The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hey, it's your internet pal, John Gruber, trying something different, something new

00:00:05 ◼   ► after 226 episodes of this edition of the talk show. It's just me today, no guest. And

00:00:13 ◼   ► it's July 31st. I have two sponsors scheduled for July, sort of been remiss this month doing

00:00:24 ◼   ► regular episodes. So I'm trying something new. It's just me. And I'm going to talk in

00:00:30 ◼   ► your ear here. And for what to talk about, I tweeted this morning asking for questions,

00:00:39 ◼   ► ask me anything more or less. And I am overblown. I thought I could knock this out in an hour,

00:00:45 ◼   ► get all the good questions. One, I like a sort of a short one hour episode, get through

00:00:49 ◼   ► all the questions. There's no way that that's going to happen. I have just spent the last,

00:00:54 ◼   ► probably close to four hours sorting through the questions on Twitter. They're terrific.

00:01:02 ◼   ► I've categorized them. I don't think there's any chance. I'd be lucky if I get through half of them.

00:01:07 ◼   ► I think it could be really fun. So my thanks to everybody who asked questions. My apologies to

00:01:15 ◼   ► everybody whose questions I don't get to. Maybe I'll do another episode like this, but anyway,

00:01:19 ◼   ► it's just me answering your questions today on the talk show. And before I do,

00:01:25 ◼   ► why don't I knock this out of the way and tell you about Squarespace?

00:01:30 ◼   ► Squarespace has been sponsoring this podcast longer than any other sponsor I can think of.

00:01:37 ◼   ► There's a bunch of repeat sponsors who I'm sure you're all familiar with, but Squarespace

00:01:42 ◼   ► is the king, and I thank them for their continuing support.

00:01:46 ◼   ► Here's the thing, though.

00:01:47 ◼   ► I truly believe in Squarespace.

00:01:50 ◼   ► I really do think that it is the best way

00:01:54 ◼   ► for almost anybody to get a website off the ground.

00:02:01 ◼   ► And it doesn't matter what type of website you're building.

00:02:04 ◼   ► You could host a blog, you could host a podcast,

00:02:08 ◼   ► You can put up a store, you can set up a portfolio,

00:02:13 ◼   ► and you get so much customization.

00:02:17 ◼   ► The main thing, I hear, oh, you go there,

00:02:20 ◼   ► you get templates to choose from, and I start thinking,

00:02:22 ◼   ► ah, you're gonna get like a cookie cutter site.

00:02:25 ◼   ► You use Squarespace sites every day,

00:02:27 ◼   ► and you don't even realize it.

00:02:28 ◼   ► I do this all the time.

00:02:29 ◼   ► The main reason I often find out

00:02:31 ◼   ► that somebody's using Squarespace

00:02:33 ◼   ► is I see a typeface that they're using,

00:02:35 ◼   ► and I select it, and I go into the Safari web inspector,

00:02:38 ◼   ► and start looking at the source code

00:02:39 ◼   ► to see what typeface it is.

00:02:41 ◼   ► This just happened to me this week

00:02:42 ◼   ► with a company, a great company, local company here in Philly

00:02:45 ◼   ► the Philly Bread Company.

00:02:47 ◼   ► You can go to phillybread.com, see their website.

00:02:49 ◼   ► They're using, which obviously, some version of Courier,

00:02:53 ◼   ► but I could sort of suspect it wasn't like

00:02:56 ◼   ► the system version of Courier,

00:02:58 ◼   ► and it definitely isn't Courier new.

00:03:00 ◼   ► So I went into the web inspector to see what they're using,

00:03:03 ◼   ► and in fact, it is Courier STD,

00:03:05 ◼   ► which is sort of a web-hosted version of Courier.

00:03:08 ◼   ► looks great. It's a great look for their site. It's a great fit for their brand. Anyway,

00:03:12 ◼   ► poking around the source code, guess what? It's a Squarespace site. Again, they're there

00:03:16 ◼   ► making cool bread. They make the best English muffins. They call them Philly muffins. Oh

00:03:21 ◼   ► my God, they are the best English muffins I've ever had in my life. You guys, if you

00:03:24 ◼   ► don't live in, if you do live in Philly, see where you can get them. And if you don't live

00:03:27 ◼   ► in Philly, you're missing out. But anyway, they're using Squarespace. It makes total

00:03:33 ◼   ► sense because all they want to do is make great bread. They're, they're not here to

00:03:38 ◼   ► website and spend a lot of time on it and maintain it etc etc. Squarespace is the way that you can

00:03:45 ◼   ► make your website and just have no work. Just make it easy. It just runs and they handle everything.

00:03:54 ◼   ► You can register your domain with them. They have the CMS so you can post new content. They also

00:04:02 ◼   ► have award-winning tech support. The next time you need to make a website or and knowing the people

00:04:08 ◼   ► who listen to this show, the next time somebody comes to you for help making a website, go to

00:04:14 ◼   ► Squarespace, get started, give it an hour, give it even just half an hour and see how far you can

00:04:19 ◼   ► get. You'll be amazed and it's really just a terrific product and service. Go there and you

00:04:28 ◼   ► you get a free trial. I think it's 30 days. Get started. And

00:04:33 ◼   ► then just remember this code talk show know that just ta l K

00:04:37 ◼   ► sh o w. When you do sign up to pay use that code and you get 10%

00:04:42 ◼   ► off. They let you sign up for a whole year at a time so you

00:04:45 ◼   ► could save 10% on a whole year of Squarespace hosting just by

00:04:49 ◼   ► remembering that code. talk show. Alright, let's get

00:04:53 ◼   ► started. There's a lot of questions. Like I said, I don't

00:04:55 ◼   ► I'm going to get through them all. First category is questions related to the new 15-inch MacBook Pro,

00:05:02 ◼   ► which I've been testing now for about two weeks and pretty much doing all of my computing on.

00:05:08 ◼   ► I've kind of thrown myself in knee deep. And let me issue this. This is a correction from the show

00:05:14 ◼   ► I did last week with Marco Warmant talking about this. And I raved about Migration Assistant,

00:05:19 ◼   ► a product from Apple that lets you get a new Mac, use Migration Assistant. You can copy over

00:05:24 ◼   ► all of your stuff from another machine.

00:05:28 ◼   ► I said it copied almost everything,

00:05:30 ◼   ► except it didn't get my login items.

00:05:33 ◼   ► Well, I ended up looking into this

00:05:34 ◼   ► and it turns out that the login items,

00:05:38 ◼   ► the things in the users and groups system pref panel

00:05:41 ◼   ► that are apps that,

00:05:43 ◼   ► and a lot of them are usually background apps

00:05:45 ◼   ► that start automatically when you log in.

00:05:51 ◼   ► A lot of the ones that I thought didn't get moved over, I looked at my source machine,

00:05:55 ◼   ► which is my old personal 2014 MacBook 13-inch MacBook Pro. It turns out I looked there and

00:06:02 ◼   ► the ones that I thought I had set up as login items weren't set up there either. And so

00:06:07 ◼   ► I think what has happened for a couple of these things like TextExpander and the Keyboard

00:06:11 ◼   ► Maestro, Engine Keyboard Maestro is a great, great utility. And part of what makes it work

00:06:19 ◼   ► is that there's this invisible process in the background and engine and it has to be

00:06:22 ◼   ► running otherwise the keyboard maestro doesn't work.

00:06:26 ◼   ► Another one that I didn't think moved over was a great little background service called

00:06:29 ◼   ► Fast Scripts by Daniel Jalkett. Fast Scripts is like a system-wide scripts menu that lives

00:06:36 ◼   ► up in the menu bar and lets you have these Apple scripts, shell scripts, anything like

00:06:42 ◼   ► that. You can run them anywhere in the system. Love it. I don't know what I would do without

00:06:47 ◼   ► it. Anyway, I think that these apps, they weren't in my login items on my previous MacBook

00:06:51 ◼   ► Pro. And I think what was happening is that for you, because I do have the preference

00:06:55 ◼   ► turned on to reopen previously running apps when I log back in. So if I restart the machine

00:07:02 ◼   ► or log out and log in, I have the preference set to reopen whatever apps were already running.

00:07:06 ◼   ► I think for years now, because I have that set, those background things have been relaunching

00:07:10 ◼   ► automatically every time I restart or install a system update without being login items,

00:07:17 ◼   ► were just relaunching because I have that preference on. So my apologies to the migration

00:07:21 ◼   ► assistant team. It's even better than I thought because the couple of login items I did have

00:07:26 ◼   ► on that machine did make it over to the new machine. So even your login items move over,

00:07:31 ◼   ► they're definitely supposed to. And even on my machine, the ones that were there as login items

00:07:35 ◼   ► did. So glad to get that off my chest. I felt very guilty about having having besmirched

00:07:43 ◼   ► even one tiny aspect of migration assistant given how amazingly good it turned out to be.

00:07:49 ◼   ► So here we go. Actbook Pro. James Atkinson asks, "Probably already asked, but does it get loud

00:07:58 ◼   ► under load?" Well, that's the first question, so it wasn't asked already, James. That's a very

00:08:04 ◼   ► good question. In my personal use, which is not very strenuous, I'm not doing video editing, I'm

00:08:11 ◼   ► I'm not doing anything particularly heavy.

00:08:15 ◼   ► The fan has never come on, so it is dead silent.

00:08:18 ◼   ► And I've done some stuff that is somewhat stressful.

00:08:20 ◼   ► I've imported images, shot in raw on my Fuji X100S

00:08:25 ◼   ► into photos and had them process in the background.

00:08:29 ◼   ► I have installed a bunch of stuff from Homebrew,

00:08:33 ◼   ► some of which needed to be compiled

00:08:35 ◼   ► by the Xcode command line tools.

00:08:38 ◼   ► The fan never came on.

00:08:40 ◼   ► The only thing that I've done in the two weeks I've had this machine where the fan came on

00:08:44 ◼   ► is when I let my son Jonas play Fortnite on it. And yes, when he was playing Fortnite,

00:08:50 ◼   ► the fan definitely came on and the machine definitely got hot. Was it loud? It was no

00:08:58 ◼   ► louder than I would expect than it would be for a MacBook under duress, you know, that

00:09:06 ◼   ► was being stressful. I don't think it was any louder than previous machines, probably

00:09:10 ◼   ► And if anything the people who wish that the thing could run faster under load

00:09:15 ◼   ► They probably wish that it got louder that it had a bigger thicker

00:09:19 ◼   ► more significant cooling system

00:09:21 ◼   ► You can definitely hear it when it's under load, but fortnight was the only thing I've done where that even kicked in

00:09:28 ◼   ► Again I don't know how else to say it other than while the fan is running. I don't I don't know how it could be any quieter

00:09:38 ◼   ► Next question is from somebody whose Twitter name is

00:09:41 ◼   ► ironically racist

00:09:45 ◼   ► Satirically, so hopefully that means they're not actually racist. I don't know but it's a good question

00:09:52 ◼   ► in your opinion, do you think Apple should not will should a

00:09:57 ◼   ► swallow their pride and reverse course with touch bar and

00:10:02 ◼   ► and thickness of MacBook Pros, presumably.

00:10:05 ◼   ► B, make a new top of the line Pro,

00:10:10 ◼   ► MacBook Pro, presumably again,

00:10:11 ◼   ► for pros that's thicker with legacy ports,

00:10:14 ◼   ► hardware function keys, higher end components, et cetera.

00:10:19 ◼   ► Or C, stay the course.

00:10:20 ◼   ► So I think A and B here are actually the same thing.

00:10:23 ◼   ► I mean, swallowing their pride and reversing course

00:10:26 ◼   ► with the touch bar and thickness,

00:10:28 ◼   ► and B, making a new top of the line Pro that's thicker

00:10:31 ◼   ► is the same thing.

00:10:33 ◼   ► So I sort of feel like it's A or B,

00:10:36 ◼   ► are they going to make a thicker quote unquote pro

00:10:39 ◼   ► or B stay the course?

00:10:40 ◼   ► And I suspect, again, he's asking whether they should,

00:10:44 ◼   ► not will, I think they will stay the course.

00:10:46 ◼   ► Whether they should, I don't know.

00:10:51 ◼   ► I think that a significantly thicker

00:10:56 ◼   ► like gaming PC laptop style laptop

00:11:01 ◼   ► is just not in Apple's DNA

00:11:02 ◼   ► and I don't think it should be in their DNA.

00:11:04 ◼   ► I don't think they should do it.

00:11:06 ◼   ► A little bit thicker, what's the point?

00:11:09 ◼   ► I know that there's a lot of,

00:11:12 ◼   ► hey, the previous generation was thin enough.

00:11:15 ◼   ► Nobody asked for them to make it thinner.

00:11:18 ◼   ► Why not keep it the thickness that it was

00:11:20 ◼   ► and have it run faster, et cetera?

00:11:24 ◼   ► I get it.

00:11:25 ◼   ► And there is something to this right where and I think Marco and I talked about this

00:11:31 ◼   ► on my show last week where the current lineup of MacBook Pros I think it compared to the

00:11:40 ◼   ► desktop is roughly analogous to the regular iMac 5Ks. They are excellent machines. They

00:11:49 ◼   ► are premium machines. They are definitely not low end machines. These are premium personal

00:11:54 ◼   ► computers with terrific displays excellent consumer to prosumer

00:12:01 ◼   ► performance but Apple saw fit with the iMac to do the iMac Pro which is not

00:12:11 ◼   ► just like a little name it's not just that they tacked on the word Pro to it

00:12:17 ◼   ► and and anodized the aluminum in a space gray color and gave you a black keyboard

00:12:22 ◼   ► keyboard and trackpad. Internally, they're using Intel Xeon processors, which are totally

00:12:29 ◼   ► professional grade. They're using professional-grade RAM. They didn't just shoehorn those into

00:12:35 ◼   ► the same enclosure. It is an entirely different—as much as they look the same cosmetically side-by-side,

00:12:42 ◼   ► the cooling system in the iMac Pro is entirely different. If you took it apart, it's just

00:12:47 ◼   ► an entirely different system architecture. And it is in every way that it is different

00:12:53 ◼   ► than a regular iMac other than the cosmetic difference of the space great aluminum. Put

00:13:00 ◼   ► that aside in every other way that they're different. They are different in ways that

00:13:03 ◼   ► are truly for professionals who need high end computing performance. Is there such a

00:13:12 ◼   ► need in the laptop lineup. And I kind of think there is, I do. There are people who use laptops

00:13:19 ◼   ► for whatever reason, like, you know, developers who work at a place where everybody gets issued

00:13:26 ◼   ► a laptop, that's just it. Or you move around, you know, and you, you know, even if you want a

00:13:31 ◼   ► display, rather than get an iMac or an iMac Pro, you want to plug your MacBook into the external

00:13:37 ◼   ► display or another example video and photo professionals who are doing stuff in the field,

00:13:44 ◼   ► right? You're out there shooting photos in the field and you want to process them in light room

00:13:49 ◼   ► or Photoshop or whatever you're using right there on the spot where you need a portable for that and

00:13:53 ◼   ► you need the best performance that you can possibly get. And it's weird. I do. I mentioned

00:14:00 ◼   ► this with Marco. I kind of feel that Apple has backed themselves into a corner marketing wise

00:14:06 ◼   ► by calling all of the premium non super thin MacBooks quote unquote MacBook Pro. They've

00:14:11 ◼   ► already used the pro moniker. So with the iMac, the iMac, again, the regular iMac five

00:14:19 ◼   ► K's are amazing machines. They are not like baby computers. They are terrific computers.

