356: With a Heavy Heart
12 Dec 2019We configure a Mac Pro.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- Casey's Computer Corner Footnote
- Bendy extended keyboards
- Destiny on Stadia
- iPad Remote Control & Apple Classroom
- The Mac Pro Configurator
Sponsored by:
Chapters
- Casey’s Computer Corner
- Follow-up: Bent keyboards
- Follow-up: Destiny something
- Follow-up: iPad screen control
- Sponsor: Linode (code atp2019)
- Choose your Mac Pro. 🖼️
- Sponsor: Bombas
- Customize your Mac Pro. 🖼️
- Sponsor: Eero (code ATP)
- Expand your Mac Pro workstation. 🖼️
- All the essentials. And then some. 🖼️
- Your bag total is $17,207.19.
- Ending theme
- After-show
Casey’s Computer Corner
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s finally Mac Pro Day. I guess I should get prepared.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, I’m ready. I have a new computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hey, how many new computers do you have?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only one. It is darker than the one that it replaced.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How many holes are in the front?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I feel like this is a trick question, but none.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the answer Yeah, the answer is either a lot or zero.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not no, where’s the microphone? Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey maybe. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re looking at it right now. Casey, find the microphone hole.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know, but then I got to move my boom and that’s gonna make a whole bunch of noise.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mine’s covered in dust. Oh yeah, right above the camera on the top bezel, like the top facing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surface, there’s a small microphone looking hole right above the camera.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so apparently I have one hole on it. I do not have a gazillion. Well, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, most of matter is empty space, so it’s really a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco philosophical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I suppose with an LCD screen, in some way every pixel is a hole of light. A
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hole of light? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John well, because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a hole through which the backlight selectively shines. Oh my God, you
⏹️ ▶️ John Transparent me. I don’t know. It’s not a great analogy. This is not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a rich vein. The point is, I have my iMac Pro. It arrived Monday
⏹️ ▶️ Casey afternoon. I spent that evening, afternoon and evening, setting it up,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which sounds like a whole lot of time. It actually wasn’t that much at all, because I’ve become a pro at setting up Mac OS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from scratch. Whee! It came with Mojave, and I really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to put Catalina on it, but I have resisted the call so far. Because why not,
⏹️ ▶️ John man? Why? Is it because of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey red badge, Casey? Well, in part, yes. But it’s also because it’s the new hotness.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can write a cron job to get rid of that. We discussed that on a past show. Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know. But it’s just the new hotness. But I’ve resisted so far. I will hopefully resist at least to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the new year, because apparently that’s going to change something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hi, I’m Casey Liss. I finally have a working computer. And the first thing I want to do on it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its pretty much fine, mature-ish OS with a less fine, less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stable, cutting edge one for no benefits.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a question that people keep asking. I just thought, just before we came on the air, people keep asking it, and I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John put it into the show formally, but every time we talk about Catalina, it’s worth mentioning again.
⏹️ ▶️ John They ask, is it safe to update to Catalina? Like the same thing that Casey is debating. I’ve got this computer,
⏹️ ▶️ John and he just happened to have a new one, but anyway, it wants to update. Like the computer keeps prompting you
⏹️ ▶️ John and says, oh, there’s an update available. You sure you want to update to it? And as Marco has said in past shows, and have I said, I’ve said
⏹️ ▶️ John in past shows, don’t think there’s any super compelling reason
⏹️ ▶️ John to update unless you really want one of the new apps like the TV app or something, or you really like the music app
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of iTunes app, and I like to see the new features in the photos app,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s scary, and you have to decide whether those benefits are worth the
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently ongoing weirdness, whether it’s Casey’s weird cursor, that could have been hardware, it could have been software, we don’t actually
⏹️ ▶️ John know, We don’t want him to run that experiment, but my answer, my personal answer
⏹️ ▶️ John is it’s not a strong answer. Like is it safe to update to Catalina? Probably.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it, but you should be asking yourself is, uh, what am I going to get
⏹️ ▶️ John on the other side of it? Other than the comfort of knowing that I don’t have a badge on my system preferences, I can’t like, if there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John some new feature that’s in Catalina that you want, probably okay
⏹️ ▶️ John upgrading to it. But if there’s not a, If you can’t name a feature right now that you’re dying to have in Catalina, don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, like upgrading is a risk. It brings on potential downsides. So there has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be some kind of upside to make that worth it. And for most people, that just isn’t there.
⏹️ ▶️ John and shiny. Which is not to say that it’s bad. Like if you’re running it and it works fine for you, like I’m running it on my MacBook Air and
⏹️ ▶️ John have zero problems with it. But I’m also running Mojave on my
⏹️ ▶️ John wife’s iMac and don’t have problems with that either. So they’re both computers are fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You know, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not, and I do want the new features and photos, but I’m also very scared of the upgrade process.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve heard lots of strange things about it. So I’m still waiting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the good news is that right now, if you’re willing to classify
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iMac Pro as, I know it’s not the Mac Pro, but I would say it’s a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro. And if you’re willing to accept that classification, I’m not. first time in history,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the three of us are using Mac Pros.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not willing to accept that. It’s a Pro Mac. It’s not a Mac Pro. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of course. Define the Mac Pro. I mean, this isn’t that different from the 2013 trashcan Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro with a monitor glued to the front. Like, it’s exactly as expandable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly as upgradable. Like, you know, it has a Xeon. It has ECC RAM.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Like, you know, if you look,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s an iMac pro, it’s like a pro version of an iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the three of us kind of are running Mac pros asterisk.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree with you, Marco, but of course it’s self-serving. Now, I don’t remember what you said your build
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of your iMac pro was. I think it’s almost identical. Is that correct? Because do you, do you have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the 10 core or the 8 core? We went
⏹️ ▶️ John over this exact thing last show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remember. I’m actually going to go through it again for a bit. I’m going to do later. later. We’ll get to that later.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, short version is 10 core, 4 terabyte, 64 base GPU. Blast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For a fleeting moment, I thought maybe I would have a better computer than all of you losers. But no,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco and I have the same computer. It’s a good computer. What’s the problem? It’s an amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computer. It’s an amazing computer. But for that, for a fleeting moment before John spends $30,000 on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey his Mac Pro, we’ll talk about it later. Don’t worry. John spends 30 grand on his Mac Pro, I thought,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe, just maybe, I have the best computer of the three of us, which would
⏹️ ▶️ John I already have a better computer than both of you, as measured in wisdom and stature.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sort of the grace that comes with age and experience.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh-huh. Sure. Anyway, so I got my Mac Pro. I really like it. It seems to be working really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well. I really shouldn’t do anything to it like Catalina, but the call is strong.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I’m trying to be a mature adult because this is the first time in like a year that I feel like I actually have a computer that frigging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey works, which is nice. And I really enjoy that. And things are fast, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can’t make Xcode losing code completion and syntax
⏹️ ▶️ Casey highlighting in Swift any faster. That still happens. And you can’t make storyboards load
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any faster, which is frustrating. I don’t care. If you don’t like storyboards, tell somebody else.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I like storyboards. They work well for me, except it takes forever to load them even on the iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro, and that’s very frustrating.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the advantage now is that when Xcode has bugs and stuff like that, you can quit and relaunch it way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco faster. Much faster. And the bugs happen faster. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Fail fast, fail hard. So anyway, so yeah, so all kidding aside, I don’t think there’s really going to be any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more of Casey’s Computer Corner. This is, I consider this a footnote. But. Likely story.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, we’ll see. Hopefully this won’t break anytime soon. I did get AppleCare this time, because why wouldn’t I?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But yeah, this computer’s real nice, and I really like it and I’m glad I bought it, even if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my wallet isn’t. And again, John is gonna know that pain, or maybe already knows that pain, We’ll talk about that
Follow-up: Bent keyboards
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on, Jason Painter wanted to tell us that they bought an iMac two years ago
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with an extended keyboard and it bent and it was replaced under warranty one year after
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was originally purchased. The new one hasn’t bent. So based on this one piece
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of anecdota, maybe they solved it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I hope so because I’m going to get one of these weird keyboards with my new computer and I really don’t want it to bend.
⏹️ ▶️ John So fingers crossed. But I was heartened to hear that the one person to reply with actual experience with the bent one
⏹️ ▶️ John was the replacement in Ben, which is unlike for example, butterfly keyboards, which people get replaced and then
⏹️ ▶️ John still have problems with.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. All right, moving on.
Follow-up: Destiny something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Justin Winchester would like to talk about Destiny, but I don’t care, so we’ll move right along.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John control. Oh!
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just one item.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Let the record
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show I tried. All right, tell me about this, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was talking about playing Destiny on Stadia, and I was playing it in Chrome, the web
⏹️ ▶️ John browser on a Mac, and I was complaining about the lag, and Justin says that if you play on
⏹️ ▶️ John a Chromecast, he says it was flawless. No noticeable input lag. was super
⏹️ ▶️ John impressed. Now I don’t have a Chromecast Ultra. I do have an older
⏹️ ▶️ John Chromecast but I can’t, as far as I’m aware, try Stadia with that setup because I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have the weird $130 controller thingy. The only reason I could play at all is because I was doing it on my Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John in a browser and I had my PlayStation controller paired to my Mac with Bluetooth. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I would like to try it on a Chromecast to see if the lag is better there. I can’t imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John it being flawless flawless, and I can’t imagine not noticing the lag, but I am willing to believe it would would be better than
⏹️ ▶️ John running it through a web browser.
Follow-up: iPad screen control
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, iPad remote control and classrooms. So we were talking about loading
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an iPad up and how you could troubleshoot things remotely, and especially for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people who maybe aren’t as familiar with computers and stuff like that. Martin Feld
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrote in on behalf of his wife, Natasha Candelas. Apparently,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she teaches in a class that uses Apple Classroom on iOS. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so speaking for Martin, or Martin speaking through me, if you will, I asked my wife, Natasha Kendall,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us about Apple Classroom on iOS. She’s a primary slash elementary teacher. And she said that it enables
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you to control students’ devices to an extent. You can lock them out of the iPad to gain attention and make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apps and documents open. Apparently, the look on kids’ faces when their device is freezed is priceless. Their heads snap
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up to face the front of the room, which is kind of cool for the use that it’s actually designed for. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we were wondering, does Apple Classroom allow for any sort of remote control and it doesn’t seem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like it has any sort of VNC-style remote control as we were hoping.
Sponsor: Linode (code atp2019)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Linode, my favorite web host. Go to linode.com slash ATP to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco learn more. If you need a virtual server in the cloud, you need Linode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been with so many web hosts over my career, dedicated, VPS, whatever else. This is what used to be called VPS,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but is now like every web host now. And this is by far my favorite web host. I’ve been with Linode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for almost a decade now, I think eight or nine years, since long before they were a sponsor. And I actually sought them out as a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sponsor because I wanted to tell you all how great they are. Linode is an amazing web host for running
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever you need to run on dedicated servers. So, applications, services, websites,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certain tools like CI or CD type environments, whatever you need to run on a dedicated server, let Linode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be your host. They are an amazing value, they have amazing performance, they have amazing support,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have all sorts of plans to fit whatever your needs might be. So they have a basic one gig of RAM plan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for just $5 a month. You can’t beat that. And then whatever your needs are above that, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need multiple servers, I think you need servers with more RAM or more disk space or specialty needs like dedicated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CPUs or high RAM plans. They have it all. I’m just so happy with them. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just an amazing value, amazing support when I need it, and just really good performance in everything, everything I need.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have data centers all over the world. They just opened one up in Toronto, Canada. I believe they’re opening one up in Mumbai,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco India shortly. And they have all sorts of other things, two-factor authentication. They have a whole API,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so you can script things or automate things. You can deploy your app super easily. You can pick your Linux distro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever you need from a web host, Linode probably has it. I gotta say, it’s so nice being a Linode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco customer. I’ve never had major issues with them and I’ve been with them for so long. I’ve run so many servers
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Choose your Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco linode.com slash ATP promo code ATP 2019 for a $20 credit. Thank
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you so much to Linode for keeping all my servers running and for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll just sit on back. And I’ll see you two later. So John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell me what’s going on. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to participate in this, Casey. We need you for this journey we’re about
⏹️ ▶️ John to go on. Are you ready, everybody?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I appreciate it. All right, John, all kidding aside, I like to snark, but I am genuinely,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey genuinely, genuinely excited that the day has come and that you finally have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey information about your future computer, unless you really ruin all of our hopes and dreams
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and say you’re not going to buy one. So please, John, tell me at the very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are you going to buy a Mac Pro? And then I don’t know how you want to take it from here. Perhaps we can walk through the the configurator,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but what are you going to buy?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, just, you know, settle in here.
⏹️ ▶️ John The holiday season, it’s a time of giving, right? On ATP, that
⏹️ ▶️ John usually means that we’re giving money to Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco which is a form of giving, I suppose.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is composed of people. So I think on this episode, on this night,
⏹️ ▶️ John join me, won’t you, as we take a tour of the Mac Pro configurator? Which as we all know
⏹️ ▶️ John is the most powerful tool for giving money to Apple that has ever been presented to people like
⏹️ ▶️ John us. So that’s what I thought we would do. We’re going to go through the Mac Pro configurator.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re going to look at the options and I’m going to tell you my thoughts about those options. Oh my God,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you’re really serious,
⏹️ ▶️ John not going to take that long. There’s not that, honestly, there’s not that many options, so don’t flip out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. All right. I’m buckled in. I’m buckled in. So let me start, John. Are you getting a rack mount or are you getting a tower?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so yeah, the link will be in the show notes. Yeah, the first thing you have to do is choose your Mac Pro, which sounds
⏹️ ▶️ John ominous. And this is the first time, as far as I’m aware, that Apple has released a photograph
⏹️ ▶️ John of the rack-mount Mac Pro, other than maybe they showed it on a slide at
⏹️ ▶️ John WWDC when it was announced. But this is on the product page. They announced it, hey, we’re gonna have a rack-mount
⏹️ ▶️ John version of this, but it was never on the product page anywhere. They had it at the thing that Marco went to, right? Like the press
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco thing? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s also, I don’t know if this was here before this was opened up, but on the design page,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you scroll down a while, it shows you that there, along with the little side view, you can see the rail.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. But anyway, that one is grayed out, which is the first sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John sign that things are as they have ever been when it comes to this particular Mac Pro. It just,
⏹️ ▶️ John they just can’t get to the damn fireworks factory. Like, no matter, you know, the whole Mac Pro Day
⏹️ ▶️ John thing is a thing, and by the way, Mac Pro Day came and went, it was the day they announced it on stage at WWDC. But everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John keeps saying, oh, today’s Mac Pro Day, which is a way of acknowledging that there’s always one more thing with this computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like literally in the Steve Jobs sense, like it never fully arrives and that continues to
⏹️ ▶️ John be true. Say you wanted a RackMount Mac Pro, can you order one? No. Can you see what the options are? How much it costs?
