ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I feel like our world is a little upside down.

00:00:02 ◼   ► Did you roll over in your Wrangler?

00:00:04 ◼   ► No, I didn't roll over my Wrangler, but we're gonna talk about that.

00:00:07 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► Since you brought it up, I guess we can just start with follow-up,

00:00:11 ◼   ► and coincidentally in the very first item in follow-up, we have more Wrangler talk to have.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Awesome.

00:00:15 ◼   ► First of all, I wanted to publicly commend both Jon and Marco for Jon giving Marco

00:00:22 ◼   ► the material with which to make a truly hilarious pre-show.

00:00:26 ◼   ► And I had several people very kindly reach out to say,

00:00:29 ◼   ► "Oh my god, John was on fire." Well, oftentimes it was "John was on fire beating you up."

00:00:35 ◼   ► But at the very least it was "John was on fire."

00:00:37 ◼   ► I wasn't beating you up. But that's the whole thing. Like, first of all, you brought the

00:00:40 ◼   ► topic of the show and said, "I have a problem. I'm thinking about a wrangler." So it's like,

00:00:45 ◼   ► you're saying, "Convince me not to get a wrangler." And so I was trying to do what you asked.

00:00:49 ◼   ► That's not a problem. Like, if you're saying, "I'm into thinking about a deep wrangler," but

00:00:55 ◼   ► you phrased it as like a problem situation.

00:00:58 ◼   ► Like if you were really enthusiastic about it,

00:00:59 ◼   ► saying like, "Look, I've decided to make a life change.

00:01:02 ◼   ► "I have found who I really am now,

00:01:04 ◼   ► "and who I really am is a Jeep Wrangler person,"

00:01:07 ◼   ► like we would have been supportive of you as your friends.

00:01:09 ◼   ► - Can I, if I get a Wrangler, if I end up with a Wrangler,

00:01:11 ◼   ► can I try to find a license plate that's T-O-P-L-I-S-S?

00:01:16 ◼   ► - No, you are not allowed to do that.

00:01:18 ◼   ► - Come on.

00:01:19 ◼   ► - You are not allowed to have a giant list pun

00:01:20 ◼   ► for the rest of your life.

00:01:21 ◼   ► - Oh, come on.

00:01:22 ◼   ► - No.

00:01:23 ◼   ► - Anyway, so we have some follow-up with regards to,

00:01:26 ◼   ► Oh no, you distracted me. I was trying to compliment you two and you've distracted me.

00:01:30 ◼   ► So anyway, Marco did a very good job editing down 30 minutes of garbage into eight minutes

00:01:34 ◼   ► of pure comedy gold that was mostly on account of John giving Marco the raw material with

00:01:39 ◼   ► which to carve comedy gold out of it. So thank you to the two of you. Even though I am slightly

00:01:44 ◼   ► annoyed with you, I still find that conversation hilarious.

00:01:48 ◼   ► But we have some follow up about Wranglers from David Crawford who writes in, "Casey,

00:01:52 ◼   ► You can tell Jon that this is the guy with the yellow 458 Speciale.

00:01:55 ◼   ► I probably, I hope I pronounced that right.

00:01:57 ◼   ► I think I did.

00:01:58 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:01:59 ◼   ► Quand foulio.

00:02:00 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:02:01 ◼   ► And I can drive anything I want.

00:02:02 ◼   ► But when I run out to the garage to grab a car to run around town, I jump in my Jeep

00:02:05 ◼   ► Wrangler.

00:02:06 ◼   ► My Jeep is heavily modified and was not intended as a daily driver, but I find myself driving

00:02:09 ◼   ► it more than anything because it's fun and nimble around town.

00:02:14 ◼   ► Any thoughts, Jon?

00:02:15 ◼   ► I buy the fun part.

00:02:16 ◼   ► Nimble?

00:02:17 ◼   ► Nimble?

00:02:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:19 ◼   ► I think that's fair.

00:02:20 ◼   ► nimble in this context means it's not a terribly long car, although I believe it was a four-door

00:02:25 ◼   ► thing.

00:02:26 ◼   ► I mean, like, it spends a lot of time on two wheels. It's very nimble.

00:02:28 ◼   ► Oh, God. Here we go. Here we go.

00:02:30 ◼   ► That's the thing about the Jeep Wrangler, like, specifically for you, like, it strikes

00:02:37 ◼   ► me—well, first of all, for this choice of cars, if you've got a Ferrari, a fancy Ferrari,

00:02:41 ◼   ► or a Jeep, neither one of those is really a great car to, you know, drive around as

00:02:47 ◼   ► a regular car because you're not going to take your Ferrari to try to like go grocery

00:02:51 ◼   ► shopping and scrape the front end trying to go into a gas station or whatever. And a Jeep,

00:02:56 ◼   ► like fun cars like that, whether they're fun sporty cars or fun like off-roady cars, they're

00:03:01 ◼   ► not really fun to go on like a 45-minute highway trip in a Jeep Wrangler or a Ferrari. Like

00:03:06 ◼   ► that's not what they're about. So it seems to me that you're still, as far as we can

00:03:11 ◼   ► tell, looking for like a, what they call a daily driver, like a car that you can use

00:03:15 ◼   ► every day. And yeah, you can use a Jeep every day and you could use a Ferrari every day,

00:03:18 ◼   ► but there's a lot of big compromises with both of those things. And thus far, you've

00:03:24 ◼   ► been looking at cars that are more like regular cars that also happen to have a fun side to

00:03:29 ◼   ► them, right? So that's why I don't think either one of these cars is a good choice for you.

00:03:34 ◼   ► So forget about the 458. I know that was the second one on your list, but cross it off.

00:03:39 ◼   ► Yes, totally within my budget. I don't know. I thought it was funny, nevertheless, that

00:03:44 ◼   ► here's someone that could really drive anything and they choose to drive their Jeep.

00:03:49 ◼   ► That's why I suggested a go-kart. Remember, you think it was like I'm making a joke. I

00:03:52 ◼   ► don't know if that was cut or whatever. I suggested a go-kart because it's like a fun

00:03:56 ◼   ► toy to have. You can tool around on that and it's a vehicle, but you're not going to bring

00:04:02 ◼   ► on roads. But it's just fun, right? It's way more fun than you would think because you're

00:04:05 ◼   ► so low to the ground and even when it doesn't go fast, it feels fast and it corners. You've

00:04:09 ◼   ► driven a go-kart, right? They're fun. And it gets that out of your system so you can

00:04:12 ◼   ► have a regular car that like works and keeps out the weather and doesn't roll over and

00:04:17 ◼   ► it's safe and you know all that good stuff. Fair enough. All right we got to get out of neutral.

00:04:21 ◼   ► I'm sorry. Let's talk about the iMac Pro since we're not going to do any of that today. We can

00:04:25 ◼   ► dive right in and say that the iMac Pro RAM upgrades and this is Rene Ritchie I guess

00:04:30 ◼   ► saying you can't upgrade the RAM yourself but you can take it to an Apple store or certified service

00:04:35 ◼   ► center and they can upgrade for you what now that's a right from Rene Ritchie so

00:04:42 ◼   ► I'm assuming it's true means right from Apple's mouth we you know we said that

00:04:46 ◼   ► nothing is upgradeable meaning like if you were to open it up yourself you're

00:04:50 ◼   ► avoiding your warranty or whatever blah blah blah but apparently you can bring

00:04:53 ◼   ► it to Apple they're all great so as far as I'm concerned I mean as Marco pointed

00:04:56 ◼   ► out I think and tweet replies this like then you have to pay Apple's prices for

00:05:00 ◼   ► RAM, which is ridiculous. But at the very least it shows Apple not entirely closing

00:05:06 ◼   ► the door. I wonder if that also applies to SSDs. Could you take it to Apple and say,

00:05:10 ◼   ► please take out this SSD and I will pay your crazy price to have twice as big an SSD and

00:05:16 ◼   ► you'll put it in there for me. But I still think the best bet is to just buy it how you

00:05:20 ◼   ► want it configured because all these upgrade options seem like they're expensive. But I

00:05:26 ◼   ► I guess this is official from Apple.

00:05:28 ◼   ► If they're gonna do the upgrade,

00:05:29 ◼   ► then at least that's one option available to you

00:05:32 ◼   ► if you don't mind the cost.

00:05:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, and there are also third party

00:05:35 ◼   ► Apple authorized service centers,

00:05:37 ◼   ► so maybe you could get them to do it for you

00:05:40 ◼   ► with third party RAM that would be cheaper,

00:05:42 ◼   ► but that's a big maybe, and it probably wouldn't be

00:05:46 ◼   ► that much cheaper, relatively speaking,

00:05:48 ◼   ► and then if you ever had to send it back into Apple,

00:05:49 ◼   ► you know they're gonna see that,

00:05:51 ◼   ► and they're gonna make you remove it

00:05:53 ◼   ► or have a problem with it or something

00:05:55 ◼   ► before they'd service the machine or something.

00:05:56 ◼   ► So it's like having all the downsides of having

00:06:01 ◼   ► third-party RAM in your Mac that have been forever

00:06:04 ◼   ► of trouble with Apple service sometimes and everything else.

00:06:07 ◼   ► Everyone's gonna blame that for any problems you have.

00:06:09 ◼   ► But with the added complexity that you really can't get

00:06:12 ◼   ► to it yourself to swap it in and out,

00:06:13 ◼   ► and it probably won't be that much cheaper.

00:06:16 ◼   ► So I feel like this, there's basically two reasons

00:06:20 ◼   ► why most people want upgradable RAM in a Mac.

00:06:23 ◼   ► Reason number one, which is probably by far the most common,

00:06:26 ◼   ► is to save money from Apple's somewhat inflated costs

00:06:30 ◼   ► and get cheaper RAM from somebody else.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Reason number two is to buy it with one amount of RAM

00:06:36 ◼   ► that you can afford today, and then in a few years,

00:06:40 ◼   ► increase the amount of RAM to extend its useful lifetime,

00:06:43 ◼   ► and by that point, you will probably have more money

00:06:45 ◼   ► and also the RAM will be cheaper.

00:06:47 ◼   ► This seems to maybe solve the second one,

00:06:52 ◼   ► but it almost certainly won't solve the first one.

00:06:55 ◼   ► And I feel like the first one is probably

00:06:57 ◼   ► the more common case among people

00:06:59 ◼   ► who would be following this kind of news

00:07:00 ◼   ► and making this kind of comment.

00:07:02 ◼   ► So while it is nice that the RAM is upgradeable by somebody,

00:07:06 ◼   ► the fact that it's not really upgradeable by you is,

00:07:10 ◼   ► it might as well be not upgradeable.

00:07:12 ◼   ► Like I'm with Jon, I would strongly suggest

00:07:15 ◼   ► that you order it with the amount of RAM

00:07:16 ◼   ► that you will want for the long haul, if at all possible.

00:07:20 ◼   ► - iMac Pro Input Devices,

00:07:21 ◼   ► I thought we had talked about this on the show very briefly, but you can get both the

00:07:26 ◼   ► blacked-out Magic Mouse and a blacked-out trackpad, and something like 150 bucks for

00:07:31 ◼   ► both or thereabouts?

00:07:32 ◼   ► I don't remember exactly how much.

00:07:33 ◼   ► The configurator wasn't up when we were recording the show, but we speculated, like, "Oh, what

00:07:37 ◼   ► do you have to buy?

00:07:38 ◼   ► Two iMacs to get both of them?"

00:07:40 ◼   ► Because Apple gave the reviewers both input devices, which seemed weird if that's not

00:07:44 ◼   ► a thing that you can buy, but it totally is a thing you can buy.

00:07:47 ◼   ► Yeah, and I personally don't have any particular interest in the trackpad.

00:07:51 ◼   ► I know it works for a lot of people.

00:07:52 ◼   ► It's not really my cup of tea.

00:07:54 ◼   ► But if I were to order an iMac Pro,

00:07:56 ◼   ► which sitting here now I am not currently planning on,

00:07:59 ◼   ► there is zero chance that I would not get both devices

00:08:03 ◼   ► because even if I didn't end up using

00:08:07 ◼   ► either the mouse or the trackpad,

00:08:08 ◼   ► you know that you'll be able to sell that thing

00:08:10 ◼   ► for a billion dollars online.

00:08:11 ◼   ► - I mean, Declan's College Fund,

00:08:12 ◼   ► where you sell a black trackpad.

00:08:15 ◼   ► - You're absolutely right.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Unless there's some sort of like software,

00:08:17 ◼   ► like DRM for lack of a better phrase,

00:08:20 ◼   ► that prevents them from working with anything but an iMac Pro, which would be ridiculous.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Yeah, the DRM is that it would clash and offend your sensibilities.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Fair point. I don't know. I wonder, genuinely, once these start showing up, how much the

00:08:34 ◼   ► keyboard—how much do you think—let's start with Marco—how much do you think a

00:08:38 ◼   ► keyboard—what is it, the Magic Extended Keyboard, whatever it's called—that and

00:08:42 ◼   ► either pointing device, doesn't matter which one, just one pointing device, how much do

00:08:46 ◼   ► you think that combination will go for on eBay or equivalent?

00:08:49 ◼   ► I'm guessing it goes for a little above

00:08:51 ◼   ► what they would cost at retail.

00:08:52 ◼   ► I don't think it's gonna be a crazy amount.

00:08:54 ◼   ► - You don't think so?

00:08:55 ◼   ► - And if it is a crazy amount,

00:08:56 ◼   ► it's going to be only very briefly,

00:08:58 ◼   ► once they are in people's hands.

00:08:59 ◼   ► I don't think this is gonna be as big of a deal.

00:09:02 ◼   ► Because these are already not cheap.

00:09:04 ◼   ► Right, they're already,

00:09:05 ◼   ► like the trackpad's about 160 by itself.

00:09:08 ◼   ► - Sounds like it. - Like if you buy it

00:09:08 ◼   ► at retail and the keyboards,

00:09:10 ◼   ► I don't know how much the keyboard is,

00:09:11 ◼   ► but you know, and the mouse is 100 I think or 80.

00:09:14 ◼   ► And so like, yeah, maybe for the $160 trackpad,

00:09:18 ◼   ► you might get 200 bucks.

00:09:19 ◼   ► Maybe in the first week you might get 250,

00:09:22 ◼   ► but I wouldn't expect it to be

00:09:24 ◼   ► a bigger difference than that.

00:09:26 ◼   ► - I would think it would be more.

00:09:27 ◼   ► - I agree, I don't think it's gonna be a big premium.

00:09:29 ◼   ► I was gonna say like a 50 buck premium

00:09:31 ◼   ► for the first week and then settling down after that,

00:09:33 ◼   ► especially when people find out that the keyboard bends.

00:09:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:09:38 ◼   ► We got some, I didn't put it in fault,

00:09:39 ◼   ► but we did get a bunch of feedback about that

00:09:41 ◼   ► from people who had bent keyboards.

00:09:45 ◼   ► And some people actually did say

00:09:46 ◼   ► that as far as they're aware, they got it and it was fine out of the box and they used

00:09:50 ◼   ► it for several months and eventually the middle touches when it didn't used to. And to the

00:09:54 ◼   ► point where it starts to like spin, you know? I don't know if that's from the force of typing

00:09:58 ◼   ► or from like heat or something, but you know, like when if the contact point becomes the

00:10:02 ◼   ► middle and the sides start to lift up and it can sort of start rotating itself, that's

00:10:06 ◼   ► no good.

00:10:07 ◼   ► >> That's super weird. I mean, if it's happening, it's happening, but that's super weird. Finally,

00:10:12 ◼   ► wrote in and pointed out to us that we missed talking about something, but I'm pretty sure

00:10:17 ◼   ► we missed it because it didn't happen until after we recorded.

00:10:20 ◼   ► And that is that the Mac Pro, not the iMac Pro, but the Mac Pro will be quote-unquote

00:10:25 ◼   ► "upgradable."

00:10:26 ◼   ► And so this is from an Apple press release.

00:10:29 ◼   ► It reads, "In addition to the new iMac Pro, Apple is working on a completely redesigned

00:10:32 ◼   ► next generation Mac Pro, architected for pro customers who need the highest performance,

00:10:37 ◼   ► high-throughput system and a modular upgradeable design as well as a new high-end Pro display.

00:10:44 ◼   ► Now this isn't really news, I don't believe, but it is Apple saying one more time, "No,

00:10:50 ◼   ► really everybody, this is a thing, or well, will be a thing, maybe, one day, and it should

00:10:56 ◼   ► hopefully solve a lot of the problems that you guys justify."

