Modern-Day Dialup
John:
with the hyphen modern hyphen day yes don't put a hyphen in dial-up though i don't think let's check that no because modern day is a modifier of dial-up i know but i mean like dial-up i think might be a hyphenated word oh i gotta look i didn't think about that uh see wikipedia has it with the hyphen we can just choose not to you know that is something we could do i know i'm just making sure i'm just making sure without is even an option the apple dictionary only has it in the hyphenated form i know i'm just i'm looking
Marco:
That's usually my reference as the dictionary app.
John:
Yeah, I think you have to have the hyphen.
John:
I think without the hyphen is not a thing.
Casey:
This is hyphens run wild.
Casey:
The hyphens do not own you, gentlemen.
Casey:
Just choose not to.
Casey:
It's going in without the hyphen.
John:
No, you can't just make up your own words.
Casey:
Modern hyphen day space dial up.
John:
No.
John:
Dullop is apparently not a word.
John:
If you don't put the hyphen there, the pens are going to all email us and say, you know, dullop is not a word.
Casey:
I really don't think anyone is going to email us.
Casey:
Oh, are you kidding?
Casey:
Challenge accepted.
Marco:
Yeah, I think we could get away with that one without a single email, actually.
Marco:
I think I'm on Casey's side of this bit.
Marco:
I don't think we would hear about it from anybody.
Marco:
Does Chris Pepper listen to this podcast?
Casey:
Ultimately, John is going to go in and change it out from under us anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it.
John:
Just be correct.
John:
Why would we intentionally not be correct?
John:
What are you making this stand about?
John:
What are you proving?
Casey:
I'm proving that I am better than a need to make the dial-up gods, the hyphen gods happy.
John:
What makes you better?
John:
There's no such thing as hyphen God, so what are you trying to say?
Casey:
Because I am choosing.
Casey:
I am making a creative choice.
Casey:
I am making a creative choice to not use the hyphen.
John:
What are you expressing with that creative choice?
Casey:
That I think it's, the hyphens, too many hyphens.
John:
You think there are too many hyphens.
Marco:
That's what you're expressing.
Marco:
This is the hill you're going to die on.
Marco:
I mean, I would argue that it, I think if email lost its hyphen, which it did like forever ago, I would classify this as similar.
John:
I feel like dial-up lived and died without ever losing its hyphen.
John:
It's not going to lose this hyphen now because who the hell ever talks about dial-up?
John:
It is a fossil.
John:
We just did.
John:
I think you should put the hyphen.
John:
We are fossils.
Casey:
I would like to lodge an official complaint to the group, please.
Casey:
I received an unsolicited package in the mail today, and Marco, you seem to have sent me the incorrect M6.
Casey:
You have sent me but a mere model as opposed to an actual M6.
Casey:
So I would like to officially file a complaint with the board that you have sent to the incorrect-sized M6.
Casey:
I literally can put it in my pocket, which means it is considerably too small.
Casey:
I mean, what is this, an M6 for ants?
John:
It's last year's model.
John:
Why are you going to send that back?
John:
Say, no, I'm sorry.
John:
The 6 isn't a thing anymore.
John:
It's the 8 now.
Casey:
So all kidding aside, Marco sent me a BMW hat, which I already have one just like it, as did you, if I'm not mistaken, because I believe I got it from driving school.
Casey:
You sent me a mug and you sent me a Model M6.
Casey:
I believe that was it.
Casey:
I think so.
Casey:
Which is very kind of you to move your shit from your house to my house.
Casey:
Now I have to deal with it.
Casey:
But be that as it may, when you bought the i3, they just threw random swag at you?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Cool.
Marco:
Yeah, for Tiff's recent i3 release, they gave us this bag on the way out of just a whole bunch of random BMW stuff.
Marco:
Yeah, it's all last year's BMW stuff.
Marco:
That's why they're getting rid of it.
Marco:
And we thought, well, we don't really need any of this stuff, but it would be funny to just mail it all to Casey.
John:
So that's what we did.
John:
Thank you so much.
John:
You know how much he loves BMWs now.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
Yes, exactly.
John:
Speaking of your poor car, I just saw something flipping through a magazine.
Casey:
Wait, can we be more specific?
Casey:
Whose poor car are we speaking of?
John:
Casey's poor car.
John:
I saw something flipping through a magazine today that seemed to indicate to me that the new Golf R will only come with an automatic.
Casey:
Oh, no.
John:
I believe it's pronounced Golf R. That's what I saw in a chart.
John:
I don't think it's set in stone yet, but that seemed to be the indication of this chart.
John:
The other thing I learned is that the default transmission for the Golf in Europe is a stick still for the new generation one.
John:
That's what you get if you don't select any options.
Casey:
Well, that's the thing is here in America, if I were actually, I'd be very curious to hear you guys, what you would say about this.
Casey:
But my question is, what is going to be the last car to get rid of the stick?
Casey:
And to me, I know, John, you're going to say the Civic, but I think if I were to wager a guess, I would say it'll be either the GTI or the Jeep Wrangler of all things.
Casey:
And I really mean that.
Casey:
John, I'm assuming you're going to say the Civic.
Casey:
No, I'm not going to say the Civic.
John:
I think it's going to be some weird, expensive, not exotic car.
John:
To give an example, I forget which car it was.
John:
Some car from some company.
John:
It might be Aston Martin.
John:
One of those type of brands is introducing a new model.
John:
that comes with a stick, like a new trim level of like an existing model where they just keep making different revisions of it.
John:
And one of the revisions is like, and this one comes with a stick and it's just totally out of left field.
John:
And it's only there to satisfy a few weird people.
John:
Like it's not even presented as a performance thing.
John:
Like that type of thing where...
John:
There's no reason for this, but you're already buying an Aston Martin.
John:
It wasn't Aston.
John:
It was some other car company, but you're already buying a car for like 200 and something grand.
John:
And we keep making new trim levels every year because we don't want to have to, you know, there's a long gap between the years.
John:
And so we make the one that has the pinstripe and the one with the big wing and the four wheel drive one and the convertible one.
John:
And then eventually they make one with the stick and that's going to be the last car that's going to have a stick.
John:
It'll be an expensive novelty for very rich people on very expensive cars.
Casey:
okay that's that's a fair answer if i were to now move the goalposts and change it to be a car that like a regular human can buy what would you say in the u.s in the u.s in the u.s um maybe this is the civic still available with stick no it's not the civic is not if anything if it was going to be a honda it would be like the fit or something but i'm thinking about when the if the economies of scale will get to the point where they're not going to do that either i have
John:
you gotta figure like the civic type r would probably be a pretty good candidate for that because it's like it's a pretty high selling i think yeah car that that like the audience would want it to be stick for a long time but it's also aspirational and that it aspires to you know a very fast automated manual or a very fast automatic because that's what the exotic cars all have so it is you know the ferraris don't have them anymore and the civic wants to be a little mini ferrari so i feel like it's going to go that way i'm gonna go out of left field and say some mazda like the miata
Casey:
Hmm.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
I can buy that.
Casey:
I've never driven a Miata.
Casey:
I've heard they are phenomenally fun.
Casey:
They are extremely slow, but phenomenally fun.
John:
I think only Marco can fit in one, unfortunately.
Casey:
They are very small.
Casey:
They're not big.
Casey:
So Marco, back years and years ago when you were living in the dark ages and using dead dinosaurs to move you around from town to town, some of us chose to use a transmission that required you to have three pedals and
Casey:
That's what we call a stick.
Casey:
I know this is hard for you to remember now.
Casey:
If you remember those dark, dark, terrible days, if you were to guess which American affordable car would be the last car to have one of these just horrible devices, which would you guess?
Marco:
I just did.
Marco:
I guess the Civic Type R. I think that might be my final guess.
Marco:
I think we're almost out of the time period now where people would just get it out of cheapness.
Marco:
Are there any cars left in the U.S.
Marco:
that have a stick as the base model just for cheapness?
John:
oh yeah sure i mean i think the fit still does to give an example i'm you know like there's lots of it's still happening now i think your answer marco should be the surprise answer which you probably don't even want to hear but electric cars are starting to come with transmissions and if one doesn't already come with a manual there will be an electric car with a manual transmission as absurd as absurd as that sounds i'm pretty sure i'm pretty sure there is one now as well
John:
Yeah, wasn't there – Why?
Casey:
I think there was a – there was like a one-off Mustang, if I'm not mistaken, that they put a stick in.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah, that's what it is.
John:
It wasn't – not the Mach-E, but there was some like electrified Mustang that had a manual transmission.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Why?
John:
They have transmissions for the same reason that gas cars have transmissions, to more efficiently put the power to the road.
John:
Like the –
John:
Ticon I can't do it the Ticon has two speed transmission it's not manual obviously but it has two speeds so when you go highway cruising your engines can be going at lower speed and it's more efficient for battery power is it that much more efficient yeah it shifts at like 60 when you're flat out yeah
John:
so anyway the possibility of electric cars with main transmissions does exist and so you should predict the last car that's going to have one is going to be i mean it still fits in my model of like some novelty expensive car i just didn't say whether that car would be electric or not but it could be can you like feel the shift like you can like in a regular car yeah i mean it's the same thing this is a power source and you know some kind of clutch that you actuate with a pedal with your left foot and then you you know the whole whole nine yards different gear ratios and
Marco:
yeah why would you want i see look the whole reason i like a stick or a dct is because transmissions are terrible and the best transmission is no transmission but if there's going to be one i want to decide what it does damn it but like why if you have a type of drivetrain like a pure electric that for the most part doesn't really need a transmission why would you add one
John:
Well, as I said, you're adding it because it's more efficient.
John:
You get better mileage.
John:
Like the two-speed and the Taycan, you get better acceleration numbers because you have shorter gearing from a standstill.
John:
And then you have more efficient highway cruising because it's taller gearing.
John:
It's the same reason the gas cars do.
John:
It's exactly it.
John:
Why doesn't Tesla use the exact same setup then?
John:
They're not using – they're using like half the voltage that the Taycan is using.
John:
And there's all sorts of things about Tesla's original electric system that are different about the Porsche one.
John:
So the trade-offs Porsche is making –
John:
allow it to charge faster allow it to be slightly more efficient allow it to have slightly better performance i'm assuming the next gen tesla stuff will do all the same things because everyone's going to that whatever it is 800 volt uh setup so that's just sort of a generational thing doesn't mean they have to have a transmission it just you know there's an advantage to it like this simplicity is the advantage of not having one but you get some range and performance benefits to having one
John:
It's only two speed, right?
John:
It's not like there's 900 gears or whatever.
John:
And the only reason you'd have a manual is, like I said, to satisfy weird people who want to shift themselves.
John:
It's massively less efficient than letting it shift yourself.
Marco:
If they only have two gears, can we bring back the turbo button that computers used to have?
John:
But then what would it do with that downshift into the lower gear?
John:
Because I think if you're over like 60, you can't
John:
be in the lower gear in the taikon like it's you know that's the end of the gear as far as like i don't i don't know what you would press the button to make it do because it's not really going to make you go any faster in any real situation it can make you go slower you could force it to upship to 30 and then all of a sudden your car has your car has worse performance oh man
Casey:
I hope that day is coming.
Casey:
Not at all soon, but it could be coming.
Casey:
The reason I was very confused about bad news for my car is because my car is actually currently at a body shop because I got lightly rear-ended a week or two ago.
Casey:
And so a young person in a – what is that unremarkable Jeep?
Casey:
Like a compass or something like that?
Casey:
All of them.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
There's a lot of remarkable Jeeps right now.
Casey:
Fair, fair, fair.
Casey:
But anyway, we were at a stoplight.
Casey:
It had just turned green.
Casey:
I was just about to take off, and I felt like a very subtle bump in the back to the point that I honestly had thought I had stalled.
Casey:
That's how subtle it was.
Casey:
And then Aaron said, did we just get hit?
Casey:
And I stopped, and I realized, oh, yes.
Casey:
Yes, we did.
Casey:
And so because Virginia is a lovely, wonderful state – well, Commonwealth, strictly speaking – that does so many things right –
Casey:
does so many things right except we are monsters and require a front license plate and so the screw one of the screws that was holding uh this individual's front license plate onto their car kind of not punched a hole but sort of kind of punched a hole in the paint i guess you could say of my bumper and so uh yeah that's a thing and it's been at the repair shop for a day and a half and supposedly it's almost done you know most people just live with that you know
Casey:
no well plus it wasn't my fault like i saw a picture of it it's very small it's you're gonna pay for the entire repair yourself because there's no way that's no i did not you don't have any deductible i do have a deductible but uh this individual bumped me and so uh in in order to it was a very young person and so i think their parents and they concluded that oh they just gave you some money
Casey:
Yeah, in order to alleviate dinging their insurance, which is also selfishly good for me because I don't want this car to be forever tainted on Carfax or something like that.
Casey:
But anyways.
Marco:
I don't think that kind of incident goes to Carfax.
John:
Seriously, people, Marco should put a picture in the show.
John:
We're talking about a tiny nick to the paint the size of a dime.
John:
A ring the size of a dime, not even a complete ring.
John:
Yep, that's pretty accurate.
John:
On the plastic bumper.
John:
Yes, it went through the paint to the plastic, but that's it.
John:
It's like a ring the size of a dime.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure every car I've ever had has incurred damage like that.
Marco:
And these leases that I would turn in and they wouldn't even comment on it.
Marco:
I wouldn't get charged.
Marco:
It's that minor.
Casey:
Well, $500 later, it will be fixed.
John:
Yeah, so that's not a $500 ding.
John:
I feel you because I have the same attitude towards things and scratches on my car.
John:
Of course I do, right?
John:
But I let them build up.
John:
So I have done bumper repair on my car, and I let it get pretty bad.
John:
large, big, scratchy regions where like cement chips off the road and scratched my thing and like, you know, bumps from who knows what in the parking lot and just all sorts of stuff that happens to my car when I'm not there.
John:
And I was like, all right.
John:
And I have my car is black and like it's scraping through and making these horrible like white paint for other people's cars.
John:
Eventually built up to the point where I could plunk down an obscene amount of money to get my plastic bumper repaired.
John:
But if you do it every time, that's that's expensive.
Casey:
That's fair.
Casey:
But no, it really bothered me and I wanted to get it fixed.
Casey:
And since I was bumped in the back, you know, it's pretty much guaranteed not to be my fault.
Casey:
And we actually did call a police officer, which I have a question about that in a second.
Casey:
We called a police officer just to see what happened.
Casey:
And the gentleman was very nice, the police officer, but he basically looked at the car and said...
Casey:
That's less than, I think he said $1,500 worth of damage.
Casey:
And so I'm not even going to write this up.
John:
He's suddenly an insurance adjuster.
John:
He knows it's less than $1,500.
John:
Like if you drove a Ferrari, that would not be less than $1,500.
Casey:
That's very fair.
Casey:
But anyway, but he didn't write it up.
Casey:
And so he was just like, here, here's a form for you to write each other's information down and go away.
Casey:
What I don't understand, though, is why didn't the individual that bumped me get some sort of citation?
