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The Talk Show

303: ‘Half of the Bikini Emoji’, With Matthew Panzarino

 

00:00:00   - Are you tired of looking at new Apple products?

00:00:03   - I mean, I hesitate to say that.

00:00:04   It sounds uncharitable.

00:00:06   It has been quite an intense schedule.

00:00:08   I think it's obviously partially because they try

00:00:10   to dump everything at once normally,

00:00:12   and now it's strung out over weeks.

00:00:14   But yeah, it's a lot.

00:00:16   It's been a lot.

00:00:17   I can't phone any of it in.

00:00:18   I'm physically impossible at phoning stuff in,

00:00:20   so it's just exhausting, that's all.

00:00:24   - I have the same thought, and there's a part of me

00:00:27   that gets a little petulant, and it's like,

00:00:29   so we got, I was very excited to get the AirPods Max,

00:00:34   'cause they look really neat, and they're very expensive,

00:00:38   and it sure is fun to be able to try them

00:00:41   without ordering a pair.

00:00:42   And now at this point, in addition to spending 550 bucks,

00:00:45   you have to wait weeks and weeks to get 'em.

00:00:47   But then when they're like,

00:00:50   and review embargoes drop Thursday morning,

00:00:53   and it's like, 24 hours, F you,

00:00:56   I'm just gonna phone this in and write three sentences.

00:00:58   Sound good, too heavy.

00:01:00   There, done, publish.

00:01:02   But I can't, I have to start, you know.

00:01:05   - Yeah, of course.

00:01:06   And it wasn't even the review embargo, right?

00:01:08   It's just like, hey, this is the next morning,

00:01:13   first look stuff, right?

00:01:14   So I refused personally to sort of review them officially,

00:01:19   because I'm like, there's no way.

00:01:20   And I felt it wouldn't do anybody a service to pretend

00:01:24   that I had some sort of fully formed opinion

00:01:27   on these things, but at the same time,

00:01:29   I can't just go like, oh hey, look, here's the pictures.

00:01:32   I don't know, I'm just incapable of it.

00:01:36   - Well, and I also feel like, and I get it,

00:01:38   in some sense, I feel a little less pressure,

00:01:42   because it looks like at this point,

00:01:44   nobody's getting them for Christmas,

00:01:47   if you haven't already ordered.

00:01:48   - Right, right, if you're not an early adopter,

00:01:52   who's gonna order 'em anyway,

00:01:54   you're not gonna get 'em yet.

00:01:55   Maybe you could still get the silver ones, I don't know.

00:01:58   - I don't know.

00:01:59   And there was that fun thing that you pointed out

00:02:02   that you could get engraved ones in December,

00:02:06   but you couldn't get non-engraved ones until January.

00:02:10   - Right, and it didn't last long,

00:02:12   but it lasted about an hour.

00:02:14   And it's like, what if you really want a pair

00:02:18   that's not engraved, you don't want any marks on them at all,

00:02:21   but you really want 'em by Christmas,

00:02:23   what is the least intrusive engraving

00:02:26   that they would let you put?

00:02:29   So they won't let you just put a space.

00:02:32   Their little engraving dingus

00:02:37   will interpret that as no engraving at all.

00:02:41   So if you go to say, I would like to get my AirPods

00:02:43   engraved, and this entire string you enter

00:02:47   is just a space or a series of spaces,

00:02:49   and then you hit OK, it goes back to the next screen

00:02:54   and it has no engraving selected, which makes sense.

00:02:58   - Oh, uh-huh, yeah.

00:03:00   What, did you try, this is random,

00:03:03   but did you try using a zero-width space?

00:03:05   - No, I didn't try any fancy Unicode.

00:03:08   - Okay.

00:03:09   - That would be clever.

00:03:10   I did try a dash, which would just look like a little,

00:03:13   you know, I also thought, I forget,

00:03:18   I think that the engraving goes on the left cup

00:03:22   because the right cup is the one with the controls.

00:03:25   So I thought, you know, what if you just put an L, right?

00:03:28   (laughing)

00:03:31   'Cause that, even if you don't want them engraved,

00:03:36   you don't wanna put your name on them,

00:03:37   you don't wanna put something clever on 'em,

00:03:39   you don't want an emoji, just put an L.

00:03:41   - I like that it's minimal because it's very Appleistic,

00:03:46   it's like, hey, we only need one

00:03:47   because obviously the other one is R.

00:03:50   - Right, but it is, it's, how bizarre is it

00:03:53   that for a while at least you were able to,

00:03:55   and it's just, you know, I'm sure it would actually

00:03:57   be fascinating and it's the sort of thing

00:03:59   they're never gonna talk about,

00:04:00   but it would be fascinating to get Jeff Williams

00:04:03   to explain it, you know, like,

00:04:05   and I'm sure that it's a fascinating explanation

00:04:07   of the different supply chain paths

00:04:09   that engraved versus non-engraved ones take.

00:04:13   You know, in theory, engraving should take longer,

00:04:17   but, you know.

00:04:19   - Well, it's, in my mind, if you just go the dummy route

00:04:24   on the supply chain analysis here,

00:04:27   it would probably be that there's a certain amount

00:04:29   set aside for engraving because they go

00:04:30   to a facility for engraving.

00:04:32   And it's like if you're gonna get 'em engraved,

00:04:34   they come from this pool, which is usually less purchased,

00:04:38   people probably buy far more without engraving,

00:04:40   and then, you know, those are still in stock.

00:04:43   So that's probably, it just, you know,

00:04:45   the simplistic way of looking at it.

00:04:47   - Do you-- - By the way, I just tried,

00:04:48   I just tried to zero with space, does not work, so.

00:04:51   Sorry for anybody looking to do that.

00:04:53   - Do you get your stuff engraved when it's offered?

00:04:56   - Very, very rarely.

00:05:00   Literally the only thing I can, I currently own,

00:05:02   I have in the past, and like for my wife maybe,

00:05:06   gotten her a phone engraved, you know.

00:05:08   I think maybe even her current phone is.

00:05:10   But the only thing I currently own is an AirPods Pro case

00:05:14   with an emoji on it, and the only reason I did that

00:05:16   is 'cause I know which one is my current one

00:05:18   and which one is mine and not an Apple review unit

00:05:21   as they come and go, and that way I know,

00:05:24   you know, that one's mine.

00:05:25   Because there's, I have a lot of AirPods around here,

00:05:27   either that I've purchased or when Apple, you know,

00:05:30   drops new ones and I review a unit, it's sitting here,

00:05:33   and then I don't know which one's which.

00:05:35   - All right, I would like to get my stuff engraved,

00:05:39   but I can never decide what to get engraved on it.

00:05:43   (laughing)

00:05:46   And then I realize--

00:05:47   - A paralysis of choice.

00:05:48   - Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it really,

00:05:52   I will sit there in front of the engraving form

00:05:55   for a very long period of time,

00:05:57   and then I'll think, well, this isn't getting me anywhere.

00:05:59   And then a sensible person would think,

00:06:02   this isn't getting me anywhere,

00:06:04   I'll just order no engraved and be done with it.

00:06:06   But what I'll do is I'll say, I'll think to myself,

00:06:09   I need to get up and walk around.

00:06:10   Maybe I'll take a walk, you know, put my coat on,

00:06:14   I'm gonna go pick up some bread or something like that,

00:06:18   just to clear my head so I can think about this.

00:06:21   And then I realize, you know, it's like,

00:06:23   I'm doing all this, you know,

00:06:24   and taking a walk to clear your head, you know,

00:06:27   get some ideas, that's all well and good and it works,

00:06:29   but it's like, I'm not doing it for like,

00:06:32   something clever to write about,

00:06:34   I'm doing it to figure out what should I get engraved.

00:06:38   - No, try to slice an editorial Gordian knot.

00:06:41   You're trying to figure out whether to do the rock emoji

00:06:44   or the okay emoji.

00:06:46   - Well, for me it'd be so super boring.

00:06:48   Should I just get like, JG or should I just get Gruber?

00:06:52   Or should I go with that?

00:06:54   They do give you a star emoji.

00:06:57   Hmm. - Right, right.

00:06:59   - Maybe just Gruber.

00:07:02   - Yeah, why are we the way that we are?

00:07:04   I don't understand this.

00:07:05   - Right, and then I would just wish, it makes me wish,

00:07:07   I was like, I gotta wish they would just charge $25

00:07:10   to engrave it, 'cause then I would say, ah, forget it.

00:07:13   - Exactly, exactly.

00:07:15   Free is the worst, you know?

00:07:17   Charge me a dollar, because then I have an excuse

00:07:19   to be like, ah, I'll just put the extra dollar.

00:07:21   - I'm not for like, AirPods Pro, right?

00:07:24   I ordered AirPods Pro last year and I got 'em,

00:07:28   and it's like, I'm not worried about like,

00:07:31   oh, if I get my name engraved on the case,

00:07:33   then the resale value is no, I'm not gonna,

00:07:36   who's gonna buy a used pair of AirPods Pro?

00:07:38   - Well, people do, but yeah,

00:07:39   I would never sell 'em personally.

00:07:41   - I'm not, so it has nothing to do with that,

00:07:44   it's just pure indecision.

00:07:46   Ah, terrible.

00:07:48   And again, and then there's something to me

00:07:53   with the AirPods Max, where it's like,

00:07:55   there's a little bit of an asymmetry there.

00:07:57   Now, they're permanently asymmetrical,

00:07:59   'cause the controls are only on the right,

00:08:01   and the engravings on the left.

00:08:03   Anyway, paralysis, I don't know.

00:08:06   I don't know what I would do.

00:08:07   But anyway, you can't get 'em by Christmas,

00:08:08   so it's no worries.

00:08:10   You and I had very similar thoughts.

00:08:14   I always, I say this all the time,

00:08:16   it's always a relief, it's like,

00:08:19   I don't wanna go on and on about how heavy these things are,

00:08:22   and then I read all the other reviews

00:08:23   and nobody says anything, and it's like,

00:08:25   maybe this is completely normal, and--

00:08:27   - Or maybe, yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:08:29   Maybe I just have a weak neck.

00:08:30   - Yeah. (laughs)

00:08:31   - Let's go down with eight. - Right.

00:08:33   (laughs)

00:08:35   I think President Trump has actually

00:08:36   called people pencil decks.

00:08:37   Remember, that was--

00:08:38   - Right, right, yeah.

00:08:40   - That was big in the '80s,

00:08:41   to call somebody a pencil neck geek.

00:08:43   Yeah, there, is there something wrong with my neck?

00:08:46   - Yeah, I'm on the frat crowd, yeah.

00:08:47   - I don't know, it's, but these are heavy headphones,

00:08:52   in my opinion.

00:08:52   - They're about 100 grams.

00:08:55   I put 'em on my kitchen scale.

00:08:58   I have a fairly accurate one I use for baking and whatnot,

00:09:00   and I put 'em on there, and they're like 385

00:09:04   or 89 grams or something,

00:09:06   which is about 100 grams heavier

00:09:07   than a pair of Beats Studio,

00:09:10   which, obviously, sure, there are heavier headphones

00:09:12   in between somewhere,

00:09:13   but I do believe that's on the higher end of the scale.

00:09:17   - Yeah, and my, I have the Bose QuietComfort 35 IIs,

00:09:21   and I guess Bose has another one, a 700,

00:09:25   which I haven't looked at recently.

00:09:27   I mean, I just don't, I'm not enough of a traveler

00:09:29   and not enough of a,

00:09:30   I'm not a Marco Arman who's gonna collect headphones,

00:09:35   but the Bose are 200 and some,

00:09:37   so it's a little bit over 100 grams,

00:09:40   and you feel it, right?

00:09:41   It's also, it's not just 100 grams.

00:09:44   It's the fact that it's 100 extra or 50 extra

00:09:47   each on each ear cup, right?

00:09:50   'Cause the weight is clearly all on the ear cups.

00:09:54   - Right.

00:09:55   - But again, I'm not saying it's a problem,

00:10:00   and I thought you put it pretty well.

00:10:02   It's like, I thought your review where you were just like,

00:10:05   look, if you don't like heavy headphones,

00:10:06   don't buy these, that's it.

00:10:07   But it's not like it's a problem,

00:10:09   but I also think you nailed it where it's,

00:10:12   and I think I sort of fall into that category

00:10:15   as somebody who doesn't follow the headphone industry.

00:10:19   You know, I get a pair I like, and that's it.

00:10:21   I was a little surprised at how heavy they were,

00:10:25   and maybe I shouldn't have been based on the fact

00:10:27   that they are really high end in terms of the drivers

00:10:30   and the quality they're trying to produce.

00:10:34   - Right.

00:10:35   - But it's, yeah, it's, I mean, I even put it in my headline

00:10:40   'cause I wanted to be clever, but it, again,

00:10:44   I'm not saying this is a reason not to buy it,

00:10:46   not saying it's a product failure, but hmm,

00:10:49   this is something to think about.

00:10:51   - Yeah, I think, so it's sort of that same feeling

00:10:54   that you get when you buy, I don't know,

00:10:58   a really high quality pen, right?

00:11:00   Like a really high quality pen, very, very nice.

00:11:04   We're talking almost as, almost decorative, right?

00:11:08   Like it's usable, and in fact,

00:11:10   maybe one of the best pens made for writing

00:11:13   simply because they spent so much money making it

00:11:15   and the craftsmanship is high and all of that stuff.

00:11:18   But then you use it and you're like,

00:11:19   do I really want to scribble with this thing all day?

00:11:21   'Cause it's pretty heavy, right?

00:11:23   It's kind of like that, where you know that the heaviness

00:11:25   is a sign of overall craftsmanship and quality,

00:11:30   which heaviness sometimes is.

00:11:32   Sometimes it's not, right?

00:11:34   Like I remember this is a little tiny anecdote,

00:11:36   but like back when I used to sell cameras,

00:11:39   one of the big things we'd do was people would come in

00:11:42   with these sort of knockoffs of Canon SLRs

00:11:47   that they would get sold by a mail order usually.

00:11:50   Like it'd be like, hey, mail order this SLR, right?

00:11:52   And they would get it, and it's a plastic body

00:11:55   that has the shape of an SLR,

00:11:57   but in fact, there's no real prism.

00:12:00   It's just a viewfinder, you know, rangefinder on top.

00:12:03   And then in its complete plastic body,

00:12:06   it technically does work,

00:12:08   but it's essentially a fixed lens pinhole camera, right?

00:12:11   Like it technically does,

00:12:12   you could put film in it in the whole bit,

00:12:14   but they think they got something special for a deal.

00:12:17   But then if you crack those things open,

00:12:19   what it is is it's an empty plastic shell

00:12:21   that's one step above a disposable camera,

00:12:23   only because it can be reused, right?

00:12:26   And then in the bottom, they put a slab of lead

00:12:30   to make it feel like pig metal or whatever.

00:12:33   They put a slab in the bottom of it to make it feel hefty.

00:12:37   So when they pick it up, they're like, oh, this is great.

00:12:40   This feels just like a Canon, you know?

00:12:42   But it's like really, it's like Canoon or whatever, right,

00:12:44   on the label.

00:12:46   And it happened all the time.

00:12:47   It was crazy.

00:12:48   It was this thing I had no idea about

00:12:50   until I started working in that business.

00:12:52   And I think there's some products out there that are that way.

00:12:55   You could see them.

00:12:56   They pop up now and then, and you could tell,

00:12:58   hey, there's absolutely no way,

00:13:00   no reason for this to weigh the way it does,

00:13:04   because they're trying to impart some sense of quality

00:13:07   in this, but in reality, you open it up,

00:13:10   and it's like, oh, it's just a weight in here

00:13:11   to make it seem like it's good, right?

00:13:13   And there's physical, actual, still products that do that,

00:13:18   but then there's also products that do it metaphorically,

00:13:21   where you're like, oh, wow, this has the feel of quality,

00:13:23   but it's not really quality.

00:13:24   And I don't feel that these fall into that category at all.

00:13:28   I actually do feel that they are the weight that they are,

00:13:30   specifically because of the materials that were chosen,

00:13:33   and the materials were chosen specifically

00:13:36   to impart a feeling of quality.

