409: Midrange Snob
17 Dec 2020AirPods Max review, whether Chrome might be bad, and living the ultra… fine lifestyle.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- Group MMS issues persist, and Casey is over. it. (FB8893003)
- AirPods Max and its competitors
- Beoplay H95
- Marco’s Closed Headphones Mega-Review
- AirPods Max button and varying modes
- Passive (powerLiss operation)
- Marco’s Computing Situation
- Marco’s AirPods Max review
- Chrome is Bad?
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Chapters
- John’s indulgences
- Group MMS isn’t fixed
- B&O H95
- Sponsor: Mack Weldon (code atppodcast)
- AirPods Max “Off” mode
- Ultra… fine
- Sponsor: Flatfile
- AirPods Max review
- Sponsor: Linode
- Chrome is bad?
- Ending theme
- Post-show
John’s indulgences
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is it only Sprite on those rare once a decade occasions that you treat yourself or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is 7-Up acceptable?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh 7-Up is well do in a pinch but not really. I mean, I like
⏹️ ▶️ John 7-Up I do I like it But it’s it’s like saying is it just chocolate or vanilla like I like both of them
⏹️ ▶️ John But when you want vanilla and you get chocolate you’re like, oh, but I wanted vanilla, right? So even though they look the same
⏹️ ▶️ John and people will say they taste kind of the same, you know Anyway, I have no Sprite or 7-Up in the
⏹️ ▶️ John house and I never do. What about Sierra mist? Oh, good
⏹️ ▶️ John That is garbage and maybe you could use it to clean something. I don’t know Wow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so I’m sorry you said seven up if you
⏹️ ▶️ John can I mean, I don’t know it depends on what mood I’m in Right. It’s like secondly. Yeah. Well chocolate if you can otherwise vanilla
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes you want vanilla smells you want chocolate I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trying to nail you down. You’re not letting me
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I’m not don’t have strong feelings about drink a drink that I almost never drink like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remember This is the only thing you don’t have strong feelings about John Syracuse
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, here’s the thing. The only reason I’m known for this drink is because when I go out to a restaurant
⏹️ ▶️ John and, you know, either the thing comes with a drink or I don’t want to just have water because
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re doing everything fancy. I have to pick something to drink that’s not water. And when
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m at home, I’m not forced to make that choice. I just have water all the time. Whatever makes you happy, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John I used to have milk, but that’s got too many calories and not good for your cholesterol. So. Well, almond milk, man.
⏹️ ▶️ John Come on. Again, maybe if I need to clean something. Wow. Wow,
⏹️ ▶️ John almond milk is good. Come on, man. If you listen to the milk episode of Top Four, none of those so-called
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, yeah, they’re all just different forms of sugar and starch, but yeah, almond milk would be also a terrible choice to clean
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it’s like skin so soft where you’re trying to get the sticker scum off where it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John slimy that it’ll make the sticky stuff not stick. It’s like an oily thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John On the milk, you can’t even clean with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Golly. Alright, we don’t have time to kill, John. We have to hurry it up.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re the one who’s pressing me on my choice of drink. I have a glass of water next to me on a different level than my
⏹️ ▶️ John computer’s. What else is new?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a water bottle directly behind my keyboard and a glass full
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of ice that is prepared for later that is sitting to the right of my Magic Trackpad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I have a giant 20 ounce bottle of Howes Black Cherry Seltzer sitting on my desk at the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco level as most of my gear Except for my MacBook Air which is on top of a speaker which is running this entire operation through my LG
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 5k ultra-fine monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh man, we’re gonna get to that, but let’s not get there yet. All right.
Group MMS isn’t fixed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would like to re-air my grievance, and I will be very quick about it. Erin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is still having intermittent SMS, or really group
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MMS issues. Please, Apple, for the sake of my marriage, please, can we fix
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this for real this time? You sort of fixed it in, what was it, like 14.1 something, and then 14.3 or whatever just came
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out. It was like, no, no, no, we fixed it for realsies this time. Literally an hour ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey She was not receiving group MMSs. I filed a feedback before you all get angry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Feedback FB 8 8 9 3 0 0 3. There will be a link in the show notes. Apple people, please save me. Save
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me. Aaron is so over this and I am almost as bad as she is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is ridiculous. This is a communication device that doesn’t communicate. Please fix this. Thank you!
B&O H95
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, tell me about B&O headphones.
⏹️ ▶️ John These are Bang & Olufsen headphones that I mentioned in the last show that are sort of like AirPods Max. And I think it’s an interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John comparison because Bang & Olufsen is a similar kind of like luxury fancy brand. And in
⏹️ ▶️ John fact, the appearance and construction is very similar, you know, metal or the appearance of metal. And,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, they even have a white model with the white pads and white strap and everything looks kind of AirPodi. So these
⏹️ ▶️ John are the B-O play, God, I really don’t like, I understand where they’re going with B&O, B-O, but it’s B-E-O-P-L-A-Y.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a bad name. Anyway, the Beoplay H95s. They are $800, as you
⏹️ ▶️ John would imagine from Bang & Olufsen. It’s like a little step up in terms of price from Apple because Bang & Olufsen is clearly
⏹️ ▶️ John a luxury brand. It doesn’t have any pretense of being a real consumer brand. They’re 323 grams instead of 385 like the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John So a little bit lighter, but they do have metal on them. I’ll put a link in the show notes to these.
⏹️ ▶️ John They come with the hard case and they are symmetrically folding, but they do fold
⏹️ ▶️ John the ear cups into the negative space made by the headband. So they get smaller than the Apple ones,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they come with a hard case. Two things that Apple chose not to do and or blew it
⏹️ ▶️ John on including, depending on your stance on it. And they come with a regular 3.5 inch, 3.5 inch, 3.5
⏹️ ▶️ John millimeter audio cable thing, plus the two prong little airplane headphone
⏹️ ▶️ John plus a USB C to A, what looks like C to A charging cable. And Bang & Olufsen makes
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of different models. They make this $800 one. They also make a $300 one and a $500 one, which drop various amounts of features from the $800
⏹️ ▶️ John one. So this is a very direct competitor
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of pricing, feature set, and aesthetics. They gets a bunch of things right that Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t. By the way, I think this fancy one also, like the entire outside of the ear cup is like a giant dial.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it even gets the physical controls right. I believe that’s a swiping thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it actually turns. I don’t know. Most of B&O’s headphones, they have like touch panel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco controls, which frankly, I’ve tried a bunch. People keep asking me about whether I’ve tried the H95s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and B&O made a wonderful wired headphone. The H6 second gen was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of my favorite wired headphones ever, but I have tried almost all of their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bluetooth models up to about two years ago, and they were all garbage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me. And I couldn’t believe that the company that made that amazing wired H6 second gen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could then never follow it up with anything that sounded nearly as good as it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in their wireless segment. And they’ve always had really finicky controls. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they have more premium materials than what Apple’s going for.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they are, by some tastes, including mine, I think more attractive than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the AirPods Max. But, you know, I see what they’re going for, but as far as I know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have not yet made a great sounding wireless headphone. But I have not yet tried this model. but honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they burned so much credibility with me over the years that I would not drop $800 to buy this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if I thought I could easily return it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, that’s kind of the bang and olsen thing, is they’re always going to be overpriced for what you get. Like, that’s their whole brand. In
⏹️ ▶️ John fact, if they weren’t, it would be damaging to their brand to be reasonably priced, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco except the H6. The H6 Second Gen was like, I think, 250 or 300, and it sounded like it. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was great, and it was light and comfortable, and it was just an amazing headphone. That’s why they had to get rid
⏹️ ▶️ John It was damaging to their brand. Yeah, it was too good. Yeah, I just double checked on these ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John They do actually have a physically turning dial. I’m not sure how easy it is to use. But like, the reason I bring
⏹️ ▶️ John them up is just because they look so much like the AirPods and because Bang & Olufsen being, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know, more experienced, more practically minded than Apple, which sounds strange for a company that is
⏹️ ▶️ John known for its impractical looking electronics, having a compact
⏹️ ▶️ John folding headphone with a hard case that comes with the accessories you would expect in an $800 headphone. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like Apple really needs to learn something. If they want to play in this space, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John okay to include the cable and not make you pay 35 bucks for it. It’s even okay to make a hard case
⏹️ ▶️ John and an adapter for airplanes. It’s fine, it doesn’t diminish your brand to do that.
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AirPods Max “Off” mode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The AirPods Max button can cycle between three states, one of which is off, which is selectable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Bluetooth preferences. Wait, which are we talking about the digital crown
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John button or something?
⏹️ ▶️ John The other button. There has been confusion about this. Marco will be able to clarify, but here I’ll lay
⏹️ ▶️ John out the confusion. Then you will give us definitive clarity in the review section, which is coming. Don’t worry, everyone.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the confusion about the AirPods Max and battery life last time was like, oh, do you have to put them in that stupid case
⏹️ ▶️ John to make them to go to sleep? If you don’t do that, they’ll be on all the time. And we’re like, well, why would they be on all the time? They have a million sensors.
⏹️ ▶️ John They can tell when you’re wearing them. Wouldn’t they go off? Matt Panzerino said that they fall asleep. We read that in the
⏹️ ▶️ John last episode, his tweet about that, that if you take them off, they do go to sleep or go into an off
⏹️ ▶️ John mode. And other people are like, no, it’s going to drain your battery, right? So this was a twist on this as the reviews
⏹️ ▶️ John started coming out that the button on the the top, the one that normally toggles between transparency and
⏹️ ▶️ John noise cancelling, there’s a preference in Bluetooth settings, and I think you can get to it through a control center
⏹️ ▶️ John as well, where you can change that to cycle through three things. You press it once and it goes to transparency,
⏹️ ▶️ John press it again and it goes to noise cancelling, press it a third time and it goes to a setting called off, right? So it’s like, okay, well
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess you don’t have to use the case for that because it goes to a setting called off. But that doesn’t mean
⏹️ ▶️ John off as in the headphones are off. All it means is that it’s not transparency and not noise
⏹️ ▶️ John canceling, at least that’s what we know so far. So yes, it’s just like the AirPods Pro. Yeah, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly the same as the AirPods Pro feature set. Now, all of that being said, people are still
⏹️ ▶️ John freaking out about the idea that you can’t turn them off. And so, I mean, I’m not sure. How long have you had these, Marco? A couple of days?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, well, maybe you can’t tell us about the battery life things, but I will just add now that everyone who’s had them for a little bit longer has said,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re freaking out about the idea that you can’t turn these things off, don’t worry, because if you wore them all day long
⏹️ ▶️ John and played music really loud all day, they would still last all day. So it’s more of an academic concern
⏹️ ▶️ John than a real one. I would say that fairly definitively at this point, if you get
⏹️ ▶️ John these and never want to use that stupid case, you’ll probably be fine. Until, I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, maybe the batteries go off a cliff in two years and they start getting terrible battery life and you have to replace the battery. But
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, there’s that. And then Panzer chimed in again about this saying, this
⏹️ ▶️ John is a point in front of his tweets. There are several states, obviously they pause right away. Then a few seconds later, they shut down the connection.
⏹️ ▶️ John They aren’t just on forever when you take them off.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Real-time follow-up, that bug about SMS is not being received properly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just got a like three-hour late group MMS. So it’s happening to me too. I’m over it, Apple, over it.