Casey:
It didn't occur to me until after I had driven away and it was all over.
Casey:
Like, yeah, they didn't do a whole bunch of damage, but they still bumped another car.
Casey:
Like, shouldn't that individual have gotten written like some sort of ticket?
Casey:
I didn't if you're a law enforcement officer and have information about this, I would like not me specifically, just in general.
Casey:
I would love to hear why this person wasn't written up or given a ticket for having hit another car.
John:
As we know, many things are at the discretion of law enforcement officers.
Marco:
yeah i mean i know i think that's the answer i mean the i think the job of police officers largely is like the world is going to try to shove all of their problems onto your plate you as the police officer have to decide like what is worth my time and what isn't and what's worth the paperwork
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
And I feel like that's probably why.
Marco:
They probably get called out for every dumb little thing.
Marco:
And if they can get rid of some stuff, get it off their plate, I'm sure they're very happy to do that.
Marco:
So I'm sure the officer saw what happened here, saw it was incredibly minor.
Marco:
And not only was it not worth filing a police report for the accident, it wasn't even worth citing the person because it's like, who cares?
John:
It's not a criminal matter.
John:
They weren't reckless driving.
John:
They're not drunk.
John:
It's totally a civil...
Casey:
Oh, that's interesting.
Casey:
You don't think that there was any law broken?
Casey:
I mean, they hit another car.
John:
Is that illegal?
John:
I don't know.
John:
That's why I think your question is an interesting one.
John:
Obviously, there's fault and there's the insurance and there's all sorts of you could sue the person and have sources of civil cases or whatever.
John:
But the laws about driving are about obeying traffic signs and not being intoxicated and not driving recklessly and all that other stuff.
John:
And there's probably some law that you can cite.
Casey:
Well, what about following too close?
Casey:
I mean, there's a rule about not following too close and this individual broke that rule.
John:
weren't you weren't you stationary like maybe yeah i'm sure i'm sure somewhere on the books is a thing that says you shouldn't hit another car when if the car in front of you doesn't go you don't go either like that's i'm sure that's in there but i don't understand i don't know what like how whatever the lowest level of infraction is uh i would imagine this would have to be it and i don't know what that's called it's not a misdemeanor i don't i don't know anyway that's why i'm actually interested in the answer to this question of some police officer wants to write in because i have
John:
No idea what they would be cited for.
John:
Well, I do agree that you, as I think we discussed on a past show, the whole thing about driving is you don't let the cars touch.
John:
Yeah, that is kind of goal number one.
Casey:
Did we talk about that here?
Casey:
I think so.
Casey:
That was a neutral, if I'm not mistaken.
John:
There you go.
John:
Don't let the cars touch, Casey.
Casey:
Well, you know what?
Casey:
I was trying not to, but apparently... Takes two to touch.
Casey:
Thanks, Dad.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
So if you need a server for like a day or two, fine, you pay the hourly rate.
Marco:
Once you hit the monthly price of that server, it just stays there.
Marco:
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Marco:
You always just only pay for what you use and that's it.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
They have a whole API so you can automate stuff if you need to.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Once again, linode.com slash ATP, promo code ATP2019 for that $20 credit.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Linode for hosting all my servers and sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All righty.
Casey:
Let's do a little bit of follow-up.
Casey:
Marco, you apparently would like to file a report of your own with regard to the Paperlike 2.
Casey:
Is that a Kindle?
Casey:
I don't even know.
Marco:
Good guess.
Marco:
No, we talked on this show about a year ago.
Marco:
I had tried out a screen protector for my iPad called the Paperlike.
Marco:
I loved the way that it felt.
Marco:
Because the iPad Pro has the feeling, especially when you first get the new one when it's all clean and not covered in finger grease, it's almost tacky.
Marco:
You need a smoother surface and your fingers almost get caught in it.
Marco:
It's so...
Marco:
You know, bare and such a large surface.
Marco:
But then, unfortunately, the iPad Pro also has a fairly weak oleophobic coating, the thing that rejects finger oils.
Marco:
Because ever since the iPad Pro came out with pencil support, apparently it's been a thing that Apple has not been able to figure out.
Marco:
And an oleophobic coating that is compatible with the Apple Pencil that is any good.
Marco:
And so the result is any iPad since then is a fingerprint magnet way more than the previous ones were.
Marco:
And so the iPad screen is always just covered in finger grease.
Marco:
Anyway, so I was trying a screen protector last year called the Paperlike that that advertises that it feels like paper.
Marco:
So it's better, like a better texture for when you're drawing with a pencil and everything.
Marco:
And I hardly ever actually do that.
Marco:
But I did like the idea of a matte finish screen protector because not only did it improve that slippery finger feel and make it easier to do swipe gestures and everything, but also it seemed to lessen the fingerprint problem.
Marco:
The downside was that it kind of blurred...
Marco:
and added rainbow light refraction noise to the picture quality on the iPad.
Marco:
So it felt better, and it looked better when it was off because it wasn't covered in greasy fingerprints.
Marco:
But when it was on, the picture quality was sacrificed too much.
Marco:
It blurred the image too much, and it had this rainbow refraction noise around everything.
Marco:
I eventually took it off.
Marco:
which, again, immediately made it feel worse again, and it was immediately covered in fingerprints, but I did take it off eventually because I just didn't find the picture quality trade-off acceptable.
Marco:
The Paperlike 2 has just come out.
Marco:
I batted on Kickstarter a while ago, and the reason I gave it another shot is that they specifically addressed that picture quality thing in the
Marco:
kickstarter campaign materials for it they basically said like we've they basically created a nano coating texture very very similar advertising to uh what what apple said they did with the pro display xdr's anti-glare thousand dollar option yeah i'm sorry to hear that you had to spend a thousand dollars on the screen protector yeah
Marco:
Well, it turns out it was only, I think it was only like $25, $30, something like that.
Marco:
So it is possible to do it more cheaply.
Marco:
I got it today.
Marco:
I have it installed.
Marco:
And so far, I am pleasantly surprised by it.
Marco:
Granted, I have not had a lot of time with it yet.
Marco:
But it is a huge improvement in how much of the screen quality gets reduced.
Marco:
But there is still some picture quality reduction.
Marco:
There is still a little bit of blurring and a little bit of that rainbow noise effect.
Marco:
But it's significantly lessened than the last generation one.
Marco:
And it's much less than any other matte screen protector I've ever used before.
Marco:
which admittedly I haven't used that many in recent years because retina screens kind of ruined them.
Marco:
But this does look very good.
Marco:
It does not look as good as the Pro Display XDR's anti-glare coating, but it also isn't made of glass and $1,000.
Marco:
So, you know, to give them credit, like if you like screen protectors or if you are interested in trying one,
Marco:
Paperlight 2 is actually, it seems to be the real deal.
Marco:
So I'm going to keep it on for a while.
Marco:
I don't know if I'm going to stick with it long term yet.
Marco:
But I'm at least going to keep it on for a little while because I really like the way it feels.
Marco:
And I really like how it immediately got rid of all my fingerprints all over my screen.
Marco:
So yeah, I'll report back in future episodes on whether I still have it or not.
Marco:
But I'm tentatively optimistic about it.
Marco:
And the one thing I really wish now, I would love to have this for the MacBook Pro.
John:
So has Tiff used this, tried it on your iPad or on hers?
John:
Not yet.
John:
Because I'm wondering what, you know, she does, I'm assuming, a lot more drawing than you do on your iPad.
Marco:
Way more.
John:
How it feels for the supposed intended purpose feeling like paper.
John:
Like you want it for the fingerprinty stuff, but I'm interested to see if she likes it for the drawing parts.
Marco:
I also just enjoy the way it feels on my fingers.
Marco:
Like that's, it feels good and it doesn't have the screen all fingerprinty and that's awesome.
John:
And also, if you want, you could probably buy like nine of these and put them on your display XDR and save yourself a lot of money.
John:
Just try to ignore the seams and the part where the rounded corners don't meet.
John:
Yeah, it'll be fine.
John:
Totally fine.
Casey:
Well, I'm glad you found something that you enjoy.
Casey:
Tell me, Marco, about MacBook Pro pricing.
John:
what that's not marco's topic that's mine i was hoping that was marco's but you know what as if as i've learned many times and always deny it's always john you guys it's always always john yeah so last week when we talked about the new 16 inch macbook pro we talked about almost everything about it except one item which is the price and uh the price is interesting in that it's not interesting
John:
uh so this new six foot 16 inch macbook pro it has a bigger screen it has much better speakers it has a much better microphone it has a much better keyboard it has a bigger battery in it it has a better gpu but it's the same price as the one it replaces more or less i'm sure there's differences in the models but it starts at the same price and so they didn't they didn't increase the price they didn't say well this is the 16 inch so it's going to be an extra 50 bucks or an extra 20 bucks or an extra 100 bucks it's more or less the same price which is nice and we didn't mention i thought we should
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
This is one thing that we all got wrong in the guesses.
Marco:
Everyone thought, because Apple really has been doing a lot of price raising in recent years, whenever they change a generation of a product, price usually goes up.
Marco:
And in this case, it didn't.
Marco:
We were shocked.
Marco:
We were so sure that it would be more expensive than the current ones that a common guess in the rumor mill was that this would actually sit above the 15-inch and the 15-inch would stay in the lineup.
Marco:
just for price reasons.
Marco:
And that didn't happen here.
Marco:
They just replaced the 15 with one that's better.
Marco:
And it's the exact same price.
Marco:
And additionally, the SSD capacities doubled.
Marco:
So for the two configurations that are like the stock ones, like the $2,400 and $2,700 ones, used to be $256 and $512 on the SSD.
Marco:
And now it's $512 and 1TB, respectively.
Marco:
So they doubled the SSD sizes on both, too.
Marco:
Which is wonderful, because now we've returned to the point now where, like,
Marco:
I feel like I can confidently recommend the base model again.
Marco:
For years, I was saying, well, you should get the base model.
Marco:
It's a great buy, except 256 on the SSD is pretty tight.
Marco:
I wouldn't recommend that.
Marco:
Now, I do recommend, because 512, I think, is the minimum anybody should have.
Marco:
And I usually go for the terabyte on mine these days.
Marco:
But yeah, 512 is a perfectly fine minimum, and so the base model is recommendable once again.
Marco:
So to have this new computer that is
Marco:
substantially better in some pretty important ways, be the same price, and also give double SSD from where it was before.
Marco:
I know SSD pricing is really cheap these days.
Marco:
Yes, yes, yes, I know.
Marco:
But the fact that we have this now is pretty good.
Casey:
Yeah, I actually went to the local Apple store today to check out the new MacBook Pro.
Casey:
Do you have one yet?
Casey:
We're going to talk about this later.
Casey:
You do, don't you?
Casey:
I do want the new MacBook Pro.
Casey:
But here's the thing.
Casey:
It is a aircraft carrier compared to what I'm used to.
Casey:
And remember, I have the 12-inch MacBook.
Casey:
It's not obnoxiously heavy by comparison.
Casey:
Now, granted, I didn't have a MacBook next to it to compare to.
Casey:
But just by picking up the MacBook Pro, it's not terribly thick.
Casey:
It's not terribly heavy.
Casey:
But just in surface area alone, like the footprint of the thing is just completely
Casey:
comically, comically large.
Casey:
And I just don't know if I want something that big.
Casey:
But I've been starting to have, as we've talked about and we will talk about later, I've been starting to have problems with the iMac again.
Casey:
And so I'm starting to wonder, you know, maybe I should just get this 16-inch MacBook Pro and a, you know, LG 5K abomination and just
Casey:
call it a day and just stop having a desktop anymore.
Casey:
And I'm going to need you two to argue with me and convince me not to do that here in a little bit.
Casey:
But one way or another, the keyboard is excellent.
Casey:
It is very, very good.
Casey:
It feels very much like the Magic Keyboard.
Casey:
It feels ever so slightly less mushy to me.
Casey:
Again, I didn't have a Magic Keyboard next to it to compare, but from what I could remember of typing on a Magic Keyboard, it felt slightly less mushy.
Casey:
which I thought was good.
Casey:
I don't find the Magic Keyboard to be particularly mushy, but it felt slightly less mushy.
Casey:
But it is very, very good, and it felt extremely similar to the Magic Keyboard.
Casey:
So based on 30 to 60 seconds with it, two thumbs way, way, way up.
Casey:
I really like the keyboard, and it seems like it's exactly what we've always wanted, which again, I mean, Marco covered last week, but now you have somebody else saying that, you know what, Marco's right.
Marco:
uh marco you did buy one or no yes i did so i so what did you buy i went into the store and just bought the 2799 stock model in in like a perfectly ideal world maybe i would have gone 32 gigs and two terabytes for like future expansion but i know myself well enough to know a couple of things and
Marco:
a i'm impatient i wanted my own now now i still do have apple's review because i haven't had to send it back yet but when you have a review like i didn't want to like fully move into it like i didn't want to like have to like transfer over certain activation software licenses and stuff like that like there's like a bunch of stuff that you know when you get a new laptop you kind of like move into it fully
Marco:
And I didn't want to do all that to the review loaner, knowing that, you know, within a matter of weeks, I would have to send it back and do the whole thing again.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So I wanted to get my own fairly soon so I could really, you know, complete that move in process and only have to do it once.
Marco:
And I also, you know, I looked at the 13 inch MacBook Pro I've been using for the last year and a half.
Marco:
It only had 16 gigs of RAM and one terabyte.
Marco:
And that had been fine for me for my laptop needs.
Marco:
It would be different if it was my primary computer and I was doing heavy development work as my primary computer.
Marco:
Then I might spec it up a little bit more.
Marco:
But 16 and 1 terabyte was fine for my needs.
Marco:
It was perfectly fine for the last year and a half.
Marco:
So I know that A, that's probably going to be fine for the time I have this laptop.
Marco:
B, I also know myself.
Marco:
And I know I'm probably only going to have this laptop for a year and a half or whatever.
Casey:
That's funny.
Casey:
That's very funny.
Casey:
If you make it a month and a half, I'll be impressed.
Marco:
yeah well and you know the big test is going to be when they do come out with this keyboard in a 13 inch but then exactly that's going to be the big big test because i too look at this thing and think this is an aircraft carrier this is way bigger than what i am accustomed to uh because i've been i'm coming off the 13 for you know as i said for a year and a half so
Marco:
I'm accustomed to a much smaller computer than this.
Marco:
That being said, I did use a 15-inch for years before that and liked it, so I might stick with it.
Marco:
Either way, 16 and 1 terabyte were fine with me, and I wanted the 8-core, and that has the 8-core, so I am very, very happy with just that regular 2799 stock config, and I was able to get it very quickly.
Marco:
I got it on day one, so I got to move into it fully, and here I am.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
When I eventually want to sell it to you in a few months when the 13-inch comes out, let me know.
Casey:
No way because I'm going to get a 13.
Casey:
Honestly, I genuinely think if they had come out with what presumably would be a 14-inch – we're saying the same thing, the 13-inch with the new keyboard, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
I think I would have insta-bought it the day it came out, just like you did with this.
