catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

194: Dark Night of the Soul

Pushback on the MacBook Pro, Apple’s display business, and why we override Apple’s product names.

Episode Description:

Sponsored by:

  • Harry's: An exceptional shave at a fraction of the price. Get a free trial set with free Post Shave Balm.
  • Casper: An obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price. Use code ATP for $50 toward your mattress.
  • Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month. Native. Unlimited. Unthrottled. Uncomplicated.

MP3 Header

Transcribed using Whisper large_v2 (transcription) + WAV2VEC2_ASR_LARGE_LV60K_960H (alignment) + Pyannote (speaker diaritization).

Chapters

  1. Follow-up: Baseball Series
  2. Overriding Apple’s names
  3. Are Casey and Marco millenials?
  4. Lightroom GPU acceleration
  5. Sponsor: Harry’s
  6. External GPU boxes
  7. “Out of the display business”
  8. MacBook Pro pushback
  9. Sponsor: Casper (code ATP)
  10. Touch Bar ergonomics
  11. Sponsor: Backblaze
  12. Marco’s Waffling
  13. No TrueTone in laptops
  14. No MacBook Pro startup chime
  15. Ending theme
  16. Post-show: TouchBar optimism

Follow-up: Baseball Series

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We decided to schedule this week’s show directly against

⏹️ ▶️ Marco game seven, right? Of the baseball series that’s World Series but only in the USA?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Canada 2. That doesn’t really count. That’s not the world. They should call it the North American

⏹️ ▶️ Marco minus Mexico series.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess you could go that way. I am currently probably to my own peril attempting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to log into my Slingbox from my Mac back and see if I can turn the game on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and provide live updates for you, Marco, since I know you are deeply concerned about the score of Game 7.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You should. So this, just the basics, obviously this means that each of the teams won

⏹️ ▶️ Marco three games, so they’re tied, now they have to have a tiebreaker game, is that? That is correct. And other than that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is there anything special about how this game works? Are there any rule changes, like it ends after a certain score, or is it just a regular game?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think there is any difference, no. of there’s some rule,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forget what’s what, but one league can do, what is it, a pinch hitter, designated hitter,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey something, oh my god, designated hitter, something like that, and one league doesn’t allow that,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe. And I never understand the rules behind when that’s permitted and when that isn’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, I’ve heard people tell me that I should try to understand the infield fly rule. Is that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the difference between the American League and the American League?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a national league and no it is not. I don’t believe anyway.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But yeah so the idea is when the whatever league allows for this thing is considered to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey be at home this this hitter thing then they do the hitter thing. I think it’s a pinch

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hitter is that right? Why am I explaining this? I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the two USA baseball leagues can’t even agree on the rules? Is this like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Republican Democrat kind of thing? Like is one like what?

⏹️ ▶️ John Different islands in the Galapagos. They evolved separately.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We should probably cut all of that because that was painful to talk about, let alone listen to.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s probably not going in.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Cleveland Indians and the Chicago Cubs are playing in the final game of the World Series

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as we speak. And as we are recording, it is top of the fourth. It’s tied one to one. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t really have a preference who wins. I guess the Cubs since they haven’t won in forever.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are they really still, oh my god, they’re really still called the Indians and they really still have that logo

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in 2016? That’s correct. That is rough. Wow.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m gonna, I was gonna give live updates but given that having Sling Player running on my

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac is causing my IMAX fans to go at full tilt, I’m just gonna go ahead and disconnect and turn that off. You

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know what would have solved that problem? Oh, here we go. Here we go. Tell me Marco,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what would solve that problem? You know, Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco still barely does make one computer where the difference in fan

⏹️ ▶️ Marco audible noise levels between full load and idle is not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco distinguishable by the human ear most of the time in most rooms.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The MacBook Adorable that doesn’t have a fan? That one?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hmm. All right, two.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey That doesn’t count. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all I can do. That doesn’t count

⏹️ ▶️ Casey because that’s always at full load. I’ll just use, I’ll use the computer that’s more modern. I’ll go get my iPad mini. Hold on.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh

⏹️ ▶️ Casey goodness. Sorry. Before Marco and I kill each other, we should probably start with some fun.

Overriding Apple’s names

⏹️ ▶️ Casey follow-up. And there was an interesting thing posted over the last few days.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey As one would expect, the iFixit folks have gotten their hands on a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Escape. And it’s funny that I call it a MacBook Escape, which I believe I stole from Marco,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey because on that page it says, and I’m quoting, read on for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey our teardown of the MacBook Pro late 2016, parenthesis, edition, parenthesis.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey My question to you two is, is this simultaneous invention? Or did we get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey an uncredited citation there? Like, is this really our invention that they’re just not citing us as the source?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well,

⏹️ ▶️ John first of all, it’s not our invention. I’m pretty sure

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it is the invention of

⏹️ ▶️ John whoever in the chat room suggested that just because we picked out of the chat room, the

⏹️ ▶️ John name that we liked and then repeated it on the show does not mean that we invented that

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey name. Sure,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s appropriate. No,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John no, no. That’s how this works, right? Whoever

⏹️ ▶️ John suggested it in the chat room actually coined the term. And we were merely adopting

⏹️ ▶️ John it for a discussion, and I’m assuming it’s simultaneous. But I just wanted to clear that. Marco was the one who pulled it out of the chat

⏹️ ▶️ John room, and I’m assuming Marco pulled it out of the chat room and didn’t invent it himself, because on the show he was reading things out of the

⏹️ ▶️ John chat room.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it was before last week’s show, the people in the chat were discussing various names and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they were calling it like Escape Book Pro and F in Book Pro and a few other variations.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not entirely sure who said, if anyone actually said, Macbook Escape as the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco official name. But, well, I’ve been corrected though on Twitter and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco other places. Apparently, the official name for this computer is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Macbook Pro in parentheses 13-inch late 2016 two Thunderbolt 3

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ports, end parentheses. So from now on, I have to call it that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro 13-inch late 2016 two Thunderbolt 3 ports not MacBook Escape because the former

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a way better name apparently

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m disappointed that the name they hinted at in the presentation wasn’t the actual name because they said like with

⏹️ ▶️ John with function keys so it was like MacBook Pro parentheses with function keys but that is not obviously the official

⏹️ ▶️ John name apparently if the official name is that giant mouthful

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that even that much better though like would that have been like this is still

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not a name that anybody will know the good

⏹️ ▶️ John thing about the parentheses with function keys is you could apply it to like any Mac model that comes with the keyboard with function keys on

⏹️ ▶️ John it now you could say like you know Apple extended keyboard with function keys

⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly well like the whole reason like there you know the reason we gave this a this cute name and everyone said I should stop naming things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because originally I was one of the people I don’t I don’t even know if I was the first but I was a popularizer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the name MacBook one for the one port 12-inch MacBook when that came out cuz I had a similar problem where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they released this brand new computer that is radically different from everything else they make and they just called it MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and like there was already a computer named MacBook not even that long ago and lots of people still have them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so like it was it was a vague name an ambiguous name and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone was going through all this contortions on like press articles to say like the new MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the 12-inch retina MacBook the what MacBook with one USB port or ever like everyone was going through this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco contortions trying to unambiguously state which computer they were talking about because Apple’s names

⏹️ ▶️ Marco aren’t good enough like they’re not precise enough, and this is one of those cases, too. And by the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco way, I do regret not calling it the MacBook 2 because in so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey many ways, that’s a really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had a few people tell me that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John just adding confusion, though, because now it sounds like it’s the sequel or something and and it is a pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well it’s an air. I mean, really, let’s be honest, it’s it’s a MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air with a retina screen. It’s which again I wanted that and I said it’s gonna be amazing they’re gonna sell a ton of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them and I stand by that. The early reviews say it is pretty good.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not as good as I would like it to be in some ways but you know overall pretty good. I think they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s probably going to be very successful if anybody can justify the price hike for it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s that’s a big if but you know if they can do it that’ll be fine. But this is another one of those computers where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at the contortions of how people are trying to unambiguously refer to this computer in their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco various reviews and press articles and blog posts and tweets, and there is no good

⏹️ ▶️ Marco short name for it that unambiguously says what it refers to. So I stand by my choice to call it the MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Escape because it is short and fairly unique. I don’t think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyone could ever think that meant any other computer, and they might not necessarily know what means this one, but I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough geeks know, enough of our audience knows, enough of my audience on Twitter and stuff knows that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can say MacBook One and MacBook Escape, And the people who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are listening, almost all of them will know what I mean by that, as opposed to saying 13-inch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Pro, which now could mean three very different computers, all of which are still for sale.

⏹️ ▶️ John Just wait until next year when they add the Touch Bar to the MacBook Escape, but it still has two ports instead

⏹️ ▶️ John of four, then what the hell are you gonna call it? It’s not the MacBook Escape anymore. MacBook Escape with Touch Bar.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s MacBook too. So I have an important question for you, Marco. Are you sticking with the MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Casey One name, or are you going to adopt the CGP Grey MacBook Adorable name?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If I’m going to call it a name beyond its correct name of MacBook, or 12-inch MacBook,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then I’m going to call it MacBook One. It’s been around longer.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s more recognizable. And I think it’s, honestly, I think it’s a better name. Sorry, Grey, but.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s less of a value judgment, too.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly. But I mean, you know, realistically speaking, like it has now been, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that computer came out about what a year and a half ago, almost two years ago. Uh, it has now been long enough that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will fairly soon not need to call it the MacBook one anymore. Uh, that time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco might even be now, like, cause you only need these, these like pet names when Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco regular names, like are still ambiguous and confusing in people’s minds. When this, for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when the MacBook one first came out and they just called it a MacBook again, like lots of people still had memories

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the regular MacBook and what was called that not that long ago and everyone wanted to talk about this new computer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there was no good way to unambiguously do that but now if you say if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco say the MacBook now that still honestly does kind of refer to the whole family

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to some degree and people might be confused a little bit by that but if you just say MacBook or if you just say 12-inch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook I think you’re okay for the most part now. So I probably won’t need to use the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco name MacBook One much anymore. I might use it anyway because I like it, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think I really need to use it much anymore. Whereas, referring to the MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro 13-inch 2016, two Thunderbolt 3 ports is still in need

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a nice, short, unambiguous name. Yeah, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey terrible. Aye.

Are Casey and Marco millenials?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving on Mark King writes in to tell us that when John speaks of millions of Millennials

⏹️ ▶️ Casey typing on a screen That actually includes Marco and I strictly speaking and Mark has cited

⏹️ ▶️ Casey some thing on Wikipedia, which means it must be true and Millennials

⏹️ ▶️ Casey apparently start with those born in 1982 and I speak for Marco and saying both of us were born in 1982

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So strictly speaking we are old Millennials.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco See that’s BS though. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel like, you know, generations don’t just flip on a dime on December 31st at New Year’s. Like…

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marc

⏹️ ▶️ John Thiessen No, after you two were born, that was it. They closed the door. Like, all

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey right. David Wolff

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I was gonna say, this is like the upstate of like, of time or generations, right? You

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John know, it’s always

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the people younger than you that are the millennials. And so I actually do agree with Marco.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t feel like I qualify as this entitled self-obsessed generation, says the guy on his

⏹️ ▶️ Casey podcast. But I don’t think it’s too far after we were born.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would probably have put it at like 1990 ish, but whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John the baby boomers are self-obsessed. The millennials aren’t self-obsessed. The millennials

⏹️ ▶️ John are coddled and overconfident and have never had to try for anything. Those are the stereotypes

⏹️ ▶️ John and Gen X are disaffected and cynical and terrible.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I guess that’s fair.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, anyway, so yeah, apparently Marco and I are strictly speaking millennials, which is a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey interesting and perhaps sad realization for the two of us. So

⏹️ ▶️ John the problem is there has whatever name for the generations that are younger than millennials like there’s competition

⏹️ ▶️ John for what those names can be called. Please don’t send us the 8 million names you’ve heard. We can look them up too. But

⏹️ ▶️ John anyway one of them hasn’t won yet. So once a name wins it’ll be more convenient when we want to

⏹️ ▶️ John make fun of the young and to use that name. I use millennials because to me they are the young and but this

⏹️ ▶️ John person is right. You two are millennials as well.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco See I feel like when you know generations are kind of like they’re kind of like a like bell-curve

⏹️ ▶️ Marco shape like as the time goes on like it defines a certain era but as you get close to the edges

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the boundaries of the eras they become a lot less clearly defined so if you if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco refer and honestly I think for any generation like this is stupid but if you’re gonna refer to them I feel like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you say millennial you’re referring to kind of like the the hump the peak of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that wave and so by calling us any of the generations when we are literally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the boundary year between two twenty year long generations.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like it doesn’t really say anything like are we really that different from the people who are literally six months older

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than us like not really you know so it’s the when you get towards the edges it doesn’t really mean much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but referring to these generations at all is kind of dumb and is only a use for people to like yell about how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco weird the kids are these days

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s exactly how we’re using it though.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is the point.

Lightroom GPU acceleration

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. William Ranish wrote in and pointed out to us, I forget exactly the context,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I think maybe it was Marco was saying, oh, you know, I don’t need a super fast GPU

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or somebody was saying something along those lines. And William writes in to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey say, well, you may not think you need a super fast GPU because you’re maybe not playing games or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything like that, but is the GPU used by, say, image editing apps to do some

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the calculations required in order to mess with your pictures taken

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on your camera. That’s all GPU-based, is it not?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, some of it is. And that’s not to say that it doesn’t matter, but much of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is still very much CPU-bound. And the things that are generally where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I spend most of my time waiting for the CPU are not the things that GPU is really helping with.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I I still I have my my iMac with the the fancy GPU. I have my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 15-inch MacBook Pro without the fancy GPU and they do things at roughly the same

⏹️ ▶️ Marco speed like in Lightroom with the same kind of files like it’s not like the iMac should be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if GPU was really helping the things that I’m waiting on the iMac should be way faster than the MacBook Pro, but it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s it’s similar speeds. So and then and you and I can look and I can see and I stab menus that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the CPU cores are being pegged during these operations. I’m waiting for. So really it’s, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it might help many, many operations and stuff, but, uh, the, the things I’m complaining about,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh, it doesn’t really help. And again, it’s nice to have, but you know, not necessarily

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at certain costs and in certain roles. So, you know, my argument last week was that I wish they had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the GPU, the, basically the no GPU option in the 15 inch still there appear

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be good reasons why they don’t anymore, like related to Intel’s integrated GPU, being not as good anymore

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in those quad core configs, whatever, I don’t know, I don’t know the details of that, but something like that. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, I regret that they don’t have the option of no discrete GPU anymore, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh well, what are you gonna do? That’s kind of my attitude about MacBook Pro in general, is oh

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, what are you gonna do? Because there’s so much about it that’s a little bit weird or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco off or not quite for me. We’ll get to it,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John we’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get to it. Yeah, we will. We are sponsored this week by Harry’s.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Go to Harrys.com slash ATP right now to claim a free trial set and free

⏹️ ▶️ Marco post-shave balm. That’s Harrys.com slash ATP. Harry’s is the best

⏹️ ▶️ Marco value in razor blades, in my opinion. Now big razor companies, they have this annoying

⏹️ ▶️ Marco habit of putting out new models every few years and raising their already high prices even higher.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Unlike them, Harry’s does not believe in upcharging, which is why they made their razors even better and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re keeping prices exactly the same. Harry’s sells five blade razor cartridges,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco similar to what you might have seen from big brands. They now include a softer flex hinge

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a more comfortable glide, a trimmer blade for hard to reach places, a lubricating strip, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a textured handle for more control when it’s wet. And this is still the amazing value they’ve always been,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just $2 per blade, compared to $4 or more that you’ll pay for the big brands.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And by owning the factory in Germany where they make the blades, Harry’s can produce high quality razors themselves,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and sell them online for half the price. and this comes with all the conveniences of online shopping. You don’t have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to go to a drugstore, get into the anti-shoplifting case, anything like that, and you can just order what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you want and it gets delivered to you. They have great customer service if you ever need it. It’s wonderful.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Check out Harry’s, $2 per blade, and this is not a safety razor blade. I’ve used

⏹️ ▶️ Marco those, they’re fine, but I’m a big fan of the five blade razor cartridge. That’s simple as that, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I like. Harry’s is the best value in that business, bar none.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco $2 per blade cartridge. So go to Harrys.com slash ATP to learn more. There’s a special offer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for fans of this show. You will get a bottle of Harry’s post shave balm added to your order for free

⏹️ ▶️ Marco by visiting Harry’s.com slash ATP. Go there today and get your free trial

⏹️ ▶️ Marco set and your free post shave balm. Once again, Harry’s.com slash ATP. Thanks a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot to Harry’s for sponsoring our show.

