ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Oh, did you ever modify last week's show notes?

00:00:02 ◼   ► Marco and I had a bet going to see when you would.

00:00:04 ◼   ► - I didn't even look at them, why?

00:00:06 ◼   ► - Oh, you didn't.

00:00:07 ◼   ► - What did you have in there?

00:00:08 ◼   ► - Nothing, nothing, Dad.

00:00:10 ◼   ► - Don't look. - Don't look, Dad.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Don't look, Dad, it's fine, Dad.

00:00:13 ◼   ► - Knew about the dollar signs, pre-show, my god.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Is it the title?

00:00:16 ◼   ► 'Cause it's all like small caps on the website,

00:00:18 ◼   ► so I can't tell if that title is messed up.

00:00:19 ◼   ► - No, no, no, no.

00:00:20 ◼   ► - Do you still have your dollar signs

00:00:21 ◼   ► in your menu bar case here, or have you fixed that?

00:00:23 ◼   ► - No, I fixed it during recording.

00:00:24 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, okay.

00:00:26 ◼   ► I'm looking at... you're gonna think I'm gonna complain about the emoji FOMO thing?

00:00:30 ◼   ► No. Yeah, you've already skipped over it then.

00:00:32 ◼   ► Oh, I don't know. What am I looking at? Tell me.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Sonos and Google sitting in a tree. Anchor in Amazon. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

00:00:40 ◼   ► You messed it up by putting the word "are" in there. "Are" is not in the nursery rhyme.

00:00:45 ◼   ► Oh, that is true.

00:00:45 ◼   ► That's all I complained about. I have no problem with you doing a cute thing in the show notes.

00:00:49 ◼   ► I have a problem with you not knowing how the K-S-S-I-N-G song goes.

00:00:54 ◼   ► It would be Sonos and Google sitting in a tree.

00:00:57 ◼   ► Ellipsis.

00:00:58 ◼   ► Next line would be KSSING.

00:01:00 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:01 ◼   ► You would say Anchor and Amazon.

00:01:02 ◼   ► Like have you not, you messed it up.

00:01:04 ◼   ► - But it was two different topics.

00:01:05 ◼   ► I was trying to wrestle it in.

00:01:07 ◼   ► - I know, well you blew it.

00:01:09 ◼   ► You blew it.

00:01:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:12 ◼   ► - I'm speaking to you two fine gentlemen tonight

00:01:15 ◼   ► from the peaks of, hi Sierra.

00:01:17 ◼   ► - As am I actually, but for a bad reason.

00:01:20 ◼   ► - Oh that's surprising, yeah well.

00:01:23 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, actually I forgot to put that in the,

00:01:25 ◼   ► that should be a topic today.

00:01:26 ◼   ► - I just put it in and I now have moved it up to the top,

00:01:29 ◼   ► but we can't get there yet

00:01:30 ◼   ► because we have to do some follow-up.

00:01:32 ◼   ► So since we already are enticing the listeners,

00:01:35 ◼   ► let's just dive right in.

00:01:37 ◼   ► Jon, can you tell me about Sky Platform exclusivity,

00:01:40 ◼   ► if you please?

00:01:41 ◼   ► - Speculated on the last show

00:01:43 ◼   ► that Sky's exclusivity to the Apple TV

00:01:47 ◼   ► would be just like every other exclusive

00:01:49 ◼   ► in the gaming world, a timed exclusive,

00:01:51 ◼   ► and that is actually confirmed on that game company's website.

00:01:54 ◼   ► It says, "Arriving first on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Additional platforms to follow."

00:01:59 ◼   ► No time window given, but we'll see how that goes.

00:02:01 ◼   ► So I might just be able to hold out until it comes out on,

00:02:04 ◼   ► you know, PS4 or whatever.

00:02:05 ◼   ► - And tell me about your chair, please.

00:02:08 ◼   ► - So I have my chair, my ridiculously expensive

00:02:11 ◼   ► Herman Miller chair that I've been sitting on

00:02:13 ◼   ► since like the last show that where we talked about it,

00:02:16 ◼   ► or maybe two shows ago, I forget.

00:02:18 ◼   ► But I just wanted to give an update on how that's going.

00:02:20 ◼   ► So I did take off both of the arms.

00:02:22 ◼   ► I had to order another Torx wrench

00:02:25 ◼   ► because the one that I had couldn't fit

00:02:26 ◼   ► in a little space or whatever,

00:02:27 ◼   ► but it's always good to have more Allen keys

00:02:30 ◼   ► and Torx wrenches, you know,

00:02:32 ◼   ► in metric and standard and all sorts of sizes.

00:02:35 ◼   ► Although Torx, it just comes in its own little sizes.

00:02:38 ◼   ► T3 is what I needed.

00:02:39 ◼   ► Anyway, arms are off.

00:02:41 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:42 ◼   ► T3 or T30, I forget.