Casey:
Or maybe at most I would order a slightly different config.
Casey:
But if they had a new 13 with a new keyboard, I would have already bought one.
Casey:
And I'm a little scared.
Casey:
Was it Jonathan Morrison?
Casey:
Did I get that name right?
Casey:
I forget who it was.
Casey:
But somebody did an interview with Phil Schiller on that day.
Casey:
Um, and asked basically, Hey, so, you know, presumably the 14 is coming out soon.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
And I forget exactly how it was answered, but Phil kind of pumped the brakes on that more than I would have expected.
Casey:
So I'm a little nervous that that's going to be like many, many months in the future, but we'll, we'll see what happens.
John:
yeah that's always a possibility but i i think his statement was i mean you have he can't he's not going to say that they're coming he can't say that they're coming and the harder you press on that question the more forcefully he has to say not he has to not say that they're coming he has to say we sell the butterfly one in this one right now we are continuing to sell the butterfly because that's the truth and if you keep pressing he keeps having to say that over and over again it makes you start thinking oh my god they're never going to replace it but they will it's just a matter of time like
John:
It may be way too long, and we may be angry in two years screaming that the MacBook Air still doesn't have this keyboard, but he literally can't say anything differently now.
John:
So I saw that too, and it didn't make me feel any better or any worse about the prospects.
John:
Just people want to be reassured, and that reassurance is not coming from a company that is currently selling butterfly keyboards.
Marco:
I'm starting to lose faith that the 13-inch replacement will become 14 inches.
Marco:
The kind of thing that usually leaks pretty far ahead of time these days, usually through Ming-Chi Kuo, is when display panel sizes and resolutions change.
Marco:
And for something that we expect to be launching in less than a year and probably less than six months, the fact that we haven't had a display panel leak about a 14-inch display panel coming out soon...
Marco:
is concerning.
Marco:
And in fact, I believe Ming-Chu Kuo or one of the common rumor mill people has even said recently that it's going to be 13.3 still.
Marco:
So I'm guessing it's actually probably not going to go to 14, which I hope I'm wrong because...
Marco:
I would love for it to, but it doesn't seem like that's in the cards yet, or at least if it is in the cards, they have dramatically improved their secrecy around display panel leaks, which previously were leaking all the time very reliably.
John:
Yeah, I haven't seen any rumors of a 14.
John:
Like the only reason we're talking about a 14 is because it would be cool and it's what we all want.
John:
But besides wishful thinking on our part and the fact that it seems like a cool idea, I haven't seen anything about it.
John:
So we're still treating it as a thing that Apple should do.
John:
But I don't know what the lead times are on panels.
John:
If the thing comes out in eight months, maybe there's still time for a panel leak.
John:
But who knows?
John:
But yeah, it's firmly in the category of cool thing that we think Apple should do and not the thing that we think Apple is going to do necessarily at this point.
Casey:
Yeah, and to be fair, I'm not bent on it being a 14-inch.
Casey:
If they came out with the exact same panel, like you're saying, Marco, but the new keyboard and presumably slightly better internals, etc., I would still insta-buy that, too.
Casey:
I'm not hanging my hat on an additional inch of display.
Casey:
I'm hanging it on the new keyboard.
Casey:
Because as it turns out, as I was driving – well, Aaron was driving me to Apple because I have no car.
Casey:
I was typing on the – I was trying to do some work on my adorable and the H key was sticking and there was one other key that was sticking.
Casey:
And I'm just thinking to myself –
Casey:
It's probably for the best that I don't have my business credit card on me because I might have pulled a Marco right then and there, which is – I never have problems with the butterfly keyboard.
Casey:
Well, I mean I'm sure I can take compressed air to it, but I didn't have compressed air handy in the passenger compartment.
John:
He just held his notebook out the window while they were driving.
Casey:
Yeah, right.
Casey:
At exactly a 70-degree angle or whatever.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Casey:
Now, I have to ask you, though, Marco, these are two interrelated questions.
Casey:
I was going to ask, do you think this will be the computer for all trips to the beach, only weekend trips to the beach?
Casey:
But given that you didn't spec up the RAM to 32 gigs, I'm guessing that you will use this for brief trips but then still use your ridiculous carrying case for your summer move?
Yeah.
Marco:
That is my plan.
Marco:
When I'm out there for the whole summer, still bring in my desktop.
Marco:
Just because I want a desktop.
Marco:
I want the giant monitor.
Marco:
I want all the power.
Marco:
I want no fan noise.
Marco:
I want 100% reliability.
Marco:
For me, I love having a desktop out there for that large span.
Marco:
But this will make it so that I am much happier and more productive when I'm not going somewhere for two months.
Marco:
when I'm just going for a weekend or for a week or when I'm going other places.
Marco:
In other parts of the year, I do go to other places sometimes.
Marco:
Decreasingly so, maybe, but I still do go.
Marco:
For WBDC, there's all sorts of times when I travel where I need to or want to get work done that I can't bring my iMac Pro on trips like that.
Marco:
This will be wonderful for all of those other trips, even if I don't use it full-time for my big summer move.
Casey:
that's fair um i don't know i just keep wrestling with should i just you know ditch the imac entirely and just get one of these and a monitor but we'll see we'll talk about that in a minute um moving on before we do that let's talk about keycap replacement and apparently there's news about this uh peter wells uh tweeted at the two of you guys and said that he asked about repairability and phil said that if a key gets stuck you can pop it off and replace it what a novel idea
John:
Serviceability, wow!
John:
and lo and behold not only can you pop off a keycap and put it back on what they did was they popped the keycap off of the magic keyboard and popped it right on to the 16 inch macbook pro fits just fine now the keycaps on the magic keyboard are a little bit taller like they're thicker right so i probably wouldn't replace all the keycaps and close the lid because i think they would probably hit into the screen or whatever but just goes to show exactly how close those mechanisms are to each other despite
John:
them being different because it's not at an angle and them having whatever these stabilizing pins blah blah blah the fact is they popped off like the command key and off of the 16 inch macbook pro and put on the one from the magic keyboard so there you go it you know it is as close to the magic keyboard as it can be without being the magic keyboard uh and you can indeed open up at a single key and put it back on now oh
John:
All that said, as someone, like I said, who has popped the keycaps off, a scissor switch, Apple keyboard, and put one back on, you can screw this up, rest assured.
John:
Like, there are still delicate parts in there.
John:
You could, you know, if you have experience and know how to do it, you'll be successful.
John:
But if you're just like, I can do this.
John:
Let me just rip this thing off.
John:
They're very small, tiny pieces of plastic.
John:
And if you bend or break one of those little tiny pieces of plastic, you need a new tiny piece of plastic, which is still a possibility for repair.
John:
And that's great and everything.
John:
But don't be too cavalier about ripping your thing apart.
John:
The good thing is that an Apple repair person who presumably has vast experience taking off keycaps and putting the back on can do this for you.
John:
So yay for repairability.
Casey:
John, take me on a trip down memory lane with regard to mics and getting better over time.
John:
This is just a thought I had, you know, thinking about our last discussion about the improved microphones and speakers and stuff like that on the MacBook Pros and how cool it was and how it wasn't really top of mind because we were all focused on the keyboard and everything else.
John:
But it's a nice surprise.
John:
And I know I've talked about this before on ATP, but with the show running this long, I don't feel too bad repeating myself because two of you have probably forgotten about it by now, too.
John:
And I can't remember if I did talk about it.
John:
But I, as an old person, I like to sort of wax nostalgic about a particular period in the history of the Mac.
John:
Like right in the beginning, when the Mac first came out, there was this brief period of time.
John:
Well, actually, there was a longer period of time that you're both familiar with of the PC industry.
John:
But for the Mac specifically, there was this brief period of time where
John:
The Mac was brand new.
John:
In the beginning, there was one computer.
John:
It was called Macintosh spelled out completely, and that was it.
John:
There was no qualifiers on that.
John:
There was no designation because it was literally the only one, Macintosh, right?
John:
And then new ones came out, the 512 and the Plus and the SE and all that stuff, right?
John:
During that initial run of like,
John:
a new machine would come out and then another one and then another one.
John:
For a while there, every new Mac that came out was better than its predecessor in pretty much every way.
John:
And every aspect of the system would get improved because we were sort of in that era of computing.
John:
The CPU was faster.
John:
There were no GPUs.
John:
You don't have to worry about that.
John:
It had more ports.
John:
The floppy drive was bigger.
John:
The floppy drive was faster.
John:
The screen was a little bit sharper.
John:
The speakers were a little bit louder.
John:
The sound chip could do higher kilohertz or higher bit depth or whatever.
John:
everything about it was better the keyboard was better the mouse was better it was like and that continued for like three four or five models depending on when things bifurcate into the mac 2 and the color and everything and how you count that um and that just you know because that was a formative time in my life and i was super into the mac and everything it seemed like that's the way computers are every time a new one comes out it's better than all the than all the ones that came before it because why wouldn't it be in every aspect that it could be
John:
Obviously, there's some aspects that are the same or whatever, but there were certainly never any regressions.
John:
And in general, if you could touch it or if it affected your experience with the computer, it got better.
John:
As we all know now, that has long since not been the case.
John:
New computers come out and they improve in the few ways that are the most important, but other parts stay the same for a long time.
John:
And in general, like referring to your experience and our collective experience of the PC industry, if you were to graph anything having to do with like the advance of computers in the beginning, going from like the first personal computers to maybe like the 2000s or something.
John:
There's this big run-up where, like, every computer is so much better than the one that came before it.
John:
Moore's Law is in full effect.
John:
You got Weird Al singing parody songs where the entire premise is the idea that you get a computer and then before you even take it out of the box, it's obsolete because some other computer you can get for the same amount of money is, like, twice as fast.
John:
That doesn't happen.
John:
We wait three years now for a computer that's 20% faster.
John:
There's lots of reasons for that.
John:
We discussed it on the show.
John:
But all this is to say is there was a period where...
John:
Everything seemed like it was improving.
John:
And there was an expectation from the consumer and an excitement from the consumer that if I get a new computer, of course, the speakers are going to be better.
John:
Of course, the microphones will be better because this is this year's model.
John:
And that was last year's model.
John:
And this year, they have a way to make insert component here better.
John:
And the speakers and the microphone are things that I interact with.
John:
So they should be better.
John:
In our modern era, especially on the Mac line, we accept the idea that, for example, the webcam, as we call it, which is a ridiculous name, the front-facing camera on our Apple laptops will just go years and years without getting better.
John:
And not because it's reached any kind of limit.
John:
Like, very often the camera is poor quality and low resolution and has bad dynamic range and the lens is not great and...
John:
But every year we're not like, I can't believe they didn't upgrade the camera this year.
John:
We don't even mention it, because it's one of those things that we consider to be in stasis.
John:
Now, you could say that's because it's good enough, but honestly, it's not good enough.
John:
Like, if you look at the front-facing camera on the phone, which itself doesn't change every single time to be fantastically better, but it does try to keep pace.
John:
The front-facing camera on the iPhone has been improving, albeit more slowly.
John:
And so, our discussion of the mic and speakers made me reflect on how...
John:
Not how complacent, but how I've gotten used to the idea that certain things don't change.
John:
We touched on this last week saying now we can get back to lobbying for Face ID on Macs or whatever.
John:
One of the things I would like to see now that we're getting everything we want, we want even more.
John:
in this sort of revival of the Mac, is exactly what they just demonstrated on the 16-inch MacBook Pro.
John:
An improvement to systems that we had basically given up on.
John:
Like, Marco says he wasn't even thinking about laptop speakers being better.
John:
And the microphone?
John:
Who ever thought about that getting better?
John:
And now, you know, it's reawoken me and said, yeah, why shouldn't the front-facing camera on laptops be better every once in a while?
John:
when's the last time that changed i you know and you think oh you don't use it much i actually use it all the time when when i'm like teleconferencing with people who are in different geographic regions of my company i'm using video and what's what video the camera that's in my computer it it affects like how i present myself to my co-workers and if it can't handle the darkness in the room or it keeps changing like its exposure level because it's getting confused by like bright light coming through the window or whatever and the same thing with the microphone i found i sound echoey and distant and
John:
You know, those are all things that can and should be improved.
John:
So I don't know.
John:
I don't know what my point here is, except that I am now ready for more changes like the one they just have from the 16-inch.
John:
So I'm happy that Apple did that, and they should be a little bit scared that they did it because now I'm just getting more demanding.
Marco:
This is one of the things that I'm so happy to be back to this now.
Marco:
For these last few years where we've had the keyboard being this huge problem for a lot of people and being this huge thing that we hated –
Marco:
It was hard to look at anything else about the laptops and to really have a wish list or to really be able to focus on how else could they make technology get better and how else could they improve these things that we use every day.
Marco:
Because when your house is on fire, literally if your house is on fire, it's really hard to look at the bathroom and be like, I'd like to remodel this.
Marco:
Like it's like you have to deal with the fire first.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And so it's now, you know, the keyboard fire is being put out on the big one.
Marco:
It's already out.
Marco:
It's going to be put out on the smaller ones.
Marco:
We hope soon.
Marco:
So like now that the fire is being put out, it allows us to then finally revisit our
Marco:
Anything else about it, anything else besides like the primary input mechanism being incredibly controversial and having a high failure rate.
Marco:
So I am very much looking forward to a return to that kind of normalcy.
Marco:
And yeah, there's a bunch of stuff that I don't think they've advanced enough in recent years.
Marco:
because you know who knows what they were doing regardless you know their heads weren't on right for a while and it seems like now they put them back on and so I would love things like as I mentioned before cellular and I think there might be some movement there maybe we'll get to this there was a thing somewhere on a document that I saw about that but like
Marco:
I think it is long past time to have cellular on laptops.
Marco:
PC laptops have had it for a decade.
Marco:
I don't know why Apple has resisted so far.
Marco:
I've been told that there have been good reasons.
Marco:
I'm sure there are good reasons, but that doesn't mean they're insurmountable.
Marco:
If there is enough of a will, they can get past things that have good reasons.
Marco:
Other stuff, like, you know, as John said, is this the best webcam that we can have?
Marco:
Really?
Marco:
Because the webcam on it is still really crappy compared to... Stop calling it webcam.
Marco:
Sorry, the front-facing camera is still really crappy.
Marco:
It hasn't advanced at all in a very long time.
Marco:
The front-facing camera on iPhones is way better than the one on a $2,400 MacBook Pro, and I'm not sure that's right.
Marco:
I know there's different depths and everything.
Marco:
There's different price things.
Marco:
We just want to see progress.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I still don't think we've solved the ports and SD card problem really.
Marco:
We've kind of kicked the can down the road a little bit, but the problem is still there.
Marco:
I still think that the ports that are on the laptop should be such that most people don't need a single dongle, and I don't think we've reached that point.
Marco:
You know, there's all sorts of things that I think we can improve.
Marco:
I think battery life can always be improved, and we are just now, I think we are barely on the right side of that, where, like, most people, most of the time, will have just barely enough battery life.
Marco:
But I think we can do better than that.
