Hello Again Again
Casey:
When did I la la la?
Casey:
I don't remember that at all.
John:
You did.
John:
You la la la'd.
John:
You had messed up what you were saying and had started over, and it was adorable.
John:
Marco will find it.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
I mean, I'm not mad about it.
Casey:
I just don't recall having done it.
Casey:
I don't remember anything.
Casey:
Okay, let's lock it up.
Casey:
La la la.
Casey:
La la la.
Casey:
For the second consecutive week, I think I'm the only one with follow-up, which is kind of freaking me out a little bit.
Marco:
Well, John and I are just perfect now.
Marco:
Just no one can challenge us on anything.
John:
No, I was going to put the same thing in, but you beat me to it, so I just let you do it.
Casey:
Oh, thanks?
Casey:
Thanks, I think.
Casey:
Anyway, sorry to tread on your follow-up, sir.
Casey:
So anyway, so there is a podcast by a German fellow whose name I don't have in front of me because I make the worst show notes in the world, Chris Marquardt.
Casey:
was very nice to talk about us on his photography podcast, Tips from the Top Floor.
Casey:
It was episode 748.
Casey:
It was about halfway through the episode, give or take some, so we'll put an overcast link in the show notes as well.
John:
Wait, wait, wait.
John:
We're just going to glide right by episode 748 of a podcast?
John:
Well, I mean, it's impressive.
John:
748?
John:
That is the highest podcast episode number I've ever seen in my life.
Marco:
oh they go way higher than that so what i mean obviously i don't listen to the right kind of shows what kind of shows i guess daily shows go over or the hundreds i don't listen to any daily podcasts sure i mean yeah obviously anything daily that lasts for more than a few years but also like you'd be surprised how many podcasts out there publish more than one episode a day um usually these are usually these are things that are just dumped off of radio broadcasts so you'll have like you'll have like you know
Marco:
radio broadcast of today hour one hour two hour three hour four as four different episodes in the podcast oh well i don't listen to those kind of podcasts but anyway uh this is not that kind of podcast though i don't know that anybody listens to those kind of podcasts but lots of people publish them yeah yeah that's weird so anyway so on 748 episode 748 of chris marquardt's uh podcast uh photography tips from the top floor
Casey:
He discussed what we were discussing about how to keep dust out of your digital camera while you're changing lenses.
Casey:
And I thought that was an interesting discussion.
Casey:
And the kind of short, short version is you really don't need to worry about it because it's unlikely that you're going to run into any sort of problem that will cause a visual distortion on your images.
Casey:
And I'm oversimplifying for sure.
Casey:
You should definitely check out the episode.
Casey:
But there were three links that he pointed his listeners to, including me, because I listened to it.
Casey:
And I think all three were LensRentals.com blog posts.
Casey:
Now, if you recall, I think all three of us, certainly I, have been patrons of Lens Rentals.
Casey:
They are not a sponsor, but we've all used them.
Casey:
And these three posts on their blog, from as far back as 2008, actually,
Casey:
Involve what can happen to a lens and whether or not that really affects the image that comes out of the camera.
Casey:
And so they talk about in the first one getting lens dust on the screen and do some really interesting dust in the lens.
Casey:
And do some really interesting tests to show that unless you get fairly extreme, and again, I'm getting a little hand-wavy and oversimplifying, but unless you get fairly extreme, you're probably not going to notice this distortion.
Casey:
And in fact, they put little post-it note slivers onto the lens to show that it almost made no difference except very extreme scenarios.
Casey:
And that was just mind-boggling to me, that a piece of post-it note that looked like it was two to three millimeters square...
Casey:
Really, in basic setups, didn't seem to matter.
Casey:
That blew my mind.
Casey:
And when you use really narrow, aperture did seem to matter.
Casey:
But wide open especially, it made almost no difference.
Casey:
Is that a fair summary of that first link?
Casey:
All right, I'll take that as a yes.
Casey:
Moving on.
Casey:
And then the second link they had was about scratches and whether or not scratches on a lens make a difference.
Casey:
And they posted within their blog post two pictures.
Casey:
One is of a waste management dumpster.
Casey:
It is not on fire.
Casey:
One is of a piece of paper.
Casey:
And these images, I mean, they are not remarkable, but there was no obvious...
Casey:
damage if you will to these images these images look like they were taken with a regular lens and then you scroll down and you see the lens they were taken with and it has like i don't know maybe 10 cracks straight through the lens in you know kind of like a wheel like spokes on a wheel kind of shape it was crazy and it is crazy to me that this lens that is effectively shattered somehow ends up
Casey:
producing images that are okay so those were the two that i think were most directly uh applicable to the sorts of things that maybe any one of us would run into but the third one was the most ridiculous which is uh it's entitled i don't know why it swallowed a fly weather sealed lens with a fly inside spoiler alert this lens had a fly within it
Casey:
It is ridiculous that this fly got all the way deep, deep, deep within this lens.
Casey:
And because this is their business, they had to take it apart and repair it and they kind of go through how they did that.
Casey:
But it was incredible to me that such a thing was even possible because I assumed, obviously, ignorantly so, I assumed that these things were like hermetically sealed and all that.
Casey:
But their point was, hey, if this lens is a zoom lens where things are moving, something has to take up the space that's just been vacated and that thing is air.
Casey:
So air is getting in and out of these lenses, whether you like it or not.
Casey:
And occasionally you can find a pretty big gap where a small fly can fly through.
Casey:
So I just thought these were all really, really interesting posts.
Casey:
The podcast tips on the top floor, the episode was definitely really good and worth listening to.
Casey:
So definitely check all this stuff out if you're at all interested in any of this.
Marco:
And this is also, by the way, one of the reasons why the higher end zoom lenses don't have any externally moving elements most of the time.
Marco:
It still doesn't make it perfect.
Marco:
Stuff can still get in, especially dust being just like sucked in through like, you know, seals and stuff.
Marco:
But this lens is one of those things where as you zoom in, the whole end of it gets a lot longer as this whole kind of internal barrel sticks out.
Marco:
Whereas the high end zoom lenses will typically retain their exterior shape and dimensions at all the different zoom lengths.
Marco:
Like all the zooming is basically happening inside the lens.
Marco:
And there's lots of benefits to that.
Marco:
But one of them is that it's less likely to suck in an entire fly.
Casey:
Yeah, it's just absolutely ridiculous to me that any of this happened.
John:
Yeah, so the one thing you left out was the main topic of conversation is the idea of a door that goes down in front of the sensor for when you're changing lenses.
John:
And so the most relevant piece of information about that was the idea that even when the lens is on your camera, the dust can get inside it.
John:
And, you know, the telescoping thing with the ones that move externally, with both the internal and the external ones, it probably depends on the design of the camera because with a purely internal one,
John:
There doesn't need to be any net air movement inside and outside the lens because the same amount of air is in there as long as there's some way for, you know, the air that's already inside the completely unchanging shape of cylindrical barrel of the thing.
John:
Like, that'll be fine.
John:
And for the ones that do move, I don't know enough about zoom lenses to know if there is a glass element.
John:
between the part that moves and the rest of the camera so yes if you have a thing where the lens actually gets longer and shorter then there's some air exchange taking place there but is that air exchange causing air to enter into the sensor chamber and out of it or is it just causing air to enter into the the front part of the zoom lens in and out but either way the whole point is when the lens is on things can get in
John:
um i'm still in favor of the door though and i'll tell you why one of his other points was that like the dust just floats in the air it doesn't go down into your camera but that's i mean it's true the dust is not gonna make a diving a bombing run for your camera as soon as it sees the lenses off because this is not sentient but the net movement of dust is still down the net movement of dust wasn't down we'd have dust all over our ceilings and not all over our furniture
John:
Um, and the other thing is the, the type of things that can get onto your sensor, not the lens, you know, the lens stuff is a different thing, but things that can get onto your sensor, small things can make a big difference in particular things that were on my sensor.
John:
The theory that people had is that it was big enough for me to see.
John:
And it was, it stuck to the thing that it must've been pollen or something.
John:
The bigger, the chunkier the piece of dust, the harder it is for it to get through any kind of ceiling in a lens.
John:
Especially for a prime lens where nothing is moving and it's all closed up.
John:
But the main time you are vulnerable to dust is not when there's a tiny crack opening in some kind of ceiling thing, but when there's a huge gaping opening.
John:
And if pollen is blowing around, that's the time when the piece of pollen is going to come in and get stuck to your sensor.
John:
So...
John:
would a sensor as i said on the show i didn't even have faith that a sensor would actually even seal off a door that would actually even seal off the sensor even if there was a door because the door is not going to have a perfect seal either but i still say it's better than completely open gigantic opening to the air and i still say it is better to not have your sensor facing upward for any appreciable amount of time because
John:
Although dust does kind of float in the air, the heavier and the bigger the dust, the more likely it is to go down, and if you leave it there long enough, dust will settle on your sensor.
John:
And dust on the sensor, unlike dust in the lenses, actually is surprisingly visible at small sizes because that's a whole different ballgame than dust way out there somewhere in the path that light takes as it goes through these giant pieces of glass.
John:
This is on the sensor.
John:
like directly on the little whatever thing that protects the you know it's very close to the actual things that sense the light so a small piece of dust or pond can make a big difference so i'm still pro door but in the meantime i'm still being super careful
Marco:
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Casey:
So just earlier today as we record, there has been an announcement that we are going to talk about the Mac, or really Apple is going to talk about the Mac on October 27th.
Casey:
Media invites have gone out, and as usual, Apple's keeping things close to the chest, under the vest, whatever the phrasing is.
Casey:
Under the vest?
Casey:
Do people actually say that?
Casey:
No, close to the chest just sounded wrong.
John:
He's got his merds wixed again.
Casey:
It happens from time to time.
Casey:
We are professionals, kids.
Casey:
Don't try this at home.
Casey:
So the invite has a colorful Apple logo, or most of one anyway, and it says hello again beneath it.
Casey:
And of course, all the old Apple nerds like John Syracuse are remembering some old Mac, I don't even know which one it was, that said hello again on the screen.
John:
Some old Mac?
Casey:
I knew you were going to love this.
Casey:
I knew you were going to love this.
Casey:
I swear to God I did that on purpose, just to see you get, hear you get riled.
John:
It's hard to know with you guys.
John:
I remember...
John:
Reminiscing about Leopard.
Casey:
So which important Mac was it, John?
John:
Well, that's the one bullet point I put in this invitation.
John:
Normally, I don't put much stock in spending time looking at these invitation images.
John:
You know, they're fun.
John:
They're amusing.
John:
It's great to see them or whatever.
John:
But, like, whatever.
John:
Like, the announcement will be –
John:
time has shown for the most part the announcement images uh connect to what is announced in a less interesting way than people imagine like they're always looking for something really interesting there's a connection very often um usually that connection is pretty obvious and the obvious interpretation is correct and it's not a big deal the reason i think this one
John:
is interesting and probably interesting in a bad way is not because of the picture which appears to be an apple logo with what do you guys think that is smoke uh just color blobs it looks like a blurred version of the aurora borealis behind some dark trees at night
John:
yeah that's wow interpreted but but like it's an ink blob um and maybe that will connect to what is announced in a way that is obvious after the fact or whatever but it also has text underneath and the text says hello again in all lowercase in i don't know is that san francisco i'm not good at identifying fonts probably beats me
John:
and that is significant because the original macintosh was famously to people who are alive and uh into tech then introduced with uh hello and script written in mac paint on the screen kind of like you know the a very humanistic way for the computer to announce itself rather than you know monospace font or text or whatever is hello written in script in a big thick line right um and
John:
That didn't show up again as a marketing motif, other than referencing back to the original marketing motif, until the iMac, when Steve Jobs had returned, and it's the first big important product that... Oh, God, was it the first iMac?
