474: That's Where the Magic Happens
17 Mar 2022Universal Control, display rumors (already?), an update on MaskerAid, and wondering where the Mac Pro might go.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- iPad Air does have stereo speakers
- Mac Studio HDMI is still 2.0
- 27” Studio Display Pro coming soon?
- “Five-head” Origins
- The A7III does have animal eye detection (via Alec Pulianas)
- Base Mac Pro gets a spec bump
- MaskerAid Updates
- ARM Mac Pro worst-case scenarios
- Universal Control Impressions
#askatp
:- Did the DTK set reasonable expectations for M1 devices? (via Ryan Petriello)
- Does switching to higher-resolution displays put a strain on the CPU/GPU? (via Peter Wagoner)
- What are the three ugliest Macs of all time? (via Wade)
- Post-show: A preview of Casey’s new setup (really) with a CalDigit TS4
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Chapters
- iPad Air vs. Pro
- Mac Studio is HDMI 2.0
- Studio Display Pro coming?
- Origin of “five-head”
- A7III animal-eye detection
- Mac Pro: “New”
- Sponsor: Kolide
- MaskerAid update
- Sponsor: Linode
- Mac Pro?
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- Universal Control
- #askatp: Was DTK representative?
- #askatp: 2x30” to 2x5K?
- #askatp: Ugliest Macs
- Ending theme
- Casey’s new setup (really!)
iPad Air vs. Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We don’t have there’s no pre-show anywhere. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey can’t make anything out of this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, you absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ John you just revealing that your ferry service is just slightly more distant.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Because I have no idea about
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And I’m just angry at how, you know, worried I was for you trapped.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s just so much hardship has been stolen. All right, let’s move on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s start with some follow up. And it’s everyone who knows what the what the pre-show was. We don’t, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we just recorded it extensively. But we’re gonna start with some follow-up. Andrew Wade said, “‘Hey, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said the nice thing about the iPad Pro “‘versus the Air was that the Pro had stereo speakers “‘while the Air did not.’” I thought he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was right, but that changed when the Air had its square sides upgrade. And from the spec
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sheet, you can see that it clearly labels speakers on the top, or speaker, or speakers, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speakers on the top and on the bottom.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep, I was totally wrong about this. Yeah, the iPad Air used to have just one speaker. The only way to get, like if,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what I want out of an iPad is when you hold it in landscape, which I think is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really the default iPad orientation for most people, when you hold it in landscape, you want a speaker on the left and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a speaker on the right. And I thought only the iPad Pro line offered that, because it used to only be the Pro line that offered that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, turns out I was wrong. Thanks Andrew Wade for pointing out that the Air, when it went to USB-C in the square sides,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it switched over to a speaker on top and speaker on bottom. Now the Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has four speakers. Basically has like, you know, kind of one per corner, although they’re on the short sides only. But so that way, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Pro can do stereo left, right sound no matter what orientation you’re holding it in.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whereas the Air can only do left, right separation in landscape. But either way, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you compare the specs and I did this a little bit on last show, but like, so it came time to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco choose like, you know, what should our next iPad for our kid be? I went through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything and went with the iPad Pro, actually the 11 inch iPad Pro, because when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you compare, I mean, everyone’s doing this because I think the air embargo dropped this morning or something, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you look at the new Air, the distance between the Air and the Pro is very, very small.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is very little difference between them right now. And maybe that’ll change, the Pro is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably due for an update like later this year maybe, so maybe that’ll change when the Pro gets updated, but for right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, the gap between them in both specs and features
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and price is very small. Because we’re not gonna get just the 64 gig.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a lot of video capture going on, capturing videos and photos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and recording games, stuff like that. So we get them, I think we usually go with 256 for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our configurations for him recently. And so when you compare the prices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of 256 versus Air and Pro, the difference is not big. it’s like 150 bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so what you do get with the Pro, again, it’s not significant anymore, depending on what you’re doing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but what you get in short, Thunderbolt instead of USB-C, so you know, connectivity for certain types of peripherals
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and monitors, that’s probably never gonna be used here, but you know, just worth pointing out. You get four speakers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead of two, okay, a little bit better. You get the wide angle camera and the LiDAR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sensor, so it’s a two camera array with LiDAR, and a flash, whereas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Air, I believe, no flash and it’s just the one camera. And then the big one I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the big two are our face ID and 120 Hertz promotion. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about it. Like there’s not a lot of other differences but face ID
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also brings you know more advanced front camera stuff you could do it the portrait mode on the front camera and stuff so there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that kind of stuff. So it’s not what you get between the pro and air is not nothing but it’s not a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the price difference is also So not a lot when you compare spec for spec. So went with Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ll see if I regret that. I probably won’t. Oh, and the other downside is the Pro only comes in boring colors,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whereas the Air comes in colors that were interesting before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they were diluted so much to be more muted and tame to fit the aluminum.
Mac Studio is HDMI 2.0
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, tell me about the MacStudio HDMI port.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s still 2.0, surprise. I mean, I should have been expecting, because if you squint at the MacStudio,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, you know, a MacBook Pro in a much bigger case. And that one also has HDMI 2.0
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think the same UHS-II SD card slot. So there’s another
⏹️ ▶️ John potential upgrade opportunity for the next revision of this machine as well. It would be nice if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John going to have an HDMI port that eventually it’ll get upgraded to HDMI 2.1, which is admittedly
⏹️ ▶️ John quite a leap considering all the features that are included in HDMI 2.1 if they try to support them all. But hey, for,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, $4,000 slash $8,000, HDMI 2.1 would be nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So what does 2.1 bring? Just what are a couple of highlights?
⏹️ ▶️ John Variable refresh rate, higher frame rates,
⏹️ ▶️ John better bit depth maybe as well. A bunch more video output options.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s like a laundry list of them and you don’t have to support of them all to get HDMI 2.1. In fact, I think the HDMI Consortium
⏹️ ▶️ John changed it so that you can say HDMI 2.1, even if you only support the 2.0 subset of it. I think they learned by
⏹️ ▶️ John watching USB, right? Is that if USB can make their names meaningless, we can do that too,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So like literally you can have just the 2.0 subset of features, but still say
⏹️ ▶️ John HDMI 2.1 because technically that’s part of the spec. Anyway, it’s silly, but I feel like the
⏹️ ▶️ John higher refresh rate if Apple, you know, well, hey, you can get a gaming monitor in theory, right? And maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a gaming monitor, then HDMI port, it’s a HDMI 2.1 gaming monitor, which are more common these days now
⏹️ ▶️ John that the game console support it. If you hook that up to your Mac you can’t play games at 120 Hertz or whatever.
Studio Display Pro coming?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving right along. I need a hug
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because apparently there’s a 27-inch Studio Display Pro coming, if we’re to believe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these rumors. I can’t handle this, guys. This roller coaster of emotion. I am trapped in a glass
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cage that is sitting on a roller coaster of emotion. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco display analyst Ross Young— Wow. That’s precarious. I’m making some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey metaphors here. Yes. 27-inch Studio Display Pro with Mini-LED and ProMotion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could launch in June. Ross Young says, still expecting a 27 inch mini LED display from Apple in June, guess it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey might be a studio display pro, have confirmed it with multiple companies in their supply chain. If I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have this damn studio display for like four months, I’m gonna be real upset.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so think of it this way. Like, first of all, this is just a rumor. I don’t know how I just threw this in there because the rumor like landed
⏹️ ▶️ John immediately after the event. It was like, oh, and by the way, there’s a mini LED promo. I was just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John wait, what? Like just after your event, you’re saying it’s coming And in June, June is not that far
⏹️ ▶️ John from now. But the way to think about this, if this actually does come true, is imagine the event had
⏹️ ▶️ John come and Apple had launched two 27-inch monitors, one that’s like the one we got, and then one that
⏹️ ▶️ John has the fancy features, high refresh, HDR, mini LED, right? Obviously, the high refresh,
⏹️ ▶️ John HDR, mini LED one would be more expensive. Again, looking at a
⏹️ ▶️ John 6K display, scale that down to 5K, because it’s basically the same feature set. They’re saying it would be mini LED,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is more or less XDR is and high refresh. Well, the XDR doesn’t even have high refresh.
⏹️ ▶️ John It would be better than it in some ways, right? It would be more expensive. And if they put both of those
⏹️ ▶️ John out at the same time, would you have chosen to spend an extra probably $1,000 for these features
⏹️ ▶️ John or would you have still gotten the Apple Studio Display that you ordered now?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would, I would really think about it because I really would love high refresh.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And was You John, that convinced me that HDR may have been,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey may be something I would be interested in, just so I could see like, you know, pictures of my iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Obviously you want the features, but for an extra probably thousand, maybe $1,500, I think you would have
⏹️ ▶️ John thought twice about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think there’s any chance in hell you would have paid the premium. Because again, we don’t know how big this premium is, or will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be when this thing comes out. Also, I mean, for whatever it’s worth, there has been some back and forth with the rumorologists
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this that make it sound like it’s either coming in June or next year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rumors are very big. This thing if it comes out, you know, who knows when it’s gonna come out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think if it’s gonna be offering a you know similar you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assuming it’s the same size, you know 27 inch 5K but but also adds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know some kind of micro led and variable refresh. I don’t see how it’s under $3000 and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably more. And so I don’t I don’t think there’s any chance if these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if both these option would have been would have been released on the same day. I don’t think you would have bought the other one, Casey. I really don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think you would have stuck with the one you got. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s still it’s still an open question of how inexpensive they can make this because we thought maybe this would be the time where
⏹️ ▶️ John we would show that like, oh, because you know, because the 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John displays are apparently reasonably priced enough to be unreasonably priced laptops that maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John the previously established baseline for what does it cost to have a big retina res
⏹️ ▶️ John HDR display that baseline is no longer valid and we actually we could do a bunch cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ John so far that’s not true the baseline we have is as it ever was that if you want to have
⏹️ ▶️ John fancy features at a large size at high DPI it costs an arm and a leg because you can buy these monitors
⏹️ ▶️ John in the PC world not 5k ones, but even just 4k ones. And they cost a ton of money, like
⏹️ ▶️ John 1000s of 3000 $5,000 $6,000 to like XDR type prices for XDR
⏹️ ▶️ John type technology. By the time this comes out, if it comes out next year,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe that will have changed by then. But the real thing that is making me doubt this rumor is
⏹️ ▶️ John is, would Apple launch two such similar products, one in March and one
⏹️ ▶️ John in June? That just seems, like, unless there was some reason that it was accidentally
⏹️ ▶️ John delayed and they just couldn’t get it out in time or one of them comes late, I don’t see them having a planned release. To release
⏹️ ▶️ John after, whatever, five years, six years, or whatever, finally release a monitor, everybody buys it, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John by the time the last person gets their shipment that they ordered on launch day or something, you release a new one that’s better?
⏹️ ▶️ John That just seems too tight of a timeline for me. I mean, it would be like Apple introducing
⏹️ ▶️ John the new MacBook Pros and then three months later, introducing a totally revised,
⏹️ ▶️ John better version of the same products. It just doesn’t seem like an Apple thing to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I would suspect that if this is a thing, which I’m really skeptical, and admittedly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s in my own self and best interest to believe it’s skeptical, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if this is real at all, I don’t see it happening this year. I think it would be next year at the earliest, but we
Origin of “five-head”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, I know you have been dying to tell us about the origins of Fivehead.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey After copious amounts of research, which by the way you’re not supposed to be doing, what have you discovered?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I thought it was a Seinfeld episode because it sounds like a Seinfeld. I mean, there’s even the one with the Elaine, Elaine’s got the big head,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the bird flew right into her head. It’s like you couldn’t avoid it. It reminded me of a
⏹️ ▶️ John Seinfeld episode, but it wasn’t apparently. And after the show, many people sent me suggestions of what they thought
⏹️ ▶️ John it might be. Someone pointed out that it was probably the Flophouse and dug out the actual episode
⏹️ ▶️ John And now I will put in the link so you can hear it It is in a Flophouse episode 94, which was a long time
⏹️ ▶️ John ago in 2012 Around 29 minutes and 46 seconds. We will put a timestamp
⏹️ ▶️ John link in the show notes. You can hear Stuart Wellington
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not gonna say inventing 5-head But that’s probably where I heard it because I’ve listened to the Flophouse and
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s probably where I got it from and I think it comes up in subsequent years on the Flophouse as well. Other people
⏹️ ▶️ John pointed out, Victor Borg, is that how you pronounce his name? Victor Borg? This is just like, yeah. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know. Inflationary language, where he just takes any
⏹️ ▶️ John common English phrases with numbers and increments them by one, and he also says five head and we’ll put a link. That’s obviously much older than
⏹️ ▶️ John the Flophouse, so maybe Stuart got it from this thing that he watched when he was a kid or something. So both of those
⏹️ ▶️ John links will be in the show notes with timestamps.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel so much better now. You
⏹️ ▶️ John should. So now a five head is part of your life. And now when you go to London, you can talk
⏹️ ▶️ John about the five head building. The one that melted cars and stuff. You know that one? What?
⏹️ ▶️ John Was it like the curved reflection thing? Yeah, there’s a building in London that looks like it’s got a five head because it gets bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John at the top. It looks like it has a big bulging forehead. And the sun reflected off it in such
⏹️ ▶️ John a way that it was like melting things that were in front of it during a certain time of day. by putting a giant sunshade inside
A7III animal-eye detection
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving right along, tell us about your Marco Christmas present.
