An Upsetting and Confusing Time to Be Me
Marco:
all right i have two restaurant updates really really quick number one i finally i'm using dante uh finally yeah you went you've gone through the inferno yeah it is so just like it just works like i mean so far i guess there's not a ton of traffic on the network but like there won't be like there's not it's not that much traffic gonna be on a restaurant because customers aren't even allowed to use it
Marco:
Well, they're allowed to use a tenth of one of the connections.
Marco:
Anyway, so Dante, it turns out, this is the audio protocol that lets you just kind of send audio signals over the network.
Marco:
That's going fantastically so far.
Marco:
I will report back later on in the summer once there's real use of it, but so far it's great.
John:
Well, once you get your first sort of like someone using it in anger, like the DJ thing for St.
John:
Patrick's Day.
John:
The DJ won't know it's there.
John:
Well, you hope.
John:
That's what I'm saying.
John:
We're going to find out.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So like I have like the DJ input to the Dante system is in like an attic above the hallway that the DJ usually sets up in.
Marco:
So what comes out of the attic is just two XLR cables.
Marco:
So the DJ won't even necessarily know what those are connected to and how.
Marco:
So to them, it just looks like XLR cables that they plug into, which is exactly what it was before.
Marco:
So we'll see how that goes.
Marco:
But so far, that is a promising technology.
Marco:
Secondly, today I had to get cash for the business.
Marco:
I recognize this is going to sound ridiculous to anybody who runs real businesses, but I have now run, what, four or five businesses so far?
Marco:
Without touching any cash.
Marco:
This is the first time I have ever had to deal with cash for a business.
Marco:
Ever.
Marco:
Like, I've never withdrawn cash from a business bank account.
Marco:
so i and so you know because we're about we're about to have like a st patty's uh weekend and that's kind of our soft opening and so i have to like get cash to put in the register drawers and i'm like first of all how much cash do i have no idea second of all like what do you get do you get like you know what ratio bill so i went into the bank today and i went to the one of the like the
Marco:
the account people that's in that are like the cubicles off to the side i'm like hey i i have a couple of questions this is not a robbery did you start with that yeah like i like i i have to do this for my business i'm like first of all how much money am i allowed to take out before it's a crime this is not a robbery but how much cash do you have right exactly how much will you give me before it's a crime
Marco:
Yeah, so that's one thing.
Marco:
I know if you withdraw a certain amount above, you have to report it with counterterrorism.
Marco:
Like $10,000 or whatever.
Marco:
Yeah, so it's probably high enough that it's not going to be an issue.
John:
Did you ask someone at the restaurant before you went to the bank?
Marco:
Yeah, so I asked.
John:
It's going to be like NASA asking the woman astronauts how many menstrual pads do you need per period?
John:
A couple hundred?
John:
Will a couple hundred do it?
Marco:
Exactly, exactly.
Marco:
It was tampons, by the way.
Marco:
but anyway so yeah so and the manager told me roughly what I needed like total amount but it was you know it's just like it's kind of just like a ballpark guess and it's kind of unpredictable so yeah it turns out that what I needed was below the threshold but I also I was thinking like
Marco:
how big is cash like i brought my whole backpack into the bag like a duffel bag from heat and by the way it turns out it's way smaller than my backpack but i'm like i know i probably won't fit like in one of those just like envelopes they give you when you're a regular person taking out your own cash you carry it out carry out into the wind in a loose pile i felt like when they were handing it to me like through you know they some of them are like bundled up still and like they're handing it to me like through the window i'm stuffing it in my bag i feel like i'm in a movie it's
Marco:
and i'm like what what a nerd i am like i've done so much business in my life but just net like cash feels like so yeah i feel like i'm holding like hot lava i'm like i don't want to deal with this get this out of here meanwhile now i'm entering like a very cash heavy business like i don't know how to do that like i i don't have i i went on amazon and just searched for like cash bag like i don't know how people do this like i i just it's so embarrassing you know peak design the special bag made to carry cash yeah
Marco:
Well, I figure in the cartoons you see those big duffel bags with the big dollar sign on the side.
Marco:
You can probably buy those.
Marco:
Yeah, no, don't get those.
Marco:
Those are not a good idea.
Marco:
Yeah, for lots of reasons.
Marco:
Anyway, so this is yet another new world I'm entering.
Marco:
I was like, oh, I have to deal with...
Marco:
cash which and there's really no way to run a bar in the united states especially in new york and not deal with cash so you know it's it's a reality of the business but it's just yet one more area that i just have zero experience with and it's all new and i'm i'm you know going through the motions like an alien having i don't know how do you do this like what do you what do i do here how do you how much cash do i need is 10 million dollars enough like i don't know like i
Casey:
Have you had the staff come in yet or are they still absent on account of it being offseason?
Marco:
Some of the – like the managers have come in and started setting stuff up and everything.
Marco:
So we're getting warmed up slowly.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So have they – granted, it's in their –
Casey:
Best interest.
Casey:
It's self-serving for them to be like, oh, Marco and Tiff, you're doing the best changes.
Casey:
These are the best.
Casey:
I'm so excited.
Casey:
But like, really, though, are they excited about all this?
Casey:
Like, do they give a crap about the Dante stuff?
John:
They're excited to still be employed.
Casey:
Well, right.
Casey:
But I'm saying, like, does any of this register at all to them?
Casey:
And speaking of registers, have you changed the POSs yet?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
That was another fun thing.
Marco:
So the POSs were installed this week.
Marco:
And the guy who they sent to install it, you have to take the ferry and everything.
Marco:
So they blocked out.
Marco:
They had sent this guy.
Marco:
I assume – it sounded like it was some kind of contractor situation.
Marco:
But they had sent this guy on an eight-hour block to go do this.
Marco:
It turns out because I had been running all the wiring, usually when the POS vendor gets to a restaurant, they have to run all the network stuff because the restaurant doesn't have... Which is why it's done so neatly.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
So for this eight-hour block of time, he was done in like 90 minutes.
Marco:
He's like, this is the easiest one I've ever done.
Marco:
Because here I was thinking, I'm used to other tech people.
Marco:
Look, I've been guilty of this.
Marco:
We all have probably.
Yeah.
Marco:
When tech people encounter the work of other tech people, our instinct is to say, this is all crap.
Marco:
I got to do it my way.
Marco:
You know, we're very territorial.
Marco:
We're very kind of stupid brutes in that way.
Marco:
We do it with code.
Marco:
We do it with equipment.
Marco:
We do it with wiring.
Marco:
It's like, whatever has been done before I got here, that guy was an idiot.
Marco:
I got, you know, I'll do it.
Marco:
I'll do it from scratch my way.
Marco:
So I was expecting that kind of attitude from the person installing the system.
Marco:
And so I was there from minute one.
Marco:
I had all my wires in place right where they had to be.
Marco:
So there would be no possible reason for anyone to even suggest running their own stuff.
Marco:
And instead, the guy was super nice and was just really thankful that he didn't have to do any of that work.
Marco:
And so all my wiring work paid off that now the POS guy had a nice – he cut his day short by six hours.
John:
He had a nice four-hour lunch.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
Because we didn't pay for the installation, at least not directly.
Marco:
I'm sure all the monthly fees that we're going to be paying for the system are going to be adding up to contribute to that.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
He had a good day.
Marco:
I had a good day.
Marco:
The POS is installed.
Marco:
I get to keep saying that acronym and laughing in my head every time.
Marco:
And moving on to the next challenge, like how to deal with cash.
Casey:
Now, is Apple Pay supported at the restaurant?
Casey:
Of course it is.
Casey:
Come on.
Casey:
I had assumed nothing less.
Casey:
You know what else is exciting?
Casey:
A new ATP member special.
Casey:
And we have one for our ATP members.
Casey:
If you're not a member, go to atp.fm slash join.
Casey:
And this month, you can hear us have a conversation about corporate logos.
Casey:
So this is ATP tier list, corporate logos.
Casey:
This was John's idea.
Casey:
I will throw it over to John to describe what's going on.
Casey:
But I wanted to comment.
Casey:
Nobody's accused us of anything but honesty here.
Casey:
But I wanted to make it clear on the record that...
Casey:
John often, especially when it comes to tier lists, will surprise us with not only the fact that we're doing a tier list in the first place.
Casey:
When Marco and I showed up to this call, neither of us knew what we were talking about.
Casey:
We just knew John had a plan.
Casey:
And so we got on Zoom together and then suddenly Marco reacted.
Casey:
And I think I was not looking at the correct one of my seven screens that
Casey:
It had Zoom on it at that exact moment.
Casey:
And what had happened was John had started sharing his screen of his Mac.
Casey:
And sure enough, there was the tier list that he will describe momentarily.
Casey:
And our reaction, Marco and my reaction, that is genuinely an honest reaction.
Casey:
There are times that I'll feign surprise on the show just to help the show move along and whatnot.
Casey:
There...
Casey:
There are also times that I'm genuinely surprised.
Casey:
Like I had no idea Marco bought a restaurant beforehand.
Casey:
But this is also one of those times where Marco and I had zero idea that this was about to happen.
Casey:
And I think it makes for a much funnier show that way.
Casey:
But John, what is it that we talked about exactly?
John:
Well, let me start by saying that people who have been longtime members and have listened to our past member specials know that tier lists can sometimes be contentious.
John:
And we took a little break from them, especially in the new year.
John:
And we watched some fun movies together and talked about stuff.
John:
But then, you know, I always had this plan that, okay, well,
John:
we'll start the year off with some easy ones, but eventually we're going to go back to tier lists.
John:
Because I had a very specific tier list in mind, and that is this corporate logos one.
John:
And you might think, what could possibly be contentious about corporate logos?
John:
So if you think that, A, you've probably never heard any of our tier list episodes before, and B, you haven't seen the logos that we're going to look at.
John:
As I said at the beginning of this episode, I tried to start easy to sort of calibrate the device as it were, but things get progressively more difficult and, as Casey said, uncomfortable as the...
John:
A logo list goes on.
John:
So I won't spoil it for you.
John:
But yeah, ATP tier list, corporate logos.
John:
Check it out if you're a member.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
John did a very good job of picking the array, the spread of logos for us to look at.
Casey:
And I think that we were mostly in accord for a lot of it.
Casey:
And then we jumped right off the cliff toward the end.
Casey:
So if you want to hear that disaster, and if you want to hear me be more uncomfortable on a tier list than I think I've ever been before...
Casey:
then check it out at hp.fm slash join.
Casey:
Or if you're a member already, then you'll find it or probably have already found it in your feed.
Marco:
Yeah, I think without spoiling anything, I think it's safe to say Casey took the biggest risk of his career during this special.
Casey:
It's so true.
Casey:
It is so incredibly true.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
There's a lot of news that happened over the last week.
Casey:
And I'll tell you that it was deliberate that we delayed a day in order to have more time for everything.
Casey:
But no, it's just I was at a Cory Doctorow event here in Richmond yesterday with my good friend Sam.
Casey:
And so that's why we didn't record yesterday.
Casey:
But it worked out for the best because now we have all sorts of stuff to talk about.
Casey:
I've been instructed by the creator of Follow Up, copyright John Syracuse of 2011, that we are not doing follow up this episode.
Casey:
There's too much to say.
Casey:
So there's so much to say you could even phrase it as.
Casey:
And we're going to start with Tim Cook's spoiler where he said there's something in the air.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Now, I put this in here because it's like, why is he doing this?
John:
He's done this many times before.
John:
This is not new, right?
John:
But like, why like a day or two before there's an announcement, especially an announcement that we all more or less know what it's going to be like that they're going to introduce new MacBook Air and, you know, iPad Air, as it turns out, or whatever, right?
Yeah.
John:
why why you don't why are you doing that it used to be that apple would say nothing before even if we all knew what it was coming it's like we all know this thing's going to be announced because it's been so widely rumored we're sure it's going to come and then it does come right no surprise they still won't say anything but then the past like i don't know five or ten years tim cook just can't help saying wait until tomorrow there's something in the air what the heck is going on with that
Marco:
I think Tim just desperately wants people to think he's, like, interesting and exciting.
Marco:
And that's just not his actual persona at all.
Marco:
It's not always him.
Marco:
Sometimes it's Shiller.
John:
Sometimes it's other people, right?
John:
Sometimes.
John:
I mean, usually it's Tim.
John:
Well, anyway, Stephen Hackett had a post on his blog reminding everybody that there's something in the air teaser thing has been used in the past for the original MacBook Air.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And like I said, it turns out that they actually announced the iPad Air first, but we all knew the MacBook Air was coming and it did, as we'll talk about.
John:
But anyway, I'm going to say I disapprove of this because if you're going to tease us about it, tease us about it when it's actually like when something that only Tim Cook could know, not when we all know the MacBook Air.
John:
I had the MacBook Air in the show notes before he tweeted that.
John:
OK, so we knew it was coming.
Casey:
Oh, goodness.
Casey:
Well, I'm so sorry that you were disappointed, but it is not time to talk about the MacBook Air.
Casey:
It is instead time to talk about the Mac Studio.
John:
Yeah, normally we do these things like an announcement order, but not this time.
Casey:
John has exercised his right as the king to decide the order, and so you can blame John if you don't like it.
Casey:
But one way or another, we're going to start with the Mac Studio.
Casey:
John, did you order a Mac Studio?
John:
I think we'll get to that in a little bit.
Casey:
Oh my God.
John:
So the Mac studio is interesting because it wasn't actually rumored for this announcement.
John:
It was rumored to be coming out sometime between like, you know, spring or maybe a WWDC at the latest, but it wasn't actually rumored for this announcement strongly until like a day or two before it came out.
John:
um and at that time there was also uh oh a weird rumor that started circulating i think like the day of or the day before that actually german posted about but i actually heard about it through other channels before german had posted about it um a strange one about what might be in the max studio uh and that uh turned out to be true uh the max studio is here and the max studio comes with an m4 max
John:
and an m3 ultra and as gruber said when he was gruber was on the on like the press call about this he just thought the person misspoke like all these like letters and numbers he obviously means m4 ultra anyway go on but then he said it again and then gruber was like oh
John:
i think that's that's kind of been the reaction of everybody it's like oh what well so we'll we'll get to that in a little bit but yeah that's the good place to start the mac studio the little the the big mac mini uh m4 max which of course everyone assumed would be in it because the max cpu is usually in the mac studio i know these words i'm trying to enunciate i'm doing a bad job max mac it's tough anyway uh
John:
So the M4 Max is in there, but also the M3 Ultra chip that had not previously existed.
John:
So a couple of quick hits on this from Ars Technica, from their article.
John:
When asked why the high-end Mac Studio was getting an M3 Ultra chip instead of an M4 Ultra, Apple told us that not every chip generation will get an Ultra tier.
John:
So you're already reeling from the fact that this thing has an M3 anything in it.
John:
And then they hit you with, you know, not every generation is even going to get an Ultra.
John:
And you're like, and you count on your fingers.
John:
Wait, there was an M1 Ultra.
John:
There was an M2 Ultra.
John:
Now there's an M3 Ultra.
John:
What are you saying?
John:
Why?
John:
Why would you say that?
John:
Are you telling me that there's not even going to be an M4 Ultra?
John:
Yes.
Yeah.
Casey:
That's exactly what we're telling you.
Marco:
They couldn't hit us over the head harder with that fact.
John:
The question was about why does this have an M3?
John:
And they say, you know what?
John:
You're not even getting an M4 Ultra, so shut up.
John:
Pretty much.
John:
We'll see how that turns out, but I just think that has been out there.
John:
The second thing to know, what is the M3 Ultra?
John:
It is, in fact, two M3 Maxes stuck together.
John:
This throws a big monkey wrench into the whole theory that we've been discussing for months, which we had frustratingly not concrete information about, which is when the M3 came out.
John:
Remember we talked about this on the show?
John:
I remember because I was frustrated by the lack of closure on it.
John:
somebody said look here's the m1 and m2 and you can see they have the little section on the bottom where you'll connect them together it's the silicon interposer there's like a big strip of little things like that's where you're going to stick two of them together to make an ultra on you know the m1 max and the m2 max right and then next to it is a picture of the m3 max and they're like see m3 max doesn't have that little strip on the bottom there's no place to connect them that means there's not going to be an m3 ultra
John:
and the question i had on that show where we discussed it was is there really nothing there or did they just crop it out of the picture and the answer was i don't know no one ever told me no one i didn't i can't i have do not have the ability to uncap like m3 max socs and see if that thing's there so i'm relying entirely on other people doing this and i just never found out and i stopped thinking about it because who's thinking about the m3 in 2025 right
John:
It's like, oh, well, because there never was an M3 Ultra.
