252: Any Day Could Be Mac Pro Day
14 Dec 2017In case you haven’t heard yet, the iMac Pro was released.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show Neutral: Casey has car problems
- Follow up: Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad is apparently bendy
#askatp- Holiday gift ideas
- Code nostalgia
- A not-so-brief interlude about Overcast and feed redirects
sudo
- John's black screen of death
- iMac Pro
- Post-show: More iMac Pro
Sponsored by:
- Betterment: Rethink what your money can do.
- Hover: Find a domain name for your passion. Get 10% off your first purchase.
- Fracture: Photos printed in vivid color directly on glass. Get 15% off your first order with code ATP17.
Chapters
- Pre-show: Neutral 🖼️
- Follow-up: Bent Magic Keyboards
- Sponsor: Fracture (code ATP17)
- #askatp: Gift ideas for listeners
- #askatp: Liking our own code
- Overcast feed redirects
- Sponsor: Hover
- #askatp: “sudo”
- John’s black screen of death
- Sponsor: Betterment
- iMac Pro! 🖼️
- Ending theme
- Post-show: iMac Pro!
Pre-show: Neutral
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve got a problem. Oh, yeah, I have an uncomfortable thoughts about Jeep Wranglers.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh You just need to come up here where it’s cold and it’ll convince you not to buy. He finally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s like 30 degrees here and snowing right now. I don’t want to hear your lip about how we don’t have winter I just want to be driving
⏹️ ▶️ John with no roof and no doors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No roof. No doors. No stability. No quality. No safety Yeah, definitely. No safety.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s got a roll cage for Christ’s sakes. How you gonna tell me no safe? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John so if you get t-boned in that I’m sure the roll cage will save you The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doors will oh wait, yeah, there’s a reason they had to add a roll cage because it rolls over if you like breathe on It’s funny.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, come on. That’s what stability controls for this computer solve us from physics
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, I wanted I think I want a Wrangler and that’s probably a problem. It’s either that or go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey far So save me for myself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all the vehicles that you have lusted after for a week here and there I think a Wrangler
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is actually one of the less offensive ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s pretty offensive.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good vehicle. It’s either that or a Golf R. So, John, what would you have me have between a Wrangler and a Golf R?
⏹️ ▶️ John Easy, Golf R. No contest.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, if those are your choices, I’d go with John on that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, if those are the
⏹️ ▶️ John only two choices, it’s not a choice at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, a Wrangler, I think, is a better choice than your weird Cadillac rectangle thing and your SUV dreams, but
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I think the Cadillac is better than the Wrangler, too. I’m trying to think of a worse car and all I’m coming up with is one of those
⏹️ ▶️ John giant four-door luxury pickup trucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, those are well, but at least those have a little more function than a Wrangler
⏹️ ▶️ John no, it’s about the same They’re both they’re both ridiculous things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also, if so that reminds me to Muro did a Review
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of what was it the g65 and am gg65. I think that’s right. I might have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that wrong So it’s a twin-turbo V12 G-Wagon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe it’s pronounced Gwagon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we did a video on the Gwagon and he got it gets
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better every time I say it He did a video on the Gwagon and he hated it okay, so fine,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all right, so how about this I don’t have the money for a Quadrifoglio, but how about that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or Golf R or Wrangler? What would you have John? I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John glad to follow you over the go far, even though it’s uglier. You’re so wrong. I’ve seen him in real life now. I saw a white
⏹️ ▶️ John one the other day. I thought of you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I say it does not look good in white. Holy shit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It doesn’t look good in any
⏹️ ▶️ John color, but like this, I’ve seen enough of them now that I know it’s not just like, oh, maybe it looks weird in pictures, but it looks good in person.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t like it anywhere. I don’t like it in pictures. I don’t like it in a box. I don’t like it with a fox.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, I love you, but you are so wrong about this.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I just don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John looks, but it’s a good car. If it for a while, it’s working. Yeah, for the 10
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey minutes it’s working.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we don’t even know, maybe, like the reliability could be fine, it’s too new. Like this is the new Alpha, but we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it’s not. Look, here’s your new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John rule, Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco New rule, if you’re going to get something fun and fast, unless it is made by a Japanese company,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, what is fun and fast that’s made by a Japanese company that’s also at least mildly affordable? So like-
⏹️ ▶️ John The Toyota Bureau would be fun.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It’s not fast. Not fast. It is fun, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fast. You know, you got a GTR, which is too much money, and that’s it, that’s all you got. Maybe… No, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey NSX is fun and fast.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s unaffordable! That wasn’t one of your criteria. Just, you’re gonna lease it. You’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John lease the NSX. It’ll be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, come on. Alright, let’s say, even though this is over my budget, let’s say for the sake of discussion, 50 grand.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, for 50 grand, what do you get that’s Japanese fun and fast? I don’t know. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rest my case. I’d take a Miata.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not fast. Fun. Not fast. I mean look a Wrangler is not fast either, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you you find fun for other reasons to me a Miata would would be a better
⏹️ ▶️ John Version of that plenty fun. Yeah, that’s a good midlife crisis car for you after your second child is is in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But no, I’m serious so I mean my options are Civic type are which means I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey need to Install a paper bag in the car to wear over my head every time I drove
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it No, they won’t let you buy one. You’re over 25. That’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point I’ve heard the type R is Phenomenal to drive, but it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so unabashedly Truly hideous to look at
⏹️ ▶️ John you get in black. Maybe try to hide all the wings and ducks and scoops
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe that’s the answers just take the wing off like do a wing delete if you will
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s all wing there is do you take the wing off? They’re just left with the chassis. That’s it There’s a hard body of that car is a wing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there. I would imagine there must be some kind of like like, you know, marketing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco differentiation here at work, where like, they have to make the Civic R so hideous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it won’t detract from sales of the NSX from older people with taste.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe, but the regular Civic is kind of gross too. Like, I think they just had a styling
⏹️ ▶️ John fart on this whole generation.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey This is a great generation
⏹️ ▶️ John of Civics. Like, they’re getting great reviews, people say they’re great cars. So much so that a lot of the best
⏹️ ▶️ John parts of of them are showing up in the accord, but the styling is rough. Styling’s rough.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, if you think about it, all kidding aside, I mean, you can get a Wrangler spec to like 40 or 45 grand or something like that, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco No, you can get a Wrangler spec to 40. I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John never, I would not go near that.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is getting into the $80,000 pickup truck territory. $50,000 Jeep Wrangler. Great. That makes perfect sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John Good job, America. So hold on, jeep.com.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wonder how, see, I thought, I was trying to move on now, I’ve brought myself
⏹️ ▶️ John pointed out like the Wrangler with like leather straps for door handles but but television screens on the backs of the seats
⏹️ ▶️ John like that is a car that has lost its way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wait honest question are the back seats in a Wrangler like is there actually enough depth there that
⏹️ ▶️ John is where you got to keep your 17 friends when you go surfing Wow they go in the back seats
⏹️ ▶️ John quote-unquote right
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey there though there’s their seats
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even in the coop their
⏹️ ▶️ John front seats aren’t seats it’s like you know a bunch of boards with it with a piece of vinyl stretched across it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when was the last time you were in a Wrangler John, I’m so over
⏹️ ▶️ John you right now. Does anyone ever really in a Wrangler or are they just on it? Oh my god, I hate you, John.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why do you do this to me? Why do you do this? Why are you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so mean? See, nobody ever wants to hear me talk about fancy snow tires on my fancy Tesla, but everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wants to hear you talk about your terrible car ideas of getting this cheap
⏹️ ▶️ John crappy car. We didn’t have like an intervention of Casey. Casey is like, is too suggestible when
⏹️ ▶️ John it comes to like his, he has like a car shaped hole in his life, mostly filled with like BMW repair
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And he’s very susceptible to like, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John this will fill it and like, and just anything like Jeep Wrangler, like the track haunt.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Just something do this
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And so I don’t know, but just like he runs across the wrong ad or the wrong YouTube video and just
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s like, you know what I should get? A Winnebago. I mean, that’s his
⏹️ ▶️ John next thing. He’s going to be like, why not? The
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey family could
⏹️ ▶️ John go on vacation. We could live in it. vacation we could live in it. We’ll need to sell our house to afford it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My parents briefly had like a little tiny whatchacallem RV and I am still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little upset that they got rid of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was joking but there it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the seed and that seed will grow in your mind until maybe three years from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey now. $41,000! $41,235 for a new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wrangler. Holy shnikes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just why? At that point why? Like there are so many better things in every way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell me what tell me what for okay to Honda Civics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would rather drive to Honda Civics than then a
⏹️ ▶️ John one at one in a different color
⏹️ ▶️ John you know just alternate the excitement of having two cars that you rotate
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey like it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John raid one for cars if one car has a repair it’s so much less annoying if only you could drive both of
⏹️ ▶️ John them to the dealership at the same time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually I don’t think I would need to go that quite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that bananas I think I can ask the problem
⏹️ ▶️ John you never actually need to go.
Follow-up: Bent Magic Keyboards
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apparently the Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad is bendy, and I guess that’s something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’re supposed to be upset by? Because I tell you what, when I get a new keyboard, the first thing I do is a bend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey test to make sure it’s not bendy.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, not bendy… you didn’t read the link.
⏹️ ▶️ John bendy like if you put it in your pocket and sit on it, it’ll bend like an iPhone 6. But
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s two kinds of reports. One kind is I open up the box on my
⏹️ ▶️ John brand new new magic keyboard with numeric keypad, which is a hell of a product name. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if that’s the official name, but you know what I’m talking about. And I took it out of the box and put it down on the desk in front
⏹️ ▶️ John of me and it’s bent like it’s warped. It wobbles like, you know what I mean? So that’s, that’s no good. That’s just like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John manufacturing defector,
⏹️ ▶️ John know, maybe it got bent in transport or something like that. But the second strain of this
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of story is I got a new magic keyboard, took it out of the box. It was fine, typed on it for a week.
⏹️ ▶️ John And apparently the force of my typing bent it in the middle. If you’re gonna put only little pads or feet on four corners
⏹️ ▶️ John of a very long keyboard and it’s so thin that it bends in the middle from the force of typing,
⏹️ ▶️ John that is a pretty big failure for the functionality of a keyboard. Now your beloved Magic Keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John that you have without a numeric keyboard maybe is has a short enough wheelbase so to speak that having
⏹️ ▶️ John the little feets on the corners doesn’t make it bend in the middle or maybe you should just not look at your keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John to see if it’s bent in the middle. But But anyway, we’ll link to this
⏹️ ▶️ John MJ Size webpage that has a collection of all of this information. I don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, if it’s a manufacturing defect, it kind of makes me feel better. It’s like, oh, well, they’ll fix the manufacturing defect. But if it was actually
⏹️ ▶️ John the case that the mere act of typing on the keyboard bends it, That’s, that’s pretty bad.
Sponsor: Fracture (code ATP17)
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Visit Fracture.me and save 15% off your first order with code ATP17.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco help you keep those memories alive. They help you capture those moments and keep them around, keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you seeing them because otherwise they fall off your Instagram timeline or your Facebook river
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can have these physical objects representing these memories in your life and they are just wonderful. Fracture prints are these
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. That never happens. They’re way too lightweight for that. It’s just these wonderful, practical,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and very nice looking glass prints of your photos. And they make fantastic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gifts, especially now for the holidays. These are all human-made prints, handmade in Gainesville,
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco simple, it comes with everything you need right in the box, there’s a money back guarantee if anything goes wrong, although I’ve never seen anything go wrong.