⏹️ ▶️ John Alex Poulianis says that the a7 III does have animal eye detection, you just need to update the firmware. Many other people sent
⏹️ ▶️ John this in to me, but Alec was the first one. And so I was excited by this, and I went and looked at the camera,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the latest firmware from Sony for this camera is version 4.0.1, and what was installed
⏹️ ▶️ John on it was 2.0. So I did update the firmware. Should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey send it back for a refund.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I did. I did update the firmware. I went to the Sony website. Sony software is
⏹️ ▶️ John so awful. I mean, their iOS software is not great, but at least it works, but their Mac software is just next level
⏹️ ▶️ John bad. I downloaded a thing for a Mac that was ostensibly supposed to be a thing that lets you update the
⏹️ ▶️ John firmware on your Sony camera. Yeah, just flat out did not work. Like it was
⏹️ ▶️ John the most confusing Byzantine interface. I thought I must not be understanding what it wants
⏹️ ▶️ John me to do or why, because it would be like unplug the camera, don’t have your camera plugged in, plug it in, then turn it
⏹️ ▶️ John on and do it. It just absolutely did not work. It might be because like Mac OS has clamped
⏹️ ▶️ John down security since it was written and they never updated, who the heck knows. So Windows to the rescue,
⏹️ ▶️ John I booted into Windows and the Windows version of the software is also awful but actually works when you follow the instructions.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I booted into Windows, update my firmware and now my A73 can do pet eye detection
⏹️ ▶️ John And I took many doggie pictures.
Mac Pro: “New”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So just to add insult to injury with your Mac Pro being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey truly terrible by any reasonable measure at this point, right? Apparently the base model Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has gotten a spec bump just to make yours feel even more inadequate. No!
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, mine’s already, mine already surpasses this spec bump, but it’s interesting that they are like,
⏹️ ▶️ John whenever you see a spec bump like this, what did they do? They, they, did they bump the storage
⏹️ ▶️ John from 128 to 512? I can, hard, hard for me to believe that it was 128. Was it 256? 256, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all they’re doing is making the base level configuration have what used to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco add-on options and they’re kind of bumping everything down like one step. So it isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that there’s like new hardware available, you just get more in the base model than you got before of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same choices that were already available.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh yeah, it was 256, sorry. It’s hard to believe that you’d buy the $6,000 computer and it would come with a 256 gigabyte SSD in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just ridiculous, right? And when they do things like this, especially they
⏹️ ▶️ John bumped the graphics card from the Radeon Pro 580X, which was a terrible
⏹️ ▶️ John graphics card, to the W550X, which is considerably
⏹️ ▶️ John better. It makes me think they can’t get the 580X anymore because it’s so old, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John like, since when does Apple, like Apple doesn’t have a reputation for
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially reducing the price of configurations of computers as they age. They just don’t. I mean, they’re still
⏹️ ▶️ John selling the Apple TV HD for some obscene price. They like, just because the computer has been around
⏹️ ▶️ John for, look at the iMac Pro. Did that price ever go down in like its third year of life or whatever because it was
⏹️ ▶️ John ancient stuff? No, it didn’t. So I always think they’re running out of parts. But it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John nice that they’re still revising it. This is not an exciting update, but there you have it. But hey, if you need to boot
⏹️ ▶️ John into Windows to update your Sony camera, it’s good to have one of those Intel Macs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Real-time follow-up, Marco, that new comment, it went right over my head, but that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a much better joke than I gave you credit for, so well done. Thank
Sponsor: Kolide
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MaskerAid update
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving right along, oh, we should probably spend a minute talking about Masquerade.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The launch went well-ish, like it went fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sales have been okay. I’m going to forever blame the two of you for your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just incredible sales pitch a couple episodes back, and that’s why it happened.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel so bad. I’m so sorry. First, you invite me to beta test this app for like three months
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I do almost no testing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, it makes me feel better. So I haven’t watched what you sent me. So Marco sent me like a 20 or 30 minute
⏹️ ▶️ Casey video. So in your defense, I have not had the time yet to watch what you’ve sent me. So I have saved it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It exists. It is on the to do list, but I haven’t done it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet. Yeah. So then we did our launch show and I kind of crapped all over your schedule
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for doing it, which I didn’t mean to be a jerk about it. And I’m very sorry about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So then I did, I’m like, you know what? I feel so bad. Let me help out my friend or at least like
⏹️ ▶️ John by telling him all the other things that are wrong with that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco So I yeah, so I set up like I set up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my phone like I set up one phone like on like shooting video of another phone you and I did a whole walkthrough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the app like I’m here from from launch first launch going through here’s the purchase. Here’s everything else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here’s what I think of every single every single part of this Apple one by one. So my present to you was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a 24-minute video, which is basically giving somebody a problem. It’s like, here,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a gift to you, I’m going to give you this giant time commitment that you have to think into. You might as well have given me a puppy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right? No, puppies are better. But yeah, so anyway, I’m sorry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both for the lack of testing and for breezing over it too much when you announced it, and then also for giving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me a big time commitment as my makeup gift for those first two anti-gifts. Marshall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Polz You too could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a friend like Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Armin. Steven Lee
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m a great friend to have. So yeah, I honestly do want to hear how’s it going? Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one thing, the only reason we didn’t talk about it last week was because it was an event week, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was very surprised and in a way I was humbled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for my lack of imagination. There were just so many people who wrote in to Casey to say, like, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have this use case that and it’s great for that. And there were so many of those that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just could not think of at all at first. And because I thought it was just like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here’s an app for people who want to do what Casey does. That’s it. Period. Like an effort for people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who want to put emoji on their kids faces on Instagram. And there’s so many more use cases for it than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. And everyone’s been telling you all about that. And that’s pretty great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s been surprising for me, too. I’d love to be all smug and be like, Oh, of course, I knew this all along, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, I did not. And so a lot of very interesting use cases have come
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up. Some of the more popular ones I’ve seen is foster parents. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is not a world that I’m a part of, but I’m slightly embarrassed that I didn’t think about this. But foster parents,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in most places, my limited understanding is they are legally, I guess, obligated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to obscure the faces of the children that they’re fostering, because most states don’t seem to think it’s their right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to post photographs of the faces of the children that they’re fostering, and so they have to obscure them. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so, yeah, so foster parents have been really, really enthusiastic about this. And boudoir photographers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who want to keep things safe for work apparently are interested in putting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe some eggplants all over the photographs or something along those lines, which was something I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very surprised to read, but I mean, hey, it makes sense. And it actually got even more risque from there, but I’ll leave that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for another time. Coming back to the less risque options, teachers, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something I did think about, and certainly I’ve told friends of Erin’s and mine that are teachers,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you want to post a picture of your classroom, you may have social media releases for your kids. Some school districts do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, some don’t. But nevertheless, it’s easier, perhaps, to just obscure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey their faces. And so teachers, any of them that I’ve spoken to about it seem really enthusiastic about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Amusement park ride photos, somebody tweeted, I think I retweeted a picture of like Splash Mountain or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that at Disney World where they put like little screamy or smiley faces or whatever on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of the ride participants except them and their family or maybe it was just that the single individual which I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got quite a kick out of. Protesters or perhaps even military personnel.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Again, we stand with Ukraine, but obviously there’s a lot of really awful and terrible things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going on over there and there are are plenty of reasons why you might want to obscure faces or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that. So that’s an example. There’s just plenty of different things. A few
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people have taken to putting pig noses on the nose of their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dog. So they have a little pig snout, snoot, whatever, which is quite funny to see. I saw
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a few of those fly by. I think I retweeted one or two of those, which were very, very, very good. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like those quite a bit. So yeah, there are a lot more use cases here than I expected.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And as much as I, when we were recording a couple episodes ago, I felt like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey both of you guys were being a little tunnel visioned about it. But certainly, this is more eye
⏹️ ▶️ Casey opening than I would have expected even. So I can’t entirely fault you for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In general, a couple of other observations, I got a lot of generally friendly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey flack, but Flack nevertheless, about the fact that the app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t prompt for permission before opening a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey photo. And a lot of people were like, Hey, what are you doing?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This doesn’t seem right at all. And at first I was like, what are you talking about? This is an API.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it occurred to me that, that for better or worse, the nerds at least have been trained
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to only trust when they see a permissions prompt. And honestly, that’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the best. That being said, as of, shoot, last year, no, two years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago, God, what year is it? Time’s a flat circle. WWDC 2020.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco In 2020, they released a new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey API and it is the phpickerview controller.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the advantage of the phpickerview controller is that it allows
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you to load images without having to have any sort of prompt.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so basically by calling into Apple’s code using this specific view controller,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can ask for one or more photos and it will handle what it needs to handle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on its end. I don’t have to ask for permission or anything. It’ll just do it. And then it will come back to me with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the results. And so the only thing I have access to are the specific images
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the user, or in my case, image, that the user has selected. They don’t give me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any sort of access to anything else. And that’s really cool. And for me, it was perfect. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was exactly what I wanted, but it was funny and interesting to me that a lot of people were like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hey man, what you doing? Cause this doesn’t seem right at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But that was very fascinating. In terms of sales, it’s okay. Like it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hasn’t, you know, lit my financial world on fire. It’s not bad, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not spectacular. So there’s that. But I’m having fun with it, which is good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve already released one release. And earlier today, I sent TestFlight
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for review, but it hasn’t been approved as far as I know. Another release, one of the things that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people asked for the most was a way to get a photo from other apps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into Masquerade, which is a completely reasonable thing to ask for. And something I was planning on,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I tell you what, maybe I’m just a dummy, but the namespace for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things that interact with the share sheet has been so polluted with like generic terms,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like action extension, which you can find in like a billion different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computer science related contexts. There are so many different ways to skin this cat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it took a lot of help from random people on Twitter to get me to the exact point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanted to. But I think I have a version of that working that should be out in another week
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or so, where you can be in Photos, you can open the Share Sheet. It’ll appear in the second
⏹️ ▶️ Casey row, where you will peer to messages and things of that nature. Well, if you add
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it because you have to first add it as one of the options that are available there. But in the second row beneath Contacts,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’ll see a Masquerade icon, and then it will prompt you, hey, do you want to edit this in Masquerade?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then it will pop over to Masquerade and it’ll let you edit it right there. And assuming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the testers think that it works OK, then hopefully,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I said, I’ll have that out in a week or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey You know, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch my 24-minute video, there’s a bunch of really quick hit kind of things in there that you could do pretty quickly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All kidding aside, I do need to. The problem is I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For instance, that bug about the selection rectangle, I found that bug during the video, and I’ve told you how to fix it. I reproduce it 100% of the time. Oh, good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I was briefly looking at that earlier today, So I guess I should stop procrastinating on the video. But, um- I can tell you exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how to fix it. In Swift UI?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh no, screw that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, see, see. Cause remember that app up until this update with,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had to, so for the update for the share sheet, I had to write objective C.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s how much I’m going through for you, the purchaser.
⏹️ ▶️ John did you have to do that?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, okay, so do we, no, so I think this is worth talking about.
⏹️ ▶️ John Honestly, cause it’s, they both interoperate and it’s a Swift application and why?
⏹️ ▶️ John What did you have to do that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t want to make this long and I don’t want to be super specific because I’m doing something that’s not shady but not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey entirely on the up and up, but- Are you swizzling something? No, I’m not swizzling. No, no, no, no, no. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I needed to, let’s just say I needed to walk the responder chain. And that is something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s considerably easier to do in the way in which I was trying to do it with some of the other things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that were happening around it in Objective-C than it was in Swift. And you can do this in Swift.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s fine. Please don’t write me. It’s totally fine. I’m not upset, really, that it happened.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it was funny having to write Objective-C for the first time in a long time and remembering that, oh, semicolons
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are a thing. I forgot about that. So yes, so anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But all in all, I’m pleased with the app. There’s definitely problems with it. Apparently, 25 minutes worth of problems with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it if you’re Marco Armand. But there’s definitely problems with it. I think it is getting, I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good and I think it’s getting better and that pleases me. But sales have been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey meh and that’s pretty disheartening. So you take, you win some, you lose some.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still don’t know how to find exactly the people who use this app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s the crux of the issue, isn’t it? Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What’s good is that you have a lot more groups that you can target here. You know, like this is something that I’ve had to learn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many times. I really don’t know how to reach people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not already reaching. I never have been good at this with my own apps. If you look at the things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve made, the things that have succeeded are things that appeal to the audience I already have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The things that have not succeeded are when I try to appeal to other groups. Like when I make stuff that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not really that useful to a lot of tech nerds, I tend not to succeed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how to reach out of this audience. I have no idea. I’ve tried a couple of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ads and things here and there, but never at a large scale, and never to a super targeted group.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Never doing things like going on Facebook or Google and buying really targeted demographic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of stuff. I’ve never done any of that stuff. But that is probably something to look at.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How you might feel about that, that’s a different story. I certainly have my feelings about that kind of stuff, and that’s one of the reasons I haven’t done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. But I’ve also benefited from my businesses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mostly targeting the audience that I already have and that I can already reach.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m really good at making tools for nerds. And this isn’t going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to help you with this particular problem. But ultimately, I think if you want to really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blow out your indie app career, start making tools for nerds like you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, look at this stuff people ask you all the time. a friend for FFmpeg to do a bunch of common stuff. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many apps that are basically that. Yeah. Like that’s the kind of thing you could do. Like make something that makes people’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco synologies more useful. You know, like make something that is really good that integrates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Plex. Like the things that you’re already a big nerd about, I feel like you would at least have a better chance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of selling your existing audience on that kind of stuff and you get more people that way. Because when you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making an app that’s trying to reach out to parents with certain needs. That’s some of the people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who listen to our show. That’s some of your existing audience. That’s some of your blog audience. But it’s not going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as much of that audience as something that appeals to nerds who run FFMPEG. It’s a very,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very different market. And again, I’m only speaking from experience here. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only succeeded when I’ve targeted nerds in a broad way. And I have not succeeded when I’ve tried to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I take what you’re saying and honestly, there have been a couple either FFmpeg or FFmpeg
⏹️ ▶️ Casey adjacent things that I’ve been really thinking about. Part of the reason
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I haven’t done it is because I don’t have anything against being a Mac developer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I have no interest in learning AppKit, which I know is blasphemy for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many of our friends, but I just don’t have any interest in it. Going Catalyst is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an option but it’s got its own challenges, doing Swift UI is an option, but it’s got its own
⏹️ ▶️ Casey challenges. Um, and then the other thing, again, I take your point, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, if you’re a nerd who it knows enough to know what FFmpeg is, are you going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to pay like 20, 30, 40, 50 bucks for what is effectively just a GUI in front of FFmpeg? You know what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t just people do. I have, there’s, there’s like, there’s like 20 different apps out there that are, that are that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just used one recently. I was using a, what was I using? I think permute is just an FFmpeg front end.