John:
Like, well, the M3, M3 Max, M3 Pro, they all came out, and then we moved on, and then the M4s came out, and blah, blah, blah.
John:
Whether or not there was an interposer on the M3 Max, we just never got an M3 Ultra, so whatever.
John:
But lo and behold, here's an M3 Ultra, and it is, in fact, two M3 Maxes stuck together with an interposer.
John:
I still don't know if the M3 Maxes had interposers on them.
John:
Maybe they made separate M3 Maxes with no interposers that year.
John:
And then in 2024, end of 2024 slash beginning of 2025, they made the ones with the Interposer to stick together to make M3 Ultras.
John:
And of course, finally, on the Interposer topic, the question was about the M4 Max.
John:
Hey, can someone shave the top off of that chip and tell me if there's an Interposer there?
John:
Because that might tell us if there's going to be an M3 Ultra.
John:
But now it doesn't even freaking matter because if they don't find an Interposer, they didn't find one on the M3 Max either and we still got an Ultra.
John:
This is very frustrating and upsetting to me in many, many, many ways.
Casey:
Yeah, this is unusual.
Casey:
The other thing that struck me as odd, and many people have said this already, is that we were under the impression, and forgive me, maybe, John, you remember the exact code names or what have you, but the particular process that the M3 was on,
John:
was like a half step to what the m4 is on do you remember the two code names uh and well m3e is the second one the m3b b i think was the was the really expensive one that's the other thing we don't know we don't actually know what process the m3 ultra is on we assume it's on the expensive one that we assume it's on the expensive one that the m3 family was made on originally but we don't actually know that uh
John:
The chat room was just saying it was M3 and then M3E.
John:
I thought that the first one had a thing.
John:
But anyway, we don't actually know what process is, so it's hard to say.
John:
It seems like it should be the same process as the M3 Max, the M3 Pro, and the M3, just because presumably they were all designed together.
John:
And this is two M3 Maxes put together.
John:
And the M3 Max was on, I think, the...
John:
first one but anyway it's hard to tell apple's not saying uh at this point it's kind of moot because like well whatever process is on it's here but like you know people many people were saying they're not going to make any more chips on that and there's when we get to the other products we'll see that i think there are explanations for why the other products might have m3 based things in them but the ultra is the most difficult one to explain uh
John:
Well, maybe not, because look, the M3 Ultra is the lowest volume run.
John:
They're not going to sell a lot of these.
John:
They're really expensive.
John:
So maybe it's like, yeah, well, are we going to use the more expensive one with crappier yield?
Casey:
Who cares?
John:
It's the M3 Ultra.
John:
It's like a rounding error in terms of how many of these we're going to sell.
Casey:
Yeah, but I mean the going theory amongst all of us was, oh, the M3 line, that's reaching end of life as they're debuting the M3.
John:
Well, yeah, we're waiting for the M5 imminently.
John:
No one is thinking about the M3.
John:
This was the year that everybody's going to change to M4.
John:
We're all getting these M4 chips.
John:
Who's thinking about the M3?
Yeah.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
And yet, here we are.
John:
Here we are.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Well, yeah.
John:
So here's what Surugi had to say about it.
John:
And I think it's one of the press releases.
John:
M3 Ultra is the pinnacle of our scalable system on a chip architecture aimed specifically at users who run the most heavily threaded and bandwidth intensive applications.
John:
This is very laser targeted language from someone who knows what he's talking about saying, here's what this chip is good at.
John:
Heavily threaded, bandwidth intensive.
John:
Single core, not so much, because an M4 iPad will probably crush it in single core, okay?
John:
But heavily threaded, nothing can touch it.
John:
It's got a huge number, of course.
John:
Bandwidth intensive, nothing can touch it.
John:
It's got a huge amount of bandwidth.
John:
In every other regard, the M4s, you know, so...
John:
that as always they are very technically precise and truthful and saying here's what this chip is good for and obviously gpu based things which didn't say but it's also true um one more bit about this uh this is translated from a french website i just use the translate feature and uh no i think this was uh was this mine or i don't know it might have been mac rumors that did this translation i forget either me either me on my phone or mac rumors did this translation from a french website uh and this is what it says in translation
John:
How to explain Apple's choice to use the M3 Ultra in there.
John:
Apple has a very simple justification, which regulars of computer disassembly had already discovered.
John:
There is no UltraFusion connectors on the M4 Max chip.
John:
It is therefore impossible to merge two fourth generation chips to make an M4 Ultra.
John:
So this French website is saying, hey, we looked at the M4 Max, no interposer.
John:
Therefore, there's not going to be an M4 Ultra.
John:
Well, we just went through that with the M3 where someone also said there was no Interposer on the M3 Max and we still got an M3 Ultra.
John:
So I don't know what to think.
John:
I also have never seen, as I've mentioned on many past shows, I still have not seen a die shot of the M4 Max showing the lack of Interposer.
John:
But even if I did see a lack of Interposer, I don't know if that means anything.
John:
But then they did say not every generation would have an Ultra.
John:
Maybe they're talking about the M5 generation, which is the actual upcoming generation.
John:
It's a upsetting and confusing time to be me.
Casey:
Now, remind me, I'm not snarking yet.
Casey:
What is your, up until this week, what was your intention for your Intel Mac Pro and the potential replacement for it?
Casey:
I thought you were looking to see what happened with the studio and potentially making it happen now.
Casey:
So I'm not asking you to tell me what you're going to do, but leading up to this week, before you saw what's here, what did you think was going to happen?
John:
Yeah, my 2025 plan was, let me see what the M4 Ultra Mac Studio looks like, and let me see what the 2025 Mac Pro looks like.
John:
And then based on that, most likely I would just end up getting an M4 Ultra Mac Studio.
John:
Obviously, that's not happening.
John:
so yeah something else might happen but at this point i'm definitely waiting to see the mac pro um and speaking of chips speaking of big mac chips uh just i will put a link to this to remind everybody what german had said in april 2024 and due to his not very clear writing and the fact that he didn't emphasize this because he didn't think it was very important a lot of people missed this including me i went back to this article that we covered in the show and i think
John:
I had missed this detail or just dismissed it as him either being imprecise or just being wrong, which also happens sometimes.
John:
Here's what he said in April of 2024.
John:
The M4 chip line, and he's talking about the M4 hadn't yet been released, includes an entry level version named Dubdonen, more powerful models named Brava, and a topped end processor named Hydra.
John:
For the Mac Studio, Apple is testing versions with both a still-unreleased M3-era chip and a variation of the M4 Brava processor.
John:
The highest-end Apple desktop, the Mac Pro, is set to get the new Hydra chip.
John:
Okay, so this is so unclearly written, but what this is basically saying is M4 has a thing called Donen.
John:
That's the plain M4, okay?
John:
And more powerful models named Brava...
John:
And I believe that is the Max.
John:
I might have cut out something here or maybe he left it out.
John:
But anyway, Brava is the M4 Max.
John:
And then he says the Max Studio, Apple is testing versions with both an M3 era chip and an M4 Brava.
John:
And what did we get?
John:
A Max Studio with an M4 Brava, that's the M4 Max, and a quote unquote M3 era chip, which is the M3 Ultra.
John:
He got it exactly right.
John:
And if he understood that this was actually true and going to come to pass, he should have emphasized it way more.
John:
Because this is a bananas thing to happen in 2025 to get a thing that comes with an M4 Max and an M3 Ultra.
John:
Oh, it's still unreleased M3.
John:
Maybe he didn't know the details, but that's what happened.
John:
And he said it in 2024, right?
John:
And again, he leaked it after the embargo, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
John:
But 2024, he had the story.
John:
And then the final bit is the highest-end Apple desktop, the Mac Pro, is set to get the new Hydra chip.
John:
The Hydra chip, H-I-D-R-A, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right.
Casey:
It's probably Hydra, don't you think?
Casey:
I know it's not spelled the way Hydra is typically spelled.
John:
It might be Hydra.
John:
I keep saying Hydra.
John:
But anyway, that's not the M3 Ultra.
John:
That is a different chip that we have not seen yet.
John:
Because according to this rumor, that chip is only going to be in the Mac Pro.
John:
It's certainly not in, you know, it's so...
John:
This is a, you know, that's why I'm also waiting for the Mac Pro.
John:
If, you know, he was right in 2024 that the Mac Studio is coming with both an M4 and an M3 chip, and it did.
John:
If he's right that there's a new Hedra chip that is not one of those that's coming in the Mac Pro, I want to wait to see what that is.
Marco:
On one hand, I think you're being ridiculous because you don't even need a Mac Studio, let alone its PCI Express breakout box called the Mac Pro.
Marco:
Correct.
John:
I don't need a Mac Studio.
John:
I need a Mac Studio.
Casey:
No, you absolutely do not.
Casey:
You're absolutely nuts.
John:
GPU, GPU.
John:
I need that.
Casey:
What are you doing with that GPU?
John:
I'm hoping to play games on it.
Casey:
Oh yeah.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
John, you're living in a fantasy world.
John:
Hoping to play games is different than playing games.
John:
Thinking about the possibility of playing games, which is very different from playing them, but is in fact still an activity.
Marco:
All right.
Casey:
I love you so much, but you're living in a fantasy world.
Marco:
yeah so i on one hand yes you are being ridiculous in the sense that you the computers that you are waffling between you don't even need either one um but correct that being said i mean i didn't need this 2019 mac pro either but i sure like it right exactly yeah that's the thing like you know what do any of us need you know we none of us need most of the computer resources we have i buy honda accords and ridiculously big macs okay
Marco:
Right, exactly.
Marco:
So that being said, I think it actually for you and for nobody else, but for you, sure, it makes sense to wait and see because because German's rumor has so far proven correct about this and because he says that the alleged Hydra that's supposed to be going in the Mac Pro is of the M4 family.
Marco:
that is really interesting.
Marco:
And I think that, I mean, look, you've waited this long and you don't buy computers that often.
John:
I'm not suffering on my computer.
John:
Like it's not, I'm going to die in here.
John:
Let me tell you, I'm not really missing the Apple intelligence stuff.
John:
Well, that's true.
John:
Yeah, that's fair.
John:
And plus I have access to it five feet away at my wife's computer and it's just, it hasn't been a big deal.
John:
But yeah, anyway, this is the year that I'm looking at.
John:
Let me see what the offerings are, right?
John:
And so I'm definitely willing to wait to WWDC.
Casey:
Remind me, when did you buy that Mac Pro?
Casey:
Was it 19?
John:
This is a six-year-old computer.
Casey:
That's actually fairly quick for you.
John:
Yeah.
John:
For a computer that I bought just before Apple went through a processor transition, I'm getting good mileage out of it.
Marco:
Agreed.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But I think it is time.
Marco:
And I think whatever you get next should probably be smaller.
Marco:
But I think before the Apple Silicon transition, when you look at the Intel Workstation Xeon line that Apple would previously put in the Mac Pro,
Marco:
It had a similar dynamic most of its life, which was the Xeons, you know, they were also, like, much bigger, higher core count chips than the consumer lines of the time.
Marco:
And as a result, they would often lag behind the cutting-edge consumer chip in, like, the individual core performance, especially, like, single-threaded performance, because they would often be using, like...
Marco:
Last generation cores but in a larger manufacturing situation and a larger die size and everything.
John:
Or the current generation but under clocks because there were so many and they couldn't clock them as high.
Marco:
Yeah, possibly that too.
Marco:
So we've always had the situation – not always.
Marco:
We've most of the time had the situation with the biggest, baddest Mac workstation.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
that the single-core performance of it was often not as good as the cutting-edge consumer single-core chips of that same time period or shortly after the time period that they came out.
Marco:
So that's kind of been a reality of the processor business for a while just because of the nature of how these things are made and the different logistics and realities that go into that.
Marco:
So we now have the situation where we have this –
Marco:
flagship brand new release from Apple that has, you can get a smaller core count chip that is the highest, best core you can get for each of those cores, but a smaller count, or you can get the twice as many cores chip, the bigger version, which is a way bigger chip, and it's cost way more money
Marco:
And it will perform better in parallel workloads or in GPU-based workloads.
Marco:
It will perform substantially better.
Marco:
Not twice as well, but at least substantially better.
Marco:
But the tradeoff there, in addition to the cost and the heat and everything else, is that each one of those cores is not as fast as the current cutting-edge fastest core.
Marco:
So it kind of, I mean, look, it sucks that you have that tradeoff to make, but that is how this has always gone.
Marco:
And the difference between the M4 Macs and the M3 Ultra in even those single threaded tasks, like you'll notice it in the benchmark, but you might not notice it that much in like actual use.
Marco:
And obviously it depends on your use.
Marco:
But again, this is how the Mac Pro always was too.
Marco:
If you had benchmarked the Mac Pro against the latest generation iMac for most of its life,
Marco:
The iMac would beat the Mac Pro in single-threaded tasks.
John:
So the Apple Silicon era, though, kind of... We talked about this when Apple Silicon came out.
John:
Like, oh, this is probably how they do the same thing because this is how Intel did it.
John:
But Apple really confounded us in the beginning of the M era by doing the M1 Ultra so close to the rest of the M1s.
John:
And same thing with the M2.
John:
And even in the... I think in the M... Was it the M4 where they did the Pro and the Macs were released before the plain M4 and Macs?
John:
But anyway, the time...
John:
what you had said is what we, what we don't is expected, but I felt like Apple had sort of done something different and it was like kind of baffling why they would be, why would they have high end chips ready so soon after the low end ones and sometimes even release the high end ones on max before the low end ones.
John:
But, uh, but yeah, you're right that the M three ultra is actually arriving on a Xeon timeline, looking like a Xeon, the one thing, and we'll get to it when we finally, we will eventually get to this actual, uh, max studio.
John:
We're about to, um,
John:
The one thing that kind of sucks with the SoC is now all of a sudden GPU is so tied up with this, right?
John:
Like they're not independent entities because like you could say Xeon versus, you know, a core processor or whatever, but then you'd also make your GPU choice.
John:
And those are two independent choices.
John:
And that is not the case here.
John:
If you want a big GPU, you have to also get just probably way more cores than you want.
Marco:
Yeah, and again, that's something that for Apple having gone to this unified architecture with everything in package and everything, that was a whole bunch of trade-offs to do that.
Marco:
What they're optimizing for with that or what they were optimizing for with that is most of their machines, which are phones, tablets, and laptops.
Marco:
And by optimizing for those needs...
Marco:
They didn't need to worry too much about how could we get three cutting-edge GPUs in these computers or more than half a terabyte of RAM.
Marco:
They didn't have to have those worries when they were designing things primarily for laptops and consumer-grade machines.
Marco:
And even what I would describe as kind of like mid-pro machines, which is what we have now in the pro line.
Marco:
We can't hit those same massive resource levels, big GPU card slots that we had in the Intel era.
Marco:
But we are actually exceeding the Intel resources and performance in a lot of other ways.
Marco:
And the tradeoffs they made by putting everything with unified memory and putting everything in package...
Marco:
Those tradeoffs greatly benefit the entire rest of the line in lots of other ways.
Marco:
So this is a tradeoff they made.
Marco:
And what's interesting is that actually this tradeoff, which I don't know if they knew this when they were making this tradeoff, but one thing this has enabled them to do is make machines that are kind of accidentally really good at running local AI models because they have all of that unified memory for the GPUs to access.
Marco:
Which, you know, if you look at the PC world, it's pretty hard and pretty expensive to get PC GPUs that have a whole bunch of RAM.
John:
Which is why they have those special custom ones just for AI that cost as much as a car.
John:
They do have a ton of RAM, but are also not consumer devices.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And Apple, I think, has, you know, kind of fallen into this amazing position that they're in, which is if you happen to want to run very large or not very large AI models.
Marco:
locally on your machine.
John:
On a PC-class machine, if you don't want to spend $50,000 to get one of those big giant NVIDIA things.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
If you want to run local models, high-end Macs are the best devices to do that on for certain price and capability categories.
Marco:
So in some ways, this trade-off is actually helping them.
Marco:
But again, this entire architecture does have that giant trade-off of it has to be unified memory and it has to not support GPUs and slots.
Marco:
So everything has to be built in.
Marco:
So again, they're just...
Marco:
They're optimizing for different things.
Marco:
And I think that's actually fine.
Marco:
And I think it's definitely the right move for them because it does benefit the vast majority of their product line in pretty big ways.
Marco:
And if they can't solve, like, the very, very edge cases of, you know, really, you know, opinionated people in the Boston area who want to play games on their Macs, like...