00:02:43 ◼   ► Anyway, one of those things.

00:02:44 ◼   ► - I don't think it matters.

00:02:45 ◼   ► - It matters if you wanna take the arms off your chair.

00:02:49 ◼   ► I had a set of Torx wrench things, but they didn't fit.

00:02:52 ◼   ► And they don't make it,

00:02:53 ◼   ► a couple of the screws are hard to get out

00:02:55 ◼   ► because the levers that come out that adjust the seat

00:02:57 ◼   ► are kind of in the way, but it's not that bad,

00:02:59 ◼   ► just Amazon or some.

00:03:01 ◼   ► So I've been sitting on that chair for a while

00:03:03 ◼   ► and I have just some follow-up impressions of it.

00:03:06 ◼   ► I like it.

00:03:08 ◼   ► You know, it takes a little bit of getting used to it

00:03:10 ◼   ► because it doesn't feel like regular chairs,

00:03:12 ◼   ► but I think I've settled into it pretty well.

00:03:14 ◼   ► Two things about it have annoyed me so far.

00:03:16 ◼   ► one there is an adjustment on it to make the the seat length like basically from the back to the

00:03:22 ◼   ► front of the seat to to make it longer which is great for people with long legs like me because

00:03:25 ◼   ► you're not supposed to have like half your leg hanging off the front of the thing so you can

00:03:29 ◼   ► make the seat longer. i wish more cars had this some of them do some cars actually have this

00:03:33 ◼   ► adjustment to sort of support your legs more uh you know more down towards your knee they say

00:03:39 ◼   ► you're supposed to have like you know two inches between the back of your knee or the back of your

00:03:43 ◼   ► your calf or whatever and then the seat front. So the Herman Miller Embody has two big handles

00:03:49 ◼   ► that you can grab and slide out the front part of the chair, which I do. But unless

00:03:55 ◼   ► you are in a situation where you're sharing your chair with somebody else and constantly

00:03:59 ◼   ► switching back and forth, this, like many of the adjustments on chairs, is something

00:04:02 ◼   ► that you'll do once or twice in the beginning when you're getting used to the chair and

00:04:07 ◼   ► you'll eventually decide what adjustment setting is right for me. There's only a few choices

00:04:11 ◼   ► It's not like an infinite adjustability and you find how the seat is comfortable for you and you leave it there

00:04:17 ◼   ► But for the entire time you own this chair these two Mickey Mouse ears coffee cup mug

00:04:23 ◼   ► Handles are gonna be sticking out the front of your chair and every time I get into and out of my chair

00:04:28 ◼   ► Somehow I bump into those things. They're like ears like useless ears

00:04:32 ◼   ► Fossilized ears poking out of the front of the chair and I don't like that

00:04:36 ◼   ► Second thing is since I have it extended almost as far as it will go

00:04:40 ◼   ► I think maybe I do have it as far as it will go for my long legs

00:04:42 ◼   ► There's like a little bit of a creakiness in

00:04:45 ◼   ► The front of the chair as that a little telescoping thing kind of flexes in its in its plastic grooves

00:04:51 ◼   ► Maybe that squeak will go away over time. Maybe it won't but it's not a sort of

00:04:56 ◼   ► It's not a sound and a feeling that matches up with the price of this chair. So I really like that and the final thing

00:05:03 ◼   ► There's a lot of stuff under the chair for all of these spring-loaded like

00:05:08 ◼   ► mechanisms that handle the thing where you lean back in the chair and

00:05:12 ◼   ► Some of it probably also handles like the back tension and then there's the gas cylinder thing for the height of the chair

00:05:18 ◼   ► That giant box of works that's basically under your butt takes up a surprising amount of room and you say who cares about that room

00:05:26 ◼   ► Nothing's going on under your chair, right? Well, apparently I'm someone who occasionally

00:05:29 ◼   ► Crosses his legs and shoves both his feet underneath the bottom of the seat resting them on the top of the little leg thingies

00:05:37 ◼   ► And I didn't know I did this as much as I do until my heel started hitting that giant box that I'm now sitting on

00:05:43 ◼   ► And I suppose I could get used to it, but I'm still hitting my heels in that box surprising amount of time

00:05:48 ◼   ► I'm just like I kind of wish I kind of wish that wasn't there

00:05:51 ◼   ► I kind of wish I had that free space to shove my feet into again

00:05:55 ◼   ► So that's my update on the embody. Mostly. I like it. I think I'm definitely gonna keep it

00:06:02 ◼   ► But I'm sitting right now on the steel case gesture chair which just arrived today

00:06:07 ◼   ► This still has arms on it, and they're gonna be much more difficult to take off

00:06:11 ◼   ► I'm already puzzling over how I'm going to manage this but for now the arms are on and I'm sitting on it definitely feels different

