489: Very Inappropriate Thoughts About This Computer
30 Jun 2022HomePod rumors, MacBook rumors, phone waffling, and impulse purchases.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Marco flirts with his past
- Follow-up:
- Bitcode has been deprecated
- Previously, on ATP #205 (Overcast timestamp link) (Transcript)
- New big HomePod rumor
- Ricky on Passkey syncing
- Very important Caffè Macs follow-up
- BNPL
- Bitcode has been deprecated
- The 256GB 13” M2 MacBook Pro has crummy SSD performance
- 15” MacBook… something?
#askatp- What makes WWDC ‘22 different than the before times? (via Elijah Yap)
- Are we living in the gilded age for Mac professionals? (via Wade Tregaskis)
- How close is APFS (🛎️) to ZFS? (via Dave Aton)
- Post-show:
- Casey impulse-bought a computer
- Marco traded in iPads
- Casey got his Playdate
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Chapters
- An iPhone affair
- Farewell, Bitcode
- HomePod rumor!
- Sponsor: Locket
- Passkey syncing
- Caffé Macs follow-up
- Buy-now-pay-later follow-up
- Sponsor: Trade Coffee
- M2 256GB SSD is slow
- 15” MacBook rumor
- Sponsor: Linode
- #askatp: WWDC vs. Apple Park tourism
- #askatp: Gilded age for Mac pros?
- #askatp: ZFS vs. APFS
- Ending theme
- Casey impulse-bought a computer
- Casey’s Playdate first impressions
An iPhone affair
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m trying to avoid getting my heart broken again. So for various, in various, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ways with the iOS beta situation and everything, I mentioned that I had ordered myself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an iPhone 13 mini. You know, I had the 12 mini last year as my only phone, and I loved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. And the 13 Pro came out and won me back to the mid-size, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really quite a large size, with the big camera system and the big battery and everything, because the mini’s battery life sucked.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, then it turned out the 13 Mini, while it didn’t have any of the fancy camera stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it did improve the battery life a bit, and I was a little envious, but I thought, I don’t need it. You know, I already have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my Pro phone. I’ll stick with the Pro. I’ll enjoy the camera, et cetera. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have for most of the year, and it’s this big, heavy brick in my pocket every time I carry it anywhere. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the summer has been kicking into high gear, and I started wearing shorts as the default. Oh, here we go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again. The default leg covering. I was even feeling like, you know, maybe I should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy a 13 mini just for the summer, you know, and then I don’t know, just sell it at the end or whatever. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even though I can have 17 different computers and that feels okay, for some reason having two iPhones feels ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That feels like such an extravagance, like such a waste. So for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey whatever reason…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You need a pants phone and a shorts phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So for whatever reason, that always felt like that was off limits. There’s probably no good excuse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why. It’s like, well, if I can have a laptop and a desktop, like, why can’t I have two phones? But, you know, it just felt wasteful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, as I mentioned, I think two episodes ago, I gave away my Mini for a family member who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needed a phone. And so I had only one phone left to total that could run iOS 16.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I really, for my various testing figures, I really need two. And so my Mini was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that before and I lost it. So I ordered a new like refurb, refurb,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco renewed, refurb, iPhone 13 mini to be my test phone. And I thought, well, now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I have this, now that it’s here, I’ll put 15 on it and I’ll put 16
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on my carry phone. So, that’s what I’ve done. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I realized, well, maybe I should just take this out. Just take this for a night. I’ll pop my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco SIM card into it and just see. Just maybe I can talk about it on the show. Just that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco famous excuse, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how every podcaster excuses buying gear they don’t need. I needed it for the show. I needed to be able to talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. But I legitimately need this device as a test device. I just don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be using it as my carry phone. So anyway, so for a few days,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d say maybe four or five days, I used it as my main carry phone again. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was glorious. It feels so good. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frankly, so I got the blue one. Frankly, I think it looks really good too. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back, eh, the back I could care less about. The blue aluminum on the sides though looks really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice in all different lighting conditions. It is way nicer looking than the Pro Phone. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have that like baby blue version of the Pro Phone. It’s so much nicer looking. And I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Pro Phone looks bad, but that’s just how good the non-pro aluminum looks, like this wonderful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blue color. It’s so nice. But I kept telling myself, like, I can’t stick
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with this, I can’t. Because this is about to die. Like this whole product line is about to die.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I even thought like, do I really need the 14 when it comes out? But the answer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is I probably need to have one because it’s gonna have that low brightness widget mode on the home
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen that I’m going to have to test with. So like I’m going to get on the train again in the fall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the mid-size phone. So I’m like, I just, I don’t wanna get my heart broken again. And so yesterday I switched
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back to the giant phone just because I didn’t wanna get too used to the mini. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s so big. Oh my god, it’s so, it’s just, it’s so big and heavy, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ah, it’s just, and when you look at the specs, like the, you know, the mini
⏹️ ▶️ Marco versus the mid-size non-pro versus the mid-size pro, it’s like, you know, 140 grams, 175, and 200.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the mini is, you know, it’s not, it’s more than half the weight of the big one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that’s still, it just feels, both the weight difference and the, you know, the footprint size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco difference in your hand, It just feels so big. I still wish there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was something between these two sizes. Now maybe the answer is I could just get like, you know, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big non-pro phone, but that’s, I mean, that’s not gonna solve my development needs for this fall with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always on screen and everything. But anyway, I just, I miss having the small light
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone so much. I’m so torn. I am so fortunate that I have a job and the means
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I can actually own both of these phones and have to actually test on both of them and have a good reason to buy them, et cetera. Yes, I know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco However, God, I wish they would make better small phones again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it kind of crushes me that, you know, according to every rumor that at this point, usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone size rumors are pretty well nailed in by a year before it launches,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let alone like a few months. But at this point, it’s pretty clear, you know, the mini is going away and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just, I miss the days. Like it feels so good in the pocket. It doesn’t look ridiculous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in pockets. Like, you know, I’m still a front pocket kind of person. and it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look stupid, like with this giant lunch tray in my pocket, the way that the big phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does. The difference between the Mini and the Pro is way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bigger than the difference between the Pro and the Max. So they really just made like the Max and the Maxer right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. That’s how it feels. Here we are, we have the normal sized phone, which is the Mini,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then we have the Max and the Maxer. And oh, I’m just, it’s so sad to me that this is going away
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’ll probably never come back. Like we never we’re never gonna have like a 3.5 inch phone again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s probably for good reasons But it’s just like it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and heavier And I I hope in the future. I hope maybe Apple does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more advances with materials Maybe maybe not using steel maybe reducing the use of glass on the back,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know because you know steel and glass are very heavy So I don’t know. I don’t know what they could do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just hope they do it
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the periscope cameras will I hope make it feel not quite as onerous in the pocket.
⏹️ ▶️ John Those were rumored to be coming for the iPhone 14 but turns out not. We talked about that on a past show. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John for the 15 or 16. Imagine if it was a phone the size of the plain old 13
⏹️ ▶️ John but a little bit thinner, a little bit lighter and totally flat back. That would feel less oppressive
⏹️ ▶️ John in your pocket I feel like.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah that would be nice. And I still, again, I still think that if they can find
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it in their hearts to make a pro quality phone without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco steel around the outside, like use the aluminum, it’s lighter, it looks better,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it feels better.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the steel looks better and feels better. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco not lighter,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think it looks better and feels better. I would use a case, so who cares? But I think it definitely looks better and feels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, disagree. I will say though, besides the size, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was thinking like, well, if I just switch this to the summer, what am I gonna miss from the Pro phone? You know what I missed?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Shockingly, I would never have guessed this, ProMotion.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought there was something wrong with my Mini that everything was so jaggy, all the animations seemed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very low frame rate. I never would have noticed this before using ProMotion for a year now, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, And I still use a 60 hertz monitor all the time, but for some reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I noticed that instantly and I thought, oh, maybe it’s just because this is like a fresh boot, maybe it’s indexing crap in the background and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But no, it never went away. Like that, it always felt like low frame rate animation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that, I would never have guessed that.
⏹️ ▶️ John By the time they do the mini again, it’ll be 120 hertz, don’t worry. In three years. Three, that’s optimistic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it won’t be. It’ll be the next SE probably, and it’ll have all the lowest end components.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I mean, I feel like the smaller phone thing comes in cycles. They, you know, people ask for it, they make
⏹️ ▶️ John one, they’re disappointed in the sales, they forget about it for a while. Then people ask for one, they make it, they’re disappointed
⏹️ ▶️ John in the sales. It’ll come around, I give it five years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it will, because the thing is like, you know, the rumors were like nobody’s really buying it. And so my anecdotal experience,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how many iPhone minis have you seen in the wild that weren’t in the hands of an Apple nerd? I can tell you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my number, it’s one.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like the next mini, when the next mini comes around in five years or so, it’s not gonna be that small. It’s gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ John smaller than the current 13, but
⏹️ ▶️ John small as that little dinky thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, as I’ve said many times in the past, I would probably at least
⏹️ ▶️ Casey try for a year having a 13 or a 14 in this case, many,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if it had the same camera system as the big guys, but I will not, like that is my do or die, I will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not compromise the camera system. Well, that’s not entirely true, I suppose, because when the Max
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phones had a better camera, I wouldn’t go that big. Like I guess my first tier is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no max phones because I am not a genetic misfit, I have normal size hands. But my second
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tier is I will not compromise the camera system and I actually do use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all three cameras or all three lenses frequently. So for me, I don’t wanna give it up. If the 13
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or 14 or 15 or 17 mini had the same camera system, I’d probably get one. But while it doesn’t, it’s a no fly zone for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So for whatever it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worth, I know we’re a little early for our exit interview for the phone, but I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the 3x perspective as the only thing you have between 1x and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco zoomed in. Almost every time that I want something zoomed in, 3x is actually a little bit too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much, or it’s way too little, in which case, nothing would solve the problem. But 2x,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I often used 2x when that was a thing. The 3x is oftentimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too much zoomed in so that I have to then zoom back out, in which case, it’s just gonna use the 1x lens, much case I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, and there is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco noticeable quality degraded, you know, degradation, degrading?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Degradation! There we go, that’s the word. There it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I couldn’t fix it, I couldn’t fabricate it myself. No, I think I agree with you actually. A year
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco ago, I think I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a 3X apologist because early on I did like it, but the more I’ve used it, and I do use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, but I concur with what you said. Either I want like a 20X or or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that. Or like I’m just a little bit too far, like I don’t know, I’m across a big
⏹️ ▶️ Casey table or something like that from a kid or Aaron or something like that. And I don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 3X, but I need more than 1X. And if only there was something between one and three that would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey potentially work in this scenario. So yeah, I think I agree with you. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John you get enough pixels in there, you can just, you know, digital zoom out to two. I don’t have a 3X camera, so
⏹️ ▶️ John I haven’t experienced this, but one of the main places I use 2X is when I’m trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to take a picture of either a document or a piece of paper or something, and yeah, 1X
⏹️ ▶️ John will work, but very often with 1X, like the phone casts a shadow on the thing because the phone is too close
⏹️ ▶️ John to it, or 1X is a little more kind of fish-eyed, so the edges get a little bit wavy,
⏹️ ▶️ John the lens compensation doesn’t quite straighten everything out, and if I just want the document to be straight,
⏹️ ▶️ John quick, switch to 2X, move the phone up higher, shadow goes off the item, edges are a
⏹️ ▶️ John little bit straighter, there you go, but I can imagine maybe that was 3x I would have to hold the phone uncomfortably
⏹️ ▶️ John high and I wouldn’t be able to see what it was doing. Really I should just use the document scanning feature in notes where it just fixes all that for you
⏹️ ▶️ John but I kind of wish that was a part of the phone app because I don’t want it to go into notes I want it to be in my
⏹️ ▶️ John photos but I want it to be square-edge piece of paper. Anyway, oh you on my next phone will have a 3x camera
⏹️ ▶️ John I assume so I’ll try it out.
Farewell, Bitcode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some follow-up. And we should talk about something we talked about, what, 250
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco something like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is bitcode. And I can take a stab at what bitcode is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all about, but perhaps, John, you would be better suited to do this. So can you explain what bitcode is, and we’ll talk about why we’re talking
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the thing where when you upload your application to Apple, instead of sending Apple executable code,
⏹️ ▶️ John you instead send them this bitcode, which is slightly more abstracted, But
⏹️ ▶️ John it tells you what your program is going to do, but it isn’t made for any specific piece of hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then what Apple does is at the time they distribute your application to someone who is downloading it. They decide
⏹️ ▶️ John what architecture is the person downloading it on? What kind of iPhone do they have? What kind of whatever iPad?