External GPU boxes

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving on. Few people have written in to say that there are forthcoming

⏹️ ▶️ Casey external GPU boxes for new MacBook Pros. So Bizon Tech,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I apologize if I’m pronouncing that wrong, has a Bizon Box 3 external

⏹️ ▶️ Casey graphics card for Mac. Turn your Mac into a powerful workstation, up to 10X boost in games and professional

⏹️ ▶️ Casey apps. And so this looks like almost a mini tower-sized box. It looks

⏹️ ▶️ Casey quite large, I’m sure it’s actually not, that you can sit adjacent to your MacBook Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and connect via presumably Thunderbolt 3 and put any number of different

⏹️ ▶️ Casey GPUs in it, you can spend 21, or no, I’m sorry.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It’s-

⏹️ ▶️ Casey $2,700. Yeah, $2,700 on a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John box that has a graphics card in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that graphics card only apparently has Windows support, but nonetheless, you could spend basically

⏹️ ▶️ Casey half a MacBook Pro again getting an external graphics card. So John, is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this your solution to an excellent Mac based gaming platform?

⏹️ ▶️ John There have been a bunch of external GPU options ever since the the advent of Thunderbolt.

⏹️ ▶️ John And there are two main problems is one is not probably not a problem anymore, but used to be back in the early days

⏹️ ▶️ John of Thunderbolt. And that is that, although Thunderbolt basically gives you the ability to have sort of, you know, PCI

⏹️ ▶️ John bus that extends outside your computer. original Thunderbolt did

⏹️ ▶️ John not have as many lanes as top-end graphic cards took when you plugged them into like a gaming

⏹️ ▶️ John PC or PC or something. And that only mattered if you were going to actually use all that bandwidth between the card and the CPU

⏹️ ▶️ John and everything. And you could argue that it wouldn’t make a difference and you can’t measure or whatever. But back in the day, the band was insufficient.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m assuming with Thunderbolt three, that is either close enough not to matter anymore or has surpassed it. And it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not a problem anymore. But the real problem with external GPU solutions for me personally, why I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ John interested in them is because I have no faith that Apple supports them in any way

⏹️ ▶️ John shape or form. Bingo. And it’s not as if I need Apple to make the box, I just

⏹️ ▶️ John need Apple to say, oh yeah, this is a thing you can do with your Mac. I do not doubt that they

⏹️ ▶️ John can get this to work and I do not doubt that Apple has built support for external CPUs into the

⏹️ ▶️ John operating system that’s letting them do this. What I doubt is, is this going to be a supported

⏹️ ▶️ John configuration for me? Is some OS update going to get rid of it? Is it like, especially if you’re going to

⏹️ ▶️ John spend, you know, $800 for a really fancy GPU? Is it a thing that’s going to be useful

⏹️ ▶️ John for its purpose? Like, I don’t want to buy it and then two years later, like I can’t use it anymore because the drivers

⏹️ ▶️ John aren’t supported or there’s some bug or some new kernel change that but like, I need Apple’s blessing essentially for me to feel safe

⏹️ ▶️ John to pursue this because you know, otherwise, why don’t just make a gaming PC like at least then I know that’s unsupported by everybody

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s just my own my own challenge to battle and get to work or you know, I’ll I get driver updates

⏹️ ▶️ John from the video card company. So I’m personally very wary of solutions like this because

⏹️ ▶️ John I say as I sit in front of my eight year old computer, because I like to, you know, use things for a long

⏹️ ▶️ John time. And I really do want Apple to bless them in some way. Doesn’t just blessing for Apple doesn’t mean it’s going

⏹️ ▶️ John to be supported forever, obviously. But at least I’ll know that I’m not more on the fringes

⏹️ ▶️ John for other people who have, you know, less aversion to risk or just interested in trying something cool. definitely

⏹️ ▶️ John looks interesting and I would probably do this if I was more of a hobbyist hardware tinkerer but

⏹️ ▶️ John right now I am not interested in external GPUs until Apple gives me the nod about them.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly if I was more of a hobbyist hardware tinkerer I just build a Hackintosh or as you said

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just build a gaming PC like that’s because you do most of your gaming in Windows anyway right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Well yeah so this is the the other angle is like the thing that’s cool about is not hey

⏹️ ▶️ John I get to have a cool GPU it’s the cool thing is you get to have a laptop that works pretty well that you can

⏹️ ▶️ John also sit down plop it down on your desk and suddenly becomes way more powerful like so it’s the the whole hybrid kind of

⏹️ ▶️ John like the old Thunderbolt display with the laptop like you could just buy two separate machines but it’s kind of neat to have

⏹️ ▶️ John one machine with all your stuff on it that suddenly gets amazing new capabilities when you sit down at your desk and connect one little skinny wire that

⏹️ ▶️ John is the for me the novel interesting hardware hacker angle not just the fact that you can have a good

⏹️ ▶️ John GPU because you’re right you would just get a game if you just want a good GPU you get a gaming PC and there you go. It’s it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the you know the novelty of having external powerful things enhancing

⏹️ ▶️ John the power of your laptops and tons of PC laptops do this as well. This is not a unique thing to Apple or anything like that. It’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John you know Apple as far as I’m aware has never even acknowledged this is a thing which is really weird considering they have to provide

⏹️ ▶️ John some support for it for it to work at all.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean this the story that we get from like people like ATP tipster and other various

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sources. It really does sound like Apple really did do all of the work necessary

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make their own 5K display. And at some point, they were probably planning on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to be a product. And so they put in all this work to make Sierra support

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this kind of display over this kind of cable, make it support external GPUs over that kind of cable,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything else. And then instead, now they basically give it all to LG,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who was probably making the panel for it to begin with. LG ships it as their monitor and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple tells Nealey Patel, second hand on Twitter, that they’re out of the display business.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sunday.

“Out of the display business”

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a future follow-up item and we will discuss it. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John weird story.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There has to be something more to it than that because that is a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John weird

⏹️ ▶️ Marco story. I will just say here in case we don’t get to it again, that I think the idea of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco giving, of handing this over to LG and telling people, oh, if you want what was basically the Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 5K display, you have to now buy it from LG. That’s not as good. That’s not a very good solution

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because then that means that we have to order it from LG. LG, we have to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get LG’s warranty on it, we have to get LG’s support if anything goes wrong,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and of course, you know, LG’s exterior casing, which is kind of hideous,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all of that is worse than if we would have just bought it from Apple. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not a great situation. Like one person on Twitter pointed out, I’m sorry, I forgot who it was,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like up until now, or up until when Apple stopped selling the Thunderbolt display

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few months ago, If you bought a Mac and the Thunderbolt display and AppleCare for the Mac,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the AppleCare also covered the display. So you had your monitor covered for three years,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like you had your computer, which three years warranty on pro monitors is usually not what they go for. I think usually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re one year for most things like that. So again, it’s just like, and if anything ever went wrong with it,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as John, you know, you could bring it to an Apple store and you could have them deal with it. You could ship it to Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And now, like when it’s sold by somebody else, especially somebody like LG, who has a pretty miserable service in most things,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then you have to call God knows who, ship it God knows

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where, pay God knows what, and wait God knows how long to get it back. And it’s not nearly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as nice as if Apple would have just sold this themselves.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am a little scared for Apple’s future dedication to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco desktops, if only because that seems like a really weird move if you care about things like the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac Pro at all.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco We don’t know how

⏹️ ▶️ John long LG’s warranty is. Probably know they have a 10-year warranty. Fair enough.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So now, but what I don’t entirely get what makes this new display so unique because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I was looking at getting potentially a monitor for work before

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I got that 4K that I’m using now, I was looking at the Dell 5K and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that works with like my existing MacBook Pro that’s a few months old now on one cable.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So why was it so special that that this LG like they made a big deal about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it being over one cable? What am I missing here? It seems like this was something we could already do. All right, if

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re foisting this up, we’ll move it up and we’ll talk about it now.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Although you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John breaking that you’re breaking the flow of what I wanted to talk about in the order I want to talk about, which actually made sense. But that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s my job. That’s fine.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It’s like top four.

⏹️ ▶️ John What you just alluded to the 5k displays that neely patel tweeted and then his

⏹️ ▶️ John tweet was Quoted a bunch of places that apple confirmed to him that oh, they’re out

⏹️ ▶️ John of the standalone display business And that night that after I heard

⏹️ ▶️ John that tweet I had trouble getting to sleep because I was so upset about the prospect of there

⏹️ ▶️ John being no Apple monitor

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey But I was also are

⏹️ ▶️ John you serious? I’m serious, but I was also upset about What had gone down

⏹️ ▶️ John that day because here’s the deal like everything Marco said about Apple monitors is true And it’s like the reason I buy them and

⏹️ ▶️ John you know I like how the case looks I like how it’s warrantied as part of I like everything matches. These are all silly reasons, but it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s why it’s why I buy Macs I’m part of the reason I buy Macs. I like how the stuff looks together

⏹️ ▶️ John And so I don’t like the idea that there’s not going to be an Apple monitor But

⏹️ ▶️ John what really bugs me is That Apple would

⏹️ ▶️ John back channel, on background, semi, off the record, whatever, confirmed

⏹️ ▶️ John secretly, conveyed by a tweet, that they’re not making monitors anymore, that they’re out of the standalone display

⏹️ ▶️ John business. If Apple’s gonna be out of the standalone display business, they should say so, as a company.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, you don’t have to say we’re never gonna make one in a million years, but just say, don’t wait

⏹️ ▶️ John for us to release a 5K monitor, because we have no plans to do so, this is

⏹️ ▶️ John the one. I don’t understand why Apple can’t just say that. Instead, they have to do this thing, which

⏹️ ▶️ John is like, well, how much do I trust that? Can I find my own back channels into someone who

⏹️ ▶️ John spoke to someone who knows something in Apple to tell us, oh yeah, no, we’re not making them anymore. I know that Apple’s presentation said, here’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a great LG monitor, just do it, right? I feel like there should be, doesn’t have

⏹️ ▶️ John to be in the keynote, but it should be on the record statements from Apple,

⏹️ ▶️ John like not just one of them and not just a little turd, but like it should be common knowledge, Just like it’s common knowledge that they’re selling

⏹️ ▶️ John a new line of computers. Also say, and by the way, Apple, like, like when Apple left the printer business.

⏹️ ▶️ John They didn’t, like, just stop making printers and just tell people to buy other printers, but then not also say, guess what, Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not making printers anymore. Like that wasn’t a secret mystery. Everybody knew, you know, that bothers

⏹️ ▶️ John me immensely. So anyway, mostly because the news is bad and part of me still wants to

⏹️ ▶️ John cling to the idea that like, maybe they’ll change their mind next year and that’s why they’re not saying anything, blah, blah, blah.

⏹️ ▶️ John As for the specific of the LG thing, I really want someone to tear one of these apart, because we don’t know what’s inside there.

⏹️ ▶️ John Is there a GPU inside there that it’s communicating with through these new features in Sierra? Or is there not?

⏹️ ▶️ John To get to Casey’s question, is you know, multi stream multiple display

⏹️ ▶️ John port 1.2 streams, or some other technique to drive a big monitor? Is that

⏹️ ▶️ John what the Dell ones are using? Because I don’t think Apple invented this multi stream thing. Maybe it’s just a standard that existed. And this is the

⏹️ ▶️ John first time Apple supporting it in their notebooks. Or is it this weird external GPU

⏹️ ▶️ John we don’t know. As for random stuff, the tips to promise us a hub that has never been delivered said

⏹️ ▶️ John about how about how the tips is now such as now saying that Dell uses two cables and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John very buggy anyway, about the display with the GPU or whatever. Well, you know, the Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple didn’t ship that. So like, and I can say we’ve gotten

⏹️ ▶️ John conflicting reports of what exactly Apple has ever planned to ship or you know, or anything

⏹️ ▶️ John like that. Like, This is all just random hearsay. All we have to go on is what

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple actually delivers as products and

⏹️ ▶️ John what they say publicly. And right now, they’re not delivering a monitor and they’re sort of semi-kind of publicly saying they’re not

⏹️ ▶️ John making monitors anymore, which is hugely disappointing because I think that almost

⏹️ ▶️ John as much as not updating the Mac Pro in three years is sort

⏹️ ▶️ John of an abandonment of one particular market segment, the

⏹️ ▶️ John segment that buys the Mac Pro basically. It’s all

⏹️ ▶️ John part of the same thing. It’s saying, we’re not going to make a standalone monitor, and if we ever

⏹️ ▶️ John make another Mac Pro, just count your lucky stars and you’re just going to have to find another monitor for it because you don’t care about it.

⏹️ ▶️ John And the Mini, the same thing. It’s kind of like saying, the desktop Mac experience

⏹️ ▶️ John is the iMac, and these other computers, if we decide to make them or not, that’s fine. I don’t understand how Apple can

⏹️ ▶️ John be so dedicated to the Mac as it claims to be unless their conception of the Mac does not

⏹️ ▶️ John include anything that doesn’t come with a monitor which is that may be the case but like for me as a fan

⏹️ ▶️ John of Macs that don’t come with monitors for a variety of reasons canceling the monitor for me made

⏹️ ▶️ John me feel worse than them not updating the Mac Pro for three years like it made me for the first time really

⏹️ ▶️ John truly doubt whether they were ever going to make another Mac Pro I don’t care about the mini

⏹️ ▶️ John like canceling the monitor did that to me. So here I am saying there’s not going to be any more displays.

⏹️ ▶️ John Right? And many people point out like how can you believe the tipster is obviously all completely false information, whatever, I

⏹️ ▶️ John tipster I don’t I don’t care, whatever. He’s just it’s a fun diversion. But finding out from

⏹️ ▶️ John through Neil Patel through a tweet from Apple back channels that Apple itself is telling people

⏹️ ▶️ John are out of the standalone display business just crushed me. It crushed me to the point where I was immediately

⏹️ ▶️ John trying to consider if they come out with another Mac Pro, I don’t think I’m going to buy one. I should

⏹️ ▶️ John just get an iMac. I cannot live in a world where I going to wait until June of next

⏹️ ▶️ John year to get a new Mac Pro and then connect the third ugly third party five head monitor to it.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if I can do it. And I was like, well, if you can’t do it, then what are you even waiting for? Why don’t you just buy an iMac? Why are you sitting

⏹️ ▶️ John in front of this ancient computer? It’s lower than your phone now. It’s just ridiculous. Just, I don’t know. This, this

⏹️ ▶️ John monitor thing has totally destroyed me. So you’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying in this hypothetical world where they

⏹️ ▶️ Casey release a new Mac Pro, let’s just go just completely out of left field. Let’s say they bring back

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the cheese grater, but new insides, everything’s modern and beautiful

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the fans are silent and everything is perfect and it’s made for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John Syracuse. But because there’s no Apple external display, you would not buy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that hypothetical computer. That’s what you’re saying.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’d have to think about it. Like this is what I was up at night thinking about. It’s like, can I do it? What? And I have to say,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s mostly also because I know that there’s no prospect of any Mac Pro until a long time from now. Like that it’ll be

⏹️ ▶️ John even more waiting. If they came out with a Mac Pro tomorrow, like I would be less upset. But I know there’s no Mac Pro coming out tomorrow.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no Mac Pro coming out next week. There’s no Mac Pro coming out next month. It’s gonna be another long wait. And

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t, you know, I’ve been waiting a really long time, right? I don’t know if I can wait that long

⏹️ ▶️ John for the reward at the end of it to be whatever the hell decide the Mac Pro is now, and

⏹️ ▶️ John oh, by the way, find some monitor you can use with it. Good luck. I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t like it. You’re saying that you wouldn’t buy this perfect John Syracuse

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac that I’ve just invented out of thin air because you don’t like the look of the LG monitor.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I- It’s possible.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey possible. That does not compute in my mind.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John That is such- Put it this way,

⏹️ ▶️ John I have never had a non-Apple monitor. I’ve always had a series of Apple monitors.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, let me give you a hint. It’s okay. They aren’t as pretty in terms of the bezel,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey depending on who you’re talking with, but they work just fine. And in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey fact, in some ways, I prefer my LG monitor work because it’s much more matte

⏹️ ▶️ Casey than my iMac is. In every other measurable way, I prefer the iMac, but- I’m sitting

⏹️ ▶️ John in front of a matte Apple monitor right now, you realize. It’s older than

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your Mac Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly. But I mean, to each their own. If this is the way

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you want to live your life, then power

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John to you, man.