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of my, I think a lot of my player apps are ffmpeg, for instance. I find out when you like look in the packages and you see they
⏹️ ▶️ John bundle their own copy of
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco ffmpeg or some
⏹️ ▶️ John of them in the preferences window ask you to locate your copy of ffmpeg and then you realize how many of these apps are
⏹️ ▶️ John just for an insert fmpeg. Yeah, and I use them because I don’t want to have to Google for the command line every time.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just want to have it use a GUI app. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, fair. I don’t know, it’s worth thinking about. I think for now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my intention is to get rid of some of the things that bother me about Masquerade,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is generally speaking things that bother other people about Masquerade, like for example, not having a chair extension.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I’d like to spend another month or two, you know, trying to get through those. And I feel like I’ve been making pretty quick progress
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a lot of them. And then once that’s done,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I might spend a little time spit polishing Peak of You. We should talk about that in another episode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I don’t know if it’s worth my time or not, but I feel like a little spit shine would be nice. And then I’m not sure what’s coming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey next, be honest with you, I’ve really thought about doing just, you know, my, my own spin on an FFMPEG front end, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’ve described, I really, really, really want to make a, a nicer way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to put chapters into videos, which is like an esoteric part of an esoteric
⏹️ ▶️ Casey market, but the options that exist today, I’m not in love with. And so I I’m really considering
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing something like that for all I know, maybe both of these things could be the same app. I don’t know, but, um, one way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or another, I don’t know what’s coming after Masquerade. But, oh, and to go back a step,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have thought very hard and I don’t know if I’m going to do it, but I’ve thought very hard about taking the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey meager earnings that Masquerade has already got and pumping a lot of that into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey advertising for it. And I don’t know exactly what that would look like. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Honestly, I don’t know really anything about how to pay for people to pay for advertising
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that will hopefully get people to not only install your app, but but convert and purchase the IAP. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I’m gonna do. I think I’m going to try it at least a little bit. I don’t know if that means Instagram. I don’t know if that means
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Facebook. If I’m smart, it probably means Facebook, as gross as that is. But I think I’m gonna at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey least give it a shot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, I would go Instagram because you figure like that’s where people are. You know, like you could show a picture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the emoji already on it as the ad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But at that point, I’m asking you to do something that Instagram already does, right? So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to pay for something that Instagram already does. I don’t know. Again, I’m happy to talk about this in a general
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sense. I think in the interest of time, since we have a lot more to cover, I think we should put it in the parking lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for now. But we can put it in the parking lot and circle back later. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know what I’m gonna do about this, but if there’s interest both with you two and with the listener
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me talking through this as I work through it over a month or two from now, then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m certainly happy to bring it to the show and talk it over. But I feel like my gut sitting here tonight is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think a little bit of Facebook and maybe Instagram advertising is worth exploring. And maybe I put 10%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of what I’ve earned from Masquerade into it, which is frustratingly not $30 million,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is what I was hoping for, but certainly did not expect. But put 10% of what I’ve earned
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into it and see if I can get any traction from it. And I don’t know, we’ll see what happens.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I appreciate anyone who has bought it for sure. I appreciate anyone who has told
⏹️ ▶️ Casey friends or family about it, doubly sure. And if you haven’t checked it out, I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey encourage it. And not only is it, I think it’s pretty good today and it’s certainly gonna get better. And after
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I weep from all the feedback that Marco’s given me, I will be making presumably many of the changes that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he suggested and hopefully it’ll get better still.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will ruin slightly that it’s going to be a lot of removal of some text.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that is not surprising.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less text than you have. But not a lot less. Still Casey. Still
⏹️ ▶️ John very Casey. Got to get that file size down. Got to remove those characters.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I actually am blowing out the file size ever so slightly. I think it’s only like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two or three megs to download right now. But I’m adding a photo of me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a small photo of me in it because one of the features I’m adding in the forthcoming version is you can have like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a sort of effectively a multiplier on how big the emoji is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey once it’s put on a face. So if you think about the way this works is, I get from an API, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the face is at such and such rectangle. Well, you have the option coming up. You will have the option of saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, make that rectangle 120% bigger than it normally is, of the size that the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey API gave me. So you have a better likelihood of it covering the whole head rather than just the face.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, in order to do that, I put a picture of me in there. And then you can slide left and right to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey make the emoji bigger or smaller over my face. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s in, I don’t know if you can get it in test flight right this minute, but it’s as soon as Apple gets around to testing the test flight version,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can get it because it’s pending, it’s waiting on Apple. And so I added a picture of me, and that was like a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Meg in total across all three sizes. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the welcome screen, the image, the icon, the masquerade icon at the top,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey annoyingly, even for the 13 Pro Max, the biggest icon that Apple packages
⏹️ ▶️ Casey within the bundle of their own volition is like 72 by 72 at 2x or something like that. It’s like an iPad size at 2x.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I felt guilty adding another copy of the same thing to the bundle in order to get a more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey retina-friendly version of the icon, and I’ve been called on it enough times that I’ve decided, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what’s the real difference between like a four-meg app and a five-meg app or whatever? So I’ve added another
⏹️ ▶️ Casey copy of the masquerade icon so it looks a little cleaner on the landing page. So it’s getting a little bit bigger, I’m sad to say,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I guess Marco is gonna help me offset that. That’s what it is, I’m offsetting it. You know, just like you offset
⏹️ ▶️ Casey caloric intake by exercise. Well, Marco’s giving me my exercise, if you will, so I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey offset the bloat of my app. There you go, so it’s a team effort.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll save you tens of bytes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tens of bytes, I tell you. All right, well, again, I mean, I’m not trying to shut down the conversation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a general level. I think we should move on for today, but if listeners or if you two are interested
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in anything that’s going on, I’m happy to talk about it in future episodes.
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Mac Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, this is the part where I go to sleep for a little while. Let’s talk about the Mac Pro. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John been a little bit of an emotional roller coaster after the event. I mean, I talked through this in the last episode,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the things they said in the event could lead to various
⏹️ ▶️ John futures that would not make me particularly happy or that don’t make a lot of even sense to me.
⏹️ ▶️ John So in one of my emotional low points since last week, I
⏹️ ▶️ John was thinking about a future ARM-based Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John that would be in keeping with everything Apple has said and everything that we know,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it would also be extremely confusing and disappointing. And it’s this. And I mentioned some of this
⏹️ ▶️ John in the last show, but putting it all together after the show, I was like, they could do this, and
⏹️ ▶️ John it would fit with what they said. So first is that it would just have the M1 Ultra in it. That would
⏹️ ▶️ John fit with what they said, because what they said is this is the last M1 chip, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And they also seem to be saying that their transition is gonna complete more or less on schedule,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it seems kind of unlikely that there’s going to be a gigantic 40-core M2-based chip
⏹️ ▶️ John ready during that schedule. Again, who knows, but it just seems unlikely at this point. So
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, you could just have the M1 Ultra. Why is that disappointing? Well, we’ve already got a computer with the M1 Ultra
⏹️ ▶️ John in it. It’s called the Mac Studio. And you’re gonna release a Mac Pro and it’s got the exact same chip in it. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not very pro. It’s like, okay, well then maybe, so let’s flesh out the rest of this machine. I would
⏹️ ▶️ John have PCI slots. But in keeping with Marco’s pessimism, you have PCI slots,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you can’t put GPUs in them. So the PCI slots would just be there for other things.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can do lots of stuff with PCI slots, but if you can’t put GPUs in them, it’s weird.
⏹️ ▶️ John And of course, if it’s got an M1 Ultra in it, that means the max RAM is 128 gigs, because that’s the maximum of the
⏹️ ▶️ John M1 Ultra. And then if it’s the Mac Pro and not the Mac Studio, it would probably be more expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s the top end machine. And that Mac Pro, M1 Ultra only,
⏹️ ▶️ John max 128 gigs of RAM, PCI slots with no GPU support, bigger and more expensive than a Mac Studio,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not a good Mac Pro. It’s just kind of a sad Mac Pro. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a nonsensical, confusing Mac Pro because how would Apple even advertise
⏹️ ▶️ John that Mac Pro? here’s our new most powerful computer. You know, buy
⏹️ ▶️ John this one for more money than this other one and do
⏹️ ▶️ John everything at exactly the same speed because it has the same system on a chip, the same amount of RAM,
⏹️ ▶️ John no more GPU power, but I guess you can put internal SSDs and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, or audio interface cards, which people tell me there aren’t even a thing anywhere, but who knows? That would be
⏹️ ▶️ John super disappointing. and yet it would fit with all available information. And so I was thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John about that and thinking, God, I hope they don’t do that. And that led me down to dig myself out of that sort of pit
⏹️ ▶️ John of despair of this just, because what I’m basically describing is, it’s a Mac studio,
⏹️ ▶️ John but bigger and more expensive with card slots that are useless to everybody. Almost everybody. Card slots
⏹️ ▶️ John that are almost useless to almost everybody, because honestly, what goes in the card slots? Like afterburner card, which you don’t need anymore
⏹️ ▶️ John because they have that stuff on the system on a chip. Tons of GPUs. If you look at what does Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John sell you that you can put in those slots in the Mac Pro, they sell tons of GPUs. You can put four
⏹️ ▶️ John giant GPUs in there, but I think two dual cards with the huge amounts of like, that’s what Apple sells you to put
⏹️ ▶️ John in there. And you can put other stuff in there like PCI, PCIe SSD cards,
⏹️ ▶️ John cards with more USB slots in them, the aforementioned mythical audio interface cards.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are other things you can put in there, but GPUs are one of the big ones. So to get myself out of this
⏹️ ▶️ John funk, I said, that can’t be it. there’s gotta be something more, there’s gotta be something
⏹️ ▶️ John more to the Mac Pro. And I was trying to convince myself that maybe like a big M2
⏹️ ▶️ John will be ready because you know, the low end M2s will come out around the middle of the year with the new MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Air and maybe the new Mac mini will have an M2 and then new MacBook Pros
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe. So maybe by the end of the year, maybe they will have an M2. I just couldn’t convince myself. I couldn’t convince myself that by the end of
⏹️ ▶️ John this year, there’s gonna be like a 40 core M2 base chip. I may be wrong. Again, all of my
⏹️ ▶️ John expectations are trained based on like public Intel roadmaps
⏹️ ▶️ John history and stuff like that, but it just seems less likely to me. So I was looking for something, anything to make me feel
⏹️ ▶️ John better about the possibility of a Mac Pro that isn’t stupid.