John:
Yes, it was the first iMac.
John:
And that one said, hello, and then in parentheses, again.
John:
And the reason that said hello again is because it was kind of announcing this new computer, this weird teal thing that you've never seen before.
John:
Like, it looks like no other Mac that's been announced.
John:
Like...
John:
Along with the iPod, the products that turned around Apple from this company that was going out of business to a company that paid attention to the iMac, really, I think was the thing that made people say, oh, maybe Apple's not going out of business after all, which is not, you know, that's damning with faint praise.
John:
Oh, I guess they're not going out of business, but people paid attention.
John:
And it was interesting.
John:
It was the original iMac, the best computer in the world.
John:
No, but.
John:
It was a very important computer.
John:
It was important to Apple because it meant that they were a vibrant company that could do interesting things that people wanted to look at.
John:
And it was important to the entire industry that it influenced how technology and computing hardware was made from that point forward.
John:
I talked about all the teal irons and vacuums and all sorts of other things, how it just influenced industrial design and technology.
John:
brought a new focus on what computers look like or before they were just basically beige boxes and apples had classier beige boxes but uh it didn't make a difference and all of a sudden this one was in your face you could not ignore it it was it looked totally different than anything else and so hello again felt appropriate appropriate time gap what was the iMac like 1998 uh from 1984 to 1998 that's when they felt like it was important and significant enough to reference back to the original Mac's hello
John:
and i give them that i say all right hello again it fit with that it was it was an important dramatic moment in the history of apple important time to reference back to the original mac now they're saying it no parentheses this time and the obvious interpretation is oh this is going to be announcement about max which surprises what everyone assumes it's going to be this is the time when they're going to announce some kind of max and we'll talk about what which max those might be in a little bit
John:
And it's a nice way of saying we know it's been a long time since we introduced Macs.
John:
So here's some Macs, right?
John:
But I feel like by using hello again...
John:
They're implying a significance that I don't think they can deliver on unless they are doing ARM Macs.
John:
Oh, that's bold.
John:
They're implying a significance, a significant event, as important as the original Macintosh or the first iMac.
John:
And the only thing they can announce today, the only thing that is in any of the rumors or whatever, that they can announce tomorrow or whenever, next week...
John:
that will live up to hello again is if they are substantially altering the mac line in a way that is obvious and as as obvious and as dramatic as the imac was or as the original mac was and maybe even rmax doesn't qualify for that only among nerds it would qualify because people don't care what the hell chip is on their computers right but at least to nerds that would be significant it would be a big transition but i don't think they're going to announce rmax i think they're just going to announce a bunch of new macs that are pretty cool i don't know if it deserves hello again i feel like i've been overhyped
John:
already raining on everyone's parade and we're over a week away this has only been an announcement for like six hours you can't overuse it like the one more thing they've used sparingly for the most part and I almost give them a pass on that because I feel like one more thing was used so many times hello has only been used you know the original Mac constant references to the original Mac and then the iMac with again in parentheses and now they're using it now because they haven't released Macs in like a year it's not if they're trying to do it to like you know
John:
to engender good feelings, it's not working on me, and I don't think there's anything they can deliver that will live up to the significance of that to old fogies like me.
John:
Everyone else doesn't care.
John:
No one knows about Hello Again.
John:
You didn't even know it was the original iMac.
John:
It's not a stumble for the company, but for me, as an old-school Mac user, I feel like this is an inappropriate use of that slogan.
John:
Or they could announce new amazing Macs that are totally on par with the iMac and the original Mac, but I'm not holding my breath.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, I think...
Marco:
i don't doubt that it is possible to do something in the mac lineup that would justify this level of of old school reference hype but i i really don't think it's very likely likely that that's what they've done this time just because of you know the the situation the mac has been in for all this time the uh the relative importance of the mac to apple that that at least the way it seems is fairly low these days um
Marco:
So I really doubt that they have done what you would expect from this kind of reference.
Marco:
That being said, I mean, you know, the again now is not in parentheses.
Marco:
So maybe that means that they deleted more ports.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
Well, I mean, that's the other thing.
John:
Like, you can do hello, and then you can do hello again, but if you do again again, you're kind of out of ideas.
John:
So, I mean, that could be the way they're saying it's not as significant as you think.
John:
We're referencing hello, but obviously we already did hello again, and now we're doing it again again.
John:
If they had did hello again again, I don't know.
John:
i mean they did be it was it the funnest ipod why not hello again again i wonder what killed that one in the meeting to come up with this slogan bigger is bigger probably a 10 minute meeting because again who cares about these images who even knows they exist except for like tech journalists and people who read tech sites but that's the thing i mean like like they disappear like the moment the event starts these images disappear from the world
John:
yeah no one cares about them once the thing is over no one goes back and says oh i guess you know it turned out they were announcing you know back to the mac they did announce a bunch of mac stuff so anyway um i personally feel like i have been overhyped in the grand scheme of things hello again doesn't matter at all but i won't forget
Marco:
So here's a question.
Marco:
So the MacBook Pro, based on the rumors and everything that have been fairly consistent for quite a long time now, so I think there's probably one of those where there's smoke, there's fire situations where we can be pretty sure at least some of what's being announced next week by this point.
Marco:
And it sure seems like the MacBook Pro is getting a noteworthy update, but not like a revolutionary update.
Marco:
It might be getting some cool software mappable function keys.
Marco:
Like, okay, that's fine.
Marco:
It's probably not going to be amazingly revolutionary.
Marco:
It's probably going to be nice to have.
Marco:
It's probably going to get...
Marco:
A little bit smaller, a little bit lighter.
Marco:
That's also not revolutionary, just nice to have.
Marco:
It's probably going to be a little faster, a little slightly more updated things, Touch ID maybe for unlocking.
Marco:
Again, nice to have.
Marco:
So it's going to add up to a really nice update, not likelihood.
Marco:
But to be this revolutionary, what you're expecting from this use of this reference, I don't think it stands a chance.
Marco:
One thing I am a little curious about is that 13-inch Retina MacBook Air.
Marco:
I'm telling you, like that...
Marco:
There's something there.
Marco:
We've been hearing about the MacBook Pro forever now.
Marco:
We've been hearing about this updated MacBook Pro in rumor sites for, what, six months at least?
Marco:
It's been a long time.
Marco:
And then we've heard almost nothing about whatever this 13-inch MacBook or MacBook Air is being released, allegedly.
Marco:
Maybe that is going to be more interesting because, you know, they sure sell a lot of MacBook Airs.
Marco:
And so even though the geeks like us have been focused on all the Retina machines for the last four years since they introduced the first one, they still continue to sell a ton of MacBook Airs because they're very affordable.
Marco:
They're very practical.
Marco:
They're a really good balance of lots of things.
Marco:
I've gone over this before.
Marco:
I wonder if maybe the really significant machine of this event is actually that 13-inch MacBook Air or whatever it is that is going to fill that slot now.
Marco:
I don't know.
Casey:
So let's suppose for a second that there is a 13-inch MacBook of some flavor that is Retina.
Casey:
Why would that be an Air and not just a 13-inch MacBook?
John:
Well, that's the problem with all these rumors because they keep saying the 13-inch MacBook Air.
John:
As we all know from a long time watching rumors things, the one thing that rumor sites pretty much never know, the two things they pretty much never know, are the name and the price.
John:
because those are easily changeable and they're not important for most people to know who would leak a small number of people can know them name and price leak last and sometimes price not at all and they have to but they have to keep referring to this you know whatever they have rumors and part leaks and things people have seen things or whatever even people who are working on the machine don't know what it's going to be named because that's not their department all they know is that there's a 13 inch screen and something having to do with a laptop and we've discussed this in the past like maybe that 13 inch screen was for
John:
Is that a 13-inch MacBook Pro?
John:
Is it a 13-inch MacBook?
John:
Is it an Air replacement?
John:
The whole point is you could have someone with this machine sitting in front of them right now and get them on the phone and say, so is that a MacBook Air?
John:
I'm like, I don't know.
John:
I can just describe to you the machine.
John:
I don't know how it's going to be sold.
John:
Is it going to have the Air name on it or not?
John:
Especially if it's Retina.
John:
At this point, Air is defined by not having a Retina screen.
John:
That's what distinguishes the thing.
John:
By having old ports and not having a Retina screen.
John:
I don't know.
John:
If they have...
John:
a laptop that fits into that slot in their lineup somehow i think it's fine but i don't know if we can but by continually referring it to as a 13 inch macbook air i think it sets weird expectations about it like you know does that mean it has to be really cheap does that mean it has to have more ports than we would expect does that mean it has to have a non-retina screen or otherwise there's not an error or does it just have to have the name air on it and it'll be like surprise apple's decided to keep that line going even though there's no real reason to
Marco:
Well, but, you know, Air does mean something in hardware terms.
Marco:
The Air has always used this line of Intel CPUs that has a thermal power of roughly 17 watts.
Marco:
And the MacBook One uses like 6-watt CPUs, so it's a lot less power, and therefore it can be fanless, but it also is not nearly as fast, can't sustain a load for nearly as long, and has a bunch of other limitations, like in how many ports it can have due to various limitations of the chipset and everything else.
Marco:
So the MacBook One
Marco:
It's never going to be as powerful as a recently updated MacBook Air could be because the MacBook Air just has a much higher power budget.
Marco:
And then above the MacBook Air, you have the 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros.
Marco:
And those use... I mean, the 15-inch uses like a 45-watt line.
Marco:
I forget what wattage the 13-inch uses.
Marco:
I think it was like 25 or 30.
Marco:
Anyway, whatever it is, it's a lot more than 17.
Marco:
And so you have this slot in the middle.
Marco:
And the MacBook Air...
Marco:
One of the reasons it could be so thin and so light and so small is because these really low power CPUs were just an awesome balance of power versus performance.
Marco:
That lineup of these little 17-watt CPUs has been as yet completely unused in anything with a retina screen and therefore completely unused in anything that a power user like us might care about because most of us want retina screens.
Marco:
But it turns out like that balance is awesome.
Marco:
Like for what most people need out of a laptop, you know, the MacBook one, the most recent MacBook one, the second one got a lot faster than the first one, but it's still nowhere near what an updated error could do.
Marco:
And the MacBook one, a lot of people complain that, you know, and I use one briefly.
Marco:
I know like, you know, it's kind of slow.
Marco:
Well, it turns out that the MacBook Air has a lot fewer people complaining about the slowness because the MacBook Air CPUs can actually be substantially faster.
Marco:
And so to not use that processor line in anything, I think, is a waste because it's such a good balance of battery life and low heat versus performance.
Marco:
Now, what they could do is basically have the MacBook Pro 13-inch come down and use that processor line or at least offer it as an option and kind of replace what the Air used to be.