John:
you know if it can't solve that need quite as well as the previous generation like oh well it solves a lot of other needs really really really well and they take that trade off i mean they're getting close to it though and again wrapping up the the rumors that here you know not every generation is going to have an m4 ultra but the hydra high-end hydra that's coming in the mac pro has not yet been seen well if not every android is going to have an ultra but they're still a high-end chip this really puts a lot more weight behind the idea that you'll get like an m4 extreme
John:
in the Mac Pro.
John:
It's not an M4 Ultra.
John:
It's not two M4 Maxes stuck together.
John:
The M4 Max doesn't have an interposer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John:
Basically, the Mac Pro will have a chip that is not an Ultra, that is bigger and better and badder than an Ultra, which would justify the Mac Pro existing instead of just being a giant PCI breakout box for the Mac Studio.
John:
We shall see at WWDC.
Casey:
All right, so tell me about this computer, John, or do you want me to go through this?
John:
I can go through some of the things here.
John:
Collecting the stats in this was such a pain, mostly because, and I feel for Apple here, Apple needs to mend my SKUs.
John:
They cannot have a thousand products.
John:
It wasn't that bad when Macs had components and you could pick like how much RAM, how much storage, which CPU, blah, blah, blah.
John:
But now that so much stuff is tied together,
John:
They have to manufacture 700 different combinations.
John:
So anyway, here's what you get with.
John:
Let me see.
John:
How do I have this broken down?
John:
Yeah, I should ignore that top part and just move on from.
John:
Yeah, we're talking about the M3 Ultra here.
John:
Here's what you get in the Ultra.
John:
You can get 28 CPU cores with 60 GPU cores.
John:
That's your sort of like binned, not everything works choice.
John:
Or you can get 32 CPU cores with 80 GPU cores.
John:
That's the everything works model.
John:
And those are the only two choices, which, you know, fine.
John:
Like...
John:
That seems reasonable.
John:
It seems like a pretty big drop in GPU cores, 60 or 80, like 20 of them are disabled.
John:
But, you know, like it's a big chip.
John:
Really, it's just 10 per chip or whatever.
John:
28 versus 32.
John:
Like I still look at these things and I'm like, well, I mean, you could get a 28 core like Xeon back in the day, but these cores are more powerful.
John:
So it's not that big of a deal.
John:
you do get double the neural engines from your two m3 maxes stuck together so you get a 32 core neural engine instead of the 16 uh apple touts this as marco was alluding to ai professionals can use mac studio with m3 ultra to run large language models with over 600 billion parameters directly on device making it the ultimate desktop for ai development even though nvidia does have that little mac mini looking thing but whatever
John:
Same deal with the media engine.
John:
They've got twice the components.
John:
I don't think they're actually using all of them, but they are using both sets of ProRes.
John:
So it's got two times the resources of the M3 Max and can play back 22 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video.
John:
so yeah two m3 maxes pretty cool uh now same deal with the the skews ram choices uh if you get the m3 ultra with the 28 cpu cores and 60 gpu cores the one the binned one you have two choices in the amount of ram you can get just two it starts at 96 which is nice that's a good that's the best starting ram i've seen in a long time on an apple
John:
It starts at 96.
John:
That if you don't want 96, your other choice is 256.
John:
All right.
John:
If you get the big M3 Ultra where everything works, 32 CPU cores, 80 GPU cores, it starts at 96.
John:
Your next choice is 256, which is an additional $1,600.
Casey:
Gracious.
John:
And then your only other choice is 512 gigabytes of RAM, which is please add $4,000 to upgrade the RAM from 96 to 512.
John:
Just to reiterate, that is not how much that RAM actually costs.
Marco:
Oh, really?
John:
Anyway, that's where the margins are.
John:
Apple?
John:
yeah um the the m3 ultra has over 800 gigabytes per second of memory bandwidth which is actually the same as the m2 ultra like the m2 ultra has 819.2 gigabytes per second and when they say over 800 i'm assuming they mean that like it's interesting that they haven't bumped the memory bandwidth from m3 ultra down from m2 ultra to m3 ultra but is what it is and just for comparison the m4 max has 546 gigabytes per second so if they had if they had stuck two m4 maxes together somehow and doubled it they'd be over a thousand but they're not they're 800
John:
Still very high bandwidth, but no change over the M2 Ultra.
John:
So that's the M3 Ultra Mac Pro.
John:
Not a lot of configurations.
John:
All the configurations are good.
John:
They all start at 96 gigs of RAM.
John:
And by the way, like you said, who cares what it starts at?
John:
starting ram is so important to your wallet when it comes to apple products because that's the one where you don't have to add an obscene number to the price so starting at 96 is fantastic if this was an m4 ultra instead of m3 ultra i'd be like this is great i've already determined through experimentation over the past several years that 96 gigs of ram is plenty for me that's what i've got on my mac pro now i never have to look at ram i never go into just it's fine so
John:
that's the starting RAM.
John:
It's like, I can save so much money by not touching that RAM thing in the product configurator.
John:
It's just the price.
John:
It comes with 96 gigs of RAM, but alas, it is in fact an M3 Ultra, not an M4.
John:
The other thing is like, why are you poo-pooing the M3 Ultra?
John:
It's got 80 core GPU.
John:
The M3 Max was actually pretty good with half that number of cores.
John:
Maybe it'll be great.
John:
So I'm waiting to see some benchmarks, but you know,
John:
It might be, but in 2025, it really wouldn't feel good to me to spend so much money to get the biggest GPU Apple offers, knowing that its GPUs aren't as good, its CPU cores aren't as good, like knowing that it's old tech.
John:
Knowing that the M5 is around the corner, and it's not just entirely academic, because right after this announcement came out, I saw something fly by on Mastodon where somebody was announcing a change in Xcode 16.3, which is due out soon, I think, or is in beta now or whatever, and a new tool in Instruments.
John:
You can do this like a low overhead CPU profiling thing to give you more accurate flame graphs for CPU usage per call stack, blah, blah, blah, right?
John:
Only works on M4 or later.
John:
like rolling out a new potentially useful useful feature like for like checking the performance of your app but it only works on m4 or later like a day after you released your fastest computer ever with an m3 in it just feels punitive that's the type of stuff you feel like you're missing out on it's like oh who cares about the performance difference the m3 ultra is going to be great it's like stuff like that where it's like really a feature that only works on m4 or later that would seem reasonable if they were only putting out m4 computers but they're not so here we are
Casey:
All right, so CPU options.
Casey:
We've got 14 CPU, 32 GPU, or 16 CPU, 40 GPU.
Casey:
A 16-core neural engine.
Casey:
This is in comparison to 32 cores for the M3 Ultra.
Casey:
There's M4 Max, which with 14 and 32 cores is 36 gigs, take it or leave it, for RAM.
Casey:
And the M4 Max 1640 cores is 4864 or 128 gigs, with 128 gigs being an additional $1,000.
Casey:
And as was previously mentioned, 546 gigs per second memory bandwidth.
John:
These RAM configurations seem a little bit punitive.
John:
Like 36 is the only choice for the Bind M4 Max, but you know, whatever.
John:
The non-Bind one isn't that much more expensive.
John:
And 4864 and 128...
John:
It's kind of annoying that 96 isn't an option, especially since the 64 gig upgrade is 200 bucks.
John:
But if you want to go to 128, it's a thousand.
John:
So something between 64 and 128 would have been nice because if you feel like 64 isn't quite going to 64 for 200 extra bucks, like, oh, it hurts because this is not real RAM prices, but it's fine.
John:
But I wish I had just a little bit more.
John:
Well, you know, can you add $800 on top of that?
John:
but anyway you know and i have to say the m4 max max studio is a good computer it is a a macbook pro without a screen and better cooling if that's what you want and and you know better io and blah blah blah they made that and it's priced like you would expect it to be and that's a good computer the m4 max is a good cpu i don't have no shade on the m4 max max studio right and in fact if i ended up buying a studio this year because the mac pro didn't appeal to me i'm
John:
probably get an m4 max one just because i would take the money i saved and put it into like storage and stuff because i have a whole storage upgrade cascade that i have to go through because i'm really pressing up against the edge of four terabytes as in my backup vortex um
John:
And by getting the M4 Max, I would be saying, I'm not going to try to game on this.
John:
Like, it's just this is just hold me over until something, you know, five, six years from now or whatever.
John:
So I think the M4 Max Max Studio is actually a really, really good Mac for people who want a desktop Mac with more power than a Mac Mini.
Marco:
Yeah, honestly, I'd say for most people, unless you know for sure that the Ultra would be faster for work that you do a lot of, the Max is probably the better computer.
Marco:
And for lots of reasons.
Marco:
Number one, you'll save two grand.
Marco:
So that's a lot that can be allocated to other resources or other uses.
John:
Although I have to say, the pricing on the Ultra...
John:
Not that bad.
John:
The M3 Ultra in the grand scheme of things, you know, it's expensive, but especially if you don't touch the RAM and stuff, it's not Mac Pro painful.
Marco:
Fair, but it is painful.
Marco:
And, you know, so if what you're looking for is a really good desktop workstation Mac,
Marco:
I honestly think the base model Mac Studio is a pretty good option for you.
Marco:
I might option up a few things here and there, but for two grand, that's a really good deal.
Marco:
And for most people, that's going to be the better option.
John:
I would say don't get the base model.
John:
Get the M4 Macs with everything working, the 16-core, 40-core one.
John:
Get that one.
John:
Yeah, that's what I'm going to do.
John:
And then add $200 for 64 gigs of RAM, and you're still... It's priced very much like the laptops without a screen.
John:
The prices are pretty comparable, I think, if you chop off the screen and think about that.
John:
Because you get so much more with the Mac.
John:
You get so many ports on that thing, right?
John:
And a giant cooler and everything, so...
Marco:
Yeah, it's pretty good.
Marco:
Yeah, it's actually priced very similar.
Marco:
Because if you want a MacBook Pro with that same M4 Max chip without any cores disabled, it's like $3,500 or $4,000.
Marco:
And the Mac Studio, same thing with all the cores available M4 Max, is $2,500.
Marco:
So it is substantially cheaper.
Marco:
If you already have a screen... No screen, no keyboard, no trackpad.
Marco:
Yeah, bring your own keyboard, mouse, but if you already have a screen or if you want a different kind of screen and you don't need to be a laptop, that's great.
Marco:
That being said, I think the Mac Studio M4 Max being a really good buy for most people also kind of highlights...
Marco:
If you're in the market for this for, you know, horsepower reasons, I think you should consider the desktop laptop lifestyle.
Marco:
Obviously, it can be more money depending on, you know, what hardware you already have and stuff.
John:
But if you're ever going to use a laptop, it's a better deal.
John:
Like if you if you if you know, like me, that you are never going to if you had a laptop, you would literally never touch it or look at the screen.
John:
Don't get it.
John:
Get a desktop.
John:
But if you're kind of like, I don't know, I might like to have a laptop.
John:
Yeah, get the laptop.
John:
It's a no brainer.
Marco:
Yeah, or if you would otherwise also get a laptop.
Marco:
If you're like, well, I need a desktop and a laptop, you should evaluate whether you can just get an M4 Max MacBook Pro and have that serve both roles.
Marco:
But that being said, this looks like a really good computer.
Marco:
What's interesting, two things.
Marco:
Number one, I think the Mac Studio, honestly, I...
Marco:
I have never seen one in the wild outside of an Apple store.
Marco:
I've never seen anybody who buys this computer.
Marco:
I can't imagine they sell a ton of them.
Marco:
But to me, I think Apple's naming scheme here has bitten them in the butt in two ways that are probably unfair to this product.
Marco:
Number one, as I've said before, I think this should be called the Mac Pro.
Marco:
The Mac Studio is, in every way, the modern Mac Pro.
Marco:
And what we call the Mac Pro is, as I said earlier, kind of a PCI Express breakout box for the Mac Studio.
John:
And what do you name that one?
John:
The Mac Extreme?
Marco:
How about the, you know, I don't know, the Mac Expansion.
Marco:
Yeah, there we go.
Marco:
Big Mac is perfect.
Marco:
That might be a little bit of a problem.
Marco:
Perfect.
Marco:
So honestly, if you look at resource levels, performance, where it fits in people's workflows and lineups, the Mac Studio is, for all intents and purposes, the Mac Pro of today.
Marco:
But they still have another product called Mac Pro, which is a Mac Studio with slots.
Marco:
And that's basically the only difference.
Yeah.
John:
But anyway... For now, I'll see.
Marco:
Yeah, and again, maybe they'll create more air above it in the future, but for now, that's what it is.
Marco:
But I think people don't consider the Mac Studio who maybe should because it's not called Mac Pro.
Marco:
And then secondly, the other kind of...
Marco:
The other kind of like, you know, naming conundrum they have themselves in is if you look at the performance of the M3 chips versus the M4 chips, the M4 chips are indeed faster.
Marco:
And in fact, that was a bigger leap from chip to chip than most of the most of the single generations are.
Marco:
However,
Marco:
I think a lot of people are going to hesitate to, in 2025, buy a brand new $4,000 plus computer with only, quote, only the M3 in it.
Marco:
Apple's naming sends messages.
Marco:
And when they have the M3 coming out now and everything else is M4...
Marco:
That tells people, this is the old one, it's not as good, which is technically true, but I think when people hear that name and that difference, I think people assume it's a bigger difference than it is.
Marco:
Like, again, compared back to the Xeon days, nerds like us might know that, oh, this Xeon has this core, whereas this one has...
Marco:
Bad River Core, and this one has Desert Storm or whatever.
Marco:
We would know the weird Intel names.
Marco:
We would know that stuff, but most people didn't know.
Marco:
It was just like, oh, I got the Xeon.
Marco:
It's fast.
Marco:
How many cores is yours?
Marco:
14?
Marco:
Oh, mine's 16.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
With this, Apple has branded these chips with such...
Marco:
clear, easy-to-know names that it sounds like it's a pretty big deal when you go from one to the other.
Marco:
And it's similar to back when they would have the iPhones with the S phones.
Marco:
It was like, I went from a 4 to a... Oh, it's only an S year, 4S.
Marco:
I'll skip this one.
Marco:
S's don't matter much.
Marco:
And in reality, those were often very significant upgrades, but their naming made it seem like they weren't.
Marco:
In this case, going from M3 to M4...
Marco:
Sounds like a really big leap.
Marco:
But in fact, they're both insanely fast.
Marco:
The difference is not that huge when you're at this kind of level.
Marco:
And that being said, though, I think people will, I think, feel a little bit bad ordering the M3 Ultra version.
Marco:
Maybe that could really backfire.
Marco:
Maybe that depresses sales slightly.
Marco:
And Apple says, no one's buying the big chips.
Marco:
I guess we don't need to make them anymore.
John:
I think I think Apple does know that this is an awkward situation.
John:
The only thing other thing I heard about this is vague, you know, wafty, unsubstantiated rumor speak, blah, blah, blah.
John:
Like, you know, the M3 Ultra was held back because they couldn't some some problem with some certification thing on it.
John:
And really, they like Apple.
John:
In other words, Apple would have liked to have released this at a less embarrassing time.
John:
but they could not i don't know if there's any truth to that but i do know i feel like everyone kind of looks at this and says it is i mean here's the thing it is apple's fastest chip but it is also soon to be two generations old uh technology and like and it's right in the name they put it in there so you know it's it is what it is like they can they can redeem themselves with an m4 extreme but boy if that mac pro comes out of wwc with an m3 ultra in it
John:
Oh, man.
John:
I'm just going to tear off my Believe shirt.
John:
I was rending my garments.
John:
We should speed through the rest of this.
John:
So the storage situation on these things, on the M4 Max, you can get 512 up to 8 terabytes.
John:
You can go 512, 1, 2, 4, and 8.
John:
On the M3 Ultra, you can get...
John:
It starts at 1TB.
John:
Again, starting specs matter so much in this land of margins shoved into options.
John:
Starting at 1TB, so good.
John:
You can get 1, 2, 4, 8, or a new 16TB option.
John:
I was trying to calculate what this would cost.
John:
I was jokingly doing some math, and what I did to calculate was I Googled for 16TB SSD.
John:
I found an Amazon link for a price that was like $2,200 and I multiplied it by 6.5, which was the multiplier I came up with when doing the math.
John:
And it came up with some obscene number, but much more realistic would have been to look at how much eight terabytes cost and double it.
John:
And that's what Apple did.
John:
So eight terabytes, if you want to upgrade to eight terabytes, so you start at one terabyte and you add seven terabytes to upgrade to eight.
John:
Adding that 7 terabytes will cost you in magical Apple fantasy land $2,200.
John:
So how much will going from 1 to 16, adding 15 terabytes cost you?
John:
Will it cost you $2,200?
John:
No.
John:
Will it cost you $4,400?