⏹️ ▶️ John No. Someday that will also arrive, but it’s frustrating.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, I wasn’t gonna buy RackMount one, so I don’t care. So let’s click on configure for the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John Tower from $5,999 and zero cents. So much money,
⏹️ ▶️ John Right underneath that, by the way, they have a little blue text that says, get 6% daily cash back when you pay with your Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Card until December 31st, which is a deal that many people have told me about, and I’m glad exists.
⏹️ ▶️ John Normally it would be 3%, but 6% is twice as good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Although there is a small asterisk on that, though. Apple typically doesn’t charge your card until your machine ships.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh. And so if you order it with a ship date that is after December 31st, which at this point is almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any configuration of it, it might be charged to your credit card after December 31st.
⏹️ ▶️ John So according to one person who tweeted at me, something they were told by
⏹️ ▶️ John their business rep, you will not get the cash until they charge your card, but as
⏹️ ▶️ John long as you place the order before the end of the deadline, you will get the cash. So you could place the order now and
⏹️ ▶️ John get 6% cash back on January 30th or something. That is what one tweet from one person told me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, business reps don’t know crap a lot of the time. And that’s, I wouldn’t, I honestly, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t put much,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t assume that was true. It might be, but it doesn’t have high credibility.
⏹️ ▶️ John What I can say is that if you have ordered a Mac Pro with your Apple card, and you’ve already done so, or
⏹️ ▶️ John within the time window, and you don’t get 6% back because they charge your card next month, call and complain
⏹️ ▶️ John and try to get that 6%, because that is BS. I’m hoping that the business rep person was right. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s configure. Customize your Mac Pro, and at the top of the list is all the specs. These are the default
⏹️ ▶️ John specs, 3.5 gigahertz, eight core, 32 gigs of RAM, Radeon
⏹️ ▶️ John 580X with eight gigs of DRAM, 256 gig SSD, which is way too small,
⏹️ ▶️ John Magic Mouse keyboard with numeric keypad. Those are the stock stuff. First choice you have is processor.
⏹️ ▶️ John Which processor is right for you?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let me interrupt you really quickly. Are you going to be explaining what you plan to do during the tour
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or are we saving that for the end of the tour? Should we hold our questions for the end of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, okay, I’m sorry, carry on please.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe we’ll order a computer right here. Who knows what will happen. Don’t tease me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Processor. You have a lot of choices. The default one is 8-core, 3.5 gigahertz Xeon turbo boost
⏹️ ▶️ John up to 4. As sort of becomes apparent as you scroll through
⏹️ ▶️ John the configurator for this very expensive computer, there aren’t a lot of upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ John options where you add 50 or 100 bucks and get something better.
⏹️ ▶️ John really a thing. You have to add a zero to all of those notions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they could almost be measured in MacBook Airs. Like, how many MacBook Airs do you have to add to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get the next processor?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco gigahertz, eight core.
⏹️ ▶️ John The very next option, the smallest step you can make from that is 3.3 gigahertz, 12 core with
⏹️ ▶️ John a 4.4 turbo. So it’s a lower base clock, higher turbo speed,
⏹️ ▶️ John more cores, right? That’s at a thousand bucks. Goodness. Plus one MacBook Air. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not that that processor costs a thousand dollars, is that processor costs $1,000 more than the eight
⏹️ ▶️ John core. If you want to make the next jump, which is from 12 to 16, again, the base clock
⏹️ ▶️ John drops to 3.2, and the turbo is still 4.4, that’s at $2,000 over the eight core.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you want to go up one more, now you’re getting into the silly ones. You want the 24 core, that’s at $6,000, and you want the 28 core, that’s at $7,000.
⏹️ ▶️ John So obviously, the six and seven, the 24 and 28 core ones are, you know, forget about
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Although it is interesting that when Apple distributed
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pros to all the YouTubers and everything, they gave them 28 core models, which, I mean, usually
⏹️ ▶️ John they make sure they’re spec’d well, but like, I suppose it makes sense because they’re all gonna do the demos of like
⏹️ ▶️ John CPU bound things that aren’t accelerated if they don’t use like ProRes and the afterburner card or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but, and I think that’s, honestly, that’s what those very wealthy YouTubers are gonna actually buy, but
⏹️ ▶️ John add $7,000 for your CPU option, not great. So when I’m looking at these options for
⏹️ ▶️ John me, who doesn’t actually need this computer for anything important at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John Nevertheless, I’m thinking that I don’t want an eight core because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the one part of this computer that is the most difficult to upgrade. I don’t think it’s impossible
⏹️ ▶️ John to upgrade. I’m sure people are going to hack this thing and put new CPUs in and when new CPUs come out and so on and so forth. But
⏹️ ▶️ John as far as I’m personally concerned, I’m never gonna take that CPU out of there. I never took any CPUs
⏹️ ▶️ John out of my Mac Pros before and I’m probably not gonna start now, especially since like our Macs
⏹️ ▶️ John will be out and I’ll just wanna kick this thing to the curb eventually anyway. So I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want the eight, but the only option open to
⏹️ ▶️ John my wallet is the next step up. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I’m going to choose the 12 core. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would make probably the same decision because like I currently have 10 in my Mac Pro And so I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t want to go down to eight. I’m not going to take a step down. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I was buying this, I’d go either 12 or 16. The 12 would be the most likely choice, or 16 if I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted to have it be significantly better than my iMac Pro, which we’ll get to later. And also some quick real-time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco follow-up. The configuration that YouTubers got, I didn’t catch,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know they have two GPUs. Do you know whether they have the two Vega 2s or two? They have the
⏹️ ▶️ John big ones, two Vega 2s. They have the most expensive GPU option. We’ll get to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so so if that’s if that’s what they have then the configuration sent to youtubers is a $33,000 configuration
⏹️ ▶️ John makes it makes the two pro display XDRs that came with all them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not counting the Or the stands
⏹️ ▶️ John thing tell me that they were showing like it’s amazing performance in benchmarks And they weren’t even using the afterburner card in some cases
⏹️ ▶️ John because yeah thing that they were doing wasn’t accelerated on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and I think the reason, like they had to give YouTubers something crazy like this because, and I would imagine,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you know, what they were seeing with render time differences, I would imagine a lot of that comes down to the GPUs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because even though, like you know, a lot of it is core based, like we’ve had, the iMac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco went up to what, 24 cores, I think? So like we’ve had, sorry, 18 cores, the iMac Pro went up to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like, to go from 18 to 28 at the top end, like yeah, that’s a lot, but that’s not gonna cut
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your render time by, you know, by four times, right? Like the way YouTubers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were showing this being like, it was like four times faster than the iMac Pro. If you want that kind of result, you’re gonna have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also do something GPU intensive and just destroy those GPUs and put in like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s what this can do. This has, if they had configurations that had four high-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco GPUs in them, because each of these cards has two GPUs on it, the Duo series of cards here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so they had two cards that each had two GPUs on them. that’s four GPUs with apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that run GPUs very heavily in parallel, like video stuff. So like, they had to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give them a configuration like this so that they could show like massive improvements over the iMac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If they didn’t, it wouldn’t have actually been that much faster than the iMac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, although they did show some things like, some people did like 3D rendering that was CPU bound so you could see all 28
⏹️ ▶️ John cores get pegged and it did well in that, but obviously not four times faster.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, also before we leave the CPUs, I wanted to address this. There’s a thing here that says that you need the 24 or 28
⏹️ ▶️ Marco core if you use the 1.5 terabyte of RAM option, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s actually not Apple being BSE, that’s Intel being BSE. The 24 and 28
⏹️ ▶️ Marco core chips are like special chips, and I forget how they’re different, but they’re different from the rest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the series, and even Intel charges way more for them than they do for the rest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these. So, granted, I’m sure Apple’s taking a healthy margin, But the reason there’s such a big price
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hike between 16 and 24 is, in part, Intel’s fault. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John and also not a concern for me, because I’m definitely not going for the 1.5 terabyte of RAM option, spoiler alert.
⏹️ ▶️ John In the core things, though, I did want to spend money on this, because it’s basically
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t plan to upgrade. It’s un-upgradable to me. But it’s really diminishing
⏹️ ▶️ John returns. I don’t have much stuff that’s multi-core. Every once in a while, a handbrake
⏹️ ▶️ John rip or something from a Blu-ray, but like, you know, how much faster is 16 gonna be than 12?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s best case, it’s linear, and it’s not worth another $1,000. I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, we have a lot of options to go, and it’s already up to $6,999, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Manufacturers suggested retail price, anyway. Right. So I’m picking 12 there, and I’m scrolling down.
⏹️ ▶️ John Next section is memory, again, with the little blue text. How much memory is
⏹️ ▶️ John right for you? I feel like it’s a personal question. This is weird.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, I’m sort of thwarted by the options. This actually is
⏹️ ▶️ John the cheapest upgrade option, but the default is 32, which I think is a reasonable default, unlike the SSD, which we’ll get to eventually.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the next step up is 48. All right, fine, for extra 300 bucks. Apple’s RAM prices
⏹️ ▶️ John are silly, but whatever. If we add 300 bucks. And then the next option is 96.
⏹️ ▶️ John Where’s 64? Where did 64 go? 64 was what I was gonna get, but there’s no 64 option.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I could get 48 and add more because this, blessedly, like many tower Macs before, it has lots
⏹️ ▶️ John of RAM slots, but Macs that have lots of RAM slots tend to have interesting rules about rules,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, quote unquote, about where RAM should be installed for maximum performance.
⏹️ ▶️ John Whether they have triple channel memory or you have to put them in in pairs or they have to be matched in the two banks.
⏹️ ▶️ John The best was the Mac Pro I had at work, which had triple channel memory, but I think it didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John let you install things in multiples of three, it was a very weird machine. Anyway, I want 64, 64 is not an
⏹️ ▶️ John option. 48 for an extra 300 bucks seems like too little to me,
⏹️ ▶️ John but when it comes to RAM, is it really that big a deal? Because you have so many slots, you can add them.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, and you can buy RAM, but then I thought of Casey with his third-party RAM, not that I’m afraid
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco of third-party RAM, right? I was thinking the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have third-party RAM in my Mac right now. It’s lasted 10 years. Granted, I’ve had to replace it a couple times, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s fine, you know, they go bad. This Mac, the Mac I have underneath my desk now, the 2008 Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John has cute little lights that go on that shows you exactly which DIMM is having problems. It’s very nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I didn’t wanna deal with that. And so I’m thinking,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, initially I picked 48 on this. I was like, I’m gonna go with 48. I’m doing configs, I’m checking prices or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, I’ll just do 48. I can always add more RAM. 96 is $1,000 more. All right,
⏹️ ▶️ John so it’s a $700 jump from the 48.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if I get 96, I don’t have to worry about RAM for a really long time.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I won’t have to worry about third-party RAM options. Who knows what those might be for this machine, you know, and how cheap
⏹️ ▶️ John they might be or whatever. So I think I’m gonna go with 96 here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would make the exact same choice for the exact same reasons. Treat yourself, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what you gotta do. You can keep going, 192 gigabytes is $2,000 over the base. Oh no, sorry, not $2,000, $3,000 over the base.
⏹️ ▶️ John 384, which is I think what the YouTuber’s got, is $6,000 over the base. 768 is $14,000 over the base.
⏹️ ▶️ John And why does it say 768 twice? Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s whether you want six modules that are bigger or 12 modules that are, because it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether you want extra slots or not, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and the 1.5 terabyte one has been grayed out for me for some, from some time yesterday. Was it ever active?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because you have to pick the 24 or 28 core CPU. Oh, so
⏹️ ▶️ John gotta pick the, yeah, right. Anyway, that’s 25 grand. Yeah. And people are shocked
⏹️ ▶️ John by 1.5 terabytes of RAM, but not to reveal too much, but at work
⏹️ ▶️ John we have machines with more RAM than that in them. And as many, not at our desktop machines, but
⏹️ ▶️ John in the data centers, and as lots of people tweeted out, if you go to Dell, you can configure
⏹️ ▶️ John a computer, a quote-unquote tower computer that’s like 170 grand. So RAM
⏹️ ▶️ John is expensive and the market is big and some people have very big needs
⏹️ ▶️ John and people serve that need by selling products for very high prices. So this is obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John ridiculous for a quote unquote personal computer, but they do, you can buy tower PCs
⏹️ ▶️ John that are even more obscene in terms of the costing capability. So yeah, 96
⏹️ ▶️ John in the absence of a 64, 96 seems like a reasonable compromise.
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⏹️ ▶️ John Let’s go down to graphics.
⏹️ ▶️ John The default one is a Radeon Pro 580X with eight gigs, which is a very pedestrian
⏹️ ▶️ John previous generation perfectly fine video card. The
⏹️ ▶️ John very next option that is available to you, the next step up is $2,400 more. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John gosh. If you want a Radeon Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John Vega II with 32 gigs of RAM. And it just gets worse from there. You can get two of those
⏹️ ▶️ John for twice the price, lucky you. You can get a Duo for an extra 5,200,
⏹️ ▶️ John or you can get two of those for double that, an extra 10 grand, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Forget about those options. I don’t want the works, I don’t want or need the workstation cards. It’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of one of the things that if you remember that turned me off to the trash can as a product for me personally was, I don’t want a
⏹️ ▶️ John bunch of workstation cards. Like I understand that their capabilities are amazing and I saw the big Pixar demos and like,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s not, I don’t have any, it doesn’t do anything for me, even on the coolness
⏹️ ▶️ John factor. Like none of this stuff is like I need it, right? But you want it so you can do cool things that you enjoy.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the only cool thing that I do that I enjoy that has anything to do with GPUs is games. And games
⏹️ ▶️ John do not benefit from the extra money that you spend on a workstation style card. Not that they play
⏹️ ▶️ John games poorly, they play games just fine, but you can get a quote unquote gaming card that plays
⏹️ ▶️ John the game just as well for a fraction of the cost. These are not gaming cards. These are cards
⏹️ ▶️ John for people who need them to render stuff in video or do workstation 3D graphics.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s too rich for my blood. And so my only option I feel like is the base
⏹️ ▶️ John video card. And here again, the factor that I’ve been talking about through all these things comes in, which is,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not set in stone. Pick whatever GPU you want. I’ve upgraded the GPU on this Mac at least three times.