00:14:24 ◼   ► I use one from 2014 and it is still to my touch super fast. It is super fast, still

00:14:30 ◼   ► has a beautiful display. I love it. But the iMac Pro is pro in ways that there is no corresponding

00:14:40 ◼   ► MacBook Pro that is that much more "pro" than the standard machines. Is that reason enough not to do

00:14:47 ◼   ► it just because they've already used the pro name for the MacBook Pros? That seems a bit silly,

00:14:51 ◼   ► and I don't think that actually explains why they wouldn't do it. But I think it kind of belies their

00:14:57 ◼   ► thinking on the matter that that they sort of see what they've got what they're shipping

00:15:01 ◼   ► is pro. I don't know if that's a good answer for should they it's a little bit rambling

00:15:08 ◼   ► but that's the best I can do. I got to move on. J Robert Lennon asks, Have you found a

00:15:14 ◼   ► meaningful use for the touch bar or does it seem to you that it's going to go the way

00:15:18 ◼   ► of the iPod Hi Fi? Here's a corresponding question from the other perspective. Taylor

00:15:23 ◼   ► Alan asks, do you think there's anything Apple can do to change the narrative around the

00:15:28 ◼   ► touch bar? I like it and find it useful for editing an email. The touch bar is one of

00:15:34 ◼   ► those things, and I think it's as often the case, but the people who hate it, the people

00:15:38 ◼   ► who wish that Apple had never done it or that they would just forget about it, brush it

00:15:43 ◼   ► under the rug and go back to hardware keys. They seem to think everybody agrees on that.

00:15:49 ◼   ► And I don't think that's the case at all. I mean, it clearly Taylor Allen here who asked

00:15:53 ◼   ► question likes it. I don't hate it either and I personally wonder how much the the

00:16:01 ◼   ► hate around the touch bar is specifically about the absence of a

00:16:04 ◼   ► hardware escape key. I use the escape keys somewhat often. I miss it. I don't

00:16:12 ◼   ► like the software one on the touch bar but I don't use it as much as some

00:16:17 ◼   ► people. Some developers use it a lot just because there are text editors that

00:16:22 ◼   ► developers use like them that pretty much you're hitting escape as often as you hit

00:16:26 ◼   ► the spacebar that frequently and not having a hardware escape key is it can be a problem.

00:16:33 ◼   ► So what I kind of wish that Apple had done with these new MacBook Pros that just shipped

00:16:38 ◼   ► this month. I and I think I said this back in 2016 when I first reviewed these machines.

00:16:46 ◼   ► I kind of wish that they had put a hardware traditional hardware escape key right up in

00:16:51 ◼   ► the top left corner above the tilde and back to key just and made the touch bar go from

00:16:59 ◼   ► that escape key over to the touch ID button on the other side. We already have a button

00:17:05 ◼   ► up there in the touch bar, a real button. That's the touch ID sensor. That's a button.

00:17:09 ◼   ► It's not part of the touch bar. I don't think cosmetically it would look bad if there was

00:17:14 ◼   ► hardware escape key up there in the corner and they're already not using the part of

00:17:23 ◼   ► the touch bar all the way to the right. That's what I kind of wish that they had done as

00:17:28 ◼   ► a 2.0 touch bar and I wonder how much of the complaints that would alleviate. For me personally,

00:17:35 ◼   ► everything else about the touch bar I like. I've never liked using the F1 through F12

00:17:40 ◼   ► keys for things like brightness and sound. It's always seemed like occludes to me. It's

00:17:45 ◼   ► always seemed ugly to me that they've got the F1, F2, all that printed on it, and these

00:17:51 ◼   ► cryptic little icons for the brightness and stuff like that. They've seemed very fiddly

00:17:55 ◼   ► to me ever since they've started doing it. And it seems to me very un-Apple-like to have

00:18:01 ◼   ► those keys. I think that the touch bar is elegant. And for things like brightness and

00:18:05 ◼   ► sound volume adjustment. I like the touch bar better than using hardware buttons. It's

00:18:12 ◼   ► not perfect though, because you have to look at it. You can't do it by feel. So I guess

00:18:18 ◼   ► if you really memorize where the volume keys are, you could get there without having to

00:18:22 ◼   ► look. But I think this is more elegant and I like it. And I don't think it's going to

00:18:29 ◼   ► go away. I don't think that Apple is going to abandon it.

00:18:33 ◼   ► week on my show Marco mentioned a trick that you can use. You don't need third-party software

00:18:40 ◼   ► at all. You can go into System Preferences, Keyboard, and there's a modifier keys button,

00:18:47 ◼   ► and then it brings up a little alert where you can change what the modifier keys do,

00:18:51 ◼   ► and you can change the caps lock key to map it to escape. And that's what Marco's been

00:18:56 ◼   ► doing with these keyboards. I've turned it on, and I think it's pretty cool because I

00:19:01 ◼   ► don't really use caps lock for caps lock.

00:19:03 ◼   ► Using it as escape is a pretty good workaround

00:19:10 ◼   ► and it's really smart.

00:19:11 ◼   ► It even is smart enough to know once you've said,

00:19:13 ◼   ► hey, use the caps lock key for escape,

00:19:16 ◼   ► it no longer triggers the green light for caps lock.

00:19:18 ◼   ► So it's not like every other time that you use caps lock

00:19:21 ◼   ► for escape that the green light for caps lock

00:19:23 ◼   ► comes on and off.

00:19:24 ◼   ► It just never comes on once you've said,

00:19:26 ◼   ► don't use it for caps lock.

00:19:28 ◼   ► That's a pretty good workaround.

00:19:30 ◼   ► Otherwise though, if you really want a high-end MacBook

00:19:34 ◼   ► with hardware function keys, I think you're out of luck.

00:19:37 ◼   ► I think that that chip has sailed.

00:19:38 ◼   ► And honestly, I don't get it.

00:19:41 ◼   ► I don't get what you'd want the other F keys for.

00:19:44 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:19:48 ◼   ► Josh Senners, editor at Tidbits, wrote,

00:19:53 ◼   ► "I have a friend wanting to max out a MacBook Pro.

00:19:56 ◼   ► "Is the i9 a good buy after the fix?"

00:19:59 ◼   ► meaning the supplemental software update

00:20:01 ◼   ► that came out last week to fix the weird bug

00:20:03 ◼   ► where in some certain cases,

00:20:04 ◼   ► the Core i9 high-end MacBook Pro

00:20:09 ◼   ► actually was performing worse than the four core Core i7.

00:20:13 ◼   ► Or is it too limited thermally?

00:20:16 ◼   ► To go back to Joss's question.

00:20:18 ◼   ► As far as I can tell,

00:20:19 ◼   ► after the supplemental fix last week,

00:20:21 ◼   ► the Core i9 is working perfectly.

00:20:24 ◼   ► Again, I haven't run extensive benchmarks,

00:20:26 ◼   ► but I've looking at the YouTube YouTubers like Dave David Lee, I think his name is who

00:20:32 ◼   ► originally reported the issue where Adobe Premiere Pro was actually running slower on

00:20:38 ◼   ► the core I9 and only got acceptable performance when he literally put it in this freezer and

00:20:46 ◼   ► then got similar results running it not in the freezer after the supplemental fix. As

00:20:51 ◼   ► far as I can tell, the supplemental fix actually fixed it. It was a bug. It was relatively

00:20:56 ◼   ► simple in the core. I nine runs as fast as Apple promises. If you look at Apple's promised

00:21:03 ◼   ► performance gains and you know, I think they say like up to 70% faster than last year's

00:21:07 ◼   ► ion model. That's about right. I don't think the core I nine is magic. I think as Marco

00:21:15 ◼   ► said last week on the show effectively, they, they really probably should have just kept

00:21:19 ◼   ► it as a, they still should have called it a core. I seven. It's not really like a new

00:21:24 ◼   ► They've added two cores, but they've stayed on a 14 nanometer process.

00:21:30 ◼   ► And you effectively get the performance you'd expect going from four cores to six cores.

00:21:36 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:21:37 ◼   ► So if that sounds good to you, I would definitely recommend this machine.

00:21:40 ◼   ► I think it's exactly what Apple describes it as.

00:21:42 ◼   ► I don't think there's any thermal problem with it.

00:21:45 ◼   ► And it's a good time to buy, because we know that Apple doesn't really update machines.

00:21:50 ◼   ► not going to come out with new MacBook Pros three months or six months from now. They,

00:21:54 ◼   ► you know, pretty much the best you can hope for is once a year. So if you have the professional

00:21:58 ◼   ► need and you want the fastest possible MacBook that you can get, you should definitely get

00:22:03 ◼   ► the core I nine MacBook Pro. It is. It is absolutely what Apple says. It's the fastest

00:22:08 ◼   ► MacBook Pro you can buy. It's faster at everything. How much faster? It depends on how much you

00:22:15 ◼   ► know, whatever the task is, how much it can be multi-threaded or parallelized, whatever

00:22:19 ◼   ► you want to call it. But I think it is exactly as Apple describes.

00:22:24 ◼   ► Cameron Williams asks, Apple still makes the best laptops, but would you say they're still

00:22:29 ◼   ► great laptops? I say yes. Do I think they're perfect? No, but I don't know that they've

00:22:35 ◼   ► ever been perfect. Probably the closest to perfect was around 2014. And you know, there

00:22:43 ◼   ► are, you know, that's what I own and I love that machine. It's obviously slower than the

00:22:50 ◼   ► current ones. It's four years old, but boy, that was as close to perfection as, as Apple

00:22:56 ◼   ► could get, had great battery life, had a retina display, had a great selection of ports. And

00:23:03 ◼   ► I think if there's any downside, there are two things that you, you know, people, they're

00:23:06 ◼   ► all, they're both obvious and they've both been discussed to death, but the two things

00:23:10 ◼   ► that are questionable on the current MacBook Pro lineup are the keyboard and the port situation.

00:23:17 ◼   ► On the keyboard front, the reliability issue was a huge problem. Does this silicone membrane

00:23:25 ◼   ► that they've started shipping as of this generation this month, does it fix the reliability problem?

00:23:31 ◼   ► The jury's out. Only time will tell. I've used this thing for two weeks. I had it at

00:23:36 ◼   ► Marco's Beach House. I mean, I didn't take it to the actual beach, so it's not like I

00:23:40 ◼   ► actually exposed it to sand. But I've had no problems with any of the keys. But two

00:23:46 ◼   ► weeks in, who does? I mean, the problem a lot of people have is it happens a year in

00:23:50 ◼   ► or two years in or three years in. I expected a keyboard to work for years and years. There's

00:23:57 ◼   ► no reason with a 2000 or 3000 or even more MacBook that you shouldn't expect it to work

00:24:03 ◼   ► for years and have the keyboard work with perfect reliability. So the jury's out on

00:24:08 ◼   ► whether this fixes that. In terms of the keyboard working as designed, you know, the big issue

00:24:14 ◼   ► is the travel. In other words, these keys don't move as far down as the previous ones.

00:24:20 ◼   ► But Apple's been doing that. That's that's been true forever. The keyboard, you know,

00:24:24 ◼   ► Apple's laptops going back to the power book era have always moved in one direction in

00:24:29 ◼   ► the long run. They've always gotten thinner and because the machines get thinner and lighter,

00:24:34 ◼   ► the keyboards necessarily have to get thinner. I two weeks in, especially using this machine

00:24:42 ◼   ► almost exclusively for the last two weeks, I'm getting used to the keyboard and to me,

00:24:47 ◼   ► laptop keyboards are always a compromise. I mean, and I'm weird because I like to use

00:24:52 ◼   ► an old Apple extended keyboard to mechanical keyboard

00:24:56 ◼   ► with lots of travel and clicky feel

00:25:00 ◼   ► that has a keyboard, a hardware keyboard at my desk

00:25:03 ◼   ► that has way more travel and clickiness

00:25:05 ◼   ► than anything that Apple sells

00:25:07 ◼   ► or any modern keyboard really has

00:25:09 ◼   ► other than new mechanical keyboards.

00:25:11 ◼   ► And compared to that,

00:25:14 ◼   ► compared to a real mechanical keyboard,

00:25:17 ◼   ► no laptop keyboard ever has felt great to me

00:25:20 ◼   ► in terms of what I think typing on a laptop compared to typing at my desk. And you get

00:25:26 ◼   ► used to it. It's always a compromise. I find that I'm used to this. Even as someone who

00:25:32 ◼   ► really likes a clicky keyboard with lots of travel, I can get used to this. And the longer

00:25:35 ◼   ► I use it, the more it feels okay. But it's a personal preference. But I don't expect

00:25:44 ◼   ► them to go back to more travel. I think once they go to this, if you don't like it, if

00:25:49 ◼   ► if you think that the travel isn't enough,

00:25:51 ◼   ► bad news for the future,

00:25:53 ◼   ► 'cause I don't think they're ever gonna go back.

