316: MacBook Hierarchy of Needs
06 Mar 2019Two-handed dragging, Apple vs. NVIDIA, the end of configurable Macs, and our minimum requirements for the next MacBook Pro.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- Two-hand Springboard rearrangement
- Ask Tog
- Creative Selection by Ken Kocienda
- Finding 32-bit apps
- Two-hand Springboard rearrangement
- Corning is working on flexible glass
- Thunderbolt 3 → USB4
- Apple vs. NVIDIA
- End of configurable Macs?
- MacBook Hierarchy of Needs
#askatp:- How much will John spend on a new Mac Pro? (via Matt Corkum)
- Are we really professional podcasters? (via Asajz)
Post-show Neutral: Polestar 2 (via Vincent Skerved)
Sponsored by:
Chapters
- Chrome: The ATP Review
- The second-finger trick
- Corning flexible glass?
- USB4
- Finding 32-bit apps
- Xbox Game Pass
- Sponsor: Hover
- Apple & NVIDIA
- Configurable Macs
- Sponsor: Away (code ATP)
- MacBook Hierarchy of Needs
- Sponsor: Eero (code ATP)
- #askatp: Mac Pro budget
- #askatp: Job title
- Ending theme
- Neutral: Polestar 2
Chrome: The ATP Review
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’m seeing people all over Twitter say, oh my God, update Chrome right away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t for the life of me figure out how to update Chrome.
⏹️ ▶️ John About Google Chrome? About? Yeah, that’s always where it is. Oh, updating.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, mine’s up to date already. I’m on the beta channel though. Why? What’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey on in the regular channel?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t bothered to look yet. I just, everyone’s saying update now.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe they’re just finally getting the new ugly tabs. I don’t know. that I’ve had for like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What happens if your Chrome colon slash slash help is spinning? Just one
⏹️ ▶️ John not good. You go to the task manager window that Chrome has.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh God. I don’t, you know, I just don’t know how people tolerate Chrome. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so- I like Chrome. Oh God, how can you be such like a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Seriously, like you’re-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not gonna say it’s Mac-like. You won’t even own an Xbox because Microsoft makes it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, Microsoft doesn’t make Chrome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, no, seriously. Marco, I could not agree with you more. I am right there with you, dude.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, you might as well be using Windows. Chrome is so bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not Mac-like, but it is a good web browser. It is not a Mac-like web browser,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it is a good web browser. And its dev tools are still better than Safari’s.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that you’re probably right about. I can’t really say. But if you’re not a web
⏹️ ▶️ Marco developer, I don’t understand why you would use Chrome for anything besides, I mean, I guess I use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it for like Google Docs. That’s about it, it’s like, ugh, I don’t like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s so wrong, everything it does on the Mac is just so wrong, like it just behaves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco horribly, nothing is where it should be, not to mention like all the battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life issues on laptops and stuff, like it’s just bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I wouldn’t use it on a laptop if I.
⏹️ ▶️ John so rough. I mean, I do use it on a laptop all day, my laptop is plugged in all day, but battery life, forget
⏹️ ▶️ John it. It’s brutal. But no, it loads all my web pages and sometimes Safari doesn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like the unreliable keyboard. I just need you to always load web pages. Sometimes Safari decides that it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John going to do that anymore and it makes me angry. And I run both web browsers all day long. I’m always running
⏹️ ▶️ John both. I’m never just running one. So it’s not like I’m picking favorites, but I like Chrome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could not agree with you more, Marco. Like Chrome is so… I am not one of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey those people that’s super angry about things being not Mac like like Slack is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a show and Chrome is probably second place for that. It just Chrome. Chrome is
⏹️ ▶️ John than Slack. Yeah, I agree.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Actually, it is less Mac like than Slack. Well, and because like Chrome, you have alternatives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like Slack. It’s like if you have to run Slack, you probably have to run it because because of a decision other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people have made that you need to interact with. So it’s fine. Like, you know, you run it, you deal with it. It’s no big deal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whereas Because with Chrome, that’s less defensible. You can just run Safari. And chances are,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything you need to do probably works in Safari. So why would you not run Safari? Why are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you running Chrome? Oh God, it’s so bad. I gave
⏹️ ▶️ John you a reason because of those web browsers. I was looking at this tweet, just in one of our channels. Also, seriously, update your Chrome installs.
⏹️ ▶️ John It sounds like a security thing. There’s some kind of security flaw in existing Chrome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s why I tried to figure out how to update Chrome for a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two or three minutes before giving up and asking you guys. about box. Why is this the other every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other up every other so I I saw I first I checked the chrome menu for like a check for updates thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I went over the help menu because sometimes things put it in the help menu then they went to preferences which of course is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a real preference window it just this crazy URL that opens up the preferences in the browser and I’m scrolling through all these things that make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no sense like what and then it’s like well it’s not here I click on advanced and it’s nowhere in any of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either like for God’s sakes like where the hell do you help you have to do this this app I would never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought to go to the about box.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would have done the exact same steps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You just gotta know that. Whoever goes to the about box of anything. So
⏹️ ▶️ John Chrome is so aggressive about updates though. Like, there should be an icon in your toolbar that’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John a colored arrow, whether it’s green or yellow if you’ve been waiting a while. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John Chrome totally wants to update itself and will update itself whether you ask it to or not.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you need to do it in a hurry, either quit and relaunch, which I think will also do it, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. Well, but you can’t even quit it anymore. You gotta like hold down the quit button.
⏹️ ▶️ John The about, they don’t even have an about window either by the way, just in case you think they’re actually gonna pop up a dial.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, of course not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it’s like everything about Chrome is just a giant middle finger to the Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I like the Mac, so it’s like a giant middle finger to me. Ha!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hear you. I really do.
The second-finger trick
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s start with some follow-up a lot of the internet wanted to write in and tell us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Generally very gentle ways that we are all idiots and there is a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fix for the springboard Rearrangement woes that John was talking about last episode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So if you didn’t hear last episode or would like a brief recap John was lamenting in the way that only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John can and I mean that in the best possible way that it is It is nigh impossible to rearrange
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things using Springboard, using the home screen on Apple devices these days. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is just an exercise in frustration from top to bottom. And I was quietly and silently cheering
⏹️ ▶️ Casey along with John as he made this entire rant because I could not have agreed more. However, I forgot, and I bet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John also knew this and also forgot, that there is a pro-level maneuver to fix this problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, can you tell us about this?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the suggestion that
⏹️ ▶️ John many people think is a better way. Some people said easier, some people said
⏹️ ▶️ John less error prone, some people, you know, whatever. But there is another way to rearrange things,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is to use two hands. And you may be asking yourself, if you think like me,
⏹️ ▶️ John adding a second hand to the surface of the screen does not make this operation any
⏹️ ▶️ John simpler. But their theory is, okay, it’s more complicated, but it’s less error prone. Because yes, you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to put two hands on the surface of your thing, or at least be very dexterous with your one hand and have
⏹️ ▶️ John one finger holding the icon and another finger swiping across or whatever. But the advantage
⏹️ ▶️ John you get is that you don’t have to hit the edge of the screen, which is true. But now,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you’re still hovering over, you’re still the icon or icons, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can do multiple that you’re holding, you’re still hovering over the screens as you swipe past them and
⏹️ ▶️ John unlike the edge thing you’re not guaranteed that you will advance to the next screen at the fastest possible
⏹️ ▶️ John rate because you have to swipe a second time so that gives you even more time to perturb
⏹️ ▶️ John the icons on the screens that you’re passing through and I think a multi-handed
⏹️ ▶️ John multi-finger gesture actually is more difficult and more likely to screw you up especially if
⏹️ ▶️ John you foolishly grab multiple icons because then when you accidentally drop those somewhere it’s all over so
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think this actually things makes things any easier. Yes, it is an alternate way you can do it. It works a little bit better on the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John where you have a chance of perhaps it’s sitting on a table or you have more space to put two hands or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it doesn’t change the fundamental problem, which is that there’s no undo
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s very easy to accidentally mess up things you didn’t want to mess up. And then even when
⏹️ ▶️ John you get to where you want to go, there is a very small, ill-defined safe area where you can actually
⏹️ ▶️ John hover where it won’t cause something you don’t don’t want to happen to happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco To me, like the multi-finger drag and drop thing is, has the similar kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco value proposition and also downsides in practice as the rest of the iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drag and drop system that was introduced in, what was it, iOS 11? It adds a bunch of delays to things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that used to not have delays, like tapping to get a menu in Safari or things like that, or, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, it accidentally starts a drag when you might not want to start a drag. See also, force touch, which has similar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems. but it brought the great advance of being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to hold down something with one finger and use a, you don’t have to use a second hand, but you can use a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco second finger to like scroll a view or to navigate the interface such that you can drop the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing with the first finger somewhere else in the interface. And it’s great that they added that to Springboard,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it has the same problem that that has everywhere, which is that not only is it a big delay to get into that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mode and it’s very error prone to enter the mode or to not enter it, depending on what you want to do, But once you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the mode, it’s also very error prone to move around with the second finger, because a lot of times, what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you do with the second finger when you think you’re gonna swipe or scroll, you actually end up picking up a second item.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if that’s what you wanted to do, great, but the problem with this whole system is that it’s kind of unreliable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and as John said, very error prone. So in practice, I’ve known about the second finger trick
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since iOS 11 or whatever it was was released, and I’ve been using it, but I would say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I fail, and it does something I don’t want it to do probably at least half the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’m actually trying to use it. And I have the, honestly, I have the exact same error rate with drag and drop on the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as well, and the exact same error rate with reordering things in Overcast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I used, I had my own drag handles before, and then when this system came in, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only did I want to implement the new system, but it also broke my hack that gave me drag handles before, so I figured
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was kind of forced to implement the system. And it’s just like the rest of drag and drop on iOS. Like I find it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very error prone. And when it works, it’s great. Like when you can pick up one or two things and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then scroll with the other finger, that’s great. But in practice, it’s very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco error prone and does something I don’t want it to do a lot of the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know, I’d completely forgotten about it. And it’s funny, this is a tangent, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as I’ve been using my iPad Pro more and more, I do really, really like it. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it’s, it’s apparent to me, even as I’ve adjusted a lot of my workflows
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, is overkill for, for what I’m describing, but like my, my process for doing things,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it occurred to me just in the last month or so. When I was trying to like send a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey link to somebody, but I didn’t have messages open or something like that, or maybe it was an image, I don’t remember exactly what I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing, but I can, Oh, wait, wait, wait, I can tap and hold, and that’ll start a drag operation. And then with my other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hand sound familiar, I can swipe up to get the dock and open messages and then flick,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not really flick, but kind of, you know, drag the, the, the other thing that I picked up over to messages,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey drop it there and be good, which is, is actually really, really nice and, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fairly intuitive once I thought about what I needed to do, but because I grew
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up with an act, well, I shouldn’t say an actual computer. Oh my God, please don’t email me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco because I grew up with a traditional,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I, because I grew up But the traditional computer, it’s just very foreign to the way I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m trying to get better about embracing the touch way of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey life. And I am getting better about it, but it’s definitely a slow journey for me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that has taken longer than I expected.
⏹️ ▶️ John So getting used to stuff like that, like this, you know, part of it is just,
⏹️ ▶️ John like you said, what you grew up with and what you are accustomed to, but there is another aspect of it. You can
⏹️ ▶️ John actually measure people’s performance with different operations and
⏹️ ▶️ John certain things are more friendly to the way people work than others. So
⏹️ ▶️ John to give an example of like the original Mac and using a mouse,
⏹️ ▶️ John this comes up a lot when someone digs up some old computer stuff, maybe in my attic, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco The original Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John came with a guided tour. It was a floppy disk that was a guided tour, but it also
⏹️ ▶️ John came with an audio cassette that you would play while the floppy disk was in because you can’t fit that much audio
⏹️ ▶️ John on a floppy disk, that would be madness. And one of the first things they taught you on the
⏹️ ▶️ John guided tour was how to use the mouse. And they had a little animation and they showed when you move it on the horizontal
⏹️ ▶️ John surface of your desk, the cursor moves to match it. And they had a little graphic that was showing that and the voice is explaining
⏹️ ▶️ John it to you because you had to explain to people how to use the mouse. But touch is a much more direct
⏹️ ▶️ John interface where it’s like, well, there’s something that looks like a button on the screen and we say hit the button and you just
⏹️ ▶️ John shove your finger, and we all see with our toddlers how quickly,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t really have to be taught that much about that once you realize I can just put my meaty paws on the screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can do something. That’s an example of improving an interface. Before there was a
⏹️ ▶️ John indirection, however slight it might be, and however easy it was for people to overcome it, but it was still an indirection.
