Eddie Q said that they dropped the plus from the Apple TV name because everybody just calls it Apple TV anyway.

7:38So, you know, why bother? I don't get this. I don't get this. Apple TV is a hardware product. Apple TV Plus is a subscription service. Apple TV is also an app, though. Apple TV is also an app. That's true. But you have to pay more for the Plus. So if you call it all the same thing, it just confuses me. I do find myself calling Apple TV Plus Apple TV when I say, like, the studio, which featured the town in it, was on Apple TV. Apple TV. Yeah, no, I get you. Oh, I have to say Plus because it's the service. Yeah. So maybe I guess that's what he's talking about. Well, yeah, I mean, consolidation, all good.

8:18Well, DTNS is made possible by you, our listeners, whether you like the name Plus or not. Thank you to Tim Deputy, Brandon Brooks, Johnny Hernandez, and Jerry Pazel. Yes, they are Plus patrons because we talked.

8:38There's more we need to know today. Let's get to the briefs. YouTube is rolling out its redesigned interface to web, mobile, and TV apps. Here is what you can expect. Icons are softer, more transparent, placed to obscure the content less when you're using them. The seek function should be more seamless. That's what the company wants you to think anyway. Likes now have custom animations that change based on type of content. And we have new visuals, like a smoother process for other actions, like watch later, playlists, and comments will have a threaded layout for replies. Now, Tom, I don't know if you've seen people on the web being very mad about this new rollout because everybody hates change, but I've seen a lot of people being very mad about this.

9:24From what I've seen, though, it looks pretty nice. Yeah. Pay no attention to the normal level of outrage that someone moved your cheese, which is pretty much what's going on there. Who did it? Yeah. If it sustains for more than a week or it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and continues to grow, then I'll pay attention. Otherwise, it's just, yeah, people don't like it when stuff gets moved around. It is interesting that they're going with the kind of the liquid glass thing with the transparency a little bit. Otherwise, I actually realized I had these changes and didn't know it because they've been kind of rolling them out in A-B tests slowly and they didn't really rock my world.

10:07So they're fine. In fact, YouTube probably wants them to be more noticeable than I found them. Now, do you use YouTube on mobile TV or web? Like, what's the most? I use it on all. Probably more on the TV than the other two. On the web, it's more like I'm watching a trailer for, you know, Cord Killers or DTNS coverage or something. On my app, I am checking things and I tend to watch shorts more, which I think is normal on mobile. Uh, but then, yeah, the majority of my consumption would be on TV. Yeah. I, I, I don't watch YouTube on TV really at all. Um, even though I can, um, but, uh, I, I, it's mostly web for me.

10:50Mobile. Not at all. I just, I don't know. I just don't. My eyes are bad. I need a bigger screen. Uh, well, let's talk open AI then. Okay. No, I see what you did there. No, don't encourage me. uh several open ai stories uh together here on x ceo sam altman said that in a few weeks if you want it to chat gpt can start to respond in a more human-like way use more emojis act like a friend stuff they tamped down after 4-4-0 uh they say we're going to give you the option to to amp that back up also in december after age gating rolls out some restrictions and he mentioned specifically erotic chats, which is getting all the attention, will be eased if you're a verified adult.

11:38Japan's minister in charge of AI and AP, Minoru Kiyuchi, said at a press conference, we have requested OpenAI not to engage in any actions that could constitute copyright infringement. Anime and manga are irreplaceable treasures that we could be proud of around the world. Japan historically has regulations that are very AI friendly, so significant to see them saying, hold on, Sora, with the anime stuff. And the Financial Times says that OpenAI has internally, anyway, a five-year plan to raise revenue to meet the$1 trillion in data center expenses it has contracted for. That includes government contracts, which would give it some stable income, shopping tools, which could give it a bunch of income, video services, not sure what that means, consumer hardware, okay, that's the Johnny Ives stuff, and in a bit of an Amazon AWS move, becoming a supplier of compute, which I think is probably one of its best bets.

12:35So going back to what grabbed all the headlines, the erotic chats, there were some friends of mine who were not, I don't want to say outraged by this, but they were like, birth rates going down, open ai and you can just point right to open ai and i was like yeah maybe dating apps are on the chopping block i don't know birth rates coming down um but uh but yes that is uh for a company that's sort of like change the world uh then you're definitely going to get that subset of people who are like what is this for really you know is this for a friend you know or like a a special friend, you know, again, for adults.

13:18And does that matter? Do we care that much about that? There's still a little Victorianism out there, I think, where people are like, ooh, I don't know, maybe for me, but no one else should be trusted. Yeah, as if the internet hasn't existed for quite some time for you to disassociate from the outside world. Starting next year in the U.S., Netflix will make 16 Spotify video podcasts available in its service. Most of these will be from Spotify's partnership with The Ringer. The New York Times says that the deal will prevent the shows from being shown in their entirety on YouTube. Interesting. Sport shows included in the deal are the Bill Simmons podcast, very popular, the Zach Lowe show, the McShay show, Fairway Rowland, the Mismatch, and the ringers f1 show fantasy football show nfl show and nba show the culture and lifestyle shows are the rewatchables the big picture the dave chang show recipe club and dissects and two crime shows conspiracy theories and serial killers are also in the mix i don't know what to make of this uh it is reasonable for spotify to say we've got a great deal going on we want to beat youtube let's partner with Netflix to beat YouTube.

