Dark Night of the Soul
Marco:
We decided to schedule this week's show directly against Game 7, right?
Marco:
Of the baseball series.
Marco:
That's World Series, but only in the USA.
Marco:
Canada 2.
Marco:
That doesn't really count.
Marco:
That's not the world.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
They should call it the North American minus Mexico Series.
Ha ha ha.
Casey:
I guess you could go that way.
Casey:
I am currently, probably to my own peril, attempting to log into my Slingbox from my Mac and see if I can turn the game on and provide live updates for you, Marco, since I know you are deeply concerned about the score of Game 7.
Marco:
You should.
Marco:
So this, just the basics, obviously this means that each of the teams won three games, so they're tied, now they have to have a tiebreaker game, is that?
Casey:
That is correct.
Marco:
And other than that, is there anything special about how this game works?
Marco:
Are there any rule changes, like it ends after a certain score, or is it just a regular game?
Casey:
I don't think there's any difference now.
Casey:
Outside of, there's some rule, I forget what's what, but one league can do, what is it, a pinch hitter, designated hitter, something?
Casey:
Oh my God.
Casey:
Designated hitter, something like that.
Casey:
And one league doesn't allow that, I believe.
Casey:
And I never understand the rules behind when that's permitted and when that isn't.
Marco:
Now, I heard people tell me that I should try to understand the infield fly rule.
Marco:
Is that the difference between the American League and the American League?
Casey:
a national league and no it is not i don't believe anyway um but yeah so the idea is when the whatever league allows for this thing is considered to be at home this this hitter thing then they do the hitter thing i think it's a pinch hitter is that right why am i explaining this i don't know what the hell i'm talking about so the two usa baseball leagues can't even agree on the rules
Marco:
Is this like a Republican Democrat kind of thing?
Marco:
It's different islands in the Galapagos.
John:
They evolved separately.
Casey:
We should probably cut all of that because that was painful to talk about, let alone listen to.
Casey:
Yeah, that's probably not going in.
Casey:
The Cleveland Indians and the Chicago Cubs are playing in the final game of the World Series as we speak.
Casey:
And as we are recording, it is top of the fourth.
Casey:
It's tied one-to-one.
Casey:
And I don't really have a preference who wins.
Casey:
I guess the Cubs, since they haven't won in forever.
Casey:
But whatever.
Casey:
Are they really still...
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
They're really still called the Indians, and they really still have that logo in 2016?
Marco:
That's correct.
Marco:
That is rough.
Marco:
Wow.
Casey:
I was going to give live updates, but given that having Sling Player running on my Mac is causing my iMacs fans to go at full tilt, I'm just going to go ahead and disconnect and turn that off.
Marco:
You know what would solve that problem?
Yeah.
Marco:
Oh, here we go.
Casey:
Here we go.
Casey:
Tell me, Marco, what would solve that problem?
Marco:
You know, Apple still barely does make one computer where the difference in fan audible noise levels between full load and idle is not distinguishable by the human ear most of the time in most rooms.
Casey:
Oh, the MacBook adorable that doesn't have a fan?
Casey:
That one?
Marco:
Hmm.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Two.
Marco:
That doesn't count.
Marco:
That doesn't count because that's always a full load.
Casey:
I'll just use I'll use the computer that's more modern.
Casey:
I'll go get my iPad mini.
Casey:
Hold on.
Casey:
Oh, goodness.
Casey:
Before Marco and I kill each other, we should probably start with some follow up.
Casey:
And there was an interesting thing posted.
Casey:
Over the last few days, as one would expect, the iFixit folks have gotten their hands on a MacBook Escape.
Casey:
And it's funny that I call it a MacBook Escape, which I believe I stole from Marco, because on that page, it says, and I'm quoting...
Casey:
Read on for our teardown of the MacBook Pro late 2016, parenthesis, escape edition, parenthesis.
Casey:
My question to you two is, is this simultaneous invention or did we get an uncredited citation?
Casey:
They're like, is this really our invention that they're just not citing us as the source?
John:
Well, first of all, it's not our invention, I'm pretty sure.
John:
It is the invention of whoever in the chat room suggested that.
John:
Just because we picked out of the chat room the name that we liked and then repeated it on the show does not mean that we invented that name.
Casey:
Sure it does.
Casey:
It's appropriate.
Casey:
No.
Casey:
That's how this works, right?
John:
Whoever suggested it in the chat room actually coined the term.
John:
And we were merely adopting it for a discussion, and I'm assuming it's simultaneous.
John:
But I just wanted to clear that.
John:
Marco was the one who pulled it out of the chat room, and I'm assuming Marco pulled it out of the chat room and didn't invent it himself because on the show he was reading things out of the chat room.
Marco:
yeah it was it before last week's show the people in the chat were discussing various names and they were calling it like escape escape book pro and f and book pro and a few other variations i'm not entirely sure who said if anyone actually said macbook escape as the as the official name but um well i've been corrected though on on twitter and other places um
Marco:
apparently the official name for this computer is macbook pro in parentheses 13 inch late 2016 two thunderbolt 3 ports and parentheses so from now on i have to call it that macbook pro 13 inch late 2016 two thunderbolt 3 ports not macbook escape because the former is a way better name apparently
John:
I'm disappointed that the name they hinted at in the presentation wasn't the actual name because they said, like, with function keys.
John:
So it was like MacBook Pro parentheses with function keys, but that is not obviously the official name.
John:
Apparently, the official name is that giant mouthful.
Marco:
Is that even that much better, though?
Marco:
Like, would that have been...
John:
Like, this is still not a name that anybody will know.
John:
The good thing about the parentheses with function keys is you could apply it to, like, any Mac model that comes with a keyboard with function keys on it now.
John:
You could say, like, you know, Apple Extended Keyboard with function keys.
John:
Exactly.
Marco:
Well, and, like, the whole reason, like, you know, the reason we gave this cute name and everyone said I should stop naming things because originally I was one of the people.
Marco:
I don't even know if I was the first, but I was...
Marco:
a popularizer of the name macbook one for the one port 12 inch macbook when that came out because i had a similar problem where they released this brand new computer that is radically different from everything else they make and they just called it macbook and like there was already a computer named macbook not even that long ago and lots people still have them and so like it was it was a vague uh name an ambiguous name
Marco:
And everyone was going through all these contortions in press articles to say the new MacBook, the 12-inch Retina MacBook, the MacBook with one USB port or whatever.
Marco:
Everyone was going through these contortions trying to unambiguously state which computer they were talking about because Apple's names aren't good enough.
Marco:
They're not precise enough.
Marco:
And this is one of those cases, too.
Marco:
And by the way, I do regret not calling it the MacBook 2 because in so many ways... That's true.
Marco:
I didn't even think about that.
Marco:
I had a few people tell me that.
John:
That's just adding confusion, though, because now it sounds like it's the sequel or something, and it is a pro.
Marco:
Yeah, well, it's an Air.
Marco:
I mean, really, let's be honest.
Marco:
It's a MacBook Air with a Retina screen, which, again, I wanted that, and I said it's going to be amazing, and they're going to sell a ton of them, and I stand by that.
Marco:
The early reviews say it is pretty good.
Marco:
It's not as good as I would like it to be in some ways, but overall, pretty good.
Marco:
I think it's probably going to be very successful if anybody can justify the price hike for it.
Marco:
That's a big if, but if they can do it, that'll be fine.
Marco:
But this is another one of those computers where look at the contortions of how people are trying to unambiguously refer to this computer in their various reviews and press articles and blog posts and tweets, and
Marco:
There is no good short name for it that unambiguously says what it refers to.
Marco:
So I stand by my choice to call it the MacBook Escape because it is short and fairly unique.
Marco:
I don't think anyone could ever think that meant any other computer.
Marco:
And they might not necessarily know it means this one.
Marco:
But I think enough geeks know, enough of our audience knows, enough of my audience on Twitter and stuff knows that I can say MacBook One and MacBook Escape.
Marco:
And the people who are listening, almost all of them will know what I mean by that.
Marco:
As opposed to saying 13-inch MacBook Pro, which now could mean three very different computers, all of which are still for sale.
John:
Just wait until next year when they add the touch bar.
Casey:
to the macbook escape but it still has two ports instead of four then what the hell you're going to call it it's not the macbook escape anymore macbook escape with touch bar that's macbook too so i have an important question for you marco are you sticking with the macbook one name or are you going to adopt the cgp gray macbook adorable name
Marco:
If I'm going to call it a name beyond its correct name of MacBook or 12-inch MacBook, then I'm going to call it MacBook 1.
Marco:
It's been around longer.
Marco:
I think it's more recognizable.
Marco:
Honestly, I think it's a better name.
Marco:
Sorry, Gray.
Marco:
It's less of a value judgment, too.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I mean, you know, realistically speaking, like, it has now been long... You know, that computer came out about, what, a year and a half ago?
Marco:
Almost two years ago.
Marco:
It has now been long enough that I will fairly soon not need to call it the MacBook One anymore.
Marco:
That time might even be now.
Marco:
Like, because you only need these, like, pet names when Apple's regular names, like, are still ambiguous and confusing in people's minds.
Marco:
When the MacBook One first came out and they just called it MacBook, again, like, lots of people still had...
Marco:
memories of the regular macbook and what was called that not that long ago uh and everyone wanted to talk about this new computer and there was no good way to unambiguously do that uh but now if you say if you say the macbook now that still honestly does kind of refer to the whole family to some degree um and people might be confused a little bit by that but if you just say macbook or if you just say 12 inch macbook i think you're okay for the most part now so i i probably won't need to use the
Marco:
much anymore i might use it anyway because i like it but i don't think i really need to use it much anymore whereas referring to the macbook pro 13 inch late 2016 200 bolt three ports uh is still in need of a nice short unambiguous name yeah that's terrible oh
Casey:
Moving on.
Casey:
Mark King writes in to tell us that when John speaks of millions of millennials typing on a screen, that actually includes Marco and I, strictly speaking.
Casey:
And Mark has cited something on Wikipedia, which means it must be true.
Casey:
And millennials apparently start with those born in 1982.
Casey:
And I speak for Marco in saying both of us were born in 1982.
Casey:
So strictly speaking, we are old millennials.
Marco:
See, that's BS, though.
Marco:
I don't buy this at all.
Marco:
I feel like generations don't just flip on a dime on December 31st at New Year's.
John:
No, after you two were born, that was it.
John:
They closed the door like, all right.
Casey:
Well, I was going to say, this is like the upstate of time or generations, right?
Casey:
It's always the people younger than you that are the millennials.
Casey:
And so I actually do agree with Marco.
Casey:
I don't feel like I qualify as this entitled, self-obsessed generation.
Casey:
Says the guy on his podcast...
John:
um but i i don't think it's too far after we were born i would probably have put it at like 1990 ish but whatever the baby boomers are self-obsessed the the millennials aren't self-obsessed the millennials are are coddled and uh overconfident and have never had to try for anything those are the stereotypes and gen x are disaffected and cynical and terrible
John:
yeah i guess that's fair well anyway so yeah apparently uh marco and i are strictly speaking millennials which is a interesting and perhaps sad realization for the two of us well the problem is there has whatever name for the generations that are younger than millennials like there's competition for what those names could be called please don't send us the eight million names you've heard we can look them up too but anyway one of them hasn't won yet so once a name wins it'll be more convenient when we want to make fun of the youngins to use that name
John:
I use millennials because, to me, they are the youngins.
John:
But this person is right.
John:
You, too, are millennials as well.
Marco:
See, I feel like when generations are kind of like a bell curve shape as the time goes on, it defines a certain era.
Marco:
But as you get close to the edges and the boundaries of the eras, they become a lot less clearly defined.
Marco:
And honestly, I think referring to generations like this is stupid.
Marco:
But if you're going to refer to them, I feel like if you say millennial, you're referring to kind of like the hump, the peak of that wave.
Marco:
And so by calling us any of the generations when we are literally the boundary year between two 20 year long generations, I feel like it doesn't really say anything.
Marco:
Like, are we really that different from the people who are literally six months older than us?
Marco:
Like, not really.
Marco:
You know, so it's when you get towards the edges, it doesn't really mean much.
Marco:
But referring to these generations at all is kind of dumb and is only a use for people to, like, yell about how weird the kids are these days.
Marco:
That's exactly how we're using it, though.
Casey:
Yeah, that is the point.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
William Rainish wrote in and pointed out to us.
Casey:
I forget exactly the context, but I think maybe it was Marco was saying, oh, you know, I don't need a super fast GPU or somebody was saying something along those lines.
Casey:
That's what it was.
Casey:
And and William writes in to say, well, you may not think you need a super fast GPU because you're maybe not playing games or anything like that.
Casey:
But is the GPU used by, say, image editing apps to do some of the calculations required in order to mess with your pictures taken on your camera?
Casey:
That's all GPU based, is it not?
Marco:
Well, some of it is.
Marco:
And that's not to say that it doesn't matter, but much of it is still very much CPU bound.
Marco:
And the things that are generally where I spend most of my time waiting for the CPU are not the things that Jeep usually helping with.
Marco:
you know i mean i still i have my my iMac with the the fancy gpu i have my 15 inch macbook pro without the fancy gpu and they do things at roughly the same speed like in lightroom with the same kind of files like it's not like the iMac should be if gpu was really helping the things that i'm waiting on the iMac should be way faster than the MacBook pro but it's not uh it's it's similar speeds so
Marco:
And I can look and I can see and I stat menus that all the CPU cores are being pegged during these operations I'm waiting for.
Marco:
So really, it's, you know, it might help many, many operations and stuff.
Marco:
But the things I'm complaining about, it doesn't really help.
Marco:
And again, it's nice to have, but, you know, not necessarily at certain costs and in certain roles.
Marco:
So my argument last week was that I wish they had basically the no GPU option in the 15-inch still.
Marco:
There appear to be good reasons why they don't anymore, like related to Intel's integrated GPU being not as good anymore in those quad-core configs, whatever.
Marco:
I don't know the details of that, but something like that.
Marco:
anyway uh i i regret that they don't have the option of no discrete gpu anymore but oh well what are you gonna do that's that's kind of my attitude about macbook pro in general is oh well what are you gonna do because there's like there's so much about it that's a little bit weird or off or not quite for me we'll get to it yeah we will
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Harry's.
Marco:
Go to harrys.com slash ATP right now to claim a free trial set and free post-shave balm.
Marco:
That's harrys.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Harry's is the best value in razor blades, in my opinion.
Marco:
Now, big razor companies, they have this annoying habit of putting out new models every few years and raising their already high prices even higher.
Marco:
Unlike them, Harry's does not believe in upcharging, which is why they made their razors even better, and they're keeping prices exactly the same.
Marco:
Now, Harry's sells five-blade razor cartridges, similar to what you might have seen from big brands.
Marco:
They now include a softer flex hinge for a more comfortable glide, a trimmer blade for hard-to-reach places, a lubricating strip, and a textured handle for more control when it's wet.
