In the Metal
I'm going to try to get through this recording.
I'm sitting here in my old office and it is very echoey because I made a mistake when we were here cleaning out the house and filling the dumpster.
I took too many objects out of my office.
And now the acoustics in here are terrible.
It sounds like a bathroom because there's too much missing from the room.
Did I tell the story on the show?
I don't recall if I brought this up on the show, but about a month or two, maybe two or three months ago.
I was doing some sort of video conference, which is very rare for me and is soon to be rare for John or is rare for John now.
But I was doing some sort of video conference where I needed to close the closet door.
Now, the way I'm facing, I'm facing an exterior wall of the house.
And behind me is a closet, a very small closet that has, you know, some of those like accordion style doors on it.
And I closed the doors early in the day for that video conference.
And then that evening I recorded ATP.
And the next day, Marco says to me, what did you do?
I said, what?
What did you do?
What are you talking about?
Everything's the same.
No, you changed something.
No, I didn't.
What did you take out of your room?
Marco, I don't, what do you have, a camera?
No, I don't, I didn't do anything.
And we have.
Didn't it say like you took out something soft from your room and you need to put it back?
Right.
Yeah.
That's basically what you said.
And eventually we concluded, oh, I had closed the closet door.
And so all the soft material that's in the closet, like, you know, coats and things like that, instead of it being soft material, it was very echoey, hard material.
And I don't think another human on the planet, except perhaps the people, one of the people we're going to talk about in follow-up, other than Marco and this person from follow-up, I don't know if any other human on the planet would have noticed, but I tell you what, Marco noticed.
So apparently you've done it to yourself.
Congratulations.
You played yourself.
The thing is, I've recorded shows in here for years, and it's never been as good as the beach office, because the beach office is a much smaller room, and I've treated it pretty well.
This room is sized to be like a bedroom, and so it's significantly larger.
I might be moving to a small bedroom upstairs instead soon.
Reason number one, I'm trying to get through this, is the reverb that I'm going to have to try to filter out with iZotope after the recording.
Um, reason number two, one of the benefits of living at the beach is that I live on a very skinny island that's very windy.
And so in the springtime, whatever pollen might be created by the island is instantly blown right off of it.
And so there actually isn't that much pollen in the air that actually like sticks around and builds up and, you know, gets into my eyes and makes me miserable.
Um,
Well, so that also means that my tolerance for pollen has gone down over the last two years.
And so I've come back to Westchester for just like, you know, a day to run some errands.
And now I am filled with allergies.
Additionally, the change in routine made me forget to take my allergy pill this morning.
And so I have like the double whammy.
And I got away with it all day until about 15 minutes ago.
And now my eyes are just itching like crazy.
Yeah.
Oh God.
I spent a lot of time outside today too.
It's like a lot of, you know, I had a lot of like wind blowing around and blowing everything into my face.
So that's fun.
Um, and then reason number three is that despite my best efforts, which included stopping at an Apple store earlier today, I am still looking crazy.
at the goddamn LG UltraFine 5K, which is slightly crooked, which I think, I can't even tell.
I think it's slightly crooked.
Well, it's moving a lot, so it's hard to tell.
Yeah, it's wiggling constantly whenever I, like, touch the desk.
And now that I'm used to 6K, it looks like I'm using my computer, like, through a porthole.
Oh, get off of it.
you can come right off of it good grief oh my god i can allow the wiggly i can allow you going to get a studio display honestly i'm still surprised you haven't gotten a second xdr but frankly i thought about it uh you can come off of it on the postage stamp honestly maybe like if they ever update the xdr maybe i would get the second one then and like move like the older one to whichever place i was using the least um but that's i mean they're so expensive
Can we actually drop a topic right here, which is going to fly completely in the face of everything John stands for?
Hey, buddy.
You know, you could save this for seven minutes.
No, no, no.
We might as well drop it now because it's relevant.
I've been thinking a lot about my forthcoming studio display, which should be here in the next couple of weeks, which means since we're recording early, it might be here by the time we have our next recording.
No promises.
We'll see.
But I've been thinking a lot about the studio display and how there's so many things that we were talking about before it existed that we wanted, like high refresh.
What is it?
Mini LED?
I always get the terminology wrong.
Yes, because micro doesn't really exist yet.
It exists.
Well, but no one's using it really.
Not on computer displays.
So, and the point is there's a lot of stuff that it seems like low hanging fruit, even though I don't think it actually is, but there's a lot of stuff that we wanted that we didn't get in the studio display.
And I'm not complaining, mind you, I'm, I'm overjoyed to be getting this display, even with the current camera problems.
Like I'm sure they will get fixed.
I'm overjoyed to be getting this display.
Certainly Marco was about to insta buy one earlier today, if at all possible.
Um,
What I wonder from you guys is, do you see an in-between display happening in, let's say, the next two years?
Do you think that there will be a display that is beefier, more powerful, nicer, take your adjective, that is better than the studio display, but still not quite the bananas XDR?
Do you think that there's space for that in Apple's lineup for, I don't know, maybe like...
three or four thousand dollars or something like that i don't think i mean there yes there is space but your first question was will apple actually do that i don't but the apple approach i don't necessarily think is to make sure that there's space for it they would just replace this one with a better one and you know your question of you said within two years i'm going to say definitely not within two years
Well, historically speaking, Apple has been terrible about updating its monitors.
But, you know, things change.
So, you know, again, the question of will Apple do this or should they?
They absolutely should.
Of course they should.
But they just I mean, just look at the history of their monitors.
Has there ever been an Apple monitor that like a year later was replaced with one that was better?
The closest I think you can come to that is maybe the 22 inch Apple Cinema display was replaced by a 23 inch Apple Cinema display, which is a lot better.
in what seemed to me a fairly short amount of time but everything else i mean even just the xdr where is the new xdr didn't come out the year after the xdr was released that's that's for sure yeah i i think what we're likely to see here is exactly what john said like like when they are ready to offer those features you know at somewhere near this price point they'll just replace this monitor with a new model that has them it will probably be a little bit more expensive but not three thousand dollars
I don't know how much of a market there would be for a 27-inch 5K Apple monitor with those features for $3,000 or $4,000.
I think there's a market for it because it would be for people who would buy the XDR, but it's too much money, but they need the features of the XDR.
But once you're at $3,000 or $4,000, why wouldn't you go $5,000 or $6,000 for the XDR and get a much bigger monitor?
Because it's twice as much.
You get two of them.
It depends a lot on whenever the XDR is updated next.
Is it still $5,000 without a stand?
Or does it get even more expensive?
Or look, maybe they can bring it down to $4,000.
Who knows?
Or maybe it's $8,000 and it gets more expensive.
We'll see.
But the thing is, the features that we're talking about, this is another one of those reaching limits of human perception.
The features that we're talking about eventually will be economical, whether it's eventually with OLED or with micro LED.
Eventually, those features will just be par for the course.
And once you have them, it's not as if you have to wait for 500 hertz, right?
That's the point of diminishing returns.
And same thing with the HDR thing.
Will there someday be a 5,000-nit monitor?
I really doubt that is something that any human would even really want.
So I think you'll be able to fit all the features that we want into something like the Apple Studio display within a handful of years.
And at that point, for a reasonable economic amount of money, at that point, this will just be the new Apple Studio display.
But look at the cadence of Apple releasing better versions of its monitors.
Their history is really bad here.
Yeah.
So you you had said and this was off the off the cuff off the top of your head.
I dropped this on you spontaneously.
So no shame.
You had said that you thought the 22 inch cinema display to 23 inch cinema display was a year or two.
I said it was a it reminded me it was a very short amount of time relatively speaking.
So how long was it?
So August 31st, which actually is Aaron's birthday, of 1999 was the 22-inch cinema display, which has like a tripod-style stand, or just making sure we're talking about the same thing.
It's flat.
It's got two stubby little feet on the right and left sides, and it's got a kickstand on the back.
Correct.
Okay, we're talking about the same thing.
That was August 31, 1999.
The 23-inch cinema display, which is visually very different, almost iMac-ish,
no visually very different you must be thinking maybe i'm thinking of a different one oh this is uh aluminum 23 no no that's not what i'm talking okay this okay then then i take it back the one with the big plastic clear feet yeah they made two of those one at 22 and one in 23 that was march 21 2002 that makes much more sense okay i feel better say that's a pretty small gap in monitor year in apple monitor years which that's basically instant that's basically the next day those three years right it is within three years
Yeah, it was two and a half years-ish.
Yeah, so that is the smallest gap I can remember, but pretty much everything else.
Like, look at the Thunderbolt display.
That just never got changed and then eventually went away.
Well, no, it didn't.
I mean, you're thinking there was an LED cinema display that was not Thunderbolt.
It used, I believe, mini DisplayPort.
Yeah, there was a 24-inch Apple LED display that I had at work.
No, but there was also a 27.
27-inch LED display.
But it was right before Thunderbolt.
Yeah, and then replaced with the Thunderbolt.
But honestly, the replacement with the Thunderbolt display, it was like the thing that changed about it was the stupid rat tail thing and the Thunderbolt interface.
I'm not sure the panel changed at all.
Yeah, I think you might be right.
And that thing was buggy as hell.
Tiff had one for a while.
And yeah, we heard from a lot of people too.
Ours was buggy.
We heard from a lot of people theirs were buggy.
I mean, I have one.
It was always weird.
It's because it didn't run iOS.
That was the problem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But seriously, so anyway, so I was in the Apple store today.
I did finally see the studio display and the Mac studio in person.
I tried to listen to the fan noise, but you know, yeah, in an Apple store, you can't hear anything and we'll have feedback on that in a second.
But I could have bought a studio display today if I didn't want the good stand.
If I wanted just the regular like fixed angle or fixed height stand, that one they actually had in stock in my store here and I could have bought the same.
I'm like, no, if I'm going to get this thing, I want to get it with the good stand.
Hmm.
because i never i never run my apple monitors at stock height so i could have gotten it but yeah i just had to wait but as soon as i can get one of those i think i'm going to get one to replace this stupid lg and i'm just going to mail it to you what mail me the lg that's like an 80 postage sort of event but yeah hey i'll take it it's worth it for the joke alone i i'll take it i think everybody should mail you their lg 5ks and marco's usb ports still work right
Allegedly.
You know what?
They were always so unreliable.
I don't use them.
Like right now, they're just empty there.
I mean, the one that connects it to the computer still works.
Right.
Remember, it was the only one that actually frigging mattered that failed online.
Does your monitor occasionally go black like Merlin's does?
in mind yeah i'm convinced merlin has the exact same problem oh yeah yeah he totally does he has the exact same problem yeah of course everyone has that problem but yeah it's uh i oh god i this monitor i i'm so i'm so over this monitor i just want this out of my house like i i'm literally willing to spend two thousand and eighty dollars to get this monitor out of my house that's that's how much i hate it you just put it on the floor and throw a blanket over it and it could absorb sound
so getting back to you know so i don't know how far off we are from from economically having um mini led you know local dimming and everything here because if you look at the macbook pro the 16 inch macbook pro that display is what do you think about half it's like it's like if you'd have like two of them like a left half and a right half that would about be the 5k area right someone should do the math that seems maybe three
Yeah, I think it needs three.
It's like between two and three of those would cover the 5K area.
Now, I know things are harder to make when you increase the area for things like yields and everything like that.
But I think we're mostly not talking about yields of the panel.
We're mostly talking about the backlight technology.
That would enable the local dimming.
what the hell you know siri i'm not sure i understand either your house missed you no that was my watch that just did that your watch oh that's the worst anyway how far are we from being able to economically offer that i bet it's not we're not talking like six years from now if we can do it in the 16 inch macbook pro for not that much money relative to the you know the rest of the cost of the computer and everything we can probably do it in 5k without too extreme of an expense it
within maybe three years two years something like i think that's that's the time time we're talking about but again because of apple's aforementioned slowness to update the monitors that's why i think it's it's going to be more like you know three to five years probably before we see it but that being said so i did see these things in in i guess in the metal is that what we call that that's what people call it like for watches you you were in the flesh yeah i was gonna say i was in the flesh when you see a watch in person you call it seeing it in the metal so do we see the same thing that same thing about computers you do not
You're making that up.
Is that a thing that happens?
That's actually the term that watch people use.
When you see it in person, they say, I saw the watch in the middle?
That's exactly what they say, yes.
What if it's a ceramic watch?