Marco:
And there's still too many cases where you have to be really careful, otherwise you won't have any battery life.
Marco:
I still think we need software support for things like a true low power mode for macOS, which I blogged about a year or two ago.
Marco:
But I still think, give us a low power mode that has...
Marco:
that can disable turbo boost, that can turn off spotlight indexing and photo analysis and a whole bunch of other like power sucking things on Mac OS that, you know, if you need to get through a six hour flight and actually be doing something like Xcode or something that's actually taxing the battery and you have no power on that flight, you can put your laptop in low power mode and be relatively confident that you'll make it.
Marco:
You know, there's all sorts of stuff like this.
Marco:
And for so long, the tech industry has been so focused on what's next, what else, what's the future of computing in the way that they kind of have declared laptop and desktop style computing as dead.
Marco:
But we're all still doing it every single day for much or all of our work.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So I think it's about time for not only Apple, but for much of the industry to refocus on, you know, the kind of like regular or old style computer.
Marco:
And like, how can we bring this forward?
Marco:
How, you know, how much can we put into this?
Marco:
For a while, we thought this was the past.
Marco:
This was done.
Marco:
Turns out tablets and phones and everything were mostly additive.
Marco:
And all these computers that we all thought were done aren't done.
Marco:
We're all still using them.
Marco:
So let's keep moving them forward.
John:
I think the PC industry has actually been moving forward on all these fronts, because the PC industry is not just one company.
John:
It's like, you know, one company fades, another company rises, you know, but there's lots of innovation there.
John:
I guess it is mostly an Apple problem.
John:
Yeah, so obviously we're mostly focusing on Apple, but that's just the nature of...
John:
A single company versus an entire rest of the industry, because if a particular company, you know, doesn't stops really trying to sell PC notebooks, someone else will come and eat their lunch.
John:
Right.
John:
Whereas Apple stops really trying because they have such a differentiator with the OS and the whole platform and all the other things that we've talked about.
John:
um they have less uh there's less competition there's less pressure on them to uh to change so they can leave the uh camera on their laptops the same for five years six years how long has it been the same and no competitor is going to steal that customer because no one else sells mac laptops
Casey:
It does make me happy.
Casey:
As you mentioned earlier, Marco, it makes me happy that we are now finding these sorts of things to grumble about rather than one of the two primary input mechanisms for the computer not working very reliably.
John:
I had a terrible flash earlier today about thinking of like, wouldn't it be funny slash horrifying if the next thing was that a Mac laptop came out and the trackpad was unreliable?
Casey:
Yeah, imagine how bad that would be, John.
Casey:
We're going to talk about that in a minute.
John:
No, not the external one, and that's a software problem anyway, probably.
Marco:
It's like, imagine if an iPad, every iPad that came out for three and a half years, one minute out of every hour, it just wouldn't recognize touches.
John:
like and they kept releasing ipads for three years they kept doing that didn't the iphone 4 one of them had like a like a flex cable issue where it would have it was like it was like home button disease or something where like the table would disconnect from like the touch sensor and it would stop accepting touch input or something iphone 6 i believe yeah whatever it was that was like a one-time problem they fixed it by like fixing the cable or whatever but uh
John:
Yeah, stuff like that happens occasionally.
John:
But yeah, it's just hopefully none of them will be this kind of long nightmare.
John:
It's like, well, the trackpad works most of the time.
John:
Occasionally you'll swipe on it and the cursor will move.
John:
But that happens like one out of every 10,000 swipes.
John:
It's not a big deal.
John:
And we'd all just slowly be going mad over the next three years.
Casey:
No, thank you.
Casey:
Marco, you made mention of somewhere in the document there was some sort of chatter about cellular laptops.
Casey:
Well, guess what?
Casey:
It is right after what we just covered.
Marco:
So, John, it's time.
Casey:
Tell me about Lakefield System on a Chip and cellular laptops, please.
John:
Yeah, this is an article from an NNTech
John:
Talking about some new Intel chips that incorporate some cellular tech in them in the article Talks about a particular model of some saying Samsung thing and this is like, you know, you could always put cellular in x86 notebooks But then you got to put separate chips and take more power and of course they cost more money or whatever So here's something from Intel to make it easier for you to efficiently and presumably less expensively put cellular in a laptop and
John:
And again, PC laptops had cellular forever.
John:
This is just something making it easier.
John:
But it's making me think that regardless of which direction Apple goes, we keep talking about their ARM transition, if and when that's ever going to happen.
John:
And of course, if it did, you would presume that bringing cellular along with that would be really easy because Apple has a lot of experience making very powerful system on chips based on the ARM architecture, which have cellular capability, even though they also have separate chips and yada, yada, yada.
John:
But anyway, even if they stick to Intel, it seems like Intel has products in the pipe that could help some of Apple's laptops.
John:
have cellular capability with more power savings on less expense than even before.
John:
So the number of excuses for Apple not to have cellular continues to dwindle.
Casey:
Which is good news.
Casey:
And just to hopefully get in front of all the people that are going to write us and say, well, why don't you tether?
Casey:
Having done that in the car today, let me tell you, it is not fun.
Casey:
I know we cover this a lot, but people always ask, well, why don't you just tether?
Casey:
Tethering sucks.
Casey:
It's not nearly as convenient.
Casey:
It is way more convenient to turn the machine on and instantly have a connection of its own rather than having to wait for it to realize it doesn't have a connection and then wait for it to realize you have a phone nearby.
Casey:
And then often, but not always, it will be smart enough to offer you, in Catalina anyway, offer you that connection on your phone whenever
Casey:
Or even on Mojave, you could, you know, go into the Wi-Fi menu and drop down and grab your phone from the list.
Casey:
But that's still many more steps.
Casey:
You're now depleting two different batteries.
Casey:
It's just not as darn convenient.
Casey:
And I don't understand why people get such a burr up their butts about us not liking tethering.
Casey:
Yes, I do tether a lot on my laptop.
Casey:
But if I could, I would love to have a cellular laptop.
Casey:
And so I really don't enjoy people constantly saying, oh, it's just Heather.
Casey:
Yes, we get it.
Casey:
We don't want to.
Casey:
That's the whole point.
Marco:
Well, and just because a solution is good enough for you…
Marco:
doesn't mean that no one could possibly want a better one for themselves and for their needs and priorities.
Marco:
When people say just tether, they're saying it defensively because they just tether and it's fine for them, so why can't it be fine for us?
Marco:
And again,
Marco:
This is something that a lot of people never understand, but just because you don't need something doesn't mean that no one needs it.
Marco:
Or just because your priorities say this is fine doesn't mean that other people would make the same choice.
Marco:
And in the case of tethering, yeah, tethering is fine if it's your only option, which currently for laptops made by Apple it is.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
We're all old enough, everyone listening.
Marco:
We're all old enough, the three of us, to have been around when broadband came out.
Marco:
And more importantly, to have been around before broadband came out.
Marco:
And one of the big changes that happened when you went from dial-up to broadband...
Marco:
Yes, it did get a ton faster, but it was also always connected.
Marco:
You were just always online.
Marco:
Your computer was just always online.
Marco:
As opposed to having to go to a thing in your menu bar or whatever and say, connect to the internet, please.
Marco:
Wait a few seconds and then have it connect.
Marco:
That's exactly what tethering is.
Casey:
Yeah, that's a good way of looking at it.
Marco:
It's literally exactly what it is.
Marco:
You're basically doing modern-day dial-up.
Marco:
You are having to go to your menu and go to the thing and say, dial with my phone, please, like tether with my phone, please, and wait a few seconds, and then you're on.
Marco:
It is totally different to be out there in the world and to pick up your iPad or your iPhone with cellular and to just be online.
Marco:
you're just on.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
You just open it up and it's online.
Marco:
Simple as that.
Marco:
Totally different way of operating.
Marco:
And that is why I want this in a MacBook.
Marco:
There are so many times where I will take my iPad out into the world instead of a laptop, primarily because it's cellular.
Marco:
Because it's just easier.
Marco:
It's just always on.
Marco:
It's just there, right?
Marco:
I want that for the Mac as well.
Marco:
And
Marco:
It totally transforms the way you use a portable device, whether it can have cellular or not.
Marco:
And yeah, not everybody will pick that option.
Marco:
Not everybody will want to have the extra plan or whatever.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
But you know what?
Marco:
A lot of us will.
Marco:
We know that because the PC world has had these for a decade.
Marco:
People buy them.
Marco:
It's like, this is not a hypothetical...
Marco:
It's been around for a long time, and people buy them.
Marco:
And any argument you could possibly make about why the MacBook Pro shouldn't have cellular available, you can say the exact same thing about the iPad.
Marco:
And the iPad has had cellular on literally every model they offer since day one, almost 10 years ago.
Marco:
So clearly, there's some reason why they haven't wanted to put it on a Mac yet, but clearly, it should be there if they can do it.
Marco:
And I just hope the time that they can do it is coming because the need has not gone away.
Marco:
The need never will go away.
Marco:
And it's well past time.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Fracture, who prints your photos in vivid color directly onto glass.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
And usually what happens is we take the picture.
Marco:
It looks great on our phone.
Marco:
We post it online maybe, and then that's it.
Marco:
We never see it again.
Marco:
After a day, it's off the timeline.
Marco:
You almost never actually get those photos printed, and very few of them ever end up on display for you to actually enjoy.
Marco:
Let Fracture help you.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
The print goes edge to edge.
Marco:
And it's actually printed on the back surface of a thin piece of glass and kind of adhered to like a piece of foam core to help you be able to mount it into something.
Marco:
And so it's this beautiful...
Marco:
thin edge to edge very lightweight complete thing you don't frame it or anything like it comes and that's it it's totally its own unit you don't have to like you know get anything else for it it even comes with the wall hanger in the box so you really don't have to get anything else for it it's ready to display right out of the box
Marco:
And these prints look good in any decor because they're just little rectangles of glass that have your wonderful pictures on them.
Marco:
And we've used them.
Marco:
We have them all over our house.
Marco:
I have them in the office here.
Marco:
We actually make a little Fracture print square for any new podcast that we do.
Marco:
My wife and I, so there's like six or seven of them around the office right now.
Marco:
We give them as gifts.
Marco:
They make fantastic gifts because, you know, photos are great gifts and photo prints really can convert a memory and experience into a great gift for anyone in your family or friends.
Marco:
And Fracture is a really high quality company.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
So once again, fractureme.com slash ATP for wonderful glass photo prints.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Fracture for giving us lots of gifts to give to people, decorating our house, and sponsoring our show.
Casey:
Tell me about the Motorola Razr.
Casey:
So when I was a young lad, I had a Motorola Razr, and I loved that thing.
Casey:
I thought it was amazing.
Casey:
And apparently there's a new one now?
John:
Speaking of cellular, we talked about, I think last show, or a couple shows, we were talking about foldable phones, but they're regular-sized phones, but they fold the other way.
John:
You know, like a flip phone, like the Motorola Razr.
John:
Well, Motorola being the...
John:
savvy slash desperate business that it is uh has a lot of brand equity in the razor lots of people have fond memories of their razors as does casey i imagine because it was a cool thin flip phone right it's the only phone motorola is remembered for yeah i mean it's a good there's also the star tack and stuff but you know and there's a lot of brand equity in this right unfortunately the brand equity and everything about it is wrapped up in the idea that it is a thin phone that folds in the way that a razor folds right um
John:
Uh, so they are making a foldable phone that is very much like the size and shape and proportions of the original razor, except that when you open it up, ta-da, OLED screen, a bendy OLED screen is inside there.
John:
Um, and it's got one camera that is facing you when it's closed and is facing away from you when it's open.
John:
And it's got a chin, just like the razor and the whole nine yards is even like a weird nostalgia mode where it will put on the screen, like graphics that look like the old razor, uh, number pad and stuff above it and everything.
Um,
John:
I'm not sure if this is a good phone, but this is more or less exactly what I was talking about in terms of, like, the fun of making a phone that really does fold to be small and it's fun to, like, flip open and close.
John:
So this is as good an attempt at that as I can possibly imagine because it's got the brand equity.
John:
It's got the good feelings and nostalgia associated with it.
John:
The size and shape and form factor are nice in that they are very much like the thing that it is aping, but also are reasonable for a modern phone when it's open.
John:
Like, it's not a ridiculous size and shape phone.
John:
It's not really skinny or really broad or whatever.
John:
The chin is a little weird, but...
John:
uh this is this phone intrigues me obviously the folding part is the most difficult part and you still have the problems of if the screen dies because of the folding and you know if you look at the hinge it's very similar to the other one so i'm not sure if this is going to stand up to heavy use or how delicate it's going to be or whatever and whether the sort of the usefulness of being able to make it that small makes that much of a difference uh the biggest enemy of the zone is probably uh
John:
The degree to which our world and society has accommodated phones.
John:
I know on women's clothing, there continues to be a very terrible lack of reasonable size pockets.
John:
But in general, I think the trend in clothing for everybody is for the pockets to either A, start existing on women's clothing, if you're lucky.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And B, be big enough to accommodate a smartphone because we all do have smartphones.
John:
And if we buy a piece of clothing and find that our smartphones don't fit in any of the pockets, we will not have good feelings about that piece of clothing.
John:
So maybe...
John:
this the time of this phone is actually already passed and we don't need anything to get that small but maybe it will appeal to people who still think phones are too large and awkward in their pockets uh so i i thought this was this is that this to me this is the most interesting folding phone that i've seen not that i want to buy one but i want other people to buy them and see if they like it
John:
i don't think it's actually what anybody wants like it's a cool nostalgia thing but i don't think you're really solving a problem that people have by having the phone fold and get really thick but the razor isn't that thick that's what i like about it is that it is like the whole thing with the razor is look can you believe how thin this phone is and that this foldy one is also thinner than you would expect a folding phone to be it's not thin right it's still thick right but
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Do people really need their phone to get shorter just in that one dimension but twice as thick?
Marco:
It doesn't seem like that's the right dimension to be folding on.
Marco:
Not to mention, of course, I don't think for a second this is going to work.
Marco:
I don't think for a second the screen is going to be durable.
Marco:
No, I think we're nowhere near the point where anybody has solved that.
Marco:
So I don't think for a moment this is going to last more than three flips before you have a bubble on your screen or whatever.
John:
but but even assuming that it did i don't think this is solving a problem people really have today i mean i know people do have problems with phones in pockets i know because i do i have like there are certain pants that i wear that the phone fits okay in one pocket but if it's in another pocket i can't sit down because i'm afraid it's going to bend or like get damaged in some way
John:
right and and i have relatively big you know man pockets right women's clothing that has either fake pockets or ridiculously small pockets maybe this is literally the only phone that will fit in one of those pockets because the problem is usually pocket depth and also like you know how much it stretches out anyway i don't know like i don't like i said i don't i don't think this is a super pressing problem or more people would have been making smaller phones to begin with and the
John:
It could be that one of the reasons big phones became so popular is people find a place in their life for the big phone, whether they put it in their purse or they put it in their backpack or have an inside pocket on their coat or something.
