Magic Monday - August 4, 2026

by Ian Williams

Aug 05, 2026

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Yesterday's tech news... today! Apologies for the one-day delay: it was fun having a 300-mile drive back from a couple doctor appointments in California, but 100% worth it. Some life-saving discoveries come from the most surprising places. This week's talk might be a bit esoteric, and I'm far from a mathematician, but hopefully it's interesting nonetheless.

I Trust You've All Done Your Math Homework or: Why Your M1 Mac Might Not Cut It Anymore

Over two years ago, I recall Howard Oakley wrote about bfloat16, a way of representing non-integer (floating point) numbers that was developed as part of Google Brain to help with AI workload efficiency. It was first integrated into Apple's M2 line of CPUs, and Oakley's breakdown of floating point math is far better than anything I could articulate. When it comes to Apple Intelligence, there's a whole lot of math mathing, and the reasons for the newly announced support floor are more subtle than originally believed.

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Magic Monday - September 14, 2026

Life is always fun and stressful; my apologies for the late email today. If you blinked, you missed a lot of products and software updates, so let's get caught up on both halves of the story: what got announced, and what is available for your devices today. Surprise, Shine, and Sticker Shock Last Wednesday's "Surprise and Shine" event delivered on its name, marking John Ternus' first time host...

Magic Monday - September 7, 2026

We're less than 48 hours away from the September surprise, and rumors abound about what sort of fun we're in for. John Ternus, presumably, is going to be heading up the whole event for the first time. Of all the major products in Apple's lineup, the only ones that didn't receive recent price bumps are the ones that, if tradition holds, will be on stage at this week's event. If you're looking at...

Magic Monday - August 31, 2026

We made it to UCLA and back, again, and thankfully with better news than we were expecting. Getting older isn't always fun, but I'm grateful Sarah and I are able to do it together. Some unexpected products, business transitions, likely release dates, and more mark the last day of the Tim Cook era. An August Surprise August has not been a major launch month since around 2007, when the first alu...

Magic Monday - August 4, 2026

I Trust You've All Done Your Math Homework or: Why Your M1 Mac Might Not Cut It Anymore

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