⏹️ ▶️ John And luckily I was saved by another good video from Max Tech. We’ll put it in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it had a bunch of information. Some of it was old that I thought was interesting and some of it was like
⏹️ ▶️ John possibly leading us us to some scenario where we could have a better Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the first bit of older info is a patent that we’ll put a link to in the show notes. I couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John find a good link for the patent. I’m sure there’s like a.gov site that has patents on it, but I ended up going to patents.google.com
⏹️ ▶️ John because they had reasonable URLs and it was easy to search, surprise. So this is a patent describing
⏹️ ▶️ John how the M1 Pro and Macs
⏹️ ▶️ John and Ultra work, like chips we already know about. And if my slash
⏹️ ▶️ John max text understanding of this patent is correct, there’s one wrinkle to what we have discussed
⏹️ ▶️ John in the past. So there’s a photo associated with the patent you’ll be able to look at if you follow the link.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s like the big silicon wafer, which is a circle. And then it’s got little squares cut out. And each one of those squares
⏹️ ▶️ John is basically jade C die, right? And it shows how they’ll print
⏹️ ▶️ John as many of those squares as they can fit in the circle, which is kind of a shame that silicon wafers are a circle. I’m sure there’s some reason
⏹️ ▶️ John important reason they are having to do with manufacturability, but the chips aren’t circle So there’s lots of wasted space. But anyway, you got all these little
⏹️ ▶️ John squares and What they do with them is The way they get an ultra
⏹️ ▶️ John is The two Jade C dies that are next to each other have to both
⏹️ ▶️ John be working So to get an ultra with all the stuff working, it’s not just that you need two maxes
⏹️ ▶️ John with all the stuff working You need two maxes that were next to each other on the wafer So
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently the interposer thing, like they have to be next to each other.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wait, so does the interposer, is the interposer being printed between all of them?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know the details, but my understanding is what, this is what they’re saying in the patent, that even if it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John second process or a second pass or a third pass or whatever, but they have, they do actually have to be next to each other. You can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John just take these two random ones. Like the video shows these two little things coming together and being weaved together, but that’s not, that’s just fanciful
⏹️ ▶️ John graphics things. They have to actually be next to it. Maybe they do try to print it between all of them, or maybe they
⏹️ ▶️ John just look at which ones are good and then print it on the ones that are good. But either way, that explains a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit of why it’s so much more expensive to get
⏹️ ▶️ John an ultra with everything working on it, because it’s not just enough to have two maxes with all the parts working. They have to be
⏹️ ▶️ John two maxes that happen to be next to each other and the odds of that are a lot lower. You can look at this little diagram and do the math if you’re good at probability
⏹️ ▶️ John and figure out, percentage-wise, how much less likely that is to happen. And then, of
⏹️ ▶️ John course, if you just have one of the squares where everything works, that’s a max where everything works. If you get a square with only some of
⏹️ ▶️ John the stuff works, that’s a max with some cores missing. And if you get a square with a whole bunch of stuff that’s screwed up, in theory,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a pro where they just remove the bottom part of it and you don’t need that. I don’t know if that’s true. I think they might
⏹️ ▶️ John print the pros separately, but I might be wrong with that. But either way, this was enlightening. And it doesn’t make me feel that
⏹️ ▶️ John much better about the increase in cost. Like, oh, you know, if I want all the GPU cores working, it’s an extra
⏹️ ▶️ John thousand dollars, but I do have a little bit more sympathy for the yields they must be getting. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the other thing, looking at this is, how clever the system is for cost control, where you design
⏹️ ▶️ John one thing, you print it the best you can, and then every single wafer, you get X number
⏹️ ▶️ John of maxes, X number of pros, and X number of ultras, and there’s very little waste, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t have to throw anything out, because if you have two ultras and some part of it’s screwed up, maybe that’s two maxes,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe that’s one max with some stuff missing and a pro. Every square on it, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to get the best that you can possibly get out of it. And if you win the ultra lottery and a bunch of ultras come out of a wafer, great,
⏹️ ▶️ John But if not, you don’t have to throw a lot of stuff away. So I thought that was interesting. So
⏹️ ▶️ John second patent vaguely related to that, we’ll link this one as well, is, again,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t understand enough of this to know. Max Tech seemed confident in their interpretation. I read it, and my eyes glazed over.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, jeez, I should make Casey, to keep Casey awake, I should make him read this. Can you, Casey, can you please read the
⏹️ ▶️ John highlighted portion and see if this makes any sense to you whatsoever?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What? Sorry, did you need something?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A communication path that travels up and down between the first package level and the second package level, wherein a first group
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of one or more dies and the first plurality of dies function as both functional dies and stitching
⏹️ ▶️ Casey devices for two or more of the second plurality of dies, and a second group
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of one or more dies and the second plurality of dies function as both functional dies and stitching devices for two or more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the first plurality of dies. I would not have been able to make heads or tails of this, but I did do my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey research and I watched the Max Tech video and it was very good. And what Max Tech is saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or their theory is, you take two ultra, or you take one ultra,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is itself two maxes, and then below it, you put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a second ultra. So you have a total of four, is this sounding familiar? Two above, two below.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What’s better than 2D? 3D, baby. And so the theory is that they would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be able to get around some of the problems of things being physically distant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from each other. So to back up a half step, let’s say you had four M1 Maxes laid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a row, serially, if you will. If you have to get data from the leftmost one to the rightmost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one, that actually takes some time, and you would potentially have to go via the other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ones to get that data across through all these different dyes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So what they’re saying is, and what MaxTech is theorizing is, well, if we put them two on top of two,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then maybe we could make these physically approximately closer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we can stitch them together in such a way that we get a Jade, what was it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 4C die or something like that. So it’s a theory and it does make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sense to someone who does know a little bit about electronics but nothing about chip design. So
⏹️ ▶️ John possible. Yeah, I mean part of the problem with the Jade Sea die is as far as we’re aware that whole like the
⏹️ ▶️ John place where the interposer is that’s just on one edge. There’s other stuff on the other edges that do other
⏹️ ▶️ John important things right. So if you try to put four of these down, if you just take an ultra
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s got the interposer between them, where do you put the second ultra if you put it alongside, then it’s not connected
⏹️ ▶️ John to the first ultra right. If you put it underneath, then the interposers are on top of each other and this patent
⏹️ ▶️ John is about connections made from one thing Downwards to another
⏹️ ▶️ John all this weird patent language with plurality of dyes and the weird language you have to do It’s like legally
⏹️ ▶️ John is mixed with techno stuff If you ever read a patent, it doesn’t read like a normal thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’m sure all that language is there For some important historical reason that this is this is the way you have to do
⏹️ ▶️ John it for it to be Well understood in the world of patents because they use a certain language to do
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff But it just makes it confusing to try to read and figure what they’re talking about now Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John tons of chips that Apple makes have various 3D layers and stacking, like, or that TSMC
⏹️ ▶️ John makes or whatever. So that’s not a new thing, and it could be that this whole patent is just talking about that and has nothing to do with
⏹️ ▶️ John taking two ultras and putting them on top of each other or is just yet another system for making layered integrated circuits.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know enough to know. But the reason I bring this up is the idea that you could have
⏹️ ▶️ John two ultras that talk to each other relies on solving the problem of, yeah, but how?
⏹️ ▶️ John The max like video where I was thinking of winning them end and that doesn’t make any sense because there’s nothing on the the sort Of the other
⏹️ ▶️ John ends to talk to each other at all Like I don’t think there’s any forget about the distance, you know, but just
⏹️ ▶️ John a whole separate issue There’s nothing there to connect or talk as far as I’m aware So it would have to be one on top
⏹️ ▶️ John of the other or something slightly different But anyway, that would make a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro that you know, that is not stupid because hey it’s two and one ultras.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s twice as much stuff. And obviously, you’d charge way more money for that. But it would also be able to do
⏹️ ▶️ John twice as much stuff if you have a workload that can use all its execution units. So that would be great. That would make me feel a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John better, even if it still didn’t use external GPUs. Right? Now, the final bit here related to
⏹️ ▶️ John this, we’re getting increasingly sketchily sourced rumors, right? This is from
⏹️ ▶️ John Manjin Boo. I think this was on Twitter. Yeah, I don’t know this person’s
⏹️ ▶️ John rumor, history, or whatever, but the tweet says, based on what my resource reports,
⏹️ ▶️ John here is some official information on the new Mac Pro 2022. This is the bridge that connects
⏹️ ▶️ John two M1 Ultra together and will be found in the new 2022 Mac Pro. And there’s an image
⏹️ ▶️ John in the tweet that you can look, hopefully the tweet is still up. So what the image is showing
⏹️ ▶️ John is like a blueprint-ish looking diagram. In the upper right corner, there is a diagram
⏹️ ▶️ John that clearly looks like two M1 Ultras next to each
⏹️ ▶️ John other side by side with a strip going down in the middle where I guess that’s where the magic happens
⏹️ ▶️ John where somehow there’s this big vertical strip between them that lets them talk to each other.
⏹️ ▶️ John How? I don’t know, but there’s a bunch of this, you know, the diagrams talking about Daisy Dxl
⏹️ ▶️ John sub zero daisy xl sub two and Some other text explaining
⏹️ ▶️ John that the daisy is the interconnected between the things It’s just basically saying we can put them side by side
⏹️ ▶️ John and we’ll put a strip of this magic stuff here and the magic stuff Makes them talk to each other and voila. You’ve got a
⏹️ ▶️ John you know four square M1 ultra x2
⏹️ ▶️ John And according to this the processor name is red fern and it’s coming in Mac pros this September. So there’s a timeline
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a code name, there’s a diagram with a topology. It will be easy
⏹️ ▶️ John to assess which one of these rumors is correct because eventually a Mac Pro will come out
⏹️ ▶️ John and the first thing to look at is does it have more in it than an M1 Ultra? Like does it have two M1 Ultras in it?
⏹️ ▶️ John Right? If it doesn’t then everyone will be sad. If it does have two M1 Ultras, how
⏹️ ▶️ John are they physically laid out? Are they on top of each other or are they side by side?
⏹️ ▶️ John And that will sort of let us know which one of these people was closer to reality. But I,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the reason I did all this digging because I just want to believe that there’s going to be two M1 Ultras in there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because M1 Ultra makes sense, two M1 Ultras make sense to me. And Apple can paper
⏹️ ▶️ John over it by saying, we didn’t lie when we said this was the last M1 chip, it really is. And now you have two
⏹️ ▶️ John of them, two of them. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah. JS That’s exactly what I was going to say. And I don’t recall if we talked about this last episode, but it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not entirely unreasonable for them to say, look, we told you that what makes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an M1 Ultra so ultra and amazing is that it is perceived to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one chip by the operating system and so on and so forth. Well, this, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M1 Ultra Mega Max, you know, Voltron, whatever, this is two,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is two chips. So we didn’t lie. It’s two chips. It’s perceived to the OS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as two chips. But, you know, we’ve been doing this on and off for years, so it’s something we’re used to. And now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s almost like having two whole computers in one. And I don’t think that’s necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unreasonable, especially if, like I said, this is perceived by the operating system as being two different processors.
⏹️ ▶️ John You still got the NUMA thing, though. It’s like, oh, so you can say this is two different processors. We made dual processor
⏹️ ▶️ John computers before. That’s not a big deal. Right. At no point did each one of those processors have its own private
⏹️ ▶️ John pool of memory that was attached to it. And this diagram, by the way, doesn’t address that.
⏹️ ▶️ John The second diagram that shows the two M1 Ultras right next to each other, where’s the RAM in that picture?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because if you look at an actual M1 Ultra, it’s not just the two Maxes attached
⏹️ ▶️ John to each other, it’s two Maxes attached to each other, flanked on both sides by RAM chips. Where are the RAM
⏹️ ▶️ John chips in this diagram? Where did they go? Because this looks like it would be addressable as one chip and the RAM would be around it or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then how can Apple get away with calling that two M1 Ultras when it,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s, it’s really confusing and upsetting to me and I don’t know how this is going to turn out.
