00:00:00 ◼ ► I wanted to have you on because you've been like me, a Mac user, as long as you can remember,
00:00:06 ◼ ► probably, right? Yeah, well, I mean, I'm not that old. So I can remember times, you know,
00:00:14 ◼ ► I was a little bit late, as far as like the the Mac, like Apple, quote unquote, faithful.
00:00:20 ◼ ► I did not really get into Macs until I was about 16. But it's because I had this like long storied
00:00:28 ◼ ► childhood son of a software engineer, very nerdy, explorative software engineer. So I did the whole
00:00:35 ◼ ► Amiga, various like Unix systems, all that stuff. And then somebody showed me a Mac. And I was like,
00:00:43 ◼ ► Oh, yeah, it was such a great feeling, because to come, not from a situation where the Mac was
00:00:50 ◼ ► offered to me in any like, I wasn't spoon fed the Mac by my parents by my dad, especially he was
00:00:56 ◼ ► like, anti Apple and famously came around to Apple. But I really came to the Mac, like, totally
00:01:03 ◼ ► honestly, like on my own, found it said, Yep, this is for me and to come from like a Unix and Amiga
00:01:10 ◼ ► background and say, You know what, I want to have this, like, the machine that people say,
00:01:16 ◼ ► is less powerful is a toy, etc, etc, something about the, the interface, the forgiveness of the
00:01:23 ◼ ► Mac interface, forgivingness, I guess. I just said, This is for me. And I jumped right on about
00:01:30 ◼ ► 1615 16 years old. And so now, given my actual age, that's about 30 years ago, so 30 years of
00:01:37 ◼ ► the Mac. So I guess that counts as almost as long as I can remember. But that's, that's definitely
00:01:43 ◼ ► a lot longer than most people. For me, I think I've told this story. I'm sure I have. I mean,
00:01:51 ◼ ► we're like, this, I just entered in the notes. This is Episode 327 of the podcast. So I'm sure
00:01:58 ◼ ► I've told the story before. I mean, she's 326 episodes, I'm sure I've gotten to it. But for me,
00:02:04 ◼ ► I'm a little bit I think I'm a little bit older than you. But for me in in my high school years,
00:02:10 ◼ ► the Apple two was the shiznit, right? Like, and and it was, it wasn't that I didn't see that the Mac
00:02:19 ◼ ► was, I wasn't against it. But I was sort of against the way that the Mac was a level abstracted
00:02:30 ◼ ► from the machine, right? Like, that the one of the things that people of our age who remember
00:02:37 ◼ ► actually, like the Apple two, being a viable computer is that it, it really did put you right
00:02:47 ◼ ► at the machine, right? And it was, it was. And what I remember very, very specifically, was,
00:03:02 ◼ ► but I think I think it was 12th grade. And I had a programming course at my high school.
00:03:09 ◼ ► And it was just me and one other kid, and they called it like advanced placement programming or
00:03:15 ◼ ► whatever. And there was only one Macintosh, but there were several Apple two GS's. And I loved
00:03:24 ◼ ► the Apple two GS, which was sort of the Macintosh inspired version of the Apple two is the, the,
00:03:32 ◼ ► you know, the last and greatest Apple two. And there was a Macintosh inspired Apple two GS. I
00:03:41 ◼ ► think they even just called it the desktop. Do you remember that? Sort of, but I was, I was an
00:03:49 ◼ ► Amiga kid at that time. And so when you say Apple two GS, speaking of all this reminiscence,
00:03:58 ◼ ► See, we would have been, we much like today, we would have been, we would have been in fisticuffs,
00:04:06 ◼ ► even, even at that age, you know, yeah. Who you call in slow. Yeah. Who you call in slow. But
00:04:11 ◼ ► I remember it. And I remember that there was like at the beginning of the school year, it was like,
00:04:20 ◼ ► you know, you two are going to just do sort of, it was sort of like an independent study, right?
00:04:26 ◼ ► Cause there's only two kids. And, and she was a wonderful teacher and, and a great, great teacher
00:04:31 ◼ ► for computer science. But we, you know, with only two kids in the class, it was clearly going to be
00:04:36 ◼ ► individual. And I remember that there was, it was sort of like, who's going to get the Macintosh
00:04:46 ◼ ► and who's not. And it, it settled itself very easily. And it's funny in hindsight that I was
00:04:55 ◼ ► like, I, I don't want to use that thing. It, the screen is too small. It's black and white.
00:05:01 ◼ ► Right. And a hypercard does not make me, it didn't make it. It was like, this seems weird.
00:05:10 ◼ ► You know, it's like, it's all black and white. I would rather have this thing with the color screen
00:05:15 ◼ ► and the it's both color and a bigger screen. And it's, it actually is like a computer computer.
00:05:22 ◼ ► And it was like, okay, oh, this is great. This, this won't be a contentious issue that we only
00:05:29 ◼ ► have one Macintosh in the computer lab in. And in hindsight, of course I made a terrible mistake.
00:05:35 ◼ ► Right. Yeah. It's really interesting to think back that, you know, Apple, I think its whole history
00:05:42 ◼ ► has been focusing on some features that matter at the exclusion of features that it, you know,
00:05:49 ◼ ► perceives don't matter to its customer base. And when you look back at that very early original
00:05:54 ◼ ► Mac, it's like everybody had gotten used to color on their computer screens. You know, if you had a,
00:06:00 ◼ ► Atari or a Commodore or even an Apple two, you had color of course. And then to look at this
00:06:07 ◼ ► black and white screen, I guess, yeah, you, you really had to appreciate the things the Mac could
00:06:12 ◼ ► do in order to be willing to give up something. So kind of taken for granted. And it is funny too,
00:06:25 ◼ ► you were using an Amiga. I know, our friends, at panic, you know, Cable Sasser and, and,
00:06:33 ◼ ► Steven Frank were, were big Amiga users. And the, the Amiga was incredibly appealing, right?
00:06:48 ◼ ► Yeah. The Amiga was so cool that, you know, that the like raw capabilities of the computer were so,
00:06:56 ◼ ► you know, unexpected. There was a whole like scene of, they called them just the demos,
00:07:04 ◼ ► right? Demo. You would just download demos that showed off the amazing, like coprocessor that
00:07:11 ◼ ► did graphics, bleeding and stuff. And that was, you know, I guess that's sort of the opposite of
00:07:17 ◼ ► the Mac at that time. Nobody was like, look at what we can do with this like video transformation
00:07:23 ◼ ► thing. But yeah, it was a very interesting, fun time. I'm really glad I ended up following the
00:07:30 ◼ ► Mac. It's funny because I ended up getting into the Mac kind of like on, on the precipice of Apple
00:07:37 ◼ ► going out of business. So I was like, I was kind of going from like one, one like outsider dying,
00:07:44 ◼ ► you know, community, the Commodore Amiga, like, well, maybe this other one will work. And then
00:07:48 ◼ ► it's like, Oh, this one's dying too. But I ended up, you know, as you know, some, some of your
00:07:53 ◼ ► listeners know also that I worked at Apple pretty young. And I was there like when I guess, you know,
00:08:00 ◼ ► it would have been reasonable for us to question whether we'd get our paychecks the next week.
