357: A Giant Green Field
18 Dec 2019We have a bit more to say about the Mac Pro.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: John continues preparing the way
- Mice
- Follow-up:
- Thank you, listeners!
- Casey iMac !Pro offers
- Casey's Catalina Conundrum
- Marco's lamp update (thanks, Dan Engler!)
- First-generation Apple products
- Downgrades from the old Mac Pro
- GPU options for the Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR
- GPU in the Belkin image
- Mac Pro RAM options
- Mac Pro Thermodynamics
- LG UltraFine 5K is maybe not "fine"
- Expandable Macs and the history of Mac towers
#askatp- Is an AppleTV really necessary in the world of smart TVs? (via Zach Pruitt)
- How does background app refresh work? (via Adam Jaffrey)
- How does one archive a shedload of old email? (via ComboTwist)
- Post-show: The Leftovers
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Chapters
- The Attic
- Migration
- Mice
- Sponsor: Linode (code atp2019)
- Follow-up
- Buying a first-gen product
- Sponsor: ExpressVPN
- Getting into the Mac Pro
- GPUs & Pro Display XDR
- RAM upgrades
- Airflow vs. dust
- LG 5K isn’t fine
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- Expandable Macs
- #askatp: Apple TV vs. smart TV
- #askatp: Background refresh
- #askatp: Storing old email
- Ending theme
- The Leftovers
The Attic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John is your computer arrived yet? Didn’t come today. That’s for sure. Well one would think you would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hear the forklift putting it in place
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I saw the weight and the UPS tracking thing. Take a guess 100
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pounds. No 82. Oh Actually, I decided my estimate was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ridiculous and was gonna walk it way back But never
⏹️ ▶️ John machine is only like 50 so I guess 30 pounds packaging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Excited? I guess not since you don’t have a monitor yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John I did all sorts of preparing the way today. I tweeted some things here. I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John send you more stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If the Mac Pro arrives before the monitor, which by current shipping estimates is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco likely to happen, are you really going to sit there and not try it? Like not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plug it into something else just to test it out? Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean what am I going to connect it to?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anything! Yeah. Plug it into your gaming monitor. I don’t care, like anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. I don’t know. I want to have, I’m not in a hurry. I mean, I might actually take it out of
⏹️ ▶️ John the box and set it up kind of, or I don’t know. I
⏹️ ▶️ John just assume I have the monitor to get here. I got to see what the data is going to be on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitor. So like you’ve been waiting 10 years for this computer. It’s going to arrive in your house and you’re going to let it like sit in the box
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a week rather than plug it into any other monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah. I mean, what’s not, it’s going to keep,
⏹️ ▶️ John what the ship date is. Like if it’s still gonna be within my vacation time. Like there’s holiday stuff going on too, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but still. Here, take a look at that picture that I put in our Slack. That’s just for
⏹️ ▶️ John our Slack, unfortunately not for our listeners, sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my God, is this the attic?
⏹️ ▶️ John I did some major preparing of the way, as evidenced from all the impressions on the ground of where
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey things used to be. Oh my word.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You have a much nicer attic than me. This is like finished.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, there’s carpet and like a regular ceiling and everything, a window.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t think I’m putting my, piling my computers in a dingy attic. Yeah, it’s all finished.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this is like, this is nicer than my office.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, the rug is obviously gross, but you know, 80s, what can you do?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s still, it’s wall-to-wall carpeting and finished walls and ceiling and a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regular window on one side. Like, that’s… Windows on the
⏹️ ▶️ John other side too, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is a livable space.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is not heated or cooled, just FYI.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, okay. Right, that makes it
⏹️ ▶️ John Although, it was below freezing today and I worked up there half the day and
⏹️ ▶️ John was fine, just because, you know, old houses, not too much insulation. So we are
⏹️ ▶️ John heating it whether we know it or not. It’s just, the computers act as a form of insulation. They retain heat.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now I’m pixel peeping at these boxes here. I’m seeing a box for a Performa.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you see the sun fading on the Apple logo? The Apple logo on the other side of that box looks brand new.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, wow. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ John scorched. Oh yeah, so you can see the Mac Pro box and the Cinema Display box, those are already, they’re empty obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they’re already received my old computer, and then there’s a big spot for the boxes of the new computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ah, so your procedure is, when you retire something, you put it back in its own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco box in the attic for long-term storage. Yeah. Yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not bad. That’s why I have all
⏹️ ▶️ John these boxes. You’re keeping a Wii Fit? Yeah, I have a Wii Fit. Why else would I?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m gonna throw it away. We have one too, and I don’t know why. I honestly don’t know why. But I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know why we had one. I don’t know why we continue to have one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m pretty sure we had our Wii Fit long after we had our Wii.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it just like, eventually we discovered it. And I’m not sure we’ve actually located it again or thrown it away
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since then. But man, I’m really impressed by the diligence
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I had to do a lot of refactoring to try to make more efficient use of space. There’s another
⏹️ ▶️ John shot of stuff that’s in a layer that you can’t see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wow, this is a lot of stuff. Like, I mean, I keep a lot of boxes. Like, generally, I will keep the box to anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I plan to resell for a non-trivial amount of money down the road.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or that would be very difficult to ship anywhere for servicing down the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco road if necessary. So, like, you know, obviously, like, iMac boxes. Like, I keep the iMac boxes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that qualifies on both counts. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m counting roughly 40 boxes here, but I’m also seeing like a pile of jewel cases or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the back. It’s hard to make out what those are.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I used to back up everything to optical disc and I printed labels for those optical
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey nice little jewel
⏹️ ▶️ John cases. Yeah, I mean, obviously that ended, but that’s what those are. I keep the boxes
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly if I think about if I ever had to move this anywhere, whether it be from a house to another or
⏹️ ▶️ John just, you know, shipping it to somebody or giving it to somebody, how awkward would it be
⏹️ ▶️ John not to have the box and how much room does the thing take up? So when I was going through stuff today, I was like, oh, here’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a box to my two gaming monitors. I don’t need those boxes, right? But they were skinny.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if I ever needed to move those gaming monitors anywhere or give them away or ship them or sell
⏹️ ▶️ John them, it’s much easier to have the box. So I kept them. So that’s why you see a lot of these boxes for
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff that’s out. I keep the boxes because when it’s time to retire them, you put them in the box.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even if you’re gonna recycle them, it’s convenient to just have the box and bring them to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John in the box and say, here you go, and then the box is their problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They probably immediately throw it away. Like, you’re actually causing them more trouble. Well, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recycle the box, too. Imagine how big the trash can must be in an Apple store. It’s probably like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tiniest, it’s probably a Mac Pro. It’s probably one of those. What trash do they throw away?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so this was a pretty big refactor. I got rid of two G5
⏹️ ▶️ John boxes, which are very large.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my word. I’m seeing some old stuff like that, you have a 15 inch MacBook Pro box
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is black. When was the last time they were black?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I also have another black portable box. I didn’t even know what it was from the top, I couldn’t tell when I
⏹️ ▶️ John started to take it out. It was a Power Mac G4, it was also in a black box, but that is still in the protective
⏹️ ▶️ John brown wrapper, somewhere buried in here. You can see in
⏹️ ▶️ John second picture, you can see my Syracuse Boulevard sign that I stole. Oh yeah. From Long Island, poking
⏹️ ▶️ John out there. That’s my original Mac box on the bottom left and then next
⏹️ ▶️ John to it is another original Mac box that is not mine but that I got later in life. Always
⏹️ ▶️ John good to have two of those. My actual box is fairly beat up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’m curious, why are you keeping the boxes for things like the TiVo Bolt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the Sony Handycam, things that aren’t particularly meaningful,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aren’t gonna be particularly worth anything on resale, aren’t noteworthy in any way.
⏹️ ▶️ John The Handycam has my actual Handycam in it and I have the tapes and everything
⏹️ ▶️ John for that. So I think I have everything off those tapes under the computer, but it’s always good to have the tapes and the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that can play them back through a series of dongles, I can get the stuff off. So
⏹️ ▶️ John Handycam is actually in there. That’s a convenient way to store and all this stuff. The TiVos and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John someday I’ll give them to somebody. Like I used to have more TiVos, but as they aged out, I said, hey, does anybody want
⏹️ ▶️ John one of these Tivos? And some would say yes, and I would send it to them in the box. The TivoBolt is connected to
⏹️ ▶️ John television, so I’m using it. Eventually I won’t use it, and I’ll put it in that box and give it to somebody who wants it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What about like, you have boxes for GameCube controllers and the Switch Pro controller.
⏹️ ▶️ John Those are actual controllers in there. The Switch Pro controller doesn’t have anything in it, but the GameCube ones, I have
⏹️ ▶️ John many sealed in the box GameCube controllers. For what purpose? In the
⏹️ ▶️ John after times, those will be currency.
⏹️ ▶️ John know these are very valuable things, sealed in the box, never opened GameCube controllers.
⏹️ ▶️ John opened? Yes, people are trying to figure out where I live right now so they can come
⏹️ ▶️ John to my house and steal these. It’s a hot commodity.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What is the going market value today for an unopened GameCube controller?
⏹️ ▶️ John That depends on who’s buying, but they are less valuable now that Nintendo has,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think, started making them again. They made a Smash Brothers variant during the Wii era.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s my favorite controller, so I have a couple of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow. It’s like peering into your mind, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And don’t look at the other side. The other side is a mess. The other side is actually larger.
⏹️ ▶️ John I did not refactor the other side. Baby steps. And this thing’s off camera to your left. You can’t see it. I’ve got a whole line of classic
⏹️ ▶️ John Macs over there. To the right, I’ve got a bunch of other crap. That brown box on an angle is when Apple started making
⏹️ ▶️ John the iMac boxes. That’s the 5K iMac box. It’s not rectangular anymore. That’s a real stacking problem
⏹️ ▶️ John for me. I haven’t quite figured that out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s how I spend my day. By the way, I’ve been looking up on eBay. It does appear as though
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the value of an unopened, genuine Nintendo GameCube controller does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seem to vary between about $50 and $150, depending on what it is. Like it seems like some of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are obviously more collectible than others, but there’s actually a decent amount of these in the sold listings that have sold for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty significant prices.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, my attic, which is not a finished attic, it’s literally just like an unfinished space with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco raw wood everywhere. That’s where we keep all of our boxes for stuff like that, and it is nowhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco near as organized as this, but I probably keep about maybe an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eighth as many boxes as you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John do, so it’s easy. And you don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of old computers that you never owned and used. Like, I have, there’s a Mac II FX in there. Off
⏹️ ▶️ John to the right off-camera is two NexLabs, next laser printer, a
⏹️ ▶️ John next megapixel display, a next color display, to your left is a next cube.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have a lot of next stuff buried in here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s incredible. I mean, just like the amount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of stuff and the historical value of some of it and the complete seemingly lack of historical value
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of some of the other ones. A
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of it, like I do, I keep boxes because when it’s time to get rid of a thing, if So I’m gonna throw it away, then at that
⏹️ ▶️ John point I can recycle the box and throw away the thing, or recycle the thing, but if it’s going to be carried
⏹️ ▶️ John or shipped anywhere, having the box is great. Because a lot of these things are ungainly and weird and have lots of little parts, but they
⏹️ ▶️ John fit perfectly into their own original box.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s true. I can’t fault you there. It’s just. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John do, like I said, I do try to get the boxes, you know, I don’t keep them forever. They do leave the house, like those two
⏹️ ▶️ John big G5 boxes. I had, you know, I had those because I was so optimistic. You can hear back in Hypercritical, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, well, I got this 2008 Mac Pro and I’ll probably get another Mac Pro in a few years and they tend to be the same shape.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s good to have these boxes around just as like transporting mechanisms because it’s a big, heavy, bulky
⏹️ ▶️ John thing and they can get damaged in shipping or whatever. So hey, the G5
⏹️ ▶️ John was the same shape as the Mac Pro which is probably gonna be the same shape as my next Mac Pro, is probably gonna be the same shape as my next Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro and that did not pan out. So those boxes, they
⏹️ ▶️ John were sort of ladies in waiting and their time was, they were never called upon. Their time never came,
⏹️ ▶️ John and so they are now leaving the house.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m actually more surprised than anything that you have this beautiful finished attic and I never knew it. Yeah, it’s really nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s where all the stuff is. Look at that awesome laptop bag. That’s how big laptop bags used to be, when
⏹️ ▶️ John laptops were much larger. Do you see it in there? That’s a Kensington laptop bag, leather. It
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the era of like the
⏹️ ▶️ John Blackbird, like the PowerBook G3. I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it could almost fit my iMac in there. It’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, it’s huge. That’s back when Kensington made really great things. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John very old, it’s still as good as the day I got it. Everything all still works on it. It is currently
⏹️ ▶️ John holding, I believe, three Mac laptops are in there right now. Just stacked on top of each other
⏹️ ▶️ John to approximate the size of how big laptops used to be and there’s still plenty of room.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there’s a Mac portable off camera as well in its own Apple bag
⏹️ ▶️ John that the Mac portable came in, considerably larger.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just can’t believe you’re gonna get this computer and not mess with it. You’ve been waiting 10 years, all in a rush.
⏹️ ▶️ John 10 years. I said, I might take it out and just like physically situate it and like see, does it look
⏹️ ▶️ John okay here? Does it look okay there? Is it, you know, does it feel like wobbly? Is it secure? You know, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I might start the transfer process. Like I might temporarily hook a monitor up to it and figure out how
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna do the transfer. I don’t know. I’ll play it by ear, but I’m not in a super big hurry.
Migration
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t remember exactly which computer it was that we had. We had bought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Gateway 2000 computer. This is like early to mid-90s. And we had bought a Dell computer. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think the Gateway was first and then the Dell later. And one of these, my dad had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey splurged for like a 20 or 21-inch like Trinitron
⏹️ ▶️ Casey CRT or something along those lines. Maybe it wasn’t Trinitron, but it was something like a fancy, fancy, fancy CRT
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that weighed a billion and seven pounds.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep, I’ve carried this a few times.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We had a situation, that’s probably why you had those back problems back in the Tumblr days, is for carrying CRTs. We had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this like 20 whatever inch CRT that we had ordered and it didn’t come in the same time as the computer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something like that, I forget exactly what the details were, but I vividly remember that my dad either
⏹️ ▶️ Casey went out and got or perhaps ordered a literally like 10 inch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey grayscale monitor that’s purpose was only to get us through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the time before the beautiful CRT arrived. So we hooked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up this, for the time, unbelievably nice computer that surely like won 100th
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as fast as our iPhones today, but at the time was amazing. This might’ve been the Pentium Pro that we had, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recall for sure. But anyways, we hooked up this wonderful, amazing computer to this postage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stamp of a monitor and used it like that for a week or something like that until the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I’m calling Trinitron monitor finally showed up. And so granted I am a older
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and arguably more mature human than I was at 10 years old, but I’m surprised John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you’re not. After 10 frigging years, you’re not just waiting at the front door
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the delivery carrier to arrive and take the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into your office and come out three weeks later.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a thing that will come up later in the show, but physically speaking, I’m pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John sure I can’t actually connect this new computer any monitors in my house unless I buy an adapter.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know what I mean? Because on the back of the video card are, you know, USB-C shaped ports and
⏹️ ▶️ John I have no monitors that accept that as input, so I would have to get an adapter. At least one adapter, sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Does your cinema display, does that take DVI in?
⏹️ ▶️ John Which one? The one I’m looking at right
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. It’s a mini display port.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, right, it’s the newer one. Right, okay. So that, I think you can passively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adapt that to HDMI and then you can probably get a dongle.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, I can dongle, for sure I can dongle them. If you happen to have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter, that might work?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what I would need. All I need is a Thunderbolt 2 to 3. I have a Thunderbolt display too. It’s buried somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ John in that thing. All I would need is a 2 to 3 to hook that up. And then maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. But I don’t have any of those dongles, so. All right. We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see. The other question is, how are you going to do the migration from the old computer to the new one?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because the old computer lacks, like the fastest port it has is Firewire 800.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, Gigabit Ethernet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, that’s probably better.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s my plan A. I have many plan Bs and Cs and Ds and so on and so forth.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Plan A is Ethernet. Like, doing migration assistant over target disk mode is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by far the best way to do it if you are in a situation where you can do that. So anybody who doesn’t know, you hold
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down something that involves T on boot, and it turns the source
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer into basically an external hard drive for the destination computer, and you connect them via
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a cable. These days you would probably use a USB C to C cable that has to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actual thunderbolt with the actual lightning bolts on the end, not just a USB cable, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then you can do the transfer that way. When I got my new 16-inch, I did that from the old laptop, and it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amazingly fast. And I did it multiple times, because I did first the review unit, and then I got my own, and then I did it to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. And multiple times having a regular USB-C Thunderbolt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cable, which is about 20 bucks on Amazon. They’re not super cheap, but not super expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A regular Thunderbolt 3 cable really was very, very fast, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did the whole transfer for me in about two hours each time, and that’s transferring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hundreds of gigs of music and stuff. So that was great. Now in John’s case, since the 2008
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac Pro doesn’t even have Thunderbolt 1, that option
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is out. So I think any option that you would use a cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for besides Ethernet would require a hilarious chain of dongles that probably wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually work. So yeah, I guess Ethernet’s the way to go.