⏹️ ▶️ John I said I’m considering it. This is what this is what the display cancellation did to me. In

⏹️ ▶️ John the end, I think I can probably stick it out and I wouldn’t buy the current iMac. If I was waiting for an

⏹️ ▶️ John iMac, probably I would wait until they revise it with at least a new GPU in it. But like what I’m trying to do is

⏹️ ▶️ John get myself to the point where like I think you’d be okay with that because my wife’s got a 5K iMac. It’s like three feet over

⏹️ ▶️ John there. I use it all the time. The monitor is really nice. It’s way faster than my computer. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s got a one terabyte SSD, the GPU is faster than the one in my computer. Like, the more

⏹️ ▶️ John I sit there and use that one, the more I say, what are you waiting around for Mac Pro for? You know it’s not gonna be good for your

⏹️ ▶️ John purposes anyway. Like, the things that get me come back to it is like, you know, here are the fan on my wife’s iMac and

⏹️ ▶️ John all that stuff. But I was trying to figure out, should I, when the next

⏹️ ▶️ John iMac is revised, assuming it’s revised early next year or something, should I just buy it and not bother waiting for this Mac Pro?

⏹️ ▶️ John Should I buy it and then sell it if I like the Mac Pro better? I’ve just been waiting so long for this Mac Pro and the cancellation

⏹️ ▶️ John of the monitor has been the strongest signal to me that Apple is not interested in selling

⏹️ ▶️ John me the computer that I wanna buy anymore. I mean, as if the three year wait for the Mac Pro isn’t a signal enough, but who

⏹️ ▶️ John knows? They could come out with a new Mac Pro with their new conception of what the Mac Pro is supposed to be

⏹️ ▶️ John and I seriously doubt it will be anything like the cheese grater you described. But either way,

⏹️ ▶️ John if there’s no display with it, it’s really disheartening to me.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey their own. But I just, man, that’s that seems bananas to me.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I mean, do you do you? I’m, it’s just I can’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John imagine.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, like I said, I haven’t I’m not I’m not coming down that I’m definitely going to get an iMac. I’m just like, that’s what I was thinking

⏹️ ▶️ John after this announcement. I feel like I’ve come down a little bit from now. But the on the other side of it is like I said,

⏹️ ▶️ John the 5k iMac is really good. It’s a really good computer. Like the

⏹️ ▶️ John like, like I said, compared to the computer I have now it is better in every possible way and

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like oh but the GPU is not gonna be as big as the one in the Mac Pro. How do you know? Or maybe the new conception

⏹️ ▶️ John of the Mac Pro is to have the same GPU as the MacBook Pro. I don’t know what the new Mac Pro is gonna be. Nobody

⏹️ ▶️ John does. It just… I don’t know. So I’m at this point I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John still just waiting because I’m not gonna buy the current iMac but like it’s weird

⏹️ ▶️ John to be of two minds like I wish Apple had confirmed more strongly and officially that they’re out of the standalone display business

⏹️ ▶️ John because then they could have line of questioning and all the interviews are doing is like why are you out of the stand on display

⏹️ ▶️ John business people like to buy them you can add 100 bucks and get some margin do you really sell so few of them that you don’t want to do

⏹️ ▶️ John that do you not consider that part of the whole system do you think you can’t make a good monitor I mean your whole

⏹️ ▶️ John on this whole p3 thing and the color calibration and the retina and all that stuff you’re all about that except

⏹️ ▶️ John for your computers that don’t come with a monitor in which case I fend for yourself in the world in the land of third party monitors maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll recommend one good luck with warranty and repairs and And by the way, it’s ugly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I agree with you, John. The lack of the new monitor has also made me unreasonably upset because,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I agree, I think it does signal more than anything so far that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there probably won’t be another Mac Pro. Because again, if they were gonna make a new Mac Pro,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco why would they not make a new monitor to go with it? Do they really want the only

⏹️ ▶️ Marco option for Mac Pro buyers to be third-party, plasticky, crappy monitors? Is that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really what they want to be, only option for their highest end computer. I imagine that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not really their style. You know, that’s a very strong indicator that as much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I want the new Mac Pro to happen, and as much as like, you know, ATP Tipster

⏹️ ▶️ Marco says that they’re working on Skylake-E in some capacity, like, I don’t know what else that would be for except

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Mac Pro, but they’ve worked on previous Mac Pro updates and not released them.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, they’ve apparently worked on a 5K monitor and not released it. So if they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really don’t want to make their own displays, I really have to look at their actions, and not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I want to be true, and not what rumors say are true, or not what tipsters say are true.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have to look at just what they’ve done publicly and what they’ve not done publicly,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I just have to come to the conclusion that it is very unlikely that we’ll ever see a Mac Pro again.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because if that was not the case, we would see something about it. They would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco either have updated it all this time, or they would still be in the display business, because that’s pretty related,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something else. Again, this could be wrong. I would love for it to be wrong.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want a Mac Pro. I don’t want the best computer that can run the OS I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco use to only have four CPU cores, or to have loud fan noise

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I actually drive all those cores, or to be limited in the other ways I’m actually limited

⏹️ ▶️ Marco compared to Mac Pros, I want there to be a higher ceiling.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it just, it will really crush me, like, morally and my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco enthusiasm in this company, and the Mac platform as a whole. Because you know what?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Mac platform is really good on Pro hardware. It is designed for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro hardware. Mac OS scales really well to tons of CPUs,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco multiple GPUs, all sorts of cool like OpenCL stuff that never really took off, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it still has it all in there. The Mac platform is awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is such a good professional workstation OS. And to have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there no longer be professional workstation hardware that can even run it,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that will make me very, very sad. But again, I have to look at what Apple’s actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing. and it sure looks like there’s never gonna be another Mac Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now that being said, I am going to keep hope up that there will be one. I’m gonna

⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep hoping for it until next summer. And if we don’t get one by next summer, when other Skylake-E

⏹️ ▶️ Marco workstation platforms start shipping from Dell and HP and stuff, if we don’t get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one then, I will consider it over. But I am gonna hold up hope until then,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even though my hopes right now are pretty low.

⏹️ ▶️ John And by the way, for the tipster, like the supposed 5K monitor with GPU, that’s why I want to

⏹️ ▶️ John see the tear down of the LG one, because assuming he’s not just entirely fabricating this one explanation is what you

⏹️ ▶️ John were actually seeing is the internals of the LG display inside a Thunderbolt case inside

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, because that’s how Apple was working on their OS side of working on this thing. You know what I mean? It doesn’t mean

⏹️ ▶️ John that it was ever a product that Apple was ever going to ship, you know? So anyway, we have to

⏹️ ▶️ John see what’s inside this LG display before we know what the, The problem is those rumors are like I

⏹️ ▶️ John would find it Also, like Marco would find it even more depressing if they actually developed this thing internally and then it never went

⏹️ ▶️ John anywhere It would be much more explicable if that was just you know a development mule for

⏹️ ▶️ John the internals That actually went into the LG display and it was there so Apple could do it software side of it Which which again is perverse?

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like if you’re gonna do this cooperation with LG and let them sell the monitor Why let them get the margin on the

⏹️ ▶️ John monitor like they’re already making the panels for all your stuff like just why don’t you get? Take the margin you can make a nice case

⏹️ ▶️ John for that monitor here. hike up the price 50 100 bucks you think we won’t pay an extra 50 100 bucks

⏹️ ▶️ John over the price LG Of course we will like you’re not going to sell a lot of them but why you know

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll get to this when we talk about the MacBook Pro later but it smells like nickel and diming

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like well we don’t sell enough of these to care totally I acknowledge they don’t sell enough of these for it to be a blip

⏹️ ▶️ John so we can save a little money by having LG do it because we don’t care about the money it’s meaningless to us it might as well be

⏹️ ▶️ John zero dollars and it’s a lot of hassle for qualifying it and supporting it and doing warranty repairs and

⏹️ ▶️ John shipping the boxes like I totally see how this is a money loser for Apple. When, you know, when you look at

⏹️ ▶️ John everything that’s involved in it, but sometimes you have to do things like that to support

⏹️ ▶️ John the you know the use case of your top end users who again maybe are not profitable anymore but I feel like they’re an important

⏹️ ▶️ John part of keeping, you know, like, I don’t go through the whole hello car

⏹️ ▶️ John thing again but that whole angle, monitor as part of it and selling your own monitors as part of that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and like an Apple’s Apple is still in lots of businesses that are also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco low margin or not very necessary for most of their customers anymore. Things like they still sell their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wi-Fi routers and their time capsules. Like why? Why does Apple sell

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an outdated

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John wireless router?

⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t tell them they’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hear you. Right? Like They’re going to cancel those products too. Why did they kill those in the monitors? All

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these people who try to justify what Apple’s doing, they try to make excuses for Apple which you don’t need to do.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can almost always look at other parts of the Apple product line or very recent history

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you can get contradictions to that or counter arguments to that. In the case of the monitor thing, yeah, Apple doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to be in the monitor business. They don’t need to be in any business. They just need to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the iPhone business, that’s it. Apple can do just fine cutting out monitors, but then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco why are they not cutting out iPods? Apple still makes an entire

⏹️ ▶️ Marco line of iPods, and iPods are actually holding back progress in things like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iTunes. Imagine if Apple could totally cut iTunes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPod support. That could free up iTunes. It could free up so much engineering resources and legacy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco support and old stuff, and it could accelerate a possible future in which iTunes has its functions broken

⏹️ ▶️ Marco up into different apps that are actually good. Like, they have tons of reasons

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to not sell iPods anymore, but they still sell them because of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a handful of reasons that are good enough to keep them going. I’m not really sure what those are, but I’m sure people are buying them to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some degree, right? Wi-Fi routers and stuff, like, I don’t expect them to get frequent

⏹️ ▶️ Marco updates. I mean, they’re already very outdated and, you know, who knows? And they’re not really a a great deal anymore, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they still sell them for some reason. They still sell time capsules for some reason. I mean, talk about an ancient

⏹️ ▶️ Marco technology. The time capsule is an outdated wireless router with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a giant spinning hard drive in it. They still sell that, but they decided

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that monitors aren’t worth selling anymore? That makes no sense to me unless

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re killing off their entire desktop line except the iMac. You know, and one more thing too. It isn’t even just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about desktops. of people connect external monitors to their MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air and MacBook Pros. So, even if they kill the desktops,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they should still have displays that are sold for laptop customers. The last

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, the Thunderbolt and LED display before that, they were designed for laptops. They

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had little MagSafe charger and everything that would charge their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey laptops. So was this LG one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. These are obviously designed. So obviously this is still a business that exists

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if you kill the desktop. So I don’t know, it makes no sense.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we’re saying that because Apple got out of the display

⏹️ ▶️ Casey business, that is the canary in the coal mine for non-iMac desktops.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that could be, I don’t think I agree, but that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco could be. Well, it’s one of many. You know, it’s in the context of they haven’t,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only have they not even updated the Mac Pro in three years and the Mac Mini, and I think as long or roughly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as long, but the last update to both of those products made them worse in certain

⏹️ ▶️ Marco key ways and that they have not, not only have they not updated them, they haven’t even mentioned

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. Like they weren’t even on the, like when Apple showed like the slide of the Mac family, they weren’t even on the slide.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like they’re basic, like they’re still selling them totally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco unchanged for three years. Not a single update to like GPUs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or anything like that. like nothing has changed. So that is, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the context of that, where you have this very high-end machine that they do a major redesign

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that’s kind of more restrictive and more expensive, they talk about innovation a lot and then they never talk about it again,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not good.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the context of that, them also saying, you know what, we’re not gonna make our own version of this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 5K display, which, you know, technically would be perfect for the next model of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac Pro. Like, if they made the Apple version of this display and launched

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the same time as a Mac Pro next year sometime, that’d be amazing. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco many people would buy that combo, which would probably cost like $7,000, but you’d buy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it because we waited so long and it’d be so good. But again, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just, I don’t, if I’m honest with myself, I really don’t think it’s going to happen.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think the lack of a monitor any particular indicator for the desktop as if they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John you know I still think there’s a chance they’ll update the Mac Pro but like Marco pointed out it’s more

⏹️ ▶️ John of an indicator that Apple cares less about configurations that involve an external

⏹️ ▶️ John display because you know all the monitors having a little MagSafe connector it was clear it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John most people who are gonna buy this monitor are buying it because what they have a laptop but when they sit down at their desk they want a bigger

⏹️ ▶️ John screen than is available on a laptop that’s what these screens are for oh and by the way they also connect to desktop Macs

⏹️ ▶️ John but nobody cares right and that aesthetic and this is me just me personally that aesthetic

⏹️ ▶️ John of because it’s the main thing you’re looking at when you’re using a computer is you’re looking at the screen like what does a Mac look like back

⏹️ ▶️ John in the original Mac the whole thing was one thing the screen the floppy drive the power supply

⏹️ ▶️ John you know eventually the hard drive everything was all in one eventually you’re not

⏹️ ▶️ John looking at the computer part anymore except in the case of the iMac where it’s all in one right you’re look

⏹️ ▶️ John what you’re looking at is a screen and then you’ve got these tower computers or your Mac Mini for the desktop use cases.

⏹️ ▶️ John Giving up on the monitor, I’m surprised even Johnny Ive would allow this, means that anybody who wants a bigger screen than is available

⏹️ ▶️ John on a laptop is not going to be looking at an Apple thing. And I feel like, it’s not like, oh, I don’t have a Mac anymore

⏹️ ▶️ John just because the screen is an Apple screen or whatever. It’s just like that whole vibe

⏹️ ▶️ John of having an entire system that all matches and all works together and

⏹️ ▶️ John that is that has the highest guarantee of compatibility and supportedness over the years

⏹️ ▶️ John and is the most integrated with you know whatever weird buttons apple puts on whatever weird keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ John control they have are always going to work with them on and all that stuff and LG is totally integrated like that now which they emphasize

⏹️ ▶️ John in the keynote and maybe apple will keep them up to date but maybe apple will lose interest and be like oh if you bought that old

⏹️ ▶️ John LG one if it’s up to LG to update us with the drivers over like who knows like it seems like it’ll be

⏹️ ▶️ John less supported but it’s just giving up on that whole vibe of having all apple

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff it’s part of the reason that i personally like buying macs and taking that reason away makes me

⏹️ ▶️ John less enthusiastic about getting a shiny new mac if then i also have to wade into the world

⏹️ ▶️ John of third-party monitors or be forced to pick just one third-party monitor is literally the only one that works with their stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John in the integrated way that i want it to work work that that is it makes

⏹️ ▶️ John me less enthusiastic to buy a new Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess you spend a lot more time looking at the bezel of your monitor than I do because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that thing just I mean I I’m looking at a 4K LG monitor for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey now 40 to 45 hours a week and I mean in a perfect world

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’d like two of them side by side or even in a more perfect world I guess I should say a couple of Apple monitors I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey disagree with you that Apple monitors would be better in principle. But I can’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey say that I look at the bezel of this thing particularly often and that I think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to myself, well, you know, life sucks because this isn’t a shiny piece of aluminum. To each their own. This is why we’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey different people. But that just seems bananas to

⏹️ ▶️ John me. Well, you used to be a PC user, so you’re still looking at a lot of black plastic and crap.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John But I guess

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t view this as so egregious. And I mean, and again, to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey be clear, I don’t think that this LG Mondra that I’m looking at for 45 hours a week is pretty. I don’t. I think it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey relatively ugly. And there’s problems with it. It doesn’t have wide color, which to be honest, I still don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey see the difference that I can tell even in my iPhone for wide color, but whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It doesn’t have wide color. The mount on it that comes with it, it doesn’t height adjust.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s stationary. It’s static, which is annoying. It doesn’t pitch 90 degrees, which I never,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever do, but it’d be nice to have the option for some reason. So there’s plenty of things I don’t like about it. But at the end of the day,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all I’m looking at is the things on the screen. And Apple not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing a monitor to me doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care. I mean, look at the iPhone 7

