Backups, AI Bug Hunts and Apple's "Ultra" Habit Dominate ATP 690

The 690th episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast, titled "Turn Left at the Next Tree," ranged from backup software to AI-assisted security research and Apple's product naming. The hosts opened by admitting that two thirds of them were under the weather, a reminder that the show is recorded live and rarely follows a script.

Backups took up much of the discussion. Listeners and hosts compared cloud services such as Backblaze with local tools like Carbon Copy Cloner, and the conversation touched on Arq's approach to encrypted backups. A listener question about how big a drive to buy for Time Machine also got practical attention. The short answer is that the drive should be large enough to hold a useful history of your files, which depends more on how much your data changes than on the size of your startup disk.

Security was the other major thread. The hosts discussed how the cURL project has dealt with a rising volume of bug reports, some of which are generated with AI tools. They also looked at a severe Linux security issue that was reportedly uncovered with AI assistance. The tone was mixed: there is real value in automated scanning, but maintainers are left sorting through a lot of noise to find it.

On the Apple side, the episode leaned into the joke that the company seems to be putting "Ultra" on everything, with speculative names running from iPhone Ultra to iMac Ultra. The hosts also pointed to Apple's record R&D spending, a discussion of its capital expenditures, and a reminder that Project Titan, the car effort, was reported to have ended in February 2024. A post on eBay listing Mac Studios for $25,000 to $35,000 served as a reminder that secondhand prices for high-end hardware can get strange.

The show closed with a post-show segment on walking and trail recommendations, followed by members-only overtime episodes for listeners who subscribe. For anyone who follows Apple, the episode is less a set of announcements than a snapshot of what the show's hosts are noticing and joking about this week.