Marco:
but then you have nothing using these here that david shop in the chat has clarified that the 13 inch use a 28 watt cpu so it basically goes five or six watts for the macbook one 16 or 17 for the air 28 for the 13 and 45 for the 15 so these are distinct power classes that are pretty far from each other um you know the the macbook air compared to the 13 inch it's it's twice as much i mean it's or it's you know twice or half as much it's a huge gap and the macbook one to macbook air is three times as much
Marco:
So these are major power differences in the heat, the battery life, the budget.
Marco:
These are huge power differences.
Marco:
And that's why these computers are able to be so different in size and in battery life.
Marco:
It's not because they choose the sizes arbitrarily.
Marco:
It's because this massive power-sucking component of the computer is chosen and kind of in these buckets, and then they can shrink the rest of the computer around that so that it can be...
Marco:
The smallest, lightest computer possible that can still give an X watt CPU enough battery life to be practical and useful to people.
John:
What I was getting at with the Air line not having a place anymore is because the Air line was introduced as the ultra portable and the Air name is going away because the iPad Air is now replaced by the Air, even though they still sell it like it's on its way out.
John:
and the air laptop continues to have the name air despite the fact that it is no longer the smallest lightest laptop so what i would totally expect out of a 13 inch computer that people keep calling a 13 inch macbook air is for it to be a 13 inch macbook not a 13 inch macbook pro using the 15 or 28 you know 15 watt cpu in there but to be a 13 inch macbook because i don't think there's anything that says that the macbook has to be fanless the really small macbook
John:
can be fanless the next one up can have a wee little fan in it and then you go pro 13 and pro 15 that seems like a line that makes sense to me macbook pro and macbook i see no place for the air branding except for as a legacy thing where it's like they have non-retina screens they're super cheap and you're right that it's weird that they've been the only one to have this particular balance of power uh and you know size but
John:
uh that's apple's fault for just deciding to let the air be like this legacy line and not using that chip in any place else but i think now will be the time to use that chip someplace else or the chips in that class not the specific chip and i i think it is more natural for it to fit as a 13 inch macbook
John:
than to fit as like pushing up the line or whatever and then then the airline really does go away or becomes like the ipad air where like yeah they continue to sell it at an even more discounted price just to just because they can but then the you know you'd have the macbook and you'd have the slightly bigger macbook and then you'd have the macbook pro and you have the slightly bigger macbook pro and i think that would make a nice lineup
Marco:
yeah i mean but at that point like you know if if you're saying that like you know so the difference between the what is now the macbook the macbook one and the macbook air line you know the air can be like twice as fast it can it can have way more ports and more kinds of ports and a bigger screen and so if that considers itself within the same family of these two very different computers why does the macbook pro get a pro designation how is that any different
John:
uh external gpu on the 13 inch no the 13 doesn't have it the 15 only has it optionally well you could have it well barely you know only in the very high end and it's buggy and you get worse battery life if you choose that option that's everything i mean i feel like it could be distinguished the 13 inch pro would be thicker heavier and that thickness and heaviness would give it more battery to do more power sucking stuff whether it's having a higher clock cpu or
John:
more RAM or an external GPU on the high-end model or anything like that.
Marco:
Yeah, but you can say the exact same thing about going from the 12-inch to the 13-inch.
Marco:
It's the same scale of difference between the current MacBook 1 and the rumored Retina MacBook Air as there would be between this Retina MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro line.
John:
Well, look, you've got three classes of CPU, and you've only got two names, right?
John:
Because I think the Air name is on its way out.
John:
So you've got to divide it down the middle between MacBook and MacBook Pro.
John:
So the middle CPU thing has got to go on one side or the other.
John:
And I think it should go on the MacBook side.
John:
If it goes on the Pro side, oh well.
John:
But it seems more natural for me for it to go on the MacBook side.
Casey:
Yeah, I think I agree.
Casey:
I think the MacBook Air name goes away.
Casey:
And I think that we are left with MacBooks and MacBook Pros.
Casey:
And that's all that remains.
Casey:
Well, maybe, OK, so maybe like older devices would retain the Air name.
Casey:
But I'm talking about the brand new devices, whatever is considered the most modern.
Casey:
I think it would either be MacBook or MacBook Pro.
John:
Now, David Shaw was pointing out in the chat room that we actually have four classes.
John:
You got the 45 watt and the 15 inch, the 28 watt and the 13 inch, and then you're down into the MacBook Air at 16 and MacBook at five.
John:
So if you're going to put the 16 and fives or 15 and fives down in the MacBook and the 45 and 28s in the Pro, that's an even split then.
John:
But it really depends on what things Apple actually decides to use because just because CPU classes of CPUs are available doesn't mean that Apple will necessarily use them in their products.
John:
I just think the Air...
John:
The whole Air naming thing doesn't make sense anymore.
John:
It needs to be on its way out.
John:
But I think people keep using that name because it's the only way they have to refer to a machine that's not a pro and it's not the skinny little MacBook.
John:
Actually, the way I wanted to start this off, although because only one of us or 1.5 of us are looking at the notes, was...
John:
for the for the october 27th apple event i think one place to start would be what should apple announce in order of priority like what's the most important thing for them to announce second most important third post or whatever and then after that we can say what we wish they would announce ignoring what's actually important for the company so
Casey:
uh who wants to go first what what should apple announce at this october 27th event there's no there's no question it has to be new macbook pros because that is the workhorse of the lineup as far as i'm concerned i agree with you that a lot of macbook airs get sold and maybe somebody has numbers somebody outside apple has numbers maybe it's more macbook airs and macbook pros but
Casey:
Man, I think business runs, a lot of businesses run on MacBook Pros.
Casey:
I mean, Airs too, I guess, but a lot of businesses run on MacBook Pros.
Casey:
I see MacBook Pros everywhere.
Casey:
I think they have to announce MacBook Pros.
Casey:
I think that's non-negotiable or an equivalent thereof if for some reason they changed the name.
Casey:
I think that's non-negotiable.
John:
I agree.
John:
That's number one.
John:
I mean, it's obvious number one.
John:
It's a thing I think if we had to put money, we would all bet on as the most likely thing.
John:
They have to because it is the most important Mac that they have is their laptop line.
John:
And the MacBook Pros, they have been updated a long time.
John:
They're a really important computer.
John:
If they care about Macs at all, they need to and almost certainly will announce new MacBook Pros.
Marco:
Well, if you look at what is most important for them to announce, if you go by like Tim Cook Apple, it's probably the AirPods.
John:
well we're talking about max at this point okay well i guess i guess based on the based on the little advertisement although we're not reading too much it says hello again that's a mac reference this event is going to be on max will there be other things this event who knows who knows what other stuff that amounts but the airpods are already a thing i feel like this event is going to be about max for the most part and you know unless you think there's some other higher priority thing that they need to announce in october that they haven't already announced
Marco:
I mean, AirPods are probably going to make them more money than the MacBook Pro will for a while.
John:
Yeah, I know, but they already announced that.
John:
We already know about those.
John:
Yeah, but you can't buy them yet.
John:
No, but you will be able.
John:
Sure, they'll announce a date or whatever, but do you think announcing the date for that is more important than new Macs?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Maybe to Tim.
Marco:
I honestly don't think that Tim gives much thought to the Mac.
Marco:
It's not that he hates it or doesn't care about it.
Marco:
I just don't think he gives it a lot of thought.
Marco:
I really don't.
Marco:
But anyway, personal CEO speculation aside, yeah, it's probably the MacBook Pro.
Marco:
I think you're right.
Marco:
I do think the MacBook Air is probably, if I had to guess, the one that sells the most.
Marco:
However, MacBook Air buyers tend to buy it because it is so cheap.
Marco:
And so it's often like schools and people who are buying a ton of them and who need them to be as affordable as possible because they're buying a ton.
Marco:
In the case of schools, they don't have massive budgets.
Marco:
So it's probably...
Marco:
the macbook air while it is very important for it to exist and be sold and in my opinion be good i think it's less important that it be radically up to date the macbook pro on the other hand sells to people who more often care about how you know fresh it is and and macbook pro buyers would probably be more irked than macbook air buyers at the at the prospect of buying a two or three year old one brand new
John:
yeah i i think the crisis they're facing here with the whole the whole hello again thing basically acknowledges that is they are acknowledging that the people who do not buy the most volume because like you said the most volume is the cheap ones right but the people who buy cheap ones are not like waiting for apple events and looking for announcements it's the enthusiast community or like the more advanced pro users who who have even noticed that apple has not updated their mac line in a really long time
John:
we're you know we're the only people who even notice so this is it's an important there's no like lack of there's no there's no faith gap among the people who are buying macbook airs because they don't know or care like how apple updates the macbook air is already ancient they have non-retina screens if you told one of those people you're like non-retina what i don't know what you're talking about i like this laptop right
John:
That's not what this is invented for.
John:
That's why I think the highest priority, the most important thing that they have to announce here is the MacBook Pros.
John:
Not because they're going to sell more MacBook Pros than MacBook Airs, but because that's what this event is all about.
John:
You have to move the head of the train ahead.
John:
The tail end that's going, nobody cares about that.
John:
I think history has shown.
John:
You can not update the MacBook Air for a really long time.
John:
They still keep selling, which we think is awful as enthusiasts, but Tim Cook probably likes.
John:
So we're all in agreement.
John:
MacBook Pro is the most important with a corollary about AirPods making a lot of money for Tim.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I mean, ultimately, like, here's what I would like.
Marco:
See, like, I...
Marco:
I get why Tim Cook doesn't have to care that much about things like the Mac Mini and keeping the MacBook Air up to date.
Marco:
I get why.
Marco:
But all of us are Apple fans because Apple, for many product categories and for many times throughout its history, has stood for being the best, making things the best they can make them, making what they consider to be the best products possible.
Marco:
And if you look at the Mac Mini,
Marco:
Is that really the best product possible?
Marco:
No, of course not.
Marco:
Apple doesn't care about it.
Marco:
If you look at the 21-inch iMac that still ships with a 5,400 RPM hard drive standard, is that the best product Apple can make?
Marco:
No, of course not.
Marco:
Basically, you can look at a lot of the Mac lineup, whether it's entry levels being way too low spec-wise that actually make for bad products like hard drive-equipped computers in 2016, or
Marco:
or if you look at Mac product lines that just almost never get updated and continue selling the oldest hardware forever, like the Mac Pro and the Mac Mini, I just wish Apple cared about these things as much as we do.
Marco:
Because Apple as a brand, and I do believe that many of the people at both high and low levels of the company believe this and think this way,
Marco:
Apple tries to make the best products they possibly can make in so many categories.
Marco:
And for some reason, they think it's okay to completely neglect, almost to an insulting degree, some of their Mac product lines.
Marco:
And to me, that's not Apple-like.
Marco:
At least, that's not the way Apple...
Marco:
thinks it is and presents itself and the way that we Apple enthusiasts want them to be, even though actions speak louder than words.
Marco:
So right now, that's the kind of company Apple is.
Marco:
But I wish they weren't.
Marco:
I wish they were the kind of company that they project themselves as and that we expect them to be.
Marco:
Everything you sell, you should try to make it as good as you can make it.
Marco:
Because if you had to pick one Apple value, what are Apple's values or what does Apple stand for?