Ultra… fine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so Marco, last we heard our intrepid hero was about to make his walk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of shame with his extremely large computer, presumably in your bespoke carrying case.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What’s going on with your setup? You’ve been talking about the LG 5K, your favorite monitor of all time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can you update us on what the world is going on here? So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, I brought my iMac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into the Apple store. I brought it in my giant case on top of the dolly I bought for it. So I wield
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this giant case in front of the Apple store. I’m amazed they let me in the door
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with that thing. But yeah, they were very nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The store is in limited operation because of quarantine. And so they just had like a few Genius Bar stations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spread across like the front right as you walk in. The whole rest of the store shut down. So it’s kind of a minimal operation,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they handled everything really well. They at first said, oh, that sounds like it might be software. ran a little diagnostic,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but then the lead genius oversaw and was like, hey, you know, this might be some other kind of weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing, let’s take it in. So they, I don’t know, did they use the term admitted it? Like in a hospital? Like they,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever it is, they took it. They took it, like, you know, for a few days, and then have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco called to say that it indeed failed some kind of firmware level test, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they could rule out software, whatever that means, and they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have determined that it needs a new logic board. And parts for that are a little slow right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now it seems. The logic board could be 14 days out. Holy smokes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So here I am as my temporary solution, which I knew I would have to use this for a little while.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this is part of the reason why I did this around Christmas because we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t really do much for Christmas week, so I don’t have heavy computing needs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I knew this would be a good time to not be with my main computer. But in the meantime,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have this ultra-fine LG 5K
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into my quite wonderful and pleasant new M1 MacBook Air.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I have it in clamshell mode, I’m not using both screens, I’m only using the LG. The air is closed and on top
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a speaker over there with two cables plugged into it because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Ultra Fine LG monitor is just so bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As a screen, it’s fine. It is one of the only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screens that has ever existed, and I believe the only one currently for sale
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is 5K resolution at 27 inches.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As far as I can tell, there are no other ones. There’s one by Planar, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gets even worse reviews and uses DisplayPort instead. And it seems to be out of production, or at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco least in very low production. And then there’s this one, and that’s it. All the PC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people are like, oh, there’s a million 27-inch monitors. Yeah, they’re all 4K, because that’s what gamers want, and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what Windows users want, and none of them buy Macs, and Mac people don’t buy them, and so it’s a whole different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world, and that doesn’t cover this, and the DPI is wrong, and screen elements would be all the wrong sizes everything. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not interested in any of those.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, can we let me just interrupt you real quick, because I can hear the typing of this news
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying to you, what is wrong with you get one of the 97 inch curved displays
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are one of those godawful things that I don’t want to speak for you, Marco, but as a fellow old man, I probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can. I don’t want a curved display. I don’t want a 30 some inch display.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want something that’s like my iMac. Well, I mean, I have my iMac, you know, in this hypothetical, I want something that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like my iMac that’s nice and flat and rectangular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and 5k. Now I could alternatively, and this is what I did at my jobby job, I could get smaller
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 4k monitors, but in my personal opinion, you need to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at 5k if you’re going to be at 27 or more inches. That’s just my opinion, but that’s the way I like it. And I think I speak
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for you in saying that. I have zero interest in one of these 96 inch curve displays. None.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do not care. I know people love them. They are not for me, do not want, please do not write us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because we know they exist. We do not want.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, two things. Number one, like those are almost always not high DPI. So if you’re, what you’re going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for is like the retina look for max. Uh, they usually don’t have the density to do that. Um, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number two, this is very much not just your opinion. There’s a range of DPI
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that monitors can have where think where screen elements on max will look like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re in roughly the right size range, like how many pixels does it take to or how many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco square inches does you know a thing of this size take up? That’s in a fixed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco range. So we have these ranges of like what’s a correct resolution for 27 inches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the answer is either 2560 by something which is 1x and non-retina
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or 5120 by something which is 2x retina and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no one makes 3x in this range yet. Interestingly Dell makes an 8k monitor but it’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too high density to be 2x but too low to be 3x. It’s 8k at like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like 32 inches I think and 8k at 2x would have to be about 40 inches to have the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right dpi range. But anyway so and there are you’re right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there are some 4k monitors that are in the right dpi range which at 4k
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is roughly 22 to 24 inches. There are some of those that exist but not a lot even of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and one of them is the LG ultra fine 4k anyway
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the the LG man I haven’t used this monitor full-time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in in a number of years and I’ve forgotten like how mediocre it is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me the the two biggest problems are the stand is total garbage that it’s very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s very wobbly like talk about like typing on your keyboard and having your monitor wobble this is way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worse. It’s a terrible stand for wobble. Way worse than like an iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even on the same desk with the same keyboard and the same person banging on the keys. Also it has the, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like most PC monitor mounts, it has a 360 degree rotating thing, so you can rotate the monitor to portrait
⏹️ ▶️ Marco orientation or landscape if you want. But it doesn’t like latch in very well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to those even 90 degree rotations. So the most common
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing of having it just regular in portrait orientation It’s really hard to get it exactly level
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s it’s feels like it’s slightly off all the time And you can like move it slightly and it stays like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s it’s a crappy cheap stand And the monitor is wrapped in a crappy cheap enclosure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a crappy cheap backlight And there’s tons of backlight leakage around the bottom edge And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you have like a very dark screen in a very dark room you can see the bottom edge kind of glowing a little Bit and it looks like gray
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead of black So yeah backlight leakage, but besides the stand the other major problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with this monitor is that the USB ports that are on it, you basically can’t use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for anything that matters because they are unreliable, extremely, extremely unreliable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you can’t use them for things like audio or keyboards. I’m not even sure what you can use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them for. I guess like charging your phone you can use it for that, but that’s about all you can do reliably on those on those USB
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ports. So I have ordered the the CalDigit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thunderbolt dock, because it has by far seemingly the best reviews for Thunderbolt docks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because I’m relying now on, while that gets here,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which it isn’t here yet, I’m relying on my USB-C hubs that I have. I have two USB-C hubs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One I’ve never talked about, because it’s weird and boring and doesn’t seem to exist anymore. And the other one is like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, one of those that everybody has for their laptops that has like the ethernet and the two USB-A and the card
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reader, you know, and HDMI, like that thing. The thing that everybody has that costs about 50 bucks. Like I saw one of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this other weird thing that has USB-C upstream ports. But they’re both unreliable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in different ways. And I, at one point to get everything working, I had to daisy chain them both,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is not a good idea. And I had to then, the second one didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have enough power to power USB devices off of it. So I had to use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its input port to plug in a separate USB-C power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adapter. So now I have this big square of power routing and I’m like, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no way this is going to work. And it actually kind of did for a while, but it caused weird noises
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and things. Not even just ground loops, like weird other electrical noises in various things. I’m like, all right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t be running an audio business and have all this noise everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, this is just an unreliable setup. And what I ultimately want,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am so far temporarily okay with having the laptop as my primary computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put into a monitor. It’s not ideal. I would rather have a desktop, but right now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t get the new M1 Mac Mini in any reasonable amount of time if you want 16 gigs of RAM. I still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ultimately want more gigs of RAM than that and more disk space than 2 terabytes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for my desktop solutions here, so ultimately I think I am going to wait for an iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a higher spec Mac Mini or a Mac Pro before I totally replace this desktop, but in the meantime using it temporarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as, you know, MacBook Plus monitor, it seems to be fine so far. I haven’t run into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any major issues that have to do with, like, the laptop interfacing with this crappy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco display. The only issues I’ve had have been with peripherals and, you know, just getting all these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible ports to work reliably, and the only thing that I think is going to fix that is if the CalDigit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thunderbolt thing is of the quality that everyone seems to think it is and say it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then I will plug the laptop directly into that and then plug everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else into that and not even use the monitors, ports, or any of these terrible USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hubs that I have at all. And that should theoretically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fix my problems if it works. Now, I was tempted,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead of ordering the CalDigit thing on Amazon and having it take almost a week to get here because island.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was tempted to island slash COVID slash Christmas, by the way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was tempted to just set money on fire and just go to the damn Apple Store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and get the XDR. And the Apple Store also sells the CalDigit. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was, I was looking like, hey, what stores have this in stock tomorrow? And what’s the boat schedule
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that could possibly get me there with enough time to get back before the last boat. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was looking into all this stuff and look into it you know what what does the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco XDR seem like in practice and what is the 5k seem like the LG 5k you know seem like in practice and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do I really want to be looking at like I’m a professional
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I like I am an Apple commentator and a professional developer I am 38
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years old god damn it do I want to be looking at this screen that I hate every day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or do I want to get the screen that I like and look at that every day. Like, what am I working
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for? If I’m, why do I like Apple products? Why do I want something terrible and ugly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that has all these problems if I can get something great?
⏹️ ▶️ John I love this glimpse inside your internal monologue that leads you to buy expensive things.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is the devil that’s on all of our shoulders. It looks just like Marco and it sounds like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. So I looked, but ultimately, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I basically made a pro and con list between the XDR and the LG 5K, and it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as clear cut as I would hope. The XDR has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some things about it that are significant downsides to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The price is the biggest downside. I mean, the configuration I want would be $6,000 plus $500 for AppleCare plus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tax, so just under $7,000. Oh, God. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have a very hard time Justifying that for what it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and for what I need. Because I don’t need the HDR side of it. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need that at all. I really don’t like that it has a fan. I know, John, I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you said that you never hear it in practice, and you’re probably right, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really dislike that it has a fan at all, because for something that’s that expensive that I would hope would be so long-lasting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so long-lived, having a fan is a warning sign for me. It’s that, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t love that. There also is like practical downsides. Like I couldn’t do my one cable solution
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with that because 6K takes up so much bandwidth over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Thunderbolt 3 connection that there’s not enough speed left. And like, you know, I know there’s like the weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco display compression thing, but there’s not much bandwidth left for those ports on it. That’s why the ports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are not Thunderbolt, they’re USB. And they’re in many configurations, USB 2 speeds instead of USB 3 speeds.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you can’t plug the 6K into Thunderbolt docks or Thunderbolt base stations or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever they’re called, like the CalDigit. You have to plug it directly into the computer. At least as far as I know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It seems like no Thunderbolt dock supports it. So now there’s two cables instead
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of one going to the laptop. And two cables I have to keep plugging and unplugging every day as I take my laptop upstairs and then bring it back downstairs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it adds a lot of downsides. And I also, I don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the backlighting method of having those 576 LEDs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that can all be individually controlled, because that creates the potential for non-uniformity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the backlighting. It creates the potential for those halos where you have something bright in the middle of a bunch of dark,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you have a big halo blob around it. To me, that’s incredibly inelegant. I don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when TV started doing that. I don’t like Apple doing it. I’m not looking forward to the rumored
⏹️ ▶️ Marco micro-LED screens that are coming in their higher-end products I guess next year sometime because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s probably the exact same thing. I don’t like that. To me that’s inelegant. I would rather have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every pixel be individually controlled and totally independent and totally consistent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and uniform with every other pixel no matter what they are showing. I don’t like display technologies that rely on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hacks like that and I know why they do it to get their XDR you know dynamic range I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know that but I don’t like that and I don’t want that. I want uniformity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and elegance across the the entire display panel. And I don’t have that with the XDR. It comes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco close, but there’s that giant asterisk on that, and I don’t like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re worried about it from an elegance perspective, like that’s your prerogative, but I can tell you that
⏹️ ▶️ John when you’re not showing HDR video, you will never see, like
⏹️ ▶️ John that does not manifest. If I just told you, oh, the backlight’s on 100% all the time, you would have to believe it because
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s nothing you can see on the screen with your eyes without like an electric instrument to show
⏹️ ▶️ John the dynamic backlighting. Now, if you put it in HDR mode and show a star field or a black
⏹️ ▶️ John background with a white square moving across it, maybe then you can pick it up. But even then, you know, it’s hard to say.
⏹️ ▶️ John But for regular like desktop computer mode, which is the only way you’re gonna use it because you’re not doing HDR video,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t see any bloom. You can’t see any halo. In fact, for all I know, when in this 500 inch mode,
⏹️ ▶️ John the backlight is on 100% all the time. I don’t even know. I just, I can tell you that you don’t see the halo. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I know that sounds gross to you and you could worry about the, you know, electronic sophistication that causes that
⏹️ ▶️ John to happen, but I’m gonna say in practice, in regular 500 nit, I’m using my thing as a Mac mode, it is a non-issue visually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, that’s good to know. So you’ve never noticed that
⏹️ ▶️ John ever? No, I don’t think, even in the, so when you see the thing where people do like, when they do reviews
⏹️ ▶️ John of dynamic backlight television sets, and they do them in HDR mode to show this exact effect, like, hey, it’s a black background
⏹️ ▶️ John with some white text, I’m gonna show you the haloing, even when they do that for televisions, which exhibit
⏹️ ▶️ John this much more, they have to adjust the exposure on the camera because with the naked
⏹️ ▶️ John eye, it’s actually a little bit tricky to see. I don’t, you know, I do very
⏹️ ▶️ John little in HDR with this as well. I play Destiny in HDR occasionally and I have some HDR videos that I watch,
⏹️ ▶️ John but none of them really show off the hailing, but I’m absolutely sure I could see it if I give it the worst case scenario of a 100%
⏹️ ▶️ John white square moving across a black screen in HDR. But in any other mode, and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John staring at my screen right now, Like there’s black against white all over the place and I cannot see any bloom whatsoever.
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, it is, I don’t like it either. I would never buy it in my television set, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t worry about it for this monitor because at monitor levels, it just doesn’t show up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, that’s good to know. And that will probably factor into whatever I decide
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, and you’ll find out if these mini LED things come out, like eventually you’re just gonna get one no matter what,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, but you won’t have a choice, right? And then you’ll see that it’s like, Well, for non-HDR applications
⏹️ ▶️ John where nothing is really that bright,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s fine. I hope so, because it’s so inelegant of a solution. It’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, we don’t have OLED computer monitors yet. So that’s really what you want is individually lit up pixels
⏹️ ▶️ John with also high contrast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, yeah, exactly. So anyway, so I’ve decided based on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these concerns and these inelegances for me, I’m not going to get the XDR for now. I’m going to stick with the stupid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco LG as it continues to work, asterisk, but I just have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not use the LG’s built-in ports and hope that it works well through this CalDigit thing that’s on the way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if it doesn’t, then I’ll reevaluate. And I’m not excited at all about the LG
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for long-term use. I’m intending it now to be just a bridge between now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and either when I decide to switch back to my iMac Pro, which I might do whenever it comes back, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I decide not to switch back to it, if I get too hooked on the M1 lifestyle, then this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will just be a temporary thing until I figure out what my next desktop will be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then we’ll see what happens. But if the LG breaks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or if something goes wrong with it that I haven’t hit yet in the last few days that I’ve been using it so far,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would not replace it. As much as I have a hard time spending $7,000 on a 6K, I could not bring myself to buy another one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s here temporarily, but I don’t anticipate this being a permanent solution.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I understand that you’re trying to stay within a $7,000 budget, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m happy to tell you that on Craigslist here in Richmond you can get a 2011 Chevrolet Cruze.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey At CarMax here in Richmond you can get a 2012 Fiat 500 Pop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There are all sorts of automobile options that you can… Oh, actually here’s a $7,000 2005 Jeep
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I’ve always had so
⏹️ ▶️ John far of all the cars you’d named but still rather have that monitor. Can you find a decent car?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, you can finally give you could finally get your dream car for $6,995 a 1997 Jeep Wrangler. Oh, great. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bet that that sounds reliable and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comfortable. Mm hmm. Totally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, you could drive on the beach. Remember?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah, with the permit. I don’t have that. I will never get Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. I hear it’s a lot of money and but golly, I
⏹️ ▶️ John if that LG breaks, you should just get a 4K monitor and use it like you’ll survive. You’ll survive with limited screen space
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree that in truth be told, I know that you don’t particularly do the two monitor thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but at my job, I had to I think they were LG if I remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey correctly, two LG 4K monitors that were like 22 inches, something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And truth be told, if you can get over the fact that you have two monitors on your desk, which for me isn’t a big deal,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it actually was really, really nice. They were both Retina for all intents and purposes. And when you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have two of them, you get a roughly equivalent amount of real estate as a 27-inch 5K. Certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a perfect world, I prefer a 27-inch 5K, but if you don’t want to set $7,000 a flame,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can do this for like 500 bucks or something like that. Now, I’m sure you’ll hate them for some reason or another, but I mean, it’s another option.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, the price difference is so vast. Like, it is kind of funny to think that I could get, like, six
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these LGs for the cost of one of the six cases.