Marco:
And this is still the amazing value they've always been, just $2 per blade compared to $4 or more that you'll pay for the big brands.
Marco:
And by owning the factory in Germany where they make the blades, Harry's can produce high-quality razors themselves and sell them online for half the price.
Marco:
And this comes with all the conveniences of online shopping.
Marco:
You don't have to go to a drugstore, get into the anti-shoplifting case, anything like that.
Marco:
And you can just order what you want.
Marco:
And it gets delivered to you.
Marco:
They have great customer service if you ever need it.
Marco:
It's wonderful.
Marco:
Check out Harry's $2 per blade.
Marco:
And this is not a safety razor blade.
Marco:
I've used those.
Marco:
They're fine.
Marco:
But I'm a big fan of the five blade razor cartridge.
Marco:
That simple is that.
Marco:
That's what I like.
Marco:
harry's is the best value in that business bar none two dollars per blade cartridge so go to harry's.com slash atp to learn more there's a special offer for fans of this show you will get a bottle of harry's post shave bomb added to your order for free by visiting harry's.com slash atp go there today and get your free trial set and your free post shave bomb once again harry's.com slash atp thanks a lot to harry's for sponsoring our show
Casey:
All right, moving on.
Casey:
A few people have written in to say that there are forthcoming external GPU boxes for new MacBook Pros.
Casey:
So Bison Tech, I apologize if I'm pronouncing that wrong, has a Bison Box 3 external graphics card for Mac.
Casey:
Turn your Mac into a powerful workstation, up to 10x boost in games and professional apps.
Casey:
And so this looks like almost a mini tower sized box.
Casey:
It looks quite large.
Casey:
I'm sure it's actually not that you can sit adjacent to your MacBook Pro and connect via presumably Thunderbolt three and put any number of different GPUs in it.
Casey:
You can spend twenty one or no, I'm sorry.
John:
Twenty seven.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Twenty seven hundred dollars.
Casey:
on a box that has a graphics card in it um and that graphics card only apparently has windows support but nonetheless you could spend a basically half a macbook pro again getting an external graphics card so john is this your solution to an excellent uh mac based gaming platform there have been a bunch of external gpu options ever since the the advent of thunderbolt
John:
um and there are two main problems is one is not probably not a problem anymore but used to be back in the early days of thunderbolt and that is that although thunderbolt basically gives you the ability to have sort of you know pci bus that extends outside your computer uh it the original thunderbolt
John:
did not have as many lanes as top-end graphic cards took when you plugged them into a gaming PC or something.
John:
And that only mattered if you were going to actually use all that bandwidth between the card and the CPU and everything, and you could argue that it wouldn't make a difference and you can't measure it or whatever.
John:
But back in the day, the bandwidth was insufficient.
John:
I'm assuming with Thunderbolt 3, that is either close enough not to matter anymore or has surpassed it and it's not a problem anymore.
John:
But the real problem with external GPU solutions, for me personally, why I'm not interested in them, is because I have no faith...
John:
that Apple supports them in any way, shape, or form.
John:
Bingo.
John:
And it's not as if I need Apple to make the box.
John:
I just need Apple to say, oh, yeah, this is a thing you can do with your Mac.
John:
I do not doubt that they can get this to work, and I do not doubt that Apple has built support for external CPUs into the operating system that's letting them do this.
John:
What I doubt is, is this going to be a supported configuration for me?
John:
Is some OS update going to get rid of it?
John:
Especially if you're going to spend $800 for a really fancy GPU.
John:
is it a thing that's going to be useful for its purpose like i don't want to buy it and then two years later like i can't use it anymore because the drivers aren't supported or there's some bug or some new kernel changed out but like i need apple's blessing essentially for me to feel safe to pursue this because you know otherwise why don't i just make a gaming pc like at least then i know that's unsupported by everybody and it's just my own my own challenge to uh battle and get to work or you know okay we get driver updates from the the video card company so
John:
I'm personally very wary of solutions like this because I say, as I sit in front of my eight year old computer, uh, because I like to, you know, use things for a long time.
John:
And I really do want Apple to bless them in some way.
John:
It doesn't just blessing for Apple.
John:
Doesn't mean it's going to be supported forever, obviously, but at least I'll know that I'm not more on the fringes, um, for other people who have, uh, you know, less aversion to risk or just interested in trying something cool.
John:
This definitely looks interesting.
John:
And I would probably do this if I was more of a hobbyist hardware tinkerer, but yeah,
John:
Right now, I'm not interested in external GPUs until Apple gives me the nod about them.
Marco:
Honestly, if I was more of a hobbyist hardware tinkerer, I'd just build a Hackintosh.
Marco:
Or, as you said, just build a gaming PC.
Marco:
Because you do most of your gaming in Windows anyway, right?
John:
well yeah so this is the uh the other angle this is like the thing that's cool about it is not hey i get to have a cool gpu the cool thing is you get to have a laptop that works pretty well that you can also sit down plop it down on your desk and suddenly becomes way more powerful like so it's the the whole hybrid it's kind of like the old thunderbolt display with the laptop like you could just buy two separate machines but it's kind of neat to have one machine with all your stuff on it that suddenly gets amazing new capabilities when you sit down your desk and connect one little skinny wire that is the for me the novel interesting hardware hacker angle
John:
not just the fact that you can have a good gpu because you're right you would just get a game if you just want a good gpu get a gaming pc and there you go it's it's the you know the the novelty of having external powerful things enhancing the power of your laptops and tons of pc laptops do this as well this is not a unique thing to apple or anything like that it's just you know apple as far as i'm aware has never even acknowledged this as a thing which is really weird considering they have to provide some support for it for it to work at all
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, the story that we get from people like ATP Tipster and other various sources, it really does sound like Apple really did do all of the work necessary to make their own 5K display.
Marco:
And at some point, they were probably planning on it to be a product.
Marco:
And so they put in all this work to make Sierra support...
Marco:
this kind of display over this kind of cable make it support external gpus over that kind of cable uh and everything else and then instead now they basically give it all to lg who was probably making the panel for it to begin with uh lg ships it as their monitor and apple tells nila patel it secondhand on twitter that they're out of the display business um
John:
That's a future follow-up item and we will discuss it.
Marco:
It's a weird story.
Marco:
There has to be something more to it than that because that is a weird story.
Marco:
I will just say here in case we don't get to it again that I think the idea of handing this over to LG and telling people, oh, if you want what was basically the Apple 5K display, you have to now buy it from LG.
Marco:
That's not as good.
Marco:
That's not a very good solution because then that means that we have to order it from LG.
Marco:
We have to get LG's warranty on it.
Marco:
We have to get LG's support if anything goes wrong.
Marco:
And of course, LG's exterior casing, which is kind of hideous.
Marco:
And all of that is worse than if we would have just bought it from Apple.
Marco:
So it's not a great situation.
Marco:
Like one person on Twitter pointed out, I'm sorry, I forgot who it was.
Marco:
Up until now, or up until when Apple stopped selling the Thunderbolt display a few months ago,
Marco:
If you bought a Mac and the Thunderbolt display and AppleCare for the Mac, the AppleCare also covered the display.
Marco:
So you had your monitor covered for three years, just like you had your computer, which three years warranty on pro monitors is usually not what they go for.
Marco:
I think usually you're one year for most things like that.
Marco:
um so again it's just like and and if anything ever went wrong with it as john you know you could bring it to an apple store and you could have you could have them deal with it you could ship it to apple and now like when it's sold by somebody else especially somebody like lg who has like pretty miserable service in most things uh then you have to you know
Marco:
call God knows who, ship it God knows where, pay God knows what, and wait God knows how long to get it back.
Marco:
And it's not nearly as nice as if Apple would have just sold this themselves.
Marco:
And so I do kind of... I am a little scared for Apple's future dedication to desktops, if only because that seems like a really weird move if you care about things like the Mac Pro at all.
Marco:
We don't know how long LG's warranty is.
Marco:
For all we know, they have a 10-year warranty.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
I don't entirely get what makes this new display so unique because when I was looking at getting potentially a monitor for work before I got that 4K that I'm using now, I was looking at the Dell 5K, and that works with my existing MacBook Pro that's a few months old now on one cable.
Casey:
So why was it so special that...
John:
that this lg like they they made a big deal about it being over one cable what am i missing here it seems like this was something we could already do all right if we're foisting this up we'll move it up and we'll talk about it now although you're breaking that you're breaking the flow of what i wanted to talk about in the order i want to talk about which actually made sense but that's that's my job that's fine uh it's like top four what you just alluded to
John:
the 5k displays that neely patel tweeted and then his tweet was uh quoted a bunch of places that apple confirmed to him that oh they're out of the standalone display business um and then that night that after i heard that tweet i had i had trouble getting to sleep because i was so upset about the prospect of there being no apple monitor but i was also are you serious i'm serious but i was also upset about what had gone down that day because here's the deal
John:
Like, everything Marco said about Apple monitors is true, and it's, like, the reason I buy them.
John:
And, you know, I like how the case looks.
John:
I like how it's warrantied as part of it.
John:
I like how everything matches.
John:
These are all silly reasons, but it's, like, it's why I buy Macs.
John:
Part of the reason I buy Macs, I like how all the stuff looks together.
John:
And so I don't like the idea that there's not going to be an Apple monitor.
John:
But what really bugs me is that Apple would...
John:
back-channel, on-background, semi-off-the-record, whatever, confirm secretly conveyed by a tweet that they're not making monitors anymore, that they're out of the standalone display business.
John:
If Apple's going to be out of the standalone display business, they should say so as a company.
John:
Like, you don't have to say we're never going to make one in a million years, but just say...
John:
don't wait for us to release a 5k monitor because we have no plans to do so this is the one i don't understand why apple can't just say that instead they have to do this thing which is like well how much do i trust that do i can i find my own back channels into someone who spoke to someone who knows something in apple to tell us oh yeah no we're not making them anymore i know that apple's presentation said here's a great lg monitor
John:
just do it right i feel like there should be doesn't have to be in the keynote but it should be on the record statements from apple like not just one of them and not just a little turd but like it should be common knowledge just like it's common knowledge that they're selling a new line of computers also say and by the way apple like like when apple left the printer business they didn't like just stop making printers and just tell people to buy other printers but then that'll say guess what apple's not making printers anymore
John:
Like that wasn't a secret mystery.
John:
Everybody knew, you know, that bothers me immensely.
John:
So anyway, mostly because the news is bad and part of me still wants to cling to the idea that like maybe they'll change their mind next year and that's why they're not saying anything.
John:
Blah, blah, blah.
John:
as for the specific of the lg thing i really want someone to tear one of these apart because we don't know what's inside there is there a gpu inside there that it's communicating with through these new features in sierra or is there not uh to get to casey's question is you know multi-stream multiple uh uh display port 1.2 streams or some other technique to drive a big monitor uh
John:
Is that what the Dell ones are using?
John:
Because I don't think Apple invented this multi-stream thing.
John:
Maybe it's just a standard that existed, and this is the first time Apple's supporting it in their notebooks.
John:
Or is it this weird external GPU thing?
John:
We don't know.
John:
As for random stuff, the tipster who promised us a hub that has never been delivered said about how the... Oh, the tipster's now saying that Dell uses two cables, and it's very buggy.
John:
Anyway, about the display with the GPU or whatever, well, you know, Apple didn't ship that.
John:
So, like...
John:
And I can say we've gotten conflicting reports of what exactly Apple has ever planned to ship or anything like that.
John:
This is all just random hearsay.
John:
All we have to go on is what Apple actually delivers as products and...
John:
and what they say publicly and right now they're not delivering a monitor and they're sort of semi kind of publicly saying they're not making monitors anymore which is hugely disappointing because i think that almost as much as not updating the mac pro in three years is sort of a abandonment of one particular market segment the segment that the segment that buys you know the segment that buys the mac pro basically like it's it's all part of the same thing it's saying
John:
we're not going to make a standalone monitor.
John:
And if we ever make another Mac Pro, just count your lucky stars and you're just going to have to find another monitor for it because you don't care about it.
John:
And the Mini, the same thing.
John:
It's kind of like saying the desktop Mac experience is the iMac.
John:
And these other computers, if we decide to make them or not, that's fine.
John:
I don't understand how Apple can...
John:
be so dedicated to the mac as it claims to be unless their conception of the mac does not include anything that doesn't come with a monitor which is that may be the case but like for me as a fan of macs don't come with monitors for a variety of reasons canceling the monitor for me made me feel worse than them not updating the mac pro for three years like it made me for the first time really truly doubt whether they were ever going to make another mac pro i don't care about the many
John:
like canceling the monitor that to me so here i am saying there's not going to be any more displays right and many people point out like how can you believe the tipster it's obviously all completely false information whatever i mean tipster i don't i don't care whatever he's just it's a fun diversion but finding out from through neely patel through a tweet from apple back channels that apple itself is is telling people we're out of the standalone display business just crushed me it crushed me to the point where i was immediately trying to consider
John:
If they come out with another Mac Pro, I don't think I'm going to buy one.
John:
I should just get an iMac.
John:
I cannot live in a world where I'm going to wait until June of next year to get a new Mac Pro and then connect a ugly third-pointy five-head monitor to it.
John:
I don't know if I can do it.
John:
And I was like, well, if you can't do it, then what are you even waiting for?
John:
Why don't you just buy an iMac?
John:
Why are you sitting in front of this ancient computer?
John:
It's slower than your phone now.
John:
It's just ridiculous.
John:
Just, I don't know, this monitor thing has totally destroyed me.
Casey:
So you're saying in this hypothetical world where they release a new Mac Pro, let's just go just completely out of left field.
Casey:
Let's say they bring back the cheese grater.
Casey:
But new insides, everything's modern and beautiful, and the fans are silent, and everything is perfect.
Casey:
And it's made for John Syracuse.
Casey:
But because there's no Apple external display, you would not buy that hypothetical computer.
Casey:
That's what you're saying?
John:
i'd have to think about like this is this is what i was up at night thinking about it's like what can i do it and i have to say it's mostly also because i know that there's no prospect of any mac pro until a long time from now like that it'll be even more waiting if they came out with a mac pro tomorrow like i would be less upset but i know there's no mac pro coming out tomorrow
John:
there's no mac pro coming out next week there's no mac pro coming out next month it's going to be another long wait and i don't you know i've been waiting a really long time right i don't know if i can wait that long for the reward at the end of it to be whatever the hell the side the mac pro is now and oh by the way find some monitor you can use with it good luck
John:
I don't like it.
Casey:
You're saying that you wouldn't buy this perfect John Syracuse Mac that I've just invented out of thin air because you don't like the look of the LG monitor.
Casey:
It's possible.
Casey:
It's possible.
Casey:
That does not compute in my mind.
John:
Put it this way.
John:
I have never had a non-Apple monitor.
John:
I've always had a series of Apple monitors.
Casey:
John, let me give you a hint.