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#askatp: Gift ideas for listeners
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Visit fracture.me and save 15% off your first order with code ATP 17
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you so much to fracture for sponsoring our show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do a little bit of ask ATP Paige Hilliard writes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in is there any way the three of you could come up with a list of realistic things that you would like To have as holiday gifts, even if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some of you already have them Helpful hints would be greatly appreciated, and potentially opening up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your website to sell t-shirts or gear year-round would be even more appreciated. So the bad news
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that Paige’s spouse or what have you is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably going to be listening to the show, and so Paige, now you can’t use any of these ideas because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’re now giving them away. However—
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You assume we have useful ideas. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also fair. I was thinking about this on and off most of today. I try
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to every year, and I did not do it this year, I try to every year do a, like, holiday
⏹️ ▶️ Casey roundup of, here’s a bunch of different gifts that I recommend at all sorts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of different price points. And so I’ll put in the show notes, um, the last couple of years of these posts,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they’re just stuff I like. Sometimes it’s board games, sometimes it’s stupid, it’s like cables or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dumb like that. But this year I didn’t do it mostly because I didn’t feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had that many new and interesting ideas. So I’m missing out on that sweet, sweet affiliate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money. But my priority is to do a post that I think is useful before it is make a few bucks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on affiliate money. So that’s why I didn’t write it. The only thing I can come up with that I think is useful is for those of us with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new phones, a Qi charger seems like a pretty good
⏹️ ▶️ Casey answer. Now you would have to figure out would your partner want a stand-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Qi charger, say for at a desk, or would they want a lay-down Qi charger, say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for like at a nightstand? But that seems to me to be a pretty good option
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and a pretty safe option for anyone that has an iPhone 8 or newer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have a hard time with this because I am very hard to shop for, as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone in my family always complains about right around this time of year. And when I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do think of something that I actually want, I just buy it immediately and don’t give anyone else a chance to buy it for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or sometimes the things that I want are too expensive that I would feel comfortable asking for as a gift.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, so it’s, it’s kind of a hard topic. Um, especially because we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know anything about this person really. So, uh, that’s, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they like coffee, I can tell you lots of coffee gear that that could be useful. Um, I’ve written
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it up on my side a few times. So like Casey, I didn’t do anything with any kind of gift guide this year,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you know, coffee equipment, kitchen equipment in general,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for whatever they like to do, that’s always interesting gift ideas, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really hard without knowing anything else. I can think of like, kind of like a greatest hits kind of thing, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just stuff that everyone seems to enjoy and certain kitchen gadgets fit this requirement, I think pretty well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Certain ones are things like having like a really nice pair of gloves for the winter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is always good for Christmas. I enjoy having a really nice flashlight.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a line of flashlights by the brand Phoenix with an F, F-E-N-I-X, that I really enjoy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that just use two AA batteries, and you can get smaller or bigger ones, but the two AA ones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, are the best size to weight balance. They’ve got super nice LED flashlights. That’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of a pleasant thing to have around. Your mention of the Qi charging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mats is really good. the Mophie one that the Apple store sells is excellent.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I tried a few other ones now. I actually just got in the Grovemade one. Those just came today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have not yet actually used it beyond just five seconds to test it out because it’s gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my nightstand charger and I haven’t gone to bed yet. But it looks really nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s very well built. It’s pretty big, but pretty well built, pretty nice. And yeah, just, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, there’s all sorts of stuff. Like, you know, I like having a really nice backpack. I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a backpack from Briggs & Riley, which is a fancy luggage company. They make fantastic luggage, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is why I got their backpack, and I just love that. It’s just so delightful to have that. Any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of, you know, like certain people, myself included, like having nice leather goods. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, like a leather laptop case maybe, something like that. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that kind of stuff, you know, but I mean this stuff, this is so like kind of general purpose.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I like having really good travel mugs. Zojirushi makes a really nice travel mug that I really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really like. Yeah, I don’t really know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s really hard to know how to be more specific than this, but those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are all nice things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know, hearing you talk gave me a couple of other ideas. One of the best investments
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve ever, ever, ever made was what I call my GoPack, which is really just a collection of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cables and whatnot that are basically duplicates of anything I would need to charge
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any of my devices and a couple other miscellaneous bits. So, you know, if I ever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go overnight anywhere, I just grab this bag that has all of my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chargers in it always. They never ever leave that bag unless they’re, you know, in a hotel being used or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t have to, you know, remove my entire installation from my bedside table or anything like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pack it up and then reassemble it when I get back home. It is just everything in duplicate. And I’ve written a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey couple of blog posts about that. And so I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. It can get pretty spendy depending
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on what you want. I think I spent like 200 bucks on mine, and I’m not talking about the bag itself. I’m talking about all the bits inside. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a couple of fairly expensive things that I find very useful that most normal humans probably wouldn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then additionally, hearing you talk about your, did you say Briggs and Riley backpack?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I happen to adore anything that Tom Bin makes. That’s T-O-M-B-I-H-N.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s maybe a little late to order it for this holiday season, unless you are on the West Coast because they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Seattle-based, but pretty much anything Tom Bihn makes, I adore. And I highly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recommend that as much as Marco seems to highly recommend Briggs & Riley as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, just a couple other quick thoughts that Marco made me think of.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, wait. Before, one more thing also. I came up with something more specific in the kitchen category.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have gotten, as I guess for other people in the past, my favorite kitchen thermometer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is the ThermoWorks Thermapen Mark 4. If you have any need for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a kitchen thermometer, and if you ever do anything in the kitchen ever, you do. Even if you don’t think you need one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you need one. And once you have one, you will use it for lots of things. Every kitchen should have a thermometer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a scale. And the scale you can get pretty much any cheap garbage, it doesn’t really matter. The thermometer, they actually matter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quite a bit. There’s pretty big variations in quality and accuracy and speed and everything else. What you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the Thermapen Mark 4 from ThermoWorks. It runs about 70
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bucks usually if you find a good sale. I think it’s about 90 if it’s not on sale.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is the one that if you see on Top Chef, if you ever see anybody using a kitchen thermometer, it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably this one. There’s a reason for that, it’s awesome. This is like the, I was gonna say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Cadillac of thermometers, but Cadillacs aren’t that great anymore, are they? This is the Tesla of thermometers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey just, it’s really, really nice. Yeah, it’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Generally, and like, you know, I mentioned Phoenix earlier with the LED flashlight thing, and those are like 50 bucks, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, so these aren’t cheap, but it’s really nice when if you’re the kind of person who values
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quality and nice things, which almost everyone is about something, you know, it might not be about the same things that you or I are,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but almost everyone can appreciate quality in something. And it’s really nice when you can find
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something like this in a category where like pretty much everything else in the category is kind of mediocre garbage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you can figure out what’s like the one really awesome thing in that category, even if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit ridiculously priced, that kind of thing makes a good gift. Because the kind of thing where like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who receive it can probably appreciate something really awesome like that, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it’s expensive and or obscure, they might not ever know about it or they might not feel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco justified spending the price for it. So that’s the perfect kind of thing that makes a great gift is like, I wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have bought this for myself, but I really appreciate having it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I do agree that that is one of the best gifts. The, oh man, this is great, but I’m so glad I didn’t spend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the money on it. That is the sweet spot. John, we’ve delayed you far too long. What are your
⏹️ ▶️ John I reject the premise of this question, which is that we should list things that we
⏹️ ▶️ John like because people who listen to the show will like the same things that we like. I mean, we can try to list things that we like,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if we already have them. Like, that is one task. But the second part of this is for those
⏹️ ▶️ John of us who are partnered with ATV fans, the idea The idea being that if we list things that we like, that people
⏹️ ▶️ John who like the show will also like those same things. And I don’t think that’s true. Like, just because we like, that means we like them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everyone who listens to the show is not like us, hopefully. So, yeah. And
⏹️ ▶️ John also, I’m terrible at giving gifts, so even if I had good ideas for gifts, you shouldn’t listen to me, so.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s very helpful, thank you, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and I put this question in there, and I basically put it in just to say, can you come up with a list of blah? And the answer for me is no,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t. I cannot do that because I don’t think I should, I don’t think it makes sense, And even if it was phrased
⏹️ ▶️ John so it does make sense, I’m bad at that. So I’m glad you too, Philvin.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Paige, just let you and your partner know that Marco and I are your favorites and John is
⏹️ ▶️ John useless. And to ask like, what do you ask for? I’m not as bad as Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John in that I don’t immediately buy everything that I want. But when people ask me what they should get me, my answer is
⏹️ ▶️ John always nothing, which is probably the worst thing you can say to someone who wants to get you a gift. So I’m just terrible all around when
⏹️ ▶️ John it comes to gift stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, honestly, I would love to get to the point with the family where like, like maybe we just get gifts for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kids, right? Like that’s, that seems like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John better way to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it. But this is, I think this is the kind of thing like many adults want this outcome,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s very hard to get families to
⏹️ ▶️ John agree to that. We’re getting close. Like we should have like a big family map of like how far like we’ve, we’ve successfully
⏹️ ▶️ John spread the only gifts for kids thing. We’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey gotten pretty far. There’s only a few holdouts
#askatp: Liking our own code
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving on. Rob Fiorendino writes, How do you feel about your code
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or your apps after you’ve written them? Are they more like your children or your tools out in the shed?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will speak for myself and say any code that I’ve written more than three days ago is always garbage.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And any code I’ve written in the last three days is often garbage. John?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure like with the children or tools thing. I’m not sure like what, what Rob
⏹️ ▶️ John is getting at there. You can take it lots of different ways. Like, like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John tools in your shed or children, like, I don’t know. Anyway, I’ll just tell you how I feel about my code because I don’t understand that part
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. I think he’s just saying, you know, is it disposable and you’re like, yeah, whatever, or is it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, this is my creation that I’ve labored for and it is perfect in every possible way.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, like you said, Casey, it really depends on the timeline. Sometimes you write code and as soon
⏹️ ▶️ John as you’re done writing it, you just hate it, but it’s It’s like you just gotta do what you gotta do, because it’s work, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Other times, you can be mildly satisfied with it, but there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John really no such thing as far as I’m concerned as code that I write that I can look back on in the long
⏹️ ▶️ John term and not see all the terrible problems with. A couple
⏹️ ▶️ John years down the line, no matter how incredibly happy you are with something, I
⏹️ ▶️ John always do see what’s really wrong with it. If, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John if only because if that code lives on, like if it’s, if you’re aware of its existence, it
⏹️ ▶️ John probably means that it’s still in use, which means that it has to be modified to account for,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the changes of, of reality. Like, you know, things change and you have to modify and augment your code to do
⏹️ ▶️ John new things. And inevitably you get to the point where you are modifying your code in ways that you did
⏹️ ▶️ John not anticipate when you wrote it. And nothing makes code uglier and makes you more annoyed
⏹️ ▶️ John with it. Then more than trying to change it in ways that it wasn’t meant to be changed. Like you never
⏹️ ▶️ John thought things would change along this axis. So you always thought this bedrock assumption would be true when the entire system was built around
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And that bedrock assumption is not true. And you’re like, Oh, God, do I rewrite
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole thing? How can I change it? Is it too much like, and then so you just feel bad about it. So it’s mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John the more time goes on, and the more it has to change, the more bad I feel about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco? Pretty much all my old code, I look at it as, yeah, this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just garbage and it’s a burden. Like I love deleting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco code. I love when a library comes around that removes the need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for some code I’ve written that I can just delete my code and use the library or, you know, new APIs from Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and those commands, stuff like that. I code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to accomplish something else. I code to build a product. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actual code, I take very little joy in, is it beautiful or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco elegant or interesting or clever? I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take no joy in any of that. So I write code and immediately, even as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m writing it, I’m like, oh God, I don’t wanna have to maintain this. I don’t wanna have to do this crazy thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s all to accomplish the end. So basically, immediately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after my code is written, I don’t like it, and I just try to move on if I can.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, I gave a slightly snarky answer in saying everything I’ve written I hate, and that is only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I mean, I really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do feel that most of the time. But all kidding aside, in my entire career, and I’ve been doing this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for, oh, geez, like 13 years now, I think there have been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe probably five or less like blocks of code.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t mean that as like five lines. I mean like projects maybe is a better way of phrasing it. There have been like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey five or less projects wherein I’ve written some code and thought to myself, you know what? That
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was really solid and I did something really good and or clever there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And usually clever is is bad when it comes to code, but occasionally it can be good. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I think, all kidding aside, probably five times or less in my career I’ve looked back and said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that was good work. Everything else is either, well, it didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey immediately turn into a fireball, so I consider that job well done. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. he’s the one who decides how it’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ John change and if anyone has any kind of idea how it might change in the future it’s him because he’s going to be and it’s not like he’s saying
⏹️ ▶️ John he predicts everything but you never have he never has someone coming and saying you should
⏹️ ▶️ John add this feature that is that flies in the face of your entire internal design of your application
⏹️ ▶️ John even if he has the notion to do that he’s not forced to do it on an abbreviated timeline
⏹️ ▶️ John or like all sorts of like the pressures of a real job that forces
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you to do things. Except when the iPhone 10 is coming out and you got to make the release date.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. But that’s like, that’s more like just, that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John your entire job is, is using someone else’s APIs. You know, you don’t write UI kit, you roll in with the punches
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple’s platform. You’re writing on top of a platform. Everyone has that same thing. If you’re writing, you know, whatever, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John writing on top of a framework and that framework changes, and you got to, you know, roll with those punches
⏹️ ▶️ John too. But I’m saying for like the things that your actual product does. So I think it makes you feel worse when
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to change your thing in a way that it was never meant to be changed and you have to do
⏹️ ▶️ John it ASAP and you know whether you think it’s a good idea or not it has to
⏹️ ▶️ John happen that does like the worst damage to even even code that you that you feel like you know was
⏹️ ▶️ John was arranged in a reasonable way and designed in a reasonable way you have to go in there and
⏹️ ▶️ John basically like injure it and and scar it and make it uglier and just makes you want to just never look
⏹️ ▶️ John at it again and tear it all down and start over.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know those feels all too well. well.