00:10:59 ◼   ► Well, I shouldn't say you two, but in general people were complaining about, and that is

00:11:03 ◼   ► upgradeability.

00:11:04 ◼   ► So, Marco, thoughts on that?

00:11:05 ◼   ► - No, I mean, this was pretty much my fault.

00:11:07 ◼   ► Like, we recorded and I had said,

00:11:09 ◼   ► like, you know, be careful to tame your expectations

00:11:12 ◼   ► and upgrade ability because I thought all Apple had said

00:11:15 ◼   ► before that point was that it would be modular,

00:11:17 ◼   ► not necessarily upgradeable.

00:11:20 ◼   ► But then they released this press release

00:11:21 ◼   ► with the iMac Pro, which I think was actually

00:11:23 ◼   ► earlier that day, we just didn't see it,

00:11:25 ◼   ► that says literally, a modular upgradeable design

00:11:28 ◼   ► is coming with the Mac Pro.

00:11:30 ◼   ► - You can bring your pessimism back and say

00:11:32 ◼   ► that just the RAM will be upgradeable.

00:11:33 ◼   ► - There's always room for worry.

00:11:36 ◼   ► - And also, it might be a situation

00:11:39 ◼   ► like what I was just describing with the iMac Pro RAM,

00:11:41 ◼   ► which is like, who can upgrade it?

00:11:43 ◼   ► Is only Apple gonna be able to upgrade it?

00:11:45 ◼   ► Also, what upgrades will work in it?

00:11:48 ◼   ► Will you be able to put in any GPU?

00:11:51 ◼   ► Probably not.

00:11:52 ◼   ► Will you be able to put in any RAM?

00:11:53 ◼   ► Probably not.

00:11:54 ◼   ► Any disk modules?

00:11:55 ◼   ► Probably not.

00:11:57 ◼   ► There's gonna be limits on what you can put in it.

00:12:01 ◼   ► But there always were.

00:12:03 ◼   ► but the limits have increased over time

00:12:05 ◼   ► with the Mac Pro towers and everything.

00:12:07 ◼   ► Also, just technology has moved on.

00:12:09 ◼   ► If you're talking about wanting, for instance,

00:12:12 ◼   ► the old ones were very good about disk expansion,

00:12:15 ◼   ► but that was also before SSDs, really.

00:12:19 ◼   ► The SSD revolution started right at the end

00:12:21 ◼   ► of the Mac Pro tower era, really.

00:12:24 ◼   ► So you could put SSDs into the Mac Pro tower,

00:12:27 ◼   ► but it was not designed for them up front.

00:12:29 ◼   ► It was kind of a hack to get them in there

00:12:31 ◼   ► if they weren't PCI cards,

00:12:32 ◼   ► and even then those were kind of a hack.

00:12:33 ◼   ► Everything was about three and a half inch disks

00:12:35 ◼   ► and optical drives.

00:12:36 ◼   ► And these days if you design that,

00:12:38 ◼   ► you can argue like well, it probably shouldn't include

00:12:41 ◼   ► a three and a half inch disk bay at all

00:12:43 ◼   ► because high end customers probably are not using

00:12:45 ◼   ► a lot of internal three and a half inch disks anymore.

00:12:48 ◼   ► So, you know, a lot has changed since the era

00:12:51 ◼   ► of the upgradeable tower.

00:12:53 ◼   ► And you can even argue for performance reasons.

00:12:57 ◼   ► Like you wouldn't want a whole bunch of like

00:13:00 ◼   ► just serial ATA bays in there,

00:13:03 ◼   ► because high-end SSDs are all using

00:13:06 ◼   ► direct-attached methods now,

00:13:07 ◼   ► like directly attached to the PCI bus,

00:13:09 ◼   ► and things like NVMe and stuff like that.

00:13:11 ◼   ► So there's not a lot of upgradeability

00:13:14 ◼   ► that pro customers who are gonna be buying the Mac Pro

00:13:19 ◼   ► are actually going to want beyond, I think,

00:13:22 ◼   ► RAM disk space, but not necessarily

00:13:25 ◼   ► a large amount, number of physical disks,

00:13:27 ◼   ► And probably the number one is GPU upgrades.

00:13:30 ◼   ► - Ding, ding, ding.

00:13:31 ◼   ► - I don't know whether they're gonna deliver that,

00:13:32 ◼   ► but I think GPU and RAM are the big ones

00:13:35 ◼   ► and disk is kind of a secondary one.

00:13:37 ◼   ► - I think disks they can get away with,

00:13:38 ◼   ► especially if they have a way for you to,

00:13:41 ◼   ► you know, like they can have the super high speed storage,

00:13:43 ◼   ► but then some standard for some slower bulk storage.

00:13:46 ◼   ► But anyway, GPU is the big one.

00:13:47 ◼   ► That's what we were talking about last time.

00:13:48 ◼   ► GPUs keep getting faster because you can make them faster

00:13:51 ◼   ► by just adding more transistors.

00:13:52 ◼   ► You can't do that with CPUs.

00:13:53 ◼   ► You haven't been able to for a decade or more.

00:13:56 ◼   ► And so it's so important to be able to do that,

00:14:00 ◼   ► even if Apple won't, that you can do it.

00:14:03 ◼   ► That's why, we talked about the GPUs last time,

00:14:05 ◼   ► but more people have been sending more links to people

00:14:07 ◼   ► showing how a cruddy old cheese grater

00:14:12 ◼   ► can be the iMac Pro and all sorts of benchmarks.

00:14:14 ◼   ► If you just take a faster GPU and throw it in there,

00:14:16 ◼   ► and this is an ancient cheese grater,

00:14:18 ◼   ► like how do these new GPUs even work in there?

00:14:20 ◼   ► 'Cause it's just PCI express, right?

00:14:23 ◼   ► And it's just a standard card slot.

00:14:25 ◼   ► And how does the old Mac support it?

00:14:27 ◼   ► It supports it because the iMac Pro supports it

00:14:29 ◼   ► and Apple just made generic drivers for it.

00:14:31 ◼   ► And that Apple, that's not an embarrassment for Apple,

00:14:35 ◼   ► but it's like, Apple wants in on that action too.

00:14:38 ◼   ► Hey, we'll make a thing where you can put a new GPU in

00:14:40 ◼   ► and people want that machine because like, you know,

00:14:42 ◼   ► extending the life of the machine, if you buy this,

00:14:44 ◼   ► the super expensive system that is upgradable,

00:14:46 ◼   ► part of what you're paying for,

00:14:47 ◼   ► and we build into the price in some way,

00:14:50 ◼   ► is that this machine can last you a long time

00:14:52 ◼   ► if you're doing GPU intensive work.

00:14:54 ◼   ► After a year or two of use,

00:14:55 ◼   ► don't need to throw the machine out, you can just take the GPU out and put in one that's

00:14:58 ◼   ► way faster for a couple hundred bucks and new life for your machine. That's what we

00:15:03 ◼   ► all want. That's the future of the

00:15:07 ◼   ► Aftershocks bone conduction headphones go to ATP aftershocks.com to learn more

00:15:12 ◼   ► Aftershocks headphones work by bone conduction

00:15:15 ◼   ► This means small transducers rest in front of your ears not inside or around them like most headphones and they send tiny

00:15:21 ◼   ► Vibrations that you can't even feel through your cheekbones directly to your inner ear which bypasses the outside of your ears completely

00:15:28 ◼   ► So unlike every other kind of headphone bone conduction leaves your ears completely open with nothing in them

00:15:35 ◼   ► So for example, this helps in comfort reasons.

00:15:37 ◼   ► If you can't wear earbuds or in-ear monitors without pain,

00:15:41 ◼   ► like I can't, this doesn't have that problem

00:15:43 ◼   ► because there's nothing in your ear.

00:15:45 ◼   ► They're also really great for exercising in hot weather

00:15:48 ◼   ► because there's nothing covering your ear,

00:15:50 ◼   ► so it doesn't get you all sweaty.

00:15:52 ◼   ► And for exercising, it's even better because,

00:15:55 ◼   ► or if it starts raining,

00:15:56 ◼   ► because they are IP55 certified for water resistance.

00:15:59 ◼   ► And the biggest thing about these headphones,

00:16:01 ◼   ► the biggest thing that I think decides

00:16:02 ◼   ► whether they're right for you or not,

00:16:04 ◼   ► is because nothing is blocking your ears at all,

00:16:06 ◼   ► you hear all the sound from the world around you,

00:16:10 ◼   ► including what you're listening to.

00:16:12 ◼   ► So in loud surroundings, this isn't so good,

00:16:14 ◼   ► but they are awesome if you wanna listen to a podcast

00:16:17 ◼   ► or take a phone call while doing something

00:16:19 ◼   ► like walking outside where you really need

00:16:21 ◼   ► to hear the world around you for your own safety.

00:16:24 ◼   ► They're also great for practical reasons,

00:16:26 ◼   ► like if you wanna hear the world around you,

00:16:28 ◼   ► whether it's your home or your office or anything else,

00:16:30 ◼   ► and you wanna hear like if someone knocks on the door,

00:16:32 ◼   ► you wanna know about it,

00:16:33 ◼   ► or say your kid is sleeping upstairs, they wake up,

00:16:35 ◼   ► you wanna know about that.

00:16:36 ◼   ► With AfterSocks, you hear what's in the world around you

00:16:39 ◼   ► as well as what you're listening to.

00:16:41 ◼   ► AfterSocks has two great models that I recommend,

00:16:43 ◼   ► the Trek's Titanium and the Trek's Air.

00:16:46 ◼   ► They're both fantastic, the Air is the newer of the two.

00:16:49 ◼   ► I spent a number of months with each of them

00:16:51 ◼   ► and you really can't go wrong.

00:16:53 ◼   ► The battery life is fantastic on both of them.

00:16:55 ◼   ► They're both very comfortable, very lightweight.

00:16:57 ◼   ► The Air is a little bit better for comfort and weight.

00:17:00 ◼   ► the titanium fits in a pocket better.

00:17:03 ◼   ► So either way you can't go wrong, they're both wonderful.

00:17:07 ◼   ► So check it out today.

00:17:08 ◼   ► Go to ATP.aftershocks.com to get a good deal

00:17:12 ◼   ► on a nice pair of Aftershocks Trek Titanium or Trek's Air.

00:17:16 ◼   ► Once again, ATP.aftershocks.com.

00:17:19 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Aftershocks for sponsoring our show.

00:17:22 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:17:25 ◼   ► - As a final note of follow up, did we order anything?

00:17:28 ◼   ► I will start and say I have not,

00:17:29 ◼   ► which I think I said a moment ago.

00:17:31 ◼   ► I still don't think I will.

00:17:33 ◼   ► Although if I ever see one in an Apple store,

00:17:35 ◼   ► I'm gonna really have some tough thoughts

00:17:37 ◼   ► because I've seen this thing at WWDC and it is pretty.

00:17:41 ◼   ► But it's rare that I do anything on my iMac

00:17:44 ◼   ► that I have today that I feel like is truly

00:17:47 ◼   ► and utterly constrained by something an iMac Pro would fix.

00:17:51 ◼   ► Jon, did you order an iMac Pro?

00:17:52 ◼   ► It's certainly you must have,

00:17:54 ◼   ► since this is the thing you've been waiting for for years,

00:17:56 ◼   ► is it not?

00:17:57 ◼   ► - It took a while for me to figure out

00:17:58 ◼   ► what are you even talking about?

00:17:59 ◼   ► Like, what do you mean, what did we order?

00:18:00 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:18:02 ◼   ► You were never gonna order one,

00:18:03 ◼   ► and I was never gonna order one,

00:18:04 ◼   ► and Marco was always gonna order one,

00:18:06 ◼   ► so no, I didn't buy anything.

00:18:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:18:08 ◼   ► - So Marco, tell us about your configuration,

00:18:10 ◼   ► since we all know you did order one.

00:18:12 ◼   ► - I think I ordered one.

00:18:13 ◼   ► - What?

00:18:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:18:16 ◼   ► - I ordered through the business rep,

00:18:18 ◼   ► but I haven't gotten the order confirmation email,

00:18:20 ◼   ► and my card has not been charged,

00:18:22 ◼   ► and it's been four days.

00:18:23 ◼   ► - Sometimes Marco blacks out when he buys things,

00:18:25 ◼   ► and he just wakes up, and he just boxes it at his front step,

00:18:27 ◼   ► and it's like, it's inexplicable.

00:18:28 ◼   ► - I'm not entirely sure whether my order

00:18:30 ◼   ► has actually been placed or whether it fell on the floor

00:18:32 ◼   ► because that was a very busy day for them or something.

00:18:34 ◼   ► I have to follow up.

00:18:35 ◼   ► - Okay, so if you ordered one, what build,

00:18:38 ◼   ► what are the highlights of what you think you ordered?

00:18:40 ◼   ► - It's like, if I did it. (laughs)

00:18:43 ◼   ► All right, 10 core, to put this in context,

00:18:48 ◼   ► the reason I ordered this computer

00:18:50 ◼   ► is that Tiff wants it in six months

00:18:52 ◼   ► and so she wants me to buy this now

00:18:53 ◼   ► so that way when the Mac Pro comes out,

00:18:55 ◼   ► I upgrade to that and I give her this.

00:18:57 ◼   ► So I basically configured it for TIFF,

00:19:00 ◼   ► which means that I got the really big SSD,

00:19:02 ◼   ► that was the big splurge.

00:19:04 ◼   ► The 10 core, 64 gigs of RAM, not 128,

00:19:08 ◼   ► 'cause I mean my current--

00:19:09 ◼   ► - Wait, what's the really big SSD, the four gig one?

00:19:11 ◼   ► - The four terabyte, yeah.

00:19:13 ◼   ► - Four ter, what does she, for photos and stuff,

00:19:15 ◼   ► what does she got mostly?

00:19:17 ◼   ► - Photos and stuff mostly,

00:19:18 ◼   ► and a couple of video stuff around too,

00:19:20 ◼   ► 'cause like dealing with the photos

00:19:21 ◼   ► and processing them into videos sometimes.

00:19:23 ◼   ► - What does she have,

00:19:24 ◼   ► - Like how much stuff does she have now?

00:19:26 ◼   ► Like does she have more than four terabyte total storage?

00:19:28 ◼   ► Like are you buying her a computer that's like twice as big

00:19:31 ◼   ► as the one she has now in terms of primary storage

00:19:33 ◼   ► or is it about the same size?

00:19:34 ◼   ► - When we bought the 2014s that we have now,

00:19:37 ◼   ► we've maxed it out but at the time that was one terabyte.

00:19:39 ◼   ► So it's one terabyte internal and she's had this

00:19:42 ◼   ► four terabyte external Thunderbolt RAID array

00:19:46 ◼   ► that literally is four one terabyte SSDs in RAID 0.

00:19:50 ◼   ► Don't worry, it's very much backed up to various places

00:19:52 ◼   ► But that is now, that's now been operating constantly

00:19:56 ◼   ► for three years in this little enclosure

00:19:57 ◼   ► with this dumb little fan.

00:19:58 ◼   ► I don't know how long it's gonna last.

00:20:00 ◼   ► I'd rather not depend on it for too much longer.

00:20:02 ◼   ► If any of those go bad, the last thing I'm gonna wanna do

00:20:05 ◼   ► is buy a new one terabyte SSD in 2017.

00:20:08 ◼   ► So kind of preparing for that to go away.

00:20:12 ◼   ► Also, I just hate having another box and fan

00:20:14 ◼   ► and this hot thing.

00:20:15 ◼   ► All the Thunderbolt stuff runs really hot.

00:20:17 ◼   ► Like all the controller chips that are in the devices,

00:20:19 ◼   ► they run like red hot.

00:20:21 ◼   ► That's why it needs this giant fan.

00:20:22 ◼   ► and it's not for the SSDs.

00:20:23 ◼   ► Yeah, basically replacing that, simplifying her setup,

00:20:26 ◼   ► and making it better, so that's why I did that.

00:20:29 ◼   ► And again, it was also kind of a phrase,

00:20:31 ◼   ► I'm like, you know, I can probably never upgrade these,

00:20:34 ◼   ► or at least I won't want to upgrade them,

00:20:36 ◼   ► because whatever will be involved

00:20:37 ◼   ► and whatever it will cost will probably be crazy.

00:20:40 ◼   ► So, yeah, four terabyte, but, and that was a lot of money.

00:20:44 ◼   ► I'm not gonna try to candy-coat that, that was ridiculous.