Marco:
It's that.
Marco:
It's that everything they make should be the best thing that they can make.
Marco:
You can't say that about a Mac Pro that hasn't been updated in three years or a Mac Mini that hasn't been updated in probably about as long or these computers that skip generations because Apple just doesn't care about new hardware to put in them and they'll keep selling it only because it keeps selling.
Marco:
Like the 101 laptop or the... Keeping selling anything non-retina in 2016, anything with a spinning hard drive in 2016, like...
Marco:
These are not the best products they can be.
Marco:
And margins might suffer a little bit.
Marco:
And you might have to put in some engineering effort sometimes into product lines that aren't that popular.
Marco:
But if they're worth making at all, make them the best they can be.
Marco:
Because that's what Apple is supposed to actually stand for.
John:
I would add, just to qualify there, because I can imagine people typing up their tweet replies right now.
John:
It's the best they can be within their price point, obviously.
John:
No one is saying that every single computer has to have the very best components and every Mac has to have Xeon processors and ECC RAM.
John:
It's within the price range.
John:
And what we're saying is the Mac Pro is a great example, even though it is the high-end machine.
John:
can apple make and sell a mac pro at its current price point with better hardware unquestionably same thing for the mini it's not it's not saying that the mac mini has to have the top end hardware it's like the philosophy that apple itself expresses a lot of times that when they do anything they want to make it the best they can and they're they're in their own statements it's implied the best we can within the realm of this reason for this price point so when they make a keyboard and like we spent a really long time working on these key clicks so casey would be really happy and we wanted to make it
John:
They're making the best keyboard they can.
John:
They're not making a keyboard that costs $3,000.
John:
I bet you could make it better for $3,000.
John:
Yes, they have a target price for what is a reasonable price for a keyboard.
John:
That's obvious, but it's within the price ranges.
John:
Even the 101, which is fine.
John:
If education wants a Mac with an optical drive and a non-retina screen that's really rugged or whatever...
John:
If that's a product, fine.
John:
That's a product slot.
John:
But you still have to say, if people are going to buy this computer year after year, next year, we should have an ever so slightly better, more rugged, more reliable, more efficient, more pleasing device.
John:
mac with an optical drive and a non-retina screen for education like just you know you don't have to update them constantly but are you saying you know we don't ever want to invest any more money in this ever again but we will sell it year after year after year and that is on apple like it's not the fact that they're they're not making that computer have you know a five gigahertz processor and an amazing retina p3 screen on it like that's not what we're saying it's
John:
that if you're going to sell it at all like are you is this a computer you're proud to sell like are you proud to sell that iMac with the 5400 rpm drive would you be proud to give this to somebody and say we're apple and we're proud of all of our products take this 21 inch iMac with the 5400 rpm screen you'd be apologizing every five minutes yeah you know this is not what most Macs are like we're sorry like if you feel like you have to apologize to someone like yes I feel that as a tech person if someone buys like the wrong product and you're kind of like
John:
This is not representative of what all these things are like.
John:
You actually got the worst possible one, and it's really slow.
John:
And I know it was also still a lot of money for you.
John:
That's the other reason, because Apple's products are a lot of money relative to their competing products.
John:
Yes.
John:
There has to be a tradeoff for that.
John:
You have to be able to say, you know, it doesn't have to be as snappy as a Mac Pro, but like every year make it a little better.
Marco:
you know there's been a lot of like little references here and there around our community about like how you know you don't really need to defend apple as hard as you do uh apple can defend themselves they're a huge company etc etc um and one of the things i keep seeing whenever i mention a 13 inch that basically that i believe that it is both time and that it is likely that we will see a 13 inch retina macbook air next week a lot of people say oh you can't do retina in that size because it's cost too much no it doesn't look around at the entire rest of the computing industry yeah that's ridiculous look at the ipad
Marco:
It probably costs more to get those non-retina screens at this point.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
At some point, they're going to stop making the non-retina screens and Apple won't be able to buy them anymore.
Marco:
Look around the industry.
Marco:
Hardware is shockingly cheap.
Marco:
It is ridiculously cheap.
Marco:
Look around and a lot of stuff has similar or nicer screens for less money.
Marco:
It can be done.
Marco:
It can totally be done.
Marco:
It is 2016.
Marco:
It is almost 2017.
Marco:
You can have a Retina MacBook Air size screen at $1,000 and still have a profit margin healthy enough for Apple.
Marco:
That is totally possible.
Marco:
Hardware's really cheap these days.
Marco:
If you wanted to put...
Marco:
a 256 gig SSD as the base model storage in every single Mac that is sold, you could totally do it.
Marco:
And the effects on margins would probably not be very substantial at all.
Marco:
It might not even be noticeable.
Marco:
It is totally possible to go all retina, all SSD today in the Mac lineup.
Marco:
It's only up to Apple when they do that.
Marco:
And as soon as they can go all retina and all SSD, their computers will be
Marco:
Across the board, a solid recommendation.
Marco:
It'll be so much better.
Marco:
And they're not there yet because they just keep preserving the Tim Cook wave, just keep selling everything forever.
Marco:
And no matter how old or ancient or crappy it is, if someone's still buying it, we'll keep selling it at whatever low price we can get.
Marco:
No, that's...
Marco:
That's not Apple.
Marco:
That is not what Apple has ever stood for.
Marco:
That is not what most Apple people like to think Apple stands for.
Marco:
And that is not what Apple's customers think Apple stands for.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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John:
So the obvious follow-up to this, what should Apple announce in order of priority?
John:
We all agreed on the number one, talk to the MacBook Pros, talk about the larger issues.
John:
Harder question.
John:
What is the second highest priority thing that they should announce at this event?
John:
Apple Pencil 2.
John:
Oh my goodness.
John:
Now with an eraser.
Casey:
Seriously.
Casey:
I think we all answered that, and I think it's the MacBook Air or, if John and I are right, the 13-inch MacBook.
Casey:
Whatever fills that slot, I think, is the second most important.
Marco:
Yeah, and you can look at other things that are very likely.
Marco:
I think the iMac is very likely to get an update.
Marco:
I think Kaby Lake is ready for that class of CPU, isn't it?
John:
But do you think that's important?
John:
I mostly agree that it's something in that range of products, whether it ends up being a MacBook or a MacBook Pro with 13 inches, the second most important.
John:
What is the third most important?
John:
Is the iMac the third most important?
John:
Because I feel like of all the line of computer, the 5K iMac is the one that I have the least problem recommending in terms of Macs at this point.
Marco:
Yeah, well, because the 5K iMac uses a class of CPUs that is very regularly updated by Intel.
Marco:
It's almost always the first one to get certain things.
Marco:
It's like this big high power one.
Marco:
I guess they're probably easier to make.
Marco:
And so it was the first one with Skylake last winter.
Marco:
And now I... Because it has Skylake now, right?
Marco:
And then I believe the Kaby Lake version is basically ready now because it gets updated about every fall.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
The iMac will probably get an update to the Kaby Lake.
Marco:
I believe Kaby Lake is a fairly minor update.
John:
Yeah, I don't think it's crying out for a Kaby Lake upgrade.
John:
Do you think, like, of all the problems that are with the current 5K iMacs, are you saying, I wish it had a slightly faster CPU?
John:
That's not high on my list.
Marco:
Well, but the iMac is already plenty fast.
Marco:
What I'm guessing it's going to get, it already has the wide gamut color from last year.
Marco:
So the screen is already top-notch.
Marco:
I'm guessing it has to convert to USB-C and have Thunderbolt 3.
Marco:
So that's the obvious thing.
Marco:
If Apple ever gets around to making everything Retina and SSD, the next big transition is moving everything over to USB-C and Thunderbolt 3, or everything that can do that, which should be most of their computers, if not all of them.
John:
um so you know that's i would imagine the imac gets an update that is a moderate cpu increase uh gpus potentially better who knows uh and then that's the only rumor about the imac is everyone's saying new imacs with better gpus and if i had to pick one thing that needed to be upgraded i don't honestly at this point i would pick faster gpu over usb c for the imac but that's just me
Marco:
Well, USB-C has another interesting thing, which is that there's also this rumor about the 5K external display.
Marco:
And if the information that we have on that is right from ATP Tipster, and which I believe the rumor sites have all corroborated at this point, although he was telling us like six months ago.
Marco:
But if the information is right, the 5K monitor is very likely to ship this time.
Marco:
It is based on Thunderbolt 3 over USB-C plug.
Marco:
and that it will only be compatible with Macs that have USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 on them, which is currently none of them, and will presumably be everything announced next week.
Marco:
So presumably it'll be the new MacBook Pros, if the MacBook Air is new, that thing too, and the new iMac.
Marco:
So all those things should, in theory, be able to drive this new display and probably no other Macs, including the current Mac Pro, which will be slightly embarrassing, but nobody buys the Mac Pro anyway.
John:
i'm kind of torn on the on the the third priority after the macbook pros in the macbook because i really don't feel like the 5k iMac needs it other than like you said being able to drive the monitor in theory they're announcing and by the way maybe you could list that monitor as the third item but it's kind of like a tie with me for me with between the iMac and the Mac Pro even though nobody buys the Mac Pro in terms of priority order of what they should announce to
John:
have a positive to make up for the areas where they have problems.
John:
The areas where they have problems are the max that they have not updated the longest.
John:
And should is very different than will.
John:
I thought these were guesses.
John:
No, we're still on the should.
John:
What should they announce in order of priority?
John:
And I would be totally saying that, you know, MacBook Pros, that is the highest priority.
John:
MacBook, second highest priority.
John:
And then Mac Pro and iMac are kind of a tie because the Mac Pro is like, really that is, if they care about Pro at all,
John:
like they i mean obviously they can't do this if they're doing sky like e they just can't right we know that's why none of us expect the mac pro we'll get to what they think they're going to do next but if they had made wiser choices and had a macbook had a mac pro ready to go with a pre sky lake but post whatever the hell haswell e thing they're using the old ones that what is that what the old ones use i don't remember anymore the old mac pro is ivy bridge and then and they they they missed haswell and broadwell yeah okay anyway um
John:
That's what they should do.
John:
They're not going to.
John:
But I feel like that would be a tie for them.
John:
I know none of us think that the Mac Mini, because the Mac Mini is not symbolic of any segment that we think is important.
John:
It's like there's the pro segment and then there's the stuff that everybody else buys.
John:
And then the Mac Mini is like not pro, not everybody else, a weird little thing.
John:
And honestly, it is a shame they don't update it.
John:
But I think it is at the bottom of their priorities in terms of what they should announce to reassure any community of purchasers or to make up for past sins or whatever, because the Mac Mini has been on this pay no mind list for its entire life, basically, and it should just be used to it.
Marco:
No, I mean, if we're going for what should they announce to convince people who are paying attention that their head's in the right place, a Mac Pro is definitely number three, if not even number two.
Marco:
But in terms of what they will actually announce, I don't think we have a chance of it because, as you mentioned a few minutes ago...
Marco:
um basically the mac pro is currently kind of between two generations like if apple is going to release a mac pro with a certain family of intel's zeon cpus usually they do it very promptly with that family's release to the public and the last zeon cpus were released back in june that was the broadwell e line so i doubt like if they were going to ship mac pros that used broadwell
Marco:
they probably would have already done that so they should have but they didn't right and and the sky lake e zeons uh and and these these names all lag behind the consumer ships there's good reasons for that but basically sky lake is coming to the zeon family allegedly in the first half of 2017
Marco:
So my guess is that we get a Skylake Mac Pro.