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that a lot of people, a ton of people think that they

⏹️ ▶️ Casey charge and listen to music at the same time. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but a lot of people seem to think it. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you go to the Apple accessories, uh, Apple iPhone accessories page.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sure enough, there is a lightning audio and charge cable. So it’s one lightning

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to two lightning. You know, who makes that Belkin? And if Apple really gave a crap about the iPhone, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey guess they should make that too. Right? I mean, it’s, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John not, we’re not doing

⏹️ ▶️ John it to leap to give a crap about the, or at least I’m not making a leap to give a crap about the Mac. It’s just that my particular

⏹️ ▶️ John use case, like what I’m thinking that they’re giving up on that they don’t care as much about is the holistic aesthetic. Like I said,

⏹️ ▶️ John forget about desktop. Pretend there are no desktop computers and it’s only laptops. The old Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John cared enough about the overall aesthetic of the system that they can put in their product shots and that their ideal customer

⏹️ ▶️ John would buy to make giant expensive monitors that, as people in the chat room pointed out, are

⏹️ ▶️ John always way more expensive than equivalent monitors for the same panels. Like, again, granted, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John With little MagSafe things to charge your monitor dangling off the end of them. Like it was

⏹️ ▶️ John a laptop accessory. And why, who in the world would buy a laptop accessory from Apple at a ridiculous

⏹️ ▶️ John price? Because it looks really nice. Like, that’s, that’s it, because it matches and it looks nice, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John And yeah, they were, happened to be usually good monitors when they came out and they were convenient and all those stuff. But

⏹️ ▶️ John like, it’s, it’s Apple saying, yeah, it did look nice and it was cool,

⏹️ ▶️ John but the coolness was not worth being in this business to us anymore. And the coolness to me

⏹️ ▶️ John is totally worth it. And I would like to give them money and they won’t take my money. And I, you know, that it makes me

⏹️ ▶️ John sad. Is it a good business idea? Is it better to get out of that business? It was a money loser. And

⏹️ ▶️ John most people don’t care. I don’t know. It’s not doesn’t really say anything about whether they care about the Mac or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John It just means that their priorities don’t align with mine on this particular issue. And I’m sad about it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. That we’d spent a lot longer talking about that than I expected. My goodness.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I spent a lot

⏹️ ▶️ John longer thinking about that than I expected. I couldn’t believe I seriously I was up and that my wife

⏹️ ▶️ John was already asleep next to me. I’m like, what am I going to do? Am I even getting a Mac Pro? Should

⏹️ ▶️ John I give up? Like, it was terrible. It was a literal dark night of the soul when I found out that

⏹️ ▶️ John monitor was canceled. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey not one that

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t update the Mac Pro for three years. Here I am just happily hoping, like, I’m sure it’ll update it eventually.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just waiting patiently. Look at me be patient. No more monitors. No.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No! Heh.

MacBook Pro pushback

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, my thoughts and prayers are with you in this difficult time. Dan Frakes writes that Apple has told

⏹️ ▶️ Casey him that the MacBook Pro maxes out at 16 gigs of RAM because LPDDR3’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey limit is 16 gigs a chip, and Apple uses it because of a performance to energy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ratio. And then building on that, there was a, I guess an

⏹️ ▶️ Casey interview or somebody asked

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Schiller, I think it was. There was an email. They emailed him and he replied.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Thank you. Schiller said, and I’m quoting, to put more than 16 gigs of fast RAM into a notebook designed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at this time would require a memory system that consumes much more power and wouldn’t be efficient

⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough for a notebook. I hope you check out this new generation of MacBook Pro. It really is an incredible system.”

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that is supposedly, and other people have come to this conclusion as well, that is supposedly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey why Apple is not shipping more than 16 gigs of RAM in the MacBook Pros, which,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey full stop. I mean, that’s a bummer. If I were to buy one today, I would absolutely want want

⏹️ ▶️ Casey more than 16. Would I need more than 16? Probably not, but I’d want it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, and that’s today. And sometimes people want these computers to last four or five years. That’s not unusual.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, uh, this, this is a bummer, but I don’t really see how this is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple’s fault and I’m assuming one of you is going to tell me, well, I would definitely pay money for the thing that lasts two

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hours that has 11 gigs of, you know, 80 million gigs of Ram,

⏹️ ▶️ John not two hours. But yeah, well, so before we even get to that angle, there has been much,

⏹️ ▶️ John Support for the idea that this is not Apple’s fault out there

⏹️ ▶️ John down you know this is the basics of just like look the the The specific CPU they’re using

⏹️ ▶️ John with the good GPU whatever the good G the iris pro graphics or whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John Doesn’t have a chip set that supports more memory capacity and blah blah blah blah like this is a thing

⏹️ ▶️ John One other thing that people have brought up surprisingly, to get showing the links people will go to to

⏹️ ▶️ John make excuses for Apple is that there is a FAA has a restriction

⏹️ ▶️ John of like 100 watt hours for batteries, right? And that Apple can’t make

⏹️ ▶️ John a battery bigger than that. And you know, which I don’t even know if that’s true, first of all, but second of all,

⏹️ ▶️ John let’s just assume it is true. And then they follow that up by saying, and that’s why the new MacBook Pros

⏹️ ▶️ John have a 76 watt hour battery. It’s like, well, wait a second. What they’re saying is,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, they could add that extra 20 something watt hours, but that wouldn’t be enough to power the memory system

⏹️ ▶️ John subsystem required to support 32 gigs of RAM. I think the actual issue, as with a lot of this Intel stuff,

⏹️ ▶️ John is not that you can’t have a laptop that is also pretty

⏹️ ▶️ John small and light that supports 32 gigs of RAM, because I’m pretty sure Dell sells one that’s not that much

⏹️ ▶️ John bigger than, you know, it is thicker, Granted but it’s not that much thicker and it supports 32 gigs of RAM

⏹️ ▶️ John and he uses the sixth generation Intel chip You know the you know, it’s not it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John KB like or whatever I’m pretty sure it’s it’s sky like ones but but but

⏹️ ▶️ John but I’m also pretty sure is not the particular Skylight chips that Apple always

⏹️ ▶️ John uses with the big honkin Embedded GPU with the ED ram and all that other crap.

⏹️ ▶️ John So I still put this mostly on Apple because

⏹️ ▶️ John they insist on using only a particular stream the best strain to be fair they always

⏹️ ▶️ John want the best of the best the ones with the best embedded GPU because a lot of the stuff in Mac OS uses

⏹️ ▶️ John the GPU for things right so they want the best of the best and if the best of the best isn’t available

⏹️ ▶️ John they won’t ship the other kind and what I was thinking about is the way to potentially solve

⏹️ ▶️ John this with the with the smallest number of sacrifices in the short term until you you know, another chip comes

⏹️ ▶️ John out that does what it is. Ship the Intel CPU

⏹️ ▶️ John with either the crappy, the crappy one, the one that doesn’t have the fancy embedded

⏹️ ▶️ John GPU in it, because you’re putting a discrete GPU in everything anyway, and do it the old fashioned way

⏹️ ▶️ John where you just always use a discrete GPU. And yes, that would slaughter battery life, and now you can support 30 gigs

⏹️ ▶️ John of RAM, which is a slaughter battery life even more. And yes, then you’d have to make the thing three millimeters thicker,

⏹️ ▶️ John and then you’d probably have to make it a separate model. and then why are we having a separate model that’s just this weird transitional

⏹️ ▶️ John thing like the fat MacBook Pro for people who need all this crap. And that just gets us right back to the original argument

⏹️ ▶️ John which is that’s not what Apple wants to do or whatever. So in the end, I don’t think this is that big a deal because

⏹️ ▶️ John I think actually in this case, given the constraints put on them by Intel, they probably

⏹️ ▶️ John made the right choice because what they’re designing, this MacBook Pro case, I assume, the 15-inch MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ John Pro case, will be with us for a pretty long time. I don’t expect them to shave another two millimeters off of next

⏹️ ▶️ John year. I expect this case to be the guts to be swapped out of it and new guts to be put into it, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John And if it just so happens that Intel doesn’t give them anything that can fit in this case with this much battery with

⏹️ ▶️ John reasonable battery life It is a better choice to limit to 16 to keep the battery

⏹️ ▶️ John life at what it is Like it’s a better choice economically speaking and for

⏹️ ▶️ John uniformity It would be a better choice for customers who are very demanding to alt to

⏹️ ▶️ John make that other model just for them RAM, but boy that’s asking a lot of a company that is trying

⏹️ ▶️ John to narrow things down and that hasn’t updated the Mac Pro in three years to make a special one-off model just for this generation

⏹️ ▶️ John of Intel CPU because it can’t support 32 gigs of RAM that is thicker and has more battery and

⏹️ ▶️ John uses a different arrangement of CPU and GPU and also still gets worse battery life.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s just not a thing that Apple is interested in doing. So if they’re not interested in doing that, like 16

⏹️ ▶️ John gigs of RAM isn’t embarrassing for For the people who don’t buy it because it can’t support 32,

⏹️ ▶️ John I feel for them in the same way I feel for people who want Mac Pros and who

⏹️ ▶️ John want external monitors, but it is in keeping with what Apple has been doing to its product line,

⏹️ ▶️ John and I think they are hitting the fat part of the curve there. Most people don’t need more than that.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is better to have a lighter, thinner thing and have lower power requirements. So this is

⏹️ ▶️ John exactly in the same vein as everything else we talked about. people not making

⏹️ ▶️ John hardware for this very narrow set of people who are very demanding. And in this case, it is

⏹️ ▶️ John partially explicable by the availability of the kinds of CPUs they can put in it, but

⏹️ ▶️ John it still makes all of us sad. That’s what we’re talking about this show. We’re not talking about how Apple is doomed and how this is a bad computer

⏹️ ▶️ John and people shouldn’t buy it. We’re totally talking about how a bunch of nerds who want the best of the best are sad

⏹️ ▶️ John about the choices Apple is making.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well, because like here’s Here’s why some people have expressed bewilderment.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Why are so many people so upset about the new MacBook Pros? The thing is,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple makes one type of laptop now, really. They make the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ultra-thin and light, the ultra-portable. All of their laptops now are in this category.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It used to be, not that long ago, that most computer manufacturers had different laptop

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lines for basically with different size, weight, and performance classes. So you’d have like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the thin and light, which by today’s standards would be considered comically heavy, but you know, basically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have the old thin and lights that were like, you know, exactly what it sounds like, but as a result, they would be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually slower, you know, more limited and everything. And then you kind of have like the mainstream line kind of in the middle and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then you have the desktop replacement, which is like, you know, the big heavy ones

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that have like, you the very highest end CPUs, GPUs, and stuff that you could fit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in any reasonably sized laptop. And basically, Apple only

⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes one of those now. Basically, everything Apple makes is a thin and light. And the reason why so many

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people get upset every time they change or don’t change anything, but mostly when the changes happen,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that making a thin and light requires you to cut lots of things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to limit lots of things and to not address lots of what everyone thinks are edge cases,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or as you just said, John, like little narrow slices at the market. The problem is, this is kind of like the 80-20 myth,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the main problem here is like, you look at the list of things that got worse

⏹️ ▶️ Marco between the last MacBook Pro and this one. Obviously things got better, you know, weight, performance, batteries.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Certain things got better, right? But certain things were either cut or got worse.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Certain, you know, ports are no longer there, the SD card reader’s no longer there,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the RAM ceiling did not get raised to what people want and everything. Any individual one of these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco excuses, or any individual one of these problems can be justified or excused

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in some way. Usually it goes with either like, well, we couldn’t fit more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this super thin, light, low power computer, which is kind of a self-imposed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem because they don’t make one that isn’t super thin and light and low power. Or you can justify these things by

⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying, well, we cut the SD card reader, whatever it is, or recut

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the HDMI port because only some little percentage of the user base

⏹️ ▶️ Marco used it. The problem is that the little percentage of the user base that used the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco HDMI port does not completely overlap with little percentage of the user base that used the SD card slot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so on and so on. So if you look at the sum of all of the little limitations

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and things that have been added to this, and additionally, by the way, the price hikes don’t help, so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then you have like the not small percentage the user base who is very unhappy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or actually has to make a different decision now because of the price hike. So basically you add all these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco percentages up and while it may seem that any one of the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco downsides might only affect a small percentage of the user base, a large percentage

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the user base is affected by one of them. Like just you can’t name it, you know, the simple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stats like you can’t say like everyone is affected by the removal of the HDMI port

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But lots of people are affected by one of the removals on this computer. It’s just different

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for everybody. And a pro line like it, you know, historically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the highest end laptops would have the fewest limits because they could. They had they had lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they had larger cases. They usually had larger screens. So they were they were bigger. They were higher priced.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They sold in smaller quantities to more demanding markets. And so there was room both physically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and in profit margin and everything else, there was room for more ports, higher

⏹️ ▶️ Marco end things, higher wattage things and everything. And so to have the even the pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco machine be this limited in so many ways

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to have so many of the potential or current or actual buyers of this machine being

⏹️ ▶️ Marco disappointed by one thing that got worse about compared to the previous ones, that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is why so many people are mad because that’s usually you don’t usually do that in high-end pro machines. Usually things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t get extremely more restrictive at the high end. Usually the high end is where you go

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because what everyone considers like designing for the future and being forward looking and everything, that’s all done

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the low end. Like when the MacBook One came out, we all said, you know, well, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a really very compromised machine in a lot of ways, but we can just say, well, you know what? It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not for you, so you don’t have to buy it. And that worked for like, you know, a year and a half

⏹️ ▶️ Marco until now the compromises for the MacBook one have now mostly been spread

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the entire line of MacBook. So now you can’t just say that’s not for you anymore. Now it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like well if you buy if you still want to use Mac OS whenever your current laptop

⏹️ ▶️ Marco dies you need another one you’re gonna have these these restrictions on you that’s it like it’s the combination

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like the all those stats adding up to be like you know almost everyone’s affected by one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these things compared to also now the new lack of choice that we really have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about a lot of these factors. Like if Apple were to make a… I mean look, and one of the ways they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco could address this, they still sell the old one. Now they did this also when they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco introduced the Retina MacBook Pro in 2012. The very first 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in 2012. They launched for I believe also 22 or 24 hundred bucks, something like that, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was higher than the previous one. So they kept selling the old one to hit a price point. But they did something else.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They updated the internals of the old one as well to match the new one. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever I think, I forget what CPU generation that was, whatever was before Haswell, it was the one right before that, right? When

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 2012 redesign happened, the last redesign in this lineup, they kept selling the old one but they updated

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the guts so that it was, if you didn’t care about the retina screen and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the thinner and lighterness of it, you could still get all your old stuff in the old one with new

⏹️ ▶️ Marco guts. This time, they’re doing the same thing where you can still get the old one if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t care about the new advances and everything, but they didn’t update the guts. And you gotta think about, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all, it’s kind of a bummer. Second of all, why? The honest reason is probably because they just don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco care. They’re gonna phase these things out and obviously Apple does not care about keeping their Macs up to date. You know, that’s modern Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks, whoever. But imagine if you saw the new

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 15-inch MacBook Pro, and next to it in the store page, as it is now, is the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco old one. But imagine if the old one also got Skylake and a couple of USB-C Thunderbolt 3

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ports. Which one of those would look more like the Pro machine, and which one of those do you think would sell

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I, okay. So let’s suppose

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you wanted a machine with infinite flexibility

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in that, or the infinite, it’s a strong word. Let’s suppose you wanted a machine where you had

⏹️ ▶️ Casey several ports, any of which could do fricking anything.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It could drive a display. It could accept power. It could drive old USB. It could drive

⏹️ ▶️ Casey new USB. It can do anything. You could plug in a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey little docking port or not. You could plug in an SD card reader or not, or a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey compact flash card reader. I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just don’t see this the same way that you guys seem to. The reality of the situation is there’s no right

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or wrong. I’m right and I’m wrong. Marco is right and he’s wrong. John is right and he’s wrong.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, except John is never wrong.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have no USB-C peripherals, and there are times that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I plug things into my USB ports on my MacBook Pro. There are times

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I plug in an HDMI cable to my MacBook Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I certainly would need a dongle or two

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in order to hypothetically get one of these new MacBook Pros. And in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the near term, that might be a little annoying. I don’t see it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as anything more than that. And I see this, I personally