00:06:17 ◼   ► than the M body

00:06:19 ◼   ► But and and it has

00:06:21 ◼   ► Right away its adjustment for the length of the seat is to move the entire seat forward

00:06:26 ◼   ► So it's all just one unit. There's no extendy bit

00:06:27 ◼   ► it. It has less creaky bits on it and there's more room underneath it for me to cross my

00:06:32 ◼   ► legs. But it definitely feels different than the InBody. It feels more like a normal chair

00:06:37 ◼   ► and I'm not sure if I like it as much as the InBody. But I'm just sitting in it for

00:06:41 ◼   ► five minutes here. So probably next show I'll have a more longer term update on the comparison

00:06:45 ◼   ► of these two chairs. And I better hurry up because I've got like 30 days for both of

00:06:49 ◼   ► them to decide whether I want my bazillion dollars back for these chairs.

00:06:54 ◼   ► So last episode I was lamenting the fact that if you have an issue with your Google Pixel

00:06:59 ◼   ► phone, you can get online and you can tell Google, "Hey, I've got an issue," and they'll

00:07:05 ◼   ► overnight you a box with a replacement Pixel, and then you put your broken Pixel into the

00:07:10 ◼   ► box and ship it back to them.

00:07:12 ◼   ► And I thought, "Man, that would be really awesome to be able to do that with Apple.

00:07:15 ◼   ► I wish that was a thing."

00:07:17 ◼   ► And a handful of people wrote in to say, "It is a thing."

00:07:20 ◼   ► So John Tucker pointed me to AppleCare+ Express Replacement Service, which is, if you have

00:07:27 ◼   ► AppleCare+ a way that you can basically do the exact same thing.

00:07:32 ◼   ► They ship you a box and then you put your thing in the box that the new thing came in,

00:07:36 ◼   ► etc.

00:07:37 ◼   ► There's a joke here from Saturday Night Live that I'm trying to avoid.

00:07:39 ◼   ► Anyway, Prem wrote in to say, "I've done this and here's what it looks like."

00:07:44 ◼   ► And so we'll put a link to that in the show notes, and it's exactly what you would expect

00:07:48 ◼   ► to see.

00:07:49 ◼   ► Turns out this is an option I just had no idea, which if you live far away from an Apple

00:07:53 ◼   ► store, which most of the country probably does, that's pretty awesome.

00:07:57 ◼   ► And then additionally via Prem, they pointed me to a K-Base article, hi Steven, entitled

00:08:05 ◼   ► "How to Use Your Apple Watch Without Your iPhone Nearby."

00:08:08 ◼   ► And it says a handful of things in there, but one of the things it says is to receive

00:08:12 ◼   ► SMS, MMS, or push notifications from third-party apps on your Apple Watch Series 3 GPS.

00:08:19 ◼   ► and cellular, your paired iPhone must be powered on and connected to Wi-Fi or cellular, but

00:08:22 ◼   ► it doesn't need to be nearby."

00:08:25 ◼   ► So that kind of hints to me that Apple is proxying push notifications.

00:08:32 ◼   ► I have since heard reports that WhatsApp, I believe that's what the app was, I know

00:08:37 ◼   ► that that is an app, I just can't remember what people were citing, but a handful of

00:08:40 ◼   ► people cited something, and I think it was WhatsApp, as not having an Apple Watch app

00:08:45 ◼   ► at all, yet people receiving push notifications via cellular.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Additionally, the developers of Do actually wrote us to say, "Do uses local notifications.

00:08:56 ◼   ► I think the scheduled notifications were copied from the iPhone to the watch the last time

00:09:00 ◼   ► they talked."

00:09:01 ◼   ► And I think one of us had theorized that that may be the case.

00:09:03 ◼   ► But it sure sounds like, and I have since gotten tacit confirmation from a couple of

00:09:08 ◼   ► little birdies, that Apple is indeed proxying push notifications via, I guess, iCloud or

00:09:13 ◼   ► something in order for your watch, your cellular watch, to receive push notifications even if it's

00:09:18 ◼   ► not in range. I have had several people explain to me that I'm a moron and that actually Bluetooth

00:09:24 ◼   ► works very far, and I'm a moron that the watch was on Wi-Fi, but I assure you I checked to see

00:09:30 ◼   ► what the watch says it was on, and it said it was on cellular at the time. So yes, I'm aware that

00:09:37 ◼   ► the watch does work on Bluetooth and Bluetooth works further away than one would expect. I

00:09:42 ◼   ► I understand it works on WiFi,

00:09:44 ◼   ► I don't know why it wasn't on WiFi

00:09:45 ◼   ► in this particular instance,

00:09:46 ◼   ► but the watch said it was on cellular

00:09:49 ◼   ► and I am inclined to believe the watch.

00:09:50 ◼   ► So, in summary, it sure does sound like

00:09:53 ◼   ► that Apple is proxying iPhone push notifications,

00:09:55 ◼   ► which is pretty cool.