John:
No.
John:
It'll cost you $4,600 because Apple.
John:
So add $4,600 for that 16 extra terabytes.
John:
That's where all the margin is.
John:
It's great.
John:
Thunderbolt 5 and USB 4, which is great because guess what?
John:
When the M3 came out, we didn't have Thunderbolt 5.
John:
And they somehow found a way to stick Thunderbolt 5 on an M3, which must have been a pain.
John:
But, you know, at least they did that.
John:
Because can you imagine if the M3 Ultra only had Thunderbolt 4, but the M4 Max one had Thunderbolt 5?
John:
Embarrassing.
John:
But no, Thunderbolt 5, and the good thing is, as usual, because there's just so much more hardware inside the SoC, on the Ultra one, it's got Thunderbolt 5, four Thunderbolt 5 ports on the back, and the front ports are also Thunderbolt 5 on the Ultra only.
John:
On the Max one, the front ports are USB-C, 10 gigabits per second, you know, blah, blah, blah, right?
John:
Still got USB-A ports in the back.
John:
Woo!
John:
You know, use that space.
John:
10 gig Ethernet, HDMI, headphone, SD card slot, which is still UHS-II.
John:
Wi-Fi 6E because Macs don't get Wi-Fi 7 until Apple rolls out their Wi-Fi chip, I guess.
John:
I don't know.
John:
wi-fi 60 bluetooth 5.3 instead of wi-fi 7 and bluetooth 5.4 whatever um the good news under the display front is huge number of displays with apple's weird way of describing this if you get in the m3 ultra max studio you have simultaneous support for eight displays
John:
I don't know where you would fit them, but you could run them.
John:
Eight displays without the 6K resolution at 60 hertz or 4K at 144 hertz.
John:
Four displays at 8K at 60 hertz or 4K resolutions at 240 hertz, which is nice.
John:
Display port 2.1 over USB-C and then HDMI.
John:
One display at 8K at 60 hertz or 4K at 240.
John:
And support for VRR, HDR, and multi-channel audio.
John:
And the M4 Max version, you get about half that.
John:
You get support for five displays with similar specs, just fewer of them.
John:
They do have more environment stuff that they're bragging about with each one of these products.
John:
None of these are carbon neutral, if I recall, but...
John:
uh 30 recycled content in the max studio 100 recycled aluminum the enclosure 100 recycled rare earth elements and all magnets no mercury no bromated flame retardants and pvc uh packaging is entirely fiber based and apple is still trying to get all of its plastic out of its packaging by 2025 starts at two thousand dollars uh or 1800 for education you can pre-order right now available on march 12th that is your really weird 2025 max studio
Casey:
So I'm hearing you bought two already.
John:
Nope.
John:
Waiting for WWDC.
John:
Just me and my 2019 Mac Pro.
John:
I just tap it on the shoulder and say, it's you and me, kid.
John:
We're just going to wait this out.
John:
We're going to see what the deal is.
John:
You tap it on its hot, slow shoulder.
John:
Hot?
John:
How dare you?
John:
This has just massive cooling.
John:
It's not even breaking a sweat.
John:
I took the second GPU out.
John:
It has nothing to do in there.
John:
It's just these huge, lazy fans rotating like in a noir movie.
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Casey:
All right, then we also got some other computers that apparently John doesn't care about.
John:
I do care about this one.
John:
This is the computer that I told my dad to wait for.
John:
I said he needed a new computer to run TurboTax.
John:
I said, don't buy it.
John:
I'll tell you when you should buy.
John:
This is my dad's computer.
Casey:
Right, so we've got an M4 MacBook Air.
Casey:
You've got a couple of processor options.
Casey:
You've got eight CPU, 16 GPU, or 10 CPU cores, 16 GPU cores, 120 gigs of second memory bandwidth.
Casey:
Your RAM options are 16, 24, or 32, with 32 gigs being $400 extra.
John:
Which, by the way, that RAM, that $400 extra RAM going from 16 to 32, that is twice as expensive.
John:
That 16 gigs of RAM is twice as expensive as on a studio.
John:
Same thing for when you go from 16 to 24.
John:
You are paying twice as much for the RAM on your MacBook Air.
John:
Why?
John:
Because margins.
John:
There's just not a lot of place to get the margins on the MacBook Air, and the numbers are smaller.
John:
So the RAM literally costs twice as much as Mac Studio RAM.
Casey:
Storage options, 256, 512, one or two terabytes, with the two terabytes running $800 extra.
Casey:
You get Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4, which is 40 gigs a second, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3.
Casey:
The camera is the new-ish 12 megapixel center stage camera with support for desk view.
Casey:
The M3 MacBook Air, by comparison, had a 1080p FaceTime HD camera.
Casey:
Displays.
Casey:
This is very exciting.
Casey:
You can do up to two external displays with the lid open with up to 6K resolution at 60 hertz.
Casey:
You have Thunderbolt 4 digital video output.
Casey:
You have support for native DisplayPort 1.4 output over USB-C.
Casey:
By comparison, the M3 MacBook Air only had one external display with the lid open with up to 6K resolution at 60 hertz.
Casey:
And you have to close the lid to use a second display at up to 5K 60 hertz.
Casey:
Battery life, 18 hours, which is the same as the M3 MacBook Air.
Casey:
You have different power adapter choices, 30-watt, 35-watt dual for an extra $20, or 70-watt, which is also an extra $20.
Casey:
Again, 13, 15 inches, midnight starlight, silver, and a new sky blue, which is also a very good Peter Gabriel song.
Casey:
The sky blue I've not seen in person yet, but looked like the standard.
Casey:
Wait, that's silver.
Casey:
Oh, oh, oh.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Oh, there's a little bit of blue.
John:
When I first saw photos of this, I thought like the white balance was off because I'm like the white balance must be off because the silver one looked bluish.
John:
No.
John:
That's how subtle it is.
John:
It's so subtle that it could be slightly off white balance or it could be the sky blue one.
Casey:
It starts at $999 for 13 inches, which is 100 bones less than it was before.
Casey:
And it's $100 less still for education.
John:
And it starts at 16 gigs, which we already know because of the M3 and the M2, but just want to reemphasize.
Casey:
And then the 15-inch starts at basically $1,200, $1,199, $1,100 for education, which again, $100 less than before.
Casey:
Here it is, as Ben Thompson has said many times, or he's the one I've seen banging this drum most loudly.
Casey:
iPhones and a lot of Apple products have basically gotten cheaper over time on account of them not moving up with inflation.
Casey:
And now they're getting cheaper in a literal, well, I guess they're both literal, but they're getting cheaper in terms of the price tag because the price tag has actually gone down $100.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And you can pre-order these now.
Casey:
They'll be available on the 12th, which is really cool.
Casey:
And the M2 model is still available in some countries.
John:
Yeah, this is pretty, I mean, this is what everyone expected.
John:
M4 MacBook Air.
John:
We knew it would be great because we knew the M4 was great.
John:
We knew the MacBook Air was great.
John:
All you got to do is swap out the M3 for an M4.
John:
And we got that.
John:
And in between the time when we were anticipating it, they did the 16 gig RAM bump.
John:
So the base model, M4 MacBook Air.
John:
for a thousand dollars is an amazing it's like the best deal on a laptop mac that has existed in ages because you don't need to change anything about that except for the ssd because it's 256 let's say that's plenty for you because that there is scenarios where 256 is plenty for people but if you listen to the show it's not if you're listening if you're listening don't just at least get the 512 for people listening to this show probably not but like look so when i was you know getting computer from my dad i was asked you know they don't have data
John:
basically right like they they use it as a glorified web browser and to like watch videos and stuff right they do have a photo library but they barely take pictures at all right so i did wonder could he fit into i wouldn't get to recommending interviews but i did wonder academically and the answer is yes he could but i'm still gonna have him get the 512
Marco:
You can never upgrade it.
Marco:
For the love of God, at least get the 512.
Marco:
If you're a nerd, you probably want the terabyte.
Marco:
At least.
Marco:
Just please.
John:
Yeah, but that really starts killing the price of this thing.
John:
Well, yeah.
John:
So 512 was plus 200 bucks, and that I feel like you could stop.
John:
Because they lowered the price to 100 bucks, so now it's only really plus 100 bucks.
John:
So whatever.
John:
One terabyte is plus 400 bucks, which is a significant portion of the price of this machine.
John:
It really starts to hurt.
John:
But anyway, this is...
John:
straight up just an m4 version of the macbook air right down to it's still wi-fi 60 still bluetooth 5.3 it's the same as the m3 one but the m3 one was already a great machine i think the reason they can cut off a hundred dollars in this price is because this is like what the uh the third iteration of basically the same computer with just the the soc swapped out more or less
John:
This is a good deal on a good computer, and the reason they can cut off the price is because there's not a brand new screen.
John:
There is a new camera, but it's a camera that's been in a lot of other Macs.
John:
They didn't add any expensive stuff.
John:
Remember when they bumped the price $100 when they went from the wedge shape to the non-wedge shape?
John:
Because that was an all-new case, and they had to recoup the cost of the fancy casing and all the stuff or whatever.
John:
This is the cycle.
John:
It's kind of like car generations.
John:
Whatever generation...
John:
macbook air this is towards the end of the generation it gets cheaper like and it's nice you know it's a miracle to see apple essentially passing on that that savings to its customers in the entry-level model they bumped the ram to 16 so now when people can get by without with the base amount of ram and they lowered the price because they've been making this generation for a while and
John:
It doesn't have an HDR screen.
John:
It doesn't have mini LED.
John:
They didn't do anything to it.
John:
It's the same as it was.
John:
But what it is, with the exception of a lack of SD card slot, and a USB-C port on the other side, what it is is pretty good.
John:
So, boy, this is going to be such a phenomenal upgrade for my dad's computer because whatever he was running, it's too old to run...
John:
whatever the minimum OS version for TurboTax is.
John:
So I think it's like a seven or eight year old computer or something, whatever it is, it's Intel.
John:
Okay.
John:
He's going to go from an older Intel Mac to M4 MacBook Air.
John:
It's just going to be like a miracle, like completely silent.
John:
Just everything is fast.
John:
Everything is instant.
John:
The thing weighs nothing.
John:
This, the battery life is going to be just, just insane compared to what his ancient computer was that he's just been leaving plugged in half the time.
John:
Like,
John:
It's just going to be such an amazing upgrade.
John:
And the only possibility is like, well, maybe the screen, you know, because he had a MacBook Pro before that.
John:
But I think the screen will probably be close.
John:
But anyway, I'm excited for him to get his new computer.
John:
I'm going to buy this computer for my daughter.
John:
This is her college computer.
John:
I'm not sure how I'm going to spec it yet.
John:
She hasn't yet picked the color, but this is pretty cleanly good news.
John:
I would also say that I feel like we're kind of approaching...
John:
maybe we're maybe one or two years away from the end of this generation of the macbook air where they're gonna have to where they're gonna have to where i think they should do something like consider upgrading the screen you know what i mean like but this is a good a good time to buy the m4 is a really good chip for a lightweight laptop because it is low power but single core is just so fast and that's what you want if you're just doing like you know simple things with your computer
Marco:
Yeah, I love my MacBook Air.
Marco:
I have the M2 one.
Marco:
I absolutely love it.
Marco:
It is an amazing computer.
Marco:
As I mentioned last time or the time before, I've used it so much that I'm starting to wear out some of the keyboard keys.
Marco:
It's getting worse.
Marco:
If the sky blue color was better, I might be tempted to get this new one.
Marco:
But what is wrong with them with these colors?
Marco:
Okay, the MacBook Air now comes in silver-ish, silver-ish, silver-ish, and black-ish.
Marco:
Why?
Marco:
Why?
Marco:
You have four alleged colors.
Marco:
None of them are color.
Marco:
Why?
John:
I do like the midnight one, though, which is not actually black.
John:
It's actually very dark blue, apparently.
John:
But that does stand out in a crowd, I feel like.
Marco:
Yeah, because all the fingerprints stand out.
Marco:
I mean, it's fine.
Marco:
When it's clean, it looks decent.
Marco:
When it's clean and in good lighting, then you can see that it's not black, but it actually is navy blue, and it does look decent.
Marco:
I'll give you that.
Marco:
But the other three colors, again, like...
Marco:
when you don't look at Apple's website, look at like the videos of other reviewers or go see them in real life.
Marco:
And you could see like, Oh wait, that's the allegedly blue one.
John:
Yeah.
John:
The sky blue model should come with the silver one that you can always carry around next to it.
John:
So people can tell it's blue.
Yeah.
John:
It's the only way you'll be able to tell.
John:
You need the comparison.
John:
Your eyes will adjust to the white balance.
Marco:
And Starlight too, like Sky Blue and Starlight.
John:
Starlight is not even gold, right?
Marco:
Yeah, again, like you said, they look like different white balance settings on silver.
John:
Barely, but like white balance settings where you're not sure if you've bumped it.
Marco:
Yeah, it's so subtle that you need to see the silver one just so you can see, oh, that's not actually silver.
Marco:
You might need to move your head a little bit, too.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Oh, man.
Marco:
It's so weird.
Marco:
Why are they so afraid of color?
Marco:
Look at the iMac.
Marco:
The iMac is a really boring computer, but yet it got attention because it came in colors.
Marco:
That's why everyone loves the iMac.
Marco:
It's not because everyone needs a low-end desktop.
Marco:
Most people don't.
Marco:
They buy the iMac because it comes in really fun, bold colors.
Marco:
why not do that you know how many of these macbook airs they would sell if they came in like a real color one i don't even just one real color yeah like these colors these are colors like the way john mayer sings just wow the most like and john mayer is an amazing like you don't realize he's an amazing musician but he's so soft-spoken and in most of his music you like you can barely even tell everything he can play every instrument in the world and he has to be a great singer
Marco:
Yes, he's a really talented instrument player.
Marco:
He's amazing at guitar.
Marco:
He's a really good musician, but he's so restrained in his music.
Marco:
When Apple does colors, they do them pretty well.
Marco:
When they're real, bold colors, they do a pretty good job of them.
Marco:
And they just won't do it the vast majority of the time for the vast majority of their products.
Marco:
Why?
Casey:
Why?
Casey:
I hate the Apple color situation.
Casey:
And I know that nobody is banged on this drum louder than Jason.
Casey:
And he's right.
Casey:
Like there needs to be a colors are at Apple to convince them that a professionals like colors.
Casey:
And at this point be freaking anybody likes color because you're right.
Casey:
It's it's you know, what did you say?
Casey:
It's grayish grayish grayish and blackish.
Casey:
I mean, that's pretty much right.
Yeah.
Marco:
like imagine okay granted in this in this upgrade to the MacBook Pro or the MacBook Air which as I said I freaking love my M2 MacBook Air and I'm very tempted to replace it just because the keyboard keeps breaking and I don't have time to get it serviced but like this I love this computer so much
Marco:
This is the least inspiring upgrade I've seen.
Marco:
It's like they keep doing these things where it's like, well, we sort of gave you a color, a little bit.
Marco:
I didn't get my nanotexture, which, again, I didn't expect to.
Marco:
I didn't get cellular, which, again, I also didn't expect to.
John:
Although I think it is weird.
John:
Why didn't we get nanotexture?
John:
It's like a $100 or $200 option.
John:
Anything you do to this computer is at least a $100 or $200 option.
John:
So why not?
Marco:
I mean, that's true, and I would welcome that if they ever add it.
Marco:
I'm not surprised, though, because even though, yes, I know it's on the iMac now, but it does seem like nanotexture is considered by Apple marketing to be a pro-tier thing, which is a shame.
Marco:
I would love to get the MacBook Pro 14, but it just doesn't feel as nice as this.
Marco:
Like, when you're carrying it around in a bag and picking it up and opening it up, like, going in and out of, like, trains and planes and stuff, oh, my God, the MacBook Air is so much nicer than even the 14X Pro.
Marco:
It is so much lighter, and you...
Marco:
It just feels better in your hand.
Marco:
It's easier to manipulate open and close, in and out of bags and stuff.
Marco:
It is nicer.
Marco:
The battery life is better.
Marco:
There's no fan.
Marco:
There are lots of things about it that are nicer, in my opinion, than the 14-inch Pro.
Marco:
But in this generation, the same screen, it still has the slightly blurry lower resolution pixel density of the bad old touch bar days.
Marco:
They fixed that in the pros.
Marco:
They did not fix that in the air.
Marco:
And it still has only 500 nits brightness.
Marco:
So, you know, it's still the same screen.
Marco:
It's, you know, compared to PC laptops, it's a very nice screen.
Marco:
Compared to other Apple products, it's a fine screen, but it's lacking a lot of the new hotness of other screens they make.