00:13:39   So it's not that they were,

00:13:41   they've got a slab of pig metal in each ear cup.

00:13:44   They're just heavy because they were like,

00:13:46   hey, what's the best material we could possibly use?

00:13:49   And the weight consideration is way down the list,

00:13:53   way down the list on these particular pair.

00:13:55   - Yeah, making the cups out of unibody aluminum,

00:13:59   I don't know if unibody counts,

00:14:01   but it's the outer shell other than the foam thing

00:14:06   is just one big, round piece of aluminum.

00:14:10   Again, I don't know-- - Yeah, it's a hunk of metal.

00:14:13   - It's a hunk of aluminum.

00:14:15   And here on the East Coast,

00:14:17   in a pretty chilly week in Philadelphia,

00:14:21   it is kind of cool, literally cool,

00:14:25   and figuratively cool,

00:14:28   that when I'd reach up to touch them,

00:14:30   they were very cool to the touch,

00:14:31   which is not something I'm used to with headphones.

00:14:33   And I'm sure there's a whole bunch of high-end,

00:14:36   German brands of headphones that are made of metal

00:14:40   that I don't own.

00:14:42   But for these, just sort of wear 'em

00:14:45   while walking around the house,

00:14:46   it was really weird to reach up

00:14:48   and feel this ice-cool aluminum.

00:14:52   And again, they don't make your head cool

00:14:53   because your cup, you're,

00:14:55   I'm not trying to say like,

00:14:56   hey, your head's gonna be cold

00:14:57   because there's aluminum cups.

00:14:59   The aluminum doesn't touch your head,

00:15:01   but it really feels premium.

00:15:04   And it's like very futuristic too, right?

00:15:08   Like where it's so smooth

00:15:11   and like aluminum eggs on your ears.

00:15:15   They're very organically shaped.

00:15:18   - Mm-hmm.

00:15:19   Yeah, yeah, they are.

00:15:21   And I do think that they have a,

00:15:23   they have a interesting shape

00:15:29   on the horizontal axis, I guess you'd call it,

00:15:33   like outwards from the head,

00:15:35   because many, many headphones out there,

00:15:38   premium headphones, I should say,

00:15:40   have a fairly large or deep cavity.

00:15:44   And that is a sort of a physics thing, partially.

00:15:48   They need space for the air to move around

00:15:51   and for a bigger driver and all of that, right?

00:15:53   But it is, somebody brought this up,

00:15:55   and this is obviously not everybody's use case

00:15:57   and maybe a fairly minimal use case,

00:16:01   but it does typify how these are different

00:16:03   from other headphones in the shape,

00:16:05   which is that because they're so flat on the outer side

00:16:09   and so close to the head,

00:16:11   they're actually extremely comfortable to lay down on.

00:16:14   Like somebody asked me in a Twitter,

00:16:15   hey, I wear noise canceling headphones to sleep,

00:16:18   like I put 'em on and I put white noise on or whatever.

00:16:22   And I'm like, okay, you know, I get it, right?

00:16:24   Maybe you live in a noisy place,

00:16:26   or you're next to the L,

00:16:27   and you're like, this is the only way I can get to sleep,

00:16:29   or you have anxiety or whatever, and it helps.

00:16:32   But he's like, I lay down on 'em,

00:16:33   'cause how are they to lay down on?

00:16:35   And I know this is an edge case,

00:16:37   but it's funny to me that it actually typifies

00:16:39   how different they are, because they are extremely flat

00:16:42   and lozenge-shaped, and that lower profile

00:16:44   does actually make them easier to lay down on.

00:16:47   And while I don't think I'll be sleeping with them on

00:16:50   in a bed, I thought to myself,

00:16:53   how many times have I been uncomfortable on a plane

00:16:56   because I've been trying to lean up against the bulkhead

00:17:01   or against a seat rest or turn,

00:17:04   and rest against a seat rest as best I can

00:17:06   in an economy seat or whatever.

00:17:09   And it clanks against the thing,

00:17:10   and it makes my neck crick, and I can't really,

00:17:13   but I need 'em on, because I can't sleep with the roar

00:17:16   and everybody farting around me and all this.

00:17:18   And so I'm like, it makes some sense

00:17:21   that the shape, the way they are,

00:17:24   it actually is a sort of departure,

00:17:28   a left turn from the shape of a lot of premium headphones,

00:17:32   which typically look like Lobot a lot.

00:17:34   You know? - Yeah, right, right, right.

00:17:36   (laughs)

00:17:37   - I brought up the Lobot picture a couple of times,

00:17:41   and I'm like, yeah, see, those look cool.

00:17:44   Lobot looks really cool, but it's like,

00:17:46   yeah, he's got all these blinking lights,

00:17:48   and there's a lot of articulation,

00:17:50   and there's a lot of levels, just layers of stuff,

00:17:54   and these are just smooth, you know?

00:17:59   - Yeah, yeah.

00:18:02   The smoothness, the egg shape, the kind of flatness of them,

00:18:06   I think a lot of it, all of it adds up

00:18:08   to a nice differentiation in design.

00:18:10   I think it's not as evident until you really bring up a list

00:18:15   and you kind of, I open a few tabs of all of the,

00:18:19   I really, this is probably another part of this discussion,

00:18:23   but I'm really not interested in comparing these

00:18:25   against non-noise cancellation headphones,

00:18:27   'cause I think that's just a, you know,

00:18:29   if you're getting into non-NC studio monitor headphones,

00:18:33   it's just a different conversation,

00:18:35   and I don't feel that it's fair or necessary

00:18:37   to have that conversation personally.

00:18:39   I'm sure people will have that conversation,

00:18:41   oh, let me compare them against my $6,000 reference headphones

00:18:44   with no NC, you know, direct path of the audio

00:18:47   straight through with no processing.

00:18:49   It's just not that, right?

00:18:50   But if you open up all of the NC headphones

00:18:53   that are in this price range, or even more expensive,

00:18:56   some of them are, or a little bit less,

00:18:58   but certainly not cheap, it's a departure,

00:19:02   a great departure in ID from all of those headphones,

00:19:06   which are largely black and brown, some silver,

00:19:10   with a lot of bulk and a lot of, you know, very,

00:19:15   for lack of a better term, 90s Sony design aesthetic,

00:19:22   you know what I mean?

00:19:23   - Yeah, yeah.

00:19:24   - Headphones are really stuck in that universe a lot,

00:19:26   and I think Beats did a lot to change that conversation

00:19:29   in that they're like, hey, headphones are a fashion accessory

00:19:32   and certainly there are other brands.

00:19:33   I'm not saying that only Apple affiliated brands

00:19:35   have done this.

00:19:36   Skullcandy, it springs to mind, they're cheap headphones,

00:19:39   but they changed the conversation around how they look.

00:19:41   But of course, of course, of course,

00:19:43   you cannot talk about any of this without saying

00:19:46   that the Apple earbuds really changed the game

00:19:48   as far as headphones becoming a thing

00:19:52   that people looked at and cared about versus just used,

00:19:55   right, and they certainly, you know,

00:19:58   if you had those white earbuds with the dangly thread,

00:20:01   people knew what you were up to

00:20:03   and they knew that you had an iPod

00:20:05   and that was the status symbol, for sure.

00:20:07   And I think these are in that same conversation, you know?

00:20:12   - Yeah.

00:20:13   I agree, I mean, and again,

00:20:16   and I have not done anything even vaguely

00:20:19   like a deep dive on noise canceling headphones.

00:20:24   And I know people love the Sony, is it MX series, QX?

00:20:28   I don't know what the hell they are.

00:20:30   But there's a Sony one that's in that 200-some price range

00:20:33   that people really love,

00:20:35   where they say the noise canceling is great

00:20:37   and the audio quality is superior than the Bose,

00:20:41   say many.

00:20:42   I got the Bose, my family makes fun of me

00:20:47   'cause I actually bought them at the airport.

00:20:49   (laughing)

00:20:52   - You're the guy.

00:20:53   You're the guy.

00:20:53   You're the reason that they sell them at the airport.

00:20:55   Got it.

00:20:56   - Right.

00:20:58   I forget where we were going like two or three years ago

00:21:01   and I got through security.

00:21:02   I forget what the story was,

00:21:08   but I had broken a pair, the headband of a pair

00:21:13   like a year or two earlier

00:21:14   and I'd been putting off getting a new pair

00:21:16   and I was like, "To hell with this.

00:21:17   "I'm not going on this flight

00:21:18   "without noise canceling headphones."

00:21:20   And I knew there was just your typical airport place

00:21:26   where you buy Bose headphones.

00:21:28   And I did.

00:21:29   I did quick Google, like, "Well, what are they?

00:21:32   "What do they cost at Amazon?"

00:21:34   And it was like the same price.

00:21:35   It was like $270.

00:21:38   And I'm like, "So who cares?"

00:21:40   I'm buying them there.

00:21:41   - It wasn't like the $70 sushi, right?

00:21:42   It was basically the same price, yeah.

00:21:44   - Right.

00:21:45   It was a perfectly fair price to pay

00:21:48   for a pair of Bose Quay Comfort II

00:21:50   and my wife and son still do not let me hear the end of it.

00:21:55   But once you have them, it just drives me crazy.

00:21:59   And I wrote my review.

00:22:00   I often use it if I'm writing something

00:22:03   or just reading, just reading a book,

00:22:05   I will put my noise canceling headphones on,

00:22:08   have them play nothing just to have the noise canceling

00:22:11   because it is an overall better experience

00:22:15   to have headphones on playing nothing

00:22:18   but canceling out the, to me, rather unpleasant white noise

00:22:22   of an airplane cabin than to sit there and listen to it.

00:22:26   So what do you get?

00:22:27   You get better audio when you're playing nothing

00:22:31   but just have more like closer to pure silence

00:22:35   but the physical discomfort of wearing the headphones.

00:22:39   I will take that trade off any day of the week.

00:22:43   And then if you actually are watching a movie

00:22:47   or listening to music or listening to a podcast,

00:22:50   it's almost unusable to me not to have noise canceling

00:22:55   'cause you have to turn the volume up so high,

00:22:57   it's like you should be getting a warning

00:23:00   that you're listening to it too loud

00:23:02   to hear it over the cabin noise.

00:23:05   So I'm a fan but I'm not an expert

00:23:08   on the 20 different brands of them.

00:23:12   Doing it in the winter was pretty interesting.

00:23:16   My office here at the house has pretty loud heat

00:23:21   when the heat's on.

00:23:22   And especially, it's a little bit of serendipity

00:23:28   and a little bit of maybe just, well, it makes sense

00:23:32   that the vent was placed over there

00:23:34   and the windows were over here.

00:23:37   But I just sat down closer to where it's noisier.

00:23:41   What else did I test it with?

00:23:45   The oven, so like when Amy was baking something

00:23:48   and turned on the, what do you call the thing

00:23:53   that takes the exhaust out of an oven?

00:23:55   The-- - The hood.

00:23:57   - The hood, yeah.

00:23:58   - Oh, oh, no, the vent, yeah.

00:23:59   - The vent, you turn this on and it sucks up the stuff.

00:24:04   But it's good white noise.

00:24:06   And it's like, boy, they work,

00:24:07   and that's the best I could do, you know what I mean?

00:24:10   I'm not going on an airplane ride

00:24:12   in the 24 hours I've had 'em.

00:24:14   - Right, right.

00:24:14   - Noise canceling seems great.

00:24:17   - Yeah, it's good, it's good.

00:24:20   I mean, I do believe that there's a couple of things,

00:24:25   you know, a couple of natural advantages

00:24:26   that it has over something like an in-ear.

00:24:28   I mean, an in-ear, you're fighting with an in-ear,

00:24:33   you know, I'm talking like versus an over-ear headphone,

00:24:36   you're fighting the fact that the in-ear has a natural seal.

00:24:41   So it already blocks more noise than an over-ear, typically,

00:24:46   because of the foam and the gap between the foam and the ear

00:24:51   and kind of naturally, you're gonna hear more sound.

00:24:54   So the in-ear already has a better natural seal.

00:24:57   But I would guess that just comparing it, say,

00:25:00   'cause I have QuietComfort 2s,

00:25:01   which is, they've traveled all over the world with me,

00:25:04   and do very well in an airplane setting.

00:25:08   They have less hiss and low-frequency noise

00:25:11   than a Beats Studio.

00:25:12   I have not tried the Sony MX series,

00:25:15   which everybody, you know,

00:25:16   a lot of people swear by over the Bose.

00:25:18   So I can't speak to personal experience there.

00:25:20   But they definitely, the QC2s are way better

00:25:24   than the Beats Studio for me,

00:25:26   for noise cancellation purposes.

00:25:28   And sound is more neutral, you know, too,

00:25:30   which I actually prefer.

00:25:32   But the AirPods Pro, obviously,

00:25:36   their noise cancellation, quite good for an earbud.

00:25:39   I mean, pretty stellar for an earbud.

00:25:41   But I would consider them a little less than the QC2

00:25:44   in terms of efficacy.

00:25:46   And I consider the AirPods Max to be above both of those.

00:25:51   Right, so I think that's the scale for me,

00:25:54   is that the QC2s are good,

00:25:55   but the AirPods Max do provide superior noise cancellation

00:25:59   in terms of blocking, you know,

00:26:01   low frequency and sharp sounds.

00:26:03   Sharp sounds, especially, are very hard

00:26:05   for noise cancellation because they're bursts of sound

00:26:08   that kind of pierce the NC white noise frequency.

00:26:12   But the Max does a better job at sharp sound stuff,

00:26:17   like clinking glasses, snapping fingers, stuff like that.

00:26:21   I found it does a little better job.

00:26:23   So I've been pretty happy with the noise cancellation.

00:26:26   Efficiency, whatever efficacy that you, you know, of these.

00:26:31   I think they're good.

00:26:31   I think they dull a lot of rustling

00:26:34   and a lot of, you know, kind of mid frequency sound very,

00:26:38   very well, which is a lot of the stuff that distracts,

00:26:40   you know, typically.

00:26:42   Just the low hum of life around you,

00:26:44   it kind of cuts that out pretty well.

00:26:47   - The other thing, I tested the first day I had them,

00:26:49   I wore them a lot, and I actually had to run out

00:26:52   to get some groceries.

00:26:54   And so rather than wear my usual AirPods Pro

00:26:59   to listen to podcasts while I do this,

00:27:01   I wore the AirPods Max, which I ordinarily wouldn't do,

00:27:05   but I realized that they do kind of work.

00:27:08   It wasn't freezing cold, I don't know,

00:27:10   it was like in the 30s here in Philly.

00:27:13   But it was sort of like, you know,

00:27:16   like having earmuffs on, you know,

00:27:19   rather than wear a hat, it was like,

00:27:21   "Hey, my ear's aren't getting cold."

00:27:23   (laughing)

00:27:24   But then I realized it is, you know, it was like, huh.

00:27:29   And then all of a sudden I had to take them off,

00:27:31   put my mask on, then put them back on.

00:27:33   - Yes, definitely not as convenient there, same thing.

00:27:38   - But once, you know, when I leave,

00:27:39   I don't take the mask off, you know,

00:27:41   it's like I mask up in the house, leave,

00:27:43   and I don't have to take the mask off

00:27:46   while I'm in the store, I'm not like taking free samples

00:27:48   or anything like that, so, you know.

00:27:50   But when you're using earbuds, you don't have to,

00:27:54   you don't have to worry about which order you mask up.

00:27:57   - It is valid, it's valid to point out.

00:27:59   I mean, I ran into the same thing,

00:28:00   I was running to take a package to the store,

00:28:02   but because I live in a driving city, not a walking city,

00:28:06   I don't wear my mask in my car,

00:28:08   and I don't wear my mask when I leave the house, right?

00:28:11   So it obviously, yes, you're probably not gonna be driving,

00:28:14   or most people are not gonna be driving around

00:28:16   with these things on, but just as a test,

00:28:18   and because I'm trying to get as much

00:28:20   listen time as possible, I wore them out.