⏹️ ▶️ John It would work. I could do FireWire 800 to Thunderbolt, which I have that adapter,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then I should go to Thunderbolt 2. I could go Thunderbolt 2 to 3, maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But you have a direction flip in the FireWire end of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Would that actually really work? Because that adapter was made to connect FireWire 800
⏹️ ▶️ Marco peripherals to a Thunderbolt 3 host. That’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of not quite what this would be. I mean, I know FireWire was like a kind of hostless protocol,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it actually might work way better than something like USB would work, but I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know. I could just use that dongle today, because I was, well, this is a story, for a variety of reasons involving
⏹️ ▶️ John me shuffling things around in Synology, I had occasion to back up 400 gigs of data from one of my laptops
⏹️ ▶️ John to a disk image on my Synology. Right, so fine. So I, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I got a neat, that’s how I got that ethernet adapter, remember? Anyway, I plug in the ethernet adapter, and sure
⏹️ ▶️ John enough, it’s not that fast, but it’s faster than my Wi-Fi. And I start the backup, and
⏹️ ▶️ John it ran for three days. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey three days, 24 hours a day. Holy
⏹️ ▶️ John smokes. It just, it got to like the 99% mark after the first day,
⏹️ ▶️ John but apparently like, it was using SuperDuper. I think SuperDuper sorts files by size. That’s my impression anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it was towards the tail end, it was tons of little files and doing that over the network was really killing it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John that finally got updated. But, and then I said, then I was trying to mount that image and it would take forever too. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John like, maybe I need a local copy of this image. So I pulled out an external FireWire 800 drive, which of course I have hanging around,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I connected it to my 5K iMac with a FireWire 800 to Thunderbolt 2 connector, and
⏹️ ▶️ John that worked fine. And I felt like I was getting full speed out of that. So I’m just one dongle away from
⏹️ ▶️ John connecting that to the Mac Pro, I suppose, if that’s what I wanted to.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’ve gotten myself lost. So what is the missing dongle to get?
⏹️ ▶️ John Anything shaped like USB-C. I don’t have, the only dongles I have that have USB-C on one side, like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what I need to plug into the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Pro. Right, sure, sure. The USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ John shape connector. The only adapters in the entire house I have that have that shape connector on one end
⏹️ ▶️ John are USB-C to USB-A, which of course is
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey not particularly useful to me. And super slow.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So what would you want the other end to be? So USB-C to what?
⏹️ ▶️ John I want it to be Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2, if such a thing exists.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It does. Yeah, Apple makes one. I think it’s like 50 bucks. I use it for something. Like I’ve used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, I bought it back when the USB-C transition happened and I’ve ended up using it, I think like three or four times
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since then. And I was really glad I had it each of those times. It isn’t something that you would typically need very often unless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you want to continue to use any FireWire peripherals in your post-MacPro
⏹️ ▶️ John world here. I mean, I’ll just harvest the drive mechanisms out of that. That’s what I plan on doing. Mr. Palmer in
⏹️ ▶️ John the chat says he’s migrated multiple computers using FireWire 800 to Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3, and it works fine. So if I want to do that,
⏹️ ▶️ John it could. But for $50, I’ll pass. Probably I’ll just use the ethernet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’ll use it until the first two tries where it hangs at three quarters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complete for three days and then you realize,
⏹️ ▶️ John nevermind. I just did USB-C to ethernet, which is like maxes out like 300 megabits and
⏹️ ▶️ John that ran for three days and it was fine. Again, not in a hurry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So now it’s good that the monitor’s gonna be slow. Plug in HDMI anything, start the migration,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then by the time the migration finishes, your monitor should be there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is there HDMI out on my video card? I don’t know if there is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You don’t have any dongles that go USB-C or Thunderbolt to HDMI?
⏹️ ▶️ John No. What do you use for projectors at work? Let me think. Oh, no, maybe. Let’s see. Maybe I have one at
⏹️ ▶️ John work. Yeah, I could probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bring that in. Just go pick up any computer bag, turn it upside down and shake it. And certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like an HDMI USB C adapter is going to fall out of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think I have one of those at work. I suppose I could do that. I do have one HDMI monitor. My gaming monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. So just like plug that in. and start migration.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we’ll see the worst I’m patient.
Mice
⏹️ ▶️ John I still have to shop for a mouse. I’m a little bit behind on my stuff here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What? So you’re actually going to upgrade from your 30-year-old mouse? I shouldn’t make fun
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of you. I’m excited
⏹️ ▶️ John My old mouse is so gross. It just, I need a new one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco May I make a daring suggestion?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just use the Magic Mouse and see how long you last.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, yeah. That’s my immediate plan is I’m going to use the peripherals that come with
⏹️ ▶️ John it. But I know I’m not going to like it. I’m very familiar with that mouse. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I like it. I’m using one right now. I flipped it upside down and charged like a turtle just this morning.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought you were using some sort of more bulbous mouse, Marco, no?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve tried them over time here and there, but what really got me was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years ago, like kind of like in the middle of my time at Tumblr, I discovered the,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever the Logitech, I think it was the something, MX Revolution, that’s what it was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Logitech MX Revolution. When they first gave it that weighted flywheel as a scroll wheel. And the cool thing about that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that you could flick it kind of harder than you would normally scroll, kind of like give it a good flick up or down,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the wheel would detect the velocity and it would unlatch itself and just free wheel, like free
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spin, and you could use that, and then you could just kind of like touch it back and it would lock back into place wherever you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted to stop it. So you could use that to scroll inertially, and it would,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco without Apple’s touch devices, which is, before that, the only way to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that inertial scrolling on a Mac was to use one of Apple’s magic things, which I didn’t like at the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I had that kind of flywheel thing, and it was great for very quickly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scrolling through webpages and everything. It was fantastic. What let it down is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do it well on the Mac and to make it work right in a few different ways required
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their stupid software. And it was fine for like six months, and the software would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco break, and the next update wouldn’t be as good or whatever and next eventually an OS update killed it in some way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I made it so that I had to use software that didn’t work or something like that somehow I forget I forget
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how it how it ended up dying but somehow I couldn’t do it anymore and then it seemed like Logitech then failed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make any other mice that were as good as that one for like 10 years after that I don’t know what happened
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but whatever whatever happened in in the intervening time I had switched to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s Magic Mouse and I liked that it I had that inertial scrolling without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any of the BS. And I also like now, as a podcaster, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once I edit a video, I like being able to scroll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco horizontally, because the editing programs use horizontal timelines, and so it’s nice to be able to scroll horizontally with that same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inertial feeling. All the stuff you can do on a trackpad on a laptop, I can do that on my desktop with either the trackpad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the Magic Mouse, with just one little finger across the top. So I like it a lot, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the additional features of the big bulbous mice, like the, you know, like 10 different buttons and gaming features,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t use any of that stuff. So losing that wasn’t a big deal for me. I used to back when I was a gamer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that was long, long, long time ago. So, you know, now the Magic Mouse is perfectly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine for me. And it’s one of those many ways where like, if you are okay going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Apple’s default setup or Apple’s ideal setup, a lot of things just become easier for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you. And so that’s how this is for me. Like I don’t want to seek out any other mice or anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because this one works just fine and it solved my needs very well and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m used to it. And going to anything else would require giving up some of that inertial stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or making it more complicated in ways I don’t want.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A real time follow up from the chat room, Spressly points out a photograph of the back of a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro and depending on video card, you might actually have HDMI out on that video card itself.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, because all the video cards, I think every MPX video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco card has the same port arrangement. I think they all have the four USB Thunderbolt 3 ports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I think it’s HDMI.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s HDMI. Well, that’s nice. Yeah, so there you go. Don’t even need an adapter for it, there you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey go. Cool, problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey solved. All right, speaking of follow-up, we should probably start the show. Do some follow-up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Actually, you know, before we leave the topic, it is kind of cool, though, that with the new Mac Pro, the way they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco designed the Thunderbolt architecture for it, each video card
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you add also adds four USB-C ports, or four Thunderbolt 3 ports.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so if you want more ports, you can just add a video card. So I wonder, like, I wonder,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, the market for people like John who buy it with the base card and then later throw it away
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and get a better card, I would buy a couple of those secondhand cards just to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the base GPU with four more ports just for the ports. I wouldn’t even use the GP, just give
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, we won’t actually be leaving this topic, as you’ll see in a minute, but we’ll, more on that in a bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, all right. Goodness. See, Marco, you’re convincing yourself to buy a Mac Pro, just like that. Nope, not yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Give me at least another week. Yep, I’m waiting for next, one of these episodes of ATP, you’re just gonna say, hey, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got a new computer, and I’m talking to you right now, it’s the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it’s gonna be like the contest, and I’m gonna walk in like Kramer, and just smack
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my $10 on the table, I’m out. I’m out! Goodness.
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Follow-up
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, I would like to spend a quick moment and just say a genuine thank you to the many, many, many listeners
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who wrote in to say nice things about last week’s episode. If you think about it on paper,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was two hours of a man taking us on a tour of the unbelievably,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey obnoxiously overpriced computer that he just bought. And yet somehow, because that man is John Syracusa,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the episode was riveting for me, and certainly it sounded like a lot of listeners
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought the same thing. And I just genuinely wanted to say thank you to all the people who reached out and said such nice things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It made me feel really, really good. And I’m sure I speak for the other two as well in saying it made us all feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey extremely good, and I wanted to thank everyone for that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, you’re all very strange people in exactly the way that we like.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And exactly the way that we adore. All right. I meant to talk about last episode,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it was such an exhilarating ride that I just completely forgot. After the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey episode before last, when I had said, oh, you know, I’ve got this iMac Pro coming and I’m not entirely sure what I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do with the iMac. I think I’m just going to sell it to Apple for a gift card or what have you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you know, I said, I don’t really want to give it to anyone or sell it to anyone because it’s clearly haunted. I got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between 10 and 15 different offers from people saying, I am aware that your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMac is haunted. I would like it either for a challenge or because I have some need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where somebody doesn’t want to spend a whole pile of money on what this would probably be worth if it wasn’t haunted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or whatever the case may be. Sitting here right now, my plan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is to just give it to Apple because even though all of these people have said they’re aware of of the issues,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, it just seems wrong to take somebody’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John money and give them something
⏹️ ▶️ John Haynes My favorite were the ones who thought they could fix it. It’s like people want to get into bad relationships where they can change the
⏹️ ▶️ John person, right? It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s wrong, but I think I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to fix whatever is wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John Steve Zehngut Wow. Jay Haynes You’re saving yourself by not giving you the sauncet, Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve Zehngut Yeah, exactly. So yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco there is a slim
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chance There’s somebody that was local that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think is well aware of the issues and I was contemplating that because I wouldn’t have to ship it or anything, but we’ll see what happens. In
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all likelihood, I would just take the gift card and walk away and not curse anyone else with this computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I also wanted to quickly talk about last episode. You guys, rightfully so, were trying very strongly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to convince me not to install Catalina. During the show, I received
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a text message from Kyle’s The Gray wherein there was a bit of emoji that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could not decode on my old and busted Mojave-based computer. I’m out. And,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ooh, you guys know how I like my emoji. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have not upgraded yet, but I’m sweating. I’m sweating. I’m sweating real bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that might be the weakest link is me and my emoji.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Speaking of important follow-up, Marco, tell me about your lamp.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have very important lamp follow-up. Yes, please. So a few episodes back I was discussing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my lighting situation in my office wanting more light, and the solution I came up with was to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get like a four-way bulb splitter and install four light bulbs sideways
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in my Ikea knot lamp. It’s Ikea’s like $10 floor lamp that you’ve seen everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I had mentioned that I had bought a second knot lamp to go on the other side of my desk, and that in the intervening
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years between when I bought my first one, probably, you in 2006 and today,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they had actually revised the design of the knot lamp to make the shade, like the big bowl that points
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up towards the ceiling, to make that big bowl shorter. And so the same arrangement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of four bulbs that’s in my old lamp that rests comfortably below the lip of the dome,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco such that you don’t see them and they don’t look harsh or bad, that same arrangement of bulbs in the new lamp stuck
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out the top a little bit. Dan Engler wrote in to say, uh, if the not lamp
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fits the old shade, I recently took apart an old not lamp for parts and I’ll ship you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the shade. And sure enough, I took him up on the offer. Thank you, Dan. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure enough, I put the old shade on the new lamp. It fits just fine. And it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco indeed, you know, taller. And so I now have my same four bulbs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco set up on each side. and you can’t see the bulbs from the room so they don’t look harsh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and ugly and so now I have 800 watt equivalent LED
⏹️ ▶️ Marco light bulbs in my two not lamps on either side of my desk and it’s wonderful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so thank you very much to listen to Dan Engler for shipping me an IKEA. I love this like this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entire lamp from IKEA costs $10 at regular price and he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shipped the giant plastic dome that goes from the top of it across
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the country. It had to cost probably at least seven or eight bucks to ship it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it is a hilarious solution, but an amazingly effective one. So thank you again to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listener Dan Engler.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m keeping GameCube controllers and somebody’s keeping NotLamp shades. No, he didn’t keep it.
⏹️ ▶️ John He sent it to me for reuse. Oh, well, now he’s got five more to sell to you later, just like I have all those Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John extended keyboard 2s that I’m going to sell to Gruber.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So do you feel your, what is it, seasonal affected disorder? Say it, seasonal affected
⏹️ ▶️ Casey disorder, whatever. Do you feel that that’s better now that you’re being radiated by all of the LEDs known
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I gotta say, it actually does help to have a truly ridiculous amount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of light in my office most of the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like I wanna see a picture of the brightness level of your office, but I don’t know what we would use as a control.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know what I mean? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that’s the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sure if you took a picture, it wouldn’t be that remarkable because it would just look like a bright room. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wonder if you could stick a regular floor lamp in there and take a control
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shot, and then use your not lamps and take the experimental shot, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will, and share those if you’re willing sometime. Because I bet you it would be shocking how bright it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I still have to put up my white acoustic foam panels. And I was thinking maybe also changing my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco desktop surface to white if I can find some giant white board. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco word. So yeah, we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How does your office mate feel about this overabundance of illumination?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My office mate is extremely tolerant of my additions of light and I’m very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey thankful. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think you could have stopped with extremely tolerant. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, John, do you tell me why you, even if you tried, you are not actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dodging taxes? We got a very interesting and fairly punchy email about this and I assume you would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like to defend your honor.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, lots of people are telling us about the implications of buying something in a tax-free
⏹️ ▶️ John state that you don’t actually happen to live in. Just to be clear, I didn’t actually do this. This is one of the items I didn’t do,
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly because it was too much of a hassle, but also because if you do that, if you go to a neighboring state
⏹️ ▶️ John where there’s no sales tax and buy something and then bring it back to your state where you live and use it, there is a thing called a
⏹️ ▶️ John use tax, which conveniently is exactly the same as your state’s sales tax. So you are in fact
⏹️ ▶️ John supposed to pay tax on it in your state if that’s where you take it back and use it. You can always move to that state,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then you don’t have that problem anymore. But if you already live in that state, then you don’t have to pay tax at all. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I did pay the tax of the state that I live in on this particular
⏹️ ▶️ John computer. But if you’re thinking about doing it, I mean, either
⏹️ ▶️ John buy it in another state and don’t tell anybody. But if the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey IRS finds out. Certainly
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah. If the IRS
⏹️ ▶️ John finds out, they are going to make you pay the use tax for that item.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s how what is even the mechanism for doing that? Like, let’s say I go to a new I don’t even know what state
⏹️ ▶️ Casey around me doesn’t have sales tax. But for the sake of discussion, I go to another state, it does not have sales tax.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t even know where I would go within Virginia’s world to pay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a use tax. Like what would you do in Massachusetts? Just when you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So in New York, New York is very, very strict about that kind of thing, because they who really want their sales tax.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And over the years, like New York was the state that first started giving crap to Amazon about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not charging sales tax and everything. Anyway, so New York, on the state income tax that you have to file every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year, the state return,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a line for purchases you’ve made out of state, and you’re supposed to put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of your internet purchases that were made from places that don’t charge sales tax, you’re supposed to account for all of them on that line. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know anybody who does, many online
⏹️ ▶️ Marco retailers are charging tax in New York anyway for other pressure that they’ve gotten.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Interesting, I did not know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. But yeah, but the answer is probably you put it on your state tax return. And the federal IRS probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t give a crap about this. They’re not the ones who would catch you. The ones who would probably catch you would be when you go to file
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your state taxes and they see on your business you’ve deducted some amount for equipment and they’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wait a minute. You know, like, I don’t know. Actually, I guess they don’t really have any way to know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether you paid sales tax on it or not. So I don’t know, that could be, because when you buy it at the store, they don’t know who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John are. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John it just depends on if you don’t get audited or if no one is paying attention, you slide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Either way, not paying taxes you owed has a certain legal and moral implication.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So some people have a problem with that. If you have a problem with that, pay your taxes.