John:
But I'm still intrigued by the idea because the sort of monoculture of all phones being basically the same size and shape and us trying to accommodate them, I do find it a little awkward because there's really no...
John:
good place for an item that large in any of the typical pants pockets that people might have and so you end up going in a bag or something like that i don't know i don't know i it's it's a problem i kind of sort of have so that's why i'm not entirely willing to dismiss it but i think you're right about the durability and this is the first attempt at this and i'm sure it's going to be a little wonky we'll see i also i just think it's i think i guess the forward state is too thick i don't think people are actually going to want that
John:
yeah maybe i'm trying i was trying to look for what the measurements are it doesn't it doesn't look to me as thick as like the galaxy fold like that's what i'm comparing it to in my mind i'm comparing it to other folding phones and it also doesn't look so thick that i think it would like stretch out your pocket uncomfortably and it's like well it fits fine depth wise but it's so thick and of course i say this is someone with a giant wallet so maybe i'm not the best judge
Casey:
That wallet is gigantic.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Let's finish up, follow up, hopefully.
Casey:
And let's talk about my Catalina problems.
Casey:
So if you recall, I got my iMac back like a month ago and then pretty much immediately put Catalina on it after I got back from Disney World, which is just briefly after.
Casey:
And shortly after putting Catalina on it, I started knowing this is an upgrade from Mojave.
Casey:
I started noticing that my
Casey:
My trackpad, which is my primary pointing device these days, would occasionally just ignore my input.
Casey:
It would ignore clicks, and eventually those clicks would find their way to the trackpad, and it would be like a machine gun.
Casey:
It would and fire all these clicks, you know, all basically at once.
Casey:
And I asked, you know, are people seeing this or is it just me?
Casey:
And am I crazy?
Casey:
And oh, my goodness.
Casey:
Apparently, I am very not crazy, or at least not for this reason anyway.
Casey:
And a lot of people reached out via Twitter and said, oh, yes.
Casey:
Not only are they having latency issues with their Apple mice, but a handful of people actually said that other brands, especially Logitech, Bluetooth mice were having latency problems.
Casey:
And then one person, Will Bishop on Twitter, wrote in to say that he has had the machine gun issue on his MacBook Pro's touchpad, which is deeply alarming.
Casey:
So I don't know what's going on here.
Casey:
I still maintain that I feel like it's a software problem based on no facts and just gut feeling.
Casey:
But I don't know what to do about this.
Casey:
And it's really, really bothering me.
Casey:
And it's bothering me to the point that I really am starting to feel like this iMac is now cursed and
Casey:
and I'm thinking about replacing it again.
Casey:
And so to move out of follow-up and perhaps into a new topic, tell me again why I don't just want to get a 16-inch MacBook Pro and just hook up a monitor to it and just be done.
Casey:
Because this way, I will always have my one and only computer with me all the time.
Casey:
I never have to worry about going back and forth, although truth be told, I don't typically have a problem with that.
Casey:
But still, it'd be nice to have everything right there with me all the time.
Casey:
The only real problem I have with this and the ace in the hole that will get you guys to convince me to stick with an iMac is I don't have a good answer for Plex.
Casey:
I was casting around on Twitter to ask, oh, can I just get Raspberry Pi and put Plex on that and have that serve my media to me?
Casey:
And people said, yes, as long as you're direct playing, that is to say you don't have to change the format of anything that it's playing because if you have to transcode and change the format of what's being played on the fly, the Raspberry Pi will fall in its face.
Casey:
And so I've been looking into some other alternatives, including the – what is it?
Casey:
The NVIDIA Shield, something like that?
Marco:
Oh, yeah, don't do that.
Marco:
No, no, no.
Casey:
Well, I'm exploring options.
Casey:
But in summary, and let me start with John.
Casey:
John, why don't I want a laptop again?
Casey:
Because I feel like right now a 16-inch laptop with a monitor may not be too bad.
Casey:
So talk me off the ledge.
John:
laptops are terrible that's not sufficient i don't have those problems they make all sorts of noise they get hot uh you know you just like imagine using your computer but having to constantly hear some tiny little fans screaming um yes you can attach a bigger screen but then you're constantly plugging and unplugging it and then you just end up using the smaller screen which is not as good
John:
If you have to deal with pointing devices, then you've got these Bluetooth devices that you constantly have to repair or make sure are properly connected.
John:
A desktop is the right solution for a fixture in your house where you're going to do things on a big screen and for things that you want to run all the time like Plex.
John:
A desktop is the right solution.
John:
Now, your current desktop may be flaky, but the solution is not, I don't need a desktop anymore.
John:
It's like, say, if your BMW's engine exploded and you decided to buy a Jeep.
John:
That's what you're thinking of here.
John:
It's not the same thing.
John:
You may be upset with BMW, but it's like, does that mean what you want instead is a totally different kind of car that is nothing like the one you had before and that will solve all your problems?
John:
That said, I don't think you shouldn't have a laptop.
John:
I just think you should have a laptop and also have a desktop.
John:
And if your current desktop is flaky or dying, I also think it's probably still software related.
John:
But anyway, get another better, newer desktop and let that be your desktop and then also have a laptop and there will be peace in your kingdom.
Casey:
Yeah, and I mean, in a perfect world where money doesn't matter, I would just buy an iMac Pro and I would buy the 14-inch that doesn't exist.
John:
You don't need an iMac Pro.
John:
You just wait for the next regular iMac revision where they make it better and then just buy that one and have your new laptop with a good keyboard and everything will be fine.
Casey:
I guess.
Casey:
I mean, I don't know.
Casey:
I just, I feel like I could just solve everything in one shot.
Casey:
I could just solve everything right now and just get the obscenely large 16 inch and then get a monitor and then all my problems are solved.
Casey:
And so I want to watch anything on Plex, but...
John:
you know you'd have like this big don't you remember what that was like you got a desk full of cables you got a docking station it's like a thunderbolt docking station or a usb one and it's sometimes it's flaky and you plug your monitor and it's not like i'm living that life right now i have a 15 inch laptop that i plug into a monitor and a keyboard and a mouse and it's not great
John:
Like, I would prefer to have a desktop and a laptop because sometimes you need laptops to carry your computer around.
John:
But when I go to my desk, I hate having to plug the thing back in.
John:
It kernel panicked twice this week so far unplugging it because I had the temerity to unplug it from my docking station while the lid was closed.
John:
And when I open it back up again, the thing is booting.
John:
Sometimes it's booting.
John:
And sometimes I get to see the cool multi-language kernel panic thing.
John:
Like, it's not...
John:
it's not a good experience it's not as reliable your computer aside as a desktop where the monitor is always attached and the keyboard and the mouse don't go anywhere they're always right there it's i'm a huge desktop fan and i think they are good things and it's sad that your desktop is haunted as we discussed last week but i i don't recommend that you go all laptop i recommend that you get a desktop and a laptop
Casey:
I do want to say that I want to hear Marco's two cents about this.
Casey:
You will.
Casey:
And I know I will.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
I think the biggest problem I have is my current thinking is I'll get an iMac Pro and I'll get like a 13 or 14-inch MacBook Pro.
Casey:
But that is...
Casey:
thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.
Casey:
Way more than I want.
John:
Stop getting dime-sized nicks repaired on your expensive golf.
Casey:
I didn't pay for it.
Casey:
I didn't pay for it.
John:
It's okay.
John:
You can just take that money.
John:
It's good for, you know, it's exchangeable for goods and services.
Casey:
Yes, yes, yes.
Casey:
It's too late.
Casey:
But I do take your point.
Casey:
And, you know, I think the ace in the hole, which I think I'm probably taking Marco's line here is, you know, this is for my work.
Casey:
And I don't mean that in the funny way, like legitimately, this is for my work.
Casey:
And so if I'm going to spare no expense, that's a reference, John, on anything, I should probably be sparing no expense on my computer or computers.
Casey:
But
Casey:
Nevertheless, it just kills me to think of my current thinking of a $5,000-plus iMac Pro and then like a $2,000 to $3,000 MacBook Pro.
John:
Don't get an iMac Pro.
John:
What makes you think you need an iMac Pro?
John:
You don't.
Casey:
And that's where I was going with this is as much as I want an iMac Pro, do I really need an iMac Pro?
Casey:
I probably don't.
Casey:
And if I don't, then I can save myself some decent money.
Casey:
I haven't looked into this, but I would assume I can save some money.
John:
I would still recommend waiting for the next revision because the 5K iMac is fan-
John:
It's louder and shoutier and not as nice inside as the iMac Pro, so presumably there's a revision coming to the plain old iMac eventually, and that one hopefully will learn many of the lessons of the iMac Pro, but still not be as expensive, so you might want to wait for that.
Casey:
What if I get a Mac Mini, John?
Casey:
Is that okay?
John:
No, because then you're just like – that would solve your Plex problem, but you still don't have like the desktop, the place in your house where you can sit down where your computer is always already there and already configured for you to be using it.
John:
I hear you.
John:
And also happens to be on all the time.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And for the record, I don't want to buy a Mac Mini for Plex purposes because it's just a tremendous amount of money for only Plex.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
No, don't.
John:
Don't.
Casey:
Just run on your desktop.
John:
To be fair –
Casey:
To be fair, I use Plex all the time.
Casey:
If there was anything I was going to spend money on, it would be making my Plex life happy.
Casey:
But hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a Mac Mini just to run a Plex server seems stupid.
Casey:
All right, Marco, you've been very patient.
Casey:
I appreciate it.
Casey:
So solve all my problems for me by spending my money.
Casey:
This is your favorite thing in the world to do.
Casey:
Now is your moment.
Casey:
Spend all my money, please.
Marco:
I'm torn, honestly.
Marco:
I totally get your dilemma here.
Marco:
And when you first posed this question, the answer I was drafting in my head was, just get the 16.
Marco:
Just go all out.
Marco:
Because you're right.
Marco:
It would solve a bunch of problems.
Marco:
It would create a few more.
Marco:
It would.
Marco:
But it would solve some.
Marco:
I also ran through in my head, just get a Mac Mini.
Marco:
It doesn't even have to be a modern one.
Marco:
It can be an old one.
Marco:
Just get a Mac Mini for your Plex needs, and then that frees up your laptop for everything else.
Marco:
And I was thinking, you do often talk about
Marco:
getting work done while mobile.
Marco:
You talk about getting work done in the car when Aaron's driving on a longish trip.
Marco:
You talk about bringing your laptop to grocery stores to work, I guess, in the produce section.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
You talk about going to the library with your laptop.
Marco:
You talk frequently about taking your laptop out and actually doing development work on it.
Marco:
So you're doing significant work on a laptop frequently.
Marco:
So
Marco:
A decent to good laptop has to be part of your setup.
Marco:
Agreed.
Marco:
So that's a given.
Marco:
You have to have a good laptop of some sort.
Marco:
The way you talk about working in the car concerns me for a 15 or 16 inch.
Marco:
Could you, in the way that you frequently work in the car, would a 16 inch be able to fit in your lap and open up fully?
Yeah.
Casey:
I think so.
Casey:
I think I'm also overblowing car work.
Casey:
It's not that often that that happens.
Casey:
It just so happens I was in the middle of doing something when we needed to go somewhere.
Casey:
So I was like, oh, screw it.
Casey:
I'll just bring my laptop with me and do it in the car.
Casey:
I don't think you're overblowing grocery store, which, by the way, is in the little cafe area in the grocery store.
Casey:
But I don't think you're overblowing grocery store.
Marco:
Sitting by the pile of avocados.
Casey:
No, no, no, no.
Casey:
I don't live in California.
Casey:
So you're not overblowing grocery store library work because I would say one to two days a week, pretty consistently and occasionally more, I will go to a grocery store library or even a Starbucks or something like that and get work done.
Casey:
So I 100%, 100% agree with you that a...
Casey:
decent and or certainly better than what I've got laptop needs to be part of the mix.
Casey:
And unfortunately, the one I think I want is a 13 inch or 14 inch MacBook Pro that has the new keyboard.
Casey:
I really feel like that will tick the most boxes in the laptop side of the world.
Casey:
Now, I also agree with John, and I think this is where you're about to go, Marco, that I do actually really like having an iMac.
Casey:
I really, really do.
Casey:
It just seems like it's almost redundant if I'm going to be getting a very new and very fancy MacBook Pro.
Casey:
But I feel like I can justify it as not entirely redundant if I'm willing to wait for the 13 slash 14.
Casey:
I don't know how willing I am to feel it's redundant if I get a 16 tomorrow.
Marco:
And that's the thing.
Marco:
So John is right.
Marco:
Using a laptop as a desktop has a number of ways in which it sucks.
Marco:
And I do think that you should at least no longer have your current desktop.
Marco:
I think having an iMac is a great thing.
Marco:
Having your iMac might not be a great thing.
Marco:
So you might want to revisit that at least.
Marco:
That being said...
Marco:
Your current iMac, in a relatively decommissioned state where you just keep it in the corner somewhere with the screen off, could do everything a Mac Mini could do, Plex-wise and everything else.
Marco:
It's probably reliable enough for that, right?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Actually, that's such an obvious answer that I have to be honest.
Casey:
I didn't even consider that I could just leave this as a server in a closet or something.
Casey:
It's a very large, very unwieldy server, but it could serve that purpose if I really wanted it to.
Marco:
Who's going to buy it after we've been talking about it like this?
Marco:
It's so true.
John:
You just put a sign on it that says, not haunted.
John:
Yeah, right?
John:
That'll be fine.
Marco:
That'll be no problem.
Marco:
So you do kind of have a Mac Mini already in the sense that you can just use your old iMac in that role as long as it continues to work well enough for that, which is probably a pretty long time.
Marco:
I think what you really have to decide is...
Marco:
How great do you want your laptop to be?
Marco:
How big do you want your laptop to be?
Marco:
That's really it.
Marco:
If you want a really nice, fast, big screen laptop for the times that you do work on it, if the 16-inch size works for you,
Marco:
There's a pretty strong argument to just get the 16-inch tomorrow and be done with this and just have it and don't have a desktop and maybe get the LG monitor at some point in the future and have that be your desktop set up.
Marco:
But are you working a lot at your desk?
Marco:
It sounds like you are.
Casey:
I am, yeah.
Casey:
I mean, I would say, again, three or four days a week I'm at my desk, and one to two, very occasionally three days a week, I'll be doing work somewhere else.
Casey:
So if I were to optimize for anything, I should optimize for my desk.
Marco:
Yeah, so it sounds like really the best combo for you is probably some kind of iMac and a 13-inch MacBook Pro.
Casey:
Which is what I think as well.
Marco:
Yeah, and the fact that you can't get the one with the keyboard that's any good for probably another six months or so, you're just going to have to wait, I guess.
Marco:
Or compromise on that and get the damn 16 and spend a little more than what you want to spend.
Marco:
Although, honestly, if you spec up a 13, it isn't that much cheaper.