They usually contain some metal somewhere.
That's a good question, though.
There are very few watches that are all ceramic casing.
Usually, at least the button pushers will be metal or something.
The Fisher-Price watch is all plastic, right?
Yeah, but even then, you've got some metal somewhere.
There's a battery, at least.
It's wind-up.
plastic springs then yeah right because yeah you you have metal somewhere in there it's the it's the watch that magneto wears in his prison yeah there it is anyway so i saw i saw these things and i gotta say so number one the studio display looks fantastic i was very impressed by it yeah the um the raising and lowering stand version they had one on display it's very nice oh it's so nice like that
I totally want to get that one when I get one.
So how does that compare to the XDR?
Because I don't recall having heard anyone who has spent significant time with the XDR and has also seen the studio display.
And it seemed to me, having never spent meaningful time with the XDR, that the mount, the stand was very similar in quality.
Is it
that's how it felt to me i mean the xdr stand is you know it's a little bit thicker like the metal is just a little bit thicker on the base and everything and and the little i guess neck and it rotates right yes yes well so so i would say overall it's it's very similar quality to an xdr stand at like you know two-thirds scale or something like that it's it's you know or thickness or bulk or whatever very very similar however
The up and down motion of how easy it is to move up and down, I would say it felt the same.
Now, I'm not moving my XDR up and down all the time.
I set it where I want it, and then I set it and forget it.
But you do have to set it.
So I adjusted the one in the store, moved it up and down a little bit, and it felt great.
It felt exactly as high quality as the XDR stand.
And actually, the fact that it can't rotate, I consider that a feature, not a bug, because...
Again, I want my monitors to be level.
And you know what monitor can never be unlevel?
One that can't rotate.
And so I would actually prefer it to not have that ability.
This gets back to two things that I said when I originally got my XDR.
First, that I was surprised at how the up and down motion wasn't as smooth as I thought it would be.
Not that it was janky or loose.
It was very tight, but it felt kind of like...
Yeah.
even if the stand isn't.
Maybe that's not a problem for people who live in new construction, but if you live in an old house in New England, the ability to actually level your monitor, even if your desk isn't level, is actually a feature.
Of course, my desk is level, so I don't have to worry about it.
Or rather, I do have to worry about it, but I can level my desk, and I also level my monitor.
And like Marco, I got it set where I wanted, and I generally don't mess with it.
And also regarding seeing the Mac Studio in the metal, I was very surprised how bulky and blocky it looks in person.
I knew academically how big it's supposed to be.
It looked in person bigger than I expected it to look.
And still not attractive.
It's fine.
It's serving its purpose.
I'm very glad this product exists.
It definitely looks utilitarian.
I was surprised there's a large white power LED on the front.
it's not super bright but it is it has it has a larger diameter than like a typical little point white led it's like more of like a almost like a pencil eraser sized um so that that was kind of kind of interesting and a little surprising to see um so if you're sensitive to that you might want to get one of those little like stick on light cover tape things um for it but otherwise uh no it's it looks pretty cool um just it looked big it's a chunk yeah
Yeah, it's not something that I would want.
Like, you know, they have it in all their pictures.
They have it kind of like sticking out from under the monitor a little bit.
So it's like a few inches in front of the monitor a little bit.
Yeah, because they wanted to be in the product shot.
Here I am.
In practice, you're never going to want to have that be sticking out past the monitor on your desk.
You're going to like tuck it behind it somewhere, like off to the side.
Although it is nice that it fits underneath.
I think that's kind of like a space saving thing.
Like if the space is tight, you don't actually need a separate space on the desk for it.
You can just let it sort of be in the shadow of the monitor.
Yeah.
was it uh jason snell was just pointing out a like a plexiglass thing that mounts under your desk it's really what it actually is is a dual mac mini under desk mount right but because this is about the same size as two mac minis you can just buy it put it under your desk put the put the studio in it uh and then you know you wouldn't have to see it at all it would just be stuck under your desk and maybe you wouldn't hear it as much either
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On a completely random note, you know what's paining me a little bit?
Knowing that there is a black version of the keyboard and trackpad that I'm using right now, and I don't have it.
Because I don't have anything against the white version, but after having spent years with the iMac Pro's black keys, well, dark gray or whatever it was, and black trackpad, now, as of the event, you can get, and they're obscenely expensive, but you can get a black keyboard and a black trackpad.
I really want it.
So I got to say, I saw the black peripherals in person today as well.
I wasn't that impressed by them, but maybe it's just not my style.
I will say the reason I was in the Apple store.
Other than the studio display.
Well, I was shopping at Whole Foods, like almost next door to it.
And so I walked over there.
But the reason I was there is that for tonight's recording, I wanted to get myself a Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter so I could use my other Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter.
It's for, you know, remember when I recorded here in the past, we had some issues using Wi-Fi and the USB, the stupid, you know, Belkin made USB-C ethernet adapter is not very good or fast or reliable.
But, and I had, I had two of the Apple Thunderbolt ethernet adapters.
One of them's at the beach and I had one here.
I just didn't have the converter to use it on, on Thunderbolt 3.
Secondly, I wanted to get the new little Touch ID keyboard because I wanted to try it out, try using it as a keyboard.
Maybe I could switch to it.
I've already decided that's probably not going to happen, but it is kind of nice.
But I wanted to have the thing where you Velcro it under the desk or something so that you can Touch ID with it while still using a good keyboard on top of your desk.
And I did try using it for this afternoon while setting up my computer and responding to some emails and stuff.
and it's almost a good keyboard i could almost see myself using it but the damn arrow keys and we talked about how they like they apparently like rounded the corners of this keyboard so much because you got the one without the numeric keypad yes i did bingo mistake the numeric keypad one's too wide then but but i think that's what i might i might try that at some point because i mean aren't you like ambidextrous now you use like lefty trackpad and everything
I do use lefty trackpad and righty mouse, but I just don't like having the mouse all the way off in New Jersey when I'm trying to... But man, this keyboard is almost really good, except for those damn full-height left and right arrow keys.
That was messing me up constantly.
I'm used to the Microsoft Sculpt that I use all the time.
By the way, a quick little thing.
Lenovo released a new ergonomic keyboard recently.
I bought one.
I tried it.
It was so bad, and I couldn't return it.
I actually threw it away.
That's how bad that was.
So if anybody's wondering if I've found anything better than the Microsoft Sculpt for a split ergonomic keyboard, no.
But anyway, so going to the Apple thing, it's almost really good.
If they made the small keyboard without the numeric keypad going off all the way into New Jersey...
but with regular half height left and right arrow keys, that would be an amazing product.
I'd be so happy with that.
I, I might even stop using my ergonomic keyboard entirely for that product, but as it stands, unfortunately we haven't gotten there, but having touch ID is really cool.
And I was also interested to see that, um,
By setting up this Touch ID keyboard with my 16-inch MacBook Pro, which of course has its own Touch ID sensor on the MacBook Pro, I didn't have to re-register my fingerprint for the keyboard.
So it must have either transferred my fingerprint data over somehow, which I'm not sure how that's possible, while also having the whole security thing that they do where it's all locked in, or...
there is some kind of common hash that it stores, and it's able to read the same fingerprint data from two different sensors and match one common hash.
But I thought that was kind of an interesting little side effect that I expected I'd have to train my own fingerprint again on this new sensor, but I didn't.
Yeah, I think the secure enclave is on the M1, right?
It's not in the keyboard, but I might be wrong.
Yeah, that's probably it.
So it's transmitting my fingerprint image somehow from this keyboard.
Well, not the image, but some amount of data.
Who knows?
By the way, just some real-time follow-up here.
Armory in the chat has linked.
There's actually a whole Apple support document on how the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID does the fingerprint security and how it securely transmits stuff between it and the computer.
So we'll link that in the show notes as well.
Hearing you, to go back a step, talk about the officially called Magic Keyboard with Touch ID for Mac Models with Apple Silicon-US English.
That's a very non-Apple name.
That's almost one of those Amazon keyboard spam titles.
Seriously.
My goodness.
Anyways, when I was buying my new setup, when I got my new computer, I got the keyboard that has a numeric keypad on it.
And I do like a numeric keypad, but I don't use it that terribly often.
And I understand what you're saying, and I know you're being hyperbolic.
But even though my trackpad is...
East of where I would potentially want it to be.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's in New Jersey or anything like that.
Or for us, it would be the eastern shore.
But nevertheless, it is further away than I would prefer in a perfect world.
New Jersey is west of me.
I face south.
Well, that's true, actually.
That's a good point.
But anyways, the point is that the reason I didn't get the keyboard that you ended up with was expressly because I knew those arrow keys were going to drive me friggin' nuts.
And so I thought, you know what?
I'm just going to bite the bullet and I'm just going to go ahead and I'm going to get the one with the keypad because I would prefer to have the consistent arrow keys where everything is a full key size.
Just a quick update on Apple peripherals with black keycaps and so on.
Stephen Hack had a good post to remind us.
It was a discussion about the black MacBook and how that would cost more, but it came with the bigger hard drive.
But even if you accounted for the bigger hard drive, it still costs a little bit more.
So it's this thing that Apple still does, reading from his webpage.
We'll put a link in the show notes.
The current Magic Mouse, or I guess I don't know if this is current, but anyway, the Magic Mouse, white was $79, black $99.
The Magic Trackpad, white $129, black $149.
Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, numeric keypad, white 179, black 199.
I wanted the black MacBook until I saw someone else's in person, and it was just covered in fingerprints.
Oh, my God.
It smudged up.
Oh, but it was the white ones, which I had, a white poly book, and it was covered in finger grease.
I feel like it's easier to keep the white things clean than it is to keep the black one's finger ungreased because, like, it's very hard.
It's harder to clean off.
Also, who are you to be throwing stones about black keyboards, Mr. I always bought black cars for years?
I still have a black keyboard right here.
I just don't happen to have very greasy fingers or I wash my hands if it hurts or touch my computer.
I have a black mouse.
I have a black keycap.
I was lucky enough for my extremely inexpensive Mac Pro came with a keyboard with black keycaps and a black mouse that I've never unwrapped.
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All right.
We should, I guess, maybe do follow-up, or aren't we supposed to start the show at this point?
Yeah.
Someone derailed us.
I can't remember.
Yeah, geez.
It must have been Marco.
It couldn't have been me.
All right.
So we should do some actual follow-ups.
So a friend of the show, Mark Edwards, over at Django, who makes John's favorite app in the entire world, iStatMenus, he put together a follow-up to his post from several years ago that started me down this whole journey of looking into monitors and high DPI monitors and so on and so forth.
Well, Mark has put together a revisit in much the same way I had on my post in December.
And he walks through kind of, you know, let's talk again about what it is we want, why we want it, etc.
And did you know, fellas, it turns out that when you have a visual medium and you're trying to discuss visual things, it's very easy to discuss.
display examples of exactly what we're talking about.
So if you were curious, listener, as to why we keep banging this drum and barking up this tree, then I encourage you to check out this post because it is abundantly obvious very, very quickly exactly what we're talking about.
Also, actually, that reminds me, last week I meant to say out loud, and I didn't, but I did put in the show notes,
I went back and watched the iPhone 4 Retina Display announcement with Steve Jobs.
And I put in the show notes, but I completely forgot to say anything about it.
And in very Steve fashion, he does a phenomenal job in just a couple of minutes of explaining exactly why Retina is a big deal in a much better way than any one of us can just using our voices.
So it's in the last episode's show notes, but I remember I'll try to copy it to this episode's show notes as well.
But...
It is absolutely worth the, I don't know, five or ten minutes of your time if you're still confused why we want Retina so bad.
So go check that out too.
So you mentioned how it's really nice to have a blog post for this visual medium, for this visual, you know, explanation.
Well, I happened to read this blog post earlier today while sitting outside at a playground with, you know, Adam was playing and I was like sitting there, you know.
As I was sitting at the playground bench with no parents I knew around me to talk to, I was reading my phone, of course, and the wind just kept blowing in my eyes, and my eyes were just watering the entire time.
In retrospect, that was most likely because of the pollen and the missed allergy pill, but at the time, I thought, man, it's just really windy today.
And my eyes were just constantly watering.
And I'm trying to read this article, and I kept on to wipe my eyes, and they're getting all itchy and red from all the wiping then.
I almost thought you were having an emotional experience.
Yeah, it looked like that.