Buying a first-gen product
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, are you worried about buying a first generation Apple product?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, a lot of people are asking about that. We’ve discussed it in the past and I’ll just reiterate. Yeah, the normal amount that
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m concerned. I bought a first generation Power Mac G5 for similar reasons
⏹️ ▶️ John because I had the G3 and I had been waiting and waiting and waiting and the G5 came out and it was amazing but it was also
⏹️ ▶️ John a very, very first gen product. That is probably the first gen product that I quote unquote regret the most. I don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John regret it but it certainly was idiosyncratic and had all sorts of issues
⏹️ ▶️ John and it was a little bit weird. But yeah, that’s what happens if you wait
⏹️ ▶️ John a really long time between buying computers when the new fancy
⏹️ ▶️ John one comes out that is the generational leap that you were looking for, in this case, a return
⏹️ ▶️ John to a form factor that you like. You could wait another two, three years,
⏹️ ▶️ John or however long it takes, but that starts to be ridiculous. So I bought the first gen product and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John just gonna deal with the first gen problems. I’m hoping there aren’t many but I am definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John aware of it. I’m going in with eyes open. So yeah, I’m a little bit worried about it but what can you do?
⏹️ ▶️ John I really back myself into this corner.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One really encouraging thing here is that if you look at Apple’s products, the version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 1’s usually aren’t bad. Like the ones that are bad, we remember them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They stick out and we kind of use them as like horror stories forever or like morning science but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reality is that especially in recent times most of the version ones have actually been pretty solid.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean if you look at you know the most obvious examples here are the most recent Macs they’ve made.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Mac Mini which wasn’t a version one technically but it was a pretty big redesign from the one before it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have the iMac Pro which was a complete redesign from any iMac that came before it so that it definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco qualifies as a v1 I would say and they have the MacBook Pro 16 is not quite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a v1 but it’s still like you know a very recent Pro Mac they’ve made. If you look at all of those, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really haven’t had any major problems. You know, look at the last year’s iPad Pros,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same thing. Totally new designs, no real problems as far as I’m aware.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, most of the time it’s pretty rock solid stuff. You know, the iPhone 10, that was a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whole new design of the iPhone. Not really any problems as far as I’m aware. You know, they really are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quite good most of the time. And especially like when you look at the iMac Pro, I think that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brings up another side of this, which is, as we mentioned before, we don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the iMac Pro is ever going to be updated again. It might not. It wouldn’t surprise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me at all if it wasn’t. I hope it is, because I really still wanna keep buying them. But it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might never be updated again. And so if you’re trying to avoid version one of a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product, A, you can look at the iMac Pro and say, well, version one of that has been totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solid. I mean, not only do I have two of these in my house, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think I know way more people than the average person would who own these also themselves.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As far as I know, I have heard of zero problems with the iMac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the two years it’s been out so far. I have never heard of anyone having a problem with it. And again, I probably know people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can probably hear from about 10 of their owners, Like and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have no I don’t know no problems with them. And so, you know the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It has a pretty good track record behind it so far of like yeah, you know what so far It seems like the team doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this seem like they’re on the ball these days the stuff they’re making seems pretty rock-solid the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first Reviews of the iMac Pro of the Mac Pro are out so far from people who’ve had it for like a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weeks like various youtubers and stuff they’ve reported zero problems so far and And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this might be the only Mac Pro ever made. So, and the price isn’t likely to change
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much over time. So, if you’re gonna buy it, you might as well buy it now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, on a slight tangent, I had the occasion to transcode something for the first time earlier
⏹️ ▶️ Casey today. The way my house is arranged, there’s like a little hallway leading up to the office. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey generally speaking, when the old iMac, the not Pro iMac was transcoding something,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Within a pace or two of getting to the guest room slash office, you could hear those
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fans screaming, absolutely screaming. I had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my face within six inches of the iMac Pro, and mind you, all 10 cores are firing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on all 10 cylinders, if you will, and I could not hear this thing at all. Now, unlike you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two, I actually don’t really care about fans. I mean, I obviously don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, but I don’t have that visceral reaction that it seems the two of you do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You don’t care whether your computer stays on by itself or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that’s true too. But anyway, the point is, I’m not nearly as offended by fan noise as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey either of you guys are, but I was stupefied that I had all of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these cores just absolutely screaming and the fan was not audible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at all. And I even, are the exhaust vents on the bottom on this or are they on the back?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe the, I think the intake’s on the bottom and I think it shoots it out the back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay. That’s what it is. Okay. I was going to say, I felt the bottom and it didn’t occur to me until I was just talking a moment ago
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it might be coming out the back, but I felt the bottom and I didn’t feel anything warm, but that makes sense if that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey intake rather than exhaust. But anyways, I tweeted a screenshot of iStatMenus,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is John Syracuse’s favorite application of all time, and you can see that this thing is just getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey absolutely hammered and I can assure you that I could not hear a thing and that was pretty cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Welcome to the iMac Pro world, Casey. It’s really nice here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is pretty nice until they update in like three weeks, but right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco now it’s really
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Getting into the Mac Pro
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is bad about the new Mac Pro that you expect? Are there any, is there anything that’s yucking your yum at the moment?
⏹️ ▶️ John but anyway, um, yeah, this, this is another thing that’s been mentioned in the past, but it’s been top
⏹️ ▶️ John of my mind again, as this machine is about to to arrive at my home, getting at the inside of
⏹️ ▶️ John this computer, while it looks real cool and Apple shows the demo with the little latch thingy and it comes off,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is actually less convenient than the old side panel coming off. For a long
⏹️ ▶️ John time, Apple had a series of tower computers with the side either opened up or came off
⏹️ ▶️ John where you could get at the stuff. And that was convenient because in general, you didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have to move your tower computer from wherever it was. It was on the floor or on the desk. you could
⏹️ ▶️ John take, especially when you could take the side off, but even if you couldn’t, if you could, you know, move it down, just sort of shift stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John out of the way and they would, you know, fall down and you can get at all the stuff. This thing comes
⏹️ ▶️ John off the top. So if your tower is under your desk, you can’t get at the internals while it
⏹️ ▶️ John sits under your desk because you can’t get the top off. You have to lift vertically.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why you have wheels, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, so anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John if mine’s on the side table, in theory I could take the thing off, but it might be kind of awkward to lift it up.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I understand why they did the design. It’s great to be able to get it all sides, not just one side, but I think I might kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of miss the door for that internal accessibility. Occasionally,
⏹️ ▶️ John what I usually find myself doing is peeking in there to remind myself which drive mechanism is hooked up to which, or
⏹️ ▶️ John to look for like warning lights on the things, or to see if fans are spinning. And you know, that’s not going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be as frequent an occurrence with this whole new thing. And also,
⏹️ ▶️ John as we discussed WWDC, A thing that I used to do with all my computers that had sides that
⏹️ ▶️ John open up, which is open them up while they’re turned on, that will not happen with this one. To get the case off,
⏹️ ▶️ John everything shuts off hardware-wise. Like it cannot be on with the case off, as far as I’m aware, unless you defeated
⏹️ ▶️ John that mechanism. So a slight downgrade in terms of internals accessibility.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would imagine that probably for thermal reasons to make sure the airflow is going correctly and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t know, it’s electric shock. Like, I don’t know, I don’t know what’s going on inside there.
GPUs & Pro Display XDR
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, why don’t you tell me about what was it the Belkin aux power cable kit that we saw an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey image of a GPU within the Mac Pro and we apparently have some follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, Logan Hall tells us that that is actually the Radeon
⏹️ ▶️ John 5700 XT reference card that’s pictured in there and I’ll take his word for it because I can’t identify GPUs just
⏹️ ▶️ John by from the side view like that But that was yeah Marco found that image it on a product
⏹️ ▶️ John shot for just like the power cable that that provides power to that type of card is saying hey if you buy
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially I keep calling them PC graphics cards but you know if you just buy a graphics card that has nothing to do with the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John and you stick it in there and it needs power use this Belkin cable to get the power in a nice cool exactly the right
⏹️ ▶️ John length black type of thing and then the product shot they show the Radeon 5700 XT which is
⏹️ ▶️ John a card that I was actually interested in as a sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John fairly cheap gaming card which Which brings us to the next topic,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is what I spent a lot of this week thinking about. I don’t even
⏹️ ▶️ John have this computer in my house yet and already I’m plotting on what I’m going to shove inside it because there’s so much room in there.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I listened back to last week’s episode, I’m like, I’m not gonna upgrade the GPU right away, but let me tell you,
⏹️ ▶️ John PC GPUs are really cheap. I can get a
⏹️ ▶️ John good gaming card for like, good, you know, a perfectly fine, will do
⏹️ ▶️ John everything I need it to do, gaming card that is way faster than the sort of base
⏹️ ▶️ John GPU that the thing comes with for like 300 bucks. Like it’s peanuts, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John It costs less than like that bracket with a hard drive in it that you can
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey find inside of this thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Costs less than the wheels. So that led me down the alley of, what can I buy
⏹️ ▶️ John to stick inside this computer? What kind of video card, what are my video card options?
⏹️ ▶️ John And this, like so many things having to do with this Mac, is made much more complicated by my stupid choice of monitor,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is the Pro Display XDR. Now, the Pro Display XDR is
⏹️ ▶️ John a 6K monitor, and on the back of it, it just has power
⏹️ ▶️ John that goes into the wall. And then it has a bunch of little tiny USB-C shaped holes,
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s it. There’s no other holes on the back of this monitor. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re going to connect this monitor to a computer, you’ve got to get
⏹️ ▶️ John 6K worth of pixels at 60 Hertz at either 8 or 10 bits per component
⏹️ ▶️ John from your computer into this monitor, and it has to somehow
⏹️ ▶️ John end up coming out of a cable that fits into a little USB-C shaped, Thunderbolt 3 shaped, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, whatever, connector. If you look at any quote-unquote PC
⏹️ ▶️ John video card, all these inexpensive cards for a couple hundred bucks they tend not to
⏹️ ▶️ John have any USB-C shaped connectors on the back of them so the question is if you buy
⏹️ ▶️ John a PC graphics card and you stick it in your Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John which you certainly can do can you connect it to your Pro Display XDR
⏹️ ▶️ John and drive it at its native resolution that is it turns out to be quite
⏹️ ▶️ John a tall order right so here’s the deal with driving this monitor and this This is reminding me of
⏹️ ▶️ John our discussions back when the trash can came out and we were like, oh, can that run like a retina 5K display?
⏹️ ▶️ John Does it have enough bandwidth and thunderbolt? And we kept going around in circles about this. So I did
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of research on this. I know I’m not supposed to, but I did. Cause my computer was coming. So here’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what I’ve been able to determine so far. So 6K pixels at 60
⏹️ ▶️ John Hertz at 10 bits per component for the best picture quality.
⏹️ ▶️ John That, if you do all the math on that, that barely fits into Thunderbolt 3’s 40 gigabits per second
⏹️ ▶️ John bandwidth without the use of display stream compression. So if you have an uncompressed stream,
⏹️ ▶️ John you want to do 6k at 60 at 10 bits, and you have a Thunderbolt 3 connection,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can make that work. All USB-C cables of any kind
⏹️ ▶️ John have one set of low speed lanes that’s used for USB 2 speeds, regardless of whatever protocol
⏹️ ▶️ John the high speed lanes are carrying. So that’s not just Thunderbolt cables, but all just USB-C shaped
⏹️ ▶️ John cable holes that aren’t just power cables or whatever, right? Charging cables only have that low speed
⏹️ ▶️ John USB-C thing plus power and ground. Like so the quote unquote high speed lanes aren’t there, just use for power and
⏹️ ▶️ John ground. Full featured USB-C cables have four high speed lanes and then the low speed and then power
⏹️ ▶️ John and ground. Active Thunderbolt cables, the ones with the little chips in the connectors, those
⏹️ ▶️ John are the ones you were referring to before they had the little Thunderbolt symbol on them. The connectors are bigger because they actually have chips inside there.