⏹️ ▶️ John What processor does it have? So on and so forth. And then they will take the bit code and convert it to, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John they probably do this ahead of time, but anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John it to the machine code that will run on your device. So even though what you upload is bit
⏹️ ▶️ John code that will run on any device. What you download is a thing that’s made specifically for your architecture.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a way to give people slightly smaller downloads. It’s a way to be able to take
⏹️ ▶️ John that thing that was uploaded and target hardware that might not have even been released at the time you built
⏹️ ▶️ John that bit code, right? Because you’re uploading the bit code, and maybe later that year,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple releases a new piece of hardware that has a new instruction that you don’t have to upload a new app. They
⏹️ ▶️ John can just convert the bit code that you uploaded to use that new instruction if it will make some piece of your code faster
⏹️ ▶️ John while still keeping the functionality the same. Like, that’s the idea behind Bitcode. And I believe Bitcode was
⏹️ ▶️ John mandatory for watch apps. Marco, do you remember the details on this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was always mandatory for watch apps and it was optional for iOS apps.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So anyway, that’s Bitcode. And the story is Bitcode is deprecated now. So
⏹️ ▶️ John when Bitcode came out, when? I gotta click on this link to see how old this episode was. ATP episode 205
⏹️ ▶️ John when we interviewed Chris Lattner, 2017. So it’s been around for a while. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ John Chris talked about it in our interview, like why it exists, what the advantages are. But now
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not going to be a thing anymore. So starting with Xcode 14, Bitcode is no longer required
⏹️ ▶️ John for watchOS and TBS applications, and the App Store no longer accepts Bitcode submissions from Xcode 14.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you got Bitcode up there, it’ll keep working, but it’s no longer required and you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t even send it from Xcode 14. So Bitcode is done and they’re just sort of phasing it out. And they suggest that you update
⏹️ ▶️ John your projects and change the build settings to disable bitcode, and so on and so forth. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the compatibility to build with bitcode will be removed for a future Xcode release, Apple says. IPAs that contain bitcode
⏹️ ▶️ John will have their bitcode stripped before being submitted to the App Store. Debug symbols for past bitcode submissions are made available
⏹️ ▶️ John for download. So this is interesting just because bitcode, I think, was interesting. It’s an interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John idea. And when I saw that it was being deprecated, obviously we don’t know what goes on
⏹️ ▶️ John inside Apple, even on things that have a semi-public face, like we see like Swift Language Evolution and stuff like
⏹️ ▶️ John that. But this smells to me entirely like a feature that,
⏹️ ▶️ John a feature whose champions have left, right? That someone had this idea for Bitcode, or some
⏹️ ▶️ John group of people had this idea for Bitcode, and they pitched and they said, here’s what we’re gonna do, here’s what the advantages are. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got advantages to our users, it’s got advantages to us, it’s a good idea. In fact, it’s such a good idea, let’s make it mandatory
⏹️ ▶️ John on the watch. And either the things that it promised to fulfill, like the,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, you know, we can release new hardware with, that, you know, that we can retarget existing
⏹️ ▶️ John bitcode to that new hardware and developers don’t have to submit a new app, right? And smaller downloads and all that type
⏹️ ▶️ John of stuff, that either those gains were not realized, like they never actually did that, or
⏹️ ▶️ John they were realized, but the benefits that they got for them did not match the downsides
⏹️ ▶️ John of having to deal with bitcode and all the machinery to, you know, turn out the right versions or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But in general, someone had this idea at Apple and championed it and released it and promoted it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it seems like one of the ways projects like this happen in big companies is
⏹️ ▶️ John the people who are super enthusiastic about it and who are promoting all those benefits left the company
⏹️ ▶️ John or moved on to do other things or they’re on Project Titan now or whatever. And the remaining people, after
⏹️ ▶️ John a few years of shepherding Bitcode and babysitting it and looking at it, the same questions
⏹️ ▶️ John would get asked. Why are we doing Bitcode again? What is this giving us? You know, especially if like, say, it caused a problem once or twice
⏹️ ▶️ John or, you know, it seems like running the whole Bitcoin thing was a problem. Like, what are these theoretical benefits? And the champions
⏹️ ▶️ John were no longer there to say, no, we have to do Bitcoin. Here’s why, because it’s going to be awesome for this and that other thing. And instead of it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John the people who are sort of shepherding it saying, yeah, I mean, I guess it’s OK, but like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John eventually someone has the guts to say, should we just stop doing this? And then it goes away. And I’m weaving this whole big
⏹️ ▶️ John story of what could be happening. It’s like Apple have no information on this whatsoever. But that’s what this smells like.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think that’s a natural thing to happen, especially in big companies to
⏹️ ▶️ John get any idea to the from someone’s head to become an actual project that goes out to the public, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John in a company like Apple, it’s so difficult and requires so many so many skills beyond
⏹️ ▶️ John doing the thing having to do with like promoting the thing, explaining why it’s a good idea,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, getting support from all the people who need to give you a thumbs up for this to go through. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John And a lot of that is predicated on promises. I think this will do X, Y and Z for us.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. And sometimes those things just don’t turn out or sometimes they turn out. But the time
⏹️ ▶️ John where they had a big benefit has passed and now it’s not. You know, maybe during the 32 to 64 transition or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John was a big deal. But now it’s not that big a deal. But the costs remain. And so I think it is actually a good
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that, you know, assuming assuming this is the right call again, I don’t know inside Apple, but assuming this is the right call,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is an important thing for companies to do to decide when a thing they decided to do many years ago
⏹️ ▶️ John has either not worked out or its time has passed and it’s time to sort of put it to bed.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think this will mostly not impact developers too harshly. There’s going to be a long transition period. And
⏹️ ▶️ John this was, you know, the benefits to developers probably were minimal. Like, do you know of a case
⏹️ ▶️ John where Bitcode made your app run slightly faster than it would have without you resubmitting a new app?
⏹️ ▶️ John If that happened, developers probably wouldn’t even know about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. Chris talked about it in the interview, because I re-listened to that section of the interview to remind me. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this was actually one of my favorite things that he spoke about on that interview, or at least one of the few things I remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all these years later, which is, and he had a specific example, and I’m gonna butcher the details, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the idea was there was a processor, I think the comically named Swift processor,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey forget which one it was, but it was like iPhone 5 or something like that, and it had as a hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Casey instruction integer, either multiplication or division or something like that. And so what you could do,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or what Apple could do is say, hey, I built, let’s say, Masquerade for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the prior processor that does not have the special opcode for integer division or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was. But because I’m submitting to them bitcode, they can do the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey appropriate conversions such that the version of my app that’s downloaded does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use this new hardware instruction. So I get the benefits of this really fancy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hardware instruction without having even known it existed when I compiled my code, which is pretty neat.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, but do you notice that benefit as a developer? Like, do you even know that it happened? As a developer,
⏹️ ▶️ John no. Right, so in theory, it’s benefiting you because your app runs faster or something, right? Right, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John But like, is that a benefit that you would notice and care about if they took it away? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John probably not. And how much faster would it make your app? And then the flip side of that is, okay, that’s how it’s supposed
⏹️ ▶️ John to go, but what if there’s a problem? What if, you know, we’re supposed to do it in such a way that it is functionally identical
⏹️ ▶️ John to the previous version? So when the new instruction comes out, we can just use the bitcode to produce that thing. But maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John some part of this application relied on some unintended side effect
⏹️ ▶️ John of the previous instruction that it was using. And now all of a sudden, this person’s app behaves differently or has a bug or something like that. And they
⏹️ ▶️ John lose time on that. Or like I said, just the cost to maintain the infrastructure that
⏹️ ▶️ John processes the bitcode for all the different architectures. And there’s definitely costs involved
⏹️ ▶️ John in this. And the benefits of them, I think the reason we haven’t talked about bitcode very much is
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not something that developers are like, oh, Bitcoin is a lifesaver. I’m so glad Apple did that. It makes my life as a
⏹️ ▶️ John developer so much better and it makes my apps better for my users. I mean, maybe it does a little bit, but not so much
⏹️ ▶️ John that, you know, I haven’t seen anyone kick up a fuss about this deprecation, right? Like no one is
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, no, don’t take away BitCode. It’s like, huh? All right, I guess it’s time has passed. Obviously, I would love to know what the real story
⏹️ ▶️ John is. And obviously one person who did leave Apple is Chris Lattner, who seemed to love BitCode, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think it’s the type of thing, well, once Chris Lattner left, It was just, you know, a few short years before they
⏹️ ▶️ John decided to deprecate it and turn it off. It’s obviously a lot more complicated than that.
HomePod rumor!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so apparently Marco got a belated birthday present because there’s a new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey big HomePod rumor. Marco, did we read this by chance?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This literally could not have been better timed. I spent the first 10 minutes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of last week’s show basically begging, please, why aren’t there HomePod rumors? Please
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple, make a new big HomePod. I hope they still make HomePods. And sure enough, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it must have been two hours after we released that show, Mark German
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in his newsletter for Bloomberg has, you know, one of these various, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, German dumps of, like, here’s 17 new products we expect in the next year, and also one of them happens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be a new, larger HomePod. It’s a German rumor. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, it usually, he gets most of the hardware things right. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco timing isn’t always right, the marketing isn’t always right, but he gets most of the, like, existence of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware products right. And so I’m inclined to believe that this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is likely to happen. I don’t know when it’ll happen. I don’t know what exactly it’ll be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But what he says is the upcoming HomePod will run an S8 chip, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the same one that’s going to be in the watches this fall. And I looked it up. The HomePod Mini is, I think, an S4.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so it’s also a watch chip, but it’s a few years older. The previous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco large HomePod ran the A8 chip from iPhones from a billion years ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of my complaints with the big HomePod, besides the fact that it dies and is unreliable, is that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco extremely slow to do anything. And that is something that, you know, when you use a big HomePod and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then you use a HomePod Mini, the difference is night and day. The HomePod Mini is way more responsive, way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco faster. It’s still not fast, mind you, in absolute terms, but it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is way faster than the big HomePod, that’s crappy A8 chip. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this to be a few generations ahead of where the HomePod Mini is in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco processor is probably a very good thing. And German also says that it’ll be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quote closer to the original HomePod in terms of size and audio performance rather than a new HomePod
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mini and it will apparently allegedly have an updated display on top possibly with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco multitouch. So that’s all interesting. That all sounds like it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solves problems that the HomePod had. You know, if it’s gonna have much more responsive performance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s great. If it’s gonna have better audio capabilities than the Mini, that’s great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because we need that in the market. And the display and touch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interface to it also sucked. And so to have that be, you know, possibly improved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or expanded upon, that’s also great. So this sounds awesome. I really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope this is true and I hope it pans out this way. And if so, it can’t get here fast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough. He said, I believe it’s going to be like, you know, 2023 sometime. So not soon, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m just, I’m happy to hear that this product line is most likely not dead and that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the home pod mini is most likely not intended to be the only thing in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I kind of fear that based on this extremely vague rumor that the thing I’m picturing in in my head, I mean, I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John you would take it Marco, because, you know, beggars can’t be choosers, but I’m picturing a HomePod
⏹️ ▶️ John mini that’s bigger that still just has one speaker in it, as opposed to the umpteen speakers that are inside the
⏹️ ▶️ John big HomePod, like basically just a larger speaker, a larger speaker cone, but still just
⏹️ ▶️ John one. So yeah, that will be better than the mini, but I don’t think, based
⏹️ ▶️ John on their past experience and this rumor, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be something that is going to match the audio quality
⏹️ ▶️ John of your current big HomePods.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, there’s a lot of room between those. So when you only have one driver, like in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a speaker usually, in very tiny speakers you have one cone, like one speaker cone. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you get larger speakers, you typically have multiple speaker cones, they’re called drivers, and they are different sizes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to cover different frequency ranges. The bigger the cone is, the more it covers the bass, and the smaller the cone is, the more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it covers the treble, or you get these little tiny tweeter things that aren’t even cones anymore because they’re so small. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the more you can like separate out the roles, you get you get different benefits there and also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the larger the driver is the harder it is to serve the full range of sound
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so what I hope is happening here is you know there’s a lot of room between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the one driver and the quote passive radiators
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the home but many has and the I believe nine drivers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something like that that the big home but had a good seven mid-range and tweeters up in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ring or down in the ring and then it had one woofer and or was it with her two woofers and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco force-canceling configuration I don’t know I forget anyway there’s a lot of room between those two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it wouldn’t really make a lot of sense I don’t think audio engineering wise or mechanically or quality wise to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a significantly larger speaker than the HomePod mini that only has one driver in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it that doesn’t make a lot of sense it’s probably going to split out the woofer and the mid-range
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash tweeter into at least two drivers and that is great that alone is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in many cases enough and what one thing was very impressive what they did with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco full-size home pod they were able to get surprisingly good base in a surprisingly small space with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco type of woofer they used you don’t need a ton of these things you just need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit more than one and the original home pod it had those the seven
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mid-range drivers all in a circle, so it could fire in 360 degrees of sound,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most people don’t need that in most spaces. Most people need sound to come out,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at most, 180 degrees in front of it. And that’s great. If it can be a wide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco soundstage that’s still only 180 degrees instead of 360, that’s still awesome. That’s still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better than most passive, non-smart speakers that only have a couple of drivers facing forward. It’s nowhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco near 180 degrees coverage. So it’s still better than that. I think they can really get away with maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco four drivers. Like I’d say one woofer and three mid-range slash tweeters. Forward,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco left and right on the tweeters. That’s probably enough. So that’s a huge component
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reduction from what they have now. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna have to fight the designers on that because they’re gonna say, wait a second, what you’re describing is a product that is directional.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we can’t make it symmetrical. Like if it fires in a circle, there’s no front to the HomePod, right? Whichever way you put
⏹️ ▶️ John it, like it adapts to whatever, but if you actually have something that, even if you have something that has a forward facing driver and a backwards
⏹️ ▶️ John facing driver, you have to know where forward and back is. They have to put like an arrow on it or something, like so you know how
⏹️ ▶️ John to face the 180 degrees into the room.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but you already know that though, because you know where the cord goes in the back and you know where the buttons are aligned on
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the cord could probably do it. Although I feel like, I mean, not that this is what Apple will do, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John good product design would make that way more obvious than you just having to know that the cord goes, the sound, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John it looks like it’s a perfect cylinder, But keep in mind that the sound comes out opposite of the way the cord goes.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you don’t realize that and like put it sideways, you know, why is this sound so bad? And you don’t know this, your symmetrical,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, cylinder is firing into the wall to the side of you instead of into the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco room. I know this is probably a pipe dream that I don’t think they will do this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would love for them to do this. It would be great if the HomePod had a line in jack
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the back. And so, yeah, right. If they’re going to do anything like that or even if,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco God forbid, they would make the cable removable and replaceable. Maybe you could replace it with a shorter one. That would be amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Suppose they were going to add a port to it. I know that’s a lot to ask.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Then there would probably be like a little like flattened area on the back where the cables come in.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that would be another thing to fix that symmetry problem. But also, I don’t even think necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they need to do a ton of cost cutting here because they now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have the HomePod Mini, which is the value product. You know, when they launched the first HomePod,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they were entering a market where everyone buys things for 50 to $100 from Amazon or Google
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever. They came in with something that was $350 as their only entry to the market. Of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco course we all made fun of the price because it was ridiculously overspec for that market. And that’s not what people wanted out of a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smart speaker most of the time. But now they have the value segment covered.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So even if they come out with this next HomePod and it’s $350 again, in that price range,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for what it offers, it actually is, as I mentioned before, pretty competitive. It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a much smaller market. So I hope they actually try to bridge the gap a little bit. I hope they go a little bit down market,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get them something they could sell for 200 to 250. That, I think they would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do a decent amount of volume, and nobody would say, oh my God, that’s way too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expensive, if it’s significantly improved from the HomePod Mini in terms of like, you know, size and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, I’m curious to see what comes of this because I feel like I’m starting to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sniff about in the HomePod space. The Alexes that we have are getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey obscenely chatty and constantly wanting to sell us stuff and tell us stuff, which granted, this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not terribly surprising. But when we first got them, or yeah, got a couple of them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a few years back, they were extremely quiet unless they were being spoken to. but now they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey constantly needing attention. They’re ridiculous. They’re like toddlers now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as far as I’m concerned, Amazon had the lead in this area and threw it away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, agreed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Amazon could not have fumbled this worse than they have. I don’t know a lot of people who have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Amazon Echoes or their family of products who are super happy with them right now. Yeah, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whereas a few years ago, they were the leaders. They were the king of the world in this space and they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just got more and more annoying and needy and pushy and people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reacted very poorly to that.