Casey:
It's okay.
Casey:
They aren't as pretty in terms of the bezel or bezel, depending on who you're talking with.
Casey:
But they work just fine.
Casey:
And in fact, in some ways, I prefer my LG monitor at work because it's much more matte than my iMac is.
Casey:
In every other measurable way, I prefer the iMac.
John:
I'm sitting in front of a matte Apple monitor right now, you realize.
Yeah.
Casey:
It's older than your Mac Pro.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
But, I mean, to each their own.
Casey:
If this is the way you want to live your life, then power to you, man.
John:
I said I'm considering it.
John:
This is what the display cancellation did to me.
John:
In the end, I think I can probably stick it out, and I wouldn't buy the current iMac.
John:
If I was waiting for an iMac, probably I would wait until they revise it with at least a new GPU in it.
John:
But, like, what I'm trying to do is get myself to the point where, like, I think you'd be okay with an iMac.
John:
Because my wife's got a 5K iMac.
John:
It's, like, three feet over there.
John:
I use it all the time.
John:
The monitor is really nice.
John:
It's way faster than my computer.
John:
It's got a one terabyte SSD.
John:
The GPU is faster than the one in my computer.
John:
Like, the more I sit there and use that one, the more I say, what are you waiting around for a Mac Pro for?
John:
You know it's not going to be good for your purposes anyway.
John:
Like, the thing that they get me to come back to is, like, you know, here's the fan on my wife's iMac and all that stuff.
John:
I was trying to...
John:
to figure out should i when the next next imac is revised assuming it's revised early next year or something should i just buy it and not bother waiting for this mac pro should i buy it and then sell it if i like the mac pro better i've just been waiting so long for this mac pro and the cancellation of the monitor has been the strongest signal to me that apple is not interested in selling me the computer that i want to buy anymore
John:
I mean, as if the three-year wait for the Mac Pro isn't a signal enough, but who knows?
John:
They could come out with a new Mac Pro with their new conception of what the Mac Pro is supposed to be, and I seriously doubt it will be anything like the cheese gritty you described.
John:
But either way, if there's no display with it, it's really disheartening to me.
John:
yeah it's each their own but i i just man that's that seems bananas to me but i mean did you do you i'm it's just i i can't imagine i mean like i said i haven't i'm not i'm not coming down that i'm definitely going to get an iMac i'm just like that's what i was thinking after this announcement i feel like i've come down a little bit from now but on the other side of it is like i said the 5k iMac is really good
John:
it's a really good computer like the like like i said compared to the computer i have now it is better in every possible way and it's like oh but the gpu is not going to be as big as the one in in the mac how do you know or maybe the new conception of the mac pro is to have the same gpu as the macbook pro i don't know what the new mac pro is going to be nobody does
John:
it just i don't know so i'm at this point i'm still just waiting because i'm not going to buy the current iMac um but like it's weird to be of two minds like i wish apple had confirmed more strongly and officially that they're out of the standalone display business because then they could have line of questioning and all the interviews are doing just like why are you out of the standalone display business people like to buy them
John:
you can add 100 bucks and get some margin do you really sell so few of them that you don't want to do that do you not consider that part of the whole system do you think you can't make a good monitor i mean your whole on this whole p3 thing and the color calibration and the retina and all that stuff you're all about that except for your computers that don't come with a monitor in which you say fend for yourself in the world in the land of third-party monitors maybe you'll recommend one good luck with warranty and repairs and by the way it's ugly
Marco:
I agree with you, John.
Marco:
The lack of the new monitor has also made me unreasonably upset because, I agree, I think it does signal more than anything so far that there probably won't be another Mac Pro.
Marco:
Because, again, if they were going to make a new Mac Pro,
Marco:
Why would they not make a new monitor to go with it?
Marco:
Do they really want the only option for Mac Pro buyers to be third-party, plastic-y, crappy monitors?
Marco:
Is that really what they want to be, the only option for their highest-end computer?
Marco:
I imagine that's not really their style.
Marco:
That's a very strong indicator that as much as I want the new Mac Pro to happen...
Marco:
And as much as ATP Tipster says that they're working on Skylake E in some capacity, I don't know what else that would be for except for Mac Pro, but they've worked on previous Mac Pro updates and not released them.
Marco:
They've apparently worked on a 5K monitor and not released it.
Marco:
So if they really don't want to make their own displays, I really have to look at their actions and not what I want to be true and not what rumors say are true or not what tipsters say are true.
Marco:
I have to look at just what they've done publicly and what they've not done publicly.
Marco:
And I just have to come to the conclusion that it is very unlikely that we'll ever see a Mac Pro again.
Marco:
Because if that was not the case, we would see something about it.
Marco:
They would either have updated it all this time or they would still be in the display business because that's pretty related.
Marco:
Or something else.
Marco:
Again, this could be wrong.
Marco:
I would love for it to be wrong.
Marco:
I want a Mac Pro.
Marco:
I don't want the best computer that can run the OS I use to only have four CPU cores or to have loud fan noise when I actually drive all those cores or to be limited in the other ways that I'm actually limited compared to Mac Pros.
Marco:
I want there to be a higher ceiling.
Marco:
And it will really crush me morally and my enthusiasm in this company and the Mac platform as a whole.
Marco:
Because you know what?
Marco:
The Mac platform is really good on pro hardware.
Marco:
It is designed for pro hardware.
Marco:
mac os scales really well to tons of cpus multiple gpus all sorts of cool like open cl stuff that never really took off but it still has it all in there like the mac platform is awesome it is such a good professional workstation os
Marco:
And to have there no longer be professional workstation hardware that can even run it, that will make me very, very sad.
Marco:
But again, I have to look at what Apple's actually doing.
Marco:
And it sure looks like there's never going to be another Mac Pro.
Marco:
Now, that being said, I am going to keep hope up that there will be one.
Marco:
I'm going to keep hoping for it until next summer.
Marco:
And if we don't get one by next summer, when other Skylake E workstation platforms start shipping from Dell and HP and stuff, if we don't get one then, I will consider it over.
Marco:
But I am going to hold up hope until then, even though my hopes right now are pretty low.
John:
and by the way for the tipster like the the supposed 5k monitor with gpu that's why i want to see the tear down of the lg one because assuming he's not just entirely fabricating this one explanation is what you were actually seeing is the internals of the lg display inside a thunderbolt case inside apple because that's how apple was working on their os side of working on this thing you know what i mean it doesn't mean that it was ever a product that apple was ever going to ship you know so anyway we have to see what's inside this lg display before we know
John:
what the the provenance those rumors are like i would find it also like marco would find it even more depressing if they actually developed this thing internally and then it never went anywhere it would be much more explicable if that was just you know a development mule for the internals that actually went into the lg display and it was there so apple could do it software side of it which which again is perverse it's like if you're going to do this cooperation with lg and let them sell the monitor why let them get the margin on the monitor like they're already making the panels for all your stuff like just why don't you get take the margin you can make a nice case for that monitor
John:
hike up the price 50 100 bucks you think we won't pay an extra 50 100 bucks over the price lg of course we will like you're not going to sell a lot of them but why you know we'll get to this when we talk about the the macbook pro later but it it smells like nickel and diming it's like well we don't sell enough of these to care totally i acknowledge they don't sell enough of these for it to be a blip
John:
So we can save a little money by having LG do it because we don't care about the money.
John:
It's meaningless to us.
John:
It might as well be zero dollars and it's a lot of hassle for qualifying it and supporting it and doing warranty repairs and shipping the boxes.
John:
Like I totally see how this is a money loser for Apple when you look at everything that's involved in it.
John:
But sometimes you have to do things like that to support...
John:
the you know the use case of your top end users who again maybe are not profitable anymore but i feel like they're an important part of keeping uh you know like i don't go through the whole halo car thing again but that whole angle the monitor is part of it uh and selling your own monitors is part of that
Marco:
well and like and apple's apple is still in lots of businesses that are also low margin or not very necessary for most of their customers anymore things like they still sell their wi-fi routers and their time capsules like why why does apple sell an outdated wireless router them they'll hear you right like
Marco:
they're going to cancel those products too i'd rather they kill those in the monitors like look like apple all these people who try to justify what apple's doing they try to make excuses for apple which you don't need to do uh you can almost always look at other parts of the apple product line or very recent history and you can get contradictions to that or counter arguments to that like in the case of the monitor thing like
Marco:
yeah apple doesn't need to be in the monitor business you know they don't need to be in any business like they just need to be in the iphone business that's it but you know apple can do just fine cutting out monitors but then why are they not cutting out everything why are they not cutting out ipods apple still makes an entire line of ipods and ipods are actually holding back progress in things like itunes
Marco:
Like, imagine if Apple could totally cut iTunes iPod support.
Marco:
That could free up iTunes.
Marco:
It could free up so much engineering resources and legacy support and old stuff.
Marco:
And, you know, it could accelerate a possible future in which iTunes has its functions broken up into different apps that are actually good.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
They have tons of reasons to not sell iPods anymore, but they still sell them because of a handful of reasons that are good enough to keep them going.
Marco:
I'm not really sure what those are, but I'm sure people are buying them to some degree, right?
Marco:
Wi-Fi routers and stuff, I don't expect them to get frequent updates.
Marco:
I mean, they're already very outdated, and who knows?
Marco:
And they're not really a great deal anymore.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
They still sell them for some reason.
Marco:
They still sell time capsules for some reason.
Marco:
I mean, talk about an ancient technology.
Marco:
The time capsule is an outdated wireless router with a giant spinning hard drive in it.
Marco:
They still sell that, but they decided that monitors aren't worth selling anymore.
Marco:
That makes no sense to me unless they're killing off their entire desktop line except the iMac.
Marco:
And one more thing, too.
Marco:
It isn't even just about desktops.
Marco:
Lots of people connect external monitors to their MacBook Air and MacBook Pros.
Marco:
So even if they kill the desktops, they should still have displays that are sold for laptop customers.
Marco:
Like the last one, the Thunderbolt and an LED display before that, they were designed for laptops.
Marco:
They had a little MagSafe charger and everything that would charge their laptops.
Marco:
So is this LG one?
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
These are obviously designed.
Marco:
So obviously this is still a business that exists even if you kill the desktop.
Marco:
So I don't know.
Marco:
It makes no sense.
Casey:
So we're saying that because Apple got out of the display business, that is the canary in the coal mine for non-iMac desktops.
Casey:
And that could be... I don't think I agree, but that could be.
Marco:
Well, it's one of many.
Marco:
You know, it's in the context of...
Marco:
not only have they not even updated the Mac Pro in three years and the Mac Mini in, I think, as long or roughly as long, but the last update to both of those products made them worse in certain key ways.
Marco:
And they have not updated them, they haven't even mentioned them.
Marco:
When Apple showed the slide of the Mac family, they weren't even on the slide.
Marco:
They're still selling them.
Marco:
totally unchanged for three years not a single update to like gpus or anything like that like nothing has changed so that is you know in the context of that where you have this very high-end machine that they do a major redesign of that's kind of more restrictive and more expensive they talk about innovation a lot and then they never talk about it again
Marco:
that's not good.
Marco:
So in the context of that, them also saying, you know what, we're not going to make our own version of this 5K display, which technically would be perfect for the next model of Mac Pro.
Marco:
If they made the Apple version of this display...
Marco:
and launch it at the same time as a Mac Pro next year sometime, that'd be amazing.
Marco:
And so many people would buy that combo, which would probably cost like $7,000, but you'd buy it because we waited so long, and it'd be so good.
Marco:
But again, if I'm honest with myself, I really don't think it's going to happen.
John:
I don't think the lack of a monitor is any particular indicator for the desktop.
John:
I still think there's a chance to update the Mac Pro, but like Marco pointed out, it's more of an indicator that Apple cares less about configurations that involve an external display because...
John:
you know all the monitors having the little magsafe connector and it was clear it's like most people who are going to buy this monitor are buying it because what they have a laptop but when they sit down at their desk they want a bigger screen than is available on a laptop that's what these screens are for oh and by the way they also connect to desktop max but nobody cares right and that aesthetic and this is me just me personally that aesthetic of because it's the main thing you're looking at when you're using a computer is you're looking at the screen like what does a mac look like back in the original mac
John:
The whole thing was one thing, the screen, the floppy drive, the power supply, you know, eventually the hard drive.
John:
Everything was all in one.
John:
Eventually, you're not looking at the computer part anymore, except in the case of the iMac where it's all in one.
John:
Right.
John:
You're what you're looking at is a screen and then you've got these tower computers, your Mac mini for, you know, for the desktop use cases.
Right.
John:
giving up on the monitor i'm surprised even johnny ive would allow this means that anybody who wants a bigger screen than is available on a laptop is not going to be looking at an apple thing and i feel like it's not like oh i don't have a mac anymore just because the screen is in an apple screen or whatever it's just like that whole that whole vibe of having an entire system that all matches and all works together uh and
John:
That is that has the highest guarantee of compatibility and supportedness over the years and is the most integrated with, you know, whatever weird buttons Apple puts on whatever weird keyboard control they have are always going to work with them on and all that stuff.
John:
And LG is totally integrated like that now, which they emphasize in the keynote.
John:
And maybe Apple will keep them up to date, but maybe Apple will lose interest and be like, oh, if you bought that old LG one, it's up to LG to update us with the drivers.
John:
Who knows?
John:
It seems like it'll be less supported.
John:
But it's just giving up on that whole vibe of having all Apple stuff.
John:
It's part of the reason that I personally like buying Macs.
John:
And taking that reason away makes me less enthusiastic about getting a shiny new Macs.
John:
If then I also have to wade into the world of third-party monitors or be forced to pick just one third-party monitor because it's literally the only one that works with their stuff in the integrated way that I want it to work.
John:
It makes me less enthusiastic to buy a new Mac.
Casey:
I guess you spend a lot more time looking at the bezel of your monitor than I do because that thing just, I mean, I, I'm looking at a 4k LG monitor for now 40 to 45 hours a week.
Casey:
And I,
Casey:
I mean, in a perfect world, I'd like two of them side by side, or even in a more perfect world, I guess I should say, a couple of Apple monitors.
Casey:
I don't disagree with you that Apple monitors would be better in principle.
Casey:
But I can't say that I look at the bezel of this thing particularly often in that I think to myself, well, you know, life sucks because this isn't a shiny piece of aluminum.
Casey:
To each their own.
Casey:
This is why we're different people.
Casey:
But that just seems...
Casey:
bananas to me you used to be a pc user so you're still looking at a lot of black plastic crap but i guess i don't view this as so egregious and i mean and again to be clear i don't think that this lg monitor that i'm looking at for 45 hours a week is pretty i don't i think it's relatively ugly and there's there's problems with it it doesn't have wide color which to be honest i still don't see the difference that i can tell even in my iphone for wide color but whatever um
Casey:
It doesn't have a lot of color.
Casey:
The mount on it that comes with it, it doesn't height adjust.