Overcast feed redirects
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One of my favorite pastimes on the show is to bag on Marco for not having a job. However, in Marco’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey defense, I have to stand up for Marco on this one. I feel like just in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last few days, Marco, and I don’t know how much of this you want to talk about on the show, so I’m going to be a little cagey about it. But just in the last few days,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you had maybe not an emergency, but a, oh crap moment where some external force
⏹️ ▶️ Casey forced you to do a whole bunch of things and write a whole bunch of code that it seemed like you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you were planning on doing it at all, it was going to be long in the future. And so I do think, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re usually right, but it just so happens that it seems like, Marco, you’ve just gone through this recently.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So how do you feel about that code, whether or not you want to discuss the motivations behind it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m happy to talk about it. So the code you’re referring to is overcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco handling permanent feed redirects or feed changes for podcasts. Basically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way I built the overcast crawling infrastructure and database
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that feeds have feeds are keyed uniquely on URLs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that every every feeds map one-to-one to URLs and those URLs really can’t or and shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco change in the feed like if you have a new URL it gets a new feed entry and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco episodes are represented as feed items and feed items are keyed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco based on their feed ID plus then like you know a bunch of random numbers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco based on like you know, hashing their contents and then their GUID and stuff. And so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once you have feeds and feed items matched to a certain feed URL,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not trivial to then move those subscribers to a different feed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco URL because all the item IDs for everything they have subscribed to will be different. And I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easily change, I can’t just like modify the ones that are on the old feed to point to the new feed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco without having lots of other problems and everything else. And also worth noting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that the feed items table is 170 gigs now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The table that maps users to feed items is also about 170 gigs. These
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are the two biggest and highest traffic tables in Overcast. It is very hard to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modify these tables at all, to modify the schema, to add indexes or to change
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the schema, to run alter tables on it. It pretty much can’t be completed in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any kind of real-time fashion. The only way to really change that would be to set up a whole new database as a replica,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modify it, and then make it the new master. And that’s just a lot of administration work,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s risky, it involves downtime, and I hate doing it. So all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is to say that for Overcast to modify
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what URL a feed entry points to is a big deal. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since the beginning of Overcast, the way it handled redirects was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in HTTP terms, it treated them all as 302s, temporary redirects. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it encountered a redirect, it would follow it when crawling the feed, but it would never update the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco source URL to point to a new one if it encountered a 301 code which is the permanent redirect code.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This works on the web because on the web it’s pretty common
⏹️ ▶️ Marco practice that if you like host a website at a certain domain name
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or certain path and you change your URL scheme or you move hosts it’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco known on the web that you’re supposed to set up a redirect pretty much indefinitely that like it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bad idea to ever change URL without having a redirect in place because then you’re losing all your like search engine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ranking and your inbound links from other places and everything else like it’s kind of understood as a best practice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the web that you don’t break redirects ever so on the web a permanent redirect is much less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco important to be treated as such because you can just always crawl one of the URLs that something used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be at and if it’s been properly maintained it will get you to to where the feed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, where the new one is. Podcasting doesn’t work that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way in practice. So all this time when I’ve been doing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically treating this like the web, where I just kind of assume that if I follow a redirect, it’ll always be there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in podcasts, a lot of podcasters, first of all, aren’t web programmers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A lot of podcast producers, and they come from the media world. There’s also all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sorts of podcast hosting and analytics and advertising platforms
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out there that all want to host your feed for you at their domain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and are all selling their services quite successfully to big podcasters.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the big podcasters, to them, their entire world is iTunes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And with iTunes, you don’t have to maintain permanent redirects forever if you change your feed. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can just tell iTunes what your new feed URL is and it will move for you,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for itself and for Apple podcast subscribers and then you don’t have to think about it anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the concept of having permanent redirect setup is in practice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not known or not practiced by most podcasters. They are happy to move their feeds to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyone else’s service, anyone else’s domain, whatever new ad tracking insertion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco platform they’re using this six-month period they’re they’ll move it all the time and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they don’t consider what web programmers will consider you know is necessary for that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I could sit here all that’s as much as I want and try to blame them and say well you know this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your problem not mine but the reality is it becomes my problem it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is definitely my problem and it’s my and I’m the one who needs to fix it and find a solution because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what happens is when a big podcast moves, like about a year ago, This American Life moved their feed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they broke the old redirect. And I suddenly had like 80,000 people telling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me that their number one podcast was broken and overcast. And this was bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like it became my problem, very much so. At the time, I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have any kind of infrastructure in place to move subscribers between feeds in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a way that wouldn’t just break everything. And This American Life has another problem where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they don’t keep their back feed going. Like, they only keep the most recent handful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of episodes in the feed. Once something’s older than a few weeks old, you can’t download it anymore. You have to, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think they sell them or you can get them in their app or something, but you can’t download them out of the regular feed anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if I move people over to a new entry that doesn’t have all those back catalog
⏹️ ▶️ Marco episodes for This American Life, that’s a pretty big problem, especially for that show because it’s so popular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a lot of people will save up save episodes for like months at a time of those they’ll save up a big bat catalog
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so they can either go back and realist in or the save it up for like long car trips whatever else so there’s all these like very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very fragile conditions in which I have to be very careful what I do to handle redirects if anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and my original plan up until now of just not handling them was breaking down pretty badly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the driving factor this past week was that which about Casey was alluding to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the New York Times podcast, The Daily, is very, very popular. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Daily moved their feed. Overcast didn’t take the redirect. And the old feed wasn’t redirecting to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new one. I was hearing about it from a lot of people. And eventually we worked it out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they arranged to put that redirect in place. So that was a temporary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco patch but ultimately this was kind of like one of the many wake-up calls. If I finally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that was like, okay, I need to handle redirects. Also, like SoundCloud is falling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apart, and it seems like they’re probably not long for this world. So like, and a lot of podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are hosted there, so there’s gonna be a lot of feed moves there. And there’s so many popular shows that are moving to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different ad insertion platforms now and changing their feed address again. It’s a big enough problem now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that like any podcast crawling setup like this, it has to have a way to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have permanent redirects. Like that’s just the environment now. too many popular shows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco move too often, you have to do it. So what I’ve been working on for the last, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, I don’t know, week or so, is that, is permanent redirects and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making it work. And it’s really not good. Like, the way I do it is really not good,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the only way I can do it without totally modifying my database schema
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and going through like sysadmin hell for weeks as I do that, not to mention
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of costs associated with that and possible bug potential. So I really don’t want to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what I do now basically is, I have a separate process from the crawlers, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco speaking of your old code, my crawlers are the only thing I have written
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in Go. And I haven’t written in really any Go since. So my Go skills are very rusty.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I look at the crawler code now, and it’s so complex, because it was, not only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it written in this language that I’ve used for nothing else, so like my skills are dull, But also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like the first Go program I ever wrote. So it’s not particularly great Go code. Like, it’s like me learning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the language, and so everything’s in one big file, and it’s kind of all over the place. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me to track redirects there, I would have to modify the Go code. And I’ve been, I was trying to do that at first to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solve a few other problems. I’m just like, looking at this like, I just want to set this on fire.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, I have no idea what any of this does. I’m so scared to touch it, because like, it mostly has worked for a long time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I don’t want to touch it. But so instead, I made a separate process,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a separate process in PHP, my comfort language.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like comfort food. Like it’s not good for you, but you know anyway. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I made a PHP separate queue that just once a day checks feeds for redirects.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if a feed is redirecting to the same place that is also an iTunes registered feed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for more than, I I think two days is the threshold at, then it will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take all the subscribers and basically create new entries for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them in the new feed that match their entries in the old feed and then delete
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the old feed subscription. So to the user, the only thing that appears to happen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is all of a sudden the episodes for one of those shows that got moved,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they all just re-download for some reason. Everything else is preserved. Played, unplayed states,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether it’s starred or not, progress if you’re partial, and that’s all preserved, because that just gets reinserted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the new IDs. But you do have to redownload, because the client sees them as new entries.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Basically, that’s now in place. There’s now this queue that runs those things. It’s going through the backlog. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco took way too long for me to do this. I’m glad I finally did it. I wish I had a slightly more elegant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solution that wouldn’t require redownloading, but that would just be a lot more overhead.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’m not gonna do that yet, maybe down the road if it becomes a big problem. And man, once I found,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once I had something actually checking for 301 redirects, and for the iTunes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new feed URL tag, which is inserted, it’s like, people who aren’t familiar with podcasts,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who just know web programming, this would make you cry. That like, the way that you can redirect a feed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for podcasts is you leave the old feed still there, returning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a two hundred response code, but you put an XML tag in the RSS feed that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iTunes colon new feed URL and just leave that there for a few days and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iTunes picks it up and moves your feed for you and then the old feed just can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sit there not getting the episodes added to it or can just get deleted and stop working like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s how like I’m telling you this is what I have to deal with so it’s like again like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the web programmer me when I started this whole thing is I don’t need to do that. That’s terrible. No one’s going to really do that, but no people really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it and at increasing frequency. And yeah, and so anyway, once I had this redirect checking working,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was able to see quite how many very popular shows have had redirects
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since 2014 when I started crawling them. And it’s a lot. Some of them were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco simple like moving from HTTP to HTTPS. Like that that’s a very common
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. Like all the relay shows did that. Lots of lots of popular shows have done that. But a lot of them are just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco moving to different ad platforms and tracking platforms and insertion platforms and publishing platforms. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no one hosts their own feed in podcasting. It’s a mess out there. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had to deal with it even though I really didn’t want to. And I was so opinionated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about it. Like, I don’t need to do this. Like, they should have redirects in place forever. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not the reality. And I had to, you know, adopt to that because that’s the industry I’m in.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So yeah, so occasionally you have to do things and do them on the double because other people weren’t
⏹️ ▶️ John you. But it’s not his boss telling him to do it though. He’s his boss. He’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John He got to, the point is he got to delay doing it for a really long time because he didn’t want to.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Not with the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco daily though, right? And not with American Life.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not when very popular feeds
⏹️ ▶️ John redirect their, but I was saying like no one is forcing you to add an about screen that includes
⏹️ ▶️ John a car racing game to your your thing and you really don’t have your display system. No
⏹️ ▶️ John one’s making you support video podcasts if you don’t want to. No one’s deciding you have to have a recipe manager and
⏹️ ▶️ John a to-do list inside it. type of thing.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco changes over time. And you know my first email address was at juno.com and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I bought marker.org in 2000 That was the last time I had to change my email address and tell anybody,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh please update your address book. Nobody ever likes that. I also have hosted my own website at my own domain name since that time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because web hosts change, platforms change, social networks change, and it’s always nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have a domain for your home base, for what you tell people to represent you online,
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#askatp: “sudo”
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey So back to Ask ATP. Thankfully, thankfully, we have a quick one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to round us out. Stefan Kozlowski writes, Do you guys pronounce the command
⏹️ ▶️ Casey s-u-d-o as sudo or su-do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I will start by saying I have always pronounced it sudo and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I understand that it stands for super user do. So sudo is probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the more academically correct answer, but I’ve always pronounced it sudo.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to think about this question, uh, because I think I do both, both
⏹️ ▶️ John out loud and both in my head depending on context. That’s the conclusion I came to
⏹️ ▶️ John by like tracing through the times that I’ve said it or thinking about it. I think I I think
⏹️ ▶️ John I do both. I don’t know. It’s not a satisfying answer, but I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I pronounce it wrong and I don’t care. I’m proud of it. I say pseudo and I know it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco super user do. I’m very aware of this. However, I don’t care to me. Pseudo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is its own word and so it gets stone pronunciation.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I don’t think that’s wrong. That’s just one of two very common pronunciations like who’s to say which is I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John even know if that is the less common one. Maybe for all I know it’s the more common
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. It’s a Linux thing. It’s definitely wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always whatever you whatever everyone does with Linux. A lot of people will say it’s wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I don’t know. I think that it’s in the running for to being the more popular one
⏹️ ▶️ John because like you said it is a word PSEUDO like the fact that you know people just
⏹️ ▶️ John substitute a word there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That was when I was talking about I was I was just saying like you know basically like conceptually in my head
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I read that as pseudo like I read it as a word that and I I know what it means it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being fluent in language like I’m not thinking about like it’s component parts I’m thinking like oh I need to suit or do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this command like that is its own word in my head I don’t think like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh I need to super user do like when I make a directory,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, oh make der like I or micture like I think that in my head like as I could component parts,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I don’t like think about that is in I don’t say like you know make dire it’s der for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco directories so but pseudo to me like that has become its own word in my head,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that’s why I pronounce it the way I do and I don’t I don’t care about the the component parts of it and how they are pronounced.