⏹️ ▶️ John They come out, they’re on a card, right? You can, if assuming, you know, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John get rid of this computer and switch to ARM, and so on the next few years, I’m assuming I will upgrade this GPU
⏹️ ▶️ John because the GPU is upgradable. It’s a miracle. Here’s the only thing I have trepidation
⏹️ ▶️ John about when it comes to these upgrade stuff. RAM and storage, or, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, internal stuff like that, I feel like third parties are gonna fill that. But for video
⏹️ ▶️ John cards, historically, we’ve mostly gotten by sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John with dumb luck. Like Apple has sold graphics cards. In fact, I believe the graphics card that’s in my 2008
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro right now is a first party Apple upgrade graphic card. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s woefully out of date, right? But like Apple used to sell, hey, we’ll send you
⏹️ ▶️ John a box with an Apple little stamp on it that it’s a graphics card upgrade for your Mac Pro we
⏹️ ▶️ John will sell it to you separately. Right now, of course, like so many things about this computer,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no word on that and there’s no sort of, you can’t buy them now. Like if you wanted to buy these GPUs
⏹️ ▶️ John separately, as far as I’m aware, you just can’t do it. You can get them in a computer, but you can’t buy them separately. Will Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John ever offer video cards that you can buy separately to stick into the Mac Pro? I don’t know, and I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John confidently say that they will. Even though this is an incredibly expandable computer and you have lots of options, as far as
⏹️ ▶️ John I can tell, Apple considers that a thing that you choose at the time you build your machines,
⏹️ ▶️ John not a thing that you change into a machine that you’ve already bought. And like I was saying, historically,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve been able to buy quote unquote PC graphics cards with a similar enough architecture
⏹️ ▶️ John and maybe some tweaking to the firmware or whatever and just shove them into a Mac and they work,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And that’s, I have had video cards like that in my Mac Pro that were not Apple specific cards
⏹️ ▶️ John at all, but happened to work with some tweaking in an Apple computer, because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the same GPU family, and as far as the operating system is concerned, it’s the same drivers, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Is that still the case? Will there still be third-party cards that can run on this thing? NVIDIA
⏹️ ▶️ John continues to be on the outs, and it seems like, I think we talked about it a few shows back, it may be possible
⏹️ ▶️ John that NVIDIA will continue to be sort of locked out of the driver space for kernel
⏹️ ▶️ John drivers. Like, will they be able to, will you be able to buy an NVIDIA card
⏹️ ▶️ John and then download from NVIDIA website driver that goes into the thing? I don’t know. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John so I don’t have, I don’t, I can’t, I shouldn’t buy this thing a hundred percent. I’m a hundred
⏹️ ▶️ John percent sure I’ll be able to upgrade in that like the next time a new GPU comes about, uh, we’ll be able to buy
⏹️ ▶️ John a new one. Uh, real time fallout from the chat room. Apparently you can buy Ram.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else can you buy? They’re actually selling the GPUs. I mean, not technically it’s still, you know, currently unavailable, but like they’re, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listed on, on their site as separately purchasable items that that will presumably become available soon.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you can buy the Radeon Pro Vega 2 MPX module, $2,800. It’s what you’d expect. I don’t see the low-end one yet, but it’s what you’d expect, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, well, that’s good. That makes me more confident.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re at least selling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ones that they’re offering. Now, we don’t know what they’re gonna offer in the future, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also, it’s worth clarifying, there is one option, it’s similar to the eight-terabyte SSD option. They’ve announced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that soon, there will be a Radeon Pro W5700X option offered,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And by the specs, it appears to be kind of between the base GPU and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro Vega 2. So it seems like there will probably be an option that is less than a $2400 upgrade,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but still an upgrade for, you know, kind of that sits between these two. It just isn’t quite ready yet, but so that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worth noting. And I would also say, like, you know, on the expandability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco front, Apple intends for this to be what pros want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now and going forward. They intend to have this actual platform where they will continue to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco update things to put out new MPX modules with GPUs as time goes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on. We just don’t know if that’s going to happen. Their history so far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with recent Pro stuff, as they’ve gotten back on track, they’ve been really good with updating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco GPUs for the MacBook Pros, for the iMac. The iMac Pro, they did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a GPU update, although they haven’t updated anything else. with the iMac Pro yet, so I’m getting a little bit nervous. But like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so this could be great. It could be that, you know, in six to 12 months,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they release a couple of new MPX modules with new generation GPUs on them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or it could be that this remains a very niche product with very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco niche sales figures. And we don’t like to believe that Apple’s a company
⏹️ ▶️ Marco run by spreadsheets, but it kind of is in a lot of ways. And if Tim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cook Tim Cooks away the Mac Pro, then this could be just abandoned. This could just be, oh, this was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the only one they ever made and it didn’t work out, not enough people bought it because it’s really expensive, not enough people bought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it and I guess nobody wants it. I guess we can exit this business. Like that could totally happen. And only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time will tell whether that’s really what’s going to happen or not.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so like it’s basically the difference between being at the whim of Apple deciding what GPUs
⏹️ ▶️ John they want to put out and their cool black heat sinks and hardware and everything, which to be clear is what
⏹️ ▶️ John I would want. Like I’m not trying to come up with some, you know, giant RGB
⏹️ ▶️ John festooned, weird PC looking thing, but having the option to install
⏹️ ▶️ John third party cards is good. And you know, you can be assured that if you buy a third party, like
⏹️ ▶️ John equivalent GPU, like they have a good relationship with AMD and I’m sure Radeon’s will continue to work
⏹️ ▶️ John on this thing, but Nvidia is the question because you need more more permission from Apple these days
⏹️ ▶️ John to get a kernel driver loaded. So I suppose you could turn off system integrity protection or whatever and
⏹️ ▶️ John just get your Nvidia quote unquote web drivers assuming Nvidia keeps trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to make those. But that’s that’s questionable. I mean and Nvidia and Apple have been
⏹️ ▶️ John fighting for years and that doesn’t seem to be changing. So all that is to say yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, it was the option that I expected to pick is the option that says coming soon which is why on the
⏹️ ▶️ John day this thing launched I asked on Twitter does anybody have any idea what coming soon means
⏹️ ▶️ John and I asked that question in the context of the six percent cash back thing that we were just discussing because it’s like look
⏹️ ▶️ John if if you really aren’t going to get your six percent back if your
⏹️ ▶️ John thing doesn’t ship before the end of the year well then if you’re waiting
⏹️ ▶️ John around for the coming soon Radeon Pro W 5700
⏹️ ▶️ John x whatever you may be missing out on a six percent back and that’s a lot of money
⏹️ ▶️ John uh as we rack up the the price on this thing so i think what i
⏹️ ▶️ John have and to be clear no one has told me anything so i have no idea what coming soon means but it’s a pretty safe
⏹️ ▶️ John bet to guess that coming soon does not mean like within an hour
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco considering how long everything has
⏹️ ▶️ John taken on this computer it could mean before the end of the year like i don’t know what coming soon means
⏹️ ▶️ John but i also wouldn’t be surprised if it means spring. But like,
⏹️ ▶️ John because the GPU is upgradable, and I’m very excited to see this page here, by the way, it’s on Apple’s website.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll put a link in the show notes. The title of the page says Mac accessories on top. That’s the exception
⏹️ ▶️ John section. It’s in. That’s I think it’s why I was not finding this because I don’t consider these accessories. Anyway, the big text, the H1
⏹️ ▶️ John on the page, Mac components. Hey, it’s been years since
⏹️ ▶️ John that has been a category of things that you can buy for yourself. Now, some of them are things like the silly stand and the the
⏹️ ▶️ John VESA mount and they’ve always had stuff like that, like VESA mounts for your iMac or whatever. And there’s some Logitech and Belkin stuff thrown
⏹️ ▶️ John in there too, but these actual parts, right from the little option picker, Radeon Pro Vega II
⏹️ ▶️ John MPX module, 2,800 bucks. You could buy this, the Pegasus thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that lets you put regular drives in inside the case. $400 for
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing with no drives in it, okay. I mean, everything is expensive in black on this page,
⏹️ ▶️ John but at least it exists. By the way, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has one drive in it. Does it? Yeah, it comes with a single eight terabyte drive and you can put your own in the second
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Presumably you can also take out that one. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, it’s a spinning disk. All right, for $400. Yeah, well. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco funny thing is eight terabyte SSDs are almost that cheap now. Yeah, I know. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a special enterprise one, I’m sure.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I bet it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ John This also has, I think, the first time I’ve seen the Logitech camera, the magnetic
⏹️ ▶️ John camera that sticks on top of the monitor, that is $200. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was a cool surprise. I don’t think we heard about that before this, before the configurator and everything came up.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, we did. They told us about it at the launch. But they said, and Logitech’s gonna have a magnetic camera
⏹️ ▶️ John that attaches. And we said, great, can we see it? And it was nowhere to be found. I don’t know, I haven’t been keeping up with it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you couldn’t see it on launch day, I think. But here it is, it doesn’t look that bad. I already have a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Logitech camera,
⏹️ ▶️ John so I’m not sure I’m gonna spend 200 bucks on a new one. But having a camera on the top of your
⏹️ ▶️ John thing is nice. Like, it would have been nice if they could have spared a little bit of budget in their $6,000 monitor to, say,
⏹️ ▶️ John put a camera and a microphone in it. But I understand. Money’s tight when you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John selling a monitor for $6,000. You can’t have everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Did you happen to see the Belkin Aux Power Cable Kit?
⏹️ ▶️ John I did. I did see that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Did you happen to look at the images that are on that product page, specifically the last one? I didn’t click through
⏹️ ▶️ John it. What are we seeing here?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the Belkin Aux Power Cable Kit is a set of cables for $70 that runs from a special
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power header on the Mac Pro motherboard and provides those kind of aux power cables that modern gaming GPUs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco typically use. The final image on this on Apple site shows the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a third-party AMD Radeon something card in its
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of secondary slot there powered by these cables. So it’s it’s actually showing you on Apple website an official
⏹️ ▶️ Marco marketing image of you using a non-Apple GPU as a secondary GPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this machine presumably for I don’t know gaming maybe? I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John not in video. That’s for sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I know definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well the radian stuff is sure to work because they’re basically the same cards Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s still it’s cool to see that to see them showing this on the site I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean they do the same thing with the eGPUs the black magic stuff and Pegasus their their favorite storage
⏹️ ▶️ John vendor for years that it have like they’d show whatever the fancy Mac is with some Pegasus rate array or the eGPU
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff like everyone I think Before sort of the adventure Thunderbolt when people are speculating
⏹️ ▶️ John about what they do is like oh and Apple will have these sleek external GPU boxes and it’s like no they’re just letting third parties
⏹️ ▶️ John do all of that which is kind of a shame because some of them are like they don’t match as nicely
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s nice and that they actually are allowing companies other than Apple to extend their computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love that if you if you just go to the Mac accessories page you click on the header up top you should have the front page of Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accessories it’s showing the Pro Display XDR there but it’s showing it without the stand because the stand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t come with it and it looks so ridiculous just this rectangle floating in space like if you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get a stand, it levitates. Just highlights how incredibly audacious it is to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be selling this incredibly expensive monitor without a stand, and then to have the stand be $1,000. It’s amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is out of control. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it does. I mean, I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John been watching the
⏹️ ▶️ John YouTubers play with their Mac Pros.
⏹️ ▶️ John And initially, when seeing all the people who got the Mac Pros, it’s like, well, this totally makes sense. These
⏹️ ▶️ John people actually legitimately, quote unquote, need these computers in that it will
⏹️ ▶️ John save them. they have the thing, the thing they do routinely at work that takes a really long time where they are waiting on the
⏹️ ▶️ John computer. And by buying this horrendously expensive computer, they can wait half as long, a quarter as long. Like that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John you pay money for. That’s the kind of gains you want, right? So it makes sense that these people have them, but sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John the YouTubers aren’t going to be doing that much with this computer. And they’re just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can tell that they’re in some ways not particularly the market for it because they’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing about the monitor attaching to the stand. Uh, that
⏹️ ▶️ John makes perfect sense in the context of someone who works, say, in the film industry who
⏹️ ▶️ John has to, like, lug this stuff from set to set and sort of set up the monitor for
⏹️ ▶️ John the director to look at shots right after they’ve been done. You know, I don’t know that. Obviously, I’m not in this industry either, but I understand
⏹️ ▶️ John the concept of you got to pack up all your junk, right? And move it to someplace else and then unpack and set it back
⏹️ ▶️ John up. And you’re like, is this really a problem is that the stand is attached to the computer? Why would it? You know, why is it magnets? Why does
⏹️ ▶️ John need to come off? Why is it a separate thing? If you’ve ever tried to
⏹️ ▶️ John deal with a large monitor in any form, especially if it’s expensive and fragile, the stand
⏹️ ▶️ John is a pain. It really limits how you can pack that thing and how bulky the packaging has to be.