⏹️ ▶️ John What it’s making me think is, is no matter how this turns out, that it’s either going to be a crappy
⏹️ ▶️ John computer that I don’t want to buy, or it’s going to be something that I, that’s just too much money and I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ John to end up getting a Mac Studio.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, so the, the RAM thing I think might help, you know, steer the one way or the other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because what if, I wouldn’t say it wouldn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unified RAM, but what if it has RAM slots? Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking at the gap between the current Mac Pro and the Mac Studio,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in certain areas, the Mac Studio is already way past it. In certain areas, the Mac Studio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t compete with it yet. Like it can’t reach those levels. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the area that has the biggest discrepancy is not GPU performance, it’s the RAM ceiling.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the current Mac Pro has a RAM ceiling of 1.5 terabytes, right, isn’t that right? The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac Studio maxes out at 128 gigs. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty big gap. And I can’t imagine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that by going from two dies to four, we would somehow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco multiply the RAM ceiling by 10. I don’t see how that works
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with keeping everything made the same way that’s that has been made. Now, I am
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as big a skeptic as they come about the next Mac Pro being super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expandable. You know, I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of, you know, slots,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or GPU, like I, it would be surprising to me if there was ever the support for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a slotted GPU, for instance, I don’t think that’s going to happen. However, I do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think there might be RAM slots, because I don’t see how they keep the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco memory packaging strategy with all the other M1 family
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while replacing the Intel Mac Pro without having severe ramifications for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its use in things like scientific computing, which is, you know, I don’t know how big this market is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but among people who buy the current ridiculous Intel Mac Pro, that is some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of that of that group. And that’s some part that like you look, if you need a terabyte of RAM, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even just more than 128 gigs of RAM in a Mac, you know, right now, you have no option
⏹️ ▶️ Marco except that Mac Pro. And to get rid of that option in the future, I think, you know, without having something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that could replace it, that could even come close to that ceiling of resources
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this one area, I think that would be that would be, you know, kind of crappy for the lineup and for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco specialty needs that need that. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think we are very likely to see something different about the next Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that does not follow the restrictions of the other MX
⏹️ ▶️ Marco series up to this point. And I think RAM slots are the most likely thing to see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That again, I’m not super optimistic about card slots,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially not for GPUs. Like, you know, as you mentioned, like the various options for whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has card slots or not, one of them is doesn’t have card slots at all. Honestly, I think that’s the most likely.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And one of them is it has card slots that don’t support GPUs. I think that’s second most likely.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then I think the least most least likely is the, you know, support GPUs is like we have them now. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t see that happening. But I do. I do think that, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, what we have in terms of RAM with with the M ones. I don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how we reach one and a half terabytes with the current architecture, unless the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac Pro version of it supports socketed RAM. Now I think they could still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do unified RAM because the RAM that is next to the package in the M1 or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in package, I guess, whatever it is, that’s not some like magical RAM type that doesn’t exist in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the rest of the PC world. Isn’t it just like DDR5
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John something, whatever?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s HBM2 or something. I think it’s the high bandwidth memory. Like it is, so that’s the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like a lot of the amazing performance of the M1 series has to do with that unified
⏹️ ▶️ John RAM. It is very fast, it is very close, and obviously it’s shared between
⏹️ ▶️ John the CPU and the GPU. As soon as you go to external pools of it,
⏹️ ▶️ John it gets more distant, physically speaking, and metaphorically speaking, the bandwidth goes down
⏹️ ▶️ John or becomes much more expensive to try to maintain the same bandwidth, because as they said in the thing, like it’s 800 gigabytes per second
⏹️ ▶️ John is like 10 times a high-end PC. And I think you lose a lot of the
⏹️ ▶️ John performance. Like, I mean, what I keep thinking about this machine is Apple has to say something to sell it. They have to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s this machine, here’s why you should buy it. And they’ve made their job hard by putting out the Mac Studio because
⏹️ ▶️ John to sell this machine that presumably will be more expensive than the Mac Studio, you
⏹️ ▶️ John have, it has to do something better than the Mac Studio. Now you mentioned the RAM ceiling. Let’s say it has slots
⏹️ ▶️ John and it has a bigger RAM ceiling on it, right? Are there applications that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John cares about would mention in an advertisement or a comment off the way they would say, you couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do this on a Mac studio because it won’t fit in RAM. But on this machine, it will because we can have, you know, 768 gigs
⏹️ ▶️ John of RAM or whatever. Because I don’t think many people are buying the 1.5 terabyte except for a few rare
⏹️ ▶️ John instances. But I think there are use cases that won’t fit in 128. But I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that the number tails off real fast when you go up to 256 or maybe even 512. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you’re mostly limited for the RAM on these systematic chips by the max size
⏹️ ▶️ John of that little square chip you can put in there. And that does go up over time. So even though you can
⏹️ ▶️ John only fit 128 around it now using the best available little RAM chippy thing that fits in the thing, eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John that number might double. Right, so I am wondering, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think they would sacrifice memory bandwidth and latency
⏹️ ▶️ John for capacity, unless there was some use case that we already know about where capacity is super
⏹️ ▶️ John important. because again, they have to advertise this somehow. And I think that machine that you described with external RAM slots
⏹️ ▶️ John would do almost everything worse than the Mac Studio.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. I mean, it wouldn’t, again, I haven’t followed like what the different PC RAM specs are these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco days. So I don’t know what’s available and what’s not, but it wouldn’t surprise me, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, to glue two M1 Maxes together, they invented their own custom interconnect. What if they had their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco own custom RAM socket protocol and controller? I don’t know. I wouldn’t put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it past them at this point, you
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, Trevor, I’m saying that it’s actually LPDDR5 and not HBM, but it’s just very wide. Like the
⏹️ ▶️ John fact that it’s just sort of wired next to the thing and has the massive bandwidth, because it’s got these multiple, and
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing about the bandwidth, it’s got multiple memory controllers, and each time you add a memory controller, you have that much
⏹️ ▶️ John bandwidth. And so it’s not like it has that much bandwidth to every piece of memory, I think. I think that’s how much bandwidth it has in
⏹️ ▶️ John aggregate across all the chips that are wired up. Not that it really matters, because it’s not like you’re physically addressing memory anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John but just keeping that in mind, The reason the bandwidth keeps going up is because when you add a second max
⏹️ ▶️ John that second max also has its own memory interfaces to Its own private memory and the whole making it look like
⏹️ ▶️ John one chip is the magic that you know instead of it Just like one max with 400 gigabytes per second and a second max of 400 gigabytes
⏹️ ▶️ John It looks like one chip that has 800 but really the lower max has 400 to its RAM and you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, it’s not it’s RAM You know what? I mean? Yeah, like that is kind of magical, but I don’t see how you weave two of
⏹️ ▶️ John them together and and say with a straight face that the M1 Ultra was your last thing, unless
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re just gonna say, just kidding, ha ha, remember we said it was our last one? Well, surprise, it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ John But how can it be a surprise? You told us the Mac Pro was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coming. Well, they didn’t say the Mac Pro was gonna have M1 series chips in it. Yep,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, I mean, obviously I said it. The M1 is anything Apple says it is. You just call it the X1, you’re like, problem solved,
⏹️ ▶️ John see? We just did a different letter, right? One line of dialogue. Yeah, like, marketing solves
⏹️ ▶️ John all these problems too, but I keep thinking, is it plausible for an M2-based
⏹️ ▶️ John thing to, because the thing about the M2 is, I think the rumors of it is having slightly more execution units, more cores,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Because it’s three nanometer instead of five, so you can fit more cores in the same power envelope, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And which would mean that the biggest size, like the M2 Ultra would have more cores than the M1 Ultra,
⏹️ ▶️ John and there again is your differentiation. You could say, oh, well, how is this better than the Mac Studio? Well, it’s got more cores. But the real
⏹️ ▶️ John problem is, if you can make like an M2 based, you know, ultra
⏹️ ▶️ John for the new Mac Pro, you can also make it for the Mac Studio. And now there you are again with no differentiation.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like what makes the Mac Pro different than the Mac Studios? The big mystery that is
⏹️ ▶️ John weighing on my mind.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re very worked up about this, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John I am, because it’s potentially my next computer or not. Like, I mean, here’s the thing. If I wait around and the thing comes
⏹️ ▶️ John out and it’s disappointing or it’s too expensive or whatever, then I just ended up buying a Mac Studio. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, well, then why did I wait a year to buy a Mac Studio?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because you’re trying to get a lot of use out of your existing $15,000 Mac Pro? I know, I know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I know. I know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Too soon, too soon. I don’t know, so if you were to buy a Mac Studio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey today for you, how do you think you would spec it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Which should be delivered in approximately November. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John there’s that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the dates on the Mac Studios are ridiculous at this point, but all right, so how would I configure it?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, like can we, you wanna walk through it real quick? I’m curious, if you were to buy one, you know, how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would you configure it for you?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, honestly, I think my cheapness and patience would kick in and I would say,
⏹️ ▶️ John my Mac Pro is fine for me for
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a while. I know, I know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but work with me on this, please. I know you love hypotheticals.
⏹️ ▶️ John If I was forced to do it, if someone stole my Mac Pro and I had to buy a new computer, I wouldn’t obviously buy another Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d be very sad about it being stolen. But anyway, I would probably max it out because I would get 128,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would get the M1 Ultra. I wouldn’t get the eight terabyte SSD, I’d get four terabyte
⏹️ ▶️ John SSD. Those are basically the only options, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John GPU cores? Yes. I mean, cause I don’t, you know, and it would be very expensive, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I don’t know, I don’t quite know what I would do with those GPU cores cause I wouldn’t be able to play Windows games on it anymore,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I would be like, well, something will use them. Like there are, there are some
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac games, even Apple Arcade does it. Sometimes I forget that Apple Arcade stuff is all available on the Mac. I spent a while on Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Arcade on my Mac the other day saying, these games that I play on my phone and my iPad, can I play
⏹️ ▶️ John them in 6K? And the answer to a lot of them is, yeah, you can. And you can’t play them on
⏹️ ▶️ John 6K on your phone. So there’s things that Macs can do with GPU cores. But yeah, I would probably get everything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So if I’m doing this right, looking at the website, that’s $6,800, which is like half the cost of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your existing computer and like twice as fast. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t have to buy a monitor. And you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey have to buy a monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the important part. It’s so cheap. I should buy, upgrade every year now. Just keep using the same monitor with all these computers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Honestly, there’s something to be said for that. I know that’s not your style, but there’s something to be said for that. I’ve actually wondered a lot,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, since I love my MaxBook Pro, if you will. I just adore this machine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so much. Hi, Stephen Hackett. I know you love that. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco it’s- I’m just hearing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I’m feeling the collective groan from all of our audience when they hit this point and hear that. Let me tell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you. So, I don’t change the name of Macintosh HD, but my computer name is Casey’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MaxBook Pro. And you know it and you love it. But anyway, I love this thing so much. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve wondered to myself, when this M2 comes out,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would I pull a Marco and upgrade this less than a year old, or perhaps a year old 14-inch MaxBook Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I would, mostly because I’m cheap. But if the M2 was that compelling,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would I start to get myself on a yearly or every other year plan?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I’ll ever get to the point of as often as I change my underwear like Marco, But I could see myself,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, money notwithstanding, which is a big, big, big if I could see myself wanting to upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my laptops more frequently than I used to in the past if the gains continue to be as big
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as they have been. And I think the question I need to or the thing I need to look into to answer this, which I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey done is, you know, what’s the difference between the A14 and the A15, right? Because the A14
⏹️ ▶️ Casey core is what’s powering the M1, if I’m not mistaken, and we’re up to and We’re up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to A15 this year, right? So maybe even the A16 would potentially, probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not, but potentially be in the M2. So like, what are those differences? And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can look into this, I’m not asking for feedback, but I think it’s something that I’ve asked myself,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would I be on a far more regular upgrade cycle than I ever have been?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because the chips might be getting that much better every year or every other year.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think the chips would make you upgrade. The chips are not gonna give you the bump you just got from going from Intel to
⏹️ ▶️ John this. What would make you upgrade is if like, and I don’t think this is gonna particularly happen, but if it did happen, this would make
⏹️ ▶️ John you upgrade. It would be like, oh, it’s got cellular and face ID or something like that, or no more notch, right? Those are the
⏹️ ▶️ John type of things that are gonna get you in the door, not compile 15% faster. Because like what,
⏹️ ▶️ John after a year, I don’t think you’re gonna have complaints about this. Like, oh, my computer feels so slow. Like it’s not, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not gonna happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would Insta buy for either, I don’t know if I would for face ID actually, but I would absolutely Insta-buy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for cellular, without question.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I probably would too. That’s a big deal. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I’d have to decide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which laptop would get it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh no, now I’m miserable like John, no! No!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Despite my reputation here, I actually don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually upgrade my Macs that frequently outside of like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco butterfly keyboard is destroying my life, maybe this next one will be better, you know, that and then Oh, then architecture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changes, you know, like, it’s been a frequent update cycle for me recently, but usually I get a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years out of my Macs, especially my desktop Macs, that those tend to last a while. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because really, you know, year to year Mac updates are not that different, you know, year to year,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when we when the new iPhones come out, and we’re all you know, what they’ve tried all these cool features,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we’re all, wowed by the marketing. I’m like, Oh my god, I have to have that new camera. Oh, I have to have this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new thing. And you know, it’s a huge difference. They and and it’s it’s palpable, like how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much you want that. Usually when a Mac update comes out, that is that is generally just like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spec bump update. You don’t you don’t usually have that. Oh my god, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have that right now because the one I have from last year or two years ago is so much worse.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like no, it’s usually it’s like, okay, you can buy this new one, and it might be like 15% faster or or something. It’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not going to be like a huge, huge difference. You know, right now we’re going through this period of turmoil where you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, the architecture transition and everything. It’s, it’s a big deal. We’re getting big gains and big changes. But that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about to slow down, I think, to a to a pretty large degree.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, I think you’re probably right.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also phones are only like 1000 bucks, which is a lot for a phone, but it’s nothing for a Mac. And
⏹️ ▶️ John phones, especially after one or two years, the battery start to get a little cranky, whereas even a laptop battery,
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot tends to not fall off a cliff the way phones can do if you use them
⏹️ ▶️ John hard for a few years. So the urge to upgrade to a new phone is easier
⏹️ ▶️ John to give into and it makes a little bit more sense than buying, like, especially, it’s not like we’re buying, none of us are buying $1,000
⏹️ ▶️ John Macs. Even though you can buy a $1,000 Mac, those aren’t the ones that we’re buying. So being on an
⏹️ ▶️ John annual upgrade cycle for something that expensive for a 15% gain doesn’t really make much sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s fair, but it’s a fun thing to think about. Until Marco dropped that, what Mac to cellular go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in? Oh my gosh. Can you imagine if they did like a cellular, they’re the only Mac that gets
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a cellular modem is like the adorable round two. So somehow it’s like slower than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dirt. I mean, I don’t know why it would be slower than dirt, but hypothetically, you know, so it’s like this complete compromise machine,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it’s got cellular baby, I’d be
⏹️ ▶️ John so sad. I don’t think you have to worry about it. Cause I don’t think Apple’s ever going to add cellular to a Mac. See what I’m doing Apple? I’m making you do it to
⏹️ ▶️ John prove me wrong. Look at this sound clip. You said they would never do it. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know if that or psychology will work, but something’s got to work because it just seems like they have no interest in ever doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s one of those things like on a very long timescale. I think they probably will on an infinite time scale.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They probably will do it, but they’re going to take their sweet time because they’re probably waiting until they don’t have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pay Qualcomm some royalty thing. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s a really good
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, but you say that, but they eat that cost on iPads for crying out loud. They can’t eat that cost on a $5,000 MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro. because it’s percentage of price of the product or whatever?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe, because we’ve heard that is like the rumor that it was percentage of price, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. I mean, they’ve charged 120 bucks or 130 bucks for it on the iPad from the very first $500 iPad all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way up to the, you know, whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s the biggest iPad, like $1,500 now? Like, you know, they charge basically the same price for all that, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, yeah, if they charge 200 bucks on a Mac, great. I’d still buy it, like that would be great.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, you would, but anyway, the Apple, I don’t know if the upcoming iPhone is that the year when
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s 5G chips are gonna be ready or are we waiting one more year? I haven’t kept track of it. We’ve talked about this in the past in
⏹️ ▶️ John the show, but Apple is 100% making its own cellular radio chips. It just takes a long time because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s really hard, but the second they can do it, rest assured, they will be off Qualcomm and onto their own chips.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like that they’re taking their time because I don’t want them to rush out the door with a crappy chip that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John worse than the Qualcomm ones. So yeah, take your time. Make sure you get it right. Test it really
⏹️ ▶️ John well. Test it directly against the Qualcomm competition. And when it is as reliable, but you own it and don’t have to pay
⏹️ ▶️ John royalties, then please ship it on every single device you make.
