The Monitor Situation
Casey:
Now, with that said, I would like to serve you a second crap sandwich.
Casey:
If you're just joining us and you're not a bootleg listener, I just beat up Marco for about, I don't know, 10 minutes about under the radar.
Casey:
So you can go to atp.fm slash join and you can hear me beating Marco up about under the radar.
Casey:
But I would like to serve you a second crap sandwich.
Casey:
Last week's episode...
Casey:
While it was an unequivocal mess slash disaster, it was one of my favorite episodes in a long time because of the utter disaster that is both Marco and Mai's personal setups and how we decided to turn our setups on our heads.
Casey:
With that said, Marco, I have completely turned my setup on its head yet again.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
And so if this recording works, it will be a miracle.
Casey:
As of literally two-ish hours ago, maybe a hint more than that,
Casey:
I have now been using an LG 5K, baby.
Casey:
It is installed.
Casey:
I'm using it.
Casey:
And in fact, my USB Mix Pre 3 is connected to the monitor, which is connected to my computer.
Casey:
And oh man, if this works, I'll be impressed.
Marco:
You're running your sound interface through one of the ports on the back of the ultra fine.
Marco:
Yes, I am.
Marco:
Oh my God.
Casey:
I learned it by watching you.
Casey:
So Marco, I love you.
Marco:
I really do.
Marco:
Oh God.
Casey:
But this is going to be an adventure for all of us.
Marco:
So, uh, God help you with the drift.
Marco:
The only thing is you better be recording on that mix pre and with it's built an SD card.
Marco:
Cause that's going to be the only drift free recording that you get.
Casey:
I am.
Casey:
And all kidding aside, if it is a disaster, I expect, I know you will tell me, but I expect you to tell me and I'll rejigger things for next week.
Casey:
But I wanted to give it a try.
Casey:
And I thought, you know, why would I only plug in this monitor and use that for power for my computer?
Casey:
And Ethernet, by the way, is also on this monitor.
Casey:
Why would I only do Ethernet and power?
Casey:
Why not just do the audio interface there as well?
Casey:
Just really go for broke.
Casey:
And so here you go, Marco.
Casey:
There's your second crap sandwich.
Casey:
I hope you love it.
Casey:
You're missing another piece of bread.
John:
That's an open face crap sandwich.
Marco:
Yeah, it's more of a melt.
LAUGHTER
Casey:
We should talk one last time, and I can't sing, otherwise I would, one last time about the ATP store, which is back, baby, but it's on its way out the door.
Casey:
You can go to ATP.fm slash store, and you can get all sorts of sweet merchandise, which at least if you're in the contiguous, whatever, continental U.S., I always get the word wrong.
Casey:
If you're in the big part of the United States, you should, no guarantees, should get it by the holidays.
John:
Isn't Alaska a pretty big part of the United States?
John:
No, that's just the Mercator projection.
John:
Oh, okay.
John:
It's big, but not as big as it looks.
Casey:
Oh, I'm so sorry, Alaskans.
Casey:
So here we go.
Casey:
We got the M1 Pro shirt.
Casey:
We've got the M1 Max shirt available on black colored cloth, either tri-blend or cotton.
Casey:
And then rainbow print on the front and a monochrome version of the respective chips on the back.
Casey:
Then we've got the M1 Pro shirt, which we've curiously named monochrome, which does make sense because the print is monochrome.
Casey:
And yet these are on many varied colors of shirts.
Casey:
So you can go colorful ink, black shirt, or you can go colorful shirt, white or black ink, depending on which shirt color we're talking about.
Casey:
We also have the ATP winter hat.
Casey:
Note, this is a turkey hat.
Casey:
It is not a chicken hat, but it is still very, very nice.
Casey:
We've also brought back the ATP hoodie and additionally the ATP logo shirt, the classic, classic ATP logo shirt.
Casey:
So here's the thing.
Casey:
As we record this, it's Wednesday night.
Casey:
We are probably going to be releasing it Thursday sometime by, I believe it's Friday evening.
Casey:
Is that right, gentlemen?
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Friday evening, ATP time, the store will close for the sweet Kickstarter-style stuff that we've got going on now, and then sometime over the weekend we will go back to the print-on-demand stuff, which is far more limited.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
So as always, if you are driving, if you are walking, if you are biking, if you are rollerblading, if you're unicycling, whatever you may be doing, if you are moving in any way, please gently and gracefully stop and move to the side of the road or sidewalk that you're on and go to atp.fm slash store and check out the wares and perhaps make a purchase.
Casey:
Now, a couple of quick reminders.
Casey:
Number one, if you are an ATP member, go to your member page on atp.fm.
Casey:
And there will be a unique coupon code that you can use to get 15% off on these limited time sales like the one we're talking about right now.
Casey:
And if you wanted to be a member, become a member, again, atp.fm slash join.
Casey:
Additionally, I believe I talked about this last week, but I'd like to reiterate that Cotton Bureau, who is our fulfillment in print people, they're excellent, excellent, amazing friends of ours.
Casey:
They have rejiggered their shipping system such that it should, no guarantees, should be cheaper for anyone who is not American.
Casey:
And in many cases, including for Australia, I don't know if any of the other southern hemisphere countries are the same way, but at least for Australia, the VAT and some of those other taxes, they will do their best effort to calculate that at purchase time so you don't get a sweet holiday surprise, thanks to your friends at ATP.
Casey:
So again, ATP.fm slash store.
Casey:
You are running out of time.
Casey:
Every time you guys, one of you says, oh, I meant to and I forgot.
Casey:
Is it too late?
Casey:
Yes, it's too late.
Casey:
Go now.
Casey:
ATP.fm slash store.
Marco:
I feel like people do that now just to troll you.
Marco:
They do.
Marco:
Which is funny because they literally like miss out on the sale just as a method to troll you.
Casey:
But you know what?
Casey:
It's their loss, not mine.
Casey:
Well, it is kind of mine.
Casey:
But still, it's also theirs.
Casey:
So ATP.fm slash store.
John:
remember this is the holiday sale so if you're thinking of getting even if you don't want one of these things or if you're being subjected to this podcast say you're a prisoner in a car and someone is playing this podcast and you don't want to hear it but you think you might want to get the person who forced you to listen to this podcast you might want to get them a nice gift go to atp.fm slash store quickly very very quickly because this is probably like a day or less depending on when you hear this very quickly like basically now and secretly buy them something and then maybe you can bribe them into not playing this podcast when you're stuck in the car with them laughing
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And then if you become a member, remember, if you become a member, remember, you do not have to cancel despite what John thinks.
Casey:
And you can enjoy the sweet, sweet benefits like the bootleg, for example.
Casey:
So you can hear the first of the crud sandwiches that I served Marco earlier this evening.
Casey:
So check that out, atp.fm slash join, atp.fm slash store.
Casey:
Now, let's do some follow-up.
Casey:
We talked last week, I believe it was, about how, I think the genesis of this was that I do not have messages in the cloud or in iCloud turned on.
Casey:
I think you guys might have made fun of me a little bit.
Casey:
And I said, oh, I was worried about encryption and so on and so forth.
Casey:
And we kind of waved our hands at it because we weren't entirely sure the specifics of it.
Casey:
And a few people wrote in and pointed out the specifics about encryption and iCloud and messages.
Casey:
And so reading from the iCloud security overview, it says, for messages in iCloud,
Casey:
If you have an iCloud backup turned on, your backup includes a copy of the key protecting your messages.
Casey:
This ensures that you can recover your messages if you lose access to your keychain and your trusted devices.
Casey:
When you turn off iCloud backup, a new key is generated on your device to protect future messages that is not stored by Apple.
Casey:
So if I read this right, the short, short version is, it is still end-to-end encrypted even with messages in the cloud as long as you do not have iCloud backup turned on.
Casey:
The moment you have iCloud backup turned on, though, all bets are off in terms of end-to-end encryption.
Casey:
Is that fair?
John:
You should listen to ADP because we talked about this before and said the exact same thing.
John:
But not everyone has heard every episode, so it's good to hear this.
John:
I think the reason we didn't mention this specifically is because, in general, we assume that everybody has iCloud backup turned on.
John:
Do you have iCloud backup turned on, Casey?
Casey:
I'm pretty sure I do, yeah.
Casey:
Pretty sure or sure?
Casey:
You know, I never used to, but then once I started doing the Apple one plus whatever thing, I finally had the space in which to do it.
Casey:
And so I think that I do.
Casey:
I'm trying to stall for time and figure that out, but somebody else can start talking.
John:
I would recommend people use iCloud backup.
John:
And I assume most people do use iCloud backup if they can, because it's a very convenient way to get your stuff backed up.
John:
And it's,
John:
It's kind of like what Time Machine wishes it was, which is like, oh, someone hits a switch in a setting somewhere and then never has to think about it again.
John:
And that vastly increases the odds that if they drop their phone into a lake and don't have someone dive down and get it for them, that they'll have their data protected.
John:
So the reason we say, oh, messages in the cloud means Apple can get access to your messages is because we just assume people have iCloud backup turned on.
John:
And honestly, you should in general.
John:
Obviously, if you really, really are paranoid about security,
John:
i guess don't turn it on or use a different app like signal or i don't know what you want to do if you're that paranoid about security but for the average person don't turn off icloud backup because you're afraid of apple having your encryption key it's better for you to have pictures of your kids than to worry about apple looking at your messages
Casey:
Well, and to get ahead of the inevitable feedback, yes, hypothetically, law enforcement could compel Apple to give them a view into your messages, theoretically.
John:
Yeah, no, I know.
John:
But I'm saying, like, which one of these things is the more likely bad thing to happen to you?
John:
And you have to choose amongst them.
John:
It's not great having all those choices.
John:
We wish there was a way to do these double end-to-end encrypted.
John:
But as Apple explains, they're trying to save your bacon.
John:
Because the way iCloud Keychain works is if you do lose all your quote-unquote trusted devices, there's nothing Apple can do to get it back, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
And that's a thing that can happen to people, especially say you had just one iPhone and you lost and broke that iPhone and had no backups.
John:
And that had pictures of your kids on it for the past two years that you don't have anyplace else.
John:
That's not good.
John:
Apple doesn't want that to happen.
John:
That is far more likely to happen than you to be the person who the government compels Apple to give your secret encryption key and look at your messages and so on and so forth.
John:
Not saying this is a great choice for people to have to make, but these are the choices given to us.
John:
And of those two choices, I would recommend using iCloud backup.
Casey:
Real-time follow-up, I do have iCloud backup turned on.
Casey:
And again, I think that's only been since I joined Apple One, but it is on.
John:
That's good.
Casey:
All right, go team.
Casey:
Apple has had some problems with macOS Monterey and it kind of bricking some T2-enabled Macs.
Casey:
Can you tell me about this?
John:
And people keep using the term brick.
John:
I'm wondering if it's one of those terms that's going to lose its original meaning and I'm not going to be able to yell at people for using it wrong because it'll have the new meaning.
John:
But anyway, the original meaning for brick is that your computer becomes a brick, basically as useful as a brick, as in this is a piece of hardware that cannot be resurrected, that it is now like, you know, someone will have to open this up and do stuff inside it to resurrect this.
John:
It is basically a brick.
John:
Like that's where the term comes from.
John:
Not that this isn't a bad bug.
John:
It was.
John:
There was something with the Monterey update that would,
John:
hose the bridge os uh thing that runs the on the t2 chip and that would just cause your computer not to boot correctly but you could resurrect it you could do what i had to do to my mac pro and i did the same you know an old i think it was like a big sur update or something yeah hose my bridge os there's a way you have to have another mac which is not a problem in this house but for some people might be um but you can you can resurrect another mac using the apple configurator too and it's a whole big weird procedure but
John:
You can do it.
John:
That's why it's not bricked.
John:
Because if it was bricked, you wouldn't be able to resurrect it.
John:
Just like you can't resurrect a brick.
John:
Anyway, setting aside the pedantry about the term brick.
John:
There was a bug with the Monterey update.
John:
Apple says they have identified and fixed the issue with the firmware on the Apple T2 security chip, blah, blah, blah.
John:
And they say the updated firmware is now included with the existing macOS updates.
John:
So it's not like they had to release a new version, I guess.
John:
I guess if you just run the updater now, you'll get the new firmware.
John:
So whatever.
John:
Um, the Ars Technica article that we got this from, uh, points out that this, uh, Apple statement doesn't address similar complaints of people who had pre T2 Macs.
John:
Um, so maybe there's a still problem, still a problem with really older Macs, but like we said last week, Monterey seems pretty safe.
John:
I've upgraded all my computers.
John:
It's been fine.
John:
If you had a T2 based Mac and you were worried about it, apparently Apple has fixed that bug and you're fine to upgrade.
John:
If you've got a pre T2 Mac, perhaps there are still problems, but hard to say.
Casey:
And then tell me about ways to avoid the notch, which, by the way, I really don't think is necessary in my personal estimation.
Casey:
But a lot of people seem to be very worked up about this.
Casey:
So how can you avoid the notch?
John:
So Roberto Jung-Drebes says the cleanest way to get rid of the notch without having to deal with some optimal resolution, because we were talking last week, like when you said that compatibility thing, it shrinks the whole image down to non-native res, is to use RDM.
John:
I don't know what that stands for.
John:
I tried to look it up, but it's a project on GitHub.
John:
We'll put a link in the show notes.
John:
using rdm roberto says i can switch the new macbook pro resolution from the native 1512 by 982 points to 1512 by 945 points which makes the notch permanently go away so what this thing does this is the utility is just letting you pick resolutions that aren't offered to you in system preferences because you just get those five choices or whatever this lets you see way more choices and one of the choices is a resolution that falls short of where the notch is
John:
So, you know, there was a tweet.
