Give Up On The Retina Dream
John:
The show should not be that long.
John:
People keep asking us about the show, the artwork for the show.
Casey:
Oh, I moved that down.
Casey:
But okay, we can talk about it now.
John:
Let's follow up, I think.
John:
So I want Marco to address that because it is a frequently asked question.
Marco:
Yes, so right now the show has two pieces of artwork.
Marco:
It has the old Mac Pro with the new badge on it as the official one on the feed.
Marco:
Ever since WBDC, I've been embedding in the embedded artwork in each file the black Mac Pro with the new badge over it as kind of a joke from WBDC.
Marco:
Since roughly then, we've been trying to get better artwork made.
Marco:
And the biggest problem, we've talked to a few designers over the last six months or so.
Marco:
The biggest problem is that we have had no ideas.
Marco:
And so we ask a designer like, hey, we'd love to have you do something for us.
Marco:
And of course, all good designers are always busy.
Marco:
And so they ask us, okay, well, what do you want?
Marco:
And we're like, we have no ideas except that it should contain the text Accidental Tech Podcast because all other podcasts contain their name in their artwork and therefore many podcast clients are designed to not even show the title.
Marco:
This is, I believe, true in many sections of the iTunes podcast store where you can just see the square artwork and you don't even see the title.
Marco:
So it makes it hard to find the show if the title is not in the artwork.
Marco:
Besides that, we have had nothing else to work on.
Marco:
However, you guys all know us, and you can probably take a guess that even though we have no ideas, we are going to be critical of anything presented to us, which therefore means that we are the worst possible clients to have for a designer.
Marco:
Wait a second.
John:
Are you telling people that we need the full name inside the thing?
John:
Because I would be happy with the initials.
Casey:
That's what I. All right.
Marco:
Well, we're making progress here.
Marco:
I think I would argue against that.
John:
If you just have the initials, that's enough for a fan of the show who has it in their feeds to be able to recognize rather than just a diagonal banner saying new.
Marco:
Well, the fan, yes, but I would say people who already subscribe to it and already recognize us as a thing...
Marco:
The artwork being recognizable is less of a problem for them, and I would say ours now probably is very recognizable still if you're browsing a list.
Marco:
The bigger problem is attracting new people to the show, and most people browsing the iTunes store, if they see this square that says ATP, they're going to think this is the most interesting adenosine triphosphate podcast in the world, and we're not going to attract new people that way.
Marco:
It could also be a tennis podcast.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
I can't believe you knew adenosine triphosphate.
Casey:
As the husband of a biology teacher, I am very impressed.
Marco:
I'm not going to pretend like I know whether it's pronounced that way or not, but I'm pretty sure those are the words.
Marco:
You're right.
John:
All right.
John:
Anyway, the reason this question comes up is because since we recorded the last episode, the new Mac Pros have been released.
John:
I'm sure we'll talk about that later in the show.
John:
And people keep asking on Twitter, are you going to change the artwork for the podcast to be the new Mac Pro instead of the old one with a big new banner?
Marco:
on it so i mean i made that artwork six months ago i could change it um i might as well i mean we're trying to get new artwork made still so i i thought it would be a little weird to change the artwork now and then change it again in like a month or something but i agree i think you should keep the existing old style cheese grater with the new thing on it until we get official new artwork
John:
And we'll just all have to endure the constant questions about why we haven't changed the artwork.
John:
But the distinction you were just making there is important that the individual embedded artwork in each audio file is the new one.
John:
But the artwork for the show is the old one.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
The art node in the XML feed is the old Mac Pro.
John:
And that's what most clients will display, including Overcast.
John:
But some clients will read from inside of the MP3 file and show that artwork, in which case those people have been seeing the new one.
Casey:
Yeah, and we get a lot of feedback about, oh, well, is there a bug?
Casey:
Is something wrong here?
Casey:
Because sometimes I get the cheese grater.
Casey:
Sometimes I get the trash can.
Casey:
And yeah, that's why.
Casey:
It's because the XML feed, the RSS feed has one icon or one bit of artwork.
Casey:
And the embedded, what is it, ID3 tags have a different piece of artwork.
John:
So bear with us.
John:
We'll make it through this together.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So with that said, before we talk more about the Mac Pro and I go to bed, is there any follow up that you might have, John, about other things?
John:
Last show, we talked a lot about rating applications and the things we could do to add more valuable signal to the suitability of applications besides just easily gained star ratings and reviews.
John:
And one of the social things that we talked about was like, what if you could know what applications that your friends are using or that they like or whatever, and the various levels of creepiness and privacy violations of that.
John:
And someone whose name I'm going to take a run at tweeted this today.
John:
Runak Jane maybe said that App Store pages have Facebook like on them, which, you know, that's what more could you ask for in terms of knowing what your friends do?
John:
Because the Facebook like button is ubiquitous.
John:
If people use Facebook, then they already have their relationships with people and they can see which other friends like something.
John:
I don't really think that's a solution for Apple, though, and I don't think Apple thinks it's a solution either.
John:
It seems more like a stopgap because, A, it totally cuts out anybody who doesn't use Facebook, and B, Apple, despite their integration with Facebook and Twitter, tends not to want to rely on third-party companies for things that are important.
John:
And so I have to think that that is in there just because Apple doesn't know what else to do, but it's not a viable long-term solution.
John:
Personally, it doesn't help me at all because I don't use Facebook, so that doesn't help at all.
John:
I do use the App Store, and if the App Store itself had a system that was like this, I would use it because I used the App Store.
John:
But requiring me to sign up for and use some other third-party service to make this happen...
John:
is not really the solution.
John:
And I also think that, okay, what if they did it with Twitter?
John:
Use Twitter, right?
John:
Well, it's going to end up like one of those bottom of the blogs from a couple years ago with 8,000 badges to like it and to post it to Google Buzz and to give it a plus on Google+, and to retweet it on Twitter and to like it on Facebook.
John:
It's ridiculous.
John:
Apple needs an actual solution to this.
John:
But it is worth pointing out that they've got that Facebook thing integrated there.
John:
And I didn't recall that at all.
John:
Do either one of you remember ever seeing, let alone clicking on the little like button on the App Store page?
John:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I mean, I have seen them.
Marco:
They added them, I think, even in iOS 6.
Marco:
Those have been there for a while.
Marco:
However, maybe it's just me and my circle of friends.
Marco:
I've never seen more than like one or two likes there, and I'm not really...
Marco:
Like I'm accustomed to ignoring Facebook embed things all over the web with everything I see anyway.
Marco:
So I like noticed it once and then ignored it for the rest of time.
John:
Yeah, it's like ad batter blindness.
John:
I literally don't see that thing unless until someone tells me to look for it.
John:
And even then has a hard time driving my eyes towards it because they just bounce off and go around.
John:
Yeah.
John:
It becomes invisible.
John:
Ad Banner Blindness is a fascinating... I mean, I'm sure there's tons and tons of precedents for the same phenomenon, but to have a name for it and to have such frequent occasion to see things, Ad Banner Blindness is so insane that I remember maybe five years ago,
John:
I was about to write like an angry, maybe it was Twitter itself.
John:
I think it was about to write an angry email to the people who ran Twitter back in like 2007 to say that it's insane that they don't have a huge honking button somewhere on there on one of their pages to do some common function.
John:
And the button was there.
John:
But I literally could not see it because it was surrounded by things that look like an ad like
John:
It, it had enough addiness around it.
John:
Maybe it was the wrong shape, the wrong proportions or the wrong colors.
John:
I had my eyes just couldn't see it.
John:
And I searched the page and I'm scanning out.
John:
I can't believe this should be totally prominent.
John:
And eventually I saw it and it was just right in front of my face.
John:
And I was like, why did I not see that ad banner blindness?
John:
It's a real thing.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
When I was designing Instapaper back in the day, the app didn't really have a problem.
Marco:
But the website, I had one main content column.
Marco:
And then off to the right, I had a little sidebar.
Marco:
And the content column would have the main list.
Marco:
And then the sidebar would have folders and then...
Marco:
you know, kind of other, I kind of use it as a junk drawer, you know, that's where like the export was.
Marco:
That would be like different management functions, you know, bulk delete, stuff like that.
Marco:
I would constantly get, get feature requests for features that I had already implemented that were in that sidebar.
Marco:
Because people just did not see them.
Marco:
It's a very hard problem in web design.
Marco:
Anything that you put in a place that usually is an ad in most layouts, like a sidebar or a big leaderboard on top or something like that, people just will not see it.
Marco:
You're totally right.
Marco:
That's a real thing.
Marco:
And it's a big design challenge.
John:
The military should use it for camouflage because if you make something look kind of like, if you make it with the same proportions as a typical ad banner or with the same kind of colors or like, you know, just sort of fuzzy in your peripheral vision out of the corner of your eye, if it looks vaguely like an ad, your brain will never look at it.
John:
So they just need to make tanks look like giant Punch the Monkey ads.
John:
Like medium rectangle size.
Yeah.
John:
That's not a soldier.
John:
It's a skyscraper.
John:
That's a new kind of dazzle camouflage.
John:
Dazzle is very big out here.
John:
um all right so the next bit is a couple of tweets about dual input displays last show we talked about that slide that apple had on the mac pro presentation that it supports single and dual input displays and we were wondering what the hell is a dual input display a couple people have have responded
John:
that there exists displays that it's like we suspected in the case for higher resolution.
John:
They'll split the display into two parts, and they'll have two connections, and one connection drives one part of the display, and the other connection drives the other part, and there has to be sort of support on both ends of the connection to...
John:
keep things in sync and so you know each side is is showing the right image or whatever uh and i assume this was done before the advent of thunderbolt 2 because it was the only way then to drive a 4k display because a single mini display port in the old standard or a thunderbolt 1 connection or a dvi or whatever had a resolution limit that was insufficient to drive a 4k display so i said fine we'll just hook up two of those cables
John:
and then one gets one half of the display, the other half gets the other, and the operating system is aware of what's going on, and everything works.
John:
What I still don't know is, would dual-input displays give us the ability to have something that's above 4K resolution?
John:
In other words, could you have two Thunderbolt 2 connections, and would that allow the Mac Pro, with two Thunderbolt cables going to this monitor, be able to drive a higher-than-4K display?
John:
Seems like it should, but...
Marco:
Knowing nothing else about it, I don't really see why not.
Marco:
I mean, if, you know, like these displays are, let's see what it says here.
Marco:
Yeah, it's basically left and right halves.
Marco:
So it's 1920 by 2160 for each half of a 4K display.
Marco:
If you just make that a little bit bigger, you can accommodate 5120, was it?
Marco:
5120 by 2880, which is, you know, like the 27-inch version of Retina from what we have today.
Marco:
You can accommodate that very easily and not hit any bandwidth limits along the way if you're doing left and right halves like that.
John:
So it would work presumably the exact same way, just with a few more pixels.
John:
And I don't know if anything like that exists, but what they were putting up on that slide, the thing that we weren't aware of, is that before the advent of Thunderbolt 2, this is how everybody supported 4K, and the Mac Pro supports this.
John:
So if you happen to have one of those monitors, you're good to go.
Marco:
And interestingly, the new Retina MacBook Pro, I'm pretty sure, does not support that.
Marco:
I'll have to verify that.
Marco:
But I think there's some support document somewhere that says the most it will do is 4K.
Marco:
And that's only over HDMI, I think.
John:
I think actually 10.9.1 might be the first release of OS X that adds support for this feature as well.
John:
So it's a hardware and software combination to make sure that it supports dual input displays.
Marco:
right because otherwise you'd have like you know the menu bar would take up the left half of the top of the screen and weird weird stuff like that as if it were two different displays so you wouldn't want that yeah and speaking of displays and we'll talk more about the mac pro but i put this in the follow-up anyway
John:
because we talked about that sharp display that appeared briefly on the European website and it disappeared.
John:
Not only is it back as something you could order on the Apple retail store or Apple online store rather with your Mac Pro, but if you were to go to the new version of the Final Cut Pro 10 webpage at apple.com, they show screenshots of Final Cut and they actually show it running on these sharp monitors.