And I actually thought, people might think I'm crying here.
It's actually like there's a lot of water coming out of my eyes right now.
Non-native scaling makes you sad.
Well, yeah, I mean.
Anyway, yeah, so that was a very good article that I read through tears of pollen.
And joy.
Yes, also pollen, mostly pollen.
I can tell you that the mid-Atlantic is real bad.
It may not be the worst, but it is real bad for pollen.
And it is very frustrating.
And what's worse is, because I'm getting ever older, it affects me more and more every year.
And I assure you, when you have rigid gas permeable or otherwise known as hard contact lenses, if even a microscopic speck of pollen ends up between your eyeball and your contact, it's like getting stabbed to death in the eye.
It is delightful, I assure you.
I can tell you, I know that my most popular subject matter that I can cover is medical advice.
Everyone loves.
And it never goes poorly for you.
Yes, everybody loves whenever I discuss medical advice.
However, I can tell you, I have had good experiences with adult allergy shots.
I got them when I was a kid also, like more regularly.
Makes it sound dirty.
Adult allergy.
All right, go on.
Yes.
Allergy shots as an adult, you know, not like explicit allergy shots.
No, I can't actually recommend.
It actually helped a lot and takes way less time than you think to like build up immunity.
But you just said how you're dying from your eyes.
If it helps so much, why are you still bothered so badly?
Because I haven't gotten them in like three years because they don't have them at the beach.
I'm going to get back on that shot train.
uh yeah yeah what are we doing right now is this the show is this what people tune in for i believe we're still in the pre-show we're trying to do follow-up it's not working it's not working keep trying all right we'll keep we'll soldier on all right so we we've been dropping hints about this uh we had some really genuinely great feedback from a couple of different uh audio people and i know that's not the right term and i'm sorry but uh one of them that wrote in was sam kusnets
And Sam writes,
Yeah.
Yeah.
completely isolated from outside sources of noise.
In this environment, the three decibels that they pick up from the MacBook Air is certainly thermally induced, but it's hard to say what exactly it is.
My guess is vibration of any parts that have flex, like keyboard keys or the hinge of the lid.
This is very close to the edge of what is physically possible to measure, so it's shrug-worthy territory.
Apple's probably obligated to report whatever they measure, even if it's hard to explain since it's part of the official technical specifications of the device.
Finally...
There was the question of noticing a 3-decibel difference or not, with the acoustician stating that a 3-decibel difference was close to unnoticeable, and Marco observing that when he makes a 3-decibel change while editing podcasts, he very clearly notices it.
This is one of those great examples of, you're both right!
And the reason is that you're likely not talking about the same scale, because a decibel isn't a fixed quantity, it's a ratio.
And without a reference point, a decibel means nothing.
Measurements of the loudness of things in the real world use the decibel SPL scale.
The SPL means Sound Pressure Level.
and is calibrated against a specific amount of air pressure.
The reference point for one decibel SPL is 20 micropascals, which is the smallest quantity of air pressure that a human ear is able to perceive.
Anything less than that doesn't have enough energy to motivate the mechanism of the ear.
When Marco makes a three decibel adjustment while editing, he's working in the DBFS domain or decibel file system.
Just kidding.
The decibel full scale, which uses, as its reference point, the loudest possible sound that can be encoded on disk at the given sample rate and bit depth.
And this next part actually blew my mind.
I had no idea this was the case.
So back to Sam here.
This is why almost all level measurement in audio software uses negative numbers.
They are all saying, quote, how much quieter is this level than the absolute loudest possible level that I can reproduce, quote.
I had no idea.
That's why I always saw negative stuff in Final Cut Pro.
That's so cool.
So I've learned something.
You also see it if you have an AV receiver and you adjust the volume on it.
Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's very good that it shows you a negative number.
That's true.
I didn't think about that.
Yeah, you're right.
If you think about it like, you know, if like zero, it's kind of hard to say, well, what is the quietest sound?
Well, that depends a lot on the sensitivity of what you are recording or measuring it with.
As you increase the signal noise ratio or you decrease the noise floor...
Or in digital terms, if you increase the bit depth, like from 16-bit to 24-bit to 32-bit, the smallest or tiniest little measurable sound gets quieter the more sensitive you're representing it.
Whereas you can always easily represent what is the loudest.
The loudest is your digital circuit is at 1, like 1.0 or whatever.
It's the maximum capacity of that circuit before it clips.
It's the highest value it can represent, whatever it is.
So it makes sense to set that as your starting point and then represent everything as, how far below that are we?
Because the depth of that can change over time.
Right, and then Sam finishes up, a three decibel adjustment within your editor may not equate to a three decibel SPL difference once that signal makes its way through the rest of the signal path.
And even if it does, it isn't equating to an actual level of 3 decibel SPL.
It's equal to maybe 63 or 73 decibel SPL.
Human hearing perception is not linear, and the decibel scale is neither.
The difference between 70 decibels SPL and 73 decibels SPL is more perceptible than the difference between 0 decibels SPL and 3 decibels SPL.
This was all fascinating, and I know that was a little bit long, but I was riveted by all of it.
I think this is another time to say that all of which is interesting and important background knowledge, but it does not solve the very I mean, it's not a mystery, but the very puzzling reality of the wildly varying reports we continue to get from people who have own or are near Mac Studios.
Right.
It's just I've been tweeting about it all week long.
And I'm not saying any of these people are wrong, but the variability is just off the charts.
It's even made some people guess that maybe there's a manufacturing problem and some are loud or some are quiet because people are saying, all the way from the people saying, I have one, I live in a tomb where there is no noise or wind, and I can't hear it at all, and my ears are the best ears.
I won the hearing contest in my town, I can't hear a thing, and other people are like...
I'm returning my $8,000 computer because I can't stand the noise.
It's so loud you have no idea, right?
Some people even said they could hear the display.
I'm like, come on.
You can hear the display?
No one had said they could hear the display.
I'm like, at least the whole world agrees you can't hear the fans in the Apple Studio display.
And then people can't.
Until you get yours, and then you're going to say, I absolutely can hear it.
I can't hear the fans in my XDR.
I said that before.
My XDR has fans.
I do not hear them, right?
But anyway.
Same.
The Mac Studio is all over the map, right?
We even had somebody who said, I bought two Mac Studios.
One was the Ultra and one was the Max.
And I can hear the Max, but I can't hear the Ultra.
It's the same person.
Literally the same person.
And one of them is like, and it's like, well, the Ultra has the copper heat sink and blah, blah, blah.
But every other person who tested them said the fans stay at the same RPM.
Apple has said it's the same cooling assembly in both of them.
The heat sink is different.
It's baffling, right?
So all this academic stuff about explaining the decibel differences in SPL or whatever,
that's good to understand the measurements we were getting.
It's like, oh, well, we don't have to rely on people's reported annoyance level.
We can just take measurements with science.
And this explains how the science would work.
But almost everyone who's told us about science has also thrown it a little aside as if it's unimportant to say, of course, the quality of the sound matters because, you know, if it is broad spectrum, high pitch, low pitch, you know, loudness is just one factor that goes into...
is this sound annoying or even can i hear it and so the subjective support reports in many ways are all that all that does matter right because it's not like we're measuring a single frequency tone at different sound levels it's we're measuring a very complicated sound in very complicated environments and then subjecting it to individual people and
Right now, the individual people do not agree.
Are these computers dead silent or are they the noisiest things Apple has ever made and need to be returned?
And in the end, all that matters is what you, listener or me or Marco or whatever, what you think about it when you buy yours.
Because who cares if other people can't stand the noise that if you buy one and you can't hear it?
Success.
Or if everyone else thinks it's quiet and you buy one and can't stand the noise, that's bad.
So I'm still hoping that by the time my Mac studio actually ships sometime this summer, whatever issues they might have will be sorted out.
And I'm just hoping I'm old enough that the sound won't bother me.
But if it was a taste related thing, you are a super taster and you would know.
I mean, I think your taste buds get crappier as you get older.
Everything gets crappier as you get older for the most part.
So even that's probably fading with age.
But, you know, if it tastes good, being a super taster is great.
Tastes like a thousand peaches.
Thousand pairs?
Come on, chat room, help me out.
These two aren't gonna.
Millions of peaches.
Peaches for me.
All right, and moving right along.
Chris Gagné writes, it appears that some common USB-C Ethernet adapters, like the Belkin 1 Apple cells, have issues reaching full gigabit speeds plugged into the studio display.
I could only hit about 400 megabits per second via speed test when plugged into the studio display, and about 920 megabits per second, close to the limit of gigabit, plugged directly into my MacBook Pro 14-inch.
However, an Anker 2.5 gigabit Ethernet adapter, an Anker 2.5G model, was able to reach at least gigabit speeds, and I was consistently getting download speeds of about 930 gigabits per second when I plugged it into the studio display.
I don't have a 2.5 gigabit Ethernet network to test its full capabilities, but this solves my issue.
i i didn't put this in here i'm not sure why we why do we care i mean it's just an interesting thing to consider for you know the getting the full capabilities of your monitor and the mysteries of things that fit into usbc shaped holes but may not you know what i mean like it's just it never ends it's not even just cables
Yeah, I mean, I get that.
I don't know.
I would really love for someone to put together like an online calculator for all the stuff flying through a Thunderbolt connection.
Because I feel like, and this is very unscientific of me, but I feel like, well, you know, the 5K displays, Karen, that 5K is a lot of data to pass and it has to pass it, you know, very frequently.
So if the network connection is a little slower, well, I get that.
And again, that's not scientific at all.
But I wish someone would put together some sort of like online calculator where you could say, you know, something like, oh, I've got a 5K display and I've got a this or that and the other thing, you know, when do I get into the danger zone of like throughput or something like that?
So somebody make that for me, please.
And thank you.
Real-time update.
I got the fruit right eventually but blew the number.
Hundred pears or million pears?
Not a thousand pears.
Link in the show notes.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
Put it in the chat room.
I put it at the top of the document.
Just link it.
Oh, they might be giants?
Oh, fair enough.
Okay.
All right, let's talk about, from about 15 years ago, iCloud and custom domains.
Dominic Lautner wrote a blog post about a lot of the problems with iCloud and custom email domains.
And to quickly go through some of them, there's no catch-all address support.
So my email address is at caseylist.com.
Well, if you were to email like foobar at caseylist.com, which isn't a valid address,
I can set it up such that that will go to a particular email address of mine that I do check.
And iCloud doesn't allow that.
There's also, according to Dominic, aggressive DNS record validation.
There's no inbound email relay support.
And the error messages are, guess what?
Super duper opaque and useless.
Because, hey, Apple, this is what you love to do.
Yeah, Dominic, when he looked into this, got a crappy error message, and being an industrious, probably, developer or whatever, said, like, I need more.
And then just, you know, because it's like a web-type thing, you can just look at the, you know, AJAX requests going back and forth and look at the actual JSON.
And so the UI error was...
there was a problem adding this email address please try again later which is like the worst copy because try again later it's like is it going to be different later or is it are you just like is this just a form of torture like because later it makes it seem like there's a temporary condition that you think will resolve right but if you look at the json the json has an error code whatever some number and then it has an error message key in the json the json error message is mx record not pointing to icloud
Boy, that would be useful to know because now you know how to fix it.
If you know what an MX, at least you have a hint if you know what an MX record is.
And I understand this is technical and most people don't understand that, but that is not the equivalent of there was a problem ending with the email.
Please try again later because later it will not work unless someone changes the MX record between now and later.
And it reminded me of experience I'm having with my, you know, iPhoto library or, you know, Apple Photos library, where it will get into a state where I'll say restoring from iCloud dot dot dot.
And it will just stay that way forever.
And I look at it and I wonder what's really going on.
please tell me like are you ever going to complete are you stuck on something is there an image you can't get to like and i just i resort to such ridiculous things obviously i'm looking in console for anything there's nothing helpful there and then i'm using fs usage and sc usage running them and every process i can think of uh you know the the
iCloud, you know, the photo library D, the photos application itself, the cloud sync D, like just, I just want to, I'm, you know, because you look at it and like nothing's happening on the computer.
The CPU is not being stressed.
It's not a lot of disk IO, but there's a little bit and you're like, is the, are photos, is something happening related to photos?
Because I left it on this thing for like days a couple of times before I gave up and just rebuilt the whole library with the launch photos and hold down command option.