00:28:22   And yeah, you have to do the juggling thing

00:28:24   where you lift them and put a mask loop on

00:28:27   and lift the other side and put a mask loop on,

00:28:29   and all of that stuff to get it on and off.

00:28:31   - I've mentioned this many times, I write about it,

00:28:34   and I don't know, maybe it's me,

00:28:35   maybe it's a neurotic aspect of my personality,

00:28:39   but for years, I mean, going back to the wired earbuds era,

00:28:44   I've always listened to podcasts when I'm out running errands

00:28:48   and living in the city, I've run most,

00:28:52   almost all errands on foot, so it's not like I'm driving

00:28:55   while listening to something with headphones on.

00:28:59   And whenever I check out, or if I'm at the butcher counter

00:29:03   and I'm ordering some meat, I take the buds out of my ear,

00:29:08   or at least one of them out of my ear,

00:29:10   even if my audio is paused as a social signal

00:29:15   to the person I'm dealing with,

00:29:18   that you've got my audio attention.

00:29:20   And the conundrum I've been in since AirPods Pro come out

00:29:25   is that I hear better with my podcast paused

00:29:30   and transparency on than I do if I take one out.

00:29:35   And the whole taking one out thing, like the problem era--

00:29:40   - For those of you listening under 30, just wait.

00:29:45   - The problem era of my life was the regular AirPods era,

00:29:51   because what do you do with the one you take out, right?

00:29:54   It's like now you've got a delicate little thing.

00:29:57   - You're gonna set it down on a dirty counter,

00:29:59   or no, you're not gonna do that.

00:30:00   Put it in your pocket, and then the sensors get covered

00:30:02   and it starts playing, it's just awkward.

00:30:04   What do I do with it?

00:30:05   - You're, exactly, exactly.

00:30:08   It's like my coat pocket, I feel, is clean enough

00:30:10   where I would do it, but you can put it in there

00:30:12   and it thinks it's in a, I don't know, it gets confused,

00:30:15   thinks your ear canal is, well, okay, his ears got bigger,

00:30:18   but start playing.

00:30:23   So transparency, technically, is a huge win.

00:30:27   It actually does, it is a superpower.

00:30:31   I think we're such a visual species

00:30:36   that we tend to think of augmented reality

00:30:39   as being primarily visual, but we as a technology

00:30:44   civilization are clearly ahead of the game on the audio side.

00:30:48   Like, these are augmented reality.

00:30:50   And for me, again, in my hearing, I get an annual physical,

00:30:55   my hearing, I get two thumbs up every year

00:30:58   with the hearing test, you hear the beeps, beep,

00:31:00   left, right, you know, so my hearing is good.

00:31:02   But I definitely, in like a grocery store

00:31:07   with that white noise, background noise of a grocery store,

00:31:10   I hear better with transparency, talking to the clerk

00:31:14   or the deli person than I do taking them out.

00:31:18   But it looks like I'm listening to music or a podcast,

00:31:22   right, like I wish that there was some,

00:31:24   I don't know what it would be, like a flashing light

00:31:26   obviously isn't going to happen, but like--

00:31:30   - A red light, you're on air now with me.

00:31:33   - Right.

00:31:34   - We're on the line, caller, welcome.

00:31:39   - Yeah, like a red T, like transparency mode,

00:31:42   this person is paying attention to you.

00:31:44   - But it's way worse with over ears, right,

00:31:47   like the whole social signal with over ears,

00:31:49   it's like fuck you, don't talk to me,

00:31:50   or pardon my French, but you know, don't talk to me,

00:31:54   get lost.

00:31:55   - That's what I look like going to the grocery store,

00:31:57   and I know, and I wanted to like, I love this story,

00:32:01   you ever hear this story about the card,

00:32:02   I don't know if he still carries them,

00:32:03   but that Steve Martin carries around cards that say,

00:32:08   like when people come up and they're like,

00:32:09   hey, you're Steve Martin, can I have your autograph?

00:32:11   He has these cards in his pocket that he gives out,

00:32:14   and it's a card that just says, this card certifies

00:32:17   that you have met Steve Martin.

00:32:18   And then the transaction's over,

00:32:22   he doesn't have to sign anything,

00:32:24   and people, you know, they've got, you know,

00:32:26   and it's charming and funny, and oh so Steve Martin.

00:32:29   - Yeah, they've got a memento, yeah, a physical memento,

00:32:31   it's so much better even than a autograph

00:32:33   on some random slip of paper or whatever.

00:32:35   - Right, I felt like I needed to take cards around

00:32:38   that say I'm listening to you in transparency mode

00:32:41   with these headphones, and you've got

00:32:43   my full audio attention.

00:32:45   But I really felt like I needed it yesterday,

00:32:47   or the day before when I had these over-the-ear cans on.

00:32:52   And it's like, I want you to know,

00:32:54   A, I want you to know I hear you loud and clear,

00:32:57   but B, also, I really kinda need to test these

00:33:01   in the next 24 hours, and this is it.

00:33:03   - I'm not just that guy.

00:33:05   Yeah.

00:33:07   - I did, when I checked out, I couldn't do it though.

00:33:09   I put 'em down around my neck,

00:33:12   and that's when I realized that if you leave them,

00:33:15   if you take 'em off your ears long enough,

00:33:17   they stop playing.

00:33:19   Which brings us to the fact that they don't have

00:33:24   an on/off switch, which is a very Apple-like design choice.

00:33:29   - Yeah, and I think there's some confusion about that.

00:33:32   I know some of the early reviewers

00:33:33   or early looks that were published,

00:33:36   people seemed confused about that

00:33:39   and thought that the only way to stop them

00:33:42   from draining essentially at full power,

00:33:45   you know, like they're on, is to put them in the case.

00:33:49   Which does, if you say, if you assume

00:33:52   that that's the only way to turn them off fully,

00:33:55   that is kind of annoying, right?

00:33:56   Hey, I gotta use this case at all times

00:33:59   unless I want my headphones to drain, you know,

00:34:02   completely over the course of 10 hours or whatever.

00:34:05   But that's not true.

00:34:08   So the case is, it puts them into what they call

00:34:13   an ultra low power mode, right?

00:34:15   Which is, the way I compare this is

00:34:19   if you take the headphones off,

00:34:20   actually, let me run it through,

00:34:21   'cause this is a couple things that I picked up.

00:34:23   So if you take the headphones off,

00:34:24   immediately they stop playing, right?

00:34:26   Just ear detection or head detection.

00:34:28   The sensor inside says, hey, this isn't on an ear,

00:34:30   I'm gonna stop.

00:34:31   That's an AirPods thing, all the AirPods do that.

00:34:33   Then after about 15 seconds or so,

00:34:36   they actually shut down the connection

00:34:39   between the device that it was connected to

00:34:42   and the headphones.

00:34:43   So that saves a ton more power, right?

00:34:45   'Cause it says, hey, I'm no longer connected to this phone.

00:34:47   I'm just gonna go, you know, you're not playing anything

00:34:49   from the phone right now, I'm not on your head,

00:34:51   and in fact, maybe I'm still,

00:34:53   'cause remember the H1s have accelerometers in them.

00:34:55   It says, I'm gonna chill out and cut off this connection,

00:34:58   'cause that's using up power that's not necessary.

00:35:00   And then I believe there's one more stage

00:35:03   of sort of hibernation that is not,

00:35:06   you know, it's essentially what you would call

00:35:08   a low power mode.

00:35:09   And so the difference between that state

00:35:12   and what you're talking about with the case,

00:35:15   the way that I've come to think of it is that it's like,

00:35:18   I'm asleep versus I'm in,

00:35:20   versus I'm in carbonite, right?

00:35:23   - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I'm frozen in carbonite.

00:35:25   If you're frozen in carbonite, you're alive, but barely.

00:35:28   Isn't that the phrase?

00:35:31   Is he alive?

00:35:32   Barely, I don't know.

00:35:32   But I can't remember.

00:35:34   That's the basic states.

00:35:36   Like it's carbonite frozen,

00:35:39   the only sensor that's on is,

00:35:41   is this in the case or not?

00:35:44   That's pretty much the only sensor that's alive

00:35:46   in the headphones when it's in a case,

00:35:48   which is why it can last so long once it's in there.

00:35:50   And it's obviously just a magnet, right?

00:35:52   That says, hey, yo, you're in this case.

00:35:53   Just like the iPad Smart Cover.

00:35:55   But then when you take them out and like you wear them

00:35:58   and then you take them off and you set them down,

00:36:00   they go into a state that, yes,

00:36:02   we'll use more battery than is in the case,

00:36:04   but it's not the same thing as on, right?

00:36:08   And this whole disambiguation of the term on or off

00:36:13   is very Apple.

00:36:14   Like what does on even mean in a world

00:36:18   with low power chips, right?

00:36:20   Like you can see the conversation,

00:36:21   the philosophical conversation happening, right?

00:36:23   In the audio department at Apple where they're like,

00:36:25   but what does on even mean?

00:36:27   What is on?

00:36:28   You know, what is off, right?

00:36:30   But I think that's like where some of the confusion

00:36:32   came from, which is too surprising.

00:36:34   If you make assumptions that, hey,

00:36:37   the case puts them into the lowest power mode possible

00:36:40   and there's no off switch,

00:36:41   maybe they don't get turned off until you put them

00:36:43   in the case, but that's not technically true.

00:36:44   There's shades of off there.

00:36:47   - Yeah, and it's also the exact sort of thing

00:36:50   that by its nature is extremely difficult to write about

00:36:54   within 24 or 36 hours of getting them

00:36:58   if you're going to spend most of your waking hours

00:37:01   in those 24 hours using them.

00:37:03   (laughs)

00:37:05   So here's what I did.

00:37:06   I actually, I should have written it down.

00:37:08   I believe when I went to put them down last night,

00:37:12   I put them down outside the case

00:37:14   and I think they were at 81%

00:37:16   and I just looked right now as you were speaking,

00:37:20   they're at 74%.

00:37:22   So don't quote me on that.

00:37:24   It was somewhere around 80.

00:37:26   So maybe they lost 5% of their power

00:37:29   over the last 14 hours.

00:37:33   - So I could give you a little bit more accuracy on that.

00:37:35   See, I ran essentially the same test.

00:37:39   And so they, I think about 4 p.m. to 4.30 p.m. yesterday,

00:37:44   I had charged them full and then unplugged them.

00:37:49   And then I used them for maybe a handful of minutes

00:37:52   and then after work I had to cook dinner

00:37:54   and all of that stuff.

00:37:55   So I actually didn't use them much last night.

00:37:57   So I actually took them off, set them on my desk

00:38:00   around 5 p.m. and left them there all night.

00:38:04   So that's over 12 hours, almost 14, 15 hours, right?

00:38:09   Or almost 20 hours.

00:38:10   Now, when we started this call,

00:38:13   which was let's say about 40 minutes ago,

00:38:17   I put them on and started using them for this call.

00:38:20   I'm using them right now, right?

00:38:21   To listen to this call or to listen to you.

00:38:23   And they are at 96%.

00:38:26   So it's whatever power they're using overnight,

00:38:30   they're not on in the traditional sense.

00:38:33   - Right, right. - Or sorry,

00:38:34   whatever the power they're using laying on a desk

00:38:36   or off your head, but not in a case, right?

00:38:39   I did not put them in the case.

00:38:40   And so I think that there's, that's a pretty easy tell

00:38:43   that they're definitely not on, on.

00:38:46   - All right, let me take a break

00:38:47   and thank our first sponsor.

00:38:48   It's our good friends at Mack Weldon.

00:38:51   I did not cook the books on this.

00:38:52   The fix is not in, but I didn't even know

00:38:56   that they were gonna be sponsoring this episode

00:38:58   until I came down and I was already dressed.

00:39:00   I'm wearing a Mack Weldon waffle shirt

00:39:03   and then on top of it, a Mack Weldon hoodie.

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00:39:37   I don't even know which of my stuff from them

00:39:38   is my older stuff from a year or two back

00:39:41   and which is the stuff I've bought recently.

00:39:43   They started with stuff like the under the clothes stuff,

00:39:47   like hoodies, or not hoodies, underwear and undershirts

00:39:51   and socks, but they have everything.

00:39:54   They've got polos, they've got hoodies.

00:39:56   The hoodie I'm wearing right now, I absolutely love.

00:39:58   It's one of my favorites.

00:40:00   My son has the same hoodie in a slightly smaller size.

00:40:03   He loves it too.

00:40:04   Really, it's just great stuff.

00:40:06   Just really, really great stuff.

00:40:10   Don't even get me started on the slippers.

00:40:11   Merlin and I, a couple episodes ago,

00:40:13   told you all about the slippers, but the slippers,

00:40:15   I mean, for God's sake, they're just the best.

00:40:18   Anyway, they've also got a loyalty program.

00:40:22   It is so easy.

00:40:24   All you have to do is buy stuff

00:40:25   and it just puts you into the loyalty program.

00:40:29   Once you get to level one, you get free shipping for life

00:40:32   and when you reach level two,

00:40:34   which all you have to do is spend 200 bucks.

00:40:38   If you buy $200 worth of stuff,

00:40:40   you just automatically get into level two

00:40:42   and then from that point, you get 20% off every order

00:40:45   for the next year.

00:40:46   It's a great deal.

00:40:47   You don't have to do anything to qualify.

00:40:48   All you have to do is just buy stuff

00:40:50   and then the more you buy, the cheaper the stuff gets.

00:40:53   They've got a great guarantee.

00:40:55   If you don't like your first pair of underwear,

00:40:57   you can just keep 'em.

00:40:58   Don't send 'em back.

00:41:00   Do not send back your dissatisfying underwear,

00:41:03   but they will refund you, no questions asked.

00:41:06   So here's what you can do.

00:41:08   Get 20% off your first order

00:41:10   by going to mackweldon.com/talkshow

00:41:14   and enter the promo code talk show.

00:41:16   That's Mack, M-A-C-K, Weldon, W-L-E-L-D-O-N dot com.

00:41:21   Mackweldon.com/talkshow with promo code talk show

00:41:27   and you can get 20% off.

00:41:29   All right, we gotta talk about this case

00:41:32   before we get off there, Puds Max.

00:41:34   The case. (laughing)

00:41:37   I know people were dunking on it immediately,

00:41:42   but it wasn't until I saw it in person

00:41:44   that I realized how much,

00:41:46   and I don't know, I don't know.

00:41:48   My joke is that it's like,

00:41:50   I don't know which half of the bikini emoji it looks like.

00:41:53   Does it look like a butt from behind?

00:41:56   Or does it look like a bikini top from the front?

00:41:59   It's a funny looking thing.

00:42:03   It's obviously that they designed the headphones.

00:42:08   Here's my guess as to how this happened.

00:42:10   They designed the headphones.

00:42:11   They made the headphones they wanted to make

00:42:14   and then they were like,

00:42:15   well, how do we put these in a case?

00:42:16   And then they designed a case around the headphones.

00:42:18   And if the case turned out looking a little funny,

00:42:21   well, that's just it.

00:42:23   They're not gonna make the headphones different

00:42:25   just to make the case look better, I guess.

00:42:28   I did not draw the comparison to the Duo dock,

00:42:35   the MagSafe Duo dock.

00:42:38   You did in your review.

00:42:40   And it's like when that part of your review,

00:42:42   it was like boom, light bulb, yes, that's the problem.

00:42:47   The MagSafe Duo charging dock

00:42:50   feels like a cheap jack piece of,

00:42:54   if it cost 50 bucks, it would be like,

00:42:58   yeah, fine, I'll buy one.

00:42:59   50 bucks, that's a cool thing to take in my travel case.

00:43:02   For $140 or $130 without the $20 charger it requires,

00:43:08   it just doesn't feel commensurate with the price.

00:43:13   It feels like a $50 charger.

00:43:14   - Even that thing has the redeeming quality

00:43:18   of having a couple of pieces of nice aluminum in it.

00:43:20   The mounts for the watch and the magnet ring for the phone,

00:43:26   at least those scream like,

00:43:30   hey, there's some Apple stuff in here.

00:43:32   Whereas this is, I don't know what this is.

00:43:36   You know what it reminds me of, John?