John’s black screen of death
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John, tell me about your black screen of death.
⏹️ ▶️ John This could have been follow-up, but I’m trying to, you know, I think it has wandered out of follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ John and now it’s just like practically a weekly segment where I complain about my laptop in some way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, people gave me so much crap when I was complaining about my laptops.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John These are not
⏹️ ▶️ John systemic complaints. These are specific complaints for the most part.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re just updates on my life with the Mac, but the Touch Bar thing was was not really a complaint about touch bar just telling
⏹️ ▶️ John you like I tried to use it and it wasn’t for me like you know I mean so that’s different but anyway this is and this this
⏹️ ▶️ John might not be a laptop bug but it’s a situation I find myself in frequently
⏹️ ▶️ John and one of those things where I don’t know where to blame it but it just it makes my overall experience with this thing worse I think I mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ John it before that so I’ve got this docking station and it’s great when everything works
⏹️ ▶️ John well but sometimes it gets cranky when I undock it. So on doc and I
⏹️ ▶️ John go out, you know, on doc with it in clamshell mode, and I’ll go off to a meeting or something. And then I’ll arrive at the meeting,
⏹️ ▶️ John open up my laptop, and everything about it will work perfectly except for the screen is 100% black. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I used to know that everything was working perfectly back when the touch bar was not in the you know, the mode
⏹️ ▶️ John that I changed it to where it just shows the function keys all the time, because I would unlock with touch ID,
⏹️ ▶️ John or unlock by typing my password into the totally black screen. And then I could command tab and I could see the touch bar changing
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey among the applications that you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, everything’s working, I come command tabbing, I’m presuming the trackpad is working, if I could see the mouse cursor, it would be moving,
⏹️ ▶️ John I could, you know, type keyboard commands that I know worked in the front most application, you know, and like
⏹️ ▶️ John I could, if I could use it, without seeing the screen, it was all working, but the screen was 100% black, and nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John I would do to that computer sitting there would make that screen not be black, put it to sleep,
⏹️ ▶️ John wake it up again, close the lid, open it. The only way I found to bring it back is a hardware way
⏹️ ▶️ John where I would use my little they have some little dongle thingy
⏹️ ▶️ John that goes in the side that gives you like a USB port and HDMI and a bunch of other crap plug
⏹️ ▶️ John that in the side and then plug the the rooms monitor
⏹️ ▶️ John into the HDMI port and that would wake up it would first of all it would start my
⏹️ ▶️ John machine to start projecting on the on the external screen but also it would wake up the internal display right
⏹️ ▶️ John so that’s I’ve had this book really a long time and it’s annoying sometimes I’ve had to leave the meeting room, go back to my
⏹️ ▶️ John desk, get my dongle, come back to the room, plug it in, plug in the HDMI monitor, and then my thing was awake. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I ran into this problem and I’m calling this the black screen of death, even though it’s not death, it’s like in limbo, it’s alive but blind.
⏹️ ▶️ John This happened to me where I unplugged my thing because I was in a hurry to get home, unplugged it, and I
⏹️ ▶️ John needed to use my laptop at home. And I got home and opened it up and sure enough, black screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I didn’t have my little dongle because it was back at work so I couldn’t do the one magic hardware thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John makes my screen to burn back to life and I tried so many other things I tried SSHing into it from another machine
⏹️ ▶️ John I tried plugging in other things I tried getting out my very own Apple branded HDMI dongle and plugging
⏹️ ▶️ John it into my gaming monitor which is HDMI and turning everything on and that didn’t wake up the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John in the end I had to hard reset the thing which really annoyed me that’s why I
⏹️ ▶️ John spent like 20 minutes trying to bring this thing back because I was in the middle of a lot of stuff you might not surprise
⏹️ ▶️ John you might surprised to hear that I had a lot of windows open. I had a lot of things
⏹️ ▶️ John going on. I, you know, I just, I had a lot of terminals, a lot of shells and no, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John use any one of the million things that can let me resume my shelf. I’m exactly where I left off. Yes, I’m sorry. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John disappointing all the people who love T-Mux and screen and all the other things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right. I also use none of those things. I always have tons of terminal tabs and windows open and it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. Anyway, I was annoyed that I lost everything that I was working on and had to hard
⏹️ ▶️ John reset my computer who wants to reset it and the worst part is I’m not hard resetting it because it crashed I’m not hard resetting it
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s frozen it’s not like everything was fine except the screen was 100% black so
⏹️ ▶️ John this is really putting a damper this bug and the possibility of this bug can be there my annoyance when
⏹️ ▶️ John it happens it’s kind of like the month 13 is out of bounds thing where it’s like everything is mostly working
⏹️ ▶️ John but there’s some part of it that’s not working that you feel like someone should notice so I you know
⏹️ ▶️ John I would like I I think something in the operating system should be aware after a certain
⏹️ ▶️ John period of time that there is a no monitor attached and b the screen is entirely black and I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a sustainable state and the lid is open. I think that set of things there should
⏹️ ▶️ John be some assertion in the operating system that says if no monitor is attached and the lid
⏹️ ▶️ John is open and you’re awake but the screen but the screen is 100% black
⏹️ ▶️ John fix that like make it not be like that. I’m hoping that’s a thing that it can detect. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know who to blame. Maybe I blame the docking station. Maybe it’s an OS bug. Who knows? But
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, I don’t like laptops.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are you on High Sierra on this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes. No, no, I’m not. I’m on regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sierra, sorry. Okay, so it probably isn’t like a, well, I guess it isn’t a new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OS bug at least, but it’s not like Sierra was bug-free either.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what it is. It’s just my latest in a long line of infuriating sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of bugs on my laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I can assure you that this is not only not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bug that has been fixed in High Sierra, but it is not unique to your laptop because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my Marco book pro that I use at work. That exhibits this same behavior. Now I wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say that it happens all the time. I wouldn’t even say that it happens terribly often, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the only solution I had come up with for it was occasionally I can sleep it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then re reopen it, you know, close the lid and reopen it. And then sometimes it’ll come back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or like you said, you know, disconnect external monitors, reconnect external monitors. But just like you said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey additionally, there are times that I just have to just kill the machine and bring it back. So this is a clamshell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey problem. This is a software problem. This is not a new MacBook Pro problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that is very sad.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it seems like there must be some hardware aspect to it, because I don’t think merely closing the lid and opening
⏹️ ▶️ John it, I think it’s the fact that you’re attaching an external monitor and something about the I’ve attached a monitor. please detect
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s there and start sending your video signals it oh you just yanked it out I have to handle that like it’s it’s related to
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that the hardware configuration machine is changing like I’ve never seen it you know what once the computer
⏹️ ▶️ John is working in isolation I’m not plugging anything into it I’ve never seen it happen there where I close the lid and open
⏹️ ▶️ John and the screen doesn’t turn on so I don’t know but yeah like I’m that these type of
⏹️ ▶️ John problems are very often waking from sleep problems and stuff like that but I feel like waking from sleep is almost more explicable
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like well the computer is not even awake. And so like, obviously, it’s not working. This is the worst because it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so clearly so clear, especially with a touch bar, that everything is working just fine, that the computer is
⏹️ ▶️ John running, it just refuses to display anything on the screen. And I find that infuriating.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I should also add, since this is apparently the airing of grievances, it is the holiday season. After all, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should add that my Marco book pro is now going to have to go in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for service when I’m out over the holidays. Because it It turns out if you plug in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and remove, what is the port on the side? What is it? Thunderbolt? But it’s also known as…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Mini DisplayPort.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Mini DisplayPort. Yeah, thank you. If you plug and unplug Mini DisplayPort cables every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey single day, all day, every day, turns out they start to fail over time. So Monday,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I got to the office, I tried to plug in my two LG 4K monitors, and one of them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in particular wouldn’t plug in for the longest time. I would switch around cables. I switched
⏹️ ▶️ Casey around where I was plugging them in. It was nothing I could do to get it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to work. And then finally, I had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually my head IT guy come over and look at it. And he plugged in his
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MarcoBook Pro and it worked no problem immediately. Unplugged it, plugged it back in, worked no problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it appears that either the graphics card is dying or the connectors are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting screwed up in some way, shape or form. So I hope Marco that in your beloved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco book pro that you are not often time or often using the thunderbolt ports because over Time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after a year or two after a couple of years you might find them failing so good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco luck Yeah, this is one of the things that the move to usbc made a lot better that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Usbc as far as I can tell so far the connection does wear out over time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like many of them do however It seems like the parts that wear out are mostly in the cable end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and not in the port end So it is kind of annoying that your cable loosens up over time, especially when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s your power cable to your new Macbook Pro. But it does seem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that’s probably an easier fix long term, that you can probably just replace the cable in those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco conditions for USB-C. But the mini DisplayPort connector that then became the Thunderbolt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connector, that’s never been a good connector. Like, you know, one of the big problems with it is that the cables are kind of loose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in there. loose in there. There’s nothing like holding them in, really. So they can just very easily slide out or get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit dislodged or a little bit jostled. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will defend a lot of great things about the 2015-era Retina MacBook Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco However, the design of the Thunderbolt port is not one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, I kind of wish I had a Thunderbolt 1, or a Touch Bar 1, but that ain’t never going to happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My IT guy refuses to buy any Touch Bar MacBook Pros,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and maybe it’s because he’s smarter than me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. Think about it from the point of view of an IT manager at a company.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A computer that seems to have a pretty high keyboard failure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rate compared to most computers, And again, people who defend this keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if that rate is 20%, that’s still really high for a computer that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has only existed for a year. If that’s the kind of failure rate you see on a pool of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these new computers, and if buying them would make you have to rebuy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a whole bunch of dongles or display things or projecting things or things like that for the whole office,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can totally understand why an IT manager would be like, yeah that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey not oh yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not worth it like we can’t we can’t afford the downtime for the keyboards that’s a lot of work for the IT people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have to like you know get the pull those out of service from you know from the company when they when the keyboards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco break get them repaired put them back into service like you know figure out things in the meantime like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a huge burden on an IT staff and even even before all that you consider all the dongle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff so that makes total sense like I totally get it and that’s honestly that’s That’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why Apple still sells the 2015 model new in the Apple Store today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They probably sell a ton of them to big corporate purchasers who just want what they’ve been buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for years because they know it’s fine, they’re already equipped for it, and it’s pretty reliable. except
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you have to replace your Thunderbolt port.