00:25:55 ◼   ► The port situation is the bigger problem, I think.

00:25:58 ◼   ► And again, Marco Arman and I talked about this at length

00:26:02 ◼   ► in the previous episode of this show,

00:26:04 ◼   ► but the USBC ecosystem several years

00:26:09 ◼   ► into these USBC-only MacBooks

00:26:12 ◼   ► simply isn't where Apple surely expected it to be.

00:26:16 ◼   ► You can't get a good USBC hub.

00:26:19 ◼   ► You really can't.

00:26:20 ◼   ► And there are tons of USB-A plugs and peripherals out there.

00:26:25 ◼   ► And at the very least, I don't use a lot of USB peripherals,

00:26:31 ◼   ► but even as someone who doesn't use a lot of them,

00:26:35 ◼   ► even I already need a USB-A to USB-C adapter.

00:26:40 ◼   ► Even right now, I'm recording this podcast

00:26:44 ◼   ► using the 15-inch MacBook Pro.

00:26:46 ◼   ► I need a USB adapter just to plug my microphone in.

00:26:49 ◼   ► I mean, I guess I could buy a different cable,

00:26:52 ◼   ► but I don't have that cable, so I needed the adapter.

00:26:55 ◼   ► That's a downside, but I don't think it means

00:26:59 ◼   ► that they're not great laptops.

00:27:00 ◼   ► I still think they're great laptops.

00:27:01 ◼   ► I think that they have tremendous fit and finish,

00:27:04 ◼   ► absolutely beautiful displays,

00:27:07 ◼   ► and overall, and great track pads.

00:27:14 ◼   ► I think they're great laptops overall. I really do. Tom Bridge asks, does the true tone display

00:27:21 ◼   ► actually matter? I think it does. And I think it's exactly the same on the Mac as it is

00:27:27 ◼   ► on iOS, where for me at least true tone isn't something I notice. It's something I don't

00:27:34 ◼   ► notice. But then when I look at a non true after I get used to it, when I look at a non

00:27:38 ◼   ► true tone display side by side with a true tone display and indoor lighting, I am appalled

00:27:43 ◼   ► by the non true tone display. I think it looks off. I it's again, it's just something that

00:27:49 ◼   ► you don't appreciate until you see it till you get used to it and then go back to one

00:27:53 ◼   ► that doesn't have it. I love that this machine has it and it's probably my single favorite

00:27:58 ◼   ► thing about it compared to my personal 2014 MacBook Pro. Here's a question from Brandon

00:28:08 ◼   ► Miller. I'm curious about the difference you see, meaning me, between night shift and true

00:28:14 ◼   ► tone. You're pretty on the record about liking true tone, but to me they're pretty similar

00:28:19 ◼   ► and make the screen look terrible. We have these great accurate screens and they make

00:28:22 ◼   ► it look like someone peed on them. So that's interesting. But to me, I think there's a

00:28:29 ◼   ► big difference between night shift and true tone. I believe it that Brandon here and I

00:28:33 ◼   ► I believe other people can see the true tone effect and don't like it that they can tell

00:28:38 ◼   ► no matter what the color is ambient color in the room is they can see that the display

00:28:44 ◼   ► is doing something faking something you know doing a color shift to accommodate for it

00:28:50 ◼   ► and it throws everything off I believe you that you see it and if you do see it I'm sure

00:28:53 ◼   ► you hate it but I think the point of true tone is that for most people they don't see

00:28:59 ◼   ► it and it actually makes the display seem more natural even though it's actually not

00:29:05 ◼   ► showing true colors. Whereas night shift is purposefully shifting the color in a way that

00:29:11 ◼   ► is supposed to be noticeable. You're supposed to be, you know, there's no way that people

00:29:15 ◼   ► don't notice that there's everything is as a yellow greenish sickly tint to it. When

00:29:21 ◼   ► I see somebody using night shift on an iPhone, I'm appalled. I often think, cause I go, I

00:29:26 ◼   ► I don't have it turned on.

00:29:28 ◼   ► Nobody in my family uses it,

00:29:29 ◼   ► so I don't see it for weeks at a time,

00:29:31 ◼   ► and then I see somebody using it,

00:29:33 ◼   ► and I often, my first thought for a moment

00:29:35 ◼   ► is always like maybe they dropped their phone

00:29:37 ◼   ► and broke the display in some way,

00:29:39 ◼   ► and now it shows weird colors,

00:29:41 ◼   ► and then I think, oh no, no, they've got night shift on.

00:29:43 ◼   ► Like to me, it looks so gross that it seems broken.

00:29:46 ◼   ► Your mileage may vary, obviously.

00:29:50 ◼   ► Other people might have the same feeling with True Tone,

00:29:52 ◼   ► but to me, night shift is doing that on purpose,

00:29:54 ◼   ► And I still believe that the,

00:29:56 ◼   ► if it works with your eyes,

00:29:59 ◼   ► if you feel like your eyes aren't bothered as much

00:30:01 ◼   ► when you're using night shift,

00:30:03 ◼   ► good for you and keep using it.

00:30:05 ◼   ► But I think the pseudo science

00:30:06 ◼   ► that it makes you sleep better is a crock of shit.

00:30:08 ◼   ► I don't think that there's any truth to that at all.

00:30:11 ◼   ► Again, if your eyes are comfortable, you can tell.

00:30:13 ◼   ► But I think this idea that it helps you sleep better

00:30:15 ◼   ► at night because you're not showing blue tones

00:30:17 ◼   ► on the screen is a big pile of horseshit.

00:30:20 ◼   ► Dimitri, no last name, asks,

00:30:24 ◼   ► Do you think it's worth to upgrade from a 2017 base 15 inch

00:30:29 ◼   ► to the new base model 15 inch with upgraded RAM

00:30:33 ◼   ► and for two extra cores?

00:30:36 ◼   ► Also, can fan speed be adjusted by the user?

00:30:39 ◼   ► I don't think it's worth upgrading from a 2017.

00:30:43 ◼   ► I really don't.

00:30:45 ◼   ► Unless you're really RAM constrained,

00:30:48 ◼   ► but if you're RAM constrained, you know it.

00:30:50 ◼   ► If you really need 32 gigs of RAM rather than a 16 gig config, you know it, and I guess

00:30:57 ◼   ► it is worth it if the work you're doing actually maxes out the RAM. Otherwise, I can't see

00:31:03 ◼   ► that it would be worth upgrading from a 2017 model. I would just use that for a couple

00:31:09 ◼   ► of years and then upgrade. Can the fan speed be adjusted by the user? No way. I mean, I

00:31:15 ◼   ► don't even know where you would do that. I mean, maybe there's some kind of command line

00:31:18 ◼   ► stuff you can do that's off the books. But it's certainly in terms of the controls that

00:31:23 ◼   ► Apple exposes and system preferences, there's no control over fan speed. But I don't think

00:31:27 ◼   ► you need to worry about it. The fan never kicks in for me. Joel Houseman asks, "Does the new keyboard

00:31:35 ◼   ► with the membrane feel any different than the previous version of this horrible keyboard?"

00:31:40 ◼   ► Tell us what you really think, Joel. I think it definitely feels a bit different.

00:31:46 ◼   ► I don't have an extensive number of these side by side to compare with, but I did compare it to

00:31:51 ◼   ► the regular just plain MacBook from 2017. And I remember using these, the first generation of it,

00:32:00 ◼   ► or maybe that was the second generation and the 20s. I think the first generation butterfly was on

00:32:05 ◼   ► the original one port MacBook. Second generation started with the 2016 MacBook Pros that switched

00:32:11 ◼   ► to this design. And now this is the Apple's calling the third generation. I think it definitely

00:32:16 ◼   ► feels better, feels different and better. And it definitely sounds better. There's no

00:32:22 ◼   ► question about it. It's there's, there's, it's just quieter and it's a more pleasing

00:32:26 ◼   ► sound while you're typing. It's it truly is a third generation keyboard. There's, you

00:32:31 ◼   ► know, whether you like it or not, whether you think it's still a horrible keyboard,

00:32:36 ◼   ► there's no question in my mind that it's more than just a putting a membrane on the old

00:32:40 ◼   ► keyboard. It's a different, you know, it's definitely a generation ahead. It's like a

00:32:44 ◼   ► 3.0. And I like it better. Jeff, no last name, asked why didn't Apple include a plug adapter

00:32:52 ◼   ► extension given the cost is $2800? That's a great question. So for those of you, if

00:32:58 ◼   ► you don't know, up until this up until they started switching to these USB C adapters

00:33:03 ◼   ► for MacBook Pros, you're when you bought a new MacBook or MacBook Pro of any kind or

00:33:09 ◼   ► or a power book going back to then,

00:33:10 ◼   ► you'd get the rectangular power adapter,

00:33:12 ◼   ► which by default has a little prong

00:33:15 ◼   ► that you can open up and plug right into the wall.

00:33:17 ◼   ► So the adapter's right in the socket.

00:33:20 ◼   ► Or they'd ship an extensive, maybe a five or six foot cord,

00:33:24 ◼   ► and you could swap, pop the little prong

00:33:27 ◼   ► off the power adapter, put the extension cord on instead,

00:33:30 ◼   ► and get an extra six feet.

00:33:32 ◼   ► And they used to include that in the box,

00:33:33 ◼   ► and they don't anymore.

00:33:38 ◼   ► Presumably why they didn't include it is that Apple has determined or guessed or figured that most people don't use it

00:33:44 ◼   ► and therefore they can save some money by not including it and

00:33:48 ◼   ► Perhaps more than the cost of the extension cord itself

00:33:53 ◼   ► I feel like the the big savings is in space in the packaging that the packaging

00:33:58 ◼   ► I don't have the box in front of me, but the box for this

00:34:02 ◼   ► I don't believe that that they could fit that power cord in the box

00:34:07 ◼   ► the box that they're actually shipping these things in,

00:34:10 ◼   ► they'd have to make the box at least a little bit thicker

00:34:13 ◼   ► to include a power cord.

00:34:15 ◼   ► And so I guess, you know, they're saving a bit of money,

00:34:21 ◼   ► but as Jeff says for $2,800 plus,

00:34:24 ◼   ► what could be an up to, you know,

00:34:26 ◼   ► the config I'm using here is like a $5,000 config.

00:34:29 ◼   ► And I think it goes up to like 7,000

00:34:30 ◼   ► if you maxed out the SSD storage.

00:34:33 ◼   ► For a multi-thousand dollar laptop,

00:34:36 ◼   ► I think it's a nickel and dime move not to include the power cord. So I sort of feel

00:34:40 ◼   ► like where Apple should meet users halfway. My idea would be that, okay, if you don't

00:34:44 ◼   ► want to include it by default, because most people don't use it, don't. But anyone who

00:34:48 ◼   ► buys one of these machines who wants one should be able to get one for free. Like maybe while

00:34:54 ◼   ► you're buying online, they could say, would you like a power adapter cord? And if you

00:35:00 ◼   ► say yes, it would ship in a separate little box. And if you're buying in the store, they

00:35:04 ◼   ► could ask you as you're buying it and then just give you one. I really think it's ridiculous

00:35:08 ◼   ► that you have to with a 20 to 3000 $4,005,000 laptop that you have to spend money to get

00:35:14 ◼   ► a power extension cord. I'm personally a fan of them with my personal MacBook, I keep the

00:35:20 ◼   ► extension cord on the power adapter, at least in my the one that I take with me in my backpack

00:35:26 ◼   ► traveling because I usually don't need it. Usually the the length between the adapter

00:35:33 ◼   ► in the mag safe thing is long enough for me,

00:35:36 ◼   ► but often enough, I do need the extra length

00:35:40 ◼   ► that the extension cord enables

00:35:42 ◼   ► that it's worth keeping it in my backpack.

00:35:44 ◼   ► So, you know, at least a couple times a year,

00:35:47 ◼   ► I find myself needing it, and so it's worth having.

00:35:50 ◼   ► And I do feel like it's sort of a nickel and dime move

00:35:52 ◼   ► with these machines not to include it.

00:35:55 ◼   ► Paul Sprangers asks,

00:35:58 ◼   ► "A thicker MacBook Pro which has more ports,

00:36:01 ◼   ► more CPU power, more GPU and battery life.

00:36:04 ◼   ► Should Apple get on that?

00:36:05 ◼   ► Well, this is sort of a repeat of a previous question.

00:36:07 ◼   ► Best I can say is in theory, yes, but I don't expect it, no.

00:36:14 ◼   ► Sam Armstrong asks, will Apple ever back down

00:36:19 ◼   ► from their current laptop keyboard?

00:36:23 ◼   ► I am planning on getting a Windows machine

00:36:25 ◼   ► unless they make major changes.

00:36:26 ◼   ► Back down is the wrong way to look at it.

00:36:29 ◼   ► If you're expecting them to go back to the previous keyboard design,

00:36:32 ◼   ► it is not going to happen. And I don't think it should. I don't think it's,

00:36:35 ◼   ► I think that while there are some people who hated and hate this design and wish

00:36:39 ◼   ► that they would, I don't think that that number is enough to justify it.

00:36:43 ◼   ► In theory,

00:36:45 ◼   ► would they ever go to a keyboard with more travel in a,

00:36:49 ◼   ► in some future world where maybe with arm based max,

00:36:54 ◼   ► the actual computer part is so much smaller and it maybe needs

00:36:59 ◼   ► so much less physical battery inside the case that without making the machine thicker, they

00:37:04 ◼   ► could put a keyboard in that has slightly more travel. In theory, they could do that.

00:37:09 ◼   ► It would make me happy. I don't expect it to happen though. Why should one consider

00:37:16 ◼   ► the core I nine is a question from a guy named mayor and may why you are no last name or

00:37:21 ◼   ► no first name. I don't not sure which but why should one consider the core I nine over

00:37:25 ◼   ► where the Core i7, given the core count is the same,

00:37:28 ◼   ► is typing uncomfortable on the laptop when it gets hot.

00:37:31 ◼   ► Well, the core count isn't the same,

00:37:35 ◼   ► so I'm a little confused by this,

00:37:36 ◼   ► because the Core i9 has six cores,

00:37:38 ◼   ► and the Core i7 models have four cores.

00:37:41 ◼   ► So if you need more cores,

00:37:42 ◼   ► the Core i9 actually is worth it.