14:38Because Spotify has been trying to give video creators more monetization options and try to lure them over. And I guess if you want those creators to make even more money, you syndicate their content to a walled garden like Netflix and then that hurts YouTube because you have to restrict it, but then it gives customers more places to watch them. It's certainly an interesting move by Netflix to say, let's partner with something that's available elsewhere. Not that they haven't done that before with syndicated TV, but for podcasts. It's also kind of a coronation of these podcasts as being just as good as TV shows.

15:13Exactly. That's exactly what I think of. You know, this move is these are shows. These are TV shows. You can call them video podcasts if you want to because, you know, maybe they have, you know, an audio component or a lot of people just listen to them and don't watch. But these are television shows. and Netflix wants people to watch these shows. And Spotify has a lot of this IP. I think this is really smart. I wonder, I mean, for anybody who's like, I don't watch anything on The Ringer anyway, what does this mean to me? Well, maybe not. If you're not into sports, a lot of the stuff just isn't going to be your bag.

15:53But you've got some, you know, you've got some, the Dave Chang show, for example. He's a very beloved chef that does a lot of stuff online anyway. You have shows that have legs, so to speak. And yeah, the true crime stuff is just a slam dunk, I feel like. It's not the first time that podcasters have translated to Netflix, but I believe, if I'm not mistaken, it's the first time that they haven't had to adapt to Netflix. Like they're just sending their shows as they make them over to Netflix. That is really interesting to me. And I wonder if it is a signal for Netflix where they're like, let's try this out.

16:38We got some, say, you know, training wheels on with Spotify and see what happens with that. Maybe they start to partner with podcasters directly themselves, right? You know, Spotify may regret that they did this later on. hmm china's honor launched its magic 8 and magic 8 pro flagship phones in china uh international launch coming later this year they come with the gargantuan china's the land of horror huge batteries uh 7200 and 7000 milliamp hour batteries uh you will only be able to get them that big in china international versions will top out at 7100 and in europe the max will be 6270 that's probably because of restrictions on shipping batteries.

17:21A button launches its assistant called YoYo. A lot of AI in here. Both of these phones run on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, that brand new chip. And they also run Honor's Magic OS X, which is built on top of Android 16. So this is an Android phone. Magic 8 and Magic 8 Pro phones launch in China this month for 4 ,499 yuan. That's around$630. And the Pro is 5 ,699 yuan. That's around$800. Honor also showed off a concept phone that has a robotic arm to fold the camera out of the back of the phone. Honor said it'll show the phone off and offer more details at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next year.

18:05I would love to see this because the whole thing is foldables, right? It's like, Like, you know, we all want different form factors in one device. The robotic arm, very interesting to me. Remember, we've seen all these pop-ups, right? Where the phone just kind of pops up out of the top. This is like, it's going to just be like a little robotic arm lifted out of the back for you. I can't decide if this is just a really cool demo, though, right? Yeah. Like, sometimes things look really cool on stage. And then in practice, you're like, I don't really need that. But yeah. Yeah. And how does that just affect the size and the battery life and everything?

18:43But hey, people are experimenting. Speaking of experiments, Waymo said it will start testing its autonomous taxis in London in the coming months with human safety drivers and intends to make the service available to all next year. Yeah. That's an aggressive timeline to go from like, we're beginning testing now. It's a very aggressive timeline, especially given, And, you know, anybody who's ever driven in London, I salute you because it is a notoriously, you know, congested city with, you know, you're going to have the Waymos are going to have a fun time with all that. And Uber had a long, hard fight to get regulators to approve them because the London black cabs, man, the exam for that is legendary where you have to memorize all of London and then pass an exam where they just spring on you.

19:37It's like taking the bar. Yeah, it's crazy. Black cab drivers are super impressive. I wonder if maybe Uber getting through that fight makes it easier for Waymo in some respect. But I expect they're going to be another fight. And I don't know if they get regulatory approval as fast as they think they will. I would. If I were a betting man, I would say that Waymo is going to have a real hard time in London. You know, once those human drivers get out of the driver's seat, you're going to have a lot of folks saying, not in our backyard. Um, but, um, and you're right. I mean, the taxi system in London is very good.