00:08:04 ◼ ► It was like really almost out of business. So it's, it's really gratifying to have ended up
00:08:10 ◼ ► following something that I liked because I valued its merits. And then whoa, what do you know, it's
00:08:16 ◼ ► turns out it's the best and it survived. And it's right now as we see these new Macs come out,
00:08:24 ◼ ► it's like the Macs are definitely the best Macs I've ever seen. And I just can't believe we've
00:08:39 ◼ ► right? Like sometimes things don't have the right word to describe them. But demos were like
00:08:45 ◼ ► the perfect word. I remember being jealous, right? That, that I didn't have an Amiga to run them
00:08:53 ◼ ► because the best demos were definitely on the Amiga. And, and literally it was, it was the,
00:08:59 ◼ ► what we would now call an app. And it would just be like a thing you would launch and it would run
00:09:07 ◼ ► and it would show something really cool on screen. It would be animated, maybe like a 3d type thing
00:09:16 ◼ ► or whatever it, but just something that looked really cool. And then it would run and then it
00:09:23 ◼ ► would end. And that was it. And it was the whole point of it, right? The closest the Mac had were
00:09:29 ◼ ► screensavers like after dark modules, but they, they clearly weren't as cool. And there were,
00:09:35 ◼ ► there was definitely something to that where the Amiga had capabilities that, that other computers
00:09:42 ◼ ► didn't have. Yeah, for sure. It was stuff, you know, I mentioned it earlier that the specific
00:09:48 ◼ ► chip, the Amiga had was called a, I think it was the graphics coprocessor and someone called it
00:09:53 ◼ ► the copper chip. Right. And it was so renowned within the whole demo scene that like, I think
00:10:00 ◼ ► you would see, you know, like the word copper like floating across the screen and it was a very like,
00:10:06 ◼ ► hackery kind of culture. It was like all the people who were hacking and cracking the games
00:10:13 ◼ ► that you would download pirated or copy, we wouldn't download them, you copy them at disc
00:10:18 ◼ ► duplication parties. We didn't call it piracy at the time. No, it was just getting software. But
00:10:26 ◼ ► all the, it's like the same people who were smart enough and like adventurous enough to
00:10:30 ◼ ► disassemble and reverse engineer all these copy protection schemes were like the same people who
00:10:36 ◼ ► were making these incredible graphics. It's funny because they're, they're the skill set. If I think
00:10:41 ◼ ► back at it is probably the same people also who were being robbed by the piracy probably also
00:10:47 ◼ ► working at the game companies. But yeah, it's a, it was really something else. Yeah. Anybody
00:10:53 ◼ ► who could make a demo that would get any attention, let alone any, you know, like actual renown,
00:10:59 ◼ ► clearly had programming capabilities that either, either they were working for a game company or
00:11:07 ◼ ► they should have been right. Totally. Let me take a break here and thank our first sponsor. It is
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00:11:52 ◼ ► And, but without adding a lot of maintenance on the people on the other side of the website,
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00:14:43 ◼ ► but you first got in touch with me a few days ago. I had the MacBook sitting there on my desk,
00:14:49 ◼ ► stuck in migration assistant. And I was like, "I'd love to be on the show, but it's going to be like
00:14:58 ◼ ► three hours of me complaining about the migration assistant." Or lying and saying that, you know,
00:15:05 ◼ ► or just talking about how beautiful the outside of the machine is. And the only interface you've seen
00:15:18 ◼ ► It's the most beautiful hang I've ever seen. So I had real bad luck and picking up from like the
00:15:25 ◼ ► vibe on Twitter around our, you know, Slack groups and stuff like that. I'm not the only one. I think,
00:15:32 ◼ ► unfortunately, this is a beautiful, magnificent new series of Macs that for some reason,
00:15:38 ◼ ► people are having more trouble than usual with migration. And my advice to anybody who still
00:15:45 ◼ ► is waiting for theirs, just bite the bullet when you get this thing. I don't know if it's like,
00:15:50 ◼ ► you know, that it has like a slightly less new OS or what, but if I were doing it over, I would,
00:15:58 ◼ ► first things first, plug it in, go into recovery assistant on the new Mac, which you do these days
00:16:04 ◼ ► by just holding down the power key as you start it up and just reinstall, just like go in,
00:16:10 ◼ ► you know, reinstall the OS from scratch. Apple will take care of it. They'll download the latest
00:16:15 ◼ ► version. I don't know for sure that that would have spared me the hassle I went through, but I
00:16:20 ◼ ► ended up there anyway after so much grief. So I would recommend just try that and, you know,
00:16:27 ◼ ► until and unless everyone stops complaining about migration failing. So that was going to be a
00:16:34 ◼ ► horrible episode we were going to record. But now, like you say, every day gets more interesting.
00:16:44 ◼ ► And as I'm speaking to you now, I am staring into the beautiful, to my eyes, gigantic abyss of 24
00:16:54 ◼ ► inch LG monitor. That is the first monitor I've had in probably 10 years. And I'll tell you why,
00:17:05 ◼ ► because I went for the 14 inch book and and you feel like that's not enough screen space
00:17:17 ◼ ► I know you have vision issues. My vision issues are different, but also changing as I get older.
00:17:24 ◼ ► And I'm looking at this 14 inch MacBook and it's beautiful. And to be honest, I can get by
00:17:29 ◼ ► without an external monitor. But I probably would have just swam in this thing like a fish
00:17:37 ◼ ► as a 20 year old and now as a 46 year old, I am I got it. And I was like, you know what,
00:17:45 ◼ ► I think I made the right choice. But something's not right about this. It's not good in the day to
00:17:51 ◼ ► day use. So I use my MacBook mostly at my desk in my office. So I just like between the time you and
00:18:05 ◼ ► googling. It's like being a grandparent in the 80s trying to figure out how to buy a VCR.
00:18:22 ◼ ► letters that I don't know. So, you know, chatting with some people who know better than I do,
00:18:36 ◼ ► is a good starting point for me anyway, because you can get a screen that's pretty good. And
00:18:43 ◼ ► it's all based around Mac infrastructure. So it's like it assumes you're going to plug a Mac into
00:18:48 ◼ ► it. So now I'm still like I said, I am really I'm in a better mood to that I've been in a long time.
00:19:05 ◼ ► plugged in with a single cable to my LG monitor. And it's in clamshell mode. It's closed. I plugged
00:19:13 ◼ ► it in. I didn't even have to open the lid, plugged it in. Screen comes on. I'm I'm off to the races.
00:19:21 ◼ ► My MacBook is charging. It has Ethernet coming in. It has video going out. It has all of my peripherals.
00:19:29 ◼ ► I'm just like, I'm like the grandpa from the 80s who just discovered like, actually, VCRs are
00:19:35 ◼ ► really cool. Or like automatic transmissions are cool, right? Like I just I just hit the
00:19:41 ◼ ► gas pedal and the car goes, you know? Yeah. And also, it's been 10 plus years since I've looked
00:19:50 ◼ ► at a screen that is larger than a 16 inch MacBook Pro. So I'm, I'm just like, I'm really glad I
00:19:58 ◼ ► didn't get anything bigger than 24 inches because it's huge. It's, it isn't it's an interesting
00:20:04 ◼ ► place to start because it is arguably, maybe inarguably, right? The the hole in Apple's
00:20:17 ◼ ► offerings is the the Apple, what is the Apple standalone, big ass display? That doesn't cost
00:20:30 ◼ ► $5,000. Right? Yeah. With an optional $1,000 stand, right? And, again, the the it's not even
00:20:42 ◼ ► just about the cost, you know, that that the pro display XDR is is five slash $6,000. You know,
00:20:50 ◼ ► with the stand and whatever it it's that the pro display costs that much because it has certain
00:20:58 ◼ ► features that do not apply to even if you have great eyesight, truly great, you know, perfect
00:21:07 ◼ ► vision. It it has features, though, that don't really matter to you unless you're in the
00:21:13 ◼ ► professional video editing field and need that level of, of I don't even know what you call it,
00:21:23 ◼ ► but like all the all the reference monitor, right reference monitor type stuff. It's like,
00:21:30 ◼ ► like, let's just say let's just set set the bullet point like, and say $1,500. Right? Let's just say
00:21:40 ◼ ► what if Apple made a $1,500 display, which would be more expensive than almost every third party
00:21:47 ◼ ► display on the market, you know, dollar for dollar, it would still be expensive, there,
00:21:53 ◼ ► there would be plenty of margin in there. Clearly, they could make it right or to not put a
00:22:00 ◼ ► dollar point on it, it just to say, what if they just made a display that was like the 27 inch
00:22:08 ◼ ► iMac? Right? Yeah. Why not? Why just just sell me a display. And you and I know this because
00:22:15 ◼ ► we're on a, you know, group slack. And it I hear it from daring fireball readers all the time.
00:22:32 ◼ ► Yeah. But they can't because it doesn't, it doesn't the IMAX don't support target mode anymore.
00:22:39 ◼ ► But people are you know, that that is something people are willing to pay for. They're like,
00:22:44 ◼ ► I would buy the entire iMac, you know, whatever it costs, and just use it as a display from my
00:22:54 ◼ ► MacBook Pro or whatever that you know, they want to plug into it. The L and maybe Apple's answer
00:23:03 ◼ ► is just you, you know, hey, listen to us. You know, we partnered with LG several years ago
00:23:18 ◼ ► here's the funny thing. So I'm so out of it. And I don't I didn't understand I just kind of
00:23:21 ◼ ► I fell for the group think a little bit like everyone keeps saying, you know, the LG 5k is
00:23:27 ◼ ► the best thing until Apple comes out with something that of their own that is like comparable. And I
00:23:33 ◼ ► was just kind of thinking, well, I guess that's the thing I need to wait for is the whatever.
00:23:38 ◼ ► And now I'm looking at this map, the monitor I got for like 700 bucks, which is not cheap for
00:23:44 ◼ ► a 24 inch monitor. I've come to learn. I have no idea. I didn't either. No. And but it's perfect.