00:20:47 ◼   ► But, you know, the rest, kind of,

00:20:50 ◼   ► a down-the-middle configuration.

00:20:51 ◼   ► the low end GPU, the middle RAM amount,

00:20:54 ◼   ► and the middle CPU, I guess.

00:20:57 ◼   ► - How did TIFF approve the low end GPU?

00:21:00 ◼   ► - Oh, interesting question.

00:21:02 ◼   ► - So if you do the research on the 56 versus the 64,

00:21:05 ◼   ► it's not that different.

00:21:07 ◼   ► And it seems like for what we do,

00:21:11 ◼   ► I don't think anything we do,

00:21:13 ◼   ► you would notice the difference at all.

00:21:15 ◼   ► Because things like Photoshop and Lightroom,

00:21:18 ◼   ► They do use the GPU, but not for a huge amount of stuff,

00:21:23 ◼   ► and they don't use it very hard

00:21:24 ◼   ► in the way that we use these apps.

00:21:25 ◼   ► Additionally, you're probably thinking, what about gaming?

00:21:28 ◼   ► But even for, like, for A, most games she plays

00:21:31 ◼   ► are not on the computer.

00:21:33 ◼   ► B, it's still gonna be a massive upgrade from what we have.

00:21:37 ◼   ► And C, I don't think the gaming performance difference

00:21:40 ◼   ► is gonna be that big between those two.

00:21:42 ◼   ► - I'll say.

00:21:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm surprised.

00:21:44 ◼   ► So, anxious to hear about this if and when it comes in,

00:21:49 ◼   ► if and when you even ordered it,

00:21:51 ◼   ► whether or not that was a fever dream, we'll see.

00:21:53 ◼   ► - If I haven't ordered it, do you want me to make any edits

00:21:55 ◼   ► when I resubmit the order?

00:21:57 ◼   ► - Actually, I think Jon does.

00:21:58 ◼   ► It sounds reasonable to me.

00:21:59 ◼   ► - I would get a big GPU, 'cause it's not that much more,

00:22:02 ◼   ► right, it's like a couple hundred bucks more?

00:22:03 ◼   ► - I think it's like 600 more.

00:22:05 ◼   ► - 600 more, that's steep.

00:22:06 ◼   ► - I elected to spend most of the craziness on the disk,

00:22:10 ◼   ► because that's, we'll actually use that.

00:22:13 ◼   ► That's doing the thing where when you're buying a car and it's so expensive that $150 for

00:22:17 ◼   ► floor mats seems like nothing and you forget that $150 is the same size whether you compare

00:22:21 ◼   ► it to 30 grand or you compare it to 10 bucks.

00:22:24 ◼   ► It's always 150.

00:22:25 ◼   ► It doesn't change size, but you feel like it does.

00:22:27 ◼   ► So I could use that to persuade you.

00:22:30 ◼   ► Given how much you paid for the SSD, $600 for a better GPU is nothing.

00:22:34 ◼   ► It's like floor mats.

00:22:36 ◼   ► You're not wrong.

00:22:38 ◼   ► You're not wrong.

00:22:39 ◼   ► $600 is way too much for the GPU speed upgrade,

00:22:42 ◼   ► but what you paid for the four terabyte

00:22:44 ◼   ► is also way too much.

00:22:44 ◼   ► So, you know, I don't know where to go from here.

00:22:46 ◼   ► Anyway, talk to Tiff, see what you think.

00:22:47 ◼   ► - I agree.

00:22:49 ◼   ► - All right, shall we do some Ask ATP?

00:22:50 ◼   ► - Let's do it.

00:22:52 ◼   ► - So I try to discourage emailed submissions

00:22:55 ◼   ► because that encourages a lack of brevity.

00:22:58 ◼   ► However, every once in a while,

00:23:00 ◼   ► one sneaks through that I really like.

00:23:02 ◼   ► And you added this to the show notes

00:23:04 ◼   ► only because you beat me to it.

00:23:05 ◼   ► And this is J.D. Lewin writes,

00:23:08 ◼   ► I'm looking to dip my toe into the "high quality" Headphone Plus DAC digital analog converter

00:23:14 ◼   ► market, which led me to read some of Marco's older blog posts.

00:23:17 ◼   ► At the moment, the Beyerdynamic DT880s, which I'm pretty sure is what I have on my head

00:23:21 ◼   ► right now, can be had for under $200, and a $200 Fula?

00:23:28 ◼   ► I don't even know how to pronounce it.

00:23:30 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Two for $90.

00:23:32 ◼   ► This seems to be an affordable way into dangerous waters.

00:23:35 ◼   ► My question is about source material.

00:23:37 ◼   ► Will this setup be wasted on the AAC files

00:23:40 ◼   ► delivered through Apple Music, Spotify, et cetera?

00:23:42 ◼   ► So Marco, take it away.

00:23:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, so to answer the actual question

00:23:47 ◼   ► of whether decent headphones will be wasted

00:23:50 ◼   ► on playing AAC files from Apple Music and Spotify,

00:23:53 ◼   ► no, definitely not.

00:23:55 ◼   ► There is a point where some people claim

00:23:58 ◼   ► that they can hear differences between AAC/MP3/

00:24:03 ◼   ► other lossy compressed formats and lossless music.

00:24:06 ◼   ► (beep)

00:24:07 ◼   ► Excuse me.

00:24:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, see also high sample rates higher than 44.1,

00:24:12 ◼   ► you know, bit rates above 24 bit, et cetera.

00:24:16 ◼   ► We talked about this before, but you know,

00:24:18 ◼   ► basically I'm not a believer in that being noticeable

00:24:21 ◼   ► by most people.

00:24:23 ◼   ► I'm not sure if it's noticeable by any people,

00:24:26 ◼   ► but at least the few blind tests that have been done

00:24:30 ◼   ► seem to support that it really is not noticeable

00:24:33 ◼   ► by almost anybody.

00:24:35 ◼   ► So, whereas the difference in headphones or speakers,

00:24:39 ◼   ► like the difference in the actual transducers

00:24:42 ◼   ► that are producing the music for you,

00:24:44 ◼   ► that can be huge differences in very noticeable ways.

00:24:48 ◼   ► So, when you're looking for places to spend money

00:24:51 ◼   ► if you want to get a good upgrade,

00:24:53 ◼   ► a good bang for your buck,

00:24:55 ◼   ► spend that money on the headphones or the speakers

00:24:57 ◼   ► and not on the amps and the DACs

00:25:00 ◼   ► and the fancy source material

00:25:01 ◼   ► and the high bit rate everything.

00:25:03 ◼   ► you will notice the headphones.

00:25:05 ◼   ► You will not notice the DAC,

00:25:07 ◼   ► and you will not notice the source material

00:25:10 ◼   ► being good or bad,

00:25:12 ◼   ► because unless it's encoded at very low bit rates,

00:25:14 ◼   ► like a 128K MP3 or about the same AAC,

00:25:18 ◼   ► as long as it's higher than that, basically,

00:25:19 ◼   ► you're probably not gonna notice it.

00:25:21 ◼   ► And all the services now,

00:25:22 ◼   ► they all offer high quality streaming

00:25:25 ◼   ► if you have enough bandwidth that is high enough

00:25:27 ◼   ► that you're not gonna notice it.

00:25:28 ◼   ► So don't worry about that.

00:25:30 ◼   ► On the headphone topic itself,

00:25:33 ◼   ► the Beyerdynamic DT880 is a very old headphone,

00:25:37 ◼   ► but still a very, very good one.

00:25:39 ◼   ► And if it can be had for under 200 bucks,

00:25:41 ◼   ► that's a great deal.

00:25:42 ◼   ► There's a huge headphone revolution happening

00:25:44 ◼   ► over the last few years.

00:25:45 ◼   ► Lots and lots of amazing headphones are coming out.

00:25:47 ◼   ► And a lot of formerly, fairly premium ones

00:25:50 ◼   ► are being pushed downmarket.

00:25:52 ◼   ► That is one of them.

00:25:53 ◼   ► I highly suggest, if you are a fan of treble in music,

00:25:58 ◼   ► and if you like the kind of crispness

00:26:01 ◼   ► that turning up the treble a little bit

00:26:02 ◼   ► offers you in music, if it doesn't sound harsh to you,

00:26:06 ◼   ► Bear Dynamic is a great company to look at.

00:26:09 ◼   ► Their headphones tend to be a little treble heavy,

00:26:11 ◼   ► but if you like that, they are wonderful.

00:26:14 ◼   ► They are also incredibly comfortable.

00:26:17 ◼   ► The downside is that the 880, like almost any good

00:26:20 ◼   ► and especially good and expensive headphone,

00:26:23 ◼   ► has an open back to the ear cups.

00:26:25 ◼   ► So that means, if you've never used this before,

00:26:27 ◼   ► you're basically, the drivers are kind of suspended

00:26:30 ◼   ► in open air, the backs of the headphones

00:26:33 ◼   ► are just like screens, they're not solid material.

00:26:36 ◼   ► And so, an annoying, tinny version

00:26:39 ◼   ► of what you are listening to plays out

00:26:41 ◼   ► to the room around you, and they don't isolate you

00:26:44 ◼   ► very well from outside sounds.

00:26:46 ◼   ► So, this is really a terrible setup.

00:26:50 ◼   ► It's a terrible thing to use open headphones

00:26:52 ◼   ► if you are in either a loud environment,

00:26:54 ◼   ► like walking around a city, or if you are sharing

00:26:58 ◼   ► an office with anybody because your music will be really

00:27:01 ◼   ► annoyingly tinny and weird sounding to anyone else

00:27:04 ◼   ► in the office.

00:27:04 ◼   ► They will hate you if you play headphones in that way.

00:27:06 ◼   ► But if you have your own quiet space where there's not

00:27:09 ◼   ► other people around to annoy, open headphones are by far

00:27:13 ◼   ► the best sound you can get for the money.

00:27:16 ◼   ► It's not even close.

00:27:18 ◼   ► And there's basically three points that you need to know

00:27:20 ◼   ► about in this market.

00:27:22 ◼   ► On the very low end, you have the Grado SR60.

00:27:24 ◼   ► Sounds amazing, costs like 60 or 70 bucks,

00:27:27 ◼   ► but it's pretty uncomfortable.

00:27:29 ◼   ► Then you have the Beyerdynamic DT880,

00:27:32 ◼   ► which is the one that JD's asking about here.

00:27:35 ◼   ► They are great, TIFF uses a pair at her desk still,

00:27:37 ◼   ► they're wonderful, around 200 bucks.

00:27:40 ◼   ► Very, very comfortable, everything about them is great

00:27:42 ◼   ► except they have that open back,

00:27:43 ◼   ► which is impractical in certain contexts.

00:27:46 ◼   ► And then also, if you don't like very strong treble,

00:27:49 ◼   ► you won't like either of those options,

00:27:50 ◼   ► if you like a more, what they call, laid back sound,

00:27:53 ◼   ► where they kinda like roll off the treble,

00:27:55 ◼   ► It's very much like, younger people tend to like this

00:27:58 ◼   ► a little bit more because it kind of goes into like the

00:28:00 ◼   ► soft is loud musical aesthetic that has been taken over

00:28:03 ◼   ► recently in like emo music and stuff and whatever else

00:28:06 ◼   ► that I'm probably mangling the terminology for.

00:28:08 ◼   ► If you like that, if you don't like a lot of treble

00:28:10 ◼   ► and you like it to be very soft and like, you know,

00:28:13 ◼   ► gentle on your ears, the Sennheiser HD 650

00:28:18 ◼   ► used to be $600 and in recent years they've done a bunch

00:28:23 ◼   ► like special things, where they're cutting the price

00:28:25 ◼   ► at that, or they're doing special editions with Massdrop,

00:28:28 ◼   ► but it's still basically the HD 650.

00:28:31 ◼   ► That is an amazing headphone.

00:28:33 ◼   ► It's old and it looks kind of weird,

00:28:35 ◼   ► but it has like speckled plastic.

00:28:36 ◼   ► It's a very ugly thing, but it's like,

00:28:38 ◼   ► it's an amazing sounding headphone

00:28:40 ◼   ► if you can get it for below 300 bucks.

00:28:42 ◼   ► And if you don't like that strong treble

00:28:44 ◼   ► that the Bear Dynamic will give you.

00:28:46 ◼   ► So basically, those are my recommendations.

00:28:47 ◼   ► Ignore the source material quality,

00:28:49 ◼   ► just get whatever you get, don't be upset,

00:28:50 ◼   ► it's wonderful, it'll be good enough.

00:28:52 ◼   ► And if you wanna spend 60 bucks and you like Treble

00:28:56 ◼   ► and you don't like Comfort, get the Grado SR60.

00:28:58 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:28:59 ◼   ► If you want Comfort and still like Treble, the DT880.

00:29:04 ◼   ► And if you don't like Treble and you can spend

00:29:08 ◼   ► like 300 bucks-ish range, the Sennheiser HD650.

00:29:12 ◼   ► And on the DAC side, all of those can be driven

00:29:16 ◼   ► perfectly fine from the headphone jack

00:29:19 ◼   ► in any Mac desktop or laptop.

00:29:22 ◼   ► The phone, you won't get a lot of volume out of

00:29:24 ◼   ► if you try to push it too high,

00:29:25 ◼   ► but you don't need an external DAC

00:29:28 ◼   ► for any of those headphones.

00:29:30 ◼   ► You might get a little bit better performance and volume

00:29:32 ◼   ► and maybe at the highest volume,

00:29:33 ◼   ► maybe a little bit better base,

00:29:36 ◼   ► especially the HD 650 is the least efficient

00:29:38 ◼   ► of all those that I just mentioned,

00:29:39 ◼   ► so that's the one that most would need one,

00:29:42 ◼   ► but you're pretty much fine without that.

00:29:45 ◼   ► Like if you just wanna start,

00:29:46 ◼   ► just get a really nice pair of headphones

00:29:48 ◼   ► that can work with the built-in headphone jack in your Mac,

00:29:50 ◼   ► which almost everything can.

00:29:53 ◼   ► - You know, I'd just like to say,

00:29:55 ◼   ► I agree with pretty much everything you said.

00:29:56 ◼   ► I don't know about specific recommendations of headphones.

00:29:59 ◼   ► I haven't bought headphones in a long time

00:30:00 ◼   ► outside of my AirPods, but I wanted to,

00:30:03 ◼   ► and I think I've done this every time you brought it up,

00:30:05 ◼   ► I wanted to concur with you about open headphones.

00:30:08 ◼   ► I have an ancient pair of Sennheisers.

00:30:10 ◼   ► I don't even remember what model they are.

00:30:12 ◼   ► They're so damn ancient.

00:30:13 ◼   ► - I think they're a 598 maybe?

00:30:14 ◼   ► - Something like that.

00:30:15 ◼   ► I mean, they're like easily 10 years old at this point,

00:30:18 ◼   ► and I can dig up what they are.

00:30:20 ◼   ► doesn't really matter. But suffice it to say I have an ancient pair of Sennheiser

00:30:23 ◼   ► open-air headphones and they are phenomenal. They are truly, truly great. It

00:30:31 ◼   ► is terrible to be within 30 feet of me when I'm listening to them, but they are really,

00:30:36 ◼   ► really good. And I also wanted to agree with you about the quality of the source

00:30:41 ◼   ► material. You can go flack if you want, if you want to be one of those kind

00:30:46 ◼   ► of nerds, but again, Marco was absolutely right that the best thing to do is change

00:30:51 ◼   ► your headphones. I will, however, say if you can stand in your earbuds, earphones, whatever

00:30:59 ◼   ► the fancy version is. Thank you. Well, not even the custom mold ones. I'm just talking

00:31:03 ◼   ► about like a really, really fancy pair of in-ear headphones. I think they're a lot more

00:31:08 ◼   ► finicky. I don't think they're really worth it, but I have a really fancy pair of now

00:31:14 ◼   ► very discontinued Ultimate Ears in-ear headphone things.

00:31:19 ◼   ► And they are, when they're seated properly, they're the best headphones I have.

00:31:25 ◼   ► But to be fair, to get them seated 100% properly is a real pain in the butt.

00:31:29 ◼   ► So I still think Marco's right that doing something, a traditional headphone, preferably

00:31:33 ◼   ► open air, is a better choice.

