Side Project Spotlight

The Trio kick off with the rumors about Apple's March 4th event and the possible return of a budget 12-inch MacBook on an A18 chip, which leads to a very poorly researched price analysis and a pitch for a MacBook sock accessory. Steve and Aaron talk about how agentic-assisted coding at work has been mentally exhausting and how they miss actually writing code. The conversation covers why LLMs are rough for greenfield projects, what "vibe coding" actually means (and why they're not doing it), the Alex Hillman episode follow-up, and Steve's experiment running different models against Bento Fit to produce slop PRs that Kotaro then spent an hour reviewing for some reason. Steve also crashes out about the state of the industry and public perception of AI. It's a lot.

## Chapters

- 00:00 Introductions

- 01:51 Rumors and Speculations on New Macs

- 10:43 The Impact of Pricing on Apple's Product Strategy

- 11:53 The Developer Perspective on a New MacBook

- 17:36 Comparing MacBooks and iPads in Today's Market

- 18:36 The MacBook Sock

- 21:12 Mac App Renaissance

- 22:26 Follow-Up: Alex Hillman Episode

- 25:12 Agentic Coding Flow States

- 29:50 Balancing Traditional and AI-Assisted Development

- 33:26 Navigating the Challenges of Greenfield Projects

- 38:00 The Dilemma of AI in Coding

- 41:48 Navigating Agentic Coding and Professional Ethics

- 43:50 The Reality of Code Maintenance

- 44:36 Public Perception of AI and Software

- 47:41 Steve Crashes Out About the Industry

- 51:24 Bento Fit Slop PRs

- 58:37 Wrap-Up

- 59:37 One More Thing...

- 01:00:50 Tag

## Show Notes

- Apple "Experience" event March 4th, rumored budget MacBook with A18, ~12 inch, fun colors, maybe $699–$799

- Updated Studio Display and touchscreen MacBooks also rumored

- People buying $600 Mac Minis for OpenClaw setups

- Mac app renaissance? More Mac apps being submitted, possibly thanks to LLMs making AppKit less painful

- Alex Hillman episode follow-up: 219 views, 5 likes, watch hours up 46,639%

- Agentic coding fatigue: Steve and Aaron are tired. No flow state. Just planning, reviewing, iterating.

- Greenfield projects with LLMs produce average code. Better to write some bespoke code first and give the robot examples.

- "We're not vibe coding." Steve proposes "agentic-assisted" as the term. The acronym is AA, which... maybe not great.

- Code is a liability. 1,000 lines a day is not a good metric.

- People outside the bubble mostly know ChatGPT, don't pay for it, and hate it

- Steve ran three slop PRs on Bento Fit with different models as an experiment. Kotaro reviewed one for an hour anyway.

- Bento Fit's $4.34 in tip revenue resulted in a $10 tax bill

- OpenCode now has a $10/month plan for open source models

## Links

**Bento Fit**

Website: https://bentofit.app

**Tools & Services Mentioned**

OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai | OpenCode: https://opencode.ai | T3 Chat: https://t3.chat | Codex CLI: https://openai.com/codex | Claude Code: https://claude.com/product/claude-code

**One More Thing**

AppJawn LLC: https://appjawn.com

Apps: Clipdish, Mio Vino, Minimalist Meditation Timer

**PhillyCocoa:** http://phillycocoa.org

Intro music: "When I Hit the Floor", © 2021 Lorne Behrman. Used with permission of the artist.