It'll rebuild the whole library, which also takes forever, by the way, which is why I didn't want to do it.
But eventually, after several days of it just having an opaque message like this, I just gave up.
So I really wish Apple would...
Like, it's a difficult problem because you don't want to throw weird error messages in people's faces.
They're confusing.
Nobody knows what an MX record is for the most part.
So I get why they're trying to hide it.
But there should be some way for people who want to know or want some kind of hint to figure out, is this irretrievably wedged?
Is it doing something?
Or, you know, should I give up and rebuild the thing?
And Apple continues to be terrible about this.
I thought this was interesting that this sub subject came up in an otherwise unrelated topic of, you know, iCloud custom domains.
Indeed.
And then Dominic also talks about some notes about coupling with Apple IDs.
Emails sent from addresses without an account get dropped, which is super delightful.
And according to Dominic, third-party clients may leak your Apple ID, which is also super delightful.
Great.
there's problems.
And you might want to tread carefully if that's what you want to do.
These problems may or may not apply to you.
Follow the link to the article to see them in much more detail.
This is just a quick bulleted list.
But there are sort of edge cases that may concern you that you should look into.
And finally, with regard to iCloud email stuff, Eli Lindsay writes that despite including instructions to configure DNS entries for Domain Keys Identified Mail, or DKIM, DKIM signatures are not generated when sending mail from iOS or macOS Mail app.
DKIM is generated when sending from the iCloud webmail client, but who actually uses that?
This means that outgoing mail takes a deliverability hit, though it's still generally okay since sender policy framework or SPF is properly configured.
Cool.
Anything else we'd like to add about that?
Use Fastmail, I guess.
Yeah.
Oh, and speaking of, I've had a few questions about what I've done with regards to my Gmail and Google Apps share domain.
What I've done is I've continued to kick that can down the road and not think about it.
But my current plan is the same as it was before, which is even though there apparently are some ways that you can ask Google, please, please, sir, please, can I have some more?
And you might be able to get access in certain circumstances forever.
I just plan to divorce myself from Google at this point.
And so I do plan to get a fast mail account.
I need to do that soon because I would love to pull a Marco and get all of the referral credit, but I haven't done so yet.
So please, if you're thinking about sending any referral credit my way, please just hold on a little bit longer.
I promise I'll get to it at some point.
All righty.
Let's talk about iPhone 14 rumors.
And there have been a bunch lately because we're coming up to that time, which actually speaking of, I'm a little surprised that we haven't heard about WWDC yet.
It's April.
What the heck?
Yeah, it's one of those like, you know, any day now situations.
But I mean, frankly, I would be...
Very surprised if it would be any different than the last couple of years.
I think it's very little chance that it's in person.
So it's probably going to be another remote conference.
And frankly, I mean, we talk about this every year, but frankly, I think remote is better.
And it isn't better in all ways, but it's better in many ways.
And I think if they went back to having it in person again, certain parts of it would feel like a step backwards.
Yeah.
Can you imagine going to what used to be called the Fairmont and what is now – Hilton bought it and renamed it.
But it's like going back to one of these – Yeah.
But I checked the other day for fun.
Like what does it cost for that first full week of June where it would most likely be if it was in person?
And it's like $475 a night.
Yeah.
Of course, every San Jose and San Francisco hotel is in that ballpark if it's anywhere near decent.
We're not even talking like really fancy hotels.
We're talking just like in any other city in America, what would be like $100 a night.
There, it's almost $500 a night.
But anyway, can you imagine going back there in person and spending a million dollars on a hotel and flying out there from wherever you have to come from, which is a big expense and a big time commitment and everything, and sitting through the terribly slow coffee shops that you find out there between sessions and having to go into the conference center and having to wait in line to get into the room?
to then watch people like present on a stage when, frankly, if you look at the videos they've made over the last couple of years, the videos are better.
It would seem in many ways like a step backwards.
And yeah, I miss the socialization.
I miss the labs, like kind of, you know, BSing with some engineers here and there.
Like that was fun.
But I think what we have now overall is better.
And you cannot ignore that it's better in many ways even for those of us who were lucky enough to be able to go in person.
But there's so many more people who could never go in person or who maybe only go once at best because it's a big ordeal.
It's a big expense.
It's hard to get tickets.
So imagine –
How much better the current system is now for how many more total people, I really do think if we ever go back in person, it will feel like a step backwards.
And we only will have known that by now having it be better.
And then right now we think, oh, we can't wait to go back.
But if you do go back, I think you will miss the parts about this that make this so good.
Yeah, I don't know.
I want to go back just because I need an excuse to see all my friends again.
But I hear you and I think you're probably right.
If I were to wager a guess, I don't think it'll be this year.
But I think in maybe next year, it wouldn't surprise me if the keynote becomes a media event where, you know, the John Gruber's of the world and so on.
And I would love to be invited.
And us, maybe.
Hey, invite us.
You never know.
But, you know, the Grubers and the Smells of the World would get invited and would go out and go for one day for the big keynote.
If there is hardware, which is not usually their style these days, then maybe they would get some hands-on time with the hardware.
And then that would be that.
And the rest of the conference would be online, you know, just as it has been.
To go back a quick step, hearing you talk about $450 hotels in San Jose,
Is California like the crypto of states where everyone is just agreeing that it's more expensive?
I believe they're called fiat hotels.
They're just declared to be that expensive.
But like...
It's the Fairmont, while a perfectly reasonable and maybe even fine hotel.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it ultra.
That's a step too far.
But it's a perfectly fine hotel.
Was it a $450 a night hotel?
No.
No, it was not.
And when we were in San Francisco, was the Park 55 a $350 hotel?
Absolutely not.
It's all about location, though.
At least the one in San Francisco is in downtown San Francisco.
The one in San Jose is in downtown San Jose, where there is, as far as I'm able to determine, nothing.
I do miss the Beer and Sausage Place.
What was it?
Original Gravity?
Yeah, Original Gravity Public House.
That and the Vegan Indian Place across from it are both very good, and I miss those places.
I do not miss anything else about it.
right but but here's the thing like i feel like crypto not to really tick off all the crypto people again but um i feel like crypto everyone's everyone's agreeing to to we're all deciding as a collective that we're gonna believe that this this currency is worth a lot of money right
And I feel like, well, but I feel like that's California at this point.
We are just all as a society agreeing that California is expensive.
Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them is the phenomenon you're describing.
And that's true of the hotels in San Jose as well.
I don't know, man.
Real-time follow-up, it looks like Original Gravity Public House is still open, from what I can tell, which is great news.
Oh, thank God.
Yeah, that's what we should do.
We should do, oh, and it looks like the gentleman who is pouring a beer on their website has what I think is a Triforce tattoo.
That's from a game called The Legend of Zelda, John.
Do I need to go look at this photograph to see if it's actually a Triforce tattoo?
It probably isn't, actually.
I'm pretty confident, but it's in the chat room.
But, you know, I feel like, Marco, maybe, you know, once it's safe, what you and I should do is we should go on a dining tour of WWDCs of years past, and we'll get lunch at Original Gravity, we'll get dinner at House of Prime Rib, and then we can come home.
We might not even need to stay the night.
We could just come home right then and save 500 bucks.
Yeah.
oh golly i miss that place original gravity was great their sausages were delightful yeah of course all the germans are listening to this and like oh really let me tell you about it let me tell you about good sausage well okay this is going nowhere good let's talk about iphone 14 everything's relative although you took that entire detour just to avoid talking about the iphone 14 rumors i mean frankly like is this very interesting i don't think it is okay all right well john tell us what's interesting
I mean, it's interesting for the drama.
It's like the last time we talked about iPhone 14 rumors, I don't know, it was ages ago.
And the prevailing rumor at that time, which I think we described as very early, so take with a grain of salt, I was excited about because iPhone 14 is my iPhone year.
I buy a new iPhone every two years instead of every one.
And recently I've been in the cadence where it's like when Apple comes out with the new form factor, that's my year.
So I get the first of whatever the new thing is.
Like I got the first flat sided one.
I got the 12 here, right?
And then 13 was also flat sided.
So it was the 14, it's time for new form factor or whatever.
And so the rumors they had a while ago,
Or getting me excited because the main thing I didn't like about the 13 Pro, my wife has a 13 Pro, is the gargantuan camera bump.
I think we talked about this when we were reviewing our various iPhone 13s, and I was saying when I use my wife's phone very often, the camera bump's so big, first of all, that it doesn't lay flat even with a case on it.
And second, when I'm holding it, I would bump into the little wall that's around the giant camera bump.
It was like...
It just didn't – I preferred – I was glad that I had a 12 because the 12's camera bump, while big, is nothing compared to the 13 one.
It is smaller in width and height, and it sticks out less far from the phone.
And I'm like, well, maybe that will be solved by the 14.
So the early rumors in the 14 was that it was going to have a periscope camera and, like, no more camera bump, essentially.
Like, the cameras would be flush.
Because, you know, we've described this before, but the Periscope camera is basically like the sensor is inside the phone and it is sideways.
And then there's like a little prism or mirror or whatever where the light goes into the phone and then goes down the phone.
And all the lens elements are, there'll be a link in the show notes that shows an image of what it looks like.
But all the lens elements are stacked sort of sideways inside the phone.
And that would let you have a very long lens, possibly also with an optical zoom on it as well without sticking out a lot from the phone.
And then the next set of rumors that started coming were, hey, no more notch.
It's going to have a hole punch, what they call a hole punch camera, only instead of just a hole punch for the camera, it would be like a circular hole punch for the camera and then a lozenge shape hole punch for the remaining face ID sensor stuff.
But the two of them together would be much smaller than the notch.
I'm like, wow, this iPhone 14 sounds like it's going to be awesome.
And now as we get closer to actual iPhone 14 time, all my hopes have been dashed.
because now we get the real leaks.
People are leaking like the schematics that the case makers get and the CAD drawings and parts leaks of the actual screen.
So the whole bunch of stuff seems to be true.
Everyone's leaking all these different parts that show like a little circle and a lozenge cutout instead of a notch.
But honestly, that was the part that I was least excited about because the notch doesn't bother me.
And if you're going to have something screwing up the top of your screen,
Whether it's a smaller notch or a hole punch thing, it's not like you can put content there.
You can't put text there.
It's in the middle of the line.
It's good.
They're working on it.
They have the notch.
They made the notch smaller.
Then you get the hole punch, and then iPhone 16 comes around, and you've got the underscreen face ID sensors or something, which is another rumor, right?
But anyway, there's that.
But the real thing that's disappointing me is all these rumors say, yeah, the the Periscope camera thing, not this year.
And not only not this year, but the little drawings of what the iPhone 14 is going to look like.
They're saying, oh, you remember the camera on the 13?
14 is going to be even bigger.
Like what?
How could it possibly be bigger, even bigger?
It's going to like rock on the table no matter what you do to it.
So I'm really sad about that.
I'm trying to make myself feel better by thinking about what it means to have an even bigger camera bump than the 13.
And apparently, according to the rumors, what it means is the iPhone would be going from a 12 megapixel camera, 1X camera, to a 48 megapixel 1X camera, which is...
A big step up.
And the stats on that for the rumors are we would have the 57% bigger sensor than the 13 Pro going from 44mm square to 69mm square and a 28% pixel size increase going from 1.9 micrometers, microns, to 2.44mm.
um but there's a caveat there so like 48 megapixels like how can you get you're saying it's going to go to 48 megapixels it's going to be a 57 bigger sensor and it's going to have bigger pixels how can it have bigger pixels when it's got four times as many of them through the magic of what they what they confusingly call pixel binning which is not uh sorting your pixels by which ones work and which ones don't and selling the ones where everything works is more expensive
That's not what they mean.
That's a different kind of binning.
Yeah, different kind of binning.
The binning is what they will do.
Oh, this is so confusing with the retina stuff.
I'm sorry.
But what they will do is they will take a 48 megapixel camera sensor and in conditions where there's not enough light to be gathered by those tiny, tiny little pixels,
They will group together two by two squares of pixels.
And those two by two squares of pixels, those bins of four pixels will act as a single pixel for light gathering purposes.
So suddenly your 48 megapixel sensor will act just like a 12 megapixel sensor, which is exactly, you know, like a 12 megapixel sensor.
with much bigger pixels if there is adequate light like on a bright sunny day they will use all 48 individual megapixels but as the light level goes down they will bin them together and do that so this does sound like a very impressive camera and a big upgrade because if you think about how many megapixels have been in the iphone camera someone had a timeline somewhere but it was like it has only gone up a few times
and the current 12 megapixel camera has been the same for a few generations now.