Sponsor: Locket
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Lockit, a thoughtfully designed, simple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and elegant iOS app and they’re looking to hire their next iOS engineers. This is a pretty good opportunity,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think. So with Lockit, you see updates from your favorite people on your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone right there on your home screen through widgets. So the way it works is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you follow a, you know, whatever small group you want. This is not like a public platform. This is a private platform
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for either maybe just you and your partner, or maybe you and your close family, close friends,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco however you want to do it. It’s a small private group. And when you open your phone, you look at your phone all day,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you see that widget, you will see the most recent pictures that this small group has sent. They can send them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very easily throughout the day, and then you can tap right there and take a picture and show it to them on all their widgets. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a way for you to really keep in touch with a very small group of people privately without all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the baggage that comes with a big social network, but still being social with your friends and family
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or with your partner. So it’s a really cool concept and a lot of people have gotten into this. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since just this year, over 500 million lockets have been sent. They’ve had more than 20 million downloads.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The app’s been in the top 10 in the social networking chart in the app store since launch. But even though they’re operating now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at quite a scale, their team is still only three people. So this means their next iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hire will get to play a central role in building and defining the app. This app that ships to millions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can be right there. you can be making a big impact by being part of this very small staff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is a very nice, thoughtfully designed iOS app. They really care about getting the details right. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by working with Lockit, you’re really going to be building a new social network on a new frontier, the home screen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through the use of widgets. And this can really make your phone feel fun and personal again. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can feel proud to make your friends the center of your phone. So if you’re an iOS engineer, get in touch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can reach out to them at lockit.camera.jobs. It’s lockett.camera.jobs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or reach out to their founder Matt Moss on Twitter directly. you so much to LockIt for sponsoring
Passkey syncing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, tell me about passkey syncing. What’s the story here?
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a treat from Ricky, a tweet from Ricky. And it
⏹️ ▶️ John in iOS 16 and Mac OS Ventura, there isn’t any UI to disable syncing of credentials made
⏹️ ▶️ John via WebAuthn. Those are the passkey things. Passkeys are a replacement for passwords, sync across devices, and are backed
⏹️ ▶️ John up with iCloud Keychain. So this is just a statement of fact. We talked before about how you can airdrop
⏹️ ▶️ John passkeys to somebody or whatever. just when you’re using passkeys yourself, they will sync via iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ John Keychain to all your devices. That is not an option because some people are asking, hey, what if I want to have a passkey
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s like only on my phone or something? Can I do that? And the answer is no, they sync everywhere. And it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s obviously everyone makes different trade-offs between security and convenience.
⏹️ ▶️ John The, in this first iteration, the choice Apple is making is that they, a
⏹️ ▶️ John balance between security and convenience that is well suited for most people. Because for
⏹️ ▶️ John most people, if you allowed them, or if it didn’t sync everywhere by default, or if you allowed them to turn it off,
⏹️ ▶️ John they can end up in a situation where they have a PASCY that gets into some account at some point in the future where people start using these things,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s only on their phone, and their phone’s not backed up because that is a thing that you can do. Oh, I ran out of iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ John space. I didn’t want to pay for it. Who pays for iCloud space? And they drop their phone into the ocean, and that was
⏹️ ▶️ John the only place the PASCY was to log into their account. And they try to log into their account, and they can’t and
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re angry about it, right? Syncing everywhere is the thing that makes passkeys a viable replacement
⏹️ ▶️ John for passwords because then if you lose any one of your devices or even all your devices,
⏹️ ▶️ John because iCloud keychain is in iCloud, if you lose your devices or they break or your house burned down or whatever, you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t lose your ability to log into all your accounts. Kind of like in theory, you wouldn’t lose it with
⏹️ ▶️ John passwords is if you knew your passwords, which probably you don’t, but let’s say you knew your passwords, which probably means they’re bad
⏹️ ▶️ John passwords. Oh, my house burned down, I have memorized these 97 high-quality passwords. Probably
⏹️ ▶️ John not true, but in theory it could be done. But with FASCIs, you never know what they are. They’re just on your devices. So it
⏹️ ▶️ John has to sync, because that is what will protect most people from themselves. But for
⏹️ ▶️ John people who have different, want to have a different tradeoff between security and convenience,
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS 16 and macOS Ventura do not give that option. At least in the UI. This is a very specific tweet. It says, there isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John any UI to disable the syncing of credentials. Is Is there a command line way to do it? Is there some
⏹️ ▶️ John secret key? Who knows. But I think this is the right call because if you made this optional
⏹️ ▶️ John or made people have to turn it on, people could really get themselves into trouble. Again, this
⏹️ ▶️ John all requires passkeys to become a thing because if you don’t log in anywhere with passkeys, who cares what it does? But
⏹️ ▶️ John I think this is the right call, but for people who are very security conscious and want to have a thing where, like
⏹️ ▶️ John you do with a hardware, Yubikeys or whatever, where you know this is the one and only place where this thing is, not
⏹️ ▶️ John something PASCY’s is going to do at least in this first iteration.
Caffé Macs follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have incredibly important follow-up to cover.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is with regard to Cafe Max and the meals there. And we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got some feedback, and I will read it now. Pacific Rim, Pangea, et cetera, are the different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kitchens in not the name nor type of dishes that they’re offering. We were theorizing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, oh, the Pacific Rim entry for the WWDC meals, that means it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey meal from the Pacific Rim. No, no, no. Apparently, that’s the kitchen. Pangea is a kitchen, et cetera. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going back to the feedback. Employees use an app to order everything. For all the restaurants, they do a daily special
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and have a couple of staples available every day. This person writes, I worked at Infinite Loop, but the kitchens are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the same at Apple Park and all the other Cafe Max and Cupertino. I worked there for a few months and ate everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Everything’s pretty good with the exception of the grill. Think Cruise Food Kitchen. Basic American stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John A little bit of real-time feedback on the PASCU thing. Some people in the chat room were asking about this. One question was, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John wait a second. I thought passkeys weren’t supposed to leave your device. There’s a thing that Apple has done in a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of their literature about passkeys in their presentations, it’s easy to miss. But if
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re thinking about it like, what are you talking about passkeys syncing with iCloud Keychain? Because it’s supposed to
⏹️ ▶️ John stay on my device and never leave my device, right? But how does it sync if it doesn’t leave my device? It doesn’t make sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John What they always say in their presentations and documentation is, your passkey does not
⏹️ ▶️ John leave your device when you log into something. Like, oh, I’m signing into my
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Unlike your password, which you send over the internet to the website that you’re logging into, your passkey does
⏹️ ▶️ John not leave your device when you log in, right? It’s your data, you keep it in your secure
⏹️ ▶️ John enclave. It is yours to sync with as you want using the end-to-end encrypted iCloud key
⏹️ ▶️ John chain that even Apple can’t get access to or whatever. So yes, it does leave your device when it syncs to your other
⏹️ ▶️ John devices, and it leaves your device when you airdrop it to somebody else. But when you log in on a daily basis,
⏹️ ▶️ John log into this service, log into that service, it does not leave your device then, which means A, it doesn’t leave your device
⏹️ ▶️ John most of the time when you’re using it, and B, the things you’re logging into never see it. You don’t send it to them,
⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t have to store it, they don’t have to store a hash of it, they don’t have any piece of it. They have your public key, which is totally public and anybody
⏹️ ▶️ John can have and it’s fine. They don’t get your private key when you log in. So there’s that distinction.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then somebody asked, what if you only have one Apple device? Why would you still want syncing? That’s because if you drop your one Apple device
⏹️ ▶️ John in a lake, you better hope someone’s got a copy of that passkey and who has a copy of it? It’s in your iCloud key chain, which is on Apple server somewhere,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they can’t decrypt it because it’s end-to-end encrypted.
Buy-now-pay-later follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s briefly talk about buy now pay later. This is becoming more relevant in my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey world because Apple has announced that they’re going to do a buy now pay later thing via Apple Pay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we got a bunch of feedback about this and honestly, this could go on for hours. And so, I just thought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’d cover a couple of quick things. I didn’t really know how this worked and who made money and how.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the summary that I will offer up to you, the listener, is that apparently the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way this works is when you go to buy something you pay in four, generally speaking, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pay in four installments, you pay the first one immediately and then three more installments in two, four, and six weeks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey later. What happens is the merchant pays a little bit more money
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to, or a little bit higher percentage than they would for a straight-up credit card transaction
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the people that are doing buy now pay later, like Affirm or one of the many other companies, Afterpay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They basically make their money by taking a little bit more fee than a credit card.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, why would the merchant be interested in this? They do this because they’re told, and people believe,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the conversion is way higher. So it is much more likely that the thing that was in your shopping
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cart actually gets purchased when you can do it in four installments instead of just one big lump sum.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There was a pretty good episode of Planet Money about this. That’s only like 20, 25 minutes. We’ll put a link in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But what’s interesting about this is, is we don’t know a whole lot about how Apple specifically is going to conquer this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from what we’ve gathered, uh, or from what people have dug up. It sounds like Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is going to be the one providing the financing. So, you know, if you’re buying a hundred dollar item
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you’re doing that in four $25 installments, then, then Apple’s floating you 75
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bucks, right? Because you’re paying 25 immediately and then 25 and two weeks, 25 and four weeks, 25 and six weeks. Where
⏹️ ▶️ John will Apple get all that money from?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Since they’re so cash strapped, it’s gonna be real hard.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like that. Yeah. Like we were saying, Oh, Apple’s not using a bank for this. They’re going to be their own bank. I assume Apple probably
⏹️ ▶️ John has more money than most banks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly. Well put. Uh, so anyway, so Apple will float it. But,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, what is interesting is apparently they’re, and I’m a little fuzzy on the details here, but apparently they’re using Goldman Sachs to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey vend for lack of a better word. And that’s probably technically incorrect. A master card such
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it’s a, I guess like a fan. And again, I’m way out of my comfort zone here, but I guess it’s like a phantom master
⏹️ ▶️ Casey card that the transaction is run up, run up against and that they’re using Goldman
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sachs for, but the floating of this hypothetical $75 is, is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple’s money. And they will hopefully make their money back by taking slightly higher fees.
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, to use a software, but it’s like the adapter pattern, like the entire payment system doesn’t know about these things. So it has to,
⏹️ ▶️ John has to masquerade as if you paid with a slightly higher fee credit card, because from the merchant’s perspective,
⏹️ ▶️ John they get all the money at once. It doesn’t look like buy now pay later to them. It just looks like, oh, this is like a really,
⏹️ ▶️ John really high fee for this credit card or whatever. And like Casey said, the reason they’re willing to pay the higher fee is,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m assuming they don’t just think I’m sure it is actually true that people buy more stuff when,
⏹️ ▶️ John when you get all the money, but they’re only paying part of that money. So they’re more likely to purchase things. So they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John willing, the vendors, the merchants, oh, there’s too many stupid terms. The store is is where you buy stuff. The store
⏹️ ▶️ John is willing to pay a higher fee to get that customer to buy the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And to them, it just looks like a high fee credit card.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There are a bunch of catches and caveats with this. We’re not going to go into all of them. But the short short version is, there’s not a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lot of protections around this because, you know, governments haven’t really caught up to this being a thing yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Additionally, there’s there’s not a lot of protections to make sure that there’s no predatory lending, although this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tends to be not as predatory a practice to begin with, which is good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because it’s like it’s much shorter term than credit cards.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it has an end point. Like it has a defined end rather than, oh, I’ll just keep paying my $25 minimums
⏹️ ▶️ Casey until the end of time.