00:43:38   (laughing)

00:43:40   It reminds me of when you don't have a paper towel

00:43:45   and you wrap your sandwich in a napkin.

00:43:49   Where you know a paper towel is more durable.

00:43:53   It's got some heft to it.

00:43:55   I mean, I'm not saying that everybody wraps

00:43:57   your sandwich in a paper towel,

00:43:58   but let's say you're gonna pick it up

00:43:59   and you're gonna eat it and it's a little sloppy,

00:44:00   it's got some juice on it.

00:44:02   And you're like, I wanna wrap something

00:44:03   around the bottom of this.

00:44:04   Like you made it at home.

00:44:06   It's like you wrap a Subway wrapper

00:44:07   around the bottom of the sandwich and eat the top

00:44:08   if you're walking and talking.

00:44:10   When you wrap a paper towel around it,

00:44:14   you're like, this paper towel's gonna last.

00:44:15   It's gonna absorb, it's gonna soak some stuff up.

00:44:18   It's gonna be chill.

00:44:19   You wrap a napkin around it, you got holes in that thing,

00:44:22   you got fibers coming off.

00:44:24   That's what this looks like.

00:44:25   It looks like you took the headphones

00:44:27   and wrapped them in a napkin and it got holes in it.

00:44:29   It's like, oh, hey, I just need to wrap this

00:44:31   in something real quick and just take it down the block

00:44:33   and give my neighbor some chocolate chip cookies.

00:44:34   I just need to wrap it in this napkin.

00:44:37   And then by the time you get there,

00:44:38   the napkin's barely holding on.

00:44:39   That's what this looks like.

00:44:40   It's like, why?

00:44:41   Why go through all the effort to produce

00:44:45   what is probably one of the more over-engineered,

00:44:50   precision-machined pieces of headphone gear I've ever seen

00:44:55   and then wrap it in this?

00:44:57   It's honestly insulting to the product itself.

00:45:03   I don't get it.

00:45:04   It's really awkward.

00:45:05   - I think a couple of the other reviewers

00:45:10   have mentioned this.

00:45:11   I haven't caught up on all the YouTube reviews,

00:45:13   but when I unboxed it, my son was here,

00:45:16   and he was keenly interested.

00:45:17   My son is probably more of a headphone fan than I am.

00:45:20   - What kid is it, John?

00:45:24   We all loved headphones 'cause they shut our parents up.

00:45:26   - I know. (laughs)

00:45:28   Well, but now in addition to shutting up his parents,

00:45:31   it also connects with his friends.

00:45:33   So it's, from my era, it's a combination headphones

00:45:38   and telephone.

00:45:40   - And telephone, exactly, 'cause I got Discord

00:45:43   and he's talking to his friends and all that.

00:45:45   - So he's, of all the stuff that's come in,

00:45:48   he was more keenly interested in these

00:45:50   than anything recently, I think.

00:45:53   Although the M1 Mac definitely interested him.

00:45:56   But he couldn't believe that the case

00:46:02   wasn't part of the packaging.

00:46:04   (laughs)

00:46:05   And it's weird because there is packaging around the case.

00:46:09   There is a typical white, not onion paper,

00:46:14   but Apple's version of onion paper around it.

00:46:17   But you take that off and it feels like

00:46:19   there's just this second level of wrapping

00:46:22   around the headphones, and it's like,

00:46:23   "No, no, that's the case."

00:46:24   And they have a soft touch material inside.

00:46:28   I'm sure it's not suede.

00:46:30   There's no way they're gonna ship leather,

00:46:33   actual leather to everybody, both cost-wise

00:46:36   and the fact that some people don't wanna buy leather stuff.

00:46:39   It's some kind of artificial suede soft touch thing.

00:46:44   And it's not bad to the touch,

00:46:45   but that outer material is either identical to

00:46:49   or might as well be the kissing cousin

00:46:52   of that rubbery stuff that they make

00:46:54   like iPad covers out of,

00:46:58   and the Duo charging dock in particular.

00:47:01   It's like, "Yeah, that's the same stuff."

00:47:03   And it's not a bad material,

00:47:05   but it is not a premium material.

00:47:08   And there is no doubt in my mind,

00:47:10   even if you're a, you know,

00:47:12   like I'm thinking about how I travel,

00:47:17   when I go on an airplane.

00:47:18   And it's not like I fill up my backpack

00:47:22   or briefcase or whatever bag I'm taking with me.

00:47:24   I've switched to a briefcase,

00:47:26   but right before the pandemic hit.

00:47:29   So I was like, "Why did I spend all this money

00:47:32   "on a leather briefcase?"

00:47:33   And I don't go anywhere.

00:47:34   It's like, you know,

00:47:37   I'm not putting unwrapped candy bars in there.

00:47:42   I don't have potted plants in there.

00:47:45   It's like, you know, it's computer stuff

00:47:47   and books and magazines.

00:47:49   So it's all clean stuff.

00:47:51   But yet somehow my hard case for my bows

00:47:56   is kind of beat up, right?

00:47:58   It's just the nature of travel, right?

00:48:01   You can be as neat as you want

00:48:04   and put clean stuff in a bag,

00:48:06   but you're stuffing it into overhead bins.

00:48:08   You're stuffing it under the seat.

00:48:10   - It happens.

00:48:14   It just picks up battle scars over time.

00:48:17   - And I'm a careful person.

00:48:18   Like other people may not be so careful, you know?

00:48:22   Yeah, it picks up scars.

00:48:23   This stuff, especially the non-space gray colors,

00:48:26   there's just no way it's gonna stay clean looking.

00:48:29   Space gray maybe will take a beating

00:48:33   and maybe will look better with the beating,

00:48:35   but like the blue and the green and the silver,

00:48:39   it's like, it just does not seem meant for that.

00:48:42   I don't know.

00:48:43   It's like there's a certain part of Apple

00:48:45   that just, as practical as they mostly are,

00:48:48   and I think the headphones themselves

00:48:51   are very practically designed for the real world.

00:48:54   The case, it just is not.

00:48:56   And it's not a case, it's a pouch, right?

00:48:59   - Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:49:02   - And it's $550. - I don't know.

00:49:06   It is, it's just insane.

00:49:08   And there's no justifying it.

00:49:10   I'm not gonna dance around trying to go like,

00:49:12   oh, well, maybe this is clearly, clearly

00:49:16   one of those things where at the last minute,

00:49:17   they're like, shit, did anybody decide?

00:49:21   Did anybody think about a case?

00:49:23   Because like, I don't know.

00:49:25   Like the product shots show people holding it

00:49:27   by the handle and all of this stuff.

00:49:29   - Like a purse, right? - I don't know.

00:49:30   - You know, it's like-- - Yeah, like a purse.

00:49:32   I think that it would have been better

00:49:33   for them to ship it without a case,

00:49:35   because you know what that tells people?

00:49:37   This is for the home, and if you're gonna travel with it,

00:49:39   we'll come up with something for you,

00:49:41   or you can fit it into your life, right?

00:49:43   Put it in a pouch, put it in a bag, put it in whatever, right?

00:49:45   Like, you know, put it in, even a drawstring bag,

00:49:48   a lot of premium headphones.

00:49:51   Like a lot of studio monitor headphones

00:49:53   come with a drawstring bag, right?

00:49:55   Some of them come with something fancier,

00:49:56   but a lot of them come with like a, you know,

00:49:59   a nice kind of pouch, drawstring bag type thing

00:50:02   that either you use because you are that kind of person,

00:50:06   or you put in the box and never ever take out, right?

00:50:09   They would have been better off

00:50:11   to go with that kind of situation than something half-assed,

00:50:15   because I do believe it lowers the,

00:50:18   it lowers the whole product, right?

00:50:20   It doesn't elevate the product, it lowers the product.

00:50:23   Everything about the packaging and execution of this thing

00:50:27   screams expensive, high-quality headphones.

00:50:30   The box has that lovely emboss,

00:50:33   the headband has this mesh

00:50:36   that nobody else would think to execute,

00:50:38   because it's like, who would think to do that, right?

00:50:41   That you can't, you know, that's hard to do,

00:50:44   materials-wise, to attach it with very little glue

00:50:47   and very little attachment, you know,

00:50:48   to bond it in the way that they did.

00:50:51   The pistons on the headphones that extend them,

00:50:54   it's not some cheap like rail system,

00:50:56   it's like a car piston that slides out.

00:50:59   All of this stuff screams like,

00:51:01   we worked on this a long time and it was hard,

00:51:04   and here it is.

00:51:06   And then the case screams like, you know,

00:51:09   here's this shit too. (laughs)

00:51:10   - Right, the piston feels like you could use the piston

00:51:15   for extending the cups out, further out,

00:51:19   to accommodate a larger, smaller head,

00:51:22   pull 'em out, push 'em back in for fit.

00:51:25   The pistons alone feel like you could teach

00:51:28   half a semester of industrial design at a university

00:51:32   by studying the piston design alone.

00:51:34   It's that interesting, materials,

00:51:37   and it's like, how does this, it feels magical, right?

00:51:41   Because it doesn't click, it doesn't have steps,

00:51:44   but it does, it holds its shape.

00:51:46   I mean, will it over time?

00:51:48   Again, who knows, you know, three,

00:51:49   come back to me in three years and see if it still is tight.

00:51:53   But yeah, super premium.

00:51:56   Just the pistons alone, very, very premium

00:51:59   in a way that just blows away the Bose that I have,

00:52:02   which are fine, right?

00:52:03   They click, you know, and they feel way sturdier

00:52:07   than the Bose Quiet Comforts of old,

00:52:09   which used to snap after 18 months.

00:52:12   Like, guaranteed to snap 18 months after you fry 'em.

00:52:15   - Right.

00:52:17   - You know, it's like, but the case, Jesus.

00:52:21   I don't know what they're thinking.

00:52:24   - Me neither, it's almost not--

00:52:28   - And then the worst part is you kinda need it

00:52:30   to put 'em in the hibernate, right?

00:52:32   - Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:52:33   Like, if you would've had a nice shell case

00:52:37   that said, hey, this is a little bulky on the case side,

00:52:42   but it's the nest that your headphones live in, right?

00:52:47   - Right.

00:52:48   - They go in there to hibernate and you keep them safe

00:52:50   and they're protected.

00:52:51   Like, imagine, like the Bose QCs have that hard shell,

00:52:55   you know, deal that zips up.

00:52:58   Or I think it's like a soft hard shell now, you know,

00:53:01   it's like a combination floppy thing.

00:53:03   But something like that, even in the same exterior material,

00:53:08   I could see the complaint being,

00:53:09   oh man, this is gonna get dirty, but hey, you know,

00:53:11   it's a safe home for my $500 or $550 headphones.

00:53:15   I get it, right?

00:53:17   That makes sense.

00:53:18   This doesn't make any sense.

00:53:20   Because it leaves the most delicate part

00:53:22   of what you would think to be the headphone exposed.

00:53:24   Like the material, sure, if you don't want

00:53:27   these aluminum things to scratch, I get it.

00:53:30   But at the same time, who cares, who gives a crap, right?

00:53:34   The headband though, it's a mesh.

00:53:37   - Like we're gonna stick it in there

00:53:38   with my pens and pocket knives

00:53:39   and I forget to close it all the way or whatever.

00:53:41   Like, protect that, you know?

00:53:43   I mean, it's weird, it's weird, it's just all weird.

00:53:46   - Right, like you could get a scratch on the ear cups

00:53:48   and it's a scratch.

00:53:49   It's like getting a scratch on the back of your phone,

00:53:50   who cares?

00:53:51   I mean, you know, people might care,

00:53:53   but I don't wanna get a hole poked in the mesh, you know?

00:53:57   - Right, right.

00:53:58   - Anyway, I'm still not quite sure what to make of it.

00:54:02   I'm glad, I know, I guess we, you know, 550 bucks.

00:54:07   It is premium and it's a bad year to come out

00:54:10   with premium $550 headphones.

00:54:13   I mean, times are tough.

00:54:14   - Yeah, yeah. - The world is a mess.

00:54:16   But, you know, there is this whole world of high-end audio

00:54:22   and $550 isn't even the highest of the high by far.

00:54:30   I'm glad Apple is making, shooting

00:54:33   for super premium headphones.

00:54:35   And same way with HomePod, right?

00:54:40   And it's like, I know, you know, people are,

00:54:42   a lot of people think, you know, the reason Apple is behind

00:54:45   in market share on home talk-tier dingus devices

00:54:50   is that HomePod was their only standalone device

00:54:52   until they came out with the Mini

00:54:54   and it started at 300 bucks.

00:54:56   Or maybe it was 350 when it first came out.

00:54:57   And that's a lot more than all these $50 pucks

00:55:00   that everybody else makes.

00:55:02   But I'm glad they make HomePod that sounds so amazing.

00:55:05   I really am.

00:55:07   But it's, you know, there seems to be a bit of a gap

00:55:13   in price between AirPods Pro and AirPods Max

00:55:17   where there could be another set of headphones in between.

00:55:20   - In between, yeah.

00:55:22   It's a pretty big, I mean, they shot for the outside edge

00:55:26   before the middle edge, right?

00:55:28   Now it is gap filling, right?

00:55:30   You have people who are obviously buying

00:55:33   and Apple can see obviously very well

00:55:35   that people buy Beats, right?

00:55:37   And they know how many people buy them

00:55:38   and they know that that price is, you know,

00:55:41   in the middle of the $300 bracket.

00:55:43   And, you know, they're still benefiting from that

00:55:46   in that they own Beats and all of that.

00:55:49   But that also proves out the need and the desire for people

00:55:53   to have something in that universe

00:55:55   that supports the most advanced features

00:55:58   that Apple has shipped in any audio devices so far, right?

00:56:01   Which to me is really the point of these headphones.

00:56:05   It's not, you know, at the beginning of this conversation,

00:56:08   I was like, hey, I'm not really interested

00:56:09   in comparing these to non-NC headphones

00:56:12   because by nature, anytime you introduce processing

00:56:14   into the audio path,

00:56:16   it's no longer a pristine audio device, right?

00:56:20   It's just, that's not about that transmitting

00:56:23   the pure fidelity of the original recording directly

00:56:28   to your ears as little, you know, fuss as possible.

00:56:31   There are absolutely headphones and applications for that.

00:56:35   I get it, you know, recording audio files,

00:56:39   listening to the original vinyl and, you know,

00:56:42   if you've got a $1,500 vinyl record player, you know,

00:56:46   this is nothing, you know,

00:56:47   you want headphones that transmit that, you know,

00:56:50   or $2,000 record player or more, whatever,

00:56:53   you get the drift.

00:56:54   But this, that's not that at all.

00:56:56   So then you have to ask yourself, like, what is this about?

00:56:59   Like, what's the purpose of shipping these?

00:57:04   And the two H1 chips, nine microphones,

00:57:09   like every trick that they've learned so far in audio

00:57:13   is in these things.

00:57:15   And it's tied to, of course,

00:57:16   all of the tricks that they've introduced on iOS

00:57:20   for, you know, positional audio, the spatial audio

00:57:24   that they're shipping, right?

00:57:25   You have the adaptive EQ, which says,

00:57:27   hey, I'm gonna read the seal of your ears.

00:57:29   Some other headphones do this,

00:57:30   but not to the efficacy of these.

00:57:33   It's better than any of the others I've tried.

00:57:36   I will say that there is a,

00:57:37   there is a case to be made here that what they're doing

00:57:42   is exactly what you were alluding to on the AR front,

00:57:44   that they are building out this sort of platform.

00:57:48   And in my original first, you know,

00:57:52   gasp review of the AirPods,

00:57:54   'cause they came out at the same time as an iPhone,

00:57:56   and I like tucked my AirPods review into that,

00:57:58   but I also broke it out 'cause I felt like,

00:58:00   you know, it's worth talking about on its own a little bit.

00:58:03   And it was like, hey, this is audio AR, you know,

00:58:06   get ready, you know, we're gonna be looking at this.

00:58:08   And that was, you know,

00:58:10   I can't remember when they came out now,

00:58:11   the years blend together, several years ago, right?

00:58:14   But that was basically, you know,

00:58:16   me trying to be all fun and future looking and say,

00:58:19   hey, what if, what if, what if, what if?