⏹️ ▶️ John you six times as much. Maybe you could daisy chain all the USB things together to get enough power. Oh, that’s funny.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so one last piece to follow up, and an anonymous Apple genius writes, when taking a product into Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be serviced, please just ask them to run the full service diagnostic suite available to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all Genius Bar technicians. For this particular issue, we do have a cooling diagnostic that will assist with determining
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the amount of spider eggs in the iMac Pro. The other two recommended diagnostics are FSD
⏹️ ▶️ Casey EFI and FSD OS. I’m assuming full service diagnostics for the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey EFI, which is, what does that actually stand for? It’s the BIOS, right? But what does it actually stand for?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. Something firmware interface, enhanced firmware interface,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then whatever, the OS. I presume that’s like a software thing. As we are technicians, we do rely on diagnostic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tests to advise how we proceed and have troubleshooting guides made available by Apple Engineering.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey On a personal note, I’m sorry for your previous experiences that have caused you to audibly groan at the thought of having to come
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see us, but I can assure you there are a number of us who are fans and supporters of the tech media slash influencers in your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey audience. And this individual said they bought the ATPT with wheels, which means
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they are the right kind of person.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey person additionally suggests that we do find it discouraging, that the geniuses do find it discouraging to hear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey those we admire thinks so little of us. First of all, real-time follow-up, somebody added, I think, John, it’s extensible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey firmware interface, so thank you for that, John. Second of all, I assumed your groaning was not about going to see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an Apple Genius necessarily, but just about the fact that you have to carry this stupid 27-inch computer on a boat to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an Apple Store, but correct me if I’m wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like for me, the reason why I don’t like bringing in my desktops for repair
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has almost nothing to do with the people I’m gonna be interacting with. I’ve had almost entirely positive experiences
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there. It’s all about just the logistics of getting it there, and then the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inconvenience of being without it for all the time in the meantime. And then if I get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it back and it’s been wiped out, either because they restored
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it themselves or because they had to replace something that caused data loss, like replacing the SSDs or the T2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever, which I think is gonna happen. If they’re replacing the logic board, I assume that the T2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modules go with it because of the encryption keys and everything. So I assume I’m gonna have an empty Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the way home. So that’s going to mean, not only did I have to bring it there, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an ordeal, bring it home from there, which is an ordeal. But then also, I’m without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it for probably two weeks at least. And when I get it back, I have to restore from everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and deal with all the little tiny nitpicks and paper cuts that come along with having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco restored a computer. So I have to do it, which takes a lot of time. And then all the things that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t have, like that stored things in ways that doesn’t restore properly or like whatever, all that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have to deal with for the next weeks after that. So it’s just a big ordeal for my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco primary computer and I’m not looking forward to doing all that. And it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, it sucks. Like I depend on these computers. And part of the reason why I buy things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac Pro and the iMac Pro is that they tend to be pretty reliable over time. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that decreases the chances that I need to do this. Another part of the reason why I don’t keep computers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like five, six years usually, is that I want to get rid of them before they need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco service. So I don’t have to deal with this. Because I’m running businesses here. I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco afford tons of downtime. And it’s very costly to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to deal with all this crap. So I wanna minimize the time I have to deal with it. So it’s nothing to do with the Apple people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who are largely great, and everything to do with just the hassle of doing all this. Finally, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted to clarify, a number of people have written in to tell me that they have some kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco business service or AppleCare service where they will send a technician to your house to pick up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your desktop and take it away and service it and bring it back to you. And while that sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fantastic, maybe, that only eliminates some of these problems and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guarantee you they don’t serve where I live. These places, once the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco steps to get here include get on a boat, I think that’s where their service contract with Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ends, and I think that’s when they say, sorry, we can’t serve your area.
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AirPods Max review
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Speaking of new toys, and in this case toys you’ve actually bought, tell me about your new fancy pants
⏹️ ▶️ Casey headphones. Are they your favorites?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re significantly better than I expected.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, well, look at now you’re going to make me spend a whole pile of money I don’t want to spend. So maybe I shouldn’t ask you for details.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well maybe not. So, all right, so here we are. I got my AirPods Max. I’ve had them for about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco half a day and so I can’t give any useful information on battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life or obviously travel or anything like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I can tell you how they sound and I was comparing them all day listening to different music and comparing them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to every pair of headphones I have in this house. And so I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a number of opinions on comfort and sound and control and things like that. So just a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quick term I’m going to be using a lot in this. I assume everyone’s familiar with the concept of bass and treble.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m also going to be talking about the midrange a lot. The midrange is what’s between bass and treble. If you ever played with the midrange
⏹️ ▶️ Marco control or the middle part of an EQ, it kind of boosts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vocals and the middle range of the frequencies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s vocals, electric guitars, some instruments like pianos kind of live in that range. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I’m talking about here. And then finally, I’m going to be talking about the sound stage, which is an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio term for like how wide it sounds like the music
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is coming from, or like how big of a room it sounds like you’re in. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco moving on to the actual information here. The first thing you notice besides the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comical packaging and case and oh my god, the case.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s as bad as you think. It’s as awkward and clumsy to get them in and out as you think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It would not surprise me if a number of the people who buy these who aren’t nerds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and don’t follow the reviews mistake it for packaging and throw it away when they throw it away the box.
⏹️ ▶️ John It reminds me of the case on the original iPad. Do you remember that one that had
⏹️ ▶️ John the pointy little seams and was made of that same cheap material? I had it. It was terrible. Remember
⏹️ ▶️ John they use leftover iPad one cases to make this case. Oh God. The best thing I saw in one of
⏹️ ▶️ John the reviews is that when it’s in the case, like they have a little notch cut out so you can see the lightning thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John like through that little slot, the little slits that are at the bottom, inexplicable slits to allow scratches to get in, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know. They made, they didn’t even line the slits up with the lightning thing, so they had to put a notch
⏹️ ▶️ John in the slit, but the notch doesn’t always line up exactly with the lightning port that it’s supposed to
⏹️ ▶️ John be on. It just, you know, it’s just shoddy all around, just doesn’t, like ill-fitting,
⏹️ ▶️ John like an ill-fitting suit. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything about the case is as bad as you think it might be. It’s a shame, it really is, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it really puts a damper on this product in a pretty big way if it is indeed intended
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be traveled with in any capacity. Whether it’s even if it’s just like, to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and from work or something, like it’s just, it’s not, the case is hilariously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco awkward and bad. It’s ineffective as a case, it’s annoying to get them in and out, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not good. So anyway, we talked a lot about the weight and everyone was kind of worried.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The weight, I actually don’t think is that big of a problem for me in practice. Now granted, these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are not my heaviest headphones. Like my big planers are like 500 grams. So these at 350 or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is less than that. But they certainly are heavier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than most headphones that people will be comparing them to. Things like the common noise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco canceling headphones for planes, most portable headphones for like portable music
⏹️ ▶️ Marco walking around in fashionable ways and fashionable cities for fashionable people. They’re generally heavier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than those. But I didn’t really notice the weight as being a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Comfort wise, they do have a bit more clamping force, like how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard they squeeze your head, than I would like. And part of that is just necessary because of the weight. I wish
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was a little bit nicer. The ear cups themselves leave a lot of room
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for your ear. like compared to other headphones in this category, so other, you know, small, fashionable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco portable over ears, not compared to like giant, you know, the flagship headphones from the big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brands that now have all these like nice kind of raindrop shaped ear cups, compared to those, they’re still small, but compared to their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco category of like portable-ish, trendy looking headphones, they do have surprisingly deep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and roomy ear cups, significantly nicer ear cups, or at least more spacious ear cups
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the Sonys and the Bose’s that people will be comparing them to, and that I will be in a minute. The downside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the comfort for me is that the ear pads themselves are not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco super comfortable pads. Now some of this, ear pads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do break in a little bit over time, and headbands do kind of stretch and loosen a little bit over time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the comfort might improve over time, but I think the major theme is gonna stay the same here, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’s a little bit heavier and that therefore causes a bit more clamping force on your head, and the ear pads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are not that soft and they’re not that, they don’t spread the weight over a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thick rim, if that makes sense. What makes super comfortable headphones super comfortable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like, you can imagine the opposite. You can imagine if like the ear pads formed little like triangle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ridges that just ringed your ear with the thinnest thing possible, like a piece of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cardboard, like that would be uncomfortable because it would be putting all the weight of them on a very tiny little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco circle around your ears. And then the opposite would be like some like giant, thick rim,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looks like a fat tire, that kind of pad that puts a huge surface area against your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco head so it spreads the weight out. The AirPods Max are too close to the former. They don’t have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wide enough ear pad rim to distribute the weight evenly. And so it ends
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up being uncomfortable primarily because of that, because of the ear pads themselves.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the ear pad covering material, on most headphones it’s either real or fake leather,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of vinyl or something like that. The ear pad covers here are this kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost rough fabric that’s almost itchy. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco particularly comfortable and I would never describe it as luxurious. So if what they’re going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for is luxury materials, I think they’ve achieved the look, but not the feel.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it does not feel luxurious at all. And their other competitors, Bang &
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Olufsen, we mentioned earlier, and even the other noise canceling, the Bose and Sony noise canceling models
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have way nicer feeling ear pads than these. And I think if Apple chooses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to, they could dramatically improve the comfort of the AirPods Max with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just different ear pads. And they’re replaceable, they’re magnetic. You pop them off in two seconds and put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new ones on. So they could actually replace, or at least revised ear pads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for these down the road that could fit this. I don’t know if they will, but they could. And I think they should,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that could dramatically improve comfort with a few design tweaks and maybe materials changes on the ear pads.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Moving on to sound. The AirPods Max
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a headphone that is not afraid of treble. Now this is kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a divide in the headphone world, whether you want to hear treble response and treble
⏹️ ▶️ Marco detail, or whether you don’t, whether you want it to be like, you know, quote, rolled off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Treble sounds crisp and sharp, but it can be a little bit fatiguing for some people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the rolled-off, reduced treble sound is very popular among high-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headphones because it sounds like warm. You know, it’s a very, you know, old radio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco voice warmth here, but kind of not a lot of detail, you know, and the treble is like yeah right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this has kind of been a split in headphone tuning for a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Max likes treble. It gives you a lot of it. This is, you You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you like Beyerdynamic headphones or Hi-Fi Man headphones, this is for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you like the Sennheiser or Audizé sound, this is probably not for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fortunately, I’m in the treble lovers group.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was gonna say, I’m surprised you’re going on about this because this sounds like it’s made for you then.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, for me, it’s great. For almost any other headphone in this category, this is gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound like too much treble. But if you’ve heard headphones with good, well-done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco treble response, like my beloved HE6, it sounds right in line.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s also, it’s closer in line to what you’d get from like, quote, fun
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headphones, which I’ll get to in a minute. Because what that involves basically is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a sound that is not trying to be completely flat frequency response
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but is aiming for something that is just a little bit more pleasing. Imagine if you had a bass and a treble dial. Imagine if you turned up the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bass and the treble each a little bit. Not too much, but just give the bass and the treble a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit of a boost from neutral. And it makes it a little bit more alive, little bit more fun sounding to most people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is what headphone people call a V-shaped sound signature. Because if you imagine on the EQ,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the left is the bass and the right is the treble, and they’re boosted, but the middle’s not. So it forms a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit V with the controls. These have that, but it’s not super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aggressive about it. It’s not really in your face about how much treble bass it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is boosting, you know, usually that kind of toning of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a headphone means the bass especially is usually really overpowering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that the mid-range is so withdrawn by comparison that the vocals are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of hard to hear over all the bass. Like, you know, the vocals are almost withdrawn into the background.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Electric guitars are often, you know, falling into the background because the bass is pushed so high.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Max does not have that problem. It is it is a little bit V-shaped, a little bit fun, a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit boosting in treble and bass, but it’s much closer to neutral than we usually get with that kind of boost.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the mid-range does not feel buried or overpowered or withdrawn. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mid-range is, I’m a mid-range snob. And what converted me to a mid-range
⏹️ ▶️ Marco snob was planar headphones. And you know, the way headphones work, they have to move air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somehow, and very quickly, I don’t, I don’t want to waste too much time on this, Very quickly, they can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco move air by having this cone with a magnet that drives it forward and back, which is how almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all headphones work. Those are called dynamic headphones. Speakers usually almost all work that way as well. You’ve seen these speaker-shaped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cones. It’s in the volume icon, it’s everywhere. A different way that some high-end headphones work is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco called planar magnetic or orthodynamic. It’s the same thing. And what they do is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suspend a very, very thin diagram with some conductive trace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it between two grids of magnets. And by running current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through the trace on the diaphragm, it induces motion with those magnets and that’s how they move.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what that results in is less mass of the thing that’s moving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the typical cone dynamic driver that you see in most speakers and headphones. And what that does,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you have less mass moving, it allows it to have usually, not always, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually not only better bass response for reasons, physics and such, but also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a more smooth frequency response. It doesn’t have as many like weird peaks and values usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as dynamics, just because again, like the physics, when you’re moving less, it’s easier to better control
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how it moves. What this results in in practice for me, when I’ve tried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of these kinds of headphones, planar magnetic headphones usually have much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smoother mid-range. And what I mean by smooth, it’s kind of hard to explain, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you would know it if you heard it. When you hear bad mid-range, it almost sounds like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vocals are crunchy or like distorted in like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crunchy or kind of harsh way on your ears. That’s a very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco common flaw in cheap dynamic headphones. And that’s one of the reasons why so many of them are tuned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to boost the everything else and withdraw the mid-range because they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t reproduce it well. And so they kind of bury that in bass and hope you don’t notice. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco notice and I care. And the mid-range is my favorite part because that’s where all the guitars and vocals are. And I’m a guitars
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and vocals person. So I want that to be awesome and smooth. And it’s very unusual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a dynamic headphone, as opposed to the planar, to achieve a smooth
⏹️ ▶️ John You love vocals and you listen to Phish?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And guitars, I said. That’s where all the- All right, all right, I’m just saying, I feel like- The lead singer of Phish
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is Trey’s guitar. And that is solid mid-range music, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I care a lot about how electric guitars sound and yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, here’s the thing. Like, it’s funny you say that, John, because I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to make it sound like I think any of Marco’s opinions are wrong, but it is important, listener,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you understand that Marco has a very particular kind of music and his preferences match with that kind of music as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your preferences match with your kinds of music. And, and I’m not saying that’s bad or wrong or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey indifferent or otherwise. It’s just, I think when you said it was planar headphones that got you to love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the mid range and treble. Oh no, sir. It’s fish that got you to love that. It’s just a planar headphones match it well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, and so for me, like, for example, and I don’t have AirPods max, I haven’t listened to them yet. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I tend to like when, when I listen to music, I tend to be drawn to music that has, and I think we’ve talked about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this at like a year or two ago. I tend to be drawn to music that has a stronger, like bass or rhythm
⏹️ ▶️ Casey section and drums than I am wowed by, you know, really strong guitars. It’s not always
⏹️ ▶️ Casey true, but often true. And so for me, the kind of boominess that Marco would not care for,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of course, everything has limits, but I, I think I would be more receptive to it because I tend to focus on that part
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a band more than Marco does. And so none of this, again, Marco’s not wrong by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you’re making a decision about whether to spend money on what is a $600 headphones, just consider that Marco’s opinions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are based on the, on someone who, to his own admission, really likes a particular kind of music.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And if you’d like a different kind of music, take that into consideration.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And I try to test with a lot of different tracks. Assuming you don’t listen to Phish, although
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they sell at stadiums somehow, but anyway, you’re all out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey there somewhere. No, they’re very popular.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re very popular. No one wants to admit it. It’s fine. Anyway, one of the bands I test
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with for all iPhones that I test is the Avid Brothers because not only are they one of my favorite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bands but also Avid Brothers their earlier stuff before they had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like really fancy expensive producers their earlier stuff is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit more rough and and I think in my opinion better for that like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it that gives it a level of like a personality and realness that that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel like it’s sands it off a lot as they increased their production levels in later albums,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but their earlier stuff, like, their voices are almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco harsh, and they go right up to that edge, but they don’t cross it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re listening on good equipment. And it sounds incredible to hear someone’s voice that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost too harsh, but then just, it walks right up to it, and it just doesn’t cross that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco line. It’s an amazing energy to hear. Like, the early Avid Brothers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco records are murder on bad headphones, because they will reveal every flaw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in mid-range reproduction that a headphone can offer. It’s one of the reasons I use them as test tracks, because not only do I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like them, but it’s very clear when you have bad mid-range reproduction.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The AirPods Max do not achieve the level of smoothness of good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco planar headphones, but they get damn close. And that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is incredibly impressive. They’re not the only dynamic headphone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get that close, but they’re one of very, very few. That alone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is worthy of praise. Like that is, it’s very, very good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at not having that kind of crunchy sound, not having any kind of weird distortion that I can identify
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in any obvious place, like across the frequencies. It’s just a nice,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smooth, pleasant sound that is a little bit aggressive in the bass and treble to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it sound a little bit more fun. And honestly, that’s probably not like a flaw, that’s probably by design, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s what most people want. I’m very happy about the sound of these. I’ve spent a lot of time with open-backed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headphones, because open-backed headphones, they leak sound like crazy in and out, and so they’re unsuitable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whenever you’re near anybody or any noise sources, but they usually sound way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better. It’s hard for closed headphones to sound good to somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once they’re accustomed to open headphones because they just sound so much better. But again, there are a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco models of closed headphones that I’ve ever tried that are really good sounding in absolute terms, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like rating on the closed headphone curve. And the AirPods Max are one of those. They are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the best closed back headphones I’ve ever heard, possibly even the best.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they’re one of the best dynamic headphones I’ve ever heard, again, possibly even the best. So sound quality,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am extremely happy with them. They don’t beat my favorite, you know, my HG6,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they really, they beat almost everything else I have in sound quality.
