Do a Barrel Roll!
Marco:
I have rewired my entire desk, and I'm so happy.
Marco:
Oh, no.
Marco:
This has been maybe two weeks in the making because – and we've talked about this before, so I'll be quick.
Marco:
But listeners, if you missed it the last time we talked about this, the secret to clean, nice wiring –
Marco:
is to get the shortest wires you can that will fit the purpose.
Marco:
Because what so much wire clutter is, is basically you have excess wire that you have to either bundle up and tie with a cable tie or whatever.
Marco:
You've got to bunch up excess wire.
Marco:
So the good thing is, these days, so many products have standard connectors, whether it's the power plug with those standard IEC things, or obviously USB-C and various USBs.
Marco:
you can just go on Amazon and buy short versions of all of those things for almost no money.
Marco:
So measure how long you need a cable to be and then go to Amazon and put in your cart the shortest length that will be a little bit longer than how long it needs to be just to allow like bending radius and stuff.
Marco:
That makes everything so much easier.
Marco:
So now I have a very nice, clean layout.
Marco:
I did have to, also as part of this project, I did have to add some openings to my desk.
Marco:
I guess some might call them holes.
Marco:
Oh my.
Marco:
But it turns out, look, people out there, if you are not that handy like me, I'm not handy.
Marco:
I'm not a woodworker.
Marco:
My desk, I really like my desk and want it to remain looking nice.
Marco:
But
Marco:
You know those circular covers with little pass-throughs for wires that many desks have, like two of them that look kind of like small cup holders?
Marco:
Those are called grommets.
Marco:
And you can go on Amazon and you can buy desk grommets for nothing.
Marco:
You can also – many people like me are handy enough to operate a drill but not to actually do woodworking.
Marco:
Well, let me introduce you to the hole saw.
Marco:
The hole saw is a drill attachment that just creates round holes in things, and it's super easy to use.
Marco:
It's just like drilling.
Marco:
Even people like me can use a hole saw –
Marco:
to add grommets into desks, shelves, other wooden items in your house or office to have nice wire pass-throughs.
Marco:
And so the combination of adding holes and buying short cables has finally led me to a wonderful desk wiring experience.
Marco:
And so I'm talking to you now through all new wires and holes, and hopefully I wired everything correctly and we won't have me turning into Casey from last week's bootleg.
John:
Let's hope not.
John:
Tune in next week when Marco discovers the C-clamp.
John:
Hole saws.
John:
Amazing.
Casey:
All right, let's do some follow-up just a little bit since this is an event episode.
Casey:
Amanda writes in, I've taken a stab at calculating the inflation-adjusted market price for the RAM in the starter model of Mac laptop between 1999 and 2024, though finding good data sources is difficult.
Casey:
There is a chart.
Casey:
We will put a link to this toot in the show notes, which has the chart, or I shouldn't say a chart.
Casey:
It's a graph, really.
Casey:
And hopefully Marco will make this the chapter art when he edits it.
Casey:
But John, can you take us through what this indicates?
John:
So this was in response to those charts that we had from several past shows.
John:
David Schaub made a bunch of them showing how much RAM comes in the base model of various Macs and how the growth has sort of plateaued and we've been stuck in eight gigs forever.
John:
So Amanda was interested in what is the market price if you were to buy that much RAM on the market?
John:
How much would it cost?
John:
And
John:
The RAM chart obviously increases slowly over time before it kind of plateaus, but the price chart fluctuates all over the place.
John:
Lots of big swings because, you know, RAM is a commodity and the price is fluctuated, depending if they manufacture too much and they need to get rid of it or there's not enough and there's, you know, demand outstripped supply.
John:
Anyway, it bounces all over the place.
John:
But given that it's over like a 20-something year span, you can see the trend line pretty clearly.
John:
And the trend line, Apple, is down.
John:
Not just like the cost of one megabyte of RAM has gotten cheaper.
John:
This is, I believe, the cost of buying the amount of RAM that's in the base model Mac, right?
John:
So the amount of RAM is going up.
John:
Right.
John:
So it's not just like price per megabyte.
John:
I believe this is just the total price and the total price that the you know, the market price, if you were to buy this RAM on the open market, has been going down despite the fact that the amount has been going up, which is what we all imagine to be the case, because, you know, we all had computers when we were children that had very small amounts of RAM.
John:
And now our computers have much, much more.
John:
RAM gets cheaper over time.
John:
That's something we forget sometimes as Apple customers because it doesn't happen for us.
John:
But I like this chart because, A, it does show the fluctuations because that's something that feedback people gave.
John:
It's like, okay, well, the RAM chart, getting more RAM than Mac isn't that easy.
John:
Prices fluctuate.
John:
Apple has to time their purchases and do all this clever stuff.
John:
I was like, okay, that's all well and good.
John:
But still, the trend line is down.
John:
And it's, you know, we should have more RAM for less money.
John:
More on that later.
Yeah.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We have more feedback somehow on HomeKit Lite Control's UI.
Casey:
Max Levin writes, the versions of the Home app on macOS, iOS, and watchOS all feature a card interface for controlling devices, and the card contains two buttons, the body or background, which is all a tappable region and a circular button in the corner of that card.
Casey:
One takes you to the device settings and the other toggles the device state.
Casey:
It's just that which does which is flipped between watchOS and macOS and iOS.
Casey:
Yay!
Casey:
Well done.
Casey:
Yeah, so watchOS, the humongous card is a toggle, and then there's an ellipsis in the corner to get to settings, if you will.
Casey:
Then on macOS and iOS, instead of an ellipsis, you have an indicator of what the device is, like a light bulb, if you will, in the corner.
Casey:
That's how you toggle, and the rest of the card is how you get to settings.
Casey:
Cool.
John:
Don't tap the wrong thing.
Casey:
So many places I could go from here.
Casey:
All right, so let's talk about the Vegas Sphere.
Casey:
The Holoplot speakers are the speakers that are used in the Vegas Sphere, and somebody linked us to a video which talks about this.
Casey:
I did watch this video.
Casey:
I was not that impressed by the demonstration, even with headphones on, but it's a hard thing to really...
Casey:
Get into video form.
Casey:
But what was cool, which John, you pulled out and noted here, each like module, each speaker module has somewhere between 80 and 96 speakers, costs between 36 and $38,000 and weighs 220 pounds.
Casey:
Holy.
John:
each module is like a really heavy suitcase kind of like that's the size range that it is but if you look at like you know 96 speaker drivers or 80 in the one that has subwoofers so many speakers just spread you know nested as close as they could possibly be however they can get room to them and they're all essentially computer controlled
John:
And the computer control interface is like inside that box.
John:
So, you know, one of those boxes costs, you know, $36,000 to $38,000.
John:
And I can't imagine how many of those boxes they have in the sphere.
John:
So that's why the thing costs $2 billion.
John:
But it's really cool.
John:
It's like the idea of having lots of small...
John:
relatively inexpensive speakers like the speaker drivers each individual one is inexpensive but when you got 96 of them and then having computers control them to do the beam forming and everything to be able to target different sounds at different parts of the audience or just to make it so that every seat sounds good uh as opposed to they compare it in the video to the more traditional thing where you do that i wish i had a youtube link to this but the recent trend that if you go to live music you've seen is to have
John:
long vertical tower kind of gently curving towers of speakers that was not the case like if you look at a 70s rock concert you didn't see those but we've learned since the 70s that you get better sound across a larger area in the audience if you do those long vertical towers but those are fixed like they don't adjust or do beam forming or whatever they're just speakers they're carefully arranged in one position and they try to make it sound as good as they can in as many places as they can
John:
But it's kind of, if you were to look at the field of sound that those produce, it is uneven.
John:
Whereas these things are trying to give every individual seat sort of the same experience by using constructive and destructive interference and timing and all sorts of other things with what must be hundreds of speakers, thousands of speakers, maybe.
John:
I think they have the number.
John:
How many speakers are actually in this sphere?
John:
It's a huge number.
John:
And through the magic of computers, they try to make it sound good.
Marco:
and it's this is like also not an easy problem to solve because you think about like the acoustics of that space trying to make a dome sound good for every seat like even as john said like even setting aside just like you know the cool dynamic stuff we're gonna send english to this section and spanish to this section or whatever like even setting that stuff aside just making it sound good for every seat in there that is a massive acoustic challenge and
Marco:
and to make it sound good without those giant tower speaker arrays being visible because they don't want to block the view of the screen so all the speakers have to be behind the screen there's a lot of like just challenging physical uh you know situations there to try to make that both you know sound at all good but then to you know to make it sound good for everybody and i gotta tell you it sounds really good like most concerts i mean granted you know i'm listening through you know
Marco:
airpods as earplugs so it's being modified but like most concerts despite ostensibly being about the music the sound is actually not that good because it's just again it's it's a giant acoustic challenge and you know to make that sound good in any kind of especially indoor environments but they did a really good job with making it sound good in which what is probably a very very difficult situation to be in someone in the chat room found the uh
John:
youtube video i was thinking of it's from wired why music festivals sound better than ever and that's talking about the big vertical towers of speakers those those are a big advance over the old way where i guess they just sort of put the speakers on the stage in little stacks or whatever they figure out this arrangement produces
John:
The fewest terrible dead spots are places in the audience that sound terrible as compared to the old arrangements.
John:
But the computer control one is we're going to make sure there are essentially no spots where the sound is totally off or totally bad or there's no bass or way too much bass or you hear delayed or echoed or whatever.
John:
That's what the computers are trying to do.
Casey:
When I was in high school and had more free time to go to concerts, I remember vividly, I went to high school in Connecticut and we used to go to what was at the time called the Meadows Music Theater in Hartford or outside Hartford.
Casey:
And it was one of those theaters where there's like an amphitheater section and then a lawn behind it.
Casey:
Even though I fully and completely understood the science behind it, I always found it both funny and kind of mildly annoying that I would be looking at the screens both behind the stage and at the edge of the pavilion if I was on the lawn.
Casey:
And I'd be looking at the screens and I would see a snare hit.
Casey:
But by the time the sound made it to where I was, the drummer had moved on like one or two notes past what I was hearing.
Casey:
And so I would see, you know, the future, if you will.
Casey:
It was a very weird bit of time travel.
Casey:
And admittedly, I might have had a contact high from everyone around me at a Dave Matthews concert, but I had not partaken myself.
Casey:
So the sound and light, it's weird.
Casey:
It works in mysterious ways.
John:
The only way they can fix that is you've got to watch the whole thing in Vision Pro because then they can sync up the...
John:
visuals in the audio by delaying the visuals essentially.
Casey:
That remains a product in Apple's lineup.
Casey:
Speaking of products that are still for now in Apple's lineup, fine woven accessories may get one last ride before Apple pulls the plug.
Casey:
This was reported on Mac rumors a couple of weeks back.
Casey:
Over the weekend, Apple leaker and prototype collector Kosutami claimed that Apple has decided to halt production of fine-woven accessories over durability concerns.
Casey:
In a future update, the leaker has now suggested we might see yet one more round of fine-woven products in a season of new colors before Apple finally says farewell to the material for good.
John:
yeah the fine moment thing is weird like we saw the complaints about durability and it looking ugly and getting you know um and like the bottom line is if people don't like the product and it gets a reputation for not being good they gotta try again uh then i'm not gonna go back to leather but yeah take a second crack at this like they tried something that's a little bit different than what most people do which is they make like
John:
They call it vegan leather.
John:
They don't want to call it fake leather or whatever.
John:
All sorts of names they have for them, like in the car industry, are basically saying it's supposed to look and feel like leather, but it's not made from animals at all.
John:
It's made from petroleum.
John:
So it's fine.
Marco:
Great.
Marco:
Yeah, this whole thing, like when this rumor came out last week,
Marco:
It sounds like Apple is just discontinuing the current line of colors and is making a new spring collection.
Marco:
They do that.
Marco:
They always do that every year with all their accessories.
Marco:
So I'm not that surprised that things are changing in that area for the spring.
Marco:
I would be surprised if nothing changes to that lineup this fall when they would typically unveil a whole new shape and size for the new phone.
Marco:
So we'll see what happens then.
Marco:
But I think right now it's too soon to really say that anything's happening.
John:
Yeah, and despite the petroleum crack, most of the fake leather stuff does have some plastic component because you can make various kinds of plastic rubbery type materials look and feel a little bit like leather.
John:
That's what they do in car interiors.
John:
Often they can be...
John:
You can make them more durable than leather or at least durable in a different way because leather leather wears, which is something people like about whether like a leather that it changes appearance and feel over time.
John:
But that's wearing right.
John:
It doesn't stay looking brand new, whereas a lot of the fake leathers can stay looking the same for longer.
John:
But they may not be as durable long term as leather and you can sort of recondition leather and dye it and repair it and all sorts of other stuff.
John:
Anyway, it's a challenge.
John:
It's a challenge to come up with.
John:
Apple's had this challenge before to come up with environmentally friendlier versions of things they use a long time, whether it's putting tin in there or lead or whatever in the solder or the plastic that they used to use for the like the cables that would come with your phone.
John:
They had to change that to an environmentally friendly one.
John:
And the first time they tried to do that, the plastic was all brittle and broken.
John:
Like it's hard, but like that's the challenge they've put in front of themselves.
John:
So if fine woven is a swing and a miss, I give them a pass.
John:
Good effort.
John:
Try again next year.
Marco:
Transcription by CastingWords
Marco:
And it simplifies our language, culture, or movements in a way that can be fun, informative, and guilt-free.
Marco:
So it can provide insight for a new generation of IT pros.
Marco:
So they cover a wide variety of topics, things like what are the components of a software stack?
Marco:
And in fact, they have an episode number 25, The Great Stack Debate.
Marco:
This is the first in kind of a mini-series, and they explore each layer of the stack, what it's like to work on each one, and how they come together into a whole application.
Marco:
They also have topics like, are big mistakes that big of a deal?
Marco:
They have one called Warning Signs, episode number 55, which is from their Tales from the Database series.
Marco:
Boy, I have some of those.
Marco:
And this is about learning the warning signs of a problematic project from people who have figured them out the hard way and what can happen when these warning signs are missed.
Marco:
And they also have another one, episode 46, that really stands out.
Marco:
This is called In Defense of Legacy Technology.
Marco:
This is the first in their new series, Legacies, tackling different examples of older hardware and software, breaking down their relevance to today's industry landscape, and helping junior tech workers connect the old guard with their own career journeys.
Marco:
So it is just a great podcast.
Marco:
They've been running for a number of years now, and they have a great back catalog to listen to and great new episodes coming out all the time.
Marco:
So learn more about Compiler at redhat.com slash compiler podcast.
Marco:
Of course, you can listen in your favorite podcast player, and we can include a link in the show notes as well for easy adding.
Marco:
Check it out, compiler, redhat.com slash compiler podcast, or just search for Compiler in your podcast app.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Compiler for supporting our show.
Casey:
All right, let's talk about the Apple event that happened yesterday as we record this.
Casey:
This was, as per Tim Cook, the biggest day for iPads since its introduction.
Casey:
And we started off by noting that the Vision Pro remains a product in Apple's lineup.
Marco:
That was the best.
Marco:
Tim was like, this event's all about iPads.
Marco:
But first, let's talk about the Vision Pro.
John:
I just wanted to remind everyone, I mean, I think that was, as much as I made fun of it and saying that the Vision Pro remains a product in their lineup, they...
John:
I think they have to do this, right?
John:
Because if they didn't say anything, we'd be like, look, they had an event and I didn't even mention the Vision Pro.
John:
You got to mention it.
John:
You got to say to show that Apple is still committed to doing whatever it's doing with Vision Pro.
John:
Like they're not ashamed of it.
John:
They're not trying to hide it.
John:
They don't want to not talk about it because things aren't going well.
John:
there are still behind it so i think that was an important reassurance yes apple will take their lumps for saying like oh you know people don't think it's going great out there in the world but by talking about it and trying to show the few positive things they did have to say about look the enterprise loves it people are doing surgery with it it's great right you got to do that it's it's the newly announced product and i'm kind of glad that was in the presentation
Marco:
They, of course, have to keep promoting it, but they're not really giving us anything.
Marco:
They're not really adding anything to it.
Marco:
There's nothing to announce.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
There's nothing to announce.
Marco:
There's nothing to show off.
Marco:
It doesn't seem like it's going super well, and so they don't really have anything they can brag about.
Marco:
They don't really have any cool new uses they can really specifically talk about that consumers would care about.
Marco:
So it feels a little bit strained.
John:
If they'd waited a few more days, like with this, this we'll probably talk about next week, but there's this Marvel Studios, uh, what if immersive product, whatever coming to vision pro.
John:
But I guess that just wasn't ready because this is obviously this video is recorded, you know, before it was shown to us.
John:
Uh, that would have been a nice thing to mention, like to say, and we actually have some new content and it's from Marvel and you know, it's an hour long and that could get people excited, but it didn't make the cut.
Casey:
Well, it didn't make the cut because it may not have ever been there to get cut, to your point a moment ago.
John:
Yeah, it didn't make the cut in terms of time-wise.
John:
I think this announcement happened after they had long since recorded.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
Yep, yep, yep.
Casey:
So yeah, so the Vision Pro still exists.
Casey:
The MacBook Air is the world's best-selling 13 and 15-inch laptop.
John:
And 15-inch.