Casey:
It's stationary.
Casey:
It's static, which is annoying.
Casey:
It doesn't pitch 90 degrees, which I never ever do, but it'd be nice to have the option for some reason.
Casey:
So there's plenty of things I don't like about it.
Casey:
But at the end of the day, all I'm looking at is the things on the screen.
Casey:
And not Apple not doing a monitor to me doesn't necessarily mean they don't care.
Casey:
I mean, look at the iPhone seven that a lot of people, a ton of people think that they charge and listen to music at the same time.
Casey:
I don't know if that's true or not, but a lot of people seem to think it.
Casey:
And if you go to the Apple accessories, Apple iPhone accessories page, sure enough, there is a lightning audio in charge cable.
Casey:
So it's one lightning to two lightning.
Casey:
You know who makes that?
Casey:
Belkin.
Casey:
And if Apple really gave a crap about the iPhone, I guess they should make that too, right?
Casey:
I mean, it's...
John:
we're not drinking a leap to give a crap about the at least i'm not making a leap to give a crap about the mac it's just that my particular use case like what i'm thinking that they're giving up on that they don't care as much about is the holistic aesthetic like i said forget about desktops pretend there are no desktop computers and it's only laptops the old apple cared enough about the overall aesthetic of like the system that they can put in their product shots and that their ideal customer would buy to make giant expensive monitors
John:
that as people in chat room point out are always way more expensive than than equivalent monitors for the same panels like again granted right with little mag safe things to charge your monitor dangling off the end of them like it was it was a laptop accessory and why who in the world would buy a laptop accessory from apple at a ridiculous price
John:
Because it looks really nice.
John:
That's it, because it matches and it looks nice.
John:
And yeah, they happen to be usually good monitors when they came out and they were convenient and all the other stuff, but it's Apple saying, yeah, it did look nice and it was cool, but the coolness was not worth...
John:
being in this business to us anymore and the coolness to me is totally worth it and i would like to give them money and they won't take my money and i you know that it makes me sad is it a good business idea is it better to get out of that business because it was a money loser and most people don't care i don't know it's not doesn't really say anything about whether they care about the mac or whatever it just means that their priorities don't align with mine in this particular issue and i'm sad about it
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We'd spend a lot longer talking about that than I expected.
Casey:
My goodness.
John:
I spent a lot longer thinking about that than I expected.
John:
I couldn't believe it.
John:
Seriously, my wife was already asleep next to me, and I'm like, what am I going to do?
John:
Am I even getting a Mac Pro?
John:
Should I give up?
John:
It was terrible.
John:
It was a literal dark night of the soul when I found out that monitor was canceled.
Casey:
wow not one that didn't update the mac the mac pro for three years here i am just happily hoping like i'm sure they'll update it eventually i'm just waiting patiently look at me be patient no more monitors like no no well my thoughts and prayers are with you in this difficult time uh dan frakes writes that uh apple has told him that the macbook pro maxes out at 16 16 gigs of ram because lp ddr3's limit is 16 gigs of chip and
Casey:
And Apple uses it because of a performance to energy ratio.
Casey:
And then building on that, there was a, I guess an interview or somebody asked Schiller.
John:
It was an email.
John:
They emailed him and he replied.
Casey:
Schiller said, and I'm quoting, to put more than 16 gigs of fast RAM into a notebook designed at this time would require a memory system that consumes much more power and wouldn't be efficient enough for a notebook.
Casey:
I hope you check out this new generation of MacBook Pro.
Casey:
It really is an incredible system.
Casey:
So that is supposedly, and other people have come to this conclusion as well, that is supposedly why Apple is not shipping more than 16 gigs of RAM in the MacBook Pros, which, full stop, I mean, that's a bummer.
Casey:
If I were to buy one today, I would absolutely want more than 16.
Casey:
Would I need more than 16?
Casey:
Probably not, but I'd want it.
Casey:
And that's today.
Casey:
And sometimes people want these computers to last four or five years.
Casey:
That's not unusual.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
So this is a bummer, but I don't really see how this is Apple's fault.
Casey:
And I'm assuming one of you is going to tell me, well, I would definitely pay money for the thing that lasts two hours that has 11 gigs of, you know, 80 million gigs of RAM.
John:
Not two hours, but yeah.
John:
Well, so before we even get to that angle, there has been much...
John:
support for the idea that this is not apple's fault out there down you know this is the basics of just like look the the uh the specific cpu they're using with the the good gpu or whatever the good gd iris pro graphics or whatever doesn't have a chip set that supports more memory capacity and blah blah blah like this is a thing
John:
uh one other thing that people have brought up surprisingly to go showing the links people will go to to make excuses for apple is that uh there is a faa has a restriction of like 100 watt hours for batteries right and that apple can't make a battery bigger than that uh you know which i don't even know if that's true first of all but second of all let's just assume it is true and then they follow that up by saying and that's why the new macbook pros have a 76 watt hour battery yeah
John:
Wait a second.
John:
What they're saying is, yeah, they could add that extra 20-something watt hours, but that wouldn't be enough to power the memory subsystem required to support 32 gigs of RAM.
John:
I think the actual issue, as with a lot of this Intel stuff, is not that you can't have...
John:
a laptop that is also pretty small and light that supports 32 gigs of ram because i'm pretty sure dell sells one that's not that much bigger than you know it is thicker granted but it's not that much thicker and it supports 32 gigs of ram and he uses the sixth generation intel chip you know the the you know it's not it's not kb lake or whatever
John:
I'm pretty sure it's Skylake ones.
John:
But, but, but, but, I'm also pretty sure it's not the particular Skylake chips that Apple always uses with the big honking embedded GPU with the ED RAM and all that other crap.
John:
So I still put this mostly on Apple because...
John:
they insist on using only a particular strain the best strain to be fair they always want the best of the best the ones with the best embedded gpu because a lot of the stuff in mac os uses the gpu for things right so they want the best of the best and if the best of the best isn't available they won't ship the other kind and what i was thinking about is the way to potentially solve this with the with the smallest number of sacrifices in the short term until you know another chip comes out that does what it is ship
John:
the intel cpu with either the crappy the crappy one the not the one that doesn't have the fancy embedded gpu in it because you're putting a discrete gpu and everything anyway and do it the old-fashioned way where you just always use the discrete gpu and yes that would slaughter battery life and now you can support three gigs of ram which is slaughter battery life even more and yes then you'd have to make the thing three millimeters thicker and
John:
And then you'd probably have to make it a separate model.
John:
And then why are we having a separate model that's just this weird transitional thing like the fat MacBook Pro for people who need all this crap?
John:
And that just gets its right back to the original argument, which is that's not what Apple wants to do or whatever.
John:
So in the end, I don't think this is that big a deal because I think actually in this case, given the constraints put on them by Intel...
John:
they probably made the right choice because what they're designing this macbook pro case i assume the 15 inch macbook pro case will be with us for a pretty pretty long time i don't expect them to shave another two millimeters off of next year i expect this case to be the guts to be swapped out of it and new guts to be put into it right
John:
And if it just so happens that Intel doesn't give them anything that can fit in this case with this much battery with reasonable battery life, it is a better choice to limit to 16 to keep the battery life at what it is.
John:
Like, it's a better choice, economically speaking, and for uniformity.
John:
it would be a better choice for customers who are very demanding to all to make that other model just for them but boy that's asking a lot of a company that is trying to narrow things down and that hasn't updated the mac pro in three years to make a special one-off model just for this generation of intel cpu because it can't support 32 gigs of ram that is thicker and has more battery and uses a different arrangement of cpu and gpu and also still gets worse battery life
John:
That's just not a thing that Apple is interested in doing.
John:
So if they're not interested in doing that, like 16 gigs of RAM isn't embarrassing for the people who don't buy it because it can't support 32.
John:
I feel for them in the same way I feel for people who want Mac pros and who want external monitors.
John:
But it is in keeping with what Apple has been doing to its product line.
John:
And I think they are there.
John:
They're hitting the fat part of the curve there.
John:
Most people don't need more than that.
John:
It is better to have a lighter, thinner thing and have lower power requirements.
John:
So this is exactly in the same vein as everything else we talked about.
John:
apple not making hardware for this very narrow set of people who are very demanding and in this case it is partially explicable by the availability of the kinds of cpus they can put in it but it still makes all of us sad that's what we're talking about this show we're not talking about how apple is doomed and how this is a bad computer and people shouldn't buy it we're totally talking about how a bunch of nerds who want the best of the best are sad about the choices apple is making
Marco:
Yeah, because here's why.
Marco:
Some people have expressed bewilderment.
Marco:
Why are so many people so upset about the new MacBook Pros?
Marco:
And the thing is, Apple makes one type of laptop now, really.
Marco:
They make the ultra-thin and light, the ultra-portable.
Marco:
all of their laptops now are in this category like you know it used to be not that long ago that most computer manufacturers have like different laptop lines uh for basically with different size weight and performance classes so you'd have like the thin and light uh which by today's standards would be considered comically heavy but you know back you know basically you have the old thin and lights that were like you know exactly what it sounds like but as a
Marco:
And then you kind of have, like, the mainstream line kind of in the middle.
Marco:
And then you have the desktop replacement, which is, like, you know, the big, heavy ones that have, like, you know, the very highest-end CPUs, GPUs, and stuff that you could fit in any reasonably-sized laptop.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
and basically uh apple only makes one of those now basically everything apple makes is a thin and light and the reason why so many people get upset every time they they change or don't change anything but mostly when the changes happen is that you know you can making a thin and light requires you to cut lots of things and to limit lots of things and to not address lots of what everyone thinks are edge cases or as you just said john like little narrow slices at the market
Marco:
The problem is, this is kind of like the 80-20 myth.
Marco:
The main problem here is, like, you look at the list of things that got worse between the last MacBook Pro and this one.
Marco:
Obviously, things got better, you know, weight, performance, batteries.
Marco:
Certain things got better, right?
Marco:
But certain things...
Marco:
were either cut or got worse.
Marco:
Certain ports are no longer there.
Marco:
The SD card reader is no longer there.
Marco:
The RAM ceiling did not get raised to what people want and everything.
Marco:
Any individual one of these problems can be justified or excused in some way.
Marco:
Usually it goes with either like
Marco:
well, we couldn't fit more in this super thin, light, low-power computer, which is kind of a self-imposed problem because they don't make one that isn't super thin and light and low-power.
Marco:
Or you can justify these things by saying, well, we cut the SD card reader, whatever it is, or we cut the HDMI port because only some little percentage of the user base used it.
Marco:
The problem is that the little percentage of the user base that use the HDMI port does not completely overlap with the little percentage of the user base that use the SD card slot and so on and so on.
Marco:
So if you look at the sum of all of the little limitations and things that have been added to this, and additionally, by the way, the price hikes don't help.
Marco:
So then you have like the not small percentage of the user base who is very unhappy or actually has to make a different decision now because of the price hike.
Marco:
So basically, you add all these percentages up, and while it may seem that any one of the downsides might only affect a small percentage of the user base, a large percentage of the user base is affected by one of them.
Marco:
You can't name the simple stats.
Marco:
You can't say everyone is affected by the removal of the HDMI port.
Marco:
But lots of people are affected by one of the removals on this computer.
Marco:
It's just different for everybody.
Marco:
And a pro line, historically, the highest-end laptops would have the fewest limits because they could.
Marco:
They had larger cases.
Marco:
They usually had larger screens.
Marco:
So they were bigger.
Marco:
They were higher-priced.
Marco:
They sold in smaller quantities to more demanding markets.
Marco:
And so there was room, both physically and in...
Marco:
profit margin and everything else there was room for more ports higher end things higher wattage things and everything and so to have the even the pro machine be this limited in so many ways and to have so many of the potential or current or actual buyers of this machine being disappointed by one thing that got worse about compared to the previous ones
Marco:
that is why so many people are mad because that's usually you don't usually do that in high end per machines usually things don't get extremely more restrictive at the high end usually the high end is where you go because what everyone considers like designing for the future and being forward looking and everything that's all done at the low end like when the MacBook one came out
Marco:
We all said, you know, well, that's a really very compromised machine in a lot of ways.
Marco:
But we can just say, well, you know what?
Marco:
It's not for you.
Marco:
So you don't have to buy it.
Marco:
And that worked for like, you know, a year and a half until now.
Marco:
The compromises for the MacBook One have now mostly been spread to the entire line of MacBooks.
Marco:
So now you can't just say that's not for you anymore.
Marco:
Now it's like, well, if you still want to use macOS...
Marco:
whenever your current laptop dies you need another one you're gonna have these these restrictions on you that's it like it's the combination of like the all those stats adding up to be like you know almost everyone's affected by one of these things compared to also now the the new lack of choice that we really have about a lot of these factors like if apple were to make and look and one of the ways they could address this they still sell the old one and
Marco:
Now, they did this also when they introduced the Retina MacBook Pro in 2012.
Marco:
The very first 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro in 2012.
Marco:
They launched for, I believe, also $2,200 or $2,400, something like that, which was higher than the previous one.
Marco:
So they kept selling the old one to hit a price point.
Marco:
But they did something else.
Marco:
They updated the internals of the old one as well to match the new one.
Marco:
So whatever... I think... I forget what CPU generation that was.
Marco:
Whatever was before Haswell.
Marco:
It was the one right before that, right?
Marco:
When the 2012 redesign happened, the last redesign in this lineup, they kept selling the old one, but they updated the guts so that it was... If you didn't care about the retina screen and the thinner and lighterness of it, you could still get all your old stuff in the old one with new guts.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
This time, they're doing the same thing where you can still get the old one if you don't care about the new advances and everything, but they didn't update the guts.
Marco:
And you got to think about, you know, first of all, it's kind of a bummer.
Marco:
Second of all, why?
Marco:
The honest reason is probably because they just don't care.
Marco:
They're going to phase these things out, and obviously Apple does not care about keeping their Macs up to date.
Marco:
You know, that's modern Apple.
Marco:
Thanks, whoever.
Marco:
But imagine if you saw the new 15-inch MacBook Pro,
Marco:
And next to it in the store page, as it is now, is the old one.
Marco:
But imagine if the old one also got Skylake and a couple of USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports.
Marco:
Which one of those would look more like the Pro Machine?
Marco:
And which one of those do you think would sell more?
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
So let's suppose you wanted a machine with infinite flexibility in that—infinite's a strong word.
Casey:
Let's suppose you wanted a machine where you had several ports, any of which could do freaking anything—
Casey:
It could drive a display.
Casey:
It could accept power.
Casey:
It could drive old USB.
Casey:
It could drive new USB.
Casey:
It can do anything.
Casey:
You could plug in a little docking port or not.
Casey:
You could plug in an SD card reader or not or a compact flash card reader.
Casey:
Like...
Casey:
I don't – I just don't see this the same way that you guys seem to.
Casey:
And the reality of the situation is there's no right or wrong.
Casey:
I'm right and I'm wrong.