John:
with the word sharp right in the front of them that didn't even black out the logo with the ugly little stand and it is really weird to see a big you know a prominent display of non-apple hardware on a product page on a big product page it's not an obscure thing this is not a tiny image off to the corner this is a full width gigantic image of sharp displays uh and i don't do they even show max yeah they show a couple of uh thunderbolt displays as well but
John:
Since they're really pushing 4K and all this other stuff, I guess, I mean, what choice do they have?
John:
They have to show that because if they're pushing 4K support, they have to show a 4K monitor, and that's the only one they've got.
John:
So, God, I don't know.
John:
A lot of people are saying that this just proves that they weren't ready with their 4K solutions.
John:
They had to do something.
John:
Maybe, but the tiny little scared voice says, maybe they're just never going to make a 4K monitor.
John:
Maybe they're just getting out of the monitor business.
John:
And you're just going to have to buy one of these ugly plastic things someday.
Marco:
Well, or, I mean, it could go a couple other ways, too.
Marco:
I mean, it could be that the first 5120x2880 panels that Apple ships might go in a Retina iMac.
Marco:
You know, like just similar to how when this iMac came out, the one that we have now, the 27-inch screen when that first came out, as I said a couple shows ago, you could not buy a 27-inch 2560x1440 panel for anybody else for at least a few months after that came out.
Marco:
And certainly the 30-inch displays that had that resolution were not as good, not as advanced.
Marco:
You know, they had worse color, worse contrast, worse brightness, stuff like that, and they were more expensive.
Marco:
It's possible, yeah, maybe they are just saving these panels for the iMac first and saying, oh, well, the Mac Pro customers can go get their own monitors for now.
Marco:
It's also possible, and these don't have to be mutually exclusive, it's also possible that they're simply not going to make a 4K monitor, that they're going to just jump right past that and just make a 5120x2880 monitor.
Marco:
They don't need to make a 3840x whatever.
Marco:
Maybe they just skipped that because...
Marco:
for the purpose of their computer monitors, it's an awkward resolution because of the size issues we discussed previously, where if you're going to run that as a 2X retina monitor, it pretty much can't be larger than about 24 inches.
Marco:
And if you're going to run it as a 1X monitor, it has to be like 32 inches, which is a lot larger than what they make now and a lot larger than what most people want on their desks.
Marco:
So it's kind of a weird resolution to deal with
John:
as general purpose computer monitors and if you look at the screenshots on the final cut pro page they're not running those monitors in high dpi mode as far as i can tell they're definitely size look at the size of the menu bar on them they're running them in native res uh which is pretty squinty and but it you know it's it's right after my own heart of like yes please no non-native res on lcds if you can help it uh
John:
If they're going to wait for it to go on the iMac first, though, that is depressing because can you think about how long it's going to take for this to be an affordable display on an iMac?
John:
I think we need a better name for this thing.
John:
How about a quad 27-inch?
John:
It's basically take the existing 27-inch Thunderbolt display and make four of them, tack them together.
John:
That's what we're talking about in terms of pixels.
John:
All right, so for a quad 27-inch display...
John:
uh it's going to be a long time before that is inexpensive enough to go in an iMac because this one this 4k display that isn't even that high resolution is four thousand dollars so maybe next year it halves in price and it's two thousand and one more year it's down to one thousand but this isn't even as high a resolution as what we're talking about so well to be fair though
Marco:
pro like pro quote pro monitors are always a lot more expensive than similar quality desktop monitors from from like you know for for normal use pro monitors have different you know color and accuracy requirements and stuff like that yeah but the 27 inch iMac when that monitor that has really good color quality too when that first came to the iMac maybe it wasn't super duper calibrated professional photographer but it was really good quality
Marco:
Sure, yeah, but I mean, you look at the Dell, the new Dell U, whatever, the U24, the 24-inch Dell 4K display.
Marco:
It's $1,200, or I think it's $1,300 regular, but you know, every time you look at a Dell thing, it's a different price.
Marco:
So it's about $1,200, and it's 24-inch 4K.
Marco:
And that's really cheap compared to everything else we've seen so far.
Marco:
I think they even said the 28-inch version is going to be cheaper.
Marco:
I think it's going to be like $800, but I think it might not be as good of a
Marco:
it's good of a panel something like that but the point is i think we're i think the dell 24 inch 4k shows that this might not be as far off as we think that it like for this to be affordable for this to be available and affordable in our quad 27 inch theoretical resolution maybe this comes out in six months or a year and maybe you know maybe apple charges 1500 or 2000 for it
John:
So I guess we should transition right into a Mac Pro discussion because we're basically talking about it.
John:
And I think Casey put this question at the bottom of the follow-up here.
Casey:
I did.
John:
Did anyone buy a Mac Pro?
Marco:
We are sponsored once again this week by our friends at Warby Parker.
Marco:
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Marco:
They should even be affordable enough for people to accessorize and have multiple pairs if they want to.
Marco:
Warby Parker bypasses the traditional channels and sells higher quality, better looking prescription eyewear online at a fraction of the price, starting at just $95 at warbyparker.com.
Marco:
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Marco:
And let me interrupt the script for a second here.
Marco:
According to what I'm seeing online with people talking about this stuff, these things are cool.
Marco:
Like this isn't just like, you know, crappy eyeglasses you get like off the stand at your eye doctor, uh,
Marco:
like these are like people think these are trendy and cool and i can't judge that because i'm terrible at that but i can i can verify that other people who are good at this stuff are telling me that warby parker stuff is cool every pair is custom fit with an anti-reflective anti-glare polycarbonate prescription lens
Marco:
And every pair comes with a hard case and cleaning cloth, so you don't need to buy any more accessories besides the glasses.
Marco:
And you guys have the hard case.
Marco:
Tiff has the hard case for her pair.
Marco:
And everyone says it's a really good case.
Marco:
It's strong.
Marco:
It's fuzzy inside.
Marco:
It's a great, great case.
Marco:
Buying glasses online sounds like it would be risky.
Marco:
How would you know whether they will fit or how they'll look on you?
Marco:
But Warby actually has some pretty cool tools to cover these questions.
Marco:
So first of all, their website has a helpful tool that uses your computer's webcam to give you a preview of how the glasses will look on your face.
Marco:
It can even help you measure your eyes and face to get the fit exactly right.
Marco:
A little story here.
Marco:
When we first got Tiff's pair, we couldn't get her eye doctor to give us the prescription because they were weird.
Marco:
And so we used the online tool to measure and just estimate what the prescription or what the distance is, whatever it is between the eyes, what that was.
Marco:
And then a few days later, the eye doctor caved and gave us that information.
Marco:
And what we measured from Warby Parker's webcam tool was exactly the same.
Marco:
It worked perfectly.
Marco:
So that thing is really cool.
Marco:
The best part, though, about Warby Parker is that they have this awesome home try-on program.
Marco:
You can borrow up to five pairs of glasses risk-free that they will ship to you for free.
Marco:
You can try them on in the comfort of your own home for five days, then just send them back with a prepaid return label, and there's no obligation to buy.
Marco:
They also offer prescription and non-prescription polarized sunglasses.
Marco:
And I love polarized sunglasses personally.
Marco:
If you've only ever had non-polarized, you don't know what you're missing, really.
Marco:
Polarized sunglasses are awesome.
Marco:
And this is a great price even for non-prescription polarized sunglasses.
Marco:
What's also great about Warby Parker is that they believe in giving back to the world.
Marco:
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Marco:
For every pair of glasses they sell, Warby Parker gives another pair to someone in need through nonprofits such as VisionSpring.
Marco:
So this is all fantastic.
Marco:
Go to warbyparker.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Check out their great selection of premium quality, affordable eyewear.
Marco:
Browse around.
Marco:
Get yourself the home try-on kit risk-free.
Marco:
It's awesome.
Marco:
So that's very simple.
Marco:
Even this time, we made it even easier for you.
Marco:
You don't have to worry about the coupon code, which was ATP, if you still want to use it.
Marco:
But if you just go to warbyparker.com slash ATP, they'll remember that you came from us, and you'll get the free shipping on the final order and everything like that.
Marco:
It'll be great.
Marco:
So go to warbyparker.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Get your home try-on kit.
Marco:
Can you explain to me why polarized sunglasses are good since you wear them yourself?
Marco:
Because normally the reason you wear sunglasses – like I wear them almost all the time when I'm driving.
Marco:
The function of sunglasses is to reduce the amount of light that is making your eyes have to squint and say, ah, that hurts my eyes.
Marco:
So you can do that in a couple of ways.
Marco:
You can do that by just cutting the light by a lot, like putting a fogged black piece of glass in front of your face and just cutting down the amount of light a lot.
Marco:
Polarized glasses, and I'm a little unclear as to why this has this effect, but the polarizing filter with the light going through in only one vibration direction or whatever, it makes it so that you don't need to reduce the amount of light coming in as much
Marco:
for your eyes to be able to open fully and not be squinting all the time and not have that fatigue.
Marco:
I don't know why that is the case, but it is.
Marco:
So the outcome here is that you don't have to have everything be as dark, but it still feels good and your eyes get relieved.
John:
I don't even remember if the sunglasses I got are polarized or not.
John:
If you got them from Warby Parker, I think they all are, right?
John:
Yep, yep.
John:
I got them after the end of sunglasses, so I'll have to try them out this summer and see how that goes.
Casey:
You know what you need to do is, if Marco ever visits you and if he brings his M5, does Tiff's car have a heads-up display?
Casey:
Yes, it does.
Casey:
Damn it.
Casey:
Anyway, I hate you so much.
Casey:
Anyway, the point is, if you look at the heads-up display, if you look at it at the wrong angle, it will disappear.
Casey:
And that's how you know you have polarizers.
John:
I just get out one of my old LCD calculators.
Marco:
Well, I think any LCD this effect works on.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure.
Marco:
I don't think they found a way to make this not happen because LCDs have a polarizer as the front layer.
Marco:
At least they used to.
Marco:
As far as I know, this works on any, because basically the idea is if the LCD polarizer is at a 90 degree angle to the polarizer on your face, it blocks all light.
Marco:
So that an LCD screen, if you rotate it around, at some point when you're wearing polarized sunglasses, it should become black.
Casey:
That's true, but I've never noticed that in my car, which does not mean you are wrong.
Casey:
It doesn't mean that it's not the case.
Casey:
I've just never noticed it.
John:
I think modern LCDs have like a diffuser on it that scrambles up all the light so it's not all, it unpolarizes it after that point.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Something will tell us.
John:
But anyway, yes, we have many ways to tell.
John:
And yes, that's what I was saying.
John:
What you do with the old calculator way, if you had a polarized thing, you just twist it and it turns black.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So thanks to Warby Parker for sponsoring.
Casey:
And I've mentioned this several times in the past because they've been kind enough to sponsor us several times.
Casey:
But one of the great things about Home Try-On is that you can grab several frames and
Casey:
And you can try all of them.
Casey:
You can try up to five.
Casey:
And what I did when I got my sunglasses is I put in like three or four that I thought were my general style, my standard style.
Casey:
And they were not hipster at all.
Casey:
And then I put in one or two that were kind of hipster.
Casey:
And as it ends up, I actually chose one of the hipster frames because I thought they looked the best.
Casey:
And so I am very glad that I was able to try them on at home because...
Casey:
If I were not able to try on several or if I were only able to try on one or two, I don't think I would have chosen the frames I got, and I really, really, really like them, and they're really great.
Casey:
So definitely check them out.
Marco:
Yeah, TIFFs were even better.
Marco:
For her home try-on, she only picked three, but they give you five.
Marco:
So they just picked two other ones that were similar to the ones she had picked but a little bit different, and then she ended up choosing one of the ones they picked for her.
Casey:
Nice.
Marco:
Anyway, thanks to Warby Parker.
Marco:
They're awesome.
Marco:
If you wear glasses or if you want to wear glasses, go to warbyparker.com slash ATP.
John:
That's a free tip for them.
John:
What they should do is have a button that says, I can't choose frames.
John:
Here's a picture of me.
John:
Send me five that you think will look good on me.