00:09:56 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

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00:11:55 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:11:58 ◼   ► - Moving on to Ask ATP.

00:12:01 ◼   ► Jason Townsend writes in,

00:12:02 ◼   ► "For those who run Plex on a Mac,

00:12:05 ◼   ► "how do you run it with no logged in user?"

00:12:07 ◼   ► and I can speak for myself and say, I don't.

00:12:10 ◼   ► It is running as part of my user

00:12:12 ◼   ► that I'm using right now on this very Mac.

00:12:15 ◼   ► And this user is pretty much always logged in

00:12:18 ◼   ► and that's okay for me.

00:12:20 ◼   ► It may not be okay for you listener, but it's okay for me.

00:12:22 ◼   ► - I was hoping you had an answer to this.

00:12:24 ◼   ► That's why I put it in there.

00:12:25 ◼   ► I'm like, okay, so you probably know how to do this

00:12:26 ◼   ► because I do the same thing.

00:12:28 ◼   ► It's running as, actually running as my wife's user

00:12:31 ◼   ► and she's always logged in.

00:12:32 ◼   ► Now, here's the thing.

00:12:34 ◼   ► you don't, you have to be logged in,

00:12:38 ◼   ► but you don't have to be the front most user.

00:12:39 ◼   ► So if one of my kids comes up and is doing their homework

00:12:42 ◼   ► on their account on the same computer,

00:12:44 ◼   ► as long as my wife is logged in in the background,

00:12:46 ◼   ► Plex still works and runs.

00:12:47 ◼   ► So you don't have to leave their account as the front most.

00:12:50 ◼   ► But if there's a way to run it without you being logged in,

00:12:53 ◼   ► like cron it and run it as, you know,

00:12:55 ◼   ► some other user with no GUI or whatever,

00:12:58 ◼   ► I have, honestly, I haven't even tried to do it,

00:13:00 ◼   ► but I mean, maybe, have you tried anything, Casey,

00:13:03 ◼   ► or are you just like,

00:13:03 ◼   ► "Well, I'm always logged in, so I have no need for this."

00:13:06 ◼   ► - Exactly right, I have no need for it.

00:13:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, so we're not gonna say that it can't be done,

00:13:10 ◼   ► just that neither of us has tried to do it.

00:13:13 ◼   ► Marco, I assume the same.

00:13:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, to me, the idea of running it

00:13:18 ◼   ► without having a logged in user basically as root

00:13:22 ◼   ► never even occurred to me, because that's not how

00:13:24 ◼   ► I would think to run things that are on a Mac

00:13:27 ◼   ► in a server role.

00:13:29 ◼   ► Even though I know there are things that Macs can do

00:13:31 ◼   ► as a server with no user, like the built-in Apache server

00:13:33 ◼   ► and stuff like that, many of the things

00:13:35 ◼   ► that you would run a Mac server for require

00:13:39 ◼   ► there to be some kind of application in user space

00:13:42 ◼   ► running to serve those tasks.

00:13:44 ◼   ► So the idea of running a Mac in some kind of server role

00:13:48 ◼   ► without a logged in user has never even occurred to me

00:13:50 ◼   ► to even think about.

00:13:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know that was not the answer

00:13:54 ◼   ► that you were looking for, Jason, and I'm sorry for that,

00:13:56 ◼   ► but that is the answer for us.

00:13:58 ◼   ► And if you happen to know how to do this,

00:14:00 ◼   ► I would be curious to hear.

00:14:01 ◼   ► It's not really solving a need that I have,

00:14:03 ◼   ► but I'd be curious to hear, so do write in and let us know.

00:14:06 ◼   ► And Jason as well.

00:14:08 ◼   ► Tom Myers asks, "Could you guys help explain why

00:14:10 ◼   ► a massively multi-core ARM Mac Pro,"

00:14:13 ◼   ► oh, nevermind, we don't have to talk about this.

00:14:14 ◼   ► Moving on.

00:14:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:14:16 ◼   ► Just kidding, just kidding.

00:14:16 ◼   ► - What did you get for not picking the questions?

00:14:18 ◼   ► - I actually meant to earlier today

00:14:20 ◼   ► and I got sidetracked at work and never did.

00:14:21 ◼   ► And actually, to be honest,

00:14:22 ◼   ► I'm curious to hear your answer to this, Jon.

00:14:24 ◼   ► So let me reread it.

00:14:25 ◼   ► "Could you guys help explain why a massively multi-core

00:14:27 ◼   ► ARM Mac Pro wouldn't be viable?

00:14:30 ◼   ► a 64 core, etc., A11X architecture, for example.

00:14:34 ◼   ► So it would be viable, but we've talked about this on the show before.