Casey:
Marco is right and he's wrong.
Casey:
John is right and he's wrong.
Casey:
Well, except John is never wrong.
Casey:
I –
Casey:
I have no USB-C peripherals.
Casey:
And there are times that I plug things in to my USB ports on my MacBook Pro.
Casey:
There are times I plug in an HDMI cable to my MacBook Pro.
Casey:
I certainly would need a dongle or two
Casey:
in order to hypothetically get one of these new MacBook Pros.
Casey:
And in the near term, that might be a little annoying.
Casey:
I don't see it as anything more than that.
Casey:
And I see this.
Casey:
I personally...
Casey:
do see this as the pro machine in fact the thing that i'm grumpy about is what we already talked about which is 16 gigs ram but in every other way to me this is very much the pro machine it has four ports that you can use for freaking anything
Casey:
And I don't understand why the world is so frigging worked up about dongles.
Casey:
A, they're annoying.
Casey:
Okay, they're annoying.
Casey:
Fine.
Casey:
Whatever.
Casey:
I have a dongle today for Ethernet.
Casey:
I use it from time to time.
Casey:
And you know what?
Casey:
Life goes on.
Casey:
I have a dongle sometimes for displays.
Casey:
Right now, I actually have a cable that goes Thunderbolt to, I think it's DisplayPort.
Casey:
But for years, I used a dongle for my display.
Casey:
And you know what?
Casey:
Life went on.
Casey:
And have I lost any of these dongles?
Casey:
No, I don't think so because I'm an adult.
Casey:
I don't lose things.
Casey:
That's not something that I do.
Casey:
I just, ah, it drives me bananas because to me it's so—
Casey:
Maybe, maybe.
Casey:
But on the one side, I do agree with you, Marco.
Casey:
And I'm not placating.
Casey:
I really honestly do.
Casey:
Like, I understand where you're coming from.
Casey:
And there's certainly something to be said for maybe this is too early.
Casey:
Maybe this is leaving the true, utter professionals out to dry.
Casey:
But let's...
Casey:
The only thing I can do is use me as an example.
Casey:
I write code for a living.
Casey:
That's what I do.
Casey:
By most definitions, that is a pro-level profession in whatever definition of pro you so choose.
Casey:
It's the sort of thing that even if I wanted to, today, I could not do on an iPad.
Casey:
Yes, there's Swift Playgrounds, but you can't release an app to the App Store with Swift Playgrounds.
Casey:
i have to have a mac i can't have a pc unless i hackintosh whatever i have to have a mac and so i like your hackintosh voice so i i am by at least some definition a professional i'm not a photographer that's a different kind of professional i'm not an artist that's a different kind of professional but i am a professional no question and for me
Casey:
I think this machine would be frigging awesome.
Casey:
And there will be times that I'm going to have to plug in my iPhone 7 to this computer and, oh, my God, I need a dongle.
Casey:
Oh, well.
Casey:
Or I'll just get one of the USB-C to lightning freaking cables.
Casey:
Like, this is not a big deal.
Casey:
This is a problem that can be solved.
Casey:
I don't understand why there's so much...
Casey:
Oh, God, there's so much angst about this.
Casey:
And yes, Marco, and I'm picking on you because I feel like you and I are most vocally on opposite sides of this conversation.
Casey:
I do agree with you.
Casey:
And again, I hope I don't sound like I'm placating you because I mean it.
Casey:
I agree with you.
Casey:
It is less convenient to plug in something to a dongle to the computer than plugging it in directly to the computer.
Casey:
Totally agree with you.
Casey:
But at the same time, the only way to get...
Casey:
the world forward.
Casey:
The only way to march forward and to get people using USB-C is to frigging force them to, because gosh knows, even as a super nerd who wants to live on the cutting edge, if I have the choice between using old ass USB or modern USB, I'm going to choose the old one because that's what all my stuff already is.
Casey:
I'm never going to bother buying a USB-C to lightning cable.
Casey:
What does that do for me?
Casey:
Not a damn thing other than cost me 20 bucks, whatever it is.
Casey:
So,
Casey:
At some point, you have to rip the Band-Aid off.
Casey:
Now, maybe, maybe it's too soon.
Casey:
Maybe, maybe this is not the right time.
Casey:
I don't have a good answer for that.
Casey:
That very well could be true.
Casey:
But at some point, Apple has to say this new future where any port can be anything to anyone.
Casey:
is worth fighting for and i personally am okay with that i think i might be standing alone on this one and that's okay and it's kind of funny because i'm actually not in the market for a laptop and i probably won't be for another couple of years at the earliest but i i'm looking forward to getting one of these i would like a lighter laptop do i need one no i don't
Casey:
But I'd like it.
Casey:
I'd like a laptop where I can plug in the power port, damn it, RIP MagSafe, but be that as it may, I can plug in power to either side as I see fit.
Casey:
Why not?
Casey:
Whee!
Casey:
I can do whatever I want.
Casey:
I'd like a laptop where I could plug in a cheap docking station.
Casey:
The only reason I have...
Casey:
haven't bought a thunderbolt docking station which would be amazing it was well actually i only plug a couple things into my computer anyway but beyond that they're freaking expensive they're like three hundred dollars for a crappy docking station and i've seen reasonable usbc docking stations for like half that money well that's because of the protocol not the connector fair fair
Casey:
And I'm frustrated not with any one particular person.
Casey:
I'm frustrated in general because I understand where you're coming from, Marco.
Casey:
And you're not wrong.
Casey:
Despite everything I've just said, you're not wrong.
Casey:
But at the same time, I don't feel like this is such an affront to the professional experts.
Casey:
as everyone else in the world seems to.
Casey:
And since I'm the only one that's making this speech, it seems, I guess I'm the one that's wrong.
Casey:
But you know what I'm saying.
John:
You just lumped me in with Marco before and didn't even ask me what I thought of this.
John:
Marco already knows because I think we discussed it in Slack at one point.
Casey:
Well, John, what do you think?
Casey:
I'll give you the floor, sir.
John:
Again, I understand everything that Marco was saying about this.
John:
I think that going all Thunderbolt 3 is the right thing to do on these computers.
John:
In fact, I wish they had even more ports because I'm a port maniac.
John:
and i'm i'm mostly on that side i think if they had the two uh laptops that marco described the the bigger one than the skinny one i think the skinny one would sell more um way more like kind of the same reason that the laptop that had a cf card slot like the or not the cf card slot the uh
John:
PC card, formerly known as PCMCIA.
John:
The Express card 34?
John:
Yeah, whatever.
John:
And the side of the 17-inch laptop?
John:
Like, that was sitting there, too.
John:
It had tons of ports.
John:
It had ports no other laptop had because it was big enough to have them, right?
John:
And they discontinued it because not enough people bought it, right?
John:
I totally see the trade-offs.
John:
I hate dongles too.
John:
I want the future where everything is uniform.
John:
I think making a machine like this brings the future here sooner by forcing people to do uncomfortable things.
John:
The problem I have, as with almost every other criticism surrounding this event, is not so much with the machines that were introduced, but with the fact that, hey, Apple, if you really want to hasten the USB-C future, put it on all your Macs and stop selling the ones that don't have it.
John:
I am even more enthusiastic for, please get rid of all, because we're never going to get rid of this legacy USB stuff if Apple keeps selling year after year after year computers with this connector on it.
John:
The current iMac has this connector.
John:
The current Mac Pro, let's not even talk about, right?
John:
It does not have Thunderbolt 3 connectors on the back of it.
John:
in fact nothing has thunderbolt rings on the back it's just yeah so this particular mac um if i had to pick what the complement of port should be on this particular mac the only difference i would do is i would put the sd card slot on it not as marco uh ranted about in twitter today not because it's that big a deal and most people don't use it but because i think it's small there's room for it and it is the one thing that there is not
John:
There's nothing you can do to the outside that Apple can do to the outside world to force the outside world to come up with a solution that obviates the need to stick an SD card into something.
John:
Because Apple doesn't make standalone cameras.
John:
So they can't force standalone camera companies to suddenly make really fast, reliable wireless or improved USB or anything like that that is going to make it so that you have a solution that is better than taking the SD card out.
John:
Right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
given that they can't do that and there's no replacement for the sd card just put the slot in there it's a little bit easier it's not a big deal put it only on the big one like that is the only change i would have made i would not put usb type a connectors on this thing anywhere i would not put an hdmi port i would not do any of that stuff and i live in an office where every conference room has this hydra of wires poking out of it in
John:
Including dongle adapters for mini display port, mini DVI, VGA, all of which are metal wired to, you know, like those anti-theft wires things.
John:
Not because they think we're going to steal them, but because like when they were loose, people would take them from one conference room to the other and they would migrate around and people would bring them back to their desks and write their names on them in Sharpie or whatever.
John:
dongles are terrible dongles are the devil right i want to i want to get to the world where we can stop with that and you're not going to get to the world where you can stop with that unless you just get rid of the old port so i'm all i i agree with apple's decision not to put legacy ports on this my only quibbles i would have thrown an sd card and slot in there everyone probably has their own quibble they would say hdmi but like for all the other ones like oh i wish i had an hdmi port dongles are annoying eventually eventually someday maybe possibly i don't know maybe i'm maybe i'm foolish to think this eventually
John:
all of the high-end peripherals should have a little tiny connector on them.
John:
Like, I mean, we've been fighting against VGA for how many decades now?
John:
And it's still out there.
John:
But I feel like now if you buy like a projector for business, maybe they all still come with VGA.
John:
But I feel like now the tide is turning a little bit to say, all right, let's not have a VGA connector.
John:
Let's let the default connector be at least DVI or something, or maybe DisplayPort, or maybe mini DisplayPort.
John:
Like, I want to herd us towards better standards now.
John:
I'm using hand motions here and knocking things on my desk.
John:
I want to hurt us towards better standards.
John:
And I want Apple to help that along by purging legacy ports.
John:
So I'm actually mostly on Casey's side of this.
John:
And by the way, for the specific computer for the 16 gig things, I just want to say, I think if Apple could have put 32 gigs in there with the particular Intel chipset, they would have.
John:
I don't think they're withholding it at a spider because they don't think people need it.
John:
um it's just like they were as marco said totally dedicated to this thin and light thing and 16 is all they could fit if they could have fit 32 they would offer it and charge us eight bajillion dollars for it like they usually do um so i have some faith that in 2018
John:
When whatever the follow-up is, Coffee Lake, which is apparently going to be the next available Intel CPU with the good embedded GPU that can support 32 gigs of RAM with the good chipset.
John:
So 2018 or 2019, Coffee Lake, then we will get our 32 gig laptop and not before then.
John:
And that may be a long, frustrating wait, but for this specific machine at this point in time...
John:
16 gigs RAM, disappointing, but I can choke it down.
John:
And USB-C along the side, I'm pretty much okay with.
John:
I would have liked an SD card slot, but I have to say I'm mostly on Casey's side with this.
John:
In fact, you mentioned the Band-Aid thing.
John:
I think it's exactly what I mentioned when I was talking about this in Slack earlier in the week.
John:
that, you know, rip the Band-Aid off.
John:
And of course, you know, again, my complaint is if you're going to rip the Band-Aid off, you can't do it by changing just one thing and keep selling the freaking MacBook Air forever.
John:
So I'm still angry at Apple, but not about this machine, about all the other machines.
Casey:
And I think that's the thing is, I'm not the first person who said this, but I wonder if some of the whining and moaning about these computers is less about these computers and more about
Casey:
feeling boxed so let's suppose i'm a professional photographer and i want to have this machine in the field that can do i don't know whatever professional photographer people do like plug in sd cards and and do computationally difficult things or you know have a bazillion pictures open at once which somehow necessitates 32 gigs of ram you know if this isn't for you well there's no real mac pro option
Casey:
The iMac is below me because I'm a professional.
Casey:
So what options are left?
Casey:
And I think if Apple had simultaneously released or even made some amount of mention of, hey, here's some other device, be it a desktop or a super crazy laptop that's really terrible, but professionals would like it, or some other thing, then maybe we wouldn't be so desperate.
Casey:
But because we're all...
Casey:
you know, in the middle of the ocean and paddling and trying to stay above water, but our arms are getting tired and we're wondering if Apple really cares about us anymore, if that life vest will ever appear.
Casey:
We're getting really, really antsy and really concerned over a computer that really isn't meant for us.
Casey:
Like, Marco...
Casey:
you don't even use a laptop on a regular basis, yet here you are fairly perturbed about this particular laptop.
Marco:
And I think it's... I think because of what you're about to say, though, because like... Because you have no options.
Marco:
Yeah, I as a pro am worried that...
Marco:
I that like the things I use are going to move towards laptops and also sometimes I do use a laptop like when I go away for like a week at a time a few times a year where I really do use that heavily during that time.
Marco:
So I do use I don't use a laptop frequently but when I do use it I use it heavily.
Marco:
So I am a pro user when I use my laptops no question.
John:
I think Andrew Cunningham at Ars Tactica had a good take on this.
John:
His intro to the review of the only review hardware that people have, which is the MacBook Escape, started by saying that Mac users have been frustrated with Apple lately and, you know, the whole thing of, like, the Mac not getting updated as much and so on and so forth.
John:
And so the second paragraph is the new MacBook Pros released, for the record, a year and a half after the 2015 models, which were in some cases changed very little from the 2014-2013 models.
John:
have been birthed into this era of frustration.
John:
That is the key thing.
John:
That's what you were just getting at, Casey.
John:
It's not so much that I think people are particularly mad at these models or everyone has quibbles about what ports they have and the pricing and 16 gigs and stuff like that, but because they enter, the world that they are entering is the world in which all of the most ardent Mac fans are frustrated with the Mac line.
John:
And as good as these may be,
John:
The rest of the line is still just sitting there, especially insultingly continuing to be sold, including the airs, even after this, you know, supposed possible air replacement.
John:
That's the world these are coming into.
John:
So I think you're right that a lot of the anger related to this event is not about the computers that were released.
John:
It is that it's like if you're already angry and someone does something kind of nice.
John:
you can pick the nice thing that they did and say but i'm still angry about that other crap and we are we're all still angry about other crap and the more logical thing is like you said in any sort of situation you say well you know maybe you shouldn't get this or so what should i get like my options you know i feel it for the people who want an inexpensive laptop computer it's like well apple produced these pro models but what if you want to get a decent mac for a low price
John:
welcome to usba land welcome to non-retina screen like you're going back in time to buy a computer that is really super old and is way crappier like so it's it's really easy to be frustrated with the mac line and apple's treatment of it even if you like the particular machines that they released and if and if you're a super picky pro and then you look at the machines they did release and still while i have quibbles with those as well it just adds up to a very negative reaction i think i put something in the in the show notes of someone
John:
tweeting about this uh this is steve frank but you know it's echoing what you said the level of pushback for macbook pro event is staggering
John:
I sure hope someone on Apple who can make a difference is paying attention.