John:
just cut out because that's the you know sometimes that's the best part and it's also like the most nerve-wracking part of like oh which ones do i want and sometimes especially if you are fashion disabled as i am you just click a button and say look this is a picture of me this is what i look like just send me something it's a serious affliction we shouldn't joke about that so john today mac pros were available for order did you order a new mac pro
John:
No, and you knew I wasn't because I said last show that I want to wait for gaming benchmarks and other things.
John:
I did click around on the store, but I did not order one.
Marco:
Now, Casey, why aren't we asking you if you want a new Mac Pro?
Marco:
Did you order a new Mac Pro?
Marco:
I did.
Marco:
Really?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
God, no.
Casey:
Don't be silly.
Casey:
Of course not.
Casey:
No, there's no part of me that desires a non-mobile computer.
Casey:
And I'm not saying I'm right.
Casey:
I'm not saying that this makes sense.
Casey:
But for me, I've ever since, geez, I don't know, 2002, I've always had laptops.
Casey:
And I've either exclusively had laptops or almost exclusively had laptops.
Casey:
And
Casey:
I've always preferred that form factor because I guess by and large, I don't need a million gigabytes of storage space within my computer.
Casey:
I don't need a lot of the things that you guys need.
Casey:
I don't mean that to patronize you.
Casey:
I mean that genuinely.
Casey:
And so I've always preferred to have mobile computers.
Casey:
And because of that, I actually have two MacBook Pros.
Casey:
One is from work.
Casey:
One is one that I bought.
Casey:
And I've been considering buying a Retina MacBook Pro, but no, I did not buy a Mac Pro.
John:
Do you have an external monitor hooked up to that?
John:
I do.
John:
I do.
John:
Don't you feel kind of weird, though, like that you're using this thing that itself has a screen and a keyboard on it, but you're not using that screen and you're not using that keyboard.
John:
You've got another keyboard and another input device and you're looking at a different screen.
Casey:
Whoa, whoa.
Casey:
slow down sir so what i have at home is an external apple bluetooth keyboard one of the ones that takes i think it's four batteries i have a magic mouse that i use both at work and at home and then i have a samsung display that's something around 20 inches at home and there's a plethora of different displays that we use at work all of which are around the same size but
Casey:
I always, always, always use dual displays.
Casey:
So at work, I have two displays.
Casey:
At home, I have two displays.
Casey:
And I think it's absolutely barbaric to not use two displays.
John:
But it's still a mess.
John:
One of your screens has this keyboard hanging off of it that you don't use unless it's on your lap.
John:
And it's got a trackpad in front of that that you don't use because you're using your magic mouse.
John:
And that monitor is too low unless you prop it up on a stand.
John:
And then it has that big thing jutting out in front of you.
John:
If you want two screens, get two screens.
John:
Like, I think there's room in everyone's life for a desktop.
Marco:
In defense of the setup that you were just making fun of, John, I had that setup for the first few years of Tumblr, and it was great.
Marco:
I mean, when I did finally get a Mac Pro and dual monitors, that was better, but...
Marco:
The setup of having a laptop on a stand and then having a full-size keyboard and mouse on the desktop and then having a big monitor plugged into the laptop.
Marco:
So the laptop, you're right, it's just sitting there floating, not being used, except it's screen.
Marco:
So you have the big display as your primary, you have the laptop display as your secondary, and then you have full-size keyboard and mouse on the desk, laptop on a stand.
Marco:
That's a great setup.
Marco:
Your desk is going to be covered in wires, but...
Marco:
That is a great setup.
John:
I would like it better if you could fold the laptop back so that the part that you're not using is back behind the display.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like a slate tablet?
Casey:
No, no.
Casey:
I understand what you're saying.
John:
You'd still need a little stand.
John:
You'd just get rid of that horizontal part that's jutting out towards you just looking stupid with input devices that you're not using.
Marco:
I mean, it does look stupid.
Marco:
If a normal person walks by your desk and that's your setup, they will make fun of it.
Marco:
But then you see them hunched over their desk, hunched over a laptop that's just flat on the desk all day long, and they complain why their neck and shoulders hurt.
John:
Yeah, no, laptops are ergonomic nightmares.
John:
Yeah.
John:
All right.
John:
Anyway, Casey did not get a Mac Pro.
John:
Marco, the only person left who could have conceivably bought one.
Marco:
So I said previously that I was probably not going to get one until they had retina displays.
Marco:
So I bought one.
John:
well technically it had a retina display you just never qualified that it had to be an apple retina display it was implied but technically if we go back and listen to the tape you'll hear that you just said well if they offer they did offer retina displays right it's right there on the page when you scroll down you can click would you like to add a 4k display yes and if you if you don't look really closely you might think wow apple has a 4k display which i thought for a millisecond when i first saw that page i said no it's just a stupid sharp one this is a small icon
John:
You put that Mavericks background on it.
John:
It's an Apple display.
John:
No, it's not.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
And I didn't buy that display, the 4K that Apple's offering now.
Marco:
So I ordered one.
Marco:
I probably wouldn't have ordered one today if they were going to be just like in stock normally.
Marco:
And I could just buy one whenever I wanted.
Marco:
And I didn't want it so badly that I was going to order it at 3 a.m.
Marco:
So I woke up this morning, took care of my family, did all the morning stuff, and then checked.
Marco:
And it said, shipping in February.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
Well, I guess I should probably think about ordering if I want anytime soon.
Marco:
So there's a thing in New York State where New York State computer hardware is sales tax exempt if it's going to be used primarily for software development or making websites, which mine is.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
But to get the sales tax exempt thing, you have to either file for it later with the state after you have paid it and try to get reimbursed, which is a disaster of paperwork that I don't even want to attempt, or buy it through an Apple business rep.
Marco:
So that's what I did.
Marco:
I emailed the business rep at my store and I said, hey, I want one of these things.
Marco:
Let's do it.
Marco:
Which is good because that also comes with a small discount.
Marco:
Mine was discounted something like $400 by the business rep.
Marco:
It was a pretty good discount.
Casey:
That's not small.
Marco:
And so I did that because I – and I even asked him, like, you know, is there – you think I'm going to get this before February, like the website?
Marco:
And he's like, well, we can put it in the separate order system.
Marco:
There was some kind of priority, but probably not, basically, was the answer.
Marco:
I got it, mainly because I think between now and February, a lot of people are going to get these things, and everyone else can figure out what is the best retina monitor situation solution, if any, right now.
Marco:
Is it the Dells?
Marco:
Is it these other things?
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
Everyone else will have time to figure that out.
Marco:
And then by the time I get mine, I can decide then either to keep using my display and hope that the cable doesn't flake out.
Marco:
Keep using my 30 inch that I have now until Apple makes their own, you know, four times the 27 inch that we have today.
Marco:
Or I can go Dell.
Marco:
I mean, I've actually, as I said, I've never even had an Apple display, so it wouldn't be outrageous for me to buy a non-Apple display again because I've never bought an Apple display.
Marco:
So that's what I'm going with.
Casey:
Was there ever really any doubt in your mind that you would immediately insta-buy the new Mac Pro?
Marco:
I really thought that I would wait until the spring and see what people said about them, see how big of a performance gain there was from the old one, stuff like that.
John:
That's what you said.
John:
You were like, oh, I'm going to wait.
John:
I'm going to wait until all the retina stuff's ready.
John:
And you were totally gung-ho in the waiting, so much so that I was like, yeah, maybe I'll wait like Marco, but I should have known.
John:
You're never going to wait.
Marco:
Well, the other thing is, with almost all Apple hardware, the price doesn't ever go down during the lifecycle of the product.
Marco:
I mean, Macs especially.
Marco:
iOS, I guess, has changed that a lot.
Marco:
But in the Mac area, it's not like this Mac Pro is going to cost $1,000 less in six months.
Marco:
The price does not change.
Marco:
It's going to stay this exact same price from now through...
Marco:
Whenever the next one comes out.
Marco:
The Mac Pro has only had a price drop once.
Marco:
And that was the quote update last year that they did.
Marco:
That wasn't really an update that caused our logo to exist.
Marco:
So besides that, there's never been a price drop on a current Mac Pro.
Marco:
Whether I buy it now or whether I buy it in six months doesn't make much of a difference, really.
Marco:
It's like you're paying the same price.
Marco:
Might as well have it sooner and have all that extra performance sooner.
Marco:
Because there's a lot of stuff I do today that will benefit from the extra speed.
Marco:
Quite a lot, actually.
Marco:
Especially with the production of this show and a bunch of image editing tasks I often do.
Marco:
And I'll do big batch operations on big folders full of images and stuff like that where I parallelize everything.
Marco:
I mean, there's
Marco:
There's a lot that I'm going to gain from it immediately.
Marco:
And it's not going to be like, you know, tremendous, like 10 times faster than what I have now, but it is going to be between one and a half and two times faster than what I have now.
Marco:
And that will add up.
John:
So what did you get?
John:
You had eight core, 32 gig terabyte?
Marco:
Yep, exactly.
Marco:
And the, so I think I would say that the best value configuration, if you want like the best bang for your buck, it's the six core.
Marco:
No question.
Marco:
The eight core is probably not worth its price.
Marco:
It's a lot more money for the eight core.
Marco:
It's probably not worth it for most people.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
Turbo Boost is basically the same between the two.
Marco:
6-core is only $500 more.
Marco:
8-core is $1,500 more than the 6-core.
Marco:
So that's a big price difference.
Marco:
The only thing is the 8-core does have...
Marco:
double the cache.
Marco:
It's even more, actually.
Marco:
It's 12 versus 25 megabytes.
Marco:
So it has a lot more cache.
Marco:
That will affect performance, not as much as, like, two more cores would, but that will have an effective performance that's noticeable for a lot of workloads.
Marco:
So the 8-core is... And what's interesting, there's a big reason.
Marco:
I blogged this whole Turbo Boost thing.
Marco:
I linked to it again today.
Marco:
I'm not going to go over it in the show because it's too long and boring.
Marco:
And, of course, I would never do something like that in the show.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
basically the 12 core is actually going to be slower than the 8 core for a lot of things.
Marco:
For almost anything that's not using every core all the time, the 8 core is going to be the fastest chip in the lineup.
Marco:
And that's one of the reasons why Apple has given all their reviewers the 8 core model and not the 12 core model.
Marco:
So what GPU did you get?
Marco:
I was all set to get the D500, the middle one, but I ended up going with the D700.
Marco:
And the reason why is because once I priced this whole thing out,
Marco:
The price difference, you know, it's like price relativism.
John:
It's $600 extra, and it's a small percentage of the enormous cost of this machine.
John:
Right.
Marco:
And, you know, with the discount, it was probably more like, you know, $525 or $550, something like that, whatever it was.
Marco:
It was less.
Marco:
So, yeah, there was like that price relativism.
Marco:
Like, you know, if I thought of it separately, do I want to spend $600 on this extra GPU?
Marco:
I might have said no.
Marco:
But it's like, well, I already am spending all this stuff.
Marco:
What's the extra, you know, few percentage points on top of that?
Marco:
And I did that.
Marco:
Because the GPUs probably can't be reasonably upgraded.
Marco:
Yes, they're on slots.
Marco:
Yes, technically they are replaceable.
Marco:
But you can only replace them with other Apple-supplied parts.
Marco:
Chances are they're going to cost a fortune to replace these.
Marco:
If you wanted to upgrade these things in two years, it's not going to cost you $600.
Marco:
It's probably going to cost you $1,500, $2,000.
Marco:
It's going to cost you a lot.
Marco:
It would be like upgrading your motherboard and your Mac Pro.
Marco:
That's not going to be a cheap operation, even if Apple will sell you the part.
Marco:
I'm guessing OWC is not going to make their own replacement GPUs that will work with this.
Marco:
It was mainly that it's the kind of thing that basically is not replaceable over the lifetime of the machine.
Marco:
So for a very small difference, I can get the best one.
Marco:
I did it mostly so that I don't regret not getting the best one in like two years and I'm still using this and then all of a sudden I'm hitting the barrier of the D500 on something I'm doing.
Marco:
And that might never happen.