Marco:
So it's still an amazing computer for most people.
Marco:
I just do wish they would have given a little bit more in this update.
Marco:
Something else to make it a little bit exciting besides a drop of color on the new sort of bluish silver model.
John:
This is not an upgrade product.
John:
They're like, oh, you got one last year, get a new one this year.
John:
This is entirely like the product for people like my parents.
John:
Like...
John:
If you are in the market for a laptop computer, get this one because it's great.
John:
If you just bought this computer last year, there's almost nothing to make you upgrade because last year's was so good already.
John:
And so is the M2 one.
John:
But it's like these computers are not for people who are like, let's see what the new thing is this year.
John:
These are for like, I need a new computer because my old one doesn't work or is crappy or is broken.
John:
Let me arrive in the store.
John:
I need a laptop to do simple things.
John:
Show me what you got.
John:
And in that role, this thing fills that role beautifully.
John:
even just a little bit better than the previous one does.
John:
But it is absolutely not a product where it's like, let's make people with M3 MacBook Airs really want to upgrade.
John:
Nope, not this one.
Marco:
And you know how you do that?
Marco:
Colors.
Marco:
With colors, yeah.
Marco:
Look, if you don't have massive hardware upgrades, then yeah, give it a different look a little bit.
Marco:
And I'm not saying redesign the case.
Marco:
I mean, I don't think you're going to drive upgrades.
John:
Again, people who are buying $1,000 MacBook Airs are not upgrading every year.
Marco:
No, and I'm not even talking about every year, but just like when you look at what happened with the 12-inch one-port MacBook that we all love-hated, people would often buy that kind of as a fashion statement, like as like a fun thing.
John:
Like people don't always purchase – To keep it in their inside coat pocket, you might say?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
People don't always purchase computer equipment rationally.
Marco:
It isn't like, well, it's time for the numbers to line up.
Marco:
No, people buy stuff because they want it and love it.
Marco:
Not everyone, but not no one.
Marco:
So there's a lot of people who will buy a product.
Marco:
You see the same thing with the iPhone.
Marco:
People who will upgrade a phone not because their old phone is broken, but because the new phone looks really cool.
Marco:
That's a thing that people do.
Marco:
And
Marco:
They do that with computers too, with desktops and laptops.
Marco:
They do it there too.
Marco:
Not as much, but they're still there.
Marco:
So if Apple would... Again, it's a spec bump update.
Marco:
Here at ATP, we support spec bump updates.
Marco:
We love spec bump updates because the alternative is neglected products.
Marco:
And we don't want Apple to wait around to give any update until they have something mind-blowing and big.
Marco:
No, feel free.
Marco:
Spec bump them whenever you can.
Marco:
That's great.
Marco:
However...
Marco:
It does help to make an otherwise fairly uninteresting spec bump update more interesting to do some kind of new cosmetic thing.
Marco:
And you can tell that Apple believes that too, which is why they keep adding colors, but they just keep adding like the worst colors.
Marco:
the most like barely colored colors that you can possibly do like just i i think this imagine if that came out and it was like you know the same blue as the iphone 16 blue that everyone loved not the pro but the the base model iphone 16 that blue that everyone freaked out about last fall like and people were like switching away from the pro for the first time just to get that color imagine if the map book air was that color
Marco:
That'd be amazing.
Marco:
They won't do it.
Marco:
How if it was literally any of the colors of the iMac has been offered in for now for like four years, they won't do that either.
Marco:
I don't know why.
Marco:
Please do it for the love of God.
John:
Like supposedly they have tried colors internally.
John:
And the story is that they actually don't look as good in person as you think they would because laptops are not the same thing as phones and tablets.
John:
But, you know, try us, Apple.
John:
We think you can figure it out.
Marco:
And they literally sell tablets that are almost the same size.
Marco:
and are in bolder colors slightly i mean we'll get to that like not that much bolder but you know but somewhat somewhat yes they're bold enough that you could you could tell what color it is by looking at just one by itself yeah exactly you don't have to when you only have one in the room you don't have to say is that the silver or the blue like no you you can tell but barely yeah
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Casey:
Still more to go.
Casey:
We've got the A16 iPad, or I think it's actually on Apple's website, the iPad-11, if I'm not mistaken.
John:
I thought it was iPad-A16.
John:
That was the whole point of the top item.
John:
They didn't call it iPad 11th gen.
John:
Let me just double check.
Casey:
Well, the URL is 100% iPad hyphen 11.
John:
Oh, no, it's iPad.
John:
I know, but that's 11 inch.
Casey:
Oh, I'm sorry.
Casey:
You're right.
Casey:
You're right.
Casey:
You're right.
Casey:
My mistake.
Casey:
My mistake.
John:
It's iPad parentheses A16 and it comes in 11 inch and 13 inch sizes.
John:
But anyway, the point is they didn't call it iPad 11th gen, which is fine because, you know, who can keep track of these generation?
John:
It's easier, kind of easier to know.
John:
This is the one that has the A16 in it, which spoiler has the A16 in it.
John:
They also simplified the naming.
John:
It's not 10.9 inch anymore.
John:
It's 11 inch, which you get to get technical because it's got rounded corners.
John:
Like when you're doing diagonal measures, are you measuring where the corner would be on the rectangular or you're measuring it?
John:
Whatever.
John:
It's 11, like it's 11 inch.
John:
It's simplified.
John:
The iPad a 16 11 inch.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So it has the A16 with five core CPU, which which means there's one disabled core, a four core GPU, which means there's one disabled core.
John:
Which core is disabled in the CPU?
John:
I could not determine this because it's is it two power cores and three efficiency cores?
John:
Or is it one power core and four efficiency cores?
John:
Like what?
John:
I'm assuming it's two and three.
John:
I wouldn't make that assumption.
John:
The efficiency cores are really small.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Well, I believe this is the only like there's no like non-binned version of this.
John:
Like if you get the iPad A16, this is the base model cheapest iPad that you can get.
John:
And it is very cheap.
John:
you get an a16 with five cpu cores and four gpu cores there's no non-binned version of this and this is kind of where i was getting it before like when it makes sense to continue selling old chips because the you know we'll get the second but the rumor was this would have a different chip like why do we see these chips show up why does the ipad mini have an a17 pro why does this a16 why does the
John:
At some point, they tried to manufacture a whole bunch of A17 Pros and A16s.
John:
Some of those chips had stuff in them that didn't work.
John:
You could throw them in the garbage, or you could find a product to put them into.
John:
And guess what?
John:
They found a home for the A16s with stuff that doesn't work.
John:
It's just smart business.
John:
I think this is perfectly fine.
John:
I think an A16 in the base model iPad is good.
John:
In exchange for that, you get a low price, and I think you do.
Marco:
Now, I have a question.
Marco:
Now that we're talking about binning again, I have what I think is a superstition, and I wanted to get your thoughts on whether it actually is a superstition.
Marco:
I will almost never choose to buy a bin CPU because I think it's almost like buying a refurbished product.
Marco:
If one thing broke.
Marco:
Yeah, I almost think maybe this will be less reliable for me over time.
Marco:
Is that irrational?
Marco:
Is there any basis for that in science?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
I don't know.
John:
I've also had this.
John:
I can tell you I've had that same thought, but I I honestly can't come up with a rationale for explaining why I think that might be the case, because I just I don't.
John:
It's not like it was like a car made on a Friday when people weren't paying attention.
John:
It's not like there's an explanation where you can say plausibly this is why it might be different.
John:
Like, what causes flaws?
John:
There was a problem with this section.
John:
Does that mean that there's more likely to be problems with other sections?
John:
I don't know what the origin of the problems is.
John:
Like, is it just...
John:
The only thing I can think of is that maybe if the silicon wafer had problems, like that wafer had problems, for example, then presumably the whole wafer has problems.
John:
And so lots of bin chips came off that one wafer or something.
John:
But yeah, I do feel better about everything working versus some parts not working.
John:
But I feel like on all these things, when they test them, they're not guessing which parts work.
John:
They do a pretty good... When's the last time you got a CPU and one of the CPU cores stopped working?
John:
Like while you had it?
John:
Yeah.
John:
When they ship them to you and they say it has this number of cores, those cores pretty much work until you get rid of the computer.
John:
Especially Marco, but regular people do.
John:
Right?
John:
I think that when they leave the factory, they're pretty sure that the stuff they say is working is in fact working.
John:
If it wasn't, things would break real fast.
John:
be like casey with his bad ram like you if some cpu core is doing math wrong uh or like has some problem you'll probably notice that pretty quickly maybe not in a gpu where you just get artifacts or something but anyway i don't know someone who knows more about silicon can tell us but i i have absolutely felt exactly the same thing give me the one with all the working parts because it seemed like that like i just feel better knowing that they tried to make this thing i want the ones where they succeeded but then i pay ridiculous amounts of money to get that yeah
Casey:
All right, there is no Apple Intelligence, apparently 6 gigs RAM, and this is an improvement over 4 gigs on the 10th gen.
Casey:
Couldn't quite go to 8.
John:
Now, can the A16 do Apple Intelligence?
John:
That was the other question I had.
John:
I was like, maybe the neural engine is below the threshold, but...
John:
i don't think so i think no it can't yeah so anyway it's interesting at first i thought they left it at four gig but no according to mac rumors they went to six so they were close to eight but maybe even with eight it couldn't do it but anyway like i'm not sad about who cares right now that that seems fine to me it does though really you know talking about the baseline feature set apple was pretty strongly saying like apple intelligence is the baseline feature set but not on the really low-end models sorry
Casey:
Uh, the cellular version is now eSIM only.
Casey:
You get three storage options, 128, 256, and 512.
Casey:
Uh, the starting storage is twice what it was for the, uh, 10th gen.
Casey:
Uh, and here you actually do get some colors, silver, blue, pink, and yellow.
Casey:
I am very here for it.
Casey:
Imagine that colors.
Casey:
They look great.
Casey:
Let's, let's do that in other places.
Casey:
And it starts at 350 bucks.
John:
$350.
John:
I mean, you can look at this and say, what is an FACE ID?
John:
Why this?
John:
Why that?
John:
But like, you know, it's... The family resemblance is there.
John:
This is... It's a flat-sided, rounded corner iPad, you know, with no home button.
John:
Like, it's just...
John:
it's 350 bucks.
John:
Like if you, and an A16 with six gigs of RAM is pretty good for most things that people are going to use iPads for it.
John:
This is the MacBook air of iPads, essentially.
John:
Do you want to do web browsing and like do email stuff?
John:
And like, it just, it's, it's 350 bucks for this huge, pretty good looking touchscreen that you can do probably all the things most people do with iPads.
John:
Uh,
John:
If it wasn't for the OLED screen, I could use this because all I do is freaking watch streaming video.
John:
I just need the OLED screen.
John:
But everything else about it, I'm not taxing my M4 CPU while watching streaming video on my iPad.
John:
I'm not taxing it watching YouTube videos and scrolling Mastodon and SlideOver.
John:
I could do that on the $350 thing if it wasn't for the screen.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
This is one of the best deals in Apple's entire lineup.
Marco:
I would say the base model MacBook Air is probably the best deal, but I think that the base model iPad is probably second best, especially when you compare it to the other iPads.
Marco:
Just don't get a keyboard.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Well, when you compare it to the other iPads or iPad accessories,
Marco:
This entire iPad is in the same ballpark of the price of every keyboard that Apple now sells for iPads.
Marco:
Most iPad keyboards are around $300.
Marco:
This is $350 for an entire iPad.
Marco:
The keyboard does not have a screen.
Marco:
True.
Marco:
So this, yeah, like most iPads are used in very low intensity situations.
Marco:
Most iPads are being used to watch video or browse the web or check email or be terminals for something else.
Marco:
Like they're used in really low need situations most of the time.
Marco:
So this is one of those products that is fairly uninteresting to the tech press like us most of the time.
Marco:
We'll probably never mention it again.
Marco:
But there's a huge number of people who buy these, either for themselves or for their employees or children or students.
Marco:
It's a huge market out there.
Marco:
And this is a really surprisingly good product for a surprisingly low price given...
Marco:
The rest of Apple's MO in most places, which is we're going to bleed you dry and you're going to thank us for it.
Marco:
So this is this is great.
John:
I mean, this is just like the product being dragged across the line.
John:
Like this product line has been dragged across the many of the lines of, you know, the flat side thing, the rounded corners, all that other stuff.
John:
And once this iPad gets dragged across the OLED line, which will happen, you know, eventually, you know, if not OLED, whatever technology has true blacks.
John:
Right.
John:
Eventually, this iPad will have that because it will be the cheapest screen available.
John:
Like that will happen.
John:
I think it'll be a little while.
John:
it'll be a while this screen also historically has not had like the nicest lamination techniques and stuff like that also yeah yeah but but but again that will all that will all get caught up like because the the state-of-the-art advances and eventually the thing that was previously state-of-the-art is the cheapest like the this screen is better than the original ipad screen for example right so when that happens this is kind of like the same thing as like uh audio digital audio technology essentially uh
John:
satisfying the capacity of human hearing and video technology for flat images is approaching that rapidly.
John:
When this thing gets a scream with True Blacks, there will probably be a $350 adjusted for inflation thing that you can buy that is like the ultimate...
John:
watch streaming video in bed on your iPad device for $350.
John:
Like, it'll be so cheap to just say, oh, I just want a thing that I can watch, like, you know, video the way it's supposed to look that's cheap and light and does what I want it to do and I can do email and web browsing.
John:
Like,
John:
that little thing, that little iPad will – I'm excited about this because the idea that you could have a flat screen that shows the kind of image that I get on my M4 OLED iPad for $350 when that day comes, I think that – I feel like I'm living in the future.
John:
Like anybody can have a screen that would have blown your mind 10 years ago and it's a couple hundred bucks and you can have it around the house and give it to your kids and just –
John:
you know the ipad for those use cases for the simple use cases for when you're not running up against limitations of ipad os or paying 1500 for an ipad or whatever it's increasingly just an amazing device this really is like the ipad air of uh of tablets and in that role all of our frustrations with it fade away because like that's not this role like same with all my frustrations with the mac pro and the cpus all that fades away when you look at the macbook air it's like that's not what this computer is for that's not what these ipads are for and
John:
You know, you can get it in pink.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And then finally, we have the M3 iPad Air.
Casey:
You get CPU is for performance, for efficiency cores.
Casey:
All cores are enabled.
Casey:
GPU is nine core.
Casey:
One core is disabled.
Casey:
You get eight gigs of RAM, 11 and 13 inch sizes.
Casey:
Touch ID.
Casey:
There is no face ID.
Casey:
Pencil Pro and the USB-C Pencil are both supported, same as its predecessor.
Casey:
The sound, however, is a little bit different.
Casey:
In the specs, this is reading from MacRumors, in the specs for the new 13-inch iPad Air, Apple has omitted the two-times bass feature from the device's landscape stereo speakers.
Casey:
Double bass was introduced in the previous generation 13-inch iPad Air with M2 chip in May of 2024.
Casey:
Your storage options are 128, 256, 512, and 1 terabyte.
Casey:
Your colors are bluish, yellowish, blackish, and purplish.
Casey:
Starting prices, same as previous Air, 11 inches, 600 bucks, 13 inches, 800 bucks.
Casey:
You can pre-order it now.
Casey:
It launches on the 12th.
Casey:
And there's also a new Magic Keyboard.
Casey:
It has a 14-key function row, a larger trackpad, and the price of the Magic Keyboard.
Casey:
What were you saying, John?
Casey:
The 11-inch Magic Keyboard.
Casey:
The keyboard.
Casey:
The keyboard.
Casey:
is $270, and the 13-inch is $320.
Casey:
Let me use this opportunity to remind you that the starting price, as John pointed out earlier, of the A16 iPad is $350.
Casey:
That is a mere, what is that, $30 more than the 13-inch keyboard.
John:
the keyboard yeah i mean i guess this is you know if you maybe get a third-party keyboard if you really want a keyboard with this device like if you're really going to end up using it as like a laptop but then you're really pressing up against like maybe you should get a macbook air because of ipad os i don't know people like ipads but anyway this thing you know oh the ipad a16 that comes in colors as soon as you get a little bit more power no colors are gone sorry yeah like as you ascend into the sky of resources the color gets drained out like oxygen and
John:
And again, this is not the iPad Pro.
John:
This is merely the Air, but once you get to the Air, it's like, I'm sorry, you're too high-end for color.
John:
Yeah, and then the Pro has all of the color drained out of it.
John:
So this one, I'm starting to give a little bit of side eye about the lack of Face ID, right?
John:
Because how long are we going to wait?