00:23:54 ◼ ► I don't need anything else. And it turns out like I was just kind of going along for the ride with
00:23:59 ◼ ► everybody saying like, well, it's too bad. In fact, like the the I'm looking at it right now,
00:24:05 ◼ ► the the bezel is like a nice, like smooth subdued kind of charcoal. The LG logo is very modest. I
00:24:14 ◼ ► don't know. I'm like, I'm not I'm not I don't have a problem with this. I am in good position.
00:24:19 ◼ ► Well, and I that that is kind of what I think maybe, you know, nobody at Apple, you know,
00:24:39 ◼ ► that's the answer. You know, we worked with him on it. But it's like, I have heard that and and
00:24:45 ◼ ► it's popped up a lot in the last 10 days or so as people have started getting their MacBook,
00:24:53 ◼ ► their new MacBook Pros, right? Because there's a huge number of people and I'm sure that a lot of
00:24:59 ◼ ► them are the type of people who listen to my podcast. So they're listening right now. People
00:25:05 ◼ ► who probably just like you, right? Like and you were probably thinking like a year ago, like,
00:25:11 ◼ ► ah, maybe I should buy the M1 MacBook Pro, but I know it's kind of not the pro Pro MacBook Pro,
00:25:21 ◼ ► so I should wait. And they didn't know is it going to be three months, six months? Is it going to be
00:25:26 ◼ ► a whole year turned out it was a whole year. But they're all like, oh, it was worth the wait. This
00:25:33 ◼ ► machine has everything. But the other thing is that they're the type of people who might want
00:25:39 ◼ ► to plug it into a display and I've seen people talking about it. And more or less the answer
00:25:45 ◼ ► from people who own the LG 5k thing is, hey, it's not perfect, but it's actually pretty good. And
00:25:54 ◼ ► a lot of the problems people had early on were addressed by like the B revision version of it.
00:26:03 ◼ ► And, you know, that there wasn't there like a thing with like the shielding or something like
00:26:08 ◼ ► that. Like he couldn't use some equipment next to your monitor or something. Right. I remember that.
00:26:14 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. It was like the there was like a shielding issue and like it would screw up your
00:26:19 ◼ ► Wi Fi or something like that. But that's all fixed. And and now it's like, you know, this is actually
00:26:25 ◼ ► you know, a reasonable price and it's, you know, it's more expensive than most 24 inch displays,
00:26:33 ◼ ► but it's also less expensive than an Apple branded 24 inch display would be. And it is intended,
00:26:48 ◼ ► Right. And that's a beautiful I had no idea this was even technologically like where things had
00:26:54 ◼ ► gotten. Right. Like I was really skeptical when I plugged in the one USB or not not USB
00:27:01 ◼ ► Thunderbolt three cable, which looks like a USB cable. When I plugged that one cable and I was
00:27:07 ◼ ► really skeptical that it was going to be able to charge my Mac and bring all the peripherals in
00:27:12 ◼ ► and put out the video signal. And the fact that it just works, I feel like I dodged a bullet not
00:27:19 ◼ ► buying a more mainstream, you know, HDMI based monitor. I feel like this is I had no idea last
00:27:28 ◼ ► week when I was still waiting to get the MacBook, I had no idea that the week would unfold in such
00:27:35 ◼ ► a way that I'd end up with a monitor. And I would end up with a much easier setup for like docking
00:27:42 ◼ ► and undocking my work workplace. So explain that to me, though, like, like, like when you
00:27:54 ◼ ► One thing? It's the back. It's lit. I'm looking at that's why I'm so enthusiastic. That gives you
00:28:01 ◼ ► it gives you power and puts the puts the display on the external display. We should be doing an
00:28:23 ◼ ► No, yeah, but seriously, you I can't actually tell if you are playing. No, I'm not. I'm honestly not
00:28:31 ◼ ► because I'm I'm you're like me. You're like me. You don't know. I'm much like you where I honestly
00:28:46 ◼ ► docked into a monitor. So honest to God, I'm being so I'm being completely straightforward here. I
00:28:54 ◼ ► am not playing dumb. Yeah, let me explain it then for you. And for everybody else in the audience
00:29:06 ◼ ► plugged into power strip. And then into that, I have my MacBook Pro plugged in with the USB
00:29:14 ◼ ► or the sorry, the Thunderbolt three cable. Now, in addition, the monitor has an extra Thunderbolt three
00:29:24 ◼ ► and like three USB C ports. As it happens, the way I was living before was I have one of these
00:29:32 ◼ ► adapters that lets you get Ethernet and USB C and some other things. I have like a chain of USB hubs
00:29:39 ◼ ► right now. I have like a USB hub plugged into the USB C hub that also brings Ethernet. And all of
00:29:49 ◼ ► this stuff is aggregating a mouse keyboard scanner, Ethernet connection, some other junk like some
00:29:57 ◼ ► chart, you know, the cord that my phone plugs into all this junk is going into one USB C port on the
00:30:06 ◼ ► monitor. And all of that is magically conveyed to my Mac. Hmm. And I don't do anything you didn't
00:30:13 ◼ ► have to do anything. Do you need you it needs to be a special cable though, right? Like Thunderbolt
00:30:20 ◼ ► cable, it needs to be a Thunderbolt three cable. This is also something I learned in the last
00:30:25 ◼ ► few weeks or you know, I think I started thinking about it when I was doing my migration assistant.
00:30:29 ◼ ► I was like, like so many people before me, I'm sure like, well, maybe a regular USB cable would
00:30:34 ◼ ► work. You know, got to give it a try. And it doesn't work. And I didn't have I didn't have
00:30:40 ◼ ► a USB C or I'm sorry, a Thunderbolt three cable. So I just did it with Ethernet and that was okay.
00:30:46 ◼ ► But to LG's credit, this is I guess, as much as Apple helped them, Apple didn't help them in the
00:30:55 ◼ ► cable withholding department. Because the LG monitor came with a Thunderbolt three cable. So
00:31:03 ◼ ► out of the box, I plug it in. Oh, this is this is such a great story. Keep going. Keep going. I
00:31:10 ◼ ► plug it into the wall, I plug it into my Mac, and I can't believe it. Oh, like I said, I had to plug
00:31:16 ◼ ► my existing mishmash of USB hubs into the monitor. And suddenly it's I mean, I'm recording on this.
00:31:24 ◼ ► Actually, that's another device I didn't mention I'm recording on this with a Rode podcaster USB
00:31:29 ◼ ► mic plugged into this mishmash. It's like the knee bones connected to the to the leg bone.
00:31:36 ◼ ► You know, I got the road plugged into a USB hub that's plugged into the Ethernet USB C hub that's
00:31:44 ◼ ► plugged into the monitor, which is connected to the MacBook Pro 14 inch in one max with a single
00:32:21 ◼ ► Isn't that though that that kind of is like the honestly going back to when we were young
00:32:39 ◼ ► And if you were technically inclined on the PC side or the Amiga side or whatever other side,
00:32:53 ◼ ► if it's a little hard. I just want the better thing. But there it's true, though, right?
00:33:07 ◼ ► as long as you have the right Thunderbolt cable and you can argue about I personally would argue
00:33:27 ◼ ► They all have the same plug and they can therefore plug into anything. But you don't know if it's the
00:33:34 ◼ ► right plug, you know, and and you and I've been talking you you talked about your migration
00:33:41 ◼ ► assistant prevails, you know, over the last few days, we have a friend who also got one who
00:33:48 ◼ ► had a bad experience with the with the migration assistant. I had a terrible experience with
00:33:56 ◼ ► migration assistant with a review MacBook. I can't remember if it was my M one last year,
00:34:07 ◼ ► you know that that I got from Apple as the review unit or if it was the one before but it doesn't
00:34:13 ◼ ► really matter. The gist of it is, I thought I had a Thunderbolt cable. And I was trying to do
00:34:20 ◼ ► a Thunderbolt from old machine to new machine. And it was telling me that it was going to take like
00:34:27 ◼ ► 17 days. I don't know. It was like ridiculous. And I'm like, what the hell I can't. You know,
00:34:34 ◼ ► I don't have that much time. You know, I can't let this run. And it turned out that it was just
00:34:41 ◼ ► what I thought was a Thunderbolt cable because it was thick. It actually wasn't. It was just a
00:34:48 ◼ ► stupid, too thick USB-C cable. And that made all the difference. And when I went through my box of
00:34:56 ◼ ► crazy cables and got one that actually I knew was Thunderbolt, then the migration assistant took like
00:35:03 ◼ ► an hour and 10 minutes and it was boom and it was done. But that's kind of crazy, right?