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s why they’re active. Those are the four high-speed lanes, and then the chips,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then the low-speed USB, two things, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John in the case where you have a Thunderbolt 3 connection
⏹️ ▶️ John without display stream compression, two-year 6K, Pro Display XDR,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re only gonna get USB 2 on the ports in the back because that’s all there is left. You’re using all of the high-speed
⏹️ ▶️ John lanes just to carry the video signal. all you’ve got left is that that’s low speed lanes for
⏹️ ▶️ John USB 2 and that connects to your Pro display XDR and it uses it as a hub and you get
⏹️ ▶️ John your USB 2 ports on the back of it, right? Because remember you’re not just sending a video signal to this
⏹️ ▶️ John monitor Ideally it has ports in the back of it If you want to use any of those ports You also have to
⏹️ ▶️ John send some kind of USB type signal for it to be a hub, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John also for things like software brightness control or firmware updates or other things like that If you
⏹️ ▶️ John just send it video, if you can get that to work at all, those other features
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t work, right? So if you had a plain old DisplayPort cable, not Thunderbolt, but
⏹️ ▶️ John just DisplayPort, if you buy a PC video card, a lot of them come with multiple DisplayPort, not mini DisplayPort, but
⏹️ ▶️ John big DisplayPort, either way, like just DisplayPort. It’s not Thunderbolt, it’s not USB, it doesn’t know anything about Thunderbolt, doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know anything about USB, it is DisplayPort. Maxi DisplayPort. Yeah. can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John drive more than 5K at 60 Hertz, eight bits per pixel without display stream compression because the DisplayPort
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have enough bandwidth. Right, so if you have a PC video card with DisplayPort
⏹️ ▶️ John on the back, you cannot drive the XDR without display stream compression. Display stream
⏹️ ▶️ John compression, which I’m not gonna say over and over again, DSC is an essential feature for driving
⏹️ ▶️ John 6K display. So with DSC, if you had plain old DisplayPort
⏹️ ▶️ John cable, you can drive the XDR at 6K at 60 Hertz 10 bits per pixel, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John for display stream compression to work, sort of the OS and the card and the
⏹️ ▶️ John drivers, everything needs to know that that’s there to make it work. So you need some minimal level of OS support
⏹️ ▶️ John to say, A, I bought a card that has display stream compression, and B, the
⏹️ ▶️ John OS knows about that card and knows about the compression, and then they can talk to each other, right? But if you did that, like I said,
⏹️ ▶️ John the USB ports on the monitor won’t work because all it’s getting is the image being displayed, So those
⏹️ ▶️ John USB things are totally inert None of the software features like software
⏹️ ▶️ John brightness control would work and you can’t do any firmware updates And this is assuming you could get it to work at all I don’t even know if the XDR
⏹️ ▶️ John will even accept just a video signal, right? But if you wanted to have that you have to have display
⏹️ ▶️ John stream compression, right? That’s one of the reasons by the way, I think that the iMac Pro can’t drive it
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s if it treats it as a Display port thing you can only drive that at 5k without display
⏹️ ▶️ John stream compression anyway, so thunderbolt 3 With display stream compression
⏹️ ▶️ John right so now you’ve got thunderbolt 3 But instead of using every ounce of its 40 gigabits per second to fit your video signal
⏹️ ▶️ John over just leaving that little side lane for USB 2 if you have thunderbolt 3 with display stream compression
⏹️ ▶️ John you can get 6k at 60 Hertz at 10 bits per component Plus USB 3.1
⏹️ ▶️ John speeds and at that point the USB ports in the back of the XDR become USB 3.1 ports
⏹️ ▶️ John So for example if you have a 16-inch MacBook Pro that GPU has DSC
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you connect that to the Pro Display XDR you get USB 3.1 speeds on the back. Whoa really
⏹️ ▶️ John of the monitor Yes, that’s right straight from Apple’s website
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. Wait with does display stream compression cut does DSC Does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it introduce noticeable quality loss like it seems like it would right or it could at least
⏹️ ▶️ John I am told that That is that any losses that it introduces are imperceptible
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what I’m told.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because it’s probably one of those things like, you know, what if it displays like the static HBO intro? Like, you know what? Like there’s probably some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some pattern where you would possibly be able to notice something.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m told that it’s imperceptible. I can imagine that even just with lossless compression, you could get you
⏹️ ▶️ John can get some savings out of it. But I’m I’m told that
⏹️ ▶️ John that it meets Apple’s rigorous standard. Like it’s not Apple’s not making up DSC. DSC is a thing in the industry. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m assuming it’s kind of like texture compression on consoles where it’s a thing. People don’t know it
⏹️ ▶️ John exists because it is literally imperceptible. Like it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco anyway. No wait,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the MacBook Pro 16 uses compression and therefore has fast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB ports if it uses this monitor. That’s right. But the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t? Well, that’s the thing. It depends on what GPU you buy. So
⏹️ ▶️ John the base GPU, the 580X GPU, that MPX module.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s an MPX module. So it talks to the XDR using Thunderbolt 3, but the
⏹️ ▶️ John 580X does not have DSC. It’s such an old GPU that doesn’t support DSC at all. So the
⏹️ ▶️ John 580X, when it talks over Thunderbolt 3, uses all Thunderbolt 3’s band with just for the video signal, and just
⏹️ ▶️ John the sideband, a little low-speed USB 2 thing. So when I connect my XDR
⏹️ ▶️ John to my Mac Pro with the base GPU, I’m getting USB 2 speeds in the ports.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now, the thing about buying those cheap cards from sort of those PC cards
⏹️ ▶️ John is in general, there’s probably not gonna be a big market for
⏹️ ▶️ John PC video cards with Thunderbolt 3 ports on the back of them
⏹️ ▶️ John with display stream compression and drivers for the Mac. Because gamers don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want a 6K monitor, it’s too big. Like you don’t wanna run your game with that resolution. That native res is too many pixels.
⏹️ ▶️ John And gamers want more than 60 Hertz. What gamers want is like 4K at 144 Hertz or whatever, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re gonna do that, you can do that first of all with DisplayPort,
⏹️ ▶️ John and second of all, display stream compression is probably not even needed at that resolution. And
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no reason to invest in this sort of, I mean, this is the thing Apple’s monitors have done for a
⏹️ ▶️ John long time, which is don’t just send video to the monitor, also send a bunch of other crap because the monitor is also a hub
⏹️ ▶️ John and it has some weird software control. From Apple Display Connector, ADC, Remember that back in the day where it was
⏹️ ▶️ John a single cable that had a bunch of stuff over it to my current thing? I just, earlier in the show, I said, oh, my monitor has
⏹️ ▶️ John a mini display port. Yeah, it has mini display port, but it also has this weird cable that splits
⏹️ ▶️ John into this rat tail of multiple things because it also has USB hub in it. And the way they did it with my
⏹️ ▶️ John monitor is they just ran multiple cables and then wrapped them up in one big fat cable.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when it comes to the computer, it splits off into one thing that connects to USB-A port
⏹️ ▶️ John and one thing connects to the mini display port. I think there might even be another one in there. And then like the power thing, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John With the Pro Display XDR, power is its own separate cable and everything else has to come
⏹️ ▶️ John in through that one cable. So your only options are DisplayPort,
⏹️ ▶️ John somehow natively shoving into the monitor and working in the degenerate mode where none of the ports work and none of the software features
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and none of the firmware stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John works. Or Thunderbolt 3, which gives you USB,
⏹️ ▶️ John either the low speed lane for two or with display screen compression, enough room for high speed USB.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the number of video cards out there from anybody other than Apple that speak
⏹️ ▶️ John Thunderbolt, I don’t even know if there are any. So my
⏹️ ▶️ John market for aftermarket GPUs that actually drive the XDR
⏹️ ▶️ John and native res may be down to just whatever Apple decides to offer. So far
⏹️ ▶️ John they have a bunch of options, but all of them are quote unquote workstation options as we discussed last show.
⏹️ ▶️ John And even the other one they were thinking of rolling out, I looked at it more closely at the specs and that, it’s not that great.
⏹️ ▶️ John And as many people pointed out, the 580X, like the base GPU that I’m getting in my thing, it’s slower
⏹️ ▶️ John than the GPU in the iMac Pro. Like it’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it is a really old GPU.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is the basest of base GPU, right? It’s not slower than the one, the 16 inch, but at least the 16 inch
⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook Pro supports display stream compression. So anyway, the good thing
⏹️ ▶️ John of course about the Mac Pro is I can get a gaming card that just supports display port and hook it up to a gaming monitor. I can
⏹️ ▶️ John have two, three video cards in there. You know what I mean? I can have one hooked up to the XDR and another
⏹️ ▶️ John video card in my computer at the same time connected to 144 Hertz gaming monitor, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure I’ll do that, but I have that option. So if I, it’s not like I’m boxed out of the $300
⏹️ ▶️ John good gaming card market. I could buy a $300 gaming card, shove it in there, connect it to my gaming monitor and I’m good
⏹️ ▶️ John to go. Obviously, ideally, I would rather not have multiple GPUs for
⏹️ ▶️ John different purposes as I have my computer. Ideally, I could buy one GPU and a cool black MPX
⏹️ ▶️ John module that speaks Thunderbolt 3 and also is good GPU, but I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know if such a card is forthcoming. So that’s what I’ve got my eye on, and having delved even
⏹️ ▶️ John further into this world of cables that all look exactly the same, but
⏹️ ▶️ John do very different things in mysterious ways. I feel like some of the mystery has been removed. Now I know what to
⏹️ ▶️ John look for, other than just looking for little Thunderbolt 3-shaped holes. I have to know if things support
⏹️ ▶️ John DSC. You have to know if the OS supports them. And now it’s more explicable to me how
⏹️ ▶️ John and why the other ports in the back of the XDR work the way they do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wow. I had no idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve never been more excited to have an all-in-one computer than I am right now. My
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I mean, it is
⏹️ ▶️ John exciting that, you know, desk space is my main problem. It is exciting because I can buy a $300 gaming card
⏹️ ▶️ John right now, slam it in there, and get high frame rate, good game performance over a display port
⏹️ ▶️ John connector to a gaming monitor. Which is exactly if I was planning on playing Destiny on my Mac, that’s what I
⏹️ ▶️ John should do. I shouldn’t be playing it on my 6K XDR because people
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t game at 6K unless you’re making some sort of over the top gaming PC where you just
⏹️ ▶️ John want to go to the max everything. It’s just too much resolution, right? You want to go with the 4K and then get higher frame
⏹️ ▶️ John rates. So the fact that I have that option is cool, but I’m still out there searching for, And
⏹️ ▶️ John this is part of what I enjoy about these computers. I was, you know, Stephen Hackett was just sending me some more stuff about
⏹️ ▶️ John things inside of computers that he’s getting, like, what kind of storage can I put in there? How many different cards
⏹️ ▶️ John can I put in? Like, not just those cards, if there’s a card with a, to your point earlier, Marco, if there’s a card
⏹️ ▶️ John that comes out with a bunch more USB ports, I might shove that in there. I’ve got a lot of card slots to fill
⏹️ ▶️ John and a lot of interesting things that could possibly go in there, so. I know I shouldn’t be spending any more money on this computer,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that’s what I’m thinking about now. This is like a giant green field for
⏹️ ▶️ John with stuff over the next many years, which is exactly what no one wants to hear, that now this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John gives me an opportunity to spend more money with it. That is really true. And that’s the main
⏹️ ▶️ John advantage and attraction to this computer for me and my sort of hobbyist stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John It certainly isn’t the performance, because another thing I pointed out in the last show, and I’ll reiterate again, this
⏹️ ▶️ John computer is not the fastest Mac that they sell in terms of single-core performance. The phone is faster
⏹️ ▶️ John than in single core. Most of the other top end Macs are faster than in single core. Even in multi-core people were doing tests
⏹️ ▶️ John and saying, it’s not even as fast, like the eight core Mac Pro is not as fast as the eight core iMac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John in a couple of benchmarks. Like it’s close, but it’s not exactly there. Like these are, these are old CPUs.
⏹️ ▶️ John And their single core performance is fairly bad. Their clocks are low.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not the speed deeming you think it is. It’s all about the slots and everything else. So
⏹️ ▶️ John keep that in mind. And you know, I’ll try not to get too depressed when the arm computers come out and trance it in every
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey like a 10 inch
RAM upgrades
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, why don’t you tell me about the only other thing we haven’t talked about putting in your computer RAM.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re trying to figure out this was just a theory, but it sounded right to me. So I was trying to figure out why they didn’t offer a 64 gig option.
⏹️ ▶️ John And maybe it’s because they have to be either you have to either fill in six slots or 12 slots.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so you can’t get 64 because they don’t sell 10.66 gigabyte sticks of RAM to divide
⏹️ ▶️ John evenly by six or 12. I suppose I’ll launch that cool, like
⏹️ ▶️ John what was it, like the card slot configurator. There was like a software app on the Mac Pro that shows
⏹️ ▶️ John what you have installed and what you can upgrade to, but that makes sense to me that maybe you have to install things in
⏹️ ▶️ John match sets and you can only do threes or sixes. I’ll find out, but I think 96 gigs will hold
⏹️ ▶️ John me over for a while. So that’s one thing I’m not actually looking into upgrading.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, good. You’re not looking into upgrading one component of your $17,000 computer. Not
⏹️ ▶️ John until the second five years. Yeah, the second five years I’ll put more RAM in it maybe.
Airflow vs. dust
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then why don’t you tell me about thermodynamics if you don’t mind
⏹️ ▶️ John popular mechanics magazine somehow An article on the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John cuz why not? I mean, I guess I don’t know I don’t know these things work somehow apples connecting with popular
⏹️ ▶️ John mechanics and they talked to Chris lightenberg the senior director of
⏹️ ▶️ John product design about the Mac Pro and in particular They’re talking about the fans and the whole cooling system, which is interesting to
⏹️ ▶️ John me And they said all the right things. They’re talking about about
⏹️ ▶️ John dynamically balancing the blades so they’re actually randomized so that they sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John resonated to different frequencies to sort of produce a, over the broad spectrum to produce noise instead
⏹️ ▶️ John of just in a particular frequency so it gets annoying and to avoid harmonics and everything. We saw that at first, I think the first time that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John talked about that was the original Retina 15 inch that made more of a
⏹️ ▶️ John whooshing noise instead of a whining noise and I like that and they’re doing the same thing with these much, much larger
⏹️ ▶️ John fans, obviously. They also said they borrowed the solution from automobile tires, but that apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John produce something similar, so you don’t get drones when going over the highway where the tread patterns are randomized a little bit to
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of distribute the noise across the spectrum. The
⏹️ ▶️ John article says that one advantage of having noisy fans is that noisy, you know, regular fans
⏹️ ▶️ John can handle resistance caused by filtration systems. So if you have some kind of mesh or filter
⏹️ ▶️ John or something that makes it harder to suck the air through. If you have just a plain old regular noisy fan,
⏹️ ▶️ John it can handle that, but these very delicate, beautiful, sort of gentle, quiet fans don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John having their airflow impeded. So both the Mac Pro and the Pro Display don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John any kind of filters. This was noted by a couple of YouTubers. Like, you look through those giant gaping holes, there are the
⏹️ ▶️ John fan blades. Like, you could stick your finger through there. You know, cat hair, dust, anything,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s going in there, right? And this is Ternus, what’s his name?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco What’s his first
⏹️ ▶️ John name? I forget. John Ternus, speaking here, he says, speaking of the filters,
⏹️ ▶️ John he says, we don’t have a need for that. We create geometries that can deal with a certain amount of material
⏹️ ▶️ John getting on them. And, you know, that may sound a little bit silly. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John so you know you’re gonna get crap in your computer, but you’re like, eh, we make it so the crap finds its way out.
⏹️ ▶️ John But honestly, that is incredibly refreshing in coming from the company that made the butterfly keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey once the dust gets in
⏹️ ▶️ John it, It can’t get out. This thing is made that I mean, I don’t think you can shove buckets of sand
⏹️ ▶️ John into it, but the whole point is the holes are so big on the entrance and exit. Yeah, some stuff’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ John get in. Some stuff’s going to go out. We designed it so that, you know, it’s easy
⏹️ ▶️ John for stuff to get through it. Hopefully there’s no little place where it all catches. Hopefully it’ll just be, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John large airflow going through. And in practice, like I’m sitting here with the cheese grater that has many more tiny holes, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it also has no filters or anything on it. Stuff goes in, stuff comes out. This has been running for 10 years.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s dusty inside But I have seen way worse even on Macs. I’ve seen way worse on a previous
⏹️ ▶️ John taro max I’ve seen way worse on desktop Macs for a much shorter period of time Having
⏹️ ▶️ John a huge amount of air flow into it and also a huge amount of flare Airflow out the back
⏹️ ▶️ John like the whole front and the whole back are open to the air is actually a good system For keeping
⏹️ ▶️ John things moving and for not allowing stuff to build up. So I’m not too worried about debris. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John I I wouldn’t you know run your Mac Pro while you’re putting a new drywall as they say in the article like
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously within reason And it would be cool if there was like a HEPA filter or something inside there But honestly, I’d
⏹️ ▶️ John rather have the quieter fans than the HEPA filter because again 10 years running this other Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro With no filter whatsoever, and it’s been fine, so I’m convinced that
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a reasonable solution.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s interesting like it’s an interesting design trade-off that like you know whether a filter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is better, try to keep everything out. Because for me, in my experience, having desktops for years and years and years,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually that I built myself with these fancy, high-end enthusiast cases and all these cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fans and everything, is that usually by having a filter in there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you just give all the dust and everything one place to collect that you can ignore and never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clean. And I would imagine, in most cases, people aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cleaning their filters, And so in most cases, you just have less airflow very quickly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after ownership of one of these computers. And so I’m sure they probably had to do some kind of risk analysis
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of what’s worse in practice, having a dirty filter plugging up airflow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or having dust go through the computer. Because the thing is, even computers with filters,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in every case I’ve ever seen, there is still a ton of dust inside. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it’s coming in through other paths or what happens,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or if the filters just aren’t very good, or if they don’t cover the hole opening enough, who knows? But I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never seen a filter that stayed clean for very long, I’ve never seen anybody change or clean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a filter themselves, and I’ve never seen a computer with a filter that didn’t have a whole bunch of dust inside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway. So maybe this is kind of just admitting, like, yeah, okay, in practice, the way to do a desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is to just make it handle the amount of dust and crap that’s going to be sucked through it anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that argues for making the holes bigger, not smaller, because you want everything to pass through. Like the thing with filters
⏹️ ▶️ John is once they get clogged, the reason you see dust inside is the air will flow through the place
⏹️ ▶️ John that has the least resistance. And a clogged filter puts up a lot of resistance. So the cracks around the filter, that’s where the
⏹️ ▶️ John air will start going. And then the dust will go through there. It gets much better to have it pass through.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, I mean, obviously the cheese grater has a ton of holes, but they’re actually kind of small and you can get some dust collecting
⏹️ ▶️ John on them. Same thing with heat sink fins. If you have the heat sink fins very close together, dust will get between them. If they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John more widely spaced, the air will pass through. But you know, I said, like, 10 years with, I’ve not
⏹️ ▶️ John been nice to this computer. It’s on the floor where all the dust is in a house that has had a dog
⏹️ ▶️ John for many years during that, in two different dogs during that period of time.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s fine. Like occasionally I open up in there and I see some dust and maybe blow it out, but you know, hasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John been an issue. So I’m not particularly worried about it. If they ever made something that was meant to be using it in like a high
⏹️ ▶️ John dust environment, you’d probably need to do something because you could get like conductive bits
⏹️ ▶️ John in there that can screw stuff up, but that’s not what this is made for. It’s made to be indoors in an office-like
⏹️ ▶️ John environment. And I think it’ll do just fine. But mostly I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John happy that they spent so much time trying to make the fans very quiet and pleasant sounding when they make any noise at
⏹️ ▶️ John all. And the YouTube reviews have said it is dead silent. You know, we’ll see,
⏹️ ▶️ John same thing with the monitor. I’m glad to see people have said They literally cannot hear anything inside the monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ John So when I get them, I will give you my judgment. And hopefully my old man hearing has gotten bad enough that I
⏹️ ▶️ John will also find them sound. I’m just kidding. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kidding. I’m kidding.