Casey:
honestly like if you if you spec up a 13 you know and you can do this on the current pricing today because you can be pretty sure the new one's not going to be cheaper so you can you can go and say like all right well except if i want like a one terabyte hard drive that could be cheaper in the future as it is in the in the 50 in the 16 now right because didn't they because they doubled all the the ssds like you said
Marco:
sure okay so here let me see so 2.4 quad core you're not getting low cpu you're getting the good cpu you're getting let's see so even if i just leave the cpu the same 16 gigs of ram you said you get a terabyte uh i mean my my uh adorable is a half terabyte and that's fine so if this wasn't serving as an all-the-time computer then it would probably be okay
Marco:
Okay, so let's assume they double this to 512 as well, which I don't think is a safe assumption, but let's assume that.
Marco:
Then, just to go to 16 gigs of RAM, you're looking at $2,000 for the 13-inch today.
Marco:
And that's assuming that you don't want the fast CPU or the terabyte hard drive.
Marco:
SSD, excuse me.
Marco:
if you went to the 16 for 400 bucks more you would get the bigger screen the better speakers the much bigger battery 50% more CPU cores and you could have it today you know like you could have it right now you could have that extra six months of working with it so those all have value so you have to decide like if you're going to be spending something like $2,000 on a laptop anyway in six months would you rather spend $2,400 and have it today and have it be better in a few ways
Marco:
admittedly bigger and heavier but you know better in some pretty pretty big ways as i mentioned that glorious screen space like that's a pretty compelling option to just say screw it and do it now because this is a this is part of your work again it'd be different if you were on a super budget crunch and you you weren't doing like professional paid computer work like that would be different that isn't your situation
Marco:
So if I were you, well, I did just go and buy one, but I would strongly consider just getting the damn 16-inch today because the 14 or 13 that you want doesn't exist today, won't exist for probably half a year, and in the meantime, you could be using this.
Marco:
The price difference I don't think is huge.
Marco:
The portability difference is significant, but that's up to you whether that matters or not.
Marco:
I will say, when I was packing up my 13, when I was closing it down, packing it up, I sold it to somebody...
Marco:
I really miss that size, like being a 16-inch user now for a week.
Marco:
Man, that is a great size.
Marco:
And in the future, I might go back to it.
Marco:
But I'm super happy every time I type on the 16, I'm super happy that today I chose this.
Marco:
And I will gladly spend $2,700 to use this for the next six months instead of a butterfly keyboard.
Casey:
I also wonder, you know, a couple of things I haven't considered is it's not like my adorable will necessarily just, you know, die in a puff of smoke.
Casey:
I mean, it will still be around if I really need the portability.
John:
Use that as your flex server.
John:
As long as the keys continue to work on it.
John:
Hey, you don't need the keys.
John:
It was just your flex server.
Casey:
Yeah, that's an interesting point.
Casey:
I don't think it would be quick enough.
Casey:
I know you're joking.
Casey:
It's got a very powerful CPU for transcode.
Casey:
Exactly, exactly.
Casey:
I mean, I would like to give this one to Erin, but it's not like she's urgently in need of a new computer.
John:
She wants a computer with a broken keyboard.
John:
I'm sure she would love that.
Casey:
It's better than one that's been underwater four times.
Casey:
But be that as it may, I don't know.
Casey:
I also wonder if maybe the right answer is I get the 16 and maybe don't get it as baller as I would have if it was my only computer.
Casey:
Yeah, get the base model.
Casey:
Either get the base model.
Casey:
I'm really struggling with the idea of 16 gigs of RAM, but we can argue about that another time.
Marco:
But either way... I've been using it on my laptop for the last year and a half, and all time before that until it was 8 gigs.
Marco:
It's been fine.
Marco:
If you were going to go all out and make this your primary computer, and you're doing all your Swift stuff and all that, then maybe I'd go with 32.
Marco:
But if you're going to commit to the plan of having a laptop and a desktop...
Marco:
Don't spec up the laptop too high and don't make it too expensive.
Marco:
You know, I think the base model $2,400 or the slightly up $2,700 one that I got, I think are really good buys for what you get.
Marco:
And if you keep it relatively reasonable, if you don't spec it up like crazy, I think that's the way to go.
Marco:
Because the reality is, it sounds like, again, the right solution for you is probably a laptop and a desktop.
Marco:
The only question is whether you buy a laptop that's a bit more than what you need now or whether you buy the ideal theoretical one probably six months from now.
Casey:
I also wonder if I could pull a Marco, which I – oh, God, help me because I've made so much fun of you for this.
Casey:
But could I get the 16 now?
Casey:
And understand I'm going to take a little bit of a bath on it but resell it in six months when the 13 comes out.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Because if I treat it nicely, if I keep it well – Don't spill too much water in it.
Casey:
Don't spill –
Casey:
Too much water in it.
Marco:
By the way, Black Friday is in like a week.
John:
That's true.
John:
Casey, you know this intellectually, but I think it's my place to remind you of it once again.
John:
So it becomes top of mind.
John:
You are in a situation where you come on this podcast with the two of us and you ask us for advice about what you should buy.
John:
You should be immediately suspect of any advice that Marco gives that compels you to buy something immediately.
John:
And you should be suspect of any advice that I give that tells you to wait.
Yeah.
John:
to buy because honestly thanks guys really what position are we in marco is the guy who's always like he's always gonna say buy it immediately he always buys and i'm waiting 10 years to buy a computer so really literally like all of our advice is so massively like polluted by our sort of respective positions on these strange different strategies and yet
John:
It doesn't mean either one of us is particularly wrong.
John:
So I don't understand how you can even take any of our advice because you have to add so much salt to all of it.
John:
It's like, oh, great.
John:
Marco's telling me I should buy immediately again.
John:
Oh, great.
John:
John thinks I should wait.
Casey:
No way.
Casey:
You're so right.
Casey:
Out of curiosity, Marco, you don't know, but if you were to just stick your thumb in the wind, how much do you think you could resell your exact computer for, which you paid roughly $2,800 for?
Casey:
How much do you think you'd resell that for around WWDC this upcoming year?
Marco:
Maybe $1,800 to $1,500 at the worst.
Marco:
All right.
Casey:
So you're saying it would be about $1,000 to lease a laptop for six months.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
You generally figure if you're going to resell something like that and if you're going to do it through relatively reasonable channels, you're going to probably lose 30% to 50%, basically.
Marco:
But if you spec up with certain options...
Marco:
you get less of that back on resale than like the base price upgrades shrink down way faster in their value so that's yet another reason to stick with one of the lower models and not not super spec it up too much because like like right now like if you were to you know go boost up to eight terabytes for i believe it's twenty six hundred dollars something like that which honestly is not a bad price for that for what it is uh and you were to resell that in six months you
Marco:
wouldn't get $2,800 back for that 8 terabytes.
Marco:
You would get very little of that upgrade increment back.
Marco:
So again, stick to the lower ones.
Marco:
Again, this is not a bad idea.
Marco:
This is not unheard of.
Marco:
People do this all the time.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
You could totally buy a 16-inch now and sell it in June and have lost maybe $800 or something.
Marco:
Something in that ballpark.
Marco:
Which, again, is not a small amount of money, but you will be getting value out of this that is directly related to your work.
Marco:
You don't have to do this.
Marco:
You can keep working on your adorable and your broken iMac until the springtime or whatever and hope that a 13-inch comes out that is what you want.
Marco:
But that will then only solve your laptop problem.
Marco:
You will still have a desktop problem.
Marco:
It's like only one of these problems is being delayed here.
Marco:
Your desktop problem, I don't think you're going to have a quick solution on because I don't think anything else is likely to be released this year.
Marco:
And they don't tend to update iMacs on such a short schedule.
Marco:
They just updated the non-pro ones, what was that, about four months ago or so, three or four months ago?
Marco:
I think so.
Marco:
So you're not on a super soon schedule for the regular iMac.
Marco:
The iMac Pro seems to be Intel-related.
Marco:
Who knows when the next Xeons are out for it, and then who knows how long Apple will take to update to them, if ever.
Marco:
Those are two giant questions that I don't think we have any idea what the answers are yet.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
Your desktop question is not going to be solved by a new product release in the near future in all likelihood.
Marco:
So I would honestly strongly consider the previously considered option for the desktop, which is the refurb iMac Pro that is still in Apple's refurb store for $42.50.
Marco:
not a bad computer for that price i if i were to have to buy a new desktop today that is still what i would buy even after the mac pro comes out if i had to make a quick replacement i think i would still even buy the imac pro in that in that scenario it's that good and and it's that well suited to my needs
Marco:
And I think you would appreciate it too because as much as you say, well, I don't need a desktop.
Marco:
I don't need a super pro iMac pro desktop.
Marco:
You do like a good desktop.
Marco:
The iMac pro is a good desktop and you do like your FFmpeg.
Marco:
You do a whole lot of transcoding and a whole lot of Swift UI building and stuff like that.
Marco:
Like stuff that really is hard on the CPUs.
Marco:
I wouldn't say everyone I know needs an iMac pro or would even benefit from one or would even notice the difference from a regular iMac to an iMac pro.
Marco:
you would it would also be likely to work for a little while longer than your current one maybe so i still think for your desktop solution you're pro i would still strongly consider an iMac pro if you're going to have a desktop for your laptop i think it's i think it's a separate discussion i honestly do it's up to you whether you want to buy a 16 now or wait for the 13 with the good keyboard but uh
Marco:
You need it now, and you won't take too much of a bath if you decide to buy it now and resell it later.
Marco:
So it's up to you.
Casey:
See, this is the problem with talking to you because now I feel like I'm about to spend $7,000 on two computers.
Marco:
Right, and then talk to John.
Casey:
You'll spend nothing.
Casey:
Well, I appreciate the advice, guys.
Casey:
I'm going to make a decision on something soon because this is untenable the way it is.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
Let's do some Ask ATP, and let's start with Bastion Inuk, who writes, Today I learned Amazon Prime Video, or parts of it, is built with server-side Swift.
Casey:
Bastion's question is, when is the language ready for server-side production, in our respective opinions?
Casey:
You know, I'll start by answering this by quoting someone.
Casey:
I heard this on a podcast years and years and years ago, and
Casey:
It seems so obvious in retrospect, as all great ideas do, but somebody once said that you never want to be the biggest client of anything.
Casey:
You never want to be the biggest installation.
Casey:
It was Marco who said that.
Casey:
Yes, I know.
John:
I can never tell with you.
Casey:
This time I knew.
Casey:
This time I knew.
Casey:
There are many times I do not.
Casey:
This time I knew.
John:
I was just about to yell at you, but you were just – it's fine.
John:
Okay.
Casey:
I was setting it up, John.
Casey:
You took it from me.
Casey:
You stole it from me.
John:
My faith in you is so shaken.
John:
How long am I going to let him go through this?
Casey:
I should be offended, but I don't blame you at all.
Casey:
Anyway, so yeah, Marco, I don't remember.
Casey:
I think it was on Build and Analyze.
Casey:
You had said, you never want to be the biggest client of anything.
Casey:
And I think that that was really astute.
Casey:
And I think that that's true.
Casey:
So as long as other people who are far, far bigger than you are using whatever the particular technology or language or what have you that you're looking at, then...
Casey:
So that's not, you know, the get out of jail free card, if you will, but that's a really good litmus test to figure out, is this really working or not?
Casey:
And, you know, if you hear about, say, I don't know, Twitter using, I don't know, say Ruby on Rails and you hear about it, oh, I don't know, say failing constantly, maybe Ruby on Rails isn't quite ready.
Casey:
But since I've stolen your answer from you and parroted it back to you, Marco, do you have anything else you would like to add?
Yeah.
Marco:
It depends on what your needs are.
Marco:
What are you trying to get out of your server-side language?
Marco:
Are you using something that you're mainly doing because you love new languages and you're kind of a language nerd or you're a Swift nerd?
Marco:
Do you want to use server-side Swift because you just like Swift so much and it's more of like an experimental thing or an exploratory thing or a learner new skills?
Marco:
In that case, do whatever you want.
Marco:
It doesn't really matter.
Marco:
If you want something that scales easily, I won't use the word scalable, really, because scalable is not really a thing.
Marco:
It's how easily something scales, basically.
Marco:
Lots of languages can scale well or poorly, depending on the choices you make and the resources you have.
Marco:
It isn't that certain languages are scalable or not.
Marco:
It's just that certain languages make that easier or harder.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So there's a question of that.
Marco:
But for me, with server-side languages, my server-side code exists as a supporting role to what I really want to be doing.
Marco:
What I really want to be doing is writing the app.
Marco:
And the last thing I want to be doing is messing around with my server stuff.
Marco:
I really don't like doing it.
Marco:
And I really don't like the idea of... Because server stuff kind of has its own schedule.
Marco:
It's kind of its own beast.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
Server stuff can invent a need for attention at any time.
Marco:
You could be asleep or on vacation.
Marco:
Or you could be really busy with something else.
Marco:
And server stuff can say, hey, hey, I just exploded.
Marco:
Fix me.
Marco:
Like my iMac.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And so for me, I want my server stuff to be as low needs, low maintenance, high reliability as possible.
Yeah.
Marco:
And for that set of priorities, which again may not be your priorities, but for that set of priorities where my server stuff is really just like this kind of like supporting, you know, low profile task that I don't want my server stuff to be exciting.
Marco:
I'm not looking to learn a bunch of new things with my server stuff.
Marco:
I'm not looking for experimentation with my server stuff.
Marco:
I just want to do the most boring thing possible so it works and I can stop thinking about it.
Marco:
For that, I would say server-side Swift is still too young.
Marco:
It's changing too quickly.
Marco:
It's too young.
Marco:
And I would not use it yet because, again, my priorities are not I love Swift so much and love new languages so much that I want to be cutting edge.
Marco:
That's not me.
Marco:
I want my server code to go away, basically.
Marco:
I want to write it and forget about it.
Marco:
And that's mostly what I can do with the old boring stuff I use.
Marco:
So again, it depends on your priorities, though.
Marco:
But those are mine.
Marco:
I would say that, again, not being the biggest user or something, very solidly good advice still.
Marco:
Because you want to use the stuff that Facebook and Wikipedia – you want to use whatever big sites you use.
Marco:
because it's just easier for you.
Marco:
You have tons of resources available to you if you have any questions.
Marco:
You probably won't have anything break.
Marco:
You probably won't be exceeding the capacity of anything.
Marco:
You're not going to hit scaling limits in all likelihood with whatever you're doing if Wikipedia is using the same thing and they aren't hitting the scaling limits.
Marco:
There's all sorts of benefits like that.
Marco:
Also,
Marco:
big companies tend to use stuff that's a little bit old for all these reasons, right?
Marco:
Or because they themselves are old and they built their infrastructure back when these languages were new or whatever.
Marco:
And that's another huge advantage.
Marco:
Like if you're doing something that's old, it'll be included in repositories for Linux package managers.
Marco:
It'll, it'll have tons of stack overflow answers.
Marco:
Like it'll just, the tools will be mature.
Marco:
The frameworks won't be changing very often.
Marco:
The language won't be changing very often.
Marco:
Like there's just, there's huge advantages to all that.