⏹️ ▶️ John Can you list those headphones, by the way, all the headphones that you tested against?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll get there in one moment. I do, before I do direct comparisons, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to talk about control. The digital crown we were talking about last week, I speculated that it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was the same part as the watch, John, I believe you said it must have been much bigger. You were right, it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much bigger than the watch’s digital crown. That being said, because of where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is and the fact that you’re not looking at it as you’re operating it, it actually feels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little too small still, and it feels a little bit fiddly as a volume control.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s not actually great as the primary button, which is track skipping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or play pause. It’s not great for that either because because it’s a digital crown there’s a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of travel to push it in and way more travel than like the regular button that’s next to it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to control the noise cancellation modes and it’s actually because again because it’s a digital crown
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a little bit difficult to click it in without accidentally changing the volume slightly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so i think i actually another button would have served this role better and if they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to only have a digital crown and one button i would I would argue they should flip the roles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them. That pushing in the digital crown should be the noise cancellation toggle. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the much easier to press, much easier to double and triple click button that’s right next to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, should be the play, pause and skip and everything. Otherwise, we covered earlier, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ANC has the same, you know, three modes, the transparency, you know, ANC and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off modes as the AirPods Pro. They work very similarly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Automatic head detection, which is basically what activates the AirPods Max
⏹️ ▶️ Marco automatically when you put it on your head and it makes it take over the current audio playback route. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco works fine. It’s also an option that you can turn off. One thing that I don’t think you can turn off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet, that I hope they add the ability to turn off, is the automatic pausing when you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take it off your ear. For whatever reason, like you know, AirPods Pro, it makes more sense, you’re like taking it out of your ear,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that kind of makes more sense. But on this, sometimes I like gotta like put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my finger under the ear cups slightly to maybe itch my ear or something during a long recording. And if you do that with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these, the audio pauses. Like if it’s away from your ear at all, even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like to, you know, move a finger or maybe adjust your glasses or whatever, like it’ll pause and that’s, that’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of annoying. So I hope that becomes an option down the road.
⏹️ ▶️ John One of the good things about these headphones, speaking of all these things, you’re talking about the buttons and all the different things that they perform is
⏹️ ▶️ John that my assumption is that all the buttons are essentially programmable and in that if they change
⏹️ ▶️ John their mind about what the buttons wanna do, or even something as dramatic as you just said, let’s switch the noise canceling
⏹️ ▶️ John versus the crown button to do opposite functions, that they could in theory do that because it’s all software controlled,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Yeah, as far as I know. Right, and that leads me to a question that came up, actually we should have talked
⏹️ ▶️ John about it follow, but we missed it. And I’m not sure you know the answer to this. Maybe iFixit
⏹️ ▶️ John could know, is there any electrical connection between
⏹️ ▶️ John the ear cups? Like, is there a wire essentially going from the left ear cup to the right ear cup,
⏹️ ▶️ John or are they essentially two completely independent little computers, because there are two little H1 chips
⏹️ ▶️ John in there, that like on your AirPods, where there’s no wire between them, they just communicate with each other and coordinate
⏹️ ▶️ John to be a pair of headphones together for you, or is there actually a wire connection between them?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, they have to be powered. So there has to be at least a power cable between the two. Maybe there’s a battery in each
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. Sure, but there’s only one charging port.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is a power cable between them at least. And I would guess like there is probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a wired audio coordination signal between them as well, because otherwise actually there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were almost certainly have to be because as I’m about to get to the wired mode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is indeed zero latency. And so it would be nearly impossible to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like wireless is sending it across your head without introducing any latency anywhere that that would be, that would be very difficult if not impossible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so at least doing it in the digital domain. So that would be very unlikely. So yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s almost certainly that they are wired together just through one of the sides of the headband. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wired mode, speaking of which, yeah, works great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Are you using them right now?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, are you using it now? No, because the comfort is just not good enough for me for long listening.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, but I could, and that’s the important thing. If I was on a trip or something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I wanted to just bring a small, well, a well-traveling pair of headphones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe these aren’t the right ones because of their stupid case, but yeah, I could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bring these if I wanted to, and I could use the cable for that. The cable, like the little, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the $35 backwards wire is kind of comical that it costs $35. Talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco luxury. This is the thinnest, crappiest feeling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cable that I think I’ve ever seen Apple sell. It’s so bad that had I not ordered it directly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Apple, I would assume it was counterfeit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, delightful. It’s so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I’m pretty sure, like I’m guessing that this is only analog
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio, so it’s only three conductors. It doesn’t even have, it isn’t even the TRRS with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the remote pin. It’s only TRS, like the regular old three pin or three conductor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cable without the remote control. So like, it’s just those three wires in there and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is such a thin, crappy feeling cable. It’s also very short. It’s only one meter, and so at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a desk, it’s too short. If you’re plugging it into a laptop on a trip or something,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s probably fine for that. Or if you’re plugging it into something in your pocket for some reason, somehow, if you still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have anything in your pocket with a headphone jack, then it would be fine for that as well, but it is too short for desks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or plugging it into a microphone directly if you’re using it for podcast monitoring.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, exactly. The cable does not have a microphone or remote on it. You have to use those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things built into the headphones. It’s also weird too that when you’re using the cable mode, the headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still have an independent volume control on them. So they don’t just run at line
⏹️ ▶️ Marco volume level of whatever you’re plugging it into. They have their own volume control that you have to turn up and down separately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the device you’re plugging it into if you want to. Which confused me at first. I thought they were broken because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was just super quiet. And it took me a while to figure out, oh, I have to turn up their volume as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, so comparing it to other headphones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And just a quick thing, this is a very important thing to do when you’re comparing audio quality or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even comfort because it is so hard to remember how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something sounds. Our brains play tricks on us, our memory is not that good,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the only way to really compare headphones is to compare them like side by side
⏹️ ▶️ Marco immediately like try this now quickly switch try this and quickly switch back and try that try to listen to the same thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same segment of the song on both like it’s it trying to turn you this any other way trying to like do any kind of testing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by memory or by comparing frequency response graphs like it doesn’t really work our brains are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not good at that you have to do it this way and this is what I did so this is why I’m only going to compare it to headphones that I actually had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with me and tested today also people talk about uh break-in or breaking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in speakers and headphones and this concept that they sound better over time as they break
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in. This has been disproven, there’s no science to back this up by anybody ever. The headphones aren’t breaking in,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your brain is breaking in. Your brain is getting accustomed to their sound profile. So anything you get after listening
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to it for a while, your brain is accustomed to it, it might be doing a bit of correction and it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound good to you, so that’s fine. So anyway, and also note
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I compare this to the Sony noise cancelling headphones, that The current Sony model is the WH-1000XM4.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t have the XM4, I have the XM2, two versions back.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is very similar in most ways. The main things they’ve changed between the two and the four
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are they’ve switched to USB-C and they’ve changed some of the smart features and some of the available audio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco processing features. But there’s not much else that’s different between them as far as I can tell.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so first, comparing them to full-size wired
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headphones, which is not a fair comparison in many ways. But my beloved Hifiman
⏹️ ▶️ Marco HE6, my big flagship, my favorite headphone of all time, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco open-backed. This is not a fair fight at all. The HE6 is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all, discontinued many years ago, cost twice as much, wired,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco open-backed, requires ridiculous amps to supply enough power to it. But,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, it does, the HG6 does sound better, but not as much better as I would have thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all those trade-offs. The HG6-
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you try the AirPods Max with a wire for the audio as to try to
⏹️ ▶️ John compete to remove the Bluetooth factor?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I tried it both ways. I did some of the testing with the wire and some without. Honestly, I could not tell a difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bluetooth, as a codec and as a thing, like audiophiles argue about this all the time about what it does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to their sound quality. The reality is it’s complicated. There’s been multiple Bluetooth codecs over time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco multiple codecs that different devices support. If you’re using like the old A2DP
⏹️ ▶️ Marco codec, it does indeed sound kind of crappy with good enough headphones, like you can hear the difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But no modern headphone communicates that way. The Android and Sony
⏹️ ▶️ Marco camps for a while used something called AptX, which was like a higher end codec. Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always used AAC. So they’re simply, as far as I can tell, they’re still doing this, simply encoding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on AAC on the device, sending it over the air as AAC, and then decoding in the headphone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’ve done that for a long time now. Whatever they’re doing is at a high enough bit rate that it’s pretty transparent.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I cannot tell a difference. Anyway, I compared it to my current closed headphone favorite,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the one I’m using right now, the Dan Clark Audio EON2 Closed. EON2 is way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more comfortable. It’s just, it’s a huge headphone. Like it’s one of those teardrop shaped ear cup things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a massive headphone, huge comfortable pads, but it’s also the EON2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is tuned for one of those warm sound signatures with relatively weak treble response.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually thought the sound from the Max is more fun because it has that increased
⏹️ ▶️ Marco treble, but EON2 is a little bit smoother, has more refined mid-range and everything. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco moving down the price range a little bit, the wonderful, venerable headphones that I think Casey’s probably wearing right now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro. The way they sound,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the tonal balance, you know, treble, bass, everything like that, is actually very similar to the AirPods Max.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The DT 770 has a, you know, V-shaped EQ curve, kind of, that boosts treble and bass
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit. But the 770’s bass is a bit weaker, the treble is a bit stronger,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the mid-range is very slightly more crunchy on the 770. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall, a surprisingly similar sound. Of all the headphones I tried it against,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the DT 770 sounds the most similar to the Max, but the Max sounds like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slightly better, a bit smoother and a bit more refined, I mean a bit better balanced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version of the DT 770. So it actually sounds significantly, you know, it sounds better,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like, if you, you have to like try them back to back to really even notice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the difference. So it’s basically a wireless DT 770, and I consider that a very
⏹️ ▶️ John like three times the price,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? Yeah. But you know, it’s wireless, it has noise cancellation. Like I wouldn’t want to travel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with my 770s. I have, but it’s not fun because they’re so big and bulky. But certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like for, you know, at a desk, you know, the 770s put up a pretty good fight. Now compared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the AirPods Pro, the AirPods Max have a worse transparency
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mode. And I don’t know if this is just the physics of, you know, having these cups that sit over your ears
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that don’t quite maybe seal as uniformly or as evenly as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the AirPods Pro, which are going partially in your ears. And the AirPods Pro benefit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from having your ear itself as part of the thing that is adjusting the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco noise on the way in, like the shape of your ear actually changes sound on the way in. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over-ear headphones, where there are microphones are outside of your ear, don’t have the benefit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of knowing how your ear is going to shape the sound on the way in. Whereas the AirPods Pro, the microphones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are like partially in your ear, and so they are getting some of that ear processing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that your ear is doing on the sound, they’re getting some of that on the way into their microphone. So they’re able to have,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, a better transparency mode as a result. Transparency on the Max, honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ John Everybody loves it. All the reviews are saying, wow, transparency mode is amazing. And I’m hearing these reviews from people who have
⏹️ ▶️ John used the AirPod Pros, right? So it’s not like people who have never been in the Apple ecosystem and haven’t tried the
⏹️ ▶️ John other Apple products. So that’s a little bit surprising, but you know what makes me think that what Apple needs here
⏹️ ▶️ John is to talk to the Sony folks, because what you want is your own personal head-related transfer function.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes. So that knows the shape of your ears and because the AirPod Max doesn’t know the shape of your, like
⏹️ ▶️ John you know exactly like the actual sound landing on your head is hitting giant aluminum cups
⏹️ ▶️ John with pinholes in them, right? It is not bouncing around in your ear. And so Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John probably has some sort of best guess standardized head related transfer function
⏹️ ▶️ John to try to make transparency sound more or less normal, but the AirPods Pro have your literal actual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and to be clear, like the AirPods Pro transparency mode totally destroys