John:
Did you hear that?
John:
Oh, I heard the 15-inch MacBook Air.
John:
Nobody wants to buy it.
John:
It's the world's best-selling 15-inch laptop, Apple.
John:
Yeah, that's pretty great.
John:
Don't think about canceling that because it's not as popular as the 13.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
So things are going well, at least in the MacBook Air section of the world.
Casey:
And then we end up with John Ternus on the subway.
Casey:
I guess it was the BART.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
It doesn't really matter.
Casey:
And I noticed as he was standing there that the marquee or whatever behind him, the little ticker tape, if you will, says this train now goes to 13, which was a surprising nod to what was expected, but still yet to come.
Casey:
And what was coming was the iPad Air, which is now in 11 and 13 inches.
Casey:
And
Casey:
But there was an off-the-cuff mention or an off-handed comment that about half of the users choose 13-inch iPad Pro.
Casey:
Was it iPad Pros I think they were talking about?
Marco:
That was for Pro.
Marco:
They were saying that, inspired by iPad Pro, comma, where about half of the users choose the larger screen.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Which is interesting.
Marco:
Because users couldn't have chosen the larger screen on the iPad Air, which didn't have one.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
But and that's honestly that I mean, that's new information that like of all I had previous about half choose the 13 things like that's surprising to me.
Marco:
I would have expected that to be less.
John:
But I mean, I mean, I guess it kind of shows like who's in the market for an iPad Pro.
John:
And I feel like at this point, the iPad Pro is like strongest unique selling proposition.
John:
is the pen right yeah the pencil whatever you know and so if you're an artist and you're going to actually use that pencil you sure you definitely want the bigger one right because the same people wanted you know bigger wacom tablets or whatever like that's i don't imagine people are buying the bigger one so they can browse the web a little bigger it's all about having a bigger canvas to to draw with the pencil but for whatever reason yeah people are buying the big one which is the most expensive one
Casey:
So we get the new iPad Air, 11 and 13 inches.
Casey:
It's got an M2.
Casey:
It's got some okay colors.
Casey:
They're not super wild, but they're fine.
John:
And by the way, it's the new 11-inch and 13.
John:
Obviously, the 13-inch is a new size.
John:
The 11-inch, it's the same size as the 10.9.
John:
Like it's not they just Apple has just decided they're not going to do the decimal thing, which is kind of weird that they did it to begin with.
John:
I think the actual screen is like 10.86 inches.
John:
Apple used to call the 10.9 with rounding, but they couldn't round one more place.
John:
Now they're just calling it the 11.
John:
But I believe it is the exact same resolution, exact same dimensions as the previous 10.9 screen.
John:
well and that that rounding is actually happening across all four of the ipads that were announced today um there's i think different amounts of rounding but they're all being rounded up to the nearest inch which is fine like that's that's what they do they've always done that with their laptops it's not like their 13 inch laptops has always been exactly 13.0 inches it's just weird that for so long we've dealt with like the 10.9 inch or 12.9 inch but yeah that whoever whoever had that idea apple snapped out of it yeah i'm glad it's much easier now
Casey:
Now, I thought that some, I read somewhere, this is not part of the event, but I could have sworn I read somewhere that there are a few more pixels.
John:
We'll get to that.
John:
It's in the Pro, not in this one, though.
John:
This, the iPad Air, I believe, has exactly, the iPad Air is essentially the previous iPad Pro, but without Face ID and with the Touch ID thing added.
John:
Like, it's, I don't think there's any, there's new screen.
John:
Obviously, the 13-inch is new, right?
John:
But the 10.9, I believe, is down to the Pixel, down to the millimeter, the same as it was.
Casey:
but no promotion in the ipad air which which is worth noting but anyways so yeah so what is this ipad air it's an m2 it works with the existing at this point magic keyboard so this is the one that we'll later find out what we knew that it doesn't have a function row but we didn't know yet that that's what differentiates it and it works with a apple pencil i still i need to bring up that stupid chart because i'm still not entirely clear which apple pencils it works with
John:
all the ipads that were announced to oh not all okay anyway if your ipad works with two pencils and it's just announced it works with the apple pencil pro which we'll talk about in a little bit and the usb one the usb one works with any of them because you plug it in with a wire and it's all like there's no there's no sort of physical incompatibility with them so that essentially works with all of them and if you have a flat-sided uh
John:
iPad with a landscape camera that's not the cheapest one, then you work with the Apple Pencil Pro because that's the only one that has the magnets and inductive charging to work with the flat-sided ones with the landscape camera.
John:
Righto.
John:
So you can't use the Apple Pencil 2, even though it looks like you could.
John:
Because it doesn't have the magnets and inductive stuff to line up with where it is because they had to move all the stuff around because it's got the camera on the long side and it previously didn't.
John:
So even though we're still in this transition period of confusion, we are approaching a future year when every iPad, right now every iPad works with a pencil, which is good.
John:
And soon every iPad will work with two pencils, the cheap one and the expensive one.
John:
We'll get there eventually.
John:
We're not there yet, but we'll get there.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So to work with the existing Magic Keyboard, a couple of Apple Pencils.
Casey:
It now starts at 128 gigs and goes up to a terabyte, starting at $600 and $800 available sometime next week.
Casey:
I thought I heard on Upgrade today that it was like Wednesday or Thursday of this upcoming week.
Casey:
So not tomorrow as we record, but like a week from or something like that.
Casey:
But there's some interesting news with regard to packaging.
John:
Actually, before we get to that, just to highlight, even though this looks like the old iPad Pro appearance and can use the Magic Keyboard and everything, it does not have Face ID.
John:
It has the Touch ID button thingy on the power button.
John:
Uh, which is kind of weird to have like, Oh, it's just like the old pro, but we pulled out a bunch of stuff to make it cheaper.
John:
I guess it makes sense.
John:
But, uh, just, just to be clear, uh, you're, you do not get face ID with this one.
Casey:
So according to 9to5Mac, the new iPad Pro and iPad Air no longer include charger in the box in the UK and other countries in Europe.
Casey:
And according to 9to5, this appears to be due to the waste from electrical and electronic equipment rules in the EU.
Casey:
It's applicable to the UK because it predates Brexit.
John:
And what's that acronym?
John:
Electrical and electronic equipment?
John:
Wee!
John:
W-E-E-E rules.
John:
The wee rules.
John:
Wee!
John:
No charge or fuel.
Casey:
They sound so fun.
Casey:
Then additionally, you're not going to get stickers in the box because of Apple's environmental goals.
Casey:
Again, from 9to5Mac, in a memo distributed to Apple Store teams on Tuesday, Apple explained that Apple stickers will not be included in the box for the new iPad Pro and iPad Air.
Casey:
The company says that this is part of its environmental goals as it strives to ensure its packaging is completely plastic-free.
Casey:
Apple stores, however, are receiving shipments with a limited quantity of Apple logo stickers that can be distributed to customers who buy a new iPad Pro or iPad Air, but only upon request.
John:
What a weird thing the Apple stickers are.
John:
We don't talk about it too much on the show, but how weird is it that for like, what...
John:
25 30 years apple has been including tiny stickers of its company logo in essentially all of its products and what did people do with those i mean i guess you could put them on your car or whatever but honestly like if you are an apple customer for any amount of time you've got enough stickers like the logo doesn't change like oh you got a black one with the mac pro or whatever but like you're being inundated with stickers that you do not care about they're just going in the trash or they're sitting inside the box in your attic if you're me or whatever and it's like
John:
How many stickers, how many Apple logo stickers does the world need?
Marco:
No, I mean a lot of people who don't have as many Apple products as you, which is most people, I see those stickers on cars.
Marco:
Somebody on my dog walk has them on their trash cans for some reason.
John:
Right, but that's like one.
John:
Every product would come with two.
John:
So you've got the one on your car and you've got the one spare.
John:
and you're good until you get a new car like it's too many stickers like i it's kind of amazing that they've shipped that long especially if you look at everything else that has come with products like they used to come with little instruction manual instruction booklets and those slowly narrowed down to just be like one piece of paper or like a folding thing that folds out it has like three pages like they have they have really reduced the amount of
John:
literature essentially or paper things that come with all of their products and because the stickers are plastic they're you know it's amazing they last that long so i'm saying i don't begrudge people i think it's great to have in the store that's exactly how it should be even they can even offer you buy something at apple store and say hey do you want a sticker and if you want one you get one and if you don't you pass but
John:
shipping them to everybody whether they want them or not it's too much and i i agree my view is skewed by buying way too many apple products but i feel like even if you don't buy a lot of them even if you get a new phone every five years and you're an iphone customer by now you've got a lot of those stickers indeed
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Anything else with regard to the iPad Air?
Casey:
I mean, this seems good.
Casey:
It seems like a really nice product.
Casey:
I think for most people, including surely me, if I had any common sense, this was more than enough.
Casey:
I mean, it's a really nice machine and it's not cheap, but it's not absurdly expensive.
Casey:
So I'm on board with all these changes.
John:
I really like the 13-inch Air with the pencil.
John:
Like, it's a much cheaper way to get a really big iPad that you can draw on, essentially.
John:
Which I... Just like the 15-inch MacBook Air, just like the iPhone Plus size, like...
John:
keeping the big version stuck in the highest end like trim level essentially was always a bad decision in terms of uh you know satisfying customer needs right uh and it's great that there is now a big one that is cheaper and that is you know pretty good like face id yeah i like it and everything but it doesn't affect the drawing experience right it's just the unlock experience so who cares um and so i i give the ipad mostly a thumbs up
Marco:
Yeah, I think it's, you know, and we'll get into this more as the show goes on, but there is kind of, you know, the question of what people use iPads for.
Marco:
And of course, there's lots of different answers to that question.
Marco:
But obviously, a very, very common use case for them is basically being big screens running low needs apps, like in terms of computing power.
Marco:
So that would be obviously things like watching video.
Marco:
That's a very popular use for them.
Marco:
But even, you know, a lot of people use them as kind of light productivity devices or kind of like, you know, low-end gaming devices, especially for kids.
Marco:
And so I feel like there is a very large market for iPads that are just decent and have maybe a bigger screen like the new 13-inch Air without having all of the cost of the Pro.
Marco:
And with the Pro, you know, adding a bunch of features for that cost that I think almost all iPad dealers really don't need.
Marco:
I do wish it had Face ID.
Marco:
That's the one big hard-to-swallow pill here.
Marco:
And Apple PR has obviously been telling everybody who was at the PR event today, because we've heard it all on a bunch of other podcasts now, you can always see what Apple's PR talking points are by listening to the podcasts and the YouTube videos of the people who were there, because you can tell they were all fed the same talking points.
Marco:
But clearly, Apple is telling everybody
Marco:
The Face ID components are expensive, and that's why it just can't be in the air.
Marco:
And they could put it in there if they wanted to.
Marco:
It's not that expensive.
Marco:
It's not like Face ID is brand new.
John:
The follow-up question would be like, how expensive?
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
They're choosing not to put it in there, I think, mostly for segmentation.
John:
Yeah, because the thing is, I agree that they probably are expensive, but...
John:
You know, like it's not like they're three hundred dollars.
John:
Right.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So they're there.
John:
And, you know, how much do they cost Apple?
John:
Like whatever whatever they cost.
John:
It's like because if Apple told you the truth, if they not, they're going to ever do this.
John:
But they told you, OK, when we buy this part, plus the integration and assembly, like all told, it would cost us this much more per unit to put face ID into it.
John:
And you would say, great, I'll pay that.
John:
And Apple would be like, well, that's not what you would pay.
John:
You'd pay that plus our typical 40% margin.
John:
Now, will you do it?
John:
And you're like, oh, the cost of all that plus the 40% margin, now I'm adding like 100 and something bucks to it.
John:
No, actually, I won't pay that.
John:
And Apple's going to be like, see?
John:
And we would say, how about you don't take a 40% margin on Face ID?
John:
And Apple's like, that's not how we became the richest company in the world.
John:
So that's how that conversation would go, essentially.
John:
But I mean, what...
John:
The Apple talking point is essentially emphasizing that unlike RAM and every other part of computing, apparently the Face ID components haven't gone down in price over the years as much as you would think.
John:
And of course, my fault for that would be like, what about the things that do go down in price, Apple?
John:
You also don't give us a break on those.
John:
So whatever.
John:
It's the cheaper product.
John:
What we all hope is from the good old days of computing is...
John:
something will come out and it will only be on the high-end model and we'll just wait a few years and it will trickle down to the rest of the lineup and for things whose cost follows the typical electronics you know computing curve that does happen and we do see things trickling down to the lower end models but apple's talking point on this which we just take their word for because i don't know uh is that the face id components have not reduced in price like we would expect of typical components that go into things that's why it hasn't trickled down yet
John:
We would presume that in five years, ten years, eventually it all trickles down.
John:
Like, it used to be that the cheap ones had home buttons, and we finally got rid of that.
John:
It took a long time to get rid of that, but we finally did.
John:
But we didn't replace it all with Face ID.
John:
We just had Touch ID and the power button.
John:
But, you know, I think it will happen eventually, but...
John:
Yes, for market segmentation.
John:
And yes, there's probably some truth to the idea that those components haven't come down in price because I'm not sure how many other manufacturers are buying those.
John:
But honestly, Apple is such a big customer, it shouldn't really matter.
John:
So anyway, fingers crossed for what, let's say five years from now, finally getting Face ID on the iPad Air.
John:
Not the cheap iPad, but just the iPad Air.
Right.
Marco:
I think it's interesting, too, when you're comparing or trying to figure out relative component costs, look at the iPhones.
Marco:
And what's interesting about when you compare iPhone to iPad is that they do have a lot of the same components.
Marco:
However, iPhones generally cost way more than iPads.
Marco:
But iPads have these giant screens and more speakers.
Marco:
And they don't actually save that many of the components.
Marco:
And bigger batteries.
Marco:
Those cost more, too.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And bigger cases.
Marco:
So it's interesting.
Marco:
When you look, the iPads actually probably...
Marco:
They probably do need lower-end hardware in a lot of ways to hit those prices because they are – while keeping at Apple's margins – because they are so much lower-priced than kind of similar generation or comparable iPhones.
Marco:
Like right now –
Marco:
The cheapest iPhone is the SE.
Marco:
If we're matching storage tiers, then it's $480 for the SE at 128 versus $600 for the cheapest phone, which is currently the old 13 that's still for sale.
Marco:
600 is the cheapest phone at 128 gigs with face id so that compares to the uh exact same price as the ipad air with the same storage and the ipad air has like the nm1 or m sorry m2 in it right and a massive screen
Marco:
Right, and a massive screen, and more speakers, and so, like, you can start to see, like, okay, it is kind of, you know, they don't have, maybe, they don't have the cell modem, so that saves some, you know, they don't have, like, you can get it for more money, obviously, but, like, at that price, you know, they have, you know, less cellular equipment, the camera system is cheaper, probably, but, like...
Marco:
You can start to see there is some price pressure there that they're trying to sell these devices with phone components, with phone profit margins, but they're bigger devices.
Marco:
So that does become harder.
Marco:
But all that being said, I do think the choice of Face ID is not about component cost in this case.
Marco:
It is primarily segmentation.
Casey:
So that's the iPad Air, and I think it's basically two thumbs up from the ATP crew.
Casey:
I think we're good.
Marco:
I think, though, for our listeners, if you're trying to consider what to buy, I would suggest, unless you are really pushing the processing power of your iPad, which we'll get to is difficult to do –
Marco:
ipads tend to last a long time in use like they tend to have pretty long lives i would suggest maybe going for a pro and just keeping it longer compared to going for an air if you are a nerd who listens to this show who cares about things like the best screen the face id convenience like the better better speakers better you know pros like all this stuff like i think you'd be better off buying an ipad pro every you know five years or whatever um
Marco:
compared to buying an ipad air every three years or you know whatever the numbers are for you i i think that i think it's you're better off getting the nice pro features if you're a nerd like us but for most people who are not nerds this is a this is a great you know mid-range product and they won't care and you can look at a refurb like previous model ipad pro if you don't care about the features that are new on this one because you will get all the pro features and you'll get face id you'll get all the good stuff you get a fast processor it just won't have this year's stuff and
John:
While those are still in stock from Apple or if you can find one cheap elsewhere, you can get a good deal on it.
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Casey:
So let's talk iPad Pro.
Casey:
And as we were transitioning from Ternus in the library talking about the iPad Air, he grabs a little book that says, the title is It's Thin Possible, which I thought was pretty funny.
Casey:
And we learn about the iPad Pro.
Casey:
Was it immediately that we get the commercial thing?
Casey:
Is that right?
Marco:
The crushing video?
Marco:
Mm-hmm.
Marco:
Oh, what a weird thing that was.
Casey:
Yeah, so again, as we're recording, it's Wednesday night, and I have been mostly offline for most of the day, but I've been online enough to see that apparently people have thoughts about the crushing commercial.
Casey:
So let me describe this real quick.
Casey:
So you see...
Casey:
On one of those gigantic industrial presses, just massive, massive, massive industrial presses, there's like a piano and instruments and art and paint and all these different things that are all supposed to represent, you know, different flavors of art and whatnot.
Casey:
And it's on this industrial press that starts squishing it all down.
Casey:
And they do some kind of funny things where there's like, I don't know the name for it, but you know those like wooden like people, like humanoid models that you can like pose in different poses.