00:31:35 ◼   ► But if you have ears that are conducive to in-ear things, or are willing to spend the

00:31:41 ◼   ► money to get your ears poured and get custom molds made to get IEMs like Marco just brought

00:31:46 ◼   ► up. That is probably the money no object, effort no object, best and most effective

00:31:52 ◼   ► way to get good headphones in my personal opinion. But a lot of people don't really

00:31:56 ◼   ► agree with that. Hello Marco. And other people don't want to spend that money and don't want

00:32:01 ◼   ► to be bothered. Hello both of us. So it's not the best answer unless you're really,

00:32:07 ◼   ► really going deep into this world, but it's worth at least mentioning.

00:32:12 ◼   ► All right, Jeremy Nachman writes, "I've never had much interest in cars personally, but

00:32:17 ◼   ► I have a nine-year-old who seems to have an interest.

00:32:19 ◼   ► Do you have any car magazine recommendations that kids would enjoy?

00:32:21 ◼   ► It doesn't necessarily need to be one targeting a kid's audience."

00:32:26 ◼   ► When I was growing up and I was about this age, I used to love reading Car and Driver,

00:32:29 ◼   ► and I don't pay attention to print magazines very much anymore, and I know, John, you do,

00:32:33 ◼   ► so I'm going to turn it over to you in a second.

00:32:34 ◼   ► But last I saw, Car and Driver was still pretty good, Motor Trend was okay.

00:32:39 ◼   ► You can also get a lot of really good stuff on YouTube, and that's not even like me trying

00:32:43 ◼   ► to plug myself.

00:32:44 ◼   ► Although, hey, KC on Cars is a new series you might want to look at, so here I am plugging

00:32:47 ◼   ► myself.

00:32:48 ◼   ► But no, the Motor Trend stuff that's on YouTube is actually very, very good and very digestible,

00:32:53 ◼   ► and not too bro-y, generally speaking.

00:32:56 ◼   ► There's plenty of car stuff on YouTube that is very bro-y, and I wouldn't necessarily

00:32:59 ◼   ► recommend for a nine-year-old, but the Motor Trend stuff is good in terms of magazines,

00:33:04 ◼   ► Car and Driver.

00:33:05 ◼   ► Jon, additional thoughts?

00:33:06 ◼   ► Yeah, the kid angle on this is what makes it difficult because I still watch a lot of

00:33:11 ◼   ► car stuff on YouTube and I have in the past subscribed to I think every car, every straight

00:33:18 ◼   ► car magazine, not like truck magazines or hot rod magazines or more specialty type of

00:33:23 ◼   ► stuff which may be what you could end up getting into.

00:33:27 ◼   ► But for Car and Magazines, Car and Driver is still my gold standard.

00:33:32 ◼   ► But the reason I have trouble recommending this for a kid is because, like when you think

00:33:37 ◼   ► of car magazines, like in the worst case scenario you're thinking of like some hot rotted magazine

00:33:43 ◼   ► where every single month there's a girl in a bikini sitting on the roof of a car and

00:33:47 ◼   ► you're like, "Oh, I'm not going to buy those for my kids because that's, you know, I don't

00:33:49 ◼   ► want to spread that kind of message about how this stuff works."

00:33:53 ◼   ► But here's the problem with Even Car and Driver, which I think has some of the best car riding

00:33:58 ◼   ► and has for many years now.

00:34:00 ◼   ► It is relentlessly, unconsciously sexist.

00:34:04 ◼   ► Like it is in every pore of that magazine and you think, "Well, there's no girls in

00:34:09 ◼   ► bikinis on the cover."

00:34:10 ◼   ► Like it's fine, right?

00:34:11 ◼   ► It's not though.

00:34:12 ◼   ► Like every article is written assuming that the person reading it is a man.

00:34:16 ◼   ► Like every joke, every gag, every cover image, every like so much so that they don't even

00:34:21 ◼   ► know they're doing it.

00:34:22 ◼   ► They don't even think that there could possibly be another joke.

00:34:24 ◼   ► They don't make any attempt like and then there's some right wing politics that's thrown

00:34:29 ◼   ► there but I think that's less harmful because it's mixed up with everything else.

00:34:32 ◼   ► So I have trouble recommending that young people start their life in cars reading a

00:34:39 ◼   ► magazine that assumes the only people who ever be into cars are men because that's not

00:34:43 ◼   ► healthy for anybody involved.

00:34:45 ◼   ► So I would say that YouTube has a higher chance of being sort of more welcoming.

00:34:51 ◼   ► At least the YouTube channels I've seen, there are many things to not recommend them and

00:34:54 ◼   ► And there are, of course, YouTube channels with terrible, bro-y people saying terrible,

00:35:00 ◼   ► bro-y things.

00:35:01 ◼   ► What else is new?

00:35:02 ◼   ► It's the internet.

00:35:03 ◼   ► But A, I think kids are more likely to get into that than paper magazines, which, come

00:35:09 ◼   ► on, who reads those?

00:35:10 ◼   ► And B, I think you might have a better chance of steering your kid towards a more inclusive

00:35:21 ◼   ► YouTube channel.

00:35:22 ◼   ► Because honestly, I don't know of any magazines that aren't.

00:35:24 ◼   ► In fact, the car and driver is probably the best one.

00:35:26 ◼   ► Automobiles is fairly good too, but just all those car magazines just assume you are a

00:35:33 ◼   ► guy reading a car magazine.

00:35:35 ◼   ► And half the time they don't even know they're assuming it.

00:35:38 ◼   ► It's not a good look and it's not something that I would recommend a young person get

00:35:42 ◼   ► into because why perpetuate that?

00:35:45 ◼   ► Let me just put out a call that if you are listening to this and you know of a YouTube

00:35:50 ◼   ► channel hosted by a woman that's really good that's about cars or Noah, an author that's

00:35:55 ◼   ► either a blogger or a particular author to look at any of these car magazines that's

00:35:59 ◼   ► a woman.

00:36:00 ◼   ► I would love to know that because I certainly only hear dudes of various bro-iness talking

00:36:04 ◼   ► about cars.

00:36:05 ◼   ► I'd love to hear a different perspective on that.

00:36:07 ◼   ► So maybe not even a woman, just a different perspective.

00:36:09 ◼   ► I mean, define that however you'd like, but I'd love to hear it.

00:36:13 ◼   ► So feel free to tweet at me and let me know.

00:36:15 ◼   ► And by the way, Jeremy didn't say whether his kid was girl or boy, and I don't think

00:36:19 ◼   ► it matters. Like, you shouldn't... if your kid is like a little boy who's super into

00:36:23 ◼   ► cars, he shouldn't be reading a magazine that assumes everybody who's reading it is a dude

00:36:28 ◼   ► either. Like, that's... it has nothing to do with the gender of the child or anything

00:36:31 ◼   ► like that. It's just... like, what I'm getting at is print is old, and it is mostly dominated

00:36:36 ◼   ► by old people with old opinions. And even as new writers have come in, and I think I

00:36:39 ◼   ► made a tweet a couple years ago to the effect that you could see the changeover on the writing

00:36:43 ◼   ► staff of Car and Driver when they started making jokes in the captions or their images.

00:36:47 ◼   ► They reference things like Star Trek, where you wouldn't have seen that when like Brock

00:36:50 ◼   ► Yates was still writing or whatever.

00:36:52 ◼   ► Like there is a changing of the guard, but it's still the boys' club, and there's no

00:36:57 ◼   ► reason it should be.

00:36:58 ◼   ► There's nothing gendered about cars, right?

00:37:00 ◼   ► So that's disappointing.

00:37:02 ◼   ► And YouTube, I feel like, is slightly better.

00:37:04 ◼   ► It's also worse.

00:37:05 ◼   ► Like, you know, the equivalent of the bikini girls on the hoods, those YouTube channels

00:37:09 ◼   ► totally exist too, right?

00:37:10 ◼   ► So you know, the internet is a big place, so be careful.

00:37:14 ◼   ► All right, and finally from Jeff Isu, "ECC RAM seems to make sense for high-stakes contacts

00:37:21 ◼   ► like finance, space, like space travel, etc.

00:37:24 ◼   ► What practical effects do you expect it to have on a Mac?

00:37:28 ◼   ► Have you ever noticed a flip bit on your machine?

00:37:31 ◼   ► Do you just find it cool as a nerd and/or want it for peace of mind?"

00:37:35 ◼   ► So Jon, can you kind of do a recap for us on what ECC RAM is, why this is relevant now,

00:37:40 ◼   ► and then answer the question for us?

00:37:42 ◼   ► - I think we did that on a couple past shows.

00:37:44 ◼   ► We had debates about how important this is.

00:37:45 ◼   ► So ECC is for error correcting,

00:37:48 ◼   ► where if they're, you know,

00:37:49 ◼   ► they send the information from RAM,

00:37:51 ◼   ► but they also have a bit to check

00:37:52 ◼   ► whether the information you're getting

00:37:53 ◼   ► is accurately represented.

00:37:54 ◼   ► You think it was like a parody bit or whatever,

00:37:55 ◼   ► but I think it's more complicated than that these days.

00:37:57 ◼   ► But anyway, usually they have the bit to recover,

00:38:01 ◼   ► the ability to recover from small errors,

00:38:02 ◼   ► like a one bit error.

00:38:03 ◼   ► They can correct that on the fly

00:38:05 ◼   ► because they know which bit is off

00:38:07 ◼   ► and what it should be instead.

00:38:08 ◼   ► And so it was, you know,

00:38:10 ◼   ► what would have been some bad data coming out of RAM

00:38:13 ◼   ► gets corrected to the right data.

00:38:14 ◼   ► Why would bad data come out of RAM?

00:38:17 ◼   ► That's the question about ECC RAM.

00:38:18 ◼   ► What errors are you correcting?

00:38:20 ◼   ► Who cares if you have error correcting ability

00:38:22 ◼   ► in your RAM chips?

00:38:23 ◼   ► RAM chips don't make any errors,

00:38:25 ◼   ► they're solid state components.

00:38:26 ◼   ► Everything is perfect about them, right?

00:38:28 ◼   ► Unfortunately, everything in the world of digital

00:38:30 ◼   ► is under the covers analog

00:38:32 ◼   ► until you get down to the quantum level,

00:38:33 ◼   ► but we're not gonna get into that.

00:38:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:38:36 ◼   ► So-- - You gotta have limits

00:38:37 ◼   ► somewhere.

00:38:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, so the question is,

00:38:39 ◼   ► how often these errors come up.

00:38:41 ◼   ► And the last time we talked about this,

00:38:42 ◼   ► we cited a bunch of studies.

00:38:43 ◼   ► We'll put two links into the show notes

00:38:45 ◼   ► about two semi-recent ones.

00:38:47 ◼   ► One of them was a 2009 study

00:38:49 ◼   ► that was supposedly saying that the error rates in RAM

00:38:53 ◼   ► are much higher than had previously been measured.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Something like 25 to 70,000 errors

00:39:01 ◼   ► per billion device hours per megabit,

00:39:04 ◼   ► with errors on more than 8% of DIMMs.

00:39:06 ◼   ► And there's an IBM study in the '90s

00:39:09 ◼   ► looking at like the causes of this,

00:39:11 ◼   ► like radiation from space, essentially,

00:39:14 ◼   ► flipping your bits, assuming you're not in something

00:39:16 ◼   ► that is shielded from cosmic rays,

00:39:19 ◼   ► producing one error per 256 megabytes of RAM per month.

00:39:24 ◼   ► And you can sell it from the '90s

00:39:27 ◼   ► 'cause it's talking about 200,

00:39:28 ◼   ► so one error per 256 megabytes of RAM per month,

00:39:31 ◼   ► that's not a small number if we have four gigs of RAM,

00:39:33 ◼   ► right, or 16 gigs or whatever you have.

00:39:37 ◼   ► Errors happen.

00:39:38 ◼   ► Now the question is, alright, so who cares if a bit is flipped?

00:39:41 ◼   ► What do that manifest in some way?

00:39:43 ◼   ► If you got unlucky, you could take your whole computer down.

00:39:46 ◼   ► But chances are good, nothing will happen because that bit didn't matter.

00:39:50 ◼   ► Like there are so many bits that just don't matter.

00:39:52 ◼   ► Not even that it gets corrupted and ends up in the file system, maybe that bit just didn't

00:39:55 ◼   ► matter at all.

00:39:56 ◼   ► Or you know, it changed something, it changed the color of a pixel in a way that you couldn't

00:40:03 ◼   ► detect or it just ended up in some garbage data at the end of some buffer that never

00:40:10 ◼   ► got reached.

00:40:11 ◼   ► Maybe it just doesn't matter.

00:40:12 ◼   ► It came out of RAM and it got overwritten with something else.

00:40:14 ◼   ► But every once in a while it does matter.

00:40:15 ◼   ► And the reason people use ECC is because they think that for the small incremental cost

00:40:20 ◼   ► of having ECC RAM, maybe it saves you from, for computers that run a really long time

00:40:25 ◼   ► and uptime is important and correctness is important.

00:40:29 ◼   ► is the best we have to get a little bit more safety for not that much more cost and that's

00:40:36 ◼   ► why servers use it and that's why fancy high-end desktops with server hardware use it.

00:40:42 ◼   ► And I think a lot of it for nerds like us is like, "Well, it doesn't cost that much

00:40:45 ◼   ► more and it makes it slightly more reliable, so let's do it."

00:40:50 ◼   ► But you know, it's not like a light comes on when it tells you it just saved you from

00:40:54 ◼   ► something because kind of like the big sky theory in aviation the big ram

00:40:58 ◼   ► theory is the chances of one of those bit flips actually affecting something

00:41:03 ◼   ► you do in a way that you noticed is actually pretty low but it just you know

00:41:07 ◼   ► it does make us feel better so the answer is no there's no reason basically

00:41:10 ◼   ► no I mean the reason is that it does improve things and it doesn't cost that

00:41:14 ◼   ► much more if it was seven times the cost it would be ridiculous but it's just a

00:41:18 ◼   ► little bit more and so you're like yeah why not why not do that for a little bit

00:41:22 ◼   ► - Also, and this could just be terrible

00:41:26 ◼   ► anecdotal data, you know, but just anecdotally,

00:41:28 ◼   ► my Mac Pros have been the most stable,

00:41:32 ◼   ► solid machines I've owned.

00:41:33 ◼   ► And I've gone, I've used laptops full time,

00:41:36 ◼   ► I've used an iMac full time,

00:41:38 ◼   ► and I've used Mac Pros full time.

00:41:39 ◼   ► And it's very, very different.

00:41:41 ◼   ► The Mac Pros were always the most stable machines by far.

00:41:45 ◼   ► - You didn't keep the trash cans long enough

00:41:46 ◼   ► for your GPUs to overheat, so.

00:41:48 ◼   ► - I didn't use GPUs heavily enough.

00:41:50 ◼   ► During the eight or nine months I had one,

00:41:53 ◼   ► it was rock solid.

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00:44:02 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:44:04 ◼   ► - I have questions about the iMac Pro/Mac Pro.

00:44:09 ◼   ► As someone who used to know the ins and outs

00:44:12 ◼   ► of what the current processors were in GPUs

00:44:14 ◼   ► and things of that nature like 20 years ago

00:44:16 ◼   ► I was building my own PCs, I have not kept up in a long time.

00:44:21 ◼   ► And it seems like, and I might even get this backwards, so jump in and correct me, but

00:44:26 ◼   ► it seems like everyone is really perturbed that the iMac Pro is only coming with an AMD

00:44:32 ◼   ► graphics card.

00:44:33 ◼   ► And apparently it's like Nvidia or Bust in the graphics card department.

00:44:38 ◼   ► Can one of you guys explain to me, like, A, do I even have that right?

00:44:42 ◼   ► B, why?

00:44:43 ◼   ► And C, then why isn't Apple offering NVIDIA cards and why are they so committed to AMD?

00:44:51 ◼   ► Or at least what's your best guess, if nothing else?

00:44:54 ◼   ► Jon, do you want to kind of talk me through this?

00:44:57 ◼   ► The NVIDIA thing, we talked about this before, about who at various times in our life using

00:45:03 ◼   ► computers has been the GPU performance king, you know, like starting from I guess the Voodoo

00:45:08 ◼   ► 3D days.

00:45:09 ◼   ► Ah, I remember those days.

00:45:10 ◼   ► Those were good days.

00:45:11 ◼   ► Those were good days.

00:45:13 ◼   ► 3D effects and you know, anyway.

00:45:15 ◼   ► Did you, did the Mac, I think we've talked about this

00:45:17 ◼   ► months and months and months ago,

00:45:18 ◼   ► but did the Mac ever have the thing

00:45:20 ◼   ► where you had the little stubby VGA cable

00:45:22 ◼   ► to connect the 2D card to the 3D card?