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Bose’s and the Sony’s. It’s not even close, but the AirPods Pro is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit better. Like the transparency on the Max, I was able to notice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it sometimes, Whereas I use it all the time on the Pro and I almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can never like notice artifacts of it. Whereas on the Max they’re actually pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clear. You can’t forget that you’re using transparency mode on the Max. Whereas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the Pro you can’t. That’s how good the Pro is and the Max is close but it’s not quite there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also compared to the Pro the Max just sounds way better. It’s a much larger soundstage,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stronger bass, much smoother mid-range. The AirPods Pro sound very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good for what they are, but in this case, physics wins, and the Max sounds way, way better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that’s to be expected. I sure hope so for the price difference. Moving on to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the most commonly recommended alternatives, the Bose 700. This is Bose’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco current flagship noise-canceling headphone. Very similar overall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco size. It’s a very similar bad folding, where they only fold down, they don’t fold in.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but Bose has like a normal case and that is far more useful if you’re gonna like throw it in a travel bag
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something. Bose also has significantly better comfort.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overall, out of all these headphones I’ve tried, the Bose is my favorite for comfort. Just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco barely edging out the Sonys. The Sonys are also excellent, but the Bose has a bit of an edge for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bose has noise cancellation that I think is a little bit stronger. You can also adjust
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much it is from zero to 10. Like it’s very adjustable, it’s very nice on the Bose.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It has useful voice prompts, like when you connect a device, the Bose says connect to two Marcos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone. Sony’s actually have a similar feature. It tells you like noise canceling 10,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco noise canceling five. It’ll tell you battery 57%, like it announces that all in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ear cups, which is just a nice feature. And Apple has the tech to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, obviously. They choose not to, they choose to just like play tones instead and have you look at your phone for all this info.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wish Apple would go a little bit more in this direction. That’s a very useful feature in practice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you’re actually using these, actually traveling. The
⏹️ ▶️ John way that would manifest is you would hear this voice, just a moment, just a moment, I’m working
⏹️ ▶️ John on it. I’m sorry, I couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco connect to your device.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the main voice I hear in my house when Apple speaks to me with a voice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so unfortunately my Bose love fest ends when it comes to talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the sound, Bose has the worst sound in the group by a mile.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not even close. Talking about like a crunchy mid-range, Bose is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worst. I’m pretty sure Bose’s audio engineers don’t listen to any music with vocals. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how they would possibly think that that sounds okay. It’s terrible. Mid-range is the worst.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Treble response is significantly weaker than everything else. Yeah, by far the worst sound
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the group. But that being said, on planes, that isn’t actually that big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a problem. Anyway, compared to the Sonys, WH-1000XM2 is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one I have, very similar to the 3 and 4, and the MDR-1000X, which is the 1,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sony has by far the best folding, the best travel case. They have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco excellent comfort, the ear cups are a little small, they could be a little roomier, but overall, excellent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comfort. Sony has my favorite ear pads, like just like how soft and pliable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and how much they spread the weight. They just are awesome. The Sony’s, to date, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least before I got my AirPods Pro, the Sony’s were my headphones of choice while traveling.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t use them in normal circumstances, but like on planes, I would go for those instantly. Sony has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a much bass heavier sound. It’s a little bit too boomy on the bass, a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little more crunchiness in the mid-range, and a little weak on the treble response compared to the AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Max, but way better sound than the Bose. Like the Bose, you play it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you just are sad. Like you can’t believe like, oh man, I’m really doing Neil Young a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disservice here playing his music through this right now. Whereas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey the Sony’s- And you would know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You would know. So God, I forgot about that. Whereas the Sony’s are like, okay, yeah, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think Neil would be mildly okay with this. Whereas yeah, the Bose, you’re just like, You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sad, he’s sad, everyone’s sad. The Sony has a pretty rough transparency
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mode. This is like a constant hiss that you hear and it sounds like you’re listening to the world through an intercom.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it’s not good. But otherwise, Sony is very good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall. A great all-arounder. I think if you need noise canceling headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you don’t wanna spend the AirPods Max premium and you don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AirPods Pro to serve that role, just get the Sonys, there’s a reason everyone recommends them. They really are like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great all-arounders. They’re not amazing at any one thing except for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco folding and everything. They’re super amazing, but they are really good at everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John How is the noise cancelling on the Apples? I’ve heard a lot of people say that people who find the noise
⏹️ ▶️ John cancellation on Bose and Sonys a little bit oppressive, where it feels like there’s this pressure in your ear, that somehow the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple ones were less pressure. although obviously if the Bose one has an adjustable, adjustability for the
⏹️ ▶️ John noise canceling, maybe you can dial that down. But how did you feel the noise canceling was in terms of ability to cancel
⏹️ ▶️ John noise and if you’re one of those people who feels that sort of pressure effect?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s hard, so I am one of those people who has historically not liked noise cancellation that much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That was like with some of the older ones, like the QuietComfort 35 II and stuff like that. I didn’t like those as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much. Ever since the era of the Sony 1000 series, I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco liked it when I’m on planes. And similar AirPods Pro, I have found
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be fantastic for noise cancellation because it’s not too much. It doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel or sound unnatural to me. Same thing with the Sony. The Bose, I don’t keep at level 10,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I keep it at level five. And I found that to be okay when I used it. The AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Max seem overall with noise cancellation. This is hard to test because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not flying anywhere right now. So it’s hard to test, I tested it, like, you know, Tiff was vacuuming in the other room, and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I kept switching between all these headphones, like the vacuum’s going, and I like played a podcast out of a speaker,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also nearby, to kind of see how it, how it, you know, compared to that. And overall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s very similar sounding in noise cancellation to the AirPods Pro. I expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to be much stronger, and I think it’s a little stronger, but it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a massive difference. But as for like the unnatural feeling, In my,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, limited testing so far, it seemed fine. I think if you’re okay with the way the AirPods Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it, you’ll be okay with the way these do it. Finally, what would I use this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for? Like, what wins these battles? And, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compared to, like, what would I use at a desk? I really enjoyed listening to music on the Max
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at a desk. And if I walked around listening to music, which I don’t, I walk around listening to podcasts, but if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I walk around listening to music, you know, maybe, but at a desk, it was fantastic. I love the Bluetooth integration.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If I was going for like a more minimal setup to like get rid of my desktop headphone amp
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and get rid of the wire and just have wireless headphones that I listen to, or if I was going to an office
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I wanted something for the office and I didn’t want like a big setup there, then maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The problem for me though is that they don’t offer all day comfort. When I’m listening to them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they feel great, but every time I would listen for a while and then take it off, it would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be kind of a relief that it was off my head. And that’s not good. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comfort is not good enough. Ideally, if you’re gonna have headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at a desk, you’re probably gonna be there a while. And in that case, you probably want something that has better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long-term comfort, you know, like the DT 770 or the EON 2, or if you wanna go wireless, probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Sonys for that use. And I think there’s a reason why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many tech people probably many of you listening to this right now, use the Sony headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all day at work when that’s a thing. Because they’re comfortable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you need noise cancellation all day at work, which I’ve never been a fan of using it that often, but many people do,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Sonys are probably the way you would go for that as well because again, they are better for long wearing comfort.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If the AirPods Max had better ear pads and a little bit better, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit lighter weight, a little bit better ear pads, they could take over that market. but the comfort is
⏹️ ▶️ John Wasn’t one of the rumors about the AirPods Max is that the production of it was delayed a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit because the headband was a little bit too tight and they needed to loosen it
⏹️ ▶️ John up as a manufacturing sort of adjustment?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, we heard that. I mean, I don’t know. It’s hard to know whether any of those rumors hold any water
⏹️ ▶️ John but- I mean, but I think we heard that before anyone had warned them. So it doesn’t seem like that is a rumor is a reaction
⏹️ ▶️ John to people trying them and thinking they were a little uncomfortable. It was like before anyone had even touched them that was a rumor. me
⏹️ ▶️ John wonder if there was some sort of comfort adjustment stuff going on. What I’d really like to hear
⏹️ ▶️ John is the explanation of the case. Like how did we get that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What happened there? Yeah, so at a desk, they’re a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco option for sound quality and for the integration with the OS and everything. I just wish they were more comfortable for long wearing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco While I’m walking around, I’m going to pick AirPods Pro every time. They’re pocketable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re less conspicuous, if that matters to you. Even like for the conspicuous angle,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t even, I don’t think I’d even want to wear the maxes, like on a zoom call or something because I would, it would just feel conspicuous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me. AirPods pro also for walking, having the better transparency mode matters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me. I’m always using transparency with them while walking. Uh, and the pro are also, you know, less sweaty in the summer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They fit under hats in the winter. It’s, it’s wonderful. The AirPods pro are great for walking and I don’t think the max
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is going to change that for almost anybody. Um, on a plane,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what would I use? Guess what? I’d use the AirPods Pro still because sound
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quality matters far less on planes than comfort
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and like travel practicality, travel logistics. So the Max having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this amazing sound quality that doesn’t matter so much on a plane and all the Max’s big disadvantages
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the long wearing comfort, the terrible case, those are the highest priorities on planes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I feel I feel like the case situation and the comfort situation on the Max really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cost it, that market, pretty big time. And so I would not pick it on a plane. I would continue bringing my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two pairs of AirPods Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sounds like you would not use these things in a box. You would not use them with a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco phone. You would not use them here or there. You would not use them anywhere. Does that mean Tiff is
⏹️ ▶️ John getting a pair of blue headphones?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. I don’t know if she likes them yet. We didn’t have time for her to test them today yet, but it’s just, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a shame. I really want so badly to like these because I love the way they sound. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really very much enjoy their sound, but I have a hard time thinking when I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use them. You know, so as for like whether I’m keeping it or returning it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the answer is I don’t know yet. I wish they were more comfortable and I’m gonna try wearing them a little bit more.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, we’re in the holiday extended return period now. I think I can return them up till January 15th or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m gonna wear them a lot over Christmas and just kind of see like, you know, does it break in? Do the ear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pads get a little bit softer? Does the headband loosen up a little bit to matter? I don’t know, but ultimately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope I can make these work because I do love the way they sound, but the comfort
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has me concerned enough that I think I wouldn’t give it a high chance.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let me take a different approach at this. Who should be buying these? Like what do you think the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AirPods Max are best suited for?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, ultimately I think try them. And if they’re comfortable on you, great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, you know, headphone comfort varies because people are different. We have different shaped heads, we have different shaped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ears, we have different preferences. Some people are gonna probably find them comfortable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough, some people aren’t. Comfort is going to be the biggest limiting factor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once you get past the massive price and terrible case. But again, they sound
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great and they function pretty well in most ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wish I could wear them more often, but ultimately the comfort
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a pretty big problem for me. But again, I’m just one person. They might be comfortable on you, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So all I can say is go into it with that potential warning in mind that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comfort might not work for you, or it might, and see if it works for you. And if it works for you, good, more power to
⏹️ ▶️ John It sounds like the target market is someone who values audio quality, so right away you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John willing to spend more money even though these are only marginally better sounding than say the DT-770s, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And maybe doesn’t like things in your ears, which I don’t like, so that rules out the
⏹️ ▶️ John AirPods Pro, right? And so that’s, you know, like if you’re in that realm
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re like, well, I’m not super bargain conscious, I don’t like things in my ears, I do like
⏹️ ▶️ John the sort of wireless experience, and I want them to sound really good because the only ones of the headphones that you listed
⏹️ ▶️ John that you said you like the sound of better are the way more expensive open-backed, which is totally a different category. You’re not gonna use that in an
⏹️ ▶️ John office, right? Because it costs loans, so. I don’t even use it in my office most of the time. Right,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it mostly rules out travelers because of all the travel issues or whatever. So, yeah. So I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the thing I was afraid of with these headphones is that everything we had previously surmised about them would be true
⏹️ ▶️ John and the sound quality would just be like, meh, right? But it sounds like the sound quality is better than meh.