00:58:20   Well, we're in what if now.

00:58:22   You know, it's creating, when you put these on,

00:58:24   the larger drivers, the ear cup, the comfort,

00:58:28   and the, now the content that supports that most

00:58:31   and all of this stuff,

00:58:33   it crafts a soundstage for you that feels real.

00:58:36   It feels like you're listening to the audio

00:58:38   without headphones on.

00:58:40   If you're looking at this, you know,

00:58:41   if you're watching the kind of content that supports it,

00:58:43   right, it's not all content,

00:58:44   it's only on iOS devices.

00:58:47   There's a lot of limitations here so far, right?

00:58:49   - Right.

00:58:50   - But if you are looking,

00:58:51   you're watching an episode of a show on the iOS device

00:58:56   that supports that most and the spatial audio is on,

00:59:00   and you turn it off, the soundstage like vanishes

00:59:04   and you're getting a single flat kind of,

00:59:06   hey, here's audio presentation, sounds good, but whatever.

00:59:10   When you turn it on, it really is insane.

00:59:13   Like it's really incredible the breadth and depth

00:59:16   of the soundstage there.

00:59:17   I mean, I've spent, I spent years,

00:59:19   like 10 years installing home theater audio,

00:59:22   and I know what a good soundstage sounds like.

00:59:24   I'm not the world's expert on this stuff,

00:59:27   but I know how to set up a home theater system.

00:59:29   I know how to set up 7.1 and 5.1.

00:59:32   It's actually really good.

00:59:36   Definitely not to the par of some sort

00:59:38   of actual physical installation,

00:59:40   it would never probably will be,

00:59:42   but maybe, you know, it's actually really getting close.

00:59:46   It's way, way better than any of those like

00:59:49   fake sound bar-y type things where they're like,

00:59:51   hey, we'll project your audio for you.

00:59:53   And they just kind of like use a little beam forming.

00:59:55   It's way better than that.

00:59:56   It's pretty incredible.

00:59:58   And so I think that it's really a test bed

00:59:59   for all of those technologies.

01:00:01   It is the best you can get right now

01:00:04   in a headphone version of a home theater audio setup.

01:00:09   But the downsides, of course,

01:00:11   we're all still there.

01:00:13   It only works on iOS.

01:00:14   It's only on portable devices like an iPad or whatever.

01:00:16   You can't watch your Apple TV and get that spatial audio.

01:00:19   It doesn't work yet, you know, that kind of thing.

01:00:21   - It seems crazy to me.

01:00:22   I blew a chunk of my review complaining about it.

01:00:25   It seems crazy that it doesn't work with Apple TV.

01:00:27   I mean, like, it is quite possibly

01:00:32   a better audio experience than you could get

01:00:36   from any speakers, right?

01:00:38   'Cause it's right there personally for you,

01:00:41   like in the way that VR goggles

01:00:45   are gonna give you a better VR experience

01:00:47   than a screen ever could, right?

01:00:51   - Right.

01:00:52   - It's like, you know, like the old Star Trek holodeck.

01:00:55   Never really added up the way, like, wait,

01:00:58   if it's just a bunch of, if it's just four walls

01:01:01   in like a racquetball court,

01:01:02   how are they protecting stuff in the middle?

01:01:04   But whatever is the future.

01:01:07   Like, in the way that for true VR,

01:01:11   you really need goggles that are personal for you,

01:01:14   and if you and I are having the same experience,

01:01:16   we both need goggles so that we're both

01:01:18   getting a personal experience.

01:01:19   I think that it's quite possible that for that spatial audio

01:01:23   you're getting a better experience from these headphones

01:01:25   than you would from any speaker set up in a room.

01:01:28   'Cause it's for you.

01:01:29   And maybe you could set the speakers up

01:01:31   so there's one sweet spot in the middle

01:01:33   where like two people sitting in the middle of the room

01:01:36   get the perfect experience.

01:01:37   But everybody else aren't because they're not in the center.

01:01:41   Why, you get this, the best possible audio experience

01:01:47   to watch a blockbuster action movie

01:01:49   and you have to watch it on an iPad?

01:01:52   To get, that's the biggest screen you can get?

01:01:54   It's insane.

01:01:57   It just seems crazy to me.

01:01:58   Anyway, I'll pick this up 'cause I wanna keep going.

01:02:00   But let me take a break while I'm thinking about it

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01:04:10   So here's where I'm going with this,

01:04:15   with the spatial audio.

01:04:16   To me, and this is why I love talking to you about it,

01:04:18   'cause I think you know what I'm talking about.

01:04:20   To me, it is Disney-esque in terms of its immersiveness.

01:04:27   It is visceral when you're watching something

01:04:31   that is hooked up with this.

01:04:33   It is crazy.

01:04:34   So Apple, you know, the reviewers guide

01:04:39   some suggested scenes of movies

01:04:42   that really show off spatial audio

01:04:44   and it was sort of like their,

01:04:46   look, in normal times, I probably would've gone to New York

01:04:49   and I guess they maybe would've had you

01:04:51   go down to Cupertino or something.

01:04:53   But they probably would've had a product briefing

01:04:57   in New York and had one set up for the press to go over

01:05:02   and now here, try this and we'll show you.

01:05:05   Although I guess they probably would've just would've had

01:05:06   an iPad set up in front of everybody

01:05:08   'cause it doesn't work with Apple TV.

01:05:11   But here are some of the scenes they might've shown us.

01:05:13   And I looked at them, 'cause it's like, yeah,

01:05:16   I wanna, you know, show me what spatial audio is awesome at.

01:05:20   And one of them was a scene from Ford versus Ferrari,

01:05:23   which I love, which is a great movie.

01:05:26   Do you see that guy, what's his name?

01:05:27   James Mangold, he's gonna direct the--

01:05:29   - Yeah, James Mangold's directing the new indie.

01:05:31   - The new indie. - I'm stoked.

01:05:33   - Yeah, yeah, hopefully.

01:05:34   - Yeah, I think he has the right sensibility to it.

01:05:36   It's like, you know, Ford versus Ferrari,

01:05:38   while not the world's most amazing cinema ever,

01:05:41   had really exciting photography,

01:05:44   really, you know, really like deft hand

01:05:47   as far as the character beats.

01:05:49   And in a movie like that, that's like,

01:05:50   has that kind of arc where you know

01:05:52   where it's headed in general

01:05:53   and you know it's a known story,

01:05:55   it had the right moments of like,

01:05:57   you know, kind of joy and catharsis.

01:05:58   I thought he did a really good job.

01:06:00   He'll do good with an indie, I think.

01:06:01   - I thought it was kind of crazy serendipity

01:06:03   that this, did the news break?

01:06:05   I saw the news that he's gonna helm indie five yesterday.

01:06:10   'Cause I know Disney had this big announcement

01:06:11   where they announced all their stuff for the next year.

01:06:14   I think if it didn't come out yesterday,

01:06:16   it came out the day before.

01:06:18   But I thought it was such serendipity,

01:06:20   'cause a friend of the show, Todd Visserie,

01:06:25   was tweeting recently,

01:06:26   just some sound design clips from Raiders of the Lost Ark,

01:06:30   which is like, seriously,

01:06:32   maybe my favorite movie of all time.

01:06:34   Always, always in the top five.

01:06:37   And if you say, you know,

01:06:38   "Give me the best movies you've ever seen."

01:06:41   Raiders is always in my top five.

01:06:43   And the sound is one of my favorite things about Raiders.

01:06:46   Always has been, and it's always been confounding to me

01:06:50   that more action movies don't just go back to Raiders.

01:06:53   Like, one of the great things in Raiders is,

01:06:58   okay, action movies, what happens in action movies

01:07:00   that doesn't really happen in real life all the time?

01:07:02   People are always firing guns, right?

01:07:05   It's guns, boom, boom, boom.

01:07:07   People are firing guns all the time.

01:07:08   In real life, a gunshot is a hell of a thing, right?

01:07:12   - Yeah, it's intense. - Anytime, right.

01:07:15   Every time a gun goes off in Raiders of the Lost Ark,

01:07:17   it is a hell of a thing.

01:07:19   It is like, boom!

01:07:21   It's one gunshot is a hell of a thing.

01:07:25   And it sounds like it.

01:07:26   It's like, turn that up loud.

01:07:28   Ford versus Ferrari has that sort of,

01:07:31   hey, if you take a $9 million race car in 1968

01:07:35   or whatever the hell year this was,

01:07:37   and just had a guy run it at top speed around a race course,

01:07:41   that's gonna be, that's a hell of a machine

01:07:44   to put up into the red.

01:07:46   Like, if you put that race car in the red,

01:07:48   that's a hell of a-- - It's overwhelming, right?

01:07:50   It's overwhelming.

01:07:51   And I've been in cars with,

01:07:53   not one of those specifically,

01:07:55   but I've been in cars at that level

01:07:57   with somebody else driving

01:07:58   who really knows how to hone it around.

01:08:00   It's an overwhelming experience.

01:08:02   Your body is just sort of, you know, it's intense.

01:08:06   And that's why F1 drivers

01:08:08   are some of the best athletes in the world,

01:08:09   because you can't imagine the stresses that they go under.

01:08:14   - Anyway, that was just a fun serendipity,

01:08:17   because I thought it's what makes the sound design

01:08:19   of Ford versus Ferrari such a great example

01:08:22   is exactly the sort of thing that, in my opinion,

01:08:25   the Indy franchise has gotten away from,

01:08:28   and it's sort of devolved into standard action fare.

01:08:31   And that, man, when you go back to Raiders,

01:08:34   and just like, hey, like a whip crack, just boom.

01:08:37   Just focus on this one thing

01:08:39   instead of trying to pick one crayon out of the box.

01:08:44   Don't use all 64 of them at once, right?

01:08:47   - Right. (laughs)

01:08:50   - Anyway, Ford versus Ferrari, wow.

01:08:52   It was, the scene they suggested was the scene

01:08:55   where the Matt Damon character, what's it, Shelby,

01:08:58   takes the Ford grandson and (laughs)

01:09:02   he like, not really tricks him, but like just,

01:09:05   hey, take a seat in the car,

01:09:06   let me take you around the track.

01:09:07   And it's both the race car sound and the tire squealing

01:09:12   and the bits of dialogue mixed in,

01:09:17   where there's characters talking

01:09:19   while there's this crazy noise.

01:09:20   And it's not just that you can hear them loud as day,

01:09:24   clear as a bell, but that there's direction to it.

01:09:28   And if the character is like slightly off

01:09:30   to the right center on screen,

01:09:33   their voice is coming, like, and it, again,

01:09:37   does not sound like it's coming from the iPad,

01:09:40   arms reach away from you.

01:09:42   It sounds like there's a man six feet off,

01:09:46   a little bit to your right, talking to you.

01:09:49   It is, and that visceral nature of it

01:09:53   sounds like there's a person right there,

01:09:55   and it sounds like you're in a tiny little race car

01:09:58   where your knees are up by your chin

01:10:00   with this crazy engine that could kill you,

01:10:04   revving right in front of you.

01:10:07   It all sounds so real, and it just is like the best

01:10:10   of like a modern Disney attraction.

01:10:12   Like, yeah, it feels like you're riding

01:10:15   one of those crazy flying things in Avatar, you know?

01:10:20   - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

01:10:23   Yeah, it really does.

01:10:23   And like the experience, I've said this,

01:10:27   I just like said this on Twitter and other people are like,

01:10:28   oh, yeah, yeah, this happened to me too.

01:10:31   The experience of watching one of these movies

01:10:33   with the, you know, even the AirPods Pro,

01:10:35   but obviously even more intense with the Max,

01:10:38   is that it feels like you don't have headphones on

01:10:41   and that the sound is actually projecting out

01:10:43   into the room itself from the device.

01:10:46   And I think somebody took this to mean

01:10:47   that I thought the iPad sounded great.

01:10:49   That's not what I mean.

01:10:50   It's just, I mean, it's better than, you know,

01:10:53   iPads in the past if you're talking about like the iPad Pro,

01:10:55   but it really has nothing to do with that.

01:10:57   It's really that the sound feels like it's filling

01:11:00   the room that you're in.

01:11:01   And so like I had the experience of, you know,

01:11:04   sitting in bed watching a movie on the iPad

01:11:08   and the spatial audio turned on,

01:11:11   and when I was watching it,

01:11:12   I actually thought I was gonna wake my wife up

01:11:14   'cause I thought that my headphones had disconnected.

01:11:17   And that it was playing through the iPad speakers

01:11:19   out into the room, right?

01:11:22   And I took 'em off multiple times.

01:11:24   Like I did it once, I'm like, oh no, I guess not.

01:11:27   'Cause then it pauses and you're like,

01:11:28   is it playing or not?

01:11:30   And no, I guess not.

01:11:31   And I put it back in, it starts playing.

01:11:33   I'm like, oh yeah, that's definitely the head,

01:11:34   and then a couple minutes later, I did it again.

01:11:35   I didn't believe myself.

01:11:37   It's actually kind of remarkable.

01:11:39   And I think there's, people are getting

01:11:41   a little bit hung up on the Atmos thing

01:11:43   because they're like, oh, does this really sound

01:11:46   like height level speakers plus 5.1,

01:11:49   which is really what makes Atmos different?

01:11:50   And it's like, no, you know, not really, right?

01:11:54   Like Atmos is Atmos for a reason.

01:11:56   And sure, if you have physical speakers

01:11:59   filling a physical space and,

01:12:01   and they're all calibrated correctly

01:12:03   and you have the right room for it,

01:12:05   and the screen is the right distance away

01:12:08   and you're sitting in the optimal position

01:12:09   to listen to this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?

01:12:12   Not, yeah, how many people are gonna have

01:12:15   the experience of Atmos in their home?

01:12:18   Very few, proportionately speaking.

01:12:21   Like I have an Atmos system in my house

01:12:23   because I'm fortunate enough to have the space

01:12:24   that works for it and I know how to set it up,

01:12:26   so I did it all myself, so it didn't cost me

01:12:28   a arm and a leg to install it, right?

01:12:30   - Right.

01:12:31   - But most people don't.

01:12:33   And I do believe that that is one interesting thing

01:12:36   about this that yes, these are $550,

01:12:39   but the AirPods Pro are not

01:12:41   and they both do spatial audio

01:12:43   and as they build out this platform,

01:12:45   I do believe it is actually,

01:12:46   and this is why I think this is driven

01:12:49   from the executive level a lot

01:12:50   because I believe that there are a lot of cinemaphiles

01:12:52   in Apple and a lot of people who love high-end audio

01:12:55   and all of this stuff, which is why we got HomePod

01:12:57   and not, you know, Apple Alexa,

01:13:01   is that they're democratizing quality of sound

01:13:05   in a pretty aggressive way.

01:13:07   So yes, you may not get 100% of Atmos,

01:13:10   but you may get 60 to 70% of Atmos in a headphone

01:13:15   that somebody could buy for $550

01:13:17   instead of spending eight grand on an Atmos setup.

01:13:19   - Right.

01:13:20   - And it's definitely a different way

01:13:23   to frame this conversation

01:13:25   and I'm sure people will bitch at me about it,

01:13:26   but I, as somebody who has gone through the trouble

01:13:30   to do this and help people set these up over the years,

01:13:32   I'm just telling you, it's actually a really impressive

01:13:35   sound stage that they've built virtually

01:13:37   and it will give a lot more people exposure

01:13:40   to the kind of home theater type sound at home

01:13:44   if they're using these devices.

01:13:46   I just wish it worked with Apple TV

01:13:47   the way it's supposed to, you know?

01:13:49   - Right.

01:13:50   - And I need to do some more testing.

01:13:52   - It has to be coming to Apple TV.

01:13:53   Whether it really does require some sort of hardware

01:13:56   for locating the headphones versus where the TV is

01:14:01   and we really have to wait for another Apple TV

01:14:04   hardware update or if it could be done in software,

01:14:07   I don't know, but I mean, it seems criminal to me

01:14:10   that Apple TV is $200 and you're gonna have to buy

01:14:15   another new one to get spatial audio,

01:14:19   but if it does, it does.