⏹️ ▶️ Casey do see this as the Pro machine. In fact, the thing that I’m grumpy about is what we already talked about,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is 16 gigs RAM. But in every other way to me, this is very much the Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Machine. It has four ports that you can use for freaking anything.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t understand why the world is so friggin worked up about dongles.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey A, they’re annoying. Yeah. Okay. They’re annoying. Fine. Whatever. I have a dongle today

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Ethernet. I use it from time to time and you know what? Life goes on. I have a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey dongle sometimes for displays. Right now, I actually have a cable that goes

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Thunderbolt to, I think it’s DisplayPort, but for years, I used a dongle for my display.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you know what? Life went on. And have I lost any of these dongles? No,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think so, because I’m an adult. I don’t lose things. That’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey something that I do. I just, ah, it drives me bananas, because to me,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John it’s so- Wait until you get

⏹️ ▶️ John your AirPods, we’ll see.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe, maybe. But on the one side, I do agree with you, Marco. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not placating, I really honestly do. Like I understand where you’re coming from and there’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey certainly something to be said for maybe this is too early, maybe this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is leaving the true utter professionals out to dry. But let’s, the only thing I can do is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey use me as an example. I write code for a living. That’s what I do. By most definitions, that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a pro level profession in whatever definition of pro you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so choose. It’s the sort of thing that even if I wanted to, today I could

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not do on an iPad. Yes, there’s Swift Playgrounds, but you can’t release an

⏹️ ▶️ Casey app to the App Store with Swift Playgrounds. I have to have a Mac. I can’t have a PC

⏹️ ▶️ Casey unless I hackintosh whatever. I have to have a Mac. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I— I like your

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hackintosh voice. So I am, by at least some

⏹️ ▶️ Casey definition, a professional. I’m not a photographer. That’s a different kind of professional. I’m not an

⏹️ ▶️ Casey artist, that’s a different kind of professional, but I am a professional. No question. And for me,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think this machine would be friggin’ awesome. And there will be times that I’m going to have to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey plug in my iPhone 7 to this computer and oh my god, I need a dongle, oh

⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, or I’ll just get one of the USB-C to lightning frickin’ cables. This is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not a big deal. This is a problem that can be solved. I don’t understand

⏹️ ▶️ Casey why there’s so much, oh God, there’s so much angst about this. And yes, Marco, and I’m picking

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on you because, you know, I feel like you and I are most vocally on opposite sides of this conversation.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do agree with you. And again, I hope I don’t sound like I’m placating you because I mean it. I agree with you. It is less

⏹️ ▶️ Casey convenient to plug in something to a dongle to the computer than plugging it in directly to the computer.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Totally agree with you. But at the same time, the only way to get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the world forward, the only way to march forward and to get people using USB-C is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to friggin force them to because gosh knows even as a super nerd who wants to live

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the cutting edge if I have a choice between using old ass USB or modern USB

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m going to choose the old one because that’s what all my stuff already is. I’m never going to bother buying a USB-C to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey lightning cable. What does that do for me? Not a damn thing other than cost me 20 bucks whatever it is. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at some point you have to rip the band-aid off. Now maybe maybe it’s too soon. Maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is not the right time. I don’t have a good answer for that. That very well could be true. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at some point, Apple has to say this new future where

⏹️ ▶️ Casey any port can be anything to anyone is worth fighting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for. And I personally am okay with that. I think I might be standing alone on this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one and that’s okay. And it’s kind of funny because I’m actually not in the market for a laptop and I probably won’t be

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for another couple of years at the earliest, but I’m looking forward to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting one of these. I would like a lighter laptop. Do I need one? No, I don’t,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I’d like it. I’d like a laptop where I can plug in the power port, damn it,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey RIP MagSafe, but be that as it may, I can plug in power to either side as I see fit. Why not? Wee!

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can do whatever I want. I’d like a laptop where I could plug in a cheap docking station. The

⏹️ ▶️ Casey only reason I haven’t bought a Thunderbolt docking station, which would be amazing.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was well, actually I only plug a couple of things into my computer anyway, but beyond that, they’re frigging expensive. They’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like $300 for a crappy docking station. And I’ve seen reasonable USB-C docking stations for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like half that money.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, that’s because of the protocol, not the connector.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair, fair. I’m frustrated not with any one particular

⏹️ ▶️ Casey person. I’m frustrated in general because I understand where you’re coming from, Marco,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you’re not wrong. Despite everything I’ve just said, you’re not wrong. But at the same time,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just, I don’t feel like this is such an affront to the professional as everyone

⏹️ ▶️ Casey else in the world seems to. So, and since I’m the only one that’s making this speech, it seems,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I guess I’m the one

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s wrong. But you know what I’m saying.

⏹️ ▶️ John You didn’t, you just lumped, you lumped me in with Marco before and didn’t even ask me what I thought of this. Marco

⏹️ ▶️ John already knows, because I think we discussed it in Slack at one point.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, what do you think? I’ll give you the floor, sir.

⏹️ ▶️ John Again, I understand everything that Marco was saying about this. I think that

⏹️ ▶️ John going all Thunderbolt 3 is the right thing to do on these computers.

⏹️ ▶️ John In fact, I wish they had even more ports, because I’m a port maniac. And I’m mostly

⏹️ ▶️ John on that side. I think if they had the two laptops that Marco described, the bigger one and then the skinny I think the skinny

⏹️ ▶️ John one would sell more. Way more. Like kind of the same reason that the laptop that had

⏹️ ▶️ John a CF card slot, like the, or no, not a CF card slot, the PC card, formerly known as PCMCIA.

⏹️ ▶️ John The express card 34? Yeah, whatever. And the side of the 17 inch laptop, like that was

⏹️ ▶️ John sitting there too. It had tons of ports. It had ports no other laptop had because it could, because it was big enough to have them,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? And they discontinued it because not enough people bought it, right? I totally see the trade-offs. I hate

⏹️ ▶️ John dongles too. I want the future where everything is uniform. I think

⏹️ ▶️ John making a machine like this brings the future here sooner by forcing people to do uncomfortable things.

⏹️ ▶️ John The problem I have, as with almost every other criticism surrounding this event, is not so much with

⏹️ ▶️ John the machines that were introduced, but with the fact that, hey, Apple, if you really want to hasten

⏹️ ▶️ John the USB-C future, put it on all your Macs and stop selling the ones that don’t have it.

⏹️ ▶️ John I am even more enthusiastic for, please get rid of all, because we’re never going to get rid of this legacy USB

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff if Apple keeps selling year after year after year computers with this connector on it. The current iMac

⏹️ ▶️ John has this connector, the current Mac Pro let’s not even talk about right? It does not have Thunderbolt 3 connectors in the back

⏹️ ▶️ John of it. In fact nothing has Thunderbolt 3 things on the back. It’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah so this particular Mac if I had to pick what the complement

⏹️ ▶️ John of ports should be on this particular Mac the only difference I would do is I would put the SD card slot on it

⏹️ ▶️ John not as Marco ranted about on today, not because it’s that big a deal and most people don’t use it,

⏹️ ▶️ John but because I think it’s small, there’s room for it. And it is the one thing with it, there is not,

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s nothing you can do to the outside that Apple can do to the outside world to force the outside world

⏹️ ▶️ John to come up with a solution that obviates the need to stick an SD card into something because Apple doesn’t make standalone

⏹️ ▶️ John cameras. So they can’t force standalone camera companies to suddenly make really fast, reliable wireless

⏹️ ▶️ John or really are improved USB or anything like that that is going to make it so that you have

⏹️ ▶️ John a solution that is better than taking the SD card out. Right. So given that they can’t do that and there’s no

⏹️ ▶️ John replacement for the SD card, just put the slot in there. It’s a little bit easier. It’s not a big deal. Put it only on the big one.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like that is the only change I would have made. I would not put USB type A connectors on this thing anywhere. I would

⏹️ ▶️ John not put an HDMI port. I would not do any of that stuff. And I live in an office where every conference room

⏹️ ▶️ John has this hydra of wires poking out of it, including dongle

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey adapters for

⏹️ ▶️ John mini-display port, mini-DVI, VGA, all of which are metal-wired,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, like those anti-theft wires things? Not because they think we’re going to steal them, but because, like, when

⏹️ ▶️ John they were loose, people would take them from one conference room to the other, and they would migrate around and people would bring them back to their desks and write their

⏹️ ▶️ John names on them in Sharpie or whatever. Dongles are terrible. Dongles are the devil, right? I

⏹️ ▶️ John want

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey to get to the

⏹️ ▶️ John world where we can stop with that, and you’re not going to get to the world where you can stop with that unless you just

⏹️ ▶️ John get rid of the old port. So I’m all that I agree with Apple’s decision not to put legacy ports on this.

⏹️ ▶️ John My only quibble is I would have thrown an SD card slot in there. Everyone probably has their own quibble. They would say HDMI, but like for all the other

⏹️ ▶️ John ones like, Oh, I wish I had an HDMI port. Dongles are annoying. Eventually, eventually, someday, maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John possibly, I don’t know, maybe I’m maybe I’m foolish to think this. Eventually, all of the high end peripherals

⏹️ ▶️ John should have a little tiny connector on them. Like, I mean, we’re fighting, we’ve been fighting against VGA for how many decades now?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And it’s still out there. But I feel

⏹️ ▶️ John like now if you buy like a projector for business, maybe they all still come with with VGA.

⏹️ ▶️ John But I feel like now the tide is turning a little bit to say, all right, let’s not have a VGA connector. Let’s

⏹️ ▶️ John let’s let the default connector be at least DVI or something or maybe DisplayPort or maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John mini DisplayPort. Like I want to I want to herd us towards better standards. I’m using hand motions

⏹️ ▶️ John here and knocking things on my desk. I want to herd us towards better standards. And I want Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John to help that along by purging legacy ports. So I’m actually mostly on Casey side of this.

⏹️ ▶️ John And by the way, for the specific computer for the 16 gig things, I just want to say, I think if Apple could

⏹️ ▶️ John have put 32 gigs in there with the particular Intel chipset, they would have I don’t think they’re holding with holding it out of spider because they

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think people need it. It’s just like they were, as Marco said, totally dedicated to this thin and

⏹️ ▶️ John light thing. And 16 is all they could fit. If they could have Fit32 they would offer it and charge us a

⏹️ ▶️ John bajillion dollars for it like they usually do So I have some faith that in 2018 when

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever the follow-up is Coffee Lake which is apparently going to be

⏹️ ▶️ John the next available Intel CPU with the good embedded GPU that can

⏹️ ▶️ John support 32 gigs of RAM with the good chipset So 2018 or 2019 Coffee

⏹️ ▶️ John Lake then we will get our 32 gig laptop and not before then and that

⏹️ ▶️ John may be a long frustrating wait but for this specific machine at this point in time 16 gigs

⏹️ ▶️ John RAM disappointing but I can choke it down and USB C along the side

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m pretty much okay with I would have liked an SD card slot but I am I’m mostly on

⏹️ ▶️ John Casey’s side with this and in fact you mentioned the band-aid thing I think it’s exactly what I mentioned I was talking about this in slack

⏹️ ▶️ John like you know earlier in the week that you know rip the band-aid off and of course you know

⏹️ ▶️ John again my complaint is if you’re gonna rip the band-aid off you can’t do it by changing just one thing and keep selling the freaking MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ John Air forever. So I’m still angry at Apple, but not about this machine, about all the other machines.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and I think that’s the thing is, I’m not the first person who’ve said this, but I wonder

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if some of the, the whining and moaning about these computers

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is less about these computers and more about feeling boxed.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let’s suppose I’m a professional photographer and I want

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have this machine in the field that can do, I don’t know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever professional photography people do, like plug in SD cards and, and do computationally difficult

⏹️ ▶️ Casey things, or, you know, have a bazillion pictures open at once, which somehow necessitates 32

⏹️ ▶️ Casey gigs of Ram. Well, you know, if this isn’t for you, well, there’s no real Mac pro

⏹️ ▶️ Casey option. The iMac is below me because I’m a professional. So what options are

⏹️ ▶️ Casey left? And I think if Apple had simultaneously released

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or even made some amount of mention of, hey, you know, here’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey some other device, be it a desktop or a super crazy laptop, that’s really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey terrible, but professionals would like it or some other thing, then maybe we

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wouldn’t be so desperate. But because we’re all, you know, in the middle of the ocean

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and paddling and and trying to stay above water, but our arms are getting tired and we’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wondering if Apple really cares about us anymore, if that life vest will ever appear. We’re getting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really antsy and really concerned over a computer that really isn’t meant for us. Like, Marco,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you don’t even use a laptop on a regular basis, yet here you are fairly perturbed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this particular laptop. And I think it’s- I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because of what you’re about to say, though, because like- Because you have no options. Yeah, I as a pro am worried

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the things I use are going to move towards laptops.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also, sometimes I do use a laptop. Like when I go away for like a week at a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time, a few times a year, where I really do use that heavily during

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that time. So I don’t use a laptop frequently, but when

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do use it, I use it heavily. So I am a pro user when I use my laptops, no question.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think Andrew Cunningham at Ars Technica had a good take on this is intro to the review of the only

⏹️ ▶️ John review hardware that people have, which is the MacBook escape, started by saying that Mac users have been frustrated

⏹️ ▶️ John with Apple lately and you know, the whole thing of like the Mac not getting updated as much and so on and so forth. And so the

⏹️ ▶️ John second paragraph is the new MacBook pros released for the record a year and a half after the 2015 models,

⏹️ ▶️ John which were in some cases changed very little from the 2014 2013 models have been birthed into this era

⏹️ ▶️ John of frustration. That is the key thing is what you’re just getting at Casey. It’s not so much that

⏹️ ▶️ John I think people are particularly mad at these models or whoever has quibbles about, you know, what ports they have and the pricing and 16

⏹️ ▶️ John gigs and stuff like that, but because they enter the world that they are entering is the world in which

⏹️ ▶️ John all of the most ardent Mac fans are frustrated with the Mac line. And as good

⏹️ ▶️ John as these may be, the rest of the line is still just sitting there, especially in Salt and Leaks

⏹️ ▶️ John continuing to be sold, including the Air, even after this you know supposed possible error replacement that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the world these are coming into so I think you’re right that a lot of the anger related to this event is not

⏹️ ▶️ John about the computers that were released it is that it’s like if you’re already angry and someone does something

⏹️ ▶️ John kind of nice you can pick the nice thing that they did and say but I’m still angry about that other crap

⏹️ ▶️ John and we are we’re all still angry about other crap and the more logical thing is like you said in any sort

⏹️ ▶️ John of situation you say well you know maybe you shouldn’t get this or so what should I get like

⏹️ ▶️ John my options you know I feel it for the people who want an inexpensive laptop computer

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like well Apple produce these pro models but what if you want to get a decent Mac

⏹️ ▶️ John for a low price welcome to USB a land welcome to

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey non retina

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco screen

⏹️ ▶️ John like you’re going back in time to buy a computer that is really super old and is way crappier

⏹️ ▶️ John like so it’s it’s really easy to be frustrated with the Mac line

⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple’s treatment of it, even if you like the particular machines that they released. And if and if

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re a super picky pro and then you look at the machines they did release and still while I have quibbles with those as well, it

⏹️ ▶️ John just adds up to a very negative reaction. I think I put something in the in the show notes of someone tweeting about

⏹️ ▶️ John this. This is a Steve Frank but you know it’s echoing what you said the level of pushback for

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro event is staggering. I sure hope someone Apple who can make a difference is paying attention like I

⏹️ ▶️ John agree that right or wrong. You can say all these people are whining or complaining or they don’t have a reason.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is a really weird vibe. I can’t a pretty unprecedented vibe in the modern Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John era for Apple to have a major announcement of products and for the reaction from the most

⏹️ ▶️ John ardent fans, the people who are watching the live stream, the people who knew there would be an event at all the people who

⏹️ ▶️ John read tech sites about the event to have a vocal portion of that you have to say it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John all them not even gonna say it’s the majority but definitely vocal portion of that, their reaction to the event to be like

⏹️ ▶️ John anger, like Apple did something wrong, like maybe we shouldn’t have released anything. People are super angry at us now. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John before, at least they were just anticipating like, well, wait and see, wait and see. But now they’re like angry at us. This used to

⏹️ ▶️ John happen, by the way, all the time before the jobs to air anytime Apple announced anything, pretty

⏹️ ▶️ John much in the 90s. Everyone, all the Mac fans would get angry at Apple. Like this was the vibe for

⏹️ ▶️ John pretty much the, you know, most of my childhood

⏹️ ▶️ John and young young adult of Apple was we were all angry at Apple for for not winning

⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac PC wars. We’re all angry at Apple for allowing Microsoft to dominate and all the dumb

⏹️ ▶️ John things that they did that we think they should have done differently which would have you know solved this problem whatever and anytime they announced

⏹️ ▶️ John anything we were angry about it because we knew they needed a new operating system and they’d announced a new operating system

⏹️ ▶️ John strategy we’d say this sucks this operating system sucks what are you doing when they announced Mac OS X everyone was super angry

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want a terminal I don’t want a command line But being angry at Apple used to be the vibe. But then after

⏹️ ▶️ John Jobs turned it around, every time there was an Apple event, we would wait like it’s Christmas morning and be like, oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John goody Apple things. And we talk about them and pick them or whatever. We were all excited by it. And this is like the first turn

⏹️ ▶️ John back towards the dark side of Apple announces a bunch of stuff and we’re all just angry

⏹️ ▶️ John about the Mac. The iPhone stuff is a little bit backlash. I think the iPhone stuff, people were

⏹️ ▶️ John kind of angry about that. That’s more like when you’re really super successful, people want to tear you down. Right. is like

⏹️ ▶️ John neglect and frustration. And then you release a bunch of products that,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, leave a bunch of the don’t address a whole bunch of the frustration and the part of the frustration

⏹️ ▶️ John they do address, address it in a way that is not satisfactory to your most

⏹️ ▶️ John cranky users. And so that that I think explains this whole big vibe.