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Universal Control
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So in the last few days, all the betas are no longer beta. Now they are out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is this? 15.4. Is that right? I don’t even remember anymore. Something like that. Uh, in the new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey version of whatever ridiculous California name we’re on. God, I’m a mess. What are we on Monterey? Uh, so it’s 12.3 and 15.4.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And, uh, and now we can do universal control, which I have played with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very briefly. John, I think you played with it at least a little bit, and Marco, you haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had a chance to play with it yet, is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m honestly, I don’t really keep an iPad next to me on my desk.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I typically don’t either.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Actually, at the moment, I don’t have an iPad. That’s a whole separate
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco to you about it. Let me tell
⏹️ ▶️ John you the good word about it. So Casey mentioned that the things are out of beta. What he means is that Mac OS and iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John and iPad OS are out of beta, but universal control, which ships in the non-beta version of those operating systems,
⏹️ ▶️ John is itself still beta a tiny little beta tag next to all the little things just to let you know this might not work.
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, universal control, the thing demoed so long ago that people might have forgotten about it. Drag your cursor off the edge of the screen and
⏹️ ▶️ John watch it burst through the edge of your iPad screen. I don’t keep an iPad near my Mac either.
⏹️ ▶️ John I keep it in a whole different room in the house, but I brought the iPad down here to try it out. It’s super cool
⏹️ ▶️ John and it works magically just like they said. Performance is great. I did cause it to crash. That’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s beta. All right. But I had an actual task I was doing. I was
⏹️ ▶️ John filing a bug against the version of Apple Podcasts that’s on iPadOS. I was like, oh, how am I gonna get
⏹️ ▶️ John a screenshot off of my iPad over to my Mac? I’ll have to AirDrop it. And it’s like, but wait, this is
⏹️ ▶️ John a great opportunity to use universal control. I’ll just take the screenshot on my iPad and then just
⏹️ ▶️ John yank my cursor from my Mac over there, grab the photo and pull it over to my Mac. And on the second try, it
⏹️ ▶️ John worked. And that was cool. And I like the little animations. This is also the first time
⏹️ ▶️ John that I have had any extended period of time to use iPad’s, iPadOS’s cursor support,
⏹️ ▶️ John which I know has been out for years now, but I haven’t really ever used it besides briefly, because my wife’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got the little, what is it called, the weird keyboard, foldy thingy for the iPad Pro. What
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey is that called?
⏹️ ▶️ John The foldy one? Is it smart? Is it magic? Does it have a trackpad or not? It has a trackpad. It’s the magic.
⏹️ ▶️ John Okay, it’s the magic smart Pro Max. Yes. It costs as much as the small iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ John Other than playing with that, I hadn’t done it, but now using my actual mouse and keyboard is cool. But the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John I will say is that, and I haven’t tried this myself, but it just occurred to me when watching a conversation in another
⏹️ ▶️ John Slack, it says this right in the documentation too, I think. Universal Control doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John just let you drag your cursor from your Mac screen onto your iPad, it also lets you drag your cursor from your Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John screen onto another Mac screen. And I think more people might potentially have a
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop and a desktop on the same desk kind of area. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that is even more useful use case. Now there have been third-party products have done this for a while.
⏹️ ▶️ John What was the popular one? It was called like Synergy or something. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John And before that, there was another well-known one that I’m not remembering. There’s a bunch of these things for Linux. But there’s something
⏹️ ▶️ John about, for someone with my kind of philosophy on these things, there’s something about it being
⏹️ ▶️ John a first-party OS integrated thing versus a third-party product that makes me more likely to
⏹️ ▶️ John use it just because there’s nothing to install. I have some faith that it will be supported and work well.
⏹️ ▶️ John And maybe that’s not true. Maybe like the third-party one is actually better in the Apple one because it’s less buggy, they had a long time to work
⏹️ ▶️ John out the things, but that means the third party software has to be installed and all the different things, and it’s another thing for you to mind,
⏹️ ▶️ John intend, and make sure that it doesn’t have some sort of problem that spins out of control or a security flaw or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John This may be incorrect thinking in my head, but it’s the way I think about every third party product is just a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit of an extra burden of me to just keep track of and make sure it’s not going wonky. Whereas things that go wonky in the OS, I
⏹️ ▶️ John have no control over anyway, so I might as well just forget about it. But we talked
⏹️ ▶️ John on a past show how annoying it is that file sharing is so terrible and I just, you know, two Macs are
⏹️ ▶️ John in the same room and I don’t wanna grab a file from one and bring it to the other. I have to say that the fastest way to do that now
⏹️ ▶️ John is probably to use universal control to go over to
⏹️ ▶️ John my wife’s desktop, grab the file and bring it back. Now, unfortunately for me, I can’t see both of the screens at the same
⏹️ ▶️ John time particularly comfortably. And secondly, unfortunately, if she’s logged in as her and I’m logged in as
⏹️ ▶️ John me, that’s not gonna work to be logged into the same Apple ID and everything. But this has
⏹️ ▶️ John made me think a lot more about essentially virtual KV, what do they call Polytech Synergy and universal control
⏹️ ▶️ John virtual KVM, right? Like the idea of having multiple computers on your desk, but
⏹️ ▶️ John one set of input devices, one keyboard and one mouse, but you’re controlling multiple computers. That’s what universal control
⏹️ ▶️ John is essentially. It works with iPads, it works with Macs. If it worked with a phone, that’d be really cool too.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s making me think a lot more about what I can do with the desk space that I have. Not
⏹️ ▶️ John that there’s much room with this giant monitor on here, but maybe there might be room for, in the future, let’s say a laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John somewhere in my life. When my children take all, my children already have taken all
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the laptops. When
⏹️ ▶️ John my children finish commandeering every single laptop in the house because they don’t know what desktops are. If
⏹️ ▶️ John I ever need something portable to bring with me somewhere, I may have to get a laptop. And literally the only way
⏹️ ▶️ John I would ever bother using that laptop is if I could do it using my big keyboard and my big mouse
⏹️ ▶️ John on my desk, because I don’t like smushing myself onto laptop. It’s bad for my RSI. I just don’t like it. I feel all hunched
⏹️ ▶️ John over and gross. Laptops are gross. But if I just had it on my desk, and especially if it’s one of the
⏹️ ▶️ John new laptops with a really fancy monitor that can, you know, hang with my XDR, I
⏹️ ▶️ John might think about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I just, I played with universal control very briefly and it worked surprisingly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well. And it was pretty fluid for the most part. I was doing most of this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my screened-in porch where the Wi-Fi is good but not spectacular. And so there were a couple of times there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was definitely some latency and lag and whatever. But generally speaking, it worked very well. And what was absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bananas was I sat my iPad Pro, which is four years old now or something like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I sat my iPad Pro to the left of my, my MaxBook Pro, as previously covered, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just kept pushing the mouse to the left edge of the MaxBook Pro. And sure enough,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pink, all of a sudden my cursor was over on the iPad. It was very, very cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I look forward to playing with this more. Again, I think I get probably more use out of Sidecar,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is the thing where your screen is expanded to be on your iPad, than I expect to out of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Universal Control. But back when I had the iMac Pro and my MacBook Pro, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey often was on my desk as well, this would have been amazing at that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point when I had the two computers on my desk. That would have been so great. But even still, it’s extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well done from the limited use I’ve had with it and very, very cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I feel like the killer feature is like the unification of input, like because getting
⏹️ ▶️ John things from the world of the iPad onto the Mac has just always seemed cumbersome, like
⏹️ ▶️ John direct manipulation, even if it’s just copy on the Mac, paste on the iPad, right? That’s just so much easier
⏹️ ▶️ John than like, oh, I can do things like I’m gonna put this in Apple Notes, which I guess is a testament to Apple Notes. I need to
⏹️ ▶️ John transfer some piece of information from my iPad to my Mac, it’s text. I’ll just make a new note, I’ll paste it in,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll go over to my Mac, I’ll open up notes, by then it will be synced, I’ll pull it out, right? That’s dumb, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, why don’t you just airdrop it? Why don’t you email it to yourself? Like there’s a million different ways to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Universal clipboard, baby.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah, no, universal clipboard, I don’t need universal control for that. Although universal clipboard for me is
⏹️ ▶️ John not as reliable as universal control has been so far. And like, this is the other thing
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to say about universal control. Like universal clipboard, there’s not a lot of exposed
⏹️ ▶️ John knobs and buttons and machinery for either one of these features. They either work or they don’t. And if they don’t, you
⏹️ ▶️ John just shrug. Ah, eh, like why isn’t it working? I copied here and I pasted. Why
⏹️ ▶️ John is Universal Clipboard not working? There’s not a lot of feedback about it. There’s not someplace where you can look. There’s not a button you can
⏹️ ▶️ John press to say reset Universal Clipboard. Same thing with Universal Control. It just so happens, I think, I’m in the honeymoon period
⏹️ ▶️ John of Universal Control. With the exception of one crash, it has always just worked for
⏹️ ▶️ John me. And if it just works, I don’t care about the knobs. So the second it stops working, I get cranky because there’s nothing I can do about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I am thinking about how, like, I do want to use my iPad as an iPad. There are
⏹️ ▶️ John apps that are on the iPad that I don’t have on my Mac. I don’t have an M1 Mac, so I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John run the apps on my Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aw, you should get an M1 Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know. It’s all right, it kinda, I mean, it sucks. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John fun. Yeah, I mean, I have to say, like, I haven’t done this, but I’m assuming when you do that on your, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John gotta be when you do it on your Mac, you don’t get the iPad cursor experience, right? No. And I think that experience
⏹️ ▶️ John is super cool with iPad apps. It fits for me. I’ve always thought that was one of the best UI things Apple has ever done
⏹️ ▶️ John is cursor support on iPadOS because it is cursor support re-imagined for the iPad instead of just putting a stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, you know, arrow cursor on the iPad screen, which would look weird. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think that fits so well. And now I can do that using my actual mouse instead of that tiny little trackpad
⏹️ ▶️ John or, you know, whatever on the magic smart pro keyboard Max. is
#askatp: Was DTK representative?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some Ask ATP. Let’s start with Ryan Petriello who writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even though the DTK was never going to be a machine that was released to the public, was it an appropriate harbinger of what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the M1 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini would be? I never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had one, so I don’t feel like I really have much I can say about this, but it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost underwhelming, wasn’t it, compared to how incredible these machines are?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we all thought it was pretty great from the get-go. So I don’t know, you guys actually had one. Let’s start with Marco, what do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually barely ended up using mine, in part because it was a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mini, and at the time I didn’t have an external monitor with me. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I use it exclusively through screen sharing. And so, and also keep in mind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the dev kit did not have Rosetta. And so you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could only run, you know, Apple Silicon compiled, you know, ARM compiled stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And at that time, it was very hard to get any other third party apps that were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ARM compiled. And so, there was really not a good way for me to move into it, or like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco set it up as mine, really. And so, it was only ever a machine that I used through screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sharing, and I would run Xcode, and compile a few things here and there, and test some things here and there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I never really got a feel for it. That being said, it was also an A12Z
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in there, which is two pretty big processor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generations behind the A14 cores that made up the M1. And it had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different resources and didn’t have the unified memory stuff. So it was a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different experience than using the actual M1 Macs for lots of reasons, mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco due to the lack of Rosetta and the much older chip.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did have unified memory, they all have unified, there was no separate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, you’re right, nevermind, yeah, I was wrong about that. It was the A12Z and it was, yeah. And for me,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, not having a Rosetta and me not having a monitor really made it. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never really use it as a user, like pretty much only as a developer building my stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John So Ryan’s question is, was it appropriate? I think it was for two reasons. One,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though it was just an A12Z, it showed to developers that
⏹️ ▶️ John ARM-based chips running macOS are fine performance-wise. There are some things that
⏹️ ▶️ John the A12Z did faster than my Intel Macs at the time. Like these weird little parts of
⏹️ ▶️ John the OS are just interacting with your Mac that are just shockingly faster on ARM-based Macs. The fact that
⏹️ ▶️ John that was true on an A12Z when the M1 would be based on A14 cores,
⏹️ ▶️ John let developers know, this is for developers, don’t worry about, oh, the ARM Macs
⏹️ ▶️ John are gonna come and your app is gonna be super slow because ARM chips are wimpy. That’s not gonna happen because look how well your
⏹️ ▶️ John app runs on this thing and this thing has an A12Z in it, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And the second thing is, because it was an A12Z and an older chip, that is the appropriate
⏹️ ▶️ John thing for people to do their dev work on because you don’t want them to do dev work on some monster chip
⏹️ ▶️ John and then the real ARM Macs come out and they’re slower. What you want to happen is they do their dev work, they get the performance
⏹️ ▶️ John of their application to be adequate on the A12Z, then the real ones come
⏹️ ▶️ John out and it’s even faster and that’s exactly what happened. So I think it was absolutely perfectly appropriate. It was 100%
⏹️ ▶️ John usable, performed really well, showed developers what it was gonna be like in the ARM world, and also
⏹️ ▶️ John was the slowest ARM Mac Apple ever released.