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iMac Pro!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Betterment, rethink what your money can do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have somehow accidentally procrastinated for an hour and 20 minutes by my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clock, but we should probably talk about the iMac Pro. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco unfortunately
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me, I started to have a holiday party and made it through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about a half a drink because I was very busy tonight. So I’m sad to report, ladies and gentlemen, that this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not a holiday party for me and And I’m going to have to endure this sober, and I’m doing it for you, the listener.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So all right, guys, tell me about what’s going on.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why do you have to endure this? Aren’t you sitting in front of a 5K iMac right now?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m mostly giving you a hard time. I am sitting in front of a 5K iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John So you’re an
⏹️ ▶️ John iMac buyer. This is a computer that could potentially be for you. You like this kind of computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do. I do. I’m mostly giving you two a hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. Don’t you do a lot of video transcoding and buy all of Apple stuff in Space Gray? You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, the, the, I don’t, the sick thing about the iMac pro is the thing that I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey appeals most to me about it is the fact that it’s space gray. Cause I think that is so hot and it’s so ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’ll be the first to tell you that is utterly, truly ridiculous. That the thing I’m most excited
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about is the color, but oh my God, it looks so good. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco those accessories
⏹️ ▶️ Casey look so good. Um, no, I, I, I snark in, if you’re not a long time ATP listener,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, there, I don’t remember which episode it was and I probably won’t remember to put in the show notes, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco It was early
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on in our run. Yeah, well, it was all of them, but no early on in our run. It just so happened that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I knew we were going to be talking about the Mac pro. And I don’t remember why, cause there was no news about it, but we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were going to be talking about the Mac pro. And I made the mistake of bringing my drink upstairs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with me in, into the office while I recorded. No, I didn’t spill it on anything, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, that part wasn’t the mistake. The mistake was that I also brought the bottle with me. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by the end of that episode, I had had quite the holiday party all by myself. And so anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s very embarrassing and I won’t actually, I probably won’t link it because I am embarrassed by it and I shouldn’t have done it, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, it is what it is and you only live once. Anyway, the iMac Pro does appeal to me. We
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should, we should do a kind of an overview in just a moment. It does appeal to me. I don’t think I find it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worth all of that money. I’m not saying that it’s an unreasonable price. I’m not saying that it should be lower.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m just saying I have a really nice iMac in front of me and yes, I do transcode things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot. Yes, I am getting into video now, but sitting here now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t feel like I need a new computer, which is usually stage one in case you’re buying a new computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, Marco, tell me about what this iMac Pro is all about.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We actually, there’s still a lot of big unknowns about it because as we record this, it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, actually, are they gonna launch it at three in the morning tonight?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I think you’re right. Are we just gonna, maybe I should start my holiday party
⏹️ ▶️ John all. Just keep podcasting until the configurator goes live
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and then we can answer more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey questions. I really don’t want to do that, but there’s something to be said for how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey funny that would be. And I will go downstairs and get myself more water and my bottle, and we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can do a holiday party if that’s what it takes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not staying up till 3 in the morning. That’ll be just me and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey listeners. Yeah. I’m going to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, because the thing is, for me, the Christmas season is way too busy for me to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy a new desktop and set it up and move my stuff over and everything. I’m way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way too busy for a while. So if I just wait until the morning to order
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mine, if I order one, I mean, I’m still telling myself if.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You said that and I took pause, but I didn’t want to ruin your flow, so I just bit my tongue, but you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey order one. Now it may not be tomorrow. I believe that it may not be tomorrow, but you’re gonna order one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it’s probably gonna be at least eight in the morning. Like I’m not gonna wake up at three.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I might wait until eight. So anyway, all this is to say, at the moment that we’re recording, we don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any of the pricing and the configuration options really. Like we know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what options will be available roughly, but we don’t know if there are certain combinations that they will require.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We don’t know some of the finer details of some of the options.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the core counts are gonna be eight, 10, 14, and 18, but the 14 and 18 aren’t available until quote early
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next year. We don’t know what that means really. that could mean in two weeks, or that could mean in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three months. So there’s a whole lot of unknowns.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yeah, and the biggest thing is that we only know the base price at this moment. We only know that it starts at $5,000,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that is eight core, one terabyte, and I think 32 gigs of RAM,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is a great, like that’s an awesome, like that is my iMac, but with twice the cores. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my iMac is 30 gigs of RAM, you know, it was the top CPU at the time I bought it, which was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in 2014. And that was $4,300 or something like that at the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the top iMac is slightly cheaper now, but it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you spec up an iMac to be one terabyte of SSD and 32 gigs of RAM,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re already getting about $4,000. Like you’re near that point. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so for this to be eight cores starting at $5,000 and for it to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be the Z-Online with ECC RAM,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John workstation GPU. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like way better GPU faster SSD like and and a whole lot of extra stuff like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco am I reading correctly for like from the reviews that it comes with all three peripherals it comes with a trackpad keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John mouse. It’s so hard to tell from these early reviews because like you said about the pricing you also like
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple just you know gives you a bunch of stuff as I hear you go they don’t they don’t say you know
⏹️ ▶️ John would it even be possible to order it this way or would you have to like say yeah you can buy all these input
⏹️ ▶️ John devices but you only get to pick one you know to come for free with your with your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is why you’re gonna win the bet you’re gonna make me buy a whole second
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John iMac Pro just so I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get a black trackpad and a black mouse
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the real the real black tax. Wow. I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco have to buy a whole second machine. No more like $300 extra. Yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I lamented the 150 bucks or whatever it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey black book and this is a whole new world.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so yeah, so all this is to say pricing is still a big unknown for us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like all the details like the configuration that the reviewers all had was 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco core so it’s one step up in the processor line from 8 to 10 core and I believe it was was it 64 gigs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of RAM? 128 gigs of RAM. Okay yeah, so that’s that’s probably going to be a you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know a $7,000 configuration. Yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John and the big the big sort of nonlinear price increases are always going to be 128 gigs of RAM and four terabyte
⏹️ ▶️ John SSD. Those are going to like cost as much as a car. Like I don’t know what it’s never like it’s double the price
⏹️ ▶️ John of the of the size that’s half as much. Nope, it is not. It is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not. Yeah, it’s it’s going to be like, you know, one terabyte comes with it. Two terabytes might be like, you know, plus 400 and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then four terabytes might be like plus 1200. It’s going to be like that kind of jump like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it might even be more than that because these are
⏹️ ▶️ John and the interesting thing about these these computers and we knew this already, But I think people are relearning it for the second time because
⏹️ ▶️ John we saw these machines at WTC, like actually physically saw
⏹️ ▶️ John and in my case touched them even though you weren’t supposed to. Um, I got yelled at by the apple person.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, but there, there’s no, uh, upgrade ability in this.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a question we asked the person who was there, like, you know, is the ramp solder to the borders and slots? He said it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John in slots, but you can’t get at them. Like there’s no little door for you to upgrade the ram. like
⏹️ ▶️ John you you configure this machine from Apple and you buy it and that’s it now in theory
⏹️ ▶️ John you could like I fix it could probably find a way to open this thing up and take out the RAM and upgrade it like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing really stopping you from doing it’s not like it’s locked with the key or whatever except for perhaps a secure
⏹️ ▶️ John booth boot thing which we’ll get to in a minute but who knows how well how they’re you know integrating that with their RAM but essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John there are no upgradable parts inside this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that you are allowed to change or that you can bring it to an Apple Store and say I’d like to to buy more RAM, can you put more RAM in this for me?
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s gonna say no, the RAM that you got is what you can, same thing with upgrading the CPU or any sort of other stuff like
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Which, if you’re gonna have a machine that’s totally sealed up, this is the one to do it on because the
⏹️ ▶️ John iMac, the whole point of it is it’s all in one, right? And you know the Mac Pro is coming and
⏹️ ▶️ John that really highlights what we think will be a very important difference between the iMac Pro and the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro. The iMac Pro has the freedom now to say, 100% sealed box,
⏹️ ▶️ John configure it the way you want it and that’s it, you know, no doors, no flaps, no upgrading after the fact,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just the machine you get is the machine you get, leaving the, paving the way for the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John to take the opposite choice. So some people are kind of annoyed at that, but I feel like it is
⏹️ ▶️ John a reasonably smart differentiation, differentiation between these two machines. So it’s clear to you, why would
⏹️ ▶️ John I buy this one machine over the other? It’s like, what you want? If you want everything in one, and beautiful and elegant and
⏹️ ▶️ John simple and clean and sealed up and done and done, it’s the iMac. And if you want the
⏹️ ▶️ John other thing, it’s the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, to be fair, we don’t actually know yet whether the Mac Pro will be upgradable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We don’t, but we’re hoping. I mean, the tube was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slightly upgradable. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you could- You could change the RAM. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could add RAM, that’s it. You could swap out the SSD too. I don’t think anybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever sold the SSDs
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it wasn’t like, I think it was like the M.2 whatever thing. wasn’t entirely you know you could
⏹️ ▶️ John you could buy stuff the whole point is it was you could open the case and pull things out of it whereas this for all we know there’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s glued together like I don’t even know how easy it is to even get inside this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing I mean it’s probably like every other iMac like you know it all the components appear to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco face the back but you can’t open it from the back probably so you probably have to like remove the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you know basically go in glued on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right right and yeah so it’s probably it’s probably like magnets like the other one but anyway it’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very similar to the construction of the 27 inch iMac today. So you probably can get into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, but you don’t want to because it involves so much like surgery on the screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that lay people really shouldn’t do it because you will risk damaging things or getting dust in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John whatever else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s something that like, yeah, like Apple can do it, like their technicians can do it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John shouldn’t. And it looks pretty clean inside from the pictures they have on Apple’s website. If you look
⏹️ ▶️ John there, if the back came off in a reasonable way, it’s pretty nicely laid out. The RAM is really easy to
⏹️ ▶️ John get to. It’s sitting right there in little dim slots. You could pull it right out. Like it’s got a nice little heat pipe arrangement
⏹️ ▶️ John with the central heat sink and the two fans. And like, it looks nice in there. It looks like they, you know, sweated
⏹️ ▶️ John the details and made it look nice on the inside, even though nobody’s ever going to see that except for an Apple technician when,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, some part of it breaks or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but ultimately, like, I am very excited about this machine. I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little excited about it when it was announced this past summer. But I’m even more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco excited now that we’re getting performance numbers and that we’re getting the first reviews that have been out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The best review that I’ve seen so far is the MKBHD review. He’s had it for, he’s had it about a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week, and he’s a hard user on it. Like he creates and produces very high-end video content.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So he’s editing like high bandwidth, like high resolution video on this thing. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that really pushes it. One of the major concerns I had with the iMac Pro when we first heard about it was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe we talked about it in our live show at WBC this past summer, which my main concern was like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how does it handle being under load because my my regular 5k iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a very graceful machine until you really ask it to do something hard and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you hear annoying fan noise and the fan the family spins up and it’s loud and it’s it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just kind of ungraceful and a Mac Pro historically It has not done that. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac Pros usually are able to take pretty much any workload
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and still be dead silent or close enough to sound that you won’t hear it in an average room.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I really miss that. Like going back to a consumer level product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the regular iMac or a laptop, like when you put it under load and you hear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fan spinning, I always kind of feel like, yeah, this really isn’t made to do this very much. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, so anyway, I, I, heat and how it deals with heat is, is a big question mark
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me. Upgradability is kind of a known thing at this point. Like the laptops haven’t,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco haven’t been meaningfully upgradable since 2012. The desktops, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the only thing that’s been upgradable about the desktops anytime recently has been RAM. And even that is slowly fading
⏹️ ▶️ Marco away and the rest of the lineup. So really to me, like the upgradability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing is, it’s certainly something, it’s significant.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It matters, I think, more for long-term servicing costs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than necessarily getting a good deal up front. Like in the olden days, you’d be able to buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a MacBook or whatever or a PowerBook and go get third-party RAM from Crucial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or OWC or something like that and save a bunch of money on a high-end configuration by buying the parts yourself and putting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them in from third parties. Those days are long gone for the entire lineup desktop to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop. Like, the only thing you can still do that for is Casey’s iMac,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you shouldn’t because look what happened to Casey’s iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was waiting for somebody to make that joke and prepared to make
⏹️ ▶️ John Not the reason you shouldn’t, but I think the second use case is just longevity. Because if you buy it and you’re happy,
⏹️ ▶️ John like you buy a 32 gig arrangement and you’re happy, and it turns out that this thing is so reliable and the screen just looks gorgeous
⏹️ ▶️ John year after year that the thing is five years old and you’re like, you know what? This thing still does everything I need it to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I could use a little bit more RAM because I thought 32 would be enough for me to do what I need to do forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the latest version of Adobe’s whatever suite is just a RAM monster. And I would really like to have 64.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s where you want the ability to say, yeah, I used it for five years for 32, and it was great to extend the life
⏹️ ▶️ John of this machine. Let me upgrade it to 64. And you totally could on this machine if you could get inside it
⏹️ ▶️ John in a reasonable way, but you can’t. So if there was a little RAM door you would yank out the RAM five years
⏹️ ▶️ John later and put in some new RAM and same caveats about third-party RAM and yada yada the whole reason Apple doesn’t want you doing
⏹️ ▶️ John that makes sense but it really does extend the life of the machines if you can Add an SSD to a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that had a spinning disk or add a faster SSD or expand the RAM And that’s basically all you’ve been able to do with any
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac for the longest time if you’ve been able to do anything at all But it does extend the life of your machines I mean just my Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro is obviously the obvious example where where so much of the insides have been swapped and rotated and just gotten better
⏹️ ▶️ John and better over time that it’s extended the life of the machine. If it was still the way I bought it when it was new, it would be completely
⏹️ ▶️ John unusable right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, but like, you know, but that was also in many ways a product of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco times that it went through. Like the SSD transition is, you know, that’s not gonna happen again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? Or unless maybe we move to like those RAM
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but even just the video card, I’ve gone to like three or four video cards in this thing, each one faster than the next. that’s really
⏹️ ▶️ John extended the gaming life of the machine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s true. But anyway, I feel like most of those days are over. There was a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco section on Connected this week where Steven talked about the video card upgradeability of previous Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pros. And usually, people who want upgradable Mac Pros,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they usually think of it, if they haven’t done it before, they think of it from a PC builder perspective.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Where if you’re in the PC world, building Windows PCs, You can swap out video cards with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all sorts of different great options all the time. Everything costs very little money, relatively speaking, and you have tons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of great options. When the Mac world, you’ve only ever been limited to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the handful of cards that actually supported the Mac. And this has been true of many peripherals,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even when the Mac Pros were the tower style, like what you have and what I used to have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You couldn’t just put in any PCI Express card in there and have it work. many of them would,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but most of them wouldn’t. Or they would work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John partially. It was
⏹️ ▶️ John more than you’d think. You’d more than you think if you had to flash them up because it’s basically just based on the architecture. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple makes drivers for the, usually for the architecture, not just for a very specific card. So a lot more
⏹️ ▶️ John cards than would work than you think. But even if it was just a handful of cards, it’s not, yeah, you don’t have the selection of a PC builder,
⏹️ ▶️ John but to have the option to put a faster card in there, even if you only have literally one choice,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s only one choice that you can buy that is faster than your current one, it’s way better than zero choices. And one
⏹️ ▶️ John of the things I put in the notes here, this is a tweet from Bare Feets, the website that does lots of this kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of testing, emphasizes this fact that they were, you know, they have benchmarks, like these are
⏹️ ▶️ John OpenCL benchmarks, so they’re things that run on the GPU, of the iMac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then they pitted it against a 2010 Mac Pro, and the 2010 Mac Pro was faster, why?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because the 2010 Mac Pro has a replaceable video card, And like Margo said, there’s not a lot of choices
⏹️ ▶️ John for what you can put in the 2010 Mac Pro, but there are a couple of them. And one
⏹️ ▶️ John of them they were able to put in there was one that uses the same architecture as the GPU
⏹️ ▶️ John in the iMac Pro. So it’s an AMD Vega or however you pronounce it, 64.