00:35:27 ◼ ► and different universe better. Right. I still can't get over the fact that so much is happening
00:35:33 ◼ ► through this one cable. Right. And then on the other hand, like you said, it would take 17
00:35:38 ◼ ► days to transfer a Mac through the same interface. And it's kind of like, it reminds me of,
00:35:45 ◼ ► you know, another thing that I've like, just decided to never get good at is figuring out
00:35:50 ◼ ► all of the different, I think they're called micro USB or mini USB or all of those little
00:35:57 ◼ ► trapezoidal microscopic things. And for some reason, they never get the one that fits. No,
00:36:04 ◼ ► no, at least like you're saying, at least when it fits, you know, it's the right one. And you
00:36:09 ◼ ► finally get one that fits in there. You're like, well, I don't know what the hell this thing is
00:36:12 ◼ ► called, but it fits. You know, HDMI has gotten the same way, right? Where HDMI has has become
00:36:20 ◼ ► this thing where there are many, many versions of it now. And they all have the same plug.
00:36:27 ◼ ► But if you don't have the right cable that supports the right HDMI standard, you can't do
00:36:36 ◼ ► XYZ. So just a total tangent, but like our home entertainment system, we have one TV in our living
00:36:45 ◼ ► room, we and we only ever use two things to input to it. We have a TiVo, which gets our cable. And
00:36:54 ◼ ► we have Apple TV. And we can use the TV's remote to switch those inputs. But you can mostly like
00:37:04 ◼ ► so the Apple TV can turn off the Apple TV remote can turn off the TV, but it won't turn on the TV.
00:37:12 ◼ ► And I'm 100% certain it's because the HDMI cable isn't right. And it's what what a pain in the ass,
00:37:21 ◼ ► I would so much prefer if every single revision to the HDMI spec had an incompatible dongle,
00:37:37 ◼ ► Yeah, it's funny. Speaking of the migration, my my migration took a little longer than I expected,
00:37:51 ◼ ► totally different capacity, right? The whole like, is it a cat five? Oh, my God. Yeah, right. Right.
00:37:57 ◼ ► That's a nightmare. It's so and you have to look, speaking of vision, you have to look at this like
00:38:02 ◼ ► very fuzzy type, like printed on the sheathing of the cable and hope that you can find something
00:38:07 ◼ ► that says cat five or cat six. And then at it's in some instances, I have found misprint cables
00:38:14 ◼ ► claim to be one and then aren't. And you can't tell because like the the computer doesn't like
00:38:19 ◼ ► light up and say, woohoo, we got a cat six or whatever. It just is slower. And so I have it on
00:38:26 ◼ ► my back of my mind to like eradicate cat five cables from my house. Because I will inevitably
00:38:32 ◼ ► get one and think like, this is going to be great. I'm going to do the fastest file transfer
00:38:39 ◼ ► I'm going to tell you, I think I've again, I think I've told this story on the podcast before,
00:38:46 ◼ ► but we bought this house like five years ago. And I before we bought it, I, I said I would like cat
00:38:57 ◼ ► six Ethernet to every room and and they showed me on the blueprint, you know, here's where the
00:39:05 ◼ ► Ethernet ports will be. For the most part, it was like, yep, fine, fine, fine. It's like,
00:39:11 ◼ ► you know what, this would be a good room to put to can we can we do one here and there, you know,
00:39:16 ◼ ► and they're like, sure, sure. And and, you know, and but for the most part, you know, it was all
00:39:20 ◼ ► good. And then we walk through the house. And I look and I see them. And I'm like that they all
00:39:28 ◼ ► look good. But I didn't test them, of course. Right. Which of course, is that that's the rookie
00:39:34 ◼ ► move, right? Like when you when you buy a house, you have to test everything like test every spigot
00:39:41 ◼ ► flush every toilet, take it, take it take a dump in every toilet, right? Take a while, right. But
00:39:55 ◼ ► Guess what every single one of them was it the house actually was wired for cat six. So
00:40:21 ◼ ► I I'm like, what the hell is this? And I'm like, Oh, my God, they're, they're phone jacks.
00:40:29 ◼ ► And talk about feeling old, right? Because like, who even needs 20 phone jacks around their house?
00:40:39 ◼ ► Like, they took one look at you. And they were like, this guy needs some analog phones.
00:40:43 ◼ ► That's. But it literally was as easy, you know, which was a lot of jacks around the house,
00:40:56 ◼ ► but literally just replacing them with ethernet jacks, fix it, you know, and and that was it. But
00:41:06 ◼ ► and be honest, john, how many are still phone jacks right now? No, I know what I did. I did. I
00:41:14 ◼ ► did the smartest thing possible, which was I paid somebody to replace all of them all of them. Okay.
00:41:22 ◼ ► So instead of like, because you know me well, the way I would have done it was to go to the,
00:41:29 ◼ ► you know, like the one by the Apple TV and the one by where I'm going to put my computer in my office
00:41:36 ◼ ► to do work. I'll fix these two and leave the rest. No, I instead I paid somebody to come in. And we
00:41:44 ◼ ► because we had other stuff, smart home type integration stuff. And I'm like, can you guys
00:41:50 ◼ ► do you guys and I explained the problem to them and like, oh, we could fix that. And I'm like,
00:41:53 ◼ ► Oh, my God, will you please just go through this house and fix every one of them? Because the other
00:41:58 ◼ ► the side B of the problem is down here in my podcast cave basement is where our data closet is.
00:42:09 ◼ ► And that's where our cable comes in to the house. And the other thing was that all of those I think
00:42:18 ◼ ► I seriously think it's about 2025 cables from around the house. They were all unlabeled.
00:42:34 ◼ ► I would have complained vociferously and said, I'm not I'm not taking ownership of the house
00:42:40 ◼ ► until you label them. Instead, I found out about this after we had purchased the house.
00:42:52 ◼ ► take a look at this. And it was just this. You know, it's not just one octopus. It's like
00:43:00 ◼ ► three octopuses together. Yeah, 24 things and they're all unlabeled. They're all blue. There's
00:43:10 ◼ ► no difference in the color. And I'm like, can you label this and they did like the most amazing
00:43:17 ◼ ► labeling job. You know what I mean? Like now it's like the Library of Congress where it is like
00:43:36 ◼ ► so glad you know which one it is. I'm so glad. It's probably the kind of thing where if you are
00:43:41 ◼ ► not you or I was just fixing it ourselves, like just putting in our own port, we would just do
00:43:46 ◼ ► it and plug in a computer and if it works great, but like they probably are professional enough
00:43:51 ◼ ► that they like did a line test or something. No, yes, they did. They did. And so then at that
00:43:56 ◼ ► point, it's no big deal for them to also to just like pop on a label because they're testing it.
00:44:01 ◼ ► They know they're at both ends. Yeah, but why didn't the people who installed it in the first
00:44:05 ◼ ► place do that? Right? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they put phone jacks.
00:44:12 ◼ ► Maybe. Maybe that was the clue. Maybe. Maybe. All right, let me take a break here and thank our next
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00:48:16 ◼ ► I don't know what order to talk about stuff. I don't know if this is a stupid gimmick or not,
00:48:34 ◼ ► display. There's the rounded corners in the top left and top right. There are square corners
00:48:57 ◼ ► untrue to me. Either all four corners should be rounded or none should be rounded, but in
00:49:05 ◼ ► actual practice, I actually love it. I'm curious what you think about the rounded corners.
00:49:15 ◼ ► It really hasn't bothered me at all. Something kind of curious I noticed the other day,
00:49:21 ◼ ► somebody actually brought it to my attention. Anybody who's lucky enough to have one of
00:49:29 ◼ ► actually blocks the mouse. If you go up there, and it's kind of weird because you can go behind
00:49:36 ◼ ► the notch. It's a pointless accommodation, but it's kind of fun that you can't even go there.
00:49:51 ◼ ► Actually, you started talking about this. I popped open my clamshell so I can look at the
00:49:57 ◼ ► beautiful screen. I think I'm totally happy with that. It doesn't demand symmetry. It would be
00:50:07 ◼ ► horrible if the left was rounded and the right wasn't. To me, it works because the actual
00:50:19 ◼ ► screen corner is so close to the actual physical corner that it has to be rounded. The bezel is so
00:50:32 ◼ ► small that if it weren't rounded, it would actually have to be further from the corner.
00:50:43 ◼ ► Yeah, it would look awkward. I'm looking at it now, and whatever the radius of the curve,
00:50:52 ◼ ► to my eye anyway, it very closely matches the radius of the case. It makes the bezel have a
00:51:02 ◼ ► continuity as if it's a bent strip. If it were to come to a point there, it would look clumsy.
