As the Prophecy Foretold
Casey:
i don't want to say anything i don't want to spoil the show but i'm excited it's gonna be a good one i think i am also excited you know i'm a little pissed off at the two of you i understand it in knowing what we knew at the time i stand by it but i am a little pissed at the two of you for blowing our opportunity for we are the champions on the stupid mac pro which you didn't even end up buying which by the way i do owe you probably publicly a uh a
Casey:
I don't know, an apology, an accolade, something for not having bought a Mac Pro.
Casey:
I absolutely lost a bet with myself.
Casey:
I figured you would have had one within six months at the latest and probably six weeks, but you held out.
Marco:
Well, I mean, I bought the XDR instead.
Marco:
I'm not sure how much credit I deserve.
Casey:
Although you did hold out on that for a pretty long time as well.
Casey:
I did.
Casey:
You know, the sick thing is, the really sick thing is, now I am spoiling the show just ever so slightly.
Casey:
I'm now trying to think about what my new computing life will look like.
Casey:
Save it.
Casey:
And I'm looking at the monitor situation and I'm like, oh, s***.
Casey:
This is not good.
Casey:
This is not good at all.
Casey:
I got problems.
Casey:
I got problems, my dude.
Casey:
I got problems.
Marco:
You just watched some future episode of the show where I've just purchased a Jeep Wrangler and you've just purchased an XDR.
Casey:
I will say that you're going to hate what I ordered, but that's okay.
Marco:
I mean, unless you ordered like the Intel iMac, like I think it'll be okay.
Casey:
You know, I just really wanted that nice warmth and the fans that blow my hair back.
Casey:
I wanted it just one more time.
Casey:
it was i think the last in-person wwdc show that you two made a terrible mistake and i was complaining to marco about this before john got on on the call you you used it too soon you blew our opportunity to edit in right here we are the champions because gentlemen we are the champions today all three of us who are the champions
Casey:
all three of us i don't care about laptops your work does and you still have a jobby job all three of us are the champions my friends this was the moment i'm only the champions of if i get one of these at work the prospects of that seem dim you will you will eventually oh man so uh the rules state that we are not allowed to do any sort of follow-up uh and we need to just dive right in so big week
Marco:
I have not stopped happy crying in days.
Casey:
Yeah, I am genuinely surprised how excited I am about everything.
Casey:
And we're going to talk a lot about our reactions.
Casey:
We're going to talk a lot, obviously, about this event.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
Something that I've realized is, you know, every year I get excited for new phones, even if it's a phone that I really don't have anything to be excited about.
Casey:
I'm still excited for a new phone.
Casey:
But this year with this event, I am more excited than I ever would have expected about this.
Casey:
what has happened and what I've purchased.
Casey:
Now, we are going to talk about what we have or have not purchased.
Casey:
If we have time, we'll talk about how I've ruined my own life with my purchase, and we'll get to that later.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I am just overjoyed that the apology tour has commenced, and almost all of our wishes are coming true.
Casey:
So I am beyond excited.
Casey:
I know, Marco, I heard screams from all the way up in New York of excitement.
Casey:
Even though I was down in Virginia, I could hear it.
Casey:
You were so excited.
Casey:
And John, I think I heard one- I'm sure there wasn't all the touch bars being murdered.
Casey:
It might have been.
Marco:
All screaming out at once.
Casey:
That would have been from the West, not the North.
Casey:
But yeah, and then John, I thought I heard one grunt of satisfaction at some point.
Casey:
So I feel like we are all indeed the champions.
John:
I was excited about all this.
John:
Like, I'm just saying, I feel like the champion thing is like, you didn't even have to wait 10 years.
John:
And, you know, the Pro Macs aren't even, anyway, I feel like the Mac Pro is the appropriate time to use We Are The Champions.
John:
I understand the spirit of your request, but your request is denied.
Marco:
but we also we also never thought we would get this like it really like you know when when we were you know hoping for the mac pro to come back at all the idea of redesigning the laptops in a radical way that made them significantly more appealing to us did not seem like a possibility that was that was on the in the cards like it it's everything that we you know quote got from this we'll get there but
Marco:
Everything we got from this, I would never have guessed two years ago or three years ago, whenever that was, I would never have guessed this was a possibility for the next MacBook Pro.
John:
Yeah, because it's a move backwards.
John:
Anyway, we'll try to leave the summary.
John:
No, it's not.
John:
We'll get to that too.
John:
I know.
John:
But that's why we were just sort of resigned to our dissatisfaction and would just complain and grumble and be left in the dustbin of history like a bunch of crusty old men.
John:
But it turns out we were right.
John:
We'll get to that at the end.
Casey:
all right so we should probably try to move through this and get to the good stuff as quickly as possible and that's it we can get to the good stuff right now because it's the very first thing i am so freaking jazz no i'm not it's a voice plan it's five bucks a month i don't know before that the
Casey:
The awesome intro video.
Casey:
Oh, that's right.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
You're right.
Casey:
You're right.
Casey:
You're right.
Casey:
I completely skipped over it.
Marco:
You are correct.
Marco:
And I know now that it's called Start Up by somebody named A.G.
Marco:
Cook, who everyone knows except me, because I never know popular people.
Casey:
That's half true.
Casey:
Everyone knew except you and me.
Casey:
However, I did listen to some of his stuff, and it's very good.
Marco:
Yeah, so this has been... I think this was probably my favorite Apple intro video in a number of years.
Marco:
What I loved about it, not only was it clearly like a love letter to the Mac, which was a theme for the whole event...
Marco:
But it was obviously very high budget and high produced and very corporate friendly to this corporation.
Marco:
And normally that would not be something that I would care about very much.
Marco:
And as the Apple events have increased in their production value and pre-production as we've been in the COVID times and nobody has live events anymore –
Marco:
You know, we've said in the past it's gotten increasingly like it's watching a big commercial because that's really what it is.
Marco:
And when you have a live event and you have live people on stage, you can put more humanity into it.
Marco:
It feels less rigid and a little bit less rehearsed even though they always were pretty rehearsed.
Marco:
But the pre-recorded events are just so sterile and so formulaic and they have so much of that soul sucked out of them that to start it with something that fits their format.
Marco:
But it's just a really good version of it, I think is really nice.
Marco:
It set the tone that, yes, I'm about to watch a corporate promotional video that had infinite money and is going to make me spend infinite money.
Marco:
But to start that with something that was truly delightful and really nice and...
Marco:
For once, it didn't feel just so forced and artificial, and we can't wait to see what you do with it.
Marco:
It was none of that crap.
Marco:
Usually, the videos that they start with are kind of saccharine to me.
Marco:
And this wasn't.
Marco:
This was just really good.
Marco:
And maybe I'm just buying into the hype or whatever, but this one just hit me in a really nice way, and it was just so well done.
Marco:
And it fits so well on theme, both as part of a corporate event video, but also as this love letter to the Mac.
Marco:
It was really, really great.
Casey:
Yeah, I strong agree.
Casey:
And gosh knows that all of the old time Mac users like John and Stephen Hackett, I'm sure you guys were overjoyed with it.
John:
John, did you enjoy it?
John:
I mean, it was great.
John:
I love the song.
John:
I love the music.
John:
I love making it out of Mac sounds.
John:
That's all great.
John:
And all my one complaint was, how is this connected to new MacBook Pros?
John:
And the answer is, it's not really, but it's cool.
John:
All right.
John:
Granted, it is cool.
John:
I liked it.
John:
But I was so impatient.
John:
I was like, get on with the show, which really will let you know how I felt when the next section was about music.
Marco:
Well, first we had to see Tim Cook getting a bunch of ticks in the field.
John:
That's exactly what I said.
John:
As soon as I saw him in the grass, then I saw Tiff tweeted the same thing.
John:
So Long Island sees tall grass.
John:
We think ticks and Lyme disease.
Casey:
So we have Zane Lowe telling us about there's playlists based on moods and activities, which in principle I think is neat.
Casey:
I'll probably forget that that's a thing in about a day.
Casey:
But I can get behind the principle of it.
Casey:
And then all joking aside, there's a new voice plan.
Casey:
It's $5 a month.
Casey:
It's going to be available later this fall.
Casey:
And the kind of short, short version is it's all of Apple Music, but you can only interact with it via Siri, which is a very interesting and at first glance peculiar choice.
Casey:
But I think this is based, it's really for people to use with their HomePods, if I'm not mistaken.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
uh and it doesn't have ads we don't think and there are other things other similar plans at similar prices from their competitors that do have ads but i mean i i don't have a problem with this to be honest it's certainly not for me but hey if this is something that you want in your life especially if maybe you aren't all in on apple everything but you have a home pod or two or ten and you like them yeah man why not
John:
I feel like my tweet thoughts that I put in my tweet is still my thoughts on this entire feature, which is how much frustration are you willing to put up with in order to save some money on your monthly bill?
John:
Right.
John:
Because the idea of having access to the world's music, but you have to interact with it with Siri, which I know technically isn't true, but like the way it was framed in the presentation was like.
John:
Cheaper at the cost of your sanity, because now you have to do battle with Siri to get to play the song that you want.
John:
And I really hope it doesn't have any words that sound like other words in the title.
John:
But yeah, it seems like a competitor to other services.
John:
And if you look at the big, we'll put a link to the big like checkmark thing they have on apple.com slash music saying, here's what you get for five bucks a month.
John:
And here's what you get for 10.
John:
And here's what you get for 15.
John:
And you can see how someone in a meeting was like, look, this is going to be a cheaper plan and we have to remove some check marks because the whole idea is you pay more, you get more.
John:
So what check marks can be removed?
John:
What is the upsell to paying more?
John:
And I think they have a reasonable list of features.
John:
The one that really burns me, though, is when you use the music app, according to Gruber.
John:
If you go to the music app, the interface is just serious suggestions in your listening history.
John:
It's like, come on, that feels punitive.
John:
Like that really does feel like we're forcing you to use the voice assistant because like the upsell is, hey, you don't have to just use our voice assistant.
John:
So it shows that it is valuable to have something in addition to the voice assistant.
John:
And then they take that away for this plan.
John:
So that makes me a little bit upset.
John:
But the other thing I've seen from a lot of people is like, look,
John:
I think this is a direct shot at the Echo plan.
Marco:
You could ask it for music.
Marco:
And if you didn't have an Amazon Music plan, it would offer you to subscribe to Amazon Music right there on the Echo to your Amazon account, all done via voice.
Marco:
And it was something like four or five bucks a month if you wanted a plan that would only play on that one Echo.
Marco:
But for many people, that's great.
Marco:
And actually, we subscribed to that plan for years before we eventually wanted to get a second Echo.
Marco:
And then we had to get the full-blown Amazon Music plan for that to work very well.
Marco:
But this, I think, makes total sense in that context.
Marco:
And when compared to that, you actually get a lot more access to that membership with the Apple voice plan.
Marco:
That being said, it is a very weird product.
Marco:
I don't expect it to be something that we ever really talk about again, honestly.
Marco:
And they might end up having millions of subscribers to it, but we just might never talk about it again.
Marco:
But ultimately, I think this is a supporting role to the HomePod.
Marco:
And
Marco:
I'm going to tell you how much I love what we have to talk about after this segment, that I have a HomePod rant that I'm going to save for another time.
John:
Oh, that's strong.
John:
You're really upset about the new colors?
Marco:
No, no.
Marco:
It's about my HomePods.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
No, the HomePod mini comes in colors soon.
John:
Hooray.
John:
It comes in colors now.
John:
Topic done.
John:
AirPods.
Casey:
So they're available next week.
Casey:
They look vaguely, or more than vaguely, actually.
Casey:
They look fairly similar to the AirPods Pro, but they are all plastic.
Casey:
They don't have the little rubbery bit at the end.
Casey:
It now has spatial audio.
Casey:
It has adaptive EQ.
Casey:
Five minutes of charge gives you one hour of use.
Casey:
The charging case gives you four full charges.
Casey:
It has MagSafe charging, which is different than AirPods' case in the past, right?
Casey:
Because those were cheap, but not specifically MagSafe charging.
Casey:
these look good i was hoping for a revamp of the airpods pro i've never had any airpods except the i've had the first two generations of straight up regular airpods never had a pro never had a max and i'd like to try the airpods pro because i'd really like the noise cancellation uh but they don't i don't want to buy them until there's a new one and there isn't a new one yet but these look really really good 180 bucks available next week i think you can order them now i'm not sure about that but uh they look good
John:
You can because I did.
Casey:
Oh, OK.
Casey:
Well, there you go.
Casey:
Are you excited?
John:
Yeah.
John:
The rumor is exactly nailed that all the pictures of these for months.
John:
This is them.
John:
I really hope they fit my ears well.
John:
But the good news is they're still selling the old AirPods as well.
John:
So I didn't have to buy two of them.
John:
I just bought these.
John:
And if I don't like them, I'll just, you know, give them to a kid and buy another pair of the old ones or maybe two pair or three pair of the old ones, depending on.
John:
How paranoid I get about it.
John:
Yeah, my only complaint about these is that the engraving is now in all caps.
John:
Oh, well, that's too bad.
John:
It looks shouty.
John:
I didn't like it.
John:
But I got it engraved anyway just so I can tell my AirPods from the million other ones that are floating around the house.
John:
So I'll tell you what I think of them when I get them.
John:
My date is out into the future because engraving always pushes a date back.
Marco:
One of my favorite things about it is that the ear tapping gesture is gone now.
Marco:
Because that always, in the brief period where I used standard AirPods, that always drove me nuts and it felt uncomfortable in lots of ways and everything.
Marco:
So they went to the click sensor like the Pros.
Marco:
One thing I really like to see is MagSafe on the case.
Marco:
That was a really nice touch.
Marco:
What many people don't know is that MagSafe puck chargers are also Qi chargers.
Marco:
And you can already, without anything new, put your Qi-compatible AirPods case on a MagSafe puck.
Marco:
And if you center it exactly right, it will charge.
John:
I do.
John:
That's what I do with my... It's the only thing I use my MagSafe puck for.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
But, you know, having MagSafe in it to make it automatically align and automatically center itself is a really nice little convenience feature.
John:
And they mentioned... Do you know that it does that?
John:
Uh, that's an interesting question.
John:
Because they could just, it could just be the same as it was in the previous case, but now they just call it MagSafe.
John:
I'll tell you when I get them.
Marco:
I thought, like, when they put it on in the event, it looked like it kind of clicked into place, but maybe I have to rewatch that.
John:
The current one also kind of clicks into place.
John:
Like, you've done it, right?
John:
It does have a centering thing, because I think there are many things in there.
John:
Yeah, it's weird.
John:
Try it when, after you get off the air, take your regular thing and put it on your pocket.
John:
It's kind of, anyway, I'll tell you when I get them.
Marco:
yeah well they also said that the airpods pro case from this point forward is also now quote updated with magsafe yeah so it sounds like it's probably better alignment yeah it's probably some kind of actual hardware change in the case anyway that's nice to see
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Thank you so much to Linode for being an awesome host and sponsoring our show.
Casey:
So about 15 minutes into the broadcast, and gosh knows how far we are into our broadcast, but it was about 15 minutes for Apple, we get to the Mac.
Casey:
And we're going to interrupt very quickly what Apple did, and let's talk, John, about Monterey.
Casey:
What would you like to tell me about that?
John:
Well, they didn't announce a release date in the keynote, which is weird because it's not like it was long.
John:
They had plenty of room.
John:
But anyway, it's out on Monday, October 25th, so that's good.
John:
We've got a date for that, and that means all the developers finally got an Xcode build that will build for that, which is nice.
John:
But the important news, as far as we're concerned on this program, is...
John:
As foretold by me sort of an episode or two ago when I said they still have a chance to fix Safari in Monterey.
John:
Like, no, they've already released it.
John:
The garbage one is out.
John:
I'm like, no, but Monterey is not out.
John:
Well, as far as we can tell, it looks like from Apple's web pages for Monterey and from the reports from people who have seen the latest build,
John:
that they did fix safari in monterey that it has normal tabs when you're not in the quote-unquote compact mode like just like just like the tabs look like in safari 14 as far as i can tell there may be some other weird glitchy stuff but compact mode is still there which again is the mode where the address bar and it becomes a tab and the tab becomes an address bar which is again i don't know why i didn't see more people reiterating this we've talked about many times the
John:
only reason the tabs look like that is because they used to be the address bar so when they moved them and they weren't the address anymore it didn't make any sense but it was like hey why are the tabs like this the answer is because it used to be the address bar right so anyway compact the tab is still the address bar but in non-compact mode
John:
You have regular tabs, and they fixed it on iPadOS 15.1, apparently, too.
John:
So, you know, count this as the second major Safari redesign, maybe third if you count the iOS one, along with ToppyTabs and Safari 4, whatever the hell that was, that Apple tried to do and could not make happen because, well, in this case, because it was bad.
John:
ToppyTabs wasn't necessarily bad, but they couldn't make it happen.
John:
This time it was bad, and they...
John:
uh wound back for a good idea so kudos to apple for at the last minute realizing the error of their ways and and you know you don't even know it's last minute because they could have decided to do this reversion like a month ago it just takes a long time for us to see the result of it so i'm going to give them credit and that's why i held out hope it's like it takes a long time for these things to appear in public builds or anything they probably made the decision to revert a while ago and just have to make sure that everything still works so i'm happy about that
Marco:
Yeah, I this is like an extra little bonus, you know, cherry on top for for the wonderful day that we had.
Marco:
I haven't actually seen this because the the version of Safari that is still the live version for Big Sur is unfortunately still the version I'm still using.
Marco:
But I tell you one thing, you know, you know, people always upgrade their versions of iOS for stupid reasons like they want to get the new emoji.
Marco:
If Monterey has this nice tab design with Safari and Big Sur doesn't, I will upgrade to Monterey on day one.
Marco:
That's how much I hate these terrible blob tabs.
John:
It's the same theme as Apple fixing laptops.
John:
We're desperate to get what we used to have.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But in this case, we'll get to the laptop stuff in a minute, but a lot of the criticism the laptops have seen are like, oh, they're just bringing us back 10 years or whatever.
Marco:
And no, in the laptop's case, they actually are moving forward into quite a number of areas that are very important, whereas Safari, we literally just want them to give us what we had before.
Marco:
But at least it didn't take them five years to do it this time.
Casey:
Hooray!
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So without further ado, let's talk at least the chip section of the new MacBook Pros.
Casey:
So John Ternus came out briefly to talk about how they're, quote, completely reimagining, quote, the MacBook Pro.
Casey:
And we are going to have to revisit the City of Chips image that, John, you put this together.
Casey:
Is that correct?
Casey:
This was your image?
John:
I was always surprised when I look at how long ago these things were.
John:
This was May.
John:
May 2021.
John:
as evidenced by the tweet I tweeted about it, and the date in the URL.
John:
So this is when we were talking about the rumors, I forget where the source of rumors, but I think it was Grumman, had the rumors about what the various dies would be, the jade seed die, jade seed chop, all that stuff, like for the future max.
John:
And I was so fascinated by the rumors that I said, I'm going to mock this up.
John:
I'm going to draw what these would be like based on the rumors and specs or whatever.
John:
And this is May, right?
John:
So this section of the event, where they said, let's talk about chips,
John:
They basically announced Jade C Die and Jade C Chop, more or less exactly as the rumors indicated.
John:
Obviously, these fanciful diagrams that I make that have no bearing on the actual floor plan of the chip were not a match for anything in the event.
John:
But the number of components represented, which is the whole point of these abstract diagrams,
John:
was right on the money so they bought out uh johnny surugi to talk about it um and they introduced well they started by saying and we have a new amazing chip blah blah blah and we're calling it m1 pro and between the last show where we all made our name predictions that we'll talk about later um and uh the event we actually did hear the rumor i think again german got it a couple days before that m1 pro and m1 max were rumored names um
John:
So it wasn't actually a surprise.