John:
How long are we going to hold that as a differentiator?
John:
The Touch ID power button, whatever.
John:
My parents can't use it because apparently old people can't use Touch ID because their fingerprints are too wibbly-wobbly.
John:
Um...
John:
face id like this i feel like this should have been here the ipad air got face ed but i guess not so it's like the ipad air does not look like a great deal to me because if you want the great screen or power get an ipad pro if you don't want that what are you getting an ipad air for is there something there's some game you're playing that is too slow on the a16 ipad air that you need the m3 for its gpu power is there
John:
a CPU thing that you're doing on your iPad that you're somehow not going to get a Pro, but the A16 is not good enough?
John:
Is the screen that much better on the M3 iPad Air?
John:
Is it better at all than the A16 one?
John:
The prices aren't that bad.
John:
$600 versus $350, but
John:
I feel it's kind of hard to justify the iPad.
John:
Maybe when you do storage prices, it works out better because maybe the... I don't know.
John:
I haven't looked at the upgrade prices.
John:
I didn't break it down for this one.
John:
I'll find out because my mom is going to get a new iPad.
John:
I forget what she has now, but it's ancient.
John:
And...
John:
I haven't actually gone through the exercise with her of like, what do you actually want out of your iPad?
John:
How much storage are you using?
John:
She could end up getting an A16 one.
John:
That might be fine for her.
John:
She's certainly not going to get a Pro because she doesn't need any of that.
John:
But the iPad Air, I'm not feeling great about it.
Marco:
Yeah, so if you actually... The smallest amount of storage that you can match across all three iPad lines is 256.
Marco:
And if you price match all of them as 256 11-inch, you go 450 for the base model, 700 for the Air, and 1000 for the Pro.
Marco:
So those are pretty spaced out when you match spec for spec.
Marco:
However...
Marco:
I also, I have to think, like, who is the iPad Air 4?
Marco:
Because, you know, back, you know, not that long ago, there was, you know, the iPad line.
Marco:
It kind of became the iPad Air line briefly.
Marco:
And then there was the iPad Pro when it was newer.
Marco:
And the iPad Pro...
Marco:
It was kind of like that was the one you bought if you needed the pencil, the Apple keyboard, or if you needed certain nicer Pro things.
Marco:
Originally, that was the only one that had the four speakers.
Marco:
So there were lots of reasons to buy the Pro.
Marco:
Now, what it feels like, and obviously this is not counting things like inflation, as mentioned earlier, but what it feels like is that the Pro has been pushed higher end, and now an iPad Pro, especially once accessorized, is a pretty expensive... You're up to the $1,400 kind of territory pretty easily with the iPad Pro.
Marco:
So that feels like it's been pushed up, leaving a big gap in the middle, and what they've put in that gap is the iPad Air, the modern iPad Air.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
The iPad Air doesn't have Face ID.
Marco:
It doesn't have ProMotion.
Marco:
So it still has a 60 hertz screen.
Marco:
And those are things that if you've used a Pro, you feel that.
Marco:
It feels like a downgrade.
Marco:
So it's hard now if you had a Pro in the past, not because you needed the best of the best, but simply because that used to be the nice one.
Marco:
Suppose you have a 2018 Pro like Casey and I had.
Marco:
Suppose you have those.
Marco:
If you're looking at what's in the lineup now,
Marco:
The Air is closer to kind of what you thought you paid for your Pro back in the day.
Marco:
Again, once Accessorite especially.
Marco:
But the Air is actually a downgrade from like the 2018 Pro in some of those screen details, face ID, like they...
Marco:
And that matters.
Marco:
You notice that.
Marco:
So it feels weird to be kind of like a mid-range iPad buyer today if you were a mid-range to high-end iPad buyer in the past because it feels like now the mid-range has actually gotten worse relative to what you used to have.
Marco:
So it's kind of a weird gap in the lineup.
Marco:
And I'm not entirely sure who the Air is then for.
Marco:
Because everything I was just saying... What's the pencil situation?
John:
What's the pencil situation in the iPad A16?
Marco:
The pencil situation now is that every iPad supports pencils.
Marco:
Now, yes, they do support different ones.
Marco:
But they're not that different anymore.
Marco:
So now, every iPad supports pencils.
Marco:
Every iPad supports keyboards with trackpads.
Marco:
So there's fewer of those differences.
John:
um you know the details are a little bit different with each one but like but does does the ipad a16 support the the pencil that magnetically attaches to the edge and also what's the camera orientation i didn't actually look this up i should have the which edge is the camera on on the a16 and in the air um the uh the uh apple pencil usbc is what's supported on the base model ipad
John:
yeah so you don't get the magnetically attached thing although the camera on the base model ipad is on the landscape edge yes correct yeah just uh just like the new air and the new pro right yeah so the camera camera's on the landscape edge on both of them uh magnetically attaching pencil is arguably something that could have been dragged down to the 350 model but maybe those magnets are expensive who knows
John:
I have a much easier job explaining why the base model iPad exists and why the Pro exists.
John:
And the Air in the middle is just going to kind of get it from both sides.
John:
Like you said, it seems like it's too expensive for what you get, but then you complain that you're not getting enough because it doesn't have Face ID.
John:
And just them deciding what feature set will go in this
John:
is really weird like i mean it granted it's a16 versus m3 it is a big cpu jump but it's kind of apple's own fault that we don't feel like again except for playing games there's any particular reason that you're going to be begging for a more powerful soc in your ipad and even then like with ipad games you're mostly just waiting for the in-app purchases to load like you know there's not that much resource drain that's going to take advantage of an m4 you know oh i'm sure there's triple i games and four years ago that you can play on
Marco:
No, and I think maybe that's part of the reason why I've been motivated to buy any of these newer iPads, partly because, again, I'm not a very powerful iPad user.
Marco:
God, let me just vent for one second.
Marco:
So at the restaurant, I was setting up the new sound playing situation.
Marco:
So they used to have, literally, they had an iPod Touch to play music off of, just out of its headphone jack into a mixer from the 70s.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
And the staff was like, please replace that ancient iPod touch.
Marco:
They called it an iTouch, of course, but I'm like, fine.
John:
I love it.
John:
Love it.
John:
You should have recorded them saying they're the last known person to say the word iTouch in the United States.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Anyway, so...
Marco:
So I have these two apps that the iPad has to run.
Marco:
One of them controls the mixer so that they can control the volume and the inputs in the mixer.
Marco:
And the other one is just whatever is going to play the music.
Marco:
So in this case, it's that's actually kind of in flux right now.
Marco:
But I'm using this service called Sound Machine, which is this like business licensed commercial music service.
Marco:
And of course, they have their own crappy app or you can access through other crappy apps.
Marco:
everything's crappy but point is what I would have loved is to get a 11 or 13 inch you know big iPad and have these two apps running side by side in split view that way they are always available well the app that controls the mixer it only runs in portrait orientation cool yeah because it's basically a blown up iPhone it isn't actually running in the iPhone mode but it only runs in portrait and still as far as I know as far as I could tell
Marco:
In 2025, if an iPad app only will support running in portrait, even if you get a 13-inch iPad, there is no way to run two of them side by side.
Marco:
You can't, like, rotate it and just have, okay, just give me two portrait apps in landscape view.
Marco:
You can't do slide over?
Marco:
That's the temporary overlay, right?
Marco:
Yeah, it's like a floating thing.
Marco:
It slides in and out.
Marco:
I mean, I guess maybe you could, but that sucks.
Marco:
Like, who's going to, I'm not, like, the staff's not going to do that.
John:
Yeah, it obscures the app that's underneath it.
Marco:
Yeah, like I wanted it to be easy for the staff.
Marco:
And because, you know, not only are they like not all – they aren't all nerds, but they're also busy.
Marco:
So like they only – they don't have time to like go in and out of a bunch of different apps.
Marco:
So I wanted to have – and I was all prepared to get a 13-inch iPad Air for this purpose.
Marco:
But because that app for the mixer will only run in portrait –
Marco:
An iPad OS gives me no way to override that or to have two of them side by side and landscape on a giant screen.
Marco:
Then I'm like, okay, I guess I'll just get an iPad mini and leave it in portrait.
Marco:
So that's what I did.
Marco:
But it was like, I couldn't believe like still really in this year, iPad OS still doesn't let you do that.
John:
Same thing when you try to run iPhone apps like Instagram.
John:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
Your options for windowing and dealing with that are just so much more limited because it's an iPhone app.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
You know what is not limited?
Marco:
The Mac.
Marco:
Like, if I used a MacBook Air there, I could run two iPhone apps side by side and it would be fine.
Marco:
Like, why can't the newest iPads do that?
Marco:
iPadOS.
Marco:
Don't ask you to do anything complicated.
Marco:
run two apps but it can do that with other apps anyway so all that is to say I ended up with an iPad mini which is basically just a small iPad Air but I think the iPad lineup is still it's hard to justify buying the really high end ones for most people because people's needs for iPads generally are as mentioned earlier pretty low end needs most of the time
Marco:
But I'm glad the high end is there for people who want it.
Marco:
But I just think the high end used to be for more casual users also.
Marco:
And nowadays, it's just so expensive.
Marco:
But again, and then you put the iPad Air in the middle, and it's like, well, the iPad Air is in some ways a cut-down product from what used to be in those price segments.
Marco:
So I don't know.
Marco:
I'm kind of ambivalent towards the iPad Air.
Marco:
I guess what I wish mostly is that the Pro, especially the accessorized Pro,
Marco:
was not so incredibly expensive.
Marco:
But, oh well, it's Apple.
John:
I mean, I think what you really wish is that the middle thing had been dragged across more of the product feature lines.
John:
Like, if the middle one had Face ID and Promotion,
John:
but the rest of the features that were basically the same, you'd be like, oh, well, if you don't want the M4 one and you don't need OLED, get the Air because it's basically like the MacBook Air.
John:
It's non-OLED.
John:
The CPU is not as good.
John:
Maybe the Thunderbolt is slower.
John:
We make so much sense of the MacBook Pro versus the MacBook Air.
John:
We're like, yeah, that division of labor more or less makes sense.
John:
The reason it doesn't make sense between the iPad Pro and the iPad Air is because the Air is not...
John:
filling the role like we feel like certain things that should be the baseline now right and we're not saying that oled needs to be the baseline we're not saying the m4 needs to be the baseline but like face id should be and you know what i won't talk about on the mac but you know none of the macs have face id so it's fine um but it's such a glaring difference like it just i just don't think they kind of like the 16e i don't think they nailed the mix of features in the airline the price and everything of the name of it the price of it
John:
Like, most things about the product are right, but they didn't get the right ingredients in the mix.
John:
Like, I don't think it needs the M3.
John:
I think they could put an M2 in there.
John:
But if they have ProMotion, like, I don't know.
John:
It just, yeah, this line doesn't seem like it's in a great place.
John:
And like I said, I'll actually be curious to see when I do go through the exercise with my mom where we end up on the iPad.
John:
Because both my parents have...
John:
unfortunately been trained by me over many decades.
John:
Every time I now recommend a modern Apple product, they're like, I don't need the Pro?
John:
Why aren't we getting the Pro?
John:
You always told me I should get the Pro.
John:
I'm like, things have changed.
John:
Trust me, you do not need a MacBook.
John:
I've been getting the MacBook Pros because, like, they use computers for years and years, and it was real important to get them a high-spec MacBook Pro, so it would work for years and years.
John:
That's not an issue anymore.
John:
Like, the M4 MacBook Air will be fine for you, trust me.
John:
It'll be like a miracle.
John:
Like, you just...
John:
Just don't, you do not need a MacBook Pro.
John:
You don't want a MacBook Pro.
John:
This will be lighter.
John:
This will just, you know, the only thing I said, the only thing I asked them is, is your screen not bright enough for you?
John:
He said, no, it's plenty bright.
John:
I'm like MacBook Air, right?
John:
And so when we go to the iPads, what is that discussion going to be?
John:
I think they have like, I don't know if they have iPad Pros, but they have pretty good iPads for whatever decade they bought them in, right?
John:
And now it's time for a new one.
John:
Are they going to end up with the lowest end iPad because that is the only model that makes any sense?
John:
We'll see.
Marco:
All right, thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace and DeleteMe.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
One of the perks of membership is our weekly bonus topic called ATP Overtime.
Marco:
This week on Overtime, we're going to be talking about...
Marco:
The state of Siri, and is Siri falling further behind as we see things like the new Alexa announcement and some updates on rumors of Apple's Siri overhaul?
Marco:
So what's going on with Siri?
Marco:
We'll talk about that in overtime.
Marco:
You can join us to listen at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
Thanks, everybody, and we'll talk to you next week.
Music
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
John:
And if you're into mastodon, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E
Casey:
So I have a weird problem that has already been fixed and I didn't do anything.
Marco:
Should you see your doctor about it?
Right.
Casey:
So a couple of months ago,
Casey:
And unfortunately, I don't know exactly what it was.
Casey:
I think it was correlated with a point update to Aaron's phone and my phone that suddenly I was not receiving any of the pictures from her iCloud photo library or through shared iCloud photo library, any of the pictures that she took, right?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
These are pictures that her phone thinks are in the shared library.
Casey:
These are pictures that we've taken when we're standing next to each other or at home.
Casey:
Both cases, you know, they should be sent to the shared photo library.
Casey:
Again, I've verified everything.
Casey:
Everything looks good.
Casey:
This went on for like a month or two.
Casey:
And I complained about it a little bit online and asked for help and nobody had any idea.
Casey:
And then I decide to file a feedback.
Casey:
God help me.
Casey:
And, um, I had been pointed to there exist, and I forget exactly where it is.
Casey:
I'm sure you can like search for it, but there exist, um,
Casey:
profiles that you can download, you know, the same sort of profile you would use for like getting access to corporate stuff or whatever the case may be.
Casey:
You can download a profile or certain betas.
Casey:
Yeah, I think that's right.
Casey:
Um, so anyways, uh, you can download profiles for each of the different platforms that will do a lot more logging around photos specifically.
Um,
Casey:
And then getting that log file out can be a bit of an adventure.
Casey:
But I did this for a couple of days.
Casey:
And I did it on Aaron's phone and on my phone.
Casey:
And I'm going to butcher the details as to where you go.
Casey:
But off the top of my head, you go into settings and then like privacy.
Casey:
And then there's like analytics data or something like that.
Casey:
And you can search, thankfully, for photos.
Casey:
And so I did all that and I went to go airdrop my log.
Casey:
And when I did that on Aaron's phone, settings crashed.
Casey:
So then I tried to do the same thing on my phone.
Casey:
I will give you one guess what happened.
Casey:
Settings crashed.
Casey:
So great.
Casey:
So now, next thing I know, I'm hooking up the fanciest USB-C Thunderbolt cable I can find just to make sure I get as much bandwidth as I can to my Mac.
Casey:
And I'm syncing to my Mac.
Casey:
I'm partying like it's 2009 all over again.
Casey:
And I'm syncing to my Mac and it takes freaking forever despite using like that $100 Apple Thunderbolt cable, which I think is overkill because I think it's only USB, whatever the USB rates are, are lower than the Thunderbolt cable.
Casey:
It doesn't matter.
Casey:
I just wanted to get the best cable I could find.
Casey:
Takes freaking forever for both these things to sync.
Casey:
then at least there's a PDF that Apple provides that shows you exactly where to go to find the log file.
Casey:
And it turns out these log files are like gigs each, which is both alarming and potentially useful.
Casey:
So I go to file my feedback and I attach these log files to my feedback.
Casey:
And I upload them on my symmetric gigabit internet connection.
Casey:
And feedback assistant says, they didn't upload.
Casey:
I mean, I saw you using, thanks to iStatMenus, John, I saw my computer uploading hundreds of megabytes worth of stuff, probably thousands of megabytes worth of stuff.
Casey:
And yet feedback assistant says, nope, not going to work.
Casey:
Can I do anything about that?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
No, can't.
Casey:
Just try again.
Casey:
And then I try again.
Casey:
Is there a progress meter?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
Do I know if it worked or not?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
Can I do anything about this?
Casey:
Hell no.
Casey:
So I have a feedback.
Casey:
I'm not even going to link the freaking thing in the show notes because it's useless.
Casey:
If you happen to work for Apple and would like to see the feedback number, reach out.
Casey:
I'm happy to send it to you.
John:
Why don't you put them up on Google Drive and put a link to the Google Drive in the feedback text?
Casey:
Because I don't use Google Drive.
Casey:
And either way, I don't think anyone will ever look at this anyhow.
Casey:
So why bother?
Casey:
I've already done hours of unpaid labor for Apple.