00:51:11 ◼ ► If I look at the bottom, the same issue doesn't apply because there's all that extra space at
00:51:16 ◼ ► the bottom. Also, because the case of the keyboard part of the MacBook blocks the vision of the
00:51:23 ◼ ► rounded corner of the bottom. In the old days, and I actually think it's relevant, it's not just
00:51:44 ◼ ► Macs had rounded corners, but they were done in software. That's what you're talking about,
00:51:54 ◼ ► where you could actually put the arrow cursor up into the corner beyond the round-wrecked
00:52:04 ◼ ► boundary of the screen display. Famously, that would be how you would invoke the screensaver,
00:52:19 ◼ ► "Hey, if I put my mouse in the absolute top right corner, trigger the screensaver." Then you could
00:52:29 ◼ ► walk away from your computer and you'd know the display wouldn't burn in, which again, is sort of
00:52:35 ◼ ► an old thing to be worried about. But you could see the mouse, the arrow, go into that region,
00:52:43 ◼ ► whereas now it's actually, like you said, it's literally like a hard boundary, even in software,
00:52:52 ◼ ► and mouse is prevented from going up there. As you run the mouse pointer into the corners at the top,
00:53:04 ◼ ► Yeah, this is a really dangerous topic. I'm really glad I don't have the top corners of my Mac
00:53:10 ◼ ► set to sleep or shut down, because while we're recording the show, I'm realizing I can't just
00:53:21 ◼ ► I have one visual, while we're still talking about the top of the MacBook Pro, I have one
00:53:25 ◼ ► visual gripe, which is I think the taller menu bar and the relatively small font size of the menus,
00:53:36 ◼ ► it looks a little wrong to me. I think these menu titles are kind of swimming in an ocean of menu
00:53:43 ◼ ► bar. So that's my gripe. I had to have one bad mood reaction. It can obviously fix that in
00:53:51 ◼ ► software if they want to. But if I look back at my external monitor now, it's like the proportions of
00:54:16 ◼ ► the announcement event that there might be a notch. It's sort of the way rumors happen,
00:54:24 ◼ ► where the closer you get to the event, the more people know about it, and the more likely
00:54:28 ◼ ► something is to leak. But clearly, for as long as Apple has been working on this, they've more
00:54:36 ◼ ► or less kept it under wraps, right? Because the rumor of a notch literally only came out 72 hours
00:54:44 ◼ ► before the event. I don't blame Apple. I know that's what Apple likes to do. They like to
00:54:51 ◼ ► announce things and have as many things that could be surprising be genuine surprises to everybody.
00:55:00 ◼ ► But I can't help but think, though, that by keeping it under wraps, that maybe more eyeballs
00:55:11 ◼ ► on it would have gotten a better proportion of font size to menu bar height. Ordinarily,
00:55:19 ◼ ► it's the sort of thing that I might have very specific notes on and say, "I just think what
00:55:25 ◼ ► you should do is instead of setting the menus in 16-point San Francisco, make them 18-point,"
00:55:32 ◼ ► or something like that. I don't even know if that's the answer, but there is something to that.
00:55:41 ◼ ► They look, like you said, swimming to me. And when you select them, like you go to the Edit menu,
00:56:02 ◼ ► If you click on a regular menu bar item, the highlight of the menu item almost goes flush
00:56:09 ◼ ► to the menu that appears below it. In fact, it's just like a one-pixel separation. And on the
00:56:16 ◼ ► MacBook Pro with the notch, it's like a good, I guess, maybe six pixels or something. I don't know,
00:56:23 ◼ ► six points. And it looks a little weird, but it doesn't look like... And so that was one of the
00:56:28 ◼ ► things I noticed. And it looks weird, but it doesn't look like I'm going to go on a rant weird.
00:56:32 ◼ ► I'll get used to it. And here's an example where they could have easily made a mistake where
00:56:39 ◼ ► you and I would have gone on a rant, which is, thankfully, when you go and you click at the very,
00:56:45 ◼ ► very top of the screen, say above the Edit icon, or Edit menu, it activates. So you can't miss.
00:56:53 ◼ ► This is the whole Fitts' Law thing, right? You go up to the maximum height of your screen, click,
00:56:58 ◼ ► you get a menu. And it's a little weird that you get a menu whose Edit, like menu button title
00:57:05 ◼ ► is highlighted below the point where you clicked. But that's a little weird conceptually, but it's
00:57:12 ◼ ► perfect usability-wise. Right. The arrow cursor is actually above the highlighted area of the
00:57:20 ◼ ► selected menu. We have to talk about the notch, right? I mean, I'm fine with it overall. And
00:57:40 ◼ ► Why would I write my prediction post two hours before the event? It's stupid. But I like to do
00:57:52 ◼ ► that. I just want to put my money on the table, more or less. And... You're always one for a bad
00:58:00 ◼ ► bet. Yeah. That is literally... It's on my birth certificate. It's my middle name. Always down for
00:58:10 ◼ ► a bad bet, John Gruber. I was mostly right. And the one thing I was wrong about, I was like,
00:58:19 ◼ ► this last minute weekend rumor of a notch, no way. And I put that in writing. And of course,
00:58:37 ◼ ► the screen really is so close to the borders that there almost has to be something. It's exactly
00:58:50 ◼ ► like the iPhone notch, where it's like... I guess in theory, maybe someday Apple will come up with
00:58:57 ◼ ► some technology to shoot these cameras through the display. But barring such technology,
00:59:07 ◼ ► you either have to have a notch or you have to have a bezel that runs the entire width of the
00:59:14 ◼ ► display. And I think that on the Mac, even more than the iPhone, it actually makes a lot of sense
00:59:22 ◼ ► because it's almost a celebration of the menu bar, which is sort of like this weird hallmark of the
00:59:32 ◼ ► Mac user interface. That there's this thing at the top of the display, it's always there.
00:59:39 ◼ ► It doesn't matter which app you're in, there's going to be a menu bar. It's going to be like
00:59:46 ◼ ► 20 pixels or 24 pixels now or whatever size it is at the top of the display. It's sort of the
00:59:53 ◼ ► hallmark of the Mac user interface. And on the Mac, the notch, even though it interrupts the
00:59:59 ◼ ► menu bar, it is sort of a celebration of the menu bar because it's like the whole reason it kind of
01:00:08 ◼ ► works on these new MacBook Pros is that, well, it's not like, oh, a couple of apps have a menu
01:00:20 ◼ ► bar at the top of the screen and therefore the notch is just interrupting that. No, it's every
01:00:28 ◼ ► app. So there's a reason for it to be there. And the basic idea that the region under the menu bar
01:00:37 ◼ ► is still a 16 to 10 aspect ratio area, it actually is more, it sort of cements the menu bar, right?
01:00:57 ◼ ► Yeah. And I was thinking as you were talking that I think the concern, the first concern that comes
01:01:04 ◼ ► to people's mind is, is this thing going to distract me? That's what people thought with
01:01:08 ◼ ► the iPhone too. And as I was thinking about that, I sort of realized we've been conditioned
01:01:15 ◼ ► for the entire history of the Mac to not be distracted by the menu bar, right? It's always
01:01:21 ◼ ► been there. It's always been irrelevant to the specific task at hand. Like you're focused on
01:01:29 ◼ ► writing or illustrating something or chatting with somebody or browsing the web, and you go to the
01:01:36 ◼ ► menu bar when you need to do something, but it's there, it's persistent. And we are so trained to
01:01:42 ◼ ► ignore it that I think it's ridiculous to think, to imagine that an relatively in obtrusive black
01:02:04 ◼ ► were you a system six user or did you start in the system seven era system seven? Yes. Yeah. So
01:02:12 ◼ ► the, the, one of the controversies with system seven and was that they made the Apple logo
01:02:27 ◼ ► black and white displays, the Apple menu was black, which is just black, which is, which it has been,
01:02:40 ◼ ► Apple menu color and the whole argument was, Oh my God, there's this color. Now there's this
01:02:45 ◼ ► six color thing up in the top left corner is going to distract everybody. And it was like,
01:02:55 ◼ ► we're focused and trained to pay attention to, like you said, the, the, the rectangle beneath it.
01:03:01 ◼ ► So really what it comes down to, are there, are there compromises and trade-offs with the notch?
01:03:06 ◼ ► Yes. But I think they are mechanical compromises. Like in particular, what happens when,
01:03:13 ◼ ► you know, it's, it's nobody's idea of a great outcome that either of these things happens.
01:03:21 ◼ ► One that the text menus on the left side of the notch end up jumping over and leaving a gap
01:03:26 ◼ ► between, you know, where the notch was, that's just, it's not aesthetic. It's not great.