⏹️ ▶️ John The ability for the panel to come off the stand lets you pack it into a way smaller, very
⏹️ ▶️ John completely flat, like it’s perfectly flat, rectangular, no weird curve, like you can put that in a a nice padded
⏹️ ▶️ John Pelican whatever case and then the stand can be totally separate. The stand is still kind of ungainly
⏹️ ▶️ John but the stand is not as fragile as a giant piece of glass. So it makes perfect sense to me for
⏹️ ▶️ John these things to separate from each other and it shows they’ve actually been talking to people and saying it would be really useful to us
⏹️ ▶️ John if you didn’t sell us this $6,000 thing with a weird ungainly heavy stand
⏹️ ▶️ John that sort of clanks at the end of it. It just it makes it our life miserable. Can you do something better? And of course Apple being
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple like what about a cool magnetic connector and blah blah blah. So So that’s what they did. But if
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re just going to have it on your desk all day, it doesn’t make sense. And that is entirely separate from the idea of, OK, but does it come with
⏹️ ▶️ John the stand or not? So we’re setting that aside. Just I’m surprised that
⏹️ ▶️ John more people aren’t as excited about the idea of Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John talking to the pro customers and listening and giving a feature that clearly comes from
⏹️ ▶️ John not just speculatively thinking, it would be cool if the stand came up. But this is an actual use case.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But like every decent monitor has like a push button release to pop the stand off these. Like, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had that on my Dells like 10 years ago. But Apple’s monitors didn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s true. I was saying Apple’s monitors didn’t because they were like, well, we
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco can make it cooler. Everyone else’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did. And guess what? They didn’t cost $1,000 extra. Yeah, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, I’m setting aside the price,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco but like the
⏹️ ▶️ John idea that attaches and the, and of course when Apple does do the attaching thing, yeah, you could do it with a simple release mechanism or something,
⏹️ ▶️ John but magnets are cooler. That’s the Apple way to do it. and it’s more proprietary and they can
⏹️ ▶️ John sell you more weird ass adapters. And that’s why the VESA adapter is like that and whole nine yards. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s definitely an Apple way to do it. But I mean, for years, Apple hasn’t had monitors that
⏹️ ▶️ John adjusted in height, which is again, not a groundbreaking concept. Every monitor does that, right? In
⏹️ ▶️ John fact, Apple’s first LCD external monitor, which none of you remember and was horrendously ugly, was in fact
⏹️ ▶️ John height adjustable, the telescoping thing on it. Have you ever seen that one? It’s ugly, don’t look it up. But
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, they lost that technology. They found it again with the cool iMac with the metal arm.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, I’m glad height adjustment is back. And I’m kind of glad detachable stand is back because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s cool. Even though it makes no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey difference in my life. All right, so we concluded the base graphics card. Before we move on to storage,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanted to call attention to, I think it was Baron Von Clack in the chat, sent a KBase link for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey install and replace parts in your Mac Pro 2019. Learn about the many different parts you can replace
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and upgrade in your Mac Pro. memory, PCIe cards, Apple I O card, power supply, SSD and
⏹️ ▶️ John You will find links in the show notes to some YouTube videos that Apple put up showing how to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, excellent. That’s what I like
⏹️ ▶️ John So Apple is totally on the, you know, they’ve got the KBase articles, they’ve got videos they made to show you
⏹️ ▶️ John how to, I think they just have ones for GPU and RAM upgrading. And of course they have the cool, anyway, check out the videos. We will put them
⏹️ ▶️ John in the show notes that Apple is clearly pitching this as an upgradable machine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I know this isn’t quite what they’ve ever done before, But it’s so damn close,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it sounds so much cooler. Why didn’t they call this the 2020 Mac Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like almost no one is gonna actually get this delivered in 2019 It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the same with that iMac that was went over the year boundary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah well And and the 2013 Mac Pro was the same thing like I know zero people who got it in 2013 like even if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you order on Day one it came like in February 2014 and this is this is almost that bad like this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like right now if you order now it delivers December 3rd to January 7th. So like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost no one’s actually getting these in 2019. Why don’t you just call it 2020? It would sound cooler, it’d indicate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a clean break from all this teen garbage. And also, it’s gonna sound
⏹️ ▶️ Marco older than it is in the future. Like, you think the 2013 Mac Pro, that’s super old. But it’s actually really a 2014, basically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? Yeah, that makes a big difference. Well, it did for a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m just saying, I take your point, but it’s at this point, 94 years later, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not that big a difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, anyway, it’s a small thing, but I think they should have called it the 2020 Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mostly agree. All right, storage, including how much storage is right for you, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John Actually, before we go to storage on the GPU thing, I just want to make it clear that
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m selecting the base GPU in protest. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t actually make a difference. Nothing, I’m literally nothing I’m going to do with it is going to require more GPU.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it is kind of a waste of money. Like if the other option was there, I would pick it because it’s not gonna be a
⏹️ ▶️ John great resale value for a Radeon Pro 580X, you know what I mean? And so even if
⏹️ ▶️ John the new GPU option comes out in January, like oh, and I can upgrade and swap it in, I’m not gonna. Because it would be just
⏹️ ▶️ John expensive and a waste of money and I’d have to resell the old one or whatever. So it’s, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like I said before, the thing is never completely done and available
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s always like a work in progress,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though, like the reason I was into this GPU is because I think they discussed it, like when they were discussing the GPU options.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was like, well, I’m not interested in these super high-end workstation ones, so forget about those. And of
⏹️ ▶️ John course I’m not gonna take the base one, and there’s that sweet spot in the middle, and it’s just not even available to me, unless
⏹️ ▶️ John I wanna keep waiting, which.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will defend this base GPU. First of all, I would probably get it, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco touch my GPU, really. And this is, it seems, I don’t know too much about it, but it seems like this is fairly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco similar to the base model GPU in the iMac Pro, which admittedly is two years old, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this seems like, okay, it seems pretty good. But also it’s the only one offered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco currently that only takes up one slot instead of two. And so if you had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a need to populate all the other PCI Express slots with other stuff, you actually would want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, because then this would leave you one extra slot than any other configuration would.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, it’s not bad. And like, well, the fact that it’s not a quote unquote MPX
⏹️ ▶️ John module, like it’s great because it doesn’t take up more
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco slots. No, it is an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MPX module, it’s just a skinnier one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, it’s not the double wide thing or whatever. But the double wide things look cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, honestly, like my use case is computer that is cool, right? So these are actual
⏹️ ▶️ John use case. Because I literally, like there is no game I’m gonna be using that’s gonna need a bigger GPU. There’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John video that I’m rendering, there’s none of that. It’s all just about the cool factor. So base GPU, all right. Storage, 256
⏹️ ▶️ John default, and it’s ridiculous. I don’t understand that default. They did so well
⏹️ ▶️ John with the defaults elsewhere. A default 32 gig, the default video card as we said is fine, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John The default CPU is fine. For people who don’t want CPUs, it’s still eight cores. Not like they offered a quad core one.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, like it’s, but 256, it’s not like the SSDs in this are
⏹️ ▶️ John fantastically better than the ones in the iMac. They’re basically probably about the same. I don’t know, I haven’t seen benchmarks for
⏹️ ▶️ John it yet, but I don’t think there’s any reason to have 56. You
⏹️ ▶️ John go up to one terabyte, it’s an extra $400, which is the typical ridiculous markup. Extra 800 for two terabyte,
⏹️ ▶️ John extra 1,400 for four terabyte, which is better than what Marco paid, but it still ain’t great.
⏹️ ▶️ John Eight terabyte, coming soon, which granted, wasn’t, I don’t think, was it even mentioned as an option
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, they announced this with the release of the 16-inch MacBook Pro. At the briefing, they said, by the way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the 16-inch can go up to eight terabytes, And they said, we’re also adding this as an option to the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They didn’t say when.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they’re adding it, and you would think, oh, adding it as an option mean I’ll be able to click it on the options page when you put that up. But no,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not the case. So not that I’m, I wasn’t in the market for eight terabytes. It’s just, that’s too rich for my blood.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Which leaves you in the curious state of currently you can get a 16 inch MacBook Pro with more SSD space than you can the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, obviously you could shove away more stuff inside that case and get all the storage you want out of it. But it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I suppose if you’re doing video You really wanted that 8 terabyte you can’t order you just
⏹️ ▶️ John have to wait for coming soon all these youtubers who got these things with 8 terabytes or do they have 8 terabytes I forget
⏹️ ▶️ John but anyway I’m assuming what they’re gonna What they’re going to buy they want the 8 terabyte because they all talk about they have
⏹️ ▶️ John all the storage and it’s great to have All those internal storage and so on and so forth even though they have all their external Sands and all
⏹️ ▶️ John that other stuff they seem like they wanted to buy the 8 terabyte, but it’s not an option I don’t want to buy the 8 terabyte
⏹️ ▶️ John my current iMac my wife’s iMac is has 1 terabyte And
⏹️ ▶️ John I outgrew that so now I have my photos on an external drive
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I have one terabyte external one terabyte internal and I’m pressing up against the limits
⏹️ ▶️ John of that kind of so two terabytes is not does not give me much breathing room
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s got to be four. It’s a lot of money fully agree, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I can’t agree
⏹️ ▶️ John even though you could upgrade the internal storage I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know if you’re going to be going to be able to or going to want to rip out those little
⏹️ ▶️ John pair of SSD thingies and put in another different pair of them and anyway that would be a waste of the internal
⏹️ ▶️ John storage like and I guess once you get 256 and upgrade it with third-party, but 4 terabytes 1400
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bucks now. I’m telling you like like when I bought my iMac Pro I took the 4 terabyte option and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t I was so embarrassingly expensive I didn’t even want to tell anybody I got it because it was it cost a ridiculous amount of money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back then it’s way cheaper now and I Do not regret it for a second like even though
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the time I was I was really like angsty about it I was like, I really I hope this isn’t a mistake, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it wasn’t I love having four terabytes I’m currently using about three point two terabytes of that for it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I’m using it And it’s so nice to have it all in the built-in internal drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on this computer now granted on the Mac Pro You can add stuff a lot more easily So if you were trying to like configure this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit more like on a super tight budget Well, first of all, you shouldn’t be buying this computer. But if for some reason you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in that state Then sure if you you know do after the fact third-party
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expansion through drive bay cards or whatever else but or PCI Express SSDs directly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like If you’re gonna get this from Apple get the four terabytes
⏹️ ▶️ John and someone’s pointing on the chat room back to the GPUs briefly that if you look at the price of This is the base one
⏹️ ▶️ John has no price and their configurators and then the next one down is the Pro Vega 2 That
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s $2,400 more if you buy that what I assume is the same Radeon Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John Vega 2 module separately. It’s $2,800 so that price is the the 580
⏹️ ▶️ John X at 400 bucks basically like so that’s what that’s the money that you’re Burning if you really wanted
⏹️ ▶️ John some other GPU and you buy it later Like what how much money you wasting with that 580 X
⏹️ ▶️ John in Apple dollars is $400. How much do we sell it for? Apple maybe 200 or whatever. Yeah All right
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple afterburner now, this is nice This is all the other things like how much storage is right for you. What graphics
⏹️ ▶️ John card is right for you afterburner It says do I need an Apple afterburner card? Did
⏹️ ▶️ John you really just say if you don’t know what this card is? You probably don’t need it. Maybe that’s not true Maybe you don’t know what
⏹️ ▶️ John it is because it’s just a brand name. This is actually the biggest surprise of the configurator for me.
⏹️ ▶️ John I knew nothing about field programmable gate arrays, FPGA.
⏹️ ▶️ John That does not roll off the tongue. I knew nothing about them other than that they existed and what they did, but I’d never
⏹️ ▶️ John been in the market to buy one because what would I do with it? Hold on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can you summarize for us what is an FPGA?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s field programmable. It’s a bunch of logic
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can tell, quote unquote, in the field how to configure themselves. So when you get a silicon chip, normally,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s sort of burned into the factory. Here’s a bunch of little transistors that are arranged in a particular
⏹️ ▶️ John way and they perform a certain function, and that’s it. It’s like a fixed function. They use
⏹️ ▶️ John lithography to put it on a little chip, and that’s what you get. Field-programmable gate array lets
⏹️ ▶️ John you change the arrangement of those gates to sort of, it’s like programmable hardware, sort of.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you can do lots of interesting things with it, but as you can imagine, it’s much more expensive than the equivalent functionality if
⏹️ ▶️ John you just got it burned into a chip that did one thing. But it’s reconfigurable, so that’s what’s cool about it. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t know what the pricing of this stuff would be like, but it was so strange and foreign, some people had told us that these
⏹️ ▶️ John things cost a lot of money in the other markets where they exist. I expected it to be very, very expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ John Turns out not so much. And I, you know, especially compared to the GPUs, it’s $2,000. You
⏹️ ▶️ John know, afterburner is free, and if you want it, the only choice is you get an Apple afterburner card at 2,000 bucks. I suspect the
⏹️ ▶️ John reason it’s so much cheaper than GPUs if you were to put the GPUs down like take their chips and like
⏹️ ▶️ John look at exactly how much square footage or you know square inches
⏹️ ▶️ John of You know silicon surface area there is in these giant GPU
⏹️ ▶️ John options. It’s probably vastly larger than the the afterburner card right
⏹️ ▶️ John even though the FPGAs surely are bulkier for the functionality they
⏹️ ▶️ John provide it seems like this one is not monstrous and performs is you know they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John using it to perform a few specific functions which is able to do very very quickly but
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg so it’s too bad I have absolutely no use for this card and does not contribute
⏹️ ▶️ John to the coolness factor anyway because I have no idea what I would do with it so no afterburner card for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well and the great thing is because it’s a regular slot filled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMac sorry Mac Pro you can always add it later if Apple adds some ability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to this via a software update down the road that you would actually benefit from, you can then, at that time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy an afterburner card and stick it in. That’s the magic of the pro, like, all their other computers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to make so many decisions up front that you can never upgrade. And so, you have to often
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overbuy, or underbuy for budget reasons, or for not foreseeing future needs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then your needs change in the future and all of a sudden you have to get a whole new computer just because you didn’t have enough,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, or RAM or something like that, and you can’t upgrade it. That’s why this is so great, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you make the wrong choice on most of these things, you can change it later.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I thought of a use for the afterburner card. I was thinking of at what point, aside
⏹️ ▶️ John from the rare times when I’m doing like Blu-ray encoding or whatever, when I see
⏹️ ▶️ John my computer, or rather my wife’s computer, suffering, and I hear the fans go up a little bit because
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t have an iMac Pro, What is it usually when that happens? I bet both
⏹️ ▶️ John of you know. Photo analysis,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, I know you have a bad time with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. No. Is she unzipping Xcode?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s not her, it’s me. I’m using the computer and I hear the fans go off. I’m like, what the hell’s going on? Some sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of game? It’s always like a browser tab. It’s always something,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco some browser window open. You know when
⏹️ ▶️ John that happens? Like the tab you haven’t looked at in a while, it’s like a link you followed from Twitter and it’s some article and you started
⏹️ ▶️ John reading it and you’re like, I’ll get back to that later and you went off to do something else, and then you’re doing something else, and all of a sudden you hear the fans go off, and you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I’m just, I’m not even, my hands aren’t even touching the keyboard or the mouse. Nothing is going on. Why are the fans
⏹️ ▶️ John spinning up? And what is it always? Some stupid, extremely inefficient
⏹️ ▶️ John JavaScript and or Bitcoin miner
⏹️ ▶️ John ad festoon crappy website that you would never visit normally, but that you got linked to from Twitter, has gone off the
⏹️ ▶️ John rails, and one Chrome tab is taking 200% CPU or something. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John always what it is. So the afterburner card should be used for JavaScript acceleration. So those Bitcoin miners
⏹️ ▶️ John can go really fast and not have your fans spin up. I’m joking in case that’s not clear.