⏹️ ▶️ John So now they do have, they do have a place in the market. Maybe not a place for Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ John who, you know, has got his green eggs and ham thing going on because he’s got too many other headphones and he’s got other headphones
⏹️ ▶️ John that he already likes for the other purposes, right? But most people don’t already have like their three favorite headphones for different contexts. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco, you know, he’s got the AirPods Pro for walking the dog and for being away from his desk and also on a plane,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is weird, but that’s what he likes. And for at the desk, he’s got his fancier, you know, open back
⏹️ ▶️ John ones when no one’s around or whatever. So this thing doesn’t have a place in his life, but if you have zero over your
⏹️ ▶️ John headphones or you have just, let’s say you’d have just the Bose ones for an airplane, these sound like,
⏹️ ▶️ John again, if you’re willing to spend tons of money for something that sounds good, this could fill the role in your
⏹️ ▶️ John life where I wanna listen to music on headphones without disturbing people, and I want that music to sound really good, and I’m an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, basically. But only if the comfort works for you, and only if the price works for you, and those are two pretty big ifs.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, the comfort, I think, is also, part of the context of comfort is how long do you expect to be wearing them.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re going to be, in the olden times, at your desk all day long, and in a stupid open office, where you have to wear
⏹️ ▶️ John them for eight hours, comfort is super important. But if you’re just gonna wear them to listen to
⏹️ ▶️ John some tunes while you fiddle on your computer for 45 minutes, Comfort, maybe you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John more flexible on that, right? Maybe, you know, maybe it’s not as big a deal that after three hours they start weighing
⏹️ ▶️ John on you, right? And the magnetically attachable headphones thing that makes me,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it’s probably gonna be expensive, but surely there’ll be knockoff third party something or other
⏹️ ▶️ John earpieces. Because as I found out when I’m looking for earpieces for my DT 770s, there’s a big market for replacement
⏹️ ▶️ John ear things for headphones. And this sounds like a goldmine because if you can just make some knockoff ones that sort of kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John fit in there with the magnets and charge everybody a ridiculous amount for them. Someone’s gonna buy the
⏹️ ▶️ John leatherette or plush velvet replacement ear cups and the good thing about them is they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John be way easier to replace than on your average headphone where you gotta do that stupid thing with the little flange
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco trying to carefully put it around. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, some headphones are better than others. Some actually do have a mechanical thing, but these are super easy. You just yank these things off and throw other ones
⏹️ ▶️ John on. And if it turns out that that is your main comfort issue, scratchy fabric and that doesn’t distribute
⏹️ ▶️ John the weight and you get a pad that is a nice fabric or a leather that has a bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John contact patch and tire parlance, maybe that solves the comfort problem for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, I hope that kind of thing develops. Like I hope there is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of ecosystem for third-party ones, but I don’t know that there will be. I mean, I thought there would be a lot of third-party
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AirPods Pro tips, and there really aren’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s at least one brand that we keep hearing about our friends recommending for the AirPod Pros. What are those, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AirPod Pro tips? Yeah, I know what you’re thinking of. I can’t remember what they’re called.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so we’ll see. But yeah, ultimately I’m impressed in so many ways by parts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this product and other parts just seem so bizarrely unimpressive.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the thing I was thinking about when in between these two shows, when we talked about this, like I was thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John about the fact that we spent an entire previous episode talking about a product that none of us had and then people are like, oh, how can you talk about you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t even have it? But there’s this phenomenon, you’ll experience this if you ever work for any company that releases
⏹️ ▶️ John anything to the public or in general, puts anything out to the public. When you’re working on
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing, whether it’s a software product or a real world physical product or whatever it is, you’re like, you’re on a small team
⏹️ ▶️ John or even if you’re in a big company, but there’s a finite set of people who’s working on this thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you’re doing your best you can. You’re trying to make it the best you can within the time and the budget. And you’re thinking about all
⏹️ ▶️ John the different features and the things that it has or whatever. But you’re only 10 people, 20 people, 100
⏹️ ▶️ John people, however many people you are. And you have weird, like weirdly aligned objectives.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re a manager, if you’re a, you know, a developer, if you’re a product marketer,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re looking at it from your perspective within the context of the people making this thing. It’s true of movies, true of podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. And when you put it out into the world, so you know, the reason the wisdoms of crowds
⏹️ ▶️ John is like we make fun of that saying, but the reason it’s a saying is because you put it out into the world and it takes like 39 seconds
⏹️ ▶️ John for out of the 2 billion people that see it, if you’re Apple, because you know, you put out something and everybody sees it
⏹️ ▶️ John a Fraction of a percent look at it and immediately say oh Well here here are some three
⏹️ ▶️ John obvious problems or you think that case is terrible. The things should fold tighter Your competitors fold tighter. Why doesn’t it come
⏹️ ▶️ John with a cable? Like how many people you have met if you heard us say it last week? How many other places did you see
⏹️ ▶️ John that you saw it on Twitter? You saw it on every tech website? So every review right? How is it that Apple developed
⏹️ ▶️ John this product in-house for months or years and and either didn’t know about
⏹️ ▶️ John this or didn’t think it was that a big deal and the second we get to see it not even Touch it
⏹️ ▶️ John reviewers don’t even have it. We just look at it and you can just look at it with your eyes and go Oh, no, what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John on with that case? Because you can look at it and like we did last show say here’s my
⏹️ ▶️ John knowledge of the existing market Here’s how that thing looks like it works and I can imagine it has problems
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’ll be old people get them and they all Say that and you might think Oh Apple so dumb Don’t they know the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that everyone else immediately realizes that’s wrong with their product But I can tell you as someone who’s produced things to put them out to the world
⏹️ ▶️ John The answer is sometimes no like you’re you’re just so you have such a different perspective on
⏹️ ▶️ John it when you’re making it Very often you can convince yourself that one thing you think is super important
⏹️ ▶️ John and the other thing you think is not that important and you Get it wrong Because you’re a small set of people with a limited perspective
⏹️ ▶️ John and the wisdom of crowds is as soon as you put your product out Into the real world if there’s some stupid thing about it
⏹️ ▶️ John They’ll find it before they even touch your product and you know Obviously the better you are at the fewer
⏹️ ▶️ John those that you have and it’s great when you nail it all in the first try But there’s a reason there are revisions in their durations
⏹️ ▶️ John of product So, you know, we look at this headphone and we go like Apple before we even release that
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m let you finish But let me tell you Five things that are wrong with those headphones Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John wait and revise like maybe include a hard case maybe include that cable maybe ditch whatever that
⏹️ ▶️ John case thing is or whatever, right? It’s so easy to sort of armchair quarterback that,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that’s how we judge a product, right? How many things did they get right?
⏹️ ▶️ John How many sort of unforced errors did they make? And it sounds like these headphones, like a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of the things that Marco was talking about that he really loved, surely people spent a huge amount of time getting that
⏹️ ▶️ John right. Doing the dynamic EQ and the sound stage and adjusting it so that it
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially sounds to Marco like it is a nice V-shaped EQ of whatever it’s doing, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John computerized crap it’s doing, they probably spent so much time on that because they’re like, this is our number one priority.
⏹️ ▶️ John And maybe they spent less time on the case, right? Maybe they didn’t think too much about that or maybe there was some other
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that was, you know, like, and even though these flaws are obvious to us that like, when you’re working on
⏹️ ▶️ John it, you’re like, but we did so good on the sound. And I’m like,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, but if the whole world looks at your product and can immediately see a couple of big problems,
⏹️ ▶️ John you gotta work on those for the next revision. So I have hope, some hope that Apple will
⏹️ ▶️ John take what seems like fairly uniform feedback, that like we appreciate the things that
⏹️ ▶️ John you did well, here’s some small areas where you can do better, and come up with a Rev. 2 or
⏹️ ▶️ John Rev. 3 of these, like all the other products you just described, like the Sonys have changed a little bit and the Bose have changed a lot, and
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, sometimes for the worst, but anyway. Feed this back in and come up with a second
⏹️ ▶️ John and third revision of these, assuming this product is successful enough for them to have a second and third revision,
⏹️ ▶️ John to just tweak the few things that are wrong and keep the things that are good about it. And that can really
⏹️ ▶️ John elevate this from a product that has a very narrow appeal, especially at the given price, to one
⏹️ ▶️ John that is easier to recommend people with fewer caveats.
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Chrome is bad?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, Marco, I don’t really know why you brought your iMac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Apple, because clearly if you just uninstalled Chrome, all your problems would go away.
⏹️ ▶️ John Part of the magic of this program is that very often we put something into the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ John and if you just leave it there long enough without getting to it because you’re talking about other things,
⏹️ ▶️ John the story develops and sometimes even almost resolves itself on its own. And
⏹️ ▶️ John here I think this topic benefited from us not talking about it immediately because I think now we have
⏹️ ▶️ John more information than we did before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s kind of like how if you just don’t answer email,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John most of the need for it just goes away after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few days. Yeah, this, before we get to this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes, everyone, thank you for telling me about this. I am aware. And while I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it was not the problem on my iMac Pro, because they did their firmware diagnostic and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco found that it’s not software related and that something is wrong with the logic board apparently with controlling its thermals.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This might have actually been the problem with my 16-inch back. I did like a full
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OS restore reinstall on my 16-inch a few months back which was a huge pain in the butt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it was having all the problems that Lauren reports that his
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 2015 or his wife’s 2015 computer having of like just everything slow like slow keystrokes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even like I was having bizarre problems on that and I could not figure out why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and unfortunately I can’t test this theory on that because I already got tired of it and blew it away and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t have those problems after I did an OS reinstall but it was bad it was I’ve never had to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do that on a Mac before or since like to solve a problem like that in that way
⏹️ ▶️ John you you mentioned Lauren what we’re talking about here for people who haven’t already been following this story is Lauren Bricktor
⏹️ ▶️ John developer a famous developer of Tweedy the inventor of pull-to-refresh, generally a technically knowledgeable
⏹️ ▶️ John person, was having problems with his Mac. And it turns out that
⏹️ ▶️ John uninstalling Chrome and all the crap that Google uses to control and update Chrome solved
⏹️ ▶️ John his problem. He made a website, chromeisbad.com, Chrome is bad is all one word, where
⏹️ ▶️ John he describes his problem, he describes how to implement the solution, and has a bunch of testimonials from other people who had similar problems.
⏹️ ▶️ John And this whole story set off just this big chain of people discussing it.
⏹️ ▶️ John people saying I went to your website I’m having similar problems my computer seems slow the fans run all the time
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just generally crappy I followed your instructions I uninstalled Chrome I installed the Keystone updater
⏹️ ▶️ John that Google installs that updates Chrome behind the scenes and it solved my problem right
⏹️ ▶️ John and then other people are like okay sure but like what actually is the problem right what
⏹️ ▶️ John symptoms are you seeing beyond my computer seems slow and what is it
⏹️ ▶️ John about these steps that you took that solve that problem. And despite this story having
⏹️ ▶️ John been stewing for what, a week now, two weeks, whatever it’s been, we don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John a great solution, uh, answer to that question. I think there are a couple of things
⏹️ ▶️ John at play here. One is, this is revealing sort of the dark matter of,
⏹️ ▶️ John of computer dissatisfaction where people have Macs, right? And the Macs
⏹️ ▶️ John are unsatisfactory in some way. They always run hot. The fan is always going, they always
⏹️ ▶️ John seem slow. Like they just, they’re just unsatisfying in a way, often in a way that’s a difference
⏹️ ▶️ John from a change. It’s like when the doctor asks you, have you seen any change in your, you know, in your health? Like recently,
⏹️ ▶️ John they just want to know, like, is it different than it used to be? Right? The people don’t expect it to be like this. Like Marco said,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe typing is slow and you’re like, typing is slow? Like, like what’s going on there? Maybe you hear
⏹️ ▶️ John the fans all the time. You’re like, I don’t feel like I’m doing anything that’s making the fans go. And maybe that’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John change from previous behavior. Right? So there’s, this dissatisfaction right and then
⏹️ ▶️ John that someone comes along and says I had similar problems in that
⏹️ ▶️ John they here is my vaguely expressed dissatisfaction my computer seems slow fans running
⏹️ ▶️ John all the time right here’s what I did and it’s like install uninstall
⏹️ ▶️ John some third-party program that a bunch of people already don’t like for various reasons and by the way the final
⏹️ ▶️ John step of this cleansing is to reboot your computer and if you do all these steps
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like you have a new computer, your fans don’t run high anymore, your typing is fast and responsive, everything is snappy,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then a bunch of people follow those steps and write in and say, hey, I did that and it worked for me. And for,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, for the people who did that, great, like they presumably solved whatever problem they
⏹️ ▶️ John were having by doing this thing, right? Now maybe three days later, the problem came back, we probably don’t hear about
⏹️ ▶️ John it then, but right, but at least there was some positive thing. But the question any technically minded person has is,
⏹️ ▶️ John okay, but what was the actual problem? What was
⏹️ ▶️ John the actual solution? I can tell you now that sometimes when your computer gets into a weird state as we all know
⏹️ ▶️ John rebooting it Especially if you have your Mac configured not to relaunch all the programs that you were previously running
⏹️ ▶️ John rebooting to the finder with no apps running and No swap in use right
⏹️ ▶️ John Wow everything is like the fans are low and everything feels snappy Yeah, cuz you’re not doing anything on your computer
⏹️ ▶️ John yet Maybe after a week when you relaunch all your programs and compile everything and get four gigs into swap maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re, you know, it starts feeling slow again, right? We don’t know. What we want to look for is what is the cause?
⏹️ ▶️ John And Chrome being the idea like I uninstalled it and that fixed all my problems. It’s like, okay, but
⏹️ ▶️ John what was the actual problem? Now I can tell you from personal experience, one Chrome related problem I see a lot is,
⏹️ ▶️ John guess what? You’ve got a million Chrome windows, not on my computer, on my wife’s computer, got a million Chrome windows. You would never have a million
⏹️ ▶️ John Chrome windows. I do, but here’s the important distinction. None of those windows are showing Facebook in
⏹️ ▶️ John any form or a page with crazy ads that go nuts. Like, you know, in the middle
⏹️ ▶️ John of the night, some tab in some background window, a background tab and a background Chrome window has some ad
⏹️ ▶️ John in it that decides, you know what? 100% CPU. Is it Bitcoin mining? Who knows what the hell it’s doing? But it’s always,
⏹️ ▶️ John and Chrome itself has like a task manager inside Chrome to tell you which tabs are being naughty,
⏹️ ▶️ John which I feel like if you know which tabs are being naughty, you like suspend them. And there’s a Chrome extension that will do that for you and suspend all your background
⏹️ ▶️ John tabs. But anyway, I’ll go there, I’ll do that, I’ll find the three Facebook tags that
⏹️ ▶️ John are for whatever reason are freaking out because some ad running in the sidebar is Bitcoin mining, and I’ll close those
⏹️ ▶️ John tabs. And then suddenly all the fans go back down, right? So that is
⏹️ ▶️ John a way that Chrome can be a culprit. If you uninstall Chrome, or if you simply don’t run
⏹️ ▶️ John Chrome, you will never have an open Chrome tab with a crazy Bitcoin mining ad, right? Or just some
⏹️ ▶️ John webpage that goes nuts and starts just grinding your CPU forever and that will make your fans spin up and so on and so
⏹️ ▶️ John forth, right? So that’s one thing that could be solving these people’s problem. And by the way, Safari is way nicer
⏹️ ▶️ John to your battery, is way better on your CPU. If you care about that at all, do not use Chrome,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially if you have a laptop and battery, use Safari. It is better on your battery than Chrome. The
⏹️ ▶️ John other thing is this Keystone thing that updates Chrome in the background for you. Some people say, look,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not even running Chrome, but Keystone is doing something terrible on my computer. The second I remove
⏹️ ▶️ John Keystone, everything got better. And one of the culprits they label is the Windows Server, which is part of the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John operating system. Its job is to like composite the various buffers that you see that make up the windows on the screen, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John That it would be using a huge amount of CPU and you’re like, I uninstalled Chrome and Keystone and Windows Server
⏹️ ▶️ John CPU usage went down. Lots of people say that. Lots of people say that my computer was running
⏹️ ▶️ John hot, I’m not doing anything. I open up Activity Monitor and I see Windows Server taking 100% CPU. I uninstalled
⏹️ ▶️ John Chrome and it solved that problem. Maybe, maybe it did. But again, as technically minded people,
⏹️ ▶️ John we want to know yeah but how like how did a program that’s not running make
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows Server go nuts and then there’s one theory and it’s unfortunately is still on chromeisbad.com I think let me just double check
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah something called Keystone this is the top of the site which bizarrely hides what it’s doing from activity
⏹️ ▶️ John monitor there’s a footnote now what does it say you know hiding from activity monitor
⏹️ ▶️ John inconceivable trust me I know computers correct the Keystone updater process itself doesn’t hide
⏹️ ▶️ John from activity monitor it briefly shows up and disabuse on schedule. That is not the issue. It is causing something else in the system
⏹️ ▶️ John to consume massive CPU that leaves no indication that Chrome and Keystone are in fact the culprits. All right. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that’s an interesting theory, but you kind of have to say, but how does it do that?