John:
I didn't get the shock of saying, what do you mean M1 Pro?
John:
Because I'd heard the name before.
John:
But I was hoping the rumors weren't true.
John:
But they were.
John:
Not only does it ruin our planned t-shirt design, but it's also... We'll talk about the names in a little bit, probably in the after show.
John:
But here's the chip.
John:
And they showed it and they said, here are the specs.
John:
And it's got eight performance cores and two efficiency cores and a 16-core GPU and a 16-core neural engine.
John:
And the RAM is up to 32 gigs.
John:
And a lot of people were flipping out on Twitter when that came up on the scene.
John:
Like, oh, no, 32.
John:
Wasn't that John's big fear that's going to cap out at 32?
John:
But I did not fear because the rumor that Gurman had said for the names was M1 Pro and M1 Max.
John:
And I said, oh, well, this is just the M1 Pro.
John:
The M1 Max will surely have 64 gigs.
John:
And spoiler alert, it did.
John:
So anyway, these are the specs.
John:
But the other thing is, this is Jade C. Chop.
John:
He's just describing Jade C. Chop.
John:
He just looked at the graph and said, yep, check off the marks.
John:
Yep, that's exactly what it was.
John:
16 core, all the whole thing.
John:
um but then they started to get into the stuff that we didn't know which is like how does this thing perform not just how many execution units does it have but what is it like what do we do and so one of the first things they talked about was they doubled the memory interface to 200 gigabytes per second which is apparently three times what the m1 was um and from what ann and tech can tell they it used to be 128 bit bus and now it's 256 bit bus and they said the old one was lp ddr 4x and now it's lp ddr 5 um
John:
did they say it was five nanometers in the keynote?
John:
They did.
John:
Yes.
John:
They, they specifically mentioned it.
John:
All right.
John:
They didn't, obviously they didn't tell us if it's the, like, I should remember the N five and whatever the new P or something.
John:
Yeah.
John:
We did it.
John:
They didn't go into that level detail.
John:
So we still don't know.
John:
It's got twice as many transistors as an M one.
John:
Um,
John:
And they talked about how much faster it is than the old thing.
John:
You know, 16 GPU cores, which is double what the M1 has.
John:
So it's about twice as fast because that's how GPU cores work.
John:
It's convenient.
John:
All sorts of video acceleration, lots of good stuff that we all love.
John:
And so that was not surprising at all.
John:
But what it meant was that if that was dead on and we have the M1 Pro name,
John:
And that became true.
John:
Then it's time for M1 Max, which is the... Well, hold on.
Casey:
That is true.
Casey:
But you skipped over a couple of quick things.
Casey:
First of all, two external displays, still the case on the M1 Pro, which is a little bit surprising to me.
Casey:
I'm surprised there wasn't more support for more displays.
Casey:
But I called out a quote right at the beginning of Johnny's presentation that I thought was interesting.
Casey:
And he said, we started by re-architecting the chip fabric to enable the system on a chip to scale.
Casey:
didn't say how far it wanted to scale, just that they wanted to be able to scale.
Casey:
And that brings me back to your City of Chips image where, you know, I forget the name of them, I don't have the image up in front of me, but the basically forthcoming Mac Pro City of Chips is a metropolis of chips, but all the same stuff, right?
Casey:
And so it kind of hinted to me, and I'm probably reading the tea leaves a little too strongly, but it hinted to me that they're basically taking the M1 and making it so that they can multiply it.
Casey:
And
Casey:
And I thought that that was unsurprising, but also interesting.
John:
We'll get to that because where you see the big graphics later in the thing, I have some stuff to say about that theory.
John:
But yeah, so this is the chop version.
John:
And then a Jade C die is the M1 Max.
John:
And this is going to be difficult on a podcast.
John:
M1 space M-A-X.
John:
It sounds exactly like M1 space M-A-C-S.
John:
Good job, Apple.
John:
Really real helpful there.
John:
Yeah, the M1 Max have the M1 Max in them.
John:
It's great.
Yeah.
John:
so same deal it's it's eight performance cores two efficiency cores 32 core gpu which is four times faster than the m1 you can just do the math in case you haven't figured out if you know if you're comparing the same gpu cores it scales pretty much linearly um so yeah uh and uh
John:
The RAM is from 32 to 64.
John:
So there's your 64 gig thing.
John:
Again, at this point in the presentation, they're just talking about chips.
John:
We don't know what are these chips going to go into.
John:
We all know they're going to MacBook Pros.
John:
But anyway, the fact that they're talking about these chips and we know they're going to MacBook Pros.
John:
Yay, MacBook Pros was 64 gigs.
John:
And they doubled the memory bandwidth again.
John:
So this one does 400 gigabytes per second.
John:
um which is six times what the m1 has and a 512 bit interface is this just using like two different chips like is it like you know the c chop only uses one uh memory chip and then the c die uses two memory chips maybe it's the other way that they're the uh the chop uses two and the die uses four i think okay yeah that's what it so yeah you saw the diagrams where it shows like the mickey mouse ears of the ram oh yeah because i guess the m1 had two chips next to it
John:
yeah it's it's two and four and you'll again when we get to the anatech section you'll see the little memory interfaces labeled by anatech on the article um so yeah this is uh jade c die um and here we are on the anatech article so there's the they go into detail on this apple itself in the presentation put up a picture that is ostensibly of the actual like chips like the the actual silicon if you chop the top off of a chip and you could actually see all the transistors um
John:
So ostensibly, this is what Apple is showing.
John:
So they show the M1.
John:
It's the one where it's like everything's like rainbow colored because the features are so tiny.
John:
They refract the light or whatever.
John:
Then they show the M1 Pro and then they show the M1 Max.
John:
And I hope Marco will put this as the chapter art.
John:
But if not, you can just go to the presentation and fast forward to 20 minutes and seven seconds and see the diagram.
John:
What I want you to notice, those of you who are looking at the show notes, which I guess is just Marco and Casey.
John:
And again, we don't know how accurate these are, and we'll get to that in a moment, but ostensibly these are the real chips.
John:
If you take the M1 Pro, which is Jade C Chop, and you grab that thing, and you place it over the top of M1 Max, it essentially matches up.
John:
The M1 Pro is just the M1 Max with literally the bottom chopped off.
John:
Just like when we were talking about, what does that mean, chop?
John:
And we had someone in the silicon industry say, here's what it means.
John:
It means you just chop the bottom of the thing off.
John:
The picture Apple showed, you could have just taken the M1 Max and used like
John:
the you know rectangular selection tool and grab the top half of it and that's the m1 pro right because the bottom half is all those other gpu cores and the other two memory interfaces so here is the anatech article and they have the blocks labeled and then the m1 pro they show here's here's the cpu part with the eight performance cores and the two efficiency cores away from the corner there's the little neural engine you see the 16 core gpu taking up most of the space and then you see the 128 bit lp ddr5 memory interface and
John:
one on the left and one on the right and that's where these sort of ram ears hang off right uh and that's the chop but then when you go to the max it's exactly the same as the chop except for this gpu cores keep going and there's two more memory interfaces for the other set of ears that two more 128 bit lp ddr5 memory interfaces
John:
So there's the rumors come to life.
John:
That's what they've built.
John:
But we have to mention that the Macs can support up to four video screens.
John:
Well, actually, I think it's more than that.
John:
It'll do a 3, 6K.
John:
Well, we're talking about machines.
John:
We're talking about chips and not machines.
John:
We'll get to the machine in a second.
John:
But anyway, it has more video decode stuff as well.
John:
Now, as for these floor plan things, there's been a lot of...
John:
consternation about looking at them because if you look at the m1 max and you say okay i see how like it's just the top half is the same as the m1 pro but look at the bottom half even if you don't know what you're looking at you can just sort of pattern match do you guys both see like the two little e's facing each other yeah oh yeah and then do you also see if you look at the 16 core npu in the m1 pro uh on an attack diagram you see that little feature there
John:
oh yeah i see yeah the neural processing it's like copied and pasted from that do you see another one of those on this chip it's not copied and pasted because it's different like shading do you see where the other one is like in the bottom left half right there are elements in the m1 mac max that look like they are duplications of elements from the top of the m1 pro thing
John:
Which seems weird because the M1 Max still just has a 16-core neural engine.
John:
But if you look at the floor plan of the M1 Max in Apple's own picture, there's a whole second 16-core neural engine sitting down in the bottom half of the chip.
John:
And so a bunch of people who are, you know, silicon mavens were...
John:
uh speculating about that getting back to what casey said so here's what wild crack said on twitter uh the m1 max die shot shows a duplicated npu and many other repeat components at the bottom of the chip maybe apple is duplicating these structures on the die shot to mask what is really there which is chip to chip logic for mac pro with four m1 max dies on one package
John:
And Mike Goldsmith says, well, that could be true, but they could also just use additional PCIe interfaces to link the chips together.
John:
Looking at the images, I don't think they need to take that much artistic license.
John:
And reality is they may have indeed duplicated certain IP.
John:
So it's possible that they are printing a whole second neural engine in that spot.
John:
But it's also possible that Apple is somewhat faking this floor plan diagram to hide what is actually there.
John:
it seems more likely to me that we just don't know what that thing is and even though it looks like it's exactly the same shape as the 60 core neural engine that it maybe only comes into play when you connect four of these together or two of these together for the mac pro and then suddenly that part of the chip is active like maybe it's kind of like a redundancy thing where if one of those is bad they just use the other one you know what i mean um but either way
John:
part of the question about like, and I want to, you know, we're going to get to the MacBook Pros in a second.
John:
Part of the question about the bigger computers is, okay, this is Jade C die.
John:
That's the first half of the diagram is like, you've got the M1, Jade C die and Jade C chop has come to fruition just as the prophecy foretold.
John:
The second part of the diagram, the bottom is Jade 2C die and 4C die, which are Mac pro size chips, or maybe even iMac pro size chips.
John:
But if you look at the size of the M1 max, which is basically Jade C die,
John:
you can't really print something four times that big we talked about this for like you can't make a single die right now the size of jade 4c die in any kind of reasonable economical way so you're going to probably print a bunch of jc dies that's why it's called jc die and you put them in a multi-chip package so you don't print them all together you print multiple ones but then they have to talk to each other somehow so there's got to be some kind of interconnect interface and maybe that's at the edges of the chips and so on and so forth right
John:
but it also probably means that now we know exactly how big this stuff and that those rumors were true that if you're thinking there's going to be a single die the size of jade 4c die that seems highly highly highly unlikely given the massive size of that thing so you know as the my little graphic from may says jade c die the building block for mac for pro mac system on the chips the building block meaning this is the thing they're going to make and they're either going to give you like three-fourths of one the chop and
John:
one which is the m1 pro max or two or four in a multi-chip package using some magic that we don't quite understand so stay tuned for that with the pro max but um and also the other thing to keep in mind is this was may here are the chip that was the rumor in may here are the chips by the time we get to the the period of like the mac pro it could be like a year from now and these rumors could be stale or wrong
John:
So I just want to throw that out there as well, that, you know, the first half coming true, like by the time you get to the second part of the diagram, a lot might have changed, especially if the new Mac Pro comes out in December 2022, which it seems like it might.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I mean, on the timeline, I think what's interesting is, you know, we this again, there's rumors, as you said, been here since May and.
Marco:
Gotta say, Gurman nailed it on this one.
Marco:
Like, this all so far has panned out.
Marco:
Like, exactly as he said it would.
Marco:
So, you know, good job, Gurman.
Marco:
There was a rumor that came out, I think, yesterday that there's going to be an iMac with a 120Hz ProMotion screen coming out this coming spring.
Marco:
If that ends up panning out, you know, display leaks, which is what this is based on, tend to be somewhat reliable.
Marco:
And so if that pans out, then the schedule that we might have is, you know, all the Jade, C-Dye, and C-Chop, you know, now known as M1 Pro and M1 Max, those products are out now, and this is it.
Marco:
And we didn't get the Mac Mini or the iMac with these products in it, which is curious.
Marco:
But maybe what we're going to have then is in the spring, a spring event where we get what will most likely be called the iMac Pro at the larger 27 or 30 inch size, whatever it ends up being.
Marco:
Possibly using Jade 2C die, so two M1 Maxes.
Marco:
And then maybe the new Mac Mini there that also has that as an option, maybe if it fits.
Marco:
I don't even know if it'll fit.
Marco:
And then maybe the Mac Pro comes either at that event or later in the year.
Marco:
Because
Marco:
It sure seems like this two-year timeline is going, like, we're going to be taking all of it.
Marco:
It's not going to be, like, you know, accelerated early.
Marco:
They're going to take all of it.
Marco:
So it would not surprise me if the spring event we get iMac Pro, possibly, like, quote, Mac Mini Pro, whatever that would be.
Marco:
And those would be the 2C, rather, the dual M1 Macs designs.
Marco:
And then maybe WBC or maybe later next fall, that's when we get the new Mac Pro with quad M1 Maxes.
Marco:
And at that point, the M1 core would be pretty much done.
Marco:
It would be two years old at that point.
Marco:
And then maybe we get that same spring event.
Marco:
We get the rumored MacBook Air with the first M2.
Marco:
And then maybe like later that fall, maybe we get the first M2 Pro and M2 Max products.
Marco:
So we'll see what happens.
Marco:
But I think the springtime will answer a lot of questions for us with like filling in most of the rest of the product line.
John:
Before we leave behind the Pro Max that weren't introduced at this event, the question of what J2C die and J4C die would be called, because Apple, being the wonderful naming company they are, decided to call their big one Max.
John:
What's bigger than Max?
John:
Ultra Max?
John:
Max Plus!
John:
You could just say it has two or four M1 Maxes inside it.
John:
We don't know, but they've kind of...
John:
they've messed they painted themselves into a little bit of a naming corner if they had just called it m1x they could have called the mac pro and m1z or who knows anyway they'll figure it out the names don't mean anything but it's a bit of a conundrum well we'll see what they do with that um so for we just gave the specs on all these things but actually and as we'll find out when we go to the products we're talking about now they give variants based on how many things don't work on the chip they printed right so you can get the m1 pro in three different variants with
John:
eight or 10 cpu cores and again they all have i think 10 cpu cores but some maybe sometimes some of them don't work and you get a cheaper one um and the gpu cores you can get them with 14 or 16 so you can the pairs are you can get 814 1014 and 1016 and again that's all the exact same chip it's all jade c chop and 24 right can't you get 24
John:
not on the pro i don't believe oh sorry this is very confusing it is because like remember the chop is just the max with a bunch of gpu cores like they've been chopped off right so anyway so yeah the m1 pro it's the same chip all the time just depends on how much crap is broken on it so the cheaper ones have more broken stuff right
John:
um and then m1 max m1 max comes in two variants it comes in a 10 cpu core and 24 gpu cores and a 1032 right so the 1032 is everything working on the big chip and the 1016 is everything working on the small chip um but that's a quite like obviously they're you know that's another mac type of thing like they tend not to they don't do that with iphone chips you don't have a choice of like well i can get one with how many cores working out they all have to work right
John:
and even for the laptop ones but as they get as you get into bigger and bigger chips and you're gonna get more errors or whatever they have to find a way to make money off of those and they do it by saying well we could throw this away and make zero dollars off it or we could just disable the cores that didn't come out right from the oven and sell it in a cheaper mac and i think that's great because a lot of people don't need either all those gpu cores or all the cpu cores or if you can save 200 bucks right to sacrifice two cpu cores
John:
It's worth it if you're just gonna be web browsing and stuff on it or you just, you know, you want a little bit more GPU grunt than an Air or the lesser Pro.
John:
So kudos to Apple for actually offering all of these variants.
John:
I know it's confusing.
John:
It's a little bit of a, I already saw people asking, I don't know, should I get the eight or the 10 CPU cores or should I pay extra for the GPU cores or whatever?
John:
GPU is easier.
John:
It's like,
John:
You know if you care about graphics.
John:
There's something you're doing that uses the GPU that's slower.
John:
You'll know how much faster it will be because it scales linearly.
John:
CPU is harder because people don't know if they're using all the CPU cores, but, you know, given that the only choices for CPU cores is one variant has eight and all the rest have ten, it simplifies it a little bit, so...
John:
I like that there's variations and I like that there's some pricing difference.
John:
And as we'll see when we get to the actual products, which I promise are coming up, Apple was pretty nice in the pricing.
John:
So it all works out.
John:
But before we get to the products, we have to talk about performance.
John:
Oh, great.
John:
You got all this crap.
John:
What's the performance life?
John:
And it's time for Apple's favorite charts, which I don't know what we're going to call these.
John:
They're like the sloping line charts.
John:
They've used them for all the Apple Silicon stuff.
John:
It's a bunch of these weeping lines.
John:
And honestly, I think it does not convey what they're trying to convey.
John:
in a way that is understandable to most people, which is kind of a shame.
Casey:
You know, I'm glad you said that because I was looking at these.
Casey:
I rewatched the presentation this morning and I'm looking at these graphs and I like to think of myself as not a complete moron.
Casey:
And I'm looking at these graphs and I do not feel like they do a good job of explaining what they're trying to explain at all.
Casey:
So I'm glad I'm not the only one that is dissatisfied.
John:
Yeah, because they're trying to show two pieces of information.
John:
They're not just like people need simple charts, which is just like there's only one dimension.
John:
The taller bar is better or the taller bar or the shorter bar is better, right?
John:
But these are trying to show things in two dimensions.
John:
One dimension is power.
John:
One dimension is speed.
John:
And so that's why you get these curves.
John:
And then it's not easy for people to look and say, which curve do I like better?
John:
I mean, I guess the one that's purple because Apple made it purple.
John:
But anyway, we'll get to that chart in a second.
John:
I just want to start off with some observations from folks on Twitter that I thought were fun based on the March of Progress.
John:
So this is from Scott Perry.
John:
He says...
John:
M1 Max's DRAM is as fast as Intel's OnDie LLC, last level cache, from 2016.
John:
So the DRAM, the main RAM, like the main pool of RAM, is as fast as what Intel used as last level cache in 2016.
John:
Also, between this and the SSD performance, which is as fast as RAM was 10 years ago, Apple is making a mockery of memory hierarchy.
John:
We didn't mention that, but we'll see it in a second, but they did make the SSDs even faster.
John:
It's like 7.3 gigabytes per second in these products that we haven't yet talked about, right?
John:
And Josh Rogers says, so these aren't just any GPUs that Apple is comparing against in its charts.
John:
They came out of nowhere with NVIDIA competitive graphics, right?
John:
And that's what the charts, again, failed to communicate.
John:
They show these lines and they say,
John:
Here's the M1 Max against... Again, they're just... They haven't even shown the machines yet.
John:
They're just... The line is labeled with the chip.
John:
There's a disembodied chip represented by this curve right here.
John:
And here is a compact Pro PC with laptop graphics.
John:
And here is a high-end PC laptop.
John:
It's this high-end PC laptop graphics with no hyphen.
John:
Good job, Apple.
John:
Anyway, what the heck are those machines?
John:
What are they talking about?
John:
And why is Josh Rogers saying it's competitive with NVIDIA?
John:
Well, if you look at very, very, very tiny type that Apple didn't tout anywhere...
John:
The things they're comparing it against, the big one is a gaming laptop called the MSI GE76 Raider, if you thought Apple had bad names, and then it goes on with more letters after that, right?
John:
That's the gaming laptop they're talking about.
John:
And the other one is a Razer Blade 15, Advanced Mode, NVIDIA, blah, blah, blah.