John:
I agree that right or wrong, you can say all these people are whining or complaining or they don't have a reason.
John:
It is a really weird vibe, a pretty unprecedented vibe in the modern Apple era for Apple to have a major announcement of products and for the reaction from the most ardent fans, the people who are watching the live stream, the people who knew there would be an event at all, the people who read tech sites about the event.
John:
to have a vocal portion of that.
John:
You're not going to say it's all of them, not even going to say it's the majority, but definitely a vocal portion of that.
John:
Their reaction to the event to be like anger, like Apple did something wrong.
John:
Like maybe we shouldn't have released anything.
John:
People are super angry at us now.
John:
Like before, at least they were just anticipating like, well, wait and see, wait and see.
John:
But now they're like angry at us.
John:
This used to happen, by the way, all the time before the Jobs 2 era.
John:
Anytime Apple announced anything, pretty much in the 90s, all the Mac fans would get angry at Apple.
John:
This was the vibe for pretty much most of my childhood and young adulthood with Apple was...
John:
we were all angry at apple for for not winning the mac pc wars we're all angry at apple for for allowing microsoft to dominate and all the dumb things that they did that we think they should have done differently which would have you know solved this problem whatever and anytime they announced anything we were angry about it because we knew they needed a new operating system and they'd announce the new operating system strategy we'd say this sucks this operating system sucks what are you doing when they announced mac it was 10 everyone was super angry i don't want a terminal i don't want a command line being angry at apple used to be the vibe
John:
But then after Jobs turned it around, every time there was an Apple event, we would wait like it's Christmas morning and be like, oh, goody Apple things.
John:
And we'd talk about them and pick them or whatever.
John:
But we were all excited by it.
John:
And this is like the first turn back towards the dark side of Apple announces a bunch of stuff.
John:
And we're all just angry about the Mac.
John:
I mean, the iPhone stuff is a little bit backlash.
John:
I think the iPhone stuff.
John:
People are kind of angry about that.
John:
That's more like when you're really super successful, people want to tear you down.
John:
Right.
John:
But the Mac stuff is like neglect and frustration.
John:
And then you release a bunch of products that, you know, that leave a bunch of the don't address a whole bunch of the frustration and the part of the frustration they do address.
John:
address it in a way that is not satisfactory to your most cranky users and so that that i think explains this whole big vibe um and should apple do something about it yeah they should update the rest of their freaking max like that will go a long way we'll go a long way to calming people down um
John:
But if I was Apple, I would mostly stay the course on the USB things.
John:
If I had to design the next version of this, and by the way, there are already rumors like, hey, guess what?
John:
Super secret, totally made up rumor.
John:
Next year, Apple's going to have MacBook Pros that are cheaper and with faster CPUs and 32 gigs of RAM.
John:
whatever and you know again as andrew cunningham pointed out to the person who pointed like what are they going to put in it that's going to let them do 32 easy ram they have to wait for coffee lake or they have to do something radically different anyway um the next revision of this thing if they put an sd card slot on it just that one change even for the people who don't use sd card slots ever i think they'd be like all right now now apple i see that you have seen my concern
John:
you know how to you have not actually addressed it because i want an hdmi port but at least now i see that you are taking our feedback into consideration and are correcting your course by making the iphone 6s less bendy and slightly more grippy by making the iphone 7 grippier still and waterproof you know by uh what else they did on the mac line or i keep thinking of the iphone by not making it glass front and back after the 4 series because that broke a lot
John:
Like, that's all we want to see at this point for the pros specifically is maybe some slight reconsideration of the next iteration of this.
John:
But again, their hands are tied because of Intel's things, and so I don't think we're going to see a lot of corrections there.
John:
Just need to update the rest of the line.
John:
Force the rest of the world into the USB-C utopia that we were all promised.
Okay.
John:
Get us away from those giant USB-A connectors.
John:
I hope we start looking at them like I look at SCSI ports now.
John:
Do you believe we actually have these things and plug stuff into it?
John:
They're huge.
John:
What is it, an air intake?
John:
I don't get it.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Casper, an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price.
Marco:
Go to casper.com slash ATP and use code ATP for $50 towards your mattress.
Marco:
Casper created one perfect mattress sold directly to consumers, eliminating commission-driven and inflated prices.
Marco:
The award-winning Casper mattress was developed in-house, has a sleek design, and is delivered in a remarkably small box.
Marco:
You can get it up narrow stairs if you have to.
Marco:
And now, in addition to the mattress, Casper also offers an adaptive pillow and soft, breathable sheets.
Marco:
The mattress industry has forced consumers into paying notoriously high markups.
Marco:
Casper is revolutionizing the industry by cutting the cost of dealing with resellers and showrooms and passing that savings directly on to you.
Marco:
An in-house team of engineers spent thousands of hours developing the Casper mattress.
Marco:
It combines springy, latex, and supportive memory foams for a sleep surface with just the right sink and just the right bounce.
Marco:
Plus, its breathable design sleeps cool to help you regulate your temperature throughout the night.
Marco:
And this is all available at a shockingly fair price.
Marco:
Premium mattresses often cost well over $1,500, but Casper mattresses cost just $500 for a twin, $750 for a full, $850 for queen, $950 for king.
Marco:
and these are made in america casper also made buying mattresses online easy and completely risk-free with free delivery and free returns within a hundred night home trial if you don't love it no questions asked they will pick it up at your house and give you a full refund within a hundred nights casper understands the importance of truly sleeping on a mattress before you commit because you're going to be spending a third of your life on it
Marco:
We've heard from friends and listeners who've all had great things to say about Casper, and Time Magazine named it one of the best inventions of 2015.
Marco:
Get yours today and try it for 100 nights in your own home with free delivery and free returns with home pickup.
Marco:
Completely risk-free.
Marco:
Go to casper.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Use code ATP for $50 towards your mattress.
Marco:
Terms and conditions do apply.
Marco:
Thank you very much to Casper for sponsoring our show.
Oh.
Casey:
Why don't we have a touch bar external keyboard?
Casey:
Yes, we briefly talked about this last episode.
John:
Not so briefly, perhaps.
Casey:
Well, either way.
Casey:
I want one, something fierce, but we don't have one yet.
Casey:
Is it coming, John?
John:
I had one additional thought about that that I wanted to throw in here.
John:
Wait, you're still in follow-up?
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
Well, I think we've long since left follow-up, to be honest.
John:
No, we are still.
John:
This is all follow-up.
John:
This is all follow-up from the things we talked about last show.
John:
Because it's not like they announced any new MacBook Pros.
John:
We're still just talking about those last ones.
John:
Anyway, for the keyboard with a touch bar, I thought of a reason that, once again, I'm disappointed that no listeners tweeted at me or emailed us.
John:
That the touch bar on the keyboard, not that this changes the odds of Apple doing it,
John:
But it makes me think that it may not be as great an idea as we think.
John:
And again, I'm saying this having never actually touched one of these because they're not out yet, right?
John:
Although I did try to order mine at work and they told me, sorry, we're not getting a new Mac until February.
John:
So, yep, corporate IT, yay.
John:
All right, anyway.
John:
But yeah, the touch bar on the laptops.
John:
the whole idea about this is a touch surface that's not the screen so you're not reaching up touch the screen it's down by the keyboard it's on the level of the keyboard so it's the rest of your stuff but the touch bar is also a screen and because the things on it change you will have to look at it to know like in this app what how is the context change or define the control that you want because you can't sure it can't feel for anything on it and especially if there's something visual like a display there of a timeline or a scrubber or whatever you will have to actually look at it
John:
And on a laptop, that mostly works out because your line of sight and focal distance on the laptop screen, which is when you're using the touch bar, is not that far off from the touch bar itself.
John:
Screen, touch bar, screen, touch bar.
John:
Not a big change in focal distance.
John:
If you're using a desktop and your keyboard is in the right position ergonomically and so is your screen...
John:
pretty big difference in focal distance and most people who are touch typists don't look at the keyboard ever on a desktop because why would you you can feel where everything is there's no reason to look down there and there's a totally different focal distance so experience wise using the touch bar not on a laptop may not be as nice an experience as using it on you know on a thing where the screen is i'm kind of thinking of like a heads up display where like you don't have to look away from the road as much to look at your thing
John:
So I don't know if Apple would ever trot that out as a reason that they don't produce a keyboard with this thing on it.
John:
But I think it may actually be a semi legit reason why the touch bar is purely an animal of the laptop and is not ever a thing that is destined to be on desktop computers.
Marco:
One thing we don't know yet is, is it really meant to be a continuous input device the way a trackpad or a keyboard is?
Marco:
Or is it really meant to be what the function row was before, which is basically occasional utility functions?
Marco:
Obviously, Apple has a lot of different demos and stuff that they have in their apps, but we don't really know yet how it will be used in practice.
Marco:
Will it actually become...
Marco:
a really primary pointing device or input device, or whether it will just become a little utility thing.
Marco:
If it is the latter, if it is just a little occasional utility thing, it's a lot less important to have it on the desktop.
Marco:
It might never come, and there won't be strong demand for it, and so it might not be worth anything like that.
Marco:
But if it does come to the desktop somehow...
Marco:
Again, if it is one of those occasional reference things, then it's okay to change your eye focal distance to go to it because you're not using it constantly.
Marco:
Whereas if it's actually meant to be like some of the ways it was demoed with being things like a jog wheel in Final Cut Pro and stuff like that, that's like a constant frequent type of input device there.
Marco:
If that's the kind of things that ends up being very useful for... And we don't really know.
Marco:
I mean, whatever Apple says does not matter.
Marco:
What matters is what ends up being useful in practice, right?
Marco:
And we don't know that yet.
Marco:
Nobody even has these to review yet.
Marco:
So we don't even know yet.
Marco:
But if that happens, then I think you have a bigger problem with frequently changing your focal distance and everything up and down from the screen to the keyboard and everything.
Marco:
Although, honestly...
Marco:
I was using my laptop yesterday or the day before, using it for a while, and I was pretending that I had a touch bar, trying to figure out how does it feel to reach up here for scrolling or jogging or editing operations and everything.
Marco:
It's kind of too high up for me.
Marco:
For ergonomics, I'm a little concerned that it might not feel very good to reach all the way up there frequently for lots of interaction with my hands.
Marco:
I feel like it might be...
Marco:
a little uncomfortable and a little ergonomically weird.
Marco:
If it's going to be one of those continuous input devices, I feel like that's kind of the wrong spot for it.
Marco:
And I recognize that the right spot for that kind of thing would probably be between the space bar and the trackpad.
Marco:
But I also recognize, practically speaking, that's really hard to design around and probably bad for accidental input and everything.
Marco:
So that's probably why it's not there.
Marco:
But the way it is up top there...
Marco:
I do wonder a little bit about the ergonomics of using it very often.
John:
Well, like I said last week on the show, and as I tweeted in, as I tried to jam into a series of three tweets that I initially screwed up and had to delete and re-chain together.
John:
Boy, we're really waiting for that edit this tweet function on Twitter any day now.
John:
Anyway.
Casey:
Don't hold your breath.
John:
The time lapse, the like, imagining what has happened to Apple keyboards over the years, starting on the Mac portable, you just watch the thing squirt.
John:
into the thing it just gets flatter and flatter and flatter and the keys get so flat and soon they're not even keys and soon they're like flush with the surface of the thing and they're just going down down and then all of a sudden a screen appears on the top of it and you just keep extrapolating that out why is the screen to the top why isn't the screen at the bottom why isn't the whole thing screen why isn't it a big force touch surface but you know and that gets into all the millennials typing on the screens and the whole big thing but seriously if you time lapse that it's comical to like to just look at it it's like
John:
you don't really realize how comical it is until i mean you don't need the mac portable to do it right but just look at an old laptop keyboard you're like this is what the keys used to be like and in some respects you're like wow look at this travel it's so luxurious but in other respects you're like look at all this wasted space and air to try to ape like the keyboard which is aping the typewriter which is it's just like this whole big chain of things and the new things do look more wrong but then like you start
John:
shrinking them so much and once you start adding screens like what are we even doing here again i talked about it in the last show it just seems like a straightforward extrapolation to say that that surface doesn't need to be keyboarded at a certain point it's better to have a bunch of reconfigurable images on a on a taptic screen with force and blah blah blah and that's where everyone says well you can't extrapolate that's ridiculous it's like a slippery slope thing you have to leave the keys there and like
John:
but at a certain point do you how unkey like do they have to make the keys before you don't notice any difference like oh they have to move it's really important for touch typing and this and that and the other thing like we'll all die and the kids that replace us might not have these same ties to typing because they never learned to type anything like it might take a long time to happen but that seems to be where it's going and the reason that would work and and gets into what marco was saying about what part is the most comfortable to use the reason that would work on a laptop form factor specifically where you have to have
John:
the screen and the keyboard connected together because they fold and it's all part of the whole portability thing is because the focal distance is not that different because looking down at the keyboard any part of the keyboard on a laptop is not that far from looking down at the screen because they're attached to each other and so if you did have some kind of ui on the flat part it is still more comfortable it still gets back to what everyone you know at apple has always said and we all believe you know you don't want to touch the big vertical screen
John:
But there is a horizontal surface that you can touch and you can type on it and you can use a trackpad on it.
John:
Now you can use a touchscreen on it.
John:
It's not making a touchscreen Mac, quote unquote.
John:
And it's not like, you know, people keep thinking of the thing.
John:
You're just saying it's going to turn into a big iPad, which maybe it will.
John:
And again, we will talk about the Microsoft Surface Studio eventually.
John:
I promise I won't let it go off the list.
John:
But having a horizontal surface that you use your fingers on.
John:
that is ergonomically viable we do it all the time we called a keyboard and a trackpad and now a touch bar it is not ridiculous to think that the parts of that horizontal surface that we touch that are now fixed in hardware could one day be reconfigurable in the same way as a touch bar if the touch bar is in any way successful
John:
as an experiment as a feature that we put out into the world and people try and they can see how it works if it is in any way successful even if people say just like marco it's fine but i don't like reaching up there that doesn't mean the concept is bad that just means they didn't do it enough right so i think that that time lapse and that extrapolation
John:
clearly leads in one direction one direction only in that direction is not a move from apple's insistence on that people that don't want to touch vertical screens again buy a touchscreen windows laptop and be poking at the screen some people like it and some people have reported like you get one of those you instinctively start touching laptop screens which by the way is terrible you should never touch your laptop screen that's a separate issue that's a personal issue agreed right uh
John:
And Apple's thing is horizontal surface with touch.
John:
So I think this is a place where we could go where I would be excited to see them go because at least then you start to reap the advantages that come along with having horrible keyboards, right?
John:
Like right now we're like, we're going to keep making your keyboard smaller and smaller and flatter and flatter and less and less like a keyboard that you like.
John:
But you're not going to get over that, you know, the big win that you get by saying, guess what?
John:
It's all screen and you can do amazing things for them.