00:37:44 ◼   ► I think it is also slightly faster

00:37:48 ◼   ► at single-threaded stuff.

00:37:50 ◼   ► But if you don't really have multi-core needs,

00:37:53 ◼   ► If you don't do stuff that can be parallelized,

00:37:56 ◼   ► you probably shouldn't buy the Core i9 model.

00:37:57 ◼   ► You should save the money and get a quad core Core i7.

00:38:01 ◼   ► When the machine gets hot,

00:38:03 ◼   ► the only time it's gotten hot for me

00:38:04 ◼   ► is when my son was playing Fortnite.

00:38:07 ◼   ► And like most or perhaps every other MacBook

00:38:11 ◼   ► I've used in recent memory,

00:38:13 ◼   ► it really only gets hot in the area above the keyboard

00:38:17 ◼   ► in that aluminum strip between the top of the keyboard

00:38:21 ◼   ► and the display hinge.

00:38:23 ◼   ► That's really the only spot where I see it,

00:38:27 ◼   ► I feel it getting hot.

00:38:28 ◼   ► The keyboard itself doesn't get hot,

00:38:30 ◼   ► so I don't think it gets uncomfortable.

00:38:32 ◼   ► Mikey Lauren asks,

00:38:39 ◼   ► "Is 13 inch still the best compromise for you?"

00:38:43 ◼   ► That's a very good question.

00:38:45 ◼   ► I've been a fan of the 13 inch MacBook Pros for a while,

00:38:47 ◼   ► and even before that,

00:38:50 ◼   ► Before I was using a 13 inch MacBook Pro,

00:38:52 ◼   ► I was actually using an 11 inch MacBook Air

00:38:54 ◼   ► for a few years as my portable.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Using this 15 inch though for the last two weeks

00:39:01 ◼   ► has been eye opening in some ways

00:39:03 ◼   ► in terms of really appreciating

00:39:06 ◼   ► the extra screen real estate that it provides.

00:39:08 ◼   ► I've done a lot of stuff with side by side windows,

00:39:13 ◼   ► including putting together all these Q and A's.

00:39:16 ◼   ► I actually solicited them by Twitter

00:39:19 ◼   ► and I also said you could send them by email.

00:39:22 ◼   ► As I said before, I spent close to four hours

00:39:24 ◼   ► putting these questions together,

00:39:26 ◼   ► and I only got through the ones sent by Twitter.

00:39:29 ◼   ► I actually literally have not looked at my email

00:39:31 ◼   ► in like 48 hours, so just going through Twitter.

00:39:36 ◼   ► But putting them together, I had a BB Edit window

00:39:39 ◼   ► with a bunch of open text documents based on categories,

00:39:43 ◼   ► and Tweetbot over on the right,

00:39:45 ◼   ► and I could drag tweets over from Tweetbot to BB Edit

00:39:50 ◼   ► in a way without overlapping the windows,

00:39:52 ◼   ► just side by side, full width for both windows

00:39:56 ◼   ► that I don't think I could have done on the 13 inch.

00:39:58 ◼   ► I mean, I could have, but something would have,

00:40:01 ◼   ► the BB Edit window probably would have had

00:40:02 ◼   ► been uncomfortably narrow.

00:40:03 ◼   ► I do appreciate the size.

00:40:06 ◼   ► For me personally though, because it's not my only machine,

00:40:09 ◼   ► because primarily I, at home, and mostly at home,

00:40:13 ◼   ► I use a 5K iMac at my desk.

00:40:16 ◼   ► The portability advantages of 13 inch,

00:40:21 ◼   ► that it's smaller, it fits in a smaller bag,

00:40:25 ◼   ► it's a little bit lighter.

00:40:26 ◼   ► You can use it in more crowded conditions

00:40:31 ◼   ► like a coach seat on an airplane more comfortably

00:40:35 ◼   ► than you could a 15 inch.

00:40:37 ◼   ► I think for me personally,

00:40:38 ◼   ► 13 inch is still the best compromise,

00:40:39 ◼   ► but I have to admit using this 15 inch for two weeks,

00:40:42 ◼   ► I'm a little bit more torn on the issue

00:40:46 ◼   ► than I was two weeks ago.

00:40:48 ◼   ► But if I had to, if you said you have to buy

00:40:50 ◼   ► a new MacBook Pro today, I would probably buy a,

00:40:54 ◼   ► I would buy a 13-inch MacBook Pro.

00:40:56 ◼   ► But it's close.

00:40:58 ◼   ► Here's a guy whose name on Twitter is Squash Alcatraz.

00:41:04 ◼   ► I don't believe that's his actual given name.

00:41:07 ◼   ► It's probably a pseudonym, but if it is your name,

00:41:10 ◼   ► You know, your parents probably owe you an apology.

00:41:17 ◼   ► Which is the bigger dud? MacBook leather sleeves or iPod socks? I love this question. For those

00:41:23 ◼   ► of you who don't remember, iPod socks were a real product that Apple came out with probably

00:41:28 ◼   ► sometime around 2003 2004. But maybe 2003 I don't know. But it was in the spinning hard

00:41:33 ◼   ► drive era of iPods when they were thicker, more like the size of a pack of cards. And

00:41:43 ◼   ► one year they came out with new iPods and they also came out with these socks, which

00:41:46 ◼   ► were literally like socks. And the idea was you could slip your iPod into it and then

00:41:51 ◼   ► throw it in your backpack and not worry about the iPod getting scratched up. It wasn't really

00:41:55 ◼   ► padded but it would certainly scratch proof and it was easy to slide them in and out.

00:42:00 ◼   ► I believe that they sold for something like 19 or $20.

00:42:05 ◼   ► Maybe they were $29 knowing Apple.

00:42:07 ◼   ► I'm almost certain they weren't more than $29

00:42:10 ◼   ► 'cause I think that would have been scandalous.

00:42:12 ◼   ► I had one, I had a gray one, of course,

00:42:15 ◼   ► not really much for colors.

00:42:17 ◼   ► I liked it.

00:42:18 ◼   ► It was actually a useful way.

00:42:19 ◼   ► I actually used it as intended.

00:42:21 ◼   ► Like when I was throwing an iPod into a bag for travel,

00:42:25 ◼   ► I would put it in the sock.

00:42:29 ◼   ► Was it overpriced for a cotton sock?

00:42:31 ◼   ► Even if it was $19, yeah, I guess,

00:42:33 ◼   ► but I thought it was useful.

00:42:35 ◼   ► So I would say the bigger dud

00:42:36 ◼   ► are these new MacBook leather sleeves,

00:42:38 ◼   ► because I think people did buy the socks.

00:42:40 ◼   ► I don't think they were a hit.

00:42:42 ◼   ► They didn't really, they came out with them once,

00:42:44 ◼   ► only talked about them once, never talked about them again.

00:42:46 ◼   ► But these leather sleeves are 180 for the 13-inch

00:42:50 ◼   ► and $200 for the 15-inch,

00:42:52 ◼   ► and I don't think they're worth it.

00:42:53 ◼   ► I don't think they're good.

00:42:54 ◼   ► I don't think they're, they don't feel premium to me.

00:42:58 ◼   ► Somebody last week after Marco and I laughed about this thing on the show last week, somebody

00:43:06 ◼   ► pointed me to a company called Saddleback Leather and they make leather sleeves for

00:43:11 ◼   ► Mac books and I haven't touched them but they certainly look like better leather and they

00:43:16 ◼   ► have like a lifetime guarantee or a hundred year guarantee. I mean literally like they

00:43:21 ◼   ► guaranteed past your lifetime to last.

00:43:24 ◼   ► And they're only $100.

00:43:26 ◼   ► I mean, it really, it does seem like the prices

00:43:29 ◼   ► on these MacBook leather sleeves are exorbitant.

00:43:31 ◼   ► It doesn't really make sense to me

00:43:32 ◼   ► to spend $200 on these things.

00:43:34 ◼   ► I mean, I think the discussion would be very different

00:43:36 ◼   ► if they were, I don't know, $70 or something like that.

00:43:41 ◼   ► I don't expect these to sell at all.

00:43:43 ◼   ► So I would guess the bigger dud

00:43:45 ◼   ► is the MacBook leather sleeve.

00:43:47 ◼   ► TJ Draper asks, "I9, do the fans run much? How loud?" Again, for me, only playing Fortnite,

00:43:55 ◼   ► and that was Jonas playing Fortnite. Other stuff I do, they don't, and they're not that

00:43:59 ◼   ► loud. They're no louder than you would expect.

00:44:05 ◼   ► Samer Farha asks, "Is not having a physical escape key an issue, or is it fine in practice?"

00:44:11 ◼   ► Well, I talked about this.

00:44:14 ◼   ► I think it is an issue, but it is fine.

00:44:16 ◼   ► And being able to map caps lock to escape, I think,

00:44:19 ◼   ► does alleviate it to some degree,

00:44:20 ◼   ► although you're going to have to change some habits to get

00:44:23 ◼   ► used to that.

00:44:24 ◼   ► If Apple sold upgradable storage and RAM, but thicker MacBook,

00:44:29 ◼   ► would you consider it?

00:44:30 ◼   ► This is a question from Gordon McDowell.

00:44:33 ◼   ► If Apple sold upgradable, but thicker iMac,

00:44:36 ◼   ► would you consider it?

00:44:38 ◼   ► Their phones get thicker, but their laptops get smaller.

00:44:41 ◼   ► Or phones get bigger, but the laptops get smaller.

00:44:44 ◼   ► I think upgradable components,

00:44:48 ◼   ► they're trade-offs, and that's the way the world used to be,

00:44:53 ◼   ► that you could buy a machine

00:44:54 ◼   ► and upgrade the RAM a year later.

00:44:56 ◼   ► You could upgrade the storage at any time.

00:45:01 ◼   ► You can't do that anymore.

00:45:02 ◼   ► Everything's all sealed up.

00:45:05 ◼   ► The RAM is soldered onto the motherboard.

00:45:07 ◼   ► Uh, it is what it is. I think that it's the way of the future though. Uh, and, and we're

00:45:12 ◼   ► never going to go back. Uh, and it, to me, it's not really a selling point. I do appreciate

00:45:17 ◼   ► when I was younger and, and I was strapped for money. I do appreciate the fact that I

00:45:22 ◼   ► could get the best machine I could afford, which wasn't necessarily the best machine

00:45:26 ◼   ► period. And then later, uh, a year later, maybe two years later, I mean, at one point,

00:45:32 ◼   ► I think I upgraded the RAM in my 1991 Mac LC like four or four years after I bought

00:45:38 ◼   ► it, maybe five. I don't know. But I upgraded from four megabytes to 10 megabytes of RAM.

00:45:48 ◼   ► I think that the LC had two megabytes built in and then there were two slots, which I

00:45:55 ◼   ► to one megabyte SIM cards in and then I upgraded to two four megabytes Sims a

00:46:01 ◼   ► years later for a total of ten megabytes of RAM which is funny because you know

00:46:08 ◼   ► like a fart sound uses ten megabytes of RAM these days I appreciate that that

00:46:15 ◼   ► you know and I'm sure you know there's always you know the students today who

00:46:19 ◼   ► probably can't buy a maxed out MacBook and then years from now maybe they could

00:46:23 ◼   ► could upgrade it in theory. So I, you know, I'm not saying that upgrade ability has no

00:46:31 ◼   ► positive sides, but it's just the way the, it's just the way of the world today. And,

00:46:35 ◼   ► and I think the way that machines have gotten thinner, the way that the, the unibody construction

00:46:40 ◼   ► of these things it's just, just how it is. I mean, it's, it's no more, you know, I get

00:46:49 ◼   ► over it is my answer. Nick here, author of the excellent pixel envy website asks, and

00:46:57 ◼   ► he prefaces his question with in parentheses for real. In what ways does this meaning this

00:47:05 ◼   ► 15 inch MacBook Pro not feel like a spiritual successor to say the first 15 inch MacBook

00:47:11 ◼   ► Pro or the power book G4? And is that a problem or is it simply evolutionary? It's a good

00:47:18 ◼   ► I feel that it mostly does feel like the true spiritual successor to me the modern Apple laptop era starts not with the power book

00:47:25 ◼   ► G4 well

00:47:27 ◼   ► specifically the titanium power book G4

00:47:29 ◼   ► Where Apple moved from plastic and you know black or very dark plastic

00:47:37 ◼   ► construction to metal cases

00:47:40 ◼   ► Titanium was obviously substandard in many ways it flaked it it you know

00:47:47 ◼   ► It didn't last.

00:47:50 ◼   ► It showed a lot of wear on the palms

00:47:53 ◼   ► because it just wasn't adorable material.

00:47:55 ◼   ► Aluminum clearly is Apple's go-to material for the last,

00:48:00 ◼   ► geez, I don't know, what, 15 years?

00:48:05 ◼   ► Maybe more.

00:48:08 ◼   ► And the aluminum era, for Max,

00:48:16 ◼   ► for iPods, for watches, they use it everywhere.

00:48:21 ◼   ► And I don't see that coming to an end soon.

00:48:25 ◼   ► I mean, eventually they'll move on to something, I guess.

00:48:28 ◼   ► But they really, really use and have redefined

00:48:32 ◼   ► the way that machines are constructed.

00:48:35 ◼   ► I mean, you find aluminum laptops now,

00:48:37 ◼   ► and it's the standard across the industry

00:48:39 ◼   ► 'cause they all copy Apple.

00:48:40 ◼   ► But that's clearly, this is where they,

00:48:44 ◼   ► To me, there's a clear evolution from the titanium G4

00:48:49 ◼   ► to this month old 15 inch MacBook Pro.

00:48:53 ◼   ► I think it is the spiritual successor in almost every way.

00:48:56 ◼   ► And if there's any way that it's not,

00:48:58 ◼   ► it's the port situation.

00:49:00 ◼   ► Where especially for the 15 inch pro laptops,

00:49:05 ◼   ► Apple obviously, and you know,

00:49:08 ◼   ► it's obvious to anybody who follows the company,

00:49:10 ◼   ► even remotely, Apple moves away from legacy ports faster

00:49:14 ◼   ► than any other computer maker.