⏹️ ▶️ John Getting rid of that is better. But the same token, all these things we just described with rearranging icons
⏹️ ▶️ John and starting drag operations and holding your finger down and using another finger to swipe through, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John never going to get more friendly than it is. Like that is inherently an awkward
⏹️ ▶️ John error prone thing to do. And there’s no amount of culture or
⏹️ ▶️ John getting used to things that’s going to make that a more friendly interface than alternatives that don’t require that kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of both mental and physical gymnastics. It’s just a more difficult things
⏹️ ▶️ John for people to do. It’s not impossible. You can do it, you know, toddlers can learn how to do it as well. Like you see a two year old doing
⏹️ ▶️ John the same operation, but all things being equal, compare that to an operation
⏹️ ▶️ John where you get to split the split the task up into pieces. First set the icon aside,
⏹️ ▶️ John next find the destination, then put the thing in. It’s less error prone. It may actually
⏹️ ▶️ John be mentally, there may be more cognitive load to do the multi-step process because you have to sort of understand
⏹️ ▶️ John what you’re going to do. But if you were to test people from, you know, for the error rates or whatever, you’d see that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John more error prone to do that thing, especially if you tested a wide swath of humanity. And this is a thing that Apple used to do
⏹️ ▶️ John back in the day that they stopped doing around about when Steve Jobs came back, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is, you know, you don’t have to just have your intuition and gut about what
⏹️ ▶️ John is better for usability. You can test this. You can use science to determine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Given a wide swath of people of varying ages and abilities, whatever thing
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re trying to make happen here, We want people to be successful. We want them to be fewer errors. We want them to feel less frustrated. We
⏹️ ▶️ John want them to be able to accomplish a task at a small amount of time. We want them to remember how to do a task across
⏹️ ▶️ John a long period of time. Like you can pick what your goals are and then you can test your interfaces against those goals and
⏹️ ▶️ John find out how miserably you’re doing on them and compare multiple approaches. Bruce
⏹️ ▶️ John Tognizzini, if I’m pronouncing his name right, has a asktog.com or something. He’s got a
⏹️ ▶️ John website. You can go through all the old tests they did to figure out to come up with the Mac interface.
⏹️ ▶️ John How many buttons should a mouse have? How should the menus work? You know, all that stuff, which it doesn’t mean like
⏹️ ▶️ John once you test it, once that’s it forever and ever, because things get refined over time and we come up with improvements, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t just have to guess about these things. But Apple today tends not to do
⏹️ ▶️ John that much of that type of formal research more, you know, if you read Ken Kushenda’s book where they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like like doing that, but in an informal way, like amongst other
⏹️ ▶️ John engineers in the hallway, hey, I tried this and here’s how it felt or whatever, which is better than nothing. Like if you read
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of usability books, especially about web usability, they’ll say like, it doesn’t take much to
⏹️ ▶️ John get a, you know, 60 to 70% of the value of usability testing. You don’t need this big
⏹️ ▶️ John complicated usability lab and a big one-way mirror and cameras on people’s faces and,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, pulse monitors. You can just, informal testing with your coworkers is much better than no
⏹️ ▶️ John testing. But I would say, you know, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John still a place for that sort of actual scientific testing to come up
⏹️ ▶️ John with something better. Because right now, the reason we have all these weird interfaces in iOS is because
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s nothing obvious and better. Like if you want this capability, if you want to be able to do all these
⏹️ ▶️ John things, it’s cool that you can do them. It’s awkward, but it’s not obvious
⏹️ ▶️ John how you would be able to do those same things with less awkwardness and fewer
⏹️ ▶️ John errors, other than the things I just suggested, which is like a shelf to put things on, or using it, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna use Casey here, using an interface on a different computer,
⏹️ ▶️ John on a personal computer. If you could use a mouse and a keyboard and a much larger screen, I could rearrange Springboard
⏹️ ▶️ John and some holding areas and stuff, and a trial commit interface, it would be much easier to rearrange
⏹️ ▶️ John Springboard. Even iTunes was better, I think, but even that could be improved upon. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I look forward to rearranging the springboard on our Apple glasses
⏹️ ▶️ John in 2035, being a much simpler, less error-prone experience.
Corning flexible glass?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Speaking of simple and error prone, Apple supplier Corning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is working on flexible glass for foldable displays. There’s a post on The Verge
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where this is discussed. Apparently, their CEO, no, I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey someone from Corning, the CEO or R&D person, whatever, has said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re working
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on this foldable glass thing. And they have a very fascinating GIF that they have provided that is at the top
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the page that I could watch all day. And there isn’t too much to say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here, I don’t think, other than this is, I guess, a subtle hint that Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who uses Corning and their Gorilla Glass for iPhone displays, you know, Apple could hypothetically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use this forthcoming glass that they say is coming in the next couple of years for a foldable display, if they so choose.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s good news if you’re into it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s definitely an Apple-style thing to do because, like I said at the last show, plastic, no matter
⏹️ ▶️ John how good that plastic is, if you’re constantly going to bend it, plastic is not known for its ability to be bent
⏹️ ▶️ John back and forth many, many times and, and not show any signs of wear. Same thing, plastic is not
⏹️ ▶️ John known for its ability to resist scratches. Like it’s, it’s just generally a softer material
⏹️ ▶️ John than glass or metal or all these other things. So there’s kind of, you know, the, there are many reasons
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple settled on aluminum and glass are basically all of its products. They have the properties that
⏹️ ▶️ John make make the products pleasant to use and stand up to wear and tear.
⏹️ ▶️ John Plastic less so. The original iPhone almost had a plastic display, but they dodged that bullet
⏹️ ▶️ John at the last minute. The iPod Nano did have plastic over its display and that was very bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John So here’s hoping Apple can figure out the bendy glass because that would be a hell of a way
⏹️ ▶️ John to enter the bendables market.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Is that a thing? We got wearables
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think foldables is what you’re looking for. Isn’t that what Mike
⏹️ ▶️ John and Jason… It’s like it’s it’s like phones that fold in half bendy straws.
⏹️ ▶️ John What else is in that market iPhone 6 pluses? Whoo. Yeah, I guess folding chairs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I I would love to see if if bendable glass can actually be a thing I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am no expert in materials that sounds impossible to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John me transparent aluminum But yeah, I mean be worth something to you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it if it can be done that sounds great because you know I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is a critical problem you know if if folding phones are gonna take off we are gonna have to get over this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco issue of right now all we know how to make the front of the screens out of is plastic and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plastic kind of sucks as screen material like you know it works it’s fine but if we can have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco glass we’d rather have glass and it makes it makes a pretty big difference in niceness if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we can have glass so that would be great But I mean, I’ll believe it when I see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, I guess. Computer?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Computer? Oh, is that Star Trek 4? Is that right? Marco hasn’t seen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. That Star Trek should not have worked, and now I’m gonna get everyone emailing me about how it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t work, but I loved that one. I thought it was hilarious.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everybody loved that one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Really? Oh, I assumed it was just me. It’s universally beloved. But it shouldn’t be, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey terrible. It’s a good movie that makes people happy. It is a good movie that makes people happy, But can you just concede
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that if you look at the description of, Oh, all these future people are going to come back in time to get some whales,
⏹️ ▶️ John Fish out of water. It’s it’s a beloved, beloved characters
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco coming back there.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we get to see the crew that we know and love being in a fish out of water type
⏹️ ▶️ John scenario. And it’s fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I, again, I, I agree with you. It’s just, if you, if you were to look at it only on paper, I maintain
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it should not have worked even though it did. And bats
⏹️ ▶️ John aren’t bugs and whales aren’t fish.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, alright, moving on.
USB4
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on. We have more riveting USB naming related
⏹️ ▶️ Casey news. And this actually is kind of cool. Apparently, USB 4 has been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of announced in a way, and that is that Thunderbolt 3 is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not patent encumbered isn’t what I’m looking for. The specification has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been made royalty free. There you go. And Intel has given the spec to the USB implementers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey forum, which are the people that decide how USB works. And so Thunderbolt 3 will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eventually be called USB 4. And that’s actually really cool because that theoretically paves
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the way for what we know as Thunderbolt today to be more universal and not require maybe a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Intel CPU. Hint hint Apple, hint hint.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is a smorgasbord of USB Thunderbolt and naming stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco first the sort of the
⏹️ ▶️ John royalty free nature, we’ve covered that before. That’s been a while coming, I guess this is of the most
⏹️ ▶️ John prominent fruits of that labor. Second is that Intel is building Thunderbolt and the new USB
⏹️ ▶️ John into its CPUs so that will make both much easier to implement. You don’t have to have a separate
⏹️ ▶️ John chip for it. You just if you get an Intel CPU it’s got it built in. It being open anybody else could do the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hint hint Apple could make ARM CPUs and build in Thunderbolt. And then you have the
⏹️ ▶️ John you know USB 4 spec being a superset of Thunderbolt 3
⏹️ ▶️ John and all the USB 3.2 stuff, which makes sense. USB 4 is not here yet. USB 3.2 is like this year. USB 4
⏹️ ▶️ John is like out next year somewhere. And then finally, just to add a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John more ridiculous naming, all the other versions of USB were like
⏹️ ▶️ John USB space 2.0, USB space 1.1, but USB 4 removes the space
⏹️ ▶️ John between the B and the number. So it’s USB 4 because it has to be different.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do is like, it’s so close to good and then they do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something to make it either bad or confusing or both.
⏹️ ▶️ John Paul Matzko, Jr. They’re going to run out of variations. What do they do for five? Oh, Roman numerals. They
⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t done Roman numerals yet. So USB-V, can’t wait. Aaron Powell, Jr. There you go. Paul Matzko, Jr. I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ John to have to keep saying it’s pronounced five. Aaron
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Powell, Jr. Oh, God. I’m not looking forward to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that. No, this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very cool, though. I am really enthusiastic about Apple being able to use Thunderbolt 3
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slash USB4 on their forthcoming ARM computers, am I right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and Thunderbolt 4, I think we talked about that before, but Thunderbolt 4 is also a thing. So I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John if that has to be in a separate chip, but seeing Thunderbolt built in to CPUs and subsumed
⏹️ ▶️ John into USB means that it is much more likely to be part of everyone’s future than it was before.
Finding 32-bit apps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on, we had talked last episode, I think it was NASC ATP,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about, hey, how do I know what my 32-bit apps are on my iPad? So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I upgrade this or update the software, what am I going to lose? We
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weren’t entirely sure how to do this, but unsurprisingly, there’s a post at iMore that describes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exactly what to do, which apparently is settings general about applications.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then in there, it’ll show you an app compatibility screen that will to tell you which apps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are no longer going to be compatible in the future.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everything’s in the settings somewhere. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why they have search. But the search doesn’t work. The search never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John works. Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I’ve had the search work, I think, one time out of the probably at least five
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or six times I have tried to use it to find something. I don’t know how they possibly implemented
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the search and settings to make it so bad at finding things that I’m typing the exact name of.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Does it work for anybody?
⏹️ ▶️ John That works okay for me. It’s kind of like the search, it reminds me of the search and system preferences on the Mac, remember
⏹️ ▶️ John when they added that? And they were- That actually works. Right, but it’s hand tuned. Like they added, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think attach metadata, like you could type wallpaper, which is not a word that Apple uses to describe the desktop background,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it would find that preference pane because they put a bunch of synonyms in. But in
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS, like either it’s not hand curated like that, or they didn’t do a very
⏹️ ▶️ John good job of attaching metadata. Because you’ll type a word that is a reasonable synonym for what you’re looking for and it won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John find it. And as you pointed out, sometimes you’ll type in a word that you think is an exact match and it still won’t find it. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not sure what data it is searching across, but it’s certainly not searching, it’s certainly
⏹️ ▶️ John not doing a full text search of all text that appears on the screen in settings screens.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, like you can type literally a word that is in the title and the thing you’re looking for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will not show up. Like it isn’t even like a failure of a synonym search or a failure of a spell check or anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. Like it’s literally not indexing the words that show up on screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like it doesn’t go very deep. Like I remember I was looking for something that was like three or four screens deep and it could never find it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And maybe it just does like the first two layers or something, I don’t know. Anyway, once you have a search in your
⏹️ ▶️ John UI, it’s probably a sign that something is amiss. I’m still not entirely convinced
⏹️ ▶️ John that the idea that your settings are in a settings application rather than within the apps
⏹️ ▶️ John themselves is long-term the way to go because settings just gets tremendous
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s not like we haven’t figured out ways to put screens
⏹️ ▶️ John for configuring your applications within your application. And most apps do it anyway. So it’s weird.
Xbox Game Pass
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Surila writes that Microsoft already has Xbox Game Pass, which is a quote-unquote Netflix
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for games service with millions of subscribers. I had no idea this existed, but I also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have not owned an Xbox since the original Xbox. Way back
⏹️ ▶️ John when. Yeah. What I was getting at in the last show, which was not very well communicated, was the, like, how different the
⏹️ ▶️ John phone game market is than console games. Like PlayStation has something similar where you subscribe to
⏹️ ▶️ John PlayStation Plus and you get like a bunch of free games each month. It’s not the same thing as like a subscription service, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it is a, I mean, it is a subscription service, but you don’t get access to a ton of games. You get like one or two handpick free games
⏹️ ▶️ John a month or whatever. But both of those things, like they, both Xbox and PlayStation have a
⏹️ ▶️ John large game library of $60 games of, you know, 15 to $60 games that people want to play.
⏹️ ▶️ John Each of which is, you know, significant and worthwhile.