01:14:20   I mean, if it really does require hardware

01:14:23   that's only currently in iPhones and iPads,

01:14:25   then what are they gonna do?

01:14:26   But it has to be coming 'cause it's so frickin' good

01:14:30   and there really are, it's not just if you don't wanna spend

01:14:35   for the speakers, but if you've got like a small apartment

01:14:37   and a sleeping baby down the hall

01:14:39   or your wife is sleeping on the couch

01:14:42   or if you've got a TV in the bedroom

01:14:43   and you wanna watch this movie on the TV in your bedroom

01:14:48   and your spouse is sleeping next to you,

01:14:52   headphones are the way to go,

01:14:54   but with these, you don't have to sacrifice

01:14:56   and I'm with you.

01:14:57   It is like you get absorbed.

01:14:59   It's like 15, 30 seconds, a minute in,

01:15:02   and it's like I'm thinking like a reviewer

01:15:05   and I'm trying to figure out how this works

01:15:07   and I'm thinking about how this and where sources,

01:15:12   and then all of a sudden I realize another two minutes

01:15:14   have gone by and I'm just into the movie

01:15:17   and it's like whoa, I cannot believe

01:15:18   that this is in my headphones.

01:15:20   It is so immersive.

01:15:22   It is incredibly impressive

01:15:24   and it is like multi, you know,

01:15:28   multi $10 million Disney attraction immersiveness

01:15:32   that you can get.

01:15:33   Again, 550 is a lot for headphones,

01:15:35   but $550 for this world-class immersion

01:15:38   and you don't have to know any technical details.

01:15:40   There's no EQs to turn up or down.

01:15:43   It's just make it sound good, you know?

01:15:46   It is so immersive.

01:15:48   You've got a good sound system.

01:15:50   I set up, I finally got around to hooking up two HomePods

01:15:54   to my Apple TV in my living room.

01:15:58   My audio situation is that we were having renovations done

01:16:03   last year and we didn't know,

01:16:06   but it turned out being like incredible.

01:16:08   It was like, you know, Indiana,

01:16:10   let's go back to Indiana Jones.

01:16:11   You know, Indiana Jones slipping under the door

01:16:13   and then goes back and grabs his whip

01:16:16   before the door closes.

01:16:19   That was our contractors finishing up before COVID shut down.

01:16:24   It was just, they finished up in like the first week of March

01:16:26   and it was like, huh, that worked out really well.

01:16:29   So we got a new TV 'cause we redid the living room

01:16:34   and it's, you know, I got the big 77-inch LG OLED thing

01:16:39   and I didn't buy a sound system yet.

01:16:42   And I was like, well, we'll just play,

01:16:45   let's just play audio through the TV.

01:16:48   And it's like, hey, the audio through the TV is not bad.

01:16:51   And neither Amy nor Jonas really complain about it.

01:16:54   I'm surprised Jonas doesn't,

01:16:56   but it's for TV, sound coming out of the TV, it's not bad.

01:17:01   And so I've just procrastinated all year long

01:17:04   'cause it's 2020 and I haven't bought anything.

01:17:06   So I didn't have to unhook anything to set up.

01:17:09   I just had to move HomePods from other rooms in the house

01:17:12   to put them in the living room.

01:17:14   It sounds really good.

01:17:19   Obviously it can't fake coming from behind you,

01:17:23   but I'm not really into that.

01:17:24   I don't really want speakers behind me.

01:17:27   Like I'm fine with having all the audio coming

01:17:29   from before me, but the HomePods as home stereo thing

01:17:34   sounds way better than they have any right to sound

01:17:37   in my opinion.

01:17:38   And I love the idea and it scores me points with the wife

01:17:45   that if I go this route,

01:17:47   I don't have to have a separate woofer.

01:17:51   I don't have to have a woofer,

01:17:53   which is, I score some political points on that.

01:17:56   It's really impressive.

01:17:57   I just love what Apple's doing in this arena.

01:18:01   I really do think it comes to exactly what you said,

01:18:05   that there are people in the company who love movies,

01:18:08   but really want to democratize it.

01:18:11   And again, it is this weird,

01:18:14   to me that's the explanation.

01:18:16   Like why in the world are they selling $550 headphones?

01:18:19   Why are they selling $300 smart speakers?

01:18:22   Well, they're not $300 smart speakers.

01:18:25   And why do they work better with a pair?

01:18:27   So it's a $600 setup.

01:18:29   And it's like, if you think of them as gadgets

01:18:32   competing with Alexa stuff,

01:18:35   yes, $600 is a lot.

01:18:37   But if you think of it compared to what Bang & Olufsen

01:18:41   wants to sell you, it's really not.

01:18:45   If you come at it from the other side of the market,

01:18:49   these are democratizing prices.

01:18:51   - Yeah, and it's, look,

01:18:52   at the bottom level of this, you go, money is real.

01:18:58   $550 is a lot of money.

01:18:59   So if you decide to buy these things,

01:19:01   you need to be comfortable spending $550.

01:19:04   If you're comfortable spending that,

01:19:05   it's actually a really fascinating product

01:19:07   with some distinct benefits for people

01:19:09   that are tightly integrated with the iOS system,

01:19:11   especially if you watch a lot on iPad.

01:19:13   Like that's my summary.

01:19:15   If you listen to a lot of music,

01:19:19   like straight up music from Apple Music

01:19:22   or stream from an iOS device, it'll be great there too.

01:19:25   If you watch movies from iPad,

01:19:27   I think you're gonna get a better experience.

01:19:29   And theoretically, you're buying into a future platform

01:19:34   that will work for home theater as well,

01:19:36   like in terms of like watching it on an Apple TV.

01:19:39   But if you just want a pair of headphones

01:19:41   that work great for noise cancellation,

01:19:43   fold up really well and travel really well,

01:19:45   don't buy these.

01:19:46   They're not for that.

01:19:47   They won't work well for that.

01:19:49   As it stands, there's no case

01:19:50   that I'd really recommend traveling with them with.

01:19:53   It's just not good for that, period.

01:19:57   - Yeah, and my suggestion, if you want the Apple stuff,

01:20:01   just seriously try AirPods Pro for that.

01:20:04   'Cause I've flown, there wasn't a big window

01:20:07   between AirPods Pro coming out last October

01:20:10   and the March shutdown,

01:20:11   but I had a couple of flights in there.

01:20:13   And I stopped carrying the Bose,

01:20:16   not because I'd given up on them,

01:20:18   but just specifically so that,

01:20:20   well, if I'm going to try AirPods Pro on the flight,

01:20:23   I took at least one flight where I had them both

01:20:25   so I could try them both side by side in the cabin.

01:20:28   And it went well enough where like the next trip I took

01:20:32   before everything shut down and I stopped taking trips,

01:20:34   I just took AirPods Pro.

01:20:35   They really worked pretty well for that

01:20:38   where the noise cancellation is good enough

01:20:41   to get out the cabin noise

01:20:42   and you're just listening to music or movies

01:20:45   and it sounds clear, but it's not like this.

01:20:47   And like in my review, I touched on this where it's like,

01:20:50   I don't know what to say because it's like the movies

01:20:53   where this would make the biggest difference

01:20:54   and be worthwhile are the sort of movies

01:20:58   where I really want to watch on my TV at home.

01:21:00   But if I am going to watch a movie on a plane,

01:21:04   why not completely satiate one of my senses?

01:21:08   Like there's nothing you can do on a plane

01:21:10   to give yourself a 77 inch OLED,

01:21:13   but you can give yourself a truly world class

01:21:16   audio experience, why not?

01:21:18   Like and I could totally see if I got into a good movie

01:21:21   with these on, I feel like it would be like somebody

01:21:24   like sitting in the middle seat next to me

01:21:27   who wants to go to the bathroom

01:21:28   and they're gonna tap me on the shoulder

01:21:29   and I'm gonna be like shocked

01:21:30   'cause I forgot I was over there.

01:21:32   Like I really do.

01:21:33   I think that even though you're watching

01:21:35   on like an 11 inch iPad, I feel like the audio

01:21:38   could immerse yourself enough that you could forget

01:21:40   you're on an airplane.

01:21:41   And if you travel enough, that's a huge win, right?

01:21:43   It's like--

01:21:44   - Yeah, you just have to dedicate yourself

01:21:46   to traveling with these things in a way

01:21:47   that you don't have to dedicate yourself

01:21:49   to traveling with a pair of headphones

01:21:51   that has more folding and articulation, right?

01:21:53   So you gotta understand that trade off going in.

01:21:56   Like I'm gonna create a dedicated space for these in my bag

01:22:00   and those are gonna go in there.

01:22:02   But when I get on that 11 hour flight to the UK

01:22:06   and I watch three movies and sleep

01:22:08   and then watch another movie and then have a little breakfast

01:22:11   or whatever, I mean, hey, an 11 inch iPad

01:22:14   or 13 inch iPad, two and a half feet from your face

01:22:16   is the equivalent of an 80 inch screen, right?

01:22:19   So that plus the headphones and yeah,

01:22:22   you've got yourself a really nice portable

01:22:24   home theater setup, which doesn't,

01:22:27   it doesn't really exist in the way that it exists here

01:22:31   with existing 5.1 capable headphones

01:22:34   because it is not, there's no two way communication.

01:22:38   And that is really, I think where we're talking about

01:22:40   like the hardware stuff in the,

01:22:42   that's not in the Apple TV, how are they gonna figure that

01:22:44   or can they do it in software?

01:22:45   'Cause the iPad knows where the headphones are

01:22:48   and vice versa.

01:22:49   There is a two way communication there

01:22:51   and at least in orientation and a little bit in distance,

01:22:55   right, 'cause it does a ranging check.

01:22:58   And so it kind of knows where you are

01:23:00   and that back and forth comms is what keeps it locked in

01:23:04   and keeps it feeling like the soundstage is accurate

01:23:07   so that when you as a physical person

01:23:09   are moving around in the soundstage,

01:23:11   either your head or turning or whatever,

01:23:13   the sound stays in the proper position.

01:23:15   'Cause what normally happens when you turn your head,

01:23:18   when you're watching a screen is at the center

01:23:20   of the soundstage travels with your face.

01:23:23   And so you're looking to the left,

01:23:25   but the sounds and the soundstage is to the left

01:23:27   but the screen is to the right.

01:23:28   And like that difference is huge.

01:23:31   It's the same difference that you see in VR headsets

01:23:35   with good tracking because the moment you lose tracking

01:23:38   on that, your body's like, this ain't real

01:23:40   and by the way, I'm sick because the physical world

01:23:45   doesn't match my inner ear, right?

01:23:48   And with a good tracking of your headset,

01:23:51   it sells it immediately.

01:23:52   It makes you feel immersed.

01:23:53   It makes you feel like this is a real thing.

01:23:55   Your body and your glands and your cerebellum

01:24:00   are all working in conjunction to tell you,

01:24:04   this thing is real, this is working, everything is cool.

01:24:07   What you're seeing is real life.

01:24:09   And that kind of two-way comms is what sets this apart

01:24:13   from others 7.1 or 5.1 compatible headsets

01:24:17   that do not have any communication with the device

01:24:20   that they're watching it on.

01:24:21   And that's the differentiation factor for now here.

01:24:25   - Yeah, it reminds me of like an optical illusion.

01:24:30   There's a lot of them, like there's the famous one.

01:24:32   It's like, it looks like a chalice centered in the square

01:24:35   but if you stare at it long enough,

01:24:36   it suddenly looks like two faces in profile staring.

01:24:40   - Or Pepper's ghost with the mirrors and glass.

01:24:43   - Yeah, yeah.

01:24:45   And it's like you put these on

01:24:48   and you know you're doing spatial audio

01:24:49   and you're moving your head a little bit left to right

01:24:52   and you're like, oh yeah, yeah.

01:24:54   And you're thinking about it.

01:24:56   And no matter what you do, a minute in,

01:24:59   you completely forget.

01:25:01   And it's like instead of studying the chalice,

01:25:04   it's like you're just immersed and it's uncanny.

01:25:08   It really is, I cannot emphasize it enough,

01:25:10   it is not a gimmick.

01:25:12   It is a real thing that takes the headphone experience

01:25:16   up to another level.

01:25:17   And if you watch enough movies on an iPad,

01:25:20   it is seriously worthwhile.

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01:28:20   Before you go, I guess the other big thing,

01:28:25   I don't know if, we got all caught up talking

01:28:27   about headphones in the meantime,

01:28:29   we haven't talked about the fact that Apple

01:28:31   has completely moved the Macintosh platform

01:28:33   to a new architecture.

01:28:35   - You know, just the little things.

01:28:37   Oh gosh, yeah, well they did a lot this year, to be honest.

01:28:44   I mean, given the year it's been, it's pretty crazy.

01:28:48   That's just a month old.

01:28:49   Like isn't that wild?

01:28:50   Like this is seriously like, from my interests,

01:28:55   you know, as somebody who's, I'm interested in politics

01:28:58   in normal years and if you're interested in politics,

01:29:01   a presidential election in the US is always a big deal.

01:29:04   Needless to say, this just felt like a big one.

01:29:08   - A little bit.

01:29:08   A little bit unusual.

01:29:10   - My entire professional life has been built

01:29:14   around the Macintosh computer.

01:29:17   It's kind of a big month for the Macintosh.

01:29:21   Like this has all been a month.

01:29:23   It just seems crazy.

01:29:25   Like that is one thing I'm at the point now

01:29:28   with the M1 MacBook Pro where I'm so spoiled,

01:29:31   where it now, I'm over the part where it feels amazing

01:29:35   and it feels normal.

01:29:36   - Yeah, and it's just everything else feels worse, right?

01:29:39   Like that's the--

01:29:39   - Everything else feels worse.

01:29:40   - And you know what, just to speak to the onslaught part

01:29:45   of it, you know, the M1 Mac, huge, huge change

01:29:49   in architecture, really a generational,

01:29:52   once in a generation change, step change in capability

01:29:56   for PCs and by PCs, I mean personal computers, right?

01:30:01   And that goes for PCs that run Windows

01:30:04   or any other platform.

01:30:06   These things are just better and you can tell

01:30:09   that even now where they're like, oh, this beats

01:30:10   a more powerful PC or even a more powerful Mac,

01:30:13   or more powerful, I should say, this beats a hot top

01:30:17   of the line previous one from ostensibly the high end

01:30:20   of the line, right?

01:30:22   Previous ones, and we know, everybody knows,

01:30:25   and yes, there's been some talk about it,

01:30:27   but really I don't think anybody's quite internalized it,

01:30:29   that this is the entry level, like this is the beginning,

01:30:32   this is just like, hey, what if I wanna buy a cheap laptop?

01:30:35   Oh, just get this one, it's probably the best on the market,

01:30:37   it's $1,000, right?

01:30:39   Like that's, and it's already beating those.

01:30:41   So like the exponential shift in what PCs are capable

01:30:45   or what computers are capable of, what Macs are capable of,

01:30:48   portable computers are capable of, and what they can do,

01:30:51   how far you can push the performance

01:30:53   while still maintaining a usable battery

01:30:55   and a usable mobile platform, we're just beginning

01:30:58   to see that, and I don't think that people

01:31:00   have internalized it yet at all because A,

01:31:03   the tools need to be rebuilt to take advantage of it,

01:31:05   and then new tools, new companies, new architectures

01:31:08   that are just being spun up now, we're gonna see them

01:31:12   sort of appear over the next few years

01:31:15   that take advantage of this kind of big change.

01:31:18   Because you talk about the iPhone having had

01:31:21   an enormous profound effect on the capability of software,

01:31:26   I mean, entire billion dollar companies,

01:31:28   Airbnb wouldn't exist without the iPhone,

01:31:31   DoorDash wouldn't exist without the iPhone,

01:31:34   I don't give a crap about Android or not,

01:31:36   it's not really about that, I'm not talking down Android

01:31:38   or anything, but frankly, the App Store and the iPhone

01:31:41   provided the ability for these companies to get fuel

01:31:44   and to get access to people with a disposable income

01:31:47   that wanted to spend money on, say, food delivery

01:31:49   or vacation homes or whatever, all of these businesses

01:31:53   were fueled by the rise of the iPhone and the App Store,

01:31:56   and that, in turn, many other applications and those

01:32:01   were fueled by the fact that the platform remained performant

01:32:06   through its entire lifespan.