Going from 12 to 48 is a big jump and you don't have to, if they do the pixel binning as described, you don't have to worry about, oh, but now all the pixels are so much smaller it will suck.
They'll just bin them together and it will become like a 12 megapixel camera
with even bigger quote-unquote pixels because each of those pixels is four of the tinier ones which turn out to be 28 bigger than the one single one of the other ones so i am excited about having a bigger camera because i was originally thinking well if the iphone 14 is going to have a bigger camera bump i'm just not going to buy it i'm just going to skip it and i'll do a three-year gap instead of
a four-year one because the the periscope camera that rumor is still out there they're just like oh it's not going to be in the iphone 14 maybe it'll be in the iphone 15 or 16 you know i would like a periscope camera i would like an optical zoom but more importantly i would like a flat back to my phone so the rumors are exciting but also mildly disappointing because i said last you know last year that the 13 pro has crossed some kind of a line in terms of the size of the camera at least some kind of a line for me like it's aesthetically if you look at the back of the camera
or the phone same difference it doesn't it doesn't look like a rectangle with a thing in the corner anymore it's not in the corner anymore once you pass the midway point once you once you're taking up more than half the width of the phone you're not tucked into a corner it's just and it just is not like they might as well have just made it full width like so many android phones have done or
you know just chosen a different shape or arrangement because it's like they're trying to stick to the idea that there's a phone in the corner of there's a camera in the corner of the phone but there's not there's just a giant camera slowly eating the back of the all their phones and so i wish i'd either embrace that or figure out how to get back to you know smooth with a periscope camera but those are the rumors and i'm like i right now it's a it's a battle between being excited by having a 48 megapixel camera and being depressed about having a giant wart on the bottom of my phone
And you had put the MaxTech video on this in the show notes.
And sometimes I think their explainers are a little bit rough and kind of cut a bunch of corners.
But this one was really, really good.
And I really enjoyed it.
It's worth your time.
I think it was like 10 minutes or something like that.
And they explain exactly why 48 megapixels is potentially nothing but better.
Well, with the exception of the bigger bump.
Other than that, everything else about it is potentially better.
And, you know, one of those things is like you were saying earlier, like low light performance can actually go up because the net pixel size, once you do this binning, is bigger, just like you were saying.
And so what that means is you could have a far more crisp picture in good light and a more understandable, discernible picture in low light.
Less noisy picture in low light because you wouldn't have to crank up the ISO as much.
Yep, that's a better way of putting it.
Thank you.
So this sounds to me, if you can get over the bump, which I don't agree that we've crossed the Rubicon or anything, but I do agree that it's getting kind of ridiculous.
If you can put up with the bump, this sounds like it's going to be a dramatic improvement to the camera and the iPhone if everything comes to fruition.
Frankly, the bump... Now that I've had the 13 Pro for half a year or whatever it's been, the camera bump does not bother me at all.
That is never something that I notice.
That is never something that bothers me.
What bothers me about this phone is that it is pretty big in the pocket and pretty heavy.
My whole pants journey that I went through last fall... I'm halfway through that by having bought my fancy spoke pants, but...
Also, it still is noticeable.
I do wish that I had a smaller and lighter weight phone.
But the camera is really, really good.
And so I am glad I didn't go mini this time just for the camera alone.
And actually, if these rumors hold, it seems like they're going to be an even bigger difference in specs because the rumors are that possibly that the iPhone 14 non-pro models.
Oh, yes.
are going to retain the A15 processor and that the iPhone 14 Pro only will go to the A, presumably it's called A16, whatever the next processor is.
So it looks like if this is true, and iPhone rumors tend to be pretty accurate because it's just so hard to keep that kind of scale of an operation quiet.
But if this is true, then this year there's going to be more differentiation than ever
assuming this big 48 megapixel camera is probably also pro only, between the pro models and the non-pro models.
And so that'll be interesting to watch, but I have a feeling this is going to very, very quickly make people who are really serious about this kind of stuff jump for the pro instead of whatever other physical advantages might be present on the lower end models.
Speaking of differentiation, even within the pro phones, if the 1X camera is 48 megapixels, but they don't really substantially also upgrade the other two cameras, boy, it's going to be a big fall off from switching from the 1X.
Like already the 2X, you can tell, is not quite as good as the 1X, but...
Maybe they'll, you know, they do the thing where the Apple's camera app sort of decides when it's appropriate to use which lens.
And it seems like in a lot of scenarios, it would be better to continue to use the 1X and like crop it maybe than falling off the 2.
I don't know what the rumors are for the other two lenses.
Maybe they'll be mildly improved as well.
Yeah, because the 3X camera is not very good.
Yeah.
it may it seem with justice rumor it suddenly seems like you have an unbalanced camera system or one of your cameras suddenly got way way way better and bigger and the other two the other two are there too right and as for the um the the product line where i think we talked about this on a past show like the the the non-pro phones having a 15 instead um
And there's no getting around it.
That's a downgrade as far as customers are concerned, right?
Because it was really great when a customer could get a plain old iPhone 13 and had the exact same system on a chip as the Pro one, right?
And it's not even like you can say, oh, well, when they have the 15, I bet their battery life will be better.
It's not like they're fabbing the 15 on a different – it's going to be the A15 as the A15 ever was, fab the same way it always was.
So it doesn't suddenly get lower power either.
Um, and so that's, that's just, that's not as good as having the 16 and everything.
Um, and that's disappointing and there's no way around it.
It's not like Apple's going to pass the savings onto you.
The system on a chip is not the most expensive part of those phones anyway.
Uh, on the bright side, the other part of the rumor is, uh,
that the Pro and non-Pro lines will all have a full range of sizes.
Like, there'll be a non-Pro big phone.
Non-Pro Max, essentially.
These names are so confusing.
I listened back to episodes of the show, and I screwed up so many times.
Anyway, there will be, like, a iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Max, and there'll be iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
And the chips in the Max will be Pro and Max, but there will be no chip in a Mac called Pro Max.
Anyway...
It's their own stupid fault for doing this.
But having a big phone that is not a pro is such a – I don't know why they waited so long to do it.
Sometimes people want a really big phone.
They shouldn't be forced to pay for the most expensive phone that Apple makes just because they want a bigger screen.
So that's the good part of the new rumored arrangement.
I just, you know, I understand why, like, hey, if you're going to have a pro line, it should have maybe it should have a bigger advantage over the non pro line as opposed to the 13s where they were, you know, almost identical except for the camera.
But it's just not as good as a consumer to get the A15 and the non pro phone.
Right.
It's just not.
So that's kind of a bummer.
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all right you want to do some ask atp let's do it let's start tonight with elijah who writes i have been a long time canon user but i've seen the writing on the wall for a while that dslrs are being replaced by mirrorless cameras since i have to buy lenses again anyway to follow this trend should i stick with canons or why should i jump to sony john i think you're the most enthusiastic about sony although marco you're not far behind so john do you want to start and then marco take it away after
i didn't even know that you need to buy new lenses that you can't use that it makes sense obviously the distance the sensor from the front of the lens or whatever but anyway i think canon and sony are very different uh in terms of like it's like the differences in car manufacturers if you just like if you you get used to the way certain car manufacturers do things whether it's stupid porsche with their ignition key in the wrong spot or bottom hinged uh you know uh pedals or you know whatever like
even if it's just how the stocks work or how the cars are priced like there are things that are just sort of arbitrary decisions that you just get used to and if you try a different brand those arbitrary decisions even when they're not actually worse or better seem foreign to you and that is very true of cameras and then it goes from there up to all you know even more important things like value judgments what's important to spend money on what's not how bit you know what's more important small size or
battery life or portability or grippiness in the hand or you know how many buttons are there versus knobs versus joysticks and how do they feel there is such a huge difference between canon and sony i like sony better but if you're used to canon
almost certainly you're going to like Canon better.
It's almost impossible to imagine someone who used Canon for years tries a Sony and goes, wow, this is much better.
That is not going to happen because it is so different.
The companies make such different decisions.
They couldn't be any more different.
Sony is so...
about making the camera body as small as possible for years Sony was first Sony started they wouldn't even make it like a grip for your hand and then they put the grip on and it was just this tiny little grip and it's like what are you what are you saving the grip size for people we want a bigger grip so we can grip it better and Sony was like okay how about we make it two millimeters bigger
three it's like what are you doing just put a grip that fits in a human hand we have hands we have fingers we need them and you know sony eventually got the clue on that but it took so many years for sony to even deign to make the grip a little bit bigger that is not a problem on canon cameras especially the big ones they put giant grips on them the giant battery cases on the things the buttons feel different the ui feels different
everything about it is different so i don't think there's anything anyone could say to convince you to use a sony if you like canons if you've been using canons for years and you think they're too big and you know you don't like how the buttons work and you hate the ui then maybe you like the sony better but they they really are and canon and icon i think are so much closer than canon and sony are sony is really sort of don't their zooms go the opposite direction
uh it depends uh each there are lenses for all these different camera systems that go in different directions i think even sony made one with a with a reverse zoom lens on or maybe i'm thinking of a third party one but no one can agree on which direction the zooms could go or which direction the rings are is the zoom ring or the manual focus ring closer to you or farther away it's a little bit of it's always varied per lens yeah but anyway canon icon are much closer together than either canon and icon are from sony so
try one out in the store hold it see what you think of it if it appeals to you i endorse it i really like sony it matches my tastes and i do enjoy the small sizes for portability even if the grips are too small but if you really love canon canon makes mirrorless cameras too just buy one of those
I mostly agree.
At first, when I first heard this question, I thought I probably shouldn't answer this because I haven't been paying attention to the recent models of any of these things because I really haven't been in the camera game.
But I think when you're, you know, so Elijah's saying already, you know, they have to buy new lenses no matter what because of the shift from DSLR to mirrorless.
So it's just a question of whether to invest in Canon's mirrorless system or Sony's mirrorless system.
also not mentioned nikon's mirrorless system is another option although i know even less about that but i think when you're talking about like which system to invest in long term you have to look past whatever the current models of each of each camera are and look at in general over time what are each of these brands really best at you know what areas do they tend to specialize in or prioritize or pay attention to or excel in so
In my experience over, you know, geez, 15 years, whatever it's been, that I've been really into these things, my impression, having tried a lot of Canon stuff, a lot of Sony stuff, and almost nothing but anybody else.
So I'm sorry, I really don't know anything about Nikon.
Yeah.
I've used them a handful of times, very small handful of times.
But my impression on Icon seems like it's very similar to Canon, but less popular among pro users.
Because again, just different decisions, as John was saying.
Certain buttons are in different locations, certain things work slightly differently, but generally pretty good.
But in general, I think that Canon is better than Sony in what I would call pro-workflow and pro-ergonomics.
So if, you know, as John was saying, things like the battery grip situations, you know, if you want, if you have some kind of pro setup, if you're going to have like, you know, some, you know, some coordinated flashes or, you know, some of the big L lenses with the big, you know, telephoto zooms and the sticks on the side of sports games, or if you're in the market more for something like what, you know, what used to be like the 1D or 1DS series, you have much more pro abilities, you know, pro sports shooting, stuff like that.
I think Canon has always had an edge in that area over Sony, and they probably always will.
Canon is more likely, even though they had a later start to mirrorless, I think over time, Canon is more likely to have more pro lens options and more specialty lens options, whereas Sony tends to have things that more kind of hit the more commonly used lens rolls.
Again, I think right now Sony probably has an advantage just because they've been here a little bit longer, but I think over time that edge will go back to Canon because Canon is generally used by more pros for lots of other reasons.
And again, things like battery grips and flash accessories and timer accessories and all sorts of stuff, Canon tends to really nail that stuff.
They have a great first-party set of things and third-party tends to support them very, very well.
Where Sony tends to have the advantage is video features and
and sensor technology, and things that are related to those.
If what you're looking for is like, I want the camera that is going to be the best in low light that it can possibly be, most of the time, that's probably going to be a Sony.
Now, Nikon is interesting because a lot of times Nikon uses Sony sensors.
I don't know what the current status quo is.
Sometimes you can get a pretty awesome hybrid approach where you have Nikon with their little bit nicer pro controls with a Sony sensor.