LG 5K isn’t fine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and on this long journey through follow up, why don’t you tell me about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the LG Ultrafine 5K and how it may or may not be good for everyone.
⏹️ ▶️ John It might not be fine. It was their slogan in the ads, fine, period.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is from Mark Graham Bow, and he has had some experience with these monitors. He’s using
⏹️ ▶️ John them with 5K iMacs, and they’re hooking up the LG 5K displays. he’s working,
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s a designer and illustrator and they’re working in an environment where
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of important that the monitors all kind of agree. So when they would hook up the LG,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’d notice that it didn’t match the IMAX internal display, even if they, you know, accounted
⏹️ ▶️ John for night shift and true tone and all that other stuff, just like turning that off, or even when it wasn’t even supported on the models. So
⏹️ ▶️ John they bought a hardware calibrator and tried to get them to match each other and can never quite get them to match,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is kind of of frustrating, right? Even though in theory they use the same panel. And then they bought another
⏹️ ▶️ John LG and the two LGs that they had didn’t match each other. So there’s, you
⏹️ ▶️ John same monitor, right? So this is frustrating. This is another one of the advantages that you in theory
⏹️ ▶️ John get with Apple monitors. They always say they’re all carefully calibrated and so on and so forth. And my experience,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s been true. Having purchased Apple monitors since they were CRTs and then LCDs, they
⏹️ ▶️ John tend to be consistent and also look like each other. So Mark says
⏹️ ▶️ John in his experience with five of these LG displays that they fall short of Apple standards for factory
⏹️ ▶️ John calibration consistently Consistency, so I think you get five 5k iMacs
⏹️ ▶️ John the displays will match each other but apparently if you do that with LG 5ks They will not and you might not even
⏹️ ▶️ John be able to calibrate them to match the Apple display So yet another reason that if you care about that type
⏹️ ▶️ John of thing at all There is reason a to buy Apple and b for Apple to make its own
⏹️ ▶️ John display If you don’t care, then fine, you save a lot of money. But it’s nice to, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s nice to know that you’re paying for something when you buy these Apple display. Someone was mentioning on Twitter that
⏹️ ▶️ John they thought it was silly that Apple could never mark up like an LG panel and put it in
⏹️ ▶️ John their own case and charge hundreds more. It’s like, that’s all they’ve ever done. Like all of their monitors always been somebody else’s
⏹️ ▶️ John panel that they calibrate. They put it in an expensive case and charge you tons of money for
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And we We bought them when they were CRTs and they were Sony Trinitrons inside an Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John branded case and they cost hugely more than competing monitors. We bought them when they were
⏹️ ▶️ John multi-scan, multi-sync CRT things even after the Trinitron era.
⏹️ ▶️ John We bought them when they were LCD panels and we would keep buying them if they would only make another
⏹️ ▶️ John one today. I still think there is a place in the market for that, especially if it’s only 100 or 2
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think that 100 or two, depending on who you are, may be worth it to you if
⏹️ ▶️ John you care about your monitors matching each other or the colors being, you know, calibrated to
⏹️ ▶️ John what you want them to be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And like, that’s the kind of thing that, you know, Apple puts a lot of time and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco attention and money into things like that, things like proper calibration,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even down to, you know, even like with the iPhone displays. Like they go throughout the whole product line and stuff like that. And it’s the kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of thing that the market typically does not reward. The market does not generally notice or care.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple occasionally tries to explain it to us and we mostly gloss over because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the market largely doesn’t care. But when you do care, they’re the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only option for a lot of these things. Or when you do have a need like that, like you might not realize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you only ever buy one of these monitors, for instance, you might not realize, hey, the colors are a little bit weird. But then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you put it next to something that doesn’t have that problem, or when you buy two of them and they don’t match, Like, it’s exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that little kind of detail that Apple really cares a lot more than almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyone else in the industry about in almost every case. Or they do care more than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyone else in the industry in a lot of these cases. And I feel like they’re never gonna get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the credit that they deserve for that, but that’s the kind of thing that when we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want an Apple monitor, that’s the kind of thing we’re looking for is that level of quality,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that level of attention to detail, that level of caring about things that most of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco market will not reward, but doing it anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and as the chat room was pointing out, it’s not as if they have some kind of magic.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Like if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the same panel, it’s the same panel. How can apples be any better? It’s about quality standards.
⏹️ ▶️ John They will reject panels that don’t meet their criteria. They have some sort of standard that they measure them to. They measure
⏹️ ▶️ John the panel, and it has to be within these values of these colors and these ranges. And if it’s not, they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John take that one, and that’s why those things cost more. because it’s like bidding on chips. So you find the ones that
⏹️ ▶️ John happen to run faster, they cost more money because there’s fewer of them. Apple, they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John always done this with all of their monitors, even their really crappy monitors, they’re remarkably
⏹️ ▶️ John consistent with each other. If you buy five of them and line them all up and put them all on 100%
⏹️ ▶️ John red screen and look at them, they will all look more or less the same, right? And that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John and even just Apple pushing like the, you know, what percent of P3 and now they cover 100% of P3, and
⏹️ ▶️ John like that whole effort, it’s because they want the monitors to display as much
⏹️ ▶️ John of the color range as possible. And they wanted to display that stuff consistently.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, also even on the phones, and I bet they do the same thing by rejecting the
⏹️ ▶️ John OLED or LCD panels that don’t meet their standards and thus driving up the price. That’s part of what we
⏹️ ▶️ John pay for. And to be clear, they charge a premium for it. Like they make plenty of money. Like it’s part
⏹️ ▶️ John of the profit margin. but you know that is that is the thing that you’re paying for even though especially
⏹️ ▶️ John in phones nobody notices because most people like the completely over boosted super duper vibrant
⏹️ ▶️ John color scheme of samsung phones they’ve always judged that to be better but uh… if i guess if they try to
⏹️ ▶️ John watch a movie or tv show it might look a little bit cartoonish but then again people have their tvs calibrated that way so i don’t even know
⏹️ ▶️ John in this area i’m glad that apple’s taste still aligns with mine and uh… creative
⏹️ ▶️ John professionals who need to see the colors as they actually are So they’re sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of working off a common understanding of what it is that they’re doing. Because if everybody’s monitor was
⏹️ ▶️ John calibrated to their own personal tastes, It’s very difficult to get work done in a collaborative environment.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we have in the show notes, expandable Macs and the history of Mac towers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I know that there’s been cheese graters for a long time and I know that you could expand them. And now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know the entirety of my knowledge of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John history of Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey towers. So John, educate me if you don’t mind, since apparently there’s some sort of schtick you have here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What’s the history of Mac towers and how do you expand them?
⏹️ ▶️ John I put this in the notes inspired by some back and forth on Twitter between a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of people we know, in particular, you know, with the, you know, shipping of the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro, people who are disappointed that if you want a Macintosh
⏹️ ▶️ John computer with expandable insides where you can replace RAM and hard drives
⏹️ ▶️ John and GPUs and do all the stuff that we’ve been talking about, that your only choice is this
⏹️ ▶️ John extremely expensive super high-end thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’ve mostly been, you know, not concerned
⏹️ ▶️ John with this issue because in the short term because the whole deal was,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know has been my deal since before the trash can Mac Mac Pro, which is that Apple should
⏹️ ▶️ John make a Mac Pro as its Halo car type computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John It should be the best of the best. It should be fast because fast computers are cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John It should be everything, you know, more capable, more
⏹️ ▶️ John expandable, more powerful than anything else and yes, also more expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ John Scout out that top end. And it was important for, you know, to me that they do this. I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John important for the company. I think the trash can was a very interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John take on that. Turned out to be the wrong solution. But you can’t say that they weren’t
⏹️ ▶️ John bold. Can’t innovate more, my ass. We make fun of that. But honestly, that was an innovative
⏹️ ▶️ John computer. It was just innovating in the wrong direction, unfortunately, and had some design flaws. But it
⏹️ ▶️ John was daring and bold, and like a lot of Halo cars, some of those end up being maybe not
⏹️ ▶️ John as practical as you thought, and maybe not particularly successful. And then so they were taking a second shot at it here,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So that’s mostly why I’ve been like, well, yeah, I’m not gonna complain about the Mac Pro to
⏹️ ▶️ John say, you know, it’s too expensive or too high end, because that’s the whole point of this, is that to
⏹️ ▶️ John put this, plant this flag, put a stake in the ground, whatever your metaphor is, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, put the flag on the top of the mountain. We, this is, let’s go big or go home.
⏹️ ▶️ John All the platitudes you can think of. That’s the point of this computer. But
⏹️ ▶️ John now that that is there and it’s out there and we understand what it’s for and who’s gonna buy it and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the question and the thing that people are complaining about. Now they’re blaming the Mac Pro for it, but honestly I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s misdirected anger. The Mac Pro has to be the thing that it is.
⏹️ ▶️ John The question is, is there something between the highest of the very
⏹️ ▶️ John high end and the other Macs in Apple’s lineup?
⏹️ ▶️ John And most of the people complaining about this remember a time when Apple either had a single
⏹️ ▶️ John model that spanned more of a range or multiple models where you could you could pay Apple far less
⏹️ ▶️ John money to get a computer that was expandable, that either you could
⏹️ ▶️ John swap out different kinds of internal storage or swap out the GPU or maybe put two GPUs
⏹️ ▶️ John in it. Sometimes they had one or two CPUs, right. And a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John those people say, I’m never going to need four GPUs
⏹️ ▶️ John in my thing. I’m never going to need 28 cores. I don’t even care about ECC RAM.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t even care if it’s a Xeon. But the only choices right now are,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you have the iMac Pro and then a huge Gulf and then the very, very high end.
⏹️ ▶️ John And, you know, the people are angry about that. They say, you know, Apple is not serving my needs. Apple doesn’t make a computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what Exactly what I want. I don’t want the high-end and I also don’t want the iMac. Why doesn’t Apple make something
⏹️ ▶️ John for me At various times that Mac has been Described as the X Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John where it’s a inexpensive Mac made with consumer desktop parts. It’s expandable Apple’s never really made that computer
⏹️ ▶️ John but as people who are around for the Power Mac g5 and the early Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John pros can attest Apple used to make its high-end line of computers
⏹️ ▶️ John extend pretty far down. Like yeah, you could always spec them up to be this big monster machines,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the quote-unquote same computer like it was called a Mac Pro or was called a Power Mac, right, a Power Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John G5, you could take that same computer and spec it way down and it still had ECC
⏹️ ▶️ John RAM and it still has Xeons in it, but you could spec it way down to the point where you could pay like
⏹️ ▶️ John $1,600 for the base config. And what you would get is a gigantic
⏹️ ▶️ John tower, cheese greater tower with ECC RAM and a Xeon in it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John everything would be small. It would have the wimpy CPU. It would have fewer RAM slots. It would just have one
⏹️ ▶️ John CPU instead of two back when that was a thing they were doing. It would have a crappy video card, but you’d still be
⏹️ ▶️ John getting the whole big thing. And you take out the GPU and put a different one and you could add more
⏹️ ▶️ John RAM later and you could even if you were daring take out the CPU and upgrade it, right? That is the
⏹️ ▶️ John world that a lot of people are pining for. And like I I think their anger at the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John is misdirected because that’s a very important product for Apple to have What they’re complaining about is
⏹️ ▶️ John what about the gap? So my question to the two of you is
⏹️ ▶️ John is This a product Apple should ever make again Like why did they ever
⏹️ ▶️ John make it before why aren’t they making it now? and then the third one is can this
⏹️ ▶️ John current computer ever extend downward to you know, to that range. Can
⏹️ ▶️ John you ever sell something that looks and is essentially like the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John as we know it today that you could sell for $2,000 or less? I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just, I don’t know who is buying this. Like, yes, I understand that there are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey friends of ours that want that and maybe, maybe I would want that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But honestly, I, my perception of my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computer, or at least a desktop computer at the very least, has changed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey significantly since I started buying Macs. And maybe that’s because Apple told me to believe this, and now I’m just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of the sheeple that’s just marching to whatever Apple tells me to do. But I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of these computers, both the iMac and the laptop, as a single unit, much like a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone. I don’t view my computers as though I’m going to be upgrading the RAM in the future
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the hard drive later and I don’t even know what else I’ve upgraded in the past in computers. Like when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had my original Polybook, I had put more RAM in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, I believe, and it was reasonably easy to do that. I think I’d put a bigger hard drive in that. It was reasonably easy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do that. But nowadays I’m buying computers where like even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my Adorable has 16 gigs of RAM, if I’m not mistaken, and it has a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey half terabyte for my needs. I’m only talking about me. saying this is universal to everyone, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for my needs, it’s more, that’s fine. I mean, I’d like more, but I don’t need more. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, this iMac pro is spec’d way better than I need today. And the reason I did that is because I want it to last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a few years. I, I don’t know what it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I would upgrade in this, like I guess an SSD maybe, but at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that point, presumably I’d want a new CPU, maybe more RAM, maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I have, what do I have this thing 64 gigs of RAM? I’m not going to need more RAM anytime soon.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I view my computers as not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey expendable, that’s way too aggressive a term, but I view them as a single unit that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will use for several years and then they will move on to either someone else or get recycled or what have you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I personally don’t really see the need for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an expandable Mac in the same way that the Mac Pro exists.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I don’t know. What is the meme with the Galaxy Brain and Universe Brain and all that stuff? Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m on the smallest one of those. So, Marco, use your Galaxy Brain and make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me feel dumb for a minute. Why do you need or why do I need an expandable Mac?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, the reality is, there’s a lot of really good reasons why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this thing doesn’t exist, or rather why Apple won’t make it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think, they’re not gonna satisfy people. So one of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco biggest reasons is that we’re already talking about a very small portion of the market by not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking about laptops. We’re talking about desktops. In the time when expandable desktops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were the default kind of computer, that like if you said, I bought a computer, most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people would picture a desktop of some kind. At that time was the 90s or 80s, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up until maybe 2002, 2004,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at which point the default started becoming a laptop for almost everybody.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It never went back the other way. Like laptops came in as LCD panels got cheaper and batteries got better,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and especially, especially in the era of SSDs, when the performance between laptops and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco desktops really closed the gap big time. The reality is most people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for most of their computer needs, buy laptops now. You’re already talking about a very small part of the market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that even wants a desktop at all. And then when you look at the people who do want a desktop,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of those sales are kind of like, you know, appliances. They’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you need like a computer to be at a desk in an office, or to be displaying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something as some kind of, you know, like stationary appliance or something. A lot of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are not high-end desktops, and they don’t need to be very good. Like you wonder why Apple still sells such incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crappy configurations of the low-end iMacs, it’s for that market, right? They sell a whole ton of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Most office workers are not buying a ton of these anymore. You know, most office workers are going laptops for their staff and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it’s just, there’s not a lot of people buying desktops, and of the people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buying desktops, many of them just want them to be as cheap as possible for various reasons. So the market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for enthusiast and high-end desktops is really quite small.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Of that market, a huge portion of it are gamers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Apple doesn’t do well with gamers for lots of good reasons that neither
⏹️ ▶️ Marco side is likely to ever compromise on. You know, what gamers want is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very different kind of system than the kind of system Apple wants to make and sell. They usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aren’t even interested in more running Mac OS, so why does Apple even need to bother?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, Apple’s not probably very interested in making everybody’s gaming PCs. That’s not really a market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they care to be in or need to be in, because quite frankly, the gamers don’t like Apple very much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually, and Apple doesn’t like them very much and doesn’t want to do what they want, so they kind of, you know, stay out of each other’s way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, what people usually want, who are asking for the, you know, quote,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco X Mac, the cheap Mac tower, they’re usually basically asking for gaming PCs. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you look at like the kind of thing they’re looking for, okay, so you want a tower computer using standard consumer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco parts that aren’t very expensive, that you can put a gaming GPU in and expand it later, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically a gaming PC. And part of the reason why I think the likelihood of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is eroded even further over time is that gaming PC parts got very cheap.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s such a commodity. Like there’s no room for Apple to make much profit there. Like, if Apple wants