Casey:
If you saw a picture of it, you'd know exactly what I'm thinking of.
Casey:
And it's like got its arms up and its head looking back like, no, don't squish me sort of thing.
Casey:
And then...
Casey:
Like there's a TV with a little animated character and it looks up and kind of does like an oh no sort of thing.
Casey:
And I mean, at the time, I didn't think that much of it.
Casey:
I didn't think it was stellar, but I saw what they were going for.
Casey:
Like it made sense to me at the time.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
What they're doing is they're squishing all this down, and at the end of the commercial, the press comes back up, and you see that there's an iPad Pro sitting there.
Casey:
So the ostensible message here is that all these different things that you can do, you can paint, you can play music, you can do video, all this stuff, you can squish into this one iPad Pro.
John:
And this new iPad Pro is really thin.
John:
That's the other thing.
John:
We squished the iPad, so it got even skinnier because it was squished in a hydraulic press.
John:
That's why it's so thin.
John:
That's why it's thin possible.
John:
It's our thinnest product there, blah, blah, blah.
John:
So that's why they're using a hydraulic press in this app.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
And so for me, when I first saw it, I was like, okay, whatever.
Casey:
And apparently there's been some discourse since then.
Casey:
And I mean, I think, again, for me, I don't really understand it.
Casey:
But if I try to put my head in the shoe or put my thoughts in the shoes of someone who's a creative professional in that sense, like a true-to-form artist, musician, so on and so forth, especially what's been going on with AI recently in the discourse around AI –
Casey:
I could see how it would be a little bothersome to say the least.
Marco:
Oh, God.
Marco:
I think it was terrible.
Marco:
So I am not a creative professional in any of the ways that were represented there.
Marco:
Maybe they could crush a podcasting microphone.
Marco:
So it starts out, and the first thing you see get crushed is a trumpet standing on its end.
Marco:
First of all, my kid plays the trumpet, so there's trumpets in my house.
Marco:
And I'm like...
Marco:
I don't think musicians will like this.
Marco:
And even I, not a musician, I see they're crushing a trumpet.
Marco:
I'm like, that's so destructive.
Marco:
What a waste.
Marco:
And I'm like, I see what they're going for.
Marco:
Look, you can cram all this stuff into an iPad.
Marco:
What it looked like to me was we are destroying all of these real world artistic objects because you don't need them anymore because you're replacing them with this fake digital version.
Marco:
And that's pretty disrespectful.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
well yeah there's a lot of anxiety about like ai replacing creative people and the computers taking their jobs and stuff and i think that's all tied up in this as well i didn't even consider it like an ai thing although i see why people would be sensitive about that right now that makes sense but like it i think it just showed disrespect for all of these instruments of music of music and art like it's like you don't need this crap anymore you just have an ipad it's like oh that's that's an odd message to be sending
John:
Yeah, I see how they came up with this ad, though.
John:
So I posted this on Mastodon.
John:
I was surprised at how many people didn't know about this because I feel like it's one of the most famous channels on YouTube.
John:
But there's a channel on YouTube called, fittingly, the hydraulic press channel.
John:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John:
And they just take a hydraulic press and squish things.
John:
And the reason people like that channel is it's fun to see what various materials do when put under a tremendous amount of pressure.
John:
And generally what people want to see is them do something dramatic.
John:
They explode, they shatter, or they crush in a really interesting way, or they're just destroyed.
John:
It doesn't look like anything has happened for 30 seconds, and then finally they just shatter into a million pieces.
John:
That's why this channel is popular.
John:
So when they came up with the idea of it's really thin, we're going to put it in the hydraulic press.
John:
Oh, let's make it look like we're pressing all this stuff into it.
John:
Like we're pressing all this creativity inside of it.
John:
The problem is that when you're shooting this and you live in a culture where the hydraulic press channel exists and you know that people like it because of the destruction, that's the direction you go, which is like, okay, it's not just that we have a bunch of musical instruments and, you know, uh,
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And so what they and unknowingly what they think they're doing, what they should be doing, which is like, that's what people like about the hydraulic press channel.
John:
We have to do that, of course.
John:
But what they've unknowingly started to do is show the destruction of things that are meaningful to people.
John:
And it mostly doesn't matter whether it was all CG, all practical or anywhere in between.
John:
Like, I don't think anyone is specifically angry that they killed one trumpet.
John:
Right.
John:
It's the idea of showing even a completely CG trumpet being crushed because it is
John:
It's disrespectful to the objects, you know.
John:
It looks like because they're destroying them.
John:
The destruction of them is the point because that's what people like about the hydraulic press channels.
John:
Things are destroyed and they got those wires crossed, right?
John:
And so that's – it'll pass or whatever, but I feel like it's an interesting point because everyone making it feels like they're doing like –
John:
you know creative stuff is inside the ipad the ipad is real thin and also everybody loves the hydraulic press channel and when they put them together it's like no you didn't realize you know you took a bunch of individual things that people like but you crossed the streams to the people watching the hydraulic press channel like no violinist wants to go to the hydraulic press channel and see them destroy even the cheapest violin in the hydraulic press like that's what they essentially did they went to the hydraulic press channel they said
John:
What item do you care about in your life as a creative professional?
John:
Come to the hydraulic pressure hour.
John:
We're going to put that in it.
John:
And that people don't like.
John:
Like, that's not the vibe.
John:
So, you know, they'll learn.
John:
Hopefully learn from this mistake.
John:
I think the idea of squishing it to make it real flat is fine.
John:
But, you know, they can't all be winners.
Marco:
And, you know, one thing I noticed immediately, too, in the video is...
Marco:
you don't see any apple products getting squished like they squish like they have like some pc monitors that look they might be apple products but they just get knocked over and then it cuts away you never see them actually get damaged like you only see other things get what would they crush into the ipad like what they would i guess i'd put uh i don't know the ipod nano that we see later well the mac for a few years ago yeah that's true butterfly keyboard we the smart keyboard folio oh
Casey:
yeah well that's true so in any case uh so let's talk about the design and apple said quote we've always envisioned ipad as a magical sheet of glass and so apparently it's pretty darn close now so the 11 inch is 5.3 millimeters and just barely under a pound the 13 inch is 5.1 millimeters and i don't have the weight in front of me 1.02 pounds i believe um
Casey:
And a lot of people have pointed out this doesn't bother me as much as I think it bothers a lot of other people, although it does make me chuckle.
Casey:
The iPad Pro is now lighter than the iPad Air, which I understand how we got there.
Casey:
And maybe, John, you can give us a nickel tour.
Casey:
I can if you prefer how we ended up here.
Casey:
But that is kind of funny that this is where we are.
John:
Yeah, I mean, that's just more of Apple's like difficulty, let's say, in naming things.
John:
The iPad Air, the original one, Air was because it's light as Air and it's thin and it fits in a middle envelope.
John:
And the problem is that product was wildly successful.
John:
And so Apple's like, we need to leverage this brand equity.
John:
People like the MacBook Air.
John:
air is good a we're going to keep making that and b we can put the air suffix on other products and make people associate them with the good feelings they have about the macbook air even though it doesn't necessarily make any sense because they would put air on products that were not the smallest lightest thinnest most manila envelope slippy like they're just doing it because it's a brand name that worked and air has long since stopped meaning anything about how small it remember there was the you know the macbook one the 12 inch macbook
John:
it was way smaller than any air but it wasn't called air but the air still existed they were bigger than that right so it's air just means it's not the pro one and we're trying to leverage uh establish brand equity based on the macbook air so it's not particularly sensible and they probably should have retired it or kept it just in the macbook air when they extended it to the ipad you're like all right fine whatever but anyway the fact that the air is a little bit heavier than the pro now like
John:
Who cares?
Marco:
It's not a big deal.
Marco:
Well, it made sense.
Marco:
The very first iPad Air was a big weight and thickness savings over its predecessor.
Marco:
So it actually made sense to use it when they first used it.
Marco:
Briefly.
Marco:
Yeah, but then all iPads became those dimensions, and now it doesn't mean anything anymore.
John:
Yeah, and now the Pro's got thinner, which is interesting.
John:
So Apple's big pitch on this was...
John:
it's the thinnest apple product ever and i immediately started googling i'm like really was it thinner than i'm trying to think of the thinnest product they compared it to the ipad nano and obviously they put they showed it on camera i'm like wasn't you know and i looked this up i'm like surely the buttonless shuffle was thinner than the nano but the answer is no it was not according to my brief googling during the keynote so i i take apple at their word this is the thinnest apple product ever uh there is some history with thin apple products mostly not good
John:
What was it?
John:
The iPhone 6, I believe.
John:
Yeah, Bendgate.
John:
The thinnest iPhone they had ever made.
John:
That didn't work out that well.
John:
It turned out to be easier to bend.
John:
I guarantee you, you're going to see bent iPad Pros on a million YouTube channels.
John:
I mean, there's YouTube channels that are just literally dedicated to buying every Apple product and bending it.
John:
That just always happens.
John:
And it will happen with these as well.
John:
And Apple does the same thing.
John:
Apple bends its own products to see how bendy they are.
John:
this is thinner than it was before is it thinner is the amount that it's thinner because i think it's only like especially the 11 inches are like maybe one or two millimeters thinner than it used to be right and it's noticeable when you pick it up from the from the reports of the people who were there is that change in thickness enough to change the durability of this because when you see these youtube channels that are going to buy a new ipad pro and bend it
John:
take note of whether or not they take a previous generation ipad pro and also bend it and do they do it on a piece of equipment they can measure the strength required like is it worse than the previous one is my question and i think a lot of the sensational youtube videos you see will not answer that question they'll just say it's bendy look how easy it is to bend
John:
Okay, but is this worse than it was before?
John:
Is it better than it was before because they reinforced it?
John:
We don't know.
John:
But it is somewhat of a concern because as far as we can tell, the materials this is made out of are the same as they have been.
John:
And Apple didn't brag about any, like every car manufacturer does, every time there's a new revision, new generation of a car, they will tell you how much increased torsional rigidity the frame has.
John:
Apple did not say that about this.
John:
Last time Apple said that was, I think, with the 6S maybe, or whenever they fixed the bendy one before they started making the phone sticker again.
John:
um so i'm not against thin ipads i think it's great uh i do wonder about the durability but i'm certainly not going to try to bend mine i treat my ipad so gently it's probably not going to get bent but this is something we'll find out uh someone's going to buy that 13 inch ipad pro which is the thinnest ever 5.1 millimeters and they're going to put it in their backpack with a bunch of books or something and they're going to take it out one day and it's going to be bent and there's going to be a story about it and the question will remain
John:
Is it more bendy than the previous 12.9 inch was?
John:
And that is a question that could be answered with science, but I don't have the science or the money to bend two iPads to find out the answer to that question.
John:
Presumably Apple does and they're okay with it.
John:
So for now, I would just say if you buy one of these, maybe be a little tiny bit extra careful with it.
Casey:
Yeah, so 5.1 and 5.3 millimeters, and the iPad Air is 7 millimeters.
Casey:
And as they mentioned during the video, it is thinner than the iPod Nano.
Casey:
I almost said iPad there.
Casey:
And our friend Federico Vatici was in London at a press event that they had there, and he had the wherewithal to notice that the standard Apple Thunderbolt cable is just barely...
Casey:
taller than or you know bigger than the i presume this is the 13 inch ipad pro which is just bananas that the cable is you know when you include you know the housing and whatnot is bigger than yeah like the plastic grommet the plastic like little thing that has the little thunderbolt symbol on a thunderbolt cable that is thicker than the device that's amazing it's just bananas
John:
And they're really approaching, like, we've talked about this when they made the transition from Lightning.
John:
Now, these devices are pushing up against how thin you can make a device with a USB-C connector on it.
John:
As predicted years ago on past shows, it's like, if they keep getting thinner, eventually you will hit the limit of USB-C.
John:
And the limit of USB-C is a little bit... You'll hit that limit a little bit sooner than you would have for Lightning.
John:
You know, they need to do this, because, again, this is not just the USB-C port.
John:
It's a Thunderbolt port.
John:
That's one of the pro features.
John:
But...
John:
I feel like there is a limit on how thin they can make these iPads, and it's defined by that plug right there.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
So battery capacity has changed.
Casey:
In the 11 inch, it's gone up about 10, a little less than 10%.
Casey:
But in the 13 inch, it's gone down about 5%, which is kind of funny.
John:
And the battery life for all of them is rated the same as it ever was, which is 10 hours.
John:
So it's interesting how they end up with that.
John:
Like, I don't think the insides of these devices are different in any way other than obviously the big one has a big screen, which presumably uses more energy.
John:
So it's weird that the, well, I guess, you know, it's weird the 11 inch got bigger, but this is relative to the previous 11 inch and the 13 inch got smaller relative to the previous 13 inch.
John:
Obviously the 13 inch does have a bigger battery than the 11 inch, but whatever they're doing, like I heard from people who were there in person, like, wow, the 11 inch is so thin, even though it's like only a millimeter, you can really feel the difference.
John:
They must have a smaller battery in the 11-inch, but they don't.
John:
They have a bigger battery.
John:
The device is thinner, and it has a bigger battery, or at least a battery with more capacity.
John:
I don't know if it's physically larger.
John:
Maybe they have a better energy density with whatever new battery thing they're using.
John:
But don't think just because these are thinner that they are sacrificing battery life.
John:
Well, they may be sacrificing battery life, but if they are, it's probably not because of the thickness because they actually added battery to the 11-inch.
John:
And the 13-inch, the low went down.
John:
It only went down by like 5%.
Casey:
The colors are, speaking of, same as it ever was.
Casey:
They're silver and space black.
Casey:
I guess maybe that's slightly different than before, but effectively it's the same as it always was.
Casey:
As Jason and Mike have talked about on Upgrade many times, the fancier the device, the less cool the colors get.
Casey:
Sweet.
Casey:
But John, I'm just going to sit back and let you take this from here.
Casey:
Ultra Retina XDR, and it's on both sizes, baby.
Casey:
So how happy are you, John Siracusa?
John:
I did know that the good screen was going to come on both because that has always been the rumor.
John:
And that's great because in the previous generation, the mini LED backlit screen was only on the big size and I didn't buy that.
John:
I don't like mini LED and it wasn't important enough for me to get a big iPad anyway.
John:
But yeah, it's on both.
John:
It is, as was rumored, as we discussed in the last episode, it's a two-layer OLED.
John:
They call it the tandem OLED where they take two OLEDs and they just lay them on top of each other.
John:
And so they can run each one at a little bit lower power to extend its life, but then they get more light output because you got, hey, two screens for the price of one.
John:
It's a thousand nits max for SDR and HDR.
John:
I guess they're saying that's...
John:
full screen i don't know that i only know how they do these these great things on television ratings it's not clear how they're doing in here but anyway a 1600 nits peak hdr which means you know not probably the whole screen um those numbers the 1600 one you may may be familiar to you from what the iphone oleds are rated at and what the pro display xdr is rated at and this is kind of like the 10 hour battery life well apple has just decided that 1600 nits peak hdr that's good for a while so the xdr did that ages ago
John:
all the MacBook Pros have screens that do 1600 nits peak HDR.
John:
Now, and the phones do, and now this thing does.
John:
That's just what they pick.
John:
Because you can drive these screens harder to make them brighter and wear them out sooner.
John:
And so you can kind of pick where that is.
John:
But that's what these are capable of.
John:
And it's, you know, all in the family.
John:
The 1000 nits for SDR is interesting because SDR is like when you're looking at like your Windows and your menu bar and stuff like that.
John:
On a Mac or on any other thing, we're just looking at the UI.
John:
The UI is not an HDR unless you like do something weird to force it that way.
John:
right and the sdr limits for apple stuff is usually around 500 to 600 nits like for the max for you know for the the imac for even for the xdr when i'm looking at my xdr now nothing on my screen is 1600 nits because it's just ui there's nothing there's no hdr in it right and it's probably around well at a maximum 500 600 nits i don't crank it up that way like marco does but anyway yeah
John:
This, this iPads go to 1000 in SDR.
John:
And this is the feature of televisions as well, where they're like, okay, the actual limit for SDR for standard definition, like before the age of HDR, like back, you know, 70s or 80s or whatever, how bright or television supposed to be like, what was the mastering monitors they were using?
John:
It's so incredibly dim by modern standards that nobody would run it at that.
John:
So it has been a feature of televisions for ages to say you can watch non-HDR content like your local news and you can turn the brightness up so that it'll be much brighter than it's quote unquote supposed to be.
John:
For a portable device, that's an important feature.
John:
So you can see the screen outdoors basically.
John:
Like they're not going to show it at like 300 or 200 nits or some, you know, thing that's like...
John:
what you would expect like in a dark room you'd want to look at a computer monitor you want it to be able to go brighter so allowing the ui to go up to a thousand nits essentially it's a software change or whatever um is is a feature for outdoor viewability again i don't know if this is full screen or some portion of the screen on televisions for power reasons it is very very often uh the case that a very like 10 of the screen can light up to some huge number and 100 of the screen can light up to that number divided by like 10 or 20.