⏹️ ▶️ John And should Apple do something about it? Yeah, they should update the rest of their friggin Max like that

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco would go a long way,

⏹️ ▶️ John go a long way to calming people down. But if I was Apple, I would

⏹️ ▶️ John mostly stay the course on the USB thing. So if I if I had to design the next version of this, and by

⏹️ ▶️ John the way, there are already rumors like, Hey, guess what? super secret, totally made up rumor next year, Apple’s gonna

⏹️ ▶️ John have MacBook Pros that are cheaper, and with faster CPUs and 32 gigs of RAM,

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. And you know, again, as Andrew Cunningham pointed out to the person who pointed like, what are they going to put in it, that’s gonna

⏹️ ▶️ John let them do 30 days around. They have to wait for a coffee lake or they have to do something radically different. Anyway, the next revision

⏹️ ▶️ John of this thing, if they put an SD card slot on it, just that one change, even for the people who don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John use SD card slots ever, I think they’d be like, all right, now, now Apple, I see that you

⏹️ ▶️ John have seen my concern. You know how to, you have not actually addressed it because I want an HDMI port, but at least now

⏹️ ▶️ John I see that you are taking our feedback into consideration and are correcting your course

⏹️ ▶️ John by making the iPhone 6S less bendy and slightly more grippy by making the iPhone 7 grippier

⏹️ ▶️ John still and waterproof you know by what I will say down the Mac line or

⏹️ ▶️ John I keep thinking the iPhone line is generally by not making it glass front and back after the 4 series because that

⏹️ ▶️ John broke a lot like that’s all we want to see at this point for the pros specifically is maybe some slight

⏹️ ▶️ John reconsideration of the next iteration of this but again their hands are tied because of Intel’s things and

⏹️ ▶️ John so I don’t think we’re gonna see a lot of corrections there just need to update the rest of the line.

⏹️ ▶️ John Force the rest of the world into the USB-C utopia that we were all promised.

⏹️ ▶️ John Get us away from those giant USB-A connectors. I hope we start looking at them like I look at SCSI ports now.

⏹️ ▶️ John Do you believe we actually have these things and plugs to have been doing it? They’re huge. What is it, an air intake? I don’t get it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Casper.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price. Go to casper.com slash ATP

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and use code ATP for $50 towards your mattress. Casper created one perfect

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mattress sold directly to consumers, eliminating commission driven inflated prices. The award

⏹️ ▶️ Marco winning Casper mattress was developed in house, has a sleek design, and is delivered in a remarkably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco small box. You can get it up narrow stairs if you have to. And now in addition to the mattress, Casper also offers an adaptive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pillow and soft breathable sheets. The mattress mattress industry has forced consumers into paying notoriously high

⏹️ ▶️ Marco markups. Casper is revolutionizing the industry by cutting the cost of dealing with resellers and showrooms and passing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that savings directly on to you. An in-house team of engineers spent thousands of hours developing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Casper mattress. It combines springy latex and supportive memory foams for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a sleep service with just the right sink and just the right bounce. Plus, it’s breathable design sleeps cool to help

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you regulate your temperature throughout the night. And this is all available at a shockingly fair price.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Premium mattresses often cost well over $1,500, but Casper mattresses cost just $500 for a twin, $750 for a full, $850

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for queen, $950 for king, and these are made in America.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casper also made buying mattresses online easy and completely risk-free,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with free delivery and free returns within a 100-night home trial. If you don’t love it,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no questions asked, they will pick it up at your house and give you a full refund within 100 nights.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco understands the importance of truly sleeping on a mattress before you commit, because you’re going to be spending a third of your life on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. We’ve heard from friends and listeners who’ve all had great things to say about Casper, and Time Magazine named it one of the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco best inventions of 2015. Get yours today and try it for 100 nights in your

⏹️ ▶️ Marco own home, with free delivery and free returns, with home pickup. Completely risk-free.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Go to casper.com slash ATP. Use code ATP for $50 towards your mattress.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Terms and conditions do apply.

Touch Bar ergonomics

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you very much to Casper for sponsoring our show

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why don’t we have a touch bar external keyboard Yes, we briefly talked about this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John last episode not so briefly perhaps

⏹️ ▶️ Casey well either way I I want one some fears, but we don’t have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one yet. Is it coming John?

⏹️ ▶️ John I had one additional thought about that that I wanted to throw in here and And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have stone follow-up. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I think we’ve long since left follow-up to be honest

⏹️ ▶️ John No, we are still we’re these are all follow-up is all fall for the things about last show with new You know, cuz

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like they announced any new MacBook Pros. We’re still just talking about those last ones. Anyway

⏹️ ▶️ John For the keyboard with a touch bar. I thought of a reason that once again, I’m disappointed that no

⏹️ ▶️ John Listeners tweeted at me or emailed us That the touch bar on the keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ John not that this changes the odds of Apple doing it But that makes me think that it may

⏹️ ▶️ John not be as great an idea as we think and again I’m saying this having never actually touched one of these because

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not out yet, right? Although I did try to order mine at work and they told me sorry, we’re not getting a new max until

⏹️ ▶️ John February. So Yep, corporate IT. Yay. All right, anyway But

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah the touch bar on the laptops the whole idea

⏹️ ▶️ John About this is a touch surface. It’s not the screen. So you’re not reaching up touch the screen is down by the keyboard on level

⏹️ ▶️ John the keyboard so it’s the rest of your stuff but the touch bar is also a screen and because the things on it change

⏹️ ▶️ John you will have to look at it to know like in this app what how is the context change

⏹️ ▶️ John or define the control that you want because you can’t sure it can’t feel for anything on it and especially if there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John something visual like a display there of a timeline or a scrubber or whatever you will have to actually look at

⏹️ ▶️ John it and on a laptop that mostly works out because

⏹️ ▶️ John your line of sight and focal distance on the laptop screen which is when you’re using the touch

⏹️ ▶️ John bar is not that far off from the the touch bar itself screen

⏹️ ▶️ John touch bar screen touch bar not a big change in focal distance if we’re using a desktop

⏹️ ▶️ John and your keyboard is in the right position ergonomically and so is your screen pretty

⏹️ ▶️ John big difference in focal distance and most people who are touch typists don’t look at the keyboard ever on a desktop

⏹️ ▶️ John because why would you? You can feel where everything is, there’s no reason to look down there, and there’s a totally different focal

⏹️ ▶️ John distance. So experience-wise, using the touch bar not on a laptop

⏹️ ▶️ John may not be as nice an experience as using it on, you know, on a thing where the screen is

⏹️ ▶️ John connected. I’m kind of thinking of like a heads-up display where like you don’t have to look away from the road as much to look at your thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John So I don’t know if Apple would ever trot that out as a reason that they don’t produce a keyboard with this thing on it. But I

⏹️ ▶️ John think it may actually be a semi legit reason why the touch bar is purely

⏹️ ▶️ John an animal of the laptop and is not everything that is destined to be on desktop computers.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, one thing we don’t know yet is like, is it really meant to be like a continuous

⏹️ ▶️ Marco input device the way a trackpad or keyboard is? Or is it really meant to be what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the function row was before which is basically like occasional utility functions, Right? We don’t really know. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously, Apple has a lot of different demos and stuff that they have in their apps, but we don’t really know yet how it will be used in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco practice. Like, will it actually become a really primary pointing device or input device,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whether it will just become like a little utility thing? If it is the latter, if it is just like a little occasional

⏹️ ▶️ Marco utility thing, it’s a lot less important to have it on the desktop. You know, it might never come

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there won’t be strong demand for it, and so it might not be worth anything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. But if it does come to the desktop somehow, again, if it is one of those occasional

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reference things, then it’s okay to change your eye focal distance

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to go to it because you’re not using it constantly. Whereas if it’s actually meant to be like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of the ways it was demoed with being things like a jog wheel in Final Cut Pro and stuff like that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a constant frequent type of input device there. If that’s the kind of things that ends

⏹️ ▶️ Marco up being very useful for, and we don’t really know, I mean, whatever Apple says does not matter.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What matters is what ends up being useful in practice, right? And we don’t know that yet. Nobody even has these to review yet,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so we don’t even know yet. But if that happens, then I think you have a bigger problem with frequently

⏹️ ▶️ Marco changing your focal distance and everything up and down from the screen to the keyboard and everything. Although honestly,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was using my laptop yesterday or the day before, using it for a while, and I kind of was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco playing, I was kind of like pretending that I had a touch bar, trying to figure out like how does it feel to reach

⏹️ ▶️ Marco up here for like scrolling or jogging or editing operations and everything. It’s kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco too high up for me. Like for ergonomics, I’m a little concerned

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it might not feel very good to reach all the way up there frequently for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of interaction with my hands. Like I feel like that it might be a little uncomfortable and a little ergonomically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco weird. if it’s gonna be one of those like continuous input devices, I feel like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s kind of the wrong spot for it. And I recognize that like, the right spot for that kind of thing would probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be between the space bar and the trackpad. But I also recognize practically speaking, like that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really hard to design around and probably bad for like accidental input and everything. So that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably why it’s not there. But the way it is up top there, I do wonder

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit about the ergonomics of using it very often.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like I said last week on the show and as I tweeted in as I tried to jam into a series of three tweets that

⏹️ ▶️ John I Initially screwed up and had to delete and rechain together boy. We’re really waiting for that edit this tweet

⏹️ ▶️ John function on Twitter any day now

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’ll hold your

⏹️ ▶️ John breath the The time-lapse they’re like imagining what has happened to

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple keyboards over the years starting on the Mac portable. You just watch the thing Squish

⏹️ ▶️ John into the thing it just gets flatter and flatter and flatter and the keys get so flat and the sooner not even keys and and they’re like flush

⏹️ ▶️ John with the surface of the thing, and they’re just going down, down, down, and all of a sudden a screen appears on the top of it, and then you just keep extrapolating

⏹️ ▶️ John that out. Why is the screen at the top? Why isn’t the screen at the bottom? Why isn’t the whole thing screened? Why isn’t it

⏹️ ▶️ John a big force touch surface, but you know, and that gets into all the millennials typing on the screens and the whole big thing. But seriously,

⏹️ ▶️ John if you time lapse that, it’s comical to like, to just look at it. It’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t really realize how comical it is until, I mean, you don’t need the Mac portable to do it, right, but just look at an old laptop keyboard,

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re like, this is what the keys used to be like. And in some respects, you’re like, wow, look at

⏹️ ▶️ John this travel. It’s so luxurious. But in other respects, you’re like, look at all this wasted space in air to

⏹️ ▶️ John try to ape like the keyboard, which is aping the typewriter, which is just like this whole big chain of things.

⏹️ ▶️ John And then new things do look more around. But then like, you start shrinking them so much. And once you start adding screens, like, what are we even doing here? Again,

⏹️ ▶️ John I talked about it in the last show, it just seems like a straightforward extrapolation to say that that

⏹️ ▶️ John surface doesn’t need to be keyboard at a certain point, it’s better to have a bunch of reconfigurable

⏹️ ▶️ John images on a on a Taptic screen with force and blah blah blah and that’s where everyone says well you

⏹️ ▶️ John can’t extrapolate that’s ridiculous it’s like a slippery slope thing you have to leave the keys there I’m like but at a certain

⏹️ ▶️ John point do you how unkey like do they have to make the keys before you don’t notice any difference

⏹️ ▶️ John like oh they have to move it’s really important for touch typing and this and that and the other thing like we’re all

⏹️ ▶️ John die and the kids that replace us might not have these same ties to typing because they never learned to type anything I can make take

⏹️ ▶️ John a long time to happen but that seems to be where it’s going and the reason that would work and and gets

⏹️ ▶️ John into what Marco was saying about what part is the most comfortable to use the reason that would work on a laptop form factor

⏹️ ▶️ John specifically where you have to have the screen and the keyboard connected together because they fold and it’s all

⏹️ ▶️ John part of the whole portability thing is because the focal distance is not that different because

⏹️ ▶️ John looking down at the keyboard any part of the keyboard on a laptop is not that far from looking

⏹️ ▶️ John down at the screen because they’re attached to each other. And so if you did have some kind of UI

⏹️ ▶️ John on the flat part, it is still more comfortable, it is still gets back to whatever, and you know, Apple has always said,

⏹️ ▶️ John and we all believe, you know, you don’t want to touch the big vertical screen. But there is a horizontal surface

⏹️ ▶️ John that you can touch. And you can type on it, and you can trackpad on it. Now you can use a touchscreen on it. It’s not making

⏹️ ▶️ John a touchscreen Mac, quote unquote. And it’s not like, you know, people keep thinking, you’re just saying it’s going to turn into a big iPad,

⏹️ ▶️ John which maybe it will. And again, we will talk about the Microsoft Surface Studio, eventually. I promise I won’t let it go off the list.

⏹️ ▶️ John But having a horizontal surface that you use your fingers on that

⏹️ ▶️ John is ergonomically viable. We do all the time. We called a keyboard in a trackpad and now a touch bar.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is not ridiculous to think that the parts of that horizontal surface that

⏹️ ▶️ John we touch that are now fixed in hardware could one day be reconfigurable in the same way as a touch bar.