00:49:17 ◼   ► You name the port, Apple is probably the first

00:49:21 ◼   ► to abandon it, even if you include the floppy disk

00:49:24 ◼   ► as a port, which I think is fair.

00:49:26 ◼   ► Apple moves away from ports faster than anybody,

00:49:31 ◼   ► but the 15-inch Pro laptops have always had

00:49:34 ◼   ► what I would, at least by Apple standards,

00:49:36 ◼   ► a generous assortment of ports

00:49:39 ◼   ► that people would find useful.

00:49:41 ◼   ► I think it's most telling that Apple had for years

00:49:45 ◼   ► included an SD card reader in their Pro laptops,

00:49:48 ◼   ► even in the 13-inch model,

00:49:50 ◼   ► which is sort of an Unappley type thing to do,

00:49:54 ◼   ► to include something so specific, but it's useful.

00:49:58 ◼   ► And I think that given,

00:50:02 ◼   ► if the USB-C ecosystem were in better shape

00:50:05 ◼   ► and it was easier to get everything with USB-C by default,

00:50:10 ◼   ► and if there were really good USB-C ports

00:50:13 ◼   ► or hubs available that could power,

00:50:17 ◼   ► supply power and multiple other ports,

00:50:19 ◼   ► it might be a little different,

00:50:20 ◼   ► but I feel like the failure in this

00:50:22 ◼   ► is the failure of USB-C as a whole,

00:50:25 ◼   ► and that's the one area where it feels,

00:50:27 ◼   ► but it doesn't, it's not for lack of spirit, right?

00:50:31 ◼   ► I feel like the spirit is there,

00:50:33 ◼   ► it's just that the actual market

00:50:36 ◼   ► has failed Apple in this regard.

00:50:38 ◼   ► All right, that's the end of my MacBook Pro questions.

00:50:40 ◼   ► Here we are, we're almost an hour in.

00:50:42 ◼   ► I'm never gonna get to all of these topics.

00:50:44 ◼   ► I've still got a whole topic on the Mac in general,

00:50:48 ◼   ► not specific to the MacBook Pro, iOS,

00:50:52 ◼   ► and including both the software and iPhone and iPad,

00:50:57 ◼   ► a whole category on HomePod, Apple TV, entertainment,

00:51:01 ◼   ► category on Apple in general,

00:51:04 ◼   ► and then last, a miscellaneous and personal

00:51:07 ◼   ► category of questions. There is absolutely no way. I'm one out of six categories down

00:51:12 ◼   ► and I'm almost an hour in and I really thought that this whole thing was only going to last

00:51:15 ◼   ► an hour. So I don't know what I'm going to do. If this proves popular, maybe I'll do

00:51:19 ◼   ► a second episode with the same sort of format, no guests, just me answering these questions.

00:51:27 ◼   ► But before I get to the rest of these Mac questions, let me take a break and thank my

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00:55:55 ◼   ► about the Mac and then I don't know what I'll do. Ben Beard asks, what are your thoughts

00:56:03 ◼   ► on future MacBooks with ARM processors? The ATP guys think it could happen as soon as

00:56:08 ◼   ► 2020 related question. Jay dubs asks, do you think Apple will put a powerful, more powerful

00:56:15 ◼   ► a series chip in the MacBook pros and use it just to power marzipan apps as a way to

00:56:21 ◼   ► transition to arm and extend battery life. I don't think that that's going to happen.

00:56:29 ◼   ► I think that putting a, a, a, an Apple arm chip in as the touch bar processor as a little

00:56:39 ◼   ► side, a computer within the computer makes sense, but only in the sense that it's a peripheral

00:56:44 ◼   ► in terms of actually using it to run apps. I don't think that that makes sense. I think

00:56:48 ◼   ► Apple will switch to ARM.

00:56:49 ◼   ► I think they are absolutely full steam ahead working on it.

00:56:53 ◼   ► I agree with the ATP guys

00:56:54 ◼   ► that it could happen as soon as 2020.

00:56:56 ◼   ► I really don't think it could happen next year.

00:56:58 ◼   ► I think 2019 is probably too soon.

00:57:00 ◼   ► If I had to guess, my guess would be

00:57:04 ◼   ► that they might announce it next year at WWDC

00:57:09 ◼   ► to get developers on board

00:57:10 ◼   ► with recompiling their apps for ARM,

00:57:12 ◼   ► which shouldn't be too big of a problem, hopefully,

00:57:17 ◼   ► 'cause hopefully developers have seen this coming

00:57:18 ◼   ► and haven't been doing anything Intel specific

00:57:21 ◼   ► for years now, but who knows?

00:57:24 ◼   ► But that's what they did when they switched

00:57:26 ◼   ► from PowerPC to Intel is they announced it at WWDC,

00:57:30 ◼   ► said it would start shipping next year.

00:57:34 ◼   ► And early the next year, I think in like February,

00:57:36 ◼   ► they came out with the MacBook Pro.

00:57:39 ◼   ► They started with the MacBook Pro, but it just switched.

00:57:42 ◼   ► And I think that's what they'll do again.

00:57:43 ◼   ► It's not gonna be that you have an Intel processor

00:57:46 ◼   ► and an ARM processor that's powerful enough to really run apps. There's no reason really

00:57:54 ◼   ► for Marzipan to need an ARM processor. I really don't think there's anything, you know, there's

00:58:03 ◼   ► it runs just fine on the Mojave beta, you know, running on Intel, the power savings that you might

00:58:14 ◼   ► get from theoretically running marzipan apps

00:58:16 ◼   ► on an ARM processor while everything else runs on Intel,

00:58:21 ◼   ► I think is far outweighed by the cost that you'd incur

00:58:25 ◼   ► by including both a premium ARM processor

00:58:28 ◼   ► and an Intel processor in the same machine.

00:58:31 ◼   ► That's just wasteful.

00:58:32 ◼   ► And that's just not how transitions work.

00:58:34 ◼   ► Transitions work by ripping off the Band-Aid.

00:58:36 ◼   ► It's just, here you go, here's a new MacBook

00:58:39 ◼   ► that instead of having an Intel CPU

00:58:40 ◼   ► uses an Apple A series ARM CPU.

00:58:44 ◼   ► That's how it works.

00:58:45 ◼   ► And before you say it, yes, I remember,

00:58:49 ◼   ► I think there was some kind of weird thing

00:58:51 ◼   ► where you could get like a 68K coprocessor back

00:58:54 ◼   ► when the PowerPC Max first shipped, I don't remember.

00:58:58 ◼   ► But for the most part,

00:59:00 ◼   ► once when Apple switched from 68K to PowerPC,

00:59:02 ◼   ► it was just here's PowerPC Max.

00:59:04 ◼   ► Everything is running either natively as PowerPC code

00:59:08 ◼   ► or emulated 68K.

00:59:09 ◼   ► when they switched from PowerPC to Intel,

00:59:11 ◼   ► it was here's, this machine is now Intel-based,

00:59:13 ◼   ► not PowerPC-based.

00:59:15 ◼   ► And I think they'll do the same thing with Arm.

00:59:18 ◼   ► Daniel Alm, ALM, he's the developer

00:59:21 ◼   ► of the excellent timing app for Mac,

00:59:24 ◼   ► just sponsored during Fireball recently, actually.

00:59:26 ◼   ► It's a great app, it's sort of like,

00:59:28 ◼   ► helps you keep track of what apps you're using

00:59:31 ◼   ► and what you're working on without doing any kind of work.

00:59:35 ◼   ► You don't have to log in, it's a great app, check it out.

00:59:38 ◼   ► He asks, "Theory, next Mac Mini will essentially

00:59:42 ◼   ► "be a rebranded Apple TV 4K with an A11 or A12 processor.

00:59:46 ◼   ► "What do you think?"

00:59:47 ◼   ► In theory, that sounds great, because the Apple TV,

00:59:54 ◼   ► as it ships today, the Apple TV 4K is,

00:59:57 ◼   ► is when you run, when you try to run benchmarks on it,

01:00:02 ◼   ► very, if not faster than the currently shipping Mac Mini,

01:00:05 ◼   ► which is ridiculously old.

01:00:06 ◼   ► that's faster or as fast, and it's way smaller.

01:00:10 ◼   ► So in theory, that would be great

01:00:13 ◼   ► 'cause it would be cheaper, it would be smaller.

01:00:16 ◼   ► The performance is definitely there.

01:00:18 ◼   ► But I kind of hope not.

01:00:22 ◼   ► 'Cause I really feel like the Mac Mini

01:00:25 ◼   ► is so ridiculously outdated at this point

01:00:27 ◼   ► that I really, really hope that they come out

01:00:30 ◼   ► with a new one this fall.

01:00:32 ◼   ► Not just faster, but it has to be smaller

01:00:35 ◼   ► because as I've written on Daring Fireball recently,

01:00:37 ◼   ► the Mac Mini isn't even mini anymore

01:00:39 ◼   ► compared to these Intel NUC computers.

01:00:43 ◼   ► I don't know if they pronounce them NUC or what,

01:00:45 ◼   ► but there are Intel-based mini computers

01:00:50 ◼   ► that are the size of an Apple TV or smaller.

01:00:52 ◼   ► It's ridiculous that Apple is still selling the Mac Mini

01:00:56 ◼   ► and calling it mini when it's way bigger

01:00:58 ◼   ► than these things, ridiculously outdated.

01:01:01 ◼   ► So my hope is that Apple ships a new Mac Mini this year

01:01:04 ◼   ► in the fall. And if they do, as I said a couple of questions ago, there's no, I don't think

01:01:08 ◼   ► that, you know, there's no way that they're going to switch to arm this year. So it would

01:01:12 ◼   ► have to be Intel based. Peter Zignigo, Zignigo perhaps asks the discussion of Fortnite not

01:01:24 ◼   ► being supported on Intel integrated graphics with Marco Arment is the fact that it runs

01:01:29 ◼   ► "is great on modern iOS hardware,

01:01:31 ◼   ► "evidence of Apple's lead in mobile graphics

01:01:34 ◼   ► "and/or Epic's willingness to put in extra effort

01:01:36 ◼   ► "for that market."

01:01:38 ◼   ► I think indisputably, I don't think there's any question

01:01:41 ◼   ► that the fact that Epic put the work in

01:01:44 ◼   ► to get Fortnite running well on iPhones and iPads

01:01:48 ◼   ► and doesn't have it, doesn't really,

01:01:51 ◼   ► I think it might run on integrated graphics,

01:01:54 ◼   ► but they definitely tell you that it's not great.

01:01:58 ◼   ► and it isn't great.

01:02:00 ◼   ► It certainly doesn't run anywhere near as well

01:02:02 ◼   ► as it does on iOS hardware.

01:02:04 ◼   ► Of course that's proof that,

01:02:06 ◼   ► it's proof of the importance of the iOS market.

01:02:10 ◼   ► And the iOS market is so big and so important

01:02:13 ◼   ► that developers like Epic are willing

01:02:15 ◼   ► to target it specifically.

01:02:19 ◼   ► And the Metal APIs are only used on Apple platforms.

01:02:24 ◼   ► It's not a cross-platform set of graphic APIs.

01:02:28 ◼   ► And it's worth it for developers to support it,

01:02:33 ◼   ► even though it's specific to Apple's platforms,

01:02:35 ◼   ► because the iOS market is so big.

01:02:38 ◼   ► And the Mac market has famously, infamously,

01:02:42 ◼   ► I mean, I'm not gonna go on at length about this,

01:02:44 ◼   ► but the Mac has never been known for gaming.

01:02:48 ◼   ► It's always been behind PCs and gaming,

01:02:50 ◼   ► and perhaps it's further behind

01:02:52 ◼   ► than it ever has been at this point.

01:02:54 ◼   ► You know, 'cause there's this whole concept,

01:02:57 ◼   ► well, I talked about it on the last episode,

01:02:59 ◼   ► where my son wants to get a gaming PC.

01:03:01 ◼   ► The phrase gaming PC is now,

01:03:04 ◼   ► it's just like a whole category.

01:03:06 ◼   ► And it wasn't years ago.

01:03:08 ◼   ► I mean, PCs were known to be better for gaming.

01:03:11 ◼   ► People who were serious gamers did buy PCs

01:03:13 ◼   ► that they'd configure specifically for gaming.

01:03:16 ◼   ► But now it's just like an entire product category.

01:03:20 ◼   ► There's no question about it that the Mac is not really relevant. And you know, the bigger tell to me

01:03:25 ◼   ► isn't the fact that it doesn't run well on integrated graphics. The bigger tell to me

01:03:29 ◼   ► is that bug that I talked about on the last episode with Marco, where when you run Fortnite on,

01:03:34 ◼   ► I don't know if it's every Mac, but certainly on the 15 inch MacBook Pro, the first time you try

01:03:40 ◼   ► to join a game, it literally takes, there's a bug where it takes 10 minutes before you get in. And

01:03:45 ◼   ► and it just sits there saying loading dot dot dot.

01:03:48 ◼   ► And the solution is to literally just sit there

01:03:51 ◼   ► and wait 10 minutes and it lets you in

01:03:53 ◼   ► and then subsequently you can join games

01:03:55 ◼   ► with a regular amount of weight.

01:04:00 ◼   ► A couple of people wrote to me

01:04:01 ◼   ► and thanked me for mentioning that

01:04:02 ◼   ► because they ran into the same thing

01:04:04 ◼   ► and made the same assumption that my son and I made

01:04:07 ◼   ► at first, which was that it was a never ending bug.

01:04:10 ◼   ► Once you wait two, three, four minutes to join a game,

01:04:12 ◼   ► it's a pretty safe assumption

01:04:14 ◼   ► that you should just force quit the app and try again,

01:04:16 ◼   ► and if you run into it, just give up.

01:04:19 ◼   ► But this is actually, truthfully,

01:04:20 ◼   ► a thing where you have to wait 10 minutes and let you in.

01:04:23 ◼   ► So a couple people wrote to thank me for mentioning that

01:04:25 ◼   ► because they run into it and just gave up.

01:04:28 ◼   ► But the fact that that bug has been around

01:04:30 ◼   ► at least since April,

01:04:31 ◼   ► which is the first time I saw it mentioned on a forum,

01:04:33 ◼   ► and they still haven't fixed it at the end of July,

01:04:36 ◼   ► is ridiculous.