John:
Anyway, the big honking MSI laptop has GeForce RTX 3080 laptop GPU with 16 gigs of VRAM.
John:
which is a really good laptop GPU.
John:
It's not as good as like a 3080 or 3090 desktop, but it's a really good GPU, right?
John:
And if you look at Apple's graph, you'll see that since performance is on the y-axis, that the NVIDIA RTX 3080 actually goes up a little bit higher than the M1 Max.
John:
Again, it's hard to see.
John:
in this diagram like try you have to like draw a line with your eyes and say hey the gray line actually goes a little bit higher than the purple line it totally does it does go higher than the purple line that means that laptop is faster than than whatever is represented by m1 max in this thing which is probably a macbook pro that we're going to talk about in a second right but what apple wants you to see in this two-dimensional graph is but look how much farther to the left the purple line is
John:
and so here is someone found a review of the msi ge76 radar the name that's on the tip of everyone's tongue today right i invite you to read the review just to get a glimpse of this laptop uh but here's a quote uh msi says the radar has a 99 watt hour battery a 99.9 watt hour battery and we all know that's because 100 is the most you can bring on a plane right so it's got the biggest battery you can put in it just like apple's big laptop
John:
But our testing showed around three hours max out of the laptop during standard use.
John:
You can get a tad more with battery settings and tweaks, turning brightness down and lighting off, but it's still not amazing.
John:
So this laptop that is marginally faster than the M1 Max here, M-A-X, gets three hours of battery life.
John:
So that's what this diagram is trying to show.
John:
See how far it is to the left?
John:
That's because we use so much less power.
John:
So we're almost as fast as an RTX 3080 laptop GPU, but we use massively less power, like 100 watts less power, which they did put in purple on this diagram, right?
John:
and so that's you know that's their performance story for these laptops and i think that if i made a product that was competitive with like one of the best laptop gpus that you can buy i would name the chip i wouldn't say high-end pc laptop graphics or compact pc laptop graphics everyone wants to know well apple laptops are good but they're not as fast as i would name it uh maybe naming it would get into the thing it's like well who cares because you can't play any games on the mac anyway because it doesn't run 32-bit games from intel and rosetta is
John:
slow and games aren't ported to m1 and there's all sorts of reasons why it may not be good for quote unquote games but there's tons of other things you can do with the gpu what this is trying to say is uh the gpu cores in here as we knew from before they're really good and the straightforward math of multiplying them by how many gpu cores that math works and when that math works the result is absolutely amazing gpu cores and the numbers we didn't have before when we were doing this back of the envelope is okay yeah but how much power the answer is much less than you think
Marco:
Yeah, I think this is why I don't think we're ever going to get a Mac Pro with Apple Silicon that has slots for other manufacturers' GPUs.
Marco:
Now, maybe they'll put slots in to put more of Apple's GPUs.
Marco:
Even that, I think, is a stretch.
Marco:
I really think that the way forward for the Mac Pro in the age of Apple Silicon is just...
Marco:
more of apple's chips that have more gpu cores in them like as we're seeing with this strategy like i this this slide right here shows yes this is still in laptop land and we're not in desktop land and i know things are bigger and different and hotter and have giant fans and hair dryers and everything but this shows right here apple does not need third-party gpus
Marco:
For their purposes, for the computers they make and what they sell and who they sell them to and the app they need to run, Apple's showing right here, we don't need NVIDIA, we don't need AMD, that's it.
John:
So the thing about the pro ones, though, is that because you can have multiple GPUs in there, like the show many moons ago when we did this, at the back of the envelope, we said that it was totally plausible the Jade 4C die would be competitive with the best desktop single GPUs out there.
John:
And that's still totally true.
John:
In fact, it may have even underestimated based on the performance of this one, right?
John:
But...
John:
If you get a Mac Pro today, you aren't limited to just picking a single one of the best GPU.
John:
You can get four of the best GPU.
John:
And there's no way that you can compete with four of the best GPUs.
John:
That still leaves the land of slot open.
John:
It's not what Marco said is true.
John:
Doesn't mean you have to put NVIDIA or AMD in there.
John:
You can put those Apple, like Apple, Apple has these GPUs like, oh, but they only make integrated GPUs.
John:
you could take these gpus that they've put on this thing and put them on a card easy like they it's there like the gpu is there yes it's on the same die as the thing yes unified memory is weird and different whatever but if apple wanted to it's not like they have to start from zero to say oh we have to make an external graphics card what will we ever do they're more than 50 of the way they're already with what we've seen them release so if they really wanted to they could make an apple gpu card
John:
I'm not sure they want to.
John:
That would only mean that for the purposes of that Apple thinks its computer should be used for, that they can get by with this.
John:
And whatever purpose you were using your four AMD Vega two GPUs for, like whatever that purpose is,
John:
apple will say like say you were say you were trying to do uh you know pro res 8k pro res video decoding apple say okay but you don't need four gps to do it anymore we're able to do that now with less which they demonstrated later like that this thing can do more 8k pro res video decoding than at the current mac pro with the afterburner card right so for the things that apple thinks you should use this for
John:
They may say, yeah, you can't have that many teraflops of GPU power, but you don't need them because the thing you were doing, whatever it is, video rendering, decoding, whatever, you can do that even faster than you could before.
John:
So don't worry about the four cards.
John:
Having four cards is not a feature.
John:
Being able to do the job that you could do with two cards with four GPUs is what you want it for.
John:
So Apple could make that argument or they could just sell their own GPUs or they could continue to put third party GPUs.
John:
We don't know.
John:
It's not supposed to be talking about the Mac Pro.
John:
Let's move on.
Casey:
I'm sorry, before we move on really quickly, the MSI GE76 Raider, if you look at this pocket lint review and you scroll down, there's a close-up image of the left-hand side of the laptop.
Casey:
I just love this.
Casey:
If I'm looking at this right, the humongous exhaust fan is...
Casey:
The next to it is a USB A port where it is aligned to the top of the exhaust fan.
Casey:
Next to that is a USB C port where the bottom of the USB C port is aligned to the bottom of the USB A port.
Casey:
And then I believe next to that is a headphone port where I believe the top.
Casey:
of the headphone port is aligned again with the top of the other two ports but the usbc port is kind of floating in the middle scroll down a little more and i dare you not to vomit over the font choice for this keyboard it screams i'm an 18 year old and i like to game it's got it's got rgb lights underneath it though so it's cool oh that's so bad okay so i'll i'm going to disclose something now i don't want to get into it but uh tiff just upgraded her gaming pc and
Marco:
to the other PC in this diagram.
Marco:
The Razer Blade 15 with the RTX 3080.
Marco:
It is so much nicer than this crazy-ass thing.
Marco:
I mean, Casey, in MSI's defense...
Marco:
Anybody who's buying this G Raider thing, I don't think they're looking at aesthetics as a reason to buy this.
Casey:
I wouldn't even say that.
Casey:
I would say that these aesthetics are probably good for the kind of buyer that would want to buy this computer.
John:
Yeah, that's what they want.
John:
They want a lot of lights and they want it to look all cool and computery.
John:
We didn't put this diagram in the show notes, but remember the thing they said, but look how much worse performance these things get on battery power and all the little curved lines shrunk down?
John:
yeah yeah is that really true that like if you if you unplug this this laptop from power it gets like 1 18th the gpu performance that seems wrong i know by by default they do scale things back a lot of that is because like a power saving feature no many of these have dual gpus and and so they'll switch over to the intel one on battery power um so it's that's a common thing that i was running into but yeah all right so maybe you can disable that and maybe that's where they get the three hours of battery life is like well you're not going to use the integrated graphics so just make the discrete running all the time anyway
John:
We're not getting a piece of laptops.
John:
It doesn't matter.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Thank you so much to Stripe for being awesome, frankly, and for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
So we had a brief appearance from everybody's pal, Craig.
Casey:
And honestly, I didn't think there was that much to be covered here, except Craig specifically said you can compile more code on a single charge, which was exciting because I've been doing that a lot lately.
Casey:
He also noted that every app made available, every pro app made available by Apple is optimized for Apple Silicon.
Casey:
And there's 10,000 universal apps and plugins on the App Store, just worth noting.
Casey:
And then finally, between John Ternus and Trudy, we got to see the new MacBook Pros.
Casey:
Holy fucking shit, you guys.
Casey:
I'm so excited for these.
Casey:
I'm so excited.
Marco:
When this video was playing, I was just like, every two seconds, oh my god, they did that!
Oh my god!
Marco:
god they did that like i was i was just so giddy over i couldn't believe and and the funny thing here was that there weren't a lot of surprises because the rumor mill had been surprisingly accurate literally every i think everything that had credible rumors behind it i think we got it all
Casey:
Even the not credible ones, like the notch, even that happened.
Marco:
Yeah, that came in kind of last minute, but that ended up being correct.
Marco:
And there are some things like I did not expect 120 hertz.
Marco:
That was very new.
Marco:
But so much of this was rumored.
Marco:
And when we were talking about it over the last two years, maybe this has been rumored, when we were talking about it,
Marco:
we would always disclaim like, well, if this is actually true and maybe we'll get some of this, maybe one, maybe half of this stuff is true, you know, at best, because even we couldn't believe how much that we would possibly get.
Marco:
That was, you know, what in a good way would be called fan service.
Marco:
You know, it's, it's changes to this laptop that were things that we didn't think Apple would do just because they're Apple and they're stubborn and they have their way and they always think they're right.
And,
Marco:
And yet they did them all.
Marco:
They made this.
Marco:
And I understand.
Marco:
Again, we'll get to some of the complaints that people have about this.
Marco:
I understand that not everybody is pleased.
Marco:
I think the ones who aren't pleased are wrong.
Marco:
But, you know, we'll get there.
John:
I think if you listened to last week's episode, I was the one who said there's no reason we can't get all this.
John:
If they really have changed the ethos, as I said in the last episode of their design, there is no reason for them to try to bargain away any of these things.
John:
So there's no reason we can't get it all.
John:
My question was, have they really changed their ethos?
John:
And the answer is 100% yes.
John:
They have changed the ethos.
John:
Everything about this computer says we're now thinking differently about how to make a laptop.
John:
It is so clearly just a different philosophy embodied in every aspect.
John:
Obviously, when they did the flyby, they showed you all the things that we know.
John:
They're showing us the ports.
John:
They're showing us the keyboard.
John:
They're showing us all, like, we're all super excited about it.
John:
And it also looks like the rumor things or whatever.
John:
But yeah, this is a new design ethos.
John:
So I guess we could start with, like, physically, what are these things like?
John:
Well, they look like the rumors.
John:
Surprise.
John:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
I was so, like, giddy.
Marco:
It's just, like, seeing the ports come around and, like,
Marco:
Can we get a picture of Shruti Haldia, like the Shepard Fairey Obama thing, like just hope, like just ports.
Marco:
Like, I don't know, just whatever it would be.
Marco:
We must bow down to Shruti for giving us everything we wanted.
Marco:
Like, oh my God, I can't believe how good this is.
Marco:
And John, like, you know, what you were saying last week about, you know, we can have it all.
Marco:
I remember something you said, I think three years ago, stuck in my mind that you said, we were talking about like what we want in the next MacBook Pro and we were kind of,
Marco:
You know, saying, well, I would love if they just give us one little thing, just give us one port back or one little change.
Marco:
And you said, John, I'm tired of the bargaining.
Marco:
Why can't we do it all?
Marco:
Why can't the laptops just be good again?
Marco:
And for the entire 2016 to 2021-ish, you know, there's a lot of things that went poorly in the world during this time.
Marco:
A lot of things that made people feel like things were just bad and that things couldn't get better.
Marco:
And this got so much better in all these ways that we thought we'd be lucky to get one or two of these, and we got all of them.
Marco:
It's such a different feeling.
Marco:
This feels so not only validating that the things that we were complaining about, it wasn't just us.
Marco:
And Apple came around to that many of their customers felt this way, so much so that they convinced Apple to feel this way.
Marco:
And that's a huge thing.
Marco:
And then – so to have our own feelings be validated because there was so much time during the 2016 laptop era, you know, first with the butterfly keyboards.
Marco:
That was the biggest problem where we just felt like – we felt like we were the crazy ones.
Marco:
We felt like, you know, Apple keeps saying these are really good and, you know –
Marco:
they don't seem good in these pretty big ways to us and then they would release an update hey here's the here's the new MacBook Pro update and it would be exactly the same in all the bad ways like nothing would be changed and they would keep saying we made it better we made it better and then it would still be terrible and to finally have something that's actually
Marco:
really really great i mean unless again none of us have these yet so maybe there's some kind of major downside that we'll find out later but honestly i doubt it it seems like they really have their heads on straight and they seem to put a lot into this and i am just so relieved and and thrilled and i'm really excited again about the macbook pro and it's been so long since i've been able to say that
Casey:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
Casey:
I am super amped to get the computer that I bought, which we'll talk about later.
Casey:
I cannot tell you how excited I am for it, and I am just so much more excited than I expected to be.
Casey:
I knew I was going to like this event, and I pretty much always like Apple events, but this one, it just, I loved it.
Casey:
Shruti did an incredible job of introducing everything and of kind of acknowledging the foibles of the past without dwelling on it, without really falling on her own sword, which is a good thing when you're in her position.
Casey:
I'm just...
Casey:
I'm overjoyed.
Casey:
I'm so excited.
Casey:
I like my laptop that I have now.
Casey:
I have a year old laptop and I've never been more excited.
Casey:
Even with the phone, I've never been more excited to dump your old hardware because even though this laptop is actually very good and it's probably going to be for sale if you're interested, contact me.
Casey:
It is very good, but I'm so excited for this new one.
Casey:
I am so amped.
Casey:
So we should probably, I could go another hour just gushing over how excited I am, but we should probably talk about it.
John:
Well, people miss this, but in the pre-flight, we were trying to say, you know, everyone, try to save your summary of how you feel about these laptops at the end.
John:
Marco made it pretty far, so let's give him credit.
John:
He made it past the chip section, but he, you know, what I'm saying is I echo Marco's sentiment.
John:
We all feel similarly, and yes, this is a very exciting event.
John:
This is John's excited voice.
John:
One thing we couldn't tell from the fly around or whatever, we could see that we got all the things that we wanted, but we couldn't tell, yeah, but like,
John:
how big are these compared to the other ones, right?
John:
Like, did they, the rumors were Marco was afraid they might make it thinner.
John:
At this point, we don't know how big the batteries are because we're just watching the video.
John:
Did they make it thinner?
John:
Did they make it thicker?
John:
It's so hard to eyeball this type of thing.
John:
So here are the stats that hopefully I got everything right on for the 16 inch.
John:
It is actually 0.02 inches thicker.
John:
So they did not try to make it thinner.
John:
That's the height.
John:
I'm not sure if that includes the feet or not, but the point is they didn't really try to make this thing thinner.
John:
It is either the same or a little bit thicker.
John:
The width, it is 0.08 inches narrower, so about the same.
John:
The depth, it is 0.09 inches deeper.
John:
The weight, it is almost half a pound heavier, again indicating that they were not going for thin and light.
John:
They were going for something else.
John:
They wanted it to be unleashed.
John:
They didn't want it to be thin and light.
John:
um and that then the interesting thing is the weight when you get it with the m1 pro is less than the weight if you get it with the m1 max oh i didn't notice and i don't think that's because of the part of the silicon chip that they chopped off for the jc chop it's probably like a heat dissipation like heat sink type stuff but anyway it's 0.4 pounds heavier than the outgoing 16 inch model in the m1 pro and it's 0.5 pounds heavier
John:
um so anyway it's 4.7 and 4.8 pounds uh depending on which one you get and they say they have a little disclaimer and all these things weight varies by configuration and manufacturing process oh interesting what does that mean config configuration sure like oh if you get the bigger chip we put a bigger heat sink in there we have a manufacturing process i'm not sure if this is legally easy you have to cover your bases because it'll be a few grams different depending if they got the copper or the aluminum version of part x or something like that it's a weird disclaimer
Marco:
Yeah, or even just how much of the aluminum case got milled out.
Marco:
That could be something.
Marco:
I think this is one of my big question marks here, and this kind of gets to what I bought, which I'll get to later, but one of my big question marks here is...
Marco:
i i would love to know what kind of internal differences there are between the different configurations because that weight difference as you mentioned that's not just the chip you know so does one of the figurations have a more you know appealing to me cooling system for instance like maybe one of them has a bigger heat sinker one of them has only one fan instead of two fans or who knows there could be differences like that there have been in the past with their with their previous models so
Marco:
I'm curious to see like once people get these and start seeing iFixit tear downs and stuff like that, what are the internal differences between the configurations?
Marco:
Because I don't think we know the full story yet.
John:
it's probably just like the the ps5 where they revised the manufacturing process and basically made put less less heat sink material in it so it weighs less basically 600 grams and people freaked out about the length saying oh i want the one with the bigger heavier heat sink because why would if you take out heat sink material that seems bad but then they tested them and measured them and it actually isn't that big of a difference it was all youtube controversy that you probably missed out on but i have to think that yeah but the one if the bigger chip is 0.1 pounds heavier it's probably heat pipes and heat sinks they i'm pretty sure all the 16 inches have two fans i don't think that's the difference but
John:
We will find out.
John:
The 14-inch, similar story.
John:
It is exactly the same thickness as the outgoing 4-port 13-inch Intel MacBook Pro.
John:
We're not comparing it to the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro, which is thinner.
John:
We're comparing it to its direct competitor, which is the one with, quote-unquote, all the ports.
John:
The 4-port Intel 13-inch MacBook Pro is 0.61 inches thick, and so is the 14-inch MacBook Pro.
John:
Um, width wise, it's 0.34 inches wider depth.
John:
That's 0.35 inches deeper and weight.
John:
It is again, 0.4 pounds heavier.
John:
Um, so it is 3.5 pounds instead of 3.1 pounds.
John:
So moral of the story in terms of size and weight, these are roughly the same size, but a little bit heavier and a little bit thicker.
John:
These are not going for, Hey, you're going to be amazed at how much thinner it is in last year's.
John:
What you're going to be amazed about these is the performance and the features and what it can do for you, not the extra millimeter we shave from it.
Marco:
And I'm so happy about that, too, because, you know, for years you've been saying, look, let the pro machines be pro machines.
Marco:
No one is saying like, wow, I wish my like video encoding laptop could be two millimeters thinner.
Marco:
Like that's nobody wants that at the cost of its ability to do those video encodes.
Marco:
Like the reason why you buy high-end hardware is not to make it as thin and light as possible.
Marco:
It's to do high-end tasks.
Marco:
And so the hardware should be designed to not compromise on the ability to do those high-end tasks to whatever degree possible.
Marco:
So for this whole past generation, it seemed like they were applying the same trade-offs to the entire lineup that you would apply to the 12-inch one-port MacBook 1.
Marco:
And that was so frustrating for pros who were like, no, I don't need a zero thickness keyboard.
Marco:
I don't need to have as few ports as possible.
Marco:
I don't need all this compromise.
Marco:
I want the high-end specs and make the computer whatever thickness it needs to be to accomplish that.
Marco:
And it seems like, again, they saw the light on this.
Marco:
They did this right.
Marco:
They said, you know what?
Marco:
Pros are okay with these things not getting thinner this year and actually getting heavier or bigger or whatever because what they want is pro hardware doing pro jobs without compromises.
Marco:
That's what pro hardware needs to be.
Marco:
And they did it, even going against what any commentator would have said a few years ago.
Marco:
Apple would never make the next generation of laptops thicker and heavier.