01:03:30 ◼ ► And then even worse, you know, in the, maybe people didn't test this enough in inside Apple category
01:03:46 ◼ ► So regular menu items are the ones that go from the Apple menu to the app name, file, edit, view,
01:03:53 ◼ ► blah, blah, blah, left to right. And the status items are the ones that the little icons for,
01:04:01 ◼ ► and, and, you know, there's, what are the ones that people use from Apple? There's like the
01:04:15 ◼ ► Go ahead. Well, you know, there's a couple of Apple ones, but for the most part, if you just run
01:04:21 ◼ ► with the software that comes from Apple, you don't have a lot, but a lot of third-party apps run
01:04:31 ◼ ► in the menu bar, right? Dropbox and, and, uh, geez, I can't even name all the ones I have,
01:04:38 ◼ ► but, uh, there's tons of them. Right. And I'm sure people who listen to the show have tons and
01:04:46 ◼ ► tons of third, but that's what we're talking about. The status menu items are the ones that go from
01:04:53 ◼ ► top right and go to the left and they meet in the middle, right? The, the, the menu bar items,
01:05:04 ◼ ► you know, and there's, there's always been a, an ability to have an app that has so many menu items.
01:05:12 ◼ ► And as a, uh, nerdy power user, you can have so many status menu apps that, that they collide
01:05:23 ◼ ► and something has to give right. Even without the notch. Yeah. In fact, any developer probably
01:05:30 ◼ ► typically runs into this with X code. It's like X code has a ton of menu items and developers might
01:05:36 ◼ ► be more likely to have little fiddly right menu extras, but yeah, it's, uh, they do collide and
01:05:41 ◼ ► you just have to accept that you lose some menu extras. Right. And, you know, again, to, uh,
01:05:50 ◼ ► to go down memory lane, it arguably, maybe the, uh, you know, there, there used to be the thing
01:05:59 ◼ ► called the control strip, which was sort of the touch bar before there was a touch bar, but you,
01:06:05 ◼ ► you know, on, on the classic Mac OS, a lot of the things that we now run in, in the menu bar
01:06:12 ◼ ► would be control strip items. Right. And arguably, maybe there should be something, you know, uh, a
01:06:21 ◼ ► place other than the menu bar for those items, you know, and that third parties could feel, uh,
01:06:28 ◼ ► unrestricted about adding to, because it wouldn't be as limited in space, but, you know, where we
01:06:38 ◼ ► wound up, maybe, maybe it's better to be simpler and just say there's one menu bar and on the left
01:06:45 ◼ ► side, it's the apps menu items. And on the right side, it's these system-wide things, but the notch
01:06:53 ◼ ► makes it more complicated because it takes, especially on the 14 inch side, takes precious,
01:07:00 ◼ ► uh, pixels away from the middle. Yep. Yeah. It's like one of the, it's like I said, it's,
01:07:08 ◼ ► there is a cost to it. It is a compromise, but it's just so, maybe partly also just cause the
01:07:14 ◼ ► computer is so great. I just don't care. You know, it's like, who cares? I really, I I'll,
01:07:18 ◼ ► I'll get around. I'll get it. I'll get by. Yeah. I feel the same way. And, and, and I'm not one,
01:07:25 ◼ ► not to complain if something annoys me, but it's, it really is the truth that like one day in,
01:07:31 ◼ ► I was like, you know, for one day I was like this notch is really weird and it's really crazy. The
01:07:38 ◼ ► way the mouse just disappears underneath it. Xcode is a perfect example, but there's, you know,
01:07:44 ◼ ► a couple of apps that, that have enough menu items that it expands past that, that 50 yard line for
01:07:53 ◼ ► lack of a better term. Eh, you get used to it. You get used to it. And I think, uh, on the latest ATP,
01:07:58 ◼ ► I think it was Marco who kind of pleaded with their audience, like, cause there's already these
01:08:04 ◼ ► utilities, I guess you can install to try to try to quote unquote, I don't know what do they do,
01:08:08 ◼ ► but make, make things quote unquote back to normal. Um, and he was just like, please just
01:08:17 ◼ ► going to be a problem. And I, I don't know what kind of compromises people are going to try to do.
01:08:22 ◼ ► I didn't even look at what those utilities do, but people have kind of whined about it and said like,
01:08:30 ◼ ► I'm looking at my screen and I'm thinking that would just be so bad. Yeah. That would be,
01:08:35 ◼ ► you know, to intentionally impose extra bezel space on your Mac. It just seems like a bad idea.
01:08:42 ◼ ► Yeah. The only thing I could see being on the table for Apple to, to do at a system level
01:08:50 ◼ ► would be to, to, and clearly in, in their, in their current world, all of these settings,
01:08:58 ◼ ► no matter which platform you're on, they put under accessibility, right? Like accessibility
01:09:04 ◼ ► is where the actual features that you need for accessibility go, but it's also where like UI
01:09:20 ◼ ► accessibility thing. It's sort of a taste thing. Um, it, I could see them putting in accessibility,
01:09:27 ◼ ► I think to always treat the menu bar as black so that you don't need, like, uh, I linked to a thing
01:09:34 ◼ ► on daring fireball called top notch. It's a free utility that basically it, it makes the menu bar
01:09:41 ◼ ► black by always putting a black strip at the top of your desktop picture, whatever your desktop
01:09:47 ◼ ► picture is. And again, I linked to it because I think it's clever and it's well done, but I,
01:09:53 ◼ ► even when I linked to it, I was like, I said the same thing the ATP guys or Marco did where it's
01:09:59 ◼ ► like, honestly, you know, this is interesting. I want to let you know about it, but if you get one
01:10:05 ◼ ► of these, you should actually try living with it for a week before you even install it. Right.
01:10:11 ◼ ► Because I think it's going to disappear for you, but I could sort of see Apple adding an option to
01:10:17 ◼ ► say, always make the menu bar black and done. Right. Yeah. Maybe I should take a break and
01:10:24 ◼ ► thank our third sponsor here. Oh, I love this company. Squarespace. Oh my God. Do I love
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01:11:26 ◼ ► is that I know that the sort of people who listen to my show are the sort of people who friends come
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01:11:43 ◼ ► It'll free them to do all the creative stuff they want to do on their own without needing to know
01:11:57 ◼ ► CSS, JavaScript are. They don't even have to know. They just drag and drop the stuff. It all
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01:12:48 ◼ ► We were talking about the menu bar. I happened to just see while I was sitting there looking
01:12:54 ◼ ► at my screen, I saw this little defect that I sent you on iMessage. I don't know if you
01:13:07 ◼ ► Again, I think it's a side effect of wanting to keep it secret. Wouldn't you almost be more
01:13:20 ◼ ► surprised if macOS, I'm guessing like 12.2, doesn't have a bunch of features that smart
01:13:36 ◼ ► But one of the most interesting parts about this design, though, with the iPhone, it's like
01:13:42 ◼ ► any phone, including those running Android, could have a notch, and they could do something
01:14:06 ◼ ► menu bar. Whereas a Windows PC, it would be very difficult to, in my opinion, to have a notch
01:14:20 ◼ ► Yeah. I didn't think about that. Yeah. The coincidence that the menu bar has always been
01:14:30 ◼ ► I don't know that it makes it more likely that Apple would have pursued this design for the
01:14:42 ◼ ► hardware, but maybe it did. I don't know. It's like the alternate universe where the Mac menu
01:14:55 ◼ ► bar was always at the bottom, like the start menu or something like that, it seems so foreign to me
01:15:03 ◼ ► that it's hard to imagine that it's hard to take it seriously. Right? I don't know. It's like file,
01:15:15 ◼ ► edit, view, et cetera. They feel like they should be at the top of the screen. And I don't know if
01:15:21 ◼ ► that's because they really should be at the top of the screen or that it's so indoctrinated in me
01:15:37 ◼ ► like a filing cabinet, you would find it weird if the label for a drawer was all the way at
01:15:57 ◼ ► But yeah, it certainly did work out. I think you're right. It's really interesting to imagine
01:16:03 ◼ ► how they would have accommodated this. If Apple were bottom-oriented in the screen for their menu
01:16:12 ◼ ► bar, I don't know, would the notch go at the bottom? Could that work? I don't think it would
01:16:25 ◼ ► Yeah. You could even imagine now that maybe they could fix it with machine learning and adjust the
01:16:33 ◼ ► angle. So even if the camera were at the bottom, it would somehow fake it to make it seem like
01:16:58 ◼ ► Right. Well, the other angle, the rest of the MacBook Pro is basically the performance,
01:17:11 ◼ ► right? It is the actual it and it brings the show full circle to what we were talking about when
01:17:19 ◼ ► we were kids where it's like, what is the actual computer? And yeah, it's so fun, right?
01:17:37 ◼ ► any of the other qualities of the hardware, but just to say it is the performance, but it's also
01:17:43 ◼ ► the celebrated return of things like MagSafe and the ports. I was musing about the idea,
01:17:49 ◼ ► like what if the timeline of Apple switching to its own architecture for the M1 series Max
01:18:03 ◼ ► Then we would have had like the first of these amazing high performance Max that happened to
01:18:08 ◼ ► have these credit keyboards that nobody liked. And so it all just came together at a time when
01:18:29 ◼ ► whatever that clickiness that ultimately proved to be too loud about the butterfly keyboards.