01:32:09   You know, when the iPhone came out, it was like,

01:32:10   oh, this is cool, I can actually browse the web for real

01:32:12   and it's kind of fast, and yeah, everybody complains

01:32:15   about the speed of an iPhone, or complained about it

01:32:18   for the first couple of years, but since then,

01:32:20   nobody's said anything in practical terms,

01:32:23   aside from people running benchmarks,

01:32:26   about whether the iPhone is speedy or not.

01:32:28   It is speedy, period, it is, and that's the error

01:32:31   we're entering into with PCs, it's huge, it's a big change.

01:32:37   - I loved this from your, I just, I wanna get the numbers

01:32:42   right, so I dialed it up, but from your M1 MacBook Pro

01:32:46   review, as a real world benchmark, you compiled

01:32:50   the WebKit project, which is, again, that's not

01:32:53   an artificial benchmark, now, is a typical person

01:32:56   going to compile WebKit, no, of course not,

01:32:58   but it is a real thing, real people do, it's a real project,

01:33:02   and it's an interesting test, and the M1 MacBook Pro

01:33:05   compiles the whole source of WebKit in about 21 minutes,

01:33:10   and the 13-inch MacBook Pro Intel from this year

01:33:15   was 46 minutes, 10 seconds, so over twice as long,

01:33:19   but the biggest difference was if you do this on battery,

01:33:23   the M1, in addition to being a little over twice as fast,

01:33:26   has 91, start with a full charge, 91% battery life left.

01:33:33   And that's the same, whether you're using the MacBook Pro

01:33:36   or the MacBook Air, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro

01:33:39   from this year has 24% battery left, like, that's crazy.

01:33:44   - And then, you did-- - And it'll buy,

01:33:46   it'll say baseball, I thought those numbers were wrong,

01:33:48   I thought I was screwing something up big time,

01:33:51   so I actually had three people run it for me

01:33:53   on their own machines, and I had the same results.

01:33:56   - I would totally think that, I would look at those results,

01:34:00   and it's, you know, there's the sort of person

01:34:03   who sees results like that, and then they go,

01:34:05   you know, it's like those guys in the '80s from Utah

01:34:09   who ran to the New York Times and said

01:34:11   they invented desktop fusion.

01:34:12   (laughing)

01:34:14   - Yes, you're like, uh, let's fact check.

01:34:17   (laughing)

01:34:19   - There's the sort of person who sees results like that

01:34:22   and is like, quick, publish, and then there's the sort

01:34:25   of person who thinks, wait, I better triple check this.

01:34:30   - Yes, well I always assume I'm the weakest link, so.

01:34:33   (laughing)

01:34:35   - But even the state of the art 16-inch MacBook Pro,

01:34:39   which is a lot bigger device, and you know,

01:34:42   a lot more expensive, goes from 100% to 61%

01:34:47   on one run through WebKit.

01:34:51   Like, so the time makes a difference,

01:34:53   twice as fast is impressive, and twice as fast on,

01:34:58   we're still talking about the consumer end of the notebooks,

01:35:01   not the pro end, but the battery life thing

01:35:04   is game-changing, like, 'cause what if you need

01:35:08   to make a change and recompile it?

01:35:10   - Yep, yep.

01:35:11   - Then you can do this multiple times,

01:35:13   and there's all sorts of things that people do

01:35:16   that, you know, exporting video is huge.

01:35:20   They had lots of people export video,

01:35:22   and it's, you know, it grinds your computer,

01:35:25   and you know, all of a sudden you realize

01:35:27   you've misspelled somebody's name in the credits,

01:35:29   and you've gotta export it again, you know?

01:35:32   We screwed up, you know, that one shot in this,

01:35:37   we didn't color correct, you have to bang out

01:35:40   the whole thing, you know, you can't just fix the one thing.

01:35:44   So, you know, if you can do that multiple times,

01:35:47   and you're in the field, you're in the airport,

01:35:49   you're somewhere, and you're on battery,

01:35:52   and you're doing, you're working on a plane,

01:35:53   you can do this, it is, that's night and day,

01:35:57   that's a totally different thing,

01:35:58   and like you said, it's only the consumer end so far.

01:36:01   - Right.

01:36:02   - Which is crazy.

01:36:03   So that leads me to, you know,

01:36:06   Gurman had a report this week talking about like,

01:36:08   "Hey, where are they going with the future M series chips

01:36:12   "for the rest of the lineup?"

01:36:14   And, you know, one of the big questions people have is,

01:36:17   "What are their plans for GPUs in the pro models?"

01:36:22   I've been thinking, I've been thinking even before

01:36:26   we saw the first M1 max, I've been thinking ever since,

01:36:30   even before they announced this stuff at WWDC,

01:36:32   that they're gonna do it all themselves.

01:36:34   That they're done depending on other people.

01:36:37   - Right.

01:36:38   - They're too big a company, it's too important.

01:36:40   - Yeah, when you see how central the GPU is

01:36:43   to the modern compute landscape, you know,

01:36:45   everything from AI to, you know, even the GPU taking over UI

01:36:50   for a lot of applications, you know, from the CPU,

01:36:53   there's just very, it's actually funny because

01:36:56   there's a lot, a grand percentage less CPU bound operations

01:37:01   on a PC than there was 10 years ago.

01:37:03   - Right, and combine that, so the centrality of GPU period,

01:37:10   even if you're just using a stock Windows Intel system,

01:37:14   the centrality of the GPU to modern computing

01:37:18   is one reason that they would take it just as seriously

01:37:22   and do it all themselves the way they do CPU.

01:37:24   But then combine that, it's like a multiplier,

01:37:27   it's not just like an asterisk or a footnote,

01:37:29   it's a multiplier with the way that the M1 shows

01:37:33   that putting them all on the same chip

01:37:36   and having them designed to work together

01:37:39   makes everything faster, right?

01:37:41   Like, and so there's certain things that used to be

01:37:44   like dirty words, like shared memory, right?

01:37:48   Like, oh, shared memory, you know, that was a compromise

01:37:51   'cause it just happened to be that the systems

01:37:53   that use shared memory between a GPU and CPU

01:37:56   were low-end GPU systems, like, you know,

01:37:59   long battery life consumer laptops.

01:38:02   Or, you know, the discrete GPU versus integrated GPU, right?

01:38:08   It's a dirty word, integrated GPU,

01:38:12   'cause it meant bad GPU, bad low power.

01:38:16   - Yeah, yeah, it became a dirty word very quickly.

01:38:18   It's like, oh, that's the bare minimum

01:38:20   to get this thing to run.

01:38:22   - Right. - Yeah.

01:38:23   - Right, and so you, you know, for the most part,

01:38:25   like the words just describe how they work,

01:38:30   but what people hear is, oh, discrete GPU means powerful GPU

01:38:35   and integrated GPU means weak GPU.

01:38:41   And that's just how things were,

01:38:45   that's not how they have to be, right?

01:38:47   And the shared memory on the M1 isn't a,

01:38:52   well, okay, it's a consumer laptop.

01:38:54   No, that's how this is so much faster,

01:38:56   because anything that gets handed off,

01:38:59   like, oh, you wanna do this transformation

01:39:01   on this big photo, we'll let the GPU do it.

01:39:05   You don't have to copy the memory over anymore.

01:39:08   And every single time, and this doesn't matter how fast,

01:39:11   you know, and the M1 has very fast memory bandwidth,

01:39:15   but it doesn't matter how fast it is

01:39:16   if you don't have to copy in the first place,

01:39:18   you're saving, it's an infinite performance increase, right?

01:39:23   'Cause you're not copying.

01:39:26   - Right.

01:39:27   - And I just feel like that is definitely going to happen

01:39:31   with the Pro machines, and it's just, people are a little,

01:39:34   I think that so many people don't realize

01:39:39   how off on their own Apple is with this stuff, right?

01:39:42   And so many of the questions when the M1 was about

01:39:47   to come out, or when it just did come out

01:39:48   from other members of the media,

01:39:50   were framing it based on Windows ARM systems.

01:39:55   Because, well, these chips are using ARM,

01:39:58   and those chips use ARM, and they're very slow,

01:40:02   and there's a lot of compromises, and it's like,

01:40:06   just because they're both using the ARM instruction set

01:40:10   doesn't mean they're any more comparable

01:40:12   than the fact that like the,

01:40:15   what was the name of the chip in the 12-inch MacBook?

01:40:17   The Intel M--

01:40:21   - Oh, yeah, I can't remember.

01:40:23   Yeah, I can't remember what that thing was.

01:40:25   - Well, whatever that little chip was, was x86,

01:40:29   and the Xeon chips in the Mac Pro are x86,

01:40:33   and the fact that they're both x86

01:40:35   doesn't mean they have any shared performance characteristics

01:40:39   in terms of power or speed,

01:40:42   and the fact that Windows Surface laptops

01:40:47   are based on ARM chips, and the M1 is based

01:40:51   on the ARM architecture chips,

01:40:54   doesn't mean they share any performance characteristics

01:40:57   at all, and so beginning your framing of it that way

01:41:01   is just the wrong way to look at it, in my opinion.

01:41:04   And the fact that Apple hasn't shown us

01:41:08   pro-GPU silicon from their own design

01:41:13   doesn't mean they can't do it.

01:41:15   I mean, it's exciting, and it's a big thing

01:41:18   I'm looking forward to in 2021, is at some point,

01:41:21   they're going to show it to us this year,

01:41:23   but I believe they can do it.

01:41:26   And that might be one of the reasons

01:41:29   why they didn't make this transition a year or two earlier.

01:41:32   Like, maybe CPU-wise, clearly they could've done it earlier.

01:41:37   Maybe GPU-wise, to do it from the top

01:41:41   of the Mac Pro lineup all the way to the consumer laptops,

01:41:44   they needed more time, but I think it's coming.

01:41:46   I think it's, and I think that this idea

01:41:49   of calling them discrete GPUs and integrated GPUs,

01:41:52   forget about it.

01:41:52   - Mm-hmm, yeah.

01:41:54   I don't think that there is an analog either

01:41:59   to allow people to draw easy comparisons,

01:42:03   and I think that's one of the problems,

01:42:05   or one of the reasons that we're seeing,

01:42:07   we initially saw so much mismatch,

01:42:09   but in opinion versus performance,

01:42:12   'cause there was certainly, I mean, I'm not,

01:42:15   he sort of has a reputation as somebody

01:42:18   who doesn't mind staking opinions,

01:42:19   even if they're quite dramatically wrong,

01:42:22   or I shouldn't say wrong, but even,

01:42:25   he's like, "Hey, I'm willing to be the guy who says this,"

01:42:28   but Linus from Linus Tech Tips,

01:42:30   he generally goes out there and is like,

01:42:32   "Hey, I'm gonna plant a flag while everybody knows

01:42:36   "that I'm planting a flag that may very well be challenged,"

01:42:38   or whatever, he's willing to sort of do that,

01:42:41   but I generally find that I'm okay

01:42:44   with the way that he goes about it.

01:42:46   He's not being petulant, he's being opinionated, right?

01:42:48   And there's a difference.

01:42:50   And so he definitely came out and said,

01:42:52   "Oh, M1, good luck, this is never gonna work

01:42:56   "the way that they say it's gonna work.

01:42:57   "They're saying it's desktop class and all of this stuff,

01:43:00   "and it's just, here's the reasons that I believe

01:43:02   "that that's marketing, essentially,

01:43:04   "snow blowing versus something real."

01:43:07   And then, to his credit, came back after the announcement

01:43:10   and was like, "Uh, yeah, so here's all the reasons

01:43:12   "I was wrong, and this is actually a pretty intensely

01:43:16   "performant chip and very indicative that they could do

01:43:19   "some really cool stuff in the future."

01:43:21   And I do believe that that disconnect obviously comes

01:43:24   largely from UMA, from the unified memory architecture,

01:43:29   community transmitting so much performance gains

01:43:34   to the CPU and that integration there.

01:43:38   And I think the same conversation is gonna happen again

01:43:41   when we come to GPUs, because NVIDIA and AMD

01:43:44   certainly have a death grip on that industry

01:43:47   and are battling it out, release after release

01:43:50   for the most performant graphics chip on the market

01:43:52   and all of this stuff.

01:43:54   But they aren't systems manufacturers.

01:43:57   They cannot tell the rest of the system

01:44:00   how to act in a certain way.

01:44:02   They're certainly more integrated than ever,

01:44:05   'cause every Windows laptop maker and motherboard maker

01:44:08   wants to make sure that they work great

01:44:09   with the new NVIDIA graphics chip,

01:44:12   because otherwise people won't buy them, right?

01:44:13   It's like a big driver of sales for gaming

01:44:16   and for specialized applications.

01:44:18   But they don't make those systems.

01:44:21   They can't build them from the ground up

01:44:24   to work perfectly with them.

01:44:25   And at the end of the day, they are still a peripheral.

01:44:30   They are at the edge of the system or at one edge

01:44:33   of the system talking to the system.

01:44:36   Whereas the M1 is not a peripheral, it is the system.

01:44:40   And the M1's graphics processing

01:44:42   and M1's memory architecture is the system.

01:44:45   And that huge kind of step change in the way

01:44:48   that we think about systems integrations,

01:44:51   I believe will forever change the way we process

01:44:55   those words, integrated graphics, right?

01:44:57   It may redeem the term forever in a way

01:45:00   that we really haven't seen much happen much.

01:45:04   Everybody's like, hey, external GPUs are the thing.

01:45:06   So very interesting time ahead.

01:45:08   - And part of this is a mindset difference

01:45:13   that hasn't changed in 25, 30 years, right?

01:45:17   I think back to the '90s, and I remember a very,

01:45:19   I forget the guy, I forget his name,

01:45:21   but I remember the argument.

01:45:22   There was a guy in the Drexel dorms

01:45:26   who was more of a PC enthusiast,

01:45:28   and Drexel was very, famously was one of these

01:45:32   Macintosh campuses where you had to have access

01:45:35   to a Mac to do coursework.

01:45:38   And he was nonplussed about it.

01:45:41   Like, I think he brought his PC then,

01:45:44   so he had like a PC and a Mac on his tiny little dorm desk.

01:45:48   And I remember this argument with him about sound cards,

01:45:53   and I was like, take a step back.

01:45:56   Isn't this crazy?

01:45:57   It's crazy that you need to buy a separate sound card

01:46:01   and get sound drivers and make sure they're compatible

01:46:05   and keep 'em up to date.

01:46:06   You shouldn't be able to have a computer

01:46:10   that doesn't make sound unless you,

01:46:12   or the only sound that a PC that's out of sound card

01:46:16   in the '90s can make was like a 16 kilohertz doorbell ring.

01:46:21   - Yeah.

01:46:22   (laughs)

01:46:24   - It was like a chiptone type thing

01:46:26   unless you bought a sound card

01:46:27   and you had to keep the drives.

01:46:29   Like, this is crazy.

01:46:30   It should all just work.

01:46:32   Why shouldn't, why are you designing it?

01:46:34   Right, and that's still, like, okay,

01:46:36   sound cards aren't really a thing anymore,

01:46:38   but graphic cards still are, right?

01:46:40   It's still that mindset that if you become an enthusiast

01:46:44   and you really care, you pick these components

01:46:48   and put them together.

01:46:50   And sure, Apple never really was into that.

01:46:53   Like, you can't just put any,

01:46:55   you can't put an Nvidia GPU in a Mac Pro, period, right?

01:47:00   They did just, you know, it's not Windows.

01:47:03   - Right.

01:47:04   - And Apple's divorce with Nvidia four or five years ago

01:47:08   is never gonna heal at this point.

01:47:11   But it's still like Apple-- - Yeah, the window

01:47:14   for that to heal and Nvidia to integrate deeply has passed.

01:47:18   So now it's Apple going, nah, we're gonna do it.