John:
right i hope that's not the case on these screens but honestly i don't care that much because i don't spend my time while looking at 100 white images filling the entire screen at maximum brightness that's pointless unless you're using it as a flash um there are new resolutions on these screens the the pixels per inch is still 264 the same as it's always been uh the the 11 inch one gets 32 extra pixels in width
John:
whoo compared to the old one and the 13 inch one gets 20 pixels in width and 16 pixels at height this is not a feature like obviously this is so small you can't even see these pixels are very small um it's just this is the part they got i don't know how they came to this decision but it is relevant for software developers if you have some kind of pixel perfect layout but honestly you shouldn't side class size classes have been around for ages flexible layouts have been around for ages but just fyi um
John:
These screens, these iPad Pro OLED, tandem OLEDs, are not the same size as any previous iPad screens.
John:
And they're slightly bigger, which is fine.
John:
You do have a nanotexture glass option, and we will start getting into the portrification of the iPad at this stage.
John:
Nanotexture is a feature that was available on the Pro Display XDR ages ago.
John:
It's also on the studio display.
John:
it's basically like a matte screen, but instead of making the matte screen by putting like a piece of plastic over it or something or whatever, they take the glass, the normal glossy glass and they microscopically etch it.
John:
So the, the glass is like, if you looked at it in a microscope, it's like rough instead of smooth.
John:
And this, they do this to make reflections, you know, more diffuse or whatever.
John:
Um,
John:
I personally do not like nanotexture, and I'm glad about that because it was a $1,000 option on my already expensive screen.
John:
I don't know how much it actually costs to make nanotexture.
John:
There's maybe like the goldmine of profit margins for Apple, but Apple has always charged a huge amount for it.
John:
They charge less on the studio display proportionally than they do the XDR, which makes you think it's just like it's got to be almost pure profit for them.
John:
But who knows?
John:
Nanotexture is an option on both of these iPads.
John:
But the only way you get access to that option is if you buy the WISAC package.
John:
I'm pronouncing that wrong, probably.
John:
WISAC package?
John:
Porsche has these option packages that if you want any of the good stuff, you've got to buy the big option package, right?
John:
You can't just get nanotexture.
John:
Because nanotexture is you just add, like, what, $100, $200, whatever it is.
John:
But no, you can't even get nanotexture unless you buy one of the iPads that has one or two terabytes of storage.
John:
And what relation does storage have to the nanotexture?
John:
None.
John:
None whatsoever.
John:
It's totally unrelated.
John:
But if you want nanotexture, if you want the privilege of paying a couple hundred extra bucks for nanotexture, you have to pay up to, what, $600 more?
John:
from from going from the base uh 256 i think it's a hundred dollars for nanotexture plus six hundred dollars to go to the one terabyte model from 256 so the nanotexture option is essentially a 700 option starting from the base model and that's rough
John:
again i'm don't care because i don't like nanotexture i don't think people should get nanotexture and there are a lot of open questions about nanotexture because nanotexture on the xdr when it first came out people are like oh if you get the nanotexture on the xdr make sure you don't touch your screen because it's really hard to get fingerprints off because you know you have to clean it with apple special cloth and you can't use any any microfiber cloth you have to use apple special ones i think it's mostly bs but if you use a low quality microfiber it might be bad but
John:
If you get finger grease on it, it's hard to clean off.
John:
You can't use certain cleaners.
John:
Don't use abrasive things.
John:
You can mess it up.
John:
And because it is such a micro textured finish, I believe you could mess it up if you used anything even mildly abrasive.
John:
And by messing it up, it would essentially like permanently like smudge your screen by making it unevenly rough because you will have disturbed the evenly rough nanotextured surface with like an abrasive paper towel or something and made it unevenly rough.
John:
nanotexture has always terrified me anyway apple is now selling touch devices that you're supposed to touch when you use it forget about don't put your finger you're supposed to touch it with nanotexture on them i don't know if it's the same nanotexture that's on their screens i don't know if they've tested it and they say it's fine finger grease is fine it does come with the little special microfiber cloth which i think is just a high quality microfiber cloth but
John:
I personally would not recommend buying any of these devices with nanotexture if you are at all concerned about fingerprint smudges and cleaning the screen.
John:
Wait a week, wait a month.
John:
See what the deal is with nanotexture.
John:
Is it okay to have a nanotexture screen that you get fingerprints all over?
John:
Is it not a big deal?
John:
Or is there some sort of problem?
John:
Because this is the very first one of these that has existed.
John:
And unlike an XDR where you can just be disciplined and say, I just won't touch it, that's not an option with the iPad.
John:
I guess if you use the Apple Pencil everywhere, you could do it.
John:
But even with the Apple Pencil, I'm like, do I want to rub the Apple Pencil against my nanotexture screen?
John:
Apple has obviously tested this, and I'm sure they're going to say everything's fine.
John:
But I am personally super nervous about nanotexture, which is why I'm absolutely definitely not getting it on anything that Apple ever sells me, and certainly not on an iPad.
John:
so how do you really feel about it john i mean i'm happy about the screens the specs look great uh color reproduction looks reasonable i'm happy the 1600 nits uh you know like everything looks good about the screen i'm happy with the battery life the thickness like they put they put a double layer screen in there that gets way brighter and it's got the same 10 hours of battery life like thumbs up like this what i from what i want from this thing it's looking pretty good
Casey:
You're you're happy, but you're less effusive than I thought you would be.
Casey:
I mean, you've been waiting for this for a few years now, aren't you?
Casey:
Aren't we like overjoyed?
Casey:
Like I expect to see you or hear you running around the room screaming to the rooftops how excited you are.
Casey:
And I'm not getting that from you.
John:
Well, when I when I when I get it, I'll see how amazing it is.
John:
But yeah, no, I'm there.
John:
There are things to modify my happiness that we will get to shortly.
Marco:
This is just how John sounds when he's excited.
Casey:
Yeah, this is what John sounds like when he's really excited.
John:
There are some things that are not as exciting about this, setting aside the nanotexture thing, which we'll get to.
John:
Obviously, this works with Apple Pencil Pro, but not the Apple Pencil 2 because of the landscape camera.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, just before we leave the screen, I think the screen is a huge part of the Pro story.
Marco:
It is, by all accounts, a really great screen.
Marco:
And what they've had to do with the dual layers to make it, there is no question...
Marco:
we are we are all going to just be waiting and waiting and waiting for these screens to come to the other products in their lineup like we cannot wait for the screen to come to a macbook pro we cannot wait for the screen to come maybe eventually to a desktop size monitor like this is going to be like the thing we're waiting for because it is by all accounts just such an amazing screen so i'm really happy to see like they are they are still leading the industry in really good screens
John:
Well, I mean, it's the Samsung screen or whatever.
John:
People always attribute this to Apple.
John:
Apple's not making this screen.
John:
Well, no one else is selling them.
Marco:
I don't see anyone else doing it.
John:
Yeah, I mean, they have the power of the money to say, we want a screen that works like this.
John:
I mean, companies have been trying to do these dual-layer OLEDs for a long time, and it's been very difficult, and Apple gets the good stuff first because they pay the money, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
And I do hope this expands to other products.
John:
And to review for the people who don't know why we care about OLED, I heard Gruber on Dithering say he was looking for blooming and didn't see it.
John:
You're not going to see blooming on OLED.
John:
The reason we're excited about OLEDs is because each individual pixel lights up.
John:
individually and you may think isn't that how all screens work i have an ipad and each individual pixel likes up well lcd screens are done with a backlight where there is there are lights behind the pixels and then like color filters of various kinds that color it or whatever but the lights behind the pixels are not one pixel in size the lights behind the pixels are huge compared to pixels there's often like you know there's millions of pixels but there's like
John:
a few hundred backlight regions of you know the the the backlights are like one inch by one inch or one centimeter by one centimeter huge number of pixels especially retina resolution are behind that and so the like the worst case scenario for that is like a star field in space it's perfectly black with these pinpoints of stars each little pinprick of stars is a couple of little pixels at very high brightness
John:
on an lcd display on a quote mini led display you have to light up the backlight region behind each one of the stars the star is a pinprick but the backlight is like one centimeter by one centimeter or one inch by one inch or like whatever size the backlight regions are you have to light up that entire thing behind that pinprick so what you end up with is the blackness of space is
John:
pinpricks of light but around each pinprick of light there's like a little you can even see the shape of the backlight region sometimes it's like a little square glowing right and for years manufacturers have been trying to figure out how can we make it so you can't see the backlight behind that because lcds can't block all the light like when you turn off the when you make an lcd black and you tell it block all the light from the backlight they block as much as they can but they can't block at all and that light that leaks through where it's not supposed to be there where there's supposed to be black space but now there's gray space
John:
That is bloom around those pinpoints of light or whatever.
John:
OLED doesn't have that problem.
John:
Every individual pixel in OLED lights up all by itself.
John:
There's no backlight region.
John:
There's no how many different regions of backlights, how many individual backlights.
John:
There's essentially one backlight for every pixel.
John:
That's why we love OLED.
John:
There is no blooming in OLED other than the natural blooming of a pinprick of light when you look up at the sky and you see a star.
John:
It is a point source because you can just light up that one pixel.
John:
That's why everyone goes gaga over OLED.
John:
Our phones are OLED.
John:
You can buy OLED televisions.
John:
There are OLED screens on laptops and so on.
John:
And this is Apple's introduction to larger-than-iPhone-sized OLEDs.
John:
And, of course, OLEDs burn in, so now they've got a dual-layer one where you can run them at lower power.
John:
hopefully combat burn-in and then you can make it very bright and very colorful and so anyway yeah this is this is a great screen as i said last episode i think this will be the best screen apple has ever made i think apple itself made that pitch and like marco said that means we want screens like this to be on all our devices assuming they don't have any bad burn-in problems but we'll again we'll find that out as these enter the market
Casey:
What is the – I should know this, but I do not.
Casey:
What is the longevity for OLED?
Casey:
Because don't they eventually – it's organic light-emitting diodes, right?
John:
So something – Every time you use a Pixel, it wears down a little bit.
Casey:
Cool.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So, I mean, like –
John:
ideally what you want to happen and the televisions as well as they as they wear down you can they do like essentially a compensation cycle where there's like a computer that figures out how much each one has worn down and it tries to level them because they could say okay this one is worn out so we got to give it a little more power than that one they want to make it so that it's even but inevitably what happens is over time if even this if these compensations are working perfectly
John:
the max if you just put the whole screen being white that will just slowly get dimmer over time because you will be slowly wearing out the pixels what you want is for it to get dimmer uniformly and not have like the logo that's in the corner of the screen burned in or whatever like that's what the compensation cycles are trying to do but yeah they wear it over time but they'll and all it should last
John:
The normal usage lifetime of an iPad.
John:
I mean, look at our phones like same deal.
John:
We've had OLED phones for years and years.
John:
Right.
John:
And if you buy like a five year old phone, maybe you could detect some kind of like, you know, image retention, burn in, worn out pixels or whatever.
John:
But in general, they work.
John:
OLED phones work until nobody wants to buy them anymore.
John:
Right.
John:
Until they're so old that they're obsolete.
John:
So the same should be true of the screen.
John:
Fingers crossed.
Casey:
No promises, though.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So let's talk performance.
Casey:
There were some rumors, which I think we discussed last week, that, oh, you know what?
Casey:
This might have the M4.
Casey:
And when I first heard this, I was like, NFW.
Casey:
And then after hearing a bunch of our friends talk about it on various shows, and if we talked about it, I was like, well, I'm still really skeptical.
Casey:
But maybe...
Casey:
And so sure enough, Tim Millett comes up and says, we're going to four M4 time.
Casey:
And this is the second generation three nanometer technology.
Casey:
And I'm just going to step aside and give you back the floor.
Casey:
John Syracuse to tell us about this, please.
John:
n3e they didn't say it in the show but as close as the closest they're going to get to having a slide that says n3e because yeah that's second gen three nanometer technology from tsmc uh and like as we said last week the rumors of this once the the ipad model numbers and the part number things were dug out like ipad model numbers were dug out of ipad uh ipad os 17.5 beta
John:
right that's hard evidence and you could say well you don't know that they're going to keep the numberings they're they're they were you know they were increasing the numbers by one for each m1 right and they skipped over m3 and so that was pretty much hard evidence so like with so many of these things it's a rumor you don't know maybe kind of and then as the date approaches of the announcement things solidify and since we had the luxury of recording just one week before the event they had solidified pretty much so i i really expected to see m4 and lo and behold we did
John:
uh what is the m4 apple says it has 28 billion transistors to give a comparison the m3 has 25 billion transistors so this does have more transistors than the m3 not by a lot but it's different so if you just think this was oh this is just the m3 but on the m3 process it's not it's a different soc as we'll see as we go on here uh and again the m3 is the comparison because the m3 pro has 37 billion and the m3 max is 92 billion
John:
so this is the little one they just the plain old m4 no suffix it does have 128 gigabits per second memory bandwidth which is up from 100 on the m3 m2 and m1 so this is a bump you know we went three generations of the plain m series chip so they all had 100 gigabytes per second now we're up to 120 they're either using faster ram or i mean that's what it's got to be i think there's like a lpddr standard that's slightly faster
John:
so that's good so we've we've made kind of like a the first generation a leap in the baseline smallest m series chip memory bandwidth it has a new display engine which apple didn't elaborate on i imagine it's i don't even know like they didn't say oh we need this new display engine to drive the two layers of the the screen maybe that's true i would imagine there's some display firmware that does that and they don't have to i don't even know what they mean but anyway new display engine
John:
There's a new media engine, which is like the thing that does H.264 and H.265 and ProRes decoding, encoding and stuff.
John:
Apple didn't really talk about that.
John:
But if you look at the specs, only the M4 models say hardware accelerated 8K, H.264, blah, blah, blah.
John:
That 8K is only in the specs for the M4 ones.
John:
So I guess the other ones couldn't do hardware accelerated 8K.
John:
They had to fall back to software or something.
John:
I don't know.
John:
But anyway, it does have a new media engine.
John:
So that's good.
John:
And that's also good because...
John:
m1 m2 m3 whenever someone tested any computer with that thing in it and they do like let's see how fast it can you know encode or decode h264 that was just running on the media engine it didn't matter how many cpu cores it had how good the gpu was there's dedicated hardware in these socs to do stuff like h264 encoding and decoding right
John:
And that dedicated hardware has not gotten faster or better that quickly.
John:
I'm not sure if it's changed at all from the M1 to the M3, but it has changed in the M4, kind of like the memory bandwidth.
John:
This may be, I can't say this for certain, but this may be the first time that the media engine hardware decoder encoder thing has gotten substantially faster.
John:
At a certain point in the presentation, I forget who it was, but the person on the screen said, the M4 has up to four performance cores.
John:
And I said, wait, what now?
John:
Up to four performance cores?
John:
Anyway, and six efficiency cores.
John:
And so the M3 had four performance cores and four efficiency cores.
John:
So you got two new efficiency cores, same number of performance cores compared to the M3.
John:
Are these the same cores as the M3?
John:
Well, Apple says that the M4 cores have, all the cores in the M4 come with, quote, next generation ML accelerators.
John:
Not the neural engine, not the GPU, the CPU cores all have next generation ML accelerators.
John:
I have no idea what that means.
John:
But what it does mean is these cores are not the same as the M3 cores.
John:
The power cores aren't the same.
John:
The efficiency cores aren't the same.
John:
They're probably similar in size.
John:
They probably have a close to the similar of transistors, but they are different enough that they have whatever the hell that is.
John:
I'm sure we'll find out as time goes on.
John:
But just to be clear, and then Apple throughout this entire presentation does the thing that they love to do, which is only slightly more justified in this case, which is
John:
Let's compare it not to its predecessor, but to its predecessor minus one, which makes some sense in this one because there's never been an M3 iPad.
John:
So what are you going to compare it to?
John:
You're going to compare it to the iPad Pro that it's replacing.
John:
And the one it's replacing came with an M2.
John:
So they say it's 60% faster than the M2.
John:
And as we always say when we talk about Apple's comparisons to multiple generations old, people are like, well, that just makes sense because people have old stuff.
John:
Not everyone has the latest and greatest.
John:
We want to know how fast it is compared to the old thing that most people have.
John:
And I will explain again our reasoning.
John:
It's not that we think everyone has to have the newest stuff.
John:
It's because what you want to know, at least if you're kind of a tech nerd enthusiast, is...
John:
Is this the one to buy?
John:
Is this a year where we make a big leap?
John:
Is this a really good one?
John:
Right?
John:
And the way to know that is, how big a leap is this one over the one that came before it?
John:
And again, the one that came before it is M2.
John:
I understand that.
John:
But just talking about the M4 as an SoC.
John:
Like, is M4 just like...
John:
barely better than the m3 or is it twice as good as the m3 right even if you don't have an m3 what you want to know is is this the year we make a big leap is this a good one to buy i haven't bought an ipad in six years is this the year for me to buy because we've just made a big leap like you don't want to buy if you've been waiting years and years to buy a new one you don't want to buy when they come up with a model that's one percent better than the previous one
John:
You want to wait for that year when it's 5% or 10% or 20% because it gives you the most bang for your buck.
John:
That's the point of the comparison with the predecessor, right?
John:
And again, I know the predecessor only had an M2 because there never was an M3 iPad, so it makes this a little bit tricky.
John:
But there are devices that have M3s in them, right?
John:
And so setting aside the iPad, if you just want to know how good is the M4 compared to the M3, Apple does not want to tell you.
John:
We will find out shortly.