John:
You can see a picture of his Mac.
John:
And lo and behold, his Mac has a taller black forehead around the top border of the screen, just like all the old MacBooks used to.
John:
So if you want to just sort of throw
John:
those pixels back in apple's face apple gave you all these extra pixels of the sort of ears around the notch if you just want to throw those pixels back in apple's faces you know what i'm not going to use those pixels i'm going to pretend those pixels aren't there i'm going to set my screen to a resolution that falls below where the notch is and just ignore all those pictures and pixels and they'll just be turned off all the time and hopefully i won't have any many led blooming reminding me that that's that's actually screen behind there um that is a way to just forget about the notch entirely and
John:
and pretend that Apple gave you a smaller screen than they actually did.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Connection, an Apple U.S.
Marco:
corporate reseller, higher education reseller, and Apple authorized service provider.
Marco:
Connection has been a partner with Apple for 37 years, going all the way back to 1984.
Marco:
And I actually knew them back at their original name, Mac Connection.
Marco:
So if you've ever seen like a Mac Connection catalog back in the day, this is them.
Marco:
They're now called Connection.
Marco:
And they offer everything Apple, Mac, iPad, iPhone, watch, AirPods, and of course, many more.
Marco:
And they keep popular models, including many upgraded and build-to-order Macs, in stock, so you can get the best products right away.
Marco:
Connection has a dedicated Apple practice with an Apple-certified system engineers and solution architects on staff.
Marco:
Their main goal is creating the perfect Apple ecosystem for any customer, specializing and optimizing the end-user experience.
Marco:
And they have direct integration with Apple for Apple Business Manager, making zero-touch device deployments easy and seamless.
Marco:
Connection was also the first Jamf Gold reseller, integrator, and managed service provider.
Marco:
Connection helps customers of all sizes, including having managed a large 40K corporate iPad rollout.
Marco:
We'll be right back.
Marco:
And Connection is working on an exclusive offer with instant savings on a brand new 16-inch MacBook Pro.
Marco:
Details on that are coming soon.
Marco:
And if you still need an Intel MacBook Pro, Connection has several models available there too while supplies last.
Marco:
So visit connection.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Watch there for that exclusive 16-inch MacBook Pro offer coming very, very soon.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Connection for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, so we have, both Marco and me, some more MacBook Pro observations and so on.
Casey:
Just some quickies for me.
Casey:
So over the last week or so since we recorded, I've taken the occasion a couple of times to work with the MacBook Pro outside.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
It honestly doesn't really matter.
Casey:
All I can tell you is that my lived experience, placebo or otherwise, is that it is genuinely quite a bit brighter and easier to see outside, which is great, even in even in sunlight, which is very impressive.
John:
I don't know why you're doubting your experience.
John:
Yeah, it's way brighter.
Casey:
OK, well, because I don't know if the numbers I don't know if the numbers would say the numbers are big.
John:
I think like your old one is probably like 300 nits max.
John:
And this thing goes up to a thousand, but it's probably displaying at 500.
John:
But either way, more than 300.
Casey:
There you go.
John:
So, yeah.
John:
You can look up, I'm just making up the numbers.
John:
I'm just like, yes, this, it does not surprise me that you're much brighter screen looks brighter.
Casey:
It turns out.
Casey:
Additionally.
Casey:
So I have really enjoyed from time to time going and working at like a park, especially in pandemic times.
Casey:
Once we came to realize that, you know, if you're more than 10 feet away from somebody, especially outside, then, you know, you should be pretty safe.
Casey:
Not, you know, knock on wood, all things being considered and,
Casey:
And and so I've tried from time to time to go and find places to work.
Casey:
And, you know, I used to go to like a local grocery store.
Casey:
It's a very fancy grocery store and has like a little cafe area.
Casey:
I'm not a coffee drinker, so I didn't really ever go to Starbucks.
Casey:
But if I was, I would have gone to Starbucks.
Casey:
And but since, you know, the pandemic has happened and is happening, I'm still mostly allergic to the indoors.
Casey:
So I've been trying to find outdoors places to go and work.
Casey:
And there's a lot of really great parks in the county in which I live.
Casey:
and other things like that.
Casey:
And so over the last year and a half or two years, I've been amassing a private Apple Maps collection, I think they call it, that I call Places to Work.
Casey:
And, you know, I'll take a note of, oh, right here in this park, there's some picnic tables that are shaded or over there, there's, you know, a shady area that has picnic tables underneath it.
Casey:
Oh, and these ones have power and so on and so forth.
Casey:
And one of the things that was a real struggle for me is if I wanted to sit down for like several hours and do work, particularly outside,
Casey:
irrespective of my internet situation, which was often but not always tethering, on my old laptop, I really needed to worry about power after just an hour or two.
Casey:
And I have a USB-C battery pack that I can use.
Casey:
It's big enough physically in terms of what, milliamp hours or whatever, that I can power a computer with it for some amount of time.
Casey:
But even still, I would only have, I don't know, three or four hours or something like that on my last year's laptop.
Casey:
And
Casey:
and let me tell you, I spent all morning outside at a botanical garden here in Richmond, don't be creepy, and I was on like 75% battery or something like that when I left.
Casey:
I should have actually taken note of how long I was there and how much battery I used, but the point I'm driving at is...
Casey:
I really don't need to worry about power as long as I'm not going to be out literally all day.
Casey:
And I know that this is old news for those of you who have had M1 Max before, but even with the M1 Max and 64 gigs of RAM and 24 GPUs, it is real nice not having to worry about power for like three and four hours at a time, which is super cool.
Casey:
And I've really appreciated it already.
Casey:
Now, in the spirit of me rejiggering my desk setup, I realized, well, I'm going to be unloading this iMac Pro, which, by the way, if you're interested, please reach out.
Casey:
But I'm going to be unloading this iMac Pro in the next couple of weeks.
Casey:
And I will presumably be sending the keyboard and trackpad that came with it to the next owner.
Casey:
So now I need a new setup unless I'm going to live with the keyboard and trackpad that are physically on the laptop, which when I'm at home, I don't really want to do because it's not terribly ergonomic.
Casey:
So I went to the Apple store and I bought myself a fancy new 100 and whatever key extended keyboard with a numpad.
Marco:
The one with Touch ID?
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
The new one with Touch ID and then a new trackpad, which I think is in most ways the same as what I had, except white instead of much more attractive, in my opinion, dark gray.
Casey:
But I bought a trackpad and a new keyboard.
Casey:
Do you have any idea how frigging expensive these things are?
Marco:
I believe the keyboard, I think, is $150,000.
Casey:
The small one is, I believe.
Casey:
I believe the big one was $180.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
Right?
Marco:
Yeah, you're right.
Marco:
The small touch ID is $150.
Marco:
I've been thinking about ordering one.
Marco:
But yeah, the trackpad, I think, is also about $160 or $180.
Casey:
I thought it was $130.
Casey:
I don't have these numbers in front of me.
Casey:
It's expensive, yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, it doesn't matter if I don't have it exactly right.
Casey:
But all told, between the two of them, and I also got a second MagSafe, an additional MagSafe cable, but I think...
Casey:
I think it was like $310, $320 for just the keyboard and the mouse or something like that.
Casey:
It was preposterously expensive, just hilariously expensive.
Casey:
And to get ahead of people asking, I actually didn't necessarily want the keyboard with the Numeric keypad.
Casey:
It is what I chose, but it's not what I necessarily wanted.
Casey:
But did you remember the Achilles heel of the smaller sized keyboard that does not have the Numeric keypad on it?
John:
It's got the messed up arrow keys.
Casey:
It's got the piss poor arrow keys.
Casey:
And since I'm used to the extended version, because that's what the iMac Pro came with, I thought to myself, you know what, I'd rather have the proper arrow keys and the numeric keypad, which I do use from time to time, but not enough to really justify it in the grand scheme of things.
Casey:
So I ended up splurging for the $180, I can confirm that now, $180 magic keyboard with Touch ID and numeric keypad for Mac models with Apple Silicon, hyphen US English.
Casey:
That's a great...
John:
That's a better keyboard anyway.
John:
And by the way, that little keyboard that we're talking about, like what were we saying by the messed up arrow keys is it has the style that used to be on all the Mac laptops where the up and down arrows are half size and wedged into like a single key caps space.
John:
And then the left and right arrows are full size keys.
John:
So you have three keys in a row, left, then the up, down, and then right.
John:
that are all kind of the same height and what we wanted on the laptops what we got on the current laptops is what we call the inverted t where the left and right arrows are half height and you would think that's worse you're making the left and right arrows smaller they must be harder to hit but the key about them being half height is now you can feel for that t because you can feel the half height key and then the full height up and down pair and then the other half height key that goes to the right um and it's easy you know it's
John:
And obviously the full-size keyboard has an inverted T as well.
John:
You can actually feel for the keys without looking at them.
John:
And if you're used to that, going to the full-size left and right keys was a downgrade for a lot of people.
John:
And apparently Apple agreed, so they changed it on their laptops.
John:
But this one keyboard, this one dinky, tiny keyboard that comes with the iMacs and that you get if you don't buy this extended one,
John:
um it has the full height left and right arrow keys and the reason it has the full height left and right arrow keys if you look at the picture of it is that if you tried to make the right arrow key in particular half height it wouldn't quite work because the corner of the keyboard is rounded and so that key would not just be half height but it would also have its corner chopped off so this is a one of the few remaining examples of
John:
fairly egregious form over function where someone decided that it was really, really important for this keyboard to have rounded edges at the cost of the arrow keys being easier and more comfortable to use for most people.
John:
That's not a good trade.
John:
I know it looks cute when the keyboard has rounded corners.
John:
The keyboard you bought, Casey, has rounded corners.
John:
And so the enter key is rounded, the control key is rounded, the escape key is rounded, and the F19 key are rounded.
John:
And it's not that bad because they're still pretty big keys.
John:
It's like...
John:
Entering control and escape are much bigger than a normal key.
John:
And then F19, who hits that?
John:
It's not a big deal.
John:
But for the little keyboard, they sacrificed the usability of the arrow keys just so it could have extremely rounded corners.
John:
I think that is a bad trade.
John:
I hope Apple fixes that.
Marco:
that seemed like it was like directly from like the ghost of johnny eye like somehow johnny came back into the building and i guess his key card still works probably and he came back in and somehow he convinced like one person like hey just you know just do this for me i can't live with these less rounded keyboard corners that would otherwise make usable arrow keys i can't tolerate that you got around it a little bit more and make it a little bit more like this wonderful generation of keyboards you made from 2016 to 2019 yeah please make it more like that
John:
And that's why, like, you know, it's not like the keyboard that I'm using right now, the one that came with my Mac Pro, it's not like it doesn't have rounded corners.
John:
It does.
John:
The radius is just smaller of the rounding.
John:
Like, that's it.
John:
Like, it's not like this has sharp corners that needed to be to be fixed.
John:
And it's also not like the keyboard that I'm using right now is somehow a giant battleship like the Apple Extended Keyboard 2 or something.
John:
It's so tightly wrapped around the keys.
John:
It's like it disappears.
John:
and yet this this tightness and this amount of rounding was deemed insufficient for the new computers because the radius of the rounded corner should be similar on the screen and the keyboard's like no fine you can do that fine but if you want to do that uh either make the border on your keyboards bigger or i don't know like just don't mangle the arrow keys for it it's a bad choice but anyway i'm glad the extended one doesn't suffer from this and it's i know casey doesn't want the extended one because most people don't want a numpad but
John:
Page up, page down, home end, and real full-size inverted T arrow keys.
John:
It's a great way to live.
Casey:
And delete.
Casey:
Yeah, forward delete or whatever it is.
John:
Yeah, and forward delete without hitting FN.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Yeah, all these are very true.
Casey:
So it's, I shouldn't complain.
Casey:
It's, the thing I'm complaining about more than anything else is that it was a hundred, I've now looked it up, $180 for the keyboard and $130 for the Magic Trackpad.
Casey:
So $310 friggin' dollars for peripherals for this stupid computer that I actually absolutely am in love with.
Casey:
But nevertheless.
Marco:
Yeah, I got, man, the more I'm using this computer,
Marco:
Like, oh man, the new MacBook Pros are good.
Casey:
They're so good.
Casey:
And you know, I was, it was funny too, because after I was doing work at the Botanical Gardens, you know, Declan was in school, but Aaron and Michaela came and met me and we, you know, walked around, had lunch and stuff.
Casey:
And I was saying to Aaron, you know,
Casey:
I liked using my old laptop and it was perfectly sufficient, but it was always a little bit of a pain because it was demonstrably slower than the iMac Pro.
Casey:
And so if I'm choosing to say like work on the screened in porch, unless I pull an MKBHD and like haul the iMac Pro down there, I'm still using a slower computer and it's frustrating and it's just annoying.
Casey:
Whereas here it was, I was in the middle of a garden,
Casey:
On a computer that was tethered to nothing with a cable and tethered to my phone for internet.
Casey:
And it's so incredibly fast.
Casey:
Like, I cannot oversell how fast it is to build and run this new thing I'm working on.
Casey:
It is so fast and so nice.
Casey:
And it's so amazing to not have to feel like I am crippling myself when I step away from my desk.
Casey:
Of course, now that I say that, that's a perfect segue to the LG 5K, which I have acquired secondhand.