Marco:
That's the risk I take, I guess.
Marco:
And then when I eventually resell this, it'll be worth a little bit more.
John:
So here's where I'm at with this Mac Pro thing.
John:
Way back in the day, you were going to wait, and I had to buy immediately because I can't stand this old Mac Pro anymore.
John:
But now that the thing is out and that I've played with the price configurator and all that stuff, God, these things are expensive.
John:
It costs a lot of money.
John:
And, like, I'm in the configurator, and, like, first time you run through, you just go pick everything you want.
John:
And then you look at the price, and you're like, yeah, that's not going to happen, right?
John:
So then I've got to go and say, what do I sacrifice?
John:
Well, so, you know, 6-core.
John:
Let's go back down from 8-core because it's an easy win.
John:
All right, that makes it cheaper.
John:
uh,
John:
The GPU, I had picked the 700 on the first run through because like half the reason I'm buying this thing is I want a big GPU.
John:
I don't need all that VRAM, but I do like the execution units.
John:
And again, without gaming benchmarks, I don't know if it's going to serve my needs because this machine is not made for me.
John:
I'm just trying to use it because it's the only machine that comes with something more than a mobile GPU from Apple.
John:
And I don't want a mobile GPU.
John:
I want a gaming GPU.
John:
Apple doesn't offer gaming GPUs anymore.
John:
They offer professional GPUs, which are these monster things in here that...
John:
are not what I want or need and might not even run games that well, we'll see.
John:
Or I have a mobile GPU.
John:
And so I'm trying to make this machine into something that it's really not.
John:
And so I couldn't, I can't bring the GPU down.
John:
And the other thing about this machine is that both of us were kind of, you are still caught up in this, but we were both caught up in the idea of like,
John:
This is when the desktop is going to go retina.
John:
The lap stops have gone, well, not the Ares, but the regular MacBook Pros have gone retina.
John:
All the iOS devices are retina.
John:
Finally, with this crazy ass thing, black cylinder thing, we're going to have the power to go retina on the desktop.
John:
It's not going to come to the iMac first.
John:
It's going to come to the Mac Pro first because the Mac Pro costs a bajillion dollars and it can run a retina display.
John:
and you're still holding on to that dream but at this point i'm kind of like i have to i have to give up on the retina dream at least for 2014 like retina is not a suicide pact i'm not gonna i can't spend like my entire life savings on this machine to try to get just a desktop to spray with something in retina i have to just i have to just let it go and say it's not gonna happen next year there's no like because you know what i want i want the big quad 27 inch display that doesn't even exist that might not even be able to be driven by this thing anyway uh
John:
And so if I look at this as a machine not driving, and by the way, if I was going to buy a retina display, that's adding another $1,500 to $4,000, depending on what display I get, to the cost of this already tremendously expensive thing.
John:
And if I don't get a retina display, then I have to ask, what is this machine getting me that...
John:
upgrading my existing mac pro wouldn't what if i just put in a fast ssd and a gaming card into my existing mac pro like would that would that run games better and cpu stuff acceptably would it i know it would feel faster because i have a really big ssd and my mac pro would work and i know it feels way faster than the spinning disc here so i know what that's like
John:
and game a gaming card upgrade i know what that would be like too that would be way cheaper and i wouldn't like think about buying this mac pro i would also have to like i'd have all these discs and external enclosures that are like firewire enclosures and yeah i have the nasa and everything but i don't want to just get rid of those firewire discs so would i have to buy a thunderbolt enclosure to put that stuff in would i have to buy a thunderbolt hub that i connect to like it just the money just keeps flowing out of me
John:
and into the hands of apple and these other people and i'm i'm i don't know if i i don't know if i should buy this machine i don't know if i should just wait until it is like you said it's not like i'll wait six months and they'll be cheaper no they won't like they're not gonna get cheaper until the new versions come out next year like maybe if i'm lucky at wwec they'll announce revised mac pros right well it won't be that soon because the next zeon chips won't even be out until i think q4 next year
John:
The CPUs won't be the same, but as I said, the GPUs that are in these are already based on AMD's previous gen core.
John:
They have revised their GPU core.
John:
So it is conceivable that WWC could roll around, which is kind of the year anniversary of the machine, but not really, like the year anniversary of the announcement.
John:
And they'll say, oh, well, it's got the same Xeons, because what else could they put in it, right?
John:
Maybe there would be a slight price drop on that, but mostly what I'm looking for is they would revise the GPUs to be the newer architecture.
John:
maybe they just hold the prices the same and they'd be a little bit better but like maybe there's something out for me if i just if i just write off 2014 and say in 2015 that's when i'll get my mac pro and maybe by then in 2015 there's a chance that i'll have retina displays real retina displays quad 27 inch i don't know i haven't made a decision yet but i'm definitely thinking about i'm definitely while i'm pricing out the mac pros i'm also pricing out
John:
an SSD and a new card for my existing Mac Pro or by the way if you want to sell your Mac Pro Marco you'll give me a sweetheart dear deal you know I don't I actually was just thinking like how the hell am I going to sell this PCI Express SSD who's going to buy this
John:
well i don't know how good it is i'll have to look at like i don't it's i would never put that in my machine because it seems like finicky and expensive and i would rather just have like a sata one or whatever but i don't know like it's not finicky it is expensive but i i would i would sell this to you for a good price because i don't want to sell it like to in public i just don't want to deal with it i also don't want another cheese grater coming into my house because they're taking this one's gonna go up into the if i just sell you the card if you want
Marco:
uh yeah i don't know it's like see at that point i would just buy myself an ssd that i could reuse someplace else you know i would buy an actual sata enclosure i don't think he'll mind me saying this um i i bought this pci express card probably about eight months ago it was before wbdc by by a good amount i think it was like in february or something so i uh
Marco:
I DM Jim Dalrymple before buying it because he and I are friendly.
Marco:
So I DM him and I'm like, hey, just you don't need to answer this.
Marco:
But do you know whether the next Mac Pro will still have PCI Express slots?
Marco:
Because I really wanted to like I was going to buy this thing.
Marco:
I'm like, I really want to reuse it if possible.
Marco:
And I thought back then, of course, it would have PCI Express slots.
Marco:
Why wouldn't why would they remove that from the Mac Pro?
Marco:
That's why so many people buy the Mac Pro.
Marco:
It's got PCI Express.
Marco:
Thanks, yeah.
John:
You were one word off.
Marco:
Yeah, and Jim usually responds to casual messages, but he doesn't leak his secrets even to friends, so he just never responded.
Marco:
At first I thought, oh, well, he's being coy.
Marco:
He doesn't want to tell me anything about the new Mac Pro.
Marco:
And then it gets announced and there's no slots.
Marco:
I should have listened to Jim's non-message more closely.
Marco:
yeah because that that's not reusable in anything except for another mac pro so i don't know they do have uh little enclosures like basically thunderbolt enclosures with the pci express slot that i could put this in so i could do that that's but as you said that's like a lot of parts though that's like a lot of a lot of things that could flake out so i'm a little wary to do that that's probably like 300 for that box too it is yeah it's 300 bucks so i'm probably just going to try to sell this this uh this card
John:
That's like the rule of cables, or the rule of the Apple Store is nothing less than $30, and the rule of lightning cables used to be.
John:
But now the rule of Thunderbolt is nothing involving Thunderbolt in any way is less than $200 or $300.
John:
Aren't the cables still $50?
John:
Yeah, I'm talking about boxes.
John:
If it's an empty box, there's a Thunderbolt on one end, and then on the other end it has a bunch of other ports, you know, firewire, USB, all the other things.
John:
It's magic that that works, and it's awesome, but those boxes are always like $200 or $300.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And even in an enclosure, if you want to get a drive enclosure, the drive is $80 worth of the price of this $280 thing.
Marco:
I just hate enclosures.
Marco:
I would much rather have everything in the Synology NAS in my closet and have my desk have only the Mac Pro and nothing hanging off of it except a monitor.
Marco:
Just no...
Marco:
No, like, random enclosures on my desk all over the place.
John:
Yeah, I use them for OS X reviews, and that's what I'm thinking of.
John:
Like, next year, what am I going to do with OS X?
John:
If I get a new Mac Pro, I need some alternate boot disks to boot off of the new operating system, and you can't really boot off of a NAS, so... You just use USB 3.
Marco:
I mean, the USB 3 is, like, this awesome, fast thing that us Mac Pro owners have, like, never realized existed.
John:
But I feel like that's kind of...
John:
I do have a bus-powered USB 3TB drive that's black, in fact, and I was like, boy, that'll look great attached to my Mac Pro, but it's kind of not fair to boot the OS off a really slow 5,400 RPM, 2.5-inch.
John:
It doesn't seem right to me.
John:
I want to have a reasonable experience testing a new OS and not handicap it in that way.
John:
So I don't know.
John:
I'm conflicted.
Casey:
The best part of being cheap and not having the ridiculous needs and or lack of self-control that you two have is that I have none of this stress right now.
Casey:
I'm perfectly happy, and that has nothing to do with anything I've put in my body today.
Casey:
I'm perfectly happy with my old non-retina MacBook Pros, and I am content with that.
John:
Well, you shouldn't be.
Marco:
But I am.
Marco:
But I am.
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:
They're part of 2Cows, a company that's been around since 1994.
Marco:
They're one of the largest domain name registrars in the world today.
Marco:
So they offer tons of TLDs.
Marco:
They have .net, .co, of course they have .com, if you can find a good one.
Marco:
They have .tv, all sorts of country codes.
Marco:
They recently added .io, and they're always adding more TLDs.
Marco:
Chances are whatever TLD you're looking for, they probably have it.
Marco:
Hubbard also does not believe in heavy-handed upselling or aggressive cross-selling.
Marco:
They don't believe in hiding functionality, requiring extra payment for things that really should be included for free with domain name management, such as who is privacy and subdomains and things like URL forwarding.
Marco:
They have email service if you want.
Marco:
It's easy and affordable to create a memorable email address.
Marco:
They have Google Apps for Business, also very easy and affordable.
Marco:
And I've been saying easy a lot because all their stuff really is very easy, but...
Marco:
If you need support for any reason at all, they have tons of online help.
Marco:
Documentation, tutorials covering everything from moving domain names to hover or setting up redirects, setting up forwards, changing DNS.
Marco:
They have all these things in tutorials.
Marco:
Much, much more.
Marco:
They also, though, offer this no-hold, no-wait, and no-transfer telephone support policy.
Marco:
You can call 1-866-731-6556 Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.
Marco:
to 8 p.m.
Marco:
Eastern, and a live human being will pick up the phone who is empowered and eager to help you.
Marco:
That is incredibly unusual.
Marco:
It's not like you have to be transferred to a million people.
Marco:
Not like that.
Marco:
You don't have to wait on hold forever.
Marco:
You don't have to go through a touchstone menu or, God, one of those awful speech recognition menus.
Marco:
Oh, those are the worst.
Marco:
None of that.
Marco:
You just call their number, and they pick up the phone ready to help you.
Marco:
It's fantastic.
Marco:
Go to hover.com slash ATP.
Marco:
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Marco:
Once again, use promo code ATP for 10% off.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to Hover for sponsoring once again.
John:
Got a few more things to say about Mac Pro value.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
Are we not done yet?
John:
Keeping me up at night.
John:
No, we're not done yet because I'm going to be thinking about this for the next year.
Marco:
But I don't want to think about it.
Marco:
For whatever it's worth.
Marco:
I actually just found and pulled up my original 2008 Mac Pro order receipt.
Marco:
Because it feels like the Mac Pro has gotten more and more expensive in each generation to get mid-range specs.
John:
There was a dip, I bet, if you grabbed it.
John:
Because I remember when there was a one in front of the Mac Pro name for a little while there.
Marco:
eight was the second generation one the first generation one from 2006 uh that one you could get a single cpu i believe dual core model um it was either two or four cores i think it was two cores in one chip you can get a single cpu model of that um for i believe 16 or 1800 something like that um
Marco:
But so mine, when I got mine, I remember being upset that the price had gone up.
Marco:
And I paid $3,050.