#askatp: 2x30” to 2x5K?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Peter Wagner writes I currently use 230 and cinema displays how older
⏹️ ▶️ Casey those displays now
⏹️ ▶️ John they are amazing though They just aren’t retina. So they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey amazing. I Currently use 230 and cinema displays with a maxed out 16 inch 2019 MacBook Pro I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey considering switching to to Apple Studio displays I will use every ounce of power of my machine for creative
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work while upgrading my resolution from 2560 by 1600 to 5k in each display
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put a noticeable additional strain on my CPU or GPU I don’t want to upgrade my displays only to downgrade my overall
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computing experience I I don’t know, but I can’t imagine it would be noticeable would it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well It’s four times the pixels roughly that that’s enough that it would give me pause You know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially with a laptop driving it you know it’s not like you know in a Mac Pro like John has you could if You really had a GPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco issue you could upgrade the GPU and and or you know maybe add maybe add a second one And you could probably alleviate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that stress but driving four times the pixels is gonna be a a significant increase.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, whether it’s going to be noticeable, that’s a different story. I don’t know what the headroom is like when driving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two 30 inch displays versus two 5K displays. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it could be, maybe it doesn’t matter, I don’t know. But I would say, when you’re driving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco multiple external monitors, especially from an Intel MacBook Pro, you’re already kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, you’re pushing the bounds of like heat and noise probably.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I would expect increasing the pixel load by a huge amount of pixels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would probably run the risk of either noticeable slowdowns or increased heat and noise
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I would say that heat and noise is your big concern. Modern GPUs are really good at pushing pixels. If you’re not running
⏹️ ▶️ John games on those 2, 5, 12 things, you’re just displaying the UI with a bunch of windows, it’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ John fine performance-wise, because when are you going to see performance? Assuming it supports it at all, which I’m assuming the
⏹️ ▶️ John best GPUs on the 2019 16-inch do, it should be fine. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it is going to use more power, and I think the extra heat and noise produced
⏹️ ▶️ John by it will be more annoying to you than any kind of like, you know, stutter or anything. Up
⏹️ ▶️ John to the point that like I would say, the heat could be so much that you get like heat-based
⏹️ ▶️ John GPU glitching, which can happen in laptops and desktops for that matter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And eventual failure, more likely.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and I only say all these scary things because this is an Intel laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the Intel 16-inch. I don’t remember which generation of the 2019s were the ones
⏹️ ▶️ John that got super hot and the GPUs are really pushing the thermal limits or whatever. That’s gonna be your main
⏹️ ▶️ John constraint. If you had a desktop computer and you wanted to do this, I would say any GPU
⏹️ ▶️ John is fine. If it says it supports it, you’re fine because they just have cooling to spare. But a laptop, you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be pushing it. So the good thing though is that if you get studio displays,
⏹️ ▶️ John when you get rid of that junky laptop, the studio displays will be there and waiting for your much better one that will be able to drive those
⏹️ ▶️ John displays without breaking a sweat.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s the wonder of having good external monitors from Apple that they make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every computer modular. It’s wonderful. And they outlive your computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wouldn’t it be terrible, Marco, if your monitor and your computer were inextricably linked, like you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey couldn’t just separate the two? Who would want like an all-in-one that’s like that? That would be terrible, wouldn’t it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t tell you how many, like, it just, it kills me thinking back. Like, now that, you know, I know we already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talked about this, but now that they have released what is basically the 5K
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitor’s screen in an external monitor, and the specs on it as a monitor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are basically the same, it kills me thinking about how I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco discarded, basically, I mean, I’ve sold them or given them away, but I’ve basically discarded I think three
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those over the last eight
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey years. I think I might be in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Plus tips, that’s just mine alone, mine were I think three of them and that it kills me to think like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh those are I could have just I could have had three perfectly good 5k monitors or just bought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco won and you know kept it this whole time but oh what a waste
#askatp: Ugliest Macs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wade writes and this this this is either gonna be three minutes or 30 so buckle up the way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it writes What are the top three ugliest max of all time? No particular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reason for the timing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Maybe you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey limit it to the time since the iMac to make it fair for Marco and Casey plus we don’t want it We
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t want it devolving into just a list of quadros. So I don’t know how you want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to handle this I have been frantically doing my research as we’ve been recording
⏹️ ▶️ Casey coming up with a list. And I actually came up with four, so I’m quite proud of myself. But,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, so see, we’re going in true top four spirit in every measure of the word, because we’ve got four
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we’re not following the rules. So I assume, John, you have exactly three. Would you like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to start, or would you rather critique our selections first?
⏹️ ▶️ John I can start. I think I only have two, but I think some of the ones that you pick might be
⏹️ ▶️ John mine. I was trying to pick ones that you probably wouldn’t pick. So the actual right answer
⏹️ ▶️ John that old timers know, I think pretty much everyone would agree on this one and you
⏹️ ▶️ John will as soon as you see it, is the molar. The tooth Mac, you know what I’m talking about?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know of what you speak, but I can’t picture it in my head. I’m putting
⏹️ ▶️ John some links to Stephen Hackett’s website where he’s got some pictures of it. Just two angles of this computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Please, please to look at these now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is not attractive. The
⏹️ ▶️ John front is a real problem just right off the bat. The front is just this terrible
⏹️ ▶️ John mess. It is not particularly nice looking. The face that the drives and everything make,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco way the drive cutouts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like a fat, flat face.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It just looks like
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s been some sort of grievous skin injury. Like even just the cutouts around the floppy drives, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John the proportions, the way the speaker grilles are set in, the way it curves, but then you start rotating around. That
⏹️ ▶️ John top, by the way, is translucent. It’s one of the early translucent plastics. That’s clear translucent up there with holes in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like just, this thing is just a mess from top to bottom. Oh God. Gotta
⏹️ ▶️ John be the ugliest Mac. Look at the Apple logo, the horrendous translucent Apple logo shoved up into the corner of the
⏹️ ▶️ John weird side. So bad. Just the ugliest thing you have ever seen. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is pretty bad. This was mostly seen in education. That’s why most people don’t, haven’t seen this Mac or even heard of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was the actual official name, I believe was, let me get Mac tracker up here. I closed
⏹️ ▶️ John it. I think it was the Power Macintosh G3 all in one. Is
⏹️ ▶️ John that what it’s called? Yeah. Power Macintosh G3 parentheses all in one. Hyphenated.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, from 1999. That is the ugliest Mac that I’ve ever made. The second one might
⏹️ ▶️ John surprise some people. There’s a bunch of computers that look like this. Let me see if I can find a good,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, alright, let’s pick the LC580. It’s not this particular computer. They made
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of computers in the same case, including, by the way, the Apple TV, which you may have heard of. No, not that Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ John or the Macintosh TV, sorry. It’s not the Apple TV. It was also made in this case, but at least it was black.
⏹️ ▶️ John This case is just a confusing stack of rectangles. It
⏹️ ▶️ John uses a lot of the good design language of the Macs of the day, but whoever, it was like
⏹️ ▶️ John they took that design language and they threw it into a blender and out popped this ungainly thing where it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just an awkward stack. It looks like almost like it’s upside down. It’s like an awkward stack of rectangles.
⏹️ ▶️ John looks like an AI created it. Like we know we have floppy drives and we know I have optical drives and we know we have these features
⏹️ ▶️ John and these smooth things and these stripes and then just like, computer, make me a computer out of
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And it’s like, how about this? No, it’s terrible. It’s just so ungainly,
⏹️ ▶️ John so hideous. It shares so many individual details with its good looking computers that were
⏹️ ▶️ John around at the same time, but this one gets everything about it wrong. Those are the two that I find the
⏹️ ▶️ John most offensive. And I felt like I’m ignoring the modern ones, you guys are going to say about the modern
⏹️ ▶️ John computers, whatever, I think these two are worse than the absolute values and also
⏹️ ▶️ John in particular worse compared to their contemporaries because they just they just took a design
⏹️ ▶️ John aesthetic that was actually pretty nice for what it was and totally misfired on it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s probably the right answer. Now, Casey, let’s give him the wrong answers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. I don’t have I went by years, but I didn’t write down what years these were from.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think my first one was from roughly 2006, 2008 somewhere in that neck of the woods.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And coincidentally, it was my very first Mac. But I don’t think it aged well. I don’t think it was ever particularly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good looking. And it is the Polybook, the polycarbonate MacBook. The white plastic one?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Specifically the white plastic one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re talking about like the 2007-ish, launch in 06, but you probably had the 2007-ish version.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had, I think, a 2008 version. But yes, we’re saying the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I actually loved, I own the same computer, but I own the 2006 version. I actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco loved the way that computer looked. Because mine never had the weird yellowing on the polymer that a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of people had. Mine never had that. So I just had a nice white MacBook. And actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco later on, I think they really perfected it when they made the plastic unibody-ish kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one toward the end of its life. That is true. That is better. But yeah, I actually really enjoyed that design.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think it actually looked… I have some modern Macs on my list that were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco contemporaries around this era. And I actually did not say this was an ugly one, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John enjoy this. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is not an ugly computer. You’re wrong. Good try.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay. Wait, wait, did you have three, John? You had the Molar Mac, the LC 580.
⏹️ ▶️ John just had the two. I was going to take one of yours, but so far you’re over one. Try
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So my next one, it was actually going back in time, Flower Power. Just no.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John no. Oh, really?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John no. I mean, it’s not pretty.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s an easy one. That’s the one that people know about. I remember when Apple made that funny computer. They forget about the Polka Dot one,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Because there was Flower Power, and what was the other one called? Dalmatian or something like that? Yeah, there you go, Dalmatian. And
⏹️ ▶️ John arguably the Flower one was worse than Dalmatian because
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Dalmatian was less
⏹️ ▶️ John in your face. Yeah, those are reasonable picks. It’s interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John that they decided to make like IMAX, like towards the end of the IMAX, hey, let’s just do something fun.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they made, they didn’t just make one of them, they made two, and that’s what they picked. Like you know they have like 50 different choices
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, what are we going to do in the background? And these are the ones they picked. And it’s just, it totally looks like,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, you know, not that I’m going to blame it on Steve jobs, but when you see a decision like that from a big company, it’s like, well, they probably
⏹️ ▶️ John had a lot of different options and it came down to one person. Who’s in a, in a position to make this decision.
⏹️ ▶️ John You just said, I like that one. And that one, like literally one person steered the course of this entire product line,
⏹️ ▶️ John because you don’t have people vote on it, one person. And it probably, for all we know, it was Steve jobs saying that one and And everyone else
⏹️ ▶️ John in the room is like, all right, you’re the boss,
⏹️ ▶️ John those are the ones you want. Because how else do you pick something like that? Like you’ve already decided you’re going to do something fanciful
⏹️ ▶️ John and fun. And it’s not like, you know, you’re not going to do design by committee and just have everybody,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, vote on it or something. You’re just going to go with what the boss says. And the boss usually has good taste, except for when everything was
⏹️ ▶️ John coated in leather, but, you know, and you end up with a flower-prowned Dalmatian.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think like the leather contacts in Find My Friends were worse than that computer, but similar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, the original look of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMac, the 2004 era iMac with the just mountain of chin and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wait, you’re talking about the 17 inch iMac G5? Yes. I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey See, there you go. See, now we’re onto something. So yeah, the 2004-ish iMac G5.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So this is, imagine the general gist of a modern day
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMac, but super duper thick and with just like a third of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey front of it is chin. And it’s just, it’s chin for days. It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey five head of chin is what it is. And it’s just not good looking at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I am with you on this. It’s my number two because yeah, just the purport, like, cause it came in a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bigger size. I’m talking about the 17 inch one, like the smaller one. If you look for, you know, G5 17 inch iMac,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ll see like it is ridiculous proportions. And it doesn’t like, it has the metal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco foot, then the all white plastic enclosure. It like, it just, it’s not a good,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything, the proportions are all wrong. And then in the middle of that sea of white plastic, it has that webcam
⏹️ ▶️ Marco puncture in the top. So you have this big black circle and like, it just, or black squarish thing. Like it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just doesn’t, it has terrible proportions. Yeah, I’m totally with you. Because I actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco took the option here that was posing the question of just restricting it to like, you know, the iMac era forward,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John’s pulling these ugly things from, like I wasn’t even here for that. So I’m just saying like the ones that I actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever got to see in person or use.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then my final entry, the trashcan Mac Pro, which- What? No,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it’s just so stupid. What’s ugly about that? Okay, it’s not really ugly, which I guess I’m now changing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco of the question.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John That’s not the question. But it just looks so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It just looks so dumb. Yeah, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s just such a dumb looking computer. Like, I guess it’s aesthetically fine. Disagree.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco looks like a jet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John cool. Honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am a big fan of that computer for what it, like, before the GPU failures
⏹️ ▶️ Marco started to become noticeable. If it worked, it would’ve been great. Yeah, like, I actually really liked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the design of that computer in a number of ways. I mean, the only reason I stopped using mine was because I wanted to go Retina, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it never really had a good desktop retina story on that computer, and they never updated it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that computer, during the year or so it spent on my desk, I really enjoyed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, see, but it doesn’t look like a computer. I want a computer to look like a computer. This looks like a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey damn trash can, so
⏹️ ▶️ John no. You’re at a 50% success rate. It would be good if you were hitting in baseball, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John bad if you’re picking ugly Macs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so Marco, what do you say if you’re so smart?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, so my first one, and this is my honorable mention, my number four,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it said, it asked for the top three, but I have an honorable mention, I have my number four. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern era only, which I’m basically defining as like, you know, like.