Casey:
Now, this person did not ask for a plug, but my friend Chris Gray, who is part of, with Glenn Welsh, the Starport 75 podcast, which I've guested on a handful of times, and I actually plan to do so again soon.
Casey:
It's a Disney-themed podcast, and it's really good, and they have a great chemistry, the two of them.
Casey:
Well, Chris didn't want his LG 5K anymore, and so he sold it to me at a tremendously great deal.
Casey:
And so I felt a lot better spending the money I spent on it rather than spending like $1,300 or whatever it is to get a brand new one.
Casey:
That being said, I haven't exactly canceled the order I have for the brand new one, and I know I should, but I can't quite bring myself to do it because I think it would be so awesome to have two of these.
Casey:
But nevertheless...
Casey:
The LG 5K, in terms of the screen based on three hours of use, the screen is great.
Casey:
It's not as great as the one in the MacBook Pro, but it's great.
Casey:
It's perfectly fine.
Casey:
Perfectly fine, perfectly serviceable.
Casey:
And it has four USB-C ports.
Marco:
I love that you started out with great, and then you went to perfectly fine, and then you went to perfectly serviceable.
Casey:
You're not wrong.
Casey:
No, it is great.
Casey:
In my opinion, it is really great.
Marco:
Would you agree that it's fine?
Casey:
It is ultra fine, baby.
Casey:
Ultra fine.
Casey:
But the stand is just as crappy as everyone says it is.
Casey:
It is so bad.
Casey:
Like, I try to bring it up to full height.
Casey:
And I don't know if maybe it's because I have a couple of things plugged into it, like Ethernet and the USB Mix 3.
Casey:
But whatever it is, when I raise the stand up to full height, you know what it does?
Casey:
And shrinks down like two inches.
Casey:
Just settles back in like an old desk chair that's been at the office for too long.
Casey:
Which is very funny to me.
Casey:
And I might just get a Visa, Visa, whatever it's called, mount for it.
Casey:
But let me tell you, based again on just a few minutes of use...
Casey:
It is so nice pairing the MacBook Pro, which is so fast, with this beautiful screen that is basically the same as what I had in my iMac Pro.
Casey:
Maybe it isn't on paper, but it's effectively the same to my eyes.
Marco:
It's nearby.
Casey:
I am so happy having this thing here.
Casey:
This is so great, and I'm so excited.
Casey:
The only problem I have with my computing life right now is for the longest time...
Casey:
i feel like the um that i was a bluetooth unicorn and so many people whine and moan about how like bluetooth is garbage for peripherals and it's always laggy and this and that and the other thing and for years i've never had this problem and i feel like it may be all in my head but i feel like i'm getting a little bit of like stuttering and lag off of the new magic trackpad and it's brand new with a brand new computer so it's got to be like some interference or something i don't know
Casey:
But it's really bothering me that it's happening at all.
Casey:
So I'm hopeful I'll be able to report in a week that it just has it stopped.
Casey:
Or maybe once I unplug the iMac, that'll fix it.
Casey:
Who knows?
Casey:
But this happened before the LG for the record.
Casey:
The LG wasn't here yet when I noticed this.
Casey:
But all told, I am so freaking happy with my computing life right now.
Casey:
I cannot overstate how happy I am.
Casey:
And the touch ID and the keyboard works so well, the external keyboard.
Casey:
Like, I'm so happy, you guys.
Casey:
I'm so, so happy.
Casey:
My life is so good right now.
Casey:
Marco, let's keep it up.
Casey:
Tell me how your life is.
Marco:
It's similarly really good.
Casey:
Good, good.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
These computers are so good.
Marco:
So my current setup is, you know, it's basically what it was last week.
Marco:
I don't think I've changed anything.
Marco:
I'm waiting on a couple of Thunderbolt hubs to come in to make this a little bit nicer.
Marco:
But the gist of it is that right now I have my 16-inch desktop laptop.
Marco:
off to the side in a vertical clamshell stand, like some kind of like wood thing that stands it up vertically.
Marco:
And I have it so the vent is on top, like the hinge, the screen hinge is on top.
Marco:
The downside of this, so there's a little quirk about the design of these.
Marco:
If you're going to use it in like a vertical stand, the Apple logo and the MacBook Pro etching on the bottom are in opposite orientation.
Marco:
So no matter how you stand it up, one of those is going to be upside down.
Marco:
Um, but the way I stand it up with the hinge on top, the Apple logo is upside down, but that doesn't matter.
Marco:
It's like, that's like facing into the speaker next to it.
Marco:
So I don't see it.
Marco:
Um, but so, so I have access to the ports on the side, uh, on one side and the other side I have like plugged into like the main docking stuff.
Marco:
So I have like, I can reach over and access my SD card slot because that side of it's facing me and it's off to the right side of like my center monitor thing.
Marco:
Anyway, it looks cool and it works really well.
Marco:
And I figure having the hinge slash vent on top should help convection cooling and help the fans not need to work as hard.
Marco:
And occasionally I will be like if I'm doing something intensive on the processor, I'll reach my hand over to see if I can feel hot air coming out the top.
Marco:
And it's never gotten beyond like slightly warm.
Marco:
So this thing really does have a pretty incredible cooling system.
Marco:
I've never heard the fans as of yet.
Marco:
Yeah, same.
Marco:
So, so far I'm very happy with that.
Marco:
And the 14 inch has been my around the house, you know, workout FaceTime slash upstairs slash, you know, portable needs.
Marco:
And it's been fantastic.
Marco:
I did actually, I'm, I'm experimenting with a change.
Marco:
Um, uh,
Marco:
My iPad is it's still the it's the first 11 inch model, which I believe is the 2018 model.
Marco:
I'm barely using it anymore because, frankly, Mac laptops got so much better than they were.
Marco:
And every time I use my iPad, I wish it was a Mac laptop instead.
Marco:
And so I'm temporarily trying to just use my M1 Air right in place of the iPad.
Marco:
So in the kitchen, on the counter, I ordered one of those little plastic keyboard overlays to try to keep some dust and crumbs out of it because sometimes I'll operate it with slightly damp hands or maybe I'll have something on my hands from cooking or something.
Marco:
But I'm trying just having that be the MacBook Air.
Marco:
And so far, I'm kind of loving it.
Marco:
So we'll see.
Marco:
Because I really don't want to replace that iPad with another iPad just because I'm not iPad-ing enough.
Marco:
Whatever value iPad power users get out of it as their glorious everything machine, I've never really gotten there with it.
Marco:
And I think a MacBook Air, in that context for me, especially since I already have it, it's not like I had to go buy something separate.
Marco:
I already have these things.
Marco:
And it's only a question of like,
Marco:
Which one do I give away slash sell slash trade in at some point or save for my kid to have to use when he needs a laptop?
Marco:
Something like that.
Marco:
But now that I had both in my house, it's really, really nice to just have a small Mac.
Marco:
on the kitchen counter instead of an iPad for my personal needs and preferences.
Marco:
Because so often when I'm doing anything on an iPad, I run into something where I'm like, oh, I got to save this for next time I'm on a Mac.
Marco:
Or I could do this so much easier or better if I was on a Mac.
Marco:
And so now I'm just on a Mac and it's a lot nicer.
Marco:
So yeah, it does feel like a little bit wasteful of such a powerful computer.
Marco:
But at the same time, if I bought a new iPad today, it would have similar processing power and I would only be using it mostly to like type notes and add stuff to Amazon and my shopping cart in the kitchen when I run into something.
Marco:
So like it would be a waste of computing potential either way.
Marco:
Might as well have the computer that I can do lots more stuff on that I need to do, as opposed to the one that I so often will hit a wall and be like, well, I guess I've got to save this for later.
John:
Well, I think the Mac is probably slightly more vulnerable to kitchen hazards than the iPad.
Marco:
Yes, and that's why I ordered that keyboard cover.
Marco:
And I know it's still going to be a little more vulnerable, but it's not at super big risk of getting wet, Casey.
Marco:
Why?
Marco:
The bigger risk is just that my hands might be a little bit dirty while operating it, just because of where it is.
Marco:
It's pretty far from any water sources.
Marco:
And I also figure because it's the fanless MacBook Air...
Marco:
that whatever ventilation it would get from sucking air in through the keyboard isn't a thing.
Marco:
So covering that keyboard with a plastic cover thing shouldn't be a problem.
Casey:
You know, you talking about this reminded me of a couple things.
Casey:
First of all, at the moment, I'm currently running the MacBook Pro adjacent to the LG 5K.
Casey:
So I'm using two screens, which is...
Casey:
The first time I've done this for more than a few minutes in a long time, and I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with it.
Casey:
However, I'm using, I think this is originally, it was a hand-me-down.
Casey:
I think it's the 12 South, like, I forget what they called it.
Casey:
I'll try to remember to get up for the show notes, but it's a thing that lifts up an iMac off the desk because iMacs are notorious for being way too low.
Casey:
And I've put my MacBook Pro on that.
Casey:
So now my computer's elevated off the desk.
Casey:
I hope you guys are very happy.
Marco:
Oh, that's good.
Marco:
So now you can spill up to like three inches of water and it's not a problem.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
And the only thing I have to worry about is my $310 of peripherals I just bought.
Casey:
And then actually, speaking of peripherals, I forgot to mention earlier, I think we might have spoken about this before.
Casey:
So forgive me if I'm repeating us slash myself.
Casey:
The peripherals come with braided USB-C to lightning cables, which are delightful.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
These are so nice.
Marco:
Yeah, they're really nice.
Casey:
I don't know if we talked about that before, but they're so great.
Casey:
We did last week.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
I just want to make sure.
Marco:
John's in charge of telling us what's on the show.
Marco:
It's not that long ago.
John:
I can't remember what I had for dinner.
John:
You know what I said last week?
John:
I said, oh, we talked about this before.
John:
Remember when I was getting all braided cables for my Mac Pro and you said, oh, yeah.
John:
You're right.
Casey:
Oh, gosh.
Casey:
I'm so sorry, everyone.
Marco:
So, quick little update about benchmarks on the new MacBook Pros.
Marco:
When I last gave my benchmarks, I only had the 14-inch M1 Pro version with the 16 gigs of RAM.
Marco:
I now have the M1 Macs.
Marco:
And I have a 16-inch, which gives me the ability to run high power mode.
Marco:
And I wanted to test low power mode as well.
Marco:
So here's how that all went.
Marco:
Here's what all turned out.
Marco:
So if you recall, compared to the M1 Mac Mini, this is using an Overcast build.
Marco:
So, you know, Overcast is a moderately sized app.
Marco:
It's not huge.
Marco:
It's not tiny.
Marco:
It's a moderately sized app.
Marco:
It's a lot of Swift and a lot of Objective-C.
Marco:
And a clean build on an M1 takes about 30 seconds.
Marco:
On an M1 Pro, it took about 19 seconds, so significantly faster.
Marco:
And then on the M1 Max, it's also 19 seconds.
Marco:
In fact, every test I ran, all the Xcode tests, clean build, incremental, large and small builds, all of them took exactly the same amount of time, you know, give or take.
Marco:
I mean, this is like me, you know, mostly timing things like stopwatch based, so maybe like a half second imprecision.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
But they all had the same results.
Marco:
So I could not tell a difference.
Marco:
And I should note also, this is both the M1 Pro and M1 Max had the same 10 CPU cores.
Marco:
I had not tested the low-end 8-core model.
Marco:
So M1 Pro versus M1 Max...
Marco:
As far as I can tell, for this kind of moderate developer workload, no difference between those two chips, because I'm not really using the GPUs for anything, and it seems like the CPU needs are the same.
Marco:
Also, no difference between 14-inch and 16-inch for this purpose.
Marco:
The 16-inch does provide a much larger cooling system, but that seems to mostly only be a benefit to GPU-heavy workloads that video people are doing, and I'm not doing any of those things.
Marco:
So for developers...
Marco:
I would say any M1 Pro or M1 Max is going to be probably about the same for you.
Marco:
With the exception of that low end 8 core model.
Marco:
Again, that's probably going to be a little bit slower.
Marco:
But it would still be really fast.
Marco:
And then finally, I decided to test high power mode and low power mode.
Marco:
High power mode...
Marco:
could not tell a difference at all with anything.
Marco:
Um, and this makes sense based on what we've been told about high power mode.
Marco:
It seems like it doesn't like increase the clock speed of the chip or anything like that.
Marco:
All high power mode seems to do is run the fans at higher speed and allow them to run like even higher if necessary.
Marco:
So if you're doing some kind of like very heavy CPU and GPU sustained workloads, like again, like video people would do, uh,
Marco:
That's when you're looking at high power mode on the 16-inch being a potential gain for you.
Marco:
But for developers, it seems to make no difference whatsoever.
Marco:
At least nothing that I could notice.
Marco:
Finally, low power mode.
Marco:
I haven't tested any kind of battery impact on low power mode yet because battery tests take a very long time and I haven't had time.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Performance-wise, low power mode seems to be about 15% slower than regular mode.
Marco:
It is noticeable, but it's not a big difference.
Marco:
My 19-second build took 21 seconds.
Marco:
This was pretty consistent.
Marco:
I could measure it over and over again, and it stayed exactly in the same range.
Marco:
Low power mode, all the tests I did, about 15% slower, which is interesting.
Marco:
I'd love to learn more about it, but
Marco:
That's a small enough difference that I think if it has a big battery impact, it would be totally fine to, for instance, have it automatically switch to low power mode anytime it's on battery, which is one of the settings you get in the power system prep pane.
Marco:
You can have it always run low power mode when it's on battery, or you can manually switch it whenever you feel necessary.