01:04:36 ◼   ► I mean, if the PC version had a bug like that,

01:04:38 ◼   ► they'd fix it the next, as soon as they possibly could.

01:04:41 ◼   ► And the fact that they've let this languish on their Mac

01:04:43 ◼   ► tells you everything you need to know

01:04:45 ◼   ► about how important Epic sees the Mac

01:04:47 ◼   ► as a platform for Fortnite.

01:04:49 ◼   ► Mumper asks, "Do you have a preference

01:04:56 ◼   ► "on minimizing Windows versus using the close button?

01:04:59 ◼   ► "If so, why?

01:05:00 ◼   ► "I still struggle to see the difference

01:05:01 ◼   ► "or any reasoning to use one over the other."

01:05:04 ◼   ► This is a crazy question to me.

01:05:05 ◼   ► I personally don't use minimize at all.

01:05:10 ◼   ► I think by default, when you minimize Windows on Mac OS X,

01:05:12 ◼   ► it sticks the window into the dock

01:05:14 ◼   ► as a separate little icon.

01:05:16 ◼   ► The window itself becomes an icon in the dock.

01:05:18 ◼   ► And then there's a preference you can turn on

01:05:19 ◼   ► in the dock settings to have minimized windows

01:05:22 ◼   ► effectively go into the app they belong to.

01:05:25 ◼   ► So let's just say you're using TextEdit

01:05:28 ◼   ► and you minimize a window if you have that preference on.

01:05:31 ◼   ► It goes into, the animation shows it

01:05:34 ◼   ► going into the TextEdit app icon on the dock

01:05:36 ◼   ► and then to get back to that window,

01:05:40 ◼   ► you click on the app in the dock to get the menu

01:05:44 ◼   ► and you can choose it from there.

01:05:47 ◼   ► I don't minimize Windows, almost never.

01:05:52 ◼   ► I just don't find it useful either way.

01:05:55 ◼   ► So I either have the window open

01:05:58 ◼   ► and if I'm done with it, I close it.

01:06:00 ◼   ► I don't minimize.

01:06:01 ◼   ► The minimize feature could be totally broken

01:06:07 ◼   ► and I wouldn't notice for weeks or months

01:06:10 ◼   ► because I just never use it.

01:06:11 ◼   ► Back in the day, in the classic macOS era,

01:06:16 ◼   ► I thought that instead of minimizing what you could do,

01:06:20 ◼   ► they called it window shade, and you could double-click.

01:06:23 ◼   ► There was a button you could click

01:06:24 ◼   ► in the top right corner of the window,

01:06:26 ◼   ► or you could just double-click in the dead space

01:06:28 ◼   ► anywhere in the title bar of a window,

01:06:30 ◼   ► and the whole window would effectively window shade.

01:06:35 ◼   ► The window would go up,

01:06:36 ◼   ► and all you'd be left with is the title bar,

01:06:40 ◼   ► and it was a really convenient way to get at something

01:06:43 ◼   ► behind the window you were currently in.

01:06:45 ◼   ► And one of the things that made it cool

01:06:47 ◼   ► was because the title bar didn't move,

01:06:49 ◼   ► you could double click the title bar

01:06:50 ◼   ► to window shade the window and either look behind the window

01:06:53 ◼   ► or drag something behind the window.

01:06:54 ◼   ► But if you just wanted to look behind the window,

01:06:57 ◼   ► the title bar was still there,

01:06:59 ◼   ► still underneath the mouse pointer.

01:07:00 ◼   ► So you could just double click again to open it back up.

01:07:04 ◼   ► Part of what, to me, what makes the Mac OS X model

01:07:08 ◼   ► of minimizing, which has been here ever since Mac OS 10.0

01:07:13 ◼   ► back in 2001 or 2002, whenever the hell it shipped,

01:07:15 ◼   ► is that you can't undo, you can't un-minimize a window

01:07:21 ◼   ► without moving the mouse over to the dock,

01:07:24 ◼   ► whereas the classic Mac OS window shade feature,

01:07:27 ◼   ► you could double click, look behind, double click again,

01:07:30 ◼   ► and undo what you've just done without moving the mouse.

01:07:36 ◼   ► That was huge, huge, one of the many thousand paper cuts

01:07:40 ◼   ► of ways that Mac OS X to me remains inferior

01:07:45 ◼   ► to the classic Mac OS and UI design.

01:07:48 ◼   ► But that's a can of worms, we can't get into here

01:07:52 ◼   ► if we wanna finish any reasonable amount of time.

01:07:55 ◼   ► Next question, Steven Fosket asks,

01:08:01 ◼   ► do you think Apple really has an insanely great idea

01:08:04 ◼   ► for the new Mac Pro, if so, what will it look like?

01:08:07 ◼   ► First part of the, first question, yes,

01:08:09 ◼   ► I do think they have a great idea,

01:08:10 ◼   ► or at least they think they have a great idea,

01:08:12 ◼   ► because I also think they thought

01:08:13 ◼   ► the Trashcan Mac Pro was a great idea.

01:08:15 ◼   ► But based on what they've told us publicly,

01:08:18 ◼   ► they seem pretty clear that they see that it was a mistake,

01:08:25 ◼   ► that the Trashcan Mac Pro was not designed

01:08:29 ◼   ► around what's now obvious, the importance,

01:08:33 ◼   ► growing importance of multiple GPUs and having a thermal envelope that could take significantly

01:08:44 ◼   ► hotter GPUs than the trashcan is designed to take. So I think they've got their, I think

01:08:49 ◼   ► they've recalibrated and now have their focus on where the highest of high-end performance

01:08:55 ◼   ► computing is going in 2018, 2019. What will it look like? I have no idea. None. I don't

01:09:02 ◼   ► I don't have any little birdies

01:09:04 ◼   ► who've spilled anything about it.

01:09:06 ◼   ► Apple's lips seem to be sealed on this.

01:09:08 ◼   ► I haven't seen even any rumors

01:09:09 ◼   ► about what it's going to look like.

01:09:11 ◼   ► I have no idea.

01:09:12 ◼   ► But I do expect it to be super high performance.

01:09:18 ◼   ► I mean, to me, the most intriguing thing

01:09:21 ◼   ► is given the super high performance,

01:09:23 ◼   ► universally hailed, of the iMac Pro,

01:09:26 ◼   ► what exactly, how much faster could the Mac Pro,

01:09:31 ◼   ► to justify its existence has to be a lot faster than that.

01:09:34 ◼   ► And that's pretty interesting

01:09:35 ◼   ► 'cause the iMac Pro is very fast.

01:09:36 ◼   ► Bruce Wager, Wagger asks,

01:09:43 ◼   ► "Is it believable that Apple can't make a good Mac

01:09:46 ◼   ► "for less than $1,000?

01:09:48 ◼   ► "Seems like their choice, not a question of ability."

01:09:51 ◼   ► Of course, there's no question

01:09:52 ◼   ► that they could make a cheaper Mac.

01:09:55 ◼   ► I think that's always been true though.

01:09:56 ◼   ► It's been true for 25 years or 30 years,

01:10:01 ◼   ► however long the Mac is, what, '94, 2004.

01:10:05 ◼   ► Yeah, 35 years, 34 years of Mac.

01:10:10 ◼   ► Maybe back in 1984, they couldn't make a cheaper Mac.

01:10:16 ◼   ► But certainly for the last 25 years,

01:10:19 ◼   ► they could have if they wanted to.

01:10:21 ◼   ► It's a marketing decision that they don't.

01:10:23 ◼   ► And the fact that they make iPads

01:10:26 ◼   ► that are performance compatible,

01:10:28 ◼   ► certainly as performant enough

01:10:30 ◼   ► that they could run Mac OS X if Apple so wanted,

01:10:33 ◼   ► and they sell them for as low as $300

01:10:36 ◼   ► with a very nice display,

01:10:39 ◼   ► is proof positive that they could make a cheaper Mac

01:10:41 ◼   ► if they wanted to, but they choose not to

01:10:42 ◼   ► for whatever reasons.

01:10:44 ◼   ► Vikram Nair asks, "How ridiculous is it of Apple

01:10:52 ◼   ► "to sell the Mac Mini or Mac Pro

01:10:53 ◼   ► "at anywhere near the full price as when it came out.

01:10:57 ◼   ► "What is Apple doing here and why?"

01:11:00 ◼   ► That's a good question, and I think it's often misunderstood.

01:11:03 ◼   ► I think that Apple's pricing scheme for Macs,

01:11:07 ◼   ► and the fact that the Mac Mini is years and years old,

01:11:11 ◼   ► the Mac Pro is five years old or something like that,

01:11:14 ◼   ► and they still sell them at the same prices

01:11:16 ◼   ► as when they came out.

01:11:17 ◼   ► That's because Apple sees the price

01:11:22 ◼   ► as part of the branding and marketing of its devices.

01:11:27 ◼   ► And it really only works if they update them regularly.

01:11:35 ◼   ► When they don't update them regularly,

01:11:37 ◼   ► it starts to get absurd.

01:11:39 ◼   ► And in theory, absolutely,

01:11:40 ◼   ► if they're gonna continue to sell years old Mac Minis

01:11:45 ◼   ► and Mac Pros, the prices should be significantly lower today

01:11:48 ◼   ► than they were when they came out.

01:11:50 ◼   ► But they don't because they want to effectively

01:11:54 ◼   ► protect those price points so that when new Mac Pros

01:11:57 ◼   ► do come out or new Mac Minis do come out,

01:11:59 ◼   ► they can keep them at the price that they want them to be at

01:12:02 ◼   ► and not have it seem like a price hike.

01:12:06 ◼   ► So let's just say if they had started,

01:12:08 ◼   ► in an alternate universe where they had still,

01:12:13 ◼   ► the Mac Mini was just as old today as it is in our universe,

01:12:17 ◼   ► but they had lowered the price by $100 every year

01:12:21 ◼   ► that it went un-updated.

01:12:23 ◼   ► And then they come out with a new Mac Mini this fall

01:12:26 ◼   ► and it goes back to the original price,

01:12:28 ◼   ► it would seem like this huge price hike

01:12:30 ◼   ► and they wanna avoid that.

01:12:31 ◼   ► I don't think there's any magic to that.

01:12:39 ◼   ► It is a bit stubborn and it is something that Apple

01:12:43 ◼   ► and possibly only Apple can get away with

01:12:46 ◼   ► in the PC industry because Apple's brand

01:12:51 ◼   ► and user allegiance allows them to.

01:12:54 ◼   ► But they just don't, their computers aren't commodities

01:12:56 ◼   ► in a way that Dell computers are,

01:12:59 ◼   ► and that raise and lower by fluctuate

01:13:02 ◼   ► as component prices go up and down.

01:13:04 ◼   ► They come out with a price,

01:13:05 ◼   ► and the price is part of the brand of the device,

01:13:08 ◼   ► and it stays the same even when it gets a bit ridiculous,

01:13:11 ◼   ► as is the case with the Mac Mini and Mac Pro.

01:13:15 ◼   ► Jackson Kernian asks, "Do we know any more about how and why

01:13:20 ◼   ► "Apple got App Store skeptical Mac developers

01:13:23 ◼   ► "back into the store as announced at WWDC?"

01:13:25 ◼   ► I don't think there's any secret to it.

01:13:27 ◼   ► I don't think there's anything that's on the record.

01:13:30 ◼   ► But apps like BB Edit, which had been out of the store,

01:13:34 ◼   ► now coming back, Panix,

01:13:35 ◼   ► I believe it's Coda, not Transit, Transmit?

01:13:41 ◼   ► I forget, I don't know which of Panix apps

01:13:44 ◼   ► is definitely coming back to the store.

01:13:46 ◼   ► I think it's Coda.

01:13:47 ◼   ► And I know Rich Segal at Barebones,

01:13:52 ◼   ► I know the guys at Panic,

01:13:54 ◼   ► and I don't think there's any secret to it.

01:13:58 ◼   ► It's just good old-fashioned developer relations.

01:14:01 ◼   ► And I know there's a whole bunch of other apps

01:14:03 ◼   ► that this is the case for,

01:14:04 ◼   ► but I honestly think there's no secret to it.

01:14:07 ◼   ► It's people at Apple who work in developer relations

01:14:11 ◼   ► on a one-on-one personal basis,

01:14:12 ◼   ► reaching out to Mac developers whose apps

01:14:16 ◼   ► either were in the store and were pulled

01:14:18 ◼   ► or were never in the store,

01:14:19 ◼   ► and saying, "What do you need from us, from Apple?

01:14:23 ◼   ► "What can we do differently?

01:14:24 ◼   ► "What APIs can we change?

01:14:25 ◼   ► "What can we change with sandboxing?

01:14:26 ◼   ► "What can we improve?

01:14:27 ◼   ► "What would make the App Store,

01:14:29 ◼   ► "what would make you get back in the App Store?"

01:14:32 ◼   ► Listening and then doing what needs to be done.

01:14:36 ◼   ► Just good old-fashioned developer relations.

01:14:39 ◼   ► And it's, to me, a great sign of Apple's belief and support of third-party Mac developers

01:14:48 ◼   ► and a great sign for the platform going forward.

01:14:56 ◼   ► Next question.

01:14:58 ◼   ► Dave Swallow asks, "Do you think Apple will ever release a Mac mini, a new Mac mini to

01:15:05 ◼   ► compete with an Intel and you see a small Mac that can be a home server. Well, I hope

01:15:10 ◼   ► so. I honestly don't know what to think at this point, though. The Mac Mini is so

01:15:14 ◼   ► old that I really hope they come out with a new one, and if they come out with a new

01:15:18 ◼   ► one, I certainly hope it's a lot smaller, possibly cheaper. But at this point, I wouldn't

01:15:26 ◼   ► be surprised if they never updated either. I don't know why they continued to sell

01:15:29 ◼   ► it, though, if that's their goal. But look at what they did with AirPort hardware, where

01:15:33 ◼   ► kind of stopped updating it years ago and continued to sell it long after they'd seemingly

01:15:39 ◼   ► internally decided to no longer create new hardware.

01:15:46 ◼   ► Next question, Kevin Van Harren asks, "Since you just found out Migration Assistant is

01:15:52 ◼   ► decent, do you keep your documents/desktop in iCloud?"