Marco:
The extra 50 was for Wi-Fi, which was optional.
Marco:
So it was $3,000 for the dual 2.8 gigahertz quad core chips.
Marco:
So eight cores total across two sockets.
Marco:
So you had all, I believe, eight RAM slots across them.
Marco:
You had all this RAM capacity, dual sockets, everything else.
Marco:
$3,000 for that.
Marco:
At the time, that was the...
Marco:
second low the second lowest cpu option there was there was the 3.0 and 3.2 gigahertz but same number of core so it was they were very close cpu options like they between between the three there was one that was only a single socket that was that sucked but there was like three up top that were pretty good so that was like that was three thousand bucks that's the computer i'm sitting in front of right now dual 2.8 eight ram slots 2008 mac pro
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
At the time, that seemed like a lot of money.
Marco:
But looking back on it, now that we see modern Mac Pro pricing, that was actually a pretty good deal.
Marco:
But most of the fault of this, I think, actually lies with Intel.
Marco:
Intel has been...
Marco:
raising their Xeon prices like crazy.
Marco:
Like I remember, I believe it was the 2009 era Mac Pro, the first Nehalem generation, however that's pronounced.
Marco:
I know that's wrong.
Marco:
That's when like Intel jacked the prices way up and it became insane to get like dual sockets.
John:
Yeah, well, I have a single socket, one of those at work, and I think that one still was under $2,000 because the cheap one has always been like the single socket or whatever.
John:
I've got the single socket stupid one with four RAM slots and triple channel memory, but it had a one in front of its price.
John:
I forget what it was.
John:
It was $1,600 or $1,700.
John:
It was really cheap.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure that's not the case.
Marco:
I mean, I'll have to double check.
Marco:
When we got our 2008s, the cheapest one, I believe, was $2,700 or maybe $2,500.
Marco:
That was for the single socket one.
John:
What I'm thinking about for value for the new Mac Pros is value for me, not value as in like, is this a good product or whatever?
John:
Because the people who need this know that they need it, right?
John:
For me, for the purposes that I'm going to use it, this machine is not made for me.
John:
I'm trying to find if it's useful for me or more useful.
John:
And the tests that I want Macworld to run and everything are questions like,
John:
Are there existing Macs that you can buy now that are faster at single CPU tasks?
John:
And I think from their measurements that the top end iMac is faster in single CPU than any Mac Pro you can buy.
Marco:
I believe that's correct.
Marco:
I believe it's something like 5% faster on the single CPU benchmark.
John:
Yeah, I mean, like the tests, you know, they give a number because they have to give a number, and that's not really representative of anything, because if you ran some tests that blew through the L3 cache on the iMacs thing, then it would, you know, it would totally tank on the iMac and the Mac Pro would destroy it.
John:
Yeah.
John:
It depends on what you're doing.
John:
You can't just pick some number.
John:
It's not like the CPUs are represented by this thing.
John:
It depends on the very specific task.
John:
But it is possible that there are workloads for which the top-end iMacs is faster at single-threaded tasks.
John:
The next question is, are there non-Mac Pro Macs?
John:
that can run pick a modern 3d game at higher frame rates at the same settings and resolutions as any of the mac pros i don't know if that's the case yet but i could imagine that well i don't know it seems like it should never be the case because the the best gpu in the imax is like a 780 m or something it's a mobile part right it's not even a desktop part
John:
And surely even the crappiest GPU in the Mac Pro should be able to crush it.
John:
But I don't know until we see results.
John:
But all these questions lead me to say, like, if you're going to buy this machine to have a fast, quiet desktop machine, it's not going to be Retina.
John:
So like you can't hold that over the iMac or anything.
John:
The iMac comes with the big monitor already built in, which you would like to buy to replace the small monitor here.
John:
What is it that you're spending all this money for?
John:
If you're not going to get better performance, like, should you just get an iMac with a 27-inch display?
John:
Top of the end, top line.
John:
Because you're not going to get, like, hard drive bays or anything that you used to get with the Mac Pro that probably appealed to you.
John:
Right, exactly.
John:
And, you know, and... I mean, in both cases, I'd be giving... I think that... Is there still FireWire 800 on the iMac?
John:
I don't remember anymore.
John:
Oh, good question.
John:
I doubt it, but... Yeah, but anyway, like, it's...
John:
for value for me i have to think about that because it's so much cheaper to get a top-end imac like it's just incredibly cheaper to get a top-end imac or like i said what if i just get a new gpu and a new ssd for my existing mac pro and just wait not that i'm never not that i'm leaving the mac pro and i'm never going to get another one i will buy one eventually i think but it just has to be a clean win or it has to be retina and retina forget it doesn't seem like it's happening maybe next year and
John:
And it doesn't seem like the Mac Pros, aside from being super sexy and awesome and quiet, which all appeal to me, is a clean win in terms of value for what I want to do with the machine.
John:
And that's what's killing me.
John:
I think in my case for a true Mac Pro successor, I think this is it, but aimed at a different realm than where I am.
John:
It's aimed at people who need all the power that's in there.
John:
And I would be buying it and not using an entire one of these super expensive GPUs and not using most of the cores
John:
Uh, so it's like trying to make the best, fastest, most awesome computer of which I'm using like a tiny isolated corner.
John:
I'm not using the whole machine.
John:
And so few people will be using the whole machine.
John:
So it's kind of wasted on me.
John:
Uh, that's kind of disappointing.
Marco:
Given your priorities, especially in regards to gaming performance, I really do think that an iMac in particular, having an iMac and upgrading it more frequently.
Marco:
Maybe you have an iMac and you update it every two years.
Marco:
I think that would serve you better than trying to hold on to a Mac Pro for five years and trying to get modern gaming performance out of it.
John:
But the thing is, there's no way that the GPU in iMac should, under hardware-wise, come anywhere close to the gaming performance of the Mac Pro.
John:
It's all going to come down to drivers, I think.
John:
Because it's just the number of execution units and parallel processors in that GPU and any of the GPUs, even the low-end one, surely has to completely dwarf the amount of execution hardware that's in the stupid mobile GPU.
John:
That's in the iMac.
John:
The question for the GPU performance, okay, well, so it should crush, by all accounts, based on the hardware, any iMac.
John:
But it will not crush, probably, a real gaming GPU card in my current Mac Pro, if such a thing even exists for me to buy, because...
John:
There's plenty of gaming GPUs that have more execution hardware than the low-end and maybe even than the medium-end GPUs in the Mac Pro.
John:
They don't have as much VRAM, and they don't have all those other fancy things for the drivers for Maya and stuff like that, but I don't need those things.
John:
If I just want gaming performance, a gaming video card is a way better deal than those super expensive two GPUs, of which I'm not going to use one at all.
John:
All right, serious question.
Marco:
Why don't you just build a gaming PC for like $1,200?
Marco:
Yeah.
Why?
John:
Because PCs are disgusting.
John:
How can they build a gaming PC?
John:
I don't want to deal with that.
John:
I don't want to build anything.
John:
I don't want to have an ugly, noisy box in my house.
John:
I don't want to have two computers.
John:
I don't want to have a KVM switching.
John:
I just don't.
John:
I do not want a gaming PC.
John:
The Mac Pro is that my current Mac Pro is the culmination of the dream.
John:
I've got a GUI.
John:
I've got Unix.
John:
I can run Windows.
John:
I can run Mac both natively.
John:
It's every computer I've ever wanted all in one.
John:
It's just, you know, five years old or whatever now.
Marco:
It just seems like you're jumping through a lot of hoops, and in particular, you're taking on a lot of costs that you otherwise probably wouldn't need at all, simply to avoid having a $1,200 gaming PC under your desk that you switch between.
John:
It would be more than $1,200 if I got a good gaming PC.
Marco:
I don't think you realize how cheap PC components are.
John:
No, if I'm going to build a game, we see I would get like the $800 video card.
John:
So like right there, you know, and those $800 video cards are noisy and the power supplies you need to run them have big noisy fans and it would just be it would be a gigantic noisy hot vacuum cleaner.
John:
Or I'd have to go like Alienware where they build it for you and they just charge it on top and then you're already up into three grand for one of those things.
John:
And they're disgusting looking.
John:
No, I do not want a gaming PC.
John:
What I want basically is exactly what that little Mac Pro is, but attached to a quad retina screen and with even better GPUs that all whose performance is leveled exactly at gaming.
John:
The drivers are tweaked to make that happen.
John:
I have to wait for the benchmarks really because it could be that that hardware is totally squandered in games because of the drivers or it could be that it
John:
is reasonable and it performs the way you think it should uh but even then like that like i would pick the the 700 the d700 video card because i know that the top end gaming cards have that many execution units or more so to just be in that realm i have to pick that hardware even though i will no game is going to use 12 gigabytes vram i just have to buy that because it comes with it
Marco:
How much internal flash storage would you go with?
John:
I would pick a terabyte.
John:
I mean, I would have to, because even if I was going to buy an SSD for this thing, I would pick something close to a terabyte, just because that's not that expensive.
John:
That's not the big cost thing, and I want to just be able to fill all my stuff, and I want it to be on the super fast PCI Express SSD.
John:
That's part of the experience of having that machine.
John:
That's something that... Even the top-end iMac has a PCI Express SSD, probably not as fast as the ones that are in the Mac Pro, but... I would bet it's the same part, actually.
John:
I don't know about that, but we'll see.
John:
They did a brief testing at Macworld of the SSD, and they came up with some number, and they seemed to be impressed by it, so I'm assuming that number is faster than what they got from the SSD built into the top-end iMac.
Marco:
Yeah, it was just under a gigabyte per second read and write, which was pretty awesome.
Marco:
So I just did some quick price outs here.
Marco:
So for you to have a top-end iMac, 16 gigs of RAM, how's that?
Marco:
Good for you?
John:
16 gigs of RAM?
John:
What is this, 2007?
John:
All right.
John:
All right, let me bump them up.
John:
32, 32.
John:
Okay.
John:
This is the thing.
John:
I would save money by... I could save money by... Well, no, I couldn't save money because don't they put the 16 filling all the slots?
John:
I was going to say I could go from 16 to 32 by buying third-party RAM because you can actually replace that on those little pop-out things.
John:
That's not going to...
Marco:
Yeah, but you're going to have to pop them all out and replace them all.
Marco:
So just getting everything from Apple, for an iMac configured the way you would want it, you're looking at just under $4,000, $39.49.
Marco:
And then a Mac Pro, I put it in the 6-core because friends don't let friends buy the 4-core, and it's $5,800.
Marco:
So you're looking at...
Marco:
about almost two thousand dollars difference uh to get the mac pro plus no monitor um so i don't i'm having a hard time justifying the mac pro for you and and that's i would happily justify this for anybody who wants me to but uh for for your express needs of and priorities of wanting a really great gaming computer uh for home but otherwise like besides gaming what are you what are you mainly doing on this computer that's really stressing it like what are your highest needs tasks
John:
uh the ramp there's a reason i said 32 gigs of ram is because like if i was i can go to activity monitor now i'm probably using all my ram i'm always running out of ram i have 16 on this uh and i guess the memory compression in mavericks does help but let's see what we've got on memory
Marco:
Is Perl that needy?
Marco:
Yeah, well, you know, it's duct typing, right?
Marco:
All that RAM for duct typing?
John:
No, no.
John:
Memory use 15.4 gigabytes out of 16, but I quit a bunch of apps before I do a podcast just for safety's sake.
Casey:
I mean, granted, Perl is ancient and old and boring and silly.
Casey:
Good thing none of us are ancient.
John:
or boring or old yeah now like the ssd is is that like having a mac pro at work with an ssd and one at home without ssd is a big part of improving uh my computing experience and the other part is whenever i fire up steam to play a game or something my gpu is just not cutting it and people in the chat room are taunting me by saying they're two and a half year old imac it beats my current mac and uh
John:
The 8800 still holds its own, still does things that a really crappy iMac GPU can't.
John:
But the top-end iMac GPUs are getting better.
John:
But I'm not looking for, oh, just get something that can run modern games.
John:
I'm looking for headroom.