⏹️ ▶️ John Bad JavaScript is bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you need to put wheels on your Mac Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ John This was a tense moment in the configurator because some options are like coming soon and not available. When
⏹️ ▶️ John I first went through this configurator, there was no option for wheels. There was no wheels, there was no feet, there was
⏹️ ▶️ John no casters. I was searching the page for any of those words. It just wasn’t on the page Due
⏹️ ▶️ John to the magic of CDNs and, you know, slow rollout of content, anyone who puts
⏹️ ▶️ John anything up in the app store is familiar with this thing. It’s just, you know, you need to wait a little bit. I jumped the gun a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit. So yeah, feeder wheels are an option. Do I need wheels for my Mac Pro? That’s a good question,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s website. Do I need wheels? I remember way back when, when we did
⏹️ ▶️ John the WDAC show, I remember talking about this and thing. Like I was afraid that
⏹️ ▶️ John my beautiful, very expensive Mac would be vulnerable under my desk to people slamming chairs into it
⏹️ ▶️ John or vacuum cleaners or dogs running into it or you know, all sorts of terrible things could happen to it.
⏹️ ▶️ John So maybe if I had it on wheels I could like a roll it out of the way or you could roll to safety. R2D2
⏹️ ▶️ John style to avoid the slings and arrows of life on the floor. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John but as of a couple of shows ago when I was talking about preparing the way and I got the new side table and everything and I was thinking about
⏹️ ▶️ John putting the Mac Pro on the little side table. If it’s going to be on the side table, there’s no way in hell I want wheels on it, because
⏹️ ▶️ John now it would be high up on a surface, on a slick hard surface with wheels. That is not a
⏹️ ▶️ John good situation to be in. So I think, not because they’re $400, a
⏹️ ▶️ John bargain price of $100 per wheel, but mostly because my current plan
⏹️ ▶️ John is to try putting it on the little side table thing. No wheels. it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t feel secure with it up off the ground with wheels.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sense. I think I would I would probably get the wheels if I was getting it because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t have any notion of putting it up. I would I would definitely have it on the floor and if it’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be on the floor I want wheels not only because you know just in case it helps move it around it’s giant and heavy that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would actually be nice also if I if I ever needed to bring it to the beach it might help
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and also oh god I would I wouldn’t be I would put it in some kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John pulling it up pulling it along the sidewalk with a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco String like yeah, right like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like it’s your like red Ryder wagon that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco dragging exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly and but also like I would want it first of all I would be I’d be afraid of those feet scratching
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up my floor It like if it gets nudged slightly like wherever it was wherever it was sitting on my floor would probably
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, you know there’s rubber on the bottom of those feet. There’s got to be right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t I hope so I would also just I would appreciate the extra inch of ground clearance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would give it because that would make it easier to clean under.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, don’t put vacuums under there. That’s how it gets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dinged. Not vacuums. Like, you could stick a Swiffer head under there. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. I assume there’s rubber under there just because, like, if anyone’s familiar with the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple style of monitors with a sort of L-shaped tongue of aluminum bent underneath them, the IMAX are like that, their
⏹️ ▶️ John displays have been like that for ages. I’m sitting in front of one of the earlier models that have a very thick tongue on it, and they
⏹️ ▶️ John all look like it’s just a bent piece of aluminum, but if you pick those up and look on the bottom, the bottom, there is actually rubber underneath
⏹️ ▶️ John that big aluminum thing to keep it grippy, to keep it from scraping up your desk, so on and so forth. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John assuming that these feet have rubber under them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So KBNava9 in the chat room said, what if they offer giant wheels like they do for bikes meant for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco riding on the beach?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah. So if they have like fat bike
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tires, oh my God, I would buy that in a second. It would make it so much easier. That I would actually bring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the beach. I would pull it with its power cable or whatever, you know, down, down the half mile
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sidewalk from the ferry to the half mile sand covered sidewalk.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Not recommended. No. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ John my goodness. The other factor with these is that I think I had been thinking anyway, I had been assuming
⏹️ ▶️ John that you get wheels as an option, uh, and you either buy it with wheels or buy it with feet. But the way
⏹️ ▶️ John it would work is the feet would get unscrewed at the factory and they would stick in wheels or vice versa. Like they It
⏹️ ▶️ John would just come with those things in it. But that’s not the case. The metal tube that
⏹️ ▶️ John runs from top to bottom on this case is apparently all one piece and there’s no connecting or disconnecting. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ John get wheels, you got wheels. And if you get feet, you’ve got feet. And you cannot take one, as far as I know, that
⏹️ ▶️ John has feet and switch it to wheels or vice versa.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think you can, but I think Apple’s telling you that you have to have an authorized service provider do it. It’s a little vague
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that point. I think you can do it later, but you’re not supposed to.
⏹️ ▶️ John Does it mean you have to replace the entire metal tube?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. They don’t appear to be selling the wheels directly. I’m guessing it’s just because they don’t want you to install them yourself.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So in that same KBase article, install and replace parts in your Mac Pro, it does mention wheels
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it says, you can configure your Mac Pro with wheels to make it easier to transport. If you already have your Mac Pro and want to add wheels,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Marco’s point, contact Apple or an Apple authorized service provider.
⏹️ ▶️ John There you go. We need iFixit to tear this thing down to say, like, I mean, cause obviously you can just replace,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the entire internal skeletal case and then you get one with the wheels. But the options, because here’s what the options
⏹️ ▶️ John say, They say, stain the steel frame with feet and stain the steel frame with wheels. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John they phrase it as part of the frame itself. Whether it’s actually can be disconnected, we need iFixit to open
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing up and see if they can get the feet or the wheels off or if it’s just one big piece.
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, feet, which is nice because it saves 400 bucks, but I do think the
⏹️ ▶️ John wheels look super cool. And it’s gonna be, you know, so what if I get it, try to put it on that little side table and it’s like too
⏹️ ▶️ John wobbly or it doesn’t fit in my office or like it looks weird or I don’t like the sound whatever that’s gonna go back on the floor
⏹️ ▶️ John and then it’s gonna be on the floor with no wheels but I’ll feel better about saving 200 bucks input
⏹️ ▶️ John devices magic mouse or trackpad and it just says learn more what about which input device is right for you
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple what happened to that phrasing I thought we were friends I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna use any of these in peripherals I really dislike trackpads I don’t like Apple’s mouse even though it is a fine
⏹️ ▶️ John mouse it’s just not the style of mouse that I like so I’m going to stick with the default which is Magic Mouse 2.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m loving the Apple peripheral lifestyle. I have both the track pad on the left, mouse on the right. I will say though, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saw these peripherals in the demo rooms, cause they have a different color scheme. Instead of just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being like all space gray, like the iMac Pro, they have black tops and then silver aluminum
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bottoms. And it’s a very like high contrast look. I actually don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think they look very good. Like I really was, I thought they looked kind of weird in person. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m actually not envious of these input device color schemes at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John I forget if I have an iMac Pro. I know Casey brought someone’s iMac Pro input devices.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t recall if I did. I might have one of those keyboards upstairs somewhere. That’s the problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve got too much stuff and I’m too old and I forget things. Someone’s listening right now is like, yes, you have it, I gave
⏹️ ▶️ John it to you. How can you not remember?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I bought underscores and then I now have a set of my own that’s brand new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’ve not touched. Well, that’s not entirely true. I bought underscores that included both the mouse and the trackpad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The iMac Pro that I bought, I only got the default option, which was the mouse, because it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was cheapest and I knew I wasn’t gonna use it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’m pretty sure I have a brand new unopened version of my current
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard, the old Apple Extended with the white keys, like the pre-Magic key switches or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I’ve got one of those upstairs too. So I have a lot of options with keyboard. Anyway, keyboard, you have no options here. The magic keyboard with
⏹️ ▶️ John numeric keypad is your only option. Let’s see, can you change? Oh, you can change the language, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John about it. Pre-installed software. I was trying to upsell you on the software.
⏹️ ▶️ John You want Final Cut, you can get it. You want Logic, you can get it. I’m skipping all of that. What’s in the box? A big giant
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro. A really cool power cord. They’re into the braided stuff now.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s a braided power cord. I think the USB-C to lightning cable’s also braided.
⏹️ ▶️ John The mouse and the keyboard. Are you ready to continue? We’ve, see that was it. We just, we’ve sailed through these options in the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John What my screen says right now is $9,399. Real
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time followup from somebody inside your house. I am being told that you bought Jason Snell’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John old iMac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John peripherals. Sorry, Jason. I’m old and I forget things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so yes, I agree $9,400 and you don’t have a monitor yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but we’re just gonna continue. We’re not done here. Nope. So we’re gonna continue.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a big item left to decide on.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco bedroom where I was going to put my iMac Pro, and there’s no way to run a cable there. So
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⏹️ ▶️ John You click continue and the next page it goes, at the top it has a banner that says Mac Pro with an add to bag
⏹️ ▶️ John button. Granted, we didn’t click add to bag, which is Apple’s insistence on, they insist on
⏹️ ▶️ John calling your thing a bag and not a cart, which honestly, what kind of bag could fit something this big? I suppose
⏹️ ▶️ John it might not fit in a cart either. Maybe you need one of those Home Depot like sleds, you know? Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John it hasn’t yet been added to my bag. It’s just sitting up there, you can add it to bag. But before we get there, it says expand
⏹️ ▶️ John your Mac Pro workstation. It has the disembodied floating monitor that Margaret was talking about before. Expand your
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro workstation. Pro Display XDR. Your choices are no thanks, which is free.
⏹️ ▶️ John Nice of Apple to give you no thanks without charging you. Standard glass, which is $5,000,
⏹️ ▶️ John and nanotexture glass, which is $6,000. We have one small item
⏹️ ▶️ John on the nanotexture glass. Apple has a support article, this might have been up for a while but it was just going around recently,
⏹️ ▶️ John for the Pro Display XDR. If you get the nanotexture glass, Apple admonishes
⏹️ ▶️ John you. Use only the dry polishing cloth that comes with your display to wipe dust or smudges
⏹️ ▶️ John off the screen. Don’t add water or use liquids to clean the nanotexture glass. Never
⏹️ ▶️ John use any other cloth to clean the nanotexture glass. If you lose the included polishing
⏹️ ▶️ John cloth, you can contact Apple to order a replacement polishing cloth. So not only should you not use liquids,
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t even use your garbage dry stuff. The only, literally the only thing you can touch
⏹️ ▶️ John this screen with is Apple’s own cloths. And if you lose that one or it gets gross, you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to buy another one for an undisclosed amount of money. I love this so much. I, having seen
⏹️ ▶️ John both the standard glass and nanotexture glass in person at WWDC, I have always been on the side
⏹️ ▶️ John of the standard glass when it comes to this monitor. I think the nanotexture looks fine, but no way does
⏹️ ▶️ John it look $1,000 better to me. So for me, it’s a no-brainer decision to
⏹️ ▶️ John forget about nanotexture. And that cleaning thing, look, I have enough problems with my TVs with burn-in in them. Do I need another
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco of anxiety in my life? This monitor that you
⏹️ ▶️ John literally can’t touch with anything of any kind ever? Like, what if someone got a finger grease on it? I’d
⏹️ ▶️ John be like, I’m gonna dry rub that finger grease off? I feel like the people who are the crazy
⏹️ ▶️ John bidet proponents, like, you know, how are you going to get this thing clean? It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John a dry thing and rubbing it on it. And the thing is, for a lot of the
⏹️ ▶️ John videos, I saw people who had the early review units, these things, everyone’s like, oh, nanotexture is going to be great. I’m going to get the nanotexture.
⏹️ ▶️ John Are you like, are you in an environment like in these big sort of production houses where you’re going to be doing like
⏹️ ▶️ John real work with real people there? Like you’re just going to have fingerprints all over that thing. Are you going to defy
⏹️ ▶️ John the the wisdom of the 75 degree angle wizards telling you that Apple’s website it clearly
⏹️ ▶️ John says you cannot use any other cloth it’s 75 degrees exactly and do not touch this thing with
⏹️ ▶️ John any other cloth you get water on it forget it if you’ve seen gremlins but even if you don’t put water
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco on it you’ll destroy it so
⏹️ ▶️ John not only do I not want the nanotextured glass now I’m a little bit afraid of it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah that kind of gave me pause as well like I mean again I’m not ordering one of these but like if like I’ve been telling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco myself all this whole time like if I got this I would get nanotexture but I now I’m not so sure because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you know I’ve been living with the glossy iMac for the last five years whatever it’s been fine you know it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s occasionally been annoying reflection on it but it’s not the common case and like yeah if it’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have like this finicky side effect of I’d be afraid of anything ever getting on it and afraid of anybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever touching it and like you know like what if what if someone you know who’s like you know cleaning my my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco house wipes off the monitor like with the wrong cloth like what’s oh my god like it’s like I don’t I don’t wanna have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to worry about that for the lifetime of this product.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and to think you personally cough for about three months out of the year. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Your own phlegm and spit’s gonna be all over
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco this thing eventually, and you’re looking at it and seeing
⏹️ ▶️ John these tiny specks, and you’ll be like, what do I do about those? Am I gonna get those off with a dry cloth?
⏹️ ▶️ John You’d be there, you’d be like rubbing away at that thing like 500 strokes in each direction
⏹️ ▶️ John and every time you’d be like a fisherman’s friend. Oh God.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m saving people money. People listening to this now are like, boy, I was going to get that nanotexture glass, but now that I think about
⏹️ ▶️ John it, there’s no way.