00:45:24 ◼   ► Do you know what I'm talking about?

00:45:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I was pretty sure it did not ever

00:45:27 ◼   ► have anything like that.

00:45:28 ◼   ► No, the Mac never had gaming or VGA.

00:45:31 ◼   ► It did have VGA, there were Macs that had VGA.

00:45:33 ◼   ► You know exactly what I'm talking about though,

00:45:35 ◼   ► don't you Marco, like you had one of these.

00:45:36 ◼   ► Yeah, it would connect to your 3D effects accelerator card.

00:45:39 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:45:40 ◼   ► Yep.

00:45:41 ◼   ► those were the days. Sorry, anyway, John, carry on, please.

00:45:43 ◼   ► >> John

00:46:02 ◼   ► Arkady. Anyway, at various points, Nvidia had the fastest meaning like basically for games, like who

00:46:07 ◼   ► can run insert hot 3D game here the fastest. Sometimes it was Nvidia, sometimes it was AMD.

00:46:14 ◼   ► If you looked at the swings, it seems that in the most recent years Nvidia has been on top more,

00:46:23 ◼   ► but it really depends on the specific application. But for right now, Nvidia is on top in a lot of

00:46:30 ◼   ► markets. In games, I think they're on top because they make a lot of cards that make sacrifices in

00:46:37 ◼   ► precision for the purposes of performance. And very often, ATI, which is now AMD, would tell you,

00:46:42 ◼   ► "Yeah, that's fine, but if you want to do real serious work with a program that requires higher

00:46:47 ◼   ► precision, that AMD is better," or whatever. But also because Nvidia and AMD have chosen different

00:46:53 ◼   ► platforms for compute on GPUs and NVIDIA's one that they're what is there's CUDA, CUDA, CUDA, yeah

00:47:01 ◼   ► is right now more popular and so we had someone actually write into us about this. This is Daniel

00:47:07 ◼   ► who said in addition to NVIDIA being faster there's lots of software now that uses GPU

00:47:11 ◼   ► acceleration but only NVIDIA so their application software written it's accelerated for GPUs but

00:47:18 ◼   ► literally only accelerated by NVIDIA GPUs. The example gives us Redshift and Maya and 3D new

00:47:23 ◼   ► new plugins for Nuke like Eddy and GoGhost on the 2D side.

00:47:27 ◼   ► So part of it is like just market success

00:47:30 ◼   ► that Nvidia was able to convince software makers

00:47:32 ◼   ► of these big expensive pro applications

00:47:34 ◼   ► to write their software to only be accelerated

00:47:37 ◼   ► by Nvidia cards.

00:47:38 ◼   ► So that, forget about who's faster for it,

00:47:40 ◼   ► who has better cards or whatever.

00:47:42 ◼   ► If it literally won't work with AMD graphics cards,

00:47:46 ◼   ► that's bad, like it'll, you know,

00:47:47 ◼   ► it would run in an unaccelerated mode.

00:47:49 ◼   ► And then secondarily, if you're into games

00:47:51 ◼   ► lots of other applications, chances are that right now Nvidia sells the absolute fastest

00:47:56 ◼   ► card that will run whatever your GPU thing is the fastest.

00:47:59 ◼   ► That's why we had that question a while back, we were saying if the Mac Pro doesn't support

00:48:02 ◼   ► Nvidia, is it a failure or whatever.

00:48:05 ◼   ► I don't think it is for the most part.

00:48:08 ◼   ► And you know, if you have to use one of these applications that is only accelerated by Nvidia,

00:48:12 ◼   ► chances are good you haven't had a Mac in a long time.

00:48:15 ◼   ► Because for whatever reason, I'm not sure what the reason is, but for whatever reason,

00:48:19 ◼   ► Macs have not shipped with Nvidia GPUs, either standard or optional, for a long time now.

00:48:25 ◼   ► So it's not as if people are out there using Macs with Nvidia graphics card waiting to

00:48:30 ◼   ► upgrade.

00:48:31 ◼   ► All these people who are using these programs presumably are already using PCs.

00:48:33 ◼   ► But anyway, that's why I think people are concerned about the Nvidia situation, because

00:48:39 ◼   ► part of the promise of the Mac Pro is it's a modular system and it's upgradable, but

00:48:43 ◼   ► How upgradeable is it really if you can only ever put in new AMD graphics cards?

00:48:50 ◼   ► That's great.

00:48:51 ◼   ► It lets you extend the life of the machine like we said before, but there was a time

00:48:55 ◼   ► that some Mac users may remember when you could buy a Mac like the one sitting next

00:48:59 ◼   ► to me right now that could run cards from both of those manufacturers.

00:49:03 ◼   ► And that time was good and we would like that time to return.

00:49:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I think some other angles to consider.

00:49:09 ◼   ► First of all, the explanation of why we have not seen

00:49:14 ◼   ► any new Macs with NVIDIA GPUs in something like

00:49:18 ◼   ► three or four years is possibly related to

00:49:22 ◼   ► there was a massive series of NVIDIA GPU failures

00:49:25 ◼   ► in MacBook Pros.

00:49:27 ◼   ► We heard rumblings here and there from various

00:49:29 ◼   ► uncredible sources that there might be some kind of

00:49:31 ◼   ► big political rift between Apple and NVIDIA from that time.

00:49:36 ◼   ► but it does certainly seem like there is definitely,

00:49:40 ◼   ► like it is a choice that Apple is making

00:49:43 ◼   ► not to ship Nvidia GPUs in all of their computers

00:49:47 ◼   ► since a few years ago.

00:49:49 ◼   ► It is not just coincidence.

00:49:51 ◼   ► - And on that issue though, on it being a choice,

00:49:53 ◼   ► which again I've heard as well,

00:49:55 ◼   ► the weird part about it is that modern Apple especially

00:50:00 ◼   ► has always been really enthusiastic

00:50:02 ◼   ► about always having two suppliers

00:50:03 ◼   ► for everything that it does.

00:50:05 ◼   ► you know, even just like, because if they get themselves in situations where there's one,

00:50:08 ◼   ► they get themselves into a Qualcomm situation, and they're just like, they need someone to play

00:50:13 ◼   ► off of, but everything, the RAM, who's manufacturing their systems on a chip, like SSD screens. Best

00:50:19 ◼   ► case, Apple wants to have two sources, not just for redundancy, but so that you don't become under

00:50:25 ◼   ► the thumb of one, like you can become under the thumb of Qualcomm, it's like, who else are you

00:50:28 ◼   ► going to go to? No one else can make your radio chips, hahaha. So it would behoove Apple to go

00:50:34 ◼   ► to both of them and play them off each other. Who knows, maybe that's exactly what they're

00:50:37 ◼   ► doing and anybody who just keeps losing the contract, but from the outside it just seems

00:50:41 ◼   ► like they are now a single vendor source for their GPUs. That can't be healthy. I mean,

00:50:47 ◼   ► maybe the long-term plan is Apple is going to make its own GPUs because it's a core part

00:50:52 ◼   ► of their business, and they kind of have been doing that on the portable side. What was

00:50:56 ◼   ► it? Was this the first one that's all their own GPU with no imagination tech?

00:51:00 ◼   ► I believe so. Yeah, but they haven't done that on the Mac,

00:51:02 ◼   ► and they probably won't because for all the reasons that we've discussed before about

00:51:05 ◼   ► investment in the Mac, but it just still seems weird to me that it seems it's a much more

00:51:09 ◼   ► natural fit for Apple's business practices to be supporting both, but they haven't recently.

00:51:13 ◼   ► Well, I think there's a couple angles here. I mean, number one, like you might be right,

00:51:17 ◼   ► like AMD just might be winning all these bids because it certainly seems clear that Apple

00:51:21 ◼   ► has a pretty good relationship with AMD and for things like if you look at the 2013 trash

00:51:27 ◼   ► and Mac Pro, those were like total custom GPUs,

00:51:30 ◼   ► like just for that, that AMD made at Apple's order.

00:51:35 ◼   ► So there's clearly a lot of, a good relationship there

00:51:38 ◼   ► where AMD will probably make Apple

00:51:40 ◼   ► pretty much whatever they ask for,

00:51:42 ◼   ► which is, and the pricing that they give Apple

00:51:46 ◼   ► appears to be pretty good.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Like if you look at the workstation GPU pricing

00:51:49 ◼   ► that AMD charges, and then you look at what Apple

00:51:53 ◼   ► gives you in the stock configuration of the Mac Pro

00:51:55 ◼   ► on the iMac Pro, it does seem like AMD is giving Apple

00:51:59 ◼   ► a pretty good deal, so it could just be that.

00:52:01 ◼   ► But you're right that Apple does have two suppliers

00:52:04 ◼   ► for a lot of things.

00:52:06 ◼   ► One of the big ones that they don't is Intel

00:52:09 ◼   ► for their CPUs.

00:52:10 ◼   ► And maybe, ironically, the winner of that bid otherwise

00:52:15 ◼   ► would be AMD, but maybe they have a similar relationship

00:52:20 ◼   ► with AMD on the GPU side that they have with Intel

00:52:24 ◼   ► the CPU side, which is kind of this assured exclusivity in exchange for their good relationship

00:52:32 ◼   ► with AMD.

00:52:33 ◼   ► >> The difference is that Intel can give them the very best chips of that kind in the world,

00:52:38 ◼   ► whereas AMD at various times cannot.

00:52:40 ◼   ► And although this also brings in a topic that kept getting pushed down in the show notes,

00:52:43 ◼   ► but the several weeks ago or months ago deal where Intel is bundling AMD GPUs and sort

00:52:49 ◼   ► of like, not in the same die, but like in the same package.

00:52:53 ◼   ► And so that's an interesting synergy between Apple's two favored vendors.

00:52:57 ◼   ► And Intel, it makes some sense to me that Apple's going with Intel.

00:53:02 ◼   ► There's that relationship and there's the IBM, even more so than AMD, has proven that

00:53:07 ◼   ► they will make one-off custom chips for Apple like in the MacBook Air back in the old days.

00:53:11 ◼   ► And there's a lot of speculation that the reason Intel put so much work into its internal

00:53:17 ◼   ► GPUs with the embedded DRAM and all that stuff is because that's what Apple wanted them to

00:53:21 ◼   ► do.

00:53:22 ◼   ► I'm sure Apple likes your relationship where they have a big say in what products get generated.

00:53:27 ◼   ► And honestly, the competitor to Intel is not particularly competitive, and we get back

00:53:33 ◼   ► to, again, Apple probably wants to just make its own chips if it ever comes to that.

00:53:39 ◼   ► But the difference in that scenario is there is no software that only runs accelerated

00:53:45 ◼   ► on AMD CPUs, right?

00:53:49 ◼   ► Like it's not the NVIDIA situation where there's whole classes of software that are written

00:53:52 ◼   ► and that Intel doesn't support it or whatever.

00:53:55 ◼   ► - And you know, overall, there is a huge difference

00:53:58 ◼   ► in the results here, as you briefly alluded to.

00:54:01 ◼   ► Intel, if you are Intel exclusive for your PC CPUs,

00:54:05 ◼   ► you're fine, because the vast majority of the time,

00:54:09 ◼   ► Intel is the leader in that race,

00:54:11 ◼   ► usually by a pretty big margin.

00:54:13 ◼   ► AMD's CPU business has been second run,

00:54:16 ◼   ► basically since the Pentium 4.

00:54:18 ◼   ► It had a good run there for a little while

00:54:20 ◼   ► was king, but then it wasn't.

00:54:22 ◼   ► So if it was the other way around,

00:54:24 ◼   ► if Apple had this great relationship with AMD for the CPUs,

00:54:28 ◼   ► and would never use Intel CPUs,

00:54:31 ◼   ► they'd have a pretty big problem.

00:54:33 ◼   ► They just wouldn't be very competitive a lot of the time.

00:54:35 ◼   ► And the problem is they now have that problem

00:54:38 ◼   ► on the GPU side.

00:54:39 ◼   ► On the GPU side, I think they do okay with power per watt,

00:54:43 ◼   ► but they don't have the sheer performance edge

00:54:46 ◼   ► that they would have if Nvidia

00:54:49 ◼   ► was their only supplier, or if they would use both

00:54:52 ◼   ► like they used to.

00:54:53 ◼   ► It used to be that every generation of a Mac or a MacBook Pro

00:54:57 ◼   ► they would alternate between which vendor they were

00:55:00 ◼   ► supplying, just whoever had the most compelling one

00:55:02 ◼   ► that they could get in a volume or whatever else.

00:55:05 ◼   ► But by going seemingly AMD only for GPUs for at least

00:55:08 ◼   ► the last few years, I think it is really starting

00:55:11 ◼   ► to hurt them, especially at the high end.

00:55:14 ◼   ► I've heard from so many people who see the news

00:55:17 ◼   ► about the iMac Pro or the Mac Pro and just write it off

00:55:21 ◼   ► as sorry, we can't do that because it doesn't support CUDA.

00:55:24 ◼   ► And the only thing that might be an escape valve here

00:55:29 ◼   ► is external GPU support.

00:55:32 ◼   ► I think with Thunderbolt 3 now supporting external GPU boxes

00:55:37 ◼   ► that might be their answer.

00:55:38 ◼   ► Like it might be like we're gonna keep using AMD

00:55:42 ◼   ► for our main GPUs but if you're a pro customer

00:55:44 ◼   ► and you want a CUDA card for your work,

00:55:47 ◼   ► maybe putting it in a Thunderbolt chassis is close enough.

00:55:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, the benchmark still,

00:55:53 ◼   ► especially for these applications that need this,

00:55:55 ◼   ► like that's where the bandwidth actually does come in.

00:55:57 ◼   ► Doesn't come in in games probably.

00:55:58 ◼   ► If you're just interested in games,

00:56:00 ◼   ► you can probably get away with any GPU.

00:56:02 ◼   ► But for all these fancy computational things

00:56:05 ◼   ► that actually send a lot of data back and forth,

00:56:06 ◼   ► Thunderbolt isn't, you know,

00:56:08 ◼   ► it's not even close to the bandwidth of an internal card.

00:56:11 ◼   ► I think Barefeats also has done benchmarks with that too.

00:56:13 ◼   ► like you know let's try a MacBook Pro with an eGPU versus the iMac Pro with its internal

00:56:19 ◼   ► versus a good old cheese grater with some $900 Nvidia graphic card shoved into this

00:56:25 ◼   ► ancient internals from 2010 or 11 and the stupid cheese grater wins every time because

00:56:31 ◼   ► it's got an internal GPU with more bandwidth than everybody else and it's got the fastest,

00:56:35 ◼   ► the latest card from Nvidia.

00:56:37 ◼   ► And so like I said when the person originally asked the question would the Mac Pro be a

00:56:40 ◼   ► a failed product. I don't think so. I mean, it's silly that Apple won't support it if

00:56:45 ◼   ► it's like some weird political reason or whatever, but whatever, you know, if you buy a computer

00:56:51 ◼   ► with the fastest available GPU, next year it's not the fastest GPU anymore. And so if

00:56:56 ◼   ► you just pretend every Mac Pro you're buying is already a year old, as long as you can

00:56:59 ◼   ► either A, upgrade it so that every single year you can buy a faster GPU or B, that Apple

00:57:06 ◼   ► people revises it, and so every year if you bought a new one it has a faster GPU in it.

00:57:10 ◼   ► Like the worst situation is they put it out with a competitive pretty fast GPU that may

00:57:14 ◼   ► actually by the way be faster in your particular thing, because if you're not running games

00:57:18 ◼   ► and you're not running a CUDA accelerator application, sometimes the AMD GPU is the

00:57:22 ◼   ► fastest. It really depends on what you're doing. But the trick is you need some way

00:57:26 ◼   ► to stay on that performance path. You can't have the fastest one and then just never offer

00:57:30 ◼   ► another GPU for three years and not have it be upgradeable. So the people need some way

00:57:35 ◼   ► every year reap the benefits of the embarrassing parallelism of the graphics world.

00:57:41 ◼   ► And that's what the Mac Pro has to deliver.

00:57:43 ◼   ► If it can't deliver Nvidia, that's a bummer for some people, but what it has to deliver

00:57:48 ◼   ► is the ability to get back on the GPU train.

00:57:53 ◼   ► You can put in the all-aboard screen from Crazy Train right here, Marco.

00:57:58 ◼   ► All aboard!

00:57:59 ◼   ► (maniacal laughter)

00:58:02 ◼   ► Oh, I was gonna put on Back on the Train by Phish.