That can be very good.
there's also other features that go along with this things like you know autofocus technology even you know something more fundamental like how do they render the colors like do they render colors in a way that you like in their jpeg render and then you can save a bunch of time and not do raw or even if you're using raw like how are they how are they creating the colors in the raw to start with you know there's certain things where you know the different manufacturers will have their own algorithms for how they make the pictures and that can that can work to you know with you or against you depending on your style and your conditions but
generally canon is much better usually for things like pro ergonomics and pro workflows and sony is better for usually the more techie angles of good you know high quality sensors and video features i don't know anything about video features on these cameras and so everything i said applies only to photos and so if you're if you're a video shooter or a heavy video user frankly i think you ruin the camera industry thanks a lot but i don't know anything about that
Wow.
I think the speed, two things I had.
One is the speed thing.
That applies to photos as well.
In general, Sony is sort of on the forefront of dumping things off the sensor as fast as possible.
So you can hold down the shutter for a really long time and take 30 frames per second, right?
That kind of goes hand in hand with the sensor tech.
But in general, the Sony sort of
electronics sort of cpu gpu whatever image processing engine um they're they're pretty good at that and the the second thing is on ergonomics only if what you mean by pro-ergonomics is a is excluding the idea that you're going to be carrying this thing around a lot because if
portability is is anywhere on your list if you're a nature photographer you're lugging through the woods obviously the giant lenses you're going to lug are the big factor too but pretty much you know sony's ethos is make smaller camera bodies which is why if you get a battery grip it's a thing that you can add on to it unlike the the you know you can get canon and icons that are just built in with the giant battery grip and are the size of your head right um
Every Sony camera is way smaller than you would think it would be for the size of things.
And so depending on what you do with your photography, maybe it doesn't matter because you're in a studio and who cares how big it is or you're on the sidelines of an NFL game and you've got tons of gear anyway.
But if you're, you know, if you're doing travel photography or, you know, you're traipsing through the wilderness or the jungles or whatever.
get an iphone at that point you may value the fact that uh sony does make things tends to make things smaller and lighter including their mount is smaller that's why they have the same mount on their aps-c cameras in their full frame that was done intentionally to sort of be able to support smaller camera lenses and if you compare even we were just talking about like the
the sony 50 millimeter 1.2 if you see a picture of that next to the canon and nikon 50 millimeter full frame 1.2s the sony lenses tend to be smaller they also tend to be lighter so if that is a factor in your in your selection and you can tolerate or grow to like
the sony ui and the sony sort of the rest of the sony feature set um that may appeal to you but but yeah i just they're so different that i i can't imagine somebody who likes and is accustomed to canon and icons seeing a sony and finding it appealing unless they've been secretly gritting their teeth at just how big their camera is
Ryan Morey writes,
Is this a good idea?
Am I about to shoot myself in the foot?
Is there any better way to do this?
Should I not want to do this?
What even is a Fusion Drive?
Please advise and or expound.
If I understand this right, so Ryan said, I have an M1 Mac Mini, a 2TB Thunderbolt 3 SSD, which implies to me that it's external, and a 8TB USB hard drive, which obviously would be external.
I personally don't think you want to do a fusion drive anyway.
And John, I'll let you take it away here in a second.
But the idea of doing a fusion drive with two external drives, that seems really even one external drive.
That seems like a recipe for disaster to me.
But John, what is a fusion drive and why should Ryan definitely not do this?
Fusion Drive was a really cool idea.
In fact, I even, like, kind of fantasized about this exact idea years before it became a reality because it was back when, like, back when Mark was getting his first 160-gigabyte Intel SSD or whatever, that SSDs were so expensive, but they were so awesome.
But it's like, but how can I have the benefits of an SSD but fit all my stuff?
Because in the beginning, they didn't even make SSDs.
They were big enough to fit, like, a reasonable amount of stuff that people had.
They were all so tiny.
Yeah.
And so the idea behind a fusion drive and the fantasy that I was describing is, well, what if you just sort of combined a big, cheap spinning disk with an SSD and the operating system handled trying to keep the files that you access frequently on the SSD?
Like you didn't have to do anything.
It looks like one volume to you.
And through the magic of the file system, the operating system, everything gets shuffled around.
You're already done.
You can't do it a second time.
It was a half-hearted one.
Yeah, the first one you said FS something.
FS usage.
It stands for file system usage.
You got it.
I was proud of you.
I wasn't sure if it counted, so I did a quiet ding.
No, I'm with Marco.
That was a ding, and what you just heard moments ago was a dong, and I think that we needed both.
No, no.
There's no half dings.
You can't land on a fraction.
All right.
Integral dings only.
Yeah.
uh as anyway the fusion drive was a way to do that it was a you know use core storage was technology apple introduced sort of abstracts away all these details and lo and behold apple would sell you a computer with a small ssd and a big spinning hard drive but from your perspective would look like one drive that is not as fast as an ssd but not as slow as a spinning disc either
Cool idea, but the time of the Fusion Drive has more or less come and gone because today you can find pretty economical SSDs that are big enough to hold all your stuff.
Now, maybe you're not going to find, you know, a 10 terabyte SSD because you've got an eight terabyte spinning disk and a two terabyte SSD.
And you want you want to have a 10 terabyte total.
It's faster than that.
I understand where you're coming from.
But Fusion Drive, as you've noted, like you can probably pull this off with Disk Util.
But it's not really an area of active interest, let's say, for Apple.
And it's not a good idea to base something as important as your file system, especially if this is like your boot disk or something, on a technology that Apple does not seem interested in anymore.
Yeah.
I think you could probably pull it off.
I think it would work, but I personally wouldn't do it.
I mean, these are two big drives you're talking about.
Anyway, you've got two terabyte SSD and eight terabyte hard drive.
You probably know which things need to be in the SSD and which don't.
Boot from the SSD, use most things from the SSD, and then put the big files with the large files where you can do large sequential reads, put them on the eight terabyte spinning disk.
And if you can't figure out like how to divide your stuff up and you'd rather just the drive do it for you, like...
I mean, you can try it.
It would be a cool, you know, conversation piece for nerds if they ever visit your house.
But boy, if something goes wrong with that drive or one of them becomes unmounted while the other one is still mounted, I'm not sure that like disk utility in its current state would be able to figure out how to help you.
Yeah, that's why I think doing it with externals seems brave to say the least.
Yeah.
All right, and then fine.
Well, no, actually, I think we're going to go for a bonus.
So nearly finally, Matt Chinander writes, despite my better judgment, I'm exploring the purchase of a Pro Display XDR for my desk at home, which now houses a Mac studio.
I work from home full time and have an employer supplied 14 inch MacBook Pro that I also need to connect to the monitor on my desk.
The Dell monitor I have currently works great for this because it supports multiple inputs that I can easily switch between.
This convenience would of course be lost with the XDR's single input.
Is there any device out there that would allow me to not have to plug or unplug from the back of the XDR every time I need to switch between machines?
The first thing that comes to mind is something like an HDMI switcher or a KVM switch, but instead for Thunderbolt 3 or 4.
From the research I've done, I don't think these exist, but I would be happy to be wrong.
So I don't understand, I don't think, why we're unplugging from the back of the XDR.
Why wouldn't you just unplug the other end of that same cable?
So there's a cable coming from the XDR to one computer.
You unplug it from, let's say it's going into the studio.
You unplug it from the studio and plug it into the MacBook and then reverse that later.
I think I'm kind of missing the problem here.
No, I think they don't want to do any unplugging.
Well, you're going to have to do some sort of unplugging.
No, a KVM would do it for you, a Switch.
well sure but does that exist because i don't think it does that's the question i don't think it exists for thunderbolt 3 slash 4 speeds um certainly you could get various switches for you know simpler protocols um things like you know usb i'm sure you can get a switch for usb maybe up to like usb 3 point something speeds but i don't think anything like that exists for thunderbolt and this requires thunderbolt um unplugging the cable from the computer end and plugging into the different computer that's that's going to be i think not only your only option but i think it's not that bad of an option
obviously it would be better if it could be automated in some way and wouldn't involve physically wearing out the connector on a very expensive cable but the other thing is to know that um if in case this helps you you know decide the xdr appears to work totally fine with almost every modern thunderbolt hub that's out there like almost every like modern thunderbolt 3 slash 4 hub from owc or from caldigit or any of the other companies that are making the modern ones with these modern chipsets
The XDR works totally fine through those.
And so if that helps you make your decision a little bit more easily, that you can unplug and plug everything all at once through one cable, that might make this a little bit easier to swallow.
I was faced with a similar situation when I had my work laptop here and I wanted to hook that up to the XDR.
And I also had that same feeling that Mark was just saying, like, I know how much the cable that's connected to my XDR costs.
And I was like, am I going to really, because I'm going to do this every day, possibly multiple times a day.
Am I really going to plug and unplug this thing?
And by the way, you don't even have to use that cable.
You can use any Thunderbolt 4 cable and it's fine.
I know, but you have to plug it into the same spot in the XDR, right?
Yes, the XDR has one input port, but you can use any cable.
Right, so you'd have to get the expensive cable out of there.
The expensive cable is the one that reaches my Mac because it's over...
there it's a tower computer it's a little bit farther away anyway i didn't want to plug and unplug the good thing about the um usbc type connector you know which is the same as the thunderbolt type connector is that the springy bits are inside the connector inside the cable so springy bits inside your expensive monitor and your expensive mac pro don't wear out the ones in the cable wear out but in this case the cable is also expensive so it's kind of crappy um so i was faced with this decision i did unplug and unplug a few times but
But sometimes also what I would consider doing, which was difficult because I couldn't be on the VPN when I did this, but you can use like, you know, screen sharing.
I was going to say that.
Yeah.
And it sounds like, well, these two things are right next to each other.
You're telling me I'm going to do it.
Isn't it going to be laggy over the network or are there going to be compression artifacts?
If you have both computers on your desk, you can connect them to Ethernet.
You can connect them to the same Ethernet switch.
And if you use an efficient sort of VPN, not a VPN, a VNC or Apple Remote Desktop, there's lots of different choices that you can use here.
It's surprisingly tolerable if what you're doing is like typing source code, right?
There is lag.
It doesn't seem exactly the same, but it does give you that sort of software switch KVM type feeling.
Universal control is another option, right?
I don't know how you'd pull this off.
Universal control and sidecar may give you some other way to get at the same thing to sort of a software only solution.
It seems like it will be too laggy.
I can't possibly do that.
But it still beats plugging and unplugging.
And I agree there.
It would be great if there was some kind of Thunderbolts, you know, KVM type solution.
But that is I don't know if that's technically possible.
And I've never heard of such a thing existing.
Daniel Bergvitz writes, the Cook Doctrine says that Apple needs to control crucial technology.
How do you think that making your own cellular modem fits into this?
How will Apple be able to differentiate using a modem?
Sure, maybe they can make it a bit more stable, more integrated, cheaper, faster, and smaller.
But do you see any obvious way that making your own modem would truly help to differentiate the Apple products for the end user?
And one of you has been kind enough to put the cook doctrine into the show notes, which I will now read.
We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.
It was important to put the quote in there, and there's links to the ASIMCO page that lists the larger context of this statement.
But this bit of the Cook Doctrine, it's a single sentence here.
The first part of the sentence potentially contradicts the second part if you read it.
So, own and control, the primary technology is behind the products you make.
That's the sort of thing that we cite all the time.
Like, why would Apple do this?
Well, is it a super important part of the product?
They want to own and control it.
Right.
And so that's why, you know, why should Apple make its own system on a chip?
Why should they make their own processor for their Macs?
It's a primary technology behind the products they make.
They want to own and control it.
Now they do.
Right.
But then the second part is participate only in markets where you can make significant contribution.
Right.
Right.
It may be that you need to own and control a primary technology, even though even if you can't make a significant contribution.
And I think cellular problems are one of those cases where I don't really think Apple is looking to make a significant contribution.
But that technology is so important to their most important product, the phone.
And they've already been like screwed over in various ways, fighting with Qualcomm about it.
that it's so obvious that they need to own and control this primary technology, even though probably they can't make a significant contribution.
Because all they're hoping to do is, can we get a cell modem that works as well as the Qualcomm ones have in the past?
Like, I don't think this is an area of active innovation.
It's not like they're fabbing them.
TSMC is going to be fabbing them anyway, right?
Yeah.
Maybe they make it smaller power.