John:
but they did slash the same and it's and they seem to be better for it i'm just oh so happy so happy sorry go on yeah like i i think that it's not when we were talking about the ugly what the hell was it the raider msi raider thing that's not what these are like just to be clear it's still a thin spelt beautiful apple looking thing like it's
John:
basically the same ish the weight you probably will notice much more than the thickness but i you know like when people think oh i what you want is for them to make one of those giant gaming laptops with you know giant vents in the side and it weighs 15 pounds that's not this like these are still apple looking laptops what we're saying is just don't don't don't try to shave millimeters and they didn't so i'm happy with that in terms of the design again it looks like the rumors for people who remember the tie book the titanium uh power book
John:
That's the most similar historic Apple design because unlike the rumors, yes, this does have flat, quote unquote, flat sides.
John:
But unlike the rumors, it has absolutely has a curve at the bottom for you to get your fingers under it.
John:
And it also has fairly tall feet.
John:
So don't worry about not being able to pick these off off the table when we were talking about from the rumors.
John:
Because people were doing renders where it was like literally flat sides that just came to a right angle.
John:
That's not this.
John:
There is an absolute pretty big curve on the bottom.
John:
It's just not the same curve as we're used to.
John:
It's a curve like on the PowerBook G4 or on the Titanium PowerBook.
John:
The TyBook is the closest one because the top doesn't have the same curve as the bottom.
John:
The PowerBook G4 had...
John:
the same radius on the bottom and the top but the tie book had a big radius on the bottom and very little on the top so that's what these look like um you can just look at apple site and take a look at the pictures the feet are taller and more prominent why are the feet taller and more prominent uh the two obvious reasons you think they would be one better cooling because the taller the feet the more air you can get under it and two to help you pick it off the table even more right because it gives you a little bit more right height to get your fingers underneath the slightly flatter sides so
John:
i think i'll have to see these in person to see how like how does it hold together as a thing because i'm just so used to seeing like the current design the current design is beautiful i think like graceful sort of tapered edge with the you know tapered curve with the sharp edge kind of we all know what the current things look like these don't look like them and i don't really know what what it's going to be like to see one of these sitting on the table or to pick it up
John:
but i'm excited to have a new design because it is definitely about time as much as i love the old design as a as a sculpture this one seems also nice looking and is certainly better fit for purpose to marco's point and the other weird thing about this is hard to tell from the pictures but the bottom looks like it has like a carved out macbook pro like they etched into the case kind of deeply the words macbook pro
John:
I mean, I have the etched ATP pint glasses.
John:
And that's when I'm drinking out of them.
John:
I feel you can feel the etching with your fingers like it's an indentation.
John:
I kind of feel like that's going to be on these two.
John:
But since it's on the bottom, you're not going to see it when you're using it.
John:
And you wouldn't you wouldn't even really feel it when you're carrying it because you carry it by the edges.
John:
But that's an interesting design element.
John:
Some people really seem to hate it, but I think it's kind of cool.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, the bottom otherwise is, of most laptops, it's kind of this generic, well, you see feet and the dust on the feet and maybe some vents and screws and regulatory labels.
Marco:
So it's normally a pretty unappealing place to look.
Marco:
So to put something cool there, I'm fine with that.
Marco:
I don't see why people would have a major problem with that.
John:
battery life uh if in case it's not clear from the dimensions and the weight we just gave they didn't skimp on battery so the 14 inch has a 70 watt hour battery which is 12 more than the outgoing 13 inch um the 16 inch has 100 watt hour battery which is the most you can fit and still be allowed on planes in the u.s so that was pretty easy to predict but again they didn't shrink the battery
Marco:
Yet again, something that I feared.
Marco:
I said, I've been saying for weeks, like, oh, please don't shrink the battery.
Marco:
The battery life is so good on the M1s.
Marco:
And normally, you know, previous, you know, dysfunctional Apple would say any opportunity they'd take to shrink the battery and keep the same battery life, they would take it.
Marco:
And they didn't do that.
Marco:
They kept the 16-inch battery the same because they can't increase it, really.
Marco:
And they increased the 14.
Marco:
And that's, I think, one of the biggest reasons why the 14-inch is heavier than the outgoing 13-inch, in addition to it literally got bigger.
Marco:
But also, it has a substantially bigger battery.
Marco:
And again, in this context, for a pro laptop, I think that is the right trade-off.
Marco:
You want good battery life.
Marco:
You want great battery life.
Marco:
And it's achievable, so give it to us.
John:
So one more trade-off that they gave related to battery life is, and you'll see what the purpose of these machines is, obviously they can't make the 100 watt hour battery any bigger.
John:
They made the 14 inch one, you know, probably as much bigger as they could.
John:
But in many contexts, and they didn't really emphasize this, these laptops may not get as good battery life as, or certainly won't get as good battery life as their lesser powered M1 brethren.
John:
So the 13 inch M1 MacBook Pro gets better battery life than the 14 inch.
John:
Because the 14-inch is way faster and does more stuff.
John:
And so in the area of compromise, they said, look, if we're going to sacrifice battery life, let it be for performance.
John:
That's what they spend the battery life on.
John:
These do get better battery life than their predecessors, because obviously they're competing against Intel.
John:
Forget about, you know, whatever.
John:
But...
John:
These things have way more power hungry, hotter components inside them.
John:
They need these bigger batteries and they will chew them up.
John:
That's the point of the battery.
John:
It's there for the power to be used.
John:
So if you want, if you get this like, wow, it's got such a big battery, it's going to get great battery life.
John:
The 13 inch gets better battery life because it's less powerful.
John:
It has less stuff inside it.
John:
Right.
John:
And that's the proper trade off.
John:
You want the big monster hungry machine with all the cores.
John:
There's only so much battery we can fit in a 14 inch laptop.
John:
We make it as big as we can.
John:
But if you want maximum battery life, don't buy the thing with 10 cores.
John:
OK, that's just, you know, whatever, 64 gigs of RAM, 32 GPU cores, because, yes, you can get the 14 with all the good stuff in it.
John:
Right.
John:
That's what these machines are about.
John:
They're about power and they will spend all of their battery life on it.
John:
oh and then to charge those batteries that they have the fast charge thing which always worries me because always like shortening the battery life but anyway it will charge from zero to 50 percent in 30 minutes using the fast charge if you do the right charging dance which is all right what do i have to plug this into and what power brick and so like uh speaking of that this i think is the first time apple has ever let you pick which power brick you want when you buy it and that's probably not true i think there might have been a choice on some power book way back in the day but anyway
John:
If you buy the 14-inch and you pick the base model, you have a choice of which power brick you want.
John:
You can get the 67-watt power brick, which is the default, or for $20 more, you can get a 96-watt power brick.
John:
And then for the high-end 14-inch, you just get 96.
John:
And if you get the 16-inch, you get a 140-watt power brick with all of them, no matter what.
John:
And this was very confusing because, you know, it's like the old iPad, iPhone, which thing do I have to plug it into to get it charged at the maximum possible rate and all this other stuff.
John:
Jason Snell had a good breakdown that we will link in the show notes.
John:
That, I mean, I guess clears it up, but it's still kind of confusing.
John:
Anyway, he says, on the 14-inch models, the larger 96-watt USB-C power adapter is required for fast charging.
John:
You can fast charge either via MagSafe or via standard USB-C cable attached to that adapter.
John:
However, on the 16-inch model, all of which come with the 148-watt adapter, you can only do the ultra-fast charging via MagSafe.
John:
While there's a new specification that allows for much higher power delivery levels over USB ports, the Thunderbolt 4 USB 4 ports on the MacBook Pro don't support it.
John:
You can still charge via those ports, just not at the ultra-fast speed.
John:
So this is kind of an unfortunate timing issue.
John:
The USB-C power delivery spec does allow for, in one of the latest revisions, does allow for enough power to fast charge them, but these laptops don't have that.
John:
So if you want...
John:
50% of your 16-inch MacBook Pro's power to come in 30 minutes, you have to charge through MagSafe because the USB-C ports on that machine do not support that level of power delivery.
John:
But, you know, getting back to one more thing, and Mark was saying we get everything.
John:
Remember we were fretting a little bit, oh, if they bring back MagSafe, I'll kind of miss USB-C charging.
John:
No, you won't.
John:
Still charges via it.
John:
And you're like, oh, I don't get the mega fast charging.
John:
You don't have that now.
John:
so if you just wanted to preserve and and the reason they couldn't support it is like just you know the usbc power delivery spec like the the lead time these machines didn't allow it so they did everything we wanted for charging magsafe is back by the way if you look at the new magsafe port it's basically the same size as a usbc port in terms of thickness maybe a little bit thicker it's hard to tell in the pictures um but yeah this magsafe 3 as if magsafe wasn't confusing enough yes it's a thing on the back of your phone and it's also the power connector anyway um
John:
But you can also charge by all the USB-C ports.
John:
And the power bricks, I'm not quite sure why they give you the choice.
John:
Maybe you just want a smaller one for travel, right?
John:
But the fast charging, maybe it's because I'm just not used to it and don't have it, but I'm not sure how much of an attractive feature that would be.
John:
And I almost kind of wish with the 16-inch that there was a choice for...
John:
a smaller power brick because the 140 watt one is pretty darn big a smaller power brick that just didn't do fast charging but i can maybe they just need the 140 watt just to be able to handle like when this thing's running at full tilt or they don't want to revise this thing when later they put an even bigger chip in it but the power story is slightly confusing but basically
John:
You have all the options that you could ever want.
John:
Oh, and by the way, the MagSafe thing, it's just a cable.
John:
One end of it is USB-C that plugs into the power brick, and the other end is MagSafe.
John:
So unlike the old MagSafe things where the cable would get free and you'd have to throw out the whole power brick, that problem doesn't exist at all anymore either.
Casey:
I'm super excited about MagSafe coming back.
Casey:
I have caused laptops, my adorable, this one, I mean, I've never damaged any of them because of it, but I've caused them to fall off of my lap, off of the couch numerous times.
Casey:
In fact, more than the children, I think, have caused it to fall.
Casey:
And it's all because of power.
Casey:
And so I am super, super pumped to have MagSafe coming back.
Casey:
The only problem I have with this, and in fact, I think there's only two problems I really have with this new MacBook Pro.
Casey:
And number one, I'm going to want to get a gazillion MagSafe cables, which is going to be not cheap.
Casey:
How much is the cable alone?
John:
Yeah, they sell you the cable separately.
John:
Is it $50?
John:
Obviously, it comes with one in the box, so you don't have to worry about that.
John:
But if you want extra ones, they're not cheap.
John:
But they are like the nice cloth-covered thing.
John:
And third-party ones will surely...
John:
Well, I don't know.
John:
Will they surely be out?
John:
Because doesn't Apple like try to keep a tight rein on the MagSafe spec?
John:
I'm not sure if they let third parties do it.
John:
Anyway, knock off third party ones that may burn down your house.
John:
We'll probably be out soon for cheaper.
Casey:
The other problem I have with these MacBook Pros is have you seen the URL on Apple.com?
Casey:
It's Apple.com slash MacBook hyphen pro hyphen 14 hyphen and hyphen 16.
Casey:
Come on, guys.
John:
That's not great.
Casey:
It's not great.
John:
What I thought you were going to say is the problem related to charging with these is people are like, great, I have all these options.
John:
Now I don't have to occupy one of my Thunderbolt ports constantly with a thing that just does charging.
John:
But then people say, yeah, but there's only three Thunderbolt ports left.
John:
We'll talk about the parts in a little bit, but there are only three Thunderbolt ports.
John:
So if you thought you were getting back a Thunderbolt port by having MagSafe...
John:
You are not.
John:
There are only three of them.
John:
And then there's a MagSafe thing.
John:
And it's good that you don't have to occupy a Thunderbolt port with MagSafe, but you only have three left.
John:
If you're wondering why you only have three left, from what I've been able to determine, that is a limitation of the M1 Pro and the M1 Max.
John:
Now, Apple designed the M1 Pro and the M1 Max, so somebody inside Apple decided this is a reasonable trade-off.
John:
And when we get to what all the other ports available on the machine are, I'm kind of inclined to agree that this is a reasonable trade-off because, you know, surface area on that system on a chip is not free.
John:
You have to decide which features you're going to support and which you don't.
John:
And we haven't even got through all the things that this thing supports, and it supports a lot, and it's got a lot of ports and a lot of capabilities.
John:
Part of the beauty of Thunderbolt is three Thunderbolt ports gets you pretty darn far, especially if you're willing to dedicate one of them to a breakout box with a gazillion things on it, right?
John:
You only have a limited amount of bandwidth.
John:
Thunderbolt port seems so precious before because there was literally nothing, no other ports in the thing, but now we've got more.
John:
And so...
John:
Like people may be disappointed.
John:
They may wish that this wasn't a limitation of those ships.
John:
But if you're expecting that they just did this to save space on the case or something like that, again, from what I've been able to determine, that is not the case.
John:
If you are expecting there will never be an M1 Pro or M1 Max Mac with four Thunderbolt ports on it and all these other ports.
John:
And I think that tradeoff is reasonable and fine for what we got in exchange for it.
Casey:
That's a Texas size 10-4.
Casey:
We get 50% more air at lower fan speeds.
Casey:
And they specifically said that the fans never have to turn on for most of the tasks that you do.
Casey:
You know, I'm glad that the three of us aren't bothered by fan noise at all.
Casey:
So this doesn't really matter to us.
Casey:
I just thought I would mention it for those who do care about fan noise, because I know none of us do.
Marco:
i always wonder when they said they mean like literally don't spin and they're stationary or do they just mean it's like that's how i took it yeah like what he what he said was the fans never even have to turn on for most of the tasks you do all day yeah there you go so turn on is pretty that's pretty clear as in like they are spinning or they're not spinning so that that's really interesting if that's not like some kind of um speako typo speako suffice it to say the cooling on these is supposedly really good
Marco:
We are brought to
Marco:
it's all visual what you see is what you get live previewing stuff there's no coding required anywhere and they take so many kind of annoying problems or difficult problems off your plate that you might otherwise have to deal with if you're like running your own stuff so for instance server maintenance or security upgrades or patches or just you know keeping the server running you know if you have a big a big load spike
Marco:
So they make all that easy with any website, but they also make it really easy to make what would otherwise be a pretty complex site to build yourself.
Marco:
Things like podcast hosting or my favorite storefronts.
Marco:
This is something that's not super easy to do yourself, but Squarespace makes it easy and all integrated in their beautiful system that looks professionally designed no matter what your skill level is, lets you build things to your own branding and your own styles.
Marco:
You can customize everything.
Marco:
So it's just fantastic at Squarespace.com.
Marco:
We'll be right back.
Marco:
Go sign up at squarespace.com slash ATP and use offer code ATP to get 10% off your first purchase.
Marco:
Once again, squarespace.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Code ATP for 10% off your first purchase.
Marco:
Make your next move with Squarespace.
Casey:
All right, moving on very quickly to the keyboard.
Casey:
Actually, it won't be very quickly because, hey, guess what's missing?
Casey:
Marco, I'm so sorry.
Casey:
I know how much you love the touch bar.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
I know how much you just enjoy playing with the brightness and the volume and sliding your finger left and right.
Marco:
Don't forget first tapping it to wake it up because I was watching a video.
Casey:
Tapping it to wake it up and tapping it to hit the volume button and then sliding back and forth.
Casey:
Yes, I know you can slide on the volume button, but that's not always what you want.
Casey:
Yeah, no touch bar.
Casey:
So as much as I snark, I actually am very ambivalent about the touch bar.
Casey:
I don't
Casey:
typically use it for any of the fancy touch bar things outside of messages.
Casey:
I found the one place I really consistently use the touch bars for doing tap backs and messages, and that's about it.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I don't actively dislike the touch bar, but I can tell you I am not going to shed tears that it's gone.
Casey:
And not only that, but we are getting full height function keys for the first time on a laptop, an Apple laptop in gosh knows how long.
John:
In case you're ever wondering how Apple is going to spin something in a keynote, one of their classic moves that they employed this time is to basically say whatever thing that we're rolling out that, you know, the reason we might be embarrassed to say it is because it is like going back on something that we previously did.
John:
Like in this case, like we think the touch bar is great and now we're taking it away.
John:
How do we spin that?
John:
The way to do it is to look for literally any other product that you make that doesn't have the thing that you're taking away and say, the thing that we're replacing it with, we know that people love the insert feature that exists on some random obscure product.
John:
And therefore, we decided to bring that to insert product where we just took away something and brought back an old thing, right?
John:
And so they did that here.
John:
They said, we know that people love the full size function keys on this external keyboard for a Mac that nobody buys.
John:
right like you know that people love the full-size who says that have you heard from anybody literally on any podcast any blog i love the full-size arrow keys on the new keyboard that came with my iMac no nobody says that but apple has to find a way to spin it and i say whatever lets you sleep at night apple we just want
John:
we just want the good keyboard like yeah yeah yeah okay but it just it's like they always have to find a way to spin it as a positive it's not that we took away the touch bar that most people weren't super into it's that we're giving you the thing that we know you love all we hear about all day here at apple are full-size function keys so here they are
Casey:
What can I say except you're welcome?
Casey:
And just to be clear, they are half-height arrow keys.
Casey:
They are full-height function keys.
John:
Oh, sorry.
John:
Yes, I've been misspeaking a lot lately.
John:
I want to hear it back.
John:
It's terrible.
John:
I said PowerBook on the other show, and neither one of you called me on it either.
John:
Oh, I left it right there.
John:
I figured it was nicer.
Marco:
PowerBook has always been a better name.
John:
And by the way, so function keys, of course, are full height.
John:
I do kind of wish that they were spaced out from the other keys.
John:
It's another thing that Apple hasn't quite gotten on board with yet.
John:
I feel like there's a lot of room on the top of a 16-inch laptop for a more expansive keyboard, but baby steps.
John:
Full height function keys is a step in that direction, but also the escape key is big.
John:
it's like macbook escape type of thing you before we had the escape case a stupid image on a screen and now not only do we have a real key which we got back a couple of you know generations ago it's a real key and it's really big so if you love the escape is there and of course you have touch id which is great um and speaking of the actual arrow keys when i'm not misspeaking uh it's the good ones with the half height of right and left key so you can feel for the inverted t and you know we saw like when apple took that away yeah
John:
it might have been good but we all tried it and it felt like it was inferior because apparently we all find where the arrow keys are by by touch or whatever right and so they brought them back but the reason when we talked about this in the show the reason i just assumed that they did the full height arrow keys is because of apple's obsession with symmetry and it's not nice to have these two half spots where the keyboard isn't right
John:
That's the whole thing with the keyboard.
John:
The reason why they keep making stupid decisions about utility is, but we want the outline of the keyboard to be a perfect rectangle.
John:
And we want the perfect rectangle to be totally filled with a field of buttons.
John:
We don't want a section of the thing where there's no button because you want half-eyed arrow keys.
John:
Apple still has that instinct.
John:
They want it to be symmetrical.
John:
They want it to be beautiful.
John:
But they knew that their customers wanted half-height arrow keys.
John:
How did they solve this problem?
John:
They didn't solve it by saying, just take the full-height arrow keys and like it.
John:
Tough luck, right?
John:
That was the old Apple.
John:
The new Apple says we have to give them the half-height arrow keys.
John:
The new ethos of our laptops is we give the customers what they want.
John:
But we also feel really bad when things are asymmetrical.
John:
What can we do about that?
John:
And the answer is, paint the background of the keyboard black.
Yeah.
John:
because that makes it look like it's an entirely filled uniform rectangle and you can't even tell that the arrow keys are half height because the background is black too so this is an example of correctly balancing aesthetics and functionality do we care that the background is black probably not especially for backlit keys or whatever but it makes it a more appealing visual aesthetic you you've you've got
John:
you know, done something for the sake of visuals in a way that does not sacrifice functionality.