01:18:36 ◼ ► It just has, I feel like a tiny bit of that, but it's still just effortless for me to type on it.
01:18:42 ◼ ► So I think that's great. I think that looking at it right now, I think the decision to make
01:18:48 ◼ ► the black background on the keyboard sort of makes it aesthetically look nice. Overall,
01:18:55 ◼ ► from a hardware point of view, the thought that came into my mind, I think I tweeted about this
01:19:01 ◼ ► yesterday, was it feels like Apple finally made a Mac with as much care put into the hardware design
01:19:10 ◼ ► as they put into the hardware design of iPhones and iPads. It feels like a really, really nice
01:19:17 ◼ ► piece of hardware. And it's been a long time since I felt that way. As much as I loved all the
01:19:22 ◼ ► MacBooks I've had in the past 10 years, it's been a long time since something blew my mind. And this
01:19:34 ◼ ► Yes, exactly. Right. And I mean, there's just, it's like you said earlier, you're not the kind
01:19:40 ◼ ► of person who wouldn't complain about something if you did have a complaint. As you know, I'm not the
01:19:55 ◼ ► Right. I honestly don't know what to complain about. Right? And I really love, and I've had it
01:20:07 ◼ ► now a little bit longer than you because I got my review unit a week ahead of time, but I love
01:20:15 ◼ ► the shape of this computer in a way that I haven't loved a MacBook in many, many years. I mean,
01:20:25 ◼ ► easily 10 years, like maybe longer. There's like a sort of truth to it. It feels like comparing
01:20:40 ◼ ► the last generation Intel ones or last year's M1 13-inch MacBook Pro, the way that those machines
01:20:54 ◼ ► taper off, if you turn them upside down and they taper off at the edges, it's not false,
01:21:05 ◼ ► but it's also not true. Right? It's like the true depth of the machine should be from the middle,
01:21:29 ◼ ► Yeah. There's something ineffable about it. Partly it's just because it's smaller to me,
01:21:36 ◼ ► but I just enjoy holding it and walking around with it. To have a computer where I feel that way,
01:21:42 ◼ ► it's unusual. I have my old Intel MacBook Pro still here. I did the trade-in, but I haven't
01:21:48 ◼ ► sent it in yet. And I'm just touching each of them. And I don't think it's my imagination.
01:21:54 ◼ ► There's also something ever so slightly maybe more slick feeling or smooth feeling about the new
01:22:00 ◼ ► MacBook. I don't know if that's my imagination. It just feels really nice. And to have all of these
01:22:35 ◼ ► and everyone at that time was like, "Wow, if this is what the M1s for quote unquote consumers is,
01:22:45 ◼ ► but we were hoping for something kind of like this. And another thought that's been going through
01:22:52 ◼ ► my head as I use this is it's the first time, probably at least since the Intel Macs came out,
01:22:57 ◼ ► that I have felt like I made a substantial leap in performance from one Mac to the next.
01:23:06 ◼ ► And also, that feeling, I miss this feeling because it used to be the feeling back when we
01:23:11 ◼ ► were younger, it used to be that technology was moving along so fast in terms of performance that
01:23:17 ◼ ► you would often have the quote unquote new Mac feeling. And it would be like, "Wow, everything
01:23:24 ◼ ► Everything is faster. And I feel like I have performance headroom that I have not felt in at
01:23:32 ◼ ► least probably 15 years. And that's a weird feeling. It's a great feeling. I mean, part of
01:23:38 ◼ ► that is I chose to get like 64 gigs of RAM. I made some choices that make this even better of a Mac
01:23:47 ◼ ► than it could have been. But a lot of it is just the payoff of this transition. And I just think
01:23:53 ◼ ► that it's so inspiring right now as a Mac fan and as a Mac developer for that matter, to just have
01:23:59 ◼ ► this beautiful, functional, high-performance machine that leaves me with so few complaints.
01:24:06 ◼ ► As a Mac user, and I can only imagine that for you as somebody whose professional apps are primarily
01:24:15 ◼ ► on the Mac, as a Mac developer, it is such an assertion of Apple's commitment to the Mac
01:24:26 ◼ ► as a platform. If you go to an Apple store now and buy an iPad Pro, you get an M1 iPad Pro. And
01:24:38 ◼ ► the M1 is both a very, very good and well-received chip for MacBook Airs and consumer-grade 13-inch
01:24:52 ◼ ► MacBook Pros and the Mac Mini, and it's in the 24-inch iMac. These are among the best-reviewed
01:24:59 ◼ ► Macs in memory. But they're the same chip that's in the iPad Pro. Whereas the M1 Pro, and especially
01:25:12 ◼ ► the M1 Macs, they don't even make sense for an iPad. The differences between the regular M1
01:25:24 ◼ ► and the chips in the new MacBook Pros don't even make sense for an iPad. And to me, that
01:25:32 ◼ ► is proof that everything Apple has said over the last five, six years of people doubting
01:25:40 ◼ ► whether Apple is committed to the Mac going forward. Most famously, two, three years ago
01:25:50 ◼ ► during the WWDC keynote where Federighi was like, "Hey, are we moving towards just having
01:25:59 ◼ ► one operating system?" And then a big no dropped down on a slide. To me, this machine is the no.
01:26:12 ◼ ► This is the proof of it. And I also think that in the keynote last week, the whole John Turnus
01:26:19 ◼ ► section was sort of emphasis on that, about airflow and that they're sweating these details
01:26:29 ◼ ► that they wouldn't have to sweat. And they didn't have to do any of this. They could have just
01:26:37 ◼ ► stayed on Intel. Well, yeah. And for that matter, they could have just kept the same hardware
01:26:43 ◼ ► design, the same USB-C port and nothing else. I had the same reaction that you're talking about.
01:26:52 ◼ ► And in fact, on my podcast with Manton Reese, I summed it up like they've been saying for years
01:27:00 ◼ ► that they love the Mac. And this shows that they really do love the Mac. I think the way I
01:27:06 ◼ ► summed it up was you can't be a company that makes this computer without genuinely loving the Mac.
01:27:15 ◼ ► And it's really great to hear because I think you and I share a sort of basic trust of Apple
01:27:25 ◼ ► meeting what they say. And so when they say we love the Mac, I don't doubt it, but you kind of
01:27:31 ◼ ► still want to see the proof. Trust but verify. This is the verify for sure. Right. It really is.
01:27:39 ◼ ► Is there anything else that jumps out to you before we wrap up? I mean, to me, the curious
01:27:47 ◼ ► thing about it, and my son has said the same thing. We got him a 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro last
01:27:57 ◼ ► year. And side by side, one in one hand, one in the other. It is technically, it is officially,
01:28:06 ◼ ► the 14-inch MacBook Pro new one is a half a pound heavier. But he said, "It's weird. I think this
01:28:14 ◼ ► one feels lighter." And I was like, "That's so interesting because I've been thinking the same
01:28:20 ◼ ► thing. Even though I know it's a half pound heavier, it somehow feels lighter. And I think
01:28:43 ◼ ► No, they filled it with, they gave it more air. And I went back and watched and that John Turnus
01:28:50 ◼ ► section of the keynote, it slid past me watching it live. But in hindsight, it was a major point to
01:29:00 ◼ ► me was that he emphasized that they, he said, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, 50% more air." And that's
01:29:07 ◼ ► all I heard. And I thought, "Oh, that just means that it's got a more serious fan cooling system."
01:29:16 ◼ ► But you go back and what he says is that it circulates 50% more air while running the fans
01:29:25 ◼ ► at a slower speed than last year's 13-inch MacBook Pro with the M1. And part of that could be that it
01:29:35 ◼ ► probably is a smarter fan system, but I also think that it's just more airy inside. I don't know.
01:29:52 ◼ ► But I don't particularly feel like it's lighter, but I didn't have a lot of time with...
01:30:07 ◼ ► And I haven't used it much, but I just loved it whenever I get a chance to play around with it.
01:30:20 ◼ ► if anything else comes to mind before we wrap up, the other appreciative customer/developer
01:30:29 ◼ ► feeling I have lately is repeatedly being surprised how everything just works on this thing.