Marco:
Maybe if you're on a flight or something like that.
Marco:
But right now, I set my 14-inch to use low power mode on battery, and I haven't noticed any difference whatsoever.
Marco:
So maybe I'll just get even ridiculously more better battery life.
Marco:
So yeah, overall, very impressed.
Marco:
But it also doesn't seem to matter really which of these chips you get for developer workload, which is great news.
Marco:
That means you can be more flexible in your buying decisions and kind of get whatever you want.
Marco:
I also did not notice a difference in this particular benchmark between the 16 gig and 64 gig of RAM option.
Marco:
But that being said, one more week of usage, I totally notice a difference in my actual day-to-day usage having all this RAM.
Marco:
Because I'm not just running Xcode builds over and over again.
Marco:
I'm basking between lots of different apps.
Marco:
I have Logic.
Marco:
I have Xcode.
Marco:
I have Adobe's garbage apps.
Marco:
Which, by the way, I've...
Marco:
I briefly flirted with the idea of updating quitter to terminate all of Adobe's background crap processes.
Marco:
Instead, I just wrote a shell script and made launch D run it every 15 minutes.
Casey:
Nice.
Marco:
So it's fine.
Marco:
And it works great.
Marco:
So I've totally solved my Adobe bloat problem with a shell script.
Marco:
Maybe I'll post it somewhere.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Oh, that's very nice.
Casey:
As you're talking about memory stuff, I'm looking at, so in iStatMenus, you can get a historical graph of your memory pressure.
Casey:
Yeah, I didn't know about that until like a few days ago.
Marco:
It's great.
Marco:
So, okay, anybody using iStat menus, go turn on a memory pressure widget because it only records this graph if you have a widget on.
Marco:
But go turn on a memory widget of some kind in iStat menus so the memory switch is enabled.
Marco:
And then you can see a history of your memory pressure over up to 30 days since you've had it enabled.
Marco:
So you can actually see like over time how much memory you might need.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So I'm looking at my memory pressure since I got the computer.
Casey:
And I've been using it pretty much full time since, I don't know, day two or three.
Casey:
My iMac literally got moved off my desk like two or three days ago.
Casey:
Poor thing.
Casey:
I love that computer so much.
Casey:
It pains me so much that it's not my primary machine.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
It's not as fast.
Casey:
Well, anyways, my memory pressure at its worst, would you gentlemen like to guess the percentage of memory pressure I had at its worst?
Casey:
10%?
Casey:
It's stunning.
Casey:
Okay, mark us at 10%.
Casey:
John?
John:
People were showing these graphs before, and memory pressure is already a fuzzy thing.
John:
What the heck is the percentage?
John:
What does 100% memory pressure mean?
John:
This is all meaningless numbers.
John:
I have no idea what the number is.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
My worst memory pressure was 5%.
Casey:
5% of what?
Casey:
I don't know, but it's not a lot.
Marco:
It's low, but I don't... Mine's nine.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
It just made me laugh.
Casey:
And so I probably did not need... Almost certainly did not need 64 gigs of RAM, but no regrets.
Casey:
I am so happy that this machine, as obscenely expensive as it and its stupid peripherals were, I am so happy with this computer.
Casey:
I cannot even tell you.
Casey:
I am...
Casey:
I mean, I felt I do think I felt equally happy with the iMac Pro when it was new.
Casey:
And actually, to some degree, still to this day, it is such a nice computer.
Casey:
And I'm only slightly saying that because I want to sell it soon.
Casey:
But it is such a nice computer.
Casey:
But being able to pick it up and move it without a Pelican case MKBHD style is also so freaking great.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I mean, the iMac Pro is and was amazing in so many ways.
Marco:
We just have better computers now.
Marco:
Because the iMac Pro is also pretty old.
Marco:
I mean, that was also, what was that, 2018 model?
John:
2017, I think, right?
Marco:
2017, yeah.
Marco:
It's been a while now and it was never updated.
Marco:
So, you know, that's not recent anymore.
Marco:
When it came out and for the many years following, it was fantastic.
Marco:
But, you know, obviously this much time has passed.
Marco:
Better things are going to come out.
Marco:
Thank you.
John:
One final note on the 16-inch versus 14-inch.
John:
There's been lots of hardware teardowns of these laptops now, and people have done more extensive tests, and it's about what you would expect.
John:
So the 16-inch, as Marco noted, it has a better cooling system.
John:
It has bigger heat pipes, it has bigger fans, and there's just plain more room in there.
John:
The air slots are bigger for entry and exit, and you can equip that computer with exactly the same system on a chip as you can in a 14-inch.
John:
So to no one's surprise, the 14-inch
John:
has more trouble moving heat out of it and generally tends to get slightly hotter.
John:
That said, these laptops are so power efficient and the fans are so low RPM and so quiet.
John:
This is not a thing that you should worry about.
John:
This is only just to say, like, if you are wondering, does the 16 inch have higher cooling capacity than the 14?
John:
The answer is absolutely yes, it does.
John:
But it actually is extremely difficult to demonstrate that because you have to find a test that stresses every single part of the system on a chip.
John:
The CPU, the GPU, the memory subsystem, the SSD stresses it all at the same time in a sustained manner and then run it for a long time and then carefully measure.
John:
And if you do all of that, you can demonstrate that, yes, under extreme situations, the 14 inch will thermally throttle by a tiny amount and the 16 inch simply won't.
John:
So it makes me wonder, because high power mode is only on the 16-inch, right?
John:
Correct.
John:
It makes me wonder what the point of high power mode is if you can't even get the 16-inch to throttle no matter what you throw at it.
John:
Like, oh, I'll run the fans faster?
John:
Why bother running the fans faster?
John:
Apparently, running the fans normally has no thermal throttlings.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Maybe there are some workloads that people haven't found yet.
John:
But anyway, the 16-inch does have a bigger, better cooler system, but it probably shouldn't matter to you.
Marco:
Wouldn't it be kind of funny if like high power mode is literally just like like the door closed button on elevators?
Marco:
It's just like it's just there to like to please the YouTubers.
John:
You can see that.
John:
Well, no, it actually does make the fan spin faster.
John:
People are doing all the little things that show you the actual fan RPM.
John:
And when you put on high power mode, like the fans preemptively run a little bit faster, like the idle higher, essentially.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Sure.
Marco:
But like, you know, maybe it doesn't actually need to be that way for anything that anybody might actually do.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I mean, it may be that people just haven't found the right workload because, you know, you have to just people are just trying to find like, what can I do that stresses everything there?
John:
There are like artificial ones that just like, you know, do a bunch of math and all of the units to try to make the thing melt.
John:
And I bet maybe one of those would make it, you know, stressing the GPU as well would make it get hot.
Marco:
But yeah, this what happens if you run Slack and Dropbox at the same time?
John:
nothing can marco nothing can that's that's the thing though like all like oh i'm doing you know if you do anything you think would normally call your cause your fans to spin up on an intel laptop it's not going to on these because all those things that we talk about don't touch the gpu at all it's just something grinding your cpu and it's grinding the cpu on these computers is not going to make them break a sweat most of the chip is covered with the gpu area and they're so low power and the cooling system is so good
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by RevenueCat.
Marco:
RevenueCat makes it easy to build and manage in-app purchases for your apps on iOS, Android, and the web.
Marco:
With just a few lines of code, RevenueCat provides payment infrastructure, customer analytics, data integrations, all this giving you time back from dealing with not only the initial APIs, but also all the edge cases that you've got to consider and as things get updated across all these platforms.
Marco:
RevenueCat handles all of that fast.
Marco:
Thank you.
Marco:
This is hard stuff to write yourself.
Marco:
It's hard to cover all the edge cases.
Marco:
It's a pain in the butt to handle things like the server side validation and all this stuff.
Marco:
It's just complex.
Marco:
And it's stuff that you, as the author of an app, shouldn't usually need to worry about.
Marco:
So RevenueCat makes so much sense to help them take care of your payment system so that you can focus on your app and the thing that you actually want to do.
Marco:
So, yeah.
Marco:
And RevenueCat is great.
Marco:
So see for yourself how great it is, why thousands of developers have actually chosen to use this.
Marco:
It's created, again, by developers for developers, and it really shows.
Marco:
It's a really solid product.
Marco:
See for yourself RevenueCat.com to power your in-app purchases and subscriptions.
Marco:
Thank you so much to RevenueCat for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
I am really excited to hear your iPhone 13 Pro case review.
Casey:
And there are like 34 different bullets in this document.
Casey:
So why don't you run through all of them with us, please?
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So after great lengths and actually spending a good amount of time with each of these cases, I got a bunch of different iPhone 13 Pro cases.
Marco:
Some of which have MagSafe, some of which don't.
Marco:
And I finally have opinions and I wanted to share them before this phone got too old and it didn't matter anymore.
Marco:
Where we last left off was, I believe I had the Nudiant case that Casey, you also have.
Marco:
That's what I'm still using.
Marco:
Yeah, which is like it's like a kind of, you know, nice middle of the road.
Marco:
You know, it has MagSafe in it.
Marco:
Like it has its own magnets.
Marco:
It's kind of medium thickness, medium grip, kind of medium everything, medium attractiveness.
Marco:
Like it's just kind of medium everything.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
It's not amazing in any possible way, but it's totally fine.
Marco:
One area that I was not happy with with the Nudiant case, though, is the first time I took it into my car and the MagSafe magnet on it was not strong enough.
Marco:
I use a MagSafe car mount.
Marco:
And it easily and repeatedly would fall off the mount if I applied a little bit of pressure to, like, the bottom half of the screen, where it kind of, like, would lever itself off the mount.
Marco:
And, you know, the bottom of the screen often contains controls in apps like Waze that you might be using in the car.
Marco:
So that was kind of a big problem.
Marco:
So I decided, let me look at more cases and...
Marco:
And I wasn't super happy with the nudient's appearance either.
Marco:
You know, it doesn't look that good.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
You know, it's a piece of, you know, blue matte plastic.
Marco:
But it did feel pretty good.
Marco:
So I thought, you know, this is good.
Marco:
But let me see if I can do better.
Marco:
I also, I did try using the Apple silicone case a little bit more.
Marco:
I gave up on it.
Marco:
It's too much friction going in and out of pockets.
Marco:
I thought it might be different this time for some reason.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Maybe I'm just, you know, hoping for things that will never come.
Marco:
But I think just materially, that's never going to be good.
Marco:
It's never going to not have a lot of friction going in and out of pockets with that material.
Marco:
So whatever, you know, a lot of people use the silicone case and enjoy it.
Marco:
More power to you.
Marco:
It's not for me, for my needs.
Marco:
I would also say that the Apple silicone case, I got that Blue Jay color, thinking it would look kind of cool.
Marco:
It actually kind of looks flat and cheap.
Marco:
I think one thing I have learned in this process, these inexpensive materials that are used in cases, you're best off with darker colors.
Marco:
Kind of like John's theory of bad car body design or cheap paint or whatever it is.
Marco:
Light colors kind of show how low value the material is.
John:
No, it's the shape.
John:
My theory for cars is the lighter the color, the more you're able to actually see the shape of the car.
John:
Whereas if you have a car in all black, it hides some of the curves, which may be undesirable.
John:
Same thing with clothes.
John:
If you're trying to, you know, accentuate curves, bright colors, if you want to hide them dark.
Marco:
I should buy more dark clothes then.
Marco:
So I learned kind of like the lighter colors I was going for didn't often look good in these cases.
Marco:
And I'll get to a little bit more of that in a second.
Marco:
After the Apple silicone case and the Nudiant, I was kind of like, let me see what I can do.
Marco:
I asked people on Twitter and people on the show wrote in and I got a number of recommendations.
Marco:
There were a couple that I could not test.
Marco:
because they either aren't in stock yet, or I ordered them and haven't arrived yet.
Marco:
One of those is the Bullstrap leather case.
Marco:
I'm actually not entirely sure I want leather anymore, but I did actually pre-order one of these things forever ago.
Marco:
It still hasn't shipped.
Marco:
It was estimated for, you know, quote November, so it could show up anytime.
Marco:
And then I also...
Marco:
Many people recommended the Pitaka MagEase case series.
Marco:
And that is not available for the iPhone 13 Pro yet in the blue color, which is the color I would want.
Marco:
The rest of them are kind of, it kind of looks like carbon fiber-y.
Marco:
It's not like a super attractive look, if I'm honest.
Casey:
Oh, no, it's not.
Marco:
So I didn't test either of those, even though they both came with a lot of recommendations.
Marco:
So anyway, moving on to what I did test.
Marco:
Everyone suggested that I try Peel.
Marco:
peel is a apparently famous brand of ultra thin cases i decided you know i went to the super thin peel iphone 13 pro case and i decided to they had a color that was advertised as jet white it says as a glossy finish closely resembling the jet black iphone finish but in white and i thought well that's interesting i loved the jet black iphone and i i wanted to see like does this actually feel that feel like the way so sure enough so white just happened to you did it
Marco:
It just so happened to be white.
Marco:
Isn't that something?
Casey:
Yeah, that can happen.
Casey:
That's something that does happen from time to time.
Marco:
Yeah, isn't that something?
Marco:
So, first of all, I have to – before the case even arrived, I had gotten a mailing list email from Peel entitled, quote, Let's Talk About Lifestyle.
Marco:
That was apparently the first in a planned series of emails about minimalism.
Marco:
Oh my gosh.
Marco:
And I felt like that was overreaching for the nature of our relationship as I just ordered your $35 iPhone case.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
It hasn't even arrived yet.
Marco:
I don't want your emails about your minimalism theories.