01:15:57 ◼   ► I do not, but it's not because I think it's very different.

01:16:02 ◼   ► Assistant, I really underestimated. I really just figured based on old experience from

01:16:08 ◼   ► the early 2000s, at least when it didn't really do a good job of moving everything I wanted

01:16:14 ◼   ► from an old machine to a new machine and I found it to be less work to just start from

01:16:17 ◼   ► scratch and add it by hand. I really underestimated the modern migration assistant. I think I

01:16:23 ◼   ► understand exactly what when you when you decide to share your documents folder. In

01:16:28 ◼   ► In other words, the documents folder

01:16:30 ◼   ► at the root level of your home folder

01:16:32 ◼   ► and your desktop in iCloud.

01:16:33 ◼   ► I know exactly what it's supposed to do

01:16:36 ◼   ► and whether it works seamlessly or not, I don't want it.

01:16:39 ◼   ► I don't want my desktop, the files on my desktop

01:16:42 ◼   ► on my various Macs to be shared between them

01:16:44 ◼   ► and I don't want my documents folder

01:16:47 ◼   ► to be shared between Macs.

01:16:49 ◼   ► I have Dropbox.

01:16:50 ◼   ► I also use iCloud storage within apps like Numbers

01:16:55 ◼   ► within apps like Numbers, the iWork suite,

01:16:58 ◼   ► what's it called, iCloud Drive.

01:17:05 ◼   ► I use iCloud Drive, I use Dropbox,

01:17:07 ◼   ► Dropbox, both of those.

01:17:10 ◼   ► At this point, I don't know if I could do without either.

01:17:14 ◼   ► And if I want a file to be synced between machines,

01:17:19 ◼   ► I will either store it in Dropbox

01:17:20 ◼   ► or store it in iCloud Drive.

01:17:23 ◼   ► I like having a documents folder in my home folder

01:17:28 ◼   ► on each Mac that is local to that Mac

01:17:30 ◼   ► for when I do have files that I don't want to sync

01:17:33 ◼   ► for whatever reason between machines.

01:17:35 ◼   ► So no, I don't use that.

01:17:37 ◼   ► And to me, syncing the desktop in particular

01:17:39 ◼   ► just seemed, would just seem weird.

01:17:41 ◼   ► The desktop clearly to me is supposed to be

01:17:44 ◼   ► conceptually local to the machine.

01:17:46 ◼   ► It would be very strange, I would find it very undesirable

01:17:49 ◼   ► to have my document or my desktop sync between machines.

01:17:52 ◼   ► Next question, trying to wrap these Mac questions up here.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Michael Rockwell asks, do you expect Apple to transition

01:18:04 ◼   ► the iMac to SSDs as the default option?

01:18:07 ◼   ► It's a great question.

01:18:08 ◼   ► I think that this is possibly a sign of the difference

01:18:13 ◼   ► between the Tim Cook Apple and Steve Jobs' Apple.

01:18:18 ◼   ► I think if Steve Jobs were still around,

01:18:19 ◼   ► the iMac maybe already would be SSD by default, or SSD only. And the iMac Pro is SSD only.

01:18:32 ◼   ► The advantages of SSD over spinning hard drives in every single regard other than cost, that

01:18:38 ◼   ► you can get more storage for significantly less money with a spinning hard drive than

01:18:43 ◼   ► than SSD. But the other advantages of SSD are so great in terms of reliability and performance

01:18:51 ◼   ► and even the fact that they're dead silent are so great. And to me, that's what Apple

01:18:57 ◼   ► computers, Apple products are supposed to be is great. They're so great that it's worth

01:19:02 ◼   ► the premium you have to pay. If you really need more storage and you want to pay spinning

01:19:08 ◼   ► hard disk prices, then you should have to—I think Apple should make you use an external

01:19:14 ◼   ► drive. I believe Apple—the iMac should be SSD only at this point. So I definitely think

01:19:20 ◼   ► it will be at some point, but I think the more interesting thing is that, to me, I think

01:19:24 ◼   ► it should be already, and I think it would be if Steve Jobs were still CEO.

01:19:30 ◼   ► Derek Martin asks, "Do you think it's possible that Apple could release Macs primarily

01:19:34 ◼   ► powered by an Apple ARM chip, but which also contain an x86 chip for backward compatibility."

01:19:40 ◼   ► I kind of answered this before. That's not how transitions work. I don't think they'll do that.

01:19:43 ◼   ► I think that once they switch to ARM, it'll be all ARM and possibly with some kind of

01:19:49 ◼   ► emulation layer so that un-updated apps that are x86 can still run even through an emulator.

01:20:01 ◼   ► Saint Chris asks, "Were you a fan of tabbed folders in Mac OS 9 where you could pin a

01:20:05 ◼   ► folder to the screen edge as just a title bar tab?" It was the central organizing principle of

01:20:12 ◼   ► my workflow. I haven't found anything that can replicate it in Mac OS 10. I was a huge fan.

01:20:16 ◼   ► I wouldn't call it the central organizing principle of my workflow back then, but it was

01:20:20 ◼   ► a great feature. And yet again, especially with the Finder, just a terrific example of how the

01:20:27 ◼   ► The Classic Finder was a just vastly, infinitely better design than the Mac OS X Finder ever

01:20:33 ◼   ► was or probably will be.

01:20:35 ◼   ► The idea was you could just drag a window, take the title bar, drag it down to the bottom

01:20:39 ◼   ► of the screen, and when it got to the bottom, it would change from a window into a tab,

01:20:44 ◼   ► and the tab would stay anchored at the bottom.

01:20:47 ◼   ► And while it was there, you could click the tab and it would pop up, and you could access

01:20:53 ◼   ► the stuff in it and then click it again and it would go back down to a tab. Super convenient

01:20:59 ◼   ► for your current project, if your current project is organized in a single folder in the Finder,

01:21:05 ◼   ► or frequently accessed folders. It was just terrific. Great feature. And again, I miss it.

01:21:14 ◼   ► Ryan Jones asks, "How do you feel about the decline of exquisite attention to detail in Apple

01:21:22 ◼   ► products, specifically software, such as more inconsistencies or fewer subtle delights?"

01:21:28 ◼   ► That's a good question, and I definitely think he's right. I would go so far as to say it only

01:21:33 ◼   ► pertains to software. To me, Apple's attention to detail and hardware is greater than ever. I think

01:21:39 ◼   ► that their hardware is more refined, more closer to the perfection than it's ever been. Not to go

01:21:48 ◼   ► to go off on a tangent, but just one example is the hinge

01:21:51 ◼   ► on the current MacBook Pros, the hinge between the display

01:21:55 ◼   ► and the main body.

01:21:58 ◼   ► It works with so little effort, yet it stays

01:22:03 ◼   ► in whatever position you put it in with,

01:22:06 ◼   ► you can get it exactly at the angle you want it to

01:22:08 ◼   ► with less effort.

01:22:10 ◼   ► The hinge even looks good.

01:22:11 ◼   ► It's almost like it's not there.

01:22:12 ◼   ► You hardly even see anything.

01:22:14 ◼   ► It looks good, it feels good, it is super reliable.

01:22:17 ◼   ► It's just exquisite attention to detail.

01:22:21 ◼   ► Say what you want about the new keyboard,

01:22:24 ◼   ► but the fact that it has this,

01:22:27 ◼   ► about what do you think about the low travel.

01:22:31 ◼   ► But the way that the keys on these butterfly switches

01:22:34 ◼   ► move all at once up and down is such a,

01:22:39 ◼   ► it's so nice and it really is something

01:22:41 ◼   ► that when I go back to my old keyboard,

01:22:43 ◼   ► it really does feel a little junky.

01:22:45 ◼   ► The hardware attention to detail is terrific.

01:22:48 ◼   ► And I could go on and on about the hardware of the iPhone,

01:22:51 ◼   ► which is just terrific.

01:22:55 ◼   ► The software, definitely, there's no doubt in my mind

01:22:57 ◼   ► that there is less attention to detail in Apple software

01:23:02 ◼   ► than in the old days.

01:23:05 ◼   ► In the old days, and I would say especially

01:23:07 ◼   ► like in the classic Mac era,

01:23:13 ◼   ► It was very hard to find any user interface mistakes

01:23:16 ◼   ► in Apple's own software.

01:23:18 ◼   ► It was just in terms of just little details.

01:23:24 ◼   ► There's things now, and it's been this way

01:23:26 ◼   ► in Mac OS X forever.

01:23:27 ◼   ► I forget exactly where.

01:23:28 ◼   ► I think, let's see if I can find it here.

01:23:35 ◼   ► There's things in system preferences

01:23:36 ◼   ► where there's a little sheet that comes down

01:23:40 ◼   ► and system preferences where there's an okay

01:23:42 ◼   ► and cancel button and the okay button,

01:23:45 ◼   ► rather than being the same width as the cancel button,

01:23:48 ◼   ► it's only wide enough for the word okay, which is wrong.

01:23:53 ◼   ► It's clearly a user interface mistake.

01:23:57 ◼   ► It's wrong according to the HIG and it's wrong

01:24:00 ◼   ► according to just my native UI instincts.

01:24:05 ◼   ► I can't believe that Apple employs somebody

01:24:09 ◼   ► who would make such a mistake

01:24:12 ◼   ► while laying out a dialog box.

01:24:15 ◼   ► And furthermore, I cannot believe even more

01:24:18 ◼   ► that even given the existence of some engineer

01:24:22 ◼   ► who isn't aware of that UI convention

01:24:25 ◼   ► that an OK and a cancel button should be the same width

01:24:28 ◼   ► even if the word OK has to float

01:24:30 ◼   ► in a lot of horizontal white space.

01:24:32 ◼   ► I can't believe that it got approved.

01:24:37 ◼   ► And furthermore, Cana can't believe that it's been there for years and Apple still hasn't

01:24:42 ◼   ► fixed it. There's all sorts of little things like that in Mac OS X. You know, it is what

01:24:51 ◼   ► it is, but I just feel like and I think part of it is just that Apple has had to, you know,

01:24:58 ◼   ► they've expanded and they have so many engineers that they can't only hire engineers who are

01:25:05 ◼   ► familiar forward and backward with every single UI convention of the Mac. I do find it a little

01:25:12 ◼   ► depressing. Let's keep going here. Next question. Got to wrap this up soon. I'm running out

01:25:21 ◼   ► of steam. It's surprisingly hard to do this without a guest. Let's see here. Do I think

01:25:30 ◼   ► touch will ever come to the Mac?

01:25:32 ◼   ► This is a question from Jamie Halmick.

01:25:34 ◼   ► Not like the touch bar,

01:25:38 ◼   ► but real touch interaction on the screen.

01:25:40 ◼   ► Conversely, do you think mouse support

01:25:42 ◼   ► will ever come to the iPad?

01:25:43 ◼   ► A couple other people asked about this.

01:25:45 ◼   ► Touch support for macOS, just a matter of time,

01:25:47 ◼   ► never going to happen, Walford East wrote.

01:25:50 ◼   ► I certainly think it never should come to the Mac.

01:25:55 ◼   ► I really do believe, I firmly believe

01:25:58 ◼   ► the Apple party line on touchscreen Macs,

01:26:00 ◼   ► that the Mac is designed, fundamentally designed

01:26:04 ◼   ► from a user interface perspective to be used

01:26:07 ◼   ► with your hands on a desk or table, palms down,

01:26:11 ◼   ► on a keyboard, on a mouse, on a trackpad,

01:26:15 ◼   ► and that ergonomically reaching up and touching a screen

01:26:18 ◼   ► is suboptimal, and that the Mac has user interface controls.

01:26:28 ◼   ► Everything from the red, yellow, green buttons to the menu bar

01:26:31 ◼   ► to the way menu bar items are arranged

01:26:33 ◼   ► to how small items in the dock can

01:26:36 ◼   ► get when you're running a bunch of applications.

01:26:38 ◼   ► They have all sorts of controls throughout the UI.

01:26:40 ◼   ► Just think about the main palette in Photoshop and apps

01:26:43 ◼   ► like Photoshop, how small the buttons are.

01:26:46 ◼   ► With a precision pointer using a trackpad or mouse,

01:26:49 ◼   ► you can pack controls that are very small and close

01:26:53 ◼   ► to each other, and they remain totally functional.

01:26:56 ◼   ► and on a touchscreen, they need to be bigger

01:26:58 ◼   ► and further apart to accommodate the fact

01:27:00 ◼   ► that your finger touching a screen is imprecise.

01:27:04 ◼   ► So the Mac UI as it is, things are too close, too small

01:27:11 ◼   ► to be touch friendly.

01:27:13 ◼   ► And if Apple were to issue touchscreen Macs

01:27:16 ◼   ► and an edict that everything should be redesigned

01:27:20 ◼   ► to be touch friendly, then you'd be wasting

01:27:22 ◼   ► all this screen real estate

01:27:23 ◼   ► when you do use a mouse and trackpad.

01:27:25 ◼   ► I really think it's a bad idea.

01:27:28 ◼   ► I really do, and I don't think it's ever going to come.

01:27:31 ◼   ► Would I be shocked if it did come?

01:27:33 ◼   ► I don't know, because people seem to be clamoring for it,

01:27:36 ◼   ► but I think that they're wrong,

01:27:37 ◼   ► and I think Apple should and will stick to its guns.

01:27:40 ◼   ► I really don't think a touchscreen Mac is a good idea.

01:27:43 ◼   ► When, oh, let's see here, next question.

01:27:50 ◼   ► I've lost my train of thought here in these questions.

01:27:53 ◼   ► Oh, here's a good one.

01:27:54 ◼   ► Ryan Humphrey asks, "If you were starting a business today where long-term success was

01:27:59 ◼   ► going to be dependent on heavily investing in either Apple or Microsoft's commitment

01:28:02 ◼   ► to desktop/professional hardware, would you be comfortable locking yourself into Apple?"

01:28:06 ◼   ► Absolutely. I don't think there's any reason to doubt Apple's commitment to the Mac as

01:28:11 ◼   ► a platform going forward. I think these two statements can both be true. Apple is as committed

01:28:16 ◼   ► to the Mac as you could want the company to be today. And Apple is primarily—the primary

01:28:27 ◼   ► focus of the company, the single most important product is the iPhone. I think both of those

01:28:31 ◼   ► things can be true. That yes, the iPhone is Apple's most important product. It's the most successful.