Marco:
If it is going to exist, we get that probably at WBC of next year, which will be awesome if it exists because Skylake on the Mac Pro is actually a really big upgrade.
Marco:
Like the, the Skylake Xeon chipset, this Intel's code name, Pearly chipset has a bunch of big improvements, you know, like higher throughputs on things, more PCI express, better memory, all sorts of improvements that will be bigger than the average Xeon upgrade.
Marco:
So,
Marco:
If we're waiting for that, like, okay, it'd be nice if they had one now, but that's going to be an awesome Mac Pro when it eventually comes out.
Casey:
You know, it's weird because I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I think that updating the Mac Pro is considerably more important than updating the iMac.
Casey:
The iMac isn't that old, and I concur that it's not likely to happen because
Casey:
And God, I hope it doesn't happen because then you two will go on for 17 episodes.
Casey:
But I do think it is important for it to happen.
Casey:
It's just – unfortunately, the timing is all off.
Casey:
But it should happen for sure.
John:
Well, you have to – like the reason I'm doing this prior to this is you have to balance not just like, oh, what is the most lagging?
John:
But it's like –
John:
there's a there's a balance between the volume of these that you sell how important is this to the entire product line and how far behind is and that's why i think the macbook pros and macbook needs to come first because their volume is just so much more than the mac pro yeah but at a certain point even at the infinitesimal volumes of the mac pro cells it becomes symbolic and that's why i feel like it's kind of in the number three slot tied with the imac which the imac sells way more than the mac pro um and you know and it's like
John:
It's in other words, I don't want to say, oh, you've updated the iMac recently.
John:
You can give that one a year and a half vacation.
John:
Like, no, don't keep doing what, you know, the rate of progress on the iMac has been good.
John:
It's been, hey, 5K iMac.
John:
And then very shortly after, hey, 5K iMac with a better screen.
John:
And it should be very shortly after that.
John:
Hey, 5K iMac with USB-C that can drive this new monitor.
John:
Like, you know, keep doing that.
John:
That's what you're supposed to do.
John:
It's the one Mac they're doing the right thing with.
John:
So I almost don't want to say, oh, you don't have to update it.
John:
That's not important.
John:
But it is in the number three slot, maybe tied with the Mac Pro.
John:
We can just pick all the pinks for the number three slot.
Marco:
So how important do you guys think the external 5K display is?
Marco:
Because I think it's probably a very boring product, but I think it's actually a really big deal to power users because...
Marco:
A lot of power users use MacBook Pros or MacBook Airs as their primary or only computer, and they use them at a desk or moving around.
Marco:
And so many people I know use MacBook Pros with external monitors.
Marco:
And you can get Retina so far with various Dells and stuff, but it tends to be buggy and limited and generally crappy.
Marco:
So I would imagine, Casey, you're probably first in line for this, right?
Yeah.
Casey:
Well, yes and no.
Casey:
So I have very strong feelings about this.
Casey:
I have two Lenovo monitors at work.
Casey:
They're probably 22 or 24 inches.
Casey:
They're completely unremarkable in every way.
Casey:
They, I think, might be 1080, maybe.
Casey:
Again, they're so unremarkable, I don't even recall what resolution they are.
Casey:
I use the two of them side by side on a standing desk.
Casey:
I leave my MacBook Pro clamshelled when I'm at work.
Casey:
This, generally speaking, is actually fairly nice to have two reasonably large external monitors that are pretty much identical.
Casey:
However, this becomes a frickin' nightmare when I'm doing UI work in the simulator because these screens are not Retina, which means when I shrink the simulator so that it actually fits on my screen, which means I'm shrinking it to, you know, like 50% at the least...
Casey:
Oftentimes, I'll drop things that are on the UI.
Casey:
Perfect example.
Casey:
I constantly drop the dividing line between table view cells.
Casey:
Constantly.
Casey:
And so I think that there's something wrong with my UI.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
It's just these piece of garbage monitors I'm viewing this on.
Casey:
I understand that I could not clamshell my MacBook Pro.
Casey:
I could set that up, and I could do the simulator on there.
Casey:
I understand that, but I don't want to call me bananas, whatever you want to do.
Casey:
It's just not what I want to do.
Casey:
You're bananas.
Casey:
I want to use these external monitors.
Casey:
Thanks, man.
Casey:
I want to use these external monitors.
Casey:
So because of this, I've been going back and forth with our head IT guy trying to figure out, okay, I really want something that's retina-based.
Casey:
And I don't think that's too much to ask.
Casey:
Here's why.
Casey:
And I think I got him on board for that.
Casey:
So what can we do?
Casey:
And he said, well, you know, generally speaking, I'd want to get you a cinema display or a Thunderbolt display.
Casey:
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Casey:
I don't want that.
Casey:
I don't want that.
Casey:
I don't want that.
Casey:
You don't want that.
Casey:
Yeah, you don't.
Casey:
And he said, you know, you don't want that.
Casey:
And he knew they'd been discontinued, etc.
Casey:
But even then, even if they weren't discontinued, they're not retina.
Casey:
So it doesn't help me.
Casey:
So I had told him after having surveyed Twitter like 16 different times, I told him I would like a particular Dell 4K monitor.
Casey:
And we'll put a link in the show notes because I don't recall the exact model name offhand.
Casey:
And it's like a 22 or 24-inch 4K monitor.
Casey:
They also have a 27-inch 5K monitor, which is effectively an iMac, but it also has the price tag of an iMac because I think the 5K one is like $1,500.
Casey:
Yeah, something like that.
Casey:
The 4K one is about $400, give or take a little bit, on Amazon.
Casey:
And Solomon in the chat said P2415Q, and I'm pretty darn sure that's right.
Casey:
So anyway, it'll be in the show notes.
Casey:
So we ordered one, and it came in, and I took my two Lenovo monitors off my desk.
Casey:
I put my fancy, shiny new Dell on my desk.
Marco:
You told the story last week.
Casey:
Did I?
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
I couldn't recall if I had or not.
Casey:
And it was DOA.
Casey:
So we have a 27 inch LG 4K monitor that I really like, but it's the wrong size.
Casey:
So on the way, but not here yet, is a 24 inch equivalent LG monitor.
Casey:
And I've been going back and forth with our IT guy for like two months trying to figure out what monitor to buy, what price point we can hit, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
I don't necessarily know that this Phantom new Retina 5K external display, I sincerely doubt that it will be at a price point that...
Casey:
my company will be willing to pay.
John:
You can't drive it from your Mac anyway.
Casey:
And I wouldn't be able to drive it from my Mac anyway, so you're absolutely right.
Casey:
But let's leave that aside just for a moment.
Casey:
I'm assuming it'll still be $1,000, just like the Thunderbolt display was before it got retired.
Marco:
Maybe higher.
Casey:
Yeah, to your point, if not more.
Marco:
I mean, $1,000 for an Apple 5K display today would actually be a really competitive deal.
Casey:
Sure, but it's way more than... If you're starting from the position of probably a $200 or $250 Lenovo monitor, it's already a big deal for me to be asking for a $350 LG monitor.
Casey:
And now we're talking about a $1,000 or $1,500 Apple monitor.
Casey:
On the one side, it would be an easy sell because it's first party.
Casey:
On the other side, there's no freaking way they're going to spend that kind of money on me.
Casey:
So you're right, Marco, that I would be first in line for it in the sense that I would want it more than anything in the world.
Casey:
But I don't think my company would pay for it.
Casey:
I don't think I would want to pay for it for a work computer.
Casey:
And either way, I think this is all kind of moot because John is exactly right.
Casey:
It's unlikely that my existing effectively brand new MacBook Pro would be able to drive it anyway.
Casey:
So in summary, Casey said.
Marco:
So, I mean, this is obviously, like, you know, in a perfect world, you would get a brand new computer, you know, in a few months or whatever that has all this stuff.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Obviously, that's probably not going to happen.
Marco:
Second option here, because, you know, if you need any ammo with... It sounds like you don't, but if you need any ammo with IT, you can tell them that Marco Arment, noted Apple authority on whatever, says that, like, seriously, if you are doing...
Marco:
iOS development on a Mac, it must be Retina.
Marco:
Like, period.
Marco:
You have to... Because the exact reason you mentioned, every iOS device that runs iOS 10 is Retina.
Marco:
So if you're doing iOS development, you are running your software on Retina devices...
Marco:
And the simulator does not run correctly in an accurate way on non-retina screens unless you blow it up and then it looks... But even then, it's wrong for different reasons.
Marco:
To responsibly develop for iOS, if you have any budget at all, and if you're working for an employer...
Marco:
what you cost them every month is way more than computer equipment.
Marco:
So it's understandable if you're a hobbyist and you only have an old Mac, fine, that's one thing.
Marco:
But if you're working in an office for a professional company in the United States that makes iOS, and your job is to make iOS software...
Marco:
You need to be using a retina screen and preferably the largest one that you can possibly find, because that is just that is just the practical reality of developing iOS applications.
Marco:
That is what they need.
Marco:
It's it's simple as that.
Marco:
So you might want to consider all of this is probably not going to happen and you're probably going to tell me immediately.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
In the meantime, if you can't get them to spring for a brand new computer and a brand new 5K monitor next year or next month or next week, what about switching to a 5K iMac at work?
Marco:
Is that an option?
John:
That costs a lot more than a $350 Anoha or whatever monitor that was, LG monitor.
Casey:
Yeah, the LG monitor is under $350, and even two of them is cheaper than one iMac.
Casey:
And it's funny because from time to time I work from home, and as long as I'm hitting our production servers, I'm not doing any work that requires our QA or development servers, I don't need to be on our VPN.
Casey:
And I will do work from home on my iMac, and it is awesome.
Casey:
Amazing.
Casey:
It is so much nicer than doing work at work.
Casey:
See, that's a problem.
Casey:
Well, right.
Casey:
No, it is.
Casey:
It really is.
Casey:
And in that sense, you're absolutely right.
Casey:
But for better or worse, right, wrong or indifferent, I prefer to have a laptop so that if I want to work from home and I need to get on the VPN or I need to have something that for some crazy reason is only on my work laptop...
Casey:
I'd prefer to have a laptop, which means I think my future setup will be either one or two of these LG monitors.
Casey:
And I think all told, I'm going to be really happy with it.
Casey:
But the initial reply from my IT guy was, well, throw away one of your Lenovo monitors and use your laptop and shut up, which...
Casey:
Truth be told, it's not an unreasonable answer.
Marco:
Yeah, that is also an option.
Casey:
Yeah, but I like having the two identical screens, and so that's why I'm avoiding that.
Casey:
I think in the future I will probably end up doing one of these 4Ks and then bite the bullet and unclamshell my MacBook Pro.
Casey:
or in a more perfect world, two of the 4K displays, and in the most perfect of perfect worlds, somehow the company falls upon even more money, and they get me one of these phantom new displays with one of the phantom new Macs.
Casey:
But given that my Mac is on a two-year lease, and I've only been there like seven or eight months, that's probably not going to happen.