⏹️ ▶️ John so I’ve just gone through this configuration process of this computer that configured,
⏹️ ▶️ John quote unquote, the way I want it with all the compromises. And conveniently, at the top
⏹️ ▶️ John of the page, it says add to bag, but does not show me the price. Can I scroll to see it anywhere? There it is. It’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John very bottom. You can see it. So this is $9,400. manufacturer suggested retail
⏹️ ▶️ John price. Am I going to add a $5,000 option? Six of this thing? $5,000
⏹️ ▶️ John a display that can lay flat on my
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco desk, I guess,
⏹️ ▶️ John or be supported by a small child as suggested at WWDC? I could lean it against
⏹️ ▶️ John a stack of books. I could fashion my own stand from
⏹️ ▶️ John a larger stand. That’s a Simpsons joke, Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You could buy the VESA mount adapter for only $200 and get your own VESA stand.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco could do that. That might not be able to support its
⏹️ ▶️ John weight. Yeah, honestly, this thing just sort of leaning slightly
⏹️ ▶️ John back on your desk with whatever is supporting it completely hidden by the monitor would
⏹️ ▶️ John be less offensive to me than attaching this to a third party stand. Again, my
⏹️ ▶️ John stupid use case is focused heavily on aesthetics,
⏹️ ▶️ John heavily on aesthetics, which makes no sense to anybody, but let me be me. You know, the part of the reason I want
⏹️ ▶️ John a first party monitor is because it matches the computer and looks cool on the front and the back. Yes, it’s a stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John reason. That’s my reason. You get your own reasons. So do I really want this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John in a third party stand? Do I want it at all? What do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco absolutely want it. Come on. Standard glass with the Pro Stand. Yep,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is correct. I mean it’s ridiculous. It is utterly ridiculous,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that is everything about this is ridiculous. You don’t need any of it, but you want it and it makes you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happy. You’ve been waiting a freaking decade. You just get the thing you want, which is the standard glass in the Pro Stand.
⏹️ ▶️ John So here’s the thing and we discussed this at length, you know, mostly not restated because nothing has really changed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Part of what I was, you know, fraught and upset about at the the announcement
⏹️ ▶️ John excited by the new Mac Pro but also, uh, you know, had some trepidation, it was all about the monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because yes, the computer is horrendously expensive, uh, and yes, I just configured it up to like $9,500, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John but, you know, it’s, it’s not unreasonable. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of people are sending us the vid- uh, the audio clips of old episodes where I was like, I’m not gonna spend $15,000 on a computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, the computer, as configured by me here, you know, not particularly
⏹️ ▶️ John frugally, but whatever, it’s under 10 grand for the computer. And then you just buy a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco monitor. How much
⏹️ ▶️ John can a monitor cost? This monitor screws everything up in terms of like, totally. I do want
⏹️ ▶️ John a bigger monitor. And I do appreciate that this one is a cool big monitor, but it’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, even in my use case if I want a cool thing, it is not worth $5,000 to me. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t do anything, but like if it was just a 5K iMac screen, I’d be happy. If it was a
⏹️ ▶️ John 6K iMac screen, like everything the same as the iMac, but like bigger and more pixels, that’s the monitor I would
⏹️ ▶️ John buy. And that would be two grand, and I would be like, fine. This thing, like it is wasted on me,
⏹️ ▶️ John totally and utterly wasted. I’m sure it’s gonna look cool. It will look better than my television set or whatever, but
⏹️ ▶️ John like it is the most frustrating part of this whole. We talked about it at length, Apple should do something better.
⏹️ ▶️ John Instead they went super high end, which I can’t blame them for because the whole point of this product is to plant a flag at the very, very,
⏹️ ▶️ John very high end. So good job, Apple, you’ve done that. But for me personally, it’s very disappointing
⏹️ ▶️ John that they did this. And so it is with a heavy heart that I click standard glass.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you are spending $5,000 on this monitor. And what stand are you getting
⏹️ ▶️ John It is with an even heavier heart that I click pro stand.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco There we go.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the only option that makes sense. Everything else sucks. Like, if the point of this is to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have the Halo computer that you’ve waited so long for and that you really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want and that you’ve worked and earned your hard-earned money to buy, that is the option to pick.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, I know it’s ridiculous. Again, this whole thing is ridiculous. But that’s, like, you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an Apple monitor for your brand new, top-of-the-line Apple computer, dammit, and this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the only option they have for you. And yeah, it’s completely ridiculous. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I find it especially ridiculous that they’ve told us on a number of occasions that developers are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their biggest pro market segment. And I can’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of any developers except John Syracusa who are going to buy this monitor because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it totally does not do what developers need. Like what developers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need is what John said, a lot of space but you know still like otherwise like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco consumer grade in Like we don’t need the crazy XDR stuff with the fans, which I want to ask you about.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The fans and like the huge like, you know, thousand nits of brightness. We don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John We just need-
⏹️ ▶️ John And the iMac 5K screen and the iMac Pro screen is really good for like photos. It has P2, full P3
⏹️ ▶️ John color gamut. Like it’s not a garbage monitor. It’s really good for things well beyond
⏹️ ▶️ Marco development. Yeah, they’ve been selling, as far as I know, they’ve been selling the same panel in iMacs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since the second version of the Retina iMac, which I think was 2015. when they added P3.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m pretty sure it’s been the same panel since 2015. It’s fantastic. Just put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this panel as an external monitor, and yeah, you could charge 1,500, 2,000, that’d be fine. It doesn’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to be bigger. If it can be bigger, if you can give us 6K, that’s even better, but we don’t even need that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We just want this monitor that you’ve been shipping in iMacs for four years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a standalone monitor to buy that you can plug into any other computer. That exists!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s the LG 5K! It’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to like it, but it’s the truth! It sort of exists,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s in this terrible plastic enclosure with bad backlight bleeding all around it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so for as weird I am as I am with all like, oh, it’s got to match the computer and the
⏹️ ▶️ John aesthetics and the cool factor and stuff like that, I’m not that far outside
⏹️ ▶️ John of the sort of mainstream of the tech enthusiasts. You know, because people
⏹️ ▶️ John in, you know, the tech enthusiasts in general, like cool computers. That’s what makes them tech
⏹️ ▶️ John enthusiasts, right? In the same way that people who are into cars like fast cars that they’re never going to own
⏹️ ▶️ John just because they’re cool. Right. And so most people sensibly are not doing the stupid thing that I’m doing and buying this very
⏹️ ▶️ John expensive computer, but they appreciate Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John case wrapped around an LG LCD. Like they understand it like it’s literally the same panel in both
⏹️ ▶️ John of these things. But most, I think even plain old developers are willing to spend one or 200 bucks more
⏹️ ▶️ John to get a cool Apple case. Because it matches their computer and it looks cool. There is a threshold of looks
⏹️ ▶️ John coolness and you’re willing to, in general, Apple customers are willing to pay a little bit more for something that looks cool. So the LG one is
⏹️ ▶️ John unsatisfying, even within the realm of practical people with actual
⏹️ ▶️ John needs. They want more screen space, they can see more code, they don’t really care about color gamma, but they do do photos in their computer
⏹️ ▶️ John too. So if they’re gonna have a big desktop, it’s nice to have something with a P3 display, so great. get that LG panel, can you
⏹️ ▶️ John put it in a case that at least passes my threshold of acceptability? And it feels like the LG one is
⏹️ ▶️ John both flaky and not particularly expensive feeling, but still actually kind of expensive, as Casey pointed
⏹️ ▶️ John out in the past few shows. So it’s just a very unsatisfying product.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’d rather be really upset for a little while about how much money I spent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the right product than buy the wrong product and be kind of upset about it forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s fair. And then the Pro Stand, I mean, we’ve gone over this before, it’s very silly.
⏹️ ▶️ John I hope it’s a good stand. It seems, the magnet thing is cool, the interlocking mechanism
⏹️ ▶️ John is cool, hopefully it won’t get loose over time. I have some faith because Apple’s usually good at these kind of mechanical things
⏹️ ▶️ John like witness the iMac arm, which did get looser over time
⏹️ ▶️ John but held up surprisingly well in very hostile environments with children yanking on the thing. So I really hope their
⏹️ ▶️ John very ridiculously priced stand will hold up well. So there we go. We’re not done
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey But I was going to say, you’ve got more to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John We get to the bottom. Now we scroll. The banner at the top that says Add to Bag, that’s still there. All
⏹️ ▶️ John right. But if you keep scrolling, I’ve picked my two options here. At the bottom, I have a new subtotal. It says $15,397.00. And there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John an Add to Bag button. I’m going to click.
All the essentials. And then some.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But all the essentials and then some John, do you want AppleCare?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So at the top now it says review bag $15,000 with accessories, but there are more options.
⏹️ ▶️ John AppleCare plus for Mac $300, perhaps the cheapest thing you can buy for this thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Cheaper than
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey cheaper than the monitor stand, cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ John than any of the GPU options, than any of the CPU upgrades. Oh my word. Uh, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John AppleCare. Uh, I think in the relative cost of this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John I tend to buy AppleCare for my computers. Uh, I bought it for the Mac Pro that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John sitting below me. I bought it for all the portable things that I knew my kids were going to be using because that just makes sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, I think I bought it for my wife’s iMac. I tend to buy AppleCare. Am I coming out ahead? Probably
⏹️ ▶️ John not. It just makes me sleep better at night So I’m clicking on add to bag for AppleCare, which is weird because it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John go off to a different screen It says underneath item added to bag, but the add to bag button remains
⏹️ ▶️ John UI Apple Next option AppleCare plus for Apple display
⏹️ ▶️ John because unlike I think unlike in the past that I think I recall in the past buying AppleCare that cover the display if
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco bought it as a system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you bought like a like a like a Mac Pro old cheese grater or a power Mac G5 with a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple display that’s not a purchase, there is a unified AppleCare that covered both of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that does not exist in this case for the Pro Display XDR. Not only that, but the Pro Display XDR
⏹️ ▶️ John AppleCare, which lasts the same amount of time as the Mac AppleCare, costs $200 more. It is $500 for the AppleCare for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was thinking like, this is, I would imagine, if you think about it from Apple’s perspective of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, if you’re like an insurance actuary and you’re trying to figure out like, what’s this actually gonna cost them over time?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The parts that can go wrong in a Mac Pro are, First of all, it’s unlikely that anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inside of a modern Mac Pro is ever really gonna die within three years because it has very few moving parts, except
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fans and they’re cheap. And otherwise, if one of the solid state components dies, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very unlikely in the first three years, then fine, you can replace just that part. Whereas,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what can go wrong on a 6K display? Dead pixels or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco image retention. And those kind of problems, you have to replace that entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco panel. And I’m guessing it’s probably not possible. I’m guessing you have to replace the entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. And so you figure like if something goes wrong, that’s a lot of pixels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that could die and there’s pretty much no servicing it. Like you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to replace the entire super expensive component or entire thing. Whereas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again with the Mac pro you can replace like just the bad Ram stick or whatever and you’re fine. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I’m guessing. It’s actually, they’re probably figuring it’s actually more expensive for them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to provide extra warranty coverage on that display which by the way is probably a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco indicator that you should probably get this apple care for it
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t say marco interesting opinion coming from you um yeah no i agree it’s and also
⏹️ ▶️ John the other thing i would add is it’s much more prone to accidental damage it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco huge fragile thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that you know and that comes off the stand and it’s meant to it is meant to to be carried around if you’re in that type of
⏹️ ▶️ John environment, like from station to station, like it’s breakable. Yeah, here’s the thing that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John killer about all this, like AppleCare, I’m gonna buy this, I’m gonna have peace of mind. If you’re in sort of the geological
⏹️ ▶️ John time set that I deal with my products in, it’s really shocking to look at this and say,
⏹️ ▶️ John three years? You’re barely getting started in three years. These all run out in
⏹️ ▶️ John three years. So if you buy AppleCare for your very expensive display, and then four years later, you
⏹️ ▶️ John ding it with your elbow, You’re like, oh, good thing I had AppleCare. What do you mean good thing you got AppleCare? AppleCare is gone.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know you can do the thing where you keep paying monthly, and we talked about that on past shows, but in general, like
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking that you’re gonna get AppleCare and you never have to worry about anything is not true if you keep your computers as long as I do.
⏹️ ▶️ John All that said, I live in deadly fear of breaking this way too expensive monitor that I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John need, so I’m clicking add to bag. AppleCare Plus for Apple Display.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Are you getting any other accessories?
⏹️ ▶️ John They are offering me a Thunderbolt 3 cable, which is USB-C on both ends and is white.
⏹️ ▶️ John Get that crap out of here. I only use black cables to connect to my computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are you getting the Logitech webcam thing? Because otherwise you won’t be able to do like video calls on your computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought I already have a Logitech camera sitting on my desk right now. Because my monitor, remember my monitor
⏹️ ▶️ John also doesn’t have a camera in it, it’s so old. Everything old is new again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You missed the entire era of webcams built into monitors.
⏹️ ▶️ John I skipped over the original iSight because I didn’t, I don’t know why I didn’t get it then. and it was just like, there was no use for it and it was
⏹️ ▶️ John expensive and got really hot and it was weird. So I didn’t get the original eyesight and then I got a monitor with no camera
⏹️ ▶️ John in it and then I just kept using that computer for a decade. So. Oh my goodness. So I do have Logitech camera.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are other options, you can buy a bunch of dongles. Luckily I have a bunch of dongles already.
⏹️ ▶️ John Actually my own dongles, like I, you know, Bork gave me some dongles for my dongle book at work but I bought some of
⏹️ ▶️ John my own peripherals when there was this big sale at one point. So I do have a bunch of USB-C peripherals. Unfortunately, they’re white, but
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. What else is on this page? All those different adapters. Do you buy AirPods Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ John iCloud, Apple Music? I’m all good on the iCloud and the Apple Music.
⏹️ ▶️ John The auxiliary power thing for $70? No thanks. No, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s it. So I think I’ve clicked on everything. Let’s review Bag and see what
⏹️ ▶️ John Interestingly, when I clicked the AppleCare stuff, it didn’t update
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything. So you’re at about what, like $16,000-ish? Oh, no.