⏹️ ▶️ John Kind of like Netflix with a whole bunch of movies. whereas Apple has a collection of
⏹️ ▶️ John literally hundreds of thousands of mostly very bad games
⏹️ ▶️ John that most people don’t want to play and a small collection of good games that are already either
⏹️ ▶️ John selling well or getting people to download for free and then selling them in-game stuff. And I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John sure your typical iOS gamer feels like they would derive enough
⏹️ ▶️ John value from any reasonable subscription, because most people
⏹️ ▶️ John I see playing games on their phones don’t go through enough
⏹️ ▶️ John games to make the subscription work at it. Because iOS games are so cheap or free,
⏹️ ▶️ John if the subscription was $5 a month, they’d be like, why don’t I just spend that $5 on games? Like I spend $1.50 on games a month
⏹️ ▶️ John and you want me to subscribe, I guess I would have access
⏹️ ▶️ John to way more games, but history has shown that I only play three free games and one 99 cent
⏹️ ▶️ John game and one 50 cent in-app purchase per month on average, so
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s harder to come out ahead versus $60 Xbox games, where if I can get access to
⏹️ ▶️ John a huge library of $60 Xbox games, it’s easy to see how math work out if you have enough time to play games.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, it remains to be seen. There could be some untapped market for people who want access to 100,000 games,
⏹️ ▶️ John of which they’re gonna play two, but we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this, to me, this is just one more argument for why it makes way more sense to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this as part of a bundle than to try to sell it as a standalone service.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because it, like, you know, I see why it makes sense on game consoles, even then it isn’t for everybody,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like I see why it makes sense for some people on game consoles. But yeah, like everything you said was correct, about like the iOS market,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s just so different for games that I don’t see people wanting to pay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco separately for this. But if it was part of a bundle, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would think aspirationally, like, that’s great, I would use that. You know, even if they don’t end up actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using it for much, like it would add to the perceived value of the bundle and it would help people justify
⏹️ ▶️ Marco purchasing the bundle if it includes games and stuff, you know, and just all sorts of things that they may or may not actually use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in practice. Whereas if you try to sell it separately, there’s gonna be a lot more like scrutiny on that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco purchase. And even after they subscribe, for the people who do, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they aren’t really playing the games, they’ll be way more likely to cancel that pretty soon. Whereas if it’s part
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a bundle, they aren’t gonna like be scrutinizing every single part of that bundle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every month to say, am I still really using this or not? So again, it’s ever more reasons why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think and hope this is all gonna be one big bundle rather than individual services.
⏹️ ▶️ John And interestingly, I think they can basically give away access to tons of games without being afraid that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna end up paying out a huge amount of that subscription fee to
⏹️ ▶️ John the developers because most games are free and I can’t imagine in-app purchases being part of the subscription
⏹️ ▶️ John because that’s the way they make all their money.
⏹️ ▶️ John you can get the games for free, but the games are probably free already anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it’ll open up a slightly larger market for 99 cents games than exists now.
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, all the popular games are free and then they get in there and you buy
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever thing they’re making you buy in the game and Apple can’t allow that to be part of your $5
⏹️ ▶️ John subscription because everyone would subscribe just so they could play Candy Crush without whatever limitations
⏹️ ▶️ John they put in your way. You
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, unlimited purchase, go, go, go, go, go. Like it breaks the whole model that they’ve,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, corner they painted themselves into. It’s not a thermal corner. What’s a word other than thermal?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a casino corner. I don’t know. Like it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John the game market on iOS is so strangely shaped from a historical perspective. And you know, it’s fine
⏹️ ▶️ John that it works for Apple and people enjoy it, but I’m not sure how, Like you could throw a subscription
⏹️ ▶️ John into there and it’s almost like, you know, like Margaret was getting at like, it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John valuable from the outside, but in reality it’s pointless because no money really changes hands and it just
⏹️ ▶️ John makes you feel better about a bill you’re already going to pay anyway.
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Apple & NVIDIA
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t really know what this next topic is about. So what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’re going to talk about is Apple and NVIDIA. And I know enough to know that NVIDIA and Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used to be chummy and now they’re not. And because I am not someone who really cares
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about 3D cards and fancy graphics cards and things of that nature, I’ve never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really spent the time to like really dive in and understand the history here. But luckily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a John Syracuse that can tell me all about it. So John, what’s going on here?
⏹️ ▶️ John As we approach Mac Pro Day, which could be today, could be the day you’re listening to this anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John Probably not, but it’s time to revisit this, especially in light of
⏹️ ▶️ John semi-recent development. So we talked about Nvidia
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple in the past, and particularly Nvidia’s place in the
⏹️ ▶️ John 3D market. They have had the best, fastest cards
⏹️ ▶️ John for gaming for a long time. The lead used to swap between
⏹️ ▶️ John Nvidia and ATI, AMD, and whoever else every once in a while, but we’ve been in a long
⏹️ ▶️ John phase where NVIDIA is in the lead. They’re also have the most mind share and market share
⏹️ ▶️ John in AI applications with their CUDA language. And
⏹️ ▶️ John for a long time, Apple has not been including NVIDIA GPUs in any of its products. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not that big of a deal. If the Apple doesn’t make any kind of computers that are focused
⏹️ ▶️ John on gaming or really GPU intensive AI, Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John 3D, machine learning, yada, yada, yada stuff. But in theory, the Mac Pro could be
⏹️ ▶️ John targeted at some of those markets. And so it’s an open question,
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, this Mac Pro, Apple’s gonna learn from all its past mistakes. Is NVIDIA going to
⏹️ ▶️ John be an option on the new Mac Pro? Either from Apple or separately.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like if you could buy one, but then you could upgrade the card if the thing is indeed upgradable. And on that
⏹️ ▶️ John front, you’re like, well, if they make it any kind of computer with replaceable cards,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple doesn’t need to participate in that, they can ship it with an ATI card, AMD card,
⏹️ ▶️ John I keep calling it ATI, whatever, same company now, they can ship it with an ATI card, but
⏹️ ▶️ John if it gets older, if you don’t like it, you can buy an Nvidia card and swap it in and you’ll be fine. The wrinkle there
⏹️ ▶️ John is you need drivers for it and Nvidia in recent months and years
⏹️ ▶️ John has been very willing to write drivers for macOS, But they’ve hit a snag.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the snag is that in the latest version of Mac OS, I forget when they did this, they’ve been locking down kernel
⏹️ ▶️ John extensions for a long time in Mac OS. And the current iteration, basically, and this is
⏹️ ▶️ John a quote from Nvidia in one of their support forums, “‘Apple fully controls drivers
⏹️ ▶️ John for Mac OS. “‘Unfortunately, Nvidia currently cannot release a driver “‘unless it is approved by Apple.’” That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not strictly true. You could tell people to boot with a, you know, NVRAM ARG that disables the system protection
⏹️ ▶️ John loads unsigned kernel extensions, blah, blah, blah. I think they could get around it in that way. But that’s not something people want to
⏹️ ▶️ John do, and it’s not really feasible for a consumer product. But what they’re complaining about
⏹️ ▶️ John is that you have to be like a licensed developer, and you have to sign your kernel extension.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has to co-sign it, essentially, to say, yep, we’re OK with this kernel extension shipping. And
⏹️ ▶️ John for whatever reason, political, technical, bureaucratic, apparently,
⏹️ ▶️ John Nvidia can’t get drivers for its latest GPUs to go through
⏹️ ▶️ John the process that’s required to get them to load on Mojave Macs.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so this is upsetting for people because they’re like, I can’t even just buy, I can’t do it on a Hackintosh.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t take my old Mac Pro and put in one of the new cards because there are no drivers for it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the Mac Pro is a chance for Apple to fix all of its mistakes and to make a
⏹️ ▶️ John great new computer. It’s not the end of the world if they continue to have
⏹️ ▶️ John this vendetta against Nvidia and say we are just never going to deal with them. But it is kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of a problem for Apple that Nvidia is the leader in so many different markets and continues to have
⏹️ ▶️ John the best cards, quote unquote best cards, for many different purposes. And Apple apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John not only refuses to ship things in there, but refuses to even let Nvidia do all the work itself
⏹️ ▶️ John and ship things that can work with Macs. I hope that’s not true. something else is going on and maybe behind
⏹️ ▶️ John the scenes they’re working with NVIDIA and these things will come out with NVIDIA cards and it’ll be great another possibility
⏹️ ▶️ John is that oh ATI takes the lead again they just released a new card I think that they
⏹️ ▶️ John were the first to market with a 7 nanometer GPU there you know the new architecture
⏹️ ▶️ John a new process it’s impressive but they did not take
⏹️ ▶️ John the lead like this new card they came out with it’s on a smaller process than Nvidia is currently shipping at
⏹️ ▶️ John just barely matched an existing year old Nvidia card. So ATI
⏹️ ▶️ John has not regained the performance lead. I think this is actually a little bit of a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John Obviously, some of the stuff Nvidia does competes with Apple and its metal initiatives. And maybe this is all mood of Apple starts making
⏹️ ▶️ John its own GPU. So who the hell cares about Nvidia and ATI? But in the world we live in today,
⏹️ ▶️ John a Mac Pro produced by a company that refuses to have anything to do with Nvidia
⏹️ ▶️ John and also refuses to let Nvidia ship anything that can work inside a Mac Pro is slightly
⏹️ ▶️ John lesser for it. And I really hope that’s not how things turn out. And so this is of the many
⏹️ ▶️ John things that we’ll all be watching for on Mac Pro Day. One of them is, does it ship with an Nvidia card? And the second
⏹️ ▶️ John one is, can someone put an Nvidia card into it, a good modern Nvidia
⏹️ ▶️ John card into it after the fact and have it work?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ve heard various rumblings and rumors and things from alleged employees
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for years now about how there’s this massive bad blood between Apple and Nvidia. And the main
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason I heard stemmed from back a few generations ago, Nvidia
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had those GPUs and MacBook Pros that died a lot and caused a lot of expensive repairs for Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And basically Apple blamed Nvidia,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and kind of shunned NVIDIA from all their products since. And so, if that is indeed the reason why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we haven’t seen a lot of NVIDIA stuff from Apple in the last few years, I think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a dumb reason. Like, if there is bad blood between these companies,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it is within Apple’s power to fix it, I think they should fix it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because, you know, as you said, like there’s pretty strong demand from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high-end GPU users for NVIDIA support. by continuing to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not offer NVIDIA GPUs, I think Apple is hurting itself and its customers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more than whatever any dispute is worth.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and the interesting part is like, it’s not even that Apple has to ship NVIDIA
⏹️ ▶️ John cards, they just need to not prevent it, not prevent their customers from using NVIDIA cards. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a, like they’ve talked about how they’re, you know, they’re changing their attitude about the Mac Pro and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna make the computer that pros want, but part of it is like Apple’s stance. The idea that Apple would
⏹️ ▶️ John sell you a computer knowing that the people who buy it are going to
⏹️ ▶️ John change it after they get it, whether that’s upgrades or even just component swaps,
⏹️ ▶️ John like that mindset which Apple used to have, that they would sell you a computer
⏹️ ▶️ John with the expectation that whether it’s you’re gonna buy third-party RAM or you’re gonna buy a hard drive from
⏹️ ▶️ John someone else and slap it in there or you’re gonna buy a second GPU and put it in or you’re gonna replace the GPU that it comes
⏹️ ▶️ John with a different one, selling you essentially a platform, a modifiable platform. Obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not appropriate for laptops, for your iPhone, for a Mac mini even, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole point of the Mac Pro is to be different from those other computers. It’s different than an iMac Pro, different how?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because they sell it to you and it’s got card slots or expansion or whatever. Like, I don’t know if they’re gonna go that far.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe they’re like, oh yeah, it’s expandable, but it’s only expandable with Apple widgets, right? So you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to buy components from Apple and stick them in there, and sell it tough luck, right? But that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like that’s leaving money on the table. If they really want to be serious in the pro market, part of
⏹️ ▶️ John what makes something pro is the idea that you can buy sort of the
⏹️ ▶️ John chassis and the guts and be able to upgrade components as you go along, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what you’re paying all this money for, to have an upgradable, reliable, sturdy core
⏹️ ▶️ John computer that you can augment and build just the machine that you need for whatever you’re doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And again, that doesn’t require Apple to deal with NVIDIA at all. All it requires is them to allow NVIDIA
⏹️ ▶️ John to do what it apparently wants to do, which is sell cards to Mac users and write the drivers
⏹️ ▶️ John itself. And then it’s between those customers and NVIDIA. If the drivers suck, then, you know, like it’s like anything
⏹️ ▶️ John else. People used to sell like RAID cards and their own video cards and their
⏹️ ▶️ John own, you know, USB cards for Macs that had
⏹️ ▶️ John an older version of USB. Like that’s part of what makes, Part of what has historically made a Mac Pro is the ability
⏹️ ▶️ John to do things like that. So this situation where apparently Nvidia can’t even get its drivers to work on Mojave
⏹️ ▶️ John because of signing things, I really hope is some kind of misunderstanding. And on the bad
⏹️ ▶️ John blood front, the only company I can think of that Apple’s had worse bad blood with, if that makes
⏹️ ▶️ John sense, than Nvidia is Qualcomm. And Apple’s solution to that is they’re gonna make their own freaking
⏹️ ▶️ John modems. Like, short-term solution is we’re gonna have Intel do them, and long-term is we’re gonna make them ourselves.