John:
But Apple's not interested in that comparison, so...
John:
Anyway, it has a 10-core GPU, which is the same as the M3, although the M3 is binned sometimes because sometimes you get one with 8 cores active instead of the full 10 because binning, right?
John:
Apple bragged about how much better it is.
John:
It has the same performance as the M2 at half the power.
John:
That's great.
John:
It's a two-generation newer chip.
John:
Thumbs up.
John:
We like it.
John:
Uh, but the binning continues and binning, we use that term to be like when you make a CPU or make a silicon chip and some parts of it don't work, you can just turn off those parts and sell it anyway for a cheaper price.
John:
Because every time you make silicon, some parts, some of them don't work at all.
John:
Some of them have parts of them that don't work.
John:
And instead of throwing them out, you can just tell them, sell them at a lower price and then save the ones where everything is working and sell them at a higher price because you get fewer of those, right?
John:
Uh, that's binning.
John:
Apple is binning, and that's a term for the silicon industry.
John:
Apple has always binned its silicon in the Apple Silicon age.
John:
Now they're essentially doing the equivalent of binning with the entire product.
John:
But for the CPU itself, they are binning that.
John:
So...
John:
If you buy an iPad and you want a M4 with all the parts working, you have to buy, let me know if you've heard this one before, the one terabyte or the two terabyte storage model.
John:
And what does the storage have to do with the SoC?
John:
Nothing.
John:
It's separate chips.
John:
It's not related in any way.
Marco:
That's what it is.
John:
It's price.
John:
That's it.
John:
Because they want you to buy the FISOC package, right?
John:
Oh, you want to step up to that.
John:
You want the good stuff.
John:
Well, you can't just get the CPU with all the stuff working.
John:
If you want the CPU, all stuff working, you have to buy into other stuff, whether you want it or not.
John:
Maybe you don't need a terabyte of storage.
John:
You have no choice.
John:
So they have tied those two things together.
John:
So if you get the 256 gig or the 512 gig model, you get an M4 with, and I think this is the first, three performance cores instead of four.
John:
You're missing a performance core, not in GPU cores, which I've done many, many times.
John:
Oh, you don't get all the GPU cores.
John:
You're missing a performance core.
John:
I don't know enough about silicon manufacturing to know, like, is it because, like, the cores are new or trickier or something?
John:
Why do they usually bin based on GPUs?
John:
Why are they binning based on a performance core?
John:
Why aren't they binning based on efficiency cores?
John:
Is it because the performance cores are harder to make?
John:
Like, I don't even know.
Marco:
Well, I think it's probably about just surface area.
Marco:
You know, the performance cores are always much larger on, like, the area diagram.
John:
But I think that the GPU is the total GPU...
Marco:
You know, die area spent on GPU is bigger than total die area spent on CPUs, right?
Marco:
You're probably right.
Marco:
But keep in mind, when they bin GPU cores, usually they lop off two of them.
Marco:
So it could be like, you know, like, where is the defect in this area?
Marco:
You know, like, the odds are it's going to land, you know, within, you know, one of these blocks, the odds are this percent.
Marco:
And so, like, you know, they work the numbers, they optimize it.
Marco:
It's like, all right, well, we can bin based on the loss of these, like, large zones.
Marco:
Like, if it's somewhere in this zone, we can still sell the chip because we just disable...
Marco:
one or two GPU cores or we disable one of the performance cores or whatever.
Marco:
So I'm guessing it's all about, you know, area and the odds that it will be there or not.
John:
Yeah, well, they didn't bin based on GPU cores because no matter what storage you get, you get a full 10 core GPU, I believe.
John:
And they also binned.
John:
This is not binning again.
John:
I'm using I'm overloading this term.
John:
If you buy the model with 256 gigs or 512 gigs of storage, you get eight gigs of RAM.
John:
And this is something done in the past as well.
John:
if you buy the one terabyte two terabyte you get double the ram 16 gigs i believe they started doing that last ipad pro i think even the one before that i think that i think that might have been in the a12z generation the 2020 update yeah and again those things are they're a little bit more related because the ram is on the soc so i kind of there's a little bit of an excuse for like well that's part of the package the you know so i anyway
John:
uh if you want any of the good expensive stuff you must get all of the good expensive stuff which you know that's that's a business for you like they they've got you where they want you this is not an a la carte thing where you just spec it out exactly how you want uh things are bundled together to a degree they've never been uh
John:
And so, you know, comparing this, the M2 had four performance cores and four efficiency cores, and the M4, you know, the M2 is the predecessor in the iPad line.
John:
The M4 has four performance cores and six efficiency cores.
John:
But if you get a binned M4...
John:
you are getting an SoC with one fewer performance core than its predecessor.
John:
So the question asked by Rick Williams, which I think is a good one, Rick Williams on Mastodon, is there some benchmark where the M2 iPad Pro will beat the lower-end M4 iPad Pro because it has one more performance core?
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like, I think there could be a constructed benchmark where that might be the case, or at least I thought that might be until I saw the preliminary geek bench numbers for the M4, which may be same.
John:
Because remember, we're comparing it to the M2 because there is no M3 iPad Pro to compare it to.
John:
And that would have been like a closer fight.
John:
But the M2 is kind of older.
John:
Here, I don't know if these are true because geek bench scores come in at this stage.
John:
We don't know if they're like official or just random people trying things or they're fake or whatever.
John:
But anyway...
John:
Here, as of Wednesday, May 8th, is the Geekbench scores for M3 versus M4.
John:
I'm not even doing M2.
John:
I'm doing M3 versus M4.
John:
Single-core M3 score, which is currently the maximum single-core score for any Mac in Geekbench, is 3,131.
John:
That's a 16-inch MacBook Pro M3 Max, right?
John:
3,131.
John:
The M4 single-core score, if this is true, is 3,767, which is 20% higher in single-core than M3.
John:
That's not a small number.
John:
20% higher in single-core.
John:
Oh, my God.
John:
So that's like, okay, maybe these power cores really are difficult to manufacture.
John:
28 billion transistors compared to 25.
John:
It's not a massively bigger chicken.
John:
This is single-core.
John:
Who cares how many cores there are?
John:
This is single-core.
John:
That's a big... If that's real...
John:
that's a big leap in single core which makes me think a three performance cores in the m4 will crush four performance cores in the m3 and m2 with numbers like this um again it depends on the the algorithm or whatever and then the multi-core this is an m3 imac which is the fairest comparison plain m3 imac is a multi-core is 11 702 for the m3 and 14 677 for the m4 so it's a 25 gain in multi-core
John:
And again, the multi-core, I believe, is the same.
John:
No, no, because you have the extra efficiency cores.
John:
But anyway, 25% higher multi-core.
John:
Not that big, because I think you have the two extra efficiency cores.
John:
But 20% higher in single core.
John:
That is significant.
John:
That tells me that aside from the media engine being new, faster memory bandwidth, 20% higher single core, the M4 is not just a warmed-over M3, if these benchmarks are to be believed.
John:
Obviously, we have to wait until people get these into their hands and start testing them, but...
John:
I am optimistic that the M4 looks to be at least as good a leap over the M3 as the M3 was over its predecessor.
John:
Oh, and then one final thing, the 256 gig model, if you get the smallest amount of storage, the default smallest amount of storage in the iPad Pro,
John:
the specs that apple has say that you can only do pro res video recording at 30 frames per second at 1080p instead of 30 frames per second at 4k and the speculation is that's because everyone's favorite there's only a single nand flash chip in there so you get the half speed of course we won't know until there's a teardown or a benchmark but apple's own specs say oh and by the way video recording is slower on the one with 256 so that makes me think they cheaped out on that as well
Casey:
That is bananas, the difference between the M3 and the M4.
Casey:
If it's real.
Casey:
If it's real.
Casey:
That's what I was going to say.
Casey:
This seems almost too good to be true, but credit to Apple.
Casey:
They've done such an incredible job with Apple Silicon that I could believe it.
Casey:
It is definitely in the realm of possibility that the difference is that strong.
John:
Speaking of if it's real, this is the final bit here.
John:
The neural engine.
John:
It's there.
John:
It is a 16-core neural engine.
John:
Just like the previous one was.
John:
They say it does 38 trillion operations per second.
John:
And they did some comparison of like, look how much faster it is than the one in the A11 Bionic.
John:
Thanks, Apple.
John:
It's great.
John:
That's really old.
John:
60 times faster, right?
John:
How much faster is it than a 486?
John:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
How much faster is it than our last Intel iPad?
John:
Oh, we didn't make those.
John:
Here's the thing.
John:
I tried to look this up.
John:
I'm like, 38 trillion.
John:
That number seems big.
John:
I tried to look up the M3's neural engine score.
John:
And the number I found was 18 trillion operations per second.
John:
But then I also remember something about how Apple is changing what they're measuring.
John:
And previously they were doing like 16-bit floating point, or previously they were doing 32-bit floating point operations, and they changed it to 16-bit, and they can do twice as many of those because they pack, you know what I mean?
Casey:
Like...
John:
I don't know if this is an apples to apples.
John:
So I can't tell you whether 38 trillion versus 18 trillion is a massively better neural engine in the M4 or whether Apple has changed what they're measuring and they're doing 16-bit floating points that are 32-bit.
John:
So the jury's still out on that one.
John:
But that's another interesting thing of like the media engines have mostly been similar.
John:
The neural engines have been getting faster.
John:
They've been adding more cores.
John:
They've been adding more die space and they're getting better at what they do.
John:
But Apple didn't make any specific...
John:
claims about amazing ai stuff because i feel like as we'll get to in a little bit about the ipads in general there's a software story to these ipads that apple is not ready to tell until wwc so you know they said all this is great everything's great for ai you know the neural engine is great for ai we've been putting neural engines or whatever but they don't have any features to show us because they haven't announced those yet so it was a little bit of an awkward intro but i would imagine that when they do uh
John:
announce all the ai features of their various software products they may revisit how amazing the m4 is at them but here they just said it's great it's got a neural engine
Casey:
Then some other interesting pieces.
Casey:
There is graphite sheets in the main housing and copper in the Apple logo for thermals, which apparently gives you 20% better thermal performance.
John:
I like this, by the way, because of the cooling thing.
John:
For years, people have been complaining about essentially all of Apple's fanless devices, that they are stupidly not...
John:
thermally conductive enough and as we've discussed on past shows there are limits to how thermally conductive you want it to be and there are like actual legal limits like you can't let the outside of your device get too hot because it will burn people so sometimes apple is not conducting heat away from the soc to the outer world because they don't want to burn your legs essentially right they're like legal safety reasons why they can't do that
John:
But various YouTube channels are forever tearing open Apple's fanless devices, whether they be phones or iPads or MacBook Airs, putting in literally any kind of thermal anything.
John:
The world's cheapest two-cent thermal pad slapping on a MacBook Air.
John:
Wow, it doesn't thermal throttle anymore.
John:
right and again we say okay well is it because apple can't do that because it'll burn people's legs or whatever but like we've always you know all these rumors like the next iphone's gonna have a heat pipe and it's gonna have you know this cooling thing or whatever finally finally apple includes and brags about a thing they put in one of their flat fanless devices that helps it to be cooler and graphite cheaps they use they use these televisions as well to help cool them
John:
So thumbs up, Apple.
John:
See, you can brag about cooling technology.
John:
It's not admitting your things are too hot.
John:
Put better cooling in there so it spreads the heat more so it doesn't get too hot.
John:
I am a graphite sheet fan, and I give that a big thumbs up.
Casey:
Wow.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Cameras and my – oh, no, I'm sorry.
Casey:
I'm getting ahead of myself.
Casey:
It is apparently four times faster than the M2 and ten times faster than the original iPad Pro.
Casey:
March of progress, baby.
Casey:
Cameras and microphones, 12 megapixel back camera, same as previous model, but no ultra-wide camera.
Casey:
That is gone.
Casey:
They have removed it.
Casey:
Four studio-quality microphones.
Casey:
The LiDAR scanner remains.
Casey:
There's a new adaptive True Tone flash that apparently makes document scanning better than ever.
Casey:
When I think it was Ternus said this, I was like, okay.
Casey:
And then I saw the little video demo that they did, and I was like, okay.
Casey:
That actually sounds pretty great.
John:
As soon as he said that, I was like, yes, somebody actually scans.
John:
You know how much I would know.
John:
Anytime I scan anything, I have to try to carefully arrange it to the shadow of my phone.
John:
I was like, yes, they can solve this for me in software.
John:
I think there's a hardware component to this.
John:
I haven't seen this confirmed yet, but if you look at the camera bump on the back of the new iPads, obviously they're missing the ultra-wide camo, which is
John:
oh well um but i think there's a new thing there like the the true tone flash thing i think there's like a a ambient light sensor that lets them helps them do that i don't know maybe that hardware was already there but anyway the result they showed in the demo was perfect he takes a giant ipad hovers it over a piece of paper it casts a giant shadow on the bottom half of the thing and they fix it in software love it i want that on every i want that on the the on the new iphones too
Casey:
As was foretold, the front-facing camera is on the landscape edge, which is true for anything they announce today, unless I'm mistaken.
Casey:
And they have a, quote, completely new charging and pairing system for the Apple Pencil.
Casey:
And we've kind of been bouncing off this all episode, but basically that's why...
Casey:
You need the Apple Pencil Pro for all of these new devices or the Apple Pencil that charges via USB-C because the one that you and I have in our houses today, the magnetic one, the magnets and whatnot and the charging apparatus is in a different spot than it needs to be for the new iPads where the camera is kind of in the way.
Yeah.
Casey:
uh other changes from previous ipad pro uh no millimeter wave 5g antenna this is very sad news for me i did go to my uh my picnic table don't call it a park bench john my picnic table just a week or two back but it turns out that the tree cover was not conducive for the time of year and very quickly it ended up that i was in full sunlight which was not desirable and
Casey:
And so I didn't go for long, but I will.
Casey:
Honestly, I'm skipping ahead here, but I don't plan on picking one of these iPads up because my, you know, my M2 iPad is just fine for me.
Casey:
But that is a bummer.
Casey:
Like, that's genuinely a bummer.
Casey:
I get why Apple has done it because there's really not that much millimeter wave deployment here in the States.
Casey:
And I think it was only ever in the States to begin with.
John:
but it's kind of stinky uh no ultrawide camera which we mentioned four microphones instead of five and e-sim only so e-sim only for everyone it's an interesting decontenting here dropping the camera like the camera the one they did include is exactly the same as it was so there's no camera improvement and they ditched a camera which probably you know it's the lesser used camera or whatever but they they got rid of that they got rid of the five millimeter uh the the 5g millimeter wave it makes me wonder if the next iphone will have the millimeter wave but anyway yeah
John:
yeah they're removing some stuff here presumably this is to preserve margins with the more expensive new screen right because remember we have those rumors like the new ipads are going to be thousands of dollars and yes you can spec this up to be like three thousand seven hundred dollars or whatever but because the screen was so expensive so there is some decontenting going on here and i think they made pretty wise choices like cutting out the ultra wide camera on an ipad probably not that big a deal although it does hurt their demo that we're going to talk about in a little bit of like
John:
Controlling multi-camera device things.
John:
Well, you can't do multi-camera on the iPad anymore because it only has one camera, so no multi-camera.
John:
Ditching five microphones instead of four.
John:
Maybe that's just the arrangement of stuff inside the thing.
John:
Maybe they didn't need five, that's fine.
John:
eSIM only is the way everything is going.
John:
And then the final thing on the camera bump,
John:
It looks smaller than, unlike every other device Apple makes, the camera bump on the iPad, I think, got smaller this year, which is a welcome change.
John:
I mean, the whole thing is thin.
John:
And obviously, Apple, when they compare the thickness, they're not comparing the camera bump.
John:
If they did that, it would not be the thickness.
John:
But the whole rest of the device is super thin.
John:
But the camera bump looks like it is thinner than the previous one, and it is certainly not growing like the camera bump on iPhones are.
John:
So I don't care about the camera on my iPad.
John:
I would have liked it if the one camera they did include got better, but it didn't.
John:
But oh well.
John:
But I do like a less prominent camera bump.
Casey:
Do we know that for certainty or is that just a theory based on pictures?
John:
I just look at the pictures.
John:
I don't know for certain, but I'd be surprised if it's not smaller.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So we've got some software updates.
Casey:
Final Cut Pro 2 and Logic Pro 2 are a thing now.
Casey:
Final Cut Pro 2 is two times faster final rendering than M1.
Casey:
And you've got live multicam, which you just made mention of.
Casey:
And there's actually its own bespoke app now called Final Cut Camera.
Casey:
Or I believe maybe that's on the iPhone side.
Casey:
I forget now.
Casey:
But basically, the way it works is you can connect and preview up to four cameras all at once in one spot on the new iPads.
Casey:
You can even adjust those remote cameras, exposure, focus, white balance, and more.
Casey:
which is really, really neat.
Casey:
And you can do... They mentioned direct editing of... This is separate from the multicam stuff.
Casey:
You can do direct editing if you have a Thunderbolt drive plugged in.
Casey:
You can edit the project that is stored on the Thunderbolt drive.
Casey:
So that's pretty neat.
Casey:
Logic Pro 2...
Casey:
They did a lot of stuff for music and, you know, forgot that any other kind of audio exists, but that's what we expected.