⏹️ ▶️ John Your Bag total. your bag total is $17,207.19.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wait, 207? Wait, I missed something, hold
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on. Oh, it’s tax, that’s why, that’s why, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sorry. The subtotal before tax should be like 15,696.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I missed the Apple cares. Ah, 16,195.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It’s so hard. Here’s the thing about the prices,
⏹️ ▶️ John normally if you go through, like if you’ve gone through the configurator to like figure out
⏹️ ▶️ John which MacBook do you want or whatever when I was doing my MacBook Air, you can tell when you screwed up because you’re like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John the price is like double what it should be like. You just look at the number and you know you’ve accidentally put the quantity to or something, you’re at it,
⏹️ ▶️ John but with this computer, looking at the number does not tell you at a glance whether you accidentally added
⏹️ ▶️ John two monitors or two computers or anything because the numbers are so big, they just are breaking my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey brain. The estimated tax in my particular zip code is $858.34 and yours apparently is a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hundred dollars more than that. So the tax- Mine’s $1,400. Welcome to New York.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The tax on your, or I guess I should say in this context, the tax on y’all’s computers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is basically a MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air. Yeah, my tax is a MacBook. My tax is a 13-inch MacBook Pro, actually.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, California tax, I think sales tax is 10%. Damn, so that would be…
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey golly. Okay, so…
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yours is what, 8.5,
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco? Something like that, 8.8,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, something like that. Yeah, Massachusetts is 6.25. I think mine’s 4.5 or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forget. So $16,195 before tax. Holy smokes. Now…
⏹️ ▶️ John Shipping is free, though, so you’ve got that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco going for you. Justin Perdue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, thank goodness. Steve McLaughlin You’re not going to spend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the extra $9 for express shipping. Justin Perdue The best part of this to me is that I’m scrolling down this page and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I see Mac Pro. Order today. It delivers as early as December 30. Pro Display
⏹️ ▶️ Casey XDR. Order today delivers as late as January 15.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you could hypothetically in a best slash worst case scenario, you could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey receive the Mac Pro on December 30 and not receive the display
⏹️ ▶️ Casey until two weeks later on January 15th.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, that’s, I’m, I would be fine with that. Like I’m not in
⏹️ ▶️ John such a hurry like, Oh, I’ve just got the computer without the monitor. Like it takes me so long to like, you know, you’ve already heard about
⏹️ ▶️ John the repairing the way that continues. I still have to do stuff. I was looking at, I was looking at new mice today.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m fine with taking this slow and having the changeover be slow and careful and methodical. I mean, I’m not,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, John Roderick level who’s had a new computer in a box in his house for a year, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t, I’m not in a hurry to get, like, I don’t, I don’t care about that. Um, that said, I was worried about the 6%
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, shipping stuff. I was slightly reassured by that tweet, but I don’t know. Um, anyway, let’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s talk about these numbers here because it’s ridiculous. I don’t need this computer. That is too much money. I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John going to pay $17,000 for this entire system. It’s just literally too much money. Luckily
⏹️ ▶️ John there are many avenues available to not just fancy podcast hosts, but everybody.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, if you are, uh, persistent enough to try to save money on this,
⏹️ ▶️ John one of them is in theory you could find a state that doesn’t have sales tax, like neighboring
⏹️ ▶️ John state of New Hampshire and perhaps go there to buy it when they’re available in stores.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, speaking of which, someone sent a list, I should have
⏹️ ▶️ John for this better. Delaware also? Yeah. Someone sent a list of the Apple stores that
⏹️ ▶️ John are going to have the Mac Pro in them for you to look at. It is not all the stores, at least initially. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ John go to your local Apple store, unless you live in a major city or whatever, I think the only store in the Boston
⏹️ ▶️ John area is the one on Boylston Street that will have a Mac Pro in it. None of the Apple stores near me will have it. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you can find a state without sales tax, you can save
⏹️ ▶️ John some money by willing to drive over there and buy it in that location. Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John the company has a friends and family program for its employees where people who work for Apple can
⏹️ ▶️ John offer to, as the name says, their friends and family a fairly substantial discount on
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware. And in general, and in my experience, the discount,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it might be like a flat percent, but occasionally like the discount varies, like you can get less money off of the cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ John products and maybe more off the ones that have higher margins. It’s hit or miss, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s something. A lot of employers, you may or may not know this, but one of the advantages of working for
⏹️ ▶️ John a big corporation in a jobby job is they often have a program through which employees can buy discounted
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware from Apple, believe it or not.
⏹️ ▶️ John 6% cash back if you happen to have an Apple card or perhaps two Apple cards, a husband and wife. One could buy
⏹️ ▶️ John the monitor and one could buy the computer
⏹️ ▶️ John both get 6% back. All this is to say, I’m not gonna pay a lot for this muffler,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not gonna pay 17 grand for this system.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, no one knows this. If you’re in the state of New York and you’re gonna use your computer primarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for software development or website development, look up form ST-121.3.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You probably don’t have to pay sales tax on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John There you go. And finally, business reps. Depending on how you can
⏹️ ▶️ John ingratiate yourself slash pretend you are a real business with the business reps at your local Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John store, they can often give discounts as well. So if you combine all these together, kind of like when people buy
⏹️ ▶️ John new cars, since this is new car pricing here, you don’t wanna pay
⏹️ ▶️ John the window sticker price. And right now with the 6% thing, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John bad in that like there’s a time limit and best case you have to order by
⏹️ ▶️ John December 31st, worst case it’s already too late, you know, depending, but you’re always gonna get 3%
⏹️ ▶️ John back, right? So I plan to leverage everything at my disposal
⏹️ ▶️ John to try to save money on this stupid computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s OK. I know, I know. You’ve been waiting a long time. You’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not buying a lot of computers. I have. It’s OK.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, I don’t feel bad about buying this stupid computer. I’m excited about buying a stupid computer. I feel bad
⏹️ ▶️ John about that much money leaving. So how much money is it, and how much of a discount? But all that is to say is
⏹️ ▶️ John that this is over my limit. That if I actually had to pay 17, I would not buy this computer in this configuration. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not gonna pay 17. Yeah, you would.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You would just grumble a little bit longer about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Agreed. I don’t know. I’m glad I don’t have to determine that. I mean, I feel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s like $1,000 per week of grumbling. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, if you just combine this together, like the sales tax that I’m saving, the 6% cash back,
⏹️ ▶️ John and like a friends and family discount, you’re already well into double digit percentage discounts on this.
⏹️ ▶️ John So like they say in the ads, the more you spend, the more you save. Percentages
⏹️ ▶️ John seem like nothing until the numbers get this big and then all of a sudden, they seem like something. Especially when
⏹️ ▶️ John they stack. So there we go, we did it. Season of giving.
⏹️ ▶️ John all that you can, give until it hurts to one of the world’s richest corporations for a computer you don’t need.
Your bag total is $17,207.19.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, here it was earlier tonight, I priced my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMac Pro, my brand new iMac Pro, you know, as though I was just a rando off the street.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And before tax, if I computed this correctly, it was $7,200 and I almost fell off my chair
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thinking about spending that much money on a computer. You are talking about a computer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pre-discounts and anything else, that is literally $10,000 more than that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s interesting that you mention that. I actually prepared a little bit to, I hope this is a good time as any.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, you know, I was looking at this as well for myself, thinking, do I need a Mac Pro? Should I get a Mac Pro? Because, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would probably like one. In some ways it would actually be worse than my current setup, like for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my own practical needs. But like, it’s hell, it’s a hell of a computer. So I looked and I configured a Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s almost identical to what John just did, using almost exactly the same reasons. My only difference is where I added the wheels and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the track pad and the mouse. and I had the anti-glare pro display in my setup, although I might reconsider
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that now. Anyway, that came to $17,344 before tax. And I looked up my iMac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Only difference from what you just said, Casey, was I had the mouse and trackpad, so that came to $7,517, which is almost exactly $10,000 less.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The iMac Pro that I have, compared to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this Mac Pro setup, you know, the Mac Pro would be maybe like a third
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better in a lot of ways. Like, I’d have a screen that was about a third bigger.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would have about a third faster CPU performance maybe, you know, like about a third more RAM, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, stuff like that. Like, it would be like about a third to 50% better. You would not
⏹️ ▶️ John have a third better single core performance, that’s for sure. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco true. You might have worse single core performance. Or at least similar, yeah. So like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, in most ways, it’s like, you know, a quarter to 50% better than what I have now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What I have now, I’m extremely happy with my iMac Pro. I love it. And so I thought, for such
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a jump, this isn’t really worth spending $17,000 to me, or stacking up all of John’s discounts. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, it’s not worth it to me, because what I have now is already close enough to that in every way that I care
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about. Like, who this computer is for, really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it’s for people who the other computers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the lineup can’t be specced in the ways that they need for a really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good reason. So, for instance, if you need 384 gigs of RAM, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t put that in any other Mac. That’s what this is for. This computer is to cover all those edge cases.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you need six GPUs or four GPUs, if you need that, you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do that with anything else. So that’s the computer for you. If you need 12
⏹️ ▶️ Marco internal drives in these weird promise arrays, yeah, again, you can do that. If you need PCI Express
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slots without using some weird buggy enclosure with limited bandwidth, through a Thunderbolt cable or whatever, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you need a bunch of PCI Express slots for the kind of work you do, this is the computer for you. So there are a whole bunch of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco edge cases where this is the computer for you, and I think that’s really what it’s for, is if what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you want to do can’t be done with the other models in the lineup, this is for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you. None of those apply to me. The iMac Pro is an amazing computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for everything I do. I don’t need more than that. So I thought, for the same price as this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac Pro setup, I could buy this iMac Pro and what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else now I did I did the math so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the same cost of the Mac Pro setup I could buy the the iMac Pro that’s you know two-thirds is good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a 16-inch MacBook Pro of my preferred configuration the 2799 configuration
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my iPhone 11 Pro 256 with the Apple leather case an iPad Pro 11 256 cellular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with with the keyboard folio and the pencil an apple watch series 5 stainless steel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco airpods pro i’m figuring i’m recreating my whole setup here i could also uh buy the peak design everyday
⏹️ ▶️ Marco backpack to hold all this stuff i could buy my my herman miller embody chair
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a standing desk from ikea i’m recreating my whole desk here the microsoft sculpt ergonomic keyboard for business
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh my current favorite headphones if i only had to pick one pair the dan dan clark audio, EON2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco closed back headphones, which are $900. And you know what? You could be a podcaster too. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Rode AI1 USB microphone interface, the Shure SM57 microphone, and a good cup of coffee for $4 or less.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is the total amount. So you could have everything, my entire setup with like all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this Apple stuff, you could have the iMac Pro, the MacBook Pro, iPhone, iPad, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Watch, AirPods, backpack, desk, chair, everything. Like you could have all of that for the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco price. Now, suppose you don’t need that. I have a couple other options for you. You could also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get this iMac Pro, three of my MacBook Pros,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seven HomePods, an AeroPress to make some good coffee of course,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a month of Disney Plus. Now suppose you don’t want that option? I also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a more luxurious higher end option. iMac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 16-inch MacBook Pro, 81 pounds of macadamia nuts,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m worried about the macadamia nuts spoiling. I don’t think I could eat 81 pounds before they go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well you wouldn’t have to order them all at once. All right. Oh I do have one more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco option. It’s a lighter more fun option. You could get the iMac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Nintendo Switch with Mario Kart and Stardew Valley, a a Domino’s medium pizza
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with pineapple and pepperoni. I don’t want this. This bundle is sounding terrible and a 1994 Toyota MR2. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not getting any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John better. You have
⏹️ ▶️ John any money left over for something good to add to this bundle. So you can get a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car and an iMac Pro and a switch and a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pizza or you can again. You can get the 85 81 pounds of macadamia nuts and the Rolex and a MacBook Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, there’s a whole bunch of different options. You
⏹️ ▶️ John But the traditional sort of hypothetical scenario in the context
⏹️ ▶️ John of very expensive Apple computers is the one that really makes us all depressed because we can’t tell the future, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is, if instead of buying an expensive Apple computer here, you had taken
⏹️ ▶️ John that money and put it into Apple stock, you would now be a millionaire. It’s like, oh, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s fine. If you did it in the 80s, fine. But there are really terrible ones where it’s like instead of buying a Power Mac G5, if
⏹️ ▶️ John you’d put that money into Apple stock, you’d have like 500 grand now. I’m making
⏹️ ▶️ John no predictions about the future price of Apple stock, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but those always depress me.