⏹️ ▶️ John How does a program that runs briefly and when it runs, it does not hide from activity monitor, it runs, it appears, and
⏹️ ▶️ John then it quits. The whole point is it’s checking for updates. How does the act of running and then not
⏹️ ▶️ John running at all cause Windows Server forevermore to flip out. Is it plausible
⏹️ ▶️ John that that can happen? Sure, trigger a bug in the OS, call some private API that makes Windows Server freak out and go into
⏹️ ▶️ John an infinite loop? Could happen, but we don’t know that that’s what’s happening yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there are many counterexamples, as in everyone else who’s running Chrome, where the
⏹️ ▶️ John Keystone thing runs periodically on its own, and it doesn’t make their Windows Server freak out. I run Chrome 24
⏹️ ▶️ John hours a day, seven days a week on my computer. Keystone presumably is running in the background.
⏹️ ▶️ John My Windows server never freaks out. Doesn’t mean this bug doesn’t exist, just means I’m not experiencing it. So the people who are experiencing
⏹️ ▶️ John it are getting this bug, they’re getting unlucky, they have a problematic setup. The thing I haven’t seen anyone mention
⏹️ ▶️ John yet, although if you do some Googling you can find it, when Chrome auto-updates itself,
⏹️ ▶️ John at various times it has done weird things behind the scenes, like archiving previous
⏹️ ▶️ John versions of itself and keeping state around about how many different versions it has updated from and stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John or would fill your disk with old versions of Chrome or get its database of what versions it’s dealt with corrupted
⏹️ ▶️ John and flip out about that. So I don’t find it entirely inconceivable that the Chrome
⏹️ ▶️ John updater and all of its bookkeeping can end up getting into a state where the auto updater
⏹️ ▶️ John itself does bad things or spins for a while or fruitlessly tries to get an update that it’s never gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be able to get or otherwise, you know, spin its wheels.
⏹️ ▶️ John And one thing related to that, someone installed another Chromium-based browser, I think it was, that was
⏹️ ▶️ John Brave, I think. And their like new, their default new tab page was making Windows
⏹️ ▶️ John Server go nuts. And if you turn on like the Quartz debug thing, which shows you screen updates, you could
⏹️ ▶️ John see that the default like new tab page in Brave was redrawing itself like as fast
⏹️ ▶️ John as it possibly could over and over and over again. Which was basically asking Windows Server, hey, composite
⏹️ ▶️ John this buffer, hey, composite this buffer, hey, composite this buffer over and over and over again, as fast as it possibly can. That,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you ever see Windows Server going up in CPU, something is asking the Windows Server to composite
⏹️ ▶️ John buffers or do some screen-related window compositing thing over and over and over again.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re looking at your screen and you’re like, but nothing’s happening, it’s possible that some program somewhere,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe even something that’s not even visible, is flipping out and doing something wrong that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John causing the Windows Server CPU to increase, right? So, unfortunately, maybe we didn’t wait long enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is not a particularly… we don’t have a conclusion. No one knows what what the actual problem is. No one knows
⏹️ ▶️ John if Chrome is involved at all. We do know that if you follow a bunch of these steps that can make
⏹️ ▶️ John your computer feel better, so can just rebooting, so can just quitting all of your programs, so can
⏹️ ▶️ John logging out and logging back in, right? So can just not using Chrome and using Safari instead because Chrome in
⏹️ ▶️ John general is more of a CPU hog, right? But none of that is satisfying. Like people want there to be
⏹️ ▶️ John a culprit. It’s because I had a problem, I took steps, the problem is gone, therefore the steps I took
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly correlate to fixing the problem. Maybe they do, but with computers and
⏹️ ▶️ John with programmers, you kind of want to know, yeah, yeah, but why? But how? But what actually happened, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John What is the bug? Now, we don’t know that. We don’t have the source code to Keystone. And honestly, it’s not our problem to figure that out. If there really is a problem
⏹️ ▶️ John with Chrome, it should be the Chrome team’s job to figure it out, right? And there have been bugs in Chrome many,
⏹️ ▶️ John many times. There’s bugs in all sorts of programs. But when it’s a general malaise, as in my computer is unsatisfactory
⏹️ ▶️ John in some way, there are so many things that can be, from spider eggs to malware
⏹️ ▶️ John to like just, you know, a bad tab open in Chrome to who knows
⏹️ ▶️ John what, like we’ve all had processes go awry or things freak out that
⏹️ ▶️ John are part of the operating system or third-party software or drivers or a flaky USB device. Like computers are really
⏹️ ▶️ John complicated. So I am immediately suspicious of anyone pinning blame on any one particular
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, especially when they can’t tell me what the actual problem is. Again, it’s not their responsibility
⏹️ ▶️ John to tell me, but if you’re gonna conclusively say, Chrome is the problem, uninstall Chrome and it will fix your computer, and if it doesn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t care because it fixed my computer, I don’t know. Like, I’m not here to carry
⏹️ ▶️ John water for Chrome, even though I use it all the time and I like it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like this is an unsatisfying technical mystery. Like, the most satisfying
⏹️ ▶️ John ones are the ones where your computer is doing something weird and someone eventually figures out what the problem is.
⏹️ ▶️ John The less satisfying ones are, my computer is doing something weird and I found a solution, but I don’t know why it worked.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s the situation we’re in now. There is a problem, there’s a vaguely specified problem,
⏹️ ▶️ John there is a very cleanly specified solution, but there is no explanation for why it worked
⏹️ ▶️ John other than that those steps I took, they must have stopped something from doing something that was bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know there’s a lot of people who swear it’s true though.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, like what can be true is I did the thing and my computer got better, but that doesn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t jump from that to say, Therefore Keystone is nefarious and doing something there, but you can’t even jump
⏹️ ▶️ John to therefore Keystone has a bug We don’t even know if keys to make for all we know the Windows server has a bug Triggered by
⏹️ ▶️ John Keystone doing perfectly normal things like if you don’t know what the problem is, you don’t know where to assign blame
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean that that explanation wouldn’t surprise me in the least because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have like I haven’t used Big Sur For enough time to know if this is still true on Big Sur,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but for Catalina I I have never had a Mac OS version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have as many problems as Catalina has in specifically this kind of area of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco random performance slowdowns for no apparent reason that are solved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by rebooting and oftentimes you know correlating to background demons just going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nuts for no apparent reason like the other day I posted a screenshot on Twitter like about you know like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the high CPU usage and the handful of Catalina background demons that were seemingly consuming all these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things for no reason and one of them is Dropbox so everyone’s like oh yeah Dropbox well I I quit Dropbox
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a half hour later those same system processes were still like spinning 100%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CPU each and so I eventually rebooted and of course the problem went away and this is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t matter I don’t know whose fault this is I don’t know as you as you were saying John I don’t know if this is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bug in the OS or the a certain way that certain apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have installed like whether it’s Dropbox or Chrome or whatever a certain way that they trigger bugs in the OS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know but it is a real problem and these solutions do often fix it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so from my point of view as a user it’s like well look you guys figure this out like Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Dropbox Chrome whoever you are figure it out amongst yourselves this is your fault in some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way but it becomes my problem as a user and I have to take measures to deal with it. We don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, as you said, like we don’t know enough to assign blame, but it does seem like there is a real
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem here that many people face that is solved by removing Chrome.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, but there’s a million problems that potentially solved by a million things, including the rebooting,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is the final step. Like, so we don’t even know if it’s just one thing. Like, like you said, if it’s, if it’s an OS
⏹️ ▶️ John level problem, like there’s a little bit of the doctor hurts when I did this, then don’t do this thing. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, when I use my computer, occasionally background demons freak out and cause
⏹️ ▶️ John high CPU load. It’s like, well, just don’t use your computer. You won’t have that problem. Like, you know, it’s like, if you
⏹️ ▶️ John think it’s some piece of third-party software and you stop using that software, but then it happens again, what do you do? I’ll just stop using my computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll just stop using Finder. I’ll just stop using a web browser. Like, when there are OS-level bugs,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially if those OS-level bugs are triggered by completely valid, normal, non-nefarious
⏹️ ▶️ John application behavior, any application you run can potentially trigger that bug, whether it’s DiscoveryD
⏹️ ▶️ John freaking out and not looking up names or whatever. Like that’s the nature of OS bugs and they will manifest
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially no matter what. If there’s just one program triggering it and Chrome triggers it, but like Brave or Edge don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John or Safari doesn’t, then yeah, you solve your problem by saying, it hurts when I do this. Okay, well, don’t do that. Don’t use Chrome, use something
⏹️ ▶️ John else, right? But you still don’t know what the actual problem is. The thing about like Dropbox
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff is it’s somewhat satisfying to at least have a plausible theory. Dropbox
⏹️ ▶️ John to know when things happen on disk has to monitor changes in the Dropbox folder, and there are a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of APIs for doing that, but one of them is essentially to drink from the FS events fire
⏹️ ▶️ John hose, which is just like, look, you know, Apple operating system, just tell me everything that happens
⏹️ ▶️ John related to the file system, and I’ll figure out whether I care about it or not, right? And doing
⏹️ ▶️ John that is expensive, because if you do something that does a lot to the file system, say expanding Xcode, which
⏹️ ▶️ John creates a bazillion files, every single one of those bazillion files is firing off an FS
⏹️ ▶️ John event and Dropbox is there running and saying, oh my God, look at all these events. Do I care about this one? No. Do I care about
⏹️ ▶️ John this one? No. Do I care
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco about this one? No.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that burns CPU. And so when you’re running Dropbox and you’re expanding Xcode
⏹️ ▶️ John and you see your CPU usage going up and then you try that same process with Dropbox not running and it gets
⏹️ ▶️ John faster, you have a plausible, somewhat provable theory of what’s happening because
⏹️ ▶️ John you can run strace on Dropbox when you’re expanding Xcode and watch it, calling the FS events. Like, that
⏹️ ▶️ John is much more satisfying. When it’s just like, my computer does weird things and I can’t figure out why,
⏹️ ▶️ John it can be so many things. And that’s why these sort of, the anecdotes of, I followed your instructions
⏹️ ▶️ John and it made it better, is very much like, I mean, you can make up any instruction. Stand on one foot, touch your nose, and
⏹️ ▶️ John reboot your computer. And it’s like, oh, everything got better. Well, yeah, rebooting your computer fixes a lot of problems.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not very satisfying, but it’s true. But if I tell you to do anything before you reboot, So let’s say you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t reboot, just quitting programs solves lots of problems. Because if you quit the program that was causing a problem, or that one program
⏹️ ▶️ John was using a lot of memory, it pushed you into swap, and that was your problem, everything got slow because it’s swapping,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Even though you have an SSD, swapping is still bad, and you can get into a bad way. Like people aren’t equipped
⏹️ ▶️ John and shouldn’t be, have to be equipped, to diagnose their computer anymore than they know what that weird noise is under the hood of
⏹️ ▶️ John their car, right? They just know that something is wrong. And that’s why you take your car to someone
⏹️ ▶️ John who knows, or you hope like Apple or the developers figure out how to make it so there aren’t problems. But
⏹️ ▶️ John anytime someone comes up with like a, you know, try this one weird trick to fix your computer, the
⏹️ ▶️ John chances of that one weird trick being the solution to everyone’s problem is very, very low and more
⏹️ ▶️ John likely literally doing anything to your computer to perturb what you were doing before.
⏹️ ▶️ John Doctor it hurts when I do this. Stop doing that. Hey, it solved my problem. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t like the idea that people are thinking this was the solution. I do like the idea
⏹️ ▶️ John that people are having a better experience with their computers, but we won’t make forward
⏹️ ▶️ John progress and our computers getting better unless somebody is able to figure out what’s
⏹️ ▶️ John going on, right? Like Apple figured out, hey Discovery D, not so good. We gotta fix that. If
⏹️ ▶️ John instead Apple’s like, oh I don’t know, it’s just some vague problem, we can’t figure it out. It had to be pinpointed.