Casey:
Session players, bass and keyboard players, now they have like AI or, you know, machine learning generated automated bass and keyboard players.
Casey:
They talked a while about Chromaglow, which I guess is to fake the sound of the warmth and depth, if you will, but especially the warmth of fake of analog equipment.
Casey:
And they also have stem splitters.
Casey:
So you can drop in like a complete track that has everything in it.
Casey:
And then it will cut out or separate really the bass, the drums, the voice, and then everything else into four different tracks, which that is super duper cool if it works.
Casey:
So yeah, a little bit of a little bit of software.
Marco:
I think this is a good kind of way into AI here.
Marco:
The rumors were they were going to lean heavily into AI.
Marco:
The headline in tech for the last year or two has been AI everything.
Marco:
And what you see last year – what was interesting about last year's WWDC presentation –
Marco:
is that even though the entire industry was saying AI every five seconds, Apple didn't mention that term once.
Marco:
You could tell that was a choice they made.
Marco:
It seemed like Apple's opinion of the term AI was not maybe that high back then.
Marco:
And now what we see is them leaning into it because I think at this point they have to.
Marco:
The industry has gone that direction.
Marco:
The media, the markets, everything is wanting to know what's Apple's AI story.
John:
And they didn't make up their own term for it as people thought they might.
John:
Like, oh, I was not going to call it AI.
John:
They're going to call it something else.
John:
They said AI like dozens of times in this presentation.
John:
They're just calling it AI.
John:
They're not making up their own thing.
Marco:
And what's interesting, too, is like what they described as AI.
Marco:
is many of the features that have already existed that were previously called machine learning.
Marco:
And before that were called Siri, briefly, in a weird time.
Marco:
But obviously, we're going to hear a lot more about this at WWDC.
Marco:
And so this is kind of a weird in-between time when they had a big product launch.
Marco:
They want to market it with the hot terms.
Marco:
And I think this isn't just them doing like a term grab.
Marco:
Apple, I think, legitimately – and again, this is – talk about figuring out Apple's talking points from the event.
Marco:
Everyone who was at the event has a story about how Apple has been ahead of this game forever.
Marco:
And you could see it in the presentation too.
Marco:
Apple wants everybody to know that they think –
Marco:
We're already shipping AI-capable hardware.
Marco:
Look at our amazing neural engines and our amazing processors and our amazing GPUs and all the amazing software features we've had for years.
Marco:
And they do deserve a large amount of credit for that.
Marco:
Apple really has been shipping really great hardware that has a lot of ML acceleration features.
Marco:
They've been doing this for a long time.
Marco:
What we didn't see, though, today is use of large language model based features or generative based features that are really what people are mostly talking about today when they say AI.
Marco:
We saw Apple rebrand ML features they've had for years as AI features.
Marco:
And I don't think that's completely unfair, but it's also not what people are asking them to do.
Marco:
So I think two things are simultaneously true.
Marco:
I think it was totally warranted for them to co-opt the term to apply to stuff they're already been making.
Marco:
Because first of all, that's what everyone does.
Marco:
That's marketing.
Marco:
That's what everybody does.
Marco:
And the term AI is being used all over the place anyway.
Marco:
But also true at the same time...
Marco:
They didn't really answer the question.
Marco:
But this wasn't the right time to answer the question.
Marco:
The right times to answer the question are WWDC and this fall's iPhone event.
Marco:
And between those two, I hope to have a better answer because what people actually want when they say AI is
Marco:
I think largely is generative AI features and LLM-based features and how that can possibly integrate into better Siri and better phone assistant features built into your phone.
Marco:
That's what everyone really wants to hear from Apple.
Marco:
The iPad Pro event was not the place for that.
Marco:
So given what the event was and when it was and what Apple had to work with, I think they did a good job
Marco:
managing expectations around AI for now by basically kicking the can down the road, while also, I think fairly, touting that they're already making really good chips capable of what people mean when they say AI already today.
Marco:
But I don't think the M4, I don't think we have enough information yet to know, like, is this really meaningfully different?
Marco:
Is this, like, quote, the AI-focused chip?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
This is continuing the path they were already on.
Marco:
But the path they were already on was pretty good.
John:
And interestingly, for the rebranding, they said AI tons and tons of times.
John:
I think they even called one of their three-year-old features, like, this uses AI, even though it was three years ago, right?
John:
Like that image-dragging thing.
John:
But interestingly, on the CPU cores, like the M4 CPU cores, I'm trying to find the text.
John:
They said the CPU cores have...
John:
what is it um next generation they used ml in in the in the cpu course they didn't use ai they said that the the the individual cores have next generation ml technology or something yeah next generation ml accelerators
John:
ml accelerators what the hell is ml next generation ai accelerators that's what your cpus have i don't know if the cpu the silicon team didn't get on board obviously again i don't know what they mean by that but they made a point of it to saying these cpu cores are not the same as the m3 cpu cores they have next generation ml accelerators so yeah maybe not everyone is on the same page with the ai branding but they were so close to being able to call that ai
John:
and by the way on the final cut pro and logic pro things like it wasn't clear from the presentation because they were showing them on the ipad but there are mac versions of these same apps with the same features that i think were announced simultaneously or apple said are coming or whatever so these are not like ipad only if you don't want to use the ipad version of final cut or the ipad version of logic you want to use it on the mac you'll also get these features i believe oh that's cool all right
Casey:
i don't know if the multi-cam thing but otherwise i believe you're correct uh so new magic keyboard uh this was a series of ups and downs for your boy casey over here because uh it looks really great i really want it for the function row because that's one thing because i am a magic keyboard person on my ipad pro
Casey:
And I really like it, although I think I said last week it's not aging terribly well, but be that as it may, I really wish it had a function row.
Casey:
I wish the trackpad was a little bigger, yes, but I really wish it had a function row and holy crap, an escape key.
Casey:
Oh my gosh, what I wouldn't give for an escape key.
Casey:
But unfortunately, the new Magic Keyboard, officially anyway, and I suspect this is probably a physics problem, so it's not just an Apple gating it sort of thing.
Casey:
But anyways, officially it only works with the new iPad Pro.
Casey:
It does not work with any other iPad.
John:
Yeah, that makes sense for two reasons.
John:
One, thickness.
John:
The new one is thinner and this thing accommodates exactly the thickness of the whether it's the 11 inch or 13 inch that fits between it.
John:
They could have added a little bit of slop in there.
John:
I think I've done this in the past like, oh, you can kind of wedge it or whatever.
John:
But the second thing that's less easy to deal with is.
John:
The fact that the screen has all the weight in it, and that's why it has to be kind of cantilevered over the keyboard a little bit to keep it from tipping over when you tilt the screen.
John:
And the new ones weigh less and have their weight distributed differently.
John:
And the tilt is different, I think, partially to try to leave room for the top row of function keys because they added a new row of keys on top of the existing keyboard.
John:
And you do, from the reports of people who are there, you do kind of have to sometimes reach like under...
John:
the ipad depending on how you have it tilted to get to that function row right because they like they could there's no you can't get there's no extra space to be had so they they tried to make it so it doesn't cannily route as much because it's lighter so you don't need to it's hard to explain but if you look at it from a side view and look at the the one that you have casey in the side view you can see the one that you have has to stick more of the weight of the ipad out over the front of the thing to make it all balanced so
John:
I think this this magic keyboard would not work for the thicker, heavier models.
John:
Just like you said, just because of physics.
John:
Right.
John:
So I don't begrudge Apple making this iPad Pro M4 only because it's just it wouldn't work.
John:
And I do think this one is better.
John:
I think they have made as much room as they can by making it not have to stick out as much over the keys and, you know, with the thinner iPads.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, this thing looks really good.
Casey:
So yeah, so you've got two colors, you got a function row, the palm rest is now aluminum.
Casey:
And again, you've got a larger trackpad.
Casey:
And interestingly, it now uses haptic feedback.
Casey:
So it's not a like diving board scenario, as far as I can tell.
Casey:
It's got haptic feedback.
Casey:
Again, M4 iPad Pro only.
Casey:
Also, you get increased pass-through charging power.
Casey:
This was stated to MKBHD.
Casey:
It was the first place I saw it.
Casey:
And you can get up to 60 watts pass-through charging.
Casey:
I don't recall what the number was.
Casey:
I think it was 20-ish watts.
Casey:
on the one that I have.
Casey:
But if you're really running low on your battery, you definitely want to plug directly into the iPad on mine.
Casey:
Now it looks like it really doesn't matter.
Casey:
And then Gruber noted that, hey, the total weight of the 13-inch iPad Pro plus the Magic Keyboard is within a couple of grams or something like that of a 13-inch MacBook Air, just as is.
Casey:
And so they really are effectively equivalent once you put the iPad Pro in a Magic Keyboard.
John:
Well, one of them is a bunch of pieces that'll come apart and it's all floppy and everything.
John:
And interestingly, like about the aluminum, the aluminum is on the side that faces you when you're using it, like it's the palm rest or whatever.
John:
But the whole outside of this magic keyword I'm led to believe is continuing to be whatever that gummy like other material is, which is interesting because I mean, I guess the part like you can tell me, Casey, the part that's wearing, is that the part that you touch or is that the part that touches the surface that the thing is sitting on?
Casey:
No, it's more of the like corners in particular, the outside corners.
Casey:
So like I'm looking at it right now, the corner nearest the camera bump, the rubber on the outside or whatever this is, maybe it's not rubber, but you know what I'm saying?
Casey:
Like that, that material is peeling away on the corner really, really badly.
John:
So this aluminum is not helping you with that.
Casey:
no it's not yeah you're exactly right but uh yeah and the surface that you actually touch i mean mine isn't spick and span because i haven't you know cleaned it in a little while but i wouldn't say it's wearing particularly badly um the left actually i guess the left hand side it feels just tactilely it feels a little bit different than the right hand side i guess maybe because my right hand my right hand is doing a lot more mousing than my left hand because i basically don't mouse with my left hand at all
Casey:
So there's less contact on the right-hand side.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
That's just a theory.
Casey:
But I don't think it's wearing poorly on the interior, although aluminum would certainly be welcome.
Casey:
But it's the exterior that's the problem.
Casey:
And to your point, it doesn't seem like that's going to get any better with this one.
John:
Some people have had problems with the keyboard and the membrane that's around it and all sorts of other things with the various gummy iPad accessories.
John:
So we'll see how this holds up.
John:
yeah the trackpad is a pure win though like having having a haptic trackpad instead of the little diving board thing is great and i think having aluminum on the surface will be good but like when this thing is closed up you you're not going to confuse it with a macbook air because it's all soft and gummy on the outside like an ipad
Casey:
So tell me one of you, because I'm not trying to be funny, and this is not just me playing dumb for the purpose of the show.
Casey:
So the smart folio, the one that has a keyboard, whatever that's called, that's gone.
John:
The smart keyboard folio.
John:
I think I just mean the folio.
John:
I'm talking about the one where you get an iPad and you just want a thing to cover it.
John:
No keyboards, no trackpads.
Marco:
That's just called Smart Folio.
Marco:
But what was the first style of iPad Pro keyboard that did not have a trackpad, that was called the Smart Keyboard Folio.
Marco:
And that's always been my preferred iPad keyboard.
Marco:
And even after the Magic Keyboard came out, I actually briefly bought one when it first came out and then returned it because I really didn't like it on the 11-inch because it added so much bulk to it.
Marco:
And I didn't even like the keys of it.
Marco:
I actually really like the Smart Keyboard Folio.
Marco:
It is...
Marco:
Compared to the Magic Keyboard, it is way less bulky.
Marco:
So it's lighter.
Marco:
It's probably thinner, but it's definitely lighter.
Marco:
It is like two-thirds the price.
Marco:
It's $200 instead of $300, both of which are ridiculous prices.
Marco:
They really are.
Marco:
It's at least cheaper or less expensive.
Marco:
And it didn't have the cantilever design because it didn't need to shove the keyboard all the way back to make room for a trackpad.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
If you only need a keyboard and you don't want a trackpad, it is, I think, the better product in many ways.
Marco:
And unfortunately, there is no smart keyboard folio update for the new iPads.
Marco:
And it probably won't work.
Marco:
You could maybe try to make it work, but it probably won't be very good because of the way it mounts.
Marco:
The iPad has to rest in these slots in it, and the new iPads are thinner.
Marco:
So they're not going to really fit and mount properly in those slots.
John:
Really?
John:
I'd be like, you could do something with magnets.
John:
I think maybe Logitech or somebody, some other third party might try their hand at replacing that product.
Marco:
Oh, they might try, but people have had, I mean, how long has this keyboard style been the case?
Marco:
It's been since the 11 inch.
Marco:
That's 2018.
Marco:
So from 2018 to 2024,
Marco:
Zero other companies have made an iPad keyboard that looks, feels, and works as good as that one.
John:
Well, that's because the Apple had one.
John:
But now Apple doesn't have one, so there's no competition.
Marco:
I guess.
Marco:
But, I mean, honestly, this really disappoints me.
Marco:
I'm not surprised at all that they went this direction because it was very clear that the Magic Keyboard is where they wanted to go.
Marco:
But the Magic Keyboard is...
Marco:
heavier and bulkier and more expensive and more mechanically complicated i don't love that trade-off for my own purposes but we'll get to my purposes in a little bit so it just just pour one out for the smart keyboard folio i think the magic keyboard the new magic keyboard is actually lighter than the previous it is but it's it still has a lot more in there and it is still heavier than the smart keyboard folio
John:
So the smart folio, the reason I put this in here is because I think in their copy and maybe in the presentation as well, they make note of more viewing angles for the, again, the smart folio is just like, it puts a cover on the front and back of your iPad Pro.
John:
That's it.
John:
There's no electronics or anything in there, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
And it folds up kind of like into a little triangular wedge that you can prop it up or whatever.
John:
I can't for the life of me figure out what the more viewing angles are.
John:
It looks exactly the same as all smart folios for iPad.
John:
So you can make the little triangle.
John:
You can prop it up this way.
John:
You can lay it flat.
John:
And that's what it does.
John:
So I don't know.
John:
We'll see.
John:
oh and by the way one more thing on the smart folio with the uh with the new ipad pros getting so thin especially the really big one i feel like we're approaching the point where adding a smart folio again the cover that has nothing in it no keyboard no trackpad no nothing is coming close to doubling the thickness of your ipad now yeah having that stupid cover not that i'm complaining it's just a little bit absurd that is bananas
Marco:
I mean, I would argue that it substantially improves the utility of the iPad to have a keyboard.
Marco:
Even though I strongly regret the loss of the Smart Keyboard Folio line, if I'm going to make good use of an iPad at all, it needs to have a keyboard.
Marco:
It's simple as that.
Marco:
That is no longer an optional thing for me.
Marco:
When I briefly owned the iPad Mini, that was one of the biggest problems with me trying to use it for anything was that there were no good keyboard options for it.
Marco:
I need a keyboard, and Apple makes the best keyboards for the iPads by a mile.
Marco:
And it's just a shame my favorite one's gone now.
Marco:
But if I was going to get one of these iPads, no question, I would get it with the keyboard.
John:
By the way, Logitech does have a new keyboard for this.
John:
I mean, it's different than the Magic one, the cantilever one, because it uses a kickstand, which is what Microsoft Surface stuff do that.
John:
If you can deal with the kickstand thing,
John:
you get an arrangement where the iPad doesn't block any of your function keys, you get a trackpad, you get a pretty thin keyboard, but you have to deal with the kickstand, which might be a little bit awkward.
John:
We'll try to put a link to that one in the show notes too.
Casey:
So there's a new Apple Pencil Pro.
Casey:
There is a new sensor, which allows you to
Casey:
squeeze it to bring up a new tool palette, and then third-party developers can do something else with it if they so desire.
Casey:
There's a haptic engine for feedback, so you know when you've engaged a squeeze or what have you.
Casey:
And you know what you should do, John?
Casey:
You should do a barrel roll, because now there's a barrel roll gyroscope to allow you to roll the pencil.
Casey:
And that's very useful, for example, to change the orientation of a shaped pen or brush.
Casey:
And
Casey:
Uh, so that's pretty neat.
Casey:
And it also supports find my, which holy smokes, I would really love that.
Casey:
It's only been a handful of times that my pencil has walked away, but then those times it would have been convenient.
Casey:
Uh, and so, uh, procreate CEO, James CUDA CUDA, whatever came out and, uh, said that among other things, developers can create their own, their own custom interactions, uh, using this new Apple pencil pro and the new sensors and whatnot, which is really cool.
John:
uh and so you can use this with the ipad air and the ipad pro right the the new ones that is yeah let's give apple some rare props for reasonable naming uh this is called the apple pencil pro instead of increasing the number like apple pencil apple pencil 2 then the apple pencil usb calling this pro makes so much sense because it's the expensive one uh and
John:
The only adjustment you might have to make in your mind is this is not the Apple Pencil that only works with the iPad Pro.
John:
It is the Pencil itself that is Pro.
John:
It is the Apple Pencil Pro.
John:
And so this is a good name for what will be the slot for the expensive Pencil.
John:
So again, the goal state in the future will be every iPad can work with a Pencil and you can pick the expensive one or the cheap one.
John:
And the expensive one is called Apple Pencil Pro and that makes perfect sense.
John:
Of course, now we have to deal with Apple Pencil Pro, second generation, Apple Pencil Pro, third generation, but...