John:
Because imagine the interface that you could do
John:
marco with like your podcast editing suite where you weren't limited to just a reconfigurable touch bar and weren't limited to a totally screenless uh trackpad but could actually draw controls down there for editing on a laptop that could be amazing right that could be pretty amazing but you definitely wouldn't like typing on that keyboard so you may just have to wait until you die and uh and adam grows up and he can make that podcast up
Marco:
Our final sponsor tonight is Backblaze, unlimited native online backup for Mac and PC.
Marco:
You can get a free 15-day trial with no credit card required at backblaze.com.
Marco:
Backblaze is an amazing online backup.
Marco:
I've used it for years, since long before they were a sponsor.
Marco:
I have it for my computer, my wife's computer, even my mom's computer.
Marco:
It is so nice to have online backup.
Marco:
And if you're going to have online backup, Backblaze is the one to get.
Marco:
You can also access all your backup data with their iOS and Android apps in addition to their website.
Marco:
So, of course, you can always go to the website.
Marco:
You can download stuff if you need it.
Marco:
You can download just one file if you want.
Marco:
So if you left a file at home and you're on vacation, you can get to it with the iOS or Android app or the website or whatever else.
Marco:
It's so useful.
Marco:
I've done that all the time.
Marco:
I've done that so often.
Marco:
It kind of makes your entire computer available online if you forgot to file somewhere.
Marco:
In addition to regular restore methods like that, they also have restore by mail, which means you can purchase a hard drive with all your data on it, and they will override it to you with FedEx.
Marco:
And if you return it within 30 days, you can get a refund on the drive cost.
Marco:
So it's a really great way to restore if you have a terabyte of data to restore.
Marco:
It might take a long time to download that on your internet connection.
Marco:
You can do it with an overnight hard drive with Backblaze for a very reasonable cost as long as you send it back.
Marco:
Backblaze is trusted by lots and lots of people.
Marco:
They've stored over 200 petabytes of people's data.
Marco:
Over 10 billion files have been restored using Backblaze.
Marco:
This is such a great addition to local backups.
Marco:
Backblaze and I both agree you should still do local backups.
Marco:
You should still do Time Machine if you can.
Marco:
You should still do a disk clone like SuperDuper if you can.
Marco:
But you should also have online backup because it saves you from a whole class of other problems that no local backup can.
Marco:
Things like fire, flood, theft, power surges, all sorts of weird stuff that could happen to your computer and anything that's connected to it or in the same room as it.
Marco:
Online backup is a huge fail-safe.
Marco:
It is such great peace of mind to have this.
Marco:
You can get all of this for just $5 per month per computer with Backblaze.
Marco:
Unlimited space, unthrottled speeds.
Marco:
They will never throttle you and restrict how quickly you can upload things.
Marco:
It is so great.
Marco:
Go to backblaze.com slash ATP.
Marco:
and you will get a free 15-day trial with no credit card required.
Marco:
Once again, backblaze.com slash ATP for unlimited native online backup.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to Backblaze for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
So we forgot to talk about earlier when you were talking about the new MacBook Pro.
Casey:
How excited are you for yours to arrive?
Casey:
Because you ordered the MacBook Escape.
Marco:
I did order the MacBook Escape and I canceled it before it shipped because... Insert the Marco's Waffling jingle right here.
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
Yay, Marco's Waffling.
Marco:
Maybe that's the jingle.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, basically, I still might get one.
Marco:
I haven't decided for sure I'm not getting one.
Marco:
But as I looked at more of the specs, and as I thought about it more, and as some of the early reviews started coming in, I figured, you know what?
Marco:
I think I want to wait until I can actually try the keyboard in a store.
Marco:
I can actually see it next to the 15-inch, and hopefully try the touch bar in a store, too, and really decide then.
Marco:
Because...
Marco:
My laptop is fine.
Marco:
I'm not in a huge rush.
Marco:
The only thing that really drives me nuts about it is that I'm always out of space because I got the base model, which is awesome in every single way, except the hard drive space is not nearly enough.
Marco:
So I'm always out of space on it, and it's a huge pain, and it is a big problem for how I work.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
If I just KC it up, I can just bring an external drive wherever I go and plug it in.
Marco:
I'll have my bag of dongles and wrap it all up in my Tom Bin pouch or whatever it is.
Marco:
You're going to love it.
Marco:
I'll go full KC and just plug in a bunch of crap to my laptop.
Marco:
So I will solve the problem that way until I can figure out what I want to do.
Marco:
Because honestly, once you...
Marco:
I didn't feel good about how much it cost.
Marco:
The configuration I got was the i7 CPU.
Marco:
So the highest CPU and 16 gigs and 512 SSD.
Marco:
And that put it up to $2,200.
Marco:
And I'm like, you know...
Marco:
i don't feel good about spending that much on a 13 inch even a nicely specced one like that that doesn't feel great to me uh and i realized you know i i could i could do that but i'm not even sure like i i once again had 15 inch regret or like i was like the fear of 15 inch regret basically like
Marco:
As I mentioned before, I have sometimes regretted not getting the 15-inch.
Marco:
When I've had the 15-inch, I've always been like, man, I'm so glad I had the 15-inch.
Marco:
So I'm like, you know, I should probably wait and actually try the new one first.
Marco:
So that's basically it.
Marco:
I'm going to wait until the new ones are actually in stores and until people have reviews of all the different configurations and real-world battery tests.
Marco:
Like the reviews of the MacBook Escape, I guess the embargo was lifted today.
Marco:
So a whole bunch of the reviews came out, like the aforementioned R's one.
Marco:
And ours did a battery test that showed, interestingly, basically, that the low-demand battery life is ridiculous.
Marco:
I think it was like 16 hours or something.
Marco:
It's ridiculously good.
Marco:
But if you actually stress the processor, it's two hours.
Marco:
and so it's like well yeah that's actually that's very similar to the current ones like the current ones if you really stretch if you turn the brightness down if you really are gentle on it on my 15 inch now i can get 10 hours uh but not if i'm doing it if i'm like using xcode uh or encoding an mp3 or doing it or doing audio editing forget it then then i'm closer to five hours maybe and then if i'm actually maxing out all the cpu cores like for instance doing a big lightroom import as i discovered this summer two hours so
Marco:
So this actually isn't that different.
Marco:
So basically, I wonder what the real-world battery life will be of the other two models.
Marco:
I'm actually now quite concerned.
Marco:
I canceled this back on, I think, Sunday or whatever.
Marco:
When I saw the battery test today, I'm actually thinking, man, I bet the battery life under moderate to heavy loads of the Touch Bar models is probably going to be terrible.
Marco:
But we will see.
Marco:
I mean, two hours is already pretty terrible.
Marco:
And that's like the low power one with the biggest battery.
Marco:
So that's a little scary.
Marco:
I also thought, you know what?
Marco:
Nothing's really wrong with my current one besides having no storage space.
Marco:
So maybe I just upgrade it and deal with it and live with it for a long time.
Marco:
Because it has a keyboard I like.
Marco:
It has a trackpad I like.
Marco:
It has lots of ports that come in handy.
Marco:
It has the SD card reader that I use frequently.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
I'll probably just keep it for a while because there's only no pressing need for me to upgrade other than that stupid storage issue and just wanting the newest thing.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Marco:
Next week, I could have ordered a 15-inch.
Marco:
Who knows?
Casey:
Very well could be.
Casey:
And John, you've been waffling apparently.
John:
Yeah, this was just another misplaced item in the things.
John:
We already talked about it.
John:
It was about the display and the iMac versus the Mac Pro, but Marco always screws up the order, so there you go.
John:
That was my waffling.
Marco:
You're welcome.
John:
Although not really, because I have to say, Marco's waffling when I introduced the concept of this segment.
John:
way back when i said you know it's really uh you know it's nice to make fun of but it's really uh changing your position when information changes but the true waffling waffling is marco acting impulsively because no new information has come to light he had just not fully assessed his feelings until after he had placed the order right so that's that's waffling in the true sense where a more cautious approach might have been to hash out these internal things
John:
before placing an order he's just lucky that apple doesn't ship things very quickly because he could be having to deal with a return here where you know again no new information has come to light it's merely marco's internal landscape that has changed in the past two days or whatever well and and lots of people do that lots of people will order things and they don't like them to return them and i've only done that once with the with the macbook one i really don't like doing that i and i i really didn't usually you sell them like the mac pro i know
Marco:
yeah well yeah like yeah returning stuff like i you know i i feel bad like i know it's there for a reason i know that apple probably doesn't really care if i return it but i i feel bad because i know that like i'm invoking this clause that is not meant to be invoked frequently there's a cost to it people are bearing costs to this it's not it isn't meant to be like a free home trial so i i try not to return things if necessary or if possible rather
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
Why is there no true tone display in the MacBook Pros?
Casey:
What's up with that?
John:
Two theories.
John:
One is just like they didn't get around to it because it's a really old design of a machine, you know, like all the lead times and this could have been released earlier and blah, blah, blah.
John:
Like that's the obvious explanation.
John:
Like it's just not there because timelines.
John:
And even though this Mac is coming out now, we all know that they've been delayed because we were relating for Intel CPUs and all sorts of other crap.
John:
So the other possibility that occurred to me is,
John:
Maybe it's, I guess it doesn't explain why the feature isn't there, but why, even if it was there, why some people might not enable it for people doing color sensitive work on this screen.
John:
And I guess there are those out there like, because it does have the P3 screen and all that stuff.
John:
wouldn't you kind of not want your screen to change color profile based on the ambient light to try to get a more consistent color experience i don't know i don't know enough about our you know maybe ours would want that because like look if you don't change it it's going to look weird
John:
when you're in you know sodium lights versus fluorescence versus whatever not there they're going to be doing their work on the side of the road under sodium lights but anyway um maybe they wouldn't want it to change but i can also imagine them saying i just want to calibrate my screen and have it the way i want it and not have it worry about whether the studio lights are on or off and having it change the color right so that may maybe there's just not a lot of demand for it is what i'm saying
Marco:
Well, but, I mean, it's, you know, you can't, like, whip out pro use cases selectively to justify certain things, which Apple does.
Marco:
Like, you know, if you say, like, you know, people don't really want it on Macs because they want their color accuracy, well, don't people want that on iPads, too?
John:
Like, it's on the iPad, so, like... Yeah, I don't think people are doing as much pro work on that.
John:
But what I was saying is, like I said, it's not a reason not to include it, but it's a reason that even if they did include it, I think some people might have wanted to turn it off.
John:
which you can do you can do in the ipads too right it's just a toggle switch like so that's what i'm saying so i think actually if and when they do eventually introduce it i can imagine people saying oh that's nice but i'm never going to use that because i do professional color work on it and uh you know and i have it on my ipad pro i have it enabled and i have to say it is subtle enough that i don't notice it unlike the stupid thing that makes your your ipad look like someone peed on it when the sun goes down
John:
i don't notice the true tone because it is subtle enough and i know the lighting in my house is totally like you know very warm compared to what uh lighting could be in other situations like but i don't notice the true tone so it's it's i think it's great for you know plain consumer uses of it um but like that's in other words that's why i think you don't hear people like people are complaining about the ports and about 32 gigs of ram i haven't heard any professional users complain that there's no true tone
Marco:
Yeah, well, where it is nice to have, though, is... And Phil mentioned this when he was doing the presentation of the iPad Pro announcing True Tone.
Marco:
He said something along the lines of, like, once you have it, you don't want to go back.
Marco:
Because, like, once you have displays in your life that are adjusting color temperature throughout the day for whatever reason, whether it's reacting to the room lighting or whether it's, you know, doing something like night shift slash whatever, flux.
John:
P-screen is what you're thinking of.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Once you have, like, one of the screens in your life doing that, it's really weird and jarring to have other ones that aren't.
Marco:
And so, like, if you are getting into the lifestyle of Flux slash P-Screen slash Night Shift and True Tone, which are, I think, really two different degrees of a similar kind of thing, you want all your screens to have it.
John:
I think that's only true of the Night Shift thing.
John:
Because I have, I do, I use...
John:
Every day I use both my iPad and at least one other screen that's not color adjusted.
John:
So True Tone, I think, is subtle enough.
John:
That's what I was saying, that you don't notice it.
John:
You just think it's the same.
John:
I'm using them in different rooms, so I don't have them side by side.
John:
Perhaps if I had them side by side, I would notice the difference.
John:
But when I'm using my iPad, usually in my bedroom, and then I come down and use the 5K iMac,
John:
i do not notice that they're different i think i would notice if it was night shift because again that is super noticeable and you'd be like oh the screen is so blue after sitting in front of your p yellow iMac screen i mean it is yellow but i like it it's it it's probably a placebo but it feels like it's so much easier make your computer look like it's broken pretty much back in my day they'd be like is the green connector loose on the back of your monitor wiggle it a little bit
John:
hey i still uh have component in my bedroom tv so i know what you're talking about um the mac startup chime is dead and i don't care so anything else we want to talk about there's a bunch of asterisks on that though like it's it's off by default but you can enable it with these nv ram commands and yeah yeah we'll put a link in the show notes to how you can enable it the other weird one they're doing this weird stuff with with power and opening the lid on the macbook pros which mostly is a good idea like basically when you open the lid the thing boots
John:
Which I think makes sense for most people.
John:
Because most people, like, why are you even opening it if you're not going to turn it on?
John:
But if you're an old person who's not used to that happening, you can turn it off with another NVR app.
John:
Same thing with the Startup Chime.
John:
And, like, the Startup Chime has been compared to the Happy Mac, which I don't know if you guys still had Macs back when the little Happy Mac appeared.
John:
Did your first Macs have that?
John:
No.
John:
So you would turn on the Mac.
John:
This is from the original Mac.
John:
And a little tiny pixel art thing, Susan Care pixel art of the original Macintosh with a happy smiling face on it would appear.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And that was a super important part of the original Macintosh experience, along with the whole rest of the GUI and this funny thing called a mouse with a wire on it and everything like that.
John:
And it lasted for years, long after Macs didn't look like that anymore.
John:
Long after Apple was no longer selling Macs like that, you'd buy a titanium power book and you'd boot it and it would have that picture on it.
John:
And people must be thinking, what is that?
John:
like people who didn't know the original mic like it doesn't look like this computer i'm in front of is like is it like a little square person is it a robot i don't know you know but it was adorable and it was tradition and and we liked it and eventually apple canned it and said when you turn on our computers now you don't see that you just see this apple logo and you know and so we can have a separate debate about apple's uh dedication to whimsy and all sorts of other things when the happy mac went away it was sad and
John:
the startup chime going away same thing oh it's all the old traditions or whatever i'm mostly okay with this because you know traditions have their time the happy mac had its time and then its time was over and the startup chime is i think a vestige of that same age and if anything it probably should have gone at the same time because
John:
And, you know, when discussing this, you see all the people who are super annoyed by the startup chime.
John:
It is kind of annoying and unexpected.