⏹️ ▶️ John A lot of things don’t actually even charge any interest. It’s just like, look, you have to pay this off and this is the amount you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to pay. And here’s the schedule you have to pay it. And if you fail to pay on that schedule, you just can’t use
⏹️ ▶️ John that buy now pay later service anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we’ll send it to collections. Like, so it can.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, they’ll get your money somehow. But the whole point is like, they’re not willing to do what credit cards do, which is like, just
⏹️ ▶️ John make them an unpaid for the rest of your life. Like, that’s not an option. Like, they’re not trying to make money from you that way. Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John they need you to pay back the money, and they will get it from you if they can. But the stopgap
⏹️ ▶️ John is, unlike a credit card, where you can just keep paying the minimum and keep using that card, you can’t use your
⏹️ ▶️ John buy now, pay later thing anymore if you have not made the payments on your existing thing. So it sort of kills
⏹️ ▶️ John your payment method until you pay it off.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and then the other interesting thing is what happens if you, like, I don’t know, buy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something and it turns out you’re getting totally ripped off? Well, there’s no idea of like a chargeback or anything like that because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re not really doing, you’re not really purchasing this through a credit card company that supports that sort of thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re purchasing it through Apple or Afterpay or what have you. And so there’s a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ways that it’s not as safe for a consumer, but the advantage is, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for naive consumers, and I don’t mean that dismissively, or inexperienced perhaps is a better word for it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that you’re not looking at a 20% credit card fee that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could follow you, like you guys were saying, until the end of time. This has a defined stop date, and that’s six
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weeks from whenever you purchase. I find this very interesting. As someone who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has basically treated his credit card like a debit card for his entire life, I don’t think this is necessarily for me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it is a very interesting approach. And I am very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey curious to see what Apple does with this and how this works out for Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like there is ample room for what they call innovation in the finance space to figure out, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John but what if we did charge people fees and interest? You know, like, it’s very
⏹️ ▶️ John – the way the banking industry finds a way to make money off things that don’t seem like they’re – like most banks essentially make money off
⏹️ ▶️ John fees now. Like, they don’t – you know, the old model of like, oh, the bank takes your money and they hold it for
⏹️ ▶️ John you and they use to give people loans, they charge interest on those loans like no, they just charge you fees. And that’s how they make all their money,
⏹️ ▶️ John right. And so there’s, there’s so many places in the system where you can add a little fee. In fact, some of the chat rooms saying like, Oh, if
⏹️ ▶️ John you miss a payment, they charge you a $10 penalty or something like just little fees like, oh, it’s not interest. But
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, if you miss a payment, it’s this fee or whatever, but we’ll let you use your card. It’s kind of like, you know, think of everything used to gamify
⏹️ ▶️ John the casino games for children on the App Store, right? Oh, you’re you’ve missed a payment. So a you get a $10 penalty,
⏹️ ▶️ John but B, do you still want to use this payment method because normally we would stop you but if you pay $20 now let you use it for another
⏹️ ▶️ John purchase. Pay $30 for a boost in a loot box. Exactly right it’s like do you want to use it for
⏹️ ▶️ John an extra 24 hours you can have an extra week on this will let you use it even though you haven’t paid that off but it’s just a $50 fee or
⏹️ ▶️ John just like and okay so it’s not interest you know but it’s a way to make
⏹️ ▶️ John small amounts of money knowing that people will miss a payment or buy something that’s a little bit more than they can afford and
⏹️ ▶️ John have to wait for the next paycheck to pay it off like the industry of finding a way to
⏹️ ▶️ John make people feel good about buying something. Like, oh, this is great. I don’t have to pay it all at once. I’ll pay it now.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s real easy. And not realize that future them is going to miss that payment, and then they’re going to have to pay a
⏹️ ▶️ John fee, and then just multiply that over millions of people. It’s in the industry’s
⏹️ ▶️ John nature to exploit human weakness to make small amounts of money that people
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s in all these businesses. Great. Right. Well, I mean, in theory, kind of like they did with Apple Card. Apple will
⏹️ ▶️ John try to do the slightly better version of that. Because like I said before, I think the upside for Apple for
⏹️ ▶️ John doing this is let’s make more people use Apple Pay, more transactions going through Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John payment methods. Apple wants to drive more people to use its payment systems.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s the benefit it gets. But kind of like services where it’s like, okay, well, Apple’s business, they
⏹️ ▶️ John make all their money from selling phones, but they want to have services to make their phones more valuable. Eventually, if something is
⏹️ ▶️ John successful, somebody wakes up and notices, you know what? is actually making a lot of money too. And unlike
⏹️ ▶️ John phones now, it’s growing. So that should become a profit center for us instead of just a way to make our phones more valuable.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that can easily happen with payment methods if they ever get to that point. Because it may right now be a way to just drive
⏹️ ▶️ John more people to buy things on their phones and so on and so forth. But, and you know, we don’t charge late fees and
⏹️ ▶️ John we don’t do this, we don’t have any interest. But five years from now, someone, a bean counter runs the numbers
⏹️ ▶️ John and says, you know what, services have stopped growing. But this payment method stuff, this is a goldmine. If
⏹️ ▶️ John we increase our fee for missed payments by one cent per
⏹️ ▶️ John year, we make an extra billion dollars and then we’re looking at the Apple payments graph go up and up in our
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M2 256GB SSD is slow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so apparently in the infinitely long list of reasons why the 13-inch MacBook Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with M2 is a piece of ** is because the SSDs are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apparently way slower, which is cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is kind of disappointing for this computer because honestly, I don’t think it’s really the,
⏹️ ▶️ John like of all the things that are wrong with this computer, this one of them is a thing that could have happened to any computer, right? It
⏹️ ▶️ John could have happened to the nicest computer. It didn’t. It happens to every computer
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, right. It’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco So the thing that happens is when
⏹️ ▶️ John you put storage in a computer, whether it’s RAM or SSDs or whatever, you can buy
⏹️ ▶️ John the little chips that make up either the RAM or the flash storage or whatever in various sizes.
⏹️ ▶️ John And sometimes the biggest size you can get is not big enough to do the thing that you
⏹️ ▶️ John want. So say you wanted to have, in this case, a 256 gigabyte SSD. Can I get a 256 gigabyte single chip?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, you gotta buy two of them. You gotta buy 128 and 128. So, all right, fine. Because there’s no 256s available. Or there
⏹️ ▶️ John are available, but they’re exorbitantly expensive, right? And this is not our top end computer, right? So we’re gonna buy two of those
⏹️ ▶️ John chips and that’ll make, you know, two 128s will make 256.
⏹️ ▶️ John Years go by, the new model of this machine comes out. It’s like, oh, actually we can get single chip 256 gigabyte
⏹️ ▶️ John flash storage now. So on the new computer, we won’t have to buy a 128 and 128. We’ll just buy one 256, because it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John more expensive and it’ll use less power and I’ll take up less space and so on and so forth. And you know, and in the
⏹️ ▶️ John case of the M2 MacBook Pro, like we’re not gonna redesign the motherboard. Like we’re just gonna put
⏹️ ▶️ John one chip there. Like there used to be a place for two chips, but now we’ll just buy one of them for the base model. Cause the base model has a 256 gig SSD.
⏹️ ▶️ John Before we had to buy a 128 and 128. Now we can just buy a single 256. March of progress, fine, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John The problem is the way SSDs work in that Mac and in many Macs is if you put two chips
⏹️ ▶️ John there, The little controller that reads the solid state storage
⏹️ ▶️ John can read from and write to both of those chips at the same time. Two chips at the same time.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s, you know, again, it’s not like RAID or anything it’s all invisible to
⏹️ ▶️ John the operating system. It looks like a single volume, but practically speaking, there’s enough bandwidth and
⏹️ ▶️ John the controller knows how to talk to both of them at the same time. So when they went from two 128 chips to a single 256 chip,
⏹️ ▶️ John it cut the disk speed in half. Because previously,
⏹️ ▶️ John it could do both at once, and it’s just straight up parallel, like, oh, you’re writing stuff, I’ll write some here and some there, and I’ll do
⏹️ ▶️ John it both at the same time. And with just one chip, the speed gets cut in half. And that’s not great.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you bought a base model M1 MacBook Pro, the Touch Bar M1 MacBook Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John with a 256 gig SSD, and it came with two 128 gig flash things, that thing’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco things, that’s what they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John called, twice as fast as the new M2 one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Only if you get the base model. Now, if you get the M2, if you get an M2 with a bigger SSD,
⏹️ ▶️ John then they have to do two chips again because they can’t get them big enough, right? So I don’t know what the size of that. I think if you just get a 512, they
⏹️ ▶️ John give you two 256 chips and then you get your speed back. But this is one of those
⏹️ ▶️ John weird things that you’d have to be a nerd to know about that some person’s gonna go in and
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re gonna get this machine. And in addition to all the other things that are bad about this machine that we talked about before, they’re gonna get the base
⏹️ ▶️ John model because it’s the cheapest and not realize they’re getting a slower SSD than if they had
⏹️ ▶️ John bought the M1 version of this. And that’s a bummer, especially at the low ends. Now you have to have a nerdy friend who tells you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t buy the 256 gig if you care about SSD speed. If you don’t care about SSD speed, people won’t notice that they’re browsing the web
⏹️ ▶️ John and using Microsoft Word or whatever. But it just makes this machine more of a bummer with yet more
⏹️ ▶️ John reasons to be wary of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As much as this sucks to be a regression, you know, because this was not true of the M1 version,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like the M1 base model did not have this problem, just because of different chip configuration, as John
⏹️ ▶️ Marco said. But it just, it sucks that like this is yet another reason why people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are getting a subpar experience with this machine by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lack of information. You know, like they’re gonna go into an Apple store, they’re gonna see, oh, here’s something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that says pro and is inexpensive relative to the other pros. I must get this over the air.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And by the way, and this, I fully expect the Air to have this exact same problem. Like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, this generation of these storage chips with this M2 generation of architecture, whatever, like this generation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these chips is gonna have this problem. So I expect all of the M2 products in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 256 configuration, I expect them all to have this exact same problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this time around. And it just sucks. Like there’s just more asterisks where you have to like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as John said, you know, consult your nerd friend. I mean like, hey, what’s the right one to buy? and now it’s more complicated.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the reality is, SSD speed, it’s really fast either way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s just much faster this other way, and sustained transfer rates from SSDs aren’t that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco important of a performance characteristic of modern computers. What sucks more about this is that it’s a regression,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a significant one, in a certain metric. Not necessarily that it’s going to result in a very noticeably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slow computer in most operations. It won’t. And I would also argue, if you’re buying,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A, this computer at all, and B, the base model storage, performance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might not be very important to you. Like there’s a much higher chance than usual if you’re buying the base SSD
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you’re not really in it for the disk performance.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of a shame that it’s on the model with pro suffix though, you know, because maybe you would think it’s gonna be faster. I’m kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of afraid that when the M2 MacBook Air comes out, it won’t have this problem because it will have like a redesigned motherboard
⏹️ ▶️ John or the base model will use two chips or something like that. And so the base model Air will have a faster SSD,
⏹️ ▶️ John but this whole issue has made all of the people who have been testing this, sort of look
⏹️ ▶️ John around a little bit more as they occasionally do and say, you know, Apple’s SSDs used to be super fast in
⏹️ ▶️ John their Macs, but they haven’t really kept up. If you look at the SSDs that are coming in a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John PC laptops in similar classes, you can get much faster SSDs in a similar
⏹️ ▶️ John price range. They would look at like, oh, let’s look at a, you know, what is it, a Microsoft laptop or a Dell laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John in a similar price range and do tests on its SSDs because there are
⏹️ ▶️ John faster SSDs coming out all the time and Apple hasn’t really kept up in this area. Again, not that they’re slow and on the
⏹️ ▶️ John Air, who cares? If the Air has this problem, if you’re buying a base model Air with 256 gigs, your
⏹️ ▶️ John main problem is probably gonna be that you bought a laptop with 256 gigs in it, which is gonna feel really tight to you, I
⏹️ ▶️ John think. And your secondary problem is the performance. But it’s Apple’s cheapest laptop. It’s the base
⏹️ ▶️ John model of Apple’s cheapest laptop, so what do you expect? But the one that has the Pro in the name, the whole point is, oh, you’re stepping up to
⏹️ ▶️ John something that’s a little bit better, and it would be really disappointing to step up to something that has a quarter of the performance of a similarly priced
⏹️ ▶️ John SSD in a PC laptop. Again, not that it’s a spec race or whatever, just feel like Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John has to do some minimum amount to keep up here. At various points, Apple’s SSDs were really fast, and I think they’re just
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit behind in this generation. Maybe it’s because the PCIe 4 stuff is coming out on the PC side
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple hasn’t revved to that. Maybe they’ll catch up with the M3s and everything, but for most
⏹️ ▶️ John people, this doesn’t matter because you’re not running benchmarks all day. you’re just browsing the web, it’s perfectly fine. And what
⏹️ ▶️ John more people care about are things like reliability and maybe Apple’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John the ones they’re choosing to do better in that area, who knows. But Apple does have to keep up here and it’s kind of like the camera.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like once this starts catching on and people start poking into it, it just becomes a thing. And
⏹️ ▶️ John hopefully now, if Apple is paying attention, they will feel,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think it’s gonna be like the camera. The camera, they’re gonna feel the need to do better with the camera because it was such a big story everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John But with the SSDs, they’ll probably be like, ah, a few people complained, but no one really cares. But I do hope they keep up because it is
⏹️ ▶️ John something that does impact your day-to-day experience, whether you know it or not. You might not notice
⏹️ ▶️ John from one computer to the next, but if you skip like three computers, and you’re like, oh, they both have an SSD,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the SSDs are so much faster than they were like five, 10 years ago, and that needs to continue to be the case.