John:
We got the functionality and also arguably got nice aesthetics, according to the people who demand that thing be a perfectly uniform rectangle.
John:
So thumbs up, Apple.
John:
Good job balancing multiple stakeholders, people who want good arrow keys and people who like a uniform rectangle.
Casey:
Yeah, I'm excited for this.
Casey:
I think it'll be really great.
Casey:
So we can finally get to it.
Casey:
Connectivity is what they called it.
Casey:
On the right-hand side, you get HDMI, quote, for conveniently connecting to displays and TVs, quote.
Casey:
You get Thunderbolt 4, and you get that thing that Marco Arment has been waiting for for years.
Casey:
Marco, are you shedding tears of joy?
Casey:
You get an SD card reader.
Marco:
The tears have not stopped flowing, Casey.
Marco:
All week, just tears.
Marco:
Oh, I'm so happy.
Casey:
You get an SD card reader, quote, for enabling fast access to media, quote.
Casey:
Imagine that.
Casey:
Imagine you would want to do, I don't know, professional things with your professional computer.
Casey:
Imagine that.
Casey:
I shouldn't snark because I really am so happy, but it's been a long time coming.
Casey:
On the left-hand side, then we can recap.
John:
Well, before you get to the left-hand side.
John:
On the right-hand side, Marco should also be crying tears to dry, because what isn't on the right-hand side, now that we're done with the right-hand side?
Casey:
Oh, that's true.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
There's no headphone jack over there, is there?
John:
The headphone jack is not on the right-hand side, and Marco likes that, too.
Marco:
Mm-hmm.
Marco:
They finally moved it back.
Marco:
They moved it back to the left.
Marco:
They didn't get rid of the headphone jack, thank God.
Marco:
They just moved it over to the other side.
Casey:
Oh, this is just wonderful.
Casey:
And then the hits keep coming.
Casey:
This was the Marco Arment section of the entire presentation.
Casey:
Not only do they have the headphone jack, not only is it on the left hand side, they specifically cited, I could swear they said your name, high impedance headphone support.
Marco:
Yes, which it always had.
Marco:
Translating that from, you know, Apple speak to reality, it sounds like they've given a better headphone amp.
Marco:
And that's great because the headphone amp in there was already pretty decent.
Marco:
You know, if you were putting in like 250 ohm headphones, it was a little weak for that, but it was passable.
Marco:
You just couldn't like really blast your music.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Now it's going to have even better support for that, it seems.
Marco:
So that's fantastic.
Marco:
Oh, this is so nice.
Marco:
It's just every part of this.
Marco:
It's just like they heard everything we wanted and they gave it all to us.
Casey:
I swear this presentation, while it was a love letter to many, many, many people, it was very much a love letter to Marco Harmon.
Marco:
But it isn't just me.
Marco:
That's, again, what I was saying was validating is that, obviously, I'm not the crazy one in this world.
Marco:
I mean, maybe for different reasons.
Marco:
But the things that I thought...
Marco:
were obvious things turns out they were obvious things that it wasn't just me being this one crank all these years saying why do they do this why didn't they give us this you know enough other people agreed with that that apple had to react this way and that's that's incredibly validating and really very very nice you know not just from like i told you so point of view but also just that they fixed it so now we can all have these problems be solved like with this with this new port arrangement
Marco:
I don't think I'll have to carry a dongle.
Marco:
I will still carry... I think I'll still carry one of those USB C to A things.
Marco:
The little passive Apple one they sold back five years ago.
Marco:
Just because I occasionally have to plug in a USB A thing.
Marco:
but for the most part like i'm my big multi-port dongle i don't think i'm going to need to do anything with it ever again this is the most common needs i have hdmi if i really need it which is probably never but more importantly i have sd cards it's it's just i'm so happy the only thing if i could complain and i don't want to the only thing i would say i wish it had is an ethernet jack and i totally understand why it doesn't i don't think i don't think that'll fit right
Casey:
Probably not.
Casey:
And honestly, I don't really begrudge them for not including it because for any normal human being, you don't need an Ethernet port on this thing.
Casey:
I plug in an Ethernet dongle into my laptop probably four or five times a week because I'm a weirdo.
Casey:
But other than that, this is excellent.
John:
And so continuing on the left-hand side... Well, actually, on the Ethernet topic...
John:
So they don't have it on the machine.
John:
It's too thin.
John:
You'd have to use a dongle.
John:
They also don't have it on the power adapter, which was a possibility.
John:
Oh, that's true.
John:
Not really rumored, but they did it on the iMac, which is like, how do you get a port on something that you would only use in a desktop situation anyway?
John:
It actually kind of makes more sense for a laptop than the iMac, right?
John:
Because the iMac is...
John:
thin for quote unquote no reason right but this thing is like you're not going to use ethernet when you're on the go probably you probably just use it at your desk and then that's where you have the power brick plugged in and but you know what that would mean is instead of having magsafe 3 which does not have the capacity to transport uh ethernet in the way apple has released it you need something more like the imac thing but that's too big to fit on a laptop so you need a new connector and bottom line is they just didn't do it and i don't really particularly blame them but i will say this
John:
This line of computers, the new MacBook Pros that are actually for people who want to do things, one feature that would be appropriate for a future MacBook Pro, if they can pull it off somehow, is 10 gig Ethernet, right?
John:
My Mac Pro has it, and I know it seems silly because who has 10 gig Ethernet in their house, but as Wi-Fi gets faster and faster, Ethernet has also been getting faster.
John:
If you really have some demanding use and you're connected to some sort of network attached thing, one gigabit Ethernet starts to become like, I should just use 5G because it's faster.
John:
Right.
John:
Why am I even bothering with this stupid cable?
John:
It's slow.
John:
Right.
John:
But the point is that cable doesn't have to be that slow.
John:
10 gig Ethernet exists.
John:
40 gig Ethernet exists or whatever.
John:
Like higher standards exist.
John:
Apple ships computers that support it.
John:
Should, is it plausible and reasonable for the highest end 16 inch MacBook Pro a few years from now to have 10 gig ethernet of support?
John:
I say yes.
John:
So this is the kind of feature that this Apple that made these laptops would put on the table for the next generation MacBook Pro.
John:
And I'm looking forward to it.
Casey:
So continuing on the left-hand side, we've got MagSafe 3.
Casey:
I believe we already mentioned you can still charge through the other ports.
Casey:
A lot of people were complaining and moaning, I guess just for the sake of complaining and moaning, that you don't really have a choice of what side to charge the computer on.
Casey:
Well, that's not really true.
Casey:
You do have the choice.
Casey:
You don't have the choice specifically with MagSafe, but you can charge with USB-C in any of the three USB-C ports.
Casey:
So I'm really, really, really pleased that they didn't ditch power in on the USB-C ports because it is convenient.
Casey:
Like just the other day, I was outside at a park or something like that doing work.
Casey:
And I had a USB-C brick that I was using to power my laptop just because I was going to be there for a few hours.
Casey:
And this laptop that I have currently, it has a pretty good battery, but it's not as good as these are.
Casey:
And so being able to power your computer via just about any USB-C charger, I mean, you know, power output notwithstanding…
Casey:
That's really convenient.
Casey:
And then when you're at a place where you want it, you can use MagSafe if you so desire.
Casey:
So I'm really excited that they didn't cheap out or take the wimpy approach and say, well, sorry, MagSafe for power and that's the only choice you got.
Marco:
Yeah, it's again one of those areas where they could have taken a step backwards and they didn't.
Marco:
And we even cited that as a thing in our past episodes, like in our predictions.
Marco:
We said we really hope they can still charge via Thunderbolt ports and sure enough, they can.
Marco:
Oh, this is so nice.
Marco:
I'm still crying.
John:
And the only step they need to take, as we mentioned before in the past version of Jason, is that there is a one-step-higher USB-C power dribblery spec that would give it power parity with the MagSafe connector to be able to do the 50% charge in 30 minutes or whatever.
John:
And so this one doesn't have that, but...
John:
I don't think there's anything particularly about this design that precludes that.
John:
Maybe we'd have to wait for an M2 model or whatever, but that's just the next step for them to take.
John:
Again, if people are complaining they don't have that feature, who knows how much people really care about that feature, but as long as you can power the laptop from one of the other ports, that's fine.
Casey:
Well, that's only true on the 16, though, right?
Casey:
Because on the 14, you get the fast charging.
Casey:
As long as you have the right power adapter, you get the fast charging anywhere you want.
Casey:
It's the 16 that it's only on MagSafe.
Marco:
yeah because it's all about wattage you know the usbc ports can take in power up to 100 watts the uh 16 needs 140 watts to to fast charge and so yeah it's it's just different wattage for a bigger computer yep and then finally they made mention of displays so with the pro chip you can do two pro display xdrs i would like to meet the person that has paid for their own dual setup of pro display xdrs but nevertheless you could do it um actually oh don't even joke no just kidding oh my
Casey:
For a fleeting moment, I was like, he did not.
Casey:
And then the Max chips can do up to three XDRs and a 4K TV.
Casey:
And I think it was Trudy that specifically said, all without a single adapter.
John:
But how does it do a 4K TV?
John:
Oh, you can plug HDMI right into the computer.
Casey:
Imagine that.
John:
Speaking of HDMI, though, I don't have full information on this.
John:
But I'm assuming that the HDMI port... Well, here's the thing.
John:
We've talked about this before.
John:
The HDMI spec is weird, right?
John:
You can have a quote-unquote HDMI 2.1 port that doesn't necessarily support 48 gigabits per second, doesn't support all the different resolutions and so on and so forth.
John:
But I think that this HDMI port does not, for example, support 4K at 120 Hz.
John:
Does it support 4K at 60Hz?
John:
Probably.
John:
Maybe.
John:
I just don't know what standard it is.
John:
Is it technically HDMI 2.1, but without the full bandwidth, kind of like a lot of TVs are, or even the PS5 is, I think.
John:
Is it HDMI 2.0b?
John:
I looked in the specs page and couldn't find anything.
John:
Yeah, chat says it's 2.0b 4k at 60.
John:
That makes sense.
John:
But like, anyway, like the, that's the thing about the HDMI port.
John:
And that's, in this machine, it's a little bit of a like, there's some more headroom, because why would you want to plug in HDMI, something to the HDMI port, aside from like presenting your slides, right?
John:
There are pro scenarios where the reason you want to plug in an HDMI, maybe in that fantasy scenario, where you have three XDRs and a 4k TV, who's doing that?
John:
Someone who would be using the TV to say, show me how the video I'm working on is going to look on TV.
John:
which is fine except that i don't know if if the thing you're working on is like hdr i'm not sure if you would then be able to to output it on that hdmi port to the tv i mean you could produce hdrs have hdr on them or whatever but anyway if you're trying to use it as kind of like a tv mastering monitor for reference display to say here's how it's going to look on someone's actual television i think you might want a little bit more of the hdmi port but i'm not entirely sure if
John:
But anyway, this is all just an embarrassment of riches.
John:
The fact that you can have three XDRs or like needless to say, you know, three of literally any other monitor that's not 6K because it's got plenty of GPU grunt to do that.
John:
Or a Thunderbolt breakout box with who knows what else shoved on the thing like three Thunderbolt four ports.
John:
And this GPU combination here is a lot of bandwidth.
John:
So if you were annoyed that the previous laptops couldn't have many monitors attached, I think all those concerns are gone because this is just like directly attached to your computer.
John:
You could probably connect like nine regular PC monitors to this thing using Thunderbolt and the various, you know, adapter boxes and stuff like that and still have your HDMI port available to plug in a TV.
Casey:
So speaking of displays and refresh rates, we had a presentation from Kate where she talked about how the displays got really freaking good.
Casey:
I kind of hoped and assumed that maybe we would get mini LED like the fancy LED.
Casey:
iPad Pros have.
Casey:
But not only did we get that, but we got ProMotion as well.
Casey:
We've got 120 hertz with variable refresh rate and mini LED.
Casey:
And I would say these screens are better than y'all's fancy pants monitors because they at least have 120 hertz.
Casey:
So there.
Marco:
Yeah, no, I mean, mini LED is better than us, too.
John:
Well, I mean, ours are mini LED, but with fewer zones, probably.
Marco:
Yes, yeah, yeah, that's true.
Marco:
But what's most important is that they fixed the resolutions.
Marco:
The default resolution that these screens are in is no longer a scaling mode.
Marco:
It is true 2x with actual 2x pixels backing it at the resolutions that they're supposed to be for modern Macs.
Marco:
Oh, again, one of those things that was rumored and we thought, well, I mean, come on, that's such a nitpick that only I care about, right?
Marco:
Nope.
Marco:
That's not just a nitpick.
Marco:
A lot of people care about it and they did it and they didn't have to do it and they did it anyway.
John:
God, I'm happy.
John:
and the variable refresh rate so kind of like we talked about before like on the first time we saw a variable refresh rate and i think apple's running was on the watch and it went down to one hertz right and then we got it on the the phone what was the minimum on the phone i think it was 24 24 i believe or 10 10 i think or 10 maybe anyway on the max it's 24 um and there's a
John:
The technical explanation for this makes a little bit more sense because unlike the phone and the watch, the Macs don't have OLED screens.
John:
It's an LCD.
John:
And on LCDs, there are sort of timing constraints related to how long you can hold the pixels before you have to refresh them.
John:
And so, like, you know, the fact that this only goes down to 24 hertz is somewhat explicable by the screen technology.
John:
Presumably, eventually, someday, maybe Macs will have OLED screens on the laptop, so right now they don't.
John:
It shouldn't make that much of a difference because 20 hertz is still pretty low, and obviously you won't notice any of this.
John:
And to that end...
John:
uh jeff nadu from apple he's a frameworks engineer said app kit automatically drives updates at variable refresh rates to take advantage of promotion while also balancing for power efficiency so just like on the phones and the watch pro you know promotion is not just so you can see cool 120 hertz especially on things that run off battery power it's also a way to save you power by lowering the refresh rate when exciting stuff isn't going on which probably is you know even more likely on a screen if you're just staring at a web page and not moving your cursor or whatever it can drop down to 24
John:
hertz and save you power and the same thing for if you're watching full screen video on a plane or something it will drop down to the frame rate presumably of the movie that you're watching and save a lot of power um and then the specs of this as casey said like yes it's got it's it's got a higher refresh rate than our screens uh than the protospy xdr but it has basically the same specs 1600 nits peak 1000 nits sustained which i think is the same as the xdr
John:
uh yes so it's like a little miniature xdr and speaking of miniature we didn't talk about this before but it looks like in the pictures that the lid might be a little bit thicker maybe it's just because it has blunt sides um but yeah there's a lot going on in there apple touted this in their presentation of showing how did we manage to get a really cool mini led display in here because on the ipads and stuff that has like yeah but the ipad is actually pretty thick in the grand scheme of things how are you going to fit into a little scary laptop lid uh apple managed to do it
John:
but it seems like there's a lot of stuff packed in there because this is a really good display.
John:
Like this is better than many, it's better than for sure most desktop displays on computers in the world, right?
John:
Because people don't buy good displays.
John:
It's actually hard to find a desktop display that does 1600 nits peak, 1000 nits sustained, has the color gamut that this has, does 120 Hertz.
John:
Like that's, it's not even defined, that type of display.
John:
And this thing comes with one.
John:
So this laptop is probably going to look fairly amazing.
John:
If you're used to, if you have like a really old laptop and you're like, oh,
John:
When I use my laptop, everything looks so dim and dingy.
John:
This will not look dim.
John:
You'll turn the brightness down so you don't burn your eyeballs out, believe me.
John:
Oh yeah, one more thing on the screen.
John:
As far as I can tell from the pictures, I don't know anyone who's seen these in person yet who has confirmed this or not.
John:
It looks like the top of the screen is actually rounded, as in it's not like the OS chopping off the corners, but literally on the iPads, the screen has rounded corners on the top.
John:
Does that match your perception?
John:
that's what people seem to think yes and then the bottom of the screen is not rounded the bottom of the screen has sharp you know right angle corners which is a little bit weird but just if you care about that and we're going to get to that in a second because it's the very next section uh the screen has a couple of quirks that you might
Marco:
Well, but if you look at the design of that whole lid, that does make logical sense.
Marco:
Because the upper corners are nestled within the curved corners of the casing around it, whereas the lower corners, there's a gap there and a big flat area before it gets down to the curvature of the case.
Marco:
So logically, design-wise, that does make sense given how it's built.
John:
yep uh and now we get to the thing that you know again this snuck in the rumors for this it snuck in between our last show and and uh and the event so we didn't really get a chance to talk about it but there were rumors that the new macbook pros would have a notch which sounds ridiculous because why would they put a notch on a laptop why this doesn't make any sense um anyway it's got a notch uh and now that it has one and now that we see the design
John:
It actually does make sense.
John:
And I think not only does it make sense, I think there is almost no reason for anyone to be afraid of the notch or think they're going to dislike it, with one minor exception that I'll get to in the end.
John:
But we'll talk about the notch in a minute.
John:
So what we mean by a notch is...
John:
If you've ever seen an iPhone, you see the screen doesn't go up to the top of the iPhone.
John:
Instead, there's a little section that does not have screen on it.
John:
There's a little section cut out of the screen, like a little notch, and there are no pixels there.
John:
And in that place on the iPhone are a bunch of sensors and cameras and all sorts of crap like that, mostly for face ID, but also the front-facing camera and the little microphone, you know, the speaker, rather.
John:
There's a bunch of crap there, and that's why there's no screen there.
John:
But they wanted as much screen as possible, so they brought the screen all the way up.
John:
And on your phone, what you see up there is like the status bar and your little battery thing and the time.
John:
A bunch of crap that's in sort of the ears around the notch, right?
John:
This laptop has a notch.
John:
And the way they've done this, and by the way, I want to give, let me scroll down a little bit.
John:
I want to give David Schaub credit for this.
John:
I think it's the same David Schaub that's in our chat room because how could it not be?
John:
This was from the 16th, which I think was two days before the event.
John:
He did some math based on the rumored screen resolutions.
John:
And he put a little picture of his solver sheet here and basically came down to say that if the notch takes up 74 points or pixels, then both MacBook Pro screens, according to the rumored resolutions, have a safe display area that is perfectly 16 by 10.
John:
And you can look at the math in his thing.
John:
And sure enough, this all essentially came true.
John:
If you ignore the notch and just start the screen below the notch on these MacBook Pros, the part of the screen that does not intersect at all with the notch is exactly 16 by 10.
John:
That's its aspect ratio, right?
John:
So it's a little bit taller than 16 by 9.
John:
It's exactly 16 by 10.
John:
right and that's what the previous screens always were right uh they i think they varied a little bit over the years but yeah more or less uh 16 by 9 is a little bit too wide and mac users don't like that but they actually used to be even taller like the 12 inch power book was like 4 by 3 or some weird ass thing so that that is what people are used to what these laptops give you is say okay we give you a 16 by 10 screen instead of thinking it as a screen with a notch in it think of it as a 16 by 10 screen with ears because they're giving you extra pixels
John:
And the reason they did that is essentially... And there's all sorts of theories about why they might have done this.
John:
The first theory, when I saw it, I was like, please let this thing have face ID.
John:
It does not, unfortunately.
John:
And I'll talk about that in a second, right?
John:
But why would they do this?
John:
Why wouldn't they just put a 16x10 screen in?