John:
It's from a time when booting a computer was an event worthy of a sound.
John:
That is no longer the case.
John:
First of all, you shouldn't be rebooting your computer.
John:
Just put it to sleep at night, right?
John:
And it's just not a thing that's done.
John:
You're not rebooting it because it's crashing all the time, which is the other reason you hear all the chimes back in the 90s in your office full of Macs, right?
John:
Because there was no memory protection.
John:
One bad program would take down the whole thing, usually an Adobe app product, but...
John:
uh but it's not like that's a vestige of a different age and i think at this point it is more luxurious and more sophisticated to not make a big boom here i am i'm turning on and yes there are reasons like oh well that lets me know that it posted correctly and i'll hear the different sounds for when i have bad ram and it sounds like glass is breaking and there's an argument anyway that there's not enough whimsy in the apple stuff although i do think like i said dragging the little buttons down
John:
to the the touch bar from the main screen is slightly whimsical and same thing with the little genie animations and the poofs and all the other crap a lot of which they've gotten rid of i i read but anyway i'm okay with startup chime going away and if you really want it back you can get it back
John:
opening the lid and booting your thing probably feels weird to us but i think that's mostly that's that's mostly what regular people expect it also gets them out of the business of having to find where to put the power button but then it makes it harder for people to figure out you know the sort of hold down the power button for 10 seconds when there's no power button that was a question by the way about touch bar when you're in your touch bar computer freezes how do you like hard reboot it
John:
uh i don't know how i'm sure i don't know i'm sure there's some combination of things you press but it was much more obvious when there was a key somewhere on there or a button or something like that that had the power symbol on it that i think people are somewhat familiar with and now it's going to be a little bit trickier i believe you hold down the touch id button and the volume down circle on the touch zone
John:
Yeah, I'm sure there's some way to do it, but it is less obvious than, you know, Touch ID is the thing, but there's no little power symbol on it.
John:
Anyway, I'm okay with it, surprisingly, and I am the oldest, crustiest Mac user ever.
Casey:
Yeah, I am stunned that this is okay with you.
Casey:
I don't even know where to go from here.
Casey:
I guess now that we're done with follow-up, we can start the show.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Harry's, Casper, and Backblaze, and we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Casey:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
John didn't do any research.
Casey:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Casey:
Cause it was accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Casey:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R
Casey:
So long.
John:
I knew it was going to be a total follow-up show, but there was just so much more to talk about that event.
John:
The event that changed the Mac world.
John:
Sort of.
John:
Maybe.
Marco:
Well, really what's changing the Mac world is the slow neglect of the things they're not mentioning.
John:
That too.
Marco:
What changes the Mac world is not going to be announced on stage.
Marco:
It's going to be just like slowly trickled out through press releases and controlled leaks.
John:
Wow.
John:
well so here's the thing about that like all all the the crankiness from from you marco and also from other people about like neglecting the mac or whatever the thing that i find frustrating about it is it's so clear that apple's apple's messages we care about the mac like they said it in so like in uncertain terms like tim cook said it phil shill saying in all the interviews like they're not beating around the bush and trying to say well
John:
but we kind of do nice and they're like emphatic like we care about the mac the mac is really important to us as a product and again it doesn't really matter what they say it matters what they do but what it means is that the message apple is trying to send is that they care about the mac and if that's the message they want to send like if they why would they send that message like they're not trying to trick us it's not a trap they they want that to be the message but
John:
And it's almost as if, like, we can't do anything in the short term to really convince you.
John:
So all we can really do is say, like, they don't announce future products.
John:
They can't... They're not going to come out and say, here's what we have in the pipeline for the Mac for the next year.
John:
We realize we've neglected it.
John:
Like, that's not their thing.
John:
But they're totally saying, we care about the Mac.
John:
So I think for everybody who says Apple doesn't care about the Mac, you'd have to basically be saying that Apple is, like, lying to you to trick you.
John:
Like...
John:
Or you can say they think they care about the Mac, but they don't know how to care for the Mac anymore.
John:
They don't know what the Mac needs.
John:
The Mac needs to go elsewhere, right?
John:
But they are totally all on the same page.
John:
The Mac is very important to Apple.
John:
It's super important.
John:
They have the history.
John:
Going forward, we care about it.
John:
And I really hope that is really true from top to bottom because that gives me...
John:
some notion that they will actually fix things with their actions later.
John:
Because it would be really weird for them to emphatically say they care about the Mac as a reaction to all of us thinking that they don't, and then just never do anything different.
John:
Like, that would be super weird to me.
Casey:
So do you think that there's hope in sight?
Casey:
I mean, given that they're saying so strongly, oh, we care, we care, we care.
Casey:
But earlier this episode, you're thinking, oh, there's not going to be a new Mac Pro.
Casey:
So how do you feel?
John:
Well, I mean, Mac Pro is not the Mac.
John:
Like, their vision of the Mac could be all laptops, right?
John:
But all that would mean is, like, well, then at least freaking update your laptops more often.
John:
And, like, I'm hoping, you know, all of the angry people are getting the message through.
John:
Like, if I had my way, I would say, like, say someone says, you can't have desktop Macs anymore.
John:
Fine, whatever.
John:
The Mac is just going to be the laptops.
John:
I would say...
John:
Get rid of all the old models.
John:
Stop doing the thing where you keep them around for a long time.
John:
Update your whole line.
John:
Have a line of products from just under $1,000 on up to a bajillion dollars that is all modern, all nice, all updated on a semi-yearly basis.
John:
Do that, right?
John:
And then beyond that, you can say, okay, well, if you're going to have desktops too, do X, Y, and Z. But it doesn't matter.
John:
Whatever you decide defines the Mac, whatever technology is involved, whatever ports, whatever form factors, or whatever...
John:
i really don't like this mac line that is littered with like the corpses of old macs i really really don't like it it makes the whole product line a minefield and trying to recommend one is bad and you get in these uncomfortable situations no matter when you update and you get into these situations where there's not like a safe one to buy depending on what your needs are like right now if you want to get an inexpensive mac that's good you know choose one or the other you can get an expensive mac or you can get a good mac but you can't get them both
Marco:
honestly like the old models that are still for sale are quite compelling like it's it's it's kind of a shame they shouldn't be because they're three years old not the macbook air with that freaking screen that is not compelling no that's not but like like the old 13 inch macbook pro is still for sale and that's a pretty good buy for what it is um the old 15 inches you know also still a pretty pretty great value honestly um but yeah i mean all things all the negativity and and cynicism aside which is not unwarranted
Marco:
um there is one thing here that i'm optimistic about and and you know as you said actions speak louder than words and they can say they're committed to the mac and everything but what matters is what they ship and what they show what they do and they did just ship the touch bar well they're shipping the touch bar in like a month
Marco:
i don't know whatever whatever they're shipping it's not actually four to five weeks well yeah whatever it is so they're shipping the touch bar sometime soon even though not even reviewers have it yet and so who knows if it's delayed for some reason or if it's just bad supply chain management because apple can't launch a product anymore every touch bar mac comes with a free set it comes with a free set of airpods though so
Marco:
that's what's delaying them um so all that aside the touch bar is not just a quick hack to sell this generation of macbook pros they have gone deep with this touch bar it is deeply integrated at the hardware levels it has like its tendrils all over the hardware of the computer like the way it's integrated the the the complexity of it how it integrates with things like the camera and the microphone allegedly and
Marco:
And the APIs for it are really extensive.
Marco:
And Apple has clearly spent quite a lot of time and effort updating all their apps to use them and bring in partners to have all their apps get ready for it and everything.
Marco:
So this is an area where Apple has put a clear, strong investment into the Mac.
Marco:
where it this isn't just like a thing that they said six months ago hey that we got to do something you know to to sell macbook pros this fall but we don't want to devote a lot of money to it because we don't care about the mac anymore so just like come up with some kind of gimmickry and we'll tack it on there no this isn't that well this was brett victor who is a uh
John:
computer genius used to work for apple and you should totally google his name and go to his website and watch his videos and get your mind blown by the stuff he shows you he used to work at apple at one of those you know i don't know if it was atg then advanced technology group but one of those touchy-feely kind of research high flutant ideas and he left partially because like he had all these great ideas in his group that never went anywhere and according to his tweets this idea this the touch bar essentially
John:
Uh, he was one of, it was one of the ideas that was at Apple eight years ago.
John:
And I mean, that's true of everything.
John:
Apple's, you know, I'm sure they're looking into VR and AR for their car stuff and like all sorts of research or whatever.
John:
A lot of times these things don't go anywhere.
John:
They don't end up in a product.
John:
And, uh, you know, Brad Victor's frustration, uh, with a lot of the Apple stuff is look at all these great ideas we have and you never put them into products, but Apple is patient.
John:
And sometimes an idea has its time.
John:
So it's not as if they worked on the touch bar for eight years, but the concept of maybe this is a thing we could do with computers, uh,
John:
existed at apple eight years ago and has probably existed as a feature planned for laptops for at least a year or more especially given the skylight delays which informs a lot about these machines it's like i think apple expected to ship these sooner than they did so when this thing appears and it's got like you said mature apis and tons of app support
John:
That's partially due to delay and partially due to, like you said, this is not a new idea.
John:
This is an eight-year-old idea that must have been resurrected by somebody.
John:
Or maybe every couple of years they reevaluate a bunch of this bucket of old ideas and say, are anything applicable to current technology or is it not time for?
John:
And this came out of, like my Mac Pro came out of his eight-year slumber and said, it is my time now.
John:
Put me on a MacBook.
John:
And they did.
Marco:
Well, and I think now is a good time because the way they implemented it, which seems to be a pretty good implementation by all the first-hand accounts and the little bit of tech info we have about it, but it seems like it's basically an Apple Watch in a lot of ways.
Marco:
It has an OLED retina density screen, basically.
Marco:
It's driven by a chip that sounds very similar to the watch's S1.
Marco:
It has a secure enclave and everything, Touch ID, all that stuff.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Almost all of that is fairly recent technology that they really wouldn't have been able to deliver in that form until basically now.
John:
and also you needed like it's not just they wouldn't be able to deliver in the fall but it you have to say because apple did a watch which is not related to the touch bar really but because they did the watch that's why they had the ability to make the t1 because they had made the s1 like it's all it's like now the pieces have come together it's not as if they made the watch so they can make the touch bar but these ideas these technology research projects and concepts they have sometimes only come to fruition not because they couldn't have built the touch bar earlier because clearly they could have but because now you see hey guess what we have all the pieces for the touch bar now
John:
we i don't know i don't think they would have dedicated a you know like hey we've never made an arm cpu before but let's start a division to make a tiny arm cpu to power the touch bar like they didn't choose to do that but because they have expertise in arms and because they made the watch and because this and because that now is when it all comes together but it's like this is one of those concepts is ideas of like different ways of interacting with computers should we touch the screen should we touch the keyboard should the keyboard be a big screen which i'm sure they've tested and all this other stuff
John:
comes together in a product and that's that's the best way it should work is like keep those ideas patent them i roll i hate patents um and when their time is you know explore everything and you'll know when the time is right when it all kind of comes together and then when you do launch it it won't appear as like a half-assed thing it'll it'll be launched with tons of app support and a mature sdk and and
John:
You know, I really hope it's a good idea because they did invest a lot of time and money in this on their side.
John:
So you're right.
John:
That does that does mean that is one action that matches their worth, which is the Mac is really important to us because that's a pretty significant investment in some pretty weird hardware stuff.
John:
That the Mac hasn't seen for a long time.
John:
I mean, they could have added touch ID to the Mac, you know, at the same time as it came to the phone.
John:
If the Mac was as important as the phone is, it obviously isn't, but it is still important enough for them to bring touch ID and not just touch ideas like a little black square on the keyboard, but also this whole touch bar concept.
Casey:
So we've run long, and we probably shouldn't talk about this.
Casey:
But with all the Intel delays and whatnot, is it just a matter of time at this point before Apple starts putting A-series chips in their laptops?
Casey:
I know we keep glancing off this topic on and off.
John:
We keep glancing.
John:
We talked about it forever.
John:
I think we should put it in the big topic list for future shows.
Casey:
And that's fine.
Casey:
It seems even more obvious now that we really need to –
Casey:
that apple really needs to think about this and i'm sure they already are but i don't know they're getting they're catching a lot of blame for things that you could argue are intel's fault as we talked about earlier um and maybe they are maybe they aren't intel's fault but you could paint a picture where it is intel's fault and that and apple just doesn't usually stand for that sort of thing so i feel like it's got to be eminent but who knows
Marco:
It all depends on the conditions that... Power PC was fine until it wasn't.
Marco:
And Intel is most of the time fine, sometimes even good.
Marco:
But this past year, it isn't.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
We'll see if Intel is going to keep having problems and keep having incentives and priorities that don't really line up with Apple's very much and keep having delay problems and everything else.
Marco:
There eventually might come a time when it's worth it for Apple to do this transition.
Marco:
It could take...
Marco:
two years of conditions changing before apple says you know what we this we need this now um but it is not an easy thing like the a series chips are really good where they're used right now in the iphone and if it were as easy as just dropping them into like the intel motherboard socket well if they still had sockets but if it was as easy as dropping it into the socket and just having like a different chip
Marco:
that was apple's chip and everything else could stay the same uh you know if you could still have thunderbolt and all the pc gpu support and everything like yeah if you could still have all that and just have intel just have apple's chips in there and have them updated whenever apple could update them that'd be awesome but it but isn't that simple well they can do that that's the that's the other rumor is that apple would make its own x86 chips chips like they would get amd and then they're licensed for x86 and like the apple would design and that then you could drop it in and they would license thunderbolt like
John:
That is one of the other rumors, along with the RMac things.
John:
And that does have a lot of advantages if Apple ever wanted to do it.
John:
But, you know, as we said on past shows, like the stumbling block for a lot of this is, is the Mac worth that kind of investment?
John:
Anyway, I think this is a much longer topic and I don't want to go much longer.
John:
So I put it in the topic list for future shows, unfortunately, ahead of Microsoft Studio and Nintendo Switch.
John:
Sorry, everybody.
John:
I also put in a line item for Mac clones.
Casey:
Oh, God.
John:
Which is another discussion that came up in the wake of that event.
John:
Again, how exactly how upset are people to the point where the idea of licensing the Mac operating system has once again come up, not as a joke in certain circles.
Casey:
So, two things.
Casey:
First of all, the baseball game is now tied in the bottom of the eighth, so this is getting interesting.
Casey:
Secondly, you have put an ellipsis and then no space.
Casey:
Armand Mack revisited dot dot dot again, no space.
John:
Yes, I removed your space.
John:
I saw you put the space there.
John:
It's barbaric.
John:
You need the spaces.
John:
Put it back here.
John:
I voted space after an ellipsis.
John:
Listen, which one of us is a professional rider?
John:
I'm going to say me.
John:
I don't know about that.
John:
Yeah.
Yeah.