01:47:20   (laughing)

01:47:22   - But building their Macs on the Intel architecture

01:47:24   meant that Apple had to do these component choices.

01:47:27   Okay, we'll support these GPUs from AMD

01:47:31   and we'll support the switching

01:47:33   between the integrated Intel GPU and the AMD

01:47:36   that we add to the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

01:47:39   And we'll write the stuff in the OS

01:47:42   to know when to get into that and go back to this.

01:47:47   We'll do that, but it's like ultimately

01:47:49   the experience should just be, no, just turn it on

01:47:52   and it has good graphics, right?

01:47:55   And I feel like that's the reckoning that Linus,

01:47:59   Linus Tech, I don't know what his last name is,

01:48:01   but I know what you're talking, he called it,

01:48:03   he was calling it an iPad chips.

01:48:05   And again, I get it, I get the perspective,

01:48:10   but it's like, dude, you're not getting it.

01:48:13   I think one way Apple sandbagged everybody too

01:48:15   and I checked on this.

01:48:17   I never signed up to get a dev kit

01:48:19   'cause I didn't really have a reason for

01:48:22   and I didn't think it would be worthwhile.

01:48:25   And I asked around and people who I trusted Apple

01:48:29   to give me an honest answer, no, don't get a dev kit

01:48:34   just to sort of--

01:48:35   - To see what the M1 era is gonna be like.

01:48:39   - Right, I was told, no, it's not worth it.

01:48:43   It's not indicative.

01:48:45   It is really truly for compatibility.

01:48:48   It is truly valuable for developers

01:48:51   to test binary compatibility.

01:48:53   It is not indicative at all.

01:48:55   And we're not just saying that.

01:48:56   - Yeah, it's not some sort of sneak preview

01:48:57   that's gonna give you a good insight.

01:48:59   - Right. - Yeah.

01:49:00   - Right, and so I've talked to some friends who have,

01:49:03   lots and lots of developers have them

01:49:05   because they wanna be compatible.

01:49:06   And I was like, hey, am I not,

01:49:09   like nobody was raving about the performance

01:49:11   of those dev kits.

01:49:12   And they're like, yeah, the dev kits weren't great.

01:49:13   They're not bad.

01:49:14   It's not like you were running stuff in molasses.

01:49:17   - Right. - And I think like--

01:49:18   - But it was there just to see, hey, will it compile?

01:49:20   Will it run?

01:49:21   Will it get out the door?

01:49:22   - But none of these amazing feats of computing performance

01:49:27   were evident on the dev kit.

01:49:29   It just wasn't there.

01:49:31   But I kind of think that that framed people's perspectives

01:49:36   that whatever the M chips were going to be,

01:49:39   they were going to be like that, right?

01:49:42   Like I feel like your Linus type people

01:49:46   who were coming at it from a skeptical perspective

01:49:50   saw what people were saying about the dev kits

01:49:53   and thought that was indicative of what they would ship.

01:49:58   And those wouldn't be bad, right?

01:50:02   Like if they shipped a Mac mini--

01:50:04   - Yeah, if the first generation--

01:50:05   - That formed like a dev kit.

01:50:05   - Yeah, exactly.

01:50:06   The first generation was like, hey, as performance

01:50:09   or slightly less performance than current models,

01:50:11   I think they think it would have gotten a total pass.

01:50:15   Like there's nobody was expecting anything more than that.

01:50:18   - Right, it just wouldn't have gotten raves.

01:50:22   It wouldn't be seen as a breakthrough.

01:50:24   It was like, huh, you know, it ends up

01:50:27   that the dev kit performs exactly like, you know,

01:50:31   like a low end Intel Mac.

01:50:32   It's, you know, roughly the same.

01:50:34   - Right.

01:50:35   - But I really felt like that sandbagged

01:50:37   people's perspectives in terms of thinking

01:50:40   that that was all they were capable of.

01:50:42   And I kind of feel like it might be happening again

01:50:46   where people are thinking, okay,

01:50:48   this is the best Apple can do.

01:50:50   And so these are, you know, this isn't great

01:50:54   if you're a pro user.

01:50:56   - I have some friends who have worked on this project

01:50:58   over the years and, you know, I do feel that there are,

01:51:02   the perception ahead of time, while, you know,

01:51:06   it wasn't like I was getting some sort of grand view

01:51:09   into what they were up to, just like, oh yeah, you know,

01:51:12   working on this thing, it's pretty cool.

01:51:14   But I think that there is a general vibe inside Apple

01:51:19   that they were afraid to tip their hand to Intel.

01:51:23   - I think so too.

01:51:24   - And not in terms of, I mean,

01:51:25   I'm talking about the time period

01:51:26   even after they announced it, right?

01:51:29   So like, I think that,

01:51:30   I mean, before they announced it for sure,

01:51:32   like they didn't want to tip their hand to Intel big time,

01:51:36   you know, before they were ready,

01:51:38   because then, you know, there are all kinds of problems

01:51:40   with negotiation and like, you know,

01:51:41   Intel probably gets pissed or gets irritated.

01:51:44   I mean, Intel, if they're not stupid,

01:51:46   they knew this was coming eventually, especially years out.

01:51:48   If pundits are saying it on the internet,

01:51:50   Intel who's in the business knows, right?

01:51:52   But there certainly was, there's a difference between,

01:51:56   hey, they may do it someday and they're going to do it

01:51:57   next year and then ship it the year after or whatever,

01:51:59   or ship it like six months later.

01:52:01   And like that I think is a big difference.

01:52:04   And they were afraid to tip their hand

01:52:06   because they knew they had something special,

01:52:08   but it had to be ready, you know?

01:52:10   And they knew though that once they did tip their hand,

01:52:14   it was all over, like the Intel relationship was done,

01:52:17   you know, just absolutely done, done.

01:52:19   And that they felt they had something special enough

01:52:22   to the industry that it would change things massively

01:52:26   forever in terms of what people expect

01:52:28   from a performant chip and a performant portable machine,

01:52:32   especially, and frankly, a performant machine of any sort,

01:52:34   we'll see eventually, they knew that it would change things

01:52:37   so much overnight that they didn't,

01:52:39   they were afraid that it would get out too early.

01:52:41   And I think there was a lot of,

01:52:43   a lot of secrecy and worry about that

01:52:44   because they knew Intel was in fact screwed, you know,

01:52:48   from that perspective and unable to,

01:52:51   at least very immediately compete in any real way, shape,

01:52:54   or form with these kinds,

01:52:55   the kind of performance that they were going to see.

01:52:56   And they were very, very nervous about it getting out

01:52:59   because they knew, because it was a big thing.

01:53:01   - Yeah.

01:53:03   - They were nervous about it, they stand back, you know.

01:53:05   - Yeah, and I think that that also,

01:53:08   I think slash actually no from talking to my friends,

01:53:12   that that is a big part of the explanation

01:53:16   of why the industrial design didn't change is secrecy,

01:53:20   that for a long stretch, when the go button was hit,

01:53:25   I mean, everybody knew,

01:53:27   everybody knew this was coming eventually,

01:53:29   but like when the, okay, we are actually off to the races

01:53:32   and we're doing this for real

01:53:34   and we're committing to it internally.

01:53:36   It was typical for Apple,

01:53:38   even though this is like a major architecture change

01:53:42   to their oldest and longest standing platform

01:53:47   and biggest platform by scope, very few people knew.

01:53:52   And so how do you keep the fewest people knowing

01:53:55   for the longest time?

01:53:56   Well, you start making hardware for late 2020

01:54:00   that looks exactly the same.

01:54:01   - Exactly, right.

01:54:03   - Yeah, yeah.

01:54:05   Oh, by the way, we're gonna put this new motherboard in,

01:54:09   don't worry about why, it's just, you know, it's cool.

01:54:11   You know, just a little change, right?

01:54:13   - Yeah, yeah, you can keep the same fan, that's fine.

01:54:16   Don't worry.

01:54:17   - Exactly, yeah.

01:54:20   - Yeah, but you know, little things like the webcam,

01:54:23   you know, right, you know, lots of people dunking

01:54:25   on the webcam didn't change as a camera device.

01:54:30   It's just that the image processing chain changed completely

01:54:35   and it improved dramatically, you know, it's still,

01:54:38   you know, it is what it is photographically,

01:54:41   but the picture quality is definitely bigger, better.

01:54:43   But, and I think also too, in addition to the secrecy,

01:54:48   there was definitely a sort of,

01:54:50   look, this is such a big change.

01:54:52   We know we can do it, but it's such a big change.

01:54:55   Every variable we can remove from the equation

01:54:58   is reducing the chance of something going wrong.

01:55:02   - Yes, yes. - Right?

01:55:03   And so look, we know that now that, you know,

01:55:06   once they fixed the keyboard and went back

01:55:08   to a new scissor switch mechanism,

01:55:11   the hardware for these machines is fine.

01:55:14   You can say it's not exciting

01:55:15   because it's been mostly unchanged,

01:55:18   except for a keyboard that looks the same

01:55:19   and just works the way it probably

01:55:21   should have worked all along.

01:55:22   But removing variables while you're changing

01:55:27   the single biggest variable, the architecture.

01:55:31   - It's smart, yeah.

01:55:32   It's the smart way to play.

01:55:33   - Right, it's just, it's a scientific approach

01:55:36   to doing it, right?

01:55:37   Like just, you know, okay, we know this display,

01:55:40   we know everything we need to know

01:55:41   about the display characteristics.

01:55:43   We know this hinge, right?

01:55:45   This is a hinge for the display that we know

01:55:49   is durable and pleasant, and let's, you know,

01:55:53   let's not take the chance that we ship a new hinge

01:55:55   and oh, in the real world--

01:55:56   - The M1 Macs are great, but they snap in half.

01:55:58   Oh man, you know?

01:56:00   - Right, right.

01:56:01   Or you know, all of a sudden, three months in it

01:56:04   starts squeaking or something like that.

01:56:06   You don't have to worry about it.

01:56:07   - Yeah, then it becomes the squeak Mac pro or whatever,

01:56:09   you know, so yeah.

01:56:11   Gets meme-ified.

01:56:12   - But anyway, I do think, I,

01:56:16   so the only other question I know,

01:56:17   and I mentioned it on Daring Fireball,

01:56:20   and a few readers said, well, the other question

01:56:22   in addition to whether Apple's gonna do their own GPUs

01:56:25   is what are they gonna do about RAM on memory

01:56:28   on high-level machines?

01:56:29   Is it always going to be on the chip for all the machines?

01:56:34   I think no.

01:56:36   I think that the pro, I don't know about,

01:56:41   I would guess that even on the pro 16-inch MacBooks,

01:56:46   that they will still be on the chip,

01:56:47   because they haven't offered user-upgradable RAM

01:56:50   on even MacBook Pros for a long time, right?

01:56:53   - Right.

01:56:54   - So that's your way-- - Buy a configuration,

01:56:55   and that's your configuration.

01:56:56   - For the Mac Pro, I would guess, though,

01:57:01   that it will still be modular,

01:57:02   and that there's some different arc.

01:57:04   It just doesn't make sense that you would say,

01:57:07   if you're gonna build a machine

01:57:08   that goes up to a terabyte of RAM,

01:57:11   and the fact that they did a terabyte of RAM

01:57:13   in the Intel Mac Pro, they're not gonna go back, right,

01:57:16   and say, oh, well, all of a sudden,

01:57:18   now that we're on Apple Silicon,

01:57:19   the most you can put in a Mac Pro

01:57:21   is 256 gigabytes or something.

01:57:24   You don't make a machine capable of going up

01:57:26   to a terabyte of RAM, and then say to somebody

01:57:29   who configures it with 256 gigabytes,

01:57:33   and they're obviously already spending a small fortune,

01:57:36   oh, and if you ever decide you do need more,

01:57:38   you've gotta buy a whole new machine.

01:57:39   - Yeah. - Yeah, it doesn't make sense.

01:57:41   - Yeah, it doesn't.

01:57:43   I mean, there-- - I don't know how they do it.

01:57:45   I don't know what the electrical engineering aspect of it,

01:57:47   that they keep it as performant as having it on chip,

01:57:50   but I would guess with memory on the desktops,

01:57:52   it will still be modular in some way.

01:57:55   Maybe there will be some on the chip and some off,

01:57:59   but I would guess that that will still be modular.

01:58:01   - Yeah, that'd be my bet if you were gonna ask me

01:58:04   how, what would be the setup,

01:58:06   is there will still be some sort of base memory

01:58:10   that is integrated, you know,

01:58:12   that's the part of that universal pool.

01:58:14   And then additional memory for larger operations

01:58:18   would be off chip, and therefore, you know,

01:58:20   yes, would be less performant than integrated,

01:58:23   but I think that, let's say you were able to offer a Mac Pro

01:58:27   and you go, oh, you know,

01:58:28   I'm gonna get the 32 gigabyte Mac Pro, right?

01:58:31   Or the 64 gigabyte Mac Pro,

01:58:33   and then it's got RAM slots on it

01:58:35   that you can add up to terabyte or two terabytes more

01:58:38   or whatever, but the 32 gigabytes

01:58:42   is incredibly performant, right?

01:58:45   And you maybe don't use that external memory

01:58:48   for many operations at all,

01:58:50   and it's only the operations that require

01:58:52   storing enormous textures or enormous libraries in them

01:58:56   that it actually taps into them at all.

01:58:58   So the vast majority of your operations

01:59:02   are much more performant,

01:59:03   and then the small subset of those operations

01:59:06   that require that larger memory pool

01:59:09   are maybe slightly less performant,

01:59:11   but still get the benefits of UMA on top of it,

01:59:14   so they're better than the Mac Pro previous, right?

01:59:16   Like that's my, if I had to articulate the scenario,

01:59:19   that's the way I would look at it.

01:59:20   - Right, right, like if you're doing

01:59:22   some kind of data modeling

01:59:25   or some kind of scientific computing

01:59:27   where you've got this, you know,

01:59:30   literally 200 gigabyte data model

01:59:35   that you wanna put in memory,

01:59:36   sure, that just goes off to that RAM,

01:59:40   and you can keep it there,

01:59:42   but, you know, I don't know,

01:59:43   I just feel like if they're gonna go up to that high,

01:59:45   they're not gonna,

01:59:47   there would be too many SKUs, right?

01:59:49   Like you're gonna buy what?

01:59:51   64 gigabyte Mac Pro or 128 or 256.

01:59:55   You're gonna get a 512, you're gonna get a 768?

01:59:57   No, it's too many.

02:00:00   - 768, man, I haven't heard that.

02:00:02   I haven't heard that number in a long time.

02:00:04   - I think that's the right number.

02:00:06   - The good old days, yeah, no, I mean, yeah,

02:00:08   it was the fractional RAM days.

02:00:10   - You know you're a nerd

02:00:13   when you think that's an even number.

02:00:14   - Yeah, yeah, exactly.

02:00:16   You're like, ah, that number feels comfortable.

02:00:18   You're like, why?

02:00:19   Why would it feel comfortable?

02:00:22   - Anyway, thank you so much.

02:00:27   Have a good holiday season, Matthew.

02:00:28   - Thank you, you too.

02:00:29   - It's always good to talk to you.

02:00:30   - Yeah, absolutely.

02:00:31   - Anything else?

02:00:33   Everybody can read your fine work

02:00:35   and the work of your fine staff at TechCrunch.

02:00:37   You guys are still kicking ass over there.

02:00:39   - Thank you kindly.

02:00:40   Making an attempt.

02:00:41   - And then on the Twitter, you're @panzer, P-A-N-Z-E-R.

02:00:47   Which endlessly frustrates my ability to communicate with you.

02:00:50   (laughing)

02:00:52   I start typing this shortcut, P-A-N-Z-E,

02:00:54   and it's like, no, that's not right.

02:00:55   It's good anyway.

02:00:56   And thanks to our sponsors.

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02:01:05   their honest security report at honest.security.

02:01:08   And Mack Weldon, where you can go

02:01:10   and buy amazing menswear, underwear,

02:01:14   jet hoodies, slippers, anything you want.

02:01:17   My thanks to them.

02:01:18   All right, adios Matthew.

02:01:20   - Thank you very much sir, appreciate it.