15” MacBook rumor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Additionally, and unrelatedly, there’s apparently going to be a 15-inch MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing, according to Ming-Chi Kuo. 15-inch MacBook could feature
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M2 and M2 Pro options without the Air brand. And there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been a lot of debates whether or not my beloved 12-inch would come back or not. Nobody
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seems to agree at this time. But apparently there may be a 15-inch that is not a Pro, which is interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And not an Air either, just a 15-inch MacBook Studio?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know what this would end up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being. It’s possible. I don’t think Studio would be the name because Studio is effectively like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey nomenclature so far.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or maybe, I don’t know, it’s like mid-range Pro. So take with a grain of salt anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the RiverMill that’s about pricing, naming, or marketing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Apple marketing team basically does not leak. The only times we’ve really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gotten credible leaks from like for things like product names, usually is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when we have like accidental inclusion in Apple’s own software releases of references to a certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco name or something like that. Like Apple leaks it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Had a Mac Studio leak? Remember when Mac Studio leaked like a few days before? I don’t remember where they came from.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, that’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it was one of those like Twitter people. Anyway, it’s very unlikely that this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product that is scheduled to come out like not exactly soon that the name of it would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leak. So I wouldn’t get too bogged down in the name. What does seem, you know, likely incredible here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that some kind of like 15 inch non-pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook is coming out. I think there’s a big potential market for this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you look at what Apple’s doing with the iPhone, there is a similar rumor with the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not a rumor, that’s basically guaranteed.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, at this point, yeah. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the phone stuff does leak. Yeah, the phone stuff leaks like crazy. And so this fall, if this is correct,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the non-pro phone is going to come in two sizes. Previously,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has not been possible to get a large, to get the largest size class of phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a non-pro line. But this fall, they are changing that because turns out there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big market for big phones, even if that market doesn’t necessarily include everybody who’s willing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to spend like 1,200 bucks on a phone. So that makes sense for them to cover that market.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the same thing applies to laptops. You know, size of the screen does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not need to correlate with all of the pro components inside. Many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people want larger screen laptops, you know, and Apple has covered the 13 inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco range extremely well for years, and I’m pretty sure that is the number one range in terms of like what volume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sells across the whole industry. I think 13 inch is probably the most common one, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably, you know, but I would imagine second place is 15 inch. For years, Apple covered that very,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very well. I think what’s interesting though, is that when you look at the recent products, and this applies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco across many Apple product lines, possibly all Apple product lines, the word pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used to just mean the bigger ones. But in recent years, pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has actually been pushed further up market. In some ways, that’s just Apple wanting to, you know, keep their extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco healthy profit margins and, you know, hey, that’s how they got where they are, good for them. but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in other ways it allows them to use actually fancier and more expensive components and materials and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. And so what I think we’re seeing is the bifurcation of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more and more Apple product lines into much more distinguished pro versus non-pro than we used to have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, if you look at the MacBook Pro, MacBook Pro now has, you know, these much larger higher
⏹️ ▶️ Marco core count chips. We have things like the ProMotion displays, HDR,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like being built into the display, stuff like that. Like, those are much higher end components and needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most people don’t care about. Look at the phones. You have the three camera system, all like the pro raw stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You have the fancy materials that I hate, the promotion display again there too, like this is a more expensive thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think what they’re doing is breaking this long held notion and in a much larger way, breaking this long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco held notion that pro just meant the biggest ones and offering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco non pro big options in their product lines because there’s demand for that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and letting pro actually mean the higher end of components,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of which happen to be on the bigger scale, but not just the biggest ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think like this is long overdue, especially since I mean, whether they call it an error or not a 15 inch
⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook Air ish type computer with sort of MacBook Air internals is such a great machine
⏹️ ▶️ John for people who want a bigger screen because remember, it’s still got the air internals. It doesn’t have pro no internals, no super hot anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just like the same little power sipping thing that’s thick in 13 inch, but so much more room
⏹️ ▶️ John for battery. And yes, you have a bigger screen to power too, but that screen’s not gonna be a 1600 nit HDR, like
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, it’s a bigger screen, but I feel like the battery increase will more than make up for the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John increase. So what you get for the people who want it is a thing with a bigger screen, which people really want either for the real
⏹️ ▶️ John estate or so they can do a scale resolution to make everything bigger on their screen, right? And you get better
⏹️ ▶️ John battery life. and it’s only a little bit bigger and only a little bit heavier. And that’s a trade-off
⏹️ ▶️ John that tons of people are willing to make. Like, you know, we’re so used to it, but like, it must be so weird if you’re shopping for a
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop in the traditional Apple world of the past decade or so and saying, you know, I want a laptop. Oh, this screen’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a little big. Can you show me something with a bigger screen? And you’re like, it costs how much? You were just looking at
⏹️ ▶️ John the $999 MacBook Air with a 13 inch screen. You just saw something with a little bit bigger screen. It’s like, yeah, that’ll be, you know, add $2,500 to
⏹️ ▶️ John the price of your thing. It doesn’t make any sense to
⏹️ ▶️ John the consumer. Like, but the screen is only a little bit bigger. And they’re like, yeah, it’s got this and that and the other thing in it. And they’re like, but I don’t know what
⏹️ ▶️ John any of that is. And I don’t care about it. I just need a laptop that I can browse the web on and write things in Microsoft Word. I
⏹️ ▶️ John just want a little bit bigger screen. And you’re telling me my only option is this monstrosity that I don’t understand?
⏹️ ▶️ John This thing needs to be here. Now, Apple could be scared of doing it. Like, oh no, it’s gonna cannibalize our 16-inch
⏹️ ▶️ John sales. But honestly, no one is cross-shopping. Like I was looking at the bottom of the line MacBook Air,
⏹️ ▶️ John but to get that bigger screen, I decided to pay a few thousand more dollars. Like, I don’t think that’s a thing that happens very often,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So this machine has to exist. And that’s what they’re doing with the phones too.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just so much more pleasing and symmetrical. It makes it so much more sense for market segmentation.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it allows you to make this machine, which will have slightly different trade-offs than the base Air or than
⏹️ ▶️ John any of the larger pros. And most of those trade-offs are going to be in favor of things that people want. More battery
⏹️ ▶️ John life, bigger things on a screen or room for more stuff for not much bigger size. And that’s why I really
⏹️ ▶️ John hope that this thing, like I’m rooting for basically a 15 inch MacBook Air. Whether again, whether they call it that or not,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m rooting for it to stick to the lowest power components that Apple ships, because the
⏹️ ▶️ John M1 is plenty good. The M2 is gonna be plenty good. That’s all people need. Don’t try to put a Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John in there. I mean, I guess you could offer it if you wanted to, but I feel like the best version of this machine is MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Air guts, 15 inch screen, bigger battery. That is the machine that really hits the sweet
⏹️ ▶️ John spot of people who don’t care about Pro stuff. and they’ll love that thing. Cause like, you know, the Airs get
⏹️ ▶️ John such great battery life as it is. Can you imagine an Air with even more battery life and a bigger screen? That’s a crowd pleaser.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, definitely. And I think this would sell a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I strongly agree. Although I do think that there is potentially an appetite for an in-betweener
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between, or I guess this would be bigger than the big pro. No, no, no. We’ve got 14 and 16 inch pros now. Gosh. Yeah. Let’s the pros
⏹️ ▶️ John well, it’s not 15, it’s 16. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John that little bit of differentiated, oh, and by the way, it’s also ProMotion 1600, like the gap between
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s Pro laptop screens and it’s non-Pro laptop screens has never been bigger. Like those Pro laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John screens are amazing. And the MacBook Air screen is fine, but it’s not even in the same league in terms
⏹️ ▶️ John of features that it’s missing and things it can’t do. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know, I still, even though I don’t think it has a place in my life anymore, I still feel like I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want a 12-inch MacBook with Apple Silicon internals,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because again, I loved that machine, but it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of a piece of trash when it was brand new. It was slow. It was shush. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was delightful and it was also terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What people loved about it, the physical side of it, is so achievable with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Silicon today.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. That’s exactly what I was driving at, is that it would presumably, in the same way that my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 14-inch MacBook Pro feels like, I mean, it’s not literally, it feels like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my iMac Pro yet portable. Well, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Phantom 12 inch, you know, like M1 or M2 MacBook could be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Intel 12 inch MacBook, but not crappy. You know, like I’m a little concerned
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the keyboard in terms of, you know, could they make a scissor switch keyboard that’s super thin, but,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or, or maybe they just make it a little thicker than the old one was, but it’s spiritually successor. I don’t know. I just, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love that machine so much. And, and I really think it could be a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really great seller for someone who wants like a very small, very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey portable thing that isn’t an iPad. And granted, you know, iPadOS is allegedly getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much better and is allegedly going to have more pro apps coming soon. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, when I bought the, the Mac book, I wanted an iPad that wasn’t an iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basically. And in a lot of ways, that’s what I got, except it was slow and couldn’t do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything. But, so I guess in that way it was like an iPad, hey-o! But I don’t know, I miss
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that machine and I kind of wish it would come back even though I don’t know that I would buy one.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the same team that makes the iPhone mini, right? Because it’s, you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey know, the smallest line, the
⏹️ ▶️ John in the line that has people who really want it but doesn’t really sell that well and for people who want
⏹️ ▶️ John it small don’t have any alternatives. I mean, obviously if you, you know, I think they should just make it straight up. Like I think it
⏹️ ▶️ John would be a firstly, perfectly fine, straightforward computer. And yeah, it would sell fewer than the other models but I think that’s fine. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple can absorb that, right? But if they don’t wanna do that, if I had to motivate Apple to say, oh, you should really offer this product, and I say, yeah, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not into the just plain old 12 inch laptop, even if we can make it really thin, we did that and we weren’t into it, I would say
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a perfect opportunity to get over your reticence to make a touchscreen Mac. Just make it a convertible thing. It already
⏹️ ▶️ John runs iPad apps, we’re crying out loud. Make it something that you can fold over backwards and turn into basically a 12 inch iPad when
⏹️ ▶️ John you need it to be an iPad, and a touchscreen Mac when you need it to be a Mac. And it’s running Mac OS the whole time, and you can just run
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad apps on it. Like I know Apple doesn’t want to make this machine, but the 12 inch form factor is a perfect
⏹️ ▶️ John opportunity to do that because you wouldn’t want to like turn a 16 inch MacBook Pro into an iPad. That’s a pretty heavy
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad, but the 12 inch one that’s already in, we already make iPads that size. You can make it a similar
⏹️ ▶️ John thickness. Tons of other people in the industry are doing this. I know they don’t want to make a Mac OS touchscreen or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I feel like Apple can’t, can’t stay away from this forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the 12 inch size is the perfect place for them to dip their toe in. I don’t, I’m not predicting this. are no rumors of this.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just that’s the way I would pitch it as aren’t you more interested in this product now if you weren’t interested in a plain old 12
⏹️ ▶️ John inch laptop but according to the rumors seem like they might just make a potentially a 12 inch laptop which would be fine as
⏹️ ▶️ John well but I just feel like it’s a less exciting machine than a convertible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Frankly I think people would love that thing convertible or not I think you know you said it’s a less exciting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco machine and that’s that’s true in the sense of what we talk about on podcasts but in actual day-to-day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use that machine it’s just a modern 11 or 12 inch MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air with the Apple architecture and the good current keyboard that we have,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would be an incredibly fun, awesome computer that I think a ton of people would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love. And yeah, granted, the reason why, my speculation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the reason why the 12 inch didn’t really sell that well once the 13 inch Air came out is simply that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re looking for something for your only computer, you generally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t want to get the tiniest screen you can get. Usually you want something mid-sized. That’s why 13-inch and 15-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptops sell so well. Because if you’re only going to have one computer and one screen, a 13-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or 15-inch laptop is probably what you want most of the time. So, I get that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But this, to have this computer as an option in the lineup, what you capture with that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who maybe have a desktop as their main computer and want something as small and light as possible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for when they travel. Maybe people who fly a lot because using anything bigger on an airline tray table
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is cumbersome at best, if it’s even possible. Once that person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leans their chair back like a jerk, you can’t do anything on any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco except something this size. This is your only option. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the people who absolutely loved the old 11-inch MacBook Air and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who tolerated the 12-inch when it came out, That is a market, that is a market worth serving.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would speculate that market is probably even bigger than the market for many of the Macs they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do happily sell in the lineup. You know, I’m guessing for instance, that market is probably bigger than the market for,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, the Mac Studio. Maybe even the Mac, you know, the Mac Pro probably.