John:
Well, if they had a 16x10 screen, it would be like every other laptop that has come... Not every other one, but if you look at the predecessor laptops, you will see that if you look at the screen, the amount of border around the screen, the amount of area that is not screened,
John:
there's more of it at the top than the sides so there's a thin border on the left an equally thin border on the right and a wider border at the top why do they do that why don't look at your your macbook pro right now and look at how big the border is on the top compared to the sides you will see that it's taller on the top and the reason it's taller on the top is because that's where the camera goes the front facing camera has to be there and they could make the borders that thickness around the whole thing but then you'd have a smaller screen
John:
So what they want to do is maximize the screen area while minimizing the borders, and in this case, trying to make them uniform.
John:
So in these lines of computers, the top border is essentially the same thickness as the left and the right border, right?
John:
But they need some place for the camera to go.
John:
And to fit the camera in, they have created a notch.
John:
And that's why this thing has a notch.
John:
And why doesn't it have face ID is the next question.
John:
It's like, great.
John:
So you've cut a notch out of my screen.
John:
You've given me, quote unquote, more pixels.
John:
And we'll get to the software complications of that in a second.
John:
But if you're going to give me a notch, why not at least give me a face ID?
John:
That notch looks pretty wide, doesn't it?
John:
And if you look what's in the notch, you're like, I just see the front facing camera there.
John:
Why is the freaking thing so wide?
John:
Now, we don't know the answer to this yet, but good old iFixit will tell us, and I'm going to say that I think when iFixit rips this thing apart, what they're going to find is that what's in the notch there is, yes, the front-facing camera, but also, like, the light sensor or whatever for True Tone, and that the stuff that is in the notch takes up a surprising amount of room behind the notch once you start looking at the parts, because this is a very thin screen lid, right?
John:
you just rip open any of the current ones how much room does the camera take up and by the way this is a better camera than before is it a good camera we'll see but it's 1080 exciting welcome to 2015 there's a 1080 camera in the mac and they said a larger sensor also which again like you know where we're coming from is so bad that this it doesn't mean much to say it's better
John:
Right, but I really think they work on, like they emphasize in the video, like I'm saying like, oh, we're all on our Zoom calls all the time and we'll use the image signal processing and all the other stuff that we use.
John:
So I really have some hope that this camera will actually be much better than its predecessors, right?
John:
But like, that's why the notch is there.
John:
It's to give you more pixels, not less.
John:
And why is it so wide without Face ID?
John:
Probably because to just fit the stuff that is in there now, they had to squish it out.
John:
Now, there's lots of conspiracy theories that are like, oh, the next one's going to have Face ID, or they made the notch this wide because they wanted to have room for Face ID.
John:
Look, they're not pre-widening the notch to make room for a feature that doesn't exist.
John:
Apple doesn't like the notch.
John:
We talked about this with the original iPhone X. Apple doesn't like the notch.
John:
It has embraced it because it has to, but it doesn't like it.
John:
If it could get rid of the notch, it would.
John:
Look on the phone.
John:
When they could make the notch smaller, they did.
John:
They didn't keep it the same width for uniformity or branding, right?
John:
So I think this watch is probably as small as it can be.
John:
And if someday they need to make the notch bigger for Face ID, they will, right?
John:
So that's what I think they're doing with this now, software-wise.
John:
mac os kind of like ios has crap at the top of the screen most of the time and most of that crap goes on the left and the right side so kind of like the status bar on your phone where they got away with you know what are we going to use all that extra screen space for it's stupid well we actually have stuff to put there the little bars for your signal the battery the time all the other stuff right on the mac what goes there is the menu bar
John:
Unfortunately, the menu bar, unlike those little status things, is a thing that grows in both directions.
John:
The more menus your application has, the more it grows from the left to the right.
John:
And the more little icons like Casey that you have growing from the right to the left, the wider that goes.
John:
And eventually you're going to hit that stupid notch.
John:
and obviously you can't display things behind the notch because then the user wouldn't be able to see them the user probably could click on them by the way because the screen really is there behind the notch and you can bring your cursor behind the notch and you could hide buttons there probably in your app behind lots of cool things you could do with the notch but practically speaking don't put stuff there unless it's a practical joke right
John:
So the menus app, you know, Apple's frameworks will flow your menus around the notch.
John:
Same thing with the little icons in the menu bar in the upper right.
John:
They will flow around the notch.
John:
If there's not enough room for them, they will truncate and do all, you know, they'll do all the things right.
John:
That's how they handle the menu bar.
John:
Interestingly, though, the menu bar as it as it's sized on the Mac that you're probably looking at now is not as tall as the notch.
John:
So they made the menu bar taller, which you may remember from past discussions of us thinking, oh, they're making the menu bar taller to support touch.
John:
Seems like they were making the menu bar taller to support the notch, which was not one of our theories at the time.
John:
But not only did they make the menu bar taller, as far as I can tell from the screenshots, the menu bar is also slightly taller than the notch.
John:
I think they did this to avoid tangents, essentially, another aesthetic choice.
John:
Tangent is when the edge of one thing hits the edge of the other thing, creating sort of a line that you didn't intend to be there.
John:
In other words, if the menu bar was exactly the same height as the notch, it's actually slightly less aesthetically pleasing than having an extend slightly past it.
John:
But anyway, that's what they did.
John:
So the menu bar is taller, potentially roomier, easier to hit.
John:
Remember, this is all bonus space because starting below the menu bar or starting below the notch anyway, is starting below the menu bar or the notch.
John:
I'm not sure which it is because David Schaub was working off a theory of how tall the notch was.
John:
And we don't actually know right now, I don't think.
John:
is that's where your 16 by 9 screen begins and that 16 or 16 by 10 screen begins that 16 by 10 screen does not have any portion of it taken up on the menu bar because the menu bar is up there in the ears out of your way right now here's where we get into the one thing that apple i think fumbled right
John:
you can tell an application any application on monterey to launch in compatibility mode for on these laptops it's a checkbox and the get info thing in the finder if you go to an application in the finder and the applications that doesn't hasn't done something else throughout the notch you have a checkbox that says go into compatibility mode when that app runs it will just think the screen is the 16 by 10 part without the notch
John:
So it will just be like, I don't even see those ears.
John:
I'm just running in this part.
John:
Because then it's perfect compatibility.
John:
The 16 by 10 screen, there's square edges.
John:
It's got all the pixels.
John:
It'll work perfectly fine.
John:
But of course, app developers can say, no, my app knows about the notch.
John:
And I swear I'm not putting in a UI there.
John:
And it's not going to break my app and do all that stuff.
John:
The other option also is when things go into full screen.
John:
Same deal.
John:
When you go into full screen...
John:
If you don't know anything about the notch, it will just consider, oh, full screen doesn't include the ears because I know your app doesn't even understand those ears are there.
John:
So we're just going to full screen you below the notch.
John:
So you don't have to worry about trying to watch a movie in full screen that, you know, get hidden by the notch or whatever.
John:
Either your player is savvy about the notch, in which case the app has been updated to handle it, or your player is not savvy, in which case it doesn't even see that portion of the screen.
John:
The one thing Apple should have done, I feel like to, well, not should have done, I would say if Apple wanted to have...
John:
No complaints from anybody.
John:
What Apple could have done is put an OS level mode that says, you know what?
John:
All right, the notch doesn't exist for me.
John:
Turn off the ears.
John:
And then just literally only ever lit up 16 by 10 pixels, right?
John:
And just given the screen a taller forehead, a taller border, that black border, just like on the MacBook Pros before this, when you see a taller black border, Apple could have done that.
John:
As far as I know, there is no mode to run Mac OS like that to say, forget about the ears.
John:
It's invisible to the OS.
John:
It's invisible to the apps.
John:
I am just opting out of the ears.
John:
I'm opting out of the notch.
John:
I have a 16 by 10 screen where every single pixel is lit up and it has square edges.
John:
They could have done that.
John:
It seems like they didn't because that would just eliminate all complaints.
John:
But the people are saying, oh, it's a notch taken on my screen.
John:
I'm losing pixels, blah, blah, blah.
John:
You could say, no, you're not.
John:
And by the way, half of Apple screenshots essentially do this by either having dark mode on or showing an app in full screen with that area black or whatever.
John:
You can forget about the notch entirely if you're really that bothered by it.
John:
I think the reason Apple didn't do it is the same reason when no one cares about the notch on their phone anymore.
John:
Could you get used to it?
John:
Software is updated to handle it, and it literally becomes the non-issue.
John:
Is it good?
John:
No.
John:
Nobody likes the notch.
John:
Apple doesn't like the notch.
John:
I don't like the notch.
John:
But the way they implemented it is basically a no compromises.
John:
You can either accept the bonus pixels we've given you or don't accept them.
John:
But either way, you're still getting either the same or more.
John:
So stop complaining.
Marco:
Yeah, this to me, I've seen... I was actually very surprised to see how much notch hate there was after the event.
Marco:
And like my Twitter mentions, I've been full of people all day complaining about it.
Marco:
It seems like it's a...
Marco:
it's very common to hate on the notch right now.
Marco:
People saying that they're never going to upgrade to it, all the usual stuff that we all say when something comes out that we don't like.
Marco:
I really do think we saw this exact same stuff when the iPhone came out, and as John said, we all just got used to it, and it's fine.
Marco:
It's a compromise that we all accepted.
Marco:
And I agree.
Marco:
In this case, it does seem like because they're just giving us free additional area up there, I don't think it's that bad.
Marco:
I do...
Marco:
as a light mode user i do think it's going to be more noticeable for me than than it would be for for dark mode users but that being said the like i'm looking at my screen now and the menu bar now looks like a bunch of waste space in the middle because it's always just displaying these you know grayish pixels that
Marco:
that are just blank in the middle there.
John:
To that end, even in dark mode, though, and this is why Apple has to carefully choose their screenshots, I'm pretty sure, especially on the 14-inch, if you launch Xcode, which is a thing that people who have pro laptops often do, the set of menus that in Xcode is like...
John:
past the notch and so you get that gap you get all your menus i think i think actually it was uh and maybe it was xcode or some other app the only menu that ended up to the right side of the notch was the help menu so it was like here's all my menus and there was another one saying help like it got ejected and especially in dark mode it's like why is there why aren't all my menus together oh the notch is there right but even in light mode
John:
yeah the menus are going to flow around it and as people have been jokingly pointing out since this rumor started um one of the early mac os 10 betas had a non-functional apple logo dead center in the menu bar uh and your menus would flow around it it wasn't the apple menu you couldn't click on it it did literally nothing all it did was make it so that as your menus expanded if they hit the middle they had to flow around an apple menu that's another thing that apple wisely chose not to ship but anyway
John:
It's awkward.
John:
Apple doesn't want to do that notch.
John:
Nobody wants to do the notch.
John:
But they decided that, again, no conspiracy theory here.
John:
They're just like, how can we maximize the number of light up pixels on the front of a screen of this size?
John:
And the answer is cut out a little notch for the camera.
John:
And so they did.
Marco:
Also, just aesthetically, while a notch is not ideal, one of the complaints that many people, including me, have had over the last five years is that Apple's laptops were starting to look very dated compared to PC laptops that were on the higher end.
Marco:
PC laptops have really done a very good job over the last few years of optimizing their screens for especially this 13 to 14-inch size range.
Marco:
There have been some really nice-looking PC laptop screens that had really tiny bezels and really maximized the space.
Marco:
Apple was very much behind in that area.
Marco:
The way those PC laptops would handle questions like, well, what do you do about the webcam...
Marco:
was really weird.
Marco:
Sometimes they would just have a really crappy one stuck in the top bezel.
Marco:
Sometimes they would have those weird pop-up or pop-out webcams.
Marco:
Sometimes I just wouldn't have webcams to get around that issue entirely.
Marco:
It was a very strange set of compromises that we were seeing in the industry.
Marco:
what apple came up with here is one of those compromises for sure like by having a notch but i think this is the most apple-y way they could have done it for now and the result is yeah we get free screen space that's great john your idea of basically having it be having there be a mode that just disables that whole area of the screen entirely that's a solid idea and that's something they could just very easily throw in display preferences if they wanted to and and
Marco:
time will tell if they actually need to um that also is the kind of thing that a third-party utility might be able to do uh by itself like some kind of display hook utility might be able to do that um so that that need might be solved but ultimately i think people are going to really complain and moan about it until they get it and then they're gonna use it for a few days and forget about it and they're gonna say oh actually it wasn't it wasn't big of a deal
John:
that's why i think they didn't include that option because it's like they know from their own experience of using it that it's actually not a big deal and if the problem with allowing that mode is if someone instinctively puts it on the first day they get it and just leaves it on there they paid for pixels they're not using right they could be getting more screen space because really like
John:
that's one of the things people complain about the menu bar and the reason why auto hide menu bar is a feature and it'll be interesting to see how that interacts with the notch i don't actually know yet but like it's like why can't i get those pixels back well here you can we found a place to put your menu bar that doesn't cut into your quote unquote normal screen of 16 by 10 so like you're getting benefit from it right in most cases you essentially get back all the pixels that the menu bar was taking and then some and so now you have more room for your actual applications that's the whole point why why are you trying to light up as many pixels as possible on a lid of this size
John:
Because you get more pixels to show your stuff, right?
John:
You get a bigger screen, essentially.
John:
It's 16.2 inches.
John:
It's taller than you would have expected.
John:
And of course, the notch isn't now an Apple-branded thing, so it's perfectly in keeping.
John:
A few more things before we leave that little notch in the camera.
John:
Why not Face ID?
John:
Why is there no Face ID in this laptop, right?
John:
Again, people want to sort of assign malicious intent to Apple.
John:
I saw a couple of people talking about their pet theory and agreeing with each other.
John:
Yeah, that's totally why they did it.
John:
The best one I saw was they didn't want to put Face ID in the Mac because they want to make people buy iPhones.
John:
And if they put it on the Mac, people wouldn't buy iPhones.
John:
does that hold together for you are these competitive products i was gonna i was gonna buy an iphone but then i saw the macs have face id so i decided i don't want it doesn't anyway let's think about face id uh in this context right
John:
As far as I can tell by looking at iFixit things and just you know, basically You know measuring things the face ID module in your iPhone will not fit in the lid of this laptop I mean, I think that's the thing that we can all just sort of determine by again looking by iFixit teardowns and getting out a ruler and just Looking at these pictures.
John:
It just won't fit.
John:
It's not thick enough.
John:
The screen is really really thin, right?
John:
So that's why face ID from the iPhone won't fit in there You know if they want to just reuse it now
John:
could they have made a brand new face id module that would fit in a mac this thin maybe uh but they didn't right and if they did the notch would probably have to be even bigger than it is which isn't that big of a deal but they chose not to do it second thing is and we talked about this before we're talking about face today on the mac the face id module that is in an iphone is meant to be used from the distances a person holds an iphone from their face
John:
Is that a long enough distance for it to work on a laptop?
John:
Maybe, but maybe not depending on like it.
John:
Just take this measurement yourself and just put your laptop down where you normally use it and sit in front of it and sit down in your chair and see a measure from your face to where the camera is.
John:
And then try your iPhone face ID unlocking that is the same distance.
John:
It's probably close, but it might be a stretch, right?
John:
These are all choices Apple makes, right?
John:
It's possible that they could have.
John:
found a way to get face id into there right it's possible that they could have i think we talked about this a while back on a past show um had a camera bump on the macbook pro right oh face id is too thick to fit in your lid well don't make the whole lid thicker just make a little bump there apple's not above making a bump when they need to for a thing but on a laptop that's a different kind of compromise maybe it's more awkward to slide in and out of things you can't really stack your laptops on top of each other anymore
John:
which, by the way, you should probably not do, but people do, especially in the context of, you know, an IT department at an office or something with a bunch of laptops stacked or whatever.
John:
If they had a lump, that would be a compromise, right?
John:
So for a variety of reasonably good reasons, but some reasons that mostly have to do with the question of how much time and money and effort do you want to invest in the Mac, still the Mac has not been deemed this Mac anyway.
John:
These laptop Macs have not been deemed Macs.
John:
able uh and you know worthy of face id because it would essentially require some custom engineering some of which may be hard or possibly impossible depending on how thin that crap can be right another question related to that camera and i asked this question about other macs and we'll talk about that in a second why no center stage why center stage looks cool sometimes people gather in front of laptop why can't we have center stage right
John:
well one of the things that makes center stage possible is a camera with a fairly wide angle because center stage crops out a portion of that the camera that they put into this laptop i think is not as wide angle as it would have to be and if you wanted to use a wide angle camera
John:
chances are good that that wide angle camera would be too thick to fit in this lid.
John:
Again, the thin lid, you don't think about it, but iPads are thicker than this lid.
John:
Phones are thicker than this lid.
John:
Everything is thicker than this lid.
John:
This lid is really, really thin, right?
John:
And even with a notch, you gotta fit all the stuff in there and run all the wires to it and do all the things.
John:
Like Apple doesn't actually make any cameras or IR blaster or dot things or like Apple doesn't make those.
John:
They buy them and they can try to get components at whatever sizes they're requesting and want to be made custom for them or whatever.
John:
But they do have some limits, right?
John:
And if you wanted to say, oh, why doesn't Apple just use the, let's say, why doesn't Apple just use the center stage camera that's in the iPad?
John:
I think if you rip that out and look at the iFix and turn on, you will find that camera is too thick to fit inside the lid.
John:
And also those cameras make different trade-offs in terms of image quality and light gathering and so on and so forth.
John:
And it seems to me that the focus of this laptop's camera is to look good on your Zoom meetings, right?
John:
Not to be able to do center stage.
John:
So if your choice is a single person looks better sitting in front of his laptop versus a single person looks worse, but now we have a wide-angle camera and now we have a camera bump for it or now we have to find someone to manufacture a wide-angle camera that fits in that small space so the image quality is even worse, I think they made a reasonable trade-off.
John:
I'm still annoyed that we don't have it, but I'm annoyed from a technological progress perspective and slightly annoyed from a...
John:
r d resources money and prioritization thing but given how much amazing stuff we got on these laptops these are too compromised and these weren't rumored either they were just like kind of like the the bonus super bonus wish list items if you're wondering why we don't have these things there are reasons most of the reasons are good some of them are the reasons you don't like which is apple sells more phones than than laptops and uh the in terms of how much they invested it seems like they already invested a lot of money to make these things amazing but
John:
Just not enough money to totally redo Face ID or find a wind item camera that will work and all that other stuff.
Marco:
Yeah, I honestly, you know, the center stage thing, that could be nice if they could do it.
Marco:
Face ID, I still don't think it's that necessary in the MacBook line because...
Marco:
touch id works really well in that context you know physically speaking you're not like operating the macbook frequently one-handed with gloves or wet hands you know you're you're always having your hands in or on the keyboard area like while operating it unless you're in clamshell mode in which case you can't use face ed in the laptop either but you could use external face id yeah if you're in clamshell mode you can't do either of these things right now you could you could do external face id just like you can do external touch id
Marco:
Yes, that's true.
Marco:
But that would be even more weird hardware to put somewhere.
Marco:
I love weird hardware.
John:
Put it in a new Apple monitor that's not an XDR.
John:
We didn't get that either.
Marco:
There we go.
Marco:
And we didn't get cellular either.
Marco:
The only major feature that I would have loved to have that we haven't seen yet is cellular.
Marco:
um i knew that was a stretch to even hope for that especially given that there were literally no rumors to that effect um so i hope still someday that we get cellular but the lack of that pales in comparison to all the stuff that we did get that we never thought we would
Casey:
Yeah, we also have some good guidance that Linda Dong put up a Twitter thread about it.
Casey:
She's a designer at Apple.
Casey:
There's also a couple of things in the HIG, the Human Interface Guidelines, that we can link to that we'll also put in the show notes.
Casey:
Moving right along, camera and audio.
Casey:
Actually, I guess we talked about the camera part.