00:14:39 ◼   ► There's a couple of aspects to this. You know, so we all know that Apple makes really fast

00:14:43 ◼   ► system-mounted chips for their phones, and they make even faster ones that they use

00:14:47 ◼   ► in their iPads, and the number of cores in them has been increasing

00:14:50 ◼   ► from one, and now they're up to four in the phone.

00:14:54 ◼   ► Right? Is it four? I forget. It's, well, with the 8 series, it's now six.

00:14:58 ◼   ► You got the four slow ones and the two fast ones.

00:15:01 ◼   ► Yeah, anyway, that's a lot of cores.

00:15:03 ◼   ► That's more than they had before.

00:15:05 ◼   ► But as we discussed last time this came up,

00:15:09 ◼   ► to make something that doesn't,

00:15:11 ◼   ► you know, that's not like a little system on a chip

00:15:13 ◼   ► that takes iPad power, but instead takes 150 watts

00:15:16 ◼   ► or something like a, you know, a Xeon class CPU,

00:15:20 ◼   ► that's a very different kind of design.

00:15:23 ◼   ► You can't say, well, because we've made a chip for the iPad

00:15:26 ◼   ► that's faster than all of our laptops, right, or faster than our cheap laptops.

00:15:31 ◼   ► We've basically done all the work to make the Xeon class thing, and you haven't.

00:15:35 ◼   ► There's a lot more that goes into making a Xeon class CPU than just saying, "Oh, we have

00:15:39 ◼   ► a core and we'll just multiply it out."

00:15:41 ◼   ► It's not like a GPU where you just take the execution unit and just add more of them,

00:15:45 ◼   ► and even that gets more complicated.

00:15:47 ◼   ► There's tons of things having to do with I/O and PCI Express lanes and figuring out the

00:15:51 ◼   ► whole Thunderbolt thing and the various chipsets.

00:15:54 ◼   ► Not to mention all the multiple cores and the cache coherency and the ECC RAM and all

00:15:59 ◼   ► sorts of other things.

00:16:00 ◼   ► It's not to say that they couldn't do it.

00:16:03 ◼   ► I'm sure they would do an excellent job.

00:16:04 ◼   ► It's just to say that by having an iPad and phone chips, they haven't done all the work.

00:16:11 ◼   ► So if they wanted to make one, they could, but it's a lot of additional work.

00:16:17 ◼   ► And the question we've always had is, is it worthwhile for Apple to do all that additional

00:16:21 ◼   ► work to essentially compete with Xeon's for a line of computers that they sell very very

00:16:26 ◼   ► few of compared to anything else.

00:16:29 ◼   ► So maybe that's the answer to the viability question.

00:16:33 ◼   ► Technically viable, sure, but Apple would have to do a ton of work.

00:16:36 ◼   ► Financially viable, can Apple justify that ton of work?

00:16:39 ◼   ► Maybe they will eventually because, I mean, as people have been benchmarking the new iPhone

00:16:44 ◼   ► 8 and 8 Plus against Mac laptops, like modern Mac laptops that you can buy right now that

00:16:49 ◼   ► that are not like last year's models

00:16:51 ◼   ► and seeing how fast the system on a chip is,

00:16:55 ◼   ► the case for ARM-powered Mac laptops

00:16:58 ◼   ► is getting stronger and stronger.

00:17:00 ◼   ► But the case for ARM-powered Mac Pros,

00:17:04 ◼   ► I mean, if Apple started this project four years ago

00:17:06 ◼   ► and has a Xeon-class ARM CPU waiting in the wings

00:17:09 ◼   ► for like next year's Mac Pro, then fine.

00:17:10 ◼   ► But if they haven't started that project now,

00:17:14 ◼   ► you're not gonna see one of these for a long time.

00:17:15 ◼   ► It would cost a lot of money.

00:17:17 ◼   ► It would take a lot of time.

00:17:19 ◼   ► And honestly, I feel like Intel does pretty well

00:17:24 ◼   ► in the high end, perhaps better than they do

00:17:26 ◼   ► in the low end and the laptop space.

00:17:28 ◼   ► So best case scenario, Apple makes something

00:17:30 ◼   ► that is some single to double digit percentage

00:17:33 ◼   ► faster than Intel.

00:17:35 ◼   ► And you don't really get a lot of extra points

00:17:37 ◼   ► for doing it with less power in, is the on class thing,

00:17:40 ◼   ► because you're not running them off battery.

00:17:42 ◼   ► Like the whole point of these machines

00:17:43 ◼   ► is they're plugged into the wall

00:17:44 ◼   ► and it's like a huge amount of power going into them

00:17:47 ◼   ► to power everything, the RAM, the GPU, the separate GPU,

00:17:52 ◼   ► the multiple GPUs and stuff like that.

00:17:54 ◼   ► So I think it's viable,

00:17:57 ◼   ► but it may not be financially the best thing for Apple to do

00:18:01 ◼   ► and they have a lot of work to do.