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to try to sell their gaming PC for $3,000 instead of $6,000, they’re still way out of the market.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re still way above it. Not to mention the fact that many gamers have also gone to laptops these days,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is a whole other thing. And Apple’s not gonna make a gaming laptop for all the various things that it needs. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re talking about such a narrow part of the market that still wants a desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this day and age, doesn’t want it to be just like the bargain basement cheap thing, actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wants it to be like, you know, a powerful tower that can be expanded, isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the pro side of the market that is like, you know, pro video editors who want to buy a crazy workstation like a Mac pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also probably isn’t hardcore gamers because they’re probably going to want PC hardware that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can have even more control over and even get even cheaper and run windows on. So like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s left, it’s basically me, John and Steve Trout and Smith.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a pretty small market. And me and John will eventually just buy the Mac Pro. So, it’s…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m not saying that there aren’t, you know, things that we wish we had here. I’m not saying that there aren’t ways that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, for instance, you know, I have an iMac. I’ve been using an iMac since 2015. 2014, rather. I would love so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be able to expand it somehow.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey To what end, though? What would you be expanding? Like, and I’m not trying to be a jerk. I genuinely don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know what I would do to my computer. What is it your iMac Pro either doesn’t do today
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or you think won’t do tomorrow that you would like to rectify?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I have bought my way out of this problem. The reason why the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMacs that I’ve had since 2014 and forward, why I haven’t really outgrown their basic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco specs during their useful lifetime is because I had the money to buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a really good configuration up front. but that wasn’t always the case with the Macs I’ve bought.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like when I bought my first Mac Pro in 2008, which was the first time I could ever afford
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a MacTower, I bought a pretty modest configuration, very similar to what John bought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco his with, actually, and I upgraded over time. I didn’t go as far as John did. I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco own it for 10 years, but over time I upgraded the RAM, I upgraded the hard drives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on day one. There’s a huge market of people who can afford the entry price
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of something like this, but don’t want to or can’t pay Apple’s upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco prices. So Casey, you did. You didn’t want to pay the upgrade price for the RAM, so you bought it with base RAM
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and used third-party RAM to upgrade your Mac, right? That’s a huge market. I used to do that to every Mac I owned.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Usually I’d get the base specs from Apple. I would then go to OWC and get their RAM,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I’d go get whatever hard drive that I’d researched was like the fastest hard drive and get that, and I’d put them in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco myself because they were way cheaper than Apple’s, or sometimes they would be like larger configurations that Apple would offer or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something like that. And so it allowed me to get a better computer than I could otherwise afford.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or it allowed me to get a computer that I could afford first that was lower end, and then over time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I got more money, make it higher end with upgrades. And that side of the market is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge and totally underserved by all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Apple’s product lines now because you can’t really upgrade anything on any of them anymore basically. Like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost nothing upgradable about almost any computer or device Apple sells anymore. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so there is a huge market there to be had for people who don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to or can’t pay Apple’s high spec fees to get like a you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the full resources that they might want up front but that maybe two years in they would.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that has bitten me like I have occasionally like I a couple of laptops ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I replaced the laptop mostly because I just kept running out of space. You can kind of look cynically at that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and think, well, Apple’s selling more computers and upgrades because people can’t upgrade the ones they have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s kind of crappy. The same thing applies to the phone, the iPad, but anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So there is a big market there, but the main part of that market is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco creating computers that can’t exist otherwise, now that we have the Mac Pro released. The main part of that market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is people who need to save some money, or who want to save some money. And I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think Apple gives two craps about that market whatsoever. And that’s, I’m not saying that’s right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they are a really rich company and they got there somehow. You know, they’re doing what works for them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what works for them is typically giving you most of what you want and making you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pay two to three times what you feel comfortable paying for it if that’s what you want. So the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac Pro continues that. And I think it’s partially excused by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a very, very narrow market. That the people who still want expandable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco desktops is a very narrow market. Among that market, a lot of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco market is pros or enthusiasts like us who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are much more willing on average to pay high Apple prices. So they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are serving a good chunk of that market by what they’re doing. and they’re really making us like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ooh, really cringe and really sacrifice some of the stuff we want or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to save up for a couple more years to get this thing. They’re really making it hurt, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is probably going to work in the sense that we are probably gonna buy it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or buy something else they make and be happy enough with that, like the iMac Pro. So it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it works for them. I don’t see the strategy costing them a lot of sales that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A, they would actually want, and B, would actually happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think the X-Mac Desire, they’ve never made anything that really fits this
⏹️ ▶️ John bill, like as in not using the Xeons and ECC RAM I keep
⏹️ ▶️ John using as a stand-in. So basically a consumer desktop parts, but in an expandable case. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m putting that aside as sort of the market they don’t wanna serve because it’s price conscious or it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John gamers, like you said, and the desktop market is small, They just if they didn’t address
⏹️ ▶️ John that in the past, the chances of them addressing it now, you know, even smaller, right? So let’s just set that aside, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the main Thing that people are pining for is the thing they had for a fairly long period of time Which
⏹️ ▶️ John is that the the top end that the Xeon ECC, you know
⏹️ ▶️ John dual CPU Whatever a multi-core big giant tower thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John that product line extended downward into way cheaper cheaper prices. And so Apple could
⏹️ ▶️ John justify it by saying, well, we’re still just basically making one high end thing. Like this is our top end computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can spec it out like crazy and make it cost, you know, huge amounts of money, but essentially that
⏹️ ▶️ John very same computer you can spec down to the point where it, you know, sort of the peak of
⏹️ ▶️ John the, this strategy, they had models that had entirely different motherboards, like inside the same
⏹️ ▶️ John case, but you’d like the cheap one was basically a different computer. They didn’t even do that in the G4 era where like
⏹️ ▶️ John there was the sawtooth and the god I’m too old one what is chat room
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey help me out with the
⏹️ ▶️ John other one was sawtooth G4 and the I can’t remember
⏹️ ▶️ John they would sell computers that look like they were in the same case
⏹️ ▶️ John but there was like the good one and the bad one one of them had the the AGP one of them didn’t yeah the
⏹️ ▶️ John chat room will get it from you eventually anyway same thing with the with the power max with the different
⏹️ ▶️ John motherboards and the single CPU versus dual CPU. And that was an interesting strategy
⏹️ ▶️ John because they were all you know, especially in the Mac Pro era is in the Intel era, they were all zions like that. And
⏹️ ▶️ John there was none of them that had the cheaper consumer CPUs with higher single core speeds in there. They were all zions.
⏹️ ▶️ John But they they went way down market like you could you could get the stripper model that
⏹️ ▶️ John had almost all the expandability, sometimes not all the expandability, but almost all the expandability.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then on the outside looked like the same as the other ones, you know, it was in the same
⏹️ ▶️ John case, right? So you felt like you were getting, you know, you didn’t feel like you were getting the lesser thing, but it was
⏹️ ▶️ John considerably less expensive. And I think, uh, given their current design,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is actually possible for Apple to offer
⏹️ ▶️ John a Mac pro like computer for far less money
⏹️ ▶️ John Let’s take it rid of Intel. Because by far the
⏹️ ▶️ John most expensive component that Apple has to pay somebody else for in the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro is the CPU. Like especially when you get them to the big core camps. Intel charges a huge amount of money
⏹️ ▶️ John for those. Everything else, like take out the CPU and just say, okay, what’s left? What’s left in the Mac Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ John The case, obviously expensive with all the machining and everything, but honestly Apple’s really good at machining aluminum. And as expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John as it is, it’s not as much as you might think, especially given Apple’s expertise in this area,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? That is probably the most complicated to manufacture thing. Everything else,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a fairly straightforward motherboard with nothing particularly exotic on it. It’s got a bunch of slots.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s some nice fans. Obviously they’re custom Apple fans we just talked about in the Popular Mechanics of our article. They’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John off the shelf fans, but in the end they’re plastic fans, right? There’s a power supply. It’s probably a good power
⏹️ ▶️ John supply, but you know, like add up the parts that are in there. It’s, there’s nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John particularly expensive. There’s no reason you couldn’t get, like take out the Xeon, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Take the Mac Pro, the base Mac Pro with no Xeon in it. They could sell that computer with no
⏹️ ▶️ John CPU for like 1500 bucks, right? And then you add, you know, a $1500 CPU and it’s $3000. And then you add
⏹️ ▶️ John profit margins, you know, but like imagine now that you have that same thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John but now Apple switched to ARM, right? And they make their own ARM system on a chip type thing in there
⏹️ ▶️ John that is faster than the Xeon ever was. and you know it’s not going to cost Apple and
⏹️ ▶️ John nor will they charge thousands and thousands of dollars for that, because they’ll be making the chip themselves. Like how much
⏹️ ▶️ John does the system on a chip in the iPhone cost, right? The one that’s faster than the one that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John currently in the Mac Pro and single core, right? It is, there’s nothing about that tower
⏹️ ▶️ John that says, Apple cannot offer this product for anything less than four or 5,000. They can absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ John offer that tower for $2,000. They could probably offer that tower for $2,000 with the lowest NZON
⏹️ ▶️ John in it and just barely scrape by. But Xeons have gotten much more expensive over the years
⏹️ ▶️ John as the core counts have increased. Like getting the cheapest CPU,
⏹️ ▶️ John like how much did it cost Apple for the cheapest CPU? It used to be a lot less, right? And so I think when they transition to
⏹️ ▶️ John ARM, it will open up the possibility, not of them making an X-Mac or a smaller mini
⏹️ ▶️ John tower or a thing full of consumer parts that’s upgradable because I think that market is not big enough, but they
⏹️ ▶️ John should be able to take their quote unquote top end line of
⏹️ ▶️ John tower computers, which will probably honestly, if they keep making them be in the same looking case, even though the insides will
⏹️ ▶️ John be entirely different and sell that sell a cheaper model for far less money. Will they want
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that? Is that like what is the advantage of doing that? The advantage, I suppose, is it makes your consumers happy.
⏹️ ▶️ John The disadvantages, Margo’s pointed out, and people would buy computers less often. Uh, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John you would. It would eat into your IMAC pro sales and depending if your margins are or better on the iMac Pro versus the
⏹️ ▶️ John other one. Like, I see it going either way. Like, there is definitely consumer demand
⏹️ ▶️ John for that type of computer, but the total demand of this entire,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the desktop Mac demand thing may be so small that it’s like, why are we trying to slice and dice
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing? Like, you know, the total addressable Mac desktop market is X amount.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we can say, you’re only getting half of that market if you just go high end only.
⏹️ ▶️ John the half that’s left, and that, you know, how much of that is taken up by the Mac mini, now you’ve got an
⏹️ ▶️ John even smaller sliver. I don’t know, like, I think it’s a computer they probably should make,
⏹️ ▶️ John just as sort of an economies of scale, in that like, you’re already making, you already got the tooling for the tower and the motherboard
⏹️ ▶️ John and the chips, and when you add up the materials list without having to pay Intel for the
⏹️ ▶️ John Xeon and all the other stuff, and with Thunderbolt being royalty free and you know, all the other stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John it ends up that you can actually sell this computer for less money. I think Apple will
⏹️ ▶️ John sell it for less money. I just don’t know if they’ll cross the 2000 barrier. Once they don’t have to pay Intel,
⏹️ ▶️ John the base price for the Mac Pro should not be $6,000. It’ll be $4,000. And that’s good. That’s a trend in the right
⏹️ ▶️ John direction. Will they ever get it down to three or 2000? They absolutely could,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t know if their motivation is sufficient for that. So I feel people’s
⏹️ ▶️ John pain, believe me, I feel your pain. I just I feel I feel it perhaps more cuely than you might imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John because you didn’t just order one of these things and don’t fully understand exactly how how
⏹️ ▶️ John poorly it fares against contemporary Macs and phones and iPads and how
⏹️ ▶️ John you know how short its reign might be as a Computer that makes
⏹️ ▶️ John any sense whatsoever That’s all on me But I don’t you know
⏹️ ▶️ John a I don’t blame the computer because you want a hand and you got high-end, right? I just feel like there is there is a donut hole.
⏹️ ▶️ John There is there is a gap there to be filled and there is sort of a price umbrella. Obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no competitors coming in to fill that role than Hackintosh or whatever. But I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve seen a couple of stories to this effect and I’m not sure how much I how much stake I put in them.
⏹️ ▶️ John But like people who are keeping cheese graters like mega upgraded cheese graters, you’ve seen all these stories where it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not getting that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco stinking Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro. I’ve got my 2012, you know, cheese grater Mac Pro and
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve stuffed it to the gills with third party video cards from Nvidia that happens to still
⏹️ ▶️ John have drivers and all these fast SSDs and, you know, look how cheap it is and I’ve been using it for
⏹️ ▶️ John all these years. Those are people who would buy a $2,000 Mac Pro and, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, soup it up themselves or buy third party stuff and they’re keeping that other stuff. So, again, I think that market still
⏹️ ▶️ John is there, I just don’t, not sure how big it is. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I feel those people’s pain. I’m not entirely willing to close the door on it though. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John once we get rid of these Xeons, we may see cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ Marco See, I think you might be overvaluing the cost of the Xeon itself. I mean, certainly in the higher configurations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it becomes more apparent, but if you look at the iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro, which doesn’t have exactly the same series of Xeons in them, but it’s at least in the ballpark.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, look at what the iMac Pro gives you for $1,000 less, but also, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you spec match the one terabyte SSD between the two of them, which, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iMac Pro comes with it, then it’s $1,400 less. And it comes with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitor built in and a webcam. So you figure, if you value the monitor,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, based on the LG costing $1,200, you know, maybe value the monitor at like 800 bucks, what it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually might cost Apple. You’re at over $2,000 of price difference here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compared to the iMac Pro with very similar parts. It’s also a Xeon. It’s also same amount of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco RAM, spec matched to the SSD. If you look at that, you have a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wide gap here. And I think the lowest the Mac Pro could ever go price-wise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if Apple really cared, but while keeping most of the essentials of the current design is nowhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco near $2,000 because just the case and the big steel frame,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the precise machining that goes into that, all the metal, and you know, like, that case alone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is probably at least $500 to make. Yeah, so
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s, when you see the third-party cases, how much the third-party ones cost and how much worse are they than Apple’s? That’s a good
⏹️ ▶️ John judge, because the third-party cases, their retail price, like, so there’s profit margin built into them. You assume
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not as good a quality as Apple’s, but they’re not too terrible. And also, Apple, like I said, is really good
⏹️ ▶️ John at machining aluminum, and there are economies of scale involved here, I think that case costs a lot less than we think it
⏹️ ▶️ John does. A couple hundred bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe, okay, but so suppose the case is like three or 400 bucks, which I think is probably low. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also have this tremendous 1400 watt power supply.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well that’s why the iMac, to your point about the iMac pricing, that’s why it’s cheaper, because when you make something like
⏹️ ▶️ John the iMac, you know exactly what you have to power. You don’t need anything unnecessary, you don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ John to account for anything, both in terms of space, size, slots, traces, plugs,
⏹️ ▶️ John like you know exactly what it’s gonna be. You know all the ports, you know all the stuff that’s ever gonna be inside the thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And so that’s how you can save a lot of money. And even like the monitor, you’re not buying a monitor, you’re buying just the panel. I think the panel
⏹️ ▶️ John costs less than $800 in that thing, right? You get a lot of savings and a lot of extra margin
⏹️ ▶️ John by making an all-in-one that can only do those things, right? But the reason I’m willing to believe that maybe 2000
⏹️ ▶️ John is optimistic because I’m using like, you know, $2,005, right? but remember, Apple got those
⏹️ ▶️ John towers down to $1,600. And so I gotta do the calculator. $1,600 in the early 2000s, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the equivalent of that is now, I think it’s still, I think that’s still possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, even, you look at like, you got like four or 500 bucks for the case at least.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You probably got another few hundred bucks for the power supply, plus all the fans. It’s probably at least 100 bucks for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fans in there. Power supply is 80 bucks. For that large of one with those great, I mean, come on.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not retail price, that’s the price that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know. All right, and then you have the motherboard, which that’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a $1,000 motherboard. No, no. Look at what server boards cost. Look up the price of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Xeon server boards that have that many RAM slots, that many card slots.