00:58:05 ◼   ► ♪ Took me a long time to get back on the train ♪

00:58:10 ◼   ► - Oh, no, I do not approve of that.

00:58:14 ◼   ► Crazy train.

00:58:15 ◼   ► Every podcast needs a Viper slap.

00:58:17 ◼   ► (motor whirring)

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01:00:04 ◼   ► I actually had a call with Apple PR last week

01:00:11 ◼   ► about the iMac Pro after we recorded.

01:00:13 ◼   ► - What?

01:00:14 ◼   ► - Did you get a call, Casey?

01:00:15 ◼   ► I didn't get a call.

01:00:16 ◼   ► - I did not get a call.

01:00:17 ◼   ► Well, of course I didn't get a call.

01:00:18 ◼   ► I mean, come on.

01:00:19 ◼   ► - You sounded like the biggest iMac Pro fans

01:00:21 ◼   ► that figured they would call Casey, you know?

01:00:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:00:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, Casey has a review unit.

01:00:25 ◼   ► - That would be the ultimate troll.

01:00:27 ◼   ► Oh my God, would that be amazing?

01:00:29 ◼   ► But no, I have received no calls of any sort.

01:00:32 ◼   ► I am not special.

01:00:33 ◼   ► - Well, anyway, they reached out to me

01:00:36 ◼   ► and said they wanted to schedule a call.

01:00:38 ◼   ► I was very pleasantly surprised.

01:00:40 ◼   ► And so I prepared some questions

01:00:42 ◼   ► and I didn't really know what to expect,

01:00:44 ◼   ► but it was really nice.

01:00:46 ◼   ► It was really pretty open, pretty laid back.

01:00:49 ◼   ► I mean, and to set the expectations a little bit,

01:00:53 ◼   ► sometimes people will get mad at,

01:00:55 ◼   ► like somebody like when John Gruber has his podcast

01:00:59 ◼   ► where he'll occasionally have an Apple executive on,

01:01:01 ◼   ► some people get mad that he doesn't ask certain questions.

01:01:04 ◼   ► Like things like, "When's the next Mac Pro coming?"

01:01:07 ◼   ► 'Cause the reality is,

01:01:09 ◼   ► Apple's not gonna tell you about future products.

01:01:11 ◼   ► It's kind of a waste of a question.

01:01:13 ◼   ► Like if you're only given a limited amount of time,

01:01:15 ◼   ► it's a waste of time to ask them questions

01:01:17 ◼   ► they are unlikely to answer,

01:01:19 ◼   ► or likely to give you the answer you want.

01:01:23 ◼   ► asking about when future products are coming

01:01:26 ◼   ► or really asking anything about future products

01:01:29 ◼   ► is a waste of time, so I didn't.

01:01:31 ◼   ► I'm sure someone's gonna be mad and write in

01:01:34 ◼   ► because of something I didn't ask,

01:01:35 ◼   ► but that was generally,

01:01:37 ◼   ► there might be things I just didn't think about,

01:01:39 ◼   ► but generally there were a lot of things that I didn't ask

01:01:41 ◼   ► because the real question,

01:01:44 ◼   ► even if it wasn't phrased a certain way,

01:01:46 ◼   ► you can tell the real question

01:01:47 ◼   ► is really about a future product.

01:01:49 ◼   ► So for example, I wanted to ask about

01:01:52 ◼   ► why are there so many USB-A ports

01:01:54 ◼   ► and a card reader on the back?

01:01:56 ◼   ► But I knew that's really a question about the MacBook Pro.

01:01:59 ◼   ► - That was my question.

01:02:01 ◼   ► So you didn't ask that?

01:02:02 ◼   ► That was my first thing to ask you.

01:02:03 ◼   ► You didn't ask my question?

01:02:04 ◼   ► - I actually did kind of ask it,

01:02:06 ◼   ► but I didn't get the response that was like,

01:02:09 ◼   ► well, our Pro customers hated the MacBook Pro.

01:02:11 ◼   ► Like, no, it wasn't like that.

01:02:12 ◼   ► It was basically explaining that we offered the ports

01:02:15 ◼   ► as many as we could for our Pro customers,

01:02:17 ◼   ► et cetera, that kind of thing.

01:02:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, that question, those type of questions,

01:02:21 ◼   ► you can't ask them about future things, you can only ask them about the product. So basically

01:02:24 ◼   ► that's the only way you ever even get anything is to say, "Why does product that we're talking

01:02:30 ◼   ► about right now have a feature?" Right? So you can't even say, "Why does the iMac Pro

01:02:37 ◼   ► have USB-A ports and the MacBook Pro doesn't?" You have to just say, "I noticed there's a

01:02:42 ◼   ► lot of USB-A ports in the back. Why are those there?" Or like, "Why does it have them?"

01:02:46 ◼   ► And to give them the opportunity to give their canned PR answer. And if they don't have a

01:02:49 ◼   ► camp here and said because they thought no one would ever ask that, then they have to

01:02:53 ◼   ► think on their feet and maybe you get a little bit of insight. But sometimes they're very

01:02:56 ◼   ► forthcoming about, you know, like they could say there's some specific customers that we

01:03:00 ◼   ► talked to, they have really important USPA peripherals, and we thought like you never

01:03:03 ◼   ► know what they're going to say, and that's a way to get legit information out of it.

01:03:06 ◼   ► You just have to know how to phrase it, not as "this computer doesn't have them, why

01:03:10 ◼   ► does the iMac Pro have them?" because that's not going to put them in the right frame of

01:03:13 ◼   ► mind to give you any good info.

01:03:14 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

01:03:16 ◼   ► Anyway, it's very clear that they really are

01:03:19 ◼   ► very heavily focused on developers for this machine.

01:03:24 ◼   ► You know, it wasn't immediately obvious

01:03:25 ◼   ► when the PR first came out, like on whatever day it was

01:03:28 ◼   ► that all the embargoes were done,

01:03:29 ◼   ► like the first week review units.

01:03:31 ◼   ► It wasn't incredibly obvious then,

01:03:32 ◼   ► because everything that came out first was all YouTubers.

01:03:36 ◼   ► And so we all thought, myself included,

01:03:38 ◼   ► wow, they just gave it to YouTubers?

01:03:39 ◼   ► That's kind of, I guess that's understandable.

01:03:42 ◼   ► But then as it turned out later that day,

01:03:44 ◼   ► We saw a bunch of tweets and blog posts,

01:03:47 ◼   ► many of which were from developers.

01:03:49 ◼   ► And it's very clear that they actually

01:03:51 ◼   ► were reaching out to a lot of developers for this,

01:03:53 ◼   ► and developers just aren't that good at being at minute one

01:03:57 ◼   ► after an embargo and stuff like that,

01:03:58 ◼   ► 'cause developers are not usually reviewers or journalists.

01:04:02 ◼   ► So it's kinda like trying to coordinate cats

01:04:05 ◼   ► to all do something.

01:04:07 ◼   ► Although I still believe that cats are all a hive mind

01:04:09 ◼   ► and they're all the same cat,

01:04:10 ◼   ► just different visions of the same cat.

01:04:12 ◼   ► - Oh my goodness.

01:04:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, very strong focus on developers here.

01:04:15 ◼   ► They really, you could tell that they worked

01:04:18 ◼   ► with a lot of developers in development,

01:04:20 ◼   ► they talked to a lot of developers,

01:04:21 ◼   ► they clearly cared a lot about developer needs.

01:04:24 ◼   ► 'Cause a lot of these are gonna sell to high-end developers.

01:04:27 ◼   ► They're gonna sell to just people like me

01:04:29 ◼   ► who are willing to spend the money

01:04:31 ◼   ► on a very, very fast machine for app development.

01:04:33 ◼   ► They're gonna sell to VR developers, hopefully,

01:04:37 ◼   ► and high-end developers, content creators, et cetera.

01:04:40 ◼   ► So they were very concerned about making sure

01:04:42 ◼   ► that this was a good machine for developers.

01:04:45 ◼   ► And I really respect that.

01:04:46 ◼   ► And even though, you know, I'm a little bit biased in that

01:04:49 ◼   ► because I'm a developer and this worked out for me

01:04:51 ◼   ► 'cause they wanted to talk to me.

01:04:52 ◼   ► So obviously I'm a little bit biased,

01:04:54 ◼   ► but I thought that was a really good angle.

01:04:56 ◼   ► They seemed sincere about it.

01:04:57 ◼   ► They seemed like they had really done their homework,

01:04:58 ◼   ► done their diligence, and done their research.

01:05:00 ◼   ► And for instance, like one of the things was

01:05:03 ◼   ► that Tencore, they find is the most ideal configuration

01:05:07 ◼   ► for most developer workflows.

01:05:09 ◼   ► And they know this because they actually did tests

01:05:10 ◼   ► and worked with people and figured out what people do.

01:05:13 ◼   ► And they were able to tell that usually after

01:05:16 ◼   ► about the 10 core mark, today's tools tend to not use

01:05:21 ◼   ► many of the cores after that,

01:05:22 ◼   ► or you're bottlenecked by other things like IO.

01:05:25 ◼   ► So that made total sense.

01:05:27 ◼   ► One of the things I asked about,

01:05:28 ◼   ► 'cause last show we had a lot of discussion

01:05:31 ◼   ► about the thermal design of the iMac Pro,

01:05:34 ◼   ► and about the idea that they were downclocking

01:05:37 ◼   ► the two base CPUs by like 10% or something

01:05:40 ◼   ► at their base clocks.

01:05:42 ◼   ► And we were kind of saying,

01:05:44 ◼   ► Jon had a lot of thoughts about it,

01:05:45 ◼   ► and kind of saying like,

01:05:46 ◼   ► why drop down the performance to fit in the enclosure

01:05:50 ◼   ► that nobody was asking you to fit it in?

01:05:53 ◼   ► So I asked a lot about this,

01:05:54 ◼   ► and they were pretty unwavering about that.

01:05:59 ◼   ► They didn't cram it in here unnecessarily.

01:06:04 ◼   ► they tried to see if they could fit workstation components

01:06:08 ◼   ► into this case and they could.

01:06:10 ◼   ► You know, they did a lot of redesigning of the thermal,

01:06:12 ◼   ► so like, because there is no 3.5 inch disk offered

01:06:17 ◼   ► in the iMac Pro, that frees up a pretty large block

01:06:20 ◼   ► of pretty premium space right in the middle.

01:06:23 ◼   ► And you know, 'cause 3.5 inch disks compared

01:06:25 ◼   ► to the internals of an iMac are huge.

01:06:28 ◼   ► And it certainly does seem like they have filled

01:06:30 ◼   ► a lot of that space with like, heat sink basically.

01:06:32 ◼   ► So, 'cause it certainly has a massive heat sink apparatus

01:06:36 ◼   ► back there from the pictures.

01:06:37 ◼   ► So, the impression I got from this question is that

01:06:40 ◼   ► they didn't have to compromise

01:06:44 ◼   ► to fit the workstation parts into this case.

01:06:47 ◼   ► They designed it, it fit, and there seems to be headroom,

01:06:50 ◼   ► which I get to in a little bit.

01:06:52 ◼   ► - So, what did they say about the downclocking?

01:06:54 ◼   ► We had some feedback about that.

01:06:56 ◼   ► So, there's the base CPUs that you talked about,

01:06:58 ◼   ► but there's also the GPUs, which I didn't know

01:07:00 ◼   ► whether they were downclocking,

01:07:01 ◼   ► I speculated that maybe they'd be 90% downclock, but someone emailed the show to say they're

01:07:05 ◼   ► actually 83% downclock versus what they would be like if you took that same card and put

01:07:10 ◼   ► it in a PC.

01:07:11 ◼   ► And so, and also one other bit of feedback about downclocking specifically the GPUs,

01:07:16 ◼   ► again, I don't know if the providence of this information is sound or not, but someone emailed

01:07:22 ◼   ► to suggest that AMD has been optimistic with the clock speeds and that really if you run

01:07:28 ◼   ► them at the "rated speed" that it shortens their life and Apple cares more about them

01:07:33 ◼   ► so that they just buy, you know, they just always run them slightly downclocked anyway

01:07:36 ◼   ► just because if they don't they'll have reliability problems.

01:07:39 ◼   ► I don't know if that's trash can fallout or just total BS or just speculation or whatever,

01:07:43 ◼   ► but anyway all we know is the numbers we can look at and apparently if you buy this exact

01:07:50 ◼   ► card from AMD and it's on a regular card slot the iMac is running them 83% slower which

01:07:56 ◼   ► which is not insignificant.

01:07:59 ◼   ► So when they say, can we fit it?

01:08:01 ◼   ► Yes, they could fit it.

01:08:02 ◼   ► But if you can fit it by downclocking and using slower

01:08:06 ◼   ► speed things, did you really fit it,

01:08:09 ◼   ► or did you have to compromise on something?

01:08:11 ◼   ► I feel like their answer to you was just

01:08:12 ◼   ► rephrasing the question.

01:08:13 ◼   ► Like, why did you fit everything inside the case?

01:08:15 ◼   ► We wanted to see if we could fit everything inside.

01:08:16 ◼   ► Yeah, but why?

01:08:18 ◼   ► The real question is, why didn't you make a new case?

01:08:20 ◼   ► And the reason there is we didn't want

01:08:22 ◼   ► to spend that much money on it.

01:08:23 ◼   ► It would be a lot of design time.

01:08:25 ◼   ► There's other reasons that they're probably not going to tell you of why they didn't design a new case because surely it is

01:08:30 ◼   ► Faster to market and cost them less money in less time and less everything to use the same external design

01:08:37 ◼   ► Probably get to well that I was gonna say they get to use the same visa amounts

01:08:40 ◼   ► But they did change that part of the case, so I don't know it's still slightly

01:08:44 ◼   ► Mysterious to me, but anyway that from as far as we can tell you take those same parts and put them in an ugly

01:08:51 ◼   ► boxy PC and you can get them all to run at faster speeds or use higher bin parts.

01:08:56 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, the GPU, I honestly, I don't have any qualifications to talk about GPUs.

01:09:02 ◼   ► So I didn't ask really anything about them because I don't know anything about GPUs.

01:09:06 ◼   ► But on the CPU part, as Gerber points out a lot, like, Apple doesn't usually lie.

01:09:12 ◼   ► Like you know, they'll spin things a certain way if they want to, but they don't usually

01:09:16 ◼   ► outright lie.

01:09:17 ◼   ► Like, usually if they tell you a straight out answer, that is the truth.

01:09:21 ◼   ► And in this case, they were very clear

01:09:23 ◼   ► that they didn't need to change the case.

01:09:25 ◼   ► And there's some thermal stuff that I'll get to

01:09:28 ◼   ► in a few minutes that I think probably supports that theory

01:09:32 ◼   ► if it ends up panning out that way.

01:09:36 ◼   ► On the subject of the CPU downclocking,

01:09:38 ◼   ► so I did some research before the call

01:09:39 ◼   ► and I discovered that it's only the eight and 10 core

01:09:43 ◼   ► that are downclocked from their retail speeds,

01:09:45 ◼   ► from the retail parts.

01:09:47 ◼   ► The 14 and 18 are identical.

01:09:49 ◼   ► They are all rated at the same TDP,

01:09:52 ◼   ► so the same heat capacity of 140 watts.

01:09:54 ◼   ► They all are the same.

01:09:56 ◼   ► The eight and 10 core chips are special chips

01:10:00 ◼   ► that were made by Intel just for Apple's OEM use here.

01:10:03 ◼   ► That's why they even have different model numbers.

01:10:05 ◼   ► They have a B on the end,

01:10:06 ◼   ► and they're like slightly different numbers

01:10:07 ◼   ► than their counterparts.

01:10:09 ◼   ► If you look, I'll link to the Wikipedia table

01:10:10 ◼   ► that lists all this guy like Xeons.

01:10:13 ◼   ► So you can see these are special chips

01:10:15 ◼   ► that are only used by Apple,

01:10:17 ◼   ► and so far only in the iMac Pro.

01:10:20 ◼   ► Their answer to that was basically

01:10:23 ◼   ► they are the custom part from Intel

01:10:25 ◼   ► and that's just how the clock speed's

01:10:26 ◼   ► been down for these chips.

01:10:28 ◼   ► One of the things they wanted to make sure of

01:10:30 ◼   ► is that all of the processors that are available

01:10:33 ◼   ► in the iMac Pro have the same AVX-512 processing capacity.