⏹️ ▶️ John Which, fine, if Apple’s short-term solution is we’re gonna use AMD, ATI,
⏹️ ▶️ John GPUs and all our stuff and our long-term is I’ll make our own GPUs, fine, then do that. But right now,
⏹️ ▶️ John we don’t know that that’s the plan. Right now we just see Apple about to release a Mac Pro that
⏹️ ▶️ John before it’s even released, the smart money is that it will not have
⏹️ ▶️ John GPU performance that is competitive with the best GPUs offered in PCs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it just seems so obvious to me that this is, as you guys said, this is a problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that from what we can tell, Apple needs to fix. And being stubborn and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey petulant doesn’t seem to do anyone a service. It doesn’t help the users.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It doesn’t help Apple. It doesn’t really help anyone. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like my perception of Apple is that they can be extraordinarily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stubborn and extraordinarily petulant if they so desire. And oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes it’s for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at least understandable reasons, if not good reasons. But geez, this time I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t think so. From everything I know, which admittedly is little, it seems like they just need to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put this all to bed and start fresh. So are you going to put an NVIDIA
⏹️ ▶️ Casey card in your forthcoming Mac Pro, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John If it’s possible to do so, I can imagine doing that because I
⏹️ ▶️ John have had multiple GPUs in the Mac that’s sitting right next to me right now and I don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ John why I wouldn’t upgrade the GPU in my future Mac Pro assuming that’s a thing that is
Configurable Macs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And speaking of that, will you be able to configure that Mac Pro, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John This is on the other end of the spectrum. This is a couple of old articles. I gotta look at the dates on these.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This was January, I believe.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, one from Jason Snell, and then Gruber chimed in about it. But the end of
⏹️ ▶️ John configurable Macs. Some of it is like looking at the products that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has released recently, and some of it is just sort of tea-leaf reading and thinking about where all this is
⏹️ ▶️ John going. I think Jason was mostly inspired by the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Airs. The fact that there’s only one CPU option, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John fairly unheard of for Apple laptops. Usually they have like
⏹️ ▶️ John a fast CPU and a regular CPU and they charge you a couple hundred bucks to get a small
⏹️ ▶️ John amount of clock speed increase and people wonder whether they should buy it. Sometimes they’ll do like an i5 or an i7 and
⏹️ ▶️ John you know this historically been a way for for Apple to boost its margins because they’ll charge you
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot more than it costs them to get the faster CPU,
⏹️ ▶️ John more RAM, more storage, so on and so forth. On the iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John line of computers or computing devices, there’s configurability, but it is along
⏹️ ▶️ John fewer axes, mostly just storage. You can’t get an iPhone or an iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John with the faster CPU or more RAM. Or if you do get more RAM, it’s part of the more
⏹️ ▶️ John storage model. Like, I forget which one, the big iPad Pro, I think, had more RAM with the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco flash or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so eliminating things that you can vary, like, oh, you can get a bigger, you can get more
⏹️ ▶️ John storage, but you can’t get more memory, you can’t get more CPU. Or maybe you can’t get anything at all. Maybe just this is the way it comes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Seems to be the direction Apple is going. And so the open question is,
⏹️ ▶️ John can we envision a future where all of the Macs, except probably the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro and maybe the iMac Pro, have far
⏹️ ▶️ John fewer things that you can configure about them? Maybe color would still be in the mix because that’s the thing that everyone wants to pick,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that you wouldn’t have a choice of CPU across any of the Macs, again, except maybe the super duper
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro models. That MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, all those would come with just one CPU.
⏹️ ▶️ John is the one and only CPU that they come with, and it is a good one, and it’s made by Apple, for example. Like it’s all ARM CPUs
⏹️ ▶️ John that comes with the, we went through this before, the M11, the X12, whatever the
⏹️ ▶️ John letter and number combination that Apple comes up with for the Macs. And like all of the MacBooks
⏹️ ▶️ John come with that. All of the MacBook Pros come with the, you know, the M37 or whatever it is gonna be.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you don’t have a choice. There’s not clock speed differences. There’s not, you can’t get different amounts of RAM in them or whatever. Storage,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can imagine them still, you know, They need some, I feel like they need some
⏹️ ▶️ John dial that they can turn to charge people more money. So I can never imagine them being totally unconfigurable and just having a
⏹️ ▶️ John one price, one product, just because they make so much money by charging you more
⏹️ ▶️ John for more storage. But other than storage, I can totally imagine, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John if Apple’s making the CPUs on all of them, no longer doing what they’ve done when other people
⏹️ ▶️ John are making the CPUs, which is always getting different binned parts and charging you a couple of extra
⏹️ ▶️ John hundred bucks for a minor percentage clock speed increase.
⏹️ ▶️ John And not only can I see them doing that, I don’t think it would be that big of a deal. I mean, witness the new MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Air. It only comes with one CPU, nobody cares. There wasn’t even like a fake controversy
⏹️ ▶️ John article about it. Like the best we got were these
⏹️ ▶️ John which is like, hey, look at this. They only offer one CPU on the MacBook Air.
⏹️ ▶️ John Basically what Apple’s revealing is nobody, Like it’s not a thing that people
⏹️ ▶️ John want. Like past MacBook Airs, you had choices of CPU speed and all it did was require
⏹️ ▶️ John the customers to make another decision in the purchase process. And they’d have to think, Hmm, do I want this? Don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And probably the decision most of them made was, Oh, minus $99 minus $200 minus whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John or like, you know, that I have to charge this much more for some number decimal point to go up that I don’t care about,
⏹️ ▶️ John forget it, I’m skipping it. Um, and so I feel like this is an entirely safe thing to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John for CPU speed, probably also a safe thing to do for RAM. Again, they’ve done that before. I think there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John some, is it MacBook? Some Mac models, I think, only come with one amount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The 12-inch only has one option.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Yeah. Like, I think that’s mostly safe on the low end, especially if they give you a reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ John amount. And that just leaves storage, which is where Apple can put all their money by charging
⏹️ ▶️ John their normal exorbitant prices for additional storage. And they will. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m, I think this is a reasonable prediction. I think we’re, prediction, I think we’re already most of the way
⏹️ ▶️ John there, and I think it’s both a good move and no one will care about it. What do you guys think?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, first of all, some real-time follow-up before everyone emails us. Apparently, the 12-inch now does come with configurable RAM up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to 16 gigs. It didn’t when it first came out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John The 12-inch? Really? Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, now the high-end 12-inch can go to 16.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s been the case for at least a year, because mine is 16. I’m almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it hasn’t been updated for at least a year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Well, that’s true. Actually, that’s a very good point.
⏹️ ▶️ John What are you gonna do with all that RAM? I don’t think the CPU can work its way through all that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey RAM. No reasonable amount.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Don’t even, don’t even get me started. I love, I was just thinking to myself just a couple of days back, I still do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love my little MacBook Adorable. It is a great machine. It is exactly what I wanted in the sense that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is hyper portable more than anything else. But holy crap, is this thing slow.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Getting the iPad Pro was the worst mistake I’ve ever made when it comes to continuing to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enjoy my Adorable because it’s just painfully slow. It really, really is. When
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was not comparing it to an iPad, it wasn’t that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad. It didn’t seem that awful. Of course it’s slower than my iMac. You know, that’s to be expected, but holy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cow, the iPad Pro is so much quicker than this thing. So I’m kind of of the camp
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of bring on the ARM Macs because clearly that’ll solve all our problems. But to answer your question,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do we want configurable Macs? You know, 10-ish years ago, maybe a little more than that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would have been probably offended. And I choose that word on purpose. I would have been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe offended at not having any choice as to CPU options and many, many
⏹️ ▶️ Casey RAM options and storage options and this and that and the other. But now I mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t care. And I think Gruber’s point at the very, very end of his link to Jason’s post,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it’s perfect. And I agree with it. Gruber wrote, I want Apple system architects to do all the work to make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the decision for me to find the perfect balance. And I agree with that. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey storage, especially while it’s still pretty expensive, I think it makes sense for that to be something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you can tweak. I’m less convinced that RAM is also on that list. I kind of feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like within financial reason, just dump as much RAM as you can into these laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Casey until you can’t anymore because it’s just unaffordable. Storage would make sense. I’d
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also love a configurable cellular radio, but we know that’s not going to happen. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, why not? Why is that not going to happen? I know you’re right, but just like for the sake of like- Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, yeah. … putting Apple’s feet to the fire, you’re like, why does cellular seem like it’s something that everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just okay with not happening? We have it in the iPad and it’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Other PC makers have it in laptops and it works for them. Why can’t we have it in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey That seems like- Well, let me tell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you, Marco. It’s because when I try to tether to my phone from my Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I don’t touch my phone, it It works flawlessly every time. It never has a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Plus everyone loves draining their phone batteries,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? That’s right. And plus there’s no mechanism for having like a software-based SIM
⏹️ ▶️ Casey card, so you’d have to add another door to the laptop because we haven’t figured that out yet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it’s okay. Nobody has unlimited data plans. Those don’t exist yet and definitely are not widespread.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I understand why they wouldn’t want Macs to burn all your data.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, God, I agree with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So all kidding aside, where would you put the little plastic piece for the cellular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey antenna, though? Where do they put all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other antennas? Yeah, but I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey know. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re hiding them in the hinge right now. They find places to put antennas because laptops are made out of metal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they have a lot of wireless radios in them. So they find places. This is a solvable problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All of these are solvable problems and are solved problems in many other devices,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco including Apple’s own devices. This is why I’m just, it makes me so angry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they don’t have cellular because PC manufacturers have been shipping cellular in laptops for over a decade.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple has been shipping cellular in iPads since the very first iPad. Well, since 30 days
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after the very first iPad. But it blows my mind. Why?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It would be so useful. And as time goes on, we have more and more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco justifications for it. It isn’t like the need for cellular on laptops is going down over time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s actually going up over time as more and more people, first of all, want to avoid using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco public Wi-Fi, for God’s sake. Second of all, as hotel Wi-Fi and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gets all crapped up with people trying to download the entire internet worth of video all at once,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so it becomes decreasingly usable. And again, you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge increases of unlimited data plans, which neutralizes a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the arguments that like Mac OS is not optimized for you know conserving cellular data
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which by the way is true but is also a solvable problem. Apple introduced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the NSURL session cellular permission flags years ago and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those same flags exist on Mac OS and I don’t know if Apple knows about these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet maybe I don’t know but they could have rewritten all of their apps to use these So it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not, it isn’t a big deal, I don’t think, to add support for this kind of stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And, and again, over time we have unlimited data plans becoming more and more common anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And cellular carriers making it easier and easier to add additional devices to your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco account that have cellular modems besides just phones. Things like watches, you know, smart watches, iPads.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, the reasons to exclude cellular from Macs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep getting eroded away over time, and there’s all the more reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to. The only reason you can say for not having it is, well, you can tether to your phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yeah, that’s true, but why do they have it in the iPad then? If tethering to your phone is good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough, why have cellular in the iPad? The reason why is because it’s way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way better than tethering, and there’s lots of reasons do it besides
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just tethering. And the same things all apply to laptops. So for God’s sake,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put cellular in the laptops. Anyway, sorry for this massive interruption. Please continue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with upgradable Macs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin So I have to ask you and continue your interruption because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I agree with you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you had to choose only SD card slot, have I asked this already? SD card slot or cellular radio,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what do you choose? Michael Manis Cellular, no question. I would use it more often and it’s harder to add later.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. I agree with you. I’m not going to argue, but I’m slightly surprised because I know you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really miss your SD card slot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do, but I would use cellular a lot more. Because I have it on my iPad. I use it all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there’s lots of places where I would take my laptop, but I end up taking the iPad because I know it’ll be easier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to just quickly get online and check stuff on the iPad because it has built-in cellular. But I would like to use my MacBook for a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot more of those things. Anyway, so regarding upgradable Macs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do have a small rant on this too. I think people are really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad, and I mean this, I know lots of people, I’m friends with people, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people are really, really bad in general at estimating or guessing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or deciding which hardware features or upgrades on a computer purchase are going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be useful and important and necessary for them, and which ones are worth the money and which ones aren’t for them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t blame people for this because these things are marketed in certain ways that make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you think that you need certain things or that certain things will be insufficient for you and you need to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upgrade X, Y, or Z in order to do application A, B,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or C. The reality is many, many, many of these upgrades that they sell you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are things that you don’t actually need or that have way less of an impact on actual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usage than you might think. And CPUs I think are the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number one offender here. And this doesn’t apply to all the product lines. Like the ones, the product lines where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have meaningful differences in say the number of cores between different options.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like the iMac Pro, you can spec the iMac Pro from what’s the base model? Six cores