⏹️ ▶️ John It may be with the number of slots, but that’s what I’m getting at. Remember they made different boards that went inside
⏹️ ▶️ John their towers? They didn’t all have the 12 slots or whatever. So you make one of those that has half the number of slots in the
⏹️ ▶️ John cheap machine. It’s a thing that they used to do, is it would be in the same case, but there was dual
⏹️ ▶️ John socket versus single socket, and then how many RAM slots, and then how many expansion slots.
⏹️ ▶️ John And those are the levers you can turn to get it cheaper. I
⏹️ ▶️ John always forget about inflation. A lot of people in the Twitter, no one was even taking inflation into account, because they don’t realize how old
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey computers were. But $1,600
⏹️ ▶️ John in 2002 is not $1,600 in 2020. You want it to feel like $1,600, but it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, let’s put it this way, there is plenty of room for the base price
⏹️ ▶️ John to go down from $6,000. And I think there’s even more room once the CPU costs Apple 80 bucks instead of 800.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I would ballpark that at more like a $4,000 target, not a $2,000 target. I’ll compromise
⏹️ ▶️ John We figured it out for you, Tim, $3,000. $3,499 for the base Mac Pro with an ARM CPU in 2024.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think, and quickly, Unitron in the chat brings
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up a good point. They say like, you know, I mean, they can make a lower end case too. Yeah. And that’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like a lot of these expenses that Apple has taken on are optional. And some of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is stuff we were talking about earlier, like, you know, display calibration, where some of it is stuff that really matters to us.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Some of it is stuff that they just are kind of indulging themselves in nice design for the sake
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of nice design. You know, a lot of the case design is that for sure. A lot of that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, we know that we can charge a lot of money for this. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we are going to design it with a much larger budget for industrial design and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco physical aspects than some of the other models maybe like you know, when they’re designing the case for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Air, they have to actually to be concerned about all the little details
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the costs of that case, because that’s a low-end product that has to sell for a value price.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The margins are much slimmer in general, and it’s really a value-conscious audience and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they sell way more of them. The Mac Pro, they can be like, F it, put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever you want in the case, make the case out of gold. They probably give the industrial designers of that product a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much larger amount of free reign to do whatever they want to make something really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice because they aren’t even trying to bother hitting a price point with this product.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do wonder about those because I feel like the quality of the Mac Mini’s case, maybe that’s not a great example because the Mac Mini is
⏹️ ▶️ John so expensive now, but I don’t see any particular difference in the quality of the Mac Mini’s case and the quality
⏹️ ▶️ John of the Air’s case and the quality of the Cheese Grid or the current Mac Pro. There is the materials
⏹️ ▶️ John cost and the exact number of machined holes. Like there is sort of the labor cost where it’s obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John more labor intensive and therefore expensive and time consuming to drill all those holes. But the tolerances
⏹️ ▶️ John I bet on the Mac mini are the same as the tolerances on the Mac Pro. Like that’s just the Apple thing that they do with
⏹️ ▶️ John these particular materials. And if anything, the old strategy of making
⏹️ ▶️ John all of the Mac pros to be in that cheese grater case, it’s like the stupid keyboard thing and it’s actually cheaper for Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John to never make a smaller tower. It’s part of the reason the X Mac has never come because that market small and it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John do we really want to make a smaller tower? Can’t we just take our existing tower case and put less stuff in it, and that’s always
⏹️ ▶️ John what they did. They just took their
⏹️ ▶️ John towers that they had already designed, and sometimes you’d open them up, you’re like, ooh, there’s a lot of empty space in this
⏹️ ▶️ John one. It’s like, yeah, you got the cheap one. This thing is made to hold twice as many CPUs
⏹️ ▶️ John and twice as many RAM slots and a bigger power supply, and it’s just cheaper. I just don’t feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re ever going to make the mini tower, because that would be like a whole new dedicated computer. Even the iMac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro, they didn’t want to make a new case. In the inside, it’s all different, but on the outside, it’s the same proportions.
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, I think you could make that case $10 less expensive by making a mini tower, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you’d incur so much more cost by making an entirely new computer that the this is what I’m saying. The only the only thing I can
⏹️ ▶️ John see Apple ever doing is when they change to arm, take whatever the current high
⏹️ ▶️ John end cases and put less and cheaper things inside that exact same case because
⏹️ ▶️ John there is plenty of room in there to, you know, sort of play around and leave some empty space. You know, have
⏹️ ▶️ John eight RAM slots instead of 12 have four PCI slots instead of eight have the same stupid case
⏹️ ▶️ John with a bunch of like when you buy cars with this the little blank panels where you didn’t buy the options. That’s what’s on. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what’s on the back of the this lower end computer in 2024. What did I say? $3499 $299 in 2024 with an
⏹️ ▶️ John arm CPU. There you go. That’s that’s my I planted my flag.
#askatp: Apple TV vs. smart TV
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some Ask ATP. Zach wants to know, and this is actually something that I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been thinking about as well, do I still need to use my Apple TV if I’ve got a smart TV with AirPlay 2.0 support?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m trying to understand the value of the hardware when it seems like the TV can do it all now. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have had similar thoughts, what with my new TV, and it has Disney Plus built in, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has a Plex app built in, it has Netflix and YouTube and so many other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things that I tend to use my Apple TV for. And I have a 1080p
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple TV and I have a 4K TV now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and so it seems like I should probably upgrade to the 4K Apple TV. But do I need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to? And the conclusion I came to is that, yeah, for the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things that I use my Apple TV for, which is a lot of AirPlay, which my TV can do natively but is slightly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more flaky than the Apple TV. For Plex, the app is way better on the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey TV than it is on the TV itself. For so much of this stuff, it just seems like I personally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would prefer to do that on an Apple TV, but I don’t know that I would say it’s absolutely essential
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anymore for the most part. John, I have a feeling that you have the most strong opinion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this. What do you think? John
⏹️ ▶️ John Greenewald There is sometimes an advantage to using the the apps that are built into your television.
⏹️ ▶️ John They have the possibility of having more of a direct line to your display,
⏹️ ▶️ John which you would think wouldn’t make any difference, because, you know, shouldn’t it be the same thing? I’m coming in, I have a device connection,
⏹️ ▶️ John HD of iPod versus the built-in ones, but sometimes there actually is a difference, whether that be in terms of input lag
⏹️ ▶️ John or in terms of getting the full capabilities of display in terms of color gamut and
⏹️ ▶️ John frame rates and everything. With the Apple TV, some of the limitations third parties that are at war
⏹️ ▶️ John with Apple in various ways. It could mean that like the YouTube app on Apple TV cannot display four cage dr
⏹️ ▶️ John but the built in app on your television can those are the reasons you would use the built in ones that they
⏹️ ▶️ John for reasons for political or technological reasons they they perform better
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of capabilities uh displaying you know video than
⏹️ ▶️ John third party ones now in all other ways they tend to perform worse as in the UI is slower,
⏹️ ▶️ John the CPU inside your television is slower than the one on the Apple TV. Like they’re, they’re jankier. The app
⏹️ ▶️ John is not updated as often, you know, it’s buggy, all those other reasons where you want to avoid the internal ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, but I do want to say that sometimes there is a reason to use the builtin one. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s worth checking out. Now, if you buy a very expensive, supposedly
⏹️ ▶️ John fancy 4k Apple TV, um, in theory, what you’re getting are
⏹️ ▶️ John a much wider selection of apps, way more responsive applications, sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John more features. If this is the case, sometimes the third party app is updated
⏹️ ▶️ John frequently and the Apple TV 4k supports HDR and Dolby Vision and all those other things and maybe the built-in one
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t. And if the built-in one doesn’t, chances are it never will because it’s not going to get updated that frequently, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think there’s no great answer here. Obviously, if you’re trying to save some money, just use all the built
⏹️ ▶️ John in stuff, it will probably be fine. But it’s not, there’s no,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t just go one direction and say, well, I’m just only going to use Apple TV or only going to use the built in ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you really want the best experience, you have to take it on a case by case app by app basis, which is terrible and which no,
⏹️ ▶️ John nobody wants to deal with. But that’s the unfortunate reality of television. I don’t see that changing
⏹️ ▶️ John anytime soon because TV makers are not motivated to update their applications as frequently.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re They’re not courting developers as hard as Apple is. But on the other hand, Apple is always on the outside looking in. They don’t make the
⏹️ ▶️ John televisions, despite all those rumors in those years ago. They interface with it
⏹️ ▶️ John through an HDMI port and they do the best they can. But for things like YouTube not supporting 4K,
⏹️ ▶️ John like that’s a political thing, not a technical thing. And it just so happens that
⏹️ ▶️ John Sony and LG have a better relationship with YouTube than Apple does. And there’s no weird app store policies
⏹️ ▶️ John between them. And so your built-in app probably shows YouTube in 4K and your Apple One doesn’t, and that’s a bummer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this question becomes a lot easier in a theoretical world where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Apple TV is good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Aw, come on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Unfortunately, the Apple TV is okay. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there are ways in which the Apple TV is bad. There are ways in which the built-in apps on your TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are bad. As John mentioned, they usually have worse UIs. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost never get updated. They oftentimes have weird control
⏹️ ▶️ Marco schemes and everything. They will just feel kind of gross because they’re gonna feel just kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like Android apps or whatever, or webOS apps, whatever that even is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so they also have, there’s a substantial difference in privacy risk between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the two. TV manufacturers typically will do really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco creepy stuff with the data about what you’re watching to make more money from you after the sale,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is one of the reasons why I recommend setting up your smart TV, giving it its software updates through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ethernet, and then unplugging it, and never connecting it to Wi-Fi, never giving it your Wi-Fi password,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because then you control whether it has connectivity or not. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Apple TV is way better on the privacy front, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sometimes better in the interface front, but worse with things like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remote, worse with a lot of the reliability of the software,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certainly worse if you ever wanna do things like, I don’t know, buy TV series
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Apple’s products from Apple. For some reason, it seems like no one ever does this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that designs these things. But anyway, there’s all sorts of weird bugs with tvOS that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still hit on a regular basis. And the Apple TV hardware itself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t seem particularly well made. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had the Apple TV unit itself tend to last only about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe two or three years before they die on average. Or start flaking out in really weird ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And by the way, it’s very expensive for what it is. They still do that stupid thing where they have 32
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and 64 gig configurations of the Apple TV. which I think is getting to the point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of unconscionable that they even make you make that choice and still charge more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the 64. Oh, it’s embarrassing. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ultimately, they’re both mediocre in different ways, and you got to pick which one is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco non-mediocre in the ways that matter most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to you, and pick from there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Some of them, let me back up a half step. The remote can be used kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Wii remote, you know, so it has like almost a mouse cursor and you can wave it in the air.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Oh, I hate that so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much. I actually don’t mind it on this, believe it or not. It’s pretty well implemented,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but nevertheless, some of the apps support like mouse mode and some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of them don’t, and some of them do like halfway. Like Plex seems to support it, but you can tell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not really designed for it. Disney Plus does does not support it at all. YouTube, I think, supports
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it reasonably well, if I’m not mistaken. And so there’s a lot, all of this to say, there’s a lot of inconsistency
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between the different apps within the platform where you would not see that on an Apple TV. Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I understand that everyone hates the remote, but at least the interfaces are fairly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey consistent between apps. Yes, I know everyone’s going to say, well, what about this? What about that? Just the point is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the most part, they’re fairly consistent. And so there is a lot to be said for living in that Apple world
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you’re the kind of person who would even consider an Apple TV.
#askatp: Background refresh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Adam Jeffrey writes, I’m confused how background app refresh is meant to work. I have it turned on for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey overcast, but it doesn’t fetch and auto-download podcast episodes overnight. Are there iOS limitations to doing this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, and they are not well documented and the conditions change over time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So basically, background app refresh tells
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS to permit the app to update itself in the the background under certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco conditions sometimes. And many people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t understand this very well for a good reason because it’s not really explained.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The system will decide how often to refresh your app. Like the way the API works is like you basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco register with the system and say, I want background time this often for,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or at most this often, and then you get called back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you can perform a task for a short time, then you can go away. Now, the conditions for this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are often opaque, but generally speaking, it will let apps background
⏹️ ▶️ Marco refresh more often when they are plugged into power, like when they’re charging overnight,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it will let them background refresh more if the battery level is high.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the things that will affect this is if you run in low power mode,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco background refresh, I think, almost never, or never happens in low power mode. And a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco run their phone in low power mode all the time, just as a habit, because they need the battery life or whatever. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re running in low power mode, basically you’re almost never gonna get background refresh.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Another thing that has changed over time is in some versions of iOS, if you would,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quote, quit the app out of the multitasking switcher, it wouldn’t background refresh anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco To the best of my knowledge, that’s no longer the case. I know that wasn’t the case, I think, for most of iOS 12. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before that it might have been. Anyway, it changed sometime in the last couple of years. But I think that doesn’t matter anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Another thing that has changed dramatically is that in iOS 13, apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get way less time in the background than they used to. When you are called for background
⏹️ ▶️ Marco refresh for, or when you’re doing background task completion, in iOS 13, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get something like, I think 90 seconds of maximum time, whereas before you could take up to 10 minutes most of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. So there’s all sorts of restrictions. And the thing is, these conditions change over time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They get more stringent usually over time, and you get fewer and fewer resources as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple tries to crack down on abuse and tries to optimize for battery life. So yeah, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complicated is the answer.
#askatp: Storing old email
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Combo Twist writes, I have about 150,000 messages in Gmail that I’d like to archive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey offline. Do you have any advice? The nominal value of old email being available online feels outweighed by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the risk of a hack a la Sony and Google’s skeevy peeping. How does the developer community
⏹️ ▶️ John So one way to get your email out of Gmail is to use a non-Gmail client, like whatever your
⏹️ ▶️ John email client of choice is, and then use POP to get it out of Gmail. So then you will pull down that mail from
⏹️ ▶️ John Gmail into your other email client. then all you’ve done is got it in a second proprietary format
⏹️ ▶️ John depending on what format your email client uses. So if you’re really interested in preserving your email,
⏹️ ▶️ John the best solution is to use Google’s fairly good sort of export functionality, where you can,
⏹️ ▶️ John what you wanna do is you wanna get your email in a plain text format, and they call it M-box format
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, like that’s what you want. You want essentially text files, because although it’s not particularly useful to
⏹️ ▶️ John you to have massive text files, that format is the sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John best interchange format, because if you get all the mail headers that are provided to you, you’re sort of preserving the
⏹️ ▶️ John maximum amount of information. Then in theory, you can import that into any other
⏹️ ▶️ John future email client because an email client should understand plain text email because that is the
⏹️ ▶️ John format of email. You got a bunch of headers and a body and everything else or whatever. So that’s what I would suggest. Either
⏹️ ▶️ John use a second email client if you don’t mind having in a second proprietary format, or if you have an email
⏹️ ▶️ John client that itself uses a plain text format, Or maybe in addition to that,
⏹️ ▶️ John export your email from Gmail. We’ll put a link in the show notes to Google’s data export page.
⏹️ ▶️ John In general, most Google products give you a way to extract your data in a non-proprietary format.