00:18:03 ◼   ► - I'm still super curious to see if,

00:18:06 ◼   ► to one day discover if we'll ever see

00:18:08 ◼   ► a ARM-based MacBook Pro.

00:18:11 ◼   ► Certainly Marco has thoughts about MacBook Pros these days.

00:18:14 ◼   ► I didn't actually put that in as a topic, but we can't talk about that if we want.

00:18:18 ◼   ► But just before we leave this, I would be super excited to see.

00:18:23 ◼   ► I think everybody would be.

00:18:24 ◼   ► Every computer nerd would be like, "Someone wants to compete with high-end CPUs with Intel?

00:18:30 ◼   ► That would be great."

00:18:31 ◼   ► And like I said, Apple has shown that it's got really good talent to make.

00:18:35 ◼   ► It's just a question of will.

00:18:36 ◼   ► Does Apple want to make a chip like this?

00:18:38 ◼   ► Because if they want to, I bet they could do a really good job and it would be super

00:18:41 ◼   ► super cool, but it still strikes me as one of those fantasies, like, you know, the Halo

00:18:47 ◼   ► car kind of fantasy of like, Apple's gonna make everything its own, and it's gonna

00:18:51 ◼   ► make a special computer that's faster than anybody else's, because they're gonna

00:18:54 ◼   ► make their own CPU. That would be super cool, but I just feel like it's still a pipe dream.

00:18:59 ◼   ► Let's—baby steps. Let's get a new Mac Pro sometime this century, and then we'll

00:19:04 ◼   ► think about putting a 64-core ARM chip in it.

00:19:08 ◼   ► Richard Ernie writes in and asks a disturbingly reasonable question.

00:19:14 ◼   ► And that question is, "How many iMac Pros do you think Marco will buy before the launch

00:19:19 ◼   ► of the Mac Pro?"

00:19:20 ◼   ► I have an answer.

00:19:21 ◼   ► I also have an answer.

00:19:23 ◼   ► Okay, what do you guys think the answer will be?

00:19:25 ◼   ► I feel like the answer should be one, because you will presumably buy the most expensive

00:19:34 ◼   ► and most ridiculous iMac Pro you possibly can in the way only Marco can do, and that

00:19:40 ◼   ► should be it.

00:19:41 ◼   ► But I fear you will somehow talk yourself into, "Oh, this one thing I really don't need

00:19:47 ◼   ► and/or will make it worse."

00:19:48 ◼   ► So like, as an example, the dual graphics card MacBook Pros.

00:19:52 ◼   ► I know there won't be a direct equivalent of that in the iMac Pro, but something along

00:19:55 ◼   ► those lines.

00:19:56 ◼   ► Well, I understand that the dual graphics card MacBook Pros are hypothetically better,

00:20:01 ◼   ► But they're better in ways that don't matter to me, so I won't get the maxed out top-of-the-line

00:20:05 ◼   ► MacBook Pro.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Instead, I'll get a different MacBook Pro.

00:20:09 ◼   ► So that is the one, I don't know, like wildcard.

00:20:12 ◼   ► If you somehow convince yourself that, "Oh, maybe I don't need the cranked to 11 version

00:20:18 ◼   ► of the iMac Pro," then I could see you in for two.

00:20:21 ◼   ► Because the first one will be the, "Oh, I don't need everything," and then you'll decide,

00:20:26 ◼   ► "Oh, that was a terrible mistake.

00:20:27 ◼   ► I need everything," and then you'll get the one you should have gotten in the first place.

00:20:30 ◼   ► Jon.

00:20:31 ◼   ► You're overthinking it but also underthinking it.

00:20:32 ◼   ► My answer to this is--

00:20:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:20:36 ◼   ► - What does that mean?

00:20:37 ◼   ► - Well, you'll see in a second.

00:20:39 ◼   ► So he's overthinking it because he's got his answer of one,

00:20:42 ◼   ► but then he's hedging and what about two, blah, blah,

00:20:44 ◼   ► but you're also underthinking it

00:20:45 ◼   ► and you're forgetting a very important factor.

00:20:47 ◼   ► When I read this question, I had an immediate answer

00:20:48 ◼   ► and the answer is he will buy two

00:20:50 ◼   ► before the launch of the Mac Pro.

00:20:51 ◼   ► Why will he buy two?

00:20:52 ◼   ► Because he'll get one because he's impatient

00:20:53 ◼   ► and he'll buy one for TIFF.

00:20:55 ◼   ► That's the answer.

00:20:56 ◼   ► - I did not even think about that.

00:20:57 ◼   ► You're right, you're right.

00:20:58 ◼   ► - So he's going to buy two iMac Pros before the Mac Pro.

00:21:01 ◼   ► You're right. That is the answer. So Marco, not that it matters because you're going to be wrong, but what do you think the answer is?

00:21:09 ◼   ► I think the answer is most likely to be one, but might be zero.