John:
If I'm going to spend all this money, I want something that has the power to last me as long as this 8800 has lasted me.
Marco:
I think you'd be better served either getting a reasonably specced Mac Pro and getting a gaming PC whenever the Mac Pro becomes too slow for gaming for you for $1,200, or just getting a top-of-the-line iMac every two years.
John:
Or getting an SSD and a new video card for this one.
John:
I have to leave that in the category of things.
John:
Or buying some parts of your old Mac Pro from you and basically doing the same thing.
John:
Or buying your entire Mac Pro from you if you want to get rid of the whole thing.
John:
Who knows?
Marco:
I do, but I don't know how much it would really help you.
Marco:
Well, it would be an upgrade.
John:
Yeah, because it's two years newer.
John:
The CPUs are better.
John:
I don't know.
John:
But I have to look at it.
Marco:
That's filling me with a feeling of dread, like having you examine my Mac Pro to see if it's good enough.
John:
It'll be in better condition than mine, believe me.
John:
I try to take care of it, but as the children become more mobile and more violent than...
John:
Things that are on the floor are in the path of, you'll see.
Marco:
Yeah, I'm actually looking forward to getting it on my desk again to try to like, you know, I'll zip tie all the cables to the desk leg so they can't be pulled much and like try to like really clean everything up off the floor.
Marco:
It'll also really help with dust management in the room.
Marco:
Anyway, do you want to talk for another two hours about the Mac Pro?
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
Can we please be done?
Casey:
Who are you?
Casey:
Oh, seriously.
Casey:
I'm so bored right now.
Casey:
It defies description.
John:
Did you watch the videos of them unboxing or the pictures of them unboxing and the videos of them looking at the Mac Pro and the Mac World site?
Casey:
Oh, hell no.
John:
It's pretty sexy.
John:
Every picture I've seen so far, it's been covered in fingerprints.
John:
well yeah that definitely says something but the good thing about it is unlike an ios device it's not meant to be picked up when it's used so you can put it in place on your desk get out your little microfiber cloth polish it up and then just don't touch it again because why do you need to touch it i bet the same people who touched monitors i hate those people i bet those people will like walk up like hey what kind of computer is that and put their finger all over it well that's why you need to electrify the case oh my god
John:
We got some current running through that and maybe put some blades on the fan on the top so they stick.
John:
What's inside here?
Casey:
OK, so I'm going to be an idiot and ask one Mac Pro related question.
Casey:
So friend of the show, Jason Snell, dear friend of the show, Jason Snell has taken a video and sent it to John of the fan in the Mac Pro.
Casey:
John, would you like to expound at all upon what that video told you?
John:
Well, so he took the video with his phone or other portable thing.
John:
And so you've got the background noise elimination that all these phones do.
John:
But the thing is, he put the phone inside the top of the Mac Pro, right?
John:
So at that range, it is not canceling out the noise of that fan because it is like millimeters from the noise of that fan.
John:
And he listened to the audio after recording it and said, yeah, that's more or less what it sounds like when I'm
John:
putting my ear next to the thing and it seems super quiet you can't tell how much you're going to be able to hear it from far away because from far away you know again the noise canceling comes in or whatever but were you to stick your ear up to the thing it's kind of like on my television set where the the same guy the video was taking it from like back on his couch he's like and you can't hear anything but of course you can't because you're back by the couch but when he took the phone all the way around to the back of the thing and shoved that up against the fans you could hear what those fans sound like
John:
And the quality of the sound of the fans is kind of what you're coming with.
John:
So you're like, okay, if I can hear it from the couch, what I'm going to hear is a noise like this.
John:
And it's, you know, how high a pitch, you know, is it even?
John:
Is it uneven?
John:
Is it whooshy?
John:
Is it one frequency or a big mess?
John:
And this was very, like, whispery, whisper quiet.
John:
Like, kind of like the asymmetrical fans on the Retina MacBook Pros.
John:
When they, you know, when they zoom up, they sound more kind of like white noise whooshing and less, like...
John:
Droning or single frequency kind of thing so I am completely confident that this new Mac Pro Will be way way quieter than even my existing Mac Pro and this Mac Pro is very quiet compared to my power Mac G5 so things are going in the right direction definitely and
John:
And at this point, I totally believe the claim that the thing is as quiet as a Mac Mini.
John:
But if I had a Mac Mini or a new Mac Pro on my desk, I'll be able to hear it.
John:
But it's kind of like my TV.
John:
Is it going to be less noisy than my current computer?
John:
Yes, it definitely is.
John:
And so it's an upgrade.
John:
It's a thumbs up.
Marco:
Yeah, a lot of people have said that the old Mac Pro was loud.
Marco:
And I've never found them to be loud.
Marco:
I mean, maybe... So I've had two.
Marco:
I've had the 2008 and the 2010, I guess, even though I bought it in 2012.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I had those two.
Marco:
And I've never... One of the reasons why I love the Mac Pro so much is that every other Mac, if you put the CPUs under a full sustain load, like if you're running a hand-breaking code or something like that, the fan will spin up very audibly, and it's annoying.
Marco:
And the Mac Pro, even at full CPU load, it's...
Marco:
either completely the same as like the 2008 that you had and i used to have that didn't sound any different under full load to me it sounds different when i'm gaming because of the stupid the the cool the cooler the cooler on the video card has an unpleasant wine when i get gone in games yeah as does the the 20 the 2010 one actually but um
Marco:
Oh, God, GPU fans.
Marco:
One of the best things about the new Mac Pro is that there is no GPU fan.
Marco:
There has never been a GPU fan that is not a piece of crap.
Marco:
I've never, ever even heard of one.
Marco:
That was not terrible.
John:
I'm just so excited that this 2008 fan has not died in all the years because all my other ones went bad way before this.
John:
But that was one of the innovations that Apple talks about in designing this thing is...
John:
The realization that there's almost no situation in which all of the hot parts are hot at the same time.
John:
So it's wasteful to have separate coolers on each CPU and on each GPU, because you'll never be in a situation where all CPUs and all GPUs are flat out at the same time, or very rarely will be.
John:
And if, you know, if just one GPU is hot and the other one isn't, all that noise and energy you're spending trying to cool the parts that don't need to be cool is just wasted and produces extra noise.
John:
Like the sum total of your noise is never going to be below a certain level if you have three fans, one for each CPU or, you know, one for the GPU or whatever.
John:
So the innovation of the Mac Pro is...
John:
uh let's make them one entire cooling zone for all of them one fan for all components have them in the central chimney and then i guess just make sure that that gigantic cooling fan has the capacity to cool all three if they're cranked up but when they're not cranked up you don't have your your ceiling for noise or your floor for noise is much much lower because you don't have like this minimum amount of noise just to keep the fan spinning on you know i wonder if
John:
i wonder if they would ever they consider it as part of their thing to do kind of like a stop start thing or a cylinder deactivation or all the other thing that car engines do uh what if we just stop the fans on the other thing let's we'll have three fans but we'll just stop them when they don't need to be cooled but i imagine that was probably not a good idea so they went with one gigantic fan on really expensive ball bearings and i totally applaud that design as someone who's obsessed with noise if you're going to make a pro computer and try to figure out how to make it quiet i think this is a very clever and interesting design
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
And that's one of the reasons why I switched to the Mac Pro is because it was driving me crazy whenever I would try to record a podcast that the fan on my MacBook Pro would spin up and I would hear it.
Marco:
And I'm obsessed with the audio quality.
Marco:
I want our show to sound really good.
Marco:
And the fact that that was spinning up drove me nuts.
Marco:
And, you know, like, the Mac Pro has always... This is one of the things that makes it a Pro computer.
Marco:
It has always handled heavy loads gracefully.
Marco:
You know, like, the laptops, you can put them under a sustained load, but you're definitely going to hear it.
Marco:
They're going to be very, very hot, and you're kind of worried, like, am I...
Marco:
Am I shortening the life of something by doing this very often?
John:
Yeah, that's another reason laptops suck, and that's why Casey needs to get it, because they sound awful.
John:
They sound like they're in pain.
John:
Like, I know this because I have an older generation MacBook Air that my wife uses, and my son plays Minecraft on it all the time.
John:
And it's not a powerful GPU, but Minecraft is not a complicated game, but he runs Minecraft full screen on a 27-inch display on an old MacBook Air.
John:
And that thing sounds like it's dying for the entire time he's using it.
John:
It sounds like, help me, save me, just that...
John:
terrible like really urgent whine of that tiny little fan in this tiny little case and the whole thing's getting hot back there and it's like you play that on my mac pro it sounds no different than it does when it's idling in the finder right as it should because it's just playing minecraft but yeah it's it's torture to take anything powerful and try to shove it into this little tiny skinny sliver of a case with a heat pump attached to it and some weird asymmetrical fans trying to suck air out sideways and blow through these tiny vents desktop it's the way to go
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, it handles it so much more gracefully.
Marco:
And it also, even though it's unlikely to happen at any given moment, the fact is, like laptops and other consumer-level stuff, I've had more kernel panics on laptops than I have on Mac Pros.
Marco:
And I've used...
Marco:
laptops and Mac Pros respectively full-time, probably about the same amount in total.
Marco:
So I can safely say I've experienced way more kernel panics and instability with laptops than I have with Mac Pros.
Marco:
And there's lots of reasons for that.
Marco:
Xeons and Xeon motherboards are all made to higher standards, higher tolerances.
Marco:
There's also just ECC RAM, which, yeah, the chances are that your RAM is not going to have an error, or if it does have an error, it's somewhere you won't notice it.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
you know, you use a computer enough, and that might happen a couple times a year.
John:
And you might notice that.
John:
Yeah, ECC RAM is... That's another reason that I would want not to get an iMac, because I don't think they have ECC yet.
John:
Because, like, you know how Paranaut am about HFS+, ECC RAM is just one extra layer of protection, because I know... Somebody just completed a bingo board.
John:
There is no safety net down at the bottom for the file system, so at least I can have a little bit of protection in RAM and...
John:
Hopefully, correct some errors there before it gets to my disk.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, okay, so get a Mac Pro.
Marco:
And either play games at low frame rates and grumble about it.
Marco:
You are very good at grumbling.
Marco:
Or just get a gaming PC and grumble about that.
John:
Either way, you're grumbling about something.
John:
hopefully it won't be low frame rates i'm waiting i'm waiting the results of the tests and you know if anyone at apple wants to send me a mac pro as a as a reward for uh keeping the faith all those years and posting a picture of a matte black sports car saying that i want the next mac pro to look like that they got the color right i guess it's not math though
John:
I know.
John:
Well, you know, beggars can't be choosers.
John:
It also doesn't have any internal drives or PCI Express slots, so, you know.
Marco:
We may do exactly the car you wanted, but there's no seats.
Marco:
It's really quiet, though.
Marco:
So, Casey, do you want to talk about anything else?
Casey:
I would do anything in the world to talk about anything but the Mac Pro.
John:
Are you convinced to buy a desktop now?
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
I am more convinced than ever that I do not want a desktop because I don't want to have to worry about all this bullshit that you guys are worrying about.
Casey:
You're killing me.
Casey:
Killing me!
Casey:
Can we talk about something a little more entertaining, please?
Marco:
What else is on the list?
Casey:
Well, there's a lot of things, and most of them are boring.
Casey:
Ooh, button shapes.
Casey:
That sounds entertaining.
Casey:
God, no.
Casey:
Please, no.
Casey:
Please, please, no.
Casey:
Can we whine about some stuff that's not Mac Pro related?
Casey:
So, I would either like... I will leave it to John.
Casey:
I would either like to whine about Outlook 2011, or...
John:
software development methodologies and big business so john take your pick we're not doing software development methodologies now we've only got yeah we don't have time for that so i well excuse me marco and i have time for that yeah well no because this show should not be that long but yes i have to go to 11 and so we don't have time but that's going to be like a whole show's worth of stuff even though i have like i said i'm not preparing at all for methodologies but i feel confident that casey and i alone can
John:
complain about that for a long time.
Casey:
As much as I want to yell at you, it's very true.
John:
I put Outlook 2011 in there, but if you have some Outlook 2011 things that you'd like to share, feel free.