⏹️ ▶️ John The Mac Mini, any Mac that doesn’t have a screen on it. All laptops sell more than that, I’m sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, probably, yeah. I think there is very much a market for this. And yeah, it’s not gonna replace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the volume that the 13-inch Air does.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey It doesn’t need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to, it’s a different computer for a different purpose for different people. But I really, I hope that someday
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do find a way to offer that because I think that would be very well received
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by more people than you might expect. Unless they, you know, totally fumble it again and make something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crappy again. But I don’t think they would. I think they’ve shown their current direction is good, their current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco team making product decisions is good. They really haven’t had a lot of fumbles recently. except maybe like the,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, the studio display camera and the Mac studio fan. Other than that, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh, and this new M2 MacBook Pro. Which, that’s its own, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flat thin box of worms, but I would trust them to do a really good job with making a new modern 12
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or 11 inch MacBook Air with their current sensibilities and current hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco abilities. I think they would do a really nice job and I hope they do.
⏹️ ▶️ John I got another way to make this more exciting. Again, not that the regular 12 inch is boring or anything, but if
⏹️ ▶️ John someone was balking at a decision-maker and saying, ah, that doesn’t seem like another way to make it exciting, if you don’t want to do it in convertible,
⏹️ ▶️ John this machine is also the perfect opportunity to finally explore materials other
⏹️ ▶️ John than aluminum. Aluminum has been great, served us well. It has lots of strengths, it also has some weaknesses. Many,
⏹️ ▶️ John many years there’ve been rumors about Apple experimenting with different materials to make their laptops out of, and obviously those different materials
⏹️ ▶️ John have their own sets of trade-offs, but I think a 12 inch would be a great place to
⏹️ ▶️ John experiment with material that shores up aluminum’s two weaknesses. One, weight, which
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously aluminum is really lightweight, but there are things that are lighter. And two, aluminum bends and dents,
⏹️ ▶️ John and things like plastics and carbon fiber are more resistant to permanently bending or denting
⏹️ ▶️ John than aluminum is. So if one of those materials, if there are various many, many years
⏹️ ▶️ John of experimenting with different materials to make laptops out of it, If there’s a top contender, it would be great
⏹️ ▶️ John to do it on a 12 inch because not only would it be so much smaller than everything else, it would be so incredibly light and so
⏹️ ▶️ John incredibly durable. And even if it’s just a plain old straight up laptop with no convertibles
⏹️ ▶️ John and no touchscreen or anything like that, but it’s a laptop that’s lighter than you could ever imagine and look how durable it is. You
⏹️ ▶️ John can put it in your backpack without a case and drop your backpack on the ground like my kids do all the time and it will
⏹️ ▶️ John just bend and flex and bounce back instead of denting or chipping or shattering. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John always on the lookout for, you know, the next leap in laptop technology because glass and aluminum is great.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the best laptops have ever been, but there is a next step somewhere out there and I hope Apple finds it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, this would be a great opportunity to launch cellular Macs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, don’t, can you imagine? They can do that at any time. They don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I know, I know. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not something that’s like, anytime now it’s in iPads, same stupid chip. All right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how much I would lose my mind if they came out with what is effectively a not crappy 12
⏹️ ▶️ Casey inch MacBook that actually had cellular, I would, I would, I’m already having very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey inappropriate thoughts about this computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John You have to wait for Apple’s cell chips to come out to do that,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey right? Yeah, that’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco true. That’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John current rumors, like, oh, the reason they’re not doing it is because they’re waiting to do it with their own cell chips, which they are
⏹️ ▶️ John making, but they’re making them for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like. Yeah, but it’s like, why can’t you just,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John the iPads have had them since day one, that’s 12 years ago, they’ve had
⏹️ ▶️ John them for 12 years. They don’t want to play Qualcomm, I want to pick, whatever the excuses are, it’s not a big enough market, nobody
⏹️ ▶️ John cares about it, I don’t know what they’re thinking, but yeah, we want cellular in our laptops, Apple, get on that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can you imagine, that would be like Casey, it would be like when the Mac Pro came out and it was John Christmas, like this would be like
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes. A black carbon fiber 12 inch with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh stop, oh stop, oh God, oh if it was black too, oh this is like, oh my dreams come
⏹️ ▶️ Casey true. How many episodes of ATP did we have to go on about the stupid Mac Pro, like 15? But the Mac Pro was a real
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you know, these are things that are probably gonna happen. Excuse me, you went on about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Mac Pro for 30 episodes before it was even real. Don’t even start, you owe me at least 30. It
⏹️ ▶️ John real, they pre-announced it in like April of 2014 or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the hell it was. Whatever. And
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco we talked about it for years.
⏹️ ▶️ John And even now, they even pre-announced the new one. They’re like, oh, the Mac Pro, we’ll talk about that later. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey now, yeah, we’re just seeing it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You owe me easily 30
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John episodes. Apple has not
⏹️ ▶️ John pre-announced the black 12 inch laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, but you probably owe me 10 just on the theory, or not even theory, on the hope
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that such a thing would ever exist.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why don’t you just draw some fan art? maybe that’ll make Apple make it.
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#askatp: WWDC vs. Apple Park tourism
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s do some Ask ATP. And Elijah Yup writes, I was fortunate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to attend WWDC 22 as a Swift student challenger, and I just listened to your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey WWDC show. John quipped that for non-press folks, what happened was not WWDC, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Park tourism. I’m curious what he felt had changed. I’d heard WWDC meant meeting the developer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey community and having direct conversations with Apple engineers. And I’m glad to say that both were abundant this year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But what the heck, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John So what actually happens at WWDC in the old style is you go
⏹️ ▶️ John to sessions and you sit in a room and someone gets up on stage and does a live performance of kind of like those
⏹️ ▶️ John things you’re seeing on video. And during that, you’re sitting in an audience next
⏹️ ▶️ John to other developers, some of which you may know, some of which you may not. So there’s an interaction that you can have there with your neighbors talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about things that you’re seeing. When the thing is over, it is possible in many cases to go
⏹️ ▶️ John up and talk to the person who just gave that presentation to ask them a question or two. And then you
⏹️ ▶️ John go out into the hall, where other people who went to see other sessions are milling about and talk to them about what they saw as you’re on your
⏹️ ▶️ John way to your other session. Like that all that experience isn’t there when you’re sitting around watching
⏹️ ▶️ John a video with somebody there’s no you can’t talk to the people in the video about it. Everyone’s watching the same thing. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not multiple tracks, right? You’re not interacting, you’re not not forced, but like you’re not constantly bumping into
⏹️ ▶️ John other developers and talking to them about stuff and forming social groups and like going to lunch with them and
⏹️ ▶️ John talking about the sessions. What sessions you do, what sessions did you go to? Again, I’m not saying that that’s the reason this the current thing is
⏹️ ▶️ John bad. It’s just different, right? And so when I say, you know, what you got is, you know, you go there in person, you can have
⏹️ ▶️ John apple park tourism, you’re just physically not doing the same things that you do at normal WWDC. You’re not going
⏹️ ▶️ John from session to session, watching things talking to people, you know, it’s just different, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Now, you do get to interact with Apple people, there was no slack in the old ones, you couldn’t ask questions, how many people could you know, who
⏹️ ▶️ John are you actually sitting next to? how many people actually went to the front of the room, like there’s obviously a limited bandwidth, is the reason
⏹️ ▶️ John the new approach is better overall, but it is different. So when I say what
⏹️ ▶️ John happened wasn’t WWDC, I mean, what happened wasn’t what used to happen at the old in-person WWDC. It was very
⏹️ ▶️ John different that like, you know, one day or whatever it is, one or two days of touring the fitness center
⏹️ ▶️ John and seeing a big video on the screen with everybody, it’s much more like going to the keynote, but less like going to a
⏹️ ▶️ John normal day of WWDC where you’re picking which sessions you’re gonna go to and sitting next to people talking with your friends who went to different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And don’t even forget, you know, all the community events. Like, you know, when we recorded live and the talk show live, which I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guess, you know, happened to a degree
⏹️ ▶️ John this year. If you’re one of the lucky 180 people that fit in that room.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, still, I mean, it’s still a thing. And then there was like layers that was across the street and alt-conf that was often
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I mean, like in the
⏹️ ▶️ John new thing, the theater, the Gruber had to talk to 180 people as opposed to like 2,000 or whatever the old theater held. You know what I mean? But that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John my point, right? Is that, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is different, but you know, you didn’t see us per, I almost said performing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I guess is true, but recording live. And you didn’t see, you know, any of the relay shows recording live.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, you typically would see Connected having a live episode. And so there’s so much community stuff that happened
⏹️ ▶️ Casey around WWDC. So even if you weren’t going to WWDC proper, it was still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a fairly enjoyable time to just go and hang out with everyone, especially in San Jose, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there were like two decent places to hang out. So it wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco hard. Yeah, now there’s just one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But anyways, no, that is very helpful. Thank you, John.
#askatp: Gilded age for Mac pros?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wade Tregaskis writes, I just listened to episode 50 of the Real AFM crossover podcast, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMac Pro with Marco Armit and Jason Snell, and was startled to hear Marco describe the then situation as,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quote, an embarrassment of riches, quote, in light of the release of the iMac Pro in the promise of a real new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey second coming Mac Pro. It also reminded me that it’s been over five years since Apple’s little public come
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Jesus moment with the trash can and the Mac Pros. I’m curious how Marco feels about all that in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hindsight. Are we now living in a gilded age for Macintosh professionals or was it more of a case of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a reality distortion than reality. I suppose the timing is perfectly imperfect. Next
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week is WWDC week, as Wade wrote this, and it marks the climax of Apple’s about two years promise
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the ARM transition. Will we see a new Mac Pro? Will it be everything we hoped for? Will we achieve the coveted three out of three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey HP hosts own it award? Please make your predictions. So I guess that’s all unnecessary. So you can cut that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Marco. Hey, buddy.
⏹️ ▶️ John I left that in there on purpose because this is an older question or whatever, but this This is what people were thinking before WWDC. Obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John no Mac Pro at WWDC, so the question still stands. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I predict at WWDC that we will get the reveal of the Mac Pro. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey will definitely tell us what it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ll detail it, and it’ll be available to order later this year. Whoops. Totally.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I think you already did say that on the episode. I did. And I said
⏹️ ▶️ John I was doubtful, so I’ll gather my being right points for that now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you’ve earned it. All right, so in this case, so looking at the question here, are we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now living in a gilded age for Mac Pros? and pro here was lowercase.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or was it more of a case of reality distortion than reality back then? So this is, at the time of the iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pros launch, when that was out and it was great, and I got one and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so did Casey later, and it was amazing. John should have gotten one but never did. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of our friends got them and they were great. At that time, I stand by that statement.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, I think we have even more of an embarrassment of riches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the Mac Pro area. and lowercase p there, but it’s different. And we’re in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a transitional period. So it’s hard to say for sure, just because we haven’t seen the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Silicon Mac Pro yet. So we don’t know how high these specs go. We don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how well this thing scales. We don’t know what we get with the highest end model. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John are we gonna get- Did
⏹️ ▶️ John they trashcan it? We don’t know if they trashcanned it. What? Like are we getting another Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John where they totally miscalculate what they should be building, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, exactly. So, you know, there’s a lot of unknowns there, and this is a transitional period,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s hard to say for sure at the very highest end, but I think we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still do have a situation where we have an embarrassment of riches in the high-end Mac line, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now you have so many different options that all give us really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great performance, and what most Pro Mac users want is now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco available in laptops and in desktops. And there’s very few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trade-offs between those two. I mean, my needs could really, honestly, if I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got one of the new M2 MacBook Airs with 24 gigs of RAM, maxing that out to 24,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could get away with that most of the time. Now, granted, I want more RAM. I think I have, what do I have, 64
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this thing? I think that’s right. Yeah, 64. So, you know, but when I had 16 when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was using the M1 MacBook Air and then later M1 Mac Mini as my main desktop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had 16 for like a year and I felt it, but the rest of it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was good enough. It was compelling to keep using it that way. So going from 16 to 24 would certainly be welcome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Having more would be great, but honestly, with that one exception of like more RAM being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nicer to have, I could do all of my work on a MacBook Air plugged into a giant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitor. Like that, which is what I did. And it was great. And almost every person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know who used to buy the big tower Macs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, usually Mac Pros or before that, like G5s, almost everyone I know, almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every job that needed those, or almost every hobbyist who wanted those,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost all of them no longer need what is currently called the Mac Pro. Almost all those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs, for most of those people, are satisfied now by laptops. and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in some cases, even the lowest end laptops they now sell. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amazing. And it’s only the very, very narrow niche of specialized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs and John who are still buying the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m over here. I just added another giant MPX card. I put the Radeon Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John Vega 2 inside my Mac Pro. So now I literally have every, I have the giant
⏹️ ▶️ John W5700X, whatever that takes up like four
⏹️ ▶️ John slots or whatever. And then at the second, the Pro Vega 2 in there, I was gonna put the
⏹️ ▶️ John 580X in as well, but I realized it doesn’t fit. Like you can’t put a third video card in there because
⏹️ ▶️ John there are slot, there are PCI slots for it, but the brackets don’t let you put it in there. I guess they can’t deliver the power to it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, here I am stuffing my gigantic tower computer with way more GPU than I can ever possibly
⏹️ ▶️ John use. But that is not a market that Apple is targeting. with any of its current
⏹️ ▶️ John computers, except the 2019 Mac Pro that I’m using. When they come out with a new Mac Pro, we’ll see what they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John decided to target after that. But that’s the beauty of everything you’re saying, that the lineup is so great for pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John much everybody. And also, Apple has said that they’re also gonna make a ridiculous computer
⏹️ ▶️ John that almost nobody should buy. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco they’re not even
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, oh, we’re not gonna make that. They’re saying, you get all these great computers that fill all these needs, you get everything you ever want.