00:21:14 ◼   ► Oh, I call foul right now. Somebody mark this date down.

00:21:18 ◼   ► I said most likely one.

00:21:19 ◼   ► Alright, go ahead. Let him explain.

00:21:21 ◼   ► Okay. So in John way, I'll tell you that you're both right and wrong, and John is both wrong and right.

00:21:26 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:21:27 ◼   ► So the generous plan that would have me buying one

00:21:31 ◼   ► is I buy one for myself, when the Mac Pro comes out,

00:21:35 ◼   ► I give it to Tiff and I get myself a Mac Pro.

00:21:37 ◼   ► The case for maybe being zero,

00:21:41 ◼   ► it basically leads into the first topic

00:21:43 ◼   ► that we have on this list, which is labeled in the chat,

00:21:45 ◼   ► why is Marco on his MacBook Pro?

00:21:47 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:21:48 ◼   ► And the reason why is because my iMac has some issues

00:21:51 ◼   ► that I wanted to get repaired in the eight days left

00:21:55 ◼   ► in the warranty.

00:21:57 ◼   ► - Screen spiders.

00:21:58 ◼   ► - Good call.

00:21:59 ◼   ► - One of those is that the screen has image retention.

00:22:02 ◼   ► That is probably the biggest issue,

00:22:04 ◼   ► the issue that for long-term value

00:22:07 ◼   ► and the ability to sell it for a reasonable price

00:22:09 ◼   ► when I'm done with it, I wanna get that fixed.

00:22:12 ◼   ► Because the screen has a screen-only issue,

00:22:16 ◼   ► I am currently without my main desktop computer

00:22:19 ◼   ► for probably a week, maybe a little bit less if I'm lucky.

00:22:22 ◼   ► And that is horrible.

00:22:24 ◼   ► It's incredibly disruptive.

00:22:25 ◼   ► So I have, let me show you my desktop setup here.

00:22:28 ◼   ► I'll paste the link in the chat.

00:22:30 ◼   ► So the picture I've just shown you

00:22:31 ◼   ► is what I am podcasting on tonight.

00:22:33 ◼   ► - Oh my word.

00:22:34 ◼   ► - Are you the now mayor of Dongle Town as well?

00:22:38 ◼   ► I gotta wait for the picture to come in.

00:22:39 ◼   ► - This is tremendous.

00:22:41 ◼   ► - Oh, it's like the old times, you need some soda cans.

00:22:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm currently very much not satisfied

00:22:49 ◼   ► with owning an iMac as my primary computer

00:22:51 ◼   ► because as much as I missed the crap out of it,

00:22:54 ◼   ► I really wish it was separate from the screen.

00:22:57 ◼   ► Because then, if something went wrong with the screen,

00:23:00 ◼   ► I could just get the screen fixed.

00:23:02 ◼   ► If something went wrong with the Mac Pro,

00:23:05 ◼   ► I could plug in a laptop to the screen on my desk

00:23:08 ◼   ► and use that as a stand-in desktop

00:23:10 ◼   ► while I got the desktop serviced.

00:23:11 ◼   ► - But you're not enough of a hardware hoarder

00:23:13 ◼   ► to have extra screens around.

00:23:14 ◼   ► So say it was separate

00:23:15 ◼   ► and you just had to get the screen repaired.

00:23:16 ◼   ► You'd have a headless computer with no screen

00:23:18 ◼   ► and you'd still have to use your laptop

00:23:20 ◼   ► is what are you gonna hook up the body of your computer to?

00:23:23 ◼   ► - Well, I could get another screen.

00:23:24 ◼   ► I could basically--

00:23:25 ◼   ► - You could overnight another screen, I forgot.

00:23:27 ◼   ► Buying solves everything, buying solves all problems.

00:23:29 ◼   ► - Order a new screen, get the other one fixed,

00:23:31 ◼   ► and that's harder to do when it's an iMac.

00:23:33 ◼   ► I'm not gonna buy a whole new iMac to use for a week

00:23:35 ◼   ► and then return it or sell it or anything.

00:23:37 ◼   ► - No, but you'd buy a new 5K monitor

00:23:39 ◼   ► for a thousand bucks, no problem.

00:23:41 ◼   ► - Maybe.

00:23:41 ◼   ► I'm losing a week of productivity here

00:23:45 ◼   ► using my laptop as my only computer

00:23:48 ◼   ► And like trying to do iOS development on this, it's crazy.

00:23:52 ◼   ► - Whoa, whoa, whoa, you're not losing a week.

00:23:55 ◼   ► You're not losing a week.

00:23:56 ◼   ► You are perfectly capable of being productive.

00:23:59 ◼   ► You're just, you're too fussy to want to do it.

00:24:01 ◼   ► - No, I am doing it.

00:24:02 ◼   ► Like I am powering through and doing it, but it sucks.