John:
Take it away.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
I don't have anything hyper-specific to share.
Casey:
However, I will say that Outlook 2011, as with all of Office 2011, is a steaming pile of horse manure.
Casey:
I cannot fathom
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Microsoft software update happens constantly.
Casey:
It's obnoxious.
Casey:
It gets in the way.
Casey:
It makes you stop everything.
Casey:
Microsoft software update makes you stop Safari.
Casey:
I don't even understand why they're related except maybe Silverlight, which is dead.
Casey:
Yeah, it's okay.
John:
My favorite thing about Office 2011 is the little, Casey knows this, whatever it is, the little yellow thing that comes up in the corner to tell you, like, you know, calendar notifications, like, oh, you've got this meeting in tenements.
John:
You know the thing I'm talking about, Casey?
Casey:
No, because I probably turned it off because it's terrible.
John:
I like being reminded when I have a meeting, like I'll be there at work and the little yellow thing will pop up and say you've got a meeting in 15 minutes and it's got a little snooze button and a dismiss button and they stack up inside there.
John:
It's not that interface that I mind.
John:
It's the thing that runs that little yellow window that pops up is this application that has an alarm clock icon.
John:
It's like a blue old fashioned alarm clock with bells on it.
John:
And it's actually a pretty nice icon.
John:
The thing that drives me nuts about that particular feature is that on my Mac at home that does not have an SSD, when I wake it from sleep, usually it'll be like, oh, while I was sleeping, these events happened and it wants to tell you about the events that you either missed or that are upcoming or whatever.
John:
And so the little alarm clock guy will appear in my dock.
John:
and start bouncing.
John:
And one time I tried counting the bounces, you may not know this, but OS 10 has for many years and continues to have it's either OS 10 or the app, but I think it's the OS has a limit on the number of times that will allow any icon to bounce in the dock.
John:
And after a certain point, it just stops bouncing gives up.
John:
And I have seen the icon give up bouncing because it will grind away at my crappy spinning disk and just bounce there forever.
John:
Just bounce, bounce below.
John:
I think I counted to 75 or 100 or something at one point.
John:
And then I just stopped counting.
John:
Eventually it will stop bouncing.
John:
I don't know what it's doing this during this time.
John:
I think I've looked at FS usage a few times and seen some random like Microsoft database stuff that it's doing in the background or something.
John:
The result of it bouncing there for like two minutes, three minutes, five minutes, God knows how long.
John:
is to bring up a tiny yellow window that says here are your two meetings that you missed or they're coming 15 minutes from now that that is an inappropriate amount of disk activity and waiting time to bring up a little window that tells me which meetings i missed so god knows what it's doing but it's doing something terrible but that's not why i put this in the notes that's the thing that drives me the nuts the most when i wake my mac pro at home at home and see it grind away i mean maybe maybe it's blocking on some network call i don't know what it's doing but it grinds the
John:
It grinds the hell out of my disk to bring it.
John:
I'm surprised that people who don't have SSDs have not noticed that and not filed bucks against it.
John:
But the reason I put this in here, my biggest peeve about Outlook 2010, which I use for work because I have to...
John:
Because there are things that Apple Mail has not done successfully with my Exchange server at work.
John:
Maybe the new version of Apple Mail does, but I'm always afraid to go back to it.
John:
Because talking about flaky mail programs, in my experience, Apple Mail has been worse than Outlook.
John:
Better interface, better potential features, but worse reliability, especially with Microsoft stuff.
John:
But the reason I put it in there is that Outlook 2010 has, since the dawn of the software...
John:
And it continues to this day after many, many updates to have one of probably the most user hostile small feature.
John:
Like, it's something like, oh, that's not a big deal.
John:
That shouldn't be bothering me.
John:
It's not like deleting your data or whatever.
John:
When you say user hostile, like, is it throwing ads in your face?
John:
Is it deleting stuff?
John:
Is it corrupting your data?
John:
Is it crashing?
John:
Those are all user hostile, yes, but...
John:
They're so over the top that everyone can agree on.
John:
This is the type of thing that when I describe it, it's not going to sound like a big deal until you've lived with it for, I guess, two years now or whenever Outlook 2011 came out.
John:
I don't remember if it came out in 2011 or not.
John:
Selection and validation.
John:
What I do with my mailboxes a lot of the time is select groups of messages, either by doing select all, by clicking one and holding on shift and clicking one lower down, or by dragging them, all the different ways you can select groups of messages.
John:
I'm going to do something with them.
John:
I'm going to mark them as red.
John:
I'm going to drag them all into another folder.
John:
I'm going to do something with them.
John:
Multiple selections, right?
John:
Very often it's select all and then mark as read because you get a lot of email at work from mailing lists and they go onto a folder and sometimes you just want to mark certain sections of them read or whatever.
John:
Selecting any message in the message list in Outlook 2011 is just merely a suggestion to the program.
John:
You can select them with your mouse.
John:
Immediately, your selection is removed.
John:
You can hit Command A to select all.
John:
Immediately, your selection is entirely invalid.
John:
And what I mean is when it's removed is you did Command A. They all highlighted.
John:
A millisecond later, they all unhighlighted.
John:
Why does it do that?
John:
Because it hates you with a fiery passion.
John:
I don't know why.
John:
Sometimes it's like a smart folder.
John:
Like I'll click on my unread smart folder to show me all unread messages.
John:
When you hit command A, it will select all the ones that are currently there.
John:
But then the smart folder will grind along a little bit and say, oh, I found two new messages that are also unread.
John:
It will invalidate your entire selection.
John:
And so you just have to wait there until the number stops going up.
John:
Have you found all the unread messages in that?
John:
Is it safe for me to hit command A?
John:
And you never are.
John:
You just you think it's done.
John:
The number goes up to like 27.
John:
You hit command A. Oh, no, actually 32.
John:
Selection invalidated.
John:
Hit command A again.
John:
You think you're safe.
John:
You go to hit command T to mark all the red.
John:
Oh, no, sorry, invalidated.
John:
We found one more message.
John:
Even in message lists that are not like that, that are not part of smart folders,
John:
The first time you select one message, two message, five messages, the first time, forget it.
John:
That's just like a trial run.
John:
Your selection will immediately be gone.
John:
You will never be able to get to a command fast enough for the selection to be highlighted.
John:
And this is the type of bug when I first saw it, like, oh, look, silly, a 1.0 bug.
John:
Surely they'll get rid of this.
John:
But years later, this is still how this program behaves.
John:
It does not care that you selected things.
John:
You want to select things, you have to enter a determined battle with the program to get your selection to stay.
John:
And again, it doesn't sound like it's a big deal, but I find it incredibly maddening.
John:
And I spend a lot of my day just going select, unselected, select, unselected, select, unselected, perform operation, select, unselected, select, unselected, select, unselected, perform operation.
John:
I don't understand how this program continues to ship in this form.
John:
Like, how can the people at Microsoft use it?
John:
How can anybody use it?
John:
I can tell you right now.
John:
Why do you use it?
John:
Because we have to.
John:
Because we have to for work?
John:
You think the people at Microsoft have to for work?
John:
If you didn't use it, what would you use instead?
John:
The Gmail web interface?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
Mail?
John:
Yes.
John:
No.
John:
That's what I use.
John:
That's what I use for my actual mail.
Casey:
No, because if you had to connect to Exchange, you would use mail.app.
John:
No, I would forward all my mail to Gmail.
John:
Which is?
John:
Against corporate policy, and you can't do that yet, isn't it?
John:
I mean, I use it, like, and the thing is, I don't, I liked Entourage, the purple one that came before this yellow pissy one.
John:
I liked Entourage.
Casey:
Mother of God, you're the only person I've ever met that actually liked Entourage.
John:
Well, I liked Claris E-mailer.
John:
The Claris E-mailer guys left, went to Microsoft.
John:
Holy God!
John:
How old are you?
John:
105?
John:
The original classic Mac version of Entourage was really awesome, had great icons from Icon Factory.
John:
It was a great mail program.
John:
The OS X version of Entourage, not so great.
John:
But the thing I like about it is I like the integration of my mail application and my calendar into one thing.
John:
Some people hate that and they want it to be separate.
John:
I like them to be combined.
John:
Outlook would not be so terrible if it just worked.
John:
Like, if it didn't invalidate my selection, if things worked the way they were supposed to, if the meetings that I accepted in Outlook 2011 stayed accepted and didn't make me re-accept them, that's the other thing that it does.
John:
It makes me re-accept meetings hundreds of times.
John:
They'll just gray out on my calendar as if I've never accepted them.
John:
Accept them.
John:
Go to series.
John:
Accept the series.
John:
The next day, they're all unhighlighted again as if I didn't accept them.
John:
Again, for years of this, it's like this is all Microsoft from the client to the server to everywhere.
John:
Everything is like modern versions.
John:
It just doesn't doesn't work correctly.
John:
And there's still many things that I have to open my Windows VM and go into the quote unquote real outlook and do things from there because the Mac version can't do them or does them badly or wrong or in some strange way.
John:
but the selection and validation is that i'll remember that to the day i die that once there was this program that would not respect my ability to select things and it stayed that way for years and nobody cared and like maybe it's just me maybe it's some crazy bug in my computer that's not a problem in the program it's some crazy extension that i don't even know i'm running because i'm not running any extensions at work that i'm aware of i do i have some you know
John:
I can't think of the cause that would cause me to be the only person who has selection and validation.
John:
Maybe people can write into the show and say, yes, Outlook 2011 has been invalidating my selection for three years as well.
John:
You're not alone.
John:
If nobody writes in like that, then I'll just have to think that there's something crazy going on in my computer.
John:
But no, it's two computers.
John:
It's my home and work.
John:
So the same thing is infecting my home and work computer.
John:
It's got to be the program.
John:
It's got to be Outlook 2011.
Marco:
Thank you to our two sponges this week, please.
Casey:
After an hour and a half of you two talking about the Mac Pro, you're not going to give me more than 15 minutes about stupid Microsoft stuff?
Casey:
You can have the after show if you want.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
I hate you so much.
Casey:
However, I will say, dear, dear friend of the show, Merlin Mann, has added his commentary, which I just put into the chat, and I'm very happy that he did.
Casey:
I have no idea what it means, but candidly, I never know what Merlin's talking about until 20 minutes after he's finished because I'm not as smart as he is.
Marco:
Where did you put it?
Marco:
I don't see this.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our two sponsors this week, Warby Parker and Hover.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
John:
And now the snow is falling.
John:
Their kids are building snowmen.
John:
It's accidental.
John:
Accidental.
John:
Holiday fun time.
John:
Holiday fun time.
John:
John's gonna make snow angels.
John:
Marco and Casey are gonna let him...
John:
It's accidental.
John:
Accidental.
John:
Syracuse Angels.
John:
Holiday fun time.
John:
And you can find the show notes deep in Santa's beard.
John:
And follow the...
John:
On Twitter For holiday fun time cheer At C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S K-C-L-S-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-G-M-O-R-M-E-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse
Marco:
It's an accidental, accidental snowball fight.
Marco:
It's an accidental, accidental holiday tech podcast so long.
John:
Oh, see, he liked Entourage, too.
John:
See, Claire's emailer was great.
John:
The first version of Entourage was really great.
John:
The OS X version was less great.
John:
Outlook 2011 needs to die a terrible death.
John:
Or just work.
John:
Like, pick one or the other.
John:
If it started working, suddenly I'd be like, wow, this program, like, I might like it again or something.
John:
But it doesn't take much to just make it into a device of torture.
John:
But what reason does Microsoft have to improve it?
John:
None.
John:
Here's the thing.
John:
I don't understand how does something like that, even though this is not a big problem, it's something that every single person who uses this program has to be experiencing.
John:
Am I the only one this is happening to on my two computers that I ever use it on?
John:
And so if something like that happens, if you were a developer of this program and you're forced to run it every day because you write the program,
John:
Like you use it for your email because you work at Microsoft, you have a Mac, you work in the Mac business unit, you write, you know, you are one of the primary authors of Outlook.
John:
How could you tolerate this bug?