Marco:
What about two MacBook Pros side-by-side?
Marco:
You have your two side-by-side monitors that are the exact same size, they're both retina, and your company seems to be totally okay by MacBook Pros.
Casey:
Yeah, if only it were that easy.
Casey:
Well, leasing MacBook Pros, and if only it were that easy.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I mean, I hear you.
Casey:
And so in that sense, this is a very long way to say, heck yeah, I'd love to have one of these phantom USB-C 5K displays, but I don't foresee one being in my future unless I fund it.
Casey:
And even then, it won't be for two years because my work Mac won't support it.
John:
Kind of like the Mac Mini, Apple has conditioned us all over many years, not just a Thunderbolt display, not to expect Apple to update its monitors in any reasonable time frame.
John:
So that's why I think despite the fact that I really want a 5K display to connect to a hypothetical Mac Pro in the future, it's...
John:
It's below all those other items in terms of what they should do, because Apple's history with monitors is just abysmal.
John:
They'll introduce an amazing monitor and just let it sit there for years, and then introduce another amazing monitor and let it sit there for years, and then apparently now discontinue it.
John:
And then I fully expect if they continue to make monitors at all, they will eventually announce another amazing monitor and then let it sit there for years.
John:
So the trick is buy it around the time they announce it when it's still amazing.
John:
Don't buy it at the end of its umpteen year life cycle.
John:
So...
John:
I'm trying not to get my hopes up about it being announced, so I won't be disappointed if it's not announced.
John:
But either way, I don't think it's in their priority list.
John:
It doesn't come before any of the things that we've discussed so far in terms of that they have to do this to either because they're going to sell a lot of them, which they're not as a thousand dollar monitor, or that they need to reassure people, which they don't, because like the Mac mini, we're all just used to the fact that monitors are not a thing that Apple updates.
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Marco:
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Marco:
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John:
Yeah, and of course, I never travel anywhere, but my wife has been traveling lately, and so she took it with her.
John:
And so, obviously, the built-in USB thing, again, the first time you see it, you're like, why doesn't everybody do this?
John:
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John:
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John:
It made her want to use it instead of just ignoring it and pretending there is no lock on it.
John:
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Casey:
All right, John, you were the one who had kind of a flow to how we would discuss this.
Casey:
What comes next?
John:
Well, the other angle on this is things that we wish they would announce, but I think we've mostly covered that with the things that we would want versus the things that are actually important for Apple to announce.
John:
So we already talked about the Mac Pros and the monitor and all sorts of stuff like that.
John:
Do any of us think there is a reasonable chance of a wild card that is not related to Macs or AirPods or anything that is expected or rumored?
Casey:
You know, I hear that there's a hub that's coming one of these days.
Casey:
The hub wild card.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I don't think so.
Casey:
I'll snark aside.
Casey:
There's nothing I can think of.
John:
The wild card could be something about the Macs that we're not talking about.
John:
Like, we haven't mentioned, like, you know, Touch ID and all that.
John:
That doesn't count.
John:
We've all seen the rumors that, like, something that has not even been rumored.
Marco:
USB 3 to Ethernet.
John:
they don't have that they only have usb 2 or thunderbolt that's true that's true they're studying hubs and dongles i mean i guess that's a wild card but yeah like is that i don't know that it's true that we haven't been talking about that mostly because it's not that interesting because there's a million third-party things that you can plug into your max and they will continue to me but maybe that counts i don't know
Marco:
Here's a question.
Marco:
More on the MacBook Pros, because there are still a few big things we don't know about them that a lot of people keep asking about.
Marco:
Do you think they will have lightning ports for headphones?
Marco:
My guess is no, because I think lightning ports are going to stay iOS device only for plenty of various platform chip reasons in all likelihood, but
Marco:
I don't think they have Touch ID in there, though.
Casey:
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
Casey:
Before we answer, okay, let's assume they do not have lightning ports for headphones, Marco.
Casey:
Would you say then that they have a headphone jack at all, or is it screw you, it's Bluetooth or nothing?
Marco:
I suspect they will still have a headphone jack or a lightning port.
Marco:
And honestly, I think the more likely answer is they're still just going to have a headphone port.
Marco:
But I think they're going to have one or the other.
Marco:
They're not going to have nothing.
John:
Yeah, I think they will still have a plain old headphone port, mostly, though, because I would imagine slash hope that these Macs hardware was designed longer ago than we would like to think.
John:
You know, the Intel delays with Skylake and everything like that, that, you know...
John:
i think they'll still have headphone ports now second question is what do you think they should have would you like a macbook of any kind that did not have a plain old headphone jack but instead had either a lightning jack or nothing is that something that would be attractive to you in any way or you just see as damage basically
Casey:
I mean, I'm always on Bluetooth.
Casey:
I shouldn't say always.
Casey:
From time to time, if I have forgotten to charge my headphones in forever, which occasionally happens but is very, very rare, I would plug in my old earbuds or potentially my lightning earbuds to the Mac.
Casey:
But for me, it would not bother me if there was no audio jack of any kind and it was Bluetooth or nothing.
Marco:
To me, if I'm using my MacBook for some kind of audio output, one of the things I would do most often there is podcast editing while traveling.
Marco:
And so I can't take any latency.
Marco:
And podcast recording would also be a big thing.
Marco:
Although that wouldn't use the built-in headphone jack.
Marco:
Anyway...
Marco:
uh basically latency is is a big deal killer for me on that so bluetooth would be a very hard sell so if there's any kind of if i'm using headphones on a mac laptop most of the time i'm going to want them to be wired and so if they're going to be wired anyway they might as well either be the same lightning headphones that i can presumably use with my iphone if i ever make that switch like i probably will eventually uh or a regular headphone jack
John:
i think i'm pretty much on board with the idea of in the future replacing the headphone jack with lighting jack on max i'm not so necessarily saying apple's going to do it but i would be mostly okay with that i just think that it should lag behind the conversion in the ios ecosystem because you know we just have the iphone 7 which is the first device to do this give it a few years see if the headphone situation shakes itself out if it does and it looks like it's safe and and you have lots and lots of people
John:
with lightning headphones or with those little $9 adapters or whatever, and it's like, then, okay, all clear, you can replace the headphone jack on the Mac.
John:
And the only reason you'd be replacing it is basically uniformity.
John:
And, you know, I mean, it's not like you're trying to shave those little bits of size out of the inside of your MacBooks.
John:
It's not as constrained as it is on a phone.
John:
But uniformity would be nice.
John:
And I think once they start adding Touch ID and stuff to Macs, you start incorporating...
John:
chips and other technologies from ios devices into max for that purpose it's not too far to to go from there to lightning and i think you can do potentially interesting things with a lightning port it's it's i know it's weird to like you've got usbc right next to lightning and they're similar sizes and we talked about this way back in the day about like oh i want it to be confusing to have two and they'll put them in the wrong slots and stuff i feel like these are surmountable problems but
John:
In the short term, I would prefer if the Macs they announce on the 27th have a plain old headphone jack, and I would not like a Mac that has neither of those things in it.
Casey:
I mean, I don't think it would bother me, but the only time it would really bother me that occurred to me when you were talking is I don't have noise-canceling or noise-isolating headphones that are Bluetooth.
Casey:
So on a plane, when I want to listen to my ultimate ears that are in-ears that are noise-isolating, they're traditional wired headphones or earbuds, whatever.
Casey:
And that would really annoy me because typically I'll use either my iPad or my Mac on a long flight.
Casey:
And so that would really bum me out unless I could do the lightning to traditional headphone dance.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Well, and Apple's response to that kind of thing, usually if they move to a new thing or the deletion of an old technology like a port, if it results in people having to just buy new X, in this case, buy new headphones and this problem goes away,
Marco:
If it can be solved that way, Apple doesn't care.
Marco:
They'll just say, okay, well, fine, buy new headphones.
Marco:
You will eventually buy new headphones.
Marco:
So when that happens, you'll be okay.
Marco:
Or maybe it will motivate you to buy them sooner rather than later.
Marco:
Apple does not care if that is the answer.
Marco:
It's arguable whether they should care because you're throwing more cost onto people if they want to make this move.
Marco:
So that does add up and that money matters to most people who are buying it.
Marco:
But Apple doesn't care.
Marco:
But the problem comes when there is nothing better to move to.
Marco:
Or if the things that they're telling you, well, this problem goes away, if you just switch to X or you just stop needing Y, sometimes the result of what you use instead, they just don't have a good answer for that.
Marco:
Or the answer has a lot of other downsides that the old way didn't have.
John:
so i've got an idea for a wild card that as far as i know hasn't been rumored although i haven't been paying that much attention to it um and this is a special feature just for casey how about a waterproof laptop oh yeah yeah yeah ha ha ha no no ha ha like i think it's like as we you know we've got the phone that is waterproof basically and i think this is a feature that should be rolled out across the entire product line uh
John:
it's no reason to not put it on iPads and everything else, because it's kind of weird to have this very expensive device that you, that becomes important to your life that you bring around with you, that if you get like a little splash of water on it, potentially in the wrong spot, it's dead.
John:
And it's dead in a really bad way.
John:
And that like there's special provisions and the various warranties that Apple does, like it's treated differently.
John:
It's so, you know,
John:
I don't like that.
John:
I like feeling a little bit more confident.
John:
And laptops, you know, people spill things in them all the time.
John:
Now, can you make it as waterproof as a phone?
John:
Probably not because of the keyboard and all that other stuff.
John:
But how about a more water resistant version of a laptop?
John:
lots of you know pc makers make laptops that are better about dealing with water than any of apple's i think apple can improve in this area and that would be an interesting uh place to go i think it's an attractive feature for people i think lots of people have spilled liquid into their laptops and you don't have to sell it as like hey you can use your laptop underwater in the pool just maybe like
John:
Be more resilient to splashes.
John:
That's all I'm saying.
John:
I feel like they could do that and it would be a benefit and everybody would see it.
John:
And if they rolled that across their entire product line, eventually we would take it for granted and wouldn't be able to go back to the days where the tiniest splash can fry your whole computer.
Marco:
Oh, if only.
Marco:
That's a tough challenge, I think.
Marco:
Because if you think about the physical attributes and needs of a laptop, one of the most common...
Marco:
water problems they have is as case you knows because people often have drinks on the table next to a laptop this is you know in coffee shops on desks like all the time people have this and so if that drink goes over it's basically going to pour directly into the middle of the laptop where the laptop is covered in a giant grid of holes for keys to go through
Marco:
And if it misses the keys, it'll go into the speakers or the vents because they're air-cooled.
John:
So like on a phone, you don't really have – you have a way smaller – You got speakers, you got ports, and the keyboard you can put in a big bathtub.
Marco:
You have a way smaller number of entry points on a phone.
Marco:
And it's just a much simpler shape.
Marco:
There are fewer holes.
Marco:
You don't have air cooling of like the internals having a fan constantly sucking air through vents.
John:
You don't have that on the MacBook either.
John:
I'm thinking you start with the MacBook and you don't try to keep water to the keyboard because it's impossible.
