TWiT 1090: Flock of SQLs - Apple & Microsoft Grapple With Soaring Hardware Prices
This Week in Tech (Audio)
Leo Laporte
3.9 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 28 June 2026
⏱️ 162 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tech giants and chipmakers are facing off as AI-fueled memory shortages trigger sweeping price hikes on everything from Macs to game consoles. Hear why global supply chain standoffs, long-term contracts, and old-school market forces are quietly reshaping your daily technology.
• Apple and Microsoft hike prices on devices amid global memory shortages
• Surge in AI data centers drives RAM and storage crisis
• Intel's comeback: Core Ultra chips compete with AMD in handheld gaming
• Microsoft's pivot to ARM, Qualcomm-NVIDIA alliance, and x86 rivalry
• AI fear and backlash; organic concern amplified by international actors
• White House abruptly pulls Anthropic's Fable model, sparking industry uproar
• US government U-turns on AI regulation, restricts top models to select partners
• Tension over AI innovation vs. regulatory "rug pull" and global competition
• Smart home chaos: Matter 1.6 standard, Samsung and Level Lock shake-up
• Debate over local vs. cloud smart home control and API access fees
• Ring and Flock cameras ignite privacy and surveillance state concerns
• Social media bans for under-16s fail in Australia, UK, and Norway plan similar rules
• BBC Radio 4 long wave broadcast ends after a century
• Meta gets caught tracking employees for AI; PlayStation deletes owned movies
• US regulators propose removing brake pedals from Robotaxis
• Ford's automated systems flop, company rehiring engineers
• Farewell to tech journalist and GigaOm founder Om Malik
Host: Leo Laporte
Guests: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, Dan Patterson, and Daniel Rubino
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's time for Twit this week in tech. Jennifer Patterson, Tooey is here from The Verge. Dan Patterson of Blackbird AI and Daniel Rubino, editor-in-chief of Windows Central. Microsoft's extending the deadline for Windows 10 yet another year. The Apple prices are going up, and it's not just Apple. Are people going to blame AI for this? |
| 0:24.0 | And it looks like Mythos is out of jail. |
| 0:26.5 | All that coming up next on Twit. |
| 0:30.9 | Podcasts you love. |
| 0:32.5 | From people you trust. |
| 0:35.3 | This is Twit. |
| 0:48.2 | This is Twit. This Week in Tech. Episode 1090 recorded Sunday, June 28th, 2026. |
| 0:50.3 | Flock of Sequels. |
| 0:55.0 | It's time for Twit this week in tech, the show we cover the week's tech news. Hello, everybody. Great to have you here. |
| 0:57.3 | Great to have our panel here, starting with Dan Patterson, AI Guru at blackbird.a.i. |
| 1:02.8 | He's senior director of content at Blackbird AI, which is dedicated to ferreting out disinformation wherever it lies. |
| 1:09.7 | Your job's getting busier by the moment. |
| 1:13.3 | Yeah, it's been an interesting year to say the least. It certainly has. I've got an allergy frog |
| 1:21.9 | stuck in my throat, so forgive me. Oh, hello allergy frog. Yeah. Also here, Jennifer Patterifer paterson toi you see her every month of course |
| 1:30.3 | on tech news weekly and you see you're probably every day on the verge where she's a senior |
| 1:34.7 | of your specializing in smart homes hello jpt hello leo lovely to be here any robots fall on you lately |
| 1:44.0 | um yeah i've got these little sort of fluffy ones in my house at the |
| 1:47.4 | and and um yeah they're they're very annoying are those the ones that purr and gurgle and like that or |
| 1:55.2 | so at cES this year there was it was ecovacsax, the robot company and Switchbot, the smart |
| 2:01.6 | home company, both released like robot companions that are like, they're like teddy bears. |
| 2:06.1 | And one's like a teddy bear and one is like a little puppy, puppy dog. |
| 2:10.3 | And yeah, they, well, actually, it didn't fall on me, but it keeps falling over. |
... |
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