20:19They've been doing it for a long time. I mean, these people know what they're doing and it's a, it's a pretty pleasant experience. And you're going to get, you know, a lot of the pushback that you would get in any city that is very taxi reliant, New York city being another example. But, uh, at the same time, you know, I always talk about this in my area of Los Angeles, Waymos are just everywhere. like kids get into waymos by themselves now it's not it's not weird like it went from like oh my gosh this is so crazy and weird to this is so normal in like a year it's funny how that happens uh i remember when the sidewalk robots first showed up in la and we were like whoa look at that a little cooler is just rolling down the sun now it's more like oh that thing's in my way and the whole thing was like oh people are gonna vandalize them it's like i mean sure that's still going to happen.

21:10But for the most part, everyone just goes about their business. Yeah. You know, with the Waymos now, it's like I'm, you know, I'm next to a Waymo on on a city street and I don't even look to see if there's somebody in the front anymore. I'm like, there's nobody in the front. Two things people in L.A. don't pay any attention to Waymos and celebrities. That's right. Finally, some quick headlines that are just good to know. If you want to understand the news in the future, Samsung is going to stream an announcement on its YouTube channel on Tuesday, October 21st, 10 p.m. Eastern Time. It is expected to announce its Android XR headset, previously known as Project Muhan.

21:49Kobo announced a new remote control for its e-readers named Kobo Remote, selling for$30 starting November 4th. Ooh, a little page-turner. Edifier announced a Bluetooth speaker called the Huase New Cyber, which looks like a high-end dual GPU gaming system, but it's a Bluetooth speaker. It costs 1 ,499 yuan, which is about$210 US. Motorola announced the Moto Edge 70, also called the X70 Air in China, which at 5.3 millimeters is thinner than either the iPhone Air or Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. So very thin. Coming to China on October 31st and later internationally. Ooh, new thinnest phone. Pew Research Center surveyed more than 28 ,000 adults in 25 countries about their attitudes with AI, found that 81 % have heard a lot or at least a little about it.

22:44So most people have heard about AI. I guess that's not shocking, but it's good to know. Maybe it's more shocking that 19 % haven't. 34 % are more concerned than excited, 42 % equally concerned and excited, and then the rest are more excited than concerned. I feel like I'm in that 42%. Yeah. I feel like I'm equally concerned and excited. I'm seeing this build as like, people are more concerned than excited. I'm like, it's only a third that are more concerned. Everybody else is either equal or positive. Well, it's funny because you can get excited. You're like, wow, that works really well. Should I be concerned?

23:19Yeah, right. Exactly. That's where most people are. According to this, it's like, I don't know. It's kind of cool, but kind of not. Change is scary. Change is scary. Speaking of change, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, maybe you've heard of him, sold more Amazon stock, bringing his ownership of the company down to 9%. If you're saying, well, how much did he own before? He owned 47 % when the company went public back in 1997. Yeah, I think a lot of people don't realize just how little of it he still has. Facebook is the latest US platform to remove a service for tracking where US customs enforcement personnel or ICE personnel are located.

23:58That group has been removed. And Mozilla has added perplexity as an option to be your default search engine in its browser. All right, folks, if you would like to watch us work, you could just come on by, take a look. Yeah, just come on over. Let's have some tamales. Possibly an easier way to do it is a live stream. We do all kinds of live streams. Sarah and I do DTNS live with Rob Dunwood and Roger Chang on Thursdays on our YouTube channel. New live with it. I don't know which, which one do you know? Which one is streaming today on Wednesday? Today is Jen Cutter's review of, Oh dear. It's the, Oh, the, yes, yes.

24:43The switch too. Yeah. So today we will premiere a live stream of live with it on our YouTube channel. all kinds of good live streams. I had a great talk this week with Amos about his vibe coding experiences where he's able to do some stuff that would have taken him hours, if not weeks in a lot less time. You can check all of this out by becoming a subscriber at youtube.com slash daily tech team shift.

25:11We like to end every episode of DTNS with some shared wisdom. Today, Andrew has that wisdom and an update on using his AirPods Pro 3 to live translate. Yes, Andrew was very excited. He's like, you read my AirPod translation letter on the air. Here's my update. I have installed iOS 26.0.1 and firmware for the AirPods. It seems you cannot have your Siri as UK English and have French Canadian as your other language for live translate. It actually freezes the setup window, force quit, reopen. It has to download languages already downloaded and then freezes again. If I switch everything to the United States, which is a pain in the peach, uh, and then choose French, it didn't freeze, but then it didn't translate.

25:58So, uh, still some trouble, some struggles. Yeah. Uh, if you want to do the language of your choice, they're, they're great at doing us and Spanish, English and Spanish, you know, English and Spanish, no problem. Uh, but as soon as you get into the French Canadian in and stuff. It has some work to do, it sounds like. Thank you, Andrew, for the on-the-scene report. Indeed. And if you're thinking about anything that we talked about on the show, you've got some insight into a story that we covered, do share it with us. We'd love to hear from you. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Big thanks to Andrew for contributing to today's show.

26:33Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. If you'd like to get this show ad-free and get a bunch of episodes delivered to you on an RSS feed. Become a patron. You can do that very easily. Just head to patreon.com slash DTNS. Talk to you soon.

27:00The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.