⏹️ ▶️ John So they put that card in and because it’s the same architecture and because macOS
⏹️ ▶️ John has drivers for it because of the iMac Pro, it’s able to use that card. And just so happens to the card
⏹️ ▶️ John that could fit in that gigantic 2010 Mac Pro tower that has tons of room for cooling and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John that card is just faster than the one that’s in the iMac, because the iMac is a slower card, it’s probably clock slower,
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s a more thermally compromised environment. And so if what you care about is GPU performance
⏹️ ▶️ John in your 3D programmer, in your OpenCL, whatever program, 2010 Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John is faster than an iMac Pro, and I think this also highlights the role that the Mac Pro might
⏹️ ▶️ John play. Will the Mac Pro have an upgradable GPU? Maybe, maybe not, but I think the most important
⏹️ ▶️ John thing for these type of computers, for the Mac Pro or even for the iMac Pro is to
⏹️ ▶️ John be super fast when you release, which I think this qualifies. Like it’s got lots of cores in the CPUs and if
⏹️ ▶️ John you have an application that can use them, it will really make a difference in your life. The storage on this Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro is really, really fast. The iMac Pro is really fast. It’s faster than the laptops, right? And so that makes it
⏹️ ▶️ John the fastest Mac Apple has because the old Mac Pro is so old.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s got a you know the GPU is plenty fast right but To fulfill its role as the
⏹️ ▶️ John iMac Pro. I feel like Next year there needs to be a much faster GPU
⏹️ ▶️ John in the iMac Pro Or you know like they need to they need to update the internals of this iMac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John on a reasonable basis fine They’re not upgradable fine, but Apple itself has to upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ John them and revise them because otherwise it will just get more and more embarrassing embarrassing that
⏹️ ▶️ John your 2010 Mac Pro every year you can buy a new GPU to get you you know a 2x speed boost and whatever It is that you’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John and the iMac Pro year after year like the internals don’t get upgraded And if the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro is there isn’t upgradable same story Technology marches on and at the very
⏹️ ▶️ John very top end Apple has to be committed to releasing computers that are competitive
⏹️ ▶️ John with the top end and then Revising their computers to continue to be competitive and if they don’t want to revise them
⏹️ ▶️ John then merely make the certain components Upgradable and people will buy a PC
⏹️ ▶️ John Vega card that is faster than the one that they had before and flash it and Throw it in
⏹️ ▶️ John there, and it will work because the drivers work with every card in that architecture and won’t be happy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that my biggest concern here is the thermals and I I believe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them when they say they’ve gotten This to they’ve gotten the iMac enclosure to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cool the the up to 500 watt load that they are putting in here that or that that’s designed for.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it seems like there’s not a lot of headroom. Like, and this was exactly the problem they had with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 2013 Cylinder Mac Pro. You know, Craig Federighi famously said that they designed themselves into a thermal corner.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It seems like the 2013 Mac Pro was designed with just barely enough cooling power,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and even then it wasn’t really quite enough because of the way the dual GPUs got so hot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco With this, it seems like they went into it, like, you know, John, you mentioned last time talked about this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that like they went into the design brief of this seemingly with like fit pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco workstation grade components into the iMac enclosure. Well why? Like why couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John it be a little bit differently shaped? Why couldn’t it be designed an enclosure that supports programming components
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reverse? Exactly and so because of that because they they went in with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apparent goal or requirement of fit this into the iMac case that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was never designed for this amount of thermal load. I mean, the, this case was designed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in 2012 or was launched in 2012 and it was launched with the first, well, with the second
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generation 27 inch iMac, even the retina one was not designed for this. Like they designed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this was before the 5k we, we have shoved so much stuff into the exact same size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enclosure that in 2012 they probably were not thinking of when they designed the,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the shape and ventilation and size and everything else. with that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in mind with the thermals as a severely limiting factor probably here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I worry that on two fronts number one I worry like how much did they have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clock down the GPU and the CPUs to fit
⏹️ ▶️ John here and that gets to what you were saying of like if they’re on the ragged edge of their thing if
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ve had to down clock things there are they basically that they couldn’t support the cooling and the only
⏹️ ▶️ John way they could get it things to fit is they had to say well let’s just slightly downclock everything. And I don’t know if that’s true. That’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John been a rumor for a while that like basically all the components are running it, you know, slower speeds
⏹️ ▶️ John from the GPUs and the CPUs and the RAM and every part of the system, not a lot downclock, but just a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit. And the only reason you do that is because you couldn’t, you couldn’t cool them running
⏹️ ▶️ John at their their full speed. And that I mean, maybe that that’s a compromise for like, hey, this is a slim
⏹️ ▶️ John computer. It’s all in one, you don’t have a big box, you don’t have a big thing or whatever. I don’t think it’s unreasonable.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it does, you know, optimistically say this now further emphasizes
⏹️ ▶️ John why you might want the upcoming Mac Pro because presumably that one will not
⏹️ ▶️ John have to downclock its components. And so it will therefore be faster and have more headroom and everything. So and that gets
⏹️ ▶️ John to your point, Marco, about if they had to downclock things that you’re concerned like
⏹️ ▶️ John about all the same things about the 2012 about reliability and about noise. And so it could be argued that
⏹️ ▶️ John the 2013 Mac Pro the trash can, the privileged noise above reliability
⏹️ ▶️ John like it was very quiet all the time, but maybe it should have been a little bit more noisy because there was lots of reading problems with the GPUs,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So maybe they made a different choice here. That’s one thing that I found lacking in all the reviews is
⏹️ ▶️ John a rigorous testing of of the noise. I mean, people gave their subjective,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, reviews that are ever, but I’m looking for someone who’s like a fanatic line than like I am about fan noise.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And I wonder too, like the reliability, that’s not a small point. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing in here is really serviceable, because even Apple getting to it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco challenging, taking off the screen probably and everything, and because these are all expensive custom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco components, this is not a machine that I would want to own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of warranty very long. And I certainly would never buy one out of warranty, and I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably try to not sell it out of warranty, because I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worry that if it’s operating at so close to the thermal limits of this enclosure,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because this enclosure was never designed for this, it’s similar to a laptop, where laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco often run pretty warm if you push them all the time, and laptops tend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not to last as long. They tend to have reliability problems, or components break, or you have heat fatigue and your GPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco falls off, or things like that. There’s all sorts of problems with laptops with just things that run too hot,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they have such constrained enclosures. This is basically a giant workstation laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a big screen, in the way that it is clearly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very thermally constrained. The old Mac Pro towers, and even the trashcan Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those had a lot of headroom for most configurations. The main problem the trashcan had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was if you actually stressed the GPUs, that would cause a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you just stressed the CPU, it was fine, because it was designed with the kind of asymmetric
⏹️ ▶️ Marco triangle of heat sink in the middle there. It was designed to have one very hot side, which was the CPU, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two kind of hot sides, which were the GPUs. And as long as the kind of hot sides didn’t get super hot,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was fine. But unfortunately, that’s not how people work anymore. And they sold it as a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco GPU workstation, which was kind of a problem. So, but I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it could have been done as it was, as quietly as it was, it just made it a little bit bigger.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The main problem with the Trashcan Mac Pro, I think, is probably just they wanted to make it small.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they succeeded. It was very impressively small. But that’s something that nobody was really asking for.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And instead, they’ve made it unreliable, if you stress the GPUs. Anyway, with this, I feel like they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco done the same thing. They’ve kept it super thin on the edges, just like the current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, and the back of it’s pretty small too. And they’ve kept the same enclosure, but why?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nobody was asking for that. and it has severely constrained them.
⏹️ ▶️ John They didn’t even put that many more vents. Like the vents are bigger, but like the back of this is not covered with vents in places
⏹️ ▶️ John where the regular ones aren’t. They hid the vents behind the leg, just like they always do, so it looks clean from the back. And that
⏹️ ▶️ John is, like not only are they keeping the case the same, which presumably has big advantages in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ John tooling, you don’t have to come up with a whole new case design, you don’t have to come up with a whole new set of machines to carve
⏹️ ▶️ John out your case. Like it’s just some different slotting in the thing and you know, whatever. I don’t know if that’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ John as a big a savings as it might seem to be, but there’s something to be said for, you know, keeping some things
⏹️ ▶️ John the same. But they could have made the entire back of this thing like a giant cheese grater,
⏹️ ▶️ John and that would certainly allow more airflow into and out of this thing, and would have allowed you to have bigger, lazier, slower
⏹️ ▶️ John spinning fans instead of two relatively fast ones, pushing all the air out of the central
⏹️ ▶️ John thing and pulling all the air in through these little slits, right, so it’s all very elegant looking and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, and we don’t, you know, we don’t know. We’re worrying more than anything else. We’re not saying
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s going to be thermal problems. Even the downclocking thing is just something I’ve read as a rumor. I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John actually seen anyone pull out the speeds for all the components and say, here are the speeds for the components
⏹️ ▶️ John and if you put these things in a PC, you would never clock them down like this if you had adequate cooling. So we
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, but that gets to the heart of what you were talking about before. The reason you pay for all
⏹️ ▶️ John these expensive components, Xeons and ECC RAM and all that other stuff, is for the reliability factor. And if
⏹️ ▶️ John the reliability factor is undercut by the thermals in the form factor, then that
⏹️ ▶️ John makes this a less compelling purchase.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, like I don’t want my professional workstation, you know, $5,000 and up computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be operating very close to its thermal limits from day one, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since I can’t service anything. Because what that tells me is, I don’t think this is going to last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as long as a tower. And my current iMac, I think, has similar issues. I think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just inherent in the iMac design, that when you constrain things with thermals, things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t last reliably as long. Simple as that. That’s been the case for all computer hardware forever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When you can give them more thermal headroom, they last longer, and they run more reliably,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they run more gracefully under load. And it’s important to say what you just said, which is like, we still don’t know. We haven’t used this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet. None of us have one. We haven’t used it, and the reviews have not been very clear about load
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and thermals and noise and everything else. But that is a major concern for me at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco least, that they cram all this stuff into a case that was never designed to handle it. And even though they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did a lot of work on the cooling system and redesigning the internals and everything, it was still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a case that was not designed for 500 watt workstation grade components inside. So that’s my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco main concern is like, is this really going to last? And as I mentioned a few months ago, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not sure I want to spend $6,000 on a great computer that is gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be really flaky in three years.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, you’ll just sell it before then anyway, so.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe, but I don’t sell desktops that often. I mean, look, I’m still using my 2014 iMac now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I really, like seeing the reviews of this, I really want one, I really, really do,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I really want a speed upgrade. I do so much parallel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work that would benefit from those new cores, so, so much. I really want the black trackpad.