Casey:
I'm not doing more hours.
John:
You're trying to fix your own problem in this case.
Casey:
Well, but then all of a sudden around the, I don't think it was because of the profiles, but around the time I was doing this whole dance, it started working again.
Casey:
Did I do anything?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
Did they do anything on the iCloud side?
Casey:
Maybe.
Casey:
Who frigging knows?
Casey:
But it's all working again.
Casey:
But how freaking, have we ever talked about that feedback assistant and the whole bug reporting process may not be up to snuff?
Casey:
Maybe we should talk about that sometime.
Casey:
We can do a member special about feedback assistant, which will basically just be Marco bleeping me for an hour and a half straight.
Marco:
Honestly, I don't know why you put yourself through that anymore.
Casey:
Because I'm an idiot, Marco.
Casey:
Because I'm an idiot.
Marco:
Look, Apple has proven... Look, if you are hearing this as somebody who works in Apple and you're about to yell at me how much it matters, look, I appreciate that that's how you see it, but that's not how it is to the outside.
Marco:
To the outside world, it is extremely apparent we should not waste our time filing feedbacks.
Marco:
The way Apple treats the outside world from the feedback system is hostile at best and certainly makes it very clear to us that we are wasting our time by using it.
Marco:
So honestly, don't put yourself through this trouble.
Marco:
Just don't file feedbacks.
Marco:
Let Apple do their own QA work or improve their system so that it actually is worth it for us.
Marco:
Right now, they're doing either of those things.
Casey:
Yeah, but I mean, I wanted this to be fixed for me.
Casey:
So I thought, all right, if this is how I pay to play, then this is what I'll do.
Casey:
But you know what, Marco?
Casey:
I'm a frigging idiot because I shouldn't have even bothered.
Casey:
Oh, it makes me so mad.
Casey:
Now, the good news is it fixed itself.
Casey:
But the bad news is I went through hours of unpaid labor.
Casey:
Like genuinely, this is stuff I wouldn't have done if I wasn't kind of hinted that this is what I need to do to get help.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
I wouldn't have bothered.
Casey:
And this probably took me a couple hours.
Casey:
And let me tell you, my rates on the extremely rare occasion I do consulting are pretty lucrative.
Casey:
This was hundreds of dollars of work I did for Apple for nothing.
Casey:
And it just drives me absolutely bananas.
Marco:
This is hundreds of dollars of work that you threw away?
Marco:
Yes!
Marco:
On something that you knew didn't work?
Marco:
Yes, because I'm a moron!
Marco:
Honestly, so, okay...
Marco:
Listeners, I hope you've heard me over the years.
Marco:
I hope that you know that in general I'm not a super selfish person.
Marco:
I don't think I am.
Marco:
I think I try to be a good citizen of the world in a lot of ways that I can be.
Marco:
But when it comes to feedback assistant, I have to always tell myself, someone else will probably file this bug.
Marco:
I don't need to be the one wasting my time because odds are this thing I'm seeing, someone else will see it.
Marco:
I'm even like right now I'm on the iOS beta for I think it's 18.4 now.
Marco:
I'm on the beta and this beta is terrible.
Marco:
This is one of the buggiest point update betas I've had in years.
Marco:
It's horrendous.
Marco:
And I decided, I'm just going to get off the beta.
Marco:
What am I doing?
Marco:
The only reason I've used the betas is, A, to be able to see things and maybe talk about them on the show, which I'm pretty sure we're not actually supposed to be doing anyway.
Marco:
But B, I always thought, well, if my app breaks in weird, subtle ways on the beta, I will see it and maybe be able to issue an update to avoid the problem before the release comes out.
Marco:
But that hasn't happened in years.
Marco:
A point update breaking my app in a way that wasn't just fixed in the next beta has not happened in such a long time that I'm like, why am I doing this for them and making my phone less reliable and frustrating myself sometimes like when I hit some bug or something works worse than it did before?
Marco:
Why am I doing that?
Marco:
Like, again, like the relationship between Apple and us, I think, is very clear in recent times that like, you know, we are simply a resource that they mine.
Marco:
So why am I carrying their water?
Marco:
Why am I doing their free QA for them?
Marco:
Why am I running their betas and why am I filing feedbacks when they're very clear to us what we mean to them?
Marco:
So I will present the same question back to you.
Marco:
Like, why do you feel the need to file bug reports when you know that odds are it will end in you being frustrated and having wasted your time and probably not achieving anything that's visible to you?
John:
In this situation, the only person who could help him, the only entity that could help him was Apple.
John:
Right.
John:
Because it's Apple stuff that's broken, probably something on the server side.
John:
They're the only ones that can fix it.
John:
So if you want someone to fix it, that someone has to be Apple.
John:
And the only way to have any chance of getting Apple to fix something for you, I guess you could go through phone support, which, good luck, that probably would have taken you more hours and be less productive.
John:
Or you can file feedbacks.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And the thing of it is, is that there's nothing actionable within the device because I can't go see a log.
Casey:
I can't go look at network status.
Casey:
I can't go.
John:
Can't hit the big refresh button.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
There's nothing I can do.
John:
Can't clear the cache.
Casey:
Mm-hmm.
Casey:
And so, I mean, if you freaking write me and say sign out of your Apple ID, everyone is writing you to tell you to sign out of your Apple ID.
Casey:
No thanks.
Casey:
I will find you and punch you in the throat because that's not happening.
Casey:
And, and honestly, it shouldn't have to.
John:
And, and it probably wouldn't fix it anyway.
John:
So someone just posted about that.
John:
It's like everyone telling them to sign out of their Apple ID.
John:
So they finally did it.
John:
And it just made the problem worse.
John:
Hours and hours of trying to restore stuff.
Casey:
I think it was Dr. Drang, but either way, no, it's just, no, I'm not doing that and I shouldn't have to.
Casey:
And it's just so frustrating because this, to John's point, this was the only avenue I had.
Casey:
I mean, I guess I could have gone spelunking in console with Aaron's device connected to my computer, but like, again, no, I'm not doing free labor for Apple or unpaid labor for Apple.
Casey:
It's just...
Casey:
No.
Casey:
And the thing of it is, it was just insulting.
Casey:
Maybe not insulting, but I can think of a better word.
Casey:
It was insulting at every step of the way.
Casey:
Can I do anything to look into this as a technical user?
Casey:
As an iOS developer, can I really do anything to look into this?
Casey:
I mean, I guess I could have poured through their ridiculously verbose debug output through console.
Casey:
But effectively, no.
Casey:
Was there any way to manage this on device?
Casey:
Not really.
Casey:
Okay, so then I want to go and I want to get the logs, which is a pain in the butt.
Casey:
I mean, I get why it's a pain in the butt, but it's a pain in the butt.
Casey:
And then I go to try to collect the logs and settings crashed.
Casey:
Then I go to try to collect the logs and I have to connect to my computer like a barbarian.
Casey:
Then I go to upload it to their bespoke...
Casey:
First-party app running on their operating system, and it doesn't work.
Casey:
It doesn't work three times in a row.
Casey:
Does it tell me anything about why?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
Can I do anything about it?
Casey:
Absolutely not.
Casey:
It's just bananas, and it's just frustrating.
Casey:
Now, again, it fixed itself, which is all that really matters in the end of the day, but it's just so very, very frustrating.
Marco:
But this is the thing.
Marco:
And I would even say maybe looking at it as unpaid labor, that actually is not quite, I think, productive.
Marco:
Because there are many cases in which, yeah, if I have an actual bug, I would actually pay to get it fixed.
Marco:
But it's not so much that it's unpaid as much as wasted and unappreciated.
Marco:
Because the signal that we get from Apple from the outside, even though, again, yes, Apple employee listening to this,
Marco:
We hear you that it really makes a difference.
Marco:
And maybe for bugs that get to you and your team, that might be true.
Marco:
That's not the common case.
Marco:
And from the outside, it's very clear to us that the bugs we file are most of the time not even looked at.
Marco:
And if we do luck out and one of them does get looked at and get a response...
Marco:
The response is almost always so dismissive and obviously trying to just mass close bugs without doing anything that it makes it's very clear to us.
Marco:
What it communicates to us is our work is not being looked at.
Marco:
Our work is not being valued.
Marco:
Our work is not being taken seriously.
Marco:
And the people who are screening the bugs are just trying to go through the numbers and clear them out.
Marco:
That's how it looks to us the vast majority of the time.
Marco:
And that's, again, even if we get a response, that's what it is.
Marco:
Most bugs I have filed never got a response of any kind.
Marco:
Just sit there open forever.
Marco:
So it's very clear to us, not so much that our work is unpaid, but that our work is fruitless, that our work is pointless, that we are the chumps for even having devoted any time to this whatsoever.
Marco:
So, again, I ask you, Casey, I mean, I know you knew this already before this.
Marco:
I would strongly suggest just set that bag of rocks down and walk away.
John:
Like, this is no longer... Wait around for it to solve itself?
John:
Yes, because that is probably what happened.
John:
no well so i will give the counter example of like oh i don't need to file this because somebody else will i'm the somebody else um not not not really like actually sometimes when i look at a bug i think to myself no one else is gonna file this like no one else will so if i want apple to know about this and no one else is gonna file it i have to do it now that's rare most of the time you're right if there's some api bug someone else is gonna find it it's gonna be filed it'll be fine
John:
But not always the case.
John:
Here's the other thing.
John:
If only you file it, will they care and will they actually fix it?
John:
Well, I mean, you should, if you remember the show, which Casey certainly doesn't, but you might, Marco.
John:
What bug am I thinking of?
Marco:
Oh, your window performance dragging thing?
John:
Open up a lot of windows, performance falls off a cliff when more than one user is logged in.
Marco:
I'm the only one who's going to find that bug, let's be honest.
Marco:
Okay, but if you didn't complain on a podcast for a month about that, would that have gotten fixed?
Marco:
Not a chance in hell.
John:
right but i'm the only one i'm the only one who filed it you understand like they fixed it based on my bug you filed it and then you announced it on a podcast for a month like that's what got it fixed sure but but the point is if i didn't do that this would never have gotten fixed because it wasn't just talking about in a podcast it gets it fixed they do need a feedback to actually do stuff about it who else is going to find multiple users logged in in bazillion windows i'm that's me i'm the guy who finds that bug no you know what's great actually if you just complain on a podcast about it for enough
Marco:
Somebody in Apple who's getting paid to work at Apple files it themselves.
Marco:
So you don't have to file it?
John:
I don't think that anyone ever would have filed this because I don't think they could reproduce it because I don't think they really understood the problem and neither did I until I did it.
John:
So anyway, in those scenarios where I feel like this is not going to be found by anybody else.
John:
I need to file this.
John:
It wasn't particularly burdensome to file it.
John:
And I think I filed it multiple times.
John:
And I, myself, was narrowing down what is the deal with the bug.
John:
Do I have bad hardware?
John:
Is my video card bad?
John:
Do I have some kind of corruption?
John:
Is it an OS bug?
John:
Blah, blah, blah.
John:
Like, it took a while for me to narrow it down as well.
John:
But I did, in some scenarios...
John:
This is the only like it's the only I'm not going to fix this myself.
John:
Right.
John:
If I you know, when I eventually determined trying on a different Mac, it's still there.
John:
It's not the OS, tried OS versions, clean install.
John:
Like I did all the things I could do locally at a certain point.
John:
It's like I can't fix this.
John:
This is Apple's.
John:
It's a problem with Apple software.
John:
And I've narrowed it down enough to be able to file it.
John:
It did get fixed eventually.
John:
Yes, the podcast obviously helped a huge amount, but I feel like if I did not file this and I merely talked about it on the podcast, it would not have been fixed.
John:
And certainly if I didn't talk about it on the podcast, absolutely, this would not have gotten fixed because who is even going to find this book?
John:
so you know it's it's mostly fruitless i did file i had a list of when i was doing you know hyperspace development i have a you know a note with the running list of bugs i need to file and i filed about half of them um i have another half that i may or may not get to i got responses about one of the ones that i didn't file believe it or not because i just talked about it in a place where apple people could see it and they were curious about it and the reason i didn't file well two reasons one you know i'm busy doing development i'm like like
John:
I don't consider it unpaid labor, but it is time that I would take away from doing development.
John:
And right now it's more important for me to do development and make a note of myself.
John:
Mental note, if you get above this and you feel like you're finally in a good place with the app, you should probably file this bug, this bug, this bug, and this bug.
John:
But one of the ones that I talked about frustratingly in front of some people who happen to be Apple people,
John:
I tried to make a minimal reproduction, you know, start a new project, blah, blah, blah, do the bug, and couldn't reproduce it.
John:
So that one definitely goes in the pile of, well, I'll get to that one later if I want.
John:
But someone from Apple contacted me about that and said, hey, I heard you talk about this bug.
John:
Did you file a feedback for it?
John:
I said, no, because I can't reproduce it.
John:
But I described it to them and I said, good luck.
John:
and so i may eventually file that if i can narrow it down because i do like helping people fix bugs uh even if they're not my bugs but uh yeah you really have to decide what is a good use of your time if it's a bug that someone else is going to file or if it's the ones i didn't do it didn't file or haven't done anything about i worked around them in my app that's what we all do you find something that doesn't behave the way you expect you do a workaround you find some way to make the app
John:
do something sane.
John:
You put a big scary comment that says, I'm doing this because X, Y, and Z. Maybe Apple will fix this someday.
John:
You know, XXX to do whatever you want to do to mark it later.
John:
You can remove this when Apple fixes this bug and then you move on with your life.
John:
Because you can't every time you find a bug, like...
John:
do an exhaustive feedback and file it and wait for a response and it's just that's not productive so i think there's a balance to be struck between when is it time to file a bug is it really fast and easy to file this bug fire and forget and you just like hope it does something you're just voting with a bug filing a dupe or is it something that only you are ever going to find is only important to you or is it something that's just going to be taking too much time away from what you're actually trying to do in which case maybe write a two-sentence note and then move on with your life
Casey:
All right, so what's your deal, John?
John:
I think I've talked before about how I have speakers connected to my computer, but I turn them off all the time.
John:
They're just not on.
John:
So my computer makes no noise.
John:
That's mostly the way I like it.
John:
It's very much unlike the way Marco uses his computer.
Casey:
Wait, what noise is made when the speakers are on?
John:
Beeps.
Casey:
Oh, good grief.
John:
The system beep?
John:
I mean, I don't know what noise is your computer with.
Casey:
I thought you meant like you could hear a hum, you freaking bat.
Casey:
But no, I understand.
John:
No, like the audio from a YouTube video.
John:
You know, music.
John:
Audio from your Mac.
Casey:
So you just sit there in silence, generally speaking?
John:
Uh, yeah.
John:
Um, but anyway, I do have speakers connected.
John:
It's the polar opposite of how I use a computer.
John:
Yeah, I know.
John:
It's the opposite of your whole life, Casey.
John:
You have music playing all the time.
John:
We've established this.
John:
But, you know, when I do want to hear audio of watching a YouTube video or, you know, um, playing the rare case I play music, I do have speakers connected.
John:
Uh, but obviously I don't care about those speakers because I basically never use them.
John:
I was trying to figure out how old my current speakers are and I just...
John:
I couldn't find them.
John:
They're not in my Amazon order history.
John:
There's no receipts in my email.
John:
I don't, I honestly, I think I might've bought these in person.
John:
This is the problem with really old purchases, kids.
John:
Sometimes we used to buy things in person in stores and there's no record of that unless you're one of those people who obsessively like scans your receipts and I am not.
John:
Um, so as far as I could tell based on my photo library, which is the only actual life stream like record of my life, the oldest picture I could find of these speakers sitting on my desk was more than 16 years old.
John:
so i've had these speakers for 16 years they are cruddy uh creative gigaworks t40 speakers not the t42s uh normal numeral two but the plain old t40s they've got two very small mid-range drivers and a tiny tweeter between them in a vertical arrangement they're top ported they connect with a headphone jack there's a dc plug that goes into one of them and then there's a thing that connects the other speaker
John:
They have dials in the front of them.
John:
They have an on and off switch on the back, bass treble adjustments and volume.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
These are OK.
Marco:
I love speakers enough that I'm willing to forgive certain aesthetic sins because they sound good.
Marco:
These would have to sound really good.
John:
So that's the thing about the speakers.
John:
Anyway, what's going on with these?
John:
You're seeing them without the grills in them where you can see the stupid yellow speaker cons.
John:
Remember, not the T42s, not the T40 Series 2, not the Roman numeral 2, the plain old T40, which looked similar but not exactly the same.
John:
But anyway, they started just spraying static at me in a very unpleasant way.