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the way up to 18. You know there’s a massive difference in core count there. Even then,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not a linear increase in performance because the clock speeds come down as the core count goes up,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you still do get a substantial improvement in performance between those low-end options and those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high-end options for things like the iMac Pro or the Mac Mini, where you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge differences in CPUs that are available to you. But in most of the products, and especially the portable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco products, and this is because of power constraints, the difference between the lowest-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CPU offered and the highest-end CPU offered, the difference in performance is usually very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco small. Way smaller than you would think from the numbers that are on the page. And it’s usually on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the range of like 10 to 25% maybe. And so you might be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco paying like $300 extra to improve your CPU performance by 15%.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it seems like it could be more than that, but the numbers that are on screen, but because of things like turbo boost and thermal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco limits and power limits, it actually ends up being less than you think in practice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But people tell themselves wonderful marketing lies like, I want to be doing video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco editing, and so I have to get the absolute highest end thing possible. And it often has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very little relation to what their actual hardware needs are in practice and what the thing that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying will actually use in practice and will actually need in practice or the difference it will actually make. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many people are totally fine for their needs to be solved by the lowest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco end option in a lineup, or at best, the mid-range option in a lineup. CPU wise.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco RAM wise, I find I don’t even know how much RAM to buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I buy computers. Let alone, I can’t even imagine how other people make this decision.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think it’s based on the same kind of voodoo. It’s like, well, I want to edit videos, so I guess I’ll get the biggest.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or I’m only browsing the web most of the time, so I’ll get the smallest. And the reality is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how are people supposed to know whether they need eight or 16 gigs of RAM? If I can’t even tell you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether I need, you know, eight, 16, 32 or 64, like I have no idea. I usually get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something near the middle because I can and I figure I’ll probably use it, but like, I don’t know what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m actually using. How can anyone else know? And the reality is I have used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high end max like this wonderful, I might pro I’m using now that has pretty high specs and I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used mid range max like my MacBook pro, which has, you know, it’s a 13 inch MacBook pro. It has nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mid-range specs there. And I’ve used the 12-inch MacBook. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the crappier one, I think it was the second generation one that I used briefly, I felt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some difference between them with the things I did, but it wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as big of a difference in most operation as most people think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like my MacBook Pro, which by the numbers should be like a quarter of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the speed of my iMac Pro, isn’t actually that much slower. In the things I do, even things like building
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overcast from scratch in Xcode, it’s not that much slower than the iMac Pro. When I was testing the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mini, that I found the same thing. Like you would expect the Mac Mini to be a lot slower than the iMac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it wasn’t that much slower. It was only, it was like, it matched it in CPU performance for the things I was actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing, and it was just slower in a few other ways. But like, you know, so people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are really bad at guessing what they need and what they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should spend their money on for upgrade budgets and everything. And I think the two worst areas of that are CPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and RAM. So if Apple is removing CPU customizability from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco low-end and or thermally constrained products, that’s fine because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fact is, we don’t have that much choice there now. We just have different ways to spend arbitrary amounts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of money to get performance gains that are actually way smaller than we think that we probably won’t even notice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco RAM is a little more noticeable if you get it wrong, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the base model RAM in most of these machines is what most people buy anyway, and it’s fine. You know, we have SSDs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, so running out of RAM when you have an SSD is a lot less of a performance penalty than it used to be when you had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spinning disks. And so, if we’re getting less configurability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in these two areas, that’s fine. For most products in the lineup,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s fine. Now, that is not fine for something like an iMac Pro, where the potential range
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of processor options and the potential range of RAM amounts is way bigger. And you have more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco outliers like at the high end because these are like pro machines for pro workloads and everything and who knows what pros
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need. So anything that is targeting a high end use where thermals
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and costs aren’t necessarily constrained very well or very much, it makes sense to offer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge options. Whatever the chipset can handle, whatever the power can handle, offer the biggest options you can and give people a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco range to pick from. But as you get further down the line, when you’re in the smaller products, like especially the small laptops,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it totally makes sense to just lock in one CPU option, one or two amounts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of RAM, and then whatever storage customizability you can afford to put in there. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those are the things, the CPU matters almost not at all when you’re deciding between, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 12-inch is offered in three different CPUs. If you actually look at the difference between those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three, it’s very, very small. Why? Why is it three different CPUs? The answer is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple wants free money, right? Like that’s basically what it is. And so does Intel, right? Because some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it’s them. But like, the reality is like, if somebody has the top end, the, what is it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 1.4 gigahertz processor? Yeah, the top end, the 1.4. If you substituted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that out for the 1.2, the base model, I bet they wouldn’t even notice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bet almost no one who has the 1.4 would notice if you swapped it out for the 1.2.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s a $250 premium option. The fact is, with the small processors, the small laptops, the small thermal envelopes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this stuff doesn’t matter. So, fine, with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new Air, we have one option. I have heard zero buyers of the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air and zero potential buyers of it complain that there is only one CPU option. Literally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have heard it from none of them. And same thing, I don’t know if the RAM’s configurable, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it is, that’s a lot less important as well. Storage does make a lot of sense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have configurable because storage is something that is hugely variable in people’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs and is extremely expensive. So you can’t just put in the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amount of storage and call it a day because that would drive up the price of the machine way too much. So that makes sense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and also storage is a hard limit. With a CPU, you can edit video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a 12 inch MacBook.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John take longer. Yeah, it just takes longer. Yes, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can do it and it’s a soft limit. Like, you’ll just be delayed, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it still has the same capability. You can still do the task you want to do. It’ll just take longer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco RAM, similar. It’s like, you can still do most things you want to do, whether you have eight gigs or 16, it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just take a little bit longer if you don’t have the high amount. Storage is a hard wall. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t just fill your hard disk up bigger if you just do it more slowly. Like you don’t get more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco space by filling it up slowly. And so that’s one thing where like it matters a lot more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have that be, to give that a high ceiling for people to configure. And because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s so expensive, you can’t just give everybody the same high ceiling. So yeah, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on board with this. There really hasn’t been an area that Apple has removed customizability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from recently that I have really run into as a real problem. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do have problems with other things that Apple makes non-customizable, like the fact that they use the same keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all of their computers. That I have a big problem with, but that has never been customizable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As long as I have been an Apple customer, which was since the PowerBook G4, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have used the same keyboard in all of their laptops. I
⏹️ ▶️ John never thought that Apple would introduce third-party keyboard support for their laptops, but then they did it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, like, like, that was, uh, you know, we used to think that about iOS and they did they actually had a third
⏹️ ▶️ John party, like a third party keyboard. No, they’ll never do that. For the RAM question, if you’re wondering how much
⏹️ ▶️ John RAM you should have or whatever, like we all know this as developers, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, customers probably don’t, but iOS started as a RAM constrained
⏹️ ▶️ John environment. It was a very different fitness criteria for applications on iOS.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so iOS devices can get away with a fixed, very small amount of RAM. The Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John has a different history. And yes, even with all those iOS apps coming over to the Mac, that’s not going to change anytime
⏹️ ▶️ John soon. So I would say on the Mac, if you’re wondering whether you should get eight or 16,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re going to run a web browser plus Slack, plus one other app, get 16. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John if you haven’t looked at Activity Monitor lately, just look at how much RAM like your Chrome tabs
⏹️ ▶️ John and Slack are taking by themselves. Like it is obscene how much RAM they take. Not the virtual
⏹️ ▶️ John memory, like measuring memory is very complicated. There’s no one thing you can look at and add up in numbers and come up
⏹️ ▶️ John with a thing that’s saying it’s very, very complicated. But and yes, SSDs are way faster than spinning
⏹️ ▶️ John disks, so it’s much less important than it used to be. But SSDs are still way slower than RAM. So
⏹️ ▶️ John if you ever have a choice between 8 and 16 and you can stomach Apple’s prices, which are
⏹️ ▶️ John ridiculous for that extra eight, get the 16. But you don’t need 32 unless you know you
⏹️ ▶️ John need 32. So that’s the tricky part with RAM, is that even on the low-end models,
⏹️ ▶️ John if Apple standardized on eight, it would be bad. If Apple standardized on 16 right now, that would be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John So whatever the inflation adjusted equivalent of 16 is, like they would have to revisit that number once in a while, but 16
⏹️ ▶️ John is fine for pretty much everybody. but eight,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have to be running fancy applications to use up all of eight, and then you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John swapping to an SSD, and yes, it’s fast, but it is not as fast as RAM. But I mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John agree with everything else that Mark said, and it’s making me think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Real-time follow-up, apparently I have 64 gigs of RAM in my iMac Pro. Yeah, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s why you don’t notice any issues. And I’m currently using 39 gigs. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco How about that?
⏹️ ▶️ John What things have dots under them in the doc?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh boy, I mean, how much time do you have? So, finder, mail, messages,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Safari, things, iTunes, text mate, Chrome, Xcode, Dash, Terminal,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tower, Slack, preview, calendar, notes, solver, numbers, tweet bot, photos,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco read kit, audio hijack, colloquy, and Skype, and activity monitor. All right, so that’s a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John But you’re just over the threshold of a 32, So you wouldn’t be fixed fit into a 16. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John only using around 8. I am running Safari BB edit terminal colloquy
⏹️ ▶️ John Chrome and slack and audio hijacking
⏹️ ▶️ John and and Skype But there is a gig of swap in use
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know like and I’d buy clothes I don’t actually have a lot of windows or tabs open at this point because
⏹️ ▶️ John I close everything down when I podcast for the most for it. But anyway, yeah, eight is eight is a little bit too
⏹️ ▶️ John little to have breathing room, especially like when there’s another reason people spend the extra money for the faster
⏹️ ▶️ John CPU is they feel like it’s going to give them more longevity out of the machine. And it might, but Ram will give you much more longevity
⏹️ ▶️ John than CPU will, because there’s some, you know, say you bought
⏹️ ▶️ John Ram, not knowing that slack would come into existence, then it becomes an important part of your life. You just know how much of a ramp
⏹️ ▶️ John it was going to be in the fact that it’s gonna be running all the time and potentially has a memory leak. On the Mac, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the type of thing that can happen. On iOS, it can happen because anything that was that much of a RAM pig would never run for more than 60 seconds
⏹️ ▶️ John at a time before being killed. What the hell is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Adobe Desktop Service? Yeah, I don’t know. It’s half a gig right there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. Well, you’ve got to, what column are you looking at? You can’t really, this is the problem
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Memory. No, you have to
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco look at real memory. Real memory? Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John Memory is the virtual memory. But even real memory, it’s not, you can’t just add up all those numbers. It’s way…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco RealMemory is way more than memory for some of these. Like it says photos 4.5 gigs, but RealMemory is 4.5, memory is 730 megs.
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, I thought memory was V size and RealMemory is RSS in PS parlance. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see, it’s very hard to actually know like how much RAM is an app actually using because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it isn’t that simple. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John RealMemory says R size, which itself is a complicated concept when you mouse over it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Private memory is our, yeah, I think I did, I tried to do an article about this once.
⏹️ ▶️ John Explaining exactly how RAM is divvied up and like there is no number you
⏹️ ▶️ John can get out of PS where you can add up a bunch of things and get two values
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s like, here’s how much is in the RAM chips on my computer and here’s how much is in the SSD.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’d have to go page by page and figure out who’s sharing this page from this shared library and is it
⏹️ ▶️ John in RAM? Like it’s, you’d have to dump the whole page table. It’s ridiculous. Anyway, it’s very difficult to express this to users, but you
⏹️ ▶️ John do know when swap is in use because you can see things getting paged in and out and you can feel
⏹️ ▶️ John things getting slower.