⏹️ ▶️ John In the quote unquote true spirit of the season, like buying things is like in general,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the fad now, the same meme or whatever that all the
⏹️ ▶️ John youngsters know about is buy experiences, not things, right? But if you buy neither,
⏹️ ▶️ John that can be even better. That’s what the investing advice is like. Instead
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey of buying the thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John you wanted that was fancy, If you put that money into an investment that you
⏹️ ▶️ John magically knew would be amazing, which is the ridiculous part of the scenario. But basically, don’t spend it,
⏹️ ▶️ John save it. Put it into 401k, put it in government bonds, put it in something like that. Don’t buy the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Save that money to help you have experiences later, like the experience and be able to afford healthcare for yourself when you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John old, so on and so forth. So this is not, I was
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna say, we are professionals. Do not, please, listeners, do not buy a Mac Pro. It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John stupid thing to do. I will inevitably regret it when the ARM Macs come out that are so much faster than
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing. And so there’s a very short time window before both of you will once again be
⏹️ ▶️ John able to make fun of me about how your phones are faster than my computer. And by the way, I’m pretty sure
⏹️ ▶️ John the iPhone 11 Pro still beats the Mac Pro that I’d expect in single core performance. I need to double check
⏹️ ▶️ John these numbers, on Geekbench anyway. Obviously that’s not why you’re buying a 12 core computer and a multi-core crushes
⏹️ ▶️ John it, and in GPUs it crushes so on and so forth. But the single core performance of these computers is not good, not good
⏹️ ▶️ John at all. Like the, and the more cars you get, the worse it gets.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you’ll permit me a small journey, one of my favorite things to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I’m really, truly bored is to look at like random YouTube videos about cars or motorcycles or what have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you. Now I know almost nothing about motorcycles, but one of my favorite styles or flavors of motorcycle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey video is people who drive or ride, I guess, a Suzuki Hayabusa,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is the, like, to the best of my understanding, the most crotch-rockety of all crotch rockets.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey These typically get, or I guess often get turbocharged and you’ll see videos of these things doing like 200, 250
⏹️ ▶️ Casey miles an hour on public roads, which is just terrifying and dangerous and terrible. But I bring all this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up to say the Hayabusa is by some arguments, especially for people like me who are ignorant about motorcycles,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the creme de la creme of motorcycles until you go into like the Ducati world,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? To get a 2020 Hayabusa, the base MSRP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is $14,799. But that thing is a monkey’s paw.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, those things are going to kill you faster than cigarettes. Like, forget it.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you gave that to somebody, that was a plot point on a recent television show that I don’t want to spoil, but like giving them to someone
⏹️ ▶️ John is basically like giving them a dead fish wrapped in newspaper. Like, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco basically saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John we hope you’re dead soon. That’s true. Have fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, they probably don’t have to do a lot of warranty repairs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s also true. But my point is just that even with the 395 destination charge, this is less
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than the MSRP of John’s future computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Although John’s computer will probably last
⏹️ ▶️ John it will. Speaking of the display stuff, one other item that Apple put up, I think for the first time, their
⏹️ ▶️ John list of compatibility lists for the Pro Display XDR. And it is obviously the fancy
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro, the 15 inch MacBook Pro from 2018, the 16 inch MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro from 2019. I think the Mac Pro from 2018 and later, so it’s 15 inches. Yeah, they later revised it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and later. Because even Apple forgot that there was a 15
⏹️ ▶️ John spring. The 21.5 inch iMac from 2019, the 27 inch iMac from 2019,
⏹️ ▶️ John and any Mac model with Thunderbolt 3 ports paired with a Blackmagic
⏹️ ▶️ John eGPU or Blackmagic eGPU Pro. So, that’s it. There
⏹️ ▶️ John is one Mac notably absent Oh, from this list of computers that can drive
⏹️ ▶️ John the pro display XDR. And that is the iMac Pro. Why? Because it is essentially a 2017 computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’ll notice, all these computers are from 2018 or later or have any GPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. And they all have discrete GPUs. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the 13 inch is not there at all. Yeah. And I mean, it makes sense. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I think honestly, like it’s fine. I think it’s pretty use case, but it does get back to Marco trying to make decisions
⏹️ ▶️ John about this computer. I have no problem believing that you’re going to stick to your decision
⏹️ ▶️ John for at least some time not to buy a Mac Pro or at least not this Mac Pro. But I have a
⏹️ ▶️ John feeling that your determination will waver not because of the computer but because of the
⏹️ ▶️ John screen. Because you’ve seen the screen. It is a really nice screen. It is wasted on you just as much
⏹️ ▶️ John as it’s wasted on me. But it does give you more space and it does look nicer than the 5K.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the moment when the moment arrives that you somehow convince yourself that there’s some scenario in which you
⏹️ ▶️ John can get that display onto Your desk which obviously isn’t now because you can’t hook it up to your computer and it wouldn’t fit in there physically anyway
⏹️ ▶️ John But my desk isn’t big enough somehow some way like you if you get into the headspace where you’re gonna do everything
⏹️ ▶️ John on a 16-inch MacBook Pro again or something or Who knows if something’s gonna happen you’re gonna hook it up to a Mac Mini once it can drive
⏹️ ▶️ John it I don’t know, but I feel like You will hold firm on the tower
⏹️ ▶️ John At least until they come up with an arm one. And of course you’ll buy that But if you can get some scenario
⏹️ ▶️ John where you can get that screen, I think it will lure you because it is a really nice screen. And that is the thing that you look at all day long
⏹️ ▶️ John and it would make a difference in your life and you would appreciate that difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I’ll tell you what can really push my decision.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right now, I’ve spent the whole last episode and many episodes before this talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about how much I love my iMac Pro and how it really is the computer I need. I need and I don’t really need more than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, but the iMac Pro is two years old. It hasn’t updated yet it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That could be Intel’s fault But it’s it’s getting near the time when it probably isn’t Intel’s fault anymore
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so look Apple might decide that the Mac Pro is where they’re gonna focus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they might not update the iMac Pro anymore This might be the only one they ever make and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if that’s the case then in a few more years when this thing is you know getting pretty outdated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I want to upgrade the only sensible upgrade for me will be a Mac Pro like there it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or in whatever like the consumer iMacs are at that point but I’d probably want the Mac Pro out of those out of those choices and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the iMac Pro is left to die now which I really hope it isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because as we just illustrated with the value arguments like if you wanted to know like what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Why should the iMac Pro still exist? Price it out and you see $10,000 of why it should still exist But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like if the iMac Pro doesn’t still exist then I would kind of be pushed up market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But for my needs which I honestly I hope that doesn’t happen I really hope they keep doing the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMac Pro as well whenever there’s new chips for it And I think there still aren’t but I think there’s about to be so I hope
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that happens the other thing that can change my mind about this is is if the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitor situation changes. If they do actually end up shipping a good Apple 5K
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reasonably priced monitor that isn’t super XDR everything, or heck, a 6K that isn’t super XDR everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which I don’t think they’re gonna do, but if they do that, then that changes things. Because,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, my iMac Pro configuration, the way I specced up my iMac Pro was I think about $7,000, or maybe even almost eight,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so to spend like nine for a Mac Pro, that is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of configuration I would want, isn’t that much more, I would just have to solve the display
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem in a way that I’d be comfortable with. That’s, again, like what you said earlier when we were talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the display, the display is what really kills it. When you look at, like, this computer is so overpriced,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of that’s the display. And if they offered more good first-party display
⏹️ ▶️ Marco options, that would change the Mac Pro narrative a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would make it way more accessible. It would still be a very high-end, very expensive computer, just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the iMac Pro is. You know, the iMac Pro isn’t cheap either, but it would make it a lot more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco justifiable to people like software developers who don’t need that super XDR, you know, color and brightness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything, who just need a big monitor and a really fast computer. Like, that’s what we need, right? So like, that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so if either of those things change, if the iMac Pro goes away, or if the monitor offerings
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come down market, then I would really strongly consider a Mac Pro for my future needs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if neither of those things happen, I think I’m going to stick with the iMac Pro for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco foreseeable future. It’s really good for me. I love this computer. I’m not even dying for a new one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My current one is totally fine. I’m almost two years into it. It’s great. If my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer died today and I had to buy a new one, which why wouldn’t it? It’s under AppleCare, but if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somehow I had to buy a new computer today, probably still choose the iMac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for my needs because it really does solve them very well and I would rather spend that extra $10,000 anywhere else or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nowhere. Alright thanks to our sponsors this week
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple, Apple, and Apple. Thanks for much this week. Eero,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Linode, and Bombas, and we will see you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t let him, Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T.
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to. Accidental, accidental, tech
After-show
⏹️ ▶️ John I think for the after show for the for our loyal listeners who know
⏹️ ▶️ John that the show continues After the song even though the song says now the show is over. They’re still here. They know
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not over They kept listening to the podcast those people out there, which I assume is all of them But we all know it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John we all know somebody stopped this those people are gonna be wondering All right. Well, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna John John gonna order his Mac Pro. He just configured it Did you click the buy button at the end of this thing?
⏹️ ▶️ John Neither of you click the buy button?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no No, I did not.
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t either. Because I already ordered that computer and it’s on its way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John awesome. Do you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have an estimated ship
⏹️ ▶️ John date? Arrives December 27th through January 6th. Nice with the
⏹️ ▶️ John monitor to the monitor says arrives December 30th through January 7th.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hope so very much since your birthday falls on a Tuesday. How amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would it be if one or even better, both of these items arrived on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that particular Tuesday? That would be the best birthday
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gift ever. That really
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, I’d rather have it arrive sooner than that because I want
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey time to set it up.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like not because I’m dying to get it, but just because I’m on vacation for the holidays, right? And so that’s the perfect time
⏹️ ▶️ John for me to have time to set it up in my monk-like way taking forever to do everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, we’ll see. How long would it take you to set this up? Like I
⏹️ ▶️ John still don’t have all of the sort of furnishing arrangements sorted out. I’m still
⏹️ ▶️ John preparing the way. I, because, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco because I- You better hurry up, you don’t have that much time
⏹️ ▶️ John left. I don’t have a lot of things on my desk, but I’m reconsidering all of them. I have a microphone that I’m talking into right now
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s connected through a cable to my Mac, but my new Mac, A, won’t be in that same place, and B,
⏹️ ▶️ John you won’t have ports in the same place. So I’ve got cable routing decisions. I have some other junk
⏹️ ▶️ John on the table that I’m probably going to get rid of. I already mentioned the CD cases that are underneath that I’m going to get rid of. I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John even put in my new UPS. It’s just sitting here unplugged next to my old UPS that is actually running the computer that
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m talking to now. So there’s more stuff to do. So plenty of work ahead. Sooner would be better
⏹️ ▶️ John than later. Although what I really want is that it arrives on a day when it’s not snowing or raining.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it’s winter in the Northeast, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that’s unlikely. I know, it’s in
⏹️ ▶️ John the tall water. And I need to be home when it comes and you know, the whole nine
⏹️ ▶️ John yards. So yeah, I’ve got that to look forward to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh man, I’m so happy you did it. I was so afraid
⏹️ ▶️ John out. Me too. Yeah, and it, well, it’s like, honestly it was because of the doubt about the 6% thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like the only thing that was making me wait for speculative things about the video cards and other things like that, and it’s like, like I just,
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole, it’s the point of it being upgradable. Just like, it’s unsatisfying
⏹️ ▶️ John in that like, hey, you got to configure your dream computer. No, I didn’t. You just heard me walk through it. That’s not my dream computer. It’s the computer
⏹️ ▶️ John that I could fit into my dream. Like, it’s just not, like, there were parameters, right? And there are
⏹️ ▶️ John things, and so I had to make compromises, and I was rushed by the 6% thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like, I feel like, you know. And on the one hand, after 10 years, you can’t wait any
⏹️ ▶️ John longer. On the other hand, after 10 years, what’s waiting another six months? But like, I’m just, you know, you gotta,
⏹️ ▶️ John you just gotta do it. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had to. Like, I keep saying, like, almost nobody needs this computer, but there’s always that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little asterisk, except John Syracuse. You need this computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t need it, I just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want it, because it’s really cool. No, no one else needs it, you need it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And this is, the main reason I said this is to create, like while we’re recording, I see email arriving in another window of people saying, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can get you a discount or whatever. Rest assured, I, you know, all the discounts I listed, I, you know, I
⏹️ ▶️ John did my best with the discounts. I do not need anyone else to offer me any discounts. If Apple wants to send review hardware in the
⏹️ ▶️ John future, I am totally open to that. So Apple, if you’re listening, please feel free to send us review hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even though we don’t have 8K cameras with which to shoot videos that are gonna be shown on someone’s phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John we still can talk about products in an intelligent manner and
⏹️ ▶️ John entertain people while we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it. What you need this Mac Pro for really is to have like three Chrome windows open at once.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I saw the JavaScript accelerator for Afterburner. Get on it, WebKit team. Oh my word.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I’m very happy for you, John. Congratulations. This is the best- Congratulations slash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey condolences. Yeah, well that too. This is the best quasi birthday present in the world. It’s funny,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as soon as the configurator was available, the very first thing I did before
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I even spoke to you about it, I sent a text to your wife saying, hey, my thoughts and prayers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey during this difficult time because last I heard she was the family CFO and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oof. It is kind of funny though, like there’s that, what do you get? The person who has everything, right? It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like oh, it’s so hard to shop for some people in your life and so often those people are like, you know your spouse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What the heck does anybody get you for Christmas or your birthday this year? When you’ve just ordered this thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for yourself like you cannot compete with that with anything
⏹️ ▶️ John I just I just ordered an item that is related to this. There’s lots of preparing the way stuff Unfortunately,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not good for gifts cuz I’m like, well, I can’t wait for Christmas that I need it now you know what I ordered a Smaller level
⏹️ ▶️ John because I have a level but it’s like a big level.
⏹️ ▶️ John needed a smaller level forever. Every time I use my stupid big level, I’m like, this level is way too big.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s too big for this purpose, but I’ll just get by. Like when I’m leveling my refrigerator, it’s like this level is so
⏹️ ▶️ John big it sticks off the end of the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco refrigerator. I
⏹️ ▶️ John just needed a 16 inch level, or a 14 inch level or something like that. And
⏹️ ▶️ John what, finally, after 10 years of needing a smaller level, what finally pushed me over the
⏹️ ▶️ John line? Leveling my little side table going to put the Mac? I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can try to eyeball it, but I want it to be perfectly level. And my big level
⏹️ ▶️ John is literally too big to fit in there. So I ordered myself a level. So that’s an example of me thwarting someone
⏹️ ▶️ John who could have gotten a good, thoughtful Christmas gift. Like, oh, I’ll get you a $9 level that’s small. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a great Christmas gift. And I would say, but I can’t wait for Christmas for it, because what if the computer comes before Christmas?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my god. I love the idea so much of somebody getting you a small level for this problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the type of purchases I’m making. I don’t even want to go back through my Amazon history of all this garbage
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m buying to try to sort this stuff out. This is fantastic. Anyway, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t need any gifts for Christmas. If it was up to me, no one would get me any gifts for Christmas. Some people don’t like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I have to cooperate with their desire to give me gifts. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I sure don’t make it easy. No, yeah, I’m the same way as well. But yeah, and I would love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to someday reach a point where like we should get gifts for the kids and the adults don’t. But I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think the family would would tolerate
⏹️ ▶️ John that. But the kids thing is difficult, too, because I’m I’m a big proponent
⏹️ ▶️ John of the kid age cutoff. But it’s really difficult to suggest that policy. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John because who want what you’re basically saying is I don’t want to get your kids gifts things anymore. But if like sometimes it’s one of those things where
⏹️ ▶️ John like you you look across the room, across the family table and you see everyone else and you can see in their eyes that they
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want to buy gifts for the kids after they’re, insert X age, and you just all say it at the same time. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, thank God, because there’s so many kids and there’s just too many of them, there’s too many
⏹️ ▶️ John and what do your kids want, and what do your kids want, and it’s just like, enough, after whatever, you know, 16, 18, you know, 13,
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever age we all collectively decide, we don’t all get each other’s kids’ gifts after this age. You get your
⏹️ ▶️ John own kids’ gifts or whatever, but we don’t have to give each other, so I’m a fan of that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Many people are not a fan of that policy, and if they’re not, you just have to deal with it, So what are you gonna do? It can’t be unilateral, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unanimous. Well, I will suggest, I think the best gift that your family
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could possibly get you is to never mention how much money you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just spent on this computer again. That’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It never comes up again. It’s never a thing. It just gets forgotten. I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John bring it up, are you kidding? That’s gonna, I mean, that’s, it’ll be on my
⏹️ ▶️ John tombstone probably.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe the Mac Pro will be your tombstone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Here lies John Syracuse, he spent way too much money on an Intel computer right before Apple switched to ARM. Huh?