01:10:38 ◼   ► These are the new instructions that are,

01:10:40 ◼   ► I think, new to these chips,

01:10:41 ◼   ► or at least new to the current generation of Xeons.

01:10:45 ◼   ► These are super high end vector instructions

01:10:48 ◼   ► for certain types of math that can be very well optimized.

01:10:51 ◼   ► Some of the Xeons that are in this family

01:10:53 ◼   ► only have one compute unit.

01:10:55 ◼   ► The high end ones have two.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Apple made sure that all of theirs have two.

01:11:01 ◼   ► That being said, I looked up the specs

01:11:02 ◼   ► for the corresponding parts that are slightly higher clocked

01:11:05 ◼   ► and they have two also.

01:11:07 ◼   ► So I'm not entirely sure what that means right now.

01:11:09 ◼   ► That could have been a later change

01:11:11 ◼   ► in the release cycle for Intel

01:11:13 ◼   ► where they decided to put two on those

01:11:15 ◼   ► or they could have been referencing different parts

01:11:16 ◼   ► they could have used but didn't.

01:11:18 ◼   ► But the important thing that I got from the call

01:11:21 ◼   ► is that they didn't see this as an artificial lowering

01:11:24 ◼   ► of the clock speed, this is just how they were binned out

01:11:26 ◼   ► for their custom part, and they made sure

01:11:28 ◼   ► their custom parts all had the same AVX-512

01:11:31 ◼   ► dual processing units.

01:11:33 ◼   ► - What's custom about them besides the AVX stuff?

01:11:37 ◼   ► - I don't know.

01:11:38 ◼   ► I can ask them.

01:11:39 ◼   ► I mean, they're friendly, they'll probably answer

01:11:41 ◼   ► an email if I ask them.

01:11:43 ◼   ► So I think our concerns about the thermals

01:11:46 ◼   ► are probably unwarranted because what I heard from them,

01:11:51 ◼   ► which confirms what I heard from other people

01:11:53 ◼   ► who were at their demos or who have had review units so far,

01:11:56 ◼   ► it sounds like there is a lot of thermal headroom.

01:12:01 ◼   ► They had certain demos at these events

01:12:03 ◼   ► that were running on loops all day long

01:12:05 ◼   ► that were stressing all the CPU cores

01:12:07 ◼   ► at like 60% or higher all the time

01:12:10 ◼   ► and that you couldn't even really hear the fan.

01:12:13 ◼   ► And what I was told basically is that

01:12:16 ◼   ► the way the thermals work out in this generation,

01:12:18 ◼   ► that you can hammer the CPU is pretty hard

01:12:22 ◼   ► and you probably won't hear the fan spin up.

01:12:25 ◼   ► You will pretty much only hear it get loud

01:12:27 ◼   ► if you're hammering the CPUs and the GPUs.

01:12:31 ◼   ► And this actually is plausible to me

01:12:32 ◼   ► because this is actually not that different

01:12:34 ◼   ► from how the Skylake laptops work.

01:12:36 ◼   ► The Skylake and what is it, Ivy Bridge?

01:12:40 ◼   ► I already forgot.

01:12:41 ◼   ► So the current laptop generation compared to the old one

01:12:44 ◼   ► that I'm still holding onto is way quieter under CPU load.

01:12:47 ◼   ► It doesn't spin up for nearly as long

01:12:51 ◼   ► and it cools down much faster and everything else.

01:12:53 ◼   ► So given that these are the Xeons from the Skylake family,

01:12:56 ◼   ► that actually I think makes sense.

01:12:59 ◼   ► That's believable to me.

01:13:01 ◼   ► And it does seem like they've designed this

01:13:03 ◼   ► with a lot of thermal headroom.

01:13:04 ◼   ► So for the moment, having not used one of these yet,

01:13:08 ◼   ► having not owned one of these yet,

01:13:10 ◼   ► it does sound like they are not concerned about thermals.

01:13:14 ◼   ► And all the demo units and all the review units

01:13:16 ◼   ► out there so far have shown pretty awesome

01:13:17 ◼   ► thermal and noise performance.

01:13:20 ◼   ► So, so far it seems, tentatively,

01:13:22 ◼   ► like it might be pretty awesome

01:13:23 ◼   ► on the thermal and heat front,

01:13:24 ◼   ► and therefore that also supports their position

01:13:28 ◼   ► that these aren't really downclocked

01:13:30 ◼   ► for meaningful performance reasons.

01:13:32 ◼   ► - Well, you keep excluding the GPU

01:13:33 ◼   ► because you didn't want to talk about it,

01:13:34 ◼   ► but it's possibly more than half of the heat in here,

01:13:37 ◼   ► and certainly half of the equation.

01:13:39 ◼   ► Like if the, if the, if this info from this, and it's just from a listener, because I don't

01:13:43 ◼   ► know the clock speeds of this GPU and stuff, but if these GPUs really are at 83% of the

01:13:47 ◼   ► clock speed that if you were to buy the same card and put it in a PC and get the fastest

01:13:51 ◼   ► one, like why would you choose to do that if you've got the thermal headroom?

01:13:55 ◼   ► It doesn't, you know, especially if it's like literally the same part downclocked and not

01:13:59 ◼   ► just binned differently for pricing thing.

01:14:01 ◼   ► Like I don't quite understand how bad math works out.

01:14:04 ◼   ► So it sounds like for the CPU we have some good information on it and certainly you've

01:14:09 ◼   ► You've been doing things to stress the CPU and it seems like there's plenty of room,

01:14:12 ◼   ► but kind of like in the trash can, if you happen to do something that uses them both

01:14:15 ◼   ► at once, what does that do to things?

01:14:17 ◼   ► Like, you know, why?

01:14:19 ◼   ► The explanation for why the CPUs are downclocked is like, oh, that's just how they bend out

01:14:23 ◼   ► and maybe they had to be slower clocked because they've got the two AVX units and the normal

01:14:28 ◼   ► ones of that size didn't.

01:14:29 ◼   ► That kind of makes some kind of sense, right?

01:14:31 ◼   ► But why, on the other side of the case, where the other fan is blowing into, you know, well,

01:14:37 ◼   ► Actually, both fans are rolling through the same heat sink.

01:14:38 ◼   ► But anyway, on the other side of the case where the GPU is, why, if that stuff actually

01:14:43 ◼   ► is clocked down, and by the way, if you know the exact clock speeds of the GPU's CPU and

01:14:49 ◼   ► memory buses, please send it to the show.

01:14:54 ◼   ► That doesn't match up with the idea that there's plenty of thermal headroom, because especially

01:14:58 ◼   ► like on the high-end part, why wouldn't you run those at their full speed?

01:15:02 ◼   ► Yeah, and honestly, again, I just don't know whether I'm at full speed or not. I will say

01:15:08 ◼   ► that, like, you know, they didn't, nothing they said indicated that it couldn't handle

01:15:11 ◼   ► stressing both the CPU and GPU, just that you'd be more likely to hear it.

01:15:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know. And I would imagine the demos, they should actually did stress both

01:15:19 ◼   ► of them. You know, we haven't been there for the demos, but I think the demos probably

01:15:21 ◼   ► did stress both the GPU and the CPU, so maybe those are a good example. And, you know, and

01:15:25 ◼   ► maybe, again, they traded the quiet for, like, look, if we clock this at 83% of max speed,

01:15:31 ◼   ► We can just be quiet all the time no matter what and isn't that a better Pro experience

01:15:35 ◼   ► than allowing it to get noisy, you know, for this particular case.

01:15:39 ◼   ► Because maybe some people are using applications that are stressing both of them all the time

01:15:43 ◼   ► and it's not a great experience for the Pro Mac whose fans you can't escape by putting

01:15:48 ◼   ► it under the desk to be noisy.

01:15:50 ◼   ► Like I can come up with all sorts of reasons why they can explain this because again this

01:15:53 ◼   ► is the compact Pro machine.

01:15:55 ◼   ► It's not the Mac Pro, right?

01:15:59 ◼   ► but I don't know which of those explanations

01:16:03 ◼   ► that I could come up on my own is the right one, if any.

01:16:06 ◼   ► - You know, and maybe, I think what you just said

01:16:09 ◼   ► about kind of like hitting like a constant load minimum

01:16:13 ◼   ► heat performance kind of thing,

01:16:14 ◼   ► that might be related to the way the CPUs are clocked,

01:16:17 ◼   ► because I think it says something that

01:16:20 ◼   ► these all have the same TDP, so like when driven fully,

01:16:24 ◼   ► like at maximum, all the cores stressed,

01:16:26 ◼   ► They will all cap out at the same heat output

01:16:29 ◼   ► at all the core counts.

01:16:30 ◼   ► However, only the bottom two chips

01:16:33 ◼   ► had their base clocks reduced

01:16:35 ◼   ► from the Intel retail parts.

01:16:37 ◼   ► So maybe it really is like a heat and noise thing

01:16:39 ◼   ► because the way turbo boost works

01:16:42 ◼   ► with all modern Intel chips,

01:16:44 ◼   ► if it has thermal headroom,

01:16:46 ◼   ► it will increase its clock speed

01:16:49 ◼   ► until it hits a certain maximum that it won't go past

01:16:51 ◼   ► or until it starts getting too hot

01:16:53 ◼   ► or until more cores get engaged and then it starts to reduce the overall ceiling on them

01:16:59 ◼   ► so that it keeps below that threshold. But it doesn't ever go below the base speed.

01:17:04 ◼   ► And the turbo clock is reduced. On those two that they've modified, the 8 and 10 core,

01:17:09 ◼   ► they did reduce the turbo boost max speed as well, so I don't know what that means in

01:17:14 ◼   ► this theory, but by reducing the base clock, it's still going to turbo up a lot when it's

01:17:20 ◼   ► in use, but it's gonna run at the reduced base clock speed

01:17:23 ◼   ► when it's not doing heavy lifting.

01:17:27 ◼   ► And so maybe that is primarily there for lower noise

01:17:31 ◼   ► and heat when it's most of the time doing pretty light work.

01:17:36 ◼   ► - So really, all of our, well maybe not all,

01:17:40 ◼   ► but a lot of our qualms from last episode,

01:17:42 ◼   ► maybe a little premature.

01:17:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, yeah, the answer really is

01:17:46 ◼   ► we don't really know yet until we really get these machines,

01:17:49 ◼   ► Well, until I get this machine,

01:17:52 ◼   ► you guys aren't getting it.

01:17:53 ◼   ► But although, well, I'll get to that in a minute,

01:17:55 ◼   ► but until we really get these machines,

01:17:57 ◼   ► we really can't be incredibly sure

01:17:59 ◼   ► about any of these things.

01:18:00 ◼   ► I am hopeful now, after having this call,

01:18:04 ◼   ► and also having heard from the reviewers

01:18:06 ◼   ► and the people who were at these events,

01:18:09 ◼   ► it doesn't sound like there's reason

01:18:10 ◼   ► to be concerned about the thermals yet.

01:18:12 ◼   ► And that's pretty promising.

01:18:13 ◼   ► I'm very happy to hear that,

01:18:15 ◼   ► because that was my big concern going into this.

01:18:18 ◼   ► it seems like there's a lot of headroom

01:18:20 ◼   ► and that they didn't need to make the case bigger

01:18:22 ◼   ► and make it full of holes like what Jon wanted.

01:18:25 ◼   ► So we'll see if that actually pans out,

01:18:26 ◼   ► but I think it's plausible.

01:18:29 ◼   ► I asked a few more things, kind of like side notes here.

01:18:33 ◼   ► On the T2, one thing I thought was very interesting

01:18:37 ◼   ► is that it is indeed the SSD controller,

01:18:40 ◼   ► like it is the disk controller,

01:18:41 ◼   ► and in all of the configurations,

01:18:44 ◼   ► not just the four terabyte one,

01:18:46 ◼   ► it uses dual SSD modules,

01:18:49 ◼   ► and it uses them in parallel for performance.

01:18:51 ◼   ► And so even if you get the terabyte,

01:18:54 ◼   ► that's just using two 512s.

01:18:56 ◼   ► And with the T2 controlling it,

01:18:58 ◼   ► it isn't abstracted to the OS as two disks,

01:19:02 ◼   ► the way if you just plug in like a two disk enclosure

01:19:04 ◼   ► without any kind of RAID functionality,

01:19:05 ◼   ► it shows up as two disks, it isn't like that.

01:19:07 ◼   ► It shows up as one disk,

01:19:09 ◼   ► the controller shows it as one device,

01:19:11 ◼   ► but behind the scenes, it is actually using two in parallel.

01:19:14 ◼   ► It's one of the reasons why they're so frickin' fast.

01:19:16 ◼   ► We got anonymous feedback about that, by the way, about the dual module thing.

01:19:19 ◼   ► And like, I think it just, what it boils down to is like, you can just do the benchmark.

01:19:23 ◼   ► Look at the performance.

01:19:24 ◼   ► It's like three gigabytes per second read and write roughly.

01:19:26 ◼   ► So I think it's a little bit less for write, right?

01:19:28 ◼   ► So the debate about single versus dual, the feedback we got is that it's not actually

01:19:33 ◼   ► a dual module.

01:19:34 ◼   ► It's just one module that's split into two bits of silicon.

01:19:36 ◼   ► But the bottom line is that, what is it, like four PCI express lanes going to this controller?

01:19:40 ◼   ► Yes.

01:19:41 ◼   ► Like you, you get the results you get and you know, whether it's because they're dual

01:19:45 ◼   ► or it's just one good way, they could have put it on a single chip for different packaging

01:19:49 ◼   ► reasons is that they are giving you the PCI express lanes to get maximum performance out

01:19:54 ◼   ► of the SSDs and that the performance is better than any other Mac, essentially.

01:19:59 ◼   ► And did you ask them about the encryption stuff as well?

01:20:02 ◼   ► - A little bit, yeah.

01:20:03 ◼   ► I mean, I didn't have a lot of questions on it 'cause I didn't know enough to ask really

01:20:06 ◼   ► about, but yeah, it is certainly, it's doing all the encryption in hardware, like in the

01:20:11 ◼   ► T2.

01:20:12 ◼   ► So there's two different types of encryption going on here.

01:20:16 ◼   ► There's the hardware encryption,

01:20:17 ◼   ► kind of like what iOS devices have,

01:20:19 ◼   ► where like the actual data on the Flash is encrypted,

01:20:22 ◼   ► even if you're not using FileVault, it is encrypted.

01:20:25 ◼   ► And if you take that SSD stick or whatever it is,

01:20:29 ◼   ► out of the iMac Pro and put it in some kind of enclosure

01:20:32 ◼   ► or another iMac Pro to try to read it, you won't be able to,

01:20:35 ◼   ► because the key to decrypt it is, you know,

01:20:37 ◼   ► secure enclave style stored on that T2.

01:20:40 ◼   ► the reading of the Flash is tied to that hardware.

01:20:43 ◼   ► So the only way to read the data on the Flash

01:20:46 ◼   ► is if you can get that computer to read it for you.

01:20:48 ◼   ► If you do things like set a firmware password or something,

01:20:50 ◼   ► obviously that's going to provide pretty good security

01:20:52 ◼   ► on that so it can't boot other things.

01:20:55 ◼   ► I actually, I didn't ask too much about

01:20:57 ◼   ► what's different now with the new secure boot stuff

01:21:01 ◼   ► with things like firmware passwords and boot options

01:21:03 ◼   ► and whether it will boot external media

01:21:05 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

01:21:07 ◼   ► I know a lot of that has changed, mostly for the better.

01:21:10 ◼   ► it may be entirely for the better.

01:21:11 ◼   ► So I can't really talk about that

01:21:13 ◼   ► 'cause I don't know enough about it yet.

01:21:14 ◼   ► So there's that level of encryption.

01:21:16 ◼   ► And you can also use FileVault on top of that.

01:21:20 ◼   ► And if you do use FileVault, its encryption instructions

01:21:24 ◼   ► are now hardware accelerated.

01:21:26 ◼   ► So that's not even running on the Xeon,

01:21:27 ◼   ► it's running on the T2.

01:21:29 ◼   ► It's not taxing the Xeon at all.

01:21:31 ◼   ► - Hardware accelerated, you got my pet peeve again.

01:21:34 ◼   ► Oh, now it's hardware accelerated.

01:21:36 ◼   ► Instead of being executed on hardware,

01:21:37 ◼   ► it'll be executed on hardware.

01:21:39 ◼   ► But, yeah, you got the important point is that you don't have to make the CPU won't

01:21:45 ◼   ► be involved in this.