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MacBook Hierarchy of Needs
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⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, your discussion before of cellular and the configurability of laptops and everything
⏹️ ▶️ John was making me think of something I’ve been thinking about for a couple weeks now, but I haven’t been able to come up with a good visualization so
⏹️ ▶️ John I suppose people can make a bunch of charts and spam them at us.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I just wrote it in the thing, the notes doc to remind myself to talk about it as
⏹️ ▶️ John the MacBook hierarchy of needs, but it’s not really a hierarchy, it’s not really what I’m thinking of. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John so new laptops, new laptops are coming, we’re all excited about them. There’s a bunch of things that
⏹️ ▶️ John could potentially come in new laptops. And I was visualizing them as kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John an ordered list. And as you go down the list, Like if you went down
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole list, it’s a short list. It’s maybe like five or 10 things, maybe probably less than 10 things. If
⏹️ ▶️ John everything on the list appeared, like in the new laptops, you’d be like, these are the best laptops ever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is amazing. And if none of them appeared, you’d be super mad because like they didn’t fix
⏹️ ▶️ John anything. Like, you know, they’re still crappy like they are now. And it’s a rank
⏹️ ▶️ John to lists. So the top item is the one that you say, Apple has to do this. This is the most important
⏹️ ▶️ John thing for them to do. And the second one is like, oh, here’s the second most important. And you have to decide,
⏹️ ▶️ John as you go down the list, sort of like a color coding, at what point do you draw a line and say, this is the line
⏹️ ▶️ John of acceptability, like let’s say, where if they do this one or these two or these
⏹️ ▶️ John three things, they will have acceptably addressed the shortcomings of the current laptops.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then there’s the next line, which is like, if they do these four or these five things,
⏹️ ▶️ John they will have really good laptops. And then if they do these six or seven, they will have great laptops. and if they do eight,
⏹️ ▶️ John nine, and 10, they have the best laptops ever. And I’m sure we all have different
⏹️ ▶️ John lists, but I, you know, and I can imagine a diagram and sort of like color, or maybe like a temperature bar
⏹️ ▶️ John thing or color again. And what I’m referring to, by the way, with the MacBook hierarchy needs is Maslow’s hierarchy
⏹️ ▶️ John of needs, which is actually kind of inverted, where it’s like the basic things that everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John needs is like, what is it, safety is the bottom? No, actually, the Wikipedia
⏹️ ▶️ John page says psychological is the bottom need. Anyway, there’s safety, then there’s love and belonging,
⏹️ ▶️ John then there’s esteem, and there’s self-actualization. And so you need safety, because if you don’t have safety, if you don’t have physical safety,
⏹️ ▶️ John who’s worried about self-actualization, right? That’s the idea, that there’s certain things you need to address because they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John serious concerns and you can’t worry about the other things until you address that. But as you go
⏹️ ▶️ John up in the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, you get to things that are sort of more nice to have,
⏹️ ▶️ John where at the very top is like, I’ve got everything else going on in my life, And my final thing is self-actualization,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So the inverted version of that in the MacBook hierarchy of needs is, I’m assuming we can all agree
⏹️ ▶️ John number one is keyboard. Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John say, if you have to subdivide that, you would say keyboard reliability. Because you can’t start addressing
⏹️ ▶️ John key layout or key feel or anything else you care about keyboards until you do reliability, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And then we can start arguing about what number two and three and four are, but I think the most interesting part there is,
⏹️ ▶️ John where would you draw the line? Like let’s say the line of acceptability where they introduce
⏹️ ▶️ John new MacBooks and the new MacBooks have a reliable keyboard, right, as determined over the next six months
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. Do you draw a line right after that and say, they will have crossed the line of acceptability
⏹️ ▶️ John if everything else about the laptops doesn’t change or like is a wash, doesn’t get any better, but
⏹️ ▶️ John they have reliable keyboards, is that acceptable or is there a second item and a third item? I don’t think we have to solve this now,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I am visualizing like a color-coded rainbow chart that we work our way down during the keynote. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I know they’re not really ordered. And I know Apple could like introduce items number one, five, and seven. So there’s probably some visualization
⏹️ ▶️ John that would let us know ahead of time. So we sort of for our own personal opinions and say,
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s what I think. If they hit X, Y, and Z, here’s how I’ll feel about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, and doing that before the announcement, as opposed to just seeing what they announced and then deciding how you feel about it
⏹️ ▶️ John is a way to keep yourself from going off the deep end and saying this one pet thing that I wanted,
⏹️ ▶️ John whether it’s like an SD card slot or cellular or whatever isn’t there. And therefore I think these laptops are crap, even
⏹️ ▶️ John though they have like five of the items that I said I wanted and they’ve passed into the line of greatness or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s tough because on the one side, I want to snark and say, oh, well, obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if they don’t have a good keyboard, I can’t buy it. But that’s not really true. I’m going to buy anything
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not a question of like whether you buy it or not. It’s like the line of acceptability is basically have they
⏹️ ▶️ John improved on the current model? So let’s say they just kept giving the current models, butterfly keyboards, they update the
⏹️ ▶️ John CPUs, they give more RAM, they’re like blah, blah, blah. Like, it’s not like we wouldn’t buy them because we’d have no choice.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’d be the only Mac laptop. So I think we would all agree that they have not addressed
⏹️ ▶️ John any of the problems that we see with the current laptop lineup. We feel like the current crop of laptops over the last three years or so
⏹️ ▶️ John have problems. We wanna see those problems addressed. And I feel like the line of acceptability is, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, you have acceptably, you’ve addressed enough of the problems from our personal
⏹️ ▶️ John estimations with the current laptops that I feel like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John okay, all right, maybe I was this long on my favorite laptops in the world, but you’ve gotten
⏹️ ▶️ John out from under the dark shadow that is the butterfly keyboard, for example.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then from there, like, oh, these are good laptops, or these are great laptops, or these are the best laptops Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ John ever made, like, you know, all the way up and or down the hierarchy, depending on how you invert your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, for me, I mean, I agree with your definition of the pyramid. Like, you know, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco necessarily what I buy it because we all know I’m going to buy no matter what it is. But it’s more like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what will make it fixed? Like what will be like this is now on the right track
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or this is no longer a product category that is on fire or covered in asterisks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yeah, for me, keyboard is number one. if they if they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did nothing else except give it a good keyboard again and I define good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there as multiple facets reliability is number one but like if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all they do is replace the keyboard with a good keyboard again I consider
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that good enough I would like to see more improvements than that cellular is very high
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that list but other than that like is literally like just a good keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the only single required thing for me to say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this product is back on track.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steven Connelly Yeah, it’s so tough. I think I’m less disgruntled with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the current laptop line than you are, Marco, and John hates
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything that you can move around. So obviously, he doesn’t like the laptops.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s tough for me to say. I have definitely had some keyboard problems with my MacBook,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but they haven’t yet been egregious enough to make me really angry about them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I actually quite like the feel of the keyboard, even if I don’t particularly care for the reliability.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I don’t know, man, like, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like there’s anything really holding me back from buying another one today, except that I don’t particularly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like I need one. And in terms of in general, is the line back on track?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then yeah, I think it’s what you said. It’s a reliable keyboard and probably little else. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, earlier on you had said basically, oh, if this, this and this happened, it would be the best portable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computer ever made. I think for me that would be, you know, continued
⏹️ ▶️ Casey extreme lightness, because that’s the kind of laptop I favor these days. All day
⏹️ ▶️ Casey battery, which is obviously indirect.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco which your laptop does not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have. Yeah, and I can’t have them both, right? I can’t have it be extremely portable and light and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also have an all-day battery. You know, something that’s reasonably speedy with a reasonably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nice screen. Like another thing that, Marco, I know you’re really bothered by that doesn’t bother me as much is not having
⏹️ ▶️ Casey true pixel doubling, at least by default, you know? So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, I can understand why that annoys you, but it’s not something that I’m particularly bothered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by. And that isn’t a huge deal. That is, I consider huge deals to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things that I don’t like or that I’m worried about pretty much every time I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use it. And really, the number one thing on that list is the keyboard. I never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it, no matter how long, I’ve been using these keyboards on and off now for almost three
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years, and I still don’t like them. But I’m also always worried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’s going to break. and I’m afraid, like, I use my laptop very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gently, and I’m afraid to use it in a lot of conditions where I’m totally fine using my iPad because I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worried about getting a speck of dust on it, but I’m afraid to use my laptop in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of conditions because I know how incredibly fragile that keyboard is. And if a speck of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dust goes near it just the wrong way, there goes $700 and a week of not having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my laptop. It’s a constant worry. And for anybody who has these machines, if it isn’t a constant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worry for you, it should be. Because they are that fragile, and it is that random
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and capricious when they stop working. And it is that much of a pain to get them repaired. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like, that to me, like, that overshadows everything. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rest of it, like, the USB-C only thing, the lack of the card
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reader, the lack of MagSafe, the higher price, like, all that stuff is stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I have had, you know, two and a half years to very slowly come to terms
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with. And I mostly have the touch bar also, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still don’t like the touch bar, but if my only option on the next laptop is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a good keyboard that happens to also have a touch bar, fine, I’ll take it. Like everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else is, everything else I can say, fine, I’ll take it. But not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the keyboard reliability. And in general, the keyboard design. but the reliability is the number one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem. I worry about that every single time I use the computer, and that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco negatively impacts when and how I feel comfortable using the computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so that’s bigger than everything else.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I was thinking of this, I was mostly thinking of it, not so much as, I mean, the align of acceptability is an interesting question,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I was thinking of it in terms of how if they go down the entire list,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’d make the best laptop Apple has ever made. Because in many respects, Apple’s current laptops
⏹️ ▶️ John are the best they’ve ever made, for example, in terms of size and weight and sturdiness of the chassis,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re better than they’ve ever been. They’re thinner than they’ve ever been. They’re very sturdy. They look really good.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that aspect of the design is great. It’s just they’ve dropped the ball in other areas. So I was thinking like, if they just
⏹️ ▶️ John go down this whole list, they’ll be great. And I haven’t really drawn lines, but I’ve typed up while
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve been talking what I think is my personal list. And it’s not that long. It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John seven items long. and if they did all seven of these things, potentially this is the greatest
⏹️ ▶️ John line of laptops Apple has ever made. So my number one is keyboard reliability.
⏹️ ▶️ John My number two is screen resolution, like native 2X, all the stuff we’ve talked about.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s just important enough to me. I feel like it’s fundamental, just like the keyboard. I’m talking about the Pro laptops, by the
⏹️ ▶️ John way. I’m not talking about the MacBooks, I’m saying the MacBook Pro. In particular, I’m thinking of the 15 inch, but you can
⏹️ ▶️ John map to the 13 inch. It’s a true true retina res at the at least the old
⏹️ ▶️ John Number of points right number three is the keyboard layout and having like a real escape key
⏹️ ▶️ John so this includes anything of the improving the inverted T and You know that maybe in home and
⏹️ ▶️ John end key on the 15 inch and all like all that stuff like keyboard layout is my number three my number four is
⏹️ ▶️ John SD card just because I have Camera these SD cards number five is
⏹️ ▶️ John improved battery life because as bad as the battery life is with the current things I I don’t, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s lower on my list than all those other things just because I can get by with the battery the way it is. Like, it’s ridiculous when,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, WebEx drains my battery in an hour-long meeting, but I’m usually not that far from plugs or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John So for me, battery life is number five. Six is cellular. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s cool, but it’s, and I would use it, but it’s below all those other things. Seven is MagSafe,
⏹️ ▶️ John a return of magnetic attached cables. I can work around that with a little MagSafe thing that I have from a
⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook Air, but it would be great for it to be built in. And the last item is other additional
⏹️ ▶️ John ports, whatever those ports may be, I don’t really care, but just the idea that it wouldn’t just be USB-C on
⏹️ ▶️ John the side. If they did all those things, had a reliable keyboard, native 2X,
⏹️ ▶️ John improved keyboard layout and a real escape key, an SD card slot, improved battery life, cellular, magnetic
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, and some other ports, that could potentially be the best laptops Apple’s ever made. We’re not gonna get all
⏹️ ▶️ John that, I know, but I think that list is technologically feasible, let’s say.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple could build this computer and sell it for a reasonable price as the 15-inch MacBook Pro, and it would be the best
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop they’ve ever made. They won’t for reasons that I find personally frustrating,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there’s that. So now my line of acceptability is, I
⏹️ ▶️ John have to say, I think it’s after number two, keyboard reliability and screen res. I, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just my personal opinion, but the screen res thing really bothers me. And I can’t live in a world where we
⏹️ ▶️ John just accept from this point on that there’ll be non-native res on Apple’s Pro laptops forever and ever. It’s bad, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John like it. So that’s my line of acceptability. And then after that, things get scrambled because
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think they’re gonna put an SD card in it, I don’t think they’re gonna change the keyboard layout, but those are my next two items. So they’re probably gonna skip
⏹️ ▶️ John that and maybe go to like improved battery life and then skip everything else. And they’ll end up having
⏹️ ▶️ John good laptops. That’s just my current thinking, I’m sure everyone else’s
⏹️ ▶️ John lists vary. If I had to make a similar list for the Mac Pro, it would be a big giant mess. I don’t even know.