Marco:
Like that's fine.
Marco:
I really don't need that.
Marco:
Thank you.
Marco:
So, oh, and thanks also for opting me into your email list without having a checkbox I could see.
Marco:
That's real cool.
Marco:
Peel.
Marco:
And then when the Peel case arrived,
Marco:
It arrived in a box the size of a shoebox.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
With tons of packaging material.
Marco:
Like, it was so, I'm like, okay.
Marco:
As far as I can tell, Peel is a mostly maybe a marketing company because one thing I also tried from people's recommendations is the totally, with two E's, total, two L's, two E's, totally matte case.
Casey:
Wait, I'm sorry.
Casey:
What color was the matte case?
Marco:
it was also uh sorry pearl white is the color i got it just keeps happening to you marco isn't that weird i had the theory that maybe a white case would look good you know i'm living my beach lifestyle i got a lot of light colors here you know like white blue like you know a lot of like light colors are going on in my current life right now so i thought maybe that would be cool so i got the totally case it came with way less packaging and i was not subject to any minimalism emails and
Marco:
I had to put a post-it note on the Peel and the Totally just so I could tell them apart.
Marco:
Just so I could tell which one was Wix, rather.
Marco:
Because these things are identical.
Marco:
I would be shocked if these were not the same case.
Marco:
This is the same case made in the same factory.
Marco:
I guarantee it.
Marco:
There's no way this is two different cases.
Marco:
So, anyway...
Marco:
Totally appears to just be the same.
Marco:
Whatever factory they're using, it's the same.
Marco:
And they even have the same color options and everything.
Marco:
So as far as I can tell, this is the same thing.
Marco:
So if one of them appeals to you more than the other one, go for it.
Marco:
The prices are around the same.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
So anyway, Peel and Totally.
Marco:
Both of these white cases...
Marco:
feel okay they're very thin as promised they look like garbage if you're going to get one of these cases get a dark colored one because it's just a thin piece of plastic it looks like i wrapped my phone in heat shrink tubing and ran a blow dryer over it like that's it's not a great look and it feels okay but it's like i i can do a lot better than this now
Marco:
I also ordered from Totally their transparent soft clear case.
Marco:
So it's a soft clear.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Yeah, clear, soft is what they call it in their options.
Marco:
By the way, Peel now also offers that exact same configuration.
Marco:
What a coincidence.
Marco:
So the clear, the soft clear Totally case, I absolutely love.
Marco:
I never thought I would.
Marco:
So the downside to the SoftClear Totally case is that it does not have a MagSafe circle.
Marco:
Neither do the UltraThin, by the way.
Marco:
So none of these have MagSafe.
Marco:
And it's a little bit thicker than the UltraThin one.
Marco:
But it's like a gummy case.
Marco:
You know, if you've...
Marco:
there's people have been making phone cases out of this for years i don't know i think i think it might be like a thick soft tpu or something i don't know what this material is officially called but if you ever felt like a rugged case uh like in an apple store like from whatever brand sells like the little rugged ruggedized ones it has that feel to it so it's actually it feels kind of like a like a non-sticky gummy candy if that makes sense but the result is first of all
Marco:
It looks amazing because I have my little baby blue iPhone Pro in there, and you get to see most of the iPhone through it.
Marco:
Now, you don't really see the side bands very well.
Marco:
The design of the material is such that you don't see much of the detail through the sides.
Marco:
But you do see the back color totally fine, and it looks fantastic, and it feels the best.
Marco:
This is by far the nicest feeling case that I have.
Marco:
again the only downside here is no mag safe but i also recognize like that putting a mag safe circle of magnets in the back would also kind of make it uglier and and so i understand you know just like the apple case right so i understand why they didn't do that if the apple case the apple clear case i mean if it was squishy plastic like this instead of the hard plastic that it is that would be perfect and i would get that every single time now because i love the way this looks and i love the way it feels
Casey:
I'm very surprised by this.
Casey:
So it's the totally iPhone 13 Pro transparent, clear, soft.
Casey:
Like that's not necessarily the name, but I just want to make sure I've got all of these right.
Casey:
Correct.
Casey:
And so how soft is the soft?
Casey:
Like if it's clear plastic, I'm having troubles computing how this can be soft.
John:
Look at the picture.
John:
They show someone bending it.
John:
Like, one of the pictures shows it bending, to give you an idea.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, okay.
John:
What do you call it?
John:
Otterbox makes cases of this type, too.
John:
My daughter's phone has a case like this.
Marco:
Yeah, Otterbox.
Marco:
There was that one brand, I forget what it was, but it had that, like, strip of yellow around the outside band.
Marco:
They had a case band for a while.
Marco:
It was like an impact strip or whatever.
Marco:
They sold them in Apple stores.
Marco:
Adam had an iPad case like that a while ago.
Marco:
It feels just like that.
Marco:
You've probably felt this material before in an iPhone case or an iPad case.
Marco:
This is not a new revelation.
Marco:
This is a common material.
Marco:
I just don't know what it's called.
Marco:
But it is...
Marco:
It is awesome, and I love how it feels.
Marco:
I do worry a little bit that because it's so flexible, you could easily just scoot it over away from the case with your finger around the edges, and I worry that maybe a lot of dust might get in the edges that way.
John:
What you should be worried about is moisture, because I've seen this happen again with my daughter's phone.
John:
It looks like a water stain or a condensation trap between the case and the phone.
John:
Yeah, yeah.
John:
It can happen.
John:
I mean, you can either just live with it or you can take the case off and scrub it out and try to be more careful.
Marco:
I mean, wouldn't there be a problem with any case?
Marco:
And wouldn't a clear case actually alert you to the problem earlier so you could fix it?
John:
Right, but you wouldn't see it with the real case.
John:
Like, it makes it uglier.
John:
It's an aesthetic issue, not a water danger issue.
John:
It just looks like, you know, especially if it's just clear.
John:
Like, my daughter is made of this material, but it also has, like,
John:
designs painted on it but it's mostly clear um but if it was just entirely it also depends on what color the phone is it's an aesthetic issue it doesn't bother you i bet people get this and never care that there's like a weird you know area that's darker or lighter because of some condensation that was there once or whatever but you know you can always take it off and clean it but just that can't happen
Marco:
Oh, I didn't know that.
Marco:
Okay, thanks.
Marco:
Yeah, so I spent most of the time in the intervening time between when we last talked about this and now, I've spent most of that time with this case on because it's the one I'm happiest with overall with the exception of Nomad Safe.
Marco:
And that's a big exception, but it feels so good and looks pretty good otherwise I was willing to make that exception when I wasn't driving.
Marco:
But that being said, when I switch back to this case in a minute, after I review the other one I have here in a second,
Marco:
um i i gotta figure out like i think i might just have to keep a different case that has magsafe in my backpack that i bring when i when i go on car trips so that i can like swap cases when i'm in the car i mean i'm not driving every day i'm driving like every three weeks so it's not that big of a deal
Marco:
uh but anyway so that's the totally um clear soft case love it uh but no mag safe and then finally a few people recommended the i don't know how this is pronounced caudabe caudabe i don't know it's c-a-u-d-a-b-e oh and and i should mention too that peel and totally have no branding whatsoever which is great the caudabe has a small logo and
Marco:
The Cotterby case is not attractive.
Marco:
It has almost like a pebbled or textured plastic finish.
Marco:
It kind of looks and feels like a popcorn ceiling.
Marco:
Oh, my.
Marco:
And it's moderately, it's like medium thickness.
Marco:
It's not an ultra thin case.
Marco:
It almost feels like coarse sandpaper.
Marco:
But what's nice about it is that the overall grippiness and tackiness of it is actually fairly similar to leather, I would say.
Marco:
Like, having used leather phone cases for many years, I think this is very close to leather without being leather, which has some benefits in things like water resistance and humanitarian issues and environmental issues.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
This is pretty nice functionally.
Marco:
And it has very strong MagSafe magnets.
Marco:
So I love it for that.
Marco:
It just is kind of boring and ugly looking, if I'm honest.
Marco:
And it doesn't feel nice.
Marco:
It just feels functional.
Marco:
And it's highly functional.
Marco:
I've had it on for about a week.
Marco:
And after about a day, I stopped caring about how nice it wasn't.
Marco:
Because it does work really well.
Marco:
Um, but it's not, it's not like the, it doesn't give me the nice feelings that the, that the clear one did.
Marco:
Um, the clear one both looks and feels better, but it doesn't have MagSafe.
Marco:
And this has, this has like the strongest MagSafe of anything I've tested.
Marco:
Um, so overall the, the Kade, Rakate sheath case, um,
Marco:
i like it i don't love it i'm this might be the one that i put in my backpack to you know for car trips because it has such good mag save um but i i think i'm going to switch back to the totally clear case for my like most of the time case um that being said a few people recommended an option that i hadn't considered uh that i didn't even know existed and and once i heard about it made perfect sense
Casey:
A sack.
Casey:
You put the phone in a sack anytime you're not using it.
Marco:
A pouch, I believe.
Casey:
No, it's bumpers.
Casey:
Bumper cases, right?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
So an option I didn't even realize existed, for very cheap amounts of money, you can go on Amazon or eBay and buy MagSafe rings of magnets that you can stick onto anything.
Yeah.
Marco:
oh my goodness and so so i got a couple of them here and sure enough they work totally fine um and you can you can therefore technically you could convert a non-mag safe case into a mag safe case you're putting them on the outside of the case to be clear right well you could do either
Marco:
Now, here's the problem.
Marco:
Put them on the inside of the case.
Marco:
You can either stick them on the outside, which would work great in the sense that it would stick really well for MagSafe, but then you have a ring of magnets stuck to your case that you have to feel all the time and look at all the time.
Marco:
And I don't want to feel or look at a ring of MagSafe magnets on the outside of my case.
Marco:
If you put it on the inside of the case,
Marco:
now i feel like you've created a glass breaking risk on that back glass because you're introducing tension by putting something that's moderately thick between the case and the phone which are made to have no tolerance between them right you made a place to catch all the all the excess moisture and now crumbs and the edges of the magnets can scratch the back of your phone and you're distending the case which is going to make it fit less well this is all bad
Marco:
right yeah so i tried it i tried it on the inside for like five minutes and i'm like no i can't do this it's not so it's like having it's like having like a seed stuck between your teeth constantly yeah that so that i couldn't abide that so for now i i couldn't find a use for these for the the two little magnet sheets i bought on amazon but um but it is it is a cool option to know you can do that and at some point maybe this might be useful for a project if i wanted to like have a place to stick an iphone with magsafe somewhere like that could be useful
John:
So you didn't try bumper cases?
Marco:
I didn't try bumper cases, no.
Marco:
My assumption is that it would increase the pocket friction in and out problem because it would have to be fairly thick to even stay on and work.
Marco:
But maybe I haven't tried a modern bumper.
Marco:
Maybe I could be wrong.
John:
I think the pocket friction would definitely be a thing.
John:
You're probably right.
John:
But it'd be interesting to try one, just see what it's like.
John:
I mean, obviously, the downside is you're still going to screw up the back of your phone, but you'll scratch it up or whatever, but hopefully you won't break it because the bumpers usually do stick out pretty far from the front and the back.
John:
And I think it will also make your phone feel bigger than one of these cases, just because, again, the bumper, to do its job, its whole point is to stick out beyond the back and beyond the front.
John:
buy enough to catch your phone and absorb the impact.
John:
And I think that'll make your phone feel thicker.
John:
But I still have fond memories of the iPhone 4, 4S, whatever it was, bumper.
Casey:
Yeah, same.
Marco:
Oh, I should also clarify buttons-wise, both the Cotabay case and the Squishy Clear case...
Marco:
Both have covered buttons, and both of them cover them with nice plastic buttons.
Marco:
They're not metal.
Marco:
It's the same material as the case, it seems, but they're nice.
Marco:
They're nicely covered.
Marco:
Only the mute switch is uncovered on both, and otherwise it's covered.
Marco:
Also, all of these have covered bottoms, so sorry, John.
Marco:
I know you like your naked bottoms.
John:
Yeah, no, I don't have an iPhone 13 anyways, so I don't care, but yeah, they're all covered bottoms, so...
John:
No good.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So very happy with the Kota Bay and the clear squishy totally for two very different reasons.
Marco:
Kota Bay works really well, has the best mag safe I've found, but it's kind of ugly and not very nice feeling.
Marco:
The TPU, you know, squishy, totally clear case is awesome and looks and feels great, but has no mag safe.
Marco:
So that's it.
Marco:
Those are the two I'm going to stick with, I think, for the time being.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Caseta by Lutron Smart Lighting Control.
Marco:
This is brought to you by Lutron, pioneers in smart home technology.
Marco:
A lot of you think that you might need smart bulbs to get smart lighting, but there's a smarter way.
Marco:
Caseta's smart dimmers and switches replace the switch in the wall, making all the lights that switch controls act smart.
Marco:
There's all sorts of ways why this is great.
Marco:
Smart bulbs are not really compatible with non-nerds in my experience.
Marco:
If kids or other family members or spouses or visitors flip the switch off to that light, all of a sudden you can't control it anymore.
Marco:
Or if there is no switch or you've taped over it or blocked it off, they don't know how to turn the light on.
Marco:
caseta switches solve this problem the switch itself is smart but to everyone else it's just a light switch on the wall so you can control it through all of your smart stuff whatever you want to do you can automate it has home kit everything else but when someone comes over all they see is a button on the wall and they can just push it and it just works every single time
Marco:
Of course, they support everything you might need, voice assistance, apps, automations, and everything.