Marco:
that if you really are writing server code to support something else you're doing and you don't want to be spending 100% of your job doing the server code, pick the older boring stuff.
Marco:
And Swift on the server is not that yet.
Casey:
All right, old man, tell us what the real answer is.
John:
So I see questions like this.
John:
I always think that what they're looking for is some kind of line that a language has to cross or a litmus test to say this language is ready for server production.
John:
When is a language ready for server production?
John:
There's not actually one answer.
John:
To that question, especially in this day and age of, you know, public cloud scalable infrastructure and microservices and all the other things that are trends and, you know, whatever, but also are a fact of service side development life.
John:
In many cases.
John:
You could find yourself writing a service that's a small service that does a particular thing and that certain languages are better suited to that particular thing than others.
John:
If the thing that you're doing doesn't need to be tremendously high traffic, if it does a simple task, if it can scale simply horizontally, if your main scaling problem is not the language but is in fact the data store or whatever –
John:
you may find yourself looking at a weird language, a language that's not even used on the server too much.
John:
Hopefully you're looking at it because it has some characteristic that makes the thing that this particular server is going to be doing better, faster, easier, more efficient by some large amount, not just like, oh, I think it's cooler and I want to try it or whatever.
John:
And cases like I'm describing actually do come up.
John:
If you say, well, you know, Facebook uses this, so I should use it, or Amazon uses this, so I should use it,
John:
You'll probably be fine.
John:
Right.
John:
It's not like you'll you'll have a big problem.
John:
But especially if you are a small business or a startup or a single person or somebody for whom money makes a difference.
John:
And especially if you're running stuff in the public cloud, which you probably are if you're a small person.
John:
using a language that can be 10 times more efficient in terms of, you know, CPU time memory or whatever can save you actual money paying for your AWS bills or whatever.
John:
So if you want to use go or Erlang or yes, even Swift, uh,
John:
For your real production server that does this one simple thing that you have a really good reason to use it for, it may actually be worth dealing with the immaturity, the lack of tools, lack of documentation, so on and so forth, as long as it is actually feasible.
John:
So I feel like the only line is like...
John:
is it feasible to use this language assuming all those other things i described are like correct like that you actually are picking the right language for the job it has real measurable advantages and it's not just like your random personal preference although i would say if you're a single person shop your personal preference and skill may actually be one of the dominant factors because it's like well this is the language i know the best and so i'm going to write the best thing in it or whatever i've seen this happen in real world scenarios and it's like you know if the organization is healthy it is right to question this why is it that you think you need to use haskell
John:
And those answers need to be convincing.
John:
But if those answers are convincing, it's usually not disqualifying if like, well, nobody actually uses that on the server and the tooling is terrible.
John:
That may be true, but it may still be the right language for you.
John:
So what Marco said is like the writ large, like, you know, if you're going to just use this as like your blanket language or some big thing in a general scenario, that's fine.
John:
But I have over the past, let's say, seven years become much more convinced that it actually is
John:
healthy and smart to actually suffer the slings and arrows of an immature language that quote-unquote isn't ready for production if you have a specific single purpose for it.
John:
And like I said, with small services these days, you may find yourself in that scenario more often than you think.
Casey:
Renee Ferguson writes, hey, Marco, do you have any way to track total listen time for an account in Overcast?
Casey:
I just finished listening to ATP's entire back catalog.
Casey:
My goodness, Renee, that must have been a trip.
Casey:
I'm so sorry.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree.
John:
I'm not sorry.
John:
You're doing it right, Renee.
John:
Good job.
Oh, my goodness.
Casey:
Anyway, so Rene would like to know, having finished the entire HB Back catalog and with their previous podcasting habits, they're curious to know how much of their life have they spent listening to podcasts?
Marco:
I can't tell you.
Marco:
I can tell you what Overcast saves on the database table that saves your episode progress, which is by far my biggest database table.
Marco:
It saves on each episode that you've interacted with, it saves the current timestamp
Marco:
and whether it's been completed, but it doesn't save how much time you spent listening to it.
Marco:
So if you skip parts of it, I don't actually save that information anywhere.
Marco:
I don't know that on the database level.
Marco:
So all I know is I can tell you, and actually you can see this for yourself if you go to the webpage, if you go to the account section, you can export OPML in this kind of custom extended format that I implemented, so you can actually export all your data.
Marco:
That is all the data I have.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
I can tell you a list of episodes you completed or you marked as played in some way with Overcast, but I can't tell you how much actual time you spent listening to them.
Marco:
Regardless, the answer to your question of how much of your life have you spent listening to ATP is probably too much.
Marco:
Fair enough.
Marco:
But I appreciate it.
Casey:
As do I. And then Phil Tech, I think is how I'm supposed to pronounce this, writes, is it reasonable to assume that the release of these new Adobe iOS apps could be used as the basis for native applications on ARM-based Macs?
Casey:
Yeah, we're all waiting for that.
Casey:
You know, that's what's going to happen, isn't it?
Casey:
I'm going to buy the 16 and I'm going to resell it for the 13.
Casey:
And then six months after that, they're going to come out with the ARM-based Macs.
Casey:
I'm going to be real upset.
John:
Join the club.
John:
I'm going to be in that same boat, only I'm going to have a way more expensive computer without an ARM chip in it.
Casey:
That is true.
Marco:
But again, that's all the more reason why it's okay to buy one now that you don't spend a ton of money on, that you don't spec up like crazy.
Marco:
Buy the freaking base model or the one right above it, and then you can still resell it for not that much money.
Marco:
And again, by the way, Black Friday is coming up in a week, and there's probably going to be some kind of get $100 or $200 off kind of deal.
Marco:
Just do it.
Marco:
yeah i can't even tell which one of us is the devil on your shoulder case you have two devils on your shoulders and they're just in different outfits i was thinking like the angel and the devil on the shoulder thing i i also i couldn't but then which one is the angel neither of you yeah like i couldn't i couldn't make the analogy because i couldn't figure out which you're both so mean no uh i hear you
Casey:
Anyway, John, is it reasonable to assume that these Adobe iOS apps could be used as the basis for native ARM apps?
John:
Thanks to the specific wording of this question, the answer is yes.
John:
It is reasonable to assume they could be used as the basis for native apps.
John:
They absolutely could be, and that is reasonable.
John:
But they probably won't be.
John:
So it's not reasonable to predict that they will be.
John:
It is much more predictable that they will take the existing x86 applications and port them to ARM just the same way they ported them from 68k to PowerBC to Intel, yada yada.
Marco:
I will say there is probably somewhere, like some part of the effort for Adobe to bring their, quote, real apps to iOS, some part of that effort had to be removing any remaining assumptions in the code about code architecture and instruction sets and byte ordering and stuff like that.
Marco:
Now, granted, again, you mentioned the PowerPC transition happened, so they probably already went through a lot of that.
Marco:
but they could have still had some of that in there that was added maybe since the Intel transition for new types of features or new engine modifications that were like custom optimized just for Intel, just for x86, whatever.
Marco:
And so if they have modernized a lot of that code or gotten rid of those assumptions for the ARM build of like the core code for various things, that would still help an ARM transition on the Mac as well.
Marco:
But I don't think we really know enough about the state of their code before and whether that kind of thing still had to be done to really say for sure whether it has any relevance here.
John:
But we know the UI of the iOS ones is not the full UI.
John:
So as the basis of it, I feel like it's saying you're going to start a project.
John:
You're going to start from the desktop app, right?
John:
But of course, whatever components that are at the core that they're...
John:
Yeah.
John:
that rely because what we rely on like someone accidentally re-added something that relies on power pc or relies on intel i really hope that's not happening but who knows but anyway as the basis of makes me say like where are you starting from and i think they're going to start from the desktop version of those apps because there's just so it's the desktop version is what's going to be on the desktop version of the rmax too right it's it's going to be that
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Linode, Fracture, and DoorDash, and we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter...
Marco:
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, 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-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-
Marco:
we're not going to talk about that terrible trump in the mac pro factory thing are we unless you want to i don't want to and that's that's all i want that's i want to have covered i want to have said that we addressed this but it's gross and i don't want to think about it all right well by saying it's gross you've now addressed it good job thank you yeah
Marco:
And concur.
Marco:
So I'm curious, in the notes, it says, John is preparing the way.
Marco:
And I think this is a reference that I actually get for the first time ever.
Casey:
Yeah, I did not.
Casey:
I did not, and you did, potentially.
Marco:
I assume this is a reference to the Rectiff's famous refrigerator episode, which for anybody who has not heard it, it is a masterpiece and you should hear it.
Casey:
It is.
Marco:
It absolutely is.
Marco:
As John is preparing for the delivery of a new refrigerator, he has to prepare the way in his house of, I guess, getting the old refrigerator out of the way and preparing the house to have the fridge enter through it.
Marco:
So, John, it says you are preparing the way.
Marco:
Am I to assume that you are preparing the way in your office for the new Mac Pro?
John:
You are correct, and I'm surprised Casey didn't get that because we've actually talked about this in a past episode, how this was a thing that was going to happen.
John:
It's happening.
John:
It is now happening.
John:
It's a little bit of yak shaving involved in that, like, I'm...
John:
I'm starting to sort of stage my purchases, right?
John:
You don't want to wait until last minute.
John:
You don't want to wait until, like, any day once December starts.
John:
The order form could be up, and then the process begins of me trying to figure out.
John:
But who knows?
John:
I didn't want to, like, have the Mac Pro arrive and not have the way prepared.
John:
You know, I need to, as I said, I need to...
John:
you know this is the time to reconsider all of the things that are connected on above and under my desk because everything must go and the new thing is coming in does anything stay do i keep any component of my old system if not what do i replace it with and there's a lot of components besides the computer and the monitor you've got the mouse the keyboard all of the power accessories the little power strip things the ups the various tables and chairs and what about the whole desk maybe i need a whole desk like
John:
I joked about, you know, I need to get a new house from my Ferrari or whatever.
John:
But, like, this is the time to consider it.
John:
This setup has been here since I moved into this house, like, you know, 18 years ago or whatever.
John:
If I'm going to reconsider something, now is the time to reconsider it.
John:
I'm also, by the way, part of this reconsideration.
John:
I don't think I mentioned this on a past show or maybe a really long time ago.
John:
My Mac Pro was sitting on the floor right now to my left, as you do with a tower computer.
John:
For a long time, my Macs were always on my desk.
John:
Even when I had Tower Macs, I had one of those fairly awful... What model was it?
John:
Was it a Quadra?
John:
It was one of those quadras that wasn't really a quadra, I think.
John:
Or maybe it was still a performa.
John:
I thought there was a Q in the name.
John:
Anyway, I can't remember.
John:
But it was a tower.
John:
And it was on my desk.
John:
Because that's where my computers had always been.
John:
It used to be the monitor was built into the computer.
John:
So, of course, it would be on your desk.
John:
Anyway.
John:
uh when i got my bloom white g3 it was on my desk to the left of my monitor apple would display it that way when they show like the advertising stuff they would show the the you know the bloom white g3 next to the weird monitor that matches it and they'd be right next to each other like they're both on your desk uh let's see what else i have my desk i think when i got my power mac g5 which was looked very much like the cheese grater but in different boards and stuff on it i tried putting that on my desk i was like no it's
John:
It was just too, the power supply was squeaky, the fans were too noisy, and it was just monstrous.
John:
Like, it was bigger than the Bloom YG3 that it replaced, right?
John:
And since then, my computers have been on the floor.
John:
But the floor is a dangerous place for a computer.
John:
Lots of things happen on the floor.
John:
Children are on the floor.
John:
Things roll around on the floor.
John:
The chair is on the floor.
John:
Vacuum cleaners are on the floor.
John:
Lots of things potentially whizzing by, near, or towards your computer, right?
John:
My Mac Pro, as I think I mentioned at least once before, has a big shiny kind of chip taken out of the sort of the side case that extends past the front, right?
John:
That little piece right there.
John:
It's shiny because it's like anodized aluminum, but it's been dented and sort of like messed up in such a way that now it's like the shiny aluminum is shining through.
John:
Pretty sure that was a vacuum cleaner strike or a meteor strike or something.
John:
It's upsetting.
John:
The prospect of my umpteen bazillion dollar shiny new Mac Pro with special machined weird holes that make people grossed out on it, getting dinged by a vacuum cleaner bothers me.
John:
So part of preparing the way is I was thinking, where is this new computer going to go?
John:
Is it going to go on the floor right where my old computer is?
John:
maybe if it had wheels i was thinking the wheels i could like wheel it out of the way better when the vacuum comes along or something but like i don't know so i'm i don't think i'm gonna put it on my desk it's still pretty big i was looking at the measurements it's not as big as the cheese grater but it's still pretty big so i probably don't want that on my desk although it really does depend on the fan noise to the left of my desk since i moved in here has been a tray table
John:
tray tables that we got when we were married because i guess you need tray tables uh and they're very useful and it's been there because it was like a little table that fit like my desk doesn't extend all the way from like the bookcase on one side to the wall and the other there's a little space and it's just big enough for the tray table and i put it there when we moved in mostly on a whim uh the ups is below the tray table on top of the tray tables like my headphones and like one of my camera bags and some spare cables and
John:
uh you know various other things are on and it's useful it's useful to have a little bit extended desk space it is lower than my desk which is also nice because you can kind of pile stuff there and the piles don't you know extend up over the desk area what i was thinking is well i gotta get rid of that tray table because i feel like it's not the right tool for that job uh and also i'm looking at new ups's and i don't think any of the new ups's i want will fit under the tray table so i probably need a new table there but once i get a new table could i put the tower computer on that table and if i put it on that table
John:
could i get a lower table so the tower isn't like towering over me but also isn't on the floor so that's what i'm considering so as we're sitting here now to my left is a new table that's not a tray table it's like a piece of furniture that more or less matches my desk that does not fold right with sturdy four sturdy legs like it's not it's it's it's stable it is a viable platform
John:
for the new mac pro according to the measurements on apple's website so i could and it's a little bit lower than the old one was so i could put my mac pro there keeping it out of the way more importantly this one has enough room for the very large uh ups i just bought which is much larger than the one that is replacing i bought a ups that has fans in it
John:
Fearing whether, you know, is this going to be a problem or whatever.
John:
But I bought it saying, look, I'm going to buy it.
John:
This is preparing the way.
John:
Order it now.
John:
Buy it.
John:
Do all the research.
John:
I've done, you know, all the research and looked at all the videos for all the stuff.
John:
Like the stuff that is in my house now, I've been researching for like, I don't know, a month.
John:
Like at my leisure, right?
John:
Finally got to the ordering point.
John:
so i got the ups i set it up i plugged it in dead silent or my ears are terrible either way like i'm happy right so there you go i think usually don't the fans usually only run when it's running on battery because i think they're blowing on the inverter or something yeah that that's that's usually the case but it's not actually true that they only ever run when it's on battery they run when it needs to when it needs them to run like they're temperature sensitive and as soon as you go on battery yes of course they kick on but it's also possible depending on the model for them to be running when you're not on battery
John:
If they are running when it's not on battery, I can't hear them.
