Apple Comes for the Chromebook - DTNS 5218
Daily Tech News Show
Tom Merritt
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Also, Andy Beach joins us with opinions about HBO Max and Paramount+ merging.
Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, and Andy Beach.
Links to the stories discussed in this episode can be found here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, March 4th, 2026. |
| 0:09.3 | We tell you what you need to know, give you some important context, and try our darnedest to help each other understand. |
| 0:14.2 | Today, Andy Beach is reacting to a report that Paramount wants to move HBO into its tech platform, |
| 0:20.0 | and Apple launches an entry-level laptop to take on Chromebooks. |
| 0:24.6 | Ooh, here they come. It's actually pretty compelling. I'm Tom Merritt. And I'm Sarah Lane. |
| 0:28.6 | Let's start with what you need to know with that big story. |
| 0:32.8 | So, yeah, Apple finished its half week, three-fifths of a week of announcements with the MacBook |
| 0:41.1 | Neo, a $599 13-inch laptop that runs on Apple's A18 Pro chip. That is one generation old for |
| 0:50.3 | iPhone chips. It's the one that launched with the iPhone 16. But you heard me right, |
| 0:55.5 | $599. This laptop has a 2408 by 1506 liquid retina display. There's some compromises to get |
| 1:04.9 | that price down, though. It's only a 60 hertz refresh rate. Also has two older USB ports. |
| 1:14.6 | One, they're both USBC, but one is USB 3. That's 10 gigabits per second. That's meant for connecting things to. The other is only USB 2, which is 480 |
| 1:20.0 | megabits per second. That's the one meant for charging. You could use it for other things, |
| 1:24.2 | but it's going to be kind of slow. Neither one of them is USB 4, which is like 40 |
| 1:28.6 | gigabits per second. It only weighs 2.7 pounds, comes in four different pastel colors, has a |
| 1:35.2 | headphone jack, because I know that's important to a lot of you. There is not MagSafe charging, |
| 1:40.0 | just the USB, promises 16 hours of battery life has a 1080p webcam built in as well base model |
| 1:46.7 | comes with 8 gigabytes of RAM 256 gigabytes of storage and for an $100 extra the $699 |
| 1:54.8 | version gives you 512 gigabytes of storage you're still only going to get 8 gigs of RAM, but it does add touch ID to |
| 2:02.2 | that $699 version. This is available to order now. Everything's been available to order March 4th. |
| 2:08.1 | Well, guess what? It's March 4th. You can order it right now, and it'll ship on March 11th. |
| 2:12.9 | Do you like them, Sarah? They're pretty cool looking and seem like they have decent features for the |
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