01:28:35 ◼   ► The one with the most users generates by far the most money and therefore justifies being the

01:28:40 ◼   ► the company's prime focus of attention,

01:28:43 ◼   ► but that the company remains totally committed to the Mac.

01:28:46 ◼   ► I think both of those things can be true and are true.

01:28:49 ◼   ► NBA asks, same question asked on ATP this week,

01:28:56 ◼   ► "When do you expect to see the first ARM Mac?"

01:28:58 ◼   ► It's sort of a repeat question, sorry about that.

01:29:00 ◼   ► I'm gonna say 2020, and if not 2020, 2021 at the latest.

01:29:09 ◼   ► P. Krishna asks, "Which keyboard are you going to use

01:29:11 ◼   ► "if your Apple Extended Keyboard 2 broke?"

01:29:13 ◼   ► I would just take out one of my Mint condition

01:29:16 ◼   ► unopened Apple Extended Keyboard 2s that I have in storage

01:29:19 ◼   ► and use one of those if my current one broke.

01:29:22 ◼   ► But I guess that's sort of a non-answer.

01:29:25 ◼   ► I think what you're really asking is what if,

01:29:27 ◼   ► at a technical level, the ADB to USB adapter I used

01:29:31 ◼   ► to do it stopped working with Mac OS X?

01:29:34 ◼   ► I guess I would buy some sort of mechanical keyboard.

01:29:36 ◼   ► I'd probably talk to Jason Snell and see.

01:29:39 ◼   ► I've still never found a mechanical keyboard

01:29:41 ◼   ► that I would be satisfied with,

01:29:42 ◼   ► but I'm sure I could find something

01:29:44 ◼   ► that I would like better than anything else.

01:29:47 ◼   ► Phil Swenson asks, "Heard anything about the Apple monitor

01:29:54 ◼   ► "promised last year?

01:29:55 ◼   ► "Seems like a reasonably priced for Apple at least,

01:29:57 ◼   ► "monitor with more ports would migrate,

01:30:00 ◼   ► "mitigate port issues, and no one wants the LG."

01:30:06 ◼   ► I haven't heard anything. I just presume, and I think this is pretty obvious, that whenever

01:30:10 ◼   ► Apple's Mac Pro is ready to, the new Mac Pro is ready to come out, it will debut alongside

01:30:16 ◼   ► the Apple branded 5K or perhaps even 8K monitor that Apple talked about last year. And I would

01:30:23 ◼   ► certainly hope that it includes a bunch of ports so that people with like a MacBook Pro

01:30:29 ◼   ► who plug into the new monitor could get things like extra USB ports and stuff like that.

01:30:38 ◼   ► But I haven't heard anything about it and presume it won't come before and won't come

01:30:42 ◼   ► after it'll cut debut alongside the new Mac Pro. Richard Martin asks, "Would a MacBook

01:30:48 ◼   ► with a massive glass keyboard touchpad/Apple Pencil abstracted interface area in lieu of

01:30:54 ◼   ► the current keyboard touchpad area be a good product?

01:30:57 ◼   ► I'm gonna say no, it would be a terrible product.

01:31:00 ◼   ► Absolutely terrible.

01:31:01 ◼   ► To me, and it runs into this with these low travel keys,

01:31:06 ◼   ► and particularly with the lack of an inverted

01:31:12 ◼   ► arrow key arrangement, inverted T arrow key arrangement,

01:31:17 ◼   ► which Marco and I talked about last week,

01:31:19 ◼   ► it would be terrible.

01:31:23 ◼   ► because the thing about it,

01:31:24 ◼   ► it's not even what it would be like

01:31:25 ◼   ► once you look at the key and get your fingers on,

01:31:28 ◼   ► let's just say it would be like an iPad, right?

01:31:30 ◼   ► Like you have an iPad keyboard on a glass surface

01:31:33 ◼   ► of the top of the,

01:31:34 ◼   ► where the hardware keyboard on a MacBook is now.

01:31:37 ◼   ► Put aside what it would be like to actually type

01:31:42 ◼   ► on that keyboard once your fingers are in the right place,

01:31:46 ◼   ► which I think clearly would be inferior,

01:31:49 ◼   ► no travel keys, even with some sort of haptic feedback

01:31:52 ◼   ► along the lines of the way that the current track pads

01:31:57 ◼   ► don't really click but have haptic feedback instead.

01:32:00 ◼   ► Put aside what that would be like typing,

01:32:04 ◼   ► which I think would be inferior,

01:32:06 ◼   ► but the big problem is that you have to look to do it.

01:32:09 ◼   ► Like the whole, one of the huge advantages

01:32:12 ◼   ► that a hardware keyboard on a laptop has

01:32:16 ◼   ► that's irreplaceable is the fact

01:32:17 ◼   ► that you can get your fingers,

01:32:19 ◼   ► you get your hands in the right place simply by touch alone.

01:32:22 ◼   ► And there is absolutely nothing that a glass keyboard

01:32:26 ◼   ► could do to replicate that.

01:32:28 ◼   ► I guess in theory, they could put little nubbins

01:32:33 ◼   ► where the J and F keys are on the glass

01:32:36 ◼   ► and there'd be permanent nubbins on the glass

01:32:38 ◼   ► and you could kind of get your fingers in the right space,

01:32:40 ◼   ► but I don't see, I just don't see how it could ever be good.

01:32:43 ◼   ► I think it would be terrible, just a terrible product.

01:32:46 ◼   ► I think so much of the appeal of,

01:32:50 ◼   ► who knows how many times a day,

01:32:52 ◼   ► like in a full day of work on a MacBook

01:32:54 ◼   ► or a laptop of any kind,

01:32:55 ◼   ► how many times a day does an experienced user

01:32:59 ◼   ► put their hands on the keyboard and get their,

01:33:03 ◼   ► which also puts your thumb in a position

01:33:05 ◼   ► to use the trackpad without looking.

01:33:07 ◼   ► Hundreds, maybe.

01:33:09 ◼   ► I mean, just hundreds of times a day.

01:33:11 ◼   ► And to have to look every single time

01:33:13 ◼   ► would be such an enormous step backward,

01:33:15 ◼   ► I think it would be a disaster.

01:33:16 ◼   ► So hopefully Apple has no plans to do that.

01:33:19 ◼   ► And I say hopeful because, you know,

01:33:22 ◼   ► Apple's, you know, as I've said,

01:33:27 ◼   ► MacBooks get thinner and thinner as years go on,

01:33:30 ◼   ► and the keyboards get thinner and thinner along with them,

01:33:32 ◼   ► and the ultimate in keyboard thinness would be

01:33:35 ◼   ► a keyboard that has no travel whatsoever.

01:33:37 ◼   ► So hopefully that's not on our radar,

01:33:40 ◼   ► because I think it would be a terrible step backward

01:33:43 ◼   ► that they'd never recover from,

01:33:44 ◼   ► or that the experience would never recover from at least.

01:33:47 ◼   ► A related question from Saint Chris,

01:33:51 ◼   ► who I think had a question earlier.

01:33:53 ◼   ► Do you wish Apple would move the quote tactile nubs

01:33:57 ◼   ► from the index fingers back to the middle fingers

01:34:00 ◼   ► on the home row of their keyboards?

01:34:02 ◼   ► Now, for those of you who don't remember,

01:34:04 ◼   ► now think about this on a US QWERTY keyboard,

01:34:07 ◼   ► he's talking about these,

01:34:08 ◼   ► the little things on the F and J keys,

01:34:10 ◼   ► the ones that you put your index finger on,

01:34:11 ◼   ► there's little tactile nubs, whatever you want to call them.

01:34:16 ◼   ► Back in the day,

01:34:18 ◼   ► including on my beloved Apple Extended Keyboard 2,

01:34:21 ◼   ► Apple Keyboard put those nubbins on the middle finger keys,

01:34:24 ◼   ► which in the US would be the D and K keys.

01:34:27 ◼   ► And I have to admit, I prefer that.

01:34:30 ◼   ► I don't know why.

01:34:31 ◼   ► I don't really think there's any logic to it.

01:34:34 ◼   ► I don't know how much variation there was

01:34:38 ◼   ► between various computer manufacturers back in the '80s.

01:34:41 ◼   ► But Apple, like the Apple extended, or the Apple IIs, I say,

01:34:46 ◼   ► had those nubbins on the D and K key,

01:34:48 ◼   ► and then early Mac keyboards stuck with the Apple II design

01:34:52 ◼   ► of putting them on the index finger.

01:34:54 ◼   ► I can't justify it rationally,

01:34:55 ◼   ► other than that it just always has felt right to me.

01:34:58 ◼   ► And I don't think it's just because my first computers

01:35:01 ◼   ► that I used were Apple's.

01:35:03 ◼   ► I think that to me there is something intuitive

01:35:05 ◼   ► about the fact that your longest finger,

01:35:08 ◼   ► your middle finger, is the one

01:35:10 ◼   ► that reaches the keyboard first

01:35:11 ◼   ► and therefore finds those nubbins.

01:35:13 ◼   ► So me personally, I do wish that Apple

01:35:16 ◼   ► would move them back to the middle finger,

01:35:18 ◼   ► but I think that that chip has sailed.

01:35:21 ◼   ► The rest of the, you know, Apple has used this,

01:35:23 ◼   ► you know, moved them to the index fingers

01:35:26 ◼   ► at least 20 years ago, all right, 20, 25 years ago.

01:35:29 ◼   ► The whole, everybody, every keyboard I've seen

01:35:32 ◼   ► for 20, 20 some years has them on the F and J key,

01:35:35 ◼   ► so I don't think Apple could move this

01:35:36 ◼   ► without seeming like they'd lost their corporate mind.

01:35:39 ◼   ► But for me personally, do I wish that I could,

01:35:43 ◼   ► for example, custom order,

01:35:45 ◼   ► if I custom order a MacBook and as a preference

01:35:51 ◼   ► could get the nubbins on the D and K keys,

01:35:53 ◼   ► I would do it in a heartbeat.

01:35:55 ◼   ► I really do like that.

01:35:57 ◼   ► I thought this was a pretty interesting question.

01:35:59 ◼   ► All right, last Mac question,

01:36:02 ◼   ► and I guess it's gonna be the last question of the episode.

01:36:08 ◼   ► What is a voice or perspective about tech

01:36:10 ◼   ► that Apple isn't listening to

01:36:12 ◼   ► that could turn into a major problem?

01:36:13 ◼   ► Examples, but not my answer.

01:36:16 ◼   ► India, where Apple is sort of missing the boat on mobile.

01:36:20 ◼   ► Gamers, teenagers, artists, iOS only people, et cetera.

01:36:27 ◼   ► This is a question from Jason Becker.

01:36:30 ◼   ► I am going to say that the single,

01:36:33 ◼   ► I don't think that Apple's missing or isn't listening to.

01:36:37 ◼   ► So maybe I'm not answering the question.

01:36:40 ◼   ► But I think the biggest problem that Apple faces

01:36:43 ◼   ► that might really be a problem is the growing,

01:36:46 ◼   ► the growing rise of non-native web-based apps,

01:36:55 ◼   ► these things that are based on Electron and stuff like that,

01:36:59 ◼   ► that don't use native, and it's a Mac-specific problem.

01:37:04 ◼   ► It's not an iOS problem, at least not yet,

01:37:06 ◼   ► although it might be for the iPad as time goes on.

01:37:09 ◼   ► The only reason the Mac can justify its existence

01:37:14 ◼   ► is the fact that Mac software, for some people,

01:37:17 ◼   ► is vastly superior to anything else.

01:37:20 ◼   ► It's the superiority of Mac software

01:37:22 ◼   ► that justifies the existence of the Mac

01:37:24 ◼   ► alongside Windows and whatever else you could use

01:37:27 ◼   ► on a desktop computer.

01:37:28 ◼   ► And as it's never, I don't think we've ever seen a case,

01:37:33 ◼   ► back in the day with Java, there were cross-platform apps

01:37:36 ◼   ► and there was Flash and there's always been

01:37:39 ◼   ► cross-platform solutions, but none of them

01:37:41 ◼   ► have ever really taken off in a way

01:37:43 ◼   ► that these Electron-type things have.

01:37:45 ◼   ► And they're A, terrible, B, they're no better

01:37:49 ◼   ► on the Mac than they are on any other platform.

01:37:51 ◼   ► So if all you use are Electron-based apps,

01:37:54 ◼   ► there's really no reason for you to have

01:37:58 ◼   ► any allegiance to the Mac.

01:37:59 ◼   ► It doesn't really matter what you use.

01:38:04 ◼   ► I think it's a problem.

01:38:05 ◼   ► I think Apple sees it as a problem,

01:38:07 ◼   ► and that's partly why they're going with this Marzipan thing,

01:38:09 ◼   ► where if companies aren't going to do the work

01:38:12 ◼   ► of doing a first-class native Mac client,

01:38:15 ◼   ► but they do wanna have a quote-unquote Mac app,

01:38:20 ◼   ► it would be better if they used their iOS app code base

01:38:25 ◼   ► to get something running on the Mac,

01:38:27 ◼   ► even if it's not optimal,

01:38:28 ◼   ► than it would be to shoehorn a stupid web app

01:38:31 ◼   ► into a web app shell like Electron.

01:38:33 ◼   ► But I feel like that's a concession to the point that the true solution for most of these

01:38:40 ◼   ► apps would be to just do a real Mac app. And I think it's a bit of a problem. All right,

01:38:48 ◼   ► that's it for the Mac questions. There's a whole bunch of other topics. I guess I'll

01:38:51 ◼   ► have to do another one of these shows. Hopefully people like this. I don't know how interesting

01:38:54 ◼   ► it is. I want to thank the two sponsors for this episode, Squarespace and Casper. And

01:39:01 ◼   ► I wanna thank everybody out there who sent these questions

01:39:03 ◼   ► and it's been a lot of fun.

01:39:05 ◼   ► I can't believe that I only got through

01:39:06 ◼   ► two out of six categories.

01:39:08 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]