Marco:
They have a smart away feature that can randomly turn lights on and off during the evening to make it look like you're home even if you're not.
Marco:
You can base scenes on things like sunset time.
Marco:
So that's what we have.
Marco:
We have our lights turn on a certain amount of time before or after sunset because that's when you actually need some of the outdoor stuff to work.
Marco:
It's just super great.
Marco:
And as we talked about last week, I love Lutron Caseta.
Marco:
It is the only smart home system that I have found to be 100% reliable.
Marco:
It's just fantastic.
Marco:
It works really, really great.
Marco:
And I can't say that about anything else I've tried in the smart home space.
Marco:
So really check out Caseta by Lutron.
Marco:
Get smart lighting the smart way with Caseta smart switches.
Marco:
Learn more about Caseta at Lutron.com slash ATP.
Marco:
That's Lutron.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thanks to Caseta for turning all my lights on and off in a very smart way and for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
John, I think you in particular wanted to talk about, hey, you know, let's assume for a second that these MacBook Pros were not perfect because, man, they sure seem like they are.
Casey:
What could you do to make them better, John?
John:
Yeah, because we've just done a couple of shows, a couple of weeks talking about how these laptops have fulfilled all our wildest dreams and everything we wanted came true on them.
John:
And they, you know, they're great.
John:
And all of that is true.
John:
But people may be thinking, well, now that they've perfected the laptops, you'll never have to talk about them again because the laptop problem is solved.
John:
But of course...
John:
Nothing is so perfect.
John:
These laptops when they're released, it's very clear that there are things about them that could be upgraded, but this is good.
John:
The things I'm going to list off here, and it's not a lot of them, are going to be the things that you would expect of any technology product.
John:
When a technology product comes out, even if it is as perfect as it can be, which these laptops are not necessarily, but they're really good, but not as perfect as they can be,
John:
technology marches on and eventually there are better things you can put in them and so rather than the past many years we've had gnashing our teeth about the fundamental design of these products in terms of what features does the product have what shape is it what holes does it have on the side like really basic stuff we have the luxury now of talking about computers the way we used to be able to talk about them with is let's talk about the actual technology in them and see if there is an ever so slightly better technology that they can replace it with so
John:
If you look at these MacBook Pros and say, hey, in next year's model or the year after or whatever, in what ways could these be improved?
John:
Here are the list of obvious improvements, some of which we have touched upon before.
John:
We've got an SD card slot now.
John:
That SD card slot does not support all of the latest SD card standards.
John:
Not a big deal because most people don't have the high-end ones.
John:
In fact, some of these standards are so new that you can't even find cards that support them yet.
John:
But the one in the MacBook Pros supports UHS-II speeds, I believe.
John:
UHS-III is out.
John:
SD Express is out.
John:
The other thing to consider for the SD card slot is...
John:
some like sony cameras have a slot have two slots in some of them uh that takes either an sd card or a cf express type a card cf express type a is a little bit obscure i think only sony cameras use it but the point is you can actually have one slot that takes both sd cards and cf express any one of these updates either just just make the sd card fast slot faster by supporting sd express or uhs3 right or make it a combo slot that supports both
John:
That's an easy upgrade.
John:
You've already got the slot.
John:
It's there.
John:
Make it faster and better.
John:
And the speed differences are big.
John:
Like the UHS-II is 156 megabytes per second.
John:
UHS-III is 312 megabytes per second.
John:
That's full duplex, so double those if you use all the bandwidth in one direction.
John:
cfexpress goes from like one gigabyte per second up to four gigabytes per second so there's lots of headroom to make that sd slot better so that's good let's upgrade that in the same vein hdmi we're complaining that it's not hdmi 2.1 what's an obvious upgrade hey in the next round of these with the m2 max and m2 pro or whatever make the hdmi support uh hdmi port support uh hdmi 2.1 120 hertz 4k hdr all the good stuff
John:
Put in a better chip that converts from DisplayPort to HDMI 2.1 or whatever.
John:
Again, we're not saying you need to fundamentally change anything.
John:
It's just you've got an HDMI port.
John:
You can make that HDMI port for better.
John:
One more easy one.
John:
Camera.
John:
Hey, it's a 1080p camera.
John:
That's great.
John:
But, you know, Logitech sells 4K cameras.
John:
Maybe it's hard to fit one of those in the tiny skinny screen lid.
John:
I understand that.
John:
If you can't fit in a 4K camera, then maybe you find a way to get a wide angle camera so you can support center stage.
John:
The camera can be better.
John:
We should continue to ask for the camera to improve.
John:
We should not be stuck with another decade of that same cruddy camera in there, even though, yes, I know they just updated it.
John:
The screen, now we start to get into sort of optional extra stuff.
John:
The screen, it's great.
John:
Everyone loves the screen.
John:
There was a time when the MacBook Pro
John:
offer you an option for a glossy or matte screen.
Casey:
The iMacs do, right?
John:
You can get the iMac with a nanotexture screen, right?
John:
The big one.
John:
Yep.
John:
And, of course, the XDR has its ridiculously expensive nanotexture screen.
John:
Whether it's nanotexture or just plain old matte, for professionals, some people might prefer a matte screen.
John:
That would be a cool option to have.
John:
That's something we can roll out in the next generation if there is any demand for it.
John:
Or even just improving the anti-glare coating that's on the screen.
John:
Something in that vein, right?
Yeah.
John:
cellular we didn't get to this year we still seem to think it's possible uh you know ipads have it they're very similar on the inside now it would be cool to have cellular hell yeah yeah ethernet on the power brick uh there's no room on ethernet on the side of these machines because they're too skinny you can get an adapter or dongle to do it uh magsafe does
John:
doesn't seem like it has a way to convey ethernet to the power brick so maybe this would have to be a usbc you know you couldn't use magsafe you want an ethernet on the power brick maybe you can do any optional hey this is like i think the first year that apple's gave us an option to choose power bricks so maybe one of the options could be forego magsafe in exchange for a usbc power brick but you know or a power brick with ethernet on it with usbc on both ends that is essentially a thunderbolt cable of some kind that would probably be weird and expensive um
John:
but that would be an interesting potential option and the final one and we're really reaching the bottom of the barrel here is for like what is there anything people don't like about this machine physically speaking some people still think the trackpad is too big i know that seems weird isn't a bigger trackpad better it's nicer to sort of swipe around
John:
But it's about accidental input.
John:
A lot of people find it difficult to use this laptop without accidentally touching the trackpad.
John:
And yes, macOS has sort of accidental input rejection, but those features sometimes are a little bit unreliable and can be more annoying than useful.
John:
But if you turn them off, you have to deal with your own accidental input.
John:
So...
John:
i'm not i mean have they struck the right balance between comfortable useful trackpad size and avoiding accidental input they may think about adjusting that but i'm just excited to be here to list off this thing this list of obvious improvements and have them be just like technological improvements oh and you know i could add things like thunderbolt 5 which probably won't be out in time for this but like
John:
but yeah like we feel like you've got the you've got it right like you know you've got the design of this product right it's like you know car it's got an engine it's got wheels next year just make the engine faster and get better fuel economy and make the body nicer looking make the seats more comfortable like all the normal stuff that we expect to happen year over year and these machines despite us being you know like a glass of ice water in hell for us right despite them being oh thank god they finally fixed everything about the computers
John:
almost every single thing they put in them because these computers were designed years ago and technology markets on could be upgraded and i basically listed them in the order of i think their usefulness um and getting down to like trackpad shrink and matte screens or whatever but like yeah just upgrade all the ports like make thunderbolt faster when you can make the sd card slot better because it's already kind of slow make hdmi better uh make a better camera all that good stuff and so we are
John:
We're on the other side of the valley of doubt, whatever we were calling it before, the valley of doom for these laptops.
John:
And now we can just start asking for them to be better in plain old boring technical ways.
Marco:
Which is a great place to be.
John:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I'm not complaining.
Marco:
This show existed for a few years before the terrible 2016 laptops came out.
Marco:
There was a time when we were just kind of like, oh, you know what?
Marco:
This thing hasn't updated in a while.
Marco:
Whenever you update it next, hey, wouldn't it be great to have this XYZ?
Marco:
This is a wonderful place to be.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Couldn't agree more.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So in this kind of similar vein to what we were just talking about, but a corollary of it, if we were to make new iMacs today, let's just concentrate on the CPUs.
Casey:
What system on a chip would you put in an iMac these days, John?
John:
There's been a lot of discussion about that.
John:
And I just want to reiterate a point that we've made in the past because it seems like people are getting stars in their eyes with all the rumors of the Jade 2C and 4C die of like, you know, basically taking multiples of the M1 Macs and just putting two or four of them inside the thing.
John:
Like, that'll be great for an iMac.
John:
And I want people to sort of come back to earth a little bit by just reminding everyone that the exact same chips that they put in these laptops, the M1 Pro and the M1 Macs,
John:
are perfectly fine for a big iMac.
John:
It doesn't mean that there won't be a bigger battered chip, but I'm saying if you get, if they sell, you know, an iMac with a big screen on it, right?
John:
With a big, really nice HD, like take the 16 inch laptop screen and blow it up to, you know, 27 or 30 inches, like that kind of quality screen.
John:
And then just literally take the insides of the laptops and put them in an even better cooling solution than an iMac.
John:
there's nothing wrong with that computer these are appropriate chips for an imac because remember the imac doesn't have to be the pro computer whether they call it imac pro or not or whatever it doesn't have to be a pro and i i wouldn't i think the imac with a big screen would be a worse product if you couldn't get these laptop chips in it because the m1 pro and the m1 max are great chips for yes a desktop computer because they're that good right but
John:
yes if you can get a j2c die in there and have it be like a you know the imac pro that is you know has twice as many cores great you can do that too depending on how big you want to make the imac if you try to make it as skinny as a 24 inch you might be a little constrained but i just want everyone to stop thinking that
John:
The new iMac, the new big iMac is going to come out and it's not going to share chips with these laptops.
John:
It has to, it will, it must, unless it's going to be out like two years from now.
John:
Because these chips are perfect for an iMac, for a slim, quiet, all-in-one, you know, desktop computer.
John:
It doesn't have to be as thin as the 24-inch.
John:
It can be thicker than that.
John:
Hell, it can be as thick as the 16-inch laptop it wants.
John:
But the M1 Macs,
John:
Thumbs up for that in an iMac.
John:
And also thumbs up, obviously, for doubling that or, you know, quadrupling it.
John:
If you want to do the big honking chip in the iMac, I'm all for it.
John:
I love it.
John:
It's great.
John:
But if you don't, that's fine, too.
Casey:
That makes sense.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Because, like, if you look at historically, if you rule out the iMac Pro for a minute, the large iMac...
Marco:
for years before that and after that, always had roughly the performance envelope of the 15-inch MacBook Pro.
Marco:
It usually had similarly classed chips, but the desktop version of those chips.
Marco:
But you had generally similar core counts, similar performance.
Marco:
The iMac could go a little bit higher with everything because it had more power and more heat thermal transfer capacity.
Marco:
But for the most part,
Marco:
the iMac and the 15-inch MacBook Pro were usually very closely performing.
Marco:
They were in the same performance class.
John:
In CPU, the iMacs tended to have way better GPUs just because they had more cooling capacity.
John:
Sure, right.
Marco:
So I think for the large iMac, which still, that's still an unanswered question on how that's going to move to Apple Silicon, but for the large iMac,
Marco:
I think it is almost certain that it will have these exact chips in it.
Marco:
And the only question mark is why we haven't seen it released yet.
Marco:
And that might be as simple as they sell way more laptops and maybe they didn't have enough chips
Marco:
M1 Pro and Max chip capacity to release both of those products at once.
Marco:
So maybe the iMac will come in the spring or something like that.
Marco:
Or maybe there's some other thing they're waiting on for the iMac or whatever.
Marco:
But yeah, I'm with you.
Marco:
I don't expect the Jade 2C and 4C kind of thing.
Marco:
I don't expect that for the iMac.
Marco:
And I don't expect there to be...
Marco:
something like the iMac Pro in the past in the sense that it was the Mac Pro processors in an iMac.
Marco:
If we get that as an option, that's great.
Marco:
And I, you know, I'm not going to complain if we get that.
Marco:
But I'm also, I wouldn't hold my breath for that.
Marco:
Because I think what we're seeing here is really quite elegant.
Marco:
We have a large slice of Apple's product line using the M1.
Marco:
We have now a moderately sized slice of the product line using the larger version of that, the M1 Pro slash Max.
Marco:
And in the future down the road, we will most likely see the Mac Pro offering the big multi-die version of that, however they choose to do that.
Marco:
And I think that's the only computer we're going to see that in.
Marco:
I think it's only going to be the Mac Pro where we get that big – because I think that's going to be a very expensive processor for them to make.
Marco:
However they do it, whether it's one giant die or whether it's chiplets or whatever stuff we don't really know that much about –
Marco:
However they do it, it's going to be big and expensive.
Marco:
And so putting that in a Mac Pro makes total sense.
Marco:
Putting it in a $2,000-ish, 27-inch or 30-inch iMac makes a lot less financial sense.
John:
If they have a product called iMac Pro, I can see J2C die in there.
Marco:
I think, first of all, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the Apple Silicon transition of the large iMac is called iMac Pro, even if it doesn't have the Mac Pro chips in it.
John:
Yeah, I mean, these chips are used in Pro.
John:
You know, MacBook has Pro at the end of it as well in these chips.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, so that's why I think we're moving towards a future, actually probably a pretty near future, where the MacBook Pro and the large iMac, which might be called the iMac Pro, will use the same chip.