01:21:46 ◼   ► So most people are speculating like, you know, what performance hit do you get for using

01:21:51 ◼   ► encryption with HFS+ or APFS?

01:21:54 ◼   ► And you could measure it and, you know, Apple's like it's really small or whatever.

01:21:57 ◼   ► And I think some testing has shown that the hit might actually be more with APFS than

01:22:01 ◼   ► it was with APFS+ whether it's because it's better encryption or whatever.

01:22:05 ◼   ► Theoretically, well first of all, assuredly, this will give you more CPU, because your

01:22:12 ◼   ► CPU won't be doing any encryption stuff.

01:22:14 ◼   ► None, zero.

01:22:15 ◼   ► It'll all be done by the T2, which is great.

01:22:17 ◼   ► I like the idea of these little custom co-processors handling this very specific function.

01:22:21 ◼   ► Surely they have instructions just for it, it's great.

01:22:23 ◼   ► The second possibility that someone will have to benchmark to find out is, okay, your CPU

01:22:28 ◼   ► is freed up.

01:22:29 ◼   ► Does the T2 do that encryption job faster than the Xeon used to, because it's a dedicated

01:22:34 ◼   ► type of thing.

01:22:35 ◼   ► If it does, that means there will be less of a performance

01:22:38 ◼   ► hit for enabling FileVault on an iMac Pro with T2,

01:22:41 ◼   ► and that's something we'll have to benchmark.

01:22:44 ◼   ► - I mean, I'm guessing there's probably some kind of

01:22:46 ◼   ► smart implementation detail where,

01:22:48 ◼   ► 'cause like, it's already, in the T2's role

01:22:51 ◼   ► as the disk controller, you know,

01:22:54 ◼   ► and doing that hardware encryption the way iOS devices do,

01:22:57 ◼   ► it's already encrypting everything in and out

01:23:00 ◼   ► at full speed, even when FileVault's not on.

01:23:03 ◼   ► So I'm guessing by using FileVault,

01:23:06 ◼   ► you're probably just having another mode

01:23:09 ◼   ► of maybe of that same encryption

01:23:10 ◼   ► or having the keys combined in some way

01:23:12 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:23:13 ◼   ► I don't know the details enough to say, but--

01:23:15 ◼   ► - It could be, and if that's the case,

01:23:16 ◼   ► there'll be zero speed hit,

01:23:17 ◼   ► because it's doing it whether you have FileVault on or not,

01:23:19 ◼   ► and so this should be borne out by the benchmarks.

01:23:23 ◼   ► But it's an intriguing possibility.

01:23:24 ◼   ► This brings me back to the good old days

01:23:26 ◼   ► of Philips TriMedia accelerator.

01:23:29 ◼   ► You guys don't remember that, but--

01:23:30 ◼   ► - Nope.

01:23:31 ◼   ► There I have a very, even in the early days of Mac OS X, which maybe you were around for

01:23:35 ◼   ► and remember, the idea of Apple adding chips to Macs to make them faster in basically magical

01:23:43 ◼   ► ways.

01:23:44 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, you can just take a CPU and some RAM and a motherboard and throw them

01:23:48 ◼   ► together, but the Apple special sauce is they'll put special magic chips on there that will

01:23:51 ◼   ► make your Mac better.

01:23:52 ◼   ► This is the actual reality of the T2.

01:23:55 ◼   ► Apple made its own chip and threw it on there.

01:23:58 ◼   ► And I mean, even on Apple's own page, like the list of stuff this thing does in addition

01:24:01 ◼   ► into what we listed is image signal processing

01:24:04 ◼   ► for the front facing camera, audio controller,

01:24:07 ◼   ► of course the secure enclave, the encryption.

01:24:11 ◼   ► Oh, actually this is right from Apple's marketing page.

01:24:14 ◼   ► The data in your SSD is encrypted

01:24:15 ◼   ► using dedicated AES hardware

01:24:16 ◼   ► with no effect on the SSD's performance.

01:24:18 ◼   ► It's not clear whether they're talking about FileVault

01:24:20 ◼   ► or the other thing.

01:24:20 ◼   ► But yeah, they're actually doing something

01:24:25 ◼   ► that they have very rarely done in the past,

01:24:26 ◼   ► which is throwing a chip, a chip that nobody else has,

01:24:30 ◼   ► to their computer specifically to make them perform better.

01:24:33 ◼   ► And who doesn't like that?

01:24:33 ◼   ► That is a great pro feature.

01:24:36 ◼   ► And if it lets them, like, you know,

01:24:38 ◼   ► these are things that you should be able to measure.

01:24:40 ◼   ► If it lets them go faster on benchmarks

01:24:43 ◼   ► because the CPU is not involved at all

01:24:45 ◼   ► in any of the encryption on the disk stuff,

01:24:47 ◼   ► that's a clean win.

01:24:48 ◼   ► And if the T2S is rumored is heavily based

01:24:51 ◼   ► on an existing iPhone chip, that's a great reuse of IP.

01:24:56 ◼   ► Like they already did the work to design this chip

01:24:58 ◼   ► for their flagship product.

01:24:59 ◼   ► you can repurpose this chip and throw it in with a combination of a bunch of other stuff

01:25:04 ◼   ► and maybe even repurpose some software that you have to do, say, image processing from

01:25:07 ◼   ► the iPhone or whatever.

01:25:09 ◼   ► You know, and maybe disk controller stuff.

01:25:12 ◼   ► I don't know how much of that is shared with the iOS devices that might be using a similar

01:25:15 ◼   ► thing.

01:25:16 ◼   ► This is a smart way to make a better, faster computer, and I hope the Mac Pro has something

01:25:21 ◼   ► just like this, even though, you know, presumably doesn't have a front-facing camera or whatever.

01:25:25 ◼   ► And I think one of the things we said

01:25:27 ◼   ► when the Touch Bar was launched was,

01:25:30 ◼   ► this actually does show they are putting

01:25:32 ◼   ► significant engineering resources into the Mac still.

01:25:35 ◼   ► Not as much as we would like sometimes,

01:25:36 ◼   ► but clearly it isn't just sitting around

01:25:39 ◼   ► being completely neglected.

01:25:41 ◼   ► This wasn't like a half-assed update.

01:25:43 ◼   ► This was like a significant engineering effort

01:25:46 ◼   ► and with significant new things being put into it,

01:25:49 ◼   ► not just like a stock Intel motherboard and stock parts.

01:25:53 ◼   ► So, give them full credit where credit is due.

01:25:56 ◼   ► This is major engineering work going into the Mac.

01:25:58 ◼   ► And for a long time, it seemed like that wasn't happening.

01:26:00 ◼   ► So this is a nice change of the narrative,

01:26:04 ◼   ► and it's good to see results.

01:26:06 ◼   ► - One aspect of this integration, by the way,

01:26:09 ◼   ► of getting to the SSD specifically,

01:26:11 ◼   ► of great performance, the encryption at rest for free,

01:26:15 ◼   ► the secure enclave, this is from our anonymous source again.

01:26:21 ◼   ► This person says they feel quite confident stating there will never be a third-party

01:26:25 ◼   ► SSD upgrade for a T2-equipped Mac.

01:26:27 ◼   ► Because the integration is so tight, I mean, maybe it's tight down to being soldered in,

01:26:31 ◼   ► or maybe it's tight just down to, like, this is not something you can buy off the shelf.

01:26:35 ◼   ► There's tight integration between the storage and the controller and the encryption and

01:26:39 ◼   ► all that other stuff going on there.

01:26:42 ◼   ► That it is a very custom solution.

01:26:44 ◼   ► And that is very much like iOS devices, where no one considers, you know, upgrading the

01:26:49 ◼   ► storage you buy a 64 gig phone you're like oh I'll have to market upgrade it to 128.

01:26:53 ◼   ► No you won't because it's so integrated into like everything inside a phone is from day

01:26:59 ◼   ► one been so tied up with the whole security environment of phones and the T2 brings the

01:27:04 ◼   ► Mac closer to that ideal in good ways and bad we haven't gotten to the secure boot stuff

01:27:09 ◼   ► yet but like bringing closer to the ideal of a phone of being more resilient to hardware

01:27:15 ◼   ► attacks. Like the old adage in the world of desktop and even laptop computers is

01:27:20 ◼   ► physical access trumps all security. Even servers. Physical access trumps all

01:27:23 ◼   ► security. If you are physically there with the hardware, it doesn't really matter

01:27:26 ◼   ► what you've done security-wise because if you're physically there, there are so

01:27:29 ◼   ► many things that you can do to own that machine, right? With phones, the whole idea

01:27:37 ◼   ► has been to make them resilient to that old adage. Does physical access trump

01:27:40 ◼   ► security? Here you go, here's my phone. If Apple has done a good job, it should be

01:27:43 ◼   ► really hard for you to get anything out of it like anything at all aside from you maybe

01:27:48 ◼   ► like freezing the thing of liquid nitrogen and extracting the data from RAM but even

01:27:52 ◼   ► then it might be encrypted like you know so anyway the t2 and the associated secure boot

01:27:57 ◼   ► machinery and secure enclave and all that stuff are an attempt to bring the Mac more

01:28:01 ◼   ► into that direction for for good and bad mostly good in terms of security but bad in terms

01:28:08 ◼   ► of us as computer enthusiasts who occasionally screw up on our computers have gotten used

01:28:16 ◼   ► to the idea that physical access trumps all security is good for us when we mess up our

01:28:22 ◼   ► own computers.

01:28:23 ◼   ► Say, "Well, it's all messed up, but because I'm physically here in front of the computer,

01:28:26 ◼   ► I'm going to plug in this other drive-in boot from it."

01:28:28 ◼   ► Or, "I'm going to go in target disk mode and just pull the data off," or whatever, even

01:28:32 ◼   ► though I've hosed my OS install by messing with the bootloader or something.

01:28:35 ◼   ► Like there's always something we can do to save ourselves.

01:28:38 ◼   ► Not so much with an iPhone,

01:28:40 ◼   ► and maybe not so much with one of these iMac Pros either,

01:28:43 ◼   ► depending on how you have it configured.

01:28:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, and this is one of the reasons why

01:28:47 ◼   ► I would strongly advise, similar to the RAM argument,

01:28:52 ◼   ► don't assume you're gonna be able to upgrade these later.

01:28:54 ◼   ► You know, as you said, we heard from that anonymous tip,

01:28:57 ◼   ► they don't think that it's likely that we're gonna have

01:28:59 ◼   ► upgradable SSDs from third parties.

01:29:02 ◼   ► I didn't ask this during the call,

01:29:04 ◼   ► so I don't have any kind of official statement on this,

01:29:06 ◼   ► but I would guess the same thing.

01:29:09 ◼   ► It seems very likely that that's gonna be the case,

01:29:11 ◼   ► that I don't think you're gonna see

01:29:14 ◼   ► third-party T2 SSD modules.

01:29:17 ◼   ► And as we briefly discussed last week,

01:29:19 ◼   ► I don't think that's that different from how it is now.

01:29:22 ◼   ► Like, the last few generations of Macs that we've had,

01:29:26 ◼   ► you haven't had third-party SSD modules usually at all,

01:29:30 ◼   ► or if they do come, they come like years

01:29:32 ◼   ► after the machine is launched.

01:29:34 ◼   ► And they're usually very expensive

01:29:36 ◼   ► because they're like custom stuff from OWC

01:29:38 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:29:39 ◼   ► So like, if you can at all order your computer

01:29:42 ◼   ► with the disk space you need up front, do it.

01:29:45 ◼   ► And otherwise consider external expansion.

01:29:48 ◼   ► Because internal upgrades down the road

01:29:50 ◼   ► are just getting less and less likely

01:29:52 ◼   ► to be possible or affordable.

01:29:54 ◼   ► - So the secure boot stuff,

01:29:56 ◼   ► Cable did a bunch of tweets about it

01:29:58 ◼   ► 'cause he got one too, right?

01:29:59 ◼   ► He's another developer who got one of these.

01:30:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, he got a review unit.

01:30:02 ◼   ► Oh yeah, that's right, he didn't just get a call, he actually got a computer, which

01:30:04 ◼   ► is cool.

01:30:05 ◼   ► So he did a bunch of tweets about it.

01:30:06 ◼   ► One of them was a screenshot of a new, I guess it's an app called Startup Security Utility,

01:30:13 ◼   ► and it's where you can enable and disable the firmware password, but it also has two

01:30:16 ◼   ► little sets of radio buttons, one called Secure Boot, and the options are Full Security, which

01:30:22 ◼   ► I don't know what the defaults are, but Full Security ensures that only the latest and

01:30:25 ◼   ► most secure software can be run, and this mode requires a network connection at software

01:30:29 ◼   ► installation time.

01:30:30 ◼   ► I'm a little bit confused about the details of that

01:30:32 ◼   ► because it ensures that only the latest

01:30:34 ◼   ► and most secure software can work.

01:30:35 ◼   ► Does that mean like if it's not the latest software,

01:30:36 ◼   ► it won't boot it, but it will force you to do an update

01:30:38 ◼   ► before it will even boot?

01:30:39 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:30:40 ◼   ► Anyway, medium security requires verifiable software to boot

01:30:44 ◼   ► but not the latest software.

01:30:45 ◼   ► So you can just keep using your old OS

01:30:47 ◼   ► and no security does not enforce any requirement.

01:30:49 ◼   ► So all of our Macs now fall under the category

01:30:52 ◼   ► as far as secure boot is concerned of no security.

01:30:56 ◼   ► Like if there's an interesting name

01:30:59 ◼   ► what Apple thinks of this thing. If you plug in a drive that has an OS that can boot your machine,

01:31:03 ◼   ► it will boot, right? It doesn't do any verification that that operating system is completely valid and

01:31:09 ◼   ► hasn't been rooted, and it sure doesn't care if it's the latest version. You can whatever,

01:31:13 ◼   ► like my 2008 Mac Pro, what did it ship with? Did it ship with Snow Leopard? Maybe before that.

01:31:19 ◼   ► Maybe it shipped with Leopard. Yeah, I think it shipped with Leopard. It'll boot Leopard right

01:31:22 ◼   ► now. It doesn't care that Leopard is ancient. So that's what Apple considers no security.

01:31:27 ◼   ► And there's also an option for external boot.

01:31:29 ◼   ► And you can select disallow booting from external media,

01:31:32 ◼   ► which is pretty straightforward.

01:31:34 ◼   ► It's like, oh, you messed up your computer?

01:31:36 ◼   ► You want to boot from another disk to try to save it?

01:31:38 ◼   ► Nope, not if you have this thing set.

01:31:40 ◼   ► Or the option to allow booting from external media.

01:31:42 ◼   ► So a lot of the T2 stuff is like, you know,

01:31:45 ◼   ► you can make your iMac much more like an iPhone,

01:31:48 ◼   ► or if you change these settings,

01:31:50 ◼   ► it can just be like a normal Mac has always been.

01:31:52 ◼   ► Now it's clear the direction Apple wants you to go in.

01:31:54 ◼   ► the top items and all these radio buttons are the most secure ones.

01:31:59 ◼   ► But there's an interesting TechNote help article that I'll put a link to that, like,

01:32:05 ◼   ► what do you do if you have your iMac Pro set to the most secure settings and you screw it up?

01:32:10 ◼   ► The recovery procedure, kind of like the recovery procedure when you screw up your phone

01:32:16 ◼   ► and you have to sort of go into DFU mode or whatever, the recovery procedure for your iMac Pro

01:32:20 ◼   ► Requires you to have another Mac and that you can connect to your iMac Pro

01:32:25 ◼   ► And if you think about it's like look

01:32:28 ◼   ► You know you always need some other thing to plug your thing into like when you put your phone in DFU mode if you don't

01:32:34 ◼   ► Literally have any other hardware it just sits there staring at you

01:32:37 ◼   ► But it's not it's not you need some other device to connect to do in the case of the Mac Pro

01:32:40 ◼   ► What you need to connect to it would be kind of needed you connected to an iPhone to recover it like it would download from

01:32:45 ◼   ► The internet the OS update and funnel it through

01:32:47 ◼   ► But anyway, this is the brave new world of security.

01:32:50 ◼   ► The whole point of all the secure boot software is so that your computer can verify that it

01:32:56 ◼   ► is running clean software.

01:33:00 ◼   ► Software that, you know, there's this sort of chain of trust that each thing in the chain

01:33:03 ◼   ► verifies the next thing.

01:33:04 ◼   ► What was it?

01:33:05 ◼   ► Cable had a good tweet about it.