Maybe they can integrate it into the SoC.
There are possibilities there, but even if there weren't, even if it's just like just so we don't have to deal with Qualcomm anymore because we hate them and they're always trying to screw us and they have us over a barrel because without those Qualcomm chips, there's not a lot of other manufacturers.
They use Intel modems in one of their phones.
the intel ones maybe weren't as good they bought the company they bought intel cell modem division so now they're handling that right and i think the reason people cite the first part is the first part trumps the second part when there's a conflict the first part wins uh and so yeah that's the answer um that's that's why they have to make their modems because it is an application of the first part of the sentence which is own and control primary technologies even if the second part isn't true
I would say, too, I think the possible improvements they could make to a cell modem might be significant.
You look at something like a CPU.
Maybe five or ten years ago, it seemed like CPUs were kind of a solved problem.
Just a matter of iterating on process technology and the more physical side of things.
But when Apple jumped into the CPU game, they really showed...
By applying both good talent and also just specialization, specially designing the CPUs for exactly what their platforms and their products needed and nothing more.
Really optimizing for their stuff and their needs and then optimizing the software stack for their processor in this wonderful cycle we have now.
they actually did make pretty significant contributions to that field.
And a cell modem, I don't know much about cell modems, but I know that it's non-trivial.
I know that it is not just like, you know, a sound chip.
Like, it's a pretty significantly complex chip, and it uses a non-trivial amount of power, takes a non-trivial amount of space, and so...
If they enter that market and if they, you know, as Johnson mentioned, like they could possibly integrate it into the SOC, which frankly seems logical to me.
I don't know.
Again, knowing nothing about this, maybe it makes no sense from like a physical point of view.
They've got some radio stuff that make that tricky.
But I just mentioned that as like there are integration opportunities to do things that Qualcomm would never do because now Apple has the M7.
Remember the motion?
Yeah, yeah.
It used to be a separate chip that got sucked into the SOC real quick and I wouldn't even talk about it.
Yeah, but anyway, so cell modems are very complicated.
They're very processor intensive.
They're physically very complicated, all the radio stuff and everything.
They're a big deal, and they're such a big part of the phone in terms of its total technical complexity, its total power budget, possibly even its total heat consumption.
They're a big deal, and so I think Apple could make a good contribution to that area.
in the same way they contributed to processors.
And I think in something like a phone, that actually matters quite a bit.
And so not only do I think they are doing this, but I think it's a good idea for them to do this.
And I think once they do it,
We're going to look back a few years later and think, why didn't they do it sooner?
Or it's going to be so obvious, we're just going to forget.
They're going to announce one year, oh, now we have the built-in.
They probably won't even announce it, but at some point, we'll have the built-in cell modem, and literally the next year, no one will even talk about it anymore.
Of course it's Apple's cell modem built into the A24 or whatever.
It's just going to be a thing that's there.
And the other the other context that sort of invisible context here is they're not these two clauses of the sentence are not talking about the same thing.
The first part is about technologies.
And the second part is when when and Cook says participate only in markets, he's talking about like, what products do you make?
Do you make a printer?
Do you make a car?
Do you make a laptop?
Do you make a phone?
Right.
That's what participate only in markets.
apple doesn't participate in the market for making cpus because they just make their own cpus they don't give them to anybody else right and it's it still applies like everything we still said still applies but i think the context is mostly talking about like you know why why do you decide to make a cell phone why did you decide to uh make a tv puck or whatever like in all those cases in theory apple can explain like what we thought we can make a
the market for you know selling songs over the internet or the market for cell phones or whatever and sometimes apple is obviously right i think they have made a significant contribution to the cell phone market i think that's inarguable have they made a significant contribution to the tv connected puck market you know so this again this is the larger context this was kind of a manifesto i think it was in like an earnings call or something similar to that so context definitely matters here but um
For the technology thing, like, you know, what was their first chip, the A4?
They basically worked on it for a decade before they blew away the entire industry, right?
The A4 was the first chip they branded, but they weren't really designing the guts of it, I think, until later.
I think they had a significant, maybe the A7.
I think the A6, yeah.
Anyway, the point is, when Apple starts down this road, they're not saying that we're going to dominate, but they're like, it's so important as a primary technology that we have to do this.
And then once they have to do it, of course, they're going to be able to do it...
like in a way that is less annoying to them because every third party thing they have to integrate into an iPhone is surely a headache because they don't get to say what Qualcomm makes.
Qualcomm makes what they make.
And it's probably some significant portion of their phone manufacturing is like designing around the third party pieces that they have no control over.
They can ask for what they want.
They can suggest changes or whatever.
But in the end, if Qualcomm makes a 5G chip that uses more power than Apple would like,
what are you going to do not have 5g apple didn't have 5g for a long time when they eventually bit the bullet 5g hurt their battery life on the first generation of that phone and how much of their headache for building that phone whichever one it was was building the guts around the qualcomm chip that they can't change
Right.
And so even if it is just simply a drop in replacement, even if they never do integrate into the SoC, at the very least, Apple can make exactly the 5G or whatever chip that it wants, according to its specification on its timeline with its sweetheart deals with TSMC for their best manufacturing process and all the other stuff.
And so that's why I think in the end, we will all be very glad, assuming Apple pulls it off, when they do this, because it will have the same benefit as whenever Apple takes over any sort of technology component that goes into their things.
They've shown that it is a huge advantage to be able to do only what Apple needs.
And because they do not participate in the wider market, they don't need to sell their cell phone chips to anyone.
They're not going to sell them to anyone, I imagine.
They don't sell their Apple Silicon things to anybody else.
They just have to make it good enough for Apple, and they just have to sell enough of the things to
make up for it and i think cell modems are already in enough apple products that is you know even if it was just in the iphone it would be enough so i think it's going to happen and assuming they don't blow it it's going to be good for everybody except maybe qualcomm real-time follow-up the apple a6 is said to have a 1.3 gigahertz custom apple designed arm 7a architecture based dual cord cpu called swift rather than a licensed cpu from arm like in the previous designs
Yep.
Got to reuse those names.
B6.
Okay, anyway.
All right, thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Trade Coffee, and Linode.
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
You can join atp.fm slash join.
We'll talk to you next week.
Now the show is over.
They didn't even mean to begin.
Cause it was accidental.
Oh, it was accidental.
John didn't do any research.
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Cause it was accidental.
Oh, it was accidental.
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-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-
You know, in the grand tradition of broadcasting during large sporting events, I am sad to report that North Carolina is losing to Duke by two points, and it's almost halftime.
I love that I don't even know what sport you're talking about right now.
Like, I'm pretty sure it's not football season.
Nope.
Maybe basketball?
Is it basketball?
It is.
It's March Madness, baby.
Well, now we're in April, but it's March Madness.
Yes.
Oh, my God, Marco.
Anyway, as one is required to do, I would very much like to see Duke lose, and so far it's not sounding like it's happening.
So I have a bone to pick with Mr. Syracuse.
Last episode, when he did his amazing reveal of his new job status of not having one...
He made us try to guess what he was going to say, and we guessed freezer and TV, and Merlin guessed in the first try and wrecked this.
Well, it was not a fair comparison, because on that wrecked this episode, earlier in the episode, you had already discussed the freezer and the TV.
That's true.
We eliminated the two most common choices.
Yes!
Those topics were ruled out.
I don't...
Well, he could have guessed Toe.
I don't think... You also... No, that was also ruled out.
Yeah, it was.
Toe was also ruled out earlier.
So, like, the big, like, things like, whoa, what my John want to talk about, they were all ruled out.
Those aren't mystery topics.
Those all would have been written into the document.
Like, I don't think he would ever guess something that would have been written into the document.
We don't know that.
And Marco's right.
It didn't cross my mind until Marco said something, but you're exactly right.
Don't make excuses.
He was just in the right mindset and you two weren't.
It's fine.
Yeah.
No, it was not a level playing field.
I mean, if you want to be fair, you we'd recently had questions very close to this topic on recent ATP episodes that you had heard me answer, which is how Alex Cox said that they figured out that something was up.
So I'm saying I mean, look, in in your defense, I would probably still not have guessed correctly.
However, same.
However, it was not a level playing field because you had already ruled out all of the big hit possible topics, including the two we guessed earlier in the episode.
They hadn't been ruled out and there were so many other things that couldn't be guessed.
Those wouldn't have been in the running correctives because those are always written into the notes.
Those are never mysterious.
So it would be so stupid to make that, oh, I'm going to have a mysterious thing.
I'm not going to tell you about, you know, Toe Freezer, you know, TV show, whatever.
It's just...
just take the loss and the best thing is i making him guess was a totally a spur of the moment thing because i just i had that feeling it's like they'll i get that vibe of like i feel like we're on the right wavelength here that if i just ask this question it'll pop out it's like that game where you try to make people guess a vegetable and you show them a little card about what they're going to guess you two guess a vegetable asparagus yeah uh marco it's a vegetable casey he doesn't know of any macaroni and cheese oh stop
Is cheese a vegetable?
French fries?
Velveeta!
Velveeta!
That's a vegetable, Casey.
Carrot.
Thank you.
That's what everyone says, and I would hold it with a piece of paper that says carrot, and you'd be like, Marco just said asparagus to be Marco.
Because he likes smelly pee.
I don't even like asparagus that much.
John, do you have that gene?
Do you have smelly pee?
I do, and I do not like it.
I like the taste of asparagus.
I do not like the pee smell, so I avoid it just for the pee situation.
Yeah, it's not worth it.
I agree.
It tastes fine.
I don't love it, but yeah, it's not worth the side effects.
Uh, Marco, happy anniversary.
Uh-oh.
Uh, of... Did you have the renewal as a cell certificate?
What does this mean?
Yeah.
What did I fail to do?
Happy ninth anniversary, Marco.
Of the show?
No.
No.
Um...
hmm i i i'm really how old is my child quick no he's 10 yeah almost not quite sorry been married for more than nine years uh you really don't know this makes me a little bit sad that you're not in like a you're in trouble way just it makes me a little bit sad way i'm totally in trouble is this neutral no no no no well you're getting warmer but no not neutral oh is this our munich trip yes specifically this is the day you bought your m5 or really received your m5 oh yeah nine years ago today
oh man that was so yeah neutral was pretty good but you still have that picture on the wall you're in the room with that would have it is it still on the wall um no i that's it's in the closet with some other like you know that is sad well because the the area that it was hanging i covered up with acoustic foam on the wall i thought you would it would have graduated to the beach house it's what is the beach house have anything to do with cars it's a car free island no but it's just it's just a fond memory you have pictures of fond memories
I have other ones.
I have a picture on the wall of Trey Anastasio playing a guitar with rainbow lines coming out of it.
That's my beach wall art.
Remember when the sound hit this acoustic foam and didn't bounce back as much?
Those were good times.
For the record on my wall, and has been for years, is a picture of Marco and Underscore and me in front of the BMW Performance Driving School sign from South Carolina, which was also almost nine years ago.
That was the same year.
And that's been on my wall in the office for years now.
Just letting you know where you stand in my book, even though I don't apparently stand in the same spot.
More importantly, the poor M5.
I know, right?
That was a good car.
Sad times.
It was a great car.
uh we i feel like we should do a quick uh thank you to the members and this is non-sarcastic genuinely um there have been a bunch of new members that have signed up um over the last actually i was gonna say week it's only been a couple days since we recorded last um and that is extremely kind of all of you uh i've been mostly amused when people have written in and said yeah this had nothing to do with john and it had nothing to do with marco and casey this is all for john so uh hey you're welcome john
So I'm thanks, but thanks.
But no, all kidding aside, it's been wonderful to see the messages of support just that I've seen.
And I can only imagine how John feels.
But it's been wonderful to see the message of support.
It's been wonderful to see some of you actually, you know, financially support, which is, you know, going above and beyond.
And on behalf of all three of us.
uh thank you for that we really do appreciate it and uh i will say that we are working on merchandise we are actively working on merchandise you'll hear more about that sooner than you think john how is how is was this full week number one is that right this is the conclusion of week number one of no work maybe yeah sounds about right my timeline is already all out of whack
So I do have one specific question.
So you mentioned at the end of your blog post that you're not looking forward to having to tell people, having to explain to your job that you're now a full-time podcaster, basically.
Has that come up yet?
Have you actually had to tell anybody that, and how did it go?
Because I can tell you one thing.
From my experience, that is always kind of awkward.