Marco:
And then the smaller MacBook and the smaller iMac
Marco:
We'll use the same chip, which, by the way, iPads, the high-end iPads also use that chip.
Marco:
And then the phone and the low-end iPads use the A series of chips.
Marco:
And then, you know, the watch and the HomePods use the S series of chips.
Marco:
Like, these are all, you know, scaled up and scaled down versions of very similar basic building blocks of, like, the basic core designs.
Marco:
And that allows them to...
Marco:
spread out the r d costs massively you know that they're they're doing all this r d anyway for the phone processor and they get to spread it across their entire product line like that's an incredible you know scale thing they're doing and it's very clever and it's resulting in really great output but i think what this ultimately will lead to for us customers is fewer choices of how many different processors are going to be in the products so i don't expect there to be a lot of variation here
Marco:
Frankly, the only reason I think we have variation now with the M1 Pro and Macs and the different core counts and everything, I think it's a binning issue.
Marco:
And as the manufacturing process of these gets better, some of those options might go away.
Marco:
Some of the low-end options might just disappear.
John:
And depending on what choices they make for the industrial design of the big iMac...
John:
It is possible that they could clock them higher and heat them up more because you can put a hell of a lot more cooling behind a 27-inch or 30-inch screen if you choose to.
John:
If they go super-duper thin, then it'll probably just be clocked like the laptops are or whatever.
John:
you know as as that events from the 16 inch having a little bit more headroom than the 14 inch one under super duper load that's how you know you might think why would anyone buy an iMac it's not differentiating itself it's a desktop computer but the laptops are just as fast the iMac can be faster if Apple chooses to make it you know just clock it higher burn off more heat put bigger fans like there's plenty of room
Marco:
Yeah, that's a good point.
Marco:
Historically, when the iMac has been faster than the MacBook Pro, usually it's faster, excluding GPU stuff, usually it's faster by not a massive percentage, maybe 10% or something.
Marco:
Not usually a very, very big deal.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
they could get that kind of gain by just minor clock and cooling changes if they wanted to, but still using the same chip.
Marco:
So that wouldn't surprise me if they do that.
Marco:
But if you look at, like, the M1 iMac, I think performs exactly the same as all of their M1 Macs, right?
Marco:
Or is it, like, slightly faster?
John:
It's thinner than all the others.
John:
I know, right?
John:
It's extremely thin.
John:
My computer is extremely thin.
John:
I really hope the big iMac, they don't try to go for that thinness, but...
Marco:
Honestly, I'm really curious how they're going to do that because I'm sure they are tempted to because they have the ability now.
Marco:
If you look at the MacBook Pros, they're pretty damn thin and you could make an iMac Pro that thickness and have all the same guts.
Marco:
Keep in mind,
Marco:
All the previous, you know, all the Intel iMac cases were designed to accommodate spinning hard drives and 3.5 inch spinning hard drives at that, like big ones.
Marco:
So that's why they have that giant hump in the back.
Marco:
And they had, you know, larger cooling needs most of the time.
Marco:
When the iMac Pro came out, the iMac Pro never supported a spinning hard drive, but they replaced that.
Marco:
They kind of used that interior volume they had to put this massive cooling system in so they could put Xeons in there.
Marco:
with whatever they do with the apple silicon ones they won't need to do that anymore they have both no spinning drives by the way the 21 inch iMac that had the spinning drive and was non-retina was finally discontinued like last week we finally apple stopped selling spinning hard drives like last week but anyway uh and and the non-retina screen i believe that also had so we finally finished the retina transition nine years into it my goodness
Marco:
Oh, no, more than that.
Marco:
If you count Retina starting with the iPhone 4 instead of the 15-inch MacBook Pro, that began in 2010.
Marco:
So, anyway.
Marco:
But the Retina transition on Macs took nine years to complete.
Marco:
um anyway so you know they can like physically they can go ultra thin on the iMac on the large iMac slash iMac Pro as well if they wanted to and the only question would become like you know where do they put ports and stuff like that where do they put the SD card slot huh yeah this is going to be a test of like what what lessons have they learned like they had many years of complaining about the laptops um
John:
have people you know they haven't removed i mean they removed it from the little imac but like that's the little imac and it's so thin you can't even fit a usba port on the back of it and you can't put a headphone you know like we we understand that product it's the consumer product it's thin for mostly for fashion reasons we excuse it we allow it uh but if they replace all of the big imacs with imacs that are as thin as that small one and you can't put a headphone jack on the back and you can't put usba and you can't fit sd and it's like
John:
Then why did you make a big one, right?
John:
So I do hope they don't go quite that thin.
Marco:
Yeah, I hope you're right, because the large iMac served me well for so long, and it served so many people well for so long, because it just was an amazing balance of pro-quality performance, pro-performance levels, even before the iMac Pro itself, really pro-performance levels for many definitions of pro, and ridiculous capacity for...
Marco:
Performance and cooling and then all these ports.
Marco:
And it was just a fantastic line of computers.
Marco:
And I hope the next version of the large iMac doesn't reduce the utility of it at the expense of coolness.
Marco:
That being said...
Marco:
The small iMac, when it came out, really did make a splash.
Marco:
As we mentioned when it came out, people were talking about the design of a desktop in 2021.
Marco:
That never happens.
Marco:
No one cares about desktops anymore except pros and nerds, basically.
Marco:
But most people, the vast majority of people, would never consider buying a desktop.
Marco:
And that computer slightly bent that curve.
Marco:
i don't expect it to be a permanent thing but now for the first time in a long time people go into an apple store and they see a really cool ass looking desktop and they think for a split second oh my god i have to have that that's amazing now i think most of the energy is going to be redirected towards the redesigned macbook air next spring i think that
Marco:
That same energy of, whoa, color exists and it can be fun again.
Marco:
I think that's going to mostly go to the MacBook Air and that's going to sell like hotcakes if they do that to the MacBook Air.
Marco:
That's going to be incredible and I hope they do that as the rumors indicate because that'll be a ridiculously fun computer that people will just devour.
Marco:
Anyway, they did succeed in making this desktop something cool and noteworthy for the first time in a long time in an era where nobody thought that was possible.
Marco:
And so if they do something similar to the iMac Pro, I wouldn't necessarily blame them for it.
Marco:
Even though I'm with you, John, I think they should prioritize utility on that machine first rather than, you know, thinness and appearance.
Marco:
And maybe the direction of the new MacBook Pros suggests that they're willing to do that because that's what they do on them.
Marco:
You know, the new MacBook Pros...
Marco:
are not more attractive than the previous ones.
Marco:
I think they're differently attractive, but they're not more attractive.
Marco:
They are way more useful and way better suited to the actual needs of the actual people who buy them.
Marco:
And so maybe they'll make that same trade-off with the big iMac.
Marco:
Maybe the small iMac is fine to be the kind of minimal functionality one that prioritizes looks and coolness, and maybe they'll let the big one be the utilitarian one for professionals.
Marco:
So if they do that, I think that would be a good balance overall.
John:
If the iMac product designers are listening and you really, really want to make a super thin, big iMac, you know how you can do that real easy and no one will yell at you inside or outside the company?
John:
We all know the answer.
John:
I'm not going to say it myself.
John:
You too.
John:
How does Apple do that?
John:
How does Apple say, we really want to make a thin, big iMac and we don't want people to be mad at this.
John:
What's the solution?
Marco:
Can they put the guts of it inside a half basketball shaped thing and put that somewhere else on the desk and then have this thin panel?
John:
No, no.
John:
Casey, you get your chance.
Casey:
I have no idea.
Casey:
Call it something that's not an iMac?
Casey:
No, we all know the answer.
Casey:
Do we?
John:
Just make a good external monitor because then you don't have any excuses.
John:
You've got the Mac Pro for the big people, right?
John:
The big people?
John:
Your problem is like, well, what if I don't want a Mac Pro?
John:
You're telling me I have to get a Mac Pro if I want a utilitarian big desktop computer?
John:
No.
John:
You've got the Mac Mini.
John:
You've got these other things.
John:
Just make a big Apple monitor.
John:
It solves so many problems for you because then suddenly...
John:
everybody has more options in case he's not hemming and hawing about buying a used lg ultra fine monitor oh god like and then and then you can make a pro version of the mac mini like and then the whole world opens up because i feel like the the mac pro allows the imac to not have to bear that burden anymore of being the big monster machine great right
John:
But if you really, really want to make it super thin because you think iMac is all about super thin, fine.
John:
Go ahead.
John:
All we need is an external monitor from Apple that connects to all the other computers that Apple makes.
John:
And then we can build our systems the way we want.
Casey:
No, you're so right.
Casey:
It's funny.
Casey:
I had lunch outside with a coworker of mine at my most recent jobby job.
Casey:
And he was basically the IT director and still is.
Casey:
And we were talking about because this was before I had figured out what I was going to do with my monitor situation because this all happened really quickly.
Casey:
And we were talking about, you know, what the monitor situation is for a MacBook Pro today.
Casey:
And this is relevant because when I first went digging to try to find a monitor, a retina external monitor,
Casey:
three four years ago this was like 2017 it's like four years ago it was with my friend rory and the two of us were trying to figure out what monitor should i get and that's how i ended up on that lg4k i talked about recently which not the the lg ultra fine 4k just a straight up lg4k panel and i that's what i had used at work because it was the best like bang for the buck to get a retina screen and
Casey:
And it was so frustrating over the last week looking at the monitor situation today in 2021 and realizing it's actually a hair worse than it was in 2017 because there was a Dell 5K that was supposed to be very good and not exceedingly expensive that has no longer been made for the last like two or three years.
Casey:
So my choices in 2021 are worse than they were in 2017.
Casey:
It's preposterous.
Casey:
So yes, Apple, please make a less than $6,000 external monitor.
Casey:
Pretty please.
Marco:
It does feel like Apple is in settling old business mode, and so I do think we will get this monitor.
Casey:
I do too.
Marco:
But the only little drips and drabs of rumors that we heard about it suggested that they might have only started to work on it, like...
Marco:
like this spring or last year so and that kind of thing tends to have a multi-year timeline maybe like a two or three year timeline so i think the earliest we would get it might be next wbdc which wouldn't be that bad i mean you know if it's you know next june or that's not that bad but i wouldn't expect to see it sooner if we do that'd be great um but yeah i wouldn't get my hopes up too much on that but yeah that would be wonderful because like
Marco:
we've made such an incredible leap with the apple silicon chips in terms of what kind of performance you can get out of laptops you know right now like i i have this incredible workstation sitting next to me and i don't hear a thing and it's it's a laptop like if i would have connected any other laptop i've owned with the exception of the m1 air the way i have this laptop connected as my desktop right now
Marco:
Clamshell mode, running a giant external monitor, recording a podcast, running Zoom and Audio Hijack and all this stuff.
Marco:
There is no way any other laptop I've ever had would have inaudible fan noise in this configuration.
Marco:
It would be hot.
Marco:
The fan would be spinning.
Marco:
That level of heat would eventually cause risk of damaging the screen in clamshell mode or other problems.
Marco:
It would eventually clog with dust and it would fill up with even more heat and even louder fans.
Marco:
laptop enclosures have not been this good ever in terms of the amount of power delivered for the amount of heat and noise being produced.
Marco:
It's never been this good of a ratio.
Marco:
And so I think...
Marco:
The need for many, many people has already left in terms of desktops over the last two decades.
Marco:
But I think the amount of performance you can get out of these particular laptops, this family, the M1 and the M1 Pro and Max,
Marco:
is so high you get such ridiculous performance that i think many more people are no longer going to need a desktop who are using one before or who even you know need is a is a weird word i think many more people are going to choose not to have a desktop who were using them up to this point because the laptops are way better clamshell mode is way more reliable and works way better than it did on the intel's uh you know external monitor support and everything it's all it's so much better now we can have external touch id with these certain apple keyboards like
Marco:
Things are getting really great for using a laptop as your desktop when you need that.
Marco:
And then it's also a laptop when you want to take it somewhere with you.
Marco:
That's so compelling.
Marco:
Again, that was already the most popular thing people are doing, I think.
Marco:
But now it's even more compelling.
Marco:
And so anything that can make that even better for people, and number one problem is the monitor situation.
Marco:
That is the number one problem.
Marco:
Like, if Apple could make that better, that changes things for so many pros and power users.
Marco:
So many of us use laptops in a desktop context, either on a stand or in clamshell mode with external monitors.
Marco:
And if they can fix that, which again, I think they are.
Marco:
I don't know anything more than anybody else knows.
Marco:
I just have a hunch that this is the kind of problem they would eventually fix in this major course correction that we're seeing them go through.
John:
that will that would so radically change things that the need for the high-end iMac to be much more powerful than to be any more powerful than the you know high-end MacBook Pro I think that need just disappears because then it would be taking advantage of its own oneness like it would be the same design brief as the 24 inch it would just be bigger it's like oh it's great it's all in one and it's minimal and if you want more flexibility if Apple makes a monitor first of all if you look at the last monitor they made they were already going down this path which was
John:
Mm-hmm.
John:
One cable that connects to your laptop and it charges it and it connects it to this monitor and the monitor has ports on it.
John:
Well, guess what?
John:
We've had that technology for a long time.
John:
Apple has just not taken advantage of it.
John:
We now have the ability to plug one tiny cable into a Mac mini or any Mac laptop and...
John:
power all the ports on the back of the monitor.
John:
And now, by the way, the laptops also have a bunch of ports on them.