⏹️ ▶️ John If the touch bar is in any way successful as an experiment, a feature that we put

⏹️ ▶️ John out into the world and people try and they can see how it works if it is in any way successful. Even if people say just like Marco, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John fine, but I don’t like reaching up there. That doesn’t mean the concept is bad. That just means they didn’t do it enough, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John So I think that that time lapse and that extrapolation clearly leads in

⏹️ ▶️ John one direction, one direction only. And that direction is not a move from Apple’s insistence on that people that don’t want to touch

⏹️ ▶️ John vertical screens again by a touchscreen Windows laptop and be poking at the screen. Some people like it and some people

⏹️ ▶️ John reported like you get one of those, you instinctively start touching laptop screens, which by the way is terrible. You should never touch your laptop screen.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a separate issue. That’s a personal issue. Agreed. Right. Uh,

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s thing is horizontal surface with touch. So I think, I think this is a place where we could go

⏹️ ▶️ John where I would be excited to see them go because at least then you start to reap the advantages

⏹️ ▶️ John that come along with having horrible keyboards, right? Like right now we’re like, we’re going to keep making

⏹️ ▶️ John your keyboard smaller and smaller and flatter and flatter and less and less like a keyboard that you like, but you’re not going to get

⏹️ ▶️ John over that, you know, the big win that you get by saying, guess what? It’s all screen and you can do amazing things for that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because imagine the interface that you could do, Margo, with like your podcast editing suite where

⏹️ ▶️ John you weren’t limited to just a reconfigurable touch bar and weren’t limited to a totally screenless trackpad,

⏹️ ▶️ John but could actually draw controls down there for editing on a laptop. That could be amazing,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? That could be pretty amazing, but you definitely wouldn’t like that. I like keyboards. have to wait until you die and

⏹️ ▶️ John and Adam grows up and he can make that podcast up.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco unlimited native online backup for Mac and PC. You can get a free 15 day trial with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no credit card required at Backblaze.com. Backblaze is an amazing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco online backup. I’ve used it for years since long before they were a sponsor. I have it for my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer, my wife’s computer, even my mom’s computer. It is so nice to have online backup.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you’re going to have online backup, Backblaze is the one to get. You can also access all your backup

⏹️ ▶️ Marco data with their iOS and Android apps in addition to their website. So of course, you can always

⏹️ ▶️ Marco go to the website, you can download stuff if you need it. You can download just one file if you want. So if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco left a file at home and you’re on vacation, you can get to it with the iOS or Android app

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the website or whatever else. It’s so useful. I’ve done that all the time. I’ve done that so often. It

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of makes your entire computer available online if you forget a file somewhere.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco In addition to regular restore methods like that, they also have restore by mail, which Which means you can purchase

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a hard drive with all your data on it and they will overwrite it to you with FedEx. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you return it within 30 days, you can get a refund on the drive cost. So it’s a really great way to restore, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you have a terabyte of data to restore. It might take a long time to download that on your internet connection.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can do it with an overwritten hard drive with Backblaze for a very reasonable cost as long as you send it back.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Backblaze is trusted by lots and lots of people. restored over 200 petabytes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of people’s data. Over 10 billion files have been restored using Backblaze. This is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco such a great addition to local backups. Backblaze and I both agree, you should still

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do local backups. You should still do Time Machine if you can. You should still do a disk clone like SuperDuper if you can.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But you should also have online backup because it saves you from a whole class of other problems that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no local backup can. Things like fire, flood, theft, power surges, all sorts of weird stuff that could happen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to your computer or anything that’s connected to it or in the same room as it. Online backup is a huge

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fail safe. It is such great peace of mind to have this. You can get all of this for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just $5 per month per computer with Backblaze. Unlimited space, unthrottled

⏹️ ▶️ Marco speeds, they will never throttle you and restrict how quickly you can upload things. It is so great.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Go to backblaze.com slash ATP and you will get a free 15-day trial with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no credit card required. Once again, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. And don’t forget to check out our other videos as well.

Marco’s Waffling

⏹️ ▶️ Marco backblaze.com slash ATP for unlimited native online backup.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot to Backblaze for sponsoring our show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we forgot to talk about earlier when you were talking

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the new MacBook Pro, how excited are you for yours to arrive because you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ordered the MacBook Escape?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did order the MacBook Escape and I canceled it before it shipped because.

⏹️ ▶️ John Insert the Marcos waffling jingle right here.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yep,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John yay, Marco’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco waffling. Maybe that’s the jingle. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically, I still might get one. I haven’t decided for sure I’m not getting one, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I looked at more of the specs and as I thought about it more and as some of the early reviews started coming out, I figured, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know what, I think I wanna wait until I can actually try the keyboard in a store,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can actually see it next to the 15-inch and really decide, and hopefully

⏹️ ▶️ Marco try the Touch Bar store to and really decide then because my laptop is fine. I’m not in a huge

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rush. The only thing that really drives me nuts about it is that I’m always out of space because I got the base

⏹️ ▶️ Marco model, which is awesome in every single way, except the hard drive space is not nearly enough. So I’m always out of space

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it, and it’s a huge pain, and it is a big problem for how I work. But if I just case

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it up, I can just bring an external drive wherever I go and plug it in,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll have my bag of dongles and wrap it all up and in my Tom bin

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pouch or whatever it is and love it I’ll go full full blast full Casey

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and just plug in a bunch of crap to my laptop and and so I will solve the problem that way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that way until I can figure out what I want to do because honestly like once you I mean

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t feel good about how much it cost like the configuration I got was the i7 CPU

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the highest CPU and 16 gigs and 512 SSD

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that put it up to $2,200 and I’m like you know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t feel good about spending that much on a 13 inch even a nicely specced one like that doesn’t feel

⏹️ ▶️ Marco great to me and I realize you know I could do that but I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even sure like I once again had 15 inch regret or like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was like the fear of 15 inch regret basically like as I mentioned before like I have sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco regretted not getting the 15-inch, and when I’ve had the 15-inch, I’ve always been like, man, I’m so glad I have the 15-inch. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m like, you know, I should probably wait and actually try the new one first. So that’s basically it. I’m gonna wait until the new

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones are actually in stores and until people have reviews of all the different configurations

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and real-world battery tests. Like the reviews of the MacBook Escape, I guess the embargo

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was lifted today, so a whole bunch of the reviews came out, like the aforementioned ARS one. And ARS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco did a battery test that showed, Interestingly, basically, that the low-demand

⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery life is ridiculous. I think it was like 16 hours or something. It’s ridiculously good,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but if you actually stress the processor, it’s two hours. So it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, well, that’s actually very similar to the current ones. The current ones,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you really stretch it, if you turn the brightness down, if you really are gentle on it, on my 15 inch now, I can get 10

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hours, but not if I’m doing it if I’m like using Xcode or encoding an mp3

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or doing it or doing audio editing forget it then then I’m closer to five hours maybe and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then if I’m actually maxing out all the CPU cores like for instance doing a big Lightroom import as I discovered

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this summer two hours so this actually isn’t that different

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from so like basically I I wonder what the real world battery

⏹️ ▶️ Marco life will be of the of the other two models I’m actually now quite concerned Because like once I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco saw, I canceled this like back on I think Sunday or whatever. When I saw the battery test today I’m actually thinking,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco man I bet the the battery life under moderate to heavy loads of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Touch Bar models is probably gonna be terrible. But we will see. I mean two hours is already

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty terrible but that’s like the low power one with the biggest battery. So that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little scary. I also thought you know what nothing’s really wrong with my current one besides having no

⏹️ ▶️ Marco storage space. So maybe I just upgrade it and deal

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it and live with it for a long time because it has a keyboard I like, it has a trackpad I like, it has

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of ports that come in handy, it has the SD card reader that I use frequently. So you know, I’ll probably just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep it for a while because there’s only no pressing need for me to upgrade other than that stupid storage

⏹️ ▶️ Marco issue and just wanting the newest thing. Steven Lounger Fair enough. Who next week I could have ordered a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 15x who knows

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Very well could be and John you’ve been waffling apparently.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this was just another Misplaced item and the things we already talked about it was about the display and the

⏹️ ▶️ John iMac versus

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a

⏹️ ▶️ John pro But

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Marco

⏹️ ▶️ John always screws up the otter. So that was my waffling. You’re welcome although not really because I have to say like

⏹️ ▶️ John Marco’s waffling when I introduced the the The concept of this segment way back

⏹️ ▶️ John when I said, you know, it’s really, you know It’s nice to make fun of but it’s really changing your position when information

⏹️ ▶️ John changes, but the true waffling waffling is Marco acting impulsively

⏹️ ▶️ John because no new information has come to light he had just not fully assessed his feelings Until after he had placed the order

⏹️ ▶️ John right so that’s that’s waffling in the true sense where a more cautious approach might have been To

⏹️ ▶️ John hash out these internal things before placing on order He’s just lucky that Apple doesn’t ship things

⏹️ ▶️ John very quickly because he could be having to deal with a return here where you know again no new information has come

⏹️ ▶️ John to light. It’s merely Marco’s internal landscape that has changed in the past two

⏹️ ▶️ John days or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and lots of people do that. Lots of people will order things and then they don’t like them, return them. And I’ve only done that once with the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the MacBook one. I really don’t like doing that. I and I really didn’t really sell them like the Mac Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know. Yeah, well, yeah, like, yeah, returning stuff like, you know, I, I feel bad. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know it’s there for a reason. I know that Apple probably doesn’t really care if I return it, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel bad because I know that, like, I’m invoking this clause that is not meant to be invoked frequently.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a cost to it. People are bearing costs to this. It isn’t meant to be like a free home trial.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I try not to return things if necessary, or if possible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rather.

No TrueTone in laptops

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why is there no true tone display in the MacBook Pros? What’s up with that?

⏹️ ▶️ John Two theories. One is just like they didn’t get around to it because this is a really old design of a machine, you know, like all

⏹️ ▶️ John the lead times and this could have been released sooner and blah, blah, blah. Like that’s the obvious explanation. Like it’s just not

⏹️ ▶️ John there because timelines. And even though this Mac is coming out now, we all know that they have been

⏹️ ▶️ John delayed because we were waiting for Intel CPUs and all sorts of other crap. So that, the other possibility that

⏹️ ▶️ John occurred to me is maybe it’s, I guess that doesn’t explain why the feature isn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John there, but why, even if it was there, why some people might not enable it. For people doing

⏹️ ▶️ John color sensitive work on this screen, and I guess there are those out there, because it does

⏹️ ▶️ John have the P3 screen and all of those stuff, wouldn’t you kind of not want your screen

⏹️ ▶️ John to change color profile based on the ambient light to try to get

⏹️ ▶️ John a more consistent color experience? I don’t know, I don’t know enough about, maybe ours

⏹️ ▶️ John would want that, because I was like, look, if you don’t change it, gonna look weird when you’re in you know sodium lights

⏹️ ▶️ John versus fluorescence versus whatever not there they’re gonna be doing their work on the side of the road under sodium lights but anyway

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe they wouldn’t want it to change but I can also imagine them saying I just want to calibrate my screen and have it the way

⏹️ ▶️ John I want it and not have it worry about whether the studio lights are on or off

⏹️ ▶️ John and having it change the color right so that may maybe there’s just not a lot of demand for it is what I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John saying

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well but I mean it’s you know you You can’t whip out pro use cases selectively

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to justify certain things, which Apple does. If you say people don’t really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco want it on Macs because they want their color accuracy, well don’t people want that on iPads too?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s on the

⏹️ ▶️ John iPad. I don’t think people are doing as much pro work on that. But what I was saying is, like I said, it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John a reason not to include it, but it’s a reason that even if they did include it, I think some people might have wanted to turn it off.

⏹️ ▶️ John Which you can do. You can do it on the iPads too, right? It’s just a toggle switch. That’s what I’m saying. So So I think actually

⏹️ ▶️ John if and when they do eventually introduce it, I can imagine people saying, oh, that’s nice, but I’m never going to use that because

⏹️ ▶️ John I do professional color work on it. And uh, you know, and I have it on my iPad pro,

⏹️ ▶️ John I have it enabled and I have to say it is subtle enough that I don’t notice it. Unlike the stupid thing that makes

⏹️ ▶️ John your, your iPad look like someone peed on it when the sun goes down.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John notice the true tone because it is subtle enough. And I know the lighting in my house is totally like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John very warm compared to what But lighting could be another situation. I don’t know it’s the true tone.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s great for plain consumer uses of it. But

⏹️ ▶️ John in other words, that’s why I think you don’t hear people, like people are complaining about the ports and about 32

⏹️ ▶️ John gigs of RAM. I haven’t heard any professional users complain that there’s no true tone.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well, where it is nice to have though, and even Phil mentioned this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when he was doing the presentation of the iPad Pro announcing true tone. He said something along the lines

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of once you have it, you don’t want to go back. Because once you have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco displays in your life that are adjusting color temperature throughout the day for whatever reason, whether

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s reacting to the room lighting or whether it’s doing something like night shift slash whatever, flux.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco P-screen is what you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John thinking of.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, once you have one of the screens in your life doing that, it’s really weird

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and jarring to have other ones that aren’t. And so if you are getting into the lifestyle of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco flux slash p-screen slash night shift and true tone, which are I think really two different degrees

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a similar kind of thing. You want all your screens to have it.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s only true of the night shift things. Because I have, I do, I use,

⏹️ ▶️ John every day I use both my iPad and at least one other screen that’s not color adjusted. So true

⏹️ ▶️ John tone I think is subtle enough, that’s what I was saying, that you don’t notice it. You just think it’s the same. Like, cause

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m using them in different rooms, so I don’t have them side by side. Perhaps if I had them side by side, I would notice the difference. but

⏹️ ▶️ John when I’m using my iPad, usually in my bedroom, and then I come down and use the 5K iMac, I do not notice

⏹️ ▶️ John that they’re different. I think I would notice if it was night shift, because again, that is super noticeable, and you’d be like,

⏹️ ▶️ John oh, the screen is so blue after sitting in front of your P-yellow iMac screen.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, it is yellow, but I like it. It’s probably a placebo, but it feels like it’s so much

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John easier on my eyes. Make your

⏹️ ▶️ John computer look like it’s broken. Pretty much. Back in my day, they would be like, is the green connector loose on the back of

⏹️ ▶️ John your monitor? Wiggle it a little bit.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, I still have component in my bedroom TV, so I know what you’re talking about.

No MacBook Pro startup chime

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Mac startup chime is dead and I don’t care. So anything else

⏹️ ▶️ Casey we want to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco talk about? There’s a bunch of asterisks on that though. Like it’s off by default, but you can enable it with these NVRAM commands

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we’ll put a link in the show notes to how you can enable it. The other weird one, they’re doing this weird stuff with power

⏹️ ▶️ John and opening the lid on the MacBook Pros, which mostly is a good idea. Like basically when

⏹️ ▶️ John you open the lid, the thing boots, which I think makes sense

⏹️ ▶️ John for most people. most people like why are you even opening it if you’re not going to turn it on but if you’re an

⏹️ ▶️ John old person who’s not used to that happening you can turn it off with another nvr app same

⏹️ ▶️ John thing with the startup chime and like the startup chime has been compared to the happy mac which i don’t know if you guys still had max back when the

⏹️ ▶️ John little happy mac appeared did your first max have that no on boot so you would turn on the mag this is from

⏹️ ▶️ John the original mac and a little tiny pixel art thing susan kare pixel art of the original macintosh with a happy

⏹️ ▶️ John smiling face on it would appear And that was a super important part of the original Macintosh

⏹️ ▶️ John experience. Along with the whole rest of the GUI and this funny thing called a mouse with a wire on it and everything

⏹️ ▶️ John like that. And it lasted for years, long after Macs didn’t look like that anymore. Long after Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John was no longer selling Macs like that, you’d buy, like a, you know, you’d buy a titanium powerbook.

⏹️ ▶️ John And you’d boot it and it would have that picture on it. And people must be thinking, what is that? Like people who didn’t know

⏹️ ▶️ John the original Mac, like, it doesn’t look like this computer I’m in front of. Is it like, is it like a little square person? Is it a robot?

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what you know, but it was adorable and it was tradition and and we liked it And eventually Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John can’t it and said when you turn on our computers now, you don’t see that You just see this Apple logo and you know, and so

⏹️ ▶️ John we can have a separate debate about Apple’s dedication to whimsy and all sorts of other things

⏹️ ▶️ John when the happy Mac went away. It was sad The startup charm going away same time.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, it’s all the old traditions or whatever I’m mostly okay with this because Because

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, traditions have their time. The Happy Mac had its time and then its time was over. And the startup

⏹️ ▶️ John chime is, I think, a vestige of that same age. And if anything, it probably should have gone at

⏹️ ▶️ John the same time because and you know, when discussing this, you see all the people who are super annoyed by the startup time.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is kind of annoying and unexpected. It’s from a time when booting a computer was an event worthy of a sound.

⏹️ ▶️ John That is no

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco longer the case.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because we, you know, first of all, you shouldn’t be rebooting your computer. Just put it to sleep at night. Right. It’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John a thing that’s done. You’re not rebooting it because it’s crashing all the time, which is the other reason you hear all the chimes back in the 90s in your office full

⏹️ ▶️ John of Macs, right? Because there was no memory protection and one bad programmer would take down the whole thing, usually in an OBI

⏹️ ▶️ John product. But it’s not like… that’s a vestige of a different age. And I think at this

⏹️ ▶️ John point it is more luxurious and more sophisticated to not make a big BOOM!