John:
It's like the router that you sent me.
John:
That has fans in it that are running all the time.
John:
I literally can't hear them.
John:
So one of the few joys of aging.
John:
I cannot hear these fans.
John:
Nice.
John:
That passed my test.
John:
This is a...
John:
what is it it's uh a 910 watt maximum uh ups which is vastly more capable than the one it's replacing uh i tried to do as i always do like the watt calculation for like uh worst case scenario the pro display xdr plus the mac and try to figure out and then plus you know my speakers and
John:
whatever the hell else I might have plugged in over here.
John:
Uh, and how much would that draw?
John:
And I just, it's just like, you know what, just buy the biggest one.
John:
So I did.
John:
So I've got that also, uh, all of my various surge protectors and power strips for things that I don't have on a UPS, like my speakers and stuff where I don't, you know, it doesn't need to be on a UPS, uh,
John:
And in fact, it probably shouldn't be because those things tend not to behave well on the simulated sine wave that the crappy UPS has put out.
John:
Although mine is a fancy sine wave one, so it's nicer.
John:
Anyway, I need all new power strips.
John:
I need all new little cables that adapt from the weird position that the UPS power things are pointing out to have the cables go in the right direction so I can plug all of the things in.
John:
And then there's stuff back there that I don't even know about.
John:
I have some cases full of optical media.
John:
Remember that?
John:
I have like folio cases of optical media when I used to back up on optical media and I still keep it around down here because occasionally I need to pull something from like a really old disc and I have this big catalog of where they are.
John:
All this stuff is open for reconsideration.
John:
Luckily, the chair situation is handled.
John:
We covered that on the show already.
John:
Um...
John:
Mouse and keyboard are still an issue, and I'm still researching.
John:
Keyboard, worst case, I just keep using my current one mouse.
John:
I really think I do need a new one.
John:
We mentioned that before.
John:
But I just wanted to let everyone know that this process has begun.
John:
And I don't want to tell you how much money I've spent already preparing the way, but I'm also going to say that I'm not going to count it in the calculation of, like, how much did this whole system cost you?
Casey:
Here we go.
John:
The reason I'm not going to count it is because, look,
John:
every 18 years it's okay to reconsider the furniture and part of your house i think that is a reasonable thing to do and this this same furniture has been i already reconsidered my chair and i'm not counting that as part of it so anything i do in terms of like oh you bought new cable extender thingies you bought a new ups like this is things that had to happen anyway i bought a new ups for my old mac pro at least twice and i didn't count that towards the price of the computer so i'm not counting this towards the final calculation but it is also a non-trivial amount of money that i spent on stuff
Casey:
Oh, John.
John:
That's awesome.
John:
It is.
John:
I'm very excited about this new UPS because for many years... Something no one's ever said.
Casey:
Of course you are.
John:
For many years, I was like, I'd look at the fancy UPSs and I'd be like...
John:
yeah but they all have fans and they're so big like do i want something like that big i'm like i can probably get away with a cheap ups so as i mentioned on past shows i have a massively undersized ups where if the power goes out i have to as i said panic shut down like oh my god power's out because there is no time like this this thing is can barely keep my mac pro running when it's like not particularly stressed my mac pro and my monitor
John:
are way beyond the uh the potential power uh capabilities of this ups and i always wanted a more powerful one but they're expensive and they're big and they had fans and i was afraid of them and so i i finally overcame my fear as part of the you know like when you buy a car and you you
John:
some somehow find it palatable to pay an extra five hundred dollars for some stupid option because the whole damn car is so expensive like that whole relative price anchoring thing that is totally happening with the mac pro and i'm like well if ever there was a time to consider buying a very expensive ups is it honestly it wasn't it wasn't that expensive like the cheaper ones it was like
John:
it wasn't even twice the price of of the cheaper ones i figured this is money well spent and you know the sine wave thing i did all the research on that and everything i don't really need it i'm not running like audio equipment off of it or a cpap or whatever like don't really need it but doesn't hurt and it's kind of cool uh that that actually took the most research that the two things took the most research for the ups and then the little dongley cable things that you use to like
John:
basically redirect an outlet that's awkwardly placed or whatever like the power strip thingies oh yeah like pigtails the power strips power strip is the worst that's the one thing that i got the power strip just arrived today like just a plain old power strip i'm gonna plug like my speakers into and like other stuff that doesn't need to be on the ups trying to find a good quality one or whatever and i needed ones where the uh the plugs are rotated 90 degrees to the strip
John:
I found one on Amazon.
John:
I order it, take it out of the box.
John:
The plugs are not rotated 90 degrees.
John:
What?
John:
They're the other direction, right?
John:
So if you look at any power strip, just go to Amazon type power strip.
John:
Yeah.
John:
All of the ports like are vertical, like the three prongs.
John:
It has two and then one on the bottom, then two and then one on the bottom, like right down the strip, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
And I found one where they rotate 90 degrees and I bought it.
John:
Picture on the site just lies.
John:
It's just wrong.
John:
It's from the same company.
John:
It is the same color.
John:
It is the same size.
John:
It is the same shape.
John:
But all the ports are just rotated.
John:
And so it was cheap.
John:
It was like, you know, it's just a power strip or whatever.
John:
So I was going to I'm like, oh, I got to return this.
John:
But it's like, you know what?
John:
you could always use a new power strip like this is the thing we've talked about before surge strips like they do wear out so if you have one in your house that's been there for 18 years you should probably just replace it anyway so what i'm going to do with this one that's wrong is i'm going to replace it but i did try to contact amazon and say just just so you know the graphic on the page for this item is wrong that's not what you're shipping like it's not it at all there is a model like that but that's not what you're shipping
John:
um so i tried to find the place where you do that i just wanted to do with like web chat i didn't want to call anybody oh forget what i was bit yeah so i found a web chat thing and it's this weird you know automated system where i'm not talking to a human yet not only am i not not talking to a human yet i'm not not not licking toads um no we're not talking to a human yet but i can't type anything and
John:
The only choices I have at the bottom of the little window are bubbles with pre-selected text, essentially buttons.
John:
Right?
John:
And so the first one is, would you like to talk about an order?
John:
Like, you know, about a return?
John:
Like, there's a bunch of options.
John:
It's like a phone tree, but they're presented as text bubbles.
John:
So when you click one, it goes into the chat window as if you'd said that, but you didn't.
John:
You're just picking buttons.
John:
It is a phone tree in graphical form.
John:
Oh, God.
Yeah.
John:
So I go through that and I get to the point where I'm saying it's about an order.
John:
Even their bots don't want to talk to you.
John:
Yeah.
John:
It had some good aspects because when I go through the thing, it's like, yeah, because this is like a new low of like, you know, just some poor person in a call center doing 20 chats at once, like giving you one eight hundredth of their attention.
John:
Right.
John:
But at least that is a real human.
John:
This is this is a phone tree.
John:
Right.
John:
Yeah.
John:
um the only good thing about it was like it's about an order but i said okay what order and it presented me with a graphical list of my recent orders like this is so much easier than me copying and pasting the order id which i had already done of course i just clicked on the item i clicked on the specific item within the order so now they know exactly what i'm talking about i don't have to like send them the url or anything like that or whatever and then i get to the point where it's like do you want to return this or get a refund and i didn't i didn't want to return i didn't want a refund i just wanted to tell them you have the wrong picture for this listing
John:
And eventually I get to the point says, all right, what's your problem?
John:
Type your problem here.
John:
And I type up my thing.
John:
You know, it's like two or three sentences about the problem is.
John:
And I send it and it says, OK, so now do you want a refund or to return it?
John:
And no, I didn't.
John:
So I pick the no option.
John:
It's like, well, this interaction is done.
John:
Thank you.
Marco:
Yeah, see, have you returned stuff to Amazon ever?
Marco:
Oh, yeah, all the time.
Marco:
Because I think if you did, you would probably know that it sounds like it was literally just taking you through the return flow because it asks you as like one of the return options is why you're returning it.
Marco:
And it'll give you the option of like the website description was inaccurate.
Marco:
And I think that's what you are actually reporting.
John:
It did give me that option.
John:
I did the bubble that said item was not as described or whatever.
John:
That's the one I picked.
John:
And then it let me type freeform text to say what the specific problem was.
John:
But then it wants me to say, okay, now we're going to give you a refund.
John:
But it had an option.
John:
It's like, do you want to do a refund or do you not?
John:
And I said, not.
John:
And it said, okay, we've logged this case and blah, blah, blah.
John:
So I think my feedback was quote unquote received, just not by a human.
John:
And that's the not reassuring part.
John:
I would have liked some human interaction for some human to say,
John:
okay, we'll put this in the bucket where we put in all of the complaints about item not as described.
John:
I'm assuming that's where it's going anyway.
John:
Anyway, to find what I should have done in the first place is what I usually do is I bought one of these strips for, like, my wife's iMac when we got it.
John:
I was replacing her surge strip thing there.
John:
It does have 90-degree plugs, and I just found that exact model in her past orders.
John:
Amazon doesn't have it anymore, but I bought it from a different place by the model number, and so, you know, it was cheap, and I got it.
Marco:
i i will spend a lot of time researching a lot of things i've never spent this much time and effort on a power strip yeah you should see how much time i spent on the little pigtaily things that was the worst part i mean i yeah i had like a drawer of those in my garage like i just well so here's the thing like it's this is they're wonderful but i mean they're all the same right you know what expensive ups's look like you know like expensive ups's are differentiated from the cheap ones
John:
They're differentiated.
John:
It's weird.
John:
They're differentiated by the way computers used to be.
John:
Cheaper desktops were flat on your desk, but the towers were the fancy ones.
John:
The slightly fancier UBSs are all tower form factors.
John:
Instead of the plugs being on the top or the sides, they're on the back.
Marco:
like where the ports would be on a tower computer see i actually i actually don't like this very much because the like good ups is in recent years seem to have gone from basically like two car batteries next to each other in like a big rectangular like velveta shaped log to tall skinny towers
Marco:
And the big Velveeta-shaped log was awesome because you could use it as a footrest under your desk.
Marco:
You turn it sideways, and it was so freaking heavy that you could put your feet on it and push back and lean back without the footrest itself moving at all.
Marco:
I do not endorse this practice.
Marco:
I did it for years.
Marco:
It was wonderful.
Marco:
I had this giant enterprise-grade APC UPS that I got on some clearance site forever.
Marco:
It was out of date when I got it, but it was fine.
Marco:
It worked fine for years, and I had that awesome car battery block under my desk that I could just use as a footrest for years.
Marco:
That eventually died, and I replaced it with some cyber power thing that is a very nice UPS, but is more of a skinny tower.
Marco:
You can't do anything with that except just leave it there.
Marco:
You can't use that as a footrest at all.
John:
yeah i never had it under my feet and in general i one of the criteria for me for my setups is no power thing should be in reach of my feet because probably for the best absent-mindedly kick out plugs kick switches like i should just shouldn't even be able to reach them so then you don't have to worry about that because you'd be surprised what your feet do when they're idle uh they can mess with things but yeah those skinny towers for the record all of my power things are with an easy reach of my feet and that has never happened
John:
yeah you obviously don't have like power strips with one of those little switches right on top of it because that's well maybe or maybe your feet can't reach it i keep making short jokes i'm sorry um yeah i understand the footrest thing too it is good to have for us but i think there's better dedicated things for a feet rest if that's what you
Marco:
i have one now it sucks it just scoots around because it's like what i have now is basically like a like a half half log cushion it's like it's like a semi-circle extruded and it's just like a cushion that scoots around on the floor and it has like you know rubber dots on it they're supposed to keep it in place but it doesn't work you need like one of those wedge shaped things rubberized web shapes that wedges that doesn't move it has like the rubberized thing on the bottom but it's just it's you know i mean i've had it for a number of years now so i think the rubber is all like covered in dust and now it just slides around hmm yeah
John:
Anyway, those plugs in the back of the little skinny towers, that's like the worst place to put a plug.
John:
It's not easy to get to the ports in the back of a tower.
John:
Why are you hiding them?
John:
Like, they should be... The other ones where they were flat and they had the plugs all over the top, you could get all of them easily.
John:
So, this is the one thing I don't like about the expensive UBSs, but I can solve that by these little pigtail-y things that... Some of them duplicate ports where they will...
John:
put a little thing into the plug and on the back of them will be another plug.
John:
So you don't lose that plug, but then you have a little thing snaking off it, which you have to be careful with because the UBS can only handle a certain number of things in a certain, anyway, assuming you manage all that, it's convenient.
John:
And then they have other ones that like are different angles and you need some to come out of one side and some to cut out of the other.
John:
Like it's, it's a complicated thing.
John:
And the thing about these little pig taily things is you can find tons of them and they're super cheap, but you want to get one that is good and rated for the power you're going to put through it.
John:
And this, you know,
John:
High quality and tight fitting and, you know, complies with all the actual regulations that isn't some weird, random, unspecified ripoff thing from some no name company.
John:
Right.
John:
So that's that's why it requires a lot of research, because it's like I'm looking for like the most expensive option.
John:
Right.
John:
I do not want to buy from a company that I've never heard of for some random things that's going to come out smelling like chemically plastic and looking flimsy.
John:
That can't be the link between my horrendously expensive computer and my slightly expensive UPS.
John:
So I did spend a lot of time on that.
John:
And we'll see if I did a good job.
John:
I have, I think, all the pieces I need.
John:
I haven't started tearing out the old one because I don't even have a new computer on order.
John:
But the process is underway.
Marco:
Are we still under the delusion that you're not getting the Pro Display?
John:
We don't know yet.
John:
It's a mystery.
John:
We're in a period of uncertainty.
John:
I mean, I'm certain.
John:
Yeah, same.
John:
Only you are uncertain.
John:
That much is clear, but you are not the person making the purchase, so that certainty does not count for much.
John:
And I believe my wife is also not certain at this point.
John:
So for a variety of reasons, the family, let's say, is not certain how much money I will be spending on this computer.
Marco:
Like part of the reason why I'm pretty certain I'm not ordering myself a Mac Pro is
Marco:
is because of that display because the only way to do it is to do it right the only way to do it is to get the freaking pro display xdr if you're marco seven thousand dollar configuration with anti-glare and the stand that's the way to do it if you're going to do it at all and i don't want to do that so i'm literally just going to not do it at all maybe you need two of them for your new laptop or obviously yeah how could you not how could you not casey you're going to be the one buying it oh no i am not getting that seven thousand dollar display no sir
Marco:
Just think you could have a really awesome mediocre desktop by having a laptop plugged into that display.
Marco:
You could have a $7,000 thing that flakily wakes up in kernel panic when you unplug it when it's clamshell mode.
Casey:
How many MacBook Pros could I buy for the $7,000 I would hypothetically be spending on the display?
Marco:
Three.
Marco:
Do you think $7,000 buys a reliable clamshell experience?
Casey:
Oh, no.
John:
No, absolutely not.
John:
I don't think so either.
John:
This is the ultimate luxury that none of us can afford.
John:
It's not available at any price.
John:
It's true, because laptops stink.