⏹️ ▶️ John It had to say, this is the thing that’s wrong because when I swap it for the old thing all of a sudden my whole computer
⏹️ ▶️ John gets better and it’s not because you’re running a web browser and it’s not because you’re doing this it’s because there’s an OS level component that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John hosed right? That’s the solution I want to see or explanation right? Either
⏹️ ▶️ John someone’s using a private API, someone’s doing something to trigger a bug in the OS but someone has to figure this
⏹️ ▶️ John out and just not running Chrome, the world’s most popular web browser I think,
⏹️ ▶️ John is probably not the best solution. So either Chrome’s got to figure it out or Apple’s got to figure it out or someone’s got to
⏹️ ▶️ John figure it out. So I really hope all all the people who are following the instructions that I think are on this website, or at least tweeted
⏹️ ▶️ John of like how to provide diagnostic information to the Chrome team. The Chrome team is like, look, if
⏹️ ▶️ John you think it’s us, like help us help you. We want to fix this too, but we need to know
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s us first. And it’s difficult situation because as Marco always says, like it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John his job to help Apple debug their crap. But on the other hand, if nobody does it, nothing ever gets fixed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our sponsors this week, Linode, Mac Weldon and Flatfile. And thank you to our members
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who support us directly, you too can join at http.fm join.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you and we’ll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check podcast so
Post-show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, in our super secret private chat, copyright
⏹️ ▶️ Casey due by Friday, Marco had said in exasperation a couple of days ago, you know, screw it, maybe I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just go get an XDR. And it occurred to me in our super secret private chat, and I said to you, Marco, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you getting the XDR first and then saying, well, I mean, I have this XDR.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve got to get a Mac pro to match it. That was not the route I expected
⏹️ ▶️ Marco God, I have never wanted more for Apple to just make the monitor I want.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s such a giant hole in the market, especially now as they’ve just released these amazingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compelling laptops and Mac minis. And there is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not yet a similarly compelling iMac or Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So many people want to be using these brand new laptops and Mac minis
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as their desktops all of a sudden. And the only option is either this terrible LG monitor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Apple’s $7,000 monster.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean the only reason they all want them is because these are the only R Macs that are out and they’re the low end ones. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I think everyone who’s like, I’m going to use a fanless air as my main computer, that instinct,
⏹️ ▶️ John that desire, that whole thing is just going to go away as soon as Apple releases the presumably much
⏹️ ▶️ John faster, much better, much better suited to people’s needs pro ARM Macs. And then you say,
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, I thought you were going to use your ARM as your main computer. Like, yeah, but now the iMac is out. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s the thing. And I, right now I am using my amazing little fanless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac mini as my main computer. And, you know, there are some things about it that are not as fast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as they could be, but I think most of that is, most of that feels like software problems, honestly, it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel like hardware. There’s still a lot of stuff that is not optimized for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Silicon that kind of surprises me. Like Dropbox, they claim that it works,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it doesn’t. Like if you look in Activity Monitor, it still says it’s running Intel binaries. 1Password and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of its subprocesses are still not. I can’t run Call Recorder at all for Skype because that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all compatible yet. So there’s certain things about it that are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weird and not yet optimized. Yes, I am fully aware that my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco own two Mac apps are also not optimized, but that doesn’t really matter because they work fine
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, wait, why aren’t you two max? My caps optimized when she was recompiled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Quitter I could try haven’t touched quitter in so long I bet it will be an ordeal to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it because now I have to deal with things like notarization all that stuff Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forecast uses the mp3 encoding library lame
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it uses one that’s built from Homebrew. And so I kind of have to like, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I assume, I have to wait for that to be easily buildable on R Max and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco isn’t yet as far as I have.
⏹️ ▶️ John Does it run it in a separate process or is it all in process?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it’s in process but it’s a separately built dilib. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John all right, well that one’s gonna be a pain but I think
⏹️ ▶️ John would just be a matter of recompiling.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it just doesn’t matter. Like I don’t even run Quitter anymore myself, honestly it’s kind of abandoned but it’s.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You quit Quitter. Yeah, but and forecast like forecast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should matter, but in practice, you know, you’re only running it for a few minutes here and there and it’s so fast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway. And Rosetta is so fast that in practice, it doesn’t really matter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that app. So once it once it becomes easy to support the encoding library on that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Apple Silicon, then I will issue the update, but it isn’t yet easy. And so it’s not worth the trouble.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want to go back a step though. I think even though I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used the LG 5K briefly, but many times, cause my dad has one,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, I didn’t find it nearly as offensive as you, but again, I’ve only been using it for 10 minutes at a time,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey once, you know, once every month or two. So this is not extended use by any stretch, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey despite that, and even though I don’t find it to be that particularly terrible, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does kind of baffle me that Apple doesn’t have something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey less than the Pro Display XDR. And I know we’ve been around this several times, but I just,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I keep coming back to and thinking about, you know, and you guys have said this, other people have said this. One of the great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things about Apple in the same way, like with Coca-Cola, and I think John especially said this before,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, you know, the president is drinking the same Coke or Diet Coke that I’m drinking and the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey president may or may not be using the same iPhone I’m using and,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and yet Apple in certain circumstances is much to our request
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is reaching into these ridiculous stratospheres where no normal human, other than John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Syracuse, is buying a $7,000 monitor for his home computer. Like, why would you do that? That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ridiculous. And so I don’t begrudge them having the Pro Display XDR because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we told them we want professionals to feel catered. And they said, okay, well, here you go. You know, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now we’re catering to catering to professionals, but. That, that kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey attainable, if, if challenging level that like, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like Apple isn’t fulfilling that in a lot of spaces right now. And that’s very frustrating.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And, and it’s like Apple lost a little of that. I keep coming back to like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey prestige and I don’t know if that’s the right word for it, but you know, Apple is kind of a prestige brand to some degree, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, know, it’s, it’s a brand that a regular human can reach out and grab.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey On, on a regular human income, you know, you don’t have to be making $10 million a year to buy a really nice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone. And I, it bums me out that there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no reasonable Apple monitor for these computers that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from, from everything anyone has said are unreal, they’re phenomenally great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computers. They’re bringing back, like I’m listening to my friends and I’m listening to press talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about these computers and there’s that like, I mean, it’s not a glint in the eye because I’m listening, not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seeing these people, but there’s that verbal glint, if you will, that this is, this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computing got fun again, all of a sudden, it’s not just incremental every year. This is like, this is fun. This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, this is brand new in a lot of ways. And yet we’re mating it to these godawful displays
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’s just, and it’s just, it It stinks. And I guess it would be less offensive if the market
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as a whole catered to these needs, you know, if there was some $2,000 and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not even about the money, but for the sake of discussion, there’s some $2,000 Dell monitor that had like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a really nice enclosure and a really nice stand. I can still imagine you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guys saying, well, it’s still got the Dell logo on the front or, oh, I don’t really like that. It’s black and not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gray or it’s plastic, not metal, but still, you know what? It’s a great panel. it’s a great monitor so whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not that big a deal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know what I mean? That’s exactly what I did like and the problem is the the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco direction that the market went like for a while pre retina and pre high DPI
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a while the PC monitor market and the Mac monitor market was compatible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and not only in like the technical sense of it will work but they wanted the same things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the high-end was kind of the same or at least like it was a lot closer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and And so, in the pre-Retina days, what PC monitors wanted in the 24-inch LCD range
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was the same thing that Apple monitors wanted in the 24-inch LCD range. And then what happened was, Apple went
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Retina, multiplied everything by 2X, and the PC world didn’t. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things have diverged in how each one of these worlds handles high DPI
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitors, whether they even want them at all, and then what their priorities are.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The PC monitor market is largely like either the absolute worst
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bargain basement crap for business buyers who don’t care and just need screens, or it’s stuff targeted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at gamers. And gamers have very, very different priorities. Like for gamers, it’s much more about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high refresh rates and about, yes, high pixel densities, but not as high
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as Apple goes because those are harder to drive at high frame rates. And so the markets have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco diverged now. And so now what Apple users want and need and prioritize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not at all satisfied by what the PC makers are making to satisfy their market.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So there’s basically no one left to solve this need except either Apple themselves,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or in the case of like this LG monitor and many of their peripherals by say Belkin,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some third party manufacturer where Apple has basically like handed someone the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco parts and market to make the thing themselves that Apple doesn’t really want to make. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, obviously these LG monitors were designed with Apple’s help. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re obviously, there might even be a business deal to, where LG
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes these for Apple as part of some contract because Apple wanted this to exist, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t want to bother having to make and sell it and support it themselves. So who knows how that worked out. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clearly like there was some cooperation between the two companies to make this. Same thing with all the stupid little adapters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple kind of co-makes with Belkin that Apple doesn’t want to sell themselves. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, so that’s what happened with the monitors. And it’s a shame because if the monitor situation was better,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if Apple still did what they did forever, which is sell a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitor in the 27-inch to 30-inch range for, you know, 1,500 bucks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 1,200 bucks, whatever it would be, that would be amazing. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the monitor, and the panel that they could sell is what they’ve been shipping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the iMac since 2014. Like this is not new.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not like the technology is just cutting edge and they can only fit it in an iMac. No, maybe that might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have been true in 2014, but it’s not true now. Because obviously LG can make it. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously Apple can make it too. And it’s just so frustrating that they’re just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco choosing not to. Like I like what you said about, they are leaving these huge gaps. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of thought, when looking at certain products, you know, when looking at the AirPods Pro Max,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for sure, when looking at certainly the Pro Display XDR, the Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and even, you know, like their accessories business, like all the weird, super expensive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad cases and stuff, the super expensive MagSafe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco double charger thing, the duo that doesn’t include the power brick. It almost seems like there’s two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apples. There’s one side of the company is getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty good or has been pretty good at delivering decent value.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there’s other side, not only are they not even trying, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost spiteful how bad of a value they’re delivering. Or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much of a market they are intentionally leaving totally unaddressed. But I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that’s necessarily profitable. Like, yeah, you know what happens when Apple charges $129
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a little bedside charger? Most people don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get forced into buying it and go, oh, well, I guess I’ll reluctantly give Apple $129. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they just buy something else from some third party on Amazon for cheap. Like, that’s what actually happens here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If somebody needs a monitor and the only one Apple sells is $7,000, almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nobody except jerks like me and John are gonna be like, okay, I guess I’ll buy that, Reluctantly, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most people are like, well, I’m just not gonna buy that no matter what you say or do, or no matter what I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need, so I’m gonna find other options. And it’s a shame,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that’s really just lost business for Apple at the end of the day, and it’s worse products for everyone else.
⏹️ ▶️ John But not much lost business. Like, that’s the reason. Like, the thinking that leads them not to make that thing is the same thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John that leads them not to make Wi-Fi routers and all these other things where, or even Wi-Fi routers had a bigger mark in this. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John most computers Apple sells come with monitors. The ones that don’t are the Mac Pro, which is now you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John already in the market for a $7,000 monitor, so that’s a perfect match set there.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco There’s no discontinuity there, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John The Mac Mini, which is like, well, that’s a weird-ass computer that nobody uses and let them fend for themselves. The whole
⏹️ ▶️ John point is you bring your own monitor and keyboard or use in a data center or whatever. Definitely like a sideshow.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then all those people with laptops who just buy Dell 4K monitors that Marco doesn’t like because everything is the wrong size, but no
⏹️ ▶️ John one else cares. Or they buy those really big wide monitors. that overlap between like what the PC
⏹️ ▶️ John monitor market is, fits fine for people who just, who want one of those big curve monitors and don’t care and
⏹️ ▶️ John hook it up to their laptop. And so what’s left? What’s left is weird people, and now we’re like Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John or me conceivably, where you have this very specific desire.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you buy a monitor to list computer from Apple or you wanna use it with your laptop, but you don’t want any
⏹️ ▶️ John of the PC ones cause you don’t like the curves and you want the DPI to be what you expect it to be. And it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s getting narrower and narrower. and it’s like, I feel like Apple learned from making like the Thunderbolt display, the 24, 27 inch Thunderbolt display
⏹️ ▶️ John and 24 inch Apple LED display before that, that they just don’t sell a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John those monitors because people look at those just like the weird $129 bedside thing. They’re like, eh, I’ll pass. I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John buy a Dell monitor, right? And who’s left? Just, you know, just the people
⏹️ ▶️ John who want an external monitor, which is already a fraction of a fraction and just the people who are willing to pay the
⏹️ ▶️ John admittedly not ridiculous Apple premium for a monitor instead of just buying the
⏹️ ▶️ John cheap Dell that is the wrong shape or whatever. So the bean counter perspective on why they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John make this makes sense, same way it does for getting out of printers or Wi-Fi routers or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John because everyone looks at the Wi-Fi router and like, oh, I like that one, but I’ll just buy the cheaper, you know, Linksys router,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But the thing that everyone’s missing, the bean counter perspective missing,
⏹️ ▶️ John is sometimes you gotta make products that don’t particularly make sense on a spreadsheet just to
⏹️ ▶️ John give a better sort of cohesive product story, right? it satisfies your most loyal,
⏹️ ▶️ John who are willing to spend tons of money. They become evangelists for your brand. And even if you lose money in every
⏹️ ▶️ John single one of those 5K Apple displays that you make, in the grand scheme of things, in the long
⏹️ ▶️ John run, it helps your business. And that pitch is the one that you need to make inside Apple to make this happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it seems like that pitch has been a tougher and tougher sell. I mean, it’s the same kind of pitch that
⏹️ ▶️ John made Apple take its eye off the Mac. It’s like, yeah, but we make all money off the iPhone and we just need to satisfy existing Mac users
⏹️ ▶️ John to some minimal level. And they learn that lesson of like, no, you actually have to put more in than you
⏹️ ▶️ John think to the Mac market, even though when you look at those line graphs, the Mac is in the mix with,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, whatever other products that it’s in the mix with, it’s not, it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John the iPhone and now services, and then the other products Apple makes. Charging bricks and also the Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? That’s kind of the same level of stuff. But it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you have, sometimes you have to spend more than it seems like it’s worth to
⏹️ ▶️ John keep the ball rolling, right? And they learned it on the Mac, but they haven’t learned it on the sort of accessories thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John the sort of the idea that you want to provide a holistic Apple experience. Steve Jobs seemed to be into that because
⏹️ ▶️ John he liked the idea of being able to sell you all the things, even though the vast majority of customers aren’t gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John buy all the things, right? But having all the things on offer, I think makes
⏹️ ▶️ John your product and brand more valuable. I mean, obviously you have to draw the line somewhere, like maybe probably Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John shouldn’t be making printers anymore, right? But a monitor for your computers that
⏹️ ▶️ John matches them that almost nobody’s gonna buy, that you already have the panels for that you’re using in your
⏹️ ▶️ John iMacs, right? That I feel like is a small reach. Just make an iMac, no chin, no computer
⏹️ ▶️ John guts. Like it’s right there, it’s not that much more. And you’re like, but I can’t justify those development expenses.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, you probably can’t. You’re probably not gonna make it back, right? But do it anyway, because
⏹️ ▶️ John it makes your most loyal customers happy and it looks good in product shots and consider it part of your marketing budget.
⏹️ ▶️ John There Apple, there’s my pitch, hire me. Beep, beep, beep.