⏹️ ▶️ John And even if you’re one of these ridiculous people who wants this big monster computer, We’re going to make
⏹️ ▶️ John one of those too. And who knows what that’s going to look like? And that’ll be fun, right? So I think they’re, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re doing so much better than they were. Like they obviously from the outside, it’s hard for us to see this. But when they made
⏹️ ▶️ John that promise, we’re going to do this thing. We’re going to turn everything around. They have. It’s taken a long time. It’s taken longer than we wanted.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we lost faith a lot because on the outside, we can’t see the progress. But look at the machines that they released. They
⏹️ ▶️ John eventually figured out what they should be doing with their Mac products from top to bottom, not just the pro
⏹️ ▶️ John ones where they figured out they need more ports and everything. But I think, you know, MagSafe on the MacBook, M2 MacBook Air,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? This, they’re doing it right. So, you know, again, a few exceptions, like the weird
⏹️ ▶️ John 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro, the fans on the Mac Studio,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like, and the camera on the studio display. But hey, the fact that the studio display exists, right,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a big victory with one tiny step back with the camera. And Apple’s camera has always been crap, and it’s a lesson they haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John quite learned yet. But yeah, this is the best the Mac lineup has been in ages. And so I
⏹️ ▶️ John think, you know, two thumbs up for me. And again, we’ll see if they trash can the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and at this point though, like, you know, the Mac Studio covers even more of the needs that were not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already being met by the MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini and the MacBook Air. Like, they already, they cover
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much of so many people’s needs already with all of the other products that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty much the only needs that are still left at the top end for an Apple Silicon Mac Pro. So if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco throwing out Windows gaming, because that’s going to be Apple Silicon, so there’s no more Windows gaming, John. So if you’re throwing that out,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the needs that are left up there are basically cards, very high RAM needs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and very high GPU needs. And those aren’t zero markets, like, you know, those are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco markets with people in them, but it’s just getting more and more narrow and more and more specialized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at people who actually need this product. And so many more of us are being, are now being served very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well by all the other products.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s also top end video stuff, right? because we don’t know what’s going to be in the Mac Pro, but
⏹️ ▶️ John presumably it will do everything that takes a long time on Final Cut Pro faster than even a top-end Mac Studio, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco So it’s- Right, yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the high-end GPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John performance, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, if part, because Apple wants to sell this, if part of your job is every day waiting for crap to come out of Final Cut Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John we get you a computer that does that 50% faster, you’re willing to pay through the nose for it. That historically has been a big market for
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s ridiculous machines. And so even if they do trashcan it, and it looks like a slightly bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Studio and has no slots, If it does Final Cut Pro stuff faster than a Mac Studio
⏹️ ▶️ John with an Ultra, that’s a valuable machine to a lot of people. And I think they will sell them for whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John ridiculous price they charge.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know, I think something that Marco said earlier is important in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that at the time in which we were saying, or Marco was saying, you know, this is the golden age.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that was true compared to the absolute slog that we were all going through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the years prior with the crappy keyboards and the jump to USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before I think anyone was really ready for it. And at that point, the iMac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really was just amazing and it was a cold glass of ice water when we were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all in what seemed like hell. But looking at it with today’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point of view where things have gotten so much better since then, then yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it does look like a reality distortion field in retrospect. But when we were there,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we could say on an infinite timeline, it would all be so much better than it is today, but look at how great it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now. And that infinite timeline turned out to be what? How long, how many years ago was the iMac Pro? Like four or five years?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It only took a handful of years for Apple to really get their story straight. So I think it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was both the Gilded Age at the time and reality distortion in
#askatp: ZFS vs. APFS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Dave Aiton writes, John has sung the praises of ZFS many times in the past. How close
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is APFS to providing all the features he likes in ZFS and what is APFS
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, it’s missing so many things. I will have a link in the show notes to the Wikipedia page listing the ZFS features, but so
⏹️ ▶️ John many of them I had forgotten about. Like there’s, ZFS does so much cool stuff at a price, at a
⏹️ ▶️ John fairly high price, but I still kind of miss a bunch of them. So the big one that, uh, that I was hammering on when APFS
⏹️ ▶️ John came out that I still think is important is data integrity. ZFS can do checksums not just
⏹️ ▶️ John on metadata but also on every piece of data so you can know if you have any kind of bit rot or
⏹️ ▶️ John any kind of errors anyplace else in your system that are causing bits to be flipped when data is moved around which is great
⏹️ ▶️ John and that is super important if you care about your data. There is a cost to doing that obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John but as computers get faster and faster that cost becomes lower and lower percentage-wise given the total
⏹️ ▶️ John amount of of compute available. And I really wish that APFS did that. And it could be added to APFS at some point in the
⏹️ ▶️ John future. I forget, I delved into this when APFS was APFS was released. I’m not sure if there’s an
⏹️ ▶️ John option to do it, or it could be done very easily, but they didn’t do it. But But anyway, it’s an important
⏹️ ▶️ John feature of the FS, the FS has features on top of that, in terms of data integrity, where it can keep
⏹️ ▶️ John multiple copies of data around. And then if it finds an error, it’s got multiple copies of the data
⏹️ ▶️ John that it found an error in, it could fix that that error and it’s sort of self healing type of thing because you just tell it, where is that feature
⏹️ ▶️ John listed on here? You could kind of say like, how many copies do you want it to keep and where do you want it to keep them
⏹️ ▶️ John and do you want me to automatically self heal? It’s really great about sort of being the caretaker
⏹️ ▶️ John of your bits rather than just saying, well, I wrote the bits and I’m assuming they’re gonna be the same when I read them back later. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of transactional stuff with like rollbacks and everything. There’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John smart snapshot diffs. So if you do a snapshot and just wanna transfer diffs of that snapshot efficiently
⏹️ ▶️ John to another thing that would be great for time machine again apfs has a similar feature but the zfs one is a little bit fancier
⏹️ ▶️ John what else on this list that’s interested uh interesting uh there’s a bunch more of things that are
⏹️ ▶️ John are tunable uh about it in terms of how it lays out data and how it uses caching
⏹️ ▶️ John that are mostly of interest to enterprise scenarios obviously this is a big thing where it does essentially software raid of
⏹️ ▶️ John just combining multiple disks into giant volumes apfs does something like that on a smaller scale
⏹️ ▶️ John apfs is and more, obviously, more appropriate for Apple’s use case. Because remember, APFS debuted not on the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac, but on phones, right? And it debuted without people even knowing, where it converted all our phones to APFS
⏹️ ▶️ John and then rolled it back without us knowing, and they told us about it later. One of the greatest technical feats ever. The team that did that
⏹️ ▶️ John should get some sort of award. And Apple, like, what a dangerous thing to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey How many billions
⏹️ ▶️ John of iPhone users do we have? It’s so true. And when they do a point update, we’re gonna do what? You’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John convert their volume to a different format and then roll it back. Okay. Are you gonna tell me about
⏹️ ▶️ John this? No, the update will just take a little bit longer. So amazing. And yeah, and they did it on the phone
⏹️ ▶️ John first instead of doing it on the Mac first, which seemed like it would be easier if you do it on the Mac first. If you screw it up, who cares? You hose
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of Mac users, not the billions of iPhone users. So APFS has the features that Apple needs it to
⏹️ ▶️ John have and not many more. And it took a long time for them to build this thing in-house to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But ZFS has so many features and is so capable. And it’s probably not
⏹️ ▶️ John particularly well tuned to run on the phone given its RAM requirements and its CPU requirements, but it does
⏹️ ▶️ John have way more features. One of the analogies I heard way back when was, in terms of file
⏹️ ▶️ John systems, that ZFS is a little bit like a minivan. It can carry a lot of people,
⏹️ ▶️ John it can do a lot of things, it has a lot of features. The seats fold into floors, it’s got 20 cup holders, it’s got seven screens, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got tons of stuff in it, and what Apple needs is a Ferrari. If it’s two people, it goes real fast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, thanks to our sponsors this week, Linode, Lockit, and Trade Coffee. Thanks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to our members who support us directly. You can join at atp.fm slash join.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental. And you can find the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ John at atp.fm And if you’re into Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, N-T
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse It’s accidental, they
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to Accidental, check
Casey impulse-bought a computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is an item in the document that said, Casey impulse bought a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer. I have to know what this is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have known you since we were 10 or something like that. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco years or thereabouts.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is, I think, the closest to pulling a Marco I’ve been in a while. It only took 30
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But in all fairness, I have very rarely impulse bought a computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think Marco could identify as impulses anymore. You
⏹️ ▶️ John know what an impulse is, Marco? I don’t impulse buy a computer. I just decide to buy one and buy it. That’s not an impulse.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wait. What is an impulse? What do you mean?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t even know. I don’t even know where to go from here. Anyways, yeah. So this was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was Thursday, so it was last Thursday.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I noticed that, I forget what genesis of this issue was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but what I ended up noticing, however, one way or another, was that my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac Mini wasn’t responding to incoming network requests. Now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to back up a half step, so I have a Mac Mini, it’s a 2012, I don’t know, sometime in 2012,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so at this point it is literally 10 years old. It was gifted to me by our friends at Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mini Colo, or what is it, Mac Stadium now, I believe. No, is that right? Yes, that’s right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I think they were- I believe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Oh, okay. Maybe that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what it is. But anyways, they’re great people. I think they’ve sponsored in the past. I don’t believe they’re sponsoring in the future, but genuinely, they’re great people there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they gave me, they sent me this for free. It was, it’s a 10-year-old one that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had a 256 gig SSD that they had put in it, and they had retired it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and somehow or another, it ended up in my hands. And I was using this pretty much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exclusively as a Plex and Channels server. Channels is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing that sponsored probably a year or two back that lets you use an HD home run and an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over-the-air antenna to record things or TV Everywhere to record things. Look into it at getchannels.com
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you’re interested. They have not sponsored this, but it’s great stuff. And one of the founders is a friend of mine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, so I use it for Plex and Channels and a handful of other small things. I did use it actually for Xcode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bots when that was still a thing, but that just got deprecated as well. But one way or another,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do use it and in my world, and you can snicker and laugh all you want, but in my world,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Plex and to a lesser degree channels are an important part of my world. I think all of us have understood
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this at this point. Plex is important to me. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s important to the rest of the family too because that’s how, on the rare occasions, I said, Erin is watching TV without me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she’ll watch TV typically via Plex. The kids would get a little bit of TV time in the afternoons,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they’ll do that on Plex. So it’s important to all of us, not just me. I found that the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac Mini was not responding to incoming network requests. I could still do anything I wanted on the Internet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I can get onto the Mini, or if I actually hook up a display and hook up a keyboard and so on and so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey forth. But I couldn’t get any incoming network requests.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m troubleshooting, I’m rebooting, I’m doing this, that, and the other thing. I couldn’t figure it out. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I realized that on Wi-Fi, everything was working. Network incoming, network requests were working fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But if I use the Ethernet IP, it wasn’t working. Very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey long story. Well, already very long story, slightly shortened. It was one of two things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that seemed to have fixed it. It was either an NVRAM reset or it was a new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey version of Tailscale, which might be a future sponsor. I don’t remember, but something might’ve gotten misconfigured
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my end. You know, user error, I mean. and something might’ve gotten hosed up there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But one way or another, it seemed, I did eventually get it fixed, but I have, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s like a hard drive that has started ticking, you know, I have now lost confidence in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey machine. And even beyond that, I’m starting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to occasionally acquire 4K content from time to time, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco a 10-year-old Mac mini
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does not do well with even direct playing 4K content. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even that didn’t always go well, much less trying to transcode it on the fly. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Thursday evening, within about a half an hour of the cutoff in order to receive a mini
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with $8 fast shipping Friday evening, I ordered a refurb
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac mini, an M1 Mac mini. And I did this for a handful of reasons. First of all, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the time in which I ordered it, it was not, the Intel one was not yet repaired. And so I wanted as little downtime
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as possible. And I was able to find a refurb that had the exact configuration I wanted,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which was extremely surprising and pretty awesome. And I wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get it the next day. And Fast Shipping said I could do that. But also, it occurred to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, I thought buying a Mac mini was going to be in my future, but eventually,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like maybe when the M2 Mac minis come out. But it occurred to me, there’s not that much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different, leaving aside what will inevitably be like a radical hardware change,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a radical industrial design change.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever happen to the Mac Mini?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, no, but they’re saying maybe this is the time. It’s the year of Linux on the desktop and a new industrial
⏹️ ▶️ Casey design for a Mac Mini.
⏹️ ▶️ John And by radical, you mean it gets slightly thinner again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, exactly. Now available in starlight.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rock a blue Mac Mini or something like that. Anyways, so it occurred to me, looking at the M2 that is now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey freshly out, it’s not really that different than the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M1? Like there are differences for sure, but it’s not night and day different. And yes, I am aware that there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a little bit more that with regard to transcoding that actually would have been helpful in this particular use case. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I figured, you know what, let me just order it. In worst case, I’ll just not open it and return it. Who am I kidding?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Of course, I opened it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know, but I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s a different conversation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it on a Thursday night. It was supposed to come Friday. I paid the $8 shipping so it would come
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Friday. It came Monday, which I really want to complain and moan about, but in these unprecedented
⏹️ ▶️ Casey times, I’m trying to bite my tongue. And so I set it up, I guess
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was Monday night, and it took me a few tries to get Plex migrated over properly. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey channels went immediately. It took absolutely no effort to get channels working, but Plex was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey considerably more more fiddly because Plex. And so I eventually did get it working and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now it is up and running and I have a new M1 Mac mini home server and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m extremely pleased with it so far. It’s gone real well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You did a very exciting upgrade to the most boring computer you have in your house. Right,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s pretty accurate. That’s not entirely true. I do have a Raspberry Pi 4 that it couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really be upgraded in any reasonable way. But that is arguably the most boring or maybe the two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Raspberry Pi W’s that are serving as my garage door notification system. Those might be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more boring. But I take your point. I’m arguing to be a turd, but I take your point, and you are correct.