⏹️ ▶️ John And honestly, the Mac Pro is more of like, I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John with the Mac Pro, I have an out. They don’t make a Mac Pro that fits my bill. I’ll just buy an iMac Pro. It’s a good
⏹️ ▶️ John computer. I just want them to be back in the market of making Pro Macs, and
⏹️ ▶️ John hopes that there will be another one after that, unlike the trashcan, and that they have another chance to take a
⏹️ ▶️ John run at it, just like with the laptops. They made a bunch of laptops that we have problems with, but they’re gonna keep making more laptops so
⏹️ ▶️ John they have more chances to get it right. I just want the Mac Pro to be like that. You know, a computer that they make more of
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s all, anyway. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shouldn’t be a lot to ask.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. A keyboard that works. That’s my laptop list. Maybe I’ll refine it before WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ John or whenever we think they’re gonna announce laptops and then we can all go down the list and check off and see where we end up on
⏹️ ▶️ John our MacBook hierarchy of needs and or wants.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve Lupo I’m working on mine as you’re talking and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not satisfied with it. I don’t know. What I’ve come up with, which again,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not terribly satisfied with, is improved keyboard reliability and I’d also like the inverted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey T. I do miss that. And that is pretty much the line of acceptability for me. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really… Jared Polin Is that one item or two? Steve Lupo Well, I don’t know. Dealer’s choice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Jared Polin Well, like I said, good keyboard, but that’s a compound item.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. I mean, if they failed on the inverted T, then whatever. Like I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John be annoyed by it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they will. Don’t worry. And they will. I’d be annoyed by it, but I would move on. So to me, the line is just a better keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be that one item or two, it doesn’t really matter to me. I’m counting it as one though. My next thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is cellular. I would love to see cellular. Again, I don’t think it’ll happen. MagSafe,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think it’ll happen. That’s three. Four is an SD slot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Five is improved battery life. Six is more frequent updates to the line.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Even though I don’t buy a computer every year or every month because my name is not Marco, I would still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like to see more frequent updates. I mean, I don’t think you guys understand how tough it is to be a laptop fan. We haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gotten updates in like, I don’t know, a year. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a feature of our product though.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’m going to mix that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s fine. That’s fine. And to me, what matters, some of these things matter, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco updates matter only on an extreme scale. If a product line only gets updated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every one and a half to three years, that matters if you’re itching to buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one from one year in and you have to wait and wait and wait and for the new models to come out in order
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to buy something that you think is current, that sucks. But once you own it, that stops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mattering. And there’s a lot of these things, Once you already own it, things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the release schedule or even like a lot of the purchase price or the upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pricing, a lot of that stuff is a one-time pain before or during
⏹️ ▶️ Marco purchase, but then after purchase, you can move on and it isn’t constantly impacting you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whereas things like an unreliable keyboard, that impacts you the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entire life of the product. So that’s, to me, that’s way more important. Any factor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that impacts you the whole time you own it is way more important than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one-time pains up front.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s fair. So my list then is keyboard, and that’s where my line is, better keyboard, more reliable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and inverted T. Then below or above the line, however you want to look at it, cellular,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey magsafe, SD slot, battery life, and more ports. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I would move more ports way the crap up if I was committed forever to only buying an Adorable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I gotta tell you, it is really nice to use, I believe they’re a past sponsor,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Luna display with your MacBook Adorable to get a lot more real estate when you’re, say, working on like an iOS app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something like that, or Final Cut. However, that is really, really,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really not as fun when you only have one port, and that one port is being taken up by the Luna display.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I have a like two hour limit of having multiple monitors on my laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because only when it comes to, you know, using the iPad as a second monitor, because after that my battery’s dead
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I need to disconnect the Luna display, which happened to me just the other night. So more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ports would be like number one on my list if I knew I was going to buy an adorable and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only an adorable for the rest of my life. But the fact of the matter is this is a self-created problem because I could have just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as well chosen a different laptop that has at least one more port.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’ve got improved battery life and it’s somewhere in the middle of my list, but obviously the ARM thing we expect will take care
⏹️ ▶️ John of that. Like we’re gonna get that whether we ask for it or not. Unlike all the other things on this list, other
⏹️ ▶️ John than keyboard reliability.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are we gonna get it? Because any gains that are possible by moving to ARM, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could spend those by just making the battery smaller, to make the laptop smaller and thinner.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I don’t think they will, because I think like the 10 hour battery on the iPad, I feel like Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John line for, it’s line for acceptability for a pro laptop battery life, they’re currently below
⏹️ ▶️ John that line. They’re below it because they, you know, this is the trade-offs they’ve made, but I think they’re slightly below it. So I think we’re getting
⏹️ ▶️ John improved battery life as a guarantee with the ARM. Not like fantastically better, because like you said, they can choose
⏹️ ▶️ John to trade it off, but I feel like they’re not gonna say, the current laptops have about the right battery, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John like in terms of peak performance, like if you run it hard, how they drain down so fast.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I feel like Apple, you know, would like their
⏹️ ▶️ John current line of laptops to get a little bit better. So when they have the ability to do that, they’re not gonna trade it
⏹️ ▶️ John all away for thinness. I think they’re gonna, you know, they’re gonna do it. And, you know, on keyboard reliability,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m thinking about this too, in my more pessimistic moments, like, I’m very certain that they’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ John come out with a new keyboard. But, I guess nobody can be really certain
⏹️ ▶️ John that the new keyboard will fix all their reliability problems. Obviously, that’s the whole point of the new keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ John is to solve the problems presented by the old keyboard. But it’s not like Apple set out
⏹️ ▶️ John to make an unreliable keyboard, right? So it’s the type of thing where we’ll all be happy
⏹️ ▶️ John when they announce a laptop with a new keyboard, however they present it, but we still kind of have to take
⏹️ ▶️ John a wait and see attitude to say, okay, is it actually more reliable?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because I don’t think it’s getting 10 times thicker. It’s not going back to the old keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s going to be a new thin keyboard that we hope doesn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John problems. But that’s not an easy thing for Apple to make apparently.
⏹️ ▶️ John So there’s that possibility as a way. So I’m gonna say improved battery life is, you know, even if
⏹️ ▶️ John only slightly, is a guarantee with the ARM transition. Keyboard reliability is a guaranteed thing Apple will try
⏹️ ▶️ John to do. And everything else on this list is potentially able
⏹️ ▶️ John to be ignored by Apple, which I find very annoying, because once again, everything on this list is
⏹️ ▶️ John A, available on PC laptops, and B, entirely within the realm of feasibility for
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple to make without any significant downsides in
⏹️ ▶️ John terms of, oh, we have to increase the price by hundreds of dollars, or it is compromised in some terrible way
⏹️ ▶️ John that makes it a worse product. People would love this product that I listed on all these things. They would love
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Again, just put the 15-inch. Put all these things on the 15-inch, nobody would say, I was gonna buy a new 15-inch,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I found out it comes with an SD card slot, so screw that computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like, if you wanna have a minimal laptop that offers as little as possible,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco despite the hostility it provides to actual use, focus at all on the 12-inch, because those buyers relish
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in that. Hey, guys.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sorry, we’ve covered this on past shows. There’s no room for another port on that computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John impossible. Back when people were much more willing to believe that Apple could do no wrong, very strongly
⏹️ ▶️ John argue that there is literally no room for another port on a computer that size.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Seriously, if you gave me the same computer, Or if Apple made available this exact
⏹️ ▶️ Casey same computer with all the same internals that I was just whining about, what, half an hour ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if they made this exact same computer, but with a second port and charged me another $2,500, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I paid for this thing, for it, I would buy that tomorrow. I really would.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have great news for you, Casey. They do make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey that computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t want a MacBook Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, get a MacBook Air.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Air, yeah. That’s true. You’re probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right. MacBook Air is almost exactly what you want. The only thing is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is significantly heavier and bigger. Going from 2.0 pounds to 2.75 pounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a pretty big difference. And going from 12 inch to the 13 inch body,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is noticeably bigger and heavier. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new MacBook Air is basically a two port MacBook. Like that’s basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they made. It’s very similar in a lot of ways, and it’s a lot better in a lot of ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every curve or continuum has a certain point at which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can make things smaller and smaller and thinner and thinner, and at some point, there’s an optimal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco balance, and then at some point, you fall off a cliff. When you pass the certain point,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the trade-offs are no longer worth it, and they start becoming really severe trade-offs that start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to really impact you in ways that are no longer worth the trade-offs. I think the 12-inch for a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people’s uses is on the falling off the cliff side of that. Whereas the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 13-inch MacBook Air is comfortably on the other side of the line. So I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you want a super portable computer and you’re willing to give up some performance and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff to get there, the 13-inch MacBook Air is a way, way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better balance for most people’s needs than the 12-inch. And I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not saying the 12-inch should stop existing because there are people for whom that super tininess of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is worth those trade-offs, but it’s such a severe drop-off in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco utility to get that, that you’re an able-bodied, young-ish person.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can carry an extra three-quarters of a pound, and it’s fine, all right? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple already makes the computer that you should buy, and it’s the new MacBook Air, except for that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John stupid keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, not with that keyboard, maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah, actually, that keyboard is proving to be pretty unreliable actually. But yeah, like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re almost making like, I mean, the keyboard you have now is worse. So it is an
⏹️ ▶️ John Reliability wise, maybe it’s slightly worse, but might be better feel wise. Oh, and
⏹️ ▶️ John not so real time follow up, I realized that when I’m looking at this Wikipedia page, the bottom item in Maslow’s
⏹️ ▶️ John hierarchy, I just misread the word because the text is small and I’m tired and my eyes are blurring.
⏹️ ▶️ John Physiological safety, not psychological. physiological needs like am I hungry, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then above that is safety, am I in danger of
⏹️ ▶️ John being attacked by cougars or whatever? And then love, belonging, then esteem, then self-actualization.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the hierarchy, the MacBook hierarchy is not so neat That’s Maslow’s Hierarchy,
⏹️ ▶️ John but what can you do?
Sponsor: Eero (code ATP)
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#askatp: Mac Pro budget
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some Ask ATP. And let’s start with Matt Corkum who writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hey John, what is the maximum you would spend on the new Mac Pro? Maybe or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perhaps the max on the tower itself and the monitor separately, if you’d like to enumerate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey those numerals differently.
⏹️ ▶️ John So keep in mind, the answer to this question is heavily warped by the fact that I’m using a 10-year-old computer right
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco now and have been
⏹️ ▶️ John saving money for a long time. So this is not to say this is how much money I would typically spend on a computer. Wait,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can we guess first before you say? Go ahead, yeah. Casey,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what’s your guess? I think John is willing to spend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey somewhere around $7,500 for the computer and the monitor? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m gonna do the computer and monitor separately, just so you know. Oh, okay, so I think you would spend easily $5,000 on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the computer, probably as much as, actually, I bet you would do 7,000 on the computer, and I think you would do another couple thousand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the monitor or monitors, so I would guess, all in, you’re sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at between 7,000 and 9,000. All right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I’m guessing, see, there is gonna be some kind of value judgment here, Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know what upgrades John will consider worthwhile to go all the way to the max, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you go to the max for things like RAM or SSD size, there’s a massive step up in price,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? So, I don’t know, is he gonna go for the four terabyte SSD? Is he gonna go for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 64 or 128 gigs of RAM? Those are gonna be huge steps up in price. Those alone are probably $3,000 each,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? So, there’s gonna be the question of that, But I’m guessing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it has been so long, and because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John has been so frustrated at not having a new Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s had so long to save, and he’s even dropped hints before that he’s had like 10 years to save up, and John doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy a lot of expensive things. So I’m guessing that the budget for this is higher than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you said, Casey. I’m guessing that he will actually end up spending
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more like nine or 10,000 on the tower, or whatever it is itself.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the monitor, I mean, this is kind of just a guess at what the monitor will cost. I’m guessing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the monitor costs between two and $3,000. So I’m gonna say total of around 12 grand. Boy,
⏹️ ▶️ John you guys, just two or three shows ago, you were trying to make fun of me for my frugality, which
⏹️ ▶️ John you coarsely described as cheapness. I think you’re both underestimating my
⏹️ ▶️ John frugality. My limits, and obviously this could change based on the computer and then
⏹️ ▶️ John again, based on the price of the options, because there is a possibility that I
⏹️ ▶️ John spend way too much on a really big SSD just because I hate running out of room on stuff I wouldn’t spend on
⏹️ ▶️ John the RAM. My current thinking is
⏹️ ▶️ John not over 6K for the computer and not over 2K for the monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I was pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John close. Yeah, you were close. You were off by just one digit, Like that I would be willing
⏹️ ▶️ John to spend 5,000 something for the computer, but if the computer is pushing up to 6,000, I would reconsider, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d be willing to spend 1,800 for the monitor, but if it’s like a 2,500 monitor, I’d reconsider it. Now, with the monitor thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John if there is no other monitor, I would probably go higher just because I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John have to have an Apple monitor, right? But I’m hoping that if the monitor is more than $2,000,
⏹️ ▶️ John that there’s a 5K option, I would just take that one, it would cost less. That’s my current thinking. You
⏹️ ▶️ John feel free to play this back to me when I plunk down 12 grand for the Marco computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, I hope you do. I really hope you do. Not just to make me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, because I’m right enough. I don’t need this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John one. If you were describing the computer you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna get, Marco, that’s what you were
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s true. Maybe, but like- Mr. 64 gigs of RAM in his iMac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But like, seriously, like, you know, you’ve gone this long, it means so much to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you, you don’t really treat yourself in a lot of other ways. For God’s sakes, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life is short, get the four terabytes.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the new ad, the new ad campaign from Apple. Marker almond for Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Life is short, get the four terabytes. Don’t look at the price tag.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Treat yourself. Worst. Oh man, all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, well I’m gonna claim victory on that one until you end up paying 10 plus thousand for this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco thing. Yeah, there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco victory until the receipt’s in hand.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, make sure make sure
#askatp: Job title
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco the receipts.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, Asajj writes, for thousands of people, you are professional podcasters,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but many of you do different things full time. What do you consider yourself to be with regards to career? Programmers, podcasters,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quote unquote influencers. I can start with this. I still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t think of myself as a really and truly professional podcaster
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because that’s not really a job, right? But if you look at how I make money, yes it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And yes, I am. But I still think of myself as a developer predominantly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And if I wanted to use like a really self-involved term, I guess a producer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because in terms of both creating video content and creating written content.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I think of myself as a developer slash quote unquote producer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Even though the reality of the situation is I am a podcaster. Marco, how do you feel about this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I for years I would always write like in like you know anything that was asking me my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco job title like like what I’m like you know filling out something for the IRS or like you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entering a country and has like your occupation I would always write software developer and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so for years I consider myself a programmer number one and it was only recently that I started
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and like if somebody asked me what I do now I’ll usually say I’m a podcaster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and an app app developer, and I’ll say it in that order. I spend more of my life creating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcasts than I do writing software at this point.
⏹️ ▶️ John Mine is easier because I just have a regular day job. I just always tell people I’m a programmer and that just shuts
⏹️ ▶️ John them up because they don’t want to hear about it. I mean, it’s such a dated term at this point. Everyone says like developer or software engineer. I always just
⏹️ ▶️ John say programmer because it dates me because that’s how old I actually am. I am of the age when what I wanted to be
⏹️ ▶️ John was a programmer and that’s what I ended up being and I just keep calling myself that. And honestly, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John really, you know, my Twitter bio, I think, says like, programmer,
⏹️ ▶️ John tech writer, and podcaster, but I haven’t done tech writing in forever. But I don’t know, like, it’s hard to pin yourself down. Like, I
⏹️ ▶️ John did do a bunch of tech writing. I feel like it’s a defining characteristic of my quote-unquote career.