John:
instead you just make the keyboard a sealed off region where you can spill water in there and then you pour the water out of there like in other words water that goes in through the keyboard does not go to the rest of the computer speakers same deal you know it's just like on the watch or anything else or on the phone yes there are speakers yes you will get water in them and screw them up as long as you can get the water out and it doesn't destroy the entire computer and again start with the macbook no fan because that's obviously the hardest one because you can all the other things you can deal with but fans having like air cooling and waterproof really don't
John:
mix with each other in any sane way um but i feel like this is an area where that could be improved even if you just did the keyboard part of it like the keyboard and speaker part but still if you got water in the air vent it's you're still screwed right because you're right the people spill it on the top of the thing so this is a this is a feature that apple should roll out eventually uh you know across all its entire product line uh it probably is not going to come this year or that we would have heard rumors of it um and if there were rumors i missed them but i think that's a that's a fun wild card
Marco:
Well, and by the way, for whatever it's worth, we are about to have, by all measures, we're about to have at least two new Macs announced in a week and probably three or more.
Marco:
And we have seen...
Marco:
almost no parts leaks we like we we know roughly like there was like that one case in the top case yeah with the place where the little strip yeah we saw one 13 inch top case and that was once ago and that's it we don't know anything about the 15 inch we don't know anything about the the possible air if that wasn't it uh like we don't know anything about these computers except for like you know some of the feature bullet points which i think is kind of exciting i i love not knowing like all the details of how they're going to look and what kind of you know what exactly they're going to have like
John:
and what colors they'll come in or whatever yeah well it's because people don't care like that's that's honestly what it is like there's a lower volume like it's it's easier to keep a secret when you sell in lower volume and it's easier to keep a secret and when only weird mac nerds care about this stuff so it must be a refreshing grapple
Casey:
You know, it's funny, John, you just said something about colors, and I'd like to go back like half an hour in the conversation.
Casey:
Wildcard, colors.
Casey:
That's not a wildcard.
John:
That's been rumored, right?
Casey:
Oh, has it?
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Well, and the MacBook One has colors, so, you know.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree, but I'm saying the whole line or more of the line.
Marco:
Jet black.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
I don't think I want jet black, but a matte black?
Mm-mm-mm.
Marco:
Well, here's one thing I thought of, too.
Marco:
And again, this is probably overthinking it.
Marco:
But if you look at the invitation, the colors in that logo are very close to the metal colors that Apple's recent hardware is available in, with the exception of that orange.
Marco:
But if you look at, they have a little tip of silver, a little gold, pink, and black.
John:
And red and orange.
John:
I don't know.
John:
That's a stretch.
Marco:
Yeah, that's why.
Marco:
I mean, it is a stretch.
Marco:
But, you know, there's certainly something.
Marco:
I would expect that there are probably going to be at least the same colors that the MacBook 1 is in, which is basically all of them except rose gold.
Marco:
Did they make a rose gold MacBook 1 finally or no?
John:
i thought they did oh maybe this year they did it's the thing the thing with those colors is it's all basically silver aluminum with a tint that is so gentle that depending on the lighting in the room they change appearance like it's like those cars that are gray but look very you know have some color like the colors are not particularly bold whereas i would say matte black is bold and obviously jet black is bold i don't really don't think they're gonna make a jet black mac but they could totally make a matte black one and i would love it i just haven't seen it rumored
Casey:
I would love to see it.
Marco:
Yeah, because honestly, the space gray MacBook 1, I think it would look a lot better if it was darker, basically.
Marco:
It looks fine, but if I were getting a MacBook 1 today, I actually wouldn't necessarily get space gray just because it's not, I don't know, it's kind of a middle color.
Marco:
I wish it would be a little bit more towards one or the other.
Casey:
Yep, I agree.
Okay.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Anything else on the event?
Casey:
I know that there's another thing that just got rumored today that we can talk about, but anything else about the event specifically?
John:
I think it's related to the event, this next rumor thing, because the rumor, the story that was circulating today was about...
John:
a keyboard that wasn't just like a regular keyboard with a new strip on top of it that is a screen of some kind replacing the function keys, but rather that every key on the keyboard would be kind of like a miniature e-ink display and be changeable, have all the keycaps be changeable or whatever.
John:
um and it's weird to see this type of story breaking like shortly before an event when max will be announced but i think we all pretty much agree and even these stories agree even if this whole thing about the e and keyboards is true it's not for this event right
Casey:
That seemed consistent.
Casey:
It seemed kind of odd to me.
Casey:
Like the idea in general, which is have the entire keyboard, every key be its own e-ink display so it can change what key does what as you change modes.
Casey:
So say perhaps if you hold the command key, maybe you could see some text describing what each of those keys does.
Casey:
And you hold command option and the text changes to show what each of these hotkeys do.
Casey:
Or maybe emoji come up on the physical keyboard like in and of itself.
Casey:
I don't think that's an unreasonable idea, but it seemed odd to me that it sounded like Apple was going to a Foxconn like subsidiary or something like that in order to get this.
Casey:
It seemed to me more like Apple would just buy this company or something along those lines if they really were interested in doing this sort of thing.
Casey:
And it was also an odd time for this rumor to leak, like you said.
Casey:
So I don't put a whole lot of credence into this, even though the idea in and of itself, I think, sounds kind of cool.
John:
Anytime you see a story like this where a particular company is mentioned, especially if it's a startup, like someone's like an Australian startup, Apple is teaming up with them to blah, blah, blah.
John:
Like it's easy to read these stories as intentional leak fabrication PR by someone who is interested in seeing this startup's prospects being boosted.
John:
Like, guess what?
John:
Apple is secretly working with this startup on the next generation above.
John:
Like, who knows what the actual dearest was like.
John:
I don't want to see an individual company's name in my rumors because then I start thinking this entire story is a plant to boost the IPO or stock price or whatever of this company.
John:
Right.
John:
And so that makes me suspicious of this and timing as well.
John:
Like.
John:
If you're not saying this is going to be announced on the 27th, like, save it until after.
John:
It's like, even if you had this story and you were like 9 to 5 Mac or something, you would save it until after.
John:
Because everyone right now should be talking about the increasingly accurate rumors about what's going to be announced on the 27th.
John:
Not, oh, guess what?
John:
You know, the next Apple act up after the ones that haven't been announced yet, they're going to have a totally reconfigurable screen.
John:
So...
John:
I think this is not a great story.
John:
I don't expect to see reconfigurable ink keycaps on the 27th, and I'm not entirely convinced that it's a great idea.
John:
Even when I just think about emoji, it's like ink is cruddy.
John:
Ink is slow, needs to be refreshed.
John:
You can't use it like the keycaps control panel on the old Macs where you hold down the shift key and all the keycaps on the keyboard change to capitals.
John:
It's just too slow and clunky for that.
John:
You have to constantly be clearing out the cruddy little
John:
pixels or little balls that haven't turned over and it's just it's just not particularly apple like and we talked about it for the little strip on top and the idea would be that it doesn't change that frequently and that it can be reconfigurable in super low power but all the rumors have been pointing towards that being a color screen and when you mentioned emoji who wants to see black and white emoji keycaps you want to see a little yellow smiley face that's true actually i didn't even think about that but that's a really good point
John:
so i'm not putting much in this although i do kind of like the idea of an infinitely reconfigurable keyboard but i still feel like that's going to come by apple finally getting the guts the courage to get rid of all the moving keys and just make a giant oled thing down oh please don't even suggest that oh god you'll live to see it just wait oh it'll agree at the first keyboard i can't use at all that'll be wonderful
John:
Microsoft has discontinued your keyboard too, so I don't know what you're using.
Marco:
Well, at their Surface event, that's like two days before this, they're going to announce a new ergonomic Bluetooth keyboard that's going to be Surface branded.
Marco:
I'm just hoping it's good.
John:
Surface branded?
John:
What about it is Surface-y?
John:
Is it going to have screens on it?
Marco:
No, they're making basically like their own iMac and they're calling it Surface something or other.
Marco:
It's like going to be in the Surface family just by branding.
Marco:
And they're making a whole new line of Surface branded keyboards and I think maybe mice also.
Marco:
And one of them is an ergonomic Bluetooth keyboard that is apparently going to replace my beloved Sculpt ergonomic keyboard.
John:
Yours is wired though, right?
Marco:
No, it's wireless, but it has its own little custom dongle that kind of sucks.
Marco:
It's not nearly as good as the Logitech ones.
John:
A Surface-branded iMac, will you be able to touch the screen?
John:
I'm not quite sure how far they can stretch the Surface thing.
John:
What is the Surface that you're talking about?
John:
Because it's not a tablet and it's not a touchscreen.
Marco:
I mean, if it's thin enough, like the iMac, if you touch that a lot, you'll knock it over.
Marco:
That seems like a terrible idea.
John:
I know what I'm saying.
John:
Will it be actually a touchscreen?
John:
Because they can make it a touchscreen because their OS supports that.
Marco:
yeah it's probably just like branding it's probably going to be a regular computer anyway uh i hope they release that soon because i want to buy its keyboard and hopefully you can buy the keyboard separately earlier than rather than later but we'll see their mics are pretty good about that usually it's probably going to be available anyway are we done
Casey:
Yeah, I think so.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks to our three sponsors this week, Hover, Automatic, and Away.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, 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-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental, they didn't mean that.
Casey:
All right.
Marco:
So we have lots of options for the post-show here.
Marco:
We can talk about Tesla.
Marco:
We can talk about Project Titan.
Marco:
We can talk about... Titan is a show topic.
Marco:
We're going to save that for... Yeah.
John:
Especially since it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
Marco:
We can talk about the debate.
Marco:
We can talk about my camera stuff.
Marco:
Actually, I did want to throw in one quick thing about the camera stuff while we're talking about the Mac laptops.
Marco:
I've mentioned in the past that I pretty much always go 15-inch, and I usually don't regret that choice.
Marco:
And I have often regretted when I've gone smaller.
Marco:
I am considering whatever the new 13-inch Air ends up being this time around.
Marco:
Because one thing I noticed when I started using this new Canon camera that we mentioned last week,
Marco:
So my Sony camera that I might be replacing or at least using less is 42 megapixels.
Marco:
And I shoot RAW for lots of good reasons.
Marco:
And so processing 42 megapixel RAW files just crushes computers.
Marco:
They're so bad and they're so slow at processing those files.
Marco:
Even doing simple things like just rendering a preview is a very sluggish operation.
Marco:
And this is true between both Lightroom and Apple Photos.
Marco:
So it isn't just like a Lightroom problem.
Marco:
By comparison, so that's 42 megapixels.
Marco:
The Canon is 30, which is still a very high-resolution picture.
Marco:
But for whatever reason, I assume it's because many image processing operations are not linear in complexity.
Marco:
They're probably exponential or at least worse than linear because they have to operate on pixels that are around other pixels and everything.
Marco:
So for whatever reason, processing of a 30 megapixel picture...
Marco:
is not only faster than a 42 megapixel picture but faster by more than you'd expect by the you know 33 fewer pixels like it's it's more than that much faster it's a lot faster maybe the canon the drivers for the 5d are just better optimized you know what i mean like the whatever the the camera raw blah blah thing that knows like oh yeah this sensor's raw data here's how i should interpret it
John:
I can imagine that being very mature software for the 5D, assuming that doesn't change from the Mark III to the Mark IV or whatever.
John:
I don't know enough about cameras to know if that changes.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, as far... I mean, well, it does have this weird dual-picture thing, but I don't have that enabled.