00:24:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's exactly, exactly.

00:24:06 ◼   ► - And it's at substantial reduction of productivity

00:24:09 ◼   ► to have-- - Totally, totally.

00:24:11 ◼   ► - To lose eight inches of screen space,

00:24:14 ◼   ► of screen diagonal too for a while.

00:24:16 ◼   ► So it's not great.

00:24:18 ◼   ► At times like this, I really make a mental note to say,

00:24:22 ◼   ► just buy the desktop next time.

00:24:23 ◼   ► Like just buy the Mac Pro next time.

00:24:25 ◼   ► So I really don't like the idea of spending a lot of money

00:24:30 ◼   ► on an iMac Pro that might potentially still have,

00:24:35 ◼   ► you know, that would still have this limitation

00:24:37 ◼   ► of like if anything goes wrong with it,

00:24:38 ◼   ► I lose everything for the time it takes to get it serviced.

00:24:42 ◼   ► Also, you know, the iMac is only three years old,

00:24:46 ◼   ► minus eight days, and it already has

00:24:49 ◼   ► like a few little annoying things about it,

00:24:52 ◼   ► and I can already see like, I might not want to use this

00:24:56 ◼   ► after the Mac Pro comes out.

00:24:58 ◼   ► And I'm assuming for this discussion

00:25:01 ◼   ► that the Mac Pro is probably coming out next summer.

00:25:03 ◼   ► And so if the Mac Pro comes out way later than that,

00:25:06 ◼   ► like if it ends up being 2019 or next winter,

00:25:09 ◼   ► like you know, this might change things.

00:25:11 ◼   ► but I might actually just get zero iMac Pros,

00:25:15 ◼   ► because the iMac Pro concerns me,

00:25:17 ◼   ► in the sense that it's really hard to get an iMac

00:25:20 ◼   ► to function well and be useful for 10 years.

00:25:24 ◼   ► John's Mac Pro is actually doing that,

00:25:27 ◼   ► and you're gonna pay the price of John's Mac Pro

00:25:31 ◼   ► for an iMac Pro.

00:25:32 ◼   ► You're gonna pay the Xeon tax,

00:25:35 ◼   ► you're gonna pay the Pro tax,

00:25:36 ◼   ► you're gonna, you are gonna pay, like,

00:25:38 ◼   ► what did they say, the base price was 5,000?

00:25:40 ◼   ► - $5,000, but you forget how cheap this was.

00:25:42 ◼   ► Even accounting for inflation, 10 years ago,

00:25:43 ◼   ► this was only like 20-some, 22, $2,300.

00:25:47 ◼   ► This was back when the Mac Pros were incredibly cheap

00:25:50 ◼   ► for what you got.

00:25:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly, yeah, even with inflation,

00:25:53 ◼   ► you're coming out, I think, pretty far ahead with that.

00:25:55 ◼   ► And so, the Mac Pro, to me, you do pay a lot for it,

00:25:59 ◼   ► but they last pretty much indefinitely.

00:26:02 ◼   ► Like, they will last as long as you need them to last,

00:26:05 ◼   ► and if something does go wrong with them,

00:26:07 ◼   ► you have a much better chance of being able to

00:26:09 ◼   ► practically and economically service it yourself

00:26:11 ◼   ► down the road when it's out of warranty, et cetera.

00:26:13 ◼   ► And so the lifespan of a Mac Pro tends to be longer

00:26:17 ◼   ► than the lifespan of an iMac.

00:26:18 ◼   ► And I'm not considering the cylinder ones,

00:26:20 ◼   ► what I'm saying.

00:26:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

00:26:22 ◼   ► You're thinking of the old Mac Pros.

00:26:23 ◼   ► That's like, that's last decade thinking.

00:26:26 ◼   ► Like, okay, so that was the case.

00:26:28 ◼   ► But the most recent Mac Pro Apple has made,

00:26:30 ◼   ► none of those things are true about.

00:26:31 ◼   ► It was unreliable from the start.

00:26:33 ◼   ► It wasn't easy to repair yourself

00:26:35 ◼   ► and people aren't using them well for 10 years.

00:26:37 ◼   ► So I think you kind of have to take a wait

00:26:38 ◼   ► see and that maybe you won't have a choice of something that is big, reliable, easy to

00:26:45 ◼   ► repair, right?

00:26:46 ◼   ► Like, maybe that won't be one of your options.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Your option instead will be, you know, a faster, hopefully quieter and more powerful separate

00:26:54 ◼   ► screen thing, but that is just as unreliable as, you know, as any of the more recent Apple

00:27:00 ◼   ► hardware is and just as weird and flaky and the first generation has strange problems

00:27:04 ◼   ► and all that stuff.

00:27:05 ◼   ► I'm trying to be pessimistic, but like,

00:27:07 ◼   ► we're all kind of thinking like,

00:27