⏹️ ▶️ John Modern era is defined when you started using Macs. Yes. I have news for you, 1998 is not modern. Okay, well anyway, so, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco roughly modern era only. I’m gonna say the first Intel MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro. It’s not that it was like, you know, more horrible than the Molar. It’s just like, you know, compared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to its time. What the hell is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrong with you? This is perfectly fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I saw a whole bunch of these in my office around that time, and I never, I used one for a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while, and I never liked, like, the top edge really kills it for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me because you had those two giant holes for, I assume, microphones, plus the giant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco webcam, plus the giant thing next
⏹️ ▶️ John Those holes are not for microphones. Was it the latch? Yeah, do you remember what
⏹️ ▶️ John this was like? So this, I reviewed this, so I remember it, and I actually own one. This was before Unibody,
⏹️ ▶️ John and Unibody made these things look like garbage, right? But before Unibody, the way they closed was,
⏹️ ▶️ John they used magnets, but the way the magnets works is, there were two very thin metal hooks
⏹️ ▶️ John inside there. I think it was only two slots in the 17-inch, maybe only one. And then you’d bring them towards the magnet,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the magnet would pull the very thin metal hook down so that it would hook onto the little latching
⏹️ ▶️ John mechanism, and then you’d press that button in the front that would release the little hooks, but it was literally like little metal
⏹️ ▶️ John teeth that would come out of there. So those slots were holding the little metal things that were on a swivel.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And actually, maybe I should have picked the 17-inch version of this because it made everything even worse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because you had the giant C around the keyboard. The keyboard with the giant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey grills. Oh, that is true. I had forgotten about that. I will give you the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, maybe the 17-inch MacBook Pro would be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The keyboard was real bad, or that whole
⏹️ ▶️ John surface. Because they use the same size keyboard on the 12 inch and the 17 inch. I also complained about that in my review, which I will find
⏹️ ▶️ John a link for for notes. Like the other thing about the little latchy things is that little piece of metal that rotated out was incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ John thin and very easy to bend. And that mechanism was very delicate. And if the little latchy thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the magnet pulled it down, but it didn’t quite like the tiny, you know, one eighth of a
⏹️ ▶️ John millimeter thing didn’t hook underneath, it wouldn’t stay closed. It would just pop open and you’d push it down and it would pop open. And
⏹️ ▶️ John like nothing you can do because it’s like the refrigerator, the light in the refrigerator. Like once the thing is closed,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s when the hook is supposed to come down. And if it didn’t come down, you can’t get it to come down because you’d have to open it, but then
⏹️ ▶️ John it can’t reach anymore. It was a bad mechanism.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t mind it so much on my PowerBook G4 because that was before webcams
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and IR sensors. And like once they added the webcam and IR sensor, they just poked so many holes in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that case. And it didn’t age well into that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, that’s why it was two latches. Cause the one I reviewed was the PowerBook G4 and it just had the one latch, except for on the 17 had two,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you couldn’t, you’re right, you couldn’t have the one latch once the camera went there, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, yeah, just too many things looking at you and holes in the case, and it looked really sloppy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in person. All right, so my number three, this is gonna anger some people, what a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surprise, the 11-inch MacBook Air.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The 13-inch MacBook Air of this generation and many of those that followed it looked fine. The 11-inch,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the proportions that it had, especially the screen, that you had a huge wide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bezel around a very short squat screen on this weird like squat computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It just, it did not look attractive. The proportions were all wrong. It was impressive for what it did. And you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still think we haven’t released anything like it because the 12-inch MacBook was not like it. It was a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much more compromised machine than the 11-inch Air ever was. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not, the 11-inch Air is not an attractive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John computer. I think it’s cute.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s definitely, it’s like your dog. It’s it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco weird proportion, but in a cute
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way. All right fair enough All right My number two was the 17 inch iMac g5 as Casey
⏹️ ▶️ Marco said the big white thick weird thing and then my number one You’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kill me. Oh, no the 2019 Mac Pro What
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John no even I think
⏹️ ▶️ John in person you’d come around on it a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more No, even I have to disagree with this cuz I was gonna choose that just for the lulls But no, I actually think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a pretty good-looking computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do not like the holes I just and I know I’ve seen him. I mean look I have I have him on the back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of my XDR I mean fortunately I never have to see the back of my XDR, but like I don’t like the whole pattern I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t like the handles I don’t like the feet the wheels make a little bit better, but like the feet design with those big flat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just I don’t think it’s an attractive computer that I really don’t and I that’s maybe one of the reasons why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I never wanted to buy one like I just am not I don’t find that right and I think Honorable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mention to the rack mount version which I think is even worse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s true. I would agree with that. The rack mount version is pretty rough.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t pick the rack mount version because I thought like that’s, you know, it’s such a specialized thing. Like I don’t, I’ve never even heard of anybody buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. So it felt like that was kind of off the table, but the tower version I think is not attractive.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, if the whole thing is bothering you, maybe you wouldn’t get over that, but I have like the whole thing never really bothered me. But I remember when
⏹️ ▶️ John I first saw it, it didn’t make much of an impression, but actually having one and looking at it and sort of,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve taken photos of it. but seeing how the light reflects off the weird little hole things, it’s definitely grown on me
⏹️ ▶️ John way more than I thought it would. It is just, it is a nice object, right? It’s setting aside how it looks as
⏹️ ▶️ John a computer. And like the weird, the weird feety things, they have a little bit of a Miyazaki
⏹️ ▶️ John look to me, the little squat suction cuppy little feet. And I don’t mind the little
⏹️ ▶️ John chrome handles and the sharp edge on the top. The only thing that bothers me about this computer is the seam between the front and the
⏹️ ▶️ John back, but I don’t want them to make it even more expensive by making it one solid thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, it definitely grew on me having it in the house way more than before now. I definitely have
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of affection for it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can understand people not liking it because the holes are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco divisive. Yeah, the holes and the feet, I think, like if I got this, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would get it with wheels just to not have those feet.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the wheels do look good. Like I think they’re good looking wheels.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but yeah, that’s my number one. I cannot, I do not like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way the computer looks
⏹️ ▶️ John at all. Well, if we put a molar on your desk, I think he would run screaming to that 2019 Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Linode, and Collide. And thanks to our members who support us directly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can join at atp.fm slash join. We will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any
⏹️ ▶️ John research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John mean to ♪ Oh, accidental, accidental ♪ Tech Podcasts,
Casey’s new setup (really!)
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do we have a little time for something that’s maybe we’ll end up covering again next week, but if we have a few minutes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before we all pass out. So I got I bought and I received the Cal
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah. Which actually I changed my setup this week. I’m using the Cal Digit TS4.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s so far, I really like it. And I am really, really digging the one cable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lifestyle. Except,
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently… Except that one cable costs $130. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not only that, but no, apparently the way the LG 5K works is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s two different streams of monitor data mashed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey together. So, I guess, I’m way outside my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey comfort zone here, but I think what’s happening is because this is effectively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two monitors in terms of like data. When I plug in both the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey LG 5K and my 4K, I am now using effectively three monitors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sort of kind of worth of data, which means I don’t have enough bandwidth to do both
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the CalDigit or something about the CalDigit in combination with this makes it such that it is transmitting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 4K to the 5K and then 4K to the 4K. But what I can do is I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up-sample the 4K to be effectively 5K, which people with better eyes could probably tell the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey difference, but I can’t. So it’s very weird because I’m running the 5K in scaled
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mode at the native 5K resolution, but it’s being scaled.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that means even with my forthcoming studio display,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I was planning on doing is, you know, moving this, the 5K to be the accessory display, and then just making the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 4K like a portable display if I ever work somewhere else for some reason. And apparently,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I want to continue the one cable lifestyle, I will always have this 5K
⏹️ ▶️ Casey scaled. Even though it’s scaled to 5K, it’s scaled.
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought they said it was if you use display stream compression and that your current monitors didn’t support it, so put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. But the problem isn’t with the forthcoming monitor. The problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is this monitor. And this monitor isn’t going away.
⏹️ ▶️ John Which one isn’t going away?
⏹️ ▶️ John LG, oh, oh, I’ll make it go away.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I don’t want it to go, I want to have two monitors.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I guess I could do that. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John interesting that you can’t tell the difference if no one had mentioned that you couldn’t tell it was upscaled.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I knew that I needed to go into system preferences and fiddle with it, but I didn’t really think much about it. And my eyes, as I’ve gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Casey older, have gotten worse. And so I’m sure somebody could come, somebody with better
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eyes could come and be like, oh no, no, no, no, no, such and such icon or such and such text is blurry. And I’ll be like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m excited to get my new monitor though, I really am.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you should just, I think you should try is living with one of them. I know you have all these monitors, but you can recoup some of your costs by
⏹️ ▶️ John passing on the curse slash bleshing of the 5K to someone else and just try the one monitor lifestyle with
⏹️ ▶️ John your Apple monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey See, and I certainly could, or I could go and I could keep the 4K as the accessory monitor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and make the ultra fine 5K the portable monitor since it does so well when I move it around. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, it seems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco like- I mean, it does so
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey shame. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s as good as it’s ever gonna get now. this is the perfect time to sell it to somebody.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John but I don’t know. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey true, it was just serviced. That is true. You’re putting
⏹️ ▶️ John bad, maybe good thoughts in my head. Just had the Vano service, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I suggest something? Don’t sell it to somebody, give it to somebody. Because you don’t want to take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money for that thing and then it dies and then it’s a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you give it to them, it feels more like a curse. Oh, that’s terrible. Pass this curse on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to you. Anybody who’s getting rid of an LG 5K, mail it to Casey. Just,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that should just be what everyone does but they’re LG 5Ks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Just mail them all to Casey. That’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’ll have like six of them trying to figure out how to hook them all up at once at your desk.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I will. I absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ John If you assemble the parts from all of them, you get one working monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is the LG ship of Theseus. Thank you very much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I send John all my Kindles. The roll is on Casey all the time. Five Ks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can you imagine? What a horrible curse. Like, you go outside, like, Aaron, there’s a giant box again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That would be hilarious and she would not find it funny at all. Like Aaron is extremely easygoing, but after like the fourth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of these, she would like, I think more than anything else, where are you putting this? Where are you going to put it?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like when the toasters kept showing up at my house. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly. Just everyone’s mediocre LG 5Ks going to Casey’s house.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Like the mediocre
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel so bad. Did I ever tell you the story about how, I probably did, the story of how the toasters left my house?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes. like a courier came and got them or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, in hindsight, now I know this was Alex doing all this, but it was like Alex Cox
⏹️ ▶️ John was responsible. But I just kept getting these toasters. You could, you know, get one. And they come in big boxes,
⏹️ ▶️ John but then the boxes didn’t leave. So they were just stacked in the garage. They have some photographs of it. And so the solution was, I was like, look,
⏹️ ▶️ John we, these toasters need to leave my house. So they hired a task rabbit. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s still a thing. Like a person to come and a person showed up at my house, just a regular person
⏹️ ▶️ John with their SUV. And those toasters barely fit in the SUV. We filled
⏹️ ▶️ John the entire trunk, the back seat, and the passenger seat with just cardboard boxes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because it was like 12, you know, very large boxes. And that person, like, that person
⏹️ ▶️ John showed up and they’re like, I’m ready to do a TaskRabbit thing. I’m like, I’m not sure you, I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John sure you were well briefed on what’s going on. I’m picking up toasters. How the heck could that be? And it was just, you
⏹️ ▶️ John could see her face drop. It’s like, I’m sorry, but.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So what, were they getting mailed or donated or trashed?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know where they went from the task. A person took them out of my house. Where they went from there. I don’t know. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John they actually got shipped back. Should ask Alex about it. They will be able to tell you whether they got shipped back somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ John or donated. But all I knew was at that point, speaking of wives was these I just need to get out of my