01:30:44 ◼ ► "Wow, Rosetta 2 really works." I'm looking at my processes list now with the activity monitor,
01:30:51 ◼ ► and actually another angle of this satisfaction is just how few "Intel" processes... Not "literally
01:31:09 ◼ ► and that's a testament to all the third parties adapting and the developer tools being so
01:31:16 ◼ ► capable of making this transition. The previous transition from PowerPC to Intel was a lot more
01:31:23 ◼ ► complicated for developers. But I'm sitting here talking to you while I scroll through a list of
01:31:30 ◼ ► hundreds of processes. Several, at least 10 or 15, represent third-party apps, and then just a couple
01:31:38 ◼ ► Intel. And everything just works in part because of those third parties porting, but also because
01:31:48 ◼ ► "Eh, Rosetta takes care of it." I also want to just throw out, I think a lot of developers,
01:31:56 ◼ ► especially web developers, are really heavy into the Docker utility. And I've been into this,
01:32:03 ◼ ► just as to the extent that I dip my toes into web stuff, I've been getting into Docker. And
01:32:08 ◼ ► it was one of the concerns I had when, and I think a lot of web developers were concerned,
01:32:13 ◼ ► "What's going to happen to my Intel-based server development stuff?" And I file that under,
01:32:25 ◼ ► the continuity here, I keep trying things and then thinking, I'm recording this with, like I said,
01:32:32 ◼ ► with my Rode podcaster plugged in USB through that amazing complex wiring. And then also,
01:32:39 ◼ ► Audio Hijack is running and it's recording it and everything just works. And I couldn't be happier,
01:32:54 ◼ ► I think that my gut fear about that whole angle was that for years, I've foreseen that Apple is
01:33:06 ◼ ► going to move off Intel to their own silicon. Because once the, even just if you just look at a
01:33:30 ◼ ► "Well, this is ridiculous." When they were getting close, it seemed like, "Hey, this seems like a
01:33:36 ◼ ► direction Apple's going to go." When the iPhone started getting higher scores, you're like, "Well,
01:33:42 ◼ ► how can they not go this way?" But the fear was that by moving to their own silicon, Apple was
01:33:51 ◼ ► going to kneecap the Mac, right? That it was going to be like, "Well, okay, you can run the Mac,
01:34:02 ◼ ► but it's going to be just on a very limited platform. It'll be faster, but yet more limited."
01:34:12 ◼ ► And in fact, it is actually less limited, right? That they've actually gone back and re-added
01:34:21 ◼ ► HDMI and SD card and MagSafe, and it truly is a Mac. There's nothing about it that feels
01:34:31 ◼ ► limited or hamstrung by the fact that it's based on the silicon platform that started with the iPhone.
01:34:39 ◼ ► Right. I think a lot of people have focused on the whole, "Well, you can't run Windows anymore. You
01:34:44 ◼ ► can't do Boot Camp." And I think the significance and the importance of those features of the
01:34:50 ◼ ► compatibility, the ability to run Windows in a VM, ability to boot into Windows, was so big back at
01:34:56 ◼ ► the Intel transition time. It was a huge advantage of the transition. And increasingly, we're just in
01:35:02 ◼ ► a world where running Windows and running Intel binaries in general is not... I don't think it's
01:35:08 ◼ ► as important as it used to be. This is in part because of the predominance of web apps, which is
01:35:28 ◼ ► I think we're sort of in a historically anomalous period of time where people think they want to run
01:35:37 ◼ ► Intel stuff, but just give it a few years and it might turn out to be that being on an ARM computer
01:36:19 ◼ ► well, no pun intended, one notch would be to just say stuff you do in terminal. If you're typing it
01:36:29 ◼ ► in the terminal app, that was exactly the area where I would say we were like, "Okay, I'm sure
01:36:39 ◼ ► Apple's going in their own silicon direction, but is that going to mean... Are they going to ship
01:36:46 ◼ ► Macs without the terminal app?" That felt like it was on the table, that there might be a version
01:36:53 ◼ ► that they would say, "Here's the latest and greatest Mac, and it's based on Apple Silicon,
01:37:08 ◼ ► and in fact, they've gone the other way where not only is terminal still there, but you can
01:37:16 ◼ ► literally run Intel binary stuff in the terminal, and it's so fast you never notice. There's no
01:37:24 ◼ ► penalty at all. It actually is faster than running it on an Intel Mac, which is bananas. That's
01:37:32 ◼ ► totally bananas, and it's so unlike the previous transitions like PowerPC to Intel and to really
01:37:41 ◼ ► date ourselves, the 68K to PowerPC, where it was like there were apps that ran great under
01:37:52 ◼ ► emulation under the original, what they called Rosetta when you ran PowerPC apps on Intel.
01:37:58 ◼ ► There were apps that ran great, but you would never, ever argue that any of them ran faster
01:38:04 ◼ ► on the new one than the old one. It was like, "No, it just is great, though. Microsoft Office
01:38:15 ◼ ► hasn't been updated yet, but it still runs just fine." It's bananas that you can run stuff in the
01:38:24 ◼ ► terminal and where you really are measuring it because you're a developer and you want this stuff
01:38:31 ◼ ► to run fast and you actually know how to benchmark it, blah, blah, blah. It's bananas that it runs
01:38:51 ◼ ► In Intel, I think, through Rosetta, the VM then runs your Intel operating system stuff from Docker,
01:39:05 ◼ ► and it's all really fast. It's great. It's the most adaptable computer I've ever owned,
01:39:11 ◼ ► and I still haven't even dug into the whole fact that you can download and run certain iOS apps on
01:39:22 ◼ ► One last thing before we go, and it's the silliest thing, but I'm curious if you have thoughts on it.
01:39:29 ◼ ► I didn't mention it in my review, but I honestly think, and as the week has gone on since publishing
01:39:37 ◼ ► my review, I think that this is not just the best hinge Apple has ever made, but it's amazingly nice.
01:39:57 ◼ ► like playing with... I didn't notice it in a good way, but I didn't notice it in a bad way,
01:40:03 ◼ ► which is also good. I'm going to close it at the risk of... This is where I would normally say,
01:40:25 ◼ ► no longer a cranky, curmudgeonly old man. I'm one of these youthful, "Hello fellow kids" type.
01:40:46 ◼ ► Dave Let's talk about what can we promote from you. So you mentioned your podcast with Manton
01:40:53 ◼ ► Reese. That's Core Intuition, which is a great podcast. One of the very... And I'm not just
01:41:12 ◼ ► 13 years. And yeah, if folks are interested, that's a great way to check out some of my other
01:41:20 ◼ ► opinions, Manton's opinions. We're at coreint.org. I am on Twitter, Daniel Punkass. It's funny. We
01:41:28 ◼ ► just chatted. We just jumped into... Yeah, it's my professional name. I have a much more unrestrained
01:41:35 ◼ ► Twitter for my silly loosey goosey stuff. We just started talking. We didn't talk about
01:41:42 ◼ ► any of this stuff I do, but folks who've heard me on the show before know that I am a Mac developer.
01:41:47 ◼ ► My main app for the Mac is Mars Edit, which is a blog editor. You should check it out. And you can
01:41:52 ◼ ► find out all about my work stuff at redsweater.com, which is so fun for me to say now because within
01:41:59 ◼ ► the past year, after 20 years, I got... I used to be red dash sweater, which is actually not...
01:42:06 ◼ ► It's like red hyphen sweater. And I'm like, "Oh, you know what I mean? Type it in." And now after
01:42:11 ◼ ► like 20 years, last year, I managed to acquire red sweater with no dash. So redsweater.com,
01:42:16 ◼ ► check it out for all your Mac software needs. You don't need to type any punctuation characters
01:42:21 ◼ ► at all. Just redsweater.com. You know Will Shipley of Delicious Monster? He was like my cohort in
01:42:29 ◼ ► anguish of having a dash in the name as a Delicious Dash monster. And I think he finally got so
01:42:34 ◼ ► anguished by it, he quit and went to work for Apple. So... It was the dash. Your only choice
01:42:41 ◼ ► was to either buy the domain name without the dash or go to work for Apple. That's it. Those are the
01:42:48 ◼ ► two choices. And luckily I got the domain so I don't have to go back to Apple. That would be
01:42:53 ◼ ► horrible. But the other apps, people should know about Black Ink is your crossword puzzle app,
01:43:00 ◼ ► which is fantastic and makes me angry every time I open it because I'm very good at small
01:43:10 ◼ ► crosswords and very bad at large ones. It makes me very angry. And of course, Fast Scripts.
01:43:18 ◼ ► And to bring the show full circle is a status menu. Status menu item. Yeah. That's funny. I'm
01:43:27 ◼ ► clicking on it right now in my menu. I'm on the show with you at a horrible time for self-promotion
01:43:34 ◼ ► in a way because I'm on the verge of releasing a new Fast Scripts 3.0 update. Black Ink, I have an
01:43:42 ◼ ► iOS version in the works that I'm trying to get finished. So this is one of those like, "Hey