⏹️ ▶️ John You should take advantage of those things and do it. Same thing with Twitter, by the way. Twitter will give you a dump of all your tweets in a weird
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of JSON format with a cool local web view thing. Take advantage of that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do it on a periodic basis. Put it on your calendar. Do it once a year or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just use Mail app, you know, Mail.app on everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some people find that to be barbaric. I don’t care enough about email to have any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John problem with it. Are you
⏹️ ▶️ John using IMAP to Gmail with the Mail app?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I was. Now I think it’s all quote unquote native. I’m sure under the hood it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey IMAP, but when I sign into my Gmail account using system preferences,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I tick the email checkbox, very a la iOS from day one, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I tick the Gmail checkbox and then mail.app just magically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey understands how to talk to
⏹️ ▶️ John Gmail. I think it’s using IMO. I worry about those things where it’s like an online thing where
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s reflecting changes in Gmail because then if you go into Gmail and accidentally delete everything and then launch mail
⏹️ ▶️ John or mail is running, it will reflect the deletion. That’s why pop is sort of the disconnected thing. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not really a backup if you accidentally delete it, it gets deleted from all the places. So, POP
⏹️ ▶️ John or a data export is the way to actually preserve your mail, as opposed to the way you’re using
⏹️ ▶️ John or reading your mail.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin Agreed, but you should also note that most mail programs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or applications, when they connect to a server via POP, they will default to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey delete this once I’ve downloaded it. Because POP, from my experience anyway, comes from an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey era of I have one single device that downloads email. And so, it would connect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to your email server via POP, it would get whatever the new email is, and it would immediately delete it off the server
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because that is your one computer and that is the only place you ever check your email. You have no phone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is capable of checking email, there’s no such thing as an iPad, you don’t have a laptop, or this is your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey laptop that we’re talking about, and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. The email server was merely holding your mail temporarily while it waited for you to come
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get it. Yeah, it was like an answering machine, right? Which of course, kids these days don’t understand either, but nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s the way way, that was my experience with pop up until I can remember
⏹️ ▶️ John call it like you said, everyone has multiple device now anything that does pop. I don’t think it will default to
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And sometimes they don’t even have the option to leave it off the server anymore. So yes, obviously, you know, choose not to delete
⏹️ ▶️ John the message off the server when you pull it down from pop. And then your any decent pop
⏹️ ▶️ John client will keep track of what it’s already fetched. You can also fetch date windows like there’s a special pop address where you
⏹️ ▶️ John could fetch from Gmail that it only looks at a 30 day window for for performance reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, do look for that setting, but I don’t even recall seeing a
⏹️ ▶️ John delete from server option in a lot of POP clients, they just default to leaving it on the server because they understand that we live in this
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of multi-tenant world. Same thing with the inbox export, it won’t delete all your mail when you export
⏹️ ▶️ John it, you’ll just get a big dump.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe mail.app supports deleting from the server. Now I am not saying it’s the default,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I’m almost positive it certainly supports
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it has to, it’s part of POP. Like you might have a POP account just some random, you know, whatever, right. But
⏹️ ▶️ John for Gmail, um, in particular, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a delete from Gmail and popping,
⏹️ ▶️ John I suppose if it follows the pop protocol, it has to allow it, but yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t want to do that. Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, ExpressVPN, and Linode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we will talk to you next…
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental. John
⏹️ ▶️ John research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him, cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. It was accidental. And you can find the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ John at atp.fm. And if you’re into Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Auntie Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse
The Leftovers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, the internet has told me, or had told me over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the last few months slash weeks, that The Leftovers is a TV show worth watching.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I… But over the last
⏹️ ▶️ John few months or weeks?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John sometimes… We
⏹️ ▶️ John were telling you on rectifs years ago.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Well, yeah, but… Is that why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I… Fine, fine. Copyright 2011, John Syracuse, everyone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway… Isn’t that where you first heard about the show, from me and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Merlin? Yes, I’m sure it is where I first heard about it, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I’ve listened to every Rectifs, but I don’t think I paid much attention to it at that point.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it was when Merlin, I guess, did his 75th rewatch or something. And it came up a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Dubai Friday. And then I believe watching the pilot was a challenge
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recently on Dubai Friday. And that’s when I started really paying attention to it. And so I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey watched the, uh, first episode and it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, again, I’m trying not to spoil anything. It is extremely intense
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the moment the episode starts to the point that I almost turned it off in the first couple of minutes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cause I was like, wow, this is more than I realized I was bargaining for. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I watched the entire show, which is what three, uh, seasons. Is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? twenty five twenty four twenty five episodes in total. I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey absolutely riveted by it. I am not sure I enjoyed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. I don’t know. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John know what to think about the wire. Wasn’t that a no no
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco is Marco saying he’s watching the shows and he recognizes they’re good, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it’s making him so I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know that wasn’t the one I love the wire. No, I was talking about breaking bad. Oh yeah, there you go. It was one of those yeah watching breaking bad like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I enjoy breaking bad, but it was very stressful to watch and really was a
⏹️ ▶️ John downer. So Sounds like Casey might have had a similar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey leftovers. Well, I watched Breaking Bad and had a very similar experience. Like I was riveted by Breaking Bad. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey loved Breaking Bad, but it was not an upper. It was a downer to Marco’s point. Like it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey definitely did not make me feel good about my light. Well, I guess it did by comparison. You know what I mean? Like I didn’t, I wasn’t feeling super
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chipper after I watched an episode of Breaking Bad, but I loved Breaking Bad. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey loved it, loved it, loved it. So I watched all three seasons of Leftovers and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I definitely was mesmerized by it. I just really don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know if I liked it and I don’t know what to make of that. And also the ending,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no spoilers, the ending I felt like I got everything I wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from it and then I think I went back and listened to you and Merlin talking about the last season like weeks after you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had finished watching it. And you guys had a very different interpretation of the ending and I felt like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it ruined it. So now I hate you.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that’s so, you know, it’s, it’s made by Damon Lindelof
⏹️ ▶️ John who also did lost and also did watchmen. Um, and as I’m listening to the watchman podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John where he talks about that series and as he, he’s, he’s very self-aware like, uh, in the context
⏹️ ▶️ John of watchmen, he was like in the beginning of watchmen, there’s lots of confusing things that are happening. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the person who was on the podcast with him, I think it was Craig Mazin, the guy at Chernobyl, anyway, he’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, lots of weird stuff going on. Is this all going to be explained in just this one season of television?
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s a question that people ask him a lot, because a lot of stuff in Lost was presented
⏹️ ▶️ John and then not really paid off or not explained, or not explained for a long period of time. So you kind of got the reputation
⏹️ ▶️ John for someone who throws weird stuff out there, and then just it never gets paid off. And you’re just like, well, what
⏹️ ▶️ John was that thing? Are we ever going to find out what the thing is? Do you not care? Is this all just meaningless stuff? Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, and so leftover is, is, has, has a similar vibe where
⏹️ ▶️ John you might be forgiven for thinking like, oh, there’s lots of weird stuff. Well, it has a little off. He’s never going to explain any of this stuff where it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John going to make any sense. And as, as he points out on the podcast, he has a reputation, under reputation, his,
⏹️ ▶️ John his tolerance for endings for MB, ambiguity and endings is perhaps higher than the
⏹️ ▶️ John average persons, I think is how we put it. Right? So he said in the watchman thing, don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John worry. by the end of this thing, I will have explained everything and have a satisfying ending. But then he amended
⏹️ ▶️ John that by saying, well, it’ll be satisfying to me,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey but my experience has shown that what
⏹️ ▶️ John I considered to be a satisfying ending is not necessarily the same thing as everybody else considers to be a
⏹️ ▶️ John satisfying ending. Right? So I think the left there was false into that. Like I’m mostly on the same
⏹️ ▶️ John page with him in terms of, I think my estimation of a satisfying ending
⏹️ ▶️ John is similar to his, but Casey, it sounds like you would like things to be a little bit more nailed down
⏹️ ▶️ John than either of us, which is understandable. And if that’s the case, maybe leftovers isn’t the show for you.
⏹️ ▶️ John But because the ending can support so many different interpretations, I feel like if you’ve got your interpretation that
⏹️ ▶️ John you like, then that’s yours and just hang on to
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that. It’s no more right or wrong
⏹️ ▶️ John than my interpretation or Merlin’s interpretation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sure, I think, without spoiling the the two kind of approaches are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can take the fairly direct read that what was presented to you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is exactly what happened. Or, and that’s how I took it, or you can take the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s more to this than meets the eye read. And again, I know that’s very, very oblique. Hopefully, John, you’re understanding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John what I’m saying. No, I know what you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talking about. I was very satisfied by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the ending as it was presented and if I took it as at face value.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it reminded me a lot of my recollection of the Tale of Two Cities in high
⏹️ ▶️ Casey school. Now hear me out for a second. I read the Tale of Two Cities in high school, as so many of us did, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s the one with the best of times, worst of times, right? I’m thinking of the right thing. And it was in London or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco like that. That’s a reference.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, I read that and I didn’t particularly enjoy the book until the very end. I don’t even remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how it ended, but I remember thinking at the end of it, you know what? Actually, that was pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I felt like I got that from the take it as it’s presented ending of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Leftovers. And then I listened to you and Merlin talking about it, and you guys,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it’s fair to say, took, or at least you, John, took a different take on that ending. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you read deeper into that ending than I did. And I am dissatisfied by that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ending, and I don’t want to believe in it. So I don’t know. It was just, it was a very
⏹️ ▶️ John show. My interpretation fits very well, I think, with the rest of the show,
⏹️ ▶️ John Which is a lot, as you noted, kind of a downer. Yeah, for sure.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I will say for the Lindelof fans, if you go the progression of like Lost, The Leftovers,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then Watchmen, progressively each one has
⏹️ ▶️ John gotten sort of tighter in terms of more things are paid off, more things make
⏹️ ▶️ John sense, more things, I mean, in some respects are easier to sort of predict
⏹️ ▶️ John or understand, right? To the point where I would say, like, Watchmen,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s only nine episodes and they’ve just done the one season of it. They might do another season or whatever, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Watchmen pays off pretty much everything, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think whatever reputation he had based on lost is now unfair. And now I think he is
⏹️ ▶️ John at least as demonstrated by Watchmen, making shows where all the pieces eventually fall into place.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you’re worried about that, you know, the problem with Watchmen is you do have to have read the comic first
⏹️ ▶️ John for it to really make sense. But assuming you’ve read the comic because it is a kind of a sequel to that,
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t worry about all the weird stuff that’s thrown in your face. It all makes
⏹️ ▶️ John sense and fits together by the end of the nine episodes and the leftovers. I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John it all makes sense at the end of three seasons and fits together. It’s just that
⏹️ ▶️ John the once you got all the pieces of that puzzle, once you see the picture of the puzzle makes that picture
⏹️ ▶️ John is a sad, unsatisfying picture. But that’s that’s left
⏹️ ▶️ John ring endorsement. That’s the point of the show. Like, and if that’s, that’s why I feel like it’s not a show for
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of people, because if you’re not, if you’re not into that vibe, like there’s two ways you can come with leftovers. One,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re sort of into that whole vibe of just, you know, I don’t want to ruin it, but the general theme of the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John And two, if you’re very into just sort of the the inner
⏹️ ▶️ John turmoil of some interesting people, like all the people in leftovers have various problems that they’re battling
⏹️ ▶️ John with. There are the external problems of the plot of the show, but there’s always their own internal problems to varying degrees.
⏹️ ▶️ John And those degrees go up very, very high in terms of personal problems. Again, not ruining
⏹️ ▶️ John anything, but like some of the lead characters that show have real serious problems
⏹️ ▶️ John like not kidding, not funny base an entire season around the their problems.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you find that satisfying to sort of be in that world and, you know, struggle with those
⏹️ ▶️ John people, leftovers delivers more of that than like any other series. It’s similar to Breaking Bad. And like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John again, the main character Breaking Bad has some real serious issues that only
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco as the series goes on. It’s an understatement of the year right
⏹️ ▶️ John there. You’re right. That crank up to a degree that you would never have predicted in the beginning. Because you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, it’s right there in the title. Oh, Breaking Bad. Oh, look, but then, like, no, you don’t even
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey know. Like, you don’t even understand where this is
⏹️ ▶️ John going to go. And like, as the show goes on, you’re like, oh, my god. The Leftovers does that
⏹️ ▶️ John in a similar way with a different direction and only three seasons. But
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, that’s the kind of show it is. I think it is incredibly well made and has some amazing performances
⏹️ ▶️ John and has some things and some scenes and plot developments to really stick with me. And it’s really like
⏹️ ▶️ John good television, like movie quality television, as we used to say back before television was
⏹️ ▶️ John was really very good. In particular, the opening episode of season two is one of the best openings to a second season
⏹️ ▶️ John of a show ever. Just because if you watch season one, you’re like, Where the hell can they go with this? And then season
⏹️ ▶️ John two opens, you’re like, What? What the what? And
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it’s they eventually get it all hanging
⏹️ ▶️ John together. Amazing and brave and interesting and great performances. And
⏹️ ▶️ John some of the same actors that were in Leftovers also appear in Watchmen. So it’s part of the Lindelof averse.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Lee I will say that the pivots in season two and three, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trying not to spoil anything, but particularly the adventures that the main character goes on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The the the super special adventures, hopefully you’re picking up what I’m putting down, John.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did not expect to buy into that at all. But I ate it up like This is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that was the moment when he goes on these extraordinary adventures. That was the moment where normally I’d
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be like Yeah, okay. No i’m out but somehow It
⏹️ ▶️ John and this is because the whole the whole vibe of the thing is, you know It’s not too much of a spoiler to say that
⏹️ ▶️ John mental illness is a factor in the show Yeah, and once you have that and that’s your point
⏹️ ▶️ John of view character You’re willing to accept a lot of what would otherwise be bs because you’re like well this
⏹️ ▶️ John person is is having some I’m having some issues right now and if I’m seeing through their eyes
⏹️ ▶️ John it kind of makes sense things that things are a little bit messed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up. Yeah. It was it was good. I am glad I watched it. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t either. So the difference between this and Breaking Bad to me was that Breaking Bad had that like tangible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey visceral just stress and angst and and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey concern in every single episode. Like how is it possible that these characters
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who I both love and hate all at the same time How are they going to get through this next thing? And then with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey each increasing episode, as both of you just said, with each increasing, with each new episode in Breaking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Bad, it just got more, more stressful and, and, uh, I don’t know what’s going to happen. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t get that from The Leftovers in the same
⏹️ ▶️ John was. Leftovers is existential. Like it is, is a, it is like an undercurrent under everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so no matter what’s going on, there is this existential dread that you can, that you can’t get your hands on. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the, that’s the whole
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show. Yeah. So it was very good. I am definitely glad I saw it. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know that I would re-watch it necessarily, or certainly not anytime soon. But having never seen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Lost, and I don’t think I’ve seen any of Lindelof’s other stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John head. Well, you’re about to watch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Watchmen, right? Well, yeah. So I was going to say, that’s a perfect segue. Thank you. That I have also been told
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by the entire Internet, most especially by Friday. Apparently I’m just a – I’m a Cox’s cuck if there ever was one. Well, anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve been told by the internet that I need to read and or watch The Watchman, and so I just finished
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the graphic novel. This was the first time I read it. And I’m about halfway through the movie. I’m sorry, John, I’m doing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it in Merlin style, like 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there, 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there. Why are you watching the movie
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at all? Because I feel like it’s a piece of media in the universe that existed prior
⏹️ ▶️ John show. Yeah, but if you read the comic, I mean, what you’re watching now is, hey, I wonder how someone adapted this
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey comic to the movie.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is immaterial to the television show. You could just jump straight from the comic to the TV show, skip the movie. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not, it’s fine to watch it, I suppose, but it’s the, the, the television show follows the comic, not
⏹️ ▶️ John the movie. So every difference there is between the movie and the comic, discard the movie version. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the comic that the television show follows.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, so far I feel like the movie is tracking pretty closely with the comic,
⏹️ ▶️ John the it’s the end where it changes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’ll see. Okay, fair enough. comic within the comic, which was fine
⏹️ ▶️ John novel. Paul Matzko, Jr. Yeah, no, it’s terrible in the movie. I would have said to get the theatrical cut instead of the quote-unquote ultimate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Matzko, Jr. Oh, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John too late now. Paul
⏹️ ▶️ John Matzko, Jr. At least you know where that comic is coming from because you read the, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it’s… Paul Matzko,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jr. Yeah, I don’t think it fits at all in the movie,
⏹️ ▶️ John Paul Matzko, Jr. It does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not. Paul Matzko, Jr. Whatever. Paul Matzko, Jr. It does not. Paul Matzko, Jr. In any case, I am anxious to start watching the TV show because