John:
Apple Pencil Pro with two USB-C ports.
Casey:
Right, right.
John:
Yeah, we'll see.
John:
But anyway, kudos to Apple to not increasing the number by one and making it confusing.
John:
It's the Apple Pencil Pro.
Casey:
So that's the iPad Pro.
Casey:
The keyboard is $300 or $350, depending on what size.
Casey:
The Pencil Pro is still $130, which...
Casey:
Uh, I would have expected them to raise the price and they didn't.
Casey:
And $130 for the pencil feels like a lot at first, but then actually, especially this one, I feel like there's a lot of tech in there, even more than there was before.
Casey:
So I'm not really that bothered by the pencil, very bothered by the price of the keyboard, not that bothered by the price of the pencil.
Casey:
Uh, you can already order the pro it is available sometime next week.
Casey:
And the pencil Mac rumors has discovered has five different box designs, which are all very cute.
Casey:
And so I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
Casey:
And the original iPad has been dropped, or I shouldn't say original, excuse me, but the, what is it, iPad 10th gen, is that right?
Casey:
That is now $350.
Casey:
So that's the same, you can get an entire keyboard or you can get an entire iPad, take your pick.
John:
And the 9th gen is gone now, right?
Marco:
Yeah, well, you know, except for like education, discount channels, some of that.
Marco:
But what this means is like for, in most channels, the home button is gone from the iPad.
Marco:
We still have the iPhone SE to deal with, but from the iPad, the home button is gone.
Marco:
And everything has, oh, not Face ID, but we'll get there.
Marco:
We'll get there.
Casey:
So that's the event.
Casey:
For me, I think the iPad Pro looks great.
Casey:
It's expensive because it starts at $900.
Casey:
We didn't actually talk about that, did we?
Casey:
It starts at $900 for the 11-inch, and it just goes up from there.
John:
Is that like a $200 increase?
John:
I believe that's right.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I mean, again, the more expensive screen, we've worried how much more expensive it would be.
John:
It's more expensive.
John:
They decontented some to keep it, but it's still more expensive than it used to be.
Marco:
And honestly, like for...
Marco:
For what they are giving you, they're giving you a MacBook Air class processor.
Marco:
They're giving you MacBook Air levels of RAM.
John:
They're giving you way better than MacBook Air screen.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
The screen is way better than any Mac screen.
Marco:
So what they're giving you, that is a reasonable price for what these specs actually are.
Marco:
So I actually have no problem with this price for the product that it is.
John:
Until you start adding storage, obviously, right?
Marco:
Yeah, and the accessories.
Marco:
I mean, because the reality is the MacBook Air comes with the keyboard without charging an extra $300.
Marco:
But the thing is once you actually add the accessories, the cellular, thank God, and other things, you end up in the $1,500, $1,600 range at least.
Marco:
If you need a lot of storage, you might be even higher than that.
John:
Yeah, you can push up against $4,000 if you really dig this out.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
I mean, but almost no one's going to be doing that.
Marco:
But I think a lot of people are going to be in like the $1,200 to $2,000 range.
Marco:
And those are laptop prices.
Marco:
Good laptop prices too.
Marco:
That isn't like some base level crappy PC thing.
Marco:
Those are good laptop prices.
John:
That's either MacBook Pro price or it's a MacBook Air with decent storage.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And so that brings up the big uncomfortable question is like, well, how many people are, first of all, using an iPad in ways that can even use all of this hardware power?
Marco:
And then second of all, how many people can justify paying this much for an iPad?
Marco:
And that market exists for sure.
Marco:
Apple has shown over the years that the iPad Pro market is there.
Marco:
It does exist.
Marco:
People do use iPad Pros.
Marco:
My wife uses one.
Marco:
But they keep pushing it higher and higher in both price and in hardware specs.
Marco:
And what I'm not seeing is a lot of software that can push those needs.
Marco:
I'm not seeing a lot of actual use in the real world of people who are really burning up that processor and really using all that RAM using iPadOS.
Marco:
I've said many times before, I think it's unwise for tech people to...
Marco:
to condescend to other people by saying, you don't need this benefit, this resource.
Marco:
You won't use this.
Marco:
And it is something that tech people do a lot, kind of down-talking the less technical people that they know of in their lives.
Marco:
They're like, oh, you don't deserve to use high-end hardware.
Marco:
I deserve to.
Marco:
You don't.
Marco:
So I'm trying to avoid that.
Marco:
But it does seem like the iPad Pro continues on the path it's been on for a long time.
Marco:
Amazing hardware.
Marco:
ridiculously high-end capabilities for a tablet and for, honestly, for almost any computer, but there is still just the huge question mark of what are people who actually buy iPads and who are using iPadOS actually doing with this thing that will take advantage of any of that power?
Marco:
And I'm not saying that there is no market that will use it, but I think the market is really small.
John:
Yeah, so obviously, as we said before, the software side of this, which is obviously the biggest problem, that's WWDC.
John:
We'll have ample time to complain about it then.
John:
We had no expectation that in the iPad event that they would roll out the new version of iPadOS early and show us all the things they've done or whatever, but like this.
John:
There is a software side of this.
John:
And a lot of people see this and they see the amazing hardware and setting aside like how big the market, people almost get kind of resentful.
John:
They're like, oh, the last thing the iPad needed was better hardware.
John:
Or like they map things onto Apple and they think, Apple thinks the problem with the iPad is hardware.
John:
No, Apple doesn't think that.
John:
Apple, for whatever problems the iPad has that Apple acknowledges or knows about or whatever, they're just doing what they're supposed to do, which is make the hardware better.
John:
There is a software side of this where we all agree they're dropping the ball, right?
John:
But just because they make the hardware better doesn't mean they think that's the problem.
John:
They don't think that.
John:
They're just making the hardware better.
John:
That's what computer makers do.
John:
So kudos for Apple for making the hardware better.
John:
And we're setting aside the software conversation until WWDC, right?
John:
But I do want to say, when we're talking about the hardware, there is one thing about the hardware.
John:
That is essentially not allowing users of this product to take advantage of the power.
John:
And then no one ever talks about it.
John:
They all talk about how the software stopped people from taking advantage.
John:
And that is a thing.
John:
But the hardware at this point, especially now that they skipped a generation to give it, it's like the only product they have with an M4, right?
John:
the ipad probably needs more ports that's a hardware limitation now you can use external drives with final cut pro you can have thunderbolt or whatever what it's the macbook one with a freaking m4 in it right what if i want to power my thing but also connect with thunderbolt drive but also connect the usb sorry you can't do that
John:
Does it mean 50 ports?
John:
No, but it needs more than one.
John:
I don't know what the solution to this is.
John:
I don't know where you put the port or whatever.
John:
I'm just saying this is the rare hardware feature that is letting down the power of this device.
John:
The power of this device is constrained more every year by the fact that it has a single port.
John:
That single port has gotten better.
John:
Great.
John:
It's Thunderbolt.
John:
We love it.
John:
It's good.
John:
You need more than one.
John:
Like think of it if the MacBook one, the 12 inch MacBook had one port and it was Apple's fastest Thunderbolt port.
John:
no it had one port and it was cheap it was a cheap model it was like usb it wasn't even good this has you know fast port for using your video 8k video streaming to the thing blah blah but there's just one of them that is one area where the hardware is letting this thing down which is kind of a shame
John:
And as for the software stuff, like setting aside all the issues with multitasking or whatever, we'll talk about at WWDC.
John:
Steve Trout and Smith were recently complaining on Mastodon about sort of like a software model thing that's a problem.
John:
Like, oh, Final Cut Pro on the iPad, it's amazing.
John:
You got all this power.
John:
Here, Marco, here's an application that takes advantage.
John:
The Final Cut Pro on the iPad can burn everything that the M4 has to offer.
John:
It'll use it if you use the iPad as your video editor with Final Cut Pro.
John:
That's what you need this hardware for.
John:
And he says, well, if you do that and you start like a long running operation of Final Cut and then you switch to like Springboard or go back to the home screen, your Final Cut Pro job gets canceled.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Because like, oh, now you swap something out and it doesn't get canceled because 16 gigs of RAM and an M4 aren't enough to run a Final Cut Pro job in the background.
John:
Just get a MacBook that has those same specs someday.
John:
Yeah.
John:
you can run final cut pro in the background it doesn't cancel itself when you switch apps but the the software model the application model the environment on ios like setting aside like multitasking and file system access or whatever just like the overall like how does ipad os work
John:
It works in a way that is fundamentally unfriendly to pro apps, fundamentally unfriendly to letting people take advantage of the power of the things at the level of like, oh, yeah, on iPadOS, if something else wants resources and you're not the front most application, we just kill you, take the resources away from you, cancel your job.
John:
And that is not a pro environment.
John:
So setting aside all the other software things that we will surely talk about, there are fundamental issues, fundamental essentially invisible non-UI related issues to how iPadOS works that are at odds with the hardware that Apple is shipping.
Marco:
It's just the bigger story.
Marco:
We're seeing this from a lot of people today.
Marco:
If you were already able to do significant tasks on an iPad, if you were already using an iPad Pro substantially, then this is a great upgrade for you.
Marco:
This is an awesome product for you.
Marco:
If you were not already doing that...
Marco:
You probably still can't.
Marco:
Look, I would love to buy this thing.
Marco:
I would love it because it's so cool and so new and so shiny and so thin and light when you pick it up and it has the awesome new screen.
Marco:
I would love a justification to buy this thing.
Marco:
But I'm not one of those people.
Marco:
There are times in my life where I have used an iPad more or less.
Marco:
I've gone in and out of it.
Marco:
Recently, I've been pretty far out of it.
Marco:
I haven't actually used an iPad in, I think, about six months.
Marco:
But there are certain things... If I went to WWDC this year, I would definitely plug in, dig out...
Marco:
plug in my iPad, run all the updates, and bring my awesome smart keyboard folio because it is the best device to bring into a small place to take notes on in your lap with that keyboard, with cellular.
Marco:
It's great for that.
Marco:
But I have found that in most of my life, the iPad is not for me.
Marco:
And when I look around the tech business,
Marco:
The tech business is really big, and we've obviously never been able to cover all of it.
Marco:
We don't even cover a small amount of it.
Marco:
The tech business is huge.
Marco:
We cover the parts of it that we are closest to, mostly around the products and services we use ourselves.
Marco:
Apple has grown so big recently.
Marco:
One person used to be able to cover Apple and Apple products fairly well.
Marco:
I think Apple's big enough now that that's actually not really reasonably possible anymore to really have any depth to all their stuff in one person.
Marco:
It's a big company.
Marco:
They make a bunch of different product lines.
Marco:
And I think it's okay for us to specialize and say, you know what?
Marco:
This product and this product I'm going to use like crazy.
Marco:
This one and this one, I don't really have a need for that in my life or it doesn't fit my needs well enough.
Marco:
And for me, I realized over time that I wish I was the kind of person who could use an iPad more.
Marco:
The same way as we talked about recently, I wish I was a notebook person.
Marco:
I wish I used fancy pens and cool paper notebooks.
Marco:
I wish I was that person.
Marco:
I'm just not.
Marco:
For me, I'm finally realizing the iPad is that for me.
Marco:
And so I think it's worth accepting that about oneself.
Marco:
Even though many of us are gadget hounds, we would love a reason to buy this thing.
Marco:
It's so cool.
Marco:
It's so new.
Marco:
The cool pencil.
Marco:
And I would use it for like three days, and then I would never use it again.
Marco:
And so I'm giving this a pass.
Marco:
But the great thing about having this breadth of products is that –
Marco:
There's other products that I love and use constantly.
Marco:
I love the Mac.
Marco:
I love the phone.
Marco:
Like I've even started to really enjoy the watch in recent years.
Marco:
And I love certain ones.
Marco:
This one's not for me.
Marco:
But for everyone out there who's like, I got to have my MacBook Air.
Marco:
There's also people out there who are like, I got to have the iPad Pro.
Marco:
Now, I don't think there's as many of them by a mile.
Marco:
But those people out there.
Marco:
And so if you're one of those people, this is a great update.
Marco:
I'm personally just giving it a pass, though, because for me, I would be running to the nearest Apple store if even half of this stuff came to a MacBook Air.
Marco:
But unfortunately, that's probably not in the cards.
Marco:
But that's ultimately what I want is to continue getting really awesome Mac laptops for these needs.
Marco:
But if you're an iPad person, this is awesome and go for it.
Casey:
Yeah, you know, the iPad for me fits an odd space in my life because I desperately want it to be more for me than it is, but I do enjoy using it for what I use it for.
Casey:
It's a very, very good couch computer.
Casey:
It's a great, you know, passenger princess computer if Aaron's driving somewhere and I just want, you know, to goof off in the car because what does it have in it, Marco?
Casey:
You've mentioned this already.
Casey:
Cellular.
Casey:
Mm-hmm.
Casey:
So it's a great kind of toting around computer.
Casey:
And actually, as you said, if you want to take notes or something like that, I don't even necessarily mean with a pencil.
Casey:
If you just want to have a small computer that's on your person that you can use here and there, like at a conference or whatever, it's great for that as well.
Casey:
I enjoy my iPad enough that I don't think I would want to live a life without it.
Casey:
Although between just the three of us, I've had some really bad thoughts about getting a bumming around laptop, which I'm really uncomfortable with, but we can explore that another time.
Marco:
Oh, are you saying that maybe having a desktop laptop and a laptop laptop is a good idea?
Casey:
Hmm.
Casey:
We're not going to go there.
Casey:
We're not going to go there.
Casey:
What a surprise.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
I'm having very impure thoughts.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So anyway, so with regard to the iPad, though.
Marco:
Get the MacBook.
Marco:
air it's so freaking good i'm telling you i stop look i shouldn't be turning the ipad celebration episode into a macbook air sales pitch but i'm telling you like for the price of this ipad pro you can get a macbook air and if you like for for your purposes casey for as definitely for mine for definitely for yours that's the better computer for
Marco:
a lot of what you want.
Casey:
No, it really is.
Casey:
And honestly, all kidding aside, and I really am not trying to make a whole topic out of this, but if I could have a MacBook Air with cellular, I probably would already have one because it genuinely is that important to me.
Casey:
And if you don't agree, you know, you, the two of you and you, the broader listener, that's totally cool.
Casey:
But cellular is that important to me.
Casey:
And for the like bumming around on the go kind of computer.
Casey:
And if the MacBook Air had cellular,
Casey:
I would probably already have one.
Casey:
But that's neither here nor there.
Casey:
Let's move on.
Casey:
I don't want to get one of these because I just got this iPad, what, like a year, year and a half ago, something like that.
Casey:
And it's serving me perfectly fine.
Casey:
It's an M2 iPad Pro.
Casey:
And even though the keyboard is wearing in a way that I don't love, it still works.
Casey:
And so for now...
Casey:
I'm sticking with it.
Casey:
I don't have any needs in the house to pass down my iPad or any other iPad.
Casey:
So I'm not in for this one, but I cannot state strongly enough how impressed I am by this hardware.
Casey:
I mean, not having seen it in person yet...
Casey:
Just by looking at the specs and seeing the reviews and seeing the introductory video, it's incredible, incredible hardware.
Casey:
And I don't want to derail us on another why is iPadOS the way it is discussion.
Casey:
But I just wish for more for my iPadOS for my needs.
Casey:
Maybe not for your needs, but for my needs.
Casey:
And I just can't get that yet.
Casey:
And so for all of those reasons, I'm not in for this one.
Casey:
But John, I am hearing that you are probably going to be in for this one, huh?
John:
Yep.
John:
So my iPad, I probably watched like half of my television movies on my iPad.
John:
And it's all about the screen.
John:
And I am a TV snob and I love OLED.
John:
And I was absolutely 100% going to get this one.
John:
So I ordered one.
John:
What did you buy?
John:
It pained me a little bit to 11-inch.
John:
It pained me a little bit to see the SOC things.
John:
It doesn't matter for TV watching, obviously, but it's like, oh, I kind of like to get the silicone with all the parts working, but there's no way I was going to pay for it.
John:
it's just it was hundreds of more dollars that would be pointless for me i don't need that to watch tv and movies i barely i need i don't need any of that thing i just need like the h264 decoder right it's all i need right so i got the 11 inch when i was picking the storage size i have i have an m1 ipad pro right now so i'm replacing the m1 with the m4 and again the only reason i'm replacing it is because of that screen that's it i don't care about anything else right um
John:
Um, and so when I picked storage, I looked at my M1 and said, how much storage are this amount using?
John:
And I have a 256, I think, and I'm using like a little bit more than half.
John:
So I'm like, Oh, I can just get a 256 again.
John:
But I thought about it a little bit.
John:
And I said, you know, if the screen is as good as I think it is, I'm going to be much more likely to take some of my big honking Blu-ray rips and put them on my iPad.
John:
Like not, you know, put them like copy them to my iPad so I can watch them with like infuse or whatever.
John:
Um,
John:
So I got the 512.
John:
That doesn't give me anything.
John:
The SoC still has one performance core disabled, like that storage size upgrade.
John:
I guess I didn't know this at the time, but I guess it gives me the faster storage instead.
John:
But I don't need the faster storage either.
John:
It's like it's all pointless, right?
John:
But I got it for the storage space, anticipating that I may want to put more actual video files, big video files on the iPad.