John:
You know what it's like when a program that you wrote that you use has a bug in it.
John:
You go fix it like that day because there's no way that you're going to let that stand.
John:
You wrote the damn program.
John:
You know exactly what's going wrong and you go fix it.
John:
But nope, years pass, not fixed.
Marco:
Well, that presumes a culture of valuing quality over things like ship dates, and Microsoft has not been known for that.
John:
They're rushing to meet ship dates?
John:
I'm saying, like, day to day, it must be annoying these people.
John:
Like, Casey, you use it.
John:
Is this selection and validation thing ever happen to you?
Casey:
Am I allowed to answer truthfully?
John:
Go ahead.
John:
I'm ready for the truth.
John:
Nope.
John:
Never happens to you, huh?
Casey:
I freaking hate Outlook.
Casey:
I really hate Outlook.
Casey:
This selection of invalidation thing never happens to me.
John:
I should take some movies of it.
John:
And the most exciting thing about it is the first one, the first one never takes, right?
John:
So you'll switch over to the program and you'll go and you'll see a bunch of messages.
John:
And you just know, like, I see three messages there and I want to mark all three as spam or something like that.
John:
and you just know that the first you're going to click one of them it's going to highlight you're going to shift click down to the next one it's going to remove your entire selection that all that action is going to be wasted but you go through the motions anyway and then you do and then you do it the second time and it takes and it just becomes this thing that you do first one it doesn't count
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So hold on.
Casey:
Are we officially in the after show?
John:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
Why the are you making me listen to an hour and a half of Mac Pro discussion and I get 12 minutes of listening to John preach about something that affects me?
Casey:
And then you it doesn't affect you.
Casey:
It does.
Casey:
Well, in principle, it affects me.
Casey:
And then Marco decides, oh, the king is bored.
Casey:
So we're going to end the show.
John:
That's pretty much it.
John:
Yep.
John:
I'm so angry.
John:
The people in the chat room pretty much hit it on the head.
John:
Marco and I have been waiting for a Mac Pro for a long time.
John:
It's kind of the genesis of the show was around the time that we got the fake Mac Pro update.
John:
It's the reason we had the icon that we discussed at the top of the show.
John:
Now the new Mac Pros are finally out and we can configure them.
John:
And Marco bought one.
John:
Surely that's deserving of an entire show's worth of discussion.
John:
I think that's reasonable.
Marco:
I even cut stuff.
Marco:
I could have gone more on the Mac Pro.
Marco:
Oh, God.
Marco:
I could have too.
Casey:
I'm so angry at you two right now.
Marco:
I could have gone into Turbo Boost more.
Marco:
I could have gone into the workstation pricing from HP and Dell.
Marco:
There's so much more I could have gone into.
John:
We'll save that for a future show now that we know how much Casey likes it.
Casey:
No!
Casey:
No!
Casey:
Oh, God.
John:
If anyone at Apple wants to send Casey a complimentary Mac Pro so he can stop... Oh, God.
Casey:
Oh.
Casey:
I will use it as a trash can.
John:
I looked at the picture that you tweeted of your little setup, Casey.
John:
You've got three glasses of liquid sitting right to the left of your laptop, which is open with a keyboard in front of it.
Casey:
No, it is directly to the right of my laptop.
John:
well whatever let me yeah all right so but the point is if you were to knock those over they would spill directly into the keyboard of your crappy laptop you're right but because i'm not an idiot and i'm also a professional i will not knock them over uh-huh yeah right but that's something a sober person would say oh son of a no just kidding
John:
It just seems like an ill-advised arrangement.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
I'm so angry at you guys right now.
John:
And you've got the dual monitor problem of, like, you are aligned with the space where there is no monitor, so you're constantly looking to either your right or your left.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
You are so high-maintenance.
Casey:
I cannot believe that any piece of electronics actually fits your ridiculous requirements.
John:
Well, it doesn't.
John:
He just picks whoever's closest.
John:
That I want to have the monitor in front of me?
John:
Yeah, I'm a crazy person.
John:
You're right.
Marco:
No, that actually is one of the reasons why I prefer one giant monitor to two smaller ones is because when you have two smaller ones, I would always just kind of sit in front of the left one, like center myself to the left one, but then the right one's kind of out there like in New Jersey.
Marco:
I don't know.
John:
It's kind of hard to see.
John:
As someone who, as I pointed out before, was using two monitors when you guys were...
John:
probably learning to walk i always had the stop it the main monitor was in front of me and the auxiliary monitor was off to the side and it was a clear arrangement because the auxiliary monitor was a black and white nine inch crt so clearly very auxiliary and the 24 bit color huge 14 inch trinitron display was in front of me and so it was clear that's the real monitor and that other thing is place where i might put a pallet once in a while
Casey:
Oh, God, I'm so angry at you, too.
Casey:
Seriously, this is the most boring ATP I've ever been a part of.
Casey:
I think I said 12 words during that entire episode.
John:
You could have joined in about what your feelings were on the value proposition of a Mac Pro for someone who wants to play games.
Casey:
There's no goddamn way I have any thoughts about the Mac Pro.
Casey:
Oh, God, it's so boring.
Marco:
Well, next week we'll talk about software methodologies, and then I will become you, and you can take over the whole show.
Casey:
for the love of christ i hope so marco will have things to say about software i know he will i know it oh so angry right now there are so many bees in my bonnet what is the merlin line what it's something about my ah i can't remember it but something about my is all angry ah he's probably listening right now and i feel like an idiot but that's right so fired up right now
John:
I don't even know which expression of his you're thinking of, and I know all of his expressions, so I think you may have beat your limit.
John:
You may have been over-served tonight, sir.
Casey:
I still hate all of you.
God.
Casey:
How did we talk so long about the Mac Pro?
Casey:
It was so boring.
Casey:
This is supposed to be our Christmas special, and it's so boring.
... ...
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
I do like You Might Need a Drink as well.
John:
That is currently the top voted.
John:
I disapprove of alcohol-related titles.
Casey:
Oh, fine.
Casey:
You might need a Sprite as well.
John:
No, because then, unless we're being sponsored by Sprite, and Lex should get on that, but, you know.
John:
You might need a lemon line flavored soft drink as well.
John:
No, because then you give you Sierra Mist, which is not the same.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
John:
Have you gotten that one where it's like, you know, I know the Coke Pepsi people hate it, where you go into a restaurant and it says you can have a Coke and they say Pepsi, okay, and then you have to kill them, right?
John:
But at least Coke and Pepsi are trying to be like each other.
John:
They are direct competitors.
John:
Pepsi is trying to be like Coke.
John:
They're trying to make the same product.
John:
Sierra Mist is about as much the same product as Sprite as Root Beer is the same product as Sprite.
John:
Sierra Mist is better.
John:
Sierra Mist is vile donkey piss.
John:
It is not as bad as Mountain Dew, but it's close.
Casey:
Sean, I love you.
Casey:
Just like that, you've redeemed all of this.
John:
No, I didn't think anybody in the world actually liked Sierra Mist.
John:
I thought it was just something that they would make people take when you're a restaurant who belongs to whatever brand.
John:
I think Sprite is Coke and Sierra Mist is Pepsi or whatever.
John:
I don't remember what it is.
John:
But I was like, they would force you to take it because you would be like, okay, you're now a Pepsi restaurant and we force you to take Sierra Mist that no human would ever willingly order.
John:
And so when I say, can I have a Sprite?
John:
And they say, Sierra Mist, okay.
John:
That's worse than if you ask for Coke and they say, Pepsi, okay.
John:
No, it's not okay.
Casey:
seven up and sprite then okay then i feel like you have a reasonable substitution seven up versus sprite is like pepsi versus coke like it's a reasonable substitution sierra miss is not a reasonable substitution for anything no no no no stop okay so here's the thing pepsi is better than coke but diet what what no whoa whoa everybody relax pepsi is better than coke however
Casey:
Diet Coke is light years ahead of Diet Pepsi.
John:
Pepsi is not better than Coke.
John:
Aren't you from the South?
John:
What are you talking about?
John:
I'm not from the South.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
I'm so angry.
John:
You live in Virginia.
Casey:
I'm not from Virginia.
Casey:
Oh, I'm so angry.
Casey:
Oh, I'm so angry right now.
John:
Even Pepsi drinkers don't think that Pepsi is better than Coke.
John:
They just say they like it better.
John:
But no one seriously believes that Pepsi is better than Coke.
John:
I mean, come on.
Casey:
So angry.
Casey:
So angry.
Marco:
I hate most soda, and yet I can tell you that Pepsi sucks compared to Coke.
Marco:
Coke is way better.
John:
Seriously.
John:
Is there anybody in the chat room who believes that Pepsi, not that you like Pepsi better than Coke, but who believes that Pepsi is actually better than Coke?
Marco:
So angry.
Marco:
I'm really curious.
Marco:
I bet no one.
Marco:
No one.
Marco:
I mean, I've never heard of anybody saying that.
Marco:
And diet, like, why bother?
John:
And diet, yes.
John:
Which carcinogen do you find the least distasteful?
John:
This is ridiculous.
John:
I mean, diet soda, seriously, no nutritional value, possible cancer-causing, tastes terrible.
John:
Like, it is the anti... It is like, what's the worst thing I can put into my body and not die immediately?
LAUGHTER
John:
I mean, diet sodas, seriously, like, at the very least, I feel like they should be putting... And then when they take out the caffeine, like, it has nothing, then.
John:
It's just completely devoid of any possible value.
John:
It's just giving you cancer.
John:
That's all it's doing.
Marco:
I just, like, any... Like, all the sugar substitutes, they all... Like, I can taste them all very clearly, and they all taste like crap.
Marco:
Like, it's... When you...
Marco:
This is my little side rant where, like, going shopping and trying to read food labels, like, you have to read any food label as if a lawyer is reading it.
Marco:
Like, you have to read it like a lawyer.
Marco:
Like, when they say, like, you know, oh, this is natural strawberry flavor.
Marco:
If I wait a minute...
Marco:
What does natural actually mean in the context of food?
Marco:
Does strawberry flavor mean it contains any strawberries?
Marco:
Probably not.
Marco:
You have to think, what is the most sinister, disgusting explanation that could fit within the phrasing they've chosen legally?
Marco:
And that's probably what it's made from.
John:
It's not good.
John:
It's not good at all.
John:
And of course, regular soda is terrible because it's just full of actual sugar or full of corn syrup.
John:
Have you guys ever done that blind taste of sugar versus corn syrup, like, you know, Mexican Coke versus regular?
Marco:
I have.
John:
I cannot tell.
Marco:
I thought I could tell until I did the blind test, and then I was like, nope, can't tell.
John:
And the thing is, they don't taste different, and I can't tell which is which.
John:
It's exactly the same.
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
You know what I've learned this episode of ATP?
Casey:
I've learned that I'm so goddamn thankful that I'm not as picky as you two.
John:
We just said we couldn't tell the difference.
John:
If we were picky, we'd be like, oh, I can totally tell the Mexican is different.
John:
Nope, can't tell.
John:
That's why someday I should have Marco make me coffee so I can try it and spit it out in front of him.
John:
Oh, I've done that.
Casey:
I've done that.
Casey:
It doesn't end well for you.
Casey:
I promise.
John:
I always want to know, maybe I'm just missing the problem.
John:
I'm very sensitive to bitter tastes, being a super taster and all, so I imagine I would hate his coffee as much as I hate all coffee, but it wouldn't be his fault.
John:
Humble break.
John:
It's the only thing I'm super at, so, you know, I have to... Got that going for me.
John:
Or against me, as the case may be.
Casey:
All I know is Diet Coke is the best drink in the world.
Casey:
You and your Sprite.
It's ridiculous.
John:
And I don't have that in the house.
John:
I don't drink it.
John:
It's terrible.
John:
It's sugar water.
John:
What, Diet Coke?
John:
No, Sprite.
John:
Oh, God.
John:
It's just when I go out, very often their water tastes gross or is weird, and I don't want an alcoholic drink, so I go with Sprite, which is less... I don't know.
John:
I like it better than Coke most of the time.