⏹️ ▶️ John But just because I don’t do it now doesn’t mean I don’t feel like a writer. Just like if I stopped podcasting, I would still
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like a podcaster. But programmer is what I say to people, and then they don’t ask any more questions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I should try that because app developer I always hear people’s dumb ideas for
⏹️ ▶️ John apps. Yeah, people love apps. No one likes programs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hey, I have this great idea for an app. Can you help me make it? Well first you got a sentence NDA so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t steal my idea
⏹️ ▶️ John 10 print John 20 go to 10 I’m a programmer. All right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco programs. Oh my word Thanks to our sponsors this week, Hover, Eero, and Away,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we’ll see you next time.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re into Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, Auntie
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, tech broadcast so long
Neutral: Polestar 2
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So since everyone loves hearing about cars, we thought we would move the last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ask ATP to the after show for you. All right, Vincent S. was kind enough to send me a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recording of how you pronounce his surname, but I genuinely don’t think my mouth can make those sounds. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’ll just go with Vincent. Quervéant. Right. What do you think of the Polestar 2? Now, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re not familiar, Polestar used to be like the M division of Volvo, or at least
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that was my understanding anyway. And recently they’ve pivoted. I’m sorry, let’s bring this into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey programmer slash developer terms. They’ve pivoted to being Volvo’s all-electric arm or predominantly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey electric arm. And Volvo’s recently announced the Polestar 2,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is kind of sort of a Model 3 equivalent. I happen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to think it’s pretty good looking, although, John, I know you and I were talking, well, all three of us were talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey privately in Slack and you said you did not care for the look of it, and we can talk about that in a minute. But all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey told, it appears to be basically a Model 3, but to my eyes, better looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and from a manufacturer that’s probably going to have a whole lot less problems and will probably be able to service this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is a novel idea for a Tesla owner to actually get service and do so timely.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco because it’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I haven’t looked too much into this. There’s a really great video that, John, you had linked to us from Top
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gear, not the television program, but the journalist, I don’t know, organization,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where they did like a 10-minute quick look on it, which I guess wasn’t that quick. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it looks really good to me. I am really enthusiastic about other traditional manufacturers getting into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all-electric cars, and I am not in the market for a car and won’t be, hopefully, for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many years, five-plus years. But if I were in the market for a car today, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would take a very serious look at this. I really, really would. I’d like to hear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco’s input last, as someone who actually has an electric car. But John, what do you think about this?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think modern day Volvo has been on a bit of a run of making
⏹️ ▶️ John some really nice cars. In particular, I like the turn their styling has taken over the last five years
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco or so. Which is
⏹️ ▶️ John why it breaks my heart that this car is ungainly and ugly.
⏹️ ▶️ John disagree. It’s not ugly, but it is ungainly, and it’s just so slightly
⏹️ ▶️ John off of all their other beautiful cars. Like you made all these beautiful internal combustion cars.
⏹️ ▶️ John You have a chance to do an electric car, which has far less stuff inside it. And this is what you come
⏹️ ▶️ John up with, this sort of tall, chunky looking sedan-ish
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. It’s just so it breaks my heart. But all that said, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it will probably be a pretty good car, and it’s a reasonable balance of features
⏹️ ▶️ John and range and performance. and typical Volvo safety. So I think,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I mostly give a thumbs up to the car. I just it just the styling just breaks my heart because there’s just no reason
⏹️ ▶️ John they needed to to blow it like this. And then you see the Polestar one, which is their hybrid fancier
⏹️ ▶️ John coupe looking thing. And I think the Polestar one is not as nice looking as some of their
⏹️ ▶️ John gasoline cars, but it is way better than it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway, the one is way better looking. I
⏹️ ▶️ John agree with that. It’s a coupe. It’s easy to like make it low slung and stuff like that. Like I don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I hope the Polestar 2 is not the way Volvo’s are going to look going forward. I hope it’s just their first awkward electric
⏹️ ▶️ John and then they’ll sort it out eventually.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco. This is the kind of car that I’ve been waiting for more automakers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make. Tesla should not be the only car maker making the kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of cars that it makes. I’m very happy with my car, but Tesla is not perfect and they could certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use more competition. And I would certainly like to have more choices that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco offer the kind of things that I like about my Tesla in the future. They should not be the only company making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these things. And so the Volvo Polestar 2,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is Polestar the brand name? It’s like saying Toyota Lexus? It’s like AMG, where
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s affiliated, but they want it to be a separate thing. I don’t know how successful they’re going to be.
⏹️ ▶️ John But AMG is technically not the same as Mercedes, but everyone knows it is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or what is it? Hyundai has Genesis,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey same type of thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Genesis is a better example. I was gonna say Ram versus Dodge, because the pickups
⏹️ ▶️ John are now. No, it’s not Ram versus, it’s totally Hyundai Genesis. The successful ones, Toyota Lexus and Nissan Infiniti,
⏹️ ▶️ John those are the successful ones, but there’s been a bunch of half successful ones recently, and so far I think this
⏹️ ▶️ John is in the half successful category. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ll see. Well, anyway, so the Polestar 2, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m really happy to see this coming from a company that has the long-standing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco manufacturing and logistics expertise that Volvo does. That is something that we really need.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s like, I hope this takes off very well. It is, I don’t think it’s for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me for lots of reasons. Number one, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco says that, you know, in regards to like color and material selection,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it says no bad combinations. But I would argue there’s also no good combinations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car comes in six different colors of gray, ranging from white to black. It is literally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a gray-scale. It’s like you have six different shades, the top one is white, the bottom one is black,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you have four in the middle that are all kind of grayish. Yeah, that’s very true. Have they ever had caffeine?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, these are the most boring configurations I’ve ever seen of a car. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey midnight does look pretty good to me though, which is the almost black but not quite black.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also, I like that they’re black, speaking of being a programmer, John, is It’s called Void.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and I agree, like from the pictures, midnight is the least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible color that I can see in this list. But yeah, like it just, come on, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give it some personality. But you know, other than that, you know, it’s fine, it looks fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My main concern with something like this is that even a company with the history of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a big maker like Volvo, I still wouldn’t wanna buy their very first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mass market electric car. because you’re still gonna be a beta tester at that point. And it’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a lot of problems that they’re gonna have to work out just after it gets to market. It’s gonna have, you know, you’re gonna have all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those like 1.0 issues, right? And like, I didn’t buy a Tesla until
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they had been around for like five years. Like, or like shipping cars for five years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I feel like I jumped in at a pretty good time because by that time, a lot of the Kings had been worked out. They were already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on their second generation Model S interior and Model S, you know, design and everything. And it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way better than the earlier cars, which I would occasionally get a service loaner, so I know, I could see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco directly how much better it was than the earlier ones. And right now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there are very few other automakers that have even remotely mature
⏹️ ▶️ Marco electric options. And this is probably gonna be great in five years,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe. Maybe it might take more than that, I don’t know, hopefully not, but in five years, this might be a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great option. when it gets to like its second version or its 1.5-ish kind of version, this could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be great. But I would not want to buy somebody’s 1.0 in something like a car, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, if I buy your car, if I lease your car, whatever, I’m stuck with that car for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a number of years. Like that’s a major purchase that you’re gonna be using for a long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. Do you really want to be stuck with somebody’s 1.0 of a completely brand new thing they’ve never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco done before for that long and for that important of a purchase? I don’t think so. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something like, that’s gonna apply to all of these newcomers. Things like the Porsche Taycan,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this thing, pretty much everything that’s like an established automaker’s first real
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tesla competitor. It’s so different, like making an all-electric car is so different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in so many ways that while I have full faith that they’ll be able to do it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well a few years in, I don’t have that faith for the very first wave because I think they still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a lot to learn and I don’t wanna be their beta tester.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I agree with you all in all, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that Volvo has been very forward thinking with regard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to a subscription model for cars. And in fact, that’s exactly what it says on the Polestar 2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, can you explain that to me? Cause I read the subscription thing and it sounds just like a lease.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, so it’s a monthly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fee. Polestar feels that car ownership should be more closely resembled with phone ownership, an all-inclusive monthly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fee with the option to return or upgrade the end of your term without any hassle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or headache. How is that not a lease?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because they include insurance as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well. Oh, okay. That’s it?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I could have sworn there was something else, but I don’t know what it is off the top of my head. Maybe that is it. But the idea
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that I think with other subscription
⏹️ ▶️ Casey services, you might be able to change, I don’t know if it’s Volvo, you might be able to change cars periodically. Didn’t BMW do that?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They said that you could have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John different tiers.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could pick any other of the cars you want, and they don’t care which car you have. You just pay them the same monthly fee,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then you just pick. So they make more money from you if you pick a cheaper car, I suppose. I don’t know. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John always to just figure out how to get money from people who otherwise wouldn’t buy one. But I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be a good deal. If it’s the only way you can buy this
⏹️ ▶️ John car, then, well, then tough luck. But I wouldn’t choose it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m excited, though. I’m excited to see all these other manufacturers joining this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey electric future, which I think we can all agree is probably everyone’s future. And I just wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to reiterate what John said about Volvo lately. I, I definitely have problems with our XC90,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but by and large, I cannot say enough good things about it. And I had no desire
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to own a Volvo before we bought it. Um, Aaron, the car was for Aaron,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so she basically chose it. And I was supportive of it, not only because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s her car, but because it seemed like it would be nice. And I really do love this thing. It is not without
⏹️ ▶️ Casey faults, but I really, really love that XC90. So I agree, John, that Volvo’s really been on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a tear lately in the best possible
⏹️ ▶️ John way. I wasn’t talking about your Volvo, I was talking about the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey cars. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco’s problem. Like he’s just ignoring all the SUVs that are coming out because he’s not interested in them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the record, this Polestar 2 does look a little bit crossover-y for me. It’s a little high.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is, I would agree. The thing, the one thing they totally blew in this Polestar is the, I mean, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John just, just from looking at it, I’m surprised it wasn’t mentioned in the top of your thing. The giant
⏹️ ▶️ John walls surrounding their center console, what are they thinking? What are they thinking?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Like, they could have had
⏹️ ▶️ John an airy feeling interior that feels spacious, like, you know, because you have less stuff that you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to deal with, fewer buttons, the big tablet has a lot of the controls on it, and they put these gigantic walls
⏹️ ▶️ John around the center tunnel.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s not great. Although, you did say, Casey, this has car plays support, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin You know, based on what I saw on Twitter earlier, because I’d asked this question on Twitter earlier, and some people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who are very self-assured indicated that it should have CarPlay, yes. But the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tablet system apparently, or I shouldn’t call it a tablet, but the infotainment system is actually all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Google apparently, and it’s running Android and so on. But I’m told from the internet,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so it must be true, that it would support CarPlay as well, which is more than I can say for your two Teslas that you’ve owned.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s the thing. CarPlay support is tempting. I would actually really enjoy that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is not the same setup in Aaron’s Car, but Aaron’s Car does have CarPlay. And whether
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or not you like the census, as they call it, which is basically their infotainment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey setup, and that is one of the things that I think is most frustrating about Aaron’s Car, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey particularly startup takes an eternity. But the CarPlay implementation is really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey solid and really, really good. And so I would hope and assume that it would also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be good in this new Polestar. So in CarPlay, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know if it’s essential today, although I personally refuse to buy a car without it for future-proofing reasons,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it is really nice. I don’t use it that terribly often in my car, usually only if I’m in the car for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more than a little bit or if I’m navigating with my phone, which I don’t do that terribly often because I don’t go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new and exciting places that terribly often. But I really like CarPlay a lot. And I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really been glad that I’ve had it on the occasions that I do use it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Can I just say that this configurator website is the worst one I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John ever seen in my life. These giant, semi-transparent overlays block the view of the car you’re trying to configure. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not obvious how to pick things. Fire the company that made this website. Yeah, it’s not good. Fire
⏹️ ▶️ John this company. It took me the longest time to figure out how I picked from different options, because it’s got the text on top, it’s like slightly
⏹️ ▶️ John grayed out. It’s just bad. Like this is not, car configurers are not high
⏹️ ▶️ John technology and this one has no features that those don’t. It’s just harder to use. Bad Volvo, bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It took me a good amount of time looking at this because the first thing you see is the exterior thing and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it defaults to white. And for a good like 15 seconds, I’m looking at this thinking,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what an amazing troll. This car’s only coming in white. Like, of course Casey told
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me to go look at this and like poke through. How could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, no, no, there is an, you can close that. I just did it by accident. There’s a little close
⏹️ ▶️ John overlay. Yeah, but then you can’t pick things. Like the advanced technology of car configurators
⏹️ ▶️ John is you have a bunch of choices and you click on them and then you see the picture of the car change and neither one of those things blocks the other
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey technology. Well, yeah, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey agree. But then you can hit the bread icon. It’s not a hamburger
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John because there’s no inside.
⏹️ ▶️ John hamburger. It’s just bread.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s just bread.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chopsticks. Like you hit the chopsticks and then it comes back and blocks your view again