Marco:
It's basically... I would imagine, you know, Adobe probably optimizes as much as possible for Canon SLRs, especially for the big ones.
Marco:
Because, like, if you think about, like, who is using Lightroom?
Marco:
And, like, you know, what are the most popular cameras using Adobe Lightroom?
Marco:
I guarantee you the Canon 5D series is going to be pretty high on that list.
Marco:
And Canon in general is going to be very high on that list.
Marco:
So yeah, you're probably right to some degree.
Marco:
However, I do still think that many common image processing operations are worse than linear in time complexity as the number of pixels grows.
Marco:
But anyway, so because of that, because of this being, like, way, way faster to process images, I actually might be able to step down reasonably to the 13-inch.
Marco:
So I actually might try that this cycle.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
But what about Xcode?
John:
That was the whole reason, like, oh, when I'm on vacation, I need to do some work stuff.
John:
I hate not having the tiny screen when I try to fire up Xcode and stuff.
Marco:
It's mostly that I, like...
Marco:
Basically, I hardly ever actually do that with my laptop.
Marco:
And I also, I thought for a while, I thought that I could bring only my new 9.7-inch iPad Pro on trips where I was not going to be able to get any work done.
Marco:
And figuring that like, worst case scenario, let's say I have some major server problems.
Marco:
And I need to do a whole bunch of like logging into servers, changing stuff, resetting stuff, or setting up new servers, whatever it is.
Marco:
I need terminals for that.
Marco:
And on the iPad, there is a wonderful app I panicked called Prompt, which is a pretty good terminal app.
Marco:
And so I thought for a while, like, oh, this would be wonderful.
Marco:
I could just bring this on a trip.
Marco:
And if the unthinkable happens and I need to do a bunch of server work, I really, I can just use Prompt and I can log into my servers there with my little external smart keyboard from the iPad.
Marco:
It'll be fine.
Okay.
Marco:
This week, I actually tried to do that because this past week, I had to upgrade all of my SSH keys from the old DSA format to the less old RSA format and increase everything because basically Sierra does not allow you to log in without modification.
Marco:
It does not allow you to log in with DSA keys.
Marco:
And yes, there's some various things you could try.
Marco:
There's configuration options you can do to fix that, but I couldn't find any of them at the moment.
Marco:
So I thought, all right, let me just...
Marco:
I go to my iPad because I know Prompt can still log in with these old keys.
Marco:
And it already had my key on it.
Marco:
So I thought, great, this will be perfect.
Marco:
I'll use Prompt.
Marco:
I'll log into my old servers and I'll add my new keys to it.
Marco:
And it was great because I got to do wonderful things like use the new shared clipboard feature.
Marco:
So I could copy my keys on my Mac and then paste them into Prompt and into a server window and add it to the authorized keys file.
Marco:
So wonderful things there.
Marco:
It was wonderful.
Marco:
However, I learned during that process that using the iPad and that keyboard and not like a full-blown terminal app, but just like this kind of iOS-ified terminal app, even though as terminal apps go for iOS, prompt is great, but it is nothing compared to having a whole bunch of terminals and a real keyboard on my Mac.
Marco:
Not even close.
Marco:
And I decided then and there, if I actually ever needed to do major server work on this, this would not be a fun experience.
Marco:
I would really regret it, and I would wish for a Mac.
Marco:
And on trips, too, there was a great discussion on Upgrade this week.
Marco:
Where Jason Snell and Mike really were talking about this and kind of discussing like what they bring on trips, because both of them are very heavy iPad users now.
Marco:
And they both mostly just use Macs now for things like media production tasks like podcast and video editing that are just...
Marco:
still done better on the Mac, even though they both attempt to do it on iPads, more Jason.
Marco:
And one thing Jason said, which I thought was very apt about trying to use the iPad for, you know, quote, productivity or making it your only traveling device.
Marco:
One of the things is like with the iPad...
Marco:
you often just hit a wall, just something that it just can't do.
Marco:
And sometimes you can download an app or use a certain workflow or use some kind of big workaround, but sometimes you just can't.
Marco:
Sometimes the answer is you just can't do that really on an iPad or whatever.
Marco:
And so the idea of me ever bringing an iPad only on a trip now...
Marco:
has gotten a lot as I've used the iPad more and as I've tried to do more productive things on it, I have realized more and more that this is not a device for me to be productive with.
Marco:
Other people can do it good for them.
Marco:
It's not for me.
Marco:
It really does not fit both the kind of work I do, the kinds of needs I sometimes have when I'm traveling, and just the way I like to work.
Marco:
It is not for me.
Marco:
So I really want something small that I can travel with.
Marco:
And
Marco:
The MacBook One, obviously, is the way to go for optimizing for that.
Marco:
But that's just too far in the other direction.
Marco:
And that would make me miserable every time I had to use it because I really hate the keyboard.
Marco:
It really doesn't have enough power for me, etc.
Marco:
The MacBook Pro is great, but huge.
Marco:
And so I do kind of want to bring it places less because of how big it is.
Marco:
So that's why I'm kind of thinking maybe I'll try the 13-inch this year.
Marco:
Because I don't often need Xcode on the go.
Marco:
for the few times i do i i could you know i'd be just fine on on a macbook air i i've done it before that's how i wrote half of instapaper so like i've done it before i know i can do it lots of people do it every day it's not like it's unheard of as long as it's retina casey uh i'm not gonna do ios i'm not retina damn it but
Marco:
But anyway, so that's why I'm kind of thinking about that this time.
Marco:
And ask me again in six months when I say, oh, God, I should have gotten the 15.
Marco:
But we'll see.
Marco:
And we don't know anything about these yet.
Marco:
So the 15 could be so compelling, I might just get it anyway.
Marco:
Or the 13-inch might be the star of the show.
Marco:
uh or the 13-inch could be really you know i could be wrong the the retina air might not exist and then you know the 13-inch macbook pro is an option but it's you know that's so close to the 15 in size and weight that i kind of might as well go 15 at that point so i don't know we'll see what happens but i just i figured it was an interesting waffle you know mark was waffling segment here uh interesting that i was considering that uh for the unexpected reason that processing the files from this new camera is so ridiculously much faster than processing from the previous one
John:
You should get a keyboard for your iPad.
John:
Like, not that it'll make the terminal as good as it is in the Mac, but a lot of my frustration is like, well, so the keyboard takes up half your screen.
Marco:
No, no, no.
John:
I have the Apple smart keyboard.
John:
Oh, and even then you thought it wasn't what was an inferior experience other than the fact that you can't have multiple windows and like moving around and everything.
Marco:
I mean, part of it is that the Apple Smart Keyboard isn't a very good keyboard, and so there's things like there's no escape key, which when you're using Vim is kind of annoying.
Marco:
Really?
Marco:
When doing a lot of terminal work, it's kind of annoying, actually.
Marco:
And there's one right on screen that I just had to keep hitting, but it's annoying.
John:
There's no escape key on the big, if you have the 12-inch?
John:
iPad Pro also knows the escape key on the keyboard?
Marco:
I don't know about that one, but on the 9.7 smart keyboard, there is no escape key.
Marco:
And so that's annoying.
Marco:
There's a couple other missing keys that are kind of annoying to have.
Marco:
Also, one thing I found, I don't know if this is a problem with prompt or the keyboard, but I would very often get keystrokes that...
Marco:
that would arrive in the terminal in the wrong order that i type them which is infuriating like it's like it was very very difficult i assume that maybe prompt isn't handling latency correctly in that case or something or there's some problem between the keyboard and the ipad and prompt and the terminal like somewhere on the line keystrokes were actually getting jumbled and if if you typed anything too quickly and that sucks that's something like that is not acceptable at all for terminal work
Marco:
So and also just, you know, the complexity of of iPad multitasking, you know, not being, you know, being a lot more primitive than what you can get on a Mac if you want like multiple windows open and stuff like that.
Marco:
So it's just like it's the kind of thing like in an emergency, you could do simple things on it, but I really would not want to.
Marco:
And I would much rather take out a Mac and do it right and do it there.
Casey:
What else is going on?
John:
Is anyone thinking of buying anything after the Apple event?
John:
Like, Marco, I guess you're in the market for a laptop, it sounds like, but anyone else?
Marco:
Actually, I do want AirPods.
Marco:
I don't know if I'm going to end up being able to wear them comfort-wise, but I really do want to try them for their most likely incredible convenience.
Marco:
To be able to have, as I mentioned before, to be able to have headphones that I can literally put in this, like,
Marco:
large tic-tac shaped box in my pocket and carry them somewhere without having anything in larger pockets or around my neck or in a bag like that is incredibly compelling for me so if i can do that at all i i want them um and comfort wise i i have low expectations i i hope i can wear them at all i don't expect them to be great i just hope i can wear them at all uh i do expect them to be very annoying in the lack of controls on them
Marco:
But I'm hoping maybe that I can overcome that or just tolerate it when I'm using them or start using the Apple Watch when I'm out walking my dog or something like that.
Casey:
Yeah, I'm not going to buy AirPods immediately after the event, but I think they're going on my holiday list because I'd really like to try a pair.
Casey:
And I think they'll come in handy from time to time, even if I don't use them regularly.
Casey:
But I don't plan on buying any new hardware outside of potentially AirPods eventually based on the event.
Casey:
What about you, John?
John:
So my current plan is about six months from now, after work has gone through all of their current inventory of MacBook Pros that they hand out to people, I'm going to finally replace my Mac at work and replace it with one of the new MacBook Pros, which I hope I will be guaranteed to get at that point.
Marco:
Wow.
John:
I have the same Mac that I got the day I started at my job seven or so years ago.
John:
It's a 2009 Mac Pro.
John:
It has never been upgraded.
John:
Our current upgrade cycle of work, I forget what it is, but I think it's really short.
John:
It's like 18 months or something.
John:
You can get a new computer or maybe it's two years.
John:
I don't remember.
John:
Anyway, I'm kind of overdue.
John:
It's seven or eight years with my computer.
John:
So they're not going to get me an iMac.
John:
Everyone gets laptops.
John:
I don't think that's even a choice.
John:
I don't think I can swing it by convincing them that I need to... I wouldn't want a Mac Pro, obviously, at this point.
John:
And I don't think I can convince them about a 5K iMac.
John:
So I'm going to end up getting a laptop.
John:
And the best laptop I can get is a 15-inch Pro.
John:
But I do not want one of the current 15-inch Pros for obvious reasons.
John:
I want the new ones.
John:
So when the new ones are announced, the clock starts ticking on to when is it safe for me at work to ask for a new computer and to be able to get one of the new 15-inches.
John:
Because I don't want to ask for 15-inch and they ask to give me an old one because it's just a whole big thing.
John:
So...
John:
There is a timer that will start on the 27th, most likely, but no immediate action.
John:
Oh, and I will probably, I'll look at the AirPods.
John:
Like I'm still planning to upgrade my iPhone, still haven't been to the Apple store to pick out a color, but eventually that will happen.
John:
And I'm almost certain I'm going to get the AirPods just to try them.
John:
AirPods, whatever the hell they're called.
John:
Stop making rhyming product names, Apple.
John:
I'm almost guaranteed to get them because I like the current ear pod things and I wanted a wireless thing.
John:
So that's probably going to happen.