It is super awkward.
I don't interact with people, although I am interacting with people.
I am interacting with people for, like, business purposes, like talking to my accountant, who's also Casey's accountant, for tax stuff, right?
And have to, you know, just preemptively fill in for next year's taxes and, like, you know, just estimated taxes are pain in the butt.
So I've communicated that, but that's mostly communicated as a negative.
Like, oh, you remember that job I have?
Well, I don't anymore.
Yeah.
and so that may be important for next year's taxes or whatever but yeah it hasn't come up for any person i don't know i'll probably be okay like you know what i used to say before like it wasn't much better before really because and i realized this recently because it was like what a month ago or something i was out for like i don't know i was i had occasion to see a person who asked me a question about my life and i was like oh what do you do for a living
um oh i know i think it was when i was renewing my life insurance i don't remember anyway uh and i for years now i haven't known what to say about what do you do like and i just slipped into this thing where i feel bad because i want to give people a direct answer but eventually i just started saying kind of like marco's old hat that he can't wear anymore i would just say computers
and that usually made people not want to ask a follow-up question partly because of how like i would say it or whatever but it's like i would just say computers or sometimes the longer version would be i do stuff with computers that's all they need to know they're not actually interested they're like oh i guess fine
Like there, there aren't any follow-up questions.
Like unless there are compute, if there are actually a computer nerd, they'll, they'll be able to tell that by their follow-up question that I can tell them more, but people aren't that interested.
So they're just, I just stuff a computer.
I used to say I'm a programmer, but nowadays I'm like, they'd be like, do you program things like, you know, things on the radio or something?
Nobody thinks that.
No, you can say programmer.
Everyone knows computers.
Like that's,
But that's what I would say.
I would put occupation, programmer.
Because all those stupid fill-in things, I don't care what they think.
If they think programmer means something else, then that's fine.
But I would just say computers.
And now I can't really say computers or programmer anymore.
I mean, I can if people don't care because podcasting is done through computers as well and it kind of fits.
But...
I guess I'll let you know the first time I have to say podcaster, but it has not come up yet, and I don't expect it to come up for a while, because in general, people don't ask.
I don't talk to strangers.
Yeah, they spot you from across the room, and they're like, that man looks like he wants to talk to strangers about his job.
No, they say that man looks like he does computers.
As soon as you ask the question, Marco, a certain somebody that John lives with says, and I quote, he doesn't leave the house.
I think that might have answered the question.
Haven't gotten COVID yet.
Woo!
That you know of.
That's the same in our house.
And as a matter of fact, there's a cough going through most of the house.
And on a precaution, Aaron took a test earlier today, an at-home test.
Yeah.
It was big, fat negatory, but you never know these days.
Unfortunately, the home rapid test negative results simply mean you might not have it.
I know, I know.
John, how was your first week, though?
What did you do?
I guess, really, since I spoke to you two days ago, but have you had any good relaxation time?
Are you already doing either self-assigned or Tina-assigned honey-do's?
What have we been up to?
No.
I mean, I did spend a lot of time, you know, reading and trying to acknowledge slash reply to all the nice congratulations.
Lots of people have been tweeting at me.
Some people sent me some nice emails.
You know, I appreciate every kind word that everyone has sent.
I've tried to reply when I could.
I've also tried like on Twitter.
It's hard to know what to do because honestly, tons of people have been tweeting at me and I want to.
My practice has been for years, for years and years and years.
which probably means in the internet it's out of date, and I agree that it probably is.
My way of acknowledging that I have seen your thing and appreciate it but do not have the ability to send you an individualized reply is to like it.
Same, yeah.
To fave it, to heart it, whatever the hell it's called.
But a couple years ago, Twitter changed its official client to do this weird thing where if you follow somebody, somehow you get injected into your timeline stuff that they fave.
which doesn't make any sense to me i've apologized i've apologized for it on the show before i've like because i sometimes fave like whatever things as a form of bookmarking because third-party clients can't do bookmarking because twitter is crappy with their api and i still use third-party client but anyway i will fave things just to remind myself of them later so it's not you know rts and retweets are not an endorsement faves are not an endorsement but that is a dated notion because if i fave it and it shows up in someone else's timeline they're like oh this is this thing was you know faved by john he must really agree with it anyway
pretty much every single person who sent me a nice tweet to say, you know, congratulations or whatever, I fave them.
I fave them all.
So God knows what this is doing to anybody who follows me.
I apologize for people who follow me and aren't involved in this whole thing.
If you're seeing this huge flood of things that I'm faving, but I fave pretty much every single one of them.
And that's my way of trying to tell the people, I saw your thing and I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Right.
And I try to reserve my like longer replies for either if I have time to do it.
Cause honestly it was, it just,
you know overwhelming support i think everyone who's who's sent even a little note or whatever you just don't realize how many people are like aware of your existence until they all get something in them to you know to pop up and say hello or say something nice so that's been very gratifying um and same thing some lots of people actually send me emails and stuff too so
So I've been spending a lot of time faving and replying to emails and tweets, believe it or not, and, you know, fixing typos in my blog posts and all that stuff.
And then, yeah, and then just dealing with the – I made the – speaking of the store, I made the store page for the upcoming ADP thing today.
What else did I do?
I mean, I prepared the show notes for the thing that we just recorded, like just doing my normal podcast stuff and doing a few things around the house.
I am one of the projects I'm working on is maybe we'll talk about it in future episodes when I get past the point of research and Amazon ordering and get to the installation part.
But I'm finally going to try to upgrade my thermostat, potentially with a smart one.
which will involve major house surgery because my thermostat is, you know, older than I am or the wires from it are older than I am anyway.
So it's a little bit terrifying.
And I've been playing this for a while.
And believe me, the best time to do a thermostat is when the weather is getting warm enough that you don't need heat anymore.
So you do not want to mess with this in the middle of winter and freeze to death and your pipes burst or whatever.
So it's kind of getting to that season.
Springtime is coming where if I really screw it up and our heat doesn't work pretty soon, that will not be a fatal error.
So I'm giving myself leeway to do that.
So that is one of the projects that I'm currently tackling.
Do you even have a common line or whatever it's called?
I do not.
Oh, so can you even use a smart thermostat?
I'm going to have to do some wiring.
You're going to do it?
Yeah.
I mean, it's low voltage.
It's not that dangerous if he messes it up.
24 volts.
Yeah.
Alternating current.
Yeah, it is AC.
That's true.
The real problem is not the electrical part of it.
It is the physical part of it.
Just like routing the wires there.
Navigating the guts of my ancient terrifying house.
Yes.
Which does not have drywall.
You know, I think I spoke about this a while ago, but I got to burrow up my butt a few months back as a pandemic project to, I'm going to get the terms wrong, to go from the switches that you can like grab onto, you know, the stereotypical like older switches that are like a little thing sticking out of the wall that you flip up and down.
I forget what those are called, but I wanted to go from that to like the paddle style switches, you know, where it's just like a paddle.
Because you wanted to look like your house is from the 80s?
No, I think it... No, the paddles are now... Paddles are in style again.
It's the... What is it?
Decor... What's the... I guess the flat paddles are more in style, but I still look at them and they look like 80s to me.
Well, what's good about the flat paddles, too, is that if you wanted to upgrade them to possibly Lutron Caseta switches, they all have that same shape for the cover plates and everything.
Yep.
And so I think we got in the same argument when I was talking about this a few months back.
But anyways, I've been putting paddles everywhere, which is relatively cheap to do, all told.
And it's actually something that I can handle, which is when it comes to things around the house, there's very little that falls in that category.
And so I was able to handle all of the switching over from the toggle or whatever they're called to paddles.
um, to the paddle decor style.
Um, and I was even able to tap existing common lines to put in a couple of prior sponsor Luchon Caseta, uh, things, but I can't imagine actually like going through the wall back to the, the furnace or what have you in order to wire a new common line or just no, no, thank you.
I would definitely call.
Yeah.
I'm just going to end up running a whole new, uh, wire because the honestly, you're going to do this yourself.
Yeah.
That's what I'm saying.
I think that's bananas.
You should call somebody.
I can handle it.
it'll be okay and you know i'll talk about it on the show how it turns out but again if i really screw it up it's not like we're going to freeze to death in the house because pretty soon it's going to be hot so i didn't tell you guys i tried to fish a wire for the first time a few months back oh it was it was hilarious i excited it totally wrong and yeah right tool do you have a little uh what do you call it the little metal thingy the cable fish thing where it's like the big it's like basically like a like a long tape of metal that you reel up and yeah yeah i i got one you know just some amazon thing and
I was trying to run a network cable across a portion of my basement that I can't really reach.
It's like it's like it's like between like two posts.
So I can't you can't really get in there as a person or with your arm.
And I had to run like 15 feet to a space that I could reach.
And I got a jam between like two floorboards.
And it was just like it was just stuck.
And I had to like take a mouse.
I had to take off a siding board on the other side of the house to access where I'd gotten it stuck.
It was a whole thing.
I had it hooked on backwards, so it was hooky instead of flat.
You didn't tape up the end?
No, I did.
But like it was still it still was able to like wedge itself somewhere.
Yeah, you really got to really got to smooth that out.
Yeah, no, I did.
If you recall, when I when I first got Fios, I ran like 100 feet of cat six through my basement because the fiber comes in the far corner of the house of where from where I actually need it.
And so I did all that fishing myself through, you know, the finished room in the basement, through the non-finished rooms, up through the floor to the television area, up and up through the wall and floor into the room that I'm in.
I'm very familiar with trying to fish Ethernet cables through things.
And the techniques I came up with are unorthodox and probably stupid, but they did eventually work.
So I'm going to leverage those skills.
My thermostat wire will be easy in comparison because my thermostat is actually not that far from the furnace in the basement.
And I did all the Googling and looked up the part number and figured out all the parts that I have.
Because my furnace is not super ancient, but the wire, the two wires, only two, the two wires that go to my current thermostat,
absolutely are older than me like they don't even use rubber insulation they use like braided cloth insulation that's so old that if you look at it it crumbles oh my god none of the insulators none of the insulation on the wires are anywhere in my house have any colors everything he's like oh you're gonna find like the common wire and it'll be uh you know black and the neutral wire will be wider but the hot wire is like you kidding yeah whatever like none of the wires in my house have any color they're all color the color i would describe as soot
every single and they're not wrapped in rubber they're wrapped in like this ancient heart stuff and there's like canvas things around it and so like that just it's amazing my house doesn't burn on anytime i do anything so that is going to be removed and replaced with actual 18.5 thermostat wire uh if i am successful and if i'm not i will call someone and pay them lots of money and they'll fix my mistakes but i think i can pull it off further news on future episodes okay
Yeah, there's only a couple of spots in the house that I really wish I had an Ethernet drop.
And what I've done because I'm lazy is I've put Mocha Bridges in those spots.
But if I was braver, and I know it's not like I helped my dad when I was in high school wire our then house for Cat 5 or whatever it was at the time.
And I presumably could do it, but I'm so scared.
I'm going to like put a hole somewhere somehow, which you shouldn't be able to do using, you know, just trying to wire with ethernet.
But I feel like I would somehow like put my foot through the ceiling of the second floor, you know, or something like that.
And I'm just, I'm scared.
I'm a big baby.
I think it's one of those things eventually you realize, you know what, if I accidentally poke a hole in a wall and I don't want to be there, it's not that hard to patch a wall.
It's one of those things that you learn as an adult, like, okay, well, I can patch it and it might look a little bit uneven, but who cares?
It's just living in a house.
Did I tell you that story when we were getting a new siding on our house?
Yeah, the big project a few years back?
Yeah, yeah.
People who were doing the project were outside using pneumatic nail guns to do whatever they were doing or whatever.
And they had a misfire, and one of the nails from the nail gun went...
through the outside of the house and came into the room that i'm sitting in so i came home one day oh my gosh i came home one day and looked above the wall above like the upper right corner of the wall where my wife's computer is and there was like four inches of nail sticking out of the wall like sort of hanging there just sort of dangling because it had come almost all the way through but it had not come all the way through to fall out into the room so it was just being held in by the little part of the nail and i was like what yeah so
you know it's like well how do you patch it up no we just kind of patched it up and put a little bit of spackle over it and don't talk about it yeah it's not the same color as the wall but it's close enough that no one notices and there's so much else wrong with the house that really it's hard to pick out any one thing