⏹️ ▶️ John Here I am! I’m turning on! And yes, there are reasons like, oh, well that lets me know that it posted correctly

⏹️ ▶️ John and I’ll hear the different sounds for when I have bad RAM and it sounds like glass is breaking and there’s an argument anyway

⏹️ ▶️ John that there’s not enough whimsy in the Apple stuff although I do think like I said dragging the little buttons down

⏹️ ▶️ John to the the touch bar from the main screen is slightly whimsical and same thing with the

⏹️ ▶️ John little genie animations and the poofs and all the other crap a lot of which they’ve gotten rid of I read but anyway

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m okay with the startup chime going away and if you really want it back you can get it back opening the lid and booting

⏹️ ▶️ John your thing probably feels weird to us but I think that’s mostly that’s that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John mostly what regular people expect. It also gets them out of the business of having to find where to put the power button,

⏹️ ▶️ John but then it makes it harder for people to figure out, you know, the sort of hold down the power button for 10 seconds when there’s no power

⏹️ ▶️ John button. That was a question by the way about touch bar. When you’re in your touch bar computer freezes, how do you like hard

⏹️ ▶️ John reboot it? I don’t know how I’m sure I don’t know. I’m sure there’s some combination of things you press,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it was much more obvious when there was a key somewhere on there or a button or something like that, that had the power symbol on it that

⏹️ ▶️ John I think people are somewhat familiar with. And now it’s going to be a little bit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe you hold down the touch ID button and the volume down circle on the touch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco zone

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’m sure there’s some way to do it But like but it is it is less obvious then you know touch ID is the

⏹️ ▶️ John is the thing but it’s there’s no like a little power symbol in it anyway I’m okay with it surprisingly

⏹️ ▶️ John and I am the oldest crustiest Mac user ever.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I am stunned that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John this is okay with you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t even know where to go from here. I guess now that we’re done with follow-up. We can start the show

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week Harry’s Casper and Backblaze and we will see you next

⏹️ ▶️ Marco week.

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ John Now

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause it was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental, oh it was accidental

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the show

⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into

⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey N-T Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A

⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse It’s accidental, they

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to Accidental, check

⏹️ ▶️ John podcast so long

Post-show: TouchBar optimism

⏹️ ▶️ John I knew it was gonna be a total follow-up show, but there was just so much more to talk about that event But

⏹️ ▶️ John the event that changed the Mac world sort of maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well Really? What’s what’s changing the Mac world is the slow neglect of the things?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What changes the Mac world is not going to be announced on stage It’s gonna be just like slowly trickled

⏹️ ▶️ Marco out through press releases and controlled leaks Oh

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, here’s the thing about that, like all the crankiness from you, Marco, and also from other people about like, and neglecting

⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac or whatever. The thing that I find frustrating about it is, it’s so clear

⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple’s message is, we care about the Mac. Like they said it in so, like

⏹️ ▶️ John in uncertain terms, like Tim Cook said it, Phil Schill saying it in all the interviews. Like they’re not beating

⏹️ ▶️ John around the bush and trying to say, well, but we kind of do nice. And they’re like emphatic, like we care about

⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac. The Mac is really important to us as a product. And again, it doesn’t really matter what they say, it matters what they do. But what it means

⏹️ ▶️ John is that the message Apple is trying to send is that they care about the Mac. And if that’s the message they wanna

⏹️ ▶️ John send, like if they, why would they send that message? Like they’re not trying to trick us, it’s not a trap. They

⏹️ ▶️ John want that to be the message. And it’s almost as if like, we can’t do anything

⏹️ ▶️ John in the short term to really convince you. So all we can really do is say, like they don’t announce future products, so they can’t,

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not gonna come out and say, here’s what we have in the pipeline for the Mac for the next year. we realize

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve neglected it. We’re like, that’s not their thing, but they’re totally saying we care about the Mac. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John so I think for everybody who says, Apple doesn’t care about the Mac, you’d have to basically be saying that Apple is like lying

⏹️ ▶️ John to you to trick you. Like, you know, or you can say, they think they care about the Mac, but they don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know how to care for the Mac anymore. They don’t know what the Mac needs. The Mac needs to go elsewhere,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? But they’re totally all on the same page. The Mac is very important

⏹️ ▶️ John to Apple. It’s super important to the way of the history, going forward we care about it and I

⏹️ ▶️ John really hope that is really true from top to bottom because that gives me some

⏹️ ▶️ John some notion that they will actually fix things with their actions later because it would be really weird for them

⏹️ ▶️ John to emphatically say they care about the Mac as a reaction to all of us thinking that they don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John and then just never do anything different like that would be super weird to me.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So do you think that there’s hope in sight? I mean given that they’re saying so strongly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh we care we care we care but earlier this episode you’re thinking oh there’s not going to be a new mac pro so how do you feel

⏹️ ▶️ John well i mean mac pro is not the mac like their their

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey vision of the mac

⏹️ ▶️ John could be all laptops right but all that would mean is like well then at least freaking update your laptops more often and like like

⏹️ ▶️ John i’m hoping you know all of the the angry people are getting the message through like if i

⏹️ ▶️ John if i had my way i would say like say someone says oh you can’t have desktop max anymore fine whatever the mac is just going

⏹️ ▶️ John to be the laptops i would say get rid of all the old models stop doing the thing where you keep keep them around for a long

⏹️ ▶️ John time, update your whole line, have a have a line of products from just under $1,000 on up to

⏹️ ▶️ John bajillion dollars that is all modern, all nice, all updated on a semi-yearly

⏹️ ▶️ John basis. Do that, right? And then we’ll be, you know, and then beyond that

⏹️ ▶️ John you can say, okay, well if you’re gonna have desktops too, do X, Y, and Z, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever you decide defines the Mac, whatever technologies

⏹️ ▶️ John involved, whatever ports, whatever form factors, or whatever, I really don’t like

⏹️ ▶️ John this Mac line that is littered with like the corpses of old Macs. I really, really don’t like it.

⏹️ ▶️ John It makes the whole product line a minefield and trying to recommend one is bad and you get in these uncomfortable

⏹️ ▶️ John situations no matter when you update and you get into these situations where there’s not like a safe one to buy depending

⏹️ ▶️ John on what your needs are. Like right now, if you want to get an inexpensive Mac that’s good, you know, choose one or the other.

⏹️ ▶️ John You can get an inexpensive Mac or you can get a good Mac, but you can’t get them both.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, like the old models that are still for sale are quite compelling. Like it’s kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a shame they shouldn’t be because they’re three

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John years old.

⏹️ ▶️ John Not the MacBook Air with that freaking screen that is not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco compelling. No that’s not but like the old 13-inch MacBook Pro is still for sale and that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty good buy for what it is.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John The old 15-inch is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know also still a pretty great value honestly. But yeah I mean

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all things all the negativity and cynicism aside which is not unwarranted

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is one thing here that I’m optimistic about. And you know, as you said, actions

⏹️ ▶️ Marco speak louder than words. And they can say they’re committed to the Mac and everything, but what matters

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is what they ship and what they show, what they do. And they did

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just ship the Touch Bar. Well, they’re shipping the Touch Bar in like a month. I don’t know, whatever they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco shipping, it’s not actually… 4 to 5 weeks. Well, yeah, whatever it is. So they’re shipping the Touch Bar sometime soon, even though

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not even reviewers have it yet. And so who knows if it’s delayed for some reason or if it’s just bad supply

⏹️ ▶️ Marco chain management because Apple can’t launch a product

⏹️ ▶️ John anymore. Every Touch Bar Mac comes with a free set of Air Pods though.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s what’s delaying them. So all that aside, the Touch Bar

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not just a quick hack to sell this generation of MacBook Pros.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have gone deep with this Touch Bar. It is deeply integrated at the hardware levels.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It has like its tendrils all over the hardware of the computer, the way it’s integrated,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the complexity of it, how it integrates with things like the camera and the microphone, allegedly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the APIs for it are really extensive. And Apple has clearly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco spent quite a lot of time and effort updating all their apps to use them and bring

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in partners to have all their apps get ready for it and everything. So this is an area

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where Apple has put a clear, strong investment into the Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This isn’t just a thing they said six months ago, hey, we got to do something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to sell MacBook Pros this fall, but we don’t want to devote a lot of money to it because we don’t care about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac anymore. So just come up with some kind of gimmickry and we’ll tack it on there. No, this isn’t that. Well, this was

⏹️ ▶️ John Brett Victor, who is a computer genius who used to work for Apple,

⏹️ ▶️ John and you should totally google his name and go to his website and watch his videos and get your mind blown by the stuff he

⏹️ ▶️ John shows you. He used to work at Apple at one of those, you know, I don’t know if it was ATG, the Advanced Technology

⏹️ ▶️ John Group, but one of those touchy-feely kind of research high-flutin ideas. And he left

⏹️ ▶️ John partially because, like, he had all these great ideas in his group that never went anywhere.

⏹️ ▶️ John And according to his tweets, this idea, the touch bar essentially, he was

⏹️ ▶️ John one of the ideas that was at Apple eight years ago. And I mean, true of everything. Apple’s you know, I’m sure

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re looking into VR and AR for their car stuff and like all sorts of research or whatever. A lot

⏹️ ▶️ John of times these things don’t go anywhere, they don’t end up in a product and you know, bread, Victor’s frustration

⏹️ ▶️ John with a lot of the Apple stuff is look at all these great ideas we have and you never put them into products. But Apple is

⏹️ ▶️ John patient and sometimes an idea has its time. So it’s not as if they worked on the touch bar for eight years. But the concept

⏹️ ▶️ John of maybe this is a thing we could do with computers existed at Apple eight years ago,

⏹️ ▶️ John and has probably existed as a feature planned for laptops for at least a

⏹️ ▶️ John year or more, especially given the sky like delays, which informs a lot about these machines. It’s like I think Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John expected to ship these soon as they did. So when this thing appears and it’s got, like you said, mature

⏹️ ▶️ John API’s and tons of app support, that’s partially due to delay and partially due to, like you said,

⏹️ ▶️ John this is not a new idea. This is an eight year old idea that must have been resurrected by somebody or maybe every couple years

⏹️ ▶️ John they reevaluate a bunch of this bucket of old ideas and say, is this applicable to current technology or is it not time for?

⏹️ ▶️ John And this came out of like my Mac Pro came out of his eight year slumber and said, it is

⏹️ ▶️ John my time now. Put me on a Mac,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco put me on a MacBook.

⏹️ ▶️ John And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they did. Well, because anything now is a good time because the way they implemented it, which seems

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be a pretty good implementation by all the first hand accounts and the tech, the little bit of tech info we have about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. But it seems like it’s basically an Apple Apple watch in a lot of ways like it has it has an old red

⏹️ ▶️ Marco retina density screen. Basically, it’s driven by a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco chip that sounds very similar to the watches s one has secure enclave and everything touch ID

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all that stuff like almost all of that is fairly recent technology that they really wouldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have been able to deliver in that form until basically now.

⏹️ ▶️ John And also you needed like it’s not just they wouldn’t be able to deliver on the fall. But you have to say because Apple did a watch,

⏹️ ▶️ John which is not related to the touch bar, really, but But because they did the watch, that’s why they had the ability to make the T1,

⏹️ ▶️ John because they had made the S1. Like, it’s all, it’s like, now the pieces have come together. It’s not as if they made the watch so they

⏹️ ▶️ John could make the Touch Bar, but these ideas, these technology research projects and concepts they have,

⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes only come to fruition not because they couldn’t have built the Touch Bar earlier, because clearly they could have, but because now

⏹️ ▶️ John you see, hey, guess what? We have all the pieces for the Touch Bar now. I don’t know, I don’t think they would have dedicated

⏹️ ▶️ John a, you know, like, hey, we’ve never made an arm CPU before, but let’s start a division to make a tiny arm CPU

⏹️ ▶️ John to power the touch bar like they didn’t choose to do that. But because they have expertise in arms and because they made the watch and because

⏹️ ▶️ John this and because that now is when it all comes together. But it’s like this is one of those concepts is ideas like

⏹️ ▶️ John different ways of interacting with computers. Should we touch the screen? Should we touch the keyboard? Should the keyboard be a big screen, which I’m sure they’ve tested

⏹️ ▶️ John and all that stuff comes together in a product. And that’s that’s the best way it should work is like

⏹️ ▶️ John keep those ideas patent them. I roll I hate patents. And

⏹️ ▶️ John when their time is, you know, explore everything and you’ll know when the time is right when it all kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of comes together. And then when you do launch it, it won’t appear as like a half-assed thing. It’ll be launched

⏹️ ▶️ John with tons of app support and a mature SDK. And you know, I really hope it’s a good idea because

⏹️ ▶️ John they did invest a lot of time and money in this on their side. So you’re right. That does

⏹️ ▶️ John mean that is one action that matches their worth, which is the Mac is really important to us because that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a pretty significant investment in some pretty weird hardware stuff that the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ John hasn’t seen for a long time. I mean, they could have added Touch ID to the Mac, you know, at the same time as it came to the phone if the Mac was as important

⏹️ ▶️ John as the phone is. It obviously isn’t, but it is still important enough for them to bring Touch

⏹️ ▶️ John ID and not just Touch ID as like a little black square on the keyboard, but also this whole Touch Bar concept.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we’ve run long and we probably shouldn’t talk about this, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with all the Intel delays and whatnot, like, is it just a matter of time at this point before

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple starts putting a series chips in their laptops

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John and keep

⏹️ ▶️ Casey glancing off this topic on and off

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I keep

⏹️ ▶️ Casey glancing

⏹️ ▶️ John we talked about it forever. I think it’s a I think we should put it in the big topic list for future shows.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s fine. It’s as it seems, even more obvious now that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey we really need to that that that Apple really needs to think about this. And I’m sure they already

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are. But I don’t know, they’re getting they’re catching

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of blame for things that you could argue are Intel’s fault,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as we talked about earlier. And maybe they are, maybe they aren’t Intel’s fault, but you could

⏹️ ▶️ Casey paint a picture where it is Intel’s fault. And Apple just doesn’t usually stand for that sort of thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I feel like it’s got to be eminent, but who knows.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It all depends on the conditions that, you know, like PowerPC was fine

⏹️ ▶️ Marco until it wasn’t, You know, and Intel is most of the time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine, sometimes even good, but this past year,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, it isn’t. And we’ll see, you know, if Intel is gonna keep having problems

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and keep, you know, keep having incentives and priorities that don’t really line up with Apple’s very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco much, and keep having delay problems and everything else. There

⏹️ ▶️ Marco eventually might come a time when it’s worth it for Apple to do this transition. You know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it could take two years of conditions changing before Apple says, you know what,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we need this now. But it is not an easy thing. Like, the A-series

⏹️ ▶️ Marco chips are really good where they’re used right now in the iPhone. And if it were

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as easy as just dropping them into like the Intel motherboard socket, well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they still had sockets, but if it was as easy as dropping it into the socket and just having like a different chip that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was Apple’s chip and everything else could stay the same. You know, if you could still have Thunderbolt

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all the PC GPU support and everything,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey like yeah, if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could still have all that and just have Apple’s chips in there and have them updated whenever Apple could

⏹️ ▶️ Marco update them, that’d be awesome. But it isn’t that simple.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they can do that. That’s the other rumor, is that Apple would make its own x86 chips. Like they would get

⏹️ ▶️ John AMD and then they’re licensed for x86 and like Apple would design, then you could drop it in and they would

⏹️ ▶️ John license Thunderbolt. Like that is one of the other rumors along with the RMAC things. And

⏹️ ▶️ John that does have a lot of advantages if Apple ever wanted to do it. But as we said on past shows, like the

⏹️ ▶️ John stumbling block for a lot of this is, is the Mac worth that kind of investment? Anyway, I think this is a much

⏹️ ▶️ John longer topic and I don’t wanna go much longer. So I put it in the topic list for future shows. Unfortunately, ahead of Microsoft

⏹️ ▶️ John Studio and Nintendo Switch, sorry everybody. I also put in a lot of them for Mac clones. Oh God.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Which is

⏹️ ▶️ John another discussion that came up in the wake of that event. Again, exactly how upset are people?

⏹️ ▶️ John to the point where the idea of licensing the Mac operating system has

⏹️ ▶️ John once again come up not as a joke in certain circles.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So two things. First of all, the baseball game is now tied in the bottom of the eighth, so this is getting interesting.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Secondly, you have put an ellipsis and then no space. Arm on Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Casey revisited dot dot dot again, no space. I

⏹️ ▶️ John removed your space. I saw you put the space

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey there. It’s barbaric. You need the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco spaces.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Put

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it back. You have voters. after ellipsis.

⏹️ ▶️ John Listen, which one of us is a professional rider? I’m gonna say me. I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know about that.