⏹️ ▶️ John your compiling would probably benefit from both the faster disks and the well, I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John if the disks are faster and random seeks. So they haven’t seen that. But like, like, I like the the disk subsystem, I think is getting
⏹️ ▶️ John short shrift here. Because first of all, the disk subsystem in the, I think the 2016 2017
⏹️ ▶️ John was much faster than it was before people don’t, you know, for for large data transfers, like if you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, for if you’re doing like video or something like that. And again, I don’t know how it is for random access a bunch of small files and stuff. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I love seeing stuff like that, because people don’t think, oh, it’s got an SSD. And they think SSD equals SSD equals SSD. But
⏹️ ▶️ John as it is, these get faster. And part of the advantages of buying expensive pro hardware is it should have the fastest
⏹️ ▶️ John SSD on the fastest interface. And so the numbers coming out of this is like three gigs per second read and
⏹️ ▶️ John write sustained through the internal storage. And that’s great. That is better than
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s better than Casey’s little MacBook adorable, right? A lot better. And that’s exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John they both have SSDs. Are they the same speed they are not right that’s what I want out of a pro machine and that’s you know
⏹️ ▶️ John this machine for like processing 8k video and stuff like that that’s a lot of data to move on and off the disk
⏹️ ▶️ John and into and out of ram and so you know all thumbs up on that um
⏹️ ▶️ John that and that’s one of the things that’s attracting me to the machine the reason I think that for so many applications
⏹️ ▶️ John like the very fastest mac that apple sells maybe it won’t make everything that you do faster especially
⏹️ ▶️ John if you don’t take advantage of the multiple cores but you know if you do stuff that it
⏹️ ▶️ John uses lots of disk bandwidth. Even if you don’t care about the CPU cores or the GPU,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the best disk machine. If you just do stuff with GPUs, this is far and away going to be the fastest GPU even if you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t care about the cores and you don’t care about the disk like there’s a lot to like, even if you’re not going to
⏹️ ▶️ John use every aspect of this computer and yeah, you have to pay for the other aspects too, which is the reason people get cranky
⏹️ ▶️ John like I just want the good GPU I don’t need zions I don’t need all those stuff. Well, you get it all
⏹️ ▶️ John right. It’s expensive. It’s just the way it is. But having to pay for it all to get
⏹️ ▶️ John like a good GPU is way better than literally having no option except to buy a 2010 Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and a third party GPU and shove
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And the final thing that I worry about here before we before anybody has one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is is having this much heat going to be a problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the screen? You know, this iMac was designed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in 2012 when the components behind it were, you know, 85 watt to 100 watt load probably.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now it can be up to 500 watt load. Is having that amount of heat right up against
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the back of the LCD panel going to be a problem for the longevity and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quality of the LCD panel? Like, are you going to develop like a splotch in like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the right quadrant near the middle where the processor is on the back like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s I don’t know like how do LCDs handle very high heat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being you know generated on a component that is stuck to the back of them for three
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years these are the kind of thing I’m worried about like as it’s like I’m so excited about this machine and I’m probably gonna buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least one but I don’t know like these are problems that I wouldn’t worry about if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was a tower and I intend to buy the tower when that comes out too. Like the only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason I’m even talking about this now is because Tiff wants me to buy this so that way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can give it to her when I get the tower. So that’s probably what I’m going to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s hard not to think about those concerns when I when like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been a little bit burned by IMAX in the past and I’ve had such great experiences with the towers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know I’m surprised that you’re you’re harping on the thermal stuff so much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it seems to me like Apple has got to know what the thermal requirements
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for this thing are. And with the, with the, with the trash can, yes, they designed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey themselves into a corner in that they didn’t have a lot of headroom, which is what you said before, but it’s not like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was broken the moment it shipped. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t think this is going to be any different. I really don’t. And having seen it very briefly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I saw it when we were at WWDC, as did John, and my recollection
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of that brief window of time I spent with it was that I could hear the fans, even despite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the fact that it was in a very loud demo room. And they said that the fans were screaming deliberately
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it was a very early pre-release model and they just wanted to crank the fans up to 11
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to make sure that whatever they were demoing on screen, which I don’t even remember anymore, didn’t cause any problems.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And those fans, I’m sorry to report, gentlemen, my recollection were they were loud. Now that doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean they were going to be loud always. It doesn’t mean they’re going to be loud every time you hit, you know, command R and X code,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it certainly seemed like it was capable of moving a whole lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of air. And you very well could be right. I mean, obviously all three of us are just pontificating at the moment,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I would be really surprised if we see widespread thermal issues with this thing. I mean, it has been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey extensively redesigned on the inside specifically to avoid that very
⏹️ ▶️ John But so but like so is the trash can like and that’s exactly what it had was maybe not from day one but you
⏹️ ▶️ John had GPU failures due to heat right and so Like that was that is that
⏹️ ▶️ John was the the major and I think the only sort of systemic Hardware problem
⏹️ ▶️ John with the trash cans and Marco is sitting there right now in front of a computer that he says
⏹️ ▶️ John Runs the GPU too hot and his isn’t even a pro. So there’s some reason to believe that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have The cooling stuff licked for stuff stuck to the back of a monitor even
⏹️ ▶️ John if it is not really hot stuff like this So I think it is reasonable to be concerned given the recent history
⏹️ ▶️ John About this and you know, it just just worried like we don’t know we’ll find out right but here’s the problem with this is
⏹️ ▶️ John The only real way to find out is to be like me and be like I’m not gonna buy one of these for the first Two years just to find out
⏹️ ▶️ John what the deal is But you can’t you know You can’t do that if you want one in day one you kind of have to pull the trigger
⏹️ ▶️ John and and say whether like, are you gonna buy it or are you not gonna buy it? And that’s where the worry comes in. Because you won’t have time
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re gonna buy it when it comes out within the first month or two, you won’t have time to see in six
⏹️ ▶️ John months does everyone fire all their GPUs or not. So you just kinda gotta cross your fingers or
⏹️ ▶️ John be prepared to sell it to somebody else or do what Marco’s gonna do, which may end up working out,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is Marco gets the computer, he stresses all the CPU cores, encoding
⏹️ ▶️ John MP3s and compiling stuff, And then he passes off to Tiff and she stresses the GPU but leaves the CPU
⏹️ ▶️ John alone because she’s just playing games on it. And doing Photoshop stuff which is also all
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. Yeah. So you’ll spread the heat. So you get a splotch on one side of the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John and then a splotch on the other.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’ll even out over time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I really hope that it’s good because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the reviews are very, very positive. And these are still, these are very early reviews but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re very promising in quite how universally positive they are and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco man sky like xeons are awesome according to these reviews like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is this is a big deal on the processor front because the 10 core
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version that they’ve seated the reviewers seems to have 10 cores without a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco significant single core performance penalty like in in the previous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John generation little penalty a small or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like it’s slightly slower a single core than the newest iMac at the top spec,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but barely. And it’s obviously way faster and multi-threaded. And
⏹️ ▶️ John The real promise is supposedly that the 18 also doesn’t take a small, because it used to be like, yeah, you
⏹️ ▶️ John take a little hit, but then when you go up to whatever the maximum core count is, you take a pretty significant hit in a single core. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John the theory of these is that the 10 core takes a little hit, the 18 core will be similar performance
⏹️ ▶️ John to the 10 core in single threaded. So it’s like you’re not, you don’t have to make horrible choice between, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John if I want awesome performance on a parallel task, I have to give up at single credit, you just give up a tiny bit. And it
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t get worse as you go up in court. We’ll see if that’s true. But that’s that’s the that’s the pitch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The main concerns for most people here, when they see this, our price and lack of upgradability.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And those are very valid concerns. But it’s a very, very good value for what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get for workstation parts. Like a lot of people look at the pro line, as john said earlier, because they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want like a really good GPU for gaming, say. But that’s never been what the Mac Pro’s been very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good at. You could do that with it, but it was a pretty inefficient way to do that, you know, price-wise,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and sometimes even performance-wise. You know, you can get like GPUs that are pretty decent for gaming,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that’s not why they’re selling them here, and they don’t expect people to buy it for that reason.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And when you compare it to the price of just building a gaming PC, which John should have done years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s, you know, not even close. And PC people and Mac people who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just want to play games look at this and say, look, I could build a gaming PC for way less money. And that’s true, but you wouldn’t put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Z on it. And you wouldn’t have like a wonderful Apple 5K display in front of it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you wouldn’t have ECC RAM and workstation class other stuff. And you know, like the workstation class SSD,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you wouldn’t have all that stuff. So when you actually go to like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Dell or HP or somebody and spec out workstation grade components in a workstation that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco match the components in this that are actually like a Xeon with the same core count and a workstation GPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and workstation grade SSD that’s super fast if you can even get them to give you one. It’s actually pretty competitively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco priced from what we know so far. Again, we don’t know the pricing of the upgrades yet, but like the base price and what you get in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the base model, it’s actually pretty reasonably priced it seems. If you are looking,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and if you spec up an iMac, as I said, like if you spec up a regular iMac into this territory of performance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and capacity and everything, you’re already getting to about 4,000. So to get like, you know, double the cores
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for 5,000 is not unreasonable, I don’t think, in addition to all the other upgrades.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, value I think, from what we know so far, it’s probably fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Lack of upgradability is a big thing, but I think this is just the era in which we live now. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think the reality, you know, our laptops again haven’t been upgradable for years, for five years for most people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like they haven’t been upgradable meaningfully, if at all. And this is just the world we live in now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the reality is upgrades have been getting fewer and fewer. They’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been getting increasingly problematic, like Casey has with his RAM,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because as things get super advanced, they also tend to get more picky and more specialized. And it’s harder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to find and make third-party stuff that actually works. Look how long it takes people to make third-party things for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the custom Apple SSD modules in a lot of laptops and many of the recent desktops.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s just things are getting more advanced, more specialized, more integrated. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think the era of upgradability is really pretty much over for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most computer things. And I say this not happily because I always did that. I participated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very heavily in that. I would always buy my laptops with base configuration
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then spec them up with third-party parts to save money and to get bigger capacities and stuff and upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down the road with an SSD to make it faster and everything. And that was a great time for a long time, But I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the time is over. The technology has moved on, the market has moved on, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think very few people really even would do that anymore, even if they could.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And additionally, now you can’t. So it kind of closes the door on that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think rather than hoping to go back to the time where you could buy John’s Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in 2008 and keep it running all this time with just occasional upgrades of relatively inexpensive parts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re not going back to that time. Like we can’t. Like the parts now are too specialized, too good. Even John’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer, you could never upgrade the processors. You could never upgrade the motherboard and make it, you know, faster bus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or anything. You just can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John Can’t you do the CPUs of mine?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think you can. Well, you can, but only within a range of like the three that were available at that time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like you can’t put in a new Xeon into your motherboard until it changes the socket like
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there was a long stretch though where they kept the socket the same. It’s not my model year, I think. Well, maybe actually
⏹️ ▶️ John it was the 2009. Someone recently posted a YouTube video, I think they were doing in 2009, and they just upgraded
⏹️ ▶️ John the heck out of it to basically the fastest CPUs that still fit in the socket and all the other stuff fast. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it wasn’t super impressive, but it was pretty neat. It was mostly interesting just to watch exactly what it takes to do that. If I can
⏹️ ▶️ John find the link, I’ll throw it in the notes. But yeah, you’re right. Like eventually they change the socket and then you’re out of that business.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or even just like, you know, the new ones require a certain type of bus speed or ram type or north bridge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that yours doesn’t have like stuff like that. Like there’s always like the requirements change, even if the socket doesn’t change.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Usually you can’t meaningfully upgrade your processor after after after soul after it’s being sold, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, and so like the era of upgrade ability has been fading for a long time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I think it’s very well over now. It’s very very clearly over and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rather than hoping to go back to a time that we’re never going to go back to a more productive approach.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now would just be like, figure out how to operate in this new environment. So, and base your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco purchases accordingly. So, you know, if you’re concerned about running the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer for 10 years, well, you’re gonna take a big risk on that. You know, it might break after year five and require
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a repair that is going to be more than it’s worth, or it won’t even be available anymore. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, my approach to this is, I have just gotten accustomed to selling computers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after three years using them or sometimes less. You know, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy AppleCare from concern about service costs. I don’t buy it on phones as I mentioned because that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not for me, but you know, for Macs, I sometimes do buy it depending on pricing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and concerns at the time. Once a Mac is out of AppleCare coverage, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want it anymore. So I try to sell it before that. Currently I’m using my iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that just left its warranty and this is very unusual for I don’t usually do this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the new world where nothing is upgradable might require you to either
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy less perfect and less expensive gear more frequently than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you used to and or get used to selling it. Which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not great, it’s not fun, and it’s not particularly profitable, but like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t have to run everything into the ground necessarily. If you want super high-end stuff, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old way was buy something high-end and upgrade it every 18 months until something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better came out that you could upgrade the whole thing to. The new way is you can’t do that anymore. You can just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy something new every three years or two years or four years and sell the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old one while it’s still worth something. This isn’t a great solution for everybody,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but we don’t have any choice. the world of upgradability is gone for Macs and even many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco PCs. So that world is beyond us now. So it’s worth,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rather than dwelling on this too much and trying to fight this fight forever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s worth just figuring out how can you operate in the new world.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s coming back for the Mac Pro though, even if it’s just GPU upgradability. I’m holding that hope.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, again, we still don’t know anything about the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I want to emphasize, the GPU, I mean, it’s not just important for me. Like the GPU is the I think the
⏹️ ▶️ John most critical just because GPUs get so much better year of year because because of the inherent parallelism
⏹️ ▶️ John of their task that all they can basically you know as soon as there’s a shrink they can fit more execution units
⏹️ ▶️ John and because the problem is so parallel like you actually get a win for that so they are still on that crazy path
⏹️ ▶️ John where you know year after year they just get they get faster roughly in pace with the dense with
⏹️ ▶️ John transistor density there’s a little bit of you know a problem with RAM and bandwidth and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John like that. But in general, they like their speed increases year over year so big that if you are
⏹️ ▶️ John not on that train, if you can’t participate in that train, and you’re doing something that is GPU intensive, even
⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s not gaming, whatever it may be something GPU intensive involving video or whatever. It’s like you have to throw
⏹️ ▶️ John out the whole machine because eventually, you know, two years later, the GPUs are four times as fast and you’re just
⏹️ ▶️ John left in the dust. So you have to be able to upgrade the GPU. So please Apple make a
⏹️ ▶️ John can upgrade the GPU just one just one make it really expensive but yeah you gotta do it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco please. I mean I’ll just point out that when Apple had the Mac Pro round table and they announced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that a new Mac Pro will exist sometime not in 2017, they never said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upgradable, they said modular.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I know, I know. That’s a very different
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. I’m just hoping, I’m just holding out hope. I’m not, it’s not founded on anything other than like,
⏹️ ▶️ John than just process of elimination of like, how could you differentiate it from the iMac Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the screen will be separate, So that’s the modular part, right? Also, it could
⏹️ ▶️ John be upgradable. It could be. It could.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Some part of it. I’m just, I’m trying to get my hopes up because this is still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple and modern Apple at that. And so like the chances of it being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that upgradable, if at all, I would not consider that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a sure thing. Like if you’re looking at the iMac Pro and you’re thinking, oh, I want to hold it for the Mac Pro because it’ll be upgradable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would not consider that a safe assumption. It might be upgradable, but modular simply
⏹️ ▶️ Marco means like you will probably be able to configure it with lots of different configurations up front. Like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMac Pro comes with one CPU and one GPU, and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both within a certain range of options here. Maybe the Mac Pro will let you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pick two CPUs or two GPUs or one CPU and three GPUs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. That’s modular. It doesn’t mean any of this stuff is upgradable necessarily.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It might be upgradable, but we have no indication that it will be. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would certainly not bet on it. But anyway, the other point is that with the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro, we don’t actually know when it’s coming. All Apple said was not in 2017. It might be 2018.