John:
which I haven't done with my current model because I think I'm going to like the screen so much.
John:
So that's what I did.
John:
I got an 11 inch 512 space black.
John:
I got the folio case.
John:
That's just, you know, no keyboard, no trackpad, no nothing.
John:
It's just a gummy little case.
John:
Um, it will even out the camera bump.
John:
And, you know, I actually use that case to prop my iPad up when I watch it in bed.
John:
Like that's what I actually use it for.
John:
So it is an important case.
John:
accessory for me um i did i was like oh you know i should try to buy this through my son's college to get that educational discount and there is an educational discount and it's okay but for whatever reason
John:
The educational discount, I don't know if this is also discounted or whatever, and I Googled for a little bit, but the educational discount, if you buy AppleCare+, they make you get the one where you pay for two years up front and that's it.
John:
You can't get the monthly one.
John:
Literally can't, at least in my son's college store.
John:
And I wanted the month-by-month one because the month-by-month one...
John:
It goes until you stop paying.
John:
It doesn't stop after two years.
John:
And I plan to use this iPad for way more than two years if I possibly can.
John:
Again, the only reason I'm ditching my old one is because of the screen.
John:
And if the screen is good, the screen's never going to get any worse other than getting a little bit dimmer.
John:
But it doesn't matter because I watch in the dark anyway.
John:
So I'm in for the long haul.
John:
i want the and if i drop it and break it i want to get it replaced so i got the monthly apple care paid full price for everything get any kind of discount the monthly apple care i i set aside the educational discount and left probably hundreds of dollars on the table just so i can get the month-to-month apple care plus because i couldn't figure out or be bothered to figure out how to somehow do that through the school or whatever anyway
Casey:
Well, why didn't you?
Casey:
You could have bought it without any sort of AppleCare.
Casey:
And then in the settings app, you can actually enroll in AppleCare in there.
John:
Yeah.
John:
When I was Googling for it, there were some people who are buying through EDU or have some difficulties with that.
John:
Oh, interesting.
John:
There was enough things about like, oh, it turns out you couldn't buy it after the fact if you bought it through EDU or some crap.
John:
And I was like, I just don't want to deal with that.
Casey:
No, that's fair.
John:
it wasn't like, it wasn't that big a difference by a couple hundred dollars or whatever, but like I'll, I'll survive.
John:
So, so that's what I got.
John:
Um, and I'm looking forward to it.
John:
Uh, again, I use, I use it like literally every single day.
John:
Uh, and what I'm just using it as a glorified TV, but not just as glorified.
John:
I'm going to say that like, Oh, you just use a glorified TV.
John:
I I've said this before.
John:
I do the multi-screen experience on a single screen.
John:
When I watch TV, I'm sliping in slide over things of like ivory.
John:
Um,
John:
And I'm sometimes doing it like picture-in-picture and using NetNewsWire while the thing I'm watching is in floating like picture-in-picture in the corner.
John:
So I'm using my iPad, yes, as a TV, but as a TV where on the same TV with my fingers, I can dork around other things if it's, you know, something that I don't have to pay too much attention to.
John:
So...
John:
I'm looking forward to it.
John:
Hopefully I can get the brightness under control so my wife doesn't kill me for watching things in HDR.
John:
People tell me that I should have got a $3,500 Vision Pro or whatever, but yeah, that's what I got.
John:
My Folio has already shipped, I believe.
John:
and i should have the uh the ipad oh and i also got the pencil pro not because i use the pencil a lot because i don't but i do have the apple pencil 2 with my m1 ipad pro and i do like it for the few times that i've used it yeah i feel the same i mostly got the pencil so i can talk about it on the show uh because i don't really need a pencil and also because when i hand this down like i i'll probably hand it down to my son who does do like digital art stuff with the pencil and i want him to have a pencil that goes with it so there you go
Casey:
That's exciting, John.
Casey:
And so it arrived.
Casey:
Do you know when it arrives?
John:
Are you sure?
John:
I think that like, is it May 15th or something?
John:
Whatever day one is like for the arrival of the new iPad Pro.
Casey:
Cool.
Casey:
Well, that's super exciting.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Compiler and Squarespace.
Marco:
Thanks for our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
Today's member exclusive bonus segment in ATP Overtime is on Apple Silicon in AI servers.
Marco:
This is a story that broke, I think, just today that Apple is allegedly developing AI chips for data centers to run in custom servers.
Marco:
We're going to be covering that in ATP Overtime, members exclusive.
Marco:
Join at atp.fm slash join to hear.
Marco:
Thank you so much, and we'll talk to you next week.
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.
Marco:
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-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U
Marco:
Accidental Tech Podcast So Long
Casey:
Outside of my neighborhood, there was a house that was sitting vacant for literally five or ten years directly across the street from the exit I used to get, you know, in and out of our neighborhood every day.
Casey:
Before it sat vacant, there was actually a, you know, a Z32, a 300ZX that parked there for a while, like I used to have many years ago, and it always made me so happy to see it.
Casey:
Then it's that vacant for forever.
Casey:
And then all of a sudden somebody moved into it or whatever.
Casey:
It's no longer vacant.
Casey:
And there are like two or three Wranglers that park there all the time.
Casey:
And that just kind of makes me smile a little bit.
Casey:
I still think that the Wrangler was probably not the right choice for me.
Casey:
And I'm glad that you two numbnuts were a part in talking me out of it.
Casey:
But that house is now dead to me.
Casey:
Because in the last few days...
Casey:
Would you like to guess what is now parking in the driveway of the house that I see every time I leave my neighborhood?
John:
Is it a Cybertruck?
John:
A Yellow Rivian?
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
I would much prefer to see a Yellow Rivian.
John:
A Yellow Cybertruck?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Well, it's going to be yellow when I pee on it.
Casey:
No, not really.
Casey:
But it is a Cybertruck.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
It is...
Casey:
I'm trying to be gentle.
Casey:
It is not for me.
Casey:
You know what?
Casey:
I don't get it.
Casey:
I don't get it.
Casey:
It looks ridiculous.
Casey:
It screams I am very not confident in myself and I am compensating for my lack of confidence.
John:
No, does it scream that any more than the typical pickup truck that's a bazillion feet high?
John:
I don't think it does.
Marco:
Oh, yes.
Marco:
Honestly, I would much rather see a Cybertruck than one of those giant new regular Ford trucks that is just like the giant block.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
So the Cybertruck, okay, look.
Marco:
Let's disclaim a couple things up front.
Marco:
Elon Musk is a turd and a horrible person, okay?
Marco:
I'm not going to defend him at all.
Marco:
I don't like him at all.
Marco:
I sold my Tesla in part because of how much I don't like him.
Marco:
So this is not about him in particular.
Marco:
I think the Cybertruck is ugly, but I'm glad they tried something.
Marco:
I'm glad they actually made something that was noticeably different and an opinionated design.
Marco:
Now, that opinion was bad, but at least it's an opinionated design.
Marco:
That's fair.
John:
Well, I'm going to say it's bad, but that's what everyone says about the Cybertruck.
John:
They're glad that someone tried something new.
John:
But when someone tries something new and it really is bad, nobody congratulates them.
John:
Nobody congratulated Pontiac on the Aztec.
John:
No one said, well, I don't like how the Pontiac Aztec looks, but I'm glad Pontiac tried something.
John:
Nobody said that.
Marco:
Nobody was glad they tried.
Marco:
But the Aztec was not, it was not like a strong opinion.
Marco:
The Aztec was like a mishmash of like design by committee.
Marco:
Oh no, it was a strong opinion.
John:
It was just a bad opinion.
John:
The thing about the Cybertruck is some people like how it looks, which is not true of the Aztec.
John:
Well, obviously some people like the Aztec, but there's a large number of people who think the Cybertruck looks cool.
John:
So although it may not be to your particular taste, I think it is more successful than many other ugly cars that have come out.
John:
So when people say, I'm glad they tried something new, what they're really saying is I'm glad they tried something new that enough people actually like, even if it's not for me.
Marco:
There are so many boring, bland car designs out there.
Marco:
There's a thousand car models for you to pick from if you want a really average looking, quote, normal looking car.
Marco:
I did see a Cybertruck on the road for the first time about a week or two ago.
Marco:
Yeah, me too.
Marco:
I saw my first one like two days ago.
Marco:
Yeah, same.
Marco:
I wasn't as shocked to see it as I thought I would be because when you see everyone reacting online, they're like, oh my god, it's so weird.
Marco:
It wasn't that weird to see because I've already seen it online, I guess.
Marco:
It was fine.
Marco:
I commend any risk-taking in visual car design these days because it is so rare.
Marco:
And John's right.
Marco:
The Cybertruck is for some people.
Marco:
It's not for me, but it's for some people.
John:
like the ipad pro like it's coming all coming around uh oh the ipad pro is probably a much better all-around product yeah and the cybertruck enough people like how it looks i don't know if it's 50 or whatever but it's not like the number of people that like the percentage of people like the pontiac aztec it is a pretty big number people there is a large contingent of people who think the cybertruck looks really good
Marco:
And I think it succeeds at its goal.
Marco:
The goal of the Cybertruck was to be a really bold design.
John:
It's a statement car.
Marco:
Yeah, and it is that.
Marco:
Setting aside thoughts on its founder and setting aside the various flaws it's had so far, like the terrible gas pedal thing.
Marco:
There's a lot of flaws in it, and I'm not taking the safety flaws lightly either because that's a huge – obviously, that's a huge problem.
Marco:
But as a visual design of a vehicle, it succeeds in taking a bold statement and doing something crazy.
Marco:
Like recently, my dog walk route, one of the houses on it added a Hummer EV.
Marco:
And it's the first time I'm seeing a Hummer EV in person.
Marco:
And the Hummer EV, it is kind of striking looking, but it's striking because it just looks a little bit wrong in its proportions.
Marco:
Like it looks like you're watching a movie in the wrong aspect ratio.
Marco:
Like it looks like it's being stretched wide, but it looks like just a regular modern SUV just widened.
Marco:
It doesn't look like a bold choice in design.
Marco:
It looks like a boring car wider.
Marco:
Well, that widening thing is the Hummer thing.
Casey:
Yeah, that is Hummer's thing.
Marco:
But Hummers always look more like, you know, a little more of the military, like kind of utilitarian style.
John:
But they look wider than you think they're going to be.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
But this doesn't look like a Hummer.
Marco:
This looks like every other boring SUV stretched out a little bit wider, like weirdly wide.
Marco:
But it doesn't look like cool or good.
John:
Yeah.
John:
They didn't capture the distinctiveness of the actual original Hummer in the new one.
Marco:
Correct.
Marco:
Correct.
Marco:
Whereas the Cybertruck is very distinctive.
Marco:
It has this very divisive design.
Marco:
It is a bold choice.
Marco:
No one can look at the Cybertruck and say, that was designed by committee.
Marco:
That's so bland.
Marco:
Whereas the Hummer EV, I think, when I saw one in person here, I think it looks really bland.
Marco:
Big and weird and wide, but just bland.
Marco:
It looks like designed by committee.
Marco:
Whereas no one would ever accuse the Cybertruck of that.
John:
Yeah, the Cybertruck is kind of the perfect pickup truck for America because pickup trucks have long since not been judged by their utility.
John:
And the Cybertruck is perhaps the least utility of any pickup truck ever made.
John:
Because it's so, so many parts of it are like sacrificed on the altar of that look.
John:
And like, it's like, oh, you're sacrificing practicality.
John:
It's like no one buys, well, not no one, so few people in this country buy pickup trucks for their utility.
John:
They buy them for all sorts of other reasons.
John:
And the fact that they've been slowly shrinking the beds and making them harder to maneuver and bigger for no reason other than to make people feel better.
John:
That's what the pickup truck is in this country for most people who buy them.
John:
They're the best-selling vehicle.
John:
And so this is like...
John:
Oh, a pickup truck where you don't care about how useful it is, and everything about it is super weird and annoying, but you just want it to look cool?
John:
Let's do that to 11.
John:
And they did.
John:
It's got sharp angles everywhere.
John:
The bed is actually bigger than it is on a lot of the other big pickup trucks.
John:
And they did do some smart things by trying to make this big truck easier to maneuver than other ones, but it's just, yeah.
John:
It's a...
John:
It's probably not a great choice for the company in terms of how many of these they're going to sell because it's a $100,000 pickup truck.
John:
And yeah, they sell a lot of pickup trucks, so they don't sell a lot of $100,000 pickup trucks.
John:
It doesn't have a lot of utility.
John:
Half the people or whatever the percentage is think it is hideously ugly and the other half loves it.
John:
But it's iconic and we'll remember it in history the same way we remember the Subaru Brat.
Casey:
Oh, no, we will not.
Casey:
Don't you bite your tongue, sir.
Casey:
Both of those are way better looking and way better cars than this is.
Casey:
They were iconic.
John:
People said, this doesn't look like the usual car that I'm used to seeing.
John:
I don't even know what it is I'm looking at.
John:
And we remember them to this day.
Marco:
Look at the original MacBook Air.
Marco:
That was a terrible – believe me, I owned one.
Marco:
It was a terrible computer, but it was iconic, and some people loved the design of it.
Marco:
It doesn't need to necessarily be a great car in the stats and the on-paper ways to be an iconic success story in that way.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
It's more like the Lamborghini Countach, which is totally impractical, very difficult car to live with.
John:
But everyone knows what it looks like, don't they?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And I think if the Cybertruck was made by somebody who wasn't a total turd, you would not hear nearly as much negativity about it.
John:
Oh, well, until people start slicing people in half with those stainless steel panels and everything.
Marco:
Yeah, that's part of what I'm saying.
Marco:
There are safety concerns with its design.
John:
well we don't know there are unknowns there are unknowns setting aside like all the defects in the pedal like things they didn't mean to do on purpose they meant to on purpose make it out of stainless steel and it is yet to be seen and they meant to on purpose put those sharp corners in it and i'm not sure what if there'll be any fallout from that but it is that is a direct consequence of the look they've chosen that look has ramifications in the real world for possibly for safety but certainly for things like practicality and that ridiculous windshield wiper and all sorts of other crap
Casey:
I did not have on my bingo card for today that I would be the only person that does not like the Cybertruck and you two would be defending it.
John:
I mean, I don't like how it looks either, but I think Marco and I appreciate someone trying something new and succeeding enough that some people really love it.
Marco:
And not letting concerns like regulation and safety water down the design.
Marco:
Well, let's not applaud that too much.
John:
Not worrying about the accelerator pedal staying attached to the pedal because that's not that important.
Casey:
And then you just put a rivet in it and call it a day.
Marco:
There are legitimate safety concerns, but as a designed object, I honestly, when I saw it in person, I did not hate it as much as I thought I would.
Casey:
Oh, I hate it so badly.
John:
Speaking of design choices, did you hear about this one?
John:
You probably haven't if you're not super into this.
John:
So when you saw the Cybertruck when it was announced and everything, there was like these wheel covers, like the aerodynamic wheel covers that sort of essentially cover over the wheel to make it, you know, but they're removable.
Yeah.
John:
right it was very often those wheel covers are removable because people think the wheels look better without the aero covers on them but the cybertruck ones i don't know if you remember i can go pull up a picture of it now they have these little things that stick out basically over the rubber like into the sidewall a little bit like that's part of the look right so it's not just a cover that covers the metal part of the wheel that cover also extends into the rubber part but and it looks cool in all the demos like wow it's a distinctive look for the cybertruck
John:
But if you notice how the rubber on the wheels are made, the parts that stick out from the wheel cover sort of essentially mate with or line up with structures in the sidewall.
John:
Like it's, you know... Oh, yeah.
John:
You can't just rotate it.
John:
The wheel cover has to be lined up with the rubber of the wheel.
John:
And that's not how cars work.
John:
You may not know it, but your rubber tire does...
John:
move within the wheel, slip a little bit within the wheel.
Marco:
Whoa, I didn't know that.
John:
And so they thought they were going to ship this, but they realized if you actually drive the car with these on it, especially with the incredible power this thing has, they quickly go out of alignment.
John:
Like the wheel, the rubber goes out of alignment with the metal wheel that it's on, which makes the wheel cover also go out of alignment.
John:
And so they basically, if you buy a Cybertruck, you do not get those covers that you ostensibly paid for.
John:
And Tesla said, yeah, those, that doesn't work.
Yeah.
John:
So I don't think they're going to give them alternate wheel covers that don't extend if they're going to give them all new wheels.
John:
But there are a couple of things about the Cybertruck that, you know, they didn't either didn't think through all the way or didn't quite work out the way they want.
John:
And I love that one because it just shows the kind of like this is a young car company that no either no one thought of or was overridden perhaps by some other jerky person to say.
John:
You can't make part of the wheel be forced to line up with part of the rubber and give you a car with a thousand horsepower.
John:
That's not going to work after like, you know, 10 minutes to a couple of days.
John:
So no wheel covers for you, Cybertruck owner.
John:
Not yet, anyway.
Casey:
Well, I agree lightly that a bold statement was made, and I admire that, but everything else about it, it's hideous, it's way too big, it's obnoxious, it's just, it's not a DeLorean.
Casey:
Like, the DeLorean was wrong in other ways, but it was also adorable and delightful.
Casey:
There's nothing adorable or delightful about this monstrosity.
John:
I think it's adorable next to an F-350.
Ugh.