John:
And the Mac mini has a bunch of ports on the back of it, right?
John:
That's why we say this thing gives you the flexibility.
John:
Suddenly the iMac can be this smells very thin, all in one, very elegant, no cables, no connections thing, and fulfill that role without sacrificing the utility.
John:
Because if you've got an Apple monitor, you can connect any of Apple laptops or the Mac mini to that and have an amazing desktop setup.
John:
And still Mac pro handles the
John:
the super-duper high-end.
John:
Setting aside now the half-size Mac Pro, whether that's the only Mac Pro or there's a half-size and a big one, like the Mac Pro has got the high-end covered.
John:
The iMac, if you want it to be super thin and 30 inches, fine.
John:
Just give us a monitor so we can turn your other computers into a really awesome desktop setup.
John:
And the Mac Mini, it is a desktop computer.
John:
It's begging for a good monitor to connect to it.
John:
It's begging to have an M1 Pro and M1 Max in it probably as well.
John:
So that's the lineup for, you know, 2023.
John:
Just...
John:
an app an apple monitor a cheap apple quote unquote cheap apple monitor for 1500 bucks that's you know 5k or 6k or something hdr mini led like all the great things with face id built in with a thunderbolt cable coming out of it you can connect to any of apple's awesome laptops or any of its awesome mac minis
Marco:
that's not 1500 bucks by the way that's if my my current thinking is if they do release a 5k 27 inch you know they would probably call it xdr it would probably have micro led and stuff 1799 2000 minimum possibly 2500
John:
well i'd still buy it but i feel like same no that's look that's look that's modern apple like modern apple is we will eventually give you what you want but it's going to cost 40 more than you thought it would the laptops weren't more expensive like i said they pass the savings on to you with those laptops you get amazing laptops for similar prices or some in some cases less as much less if you benchmark them against the previous computers that cost that amount of money yeah that's true
Marco:
no but if apple does make an extra monitor it's going to be expensive like you know let me look at the look at the xdr you know you know that's the six thousand dollar xdr they only released that a pretty short time ago and it doesn't have some of these features you're talking about and it's not that much bigger than those but it's but it's 6k we'll go we say we're fine with 5k right no one's begging for 6k
Marco:
Sure, but I think a 5K Apple monitor released today by today's Apple would be minimum $2,000 and possibly even $2,500.
Casey:
My brain knows you're right, but my heart is so sad about this just listening to you.
John:
I'm still holding out hope for $17,99, but you're right.
John:
It's probably $1,999.
Marco:
And by the way, if they do that, I think that's fine.
Marco:
Because that is kind of like the deal between Pros and Apple.
Marco:
We bug them about what we actually need.
Marco:
They eventually make it.
Marco:
And it's always more expensive than we want it to be.
Marco:
And we suck it up and pay it.
Marco:
Because that's just the relationship between Pros and Apple.
Marco:
It's been that way for a long time.
Marco:
It's going more and more in that direction.
Marco:
And look at the Mac Pro.
Marco:
Everyone wanted...
Marco:
an expandable desktop tower and they finally said okay we'll give you an expandable desktop tower it'll be 15 grand but we'll give it to you right you know we'll give you this external monitor you want a nice external monitor to go with it great six thousand dollars so you know whenever this monitor does come out if they are doing it you know a 5k 27 inch it's not going to be under two grand that's i i would love it if it was but i think that's unrealistic to expect
Casey:
$2,000 for a 5K monitor makes me kind of sick, but $2,000 for a 5K monitor with 11 gazillion mini-LED zones, just like the MacBook Pro screen has, and HDR and all this other fanciness, you know, if it has, like, if it's a 27-inch-sized version of this MacBook Pro monitor...
Casey:
$2,000 may not be so unreasonable.
Casey:
If it's just the LG 5K repackaged in an Apple package, yeah, that's a waste of money.
Casey:
But if it's nice, like super nice, if it's not just ultra fine, if it's ultra nice, then yeah, I can get behind that.
John:
I'm always looking at replacing my PlayStation monitor.
John:
with another monitor.
John:
My PlayStation monitor is a 4K monitor, but it's not 120 hertz, right?
John:
And PlayStation 5 can do 120 hertz in some games now, including Destiny.
John:
And so I wanna see that, right?
John:
So I'm always looking for, I should replace this 4K monitor.
John:
It's an LG 4K.
John:
I should replace it with
John:
a better 4k you know same resolution 4k that's what the pay station outputs but i want hdr and i want it to be an ips because i don't really care about response time i just want to look really good and have good viewing angles right so i keep looking for okay i want you know it doesn't you know it doesn't it's not i'm not looking in the world of mac monitors it's just a plain old 4k monitor hdr with good brightness
John:
i don't even care if it's mini led like i just want i just want it to have you know high peak brightness so i can actually see the hdr effects like i can on my xdr and 120 hertz uh and if you put those specs into like a search all available monitors you will find some like i'm looking at a 32 inch 4k hdr 1600 nits 1152 mini led zones 120 hertz right uh that's a three thousand dollar monitor
John:
yep all right i mean it's because like this is an asus monitor that i'm looking at i think it's three thousand dollars it's pronounced it's always their top of the line like for like artists super calibrated it's not a gaming monitor because no one who wants a gaming monitor cares about this stuff they all care about like oh one millisecond response time like 300 nits max brightness i'm like get that crap out of here
John:
I'm not a pro gamer.
John:
I want things to look pretty.
John:
And then so I end up, you know, in this thing.
John:
So, yeah, it's not looking good for the mythical $1,800 5K monitor if it had HDR of any kind, which is kind of sad.
John:
But I, you know, and so I did this look and I'm like, okay, it's not time for me to replace my PlayStation monitor.
John:
I'll check again next year.
Marco:
I mean, the only thing that would support it being somewhat reasonable to be in that price range is if they don't go super HDR, XDR with it.
Marco:
Because they've been selling the 27-inch 5K iMac for, what, six years now?
Marco:
Something like that?
Marco:
Longer?
Marco:
Maybe seven or eight years that that computer has existed?
Marco:
It wasn't 2014 the first one?
Marco:
So, yes.
Marco:
So, they've been selling that panel that's in Casey's Totally Fine monitor.
Marco:
for a long time marco ultra in and they've been selling it in a computer that starts at like 2000 or 2200 bucks so i think they they could easily justify if they were still selling a monitor with that kind of spec they could easily get that in like the 1800 range but
Marco:
I don't think that's their style anymore.
Marco:
I think what they're going to do is the next high-end iMac is going to have the nice XDR-style thing that the current MacBook Pros have.
Marco:
And that's going to probably be a $2,700 starting price for that iMac.
Marco:
And therefore, I think a monitor with that would be around 2000 starting at minimum because it's no longer Apple style to try to make low end products in areas like this.
Marco:
They're kind of accessory areas to their main products.
Marco:
This kind of thing that's like a kind of higher end kind of pro style, mostly accessory.
Marco:
they're going to only make the high end ones and they're going to price them at very healthy margins.
Marco:
And that's why, you know, that's why we have their current only external monitor being this ridiculous $6,000 beast.
Marco:
Uh, I think they're going to aim similarly high with their smaller one and, uh,
Marco:
as the market tells them, please make a $1,200 monitor, they're going to make a $2,000 monitor.
Marco:
And we're going to buy it anyway because it's going to be the best option for a lot of us.
John:
Yep.
John:
Correction on this Asus monitor.
John:
Sorry, the one I was looking at is $5,000.
John:
Oh, what a bargain.
John:
I put a link in the show notes if anyone wants to see it.
John:
This is a 4K monitor, Greg.
John:
This is not a 6K monitor.
John:
This is a 4K, 32-inch, 16x9, HDR, mini-LAD, 120Hz monitor.
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Lutron Caseta, Connection, and RevenueCat.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can go to atp.fm slash join to help fund Casey's XDR Monitor.
Marco:
And we will talk to you next week.
Marco:
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
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M
Casey:
so we'll do a little bit of ask atp because it is piling up and we keep running out of time to do it and that's that's our bad but uh we figure we'll we'll plow through one or two of these depending on how brief we can be famous last words with the three of us oh come on it's apple's fault it's not our fault they they released amazing computers that we talk about a lot that's that's their fault that's on them we're just so happy
Casey:
All right, Yossi Connor writes, why is it we no longer talk about processor speed, in regard to the M1 at least, in terms of gigahertz and instead only talk about the number of cores?
Casey:
What's up with that, John?
John:
This is an easy answer to that one.
John:
Apple doesn't sell them based on different clock speeds.
John:
You can't choose the clock speed.
John:
So there's no real reason for us to discuss it.
John:
If they did offer different clock speeds, you can be sure when you're discussing it.
John:
We'd be saying, oh, you got 16-inch.
John:
What CPU did you get?
John:
What speed did you get?
John:
Yeah.
John:
But that's not an option that Apple offers.
John:
That's the main reason.
John:
The second reason is it's not like it was in the old days where the processor ran at a certain speed and they could put that speed on a spec sheet.
John:
These processors change their clock speed all the time.
John:
Not only do they change their clock speed, the parts inside the system on a chip run at different speeds at the same time when the chip is working.
John:
So it's not even like you put one number on it and say, this chip is running at 3.2 gigahertz.
John:
Really?
John:
Every part of the chip is running through?
John:
Well, not really.
John:
It's way more complicated.
John:
And so it's it's a very difficult to talk about.
John:
Obviously, lots of people still sell chips this way because they're basically saying here's the fastest it can run or here's the fastest it can run in a sustained thing or whatever.
John:
But they're just not sold that way.
John:
So that's the answer.
John:
It's not worth talking about because there's nothing we can do about it.
John:
good talk that was quick i'm stunned that was very quick i mean it's the reason i wanted this question to be in there is it's a good question we used to talk about gigahertz all the time but it's like if they if it's not something that if it's not something that we as consumers have to choose among especially when looking at pro hardware like do we have to i have to like talk about the clock speed do i want the more clock speed is i going to burn more of my battery that's just not a choice we have anymore so it's not worth discussing but the second part the technical part is the thing that people might not realize is that
John:
There's not really one number you can put on modern chips.
John:
And so it's not even a useful thing to talk about anymore, really.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And then this one I really like and wanted to talk about and Marco did as well.
Casey:
And it is a failed question in the get go, at least for John, because John does not believe in hypotheticals.
Casey:
But I do.
Casey:
And I think this is fun.
Casey:
It's a fun one.
Casey:
This is a fun question.
Casey:
Joel Short writes, if you had to choose, would you rather use the previous generation MacBook Pro bodies, you know, all USB-Cs, with an M1 Max chip or the new generation MacBook Pro with, you know, all the ports and an Intel chip?
Casey:
For me...
Casey:
This is unquestionably, don't even have to think twice, the old body with an M1 Max every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Casey:
Because I've already converted my life to USB-C and dongles if I need them.
Casey:
So I'll take the processor, hands down.
Casey:
What about you, Marco?
Marco:
see to me this is interesting because the question is a little bit vague you know so it's a fun question but the previous generation macbook pro body with the m1 max chip well which macbook pro is it the 13 inch with no touch bar and only two ports
Casey:
Oh, here we go.
Marco:
Is it a 16-inch with the touch bar?
Marco:
And then does it have the butterfly keyboard or does it have the magic keyboard?
Marco:
The previous generation started with the butterfly keyboard.
John:
I don't think any of these things are going to change your answer, though.
Marco:
Oh, no.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
If it is the immediately preceding, you know, the 2019 or 2020 models that had the fixed keyboard, like the actual good Magic keyboard, I would choose the older body with the new M1 Max chip because...
Marco:
Even though I love all the new ports and everything that we have on the new ones, the M1 series of chips and the performance they give and the thermal and battery characteristics they give are more substantial to me in my own personal utility for these machines, even though I would have to tolerate the touch bar probably with that choice.
Marco:
But no question for me, except if the question becomes the butterfly keyboard.
Marco:
I would rather use a good keyboard with a 486 in it than a butterfly keyboard with an M1 Max.
John:
But you would still pick the M1.
John:
You know why?
John:
Because you're not even touching your keyboard.
John:
Your laptop is folded up like a book and sitting next to your computer.
John:
Like you'd still buy it with the butterfly keyboard and you'd slam that thing shut and shove it into your little bookshelf thing and never look at it again because you're basically using it as your desktop laptop and it would have the M1 Max in it.
Marco:
Yeah, I guess I was thinking about it in the desktop context.
Marco:
I was thinking about it as actually using it as a laptop.
Marco:
Who uses laptops?
Marco:
Laptops stink.
Casey:
You know, did I not just talk about how much fun I had at the Botanical Gardens earlier today?
Casey:
Come now.
John:
Yeah, but I'm pretty sure he didn't mean that.
John:
butterfly keyboard like who would who would do such a thing yeah that's just cruel nobody deserves that and that's not the previous generation that's the previous previous generation like they did fix the keyboards before they went to that one yeah i agree all right so john tell me why this question is utter trash and then do your best answer
John:
No, it's fine.
John:
I mean, it's, you know, it's a hypothetical making you choose between two things that are both bad, but which one is less bad?
John:
Yeah, but the answer is you get the M1.
John:
Like, because, yes, the ports and everything were bad, and, you know, even the butterfly keyboard is better, but just the M1 is just so much better.
John:
And the M1 makes the old design less crappy, because one of the things that was crappy about the old thing was the fans would run all the time, and they'd run super hot, and they were super noisy, and the M1 fixes all of that, right?
John:
So, yeah, I would...
John:
The M1 in the old design is the less bad, the significantly less bad choice than Intel in the current design.