John:
uh so they're telling me we are not working i wanted to confirm that they're not working because like maybe it's the power cable maybe it's my mac maybe it's this right so i all i need to do they take a headphone jack in the back all i need to do is play some music into these speakers with a different cable connected to a different device should be easy right not when nobody's home because every other device i have in the house is usbc and they only have lightning to headphone adapters
John:
I was thought of using my daughter's insane CD player, but I don't think that is a headphone jack.
John:
And anyway, anyway, um, I ended up scavenging a, uh, you know, headphone to headphone wire from my like airplane, uh, uh,
John:
noise-canceling headphone bag i found a lightning to headphone adapter i grabbed an old lightning ipad out of the attic and charged it i put it in connected it to the speakers and they're broken i mean they uh it's the speakers it's not my mac it's not the wire the speakers in a particular frequency range uh produce very awful static uh and so they need to be replaced so
John:
uh it's time for me to be looking at computer speakers which one of the things i do not look at constantly unlike televisions and cars and other things like that so i did not know exactly what i would be getting to replace them because i really don't care about speakers and despite what marco just said one of the most important criteria for someone who doesn't care about speakers like me for the speakers to be on my desk is their footprint which i want to be small to reflect how important i think they are and how they look and although these are not beautiful speakers
John:
I think they look okay.
John:
With the grills in the front, they're vertical slabs.
John:
They lean back a little bit.
John:
They're dark colored.
John:
They don't stick out too much.
John:
The problem with all of the quote unquote good speakers, which people would argue any powered speaker is not a good speaker or whatever.
John:
The problem with higher quality powered speakers that you can connect to your computer is I find so many of them so ugly.
Marco:
Just so ugly.
Marco:
To be fair, that is true.
John:
I cannot tolerate how... And I know it's like, why are you picking speakers based on how they look?
John:
You listen to them, you don't have to look at them, but I do have to look at them.
Marco:
Yeah, they're right next to your screen.
Marco:
They're within your field of view all the time.
John:
Yeah, like, I don't just... I either want them to just, like...
John:
be unobtrusive but just not ugly and some of these just bother me like the shape of them bothers me so much so I was really just narrowing the field based on what can I tolerate the appearance of that doesn't take up too much room and that really gets you into the territory of just terrible speakers as you can imagine
John:
like the ones I currently have.
John:
Cause like I'm not picking based on sound criteria.
John:
Anyway, I did eventually find myself being herded towards some speakers that I can tolerate the appearance of.
John:
They are kind of small and I want, I'm not, I didn't buy anything yet.
John:
I wanted to talk about this in this show just so people who own these speakers can tell me what they think of them.
John:
Here are the two choices.
John:
These are from the company Kanto K NTO.
John:
I have some speaker stands from them that are very nice that are holding up some speakers around my TV and
John:
They also make a bunch of powered speakers.
John:
They make a line called the Aura O-R-A.
John:
I don't know how you're supposed to say it.
John:
They make the Kanto Aura and the Kanto Aura 4.
John:
4 is just no space.
John:
Kanto O-R-A 4.
John:
These are basically the same speaker.
John:
The 4s have a bigger woofer and therefore are bigger speakers.
John:
Uh, if that was really the only difference, no brainer.
John:
Kanto Aura.
John:
I should just get that one because I don't need it bigger.
John:
Smaller is better for me.
John:
Small footprint.
John:
They basically look the same, but the Aura 4s are just bigger.
John:
Why would I get them?
John:
And the why is because as much as I don't care about speakers, uh, they know how to get me on these things.
John:
The Aura
John:
Aura 4s support 24 bit slash 96 kilohertz and 16 bit slash 48 kilohertz.
John:
And I know I won't be able to hear that, especially on a terrible quality speaker like this.
John:
Like, why do we even care?
John:
But it bothers me.
John:
Oh, and by the way, the Aura 4s, 50 bucks more than the Aura.
John:
it's like well why would anyone buy the aura oh well what if you want it to be 0.9 inches narrower i do kind of want it to be narrow anyway i am leaning towards the aura 4 uh just for that reason and you know presumably they will sound better because they do have a bigger woofer and maybe i can get away with not having a subwoofer when i play video games that's the other time i turn the speakers on playing video games um
John:
So the only downside I know about them is they do not have any kind of adjustment on the speaker for bass and treble and stuff, which I can EQ on the computer or on the source, which is probably what you're supposed to do anyway or whatever.
John:
But for a casual person like me, I kind of like having bass and treble, especially because some of the reports have been that the Aura 4
John:
is a little bassier than the aura and i don't need bassier in my life i do like the subwoofer for like the little kick during video games of explosions and you know guns going off and stuff but anyway if you own either the canto aura or the canto aura 4 and you either like it or don't like it uh send me some email toot me on mastodon tell me what you think of them uh and again mostly what i'm picking these on is because i can tolerate the appearance and also because they're they're powered they're usb so it'll be digital audio going for my mac instead of uh
John:
analog which which appeals to me they do support a sub out which i probably won't buy a sub with them but if i want a sub i like that i can just connect one to it that's what i'm leaning towards haven't bought anything yet please send me your feedback if you own the canto aura and or aura 4 and what you think about them
Marco:
All right, so I do want to give two little bits of data points here.
Marco:
Number one, I actually did look at Canto a while back, and I briefly owned one of their subwoofers.
Marco:
I also tried out the Canto Tuk, or Tuk, the T-U-K model, which is their higher-end model speaker.
Marco:
I actually ended up returning those because I thought they did not sound like their price.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
The subwoofer, I thought, was a little bit closer to a good value, but my opinion of them at the time was I think they were more of a design brand than an audio brand, if that...
Marco:
To put it nicely, because they do look nice.
Marco:
I found them in person to be a little bit cheap looking and feeling, but they do.
Marco:
I mean, they're inexpensive speakers.
John:
I mean, the exception of the expensive one that you got, like most of their speakers are inexpensive.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
So, you know, so go into it with that in mind.
Marco:
I mean, compared to what you're coming from, I'm sure it will be an upgrade.
Marco:
As for the subwoofer and bass claims, the Aura 4 has a four inch woofer.
Marco:
You're going to want a subwoofer if you care about bass.
Marco:
A 4-inch driver in general on a speaker, you can get some bass out of that, but not a lot.
Marco:
To get good bass out of a speaker driver, you generally need to be bigger.
John:
It's a way bigger cone than is on my current speaker.
John:
It's way bigger.
John:
That's true, yeah.
John:
And you currently don't have a subwoofer, right?
John:
No, I did for a while, but it was so bad, I just disconnected it because it was just not worth it.
John:
Like the problem is these speakers don't really support a subwoofer.
John:
When I had the subwoofer, it was that weird arrangement where like the audio goes from the computer into the subwoofer and the subwoofer does like the crossover sort of.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And then it has an output to the speakers.
John:
Yeah, that's common.
John:
But yeah.
John:
But anyway, the Auras do actually, they do auto crossover themselves like 80 kilohertz if you connect a subwoofer or 80 hertz.
John:
Sorry.
John:
If you connect a subwoofer to them.
John:
And so like, yeah, I'm not, this is not, this is not going to be neutral audio.
John:
It's not going to be good audio.
John:
Like I'm not looking for that.
John:
It's just, I want them to look nice on my desk to sound better than what I have, uh, and to not take up too much room.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, if you can get yourself into the subwoofer lifestyle, I think you'll be able to even better optimize for the other factors you care about.
Marco:
Because to get like any kind of bass that actually sounds like full range sound, you're generally looking at like a five inch driver at least.
Marco:
I mean, you can get it without it.
John:
I have a subwoofer attached to all my game consoles for that very reason.
John:
Tiny little satellite speakers, big subwoofer, you get the good game sound.
Marco:
Right, exactly.
Marco:
Once you get a subwoofer in the system, then you can have the small desktop speakers on top that are pretty and tiny, and you lose a lot less of the overall sound when you have that kind of setup.
Marco:
But that being said, this was like a fine choice.
Marco:
Again, huge upgrade from what you're coming from, and given your state of preferences and what you want to spend and how much you care about certain things, I mean...
Marco:
i think the the 24 bitness of it is comical in this category of product why would they not put that in the small one you obviously have the chip does it cost two cents more just put it in it's i mean it could be just like a chip generation kind of thing but i mean you would not like the difference in noise floor that the extra four bits of sampling resolution gets you no it's not it's not it's not gonna make a difference this is entirely like getting the getting the cpu where all the parts work because it makes you feel better
Marco:
No, it's not like that, because at least then you're getting more resources.
Marco:
In this, you literally cannot – like, not only can your ear not – My computer won't even be putting out that audio anyway.
Marco:
But if you think – so, okay, what – the bit depth of sound –
Marco:
What that gives you is more dynamic range before you hit the noise floor.
Marco:
And already, 16 bits gives you, I think, something like 100 decibels of dynamic range.
Marco:
And 24 bits extends out to 120 or something.
Marco:
I forget the exact numbers, but it's something like that.
Marco:
But the thing is, not only can the human ear not hear that difference, but these speakers probably can't produce that difference.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
So you're very unlikely to have that matter at all, literally in any way.
Marco:
It's not like you have one fewer CPU core.
Marco:
It's like if the CPUs computed five extra zeros on the end of every integer just for fun.
John:
It was like the good feeling that you get that the other parts will work better because it had all the other things working on it that it's less likely to have a flaw or something.
John:
But anyway, yeah.
John:
The other thing about this, the R4, it's like a little bit less than an inch wider and it's actually shorter than the current speaker.
John:
So it's not that much bigger.
John:
I figured it would give me a little bit more bass to maybe tide me over longer without a subwoofer.
John:
Like I said, the cones on these things are like one and a half inches or something.
John:
But it's still an upgrade.
John:
And you may be asking yourself, why don't you get the GigaWorks T40 Series 2?
John:
It's entirely because of the stupid little stand they have underneath them.
John:
I think that makes them look uglier.
John:
And also, I do want something better than I had before.
John:
I do want to actually upgrade.
John:
So that's why I'm just not getting essentially the same speaker as I have.
John:
Over 16 years is a good run for some cruddy little computer speakers that actually for their size and price that I got these for, I think this is like a less than $100 speaker that I bought ages ago.
John:
They were probably like $70 or $80 when I bought them, maybe less.
John:
Phenomenal sound for a $70 or $80 powered computer speaker.
John:
Like incredible bargain.
John:
They don't sound good, but it's like 70 bucks.
John:
I mean, what do you expect?
John:
Like they're siblings in the same price range where they're like those disgusting white PC speakers that you get with like your Gateway 2000, which is garbage.
John:
I had those.
John:
They were garbage.
Marco:
So bad.
Marco:
I had them too.
John:
I had them attached to my Mac and I can tell you they were in the same price class as these things and these are so much better.
John:
So kudos to creative for filling a price point with speakers that were just so much better than everybody else's.
John:
But now I am graduating upwards to more expensive speakers.
Marco:
Maybe.
Marco:
See, I think you should go retro.
Marco:
Go for those clear soundstick things that came on Macs.
John:
The soundsticks.
John:
I was never a fan of those.
John:
I think Stephen Hackett still has them.
John:
I don't know if she's still using them.
John:
I was never a fan of the Harman Kardon soundsticks and the Jellyfish sub.
John:
What about the little ball ones that looked at you?
John:
The spheres?
John:
Yeah.
John:
those spheres weren't bad i had them when i reviewed the g4 cube uh they had those they came with it as like part of the whole big package setup they were pretty good for like single driver little round speakers uh they and like that clear case there it was like apple quality like the clear case that they came in was solid enough it actually was a pretty sturdy case a lot of speaker quality actually has to do with the case for people who don't know about speakers believe it or not the case
John:
It significantly affects the speaker.
John:
And so when you can make a solid one, it does help.
John:
But in the end, they were one tiny driver.
John:
So what do you expect?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
One thing that you will probably also encounter here, one thing I've noticed a lot is that speaker engineering and speaker technology –
Marco:
has really come a long way in the last five to 10 years.
Marco:
Like, speakers that used to seem really good or used to sound really good compared to their peers, like, 10 to 20 years ago, like, they did back then, but compared to a modern, even like a mid-range modern speaker...
Marco:
Modern speakers, largely, not all of them, but many of them are just so much better than speakers used to be.
Marco:
And part of that is, yes, they are now often doing DSP and kind of equalizing the sound to sound better on them to make up for their flaws.
Marco:
There's pluses and minuses to that, but that's fine.
Marco:
Also, just because of advances in engineering, we're able to engineer better enclosures.
Marco:
Like John was just saying, the enclosure around a speaker matters a lot for the sound.
Marco:
It affects how the air moves in the speaker, how resonances occur, and reflections and distortions.
Marco:
It makes a pretty big difference.
Marco:
Well, there's been so many advances in speaker design and technology over the last few decades that...
Marco:
People are 3D printing insides of cases to minimize reflections and all sorts of fun techniques like that.
Marco:
Speakers have come a long way, way more than you might assume in the last five or ten years.
Marco:
Modern speakers are really, in many cases, a pretty big step above what we used to have.
Marco:
That's impressive because what we used to have was also really good, but they're even better now.
John:
oh that's another another thing that i'm looking for when i was looking at the speakers is the wires that come out of the back of them can't be humongous which you think wouldn't be a big deal especially if you're thinking of passive speakers but remember these are powered speakers and usually the power only goes to one speaker so you somehow have to get both sound and power to the other speaker and the the speakers that i prefer for my gaming consoles i like them because they're cheap and they sound good enough for games and they have strong bass but the
John:
the cable that connects from one speaker to the other is like, like a garden hose.
Casey:
Like, I don't know.
Casey:
Who cares?
Casey:
Why does that matter?
John:
Because I have to take, I have to position the speaker, like a left speaker has to be positioned to my left and the right speaker has to be positioned to my right.
John:
So I have to get this garden hose like cable that has to come from somewhere and
John:
and go pretty far to the left for the left speaker.
John:
And it doesn't want to... It's like, think of trying to manipulate a garden hose full of water.
John:
It doesn't want to be cable managed in any way.
John:
It wants to be this giant snake that's just like, you can't bend me.
John:
It's just, I don't know what's in it.
John:
It's incredibly thick.
John:
Like, it's thicker.
John:
I'm trying to think of the equivalent.
John:
There is no equivalent cable.
John:
It is thicker.
John:
It is as thick as my outdoor extension cord.
John:
That's how thick it is.
Marco:
Think about an outdoor rated extension cord.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
Oftentimes, I have seen that cable be just an Ethernet cable.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
No, you're thinking of the KEF things because you're a fancy boy.
John:
No, but even other ones.
Marco:
I used to have a little Class D amp that did that same thing between its things.
Marco:
I've seen that.
Marco:
Oftentimes, the cable that goes between the speakers on a powered speaker set, oftentimes it is Ethernet in some form.
John:
power ethernet for the power and then audio like yeah ethernet is common the other one at least at least it uses you know it uses rj45 and and you know cat six cables like it's not it might not be the ethernet protocol and you can pick whatever cable you want it could be nice and flexible you can use flat cables yada yada the the the canto or is used what basically looks like a four pin serial connector um and the wire is thin ish you know it's not bad it's
John:
uh the current my current one that i have my current cheap speakers essentially use what looks like speaker wire to connect the non-powered speaker so that's basically the best you're going to get i don't didn't expect that but um because it's analog right everything's analog in this thing it's analog audio going into it it's analog audio going between them i believe on the auras it certainly is digital going into the back because i'm going to be connecting it with usbc and then i believe it is digital from speaker to speaker as well oh no there must be power as well so
John:
Anyway, we'll see how it goes.
John:
But the point is, it's not a garden hose.
John:
I should take a picture of it and send it to you.
John:
Maybe it's not as big as outdoor extension cord.
John:
Maybe it's indoor extension cord.
John:
But it is monstrously thick and does not want to be cable managed.
John:
Because the peakers are so small, too.
John:
Like when you try to pull the speaker towards you and it slides back because the cable doesn't want to make the 90 degree off the end of the desk.
John:
Like that's how ornery these cables are.
It's real bad.
John:
Speakers are nice, though.
John:
I forget which I have.
John:
I have, like, some kind of Logitech, like, Dolby THX.
John:
It's just for gaming.
John:
It's, like, it does not realistic sound, but the on-desk speakers are small, and the subwoofer is not too big and unobtrusive, and it's real cheap to get the setup, but I've bought two of these so far.
John:
Despite the fact that the stupid potentiometer or whatever the hell it is that is the volume knob gets staticky after a while, and I have to spray, like, an electrical contact cleaner into it, still, still I bought a second one even knowing that.
John:
It's kind of like my cheese grater.
Ha ha!
Well,