⏹️ ▶️ John could arrive the first day of 2018. So as soon as 2017 ends, any day could be Mac Pro day. Yeah, New Year’s Day. God help
⏹️ ▶️ John next decade, Any day
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco could be Mac Pro Day.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, or it could come out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in 2025. Yep. Or it could come out never.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They could just change their mind and say, you know what, actually, we’re not gonna do it anymore. Like, it’s not even a sure thing that’s going to exist.
⏹️ ▶️ John it means is that every day you wake up in 2018 and later could be Mac Pro Day. Ha ha ha ha.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is like Casey’s doom, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every week that the Mac Pro will be announced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and released.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, but realistically speaking, we know it’s like we’re all waiting for WWDC and if they miss next year, then we’re waiting for next
⏹️ ▶️ John do have some thing to hang our hat on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but the Mac Pro could come New Year’s Day, or it could come in June,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or it could come in December, or it could come in 2019. So for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anybody deciding whether to buy an iMac Pro, if you’re at all on the fence about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether you might want a Mac Pro instead.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, just buy it and sell it like Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, yeah, because it’s like, you don’t really know when it’s coming or even, again, you don’t even really know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the Mac Pro is coming. Yes, Apple said they’re working on it, but things could change over time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you never know. Until it’s actually out, you can’t guarantee that it will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be available. You can’t guarantee this thing will exist. And because we don’t know anything about it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or even when or if it’s coming out, then I think if you are really tempted by the iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro, and you’re not patient, and you need to buy something soon,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you really can’t wait until June just to see if it’ll come out by then, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this isn’t a bad option. I have a feeling, my prediction here, of what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to happen here, the iMac Pro is probably going to be so good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s probably going to satisfy so many pro needs that when the Mac Pro does finally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come out, it’s going to sell really badly. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple will use that as justification to really finally kill it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I expect the next Mac Pro to be a single release product line.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t expect it to ever get another update after its initial release because I don’t think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to sell well. And I say that not happily because I want that computer. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iMac Pro I think is going to solve so many Pro needs for so many people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco possible, possibly even me, it’s going to be good enough. It’s also like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the timing of this is also going to exacerbate this, where people who have been dying for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a high-end Mac Pro update for the last three years, they’re going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be like a lot, a lot of that demand is going to go to the iMac Pro simply because it’s out first.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so then when the Mac Pro comes out with probably the same generation components, at least the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generation processors, maybe GPUs will have small day by then. Like when the Mac Pro comes out say in six months
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the same generation stuff at a higher price point After so many people have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had six months to just buy the iMac instead. I Really don’t think it’s gonna sell very well
⏹️ ▶️ John Well the 8k screen will be a big draw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That we’ll have to see honestly like I do wonder like if they’re gonna do an 8k screen because they all they said was they’re Doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pro display. They didn’t say what size or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John anything about
⏹️ ▶️ John more optimistic about upgradable GPUs than about the 8k screen but we’ll see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah so but like we don’t so all this is to say like if you’re if you think about buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this but you are making an assumption about the next Mac Pro really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco question that assumption like are you really like first of all can you just wait and see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you can wait and see wait and see but you don’t know how long the way that way it’s going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and then secondly like is what you’re waiting for actually going to happen do we actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know that is it likely to happen? Have they said anything about it? Like, and chances are the answer to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all those things is we don’t know or no. Ultimately, I have a feeling this is the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac pro in practice. Like whether they release something next summer that nobody buys or not, that’s a different story. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think we’re going to look back on this point in Apple history when we’re all even older men in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few years on this podcast, hopefully talking about, Oh, remember when the, when the iMac pro came out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and when the Mac pro became an iMac, basically like, I think this is the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco line of Mac Pros for the long term.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. It might not be. We have a lot more to discuss about this, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we have gone long and we have an interesting holiday schedule coming up very, very soon. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think we should probably just stop here. And we will talk next week about the press
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tour with this, and we’ll talk next week about the new interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hardware and encryption sort of things. What is it, the T2 chip? Is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there’s all sorts of cool stuff in there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so we have plenty more to say. And as much as I joke, I’m actually pretty interested to talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about some of this stuff. So we will save that for next week.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you to our sponsors this week, Betterment, Hover, and Fracture. and we will see you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John and Casey wouldn’t let him, cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cuz it was accidental It was accidental And you can find
⏹️ ▶️ John the show notes at ATP FM And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John into Twitter You can follow them at C a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey e y l Issa that’s Casey list and a r co
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a r m anti Marco Armin SIR AC
Post-show: iMac Pro!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Casey, do you want us to talk even more about the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac Pro? About the Mac Pro, no. About the iMac Pro, whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s fine. If you look at what this iMac Pro is versus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what the 2013 Mac Pro was, and technically still is, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a Mac Pro. It just happens to have a screen glued to the front of it. But it’s really no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less upgradable than the 2013 Mac Pro was. It’s way faster in every way. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has more options, bigger, you know, and it supports desktop retina
⏹️ ▶️ John I think RAM and SSD upgrade, I don’t think it’s not really more, RAM and SSD upgrade, that’s a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it was so easy to take, it was so easy to take the top off the trash can. It comes right off, just a little,
⏹️ ▶️ John comes right off and right there in front of you, totally reachable, is the SSD and the RAM.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s a big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deal. Was the SSD actually, does everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John someone? Pretty sure, it was just on the outside of one of the boards and you just yank it out of the slot, put another one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in. Let’s see. Oh yeah, they do sell one. Yeah, Mac Pro 2013.
⏹️ ▶️ John At this point, I would do that for my wife’s iMac. I wish
⏹️ ▶️ John I could upgrade the SSD right now because I would pay for a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two terabyte one. It’s $1,200. For two terabytes. What,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John for a two terabyte SSD?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I would buy a third party one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously. No, this is third party. This is from
⏹️ ▶️ John OWC. That’s for the Mac Pro though. I’m assuming it’s not the same thing in the iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, you’re right. In the iMac, it’s probably different. Anyway, for all intents and purposes, if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco came out and said, this is the Mac Pro now, if they didn’t pre-announce
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the existence of a new modular one next year, or not this year, we would grumble for a few weeks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about how it wasn’t upgradable. I would grumble forever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John was going to say, a few weeks. You know why I would grumble
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco forever? You’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ John release. No, the reason I would grumble forever hasn’t had anything to do with almost anything we discussed except for
⏹️ ▶️ John one part. The fact that things might be downclocked. Because the whole point of the top line of the computer is to be the fastest
⏹️ ▶️ John it can be. And so don’t take the world’s fastest parts and then downclock them, right? That’s the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. You need to have a world’s fastest Mac that is not intentionally hobbled by some
⏹️ ▶️ John stupidity. Now, if they changed the iMac Pro to not do that and to run all the parts at their maximum
⏹️ ▶️ John speed to get the highest binned parts from all the manufacturers, right? And run them at their high
⏹️ ▶️ John bin speed, then yeah, I would be less grumbly. But if this specific one with its rumored
⏹️ ▶️ John down clock parts that cannot be your top-of-the-line computer because it’s so it’s it’s like It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like you know this is this is our top-of-the-line car. It’s you know it’s the the the the Acura
⏹️ ▶️ John NSX right? But we’ve detuned the engine by putting a restrictive exhaust on it, so we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John cut off 100 horsepower That’s just sitting there like what are you? What are you even doing?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But you could make that argument for everything though you can make that argument for any car everyone every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey freaking car is an aftermarket exhaust
⏹️ ▶️ John Okay, a car car is a bad example, but but for silicon parts, like they’re been to a certain clock speed,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the more expensive ones are the ones that can go faster, right? And to not run them
⏹️ ▶️ John at at their top speed or to buy slower speed chips, because you can’t cool them.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’ve made a bad top end computer that like you’re leaving money on the table, like you’re charging
⏹️ ▶️ John enough money that you could put in the top end part. But instead you buy the slower or worse,
⏹️ ▶️ John you buy the top bin one, but don’t run it at its maximum clock speed. That is just an embarrassment.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t do that. You got to have a fastest computer with all the fastest stuff. That’s the whole point of the top of
⏹️ ▶️ John your line is to be the top of your line.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think you’re getting a little overly worked up. If some GPU is running
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at 90% of its maximum capacity, who
⏹️ ▶️ John cares? What do you leave that 10% there for?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Who cares? It’s still infinitely better.
⏹️ ▶️ John People who want the very fastest computer and are willing to pay for it. That’s who Who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cares? That is, but by definition, John, that is the fastest computer. This is all bold
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it’s hypothetical, but like in this hypothetical world, that is the fastest computer that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sells. There is no other discussion to be
⏹️ ▶️ John had. Yeah, I know. But like, but it’s not it’s you know what I mean? Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like saying whatever Mac Apple if the fastest computer they sold was the adorable. It’s like, but that is the fast. You would know that it
⏹️ ▶️ John is possible to make a faster one by doing obvious things, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You enjoy your PC then?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey What do you know I’m with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John in this like because the role of it is to be the
⏹️ ▶️ John top Haven’t you read my case for the true Mac Pro successor like this is the whole the whole point of
⏹️ ▶️ John that your top-of-the-line Computer right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean I guess yeah, I’m not arguing that there should be a top-of-the-line computer I’m not arguing that it should be really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey damn fast But if you’re but if you’re worried about a processor being 4 gigahertz instead of 4.1 like who cares
⏹️ ▶️ John still people who buy this computer care That’s who cares like it’s because I’m not saying like, oh, you have to do
⏹️ ▶️ John something magical to make it faster than everybody else But like don’t take a part that runs at 4.1 and run it at 4.0. Why?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like why oh we had to do that to fit into thermal envelope and it gets back to what Marco and I was talking about Who’s
⏹️ ▶️ John asking you to fit it in the skinny case? Versus who is asking you to get the fastest everyone can buy people
⏹️ ▶️ John buy a whole new computers for a 10% speed bump to things That they do right they say my computer is
⏹️ ▶️ John too slow If I get 10 to 20 percent improvement on this it makes a difference in my workday in my you know
⏹️ ▶️ John compile cycle in my Render time in my whatever right they’ll buy a whole new computer
⏹️ ▶️ John for a double-digit percentage speed increase And you’re saying I’m willing to leave double-digit speed increase on the table
⏹️ ▶️ John so I can fit it into a skinny case It’s not asking for that So that’s why I’m saying I would grumble forever about this because it is a wrong-headed
⏹️ ▶️ John thing to say We’re going to make the fastest computer we can for our most demanding users But we’re gonna do
⏹️ ▶️ John a super obvious thing that makes it slower in some small way
⏹️ ▶️ John but… so… You keep asking who cares, and I’m telling you who cares. You don’t care,