John:
We covered the camera, but the audio was another kind of nice surprise.
John:
Six-speaker stereo?
John:
Six-speakers sound system?
John:
I don't think we've ever had that before, have we?
Yeah.
Marco:
Yes, so what the six speakers are, it's still just a left and right tweeter, and then there's a left and right woofer, but now they have dual woofers on each side.
Marco:
So there are basically four woofers and two tweeters.
Marco:
So yeah, six speakers is maybe pushing it a little bit, but that is what they call it.
Marco:
That being said...
Marco:
these are pretty damn great for laptops in general um the i know the 16 inch sounds pretty good already like the outgoing 16 inch intel model sounds pretty good um to have force cancelling woofers in laptops is also a pretty big deal this is i mean honestly to have force cancelling woofers in anything is a pretty big deal if you look around the industry there's not many of them
Marco:
Even like for home theater options, there are very few force-canceling woofers for home theaters.
Marco:
I believe it's the Sonos sub and like one $5,000 option from KEF or KEF, however you pronounce it.
Marco:
And there's not much else.
Marco:
But what this means basically is they align the two woofers at opposite house.
Marco:
i think it's phases or you know so basically when one moves one way the other one moves into it and such that the sound waves come out but that there's the vibration of them is canceled out and so you hear the bass but you don't hear like the floor rattling or or in this case the case of the laptop rattling which is often a problem when you're designing subwoofers in you know small enclosures and things like that and so
Marco:
force canceling is very very nice feature to have and they have it they i'm pretty sure they had it in the 16 inch already though but now they have two on each side so that's great and then to have that come to the 14 inch that's the that's what i'm most excited to see because we'll talk about what we bought in a minute i think but what i'm very curious about is how much worse is the audio in the 14 inch compared to the 16 inch the speakers in particular and
Marco:
Because historically, it's been a pretty big step down because they're just much smaller, and that's understandable.
Marco:
But in this case, you know, one thing I love about these laptops is that in many ways, the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro is a lot like this year's Macs versus Pro iPhones.
Marco:
They're basically two different sizes of the same hardware.
Marco:
There's almost no differences between them.
Marco:
You can spec them both up to all the numbers, all the gigs, all the terabytes.
Marco:
They both have 64 gig options.
Marco:
They both have the same processor options.
Marco:
They both have 8 terabyte SSD options.
Marco:
It seems like
Marco:
There are very few differences between them except size.
Marco:
Again, this is one of the reasons why I'm curious to see the teardowns.
Marco:
What kind of thermal differences are there?
Marco:
Will the 14-inch throttle before the 16-inch wheel just because there's less space for heat sinks?
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
That all remains to be seen.
Marco:
what an amazing pair of products here to to have basically all of the same capabilities and just two different sizes and that's awesome i'm i'm so happy for that because spoiler alert the one i'm more interested in is the 14 inch for my own personal needs and and to have there be from from what we know today apparently very few to no compromises in that model is really quite something
Casey:
Yeah, I agree.
Casey:
To go back just very briefly to the audio, they also mentioned that there's spatial audio on these laptops, which I don't think was the case in any prior Apple laptop.
Casey:
I might be wrong about that.
Casey:
But nevertheless, there is spatial audio in these.
Casey:
And it occurred to me that my home theater has a couple-year-old LG 4K OLED TV, but just stereo speakers.
Casey:
And I, at some point, am probably going to get a soundbar or something like that.
Marco:
Oh, God, please don't.
Casey:
Or I was talking about the Sonos soundbar I thought was approved.
Casey:
Is that not approved?
Marco:
The Sonos amp with regular speakers is great.
Marco:
The Sonos sub is an amazing subwoofer for what you get for it.
Marco:
But yeah, please use real speakers, please.
Casey:
Yeah, well, we'll argue about that another time.
Casey:
But nevertheless.
Marco:
Even crappy real speakers are better than the best soundbar.
Casey:
Well, so one way or another, the point I'm driving at is that this computer might be the best listening experience and viewing experience I have to watch a movie because I don't have any AirPods with spatial audio.
Casey:
My TV doesn't have surround sound in the sense that it is not set up for surround sound right now.
Casey:
And so with this fancy pants mini LED display, you know, XDR display and the spatial audio, this might be the best way for me to watch a movie.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
You got better blacks than your OLED TV.
Casey:
That's true.
John:
That's true.
John:
Just look at a star field and the mini LED blooming will convince you that your OLED is still better.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Well, and also, you know, the audio, like, remember when the 16-inch MacBook Pro came out a couple years back, Apple also touted, like, that they really had improved the microphones.
Marco:
And, in fact, this is one of the things they mentioned for this as well, that they even further improved the microphones now.
Marco:
And they did this whole demo in the press area about, like, this is really studio-quality microphones.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And yeah, you know what?
Marco:
I tested it out and it's really good for a built-in laptop mic, but that it was nowhere near like any other regular microphone just because physics get in the way.
Marco:
And the audio here has the same problem.
Marco:
These are going to be really good speakers for laptop speakers, but they're still in a very small case with very small drivers.
Marco:
Like there's only so much they can do with in the realm of physics.
Marco:
And so I'm sure these are going to be great for what they are.
Marco:
but you have to put it in context of what they are.
Marco:
And the screen might be great for your movie watching, but the sound will not be.
Casey:
That's fair.
Casey:
Anyway, prices start $19.99 for the 14-inch, $24.99 for the 16-inch, silver and space gray.
Casey:
You could order them already, and hypothetically they're available next week, although I will tell you that my order is not coming for quite a while.
Casey:
So, John, I'm sure you're most excited to share what you ordered.
Casey:
Would you like to go first?
John:
Actually, I'll back up a step and just read the stat for one other spec in the thing, which is 7.4 gigabytes per second read from SSDs, which exceeds the minimum spec required for the PS5 SSD.
John:
Not that you can take them out of here, but just FYI.
John:
These are really fast SSDs that are in there.
John:
And just one more reminder on the M1 Pro versus the M1 Max.
John:
The M1 Max has double the memory bandwidth because it's got two extra ears full of RAM.
John:
It's got two extra memory controllers in the thing, right?
John:
When we talk about what we buy, I mean, we're already getting a lot of questions about this.
John:
I'm sure people will keep asking.
John:
Because you have so many options, because both machines have all the options, there is a lot of confusion of should I get the Mac?
John:
Should I get the Pro?
John:
God, I hate these names.
John:
It's so hard to distinguish.
John:
Anyway.
John:
What do I care about?
John:
Do I care about GPU cores or whatever?
John:
There are other distinctions that you may or may not care about.
John:
What do I care about memory bandwidth?
John:
Do I do something that takes a lot of memory bandwidth?
John:
Will I notice that difference?
John:
It's actually not a particularly easy question to ask because people don't think about their workloads in terms of those specs.
John:
But I just wanted to remind people that the difference between the M1 Max and the M1 Pro may be insignificant and pointless to you or may be incredibly important if the thing you're currently doing is constrained by memory bandwidth because you get double the memory bandwidth.
John:
And then for the SSDs...
John:
fastener ssds matter may matter in the thing that you're doing or they may not matter at all because you spend most of your time waiting on network or something like that um it it does get confusing but these are i mean maybe these are not the problems that you like to have but these are exactly the problems the computer is like is like what kind of thing do i care about now i have all these options and we started talking about the pricing a little bit maybe we'll go into a little bit more we talk about what we bought
John:
The pricing for these is really good in the grand scheme of things.
John:
Like when you go for the options, very often it's like, oh, for $200 more, I can get this thing.
John:
It's not like Mac Pro money where it's like add $7,000.
John:
Like that's not what configuring this is like.
John:
Almost everything that you care about is like a $200 Delta, right?
John:
And it's like just the right amount of money if you care about that.
John:
Like, oh, I really want...
John:
uh the maximum gpu stuff so i'm getting a max but should i get the one with some broken cores with the 24 gpu or should i get the 32 oh it's only 200 actually for 32 and you just spring for it because you know like you're going to get that amount more right it's like it's a linear scaling of what you're going to get those kind of increments are great so you can really tune the pricing of the thing that you decide to buy based on the things that you care about as long as you know about all these little technology things that we just discussed of like
John:
what is the dividing line between pro and max what does that actually get me do i care about that it's it's complicated but like buying pro things is often complicated because good pro things have a lot of capabilities and features and you should be able to pay for the ones that you want and these products fulfill that as for me what did i buy i bought nothing because i don't like laptops and i'm waiting for the cool pro max that are gonna be even faster
Casey:
i know i know i i mean i bought airpods i'm excited to put those in my ear but uh but yeah this is all you guys go nuts all right so i would like to let me call up the apple uh store page i would like to guess what marco bought so let me go i i think you went full bore m1 max 10 core cpu 32 core gpu
Marco:
I am tempted by that, but I have not ordered that.
Marco:
And I'll tell you why.
Casey:
Interesting.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Tell me more.
Marco:
So the question that I pose to myself is, which of my computers am I replacing?
Casey:
Oh, this is a very difficult question to answer because I had the same conversation with myself.
Marco:
So I'm very – as discussed during the transition to M1, I was first using just the MacBook Air as my only computer.
Marco:
Later, I got a Mac Mini as my desktop and had used the MacBook Air as my laptop.
Marco:
And I really enjoy that two-computer setup.
Marco:
There's very common needs.
Marco:
The most common role that my laptop plays is three times a week, Tiff and I work out with a trainer over FaceTime.
Marco:
And so three times a week, that laptop has to be brought out to the living room and set up on a chair with FaceTime.
Marco:
And I use Rogamiba's sound source to boost the volume up a little bit so that I really can drive those little tiny MacBook Air speakers nice and loud so we can hear him really well and maximize the screen so we can see him really well and turn the brightness all the way up.
Marco:
So if I was still using only that one computer as my desktop,
Marco:
it would be very disruptive to have to unplug my desktop three times a week and, you know, reset all the positions of all the windows down to the built-in monitor, like, you know, bring it over there to use there and bring it back and then plug everything back in and reset all my window positions.
Marco:
So I really enjoy having two different computers, having the laptop to do that role and having the desktop to be a desktop.
Marco:
Now, I didn't get my high-performance desktop this event.
Marco:
I was hoping to have at least another Mac Mini with the bigger chips in it, and I don't have that.
Marco:
Now, on my laptop, I don't really need more performance than what the M1 MacBook Air affords me.
Marco:
I'm very happy with the M1 MacBook Air as a laptop.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
It's great in many ways.
Marco:
That being said, because of that most common use of it being these FaceTime workouts...
Marco:
having louder speakers would actually be a substantial boon and having a brighter screen would be a substantial boon.
Marco:
And when I do travel with it, having more performance and having all the port conveniences is a huge boon because when I do travel, I do bring that as, as my only computer usually.
Marco:
So,
Marco:
i don't really need to replace my air i'm very happy with my air but i want to replace it with this just because i love what this computer has become so much i want to be able to use it i i and so i'm i am like you know frivolously replacing my macbook air with a 14 inch and i ordered the 14 inch base model the one terabyte 16 gig
Marco:
because not only would it arrive on day one so i got day one delivery so i can actually get it and talk about it and you know be able to use it for this show and everything but also those are the specs of my air and it's been great it's been fine where i want the more cores and the more ram is my desktop so what do i do about that
Marco:
One option I considered is what if I buy two and just have one that I use docked as my desktop the vast majority of the time?
Marco:
And then maybe if I'm going on a trip where it would actually be convenient or useful to have all of my desktop files and everything set up,
Marco:
maybe I bring that one instead of the, you know, quote, little one for around the house use.
Marco:
I did consider this option and I could do that.
Marco:
I could, if I were doing that, I would go with probably the M1 Mac, the 24 core GPU, because I don't need all the GPU cores.
Marco:
I'd probably, I'd do the 10 core CPU, 24 core GPU, probably 64 gigs of RAM and two or four terabyte SSD because that's, my current Mac mini is two terabyte.
Marco:
I fit into it with a little bit of room to spare, but not a lot of room to spare.
Marco:
So I could do that, and I could still do that now.
Marco:
I could order this.
Marco:
It would be here right now in about a month for that kind of configuration, and I could have that.
Marco:
But I want to wait and see how much I like the 14-inch that arrives, like my, quote, low-end one.
Marco:
And I want to see all the teardowns and stuff to see what are the differences between them.
Marco:
What are people finding out?
Marco:
How do they work in clamshell mode?
Marco:
Are there any weird gotchas?
Marco:
What are the thermals like?
Marco:
What's the noise like?
Marco:
Et cetera.
Marco:
But ultimately, I don't really want to replace my Mac mini with a laptop.
Marco:
I want to replace it with a faster desktop.
Marco:
So even though I am running into the walls of this performance every day, it's mostly what I need.
Marco:
And as a desktop, it works fantastically.
Marco:
So what I should do, meanwhile, I don't know if this is what I will do.
Marco:
But what I should do is just wait on the desktop.
Marco:
Just have this time period where my laptop is going to be faster than my desktop.
Marco:
Oh, well.
Marco:
And then when the time comes that a good desktop that has these faster chips is released, then I upgrade that.
Marco:
And that might be next spring.
Marco:
It might be another year from now.
Marco:
It might be next fall.
Marco:
I think that's kind of like the outer limit.
Marco:
The longest it will probably be is a year from now.
Marco:
But the soonest it could be is maybe in the spring.
Marco:
So maybe half a year.
Marco:
So that's what I should do is wait.
Marco:
What I will probably do is see how these end up.
Marco:
Again, check into teardowns and thermals and reports from people and how much I like it.
Marco:
And then maybe replace my Mac Mini with an even beefier 14-inch model.
Marco:
Or maybe even a 16-inch if the thermals work out better for that because I wouldn't be moving it very often.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
But that's my current plan.
Marco:
So I'm going to have my quote low-end one arrive on day one.
Marco:
sit on an island for a day, ride a boat over here the next day, and then I'll start playing with it and be able to talk about it for the show.
John:
Why didn't you get 32 gigs of RAM?
John:
Is it just so you could get day one delivery?
Marco:
Yeah, it's because, two reasons.
Marco:
It's number one, day one delivery was very important to me for that one.
Marco:
And number two, I really have not needed more than 16 gigs of RAM
Marco:
for that laptop role in my life.
Marco:
For my desktop, I would love it.
Marco:
I would jump at that in a second if that was offered on the desktop.
Marco:
But for the laptop, I'm still okay with 16 gigs most of the time.
Casey:
So I'm sorry.
Casey:
So just to make sure I've got this straight.
Casey:
So you've got the base, base, base model, the eight core CPU, 14 core GPU with 16 gigs RAM and a terabyte of storage.
Marco:
Sorry, no, I guess not the base, base.
Marco:
I got the 10 core, 16 gig, one terabyte.
Casey:
Okay, so it's a Pro, not a Max, 10-core.
Casey:
Correct.
Casey:
Gotcha.
John:
All right.
John:
What number of GPU cores?
John:
Because you didn't specify that as an option.
Marco:
Oh, God.
Marco:
Hang on, I can tell you.
John:
We gave it all the variants.
John:
The choices are, you know, there's one 8-core CPU and all the rest are 10 cores.
John:
But then for your GPU, you can have a 14-core, a 16-core, a 24-core, or a 32-core.
Marco:
All right, I got it.
Marco:
10-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 16 gig, 1 terabyte.
John:
So you pick the middle CPU option on the 14-inch, basically, because there's two that are lesser and there's two that are greater.
John:
You're right on the edge of max.
John:
If you had gone up one more CPU, you'd be getting the max.
John:
Yes, it's the all parts work of the Pro.
John:
Yep, yep, that's what it is.
John:
And then you did one level up for the SSD because the base SSD is 512 and you went up to one terabyte.
John:
So again, I'm amazed that you didn't go to 32, but still.
Marco:
No, because this is still an in-stock configuration that they keep.
Marco:
If you go to the right side, they have the left side as the super cheap one.
Marco:
Then you go one model over, and it's still a stock configuration.
Marco:
Any stock configuration was delivering for day one delivery for the first half hour they were selling them.
Marco:
And then if you customize it, it was well into November.
John:
I just have to say that Marco gave his reasons for why he got this computer, but if you're listening, this is a weird configuration to get.
John:
Unless you have Marco's exact specific needs, which you probably don't, I would almost never recommend this configuration to anybody because you spent up to get the CPU better in a way that you probably won't notice, but then you cheaped out on the RAM.
John:
The thing that people will notice, regular people, is RAM and SSD space will extend the life of your thing, and most people will never notice the difference between
John:
the middle cpu gpu and like the the basis of base one so i would have shifted this money around differently for like the average consumer but given your needs especially the need for day one delivery this makes and the fact that you're fine with 16 gigs and you know all your specific reasons you listed this makes sense for you but if you're listening don't just copy the computer marco got it's probably not the right choice for you
Marco:
The reality is, what I am using this computer for, the Air, again, solves this need fine.
Marco:
This computer makes sense for me to not spec up the other two things and to prioritize shipping time because I'm a podcaster who wants to talk about it, and I'm an impatient jerk who wants to get it faster, and because I'm not replacing my desktop.
Marco:
If it's going to be my only computer or my primary computer, I would spec it very differently.
Marco:
I would spec everything much higher.
Marco:
Although, actually, I would not pick a different CPU.
Marco:
I would oh no I guess I'd probably go with the max just for the memory bandwidth so but I would go with 24 cores
Casey:
Would you like to guess what I've bought?
Casey:
Would you like me to set the stage as to what I'm doing with this computer?
Casey:
Do you just want to just guess right off the bat?
John:
I want to try to guess without knowing because I think, let's see.
John:
So you got 14 inch.
John:
That's my guess.
John:
I don't know if I'm right or not.
Casey:
Oh, sorry.
John:
Did you say?
John:
I'm assuming I'm right.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I would have also guessed 14.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Jeez.
John:
What you should have chosen is the top CPU choice, but I don't think you did.
John:
I think you probably, well, let's see.
John:
Now I'm going to go with that.
John:
You should have chosen the top CPU choice.
John:
And because there was a little me and Marco on your shoulder when you were buying it, you did pick the top CPU choice.
John:
Great.
John:
It comes with 32 by default, which is what you got.
John:
The only one I can't figure out is the SSD space.
John:
I don't remember what your baseline is.
John:
I'm going to say you went with two terabytes.
John:
So I'm saying 14-inch M1 Max, 32-core GPU, 32 gigs of RAM, two terabyte SSD.
John:
What did I get wrong?
Casey:
Literally all of it.
John:
Okay.
John:
Oh, crap.
All right.
Marco:
well anyway casey just this is one you should have bought i would guess m1 max 24 core gpu 32 i was i was gonna say two terabyte also maybe four terabyte but i i can see casey really balking at the ssd pricing so maybe every everybody everybody should be that if he got the 24 that's exactly the reason his cheap instincts he shouldn't have gotten 24 he should get the one where all the parts work but he might
Marco:
Yeah, I'm actually, okay, I'm going to say 24-core GPU, 32 gigs of RAM, one terabyte.
Casey:
Ugh.
Casey:
Neither of you are correct.
Casey:
And coincidentally, Marco, you already described what I bought almost exactly, but not just a moment ago.
Casey:
You did about five or ten minutes ago.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
So here's the thing, fellas.
Casey:
I want the option of replacing the iMac Pro with this.
Casey:
because I've never properly used an M1 Mac.
Casey:
And I have a feeling that even if I were to use a MacBook Air, I would probably look at my iMac Pro and say, this is really slow.
Casey:
Why am I using this?
Casey:
I might as well get rid of it.
Casey:
So with that in mind, if you're in the market for an Intel iMac Pro, that might also be available for purchase sometime soon.
Casey:
Let me know.