⏹️ ▶️ John The Mac mini is also the perfect computer in your house to buy refurb, right? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John sits there. It just does a very simple task. The number of things it’s ever asked to do is very small.
⏹️ ▶️ John And as long as it can do them, it’s fine. And they cost so much money when you find
⏹️ ▶️ John them new, relative to the excitement. It’s kind of like your Synology. like most people’s Synologies,
⏹️ ▶️ John and that you don’t expect to even see or hear it. It just exists ambiently
⏹️ ▶️ John as infrastructure in your house, and it just needs to be
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco there. Right? So that,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the Mac Mini is not the type of machine that you would get in Starlight and be excited about it because you’re just using it to
⏹️ ▶️ John serve your needs, and your
⏹️ ▶️ John interface with it is not even in the same room as it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. Yeah. And the Mac Mini is actually sitting physically on top of the Synology right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Although you do have
⏹️ ▶️ John some problems about computer placement in your house.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes. Well, there’s that. should run some wire. You know, it’s funny you bring that up because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I put that what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going on with that project.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey He did the project.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I put that aside for the time being because I can’t decide what I want to do is what it really boils down
⏹️ ▶️ John thought there was a problem with the historical commission.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, not really. I think so what I really need to do is I need to price out both fiber,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I’m still thinking about and cat six or what have you.
⏹️ ▶️ John project is thinking about playing the project.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Right. Yes. Yes. Right. All right, we got past the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking stage. Now we’re at the thinking stage.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly right. No, all kidding aside, what I really want to do is I want to get the price list
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or the parts list and the pricing. Because if fiber really is similar money, which I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spent a lot of time in the show saying it was, just because I put my thumb in the air and that’s what it felt like. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey once I start getting down to brass tacks, I’m not so sure that I’m correct about that. So what I want to do is I want to price
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out, is fiber really similar money? And if it is, I’ll probably go that route. But if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s like, you know, 2X or something like that, which it could be, then I’ll probably just go to Cat6
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and be done with it. To go back just very quickly, I suppose people will potentially ask.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Reafer by God is a M1 Mac mini with 16 gigs RAM, a half terabyte
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hard drive. But I really wanted to, because of this very project actually, see here’s your tie-in,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really wanted the 10 gig ethernet. I have literally, this is the only 10 gig ethernet device in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey entire house right now, but I wanted to future-proof And my thought is it might be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nice for communication with the Synology because I could hypothetically put a 10 gig card in the Synology or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey realistically that’s on the list of things I really need to upgrade because it’s also a decade old. Anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanted to future-proof myself in that regard. So it’s, you know, a 16 gigs RAM,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a half terabyte hard drive because I really don’t put much on this hard drive and the 10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gig ethernet. And surprisingly that existed in a refurb. And so it was with Apple care
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and taxes and everything else, I want to say it was like 1100 bucks or something like that. It really wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey terrible. Like it was a lot of money. Don’t get me wrong, but all things considered, it wasn’t terrible. So, so yeah, that’s the story.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We really got to get you to like coordinate with my trade in schedule.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true. We really do. I didn’t, I tell you, I take that Mac mini off your hands. Actually. I thought I did.
⏹️ ▶️ John You both, you both have the same problem is when you decide that you want something, you want it now and coordination means that one or both
⏹️ ▶️ John of you would have to wait.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey That’s very true.
⏹️ ▶️ John In case you couldn’t even make it. In case you didn’t, it couldn’t even make it past the weekend. He
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey was like, I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John Friday and it came on a Monday. I’d never
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco forget about
⏹️ ▶️ John waiting for you to, you know, be ready to give up your Mac mini.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. That, you know, you’re not wrong. Plus the thing of it is like all kidding aside, I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I would have bought Marcos Mac mini at the time he was looking to sell it because I was kicking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the can down the road and didn’t know what the M2 was going to look like. You know, I think I take your point and you are right that we should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have orchestrated this better, but I don’t think at the time I would have, I would have,
⏹️ ▶️ John Plus it wasn’t, wasn’t his Mac mini in the closet with the water.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yes. That’s true. Yes, it was.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s, what do you call it, a flood title?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s exactly right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say, Apple, they made their trading process a little bit worse. I just traded in the two iPads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was talking about a couple weeks ago, the two old ones, so I could fund the new one. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the trading process now is, by default, they don’t mail you a box anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You have to bring it to a FedEx store. and you can like call up Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and request a box now, but you have to like call them on the phone to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So rather than call them on the phone, I decided well, I had this couple of days of errands
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do driving in America the last few days, and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m like all right, well I’ll just, I’ll wait till then and I’ll bring the iPads on that trip and I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John drop them off. You can
⏹️ ▶️ John use the iPads as packing material for shipping something else. Right. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the FedEx store is a good 15 minutes from my house,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s like a half hour round trip to get from there and back to where I was based. I get all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way to the stupid FedEx store and the people behind the counter start clicking a few buttons.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, the computer’s being slow. Okay, all right. I keep clicking,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco call someone else over, hey, is this right to you? The various employees
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eventually conclude, quote, the system is down.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is not a particularly actionable statement, nor is it probably accurate. I mean, I think, you know, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could just be like, you know, some kind of weird error message that they don’t even read, but it’s, you know, oh, it’s down.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was like, all right, well, is this the kind of thing that takes usually like a few minutes, a few hours or a few days
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to come back up? I need to know this. And oh, it should be, it should be good tomorrow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Great. So whatever the reason, I had to go, go home, go back again the next day,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco another half hour of driving just to drop off these stupid things. I did all of that to avoid making a phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco call to Apple, which probably would have been much easier to say, please send me the box that you used to send
⏹️ ▶️ Marco automatically. Anyway, so for anybody out there, this process is now worse than it used to be. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sorry to hear that. It’s frustrating, but it’s still easier than like selling to people on eBay. That’s very
Casey’s Playdate first impressions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you’ll permit me just a very brief side topic, I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey received my playdate and it’s adorable and I really enjoy it. It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stupid frivolous purchase that I probably wasted my money on, but I don’t care because I love it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Matthew That is exactly what it’s supposed to be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You don’t buy the playdate because you need it for work. I mean, you might,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey but… Steven Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hey, I’m talking about it now, so can I write it off? Is that how this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco works? Matthew
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I meant like, you know, you in general. does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey not buy the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco playdate because they need it for their work. You know, no one, no one needs a playdate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The playdate serves no, like, major utility. It’s a fun thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made for fun. So I’m curious, so you’re still, do you have anything more than the first two games yet?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so I got it, I don’t know, like when? No, it was after we recorded,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so it must have been like Thursday or Friday of last week. It’s been Casey Christmas right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco now, I tell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But anyways, so I got it late last week and then I guess, is it Monday is the turnover
⏹️ ▶️ Casey day or something like that? I think that’s right. But so you, it starts with Casual Birder and Whitewater Wipeout,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then I also have Boogie Loops and what is the thing with the Back to the Future looking screen on it? What is this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing called? I don’t even remember. It is called Time Travel Adventure. There we go. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I also side loaded a handful of games. I side loaded Retro Derby, which is kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sort of a racing game, which is kind of enjoyable. Playtris, which is basically Tetris, the drawing board,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is kind of an Etch-a-Sketch, and Dr. Neario, which is basically Dr. Mario.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really enjoy this thing. It is very small. Like I’ve seen them in person, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one dub dub, and I’ve forgotten how freaking tiny it is. It is on the limit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of comfortable with my crappy eyesight, even with my contacts in, where my eyesight is actually pretty decent.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But nevertheless, this thing is so fun. Of course, Declan is taking quite a liking to it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Of the four games, Casual Burger, Whitewater Wipeout, Time Travel Adventure, and Boogie Loops, Boogie
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Loops does absolutely nothing for me, but I’m horribly not musically inclined. Time Travel Adventure is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fun. It’s the thing with the stick figure that uses the crank seemingly exclusively. Whitewater
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wipeout is okay. I really enjoyed Casual Burger, though, more than I thought I would.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That one was a lot of fun. It’s kind of sort of a,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t want to say open world, but like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco a little adventure game.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s like a little adventure game, but with very low stakes in the good way. And it was a lot of fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you know, the can full of things that have side loaded, I’ve really enjoyed as well. I really like this thing. It is so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cute. The screen, it really should have a light on it, but nevertheless, it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so crisp. It is so, so crisp. I love the feel of the crank. it’s such a stupid,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stupid thing and yet I love it. Everything about this thing is so cute. It’s so thin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and small and it’s just fun. And it’s bright yellow, which in some ways
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s a little bit ostentatious, but it’s cool because in the handful of times I’ve had it in public
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and been messing with it, a couple of times people have been like, what is that? Especially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kids actually, are like, what in the crap is that thing? So yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really like it. It’s super fun. John, I presume yours is not even with you. You haven’t even gotten a shipping
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I think there was some email about like, oh, group two is something, whatever. But like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I’m in group two, but I haven’t really been thinking about it. What I’m hoping is it’ll just show up at my door one day and I’ll be
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, pleasant surprise. Have I made a group W bench joke about that yet? I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, so I think ultimately, like, so I actually, I haven’t actually even touched it since
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that group of games came out, because I’ve just been busy with a lot of other stuff right now. So it’s like over there waiting for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I will say that I think the the non backlit screen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree with that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it looks amazing, like at one angle of the light. But then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at at pretty much any other angle, it’s it’s kind of eye straining. And you kind of wish there was more light. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco understand why they did it, because it is a really cool screen and it’s not available backlit. And, you know, putting like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco front lights in front of it is difficult to do well. I understand all that. But in practice, you really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want a lit screen because it is very tricky to get that angle right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where it looks amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And plus,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, I don’t know how other people and couples are, but for Aaron and me, we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey typically climb into bed a solid half an hour, in some cases an hour before we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fall asleep. And we’ll, you know, be reading, you know, reading on our Kindles, reading a physical book, or just messing about on our
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phones or what have you. you know, the last handful of nights I’ve wanted to play the play date for a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and There is not a light on my nightstand And so she will keep her nightstand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey light on as she’s getting sleepy and getting ready to to pass out But I have to hold
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the play date at like an extremely specific angle and at this point my contacts are out So I need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have this thing like literally six inches from my face Otherwise, it’s blurry as hell. And so it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just like untenable like it really just does not work.
⏹️ ▶️ John need the game boy front lights That’s what you need. Yeah, or the original Kindle. But the original Kindle was
⏹️ ▶️ John a reflective screen though. Like people are confused by this. It’s not an E-ink screen. It is not reflective, it
⏹️ ▶️ John is transmissive. So shining a huge amount of light on this screen, I would imagine is not going to be
⏹️ ▶️ John the same as shining a huge amount of light on an E-ink screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say it looks a lot closer to E-ink than old LCDs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yes, it does. It really does.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like in a sense, like the pixels look like they’re super right on top. It is a nice matte finish.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but in general though, I do think it is this wonderful, cute thing. In many ways, the hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a home run. However, I think in this particular decision, I think this was probably the wrong decision. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that being said, I’m still delighted about the thing. It’s still very fun. I haven’t found yet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one absolutely must-have killer app, but I will say in that first group of games so far that I played
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of those four, certainly the Casual Birder stands out as the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. But that being said, these are not games you’re gonna keep playing for years. You know, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a game, these are games you’re gonna play through once and have fun and it’s gonna take you a few hours maybe for some of the more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adventurey ones like that and then you’ll move on. So, you know, we’ll see how it goes over time but it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s just, it’s so cute and so innocent. Like that’s an odd
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing to say about a physical device. I don’t know, I don’t know how else to describe it but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s so cute and innocent and I just really like it. And like in order to start it up, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey click the little lock button or tap, press the little lock button twice, and it looks like it’s opening its eyes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it once and one eye opens, you press it again, the other eye opens. Like it’s just so adorable and fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it makes me feel, or it reminds me of, I guess maybe what it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that it’s nostalgic in a way, even though it’s a brand new device and it has a crank, but it’s nostalgic of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time when I got my original Game Boy, right? And I was talking to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Declan about this just last night. the original Game Boy, my recollection of it was that the screen was utter trash even for the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey terrible. By today’s standards, it was even worse. It was a tremendous
⏹️ ▶️ Casey brick of a device. It blew through batteries ridiculously fast. Not as fast as the Game Gear,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mind you, which would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco last a measure of minutes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but ridiculously fast nonetheless. And yet I loved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that device. I loved my original Game Boy more than almost anything in the world because that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one was mine. It was all mine. It wasn’t the shared family NES. That was Casey’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Game Boy. And so I love that thing so much. And the Playdate reminds me in many ways
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of that in so far as it isn’t just mine because Declan is trying to steal it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every chance he can get. But it’s just that innocent fun. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything about it is just so cute and adorable. And I know that’s such an odd way to describe hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or describe a console, but I really do enjoy it. Beep, beep, beep.