Marco:
Do you have any third-party RAM in there, Casey?
Casey:
No, I do not.
Casey:
I had to think about that for a second, but no, I do not.
Casey:
So anyway, so I wanted the option for this to be my only computer.
Casey:
Now, the real big problem with this, and I think the only problem with this, is that there is still, well, two problems, actually.
Casey:
There's still no good display story.
Casey:
I really, really, really like having a 5K display.
Casey:
I would love to have a 6K display, but I am way too cheap for that.
Casey:
So I really like having a 5K display, but there really doesn't exist any other than the LG Ultrafine, which I am not above.
Casey:
Like I would rock an LG Ultrafine, but it's not great, especially since, well, it's not great in comparison to what I suspect to be a really phenomenal screen on this 14 inch.
Casey:
But I've been doing a lot of development on my Intel MacBook Pro that I have right now, which, again, I really do love this machine.
Marco:
You won't anymore.
Casey:
Well, I won't anymore, first of all.
Casey:
Second of all, it doesn't have an overabundance of screen real estate.
Casey:
It is enough to get work done, but it is not an overabundance of it.
Casey:
And that is frustrating.
Casey:
And so I can absolutely sit on my screened-in porch and do work for a couple hours or go to a park and do work for a couple hours, and that's not bad.
Casey:
But it is so freeing and refreshing coming back to the big, beautiful iMac Pro display.
Casey:
So even though I want this to potentially be able to replace the iMac Pro, I really haven't solved the display story.
Casey:
And I've doubly not solved the display story because I spent $5,000 on this laptop.
Casey:
So what did I buy?
Casey:
I bought the middle of the road of the processors available on the fancier of the two 14 inches, which is to say I bought the 24 core M1 Max.
Casey:
And the reason I did that is because even that is quote unquote only $200 on top of five freaking thousand is I really don't expect myself to ever need to use that much GPU horsepower for anything.
Casey:
I really don't.
Casey:
So even though it is probably silly of me not to have gotten the, the beefiest processor and I mostly on paper agree with you, John, I just couldn't bring myself to do it knowing how much I'd be spending on the rest of this.
John:
No, it actually does make sense.
John:
I was just teasing because they figured if you're going to go, go all the way, but you, you do not have a need in anything that you do with this laptop for the 32 versus the 24.
John:
Like,
John:
You made the right choice.
John:
In fact, in some ways, it's almost kind of a shame that you can't get the max with fewer GPU cores.
John:
Oh, I would have.
John:
Because you don't need that GPU cores, but you made the right choice by stepping up to max for double the memory bandwidth.
Marco:
Yeah, and I would have made the exact same choice.
Marco:
And in fact, I would also say this is one of the downsides, I think, of this new...
Marco:
structure of designing systems around that now that they're bonding all these things into these common chip blocks and the way you're going to get more CPU cores, you have to also add a bunch more GPU cores.
Marco:
I think what this is going to result in is...
Marco:
people who prioritize CPU over GPU are going to have to massively overbuy on GPU just to get the CPU that they want.
John:
Well, I mean, but at least you get to save money because, like, think when they have 128 GPU cores, like, maybe, like, half of them are broken.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And you get a good deal on that.
John:
Like Casey saved 200 bucks by buying one with some broken GPU cores that he doesn't need.
John:
So you're right that it's a shame they tie them together.
John:
But at least like this is one of the cases they actually do pass those savings on to you, right?
John:
Like instead of just offering the ones with all the parts work where you really have to like, oh, I want the most cores, but then I have to pay for these stupid GPUs.
John:
Casey's getting away with not paying for what?
John:
Eight cores that he doesn't care about.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So I went the 24-core GPU.
Casey:
Basically, I wanted to get into the Macs, but I did not care any further because I knew I wouldn't use the GPUs.
Casey:
My iMac Pro has 64 gigs of RAM, so this machine will have 64 gigs of RAM.
Casey:
Useful?
Casey:
Maybe not.
Casey:
Necessary?
Casey:
Absolutely not.
Casey:
But I didn't want to go backwards if this is going to eventually be my only machine, which I'm not entirely sure it is, but I want that option.
Casey:
Storage.
Casey:
My iMac Pro is 4 terabytes.
Casey:
This has 4 terabytes to the tune of $1,000.
Casey:
That's the one that hurts.
John:
Apple's SSD prices do not make sense.
John:
You're wondering how they get 30-something percent margin on their Macs?
John:
Increase the storage.
John:
You'll find out.
Casey:
I looked briefly, I hovered ever so briefly over the 8 terabyte storage option, but at $1,200 additional dollars on top of the $1,000 I already added, I couldn't do it.
Casey:
So what I ended up with is $44.99 plus AppleCare plus tax.
Casey:
That puts you at about $5,000.
Marco:
Yeah, if I was going to replace my desktop, that's exactly what I'd replace it with.
Casey:
Yeah, and you said that earlier.
Casey:
I don't know if you recall, but you basically rattled off this exact machine earlier.
John:
Once you've specced it up like this, and I was looking at those prices, it's the floor mats phenomenon of like, do you want the floor mats on your $30,000 car?
John:
The floor mats are quote-unquote only $150,000.
John:
And because the car costs so much money, the $150 formats seem reasonable when really they're not reasonable in any planet because $150 is just the same amount, whether it's next to the $30,000 or in isolation.
John:
But looking at your spec and I'm saying, oh, well, the 32 core is only 200 extra bucks.
John:
And so I'm already spending five grand.
John:
Eh, just throw it in there.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
I mean, I could make a passionate argument that I made the wrong choice.
Casey:
I could see it either way.
John:
No, you made the right choice.
John:
I'm just saying that this buying, this fallacy of buying things is what would have made me go to the 32.
John:
But I think you did make the right choice.
John:
And just look at it this way.
John:
If those eight GPU cores are actually powered down, you're saving battery powered down.
Casey:
Somebody in the chat room asked you how much space you're actually using.
Casey:
So on my iMac Pro right now, according to, you know, in the About dialogue, I am...
Casey:
using three out of my four terabytes now i'll be the first to tell you i have cruft all over this thing and i i would guess i'm probably actually only using about two terabytes and the rest and i have an additional terabyte of just nonsense all over the place but i i never ever ever want to be in a position where i've bought a machine and then like a year later i think to myself well
Casey:
Screwed that one up.
Casey:
It is not my style to buy a computer like my one-year-old laptop, which by the way is available.
Casey:
It is not my style to buy a laptop and then like Marco, change it a year later.
Casey:
That is not my normal way of doing things.
Casey:
But the struggle I have, all snark and all jokes aside, is...
Casey:
I really suspect that I'm going to run Xcode, and I've been doing a lot of Swift and Swift UI development recently because I've got a whole different new thing, not Goaltender, but something else that I'm working on.
Casey:
And I've been doing a lot of Swift and Swift UI development, and I have a feeling once I try that on this new MacBook Pro, which, by the way, arrives somewhere between November 5 and November 10, when I try doing Xcode development on this, I have a feeling I will say, well...
Casey:
that iMac Pro is getting sent somewhere because I never want to touch it again.
Casey:
And that's a bummer because I really, really, really love this iMac Pro.
Casey:
And maybe it'll end up that I won't say that.
Casey:
And maybe I'll still love using this iMac Pro for reasons other than the beautiful screen.
Casey:
But I really, really suspect that I'm going to be...
Casey:
that I'm going to be in a position that I want to just use this machine or, you know, in a money, no object world, you know, a Mac mini or something like that connected to an XDR if I had infinite dollars as a desktop and then use this as a laptop.
Casey:
But given that I've already spent an obscene amount of money, by the way, ATP.fm slash join,
Casey:
since I've heard of spent an obscene amount of money on this laptop, I suspect my future is going to be that the iMac Pro is either downgraded to, don't say this, or don't let John hear me, downgraded to some sort of like server or something like that to replace my ancient Mac mini that I have, or I'll even more likely just unload the iMac Pro as well.
Casey:
And then perhaps with the proceeds from that sale, get myself some sort of monitor.
Casey:
I still can't swing a XDR unless many, many people go to atp.fm.
Casey:
But I could see myself getting like an LG 5K or something like that.
Casey:
And I think that's what my future will bring.
Casey:
But I'm not 100% sure.
Casey:
We'll see what happens.
John:
Did I just black out or did you just say you're going to use your iMac Pro as a server?
Casey:
No, why would I do that?
Casey:
That's obscene.
Casey:
You absolutely blacked out.
Marco:
Sell the iMac Pro for God's sake while it's still worth anything.
Marco:
And then when I upgrade my desktop, I'll sell you my Mac Mini.
Casey:
But it'll still be slower than my MacBook Pro.
Casey:
That's the thing.
Marco:
No, no, not for your desktop, for your server role.
Casey:
Oh, actually, well, we should take this offline.
Casey:
But all kidding aside, I might take you up on that.
Casey:
I might very well take you up on that.
Casey:
I misunderstood what you were saying.
Casey:
So that's the thing.
Casey:
So really and truly, I'm not trying to be funny.
Casey:
I'm definitely going to unload the Intel MacBook Pro, which is a great machine.
Casey:
And probably by Thanksgiving time, I will almost surely...
Casey:
end up wanting to unload the iMac Pro, which, again, is a phenomenal machine.
John:
You should not wait.
John:
You should make the decision soon, because those Intel Macs are going down in value fast.
John:
Yes.
Casey:
Well, the thing is, I need to have that machine physically here before I can get rid of it, and it's not going to be here until November 5th at the earliest.
Casey:
So I figure, even if it comes on the 10th, I'll need about a week to get everything squared away, and then at that point, it's effectively Thanksgiving.
Casey:
So that's how I landed on that math.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
I am super excited.
Casey:
I am so excited for this computer.
Casey:
I know I've probably said the word super excited about 100 times during this episode, but I'm so happy.
Casey:
I'm so excited for this machine.
Casey:
I really think it's going to be phenomenal.
Casey:
I genuinely believe that it's going to make me more productive, which maybe is me just justifying this obscene, ridiculous purchase to myself, and it probably is.
Casey:
But I really have been feeling like...
Casey:
xcode and swift and swift ui development is pushing the limits of the machines that i have today and anything else literally anything else i do is not pushing the limits but that specifically is but that's what i that's what i spend most of my week doing and so at this point i really feel like that i genuinely do need it for my work as silly as it sounds as i say it out loud and so that's why i did it and
Casey:
Surprisingly, the family CFO did not take any particular umbrage with it and basically just rolled her eyes and said, yeah, whatever, that's fine.
Casey:
So here we are.
Casey:
Hopefully I'll be able to sell some machines to some of you fine, lovely listeners sometime over the next few weeks.
Casey:
But I am super excited to get this.
Casey:
I don't know if I can show up to the show until mine shows up because I'm just going to be unbelievably woefully jealous of Marcos.
Marco:
What a great time this is.
Marco:
I'm just so happy and relieved on so many levels.
Marco:
Oh, what a good time.
Marco:
Thank you to our sponsors this week.
Marco:
Apple and Apple and Apple.
Marco:
Also, Squarespace, Linode, and Stripe.
Marco:
And thank you to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join and help fund Casey's XDR purchase in a few months.
Marco:
Yes, please.
Marco:
At ATV.FM slash join.
Marco:
We will talk to you all next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
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-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So I wanted to do a quick recap of some of the rumors that we had earlier in the year.
Casey:
And I think this was spurned by John making or bringing up an old tweet of yours, I think, with the chip city.
Casey:
and you had mentioned, oh, this episode of ATP, and then I got looking back for whatever episode it was, and unfortunately I don't recall which one it was.
Casey:
But we mentioned a couple of different rumors over that episode of ATP and maybe one or two others, and I wanted to quickly check back in on them, and we made mention of this earlier briefly, but one of them was a ransomware rumor.
Casey:
So this was when, I forget what supplier it was, but one of the suppliers for Apple, Quanta, Q-U-A-N-T-A,
Casey:
apparently had some information stolen from them, and then it was auctioned off or... I'm sorry, it was ransomed so that the bad people said, if you don't give us a whole pile of Bitcoin, probably, or some other silly fake currency, then we're going to start releasing these documents.
Casey:
And that's what happened.
Casey:
And so I was looking back at this 9to5Mac recap, and
Casey:
And here's what the leaked things said.
Casey:
They said on the right side of the forthcoming MacBook... Oh, and I'm sorry, this is dated 21 April.
Casey:
21 April.
Casey:
On the right side, there will be HDMI, USB-C, and an SD card reader.
Casey:
Check, check, check.
Casey:
On the left side, MagSafe, two times USB-C, and headphone port.
Casey:
Check, check, and check.
Casey:
And also no more touch bar.
Casey:
Check.
Casey:
absolutely nailed it.
John:
Did they show the positions?
John:
Didn't this one also have like the image that showed like the position?
John:
So the positions, relative positions were all exactly the right as well?
Casey:
No, I don't think, I don't, maybe they were actually.
Marco:
No, it did.
Marco:
It was like, this was right on and this was in April.
Marco:
We had the port layout nailed in April.
John:
Yeah, it was confusing because now that I look at it, I realize it's upside down.
John:
Yeah, that took me a while to figure out.
John:
Yeah, it's yeah.
John:
Now that I know what it actually looks like, I'm like, wait a second, that's not how.
John:
Oh, I see.
John:
Because I think I saw that.
John:
I think I thought the HDMI was MagSafe.
John:
But really MagSafe is as small as USB-C.
John:
So yes, now seeing the actual products, look at these and like, yep, they got it.
John:
It's just I was totally confused by what I was seeing in these line art drawings.
Casey:
And then Mark Gurman's roundup dated 18 of May.
Casey:
This is where we started learning about the Jade dyes.
Casey:
And I'm going to read an excerpt about that in a minute.
Casey:
But in short, Mark said there will be eight performance cores, two high efficiency cores, check and check.
Casey:
16 core GPU, check.
Casey:
32 core GPU, check.
Casey:
64 gigs memory, check.
Casey:
The only thing that was missed was the 24 core option, which as it turns out is what I bought.
John:
But that's just a binning.
John:
That's just a binning thing.
John:
I wouldn't call that a miss because he was just telling you how many things are on the chip, not how many will be working.
Casey:
Yep, that's fair.
Casey:
And then there was mention of a four-port Mac Mini with the M1 Max or M1 Pro, although they weren't called that at the time.
Casey:
That hasn't shown up yet, so it doesn't mean that Gurman was wrong.
Casey:
It's just not there yet.
Casey:
And then I wanted to read the excerpt about the Jade dies just because I thought it was interesting given all we've spoken about.
Casey:
The codenamed the Jade 2C die and Jade 4C die, a redesigned Mac Pro is planned to come in 20 or 40 computing core variations made up of 16 high performance or 32 high performance cores and four or eight high efficiency cores.
Casey:
The chips would also include either 64 core or 128 core options for graphics.
Casey:
The computing core counts top the 28 core maximum offered by today's Intel Mac Pro chips, while the higher end graphics chips would replace the parts now made by AMD.
Marco:
and that was all in may like that's that all you know as you mentioned with the exception of you know we don't have the mac mini yet or the mac pro but so far like german nailed these chips in may so and that's that's what gives me pretty good hopes for the rest of this most likely coming true as well the way he said it would because whatever info he got that outlined the jade dies and stuff
Marco:
was on like that was right on so this is probably gonna be how this goes with the with the you know mac mini and mac pro and i'm really looking forward to that because that sounds awesome so sitting here now and i was this is not in the show notes actually but i'm curious sitting here now marco are you going to get a mac pro assuming it follows the specs that we expect sitting here today i mean knowing nothing else about it probably
Casey:
I mean, I think that's fair.
Casey:
John, would you replace yours, upgrade yours?
John:
Oh, absolutely.
John:
Will I be in a position to do so financially?
John:
Maybe.
John:
Yeah, I would absolutely upgrade to the thing that is rumored in these rumors.
John:
No hesitation whatsoever.
John:
In fact, that's kind of my plan, but...
John:
i i mean it depends on when it comes december 2022 is a while from now maybe i'll feel like you know you know saving my pennies so we'll see and actually i don't have to buy another six thousand dollar freaking display and stand and all that other stuff so maybe it'll be a bargain i'm already convincing myself to do it you know my my concern over that though is you know like when when the uh when retina first came out in 2012 on that 15 inch retina mac i know i know the iphone and ipad both beat it but
Marco:
when mac retina first came out you know it it kind of ruined all other macs until retina could go across the entire product line including the giant desktop monitors and that took a while um i wonder like is 120 hertz on the laptop going to ruin my xdr and i'm gonna be just like miserable until it comes to the the size i think
John:
i think you're okay for the most part there because i don't think this machine is even rumored to have any port that can drive a 6k display at 120 hertz that's true yeah i don't i think that's even in the cards in the time frame we're talking about eventually it will be possible but i don't think thunderbolt 4 which is what these things are going to have or any of the display port specs or they could try to run with two cables but like
John:
I don't think that's in the cart, so don't worry about that.
John:
You will at least have a time in the sun with a 60 hertz XDR and a bazillion ARM cores sitting inside some kind of Mac connected to it.
John:
Because, yeah, because we just don't have the bandwidth.
John:
Like, as you start doing the math, even with display stream compression, you know, we have to use display stream compression to get 60 hertz at 6K in some GPU combination, so I'm not worried.
John:
And although, like, the question is, would Apple, I mean,
John:
we we assume the xdr is going to be around for a long time uh but uh if that's not the case would apple try to do 8k at 60 hertz you know what i mean yeah right which is i think feasible i haven't done the math um but yeah well let me tell you john if you're worried about being able to fund a yet another mac pro uh listeners atp.fm slash join oh yeah i
Casey:
And then finally, I did want to make a very brief check in.
Casey:
I looked through Apple's website earlier and I tried to amass a list of every Intel Mac that remains.
Casey:
And I believe the list is the Mac mini, which has a single model available, a three gigahertz, six core model for 1100 bucks.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
The 27-inch iMac, which obviously hasn't been updated yet, which has a handful of different options.
Casey:
The 21.5-inch iMac, which there is one Intel option still available, 2.3 gigahertz dual-core, also for $1,100.
Casey:
And the Mac Pro, but who would buy those anyway, am I right?
Marco:
yeah so all desktops in other words like there's so there's no so here intel is dead completely in the laptop line the touch bar is also totally dead in the laptop line thank god for that no no that's not true right because can't you get the 13 inch macbook pro can you still or is that i thought maybe i'm wrong about that but i thought so yeah macbook pro 13 inch
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Casey:
You can still get it on the 13-inch MacBook Pro.
Casey:
That's the only one that you can get a touch bar right now, I believe.
Marco:
Oh, you're right.
Marco:
They do have a touch bar on that M1.
Marco:
That's right.
John:
They didn't change the feature set of the cases, more or less.
John:
They just changed the guts.
Marco:
Please don't buy that, anybody.
Casey:
That's the two-port one, right?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Look, please, everybody.
Marco:
If you're going to buy a 13-inch-sized M1-based laptop, buy the MacBook Air.
Marco:
It's better in most ways.
Marco:
And if you want more performance, buy the new 14-inch...
Marco:
Please, if you already have a 13-inch, fine, you don't set it on fire or anything, that would be wasteful.
Marco:
But if you're buying new today, don't buy the 13-inch M1 Pro with the touch bar and everything.
Marco:
That's not a good choice when we have better choices now.
Marco:
Please buy the 14 or the Air.
John:
Unless you really love the touch bar, kind of like me with the old AirPods and you just want to get the last one before it's gone.
John:
That seems like it's the last one.
Marco:
Yeah, it does seem like it has quite a future.
Marco:
Yeah, good luck.
Marco:
Good luck with that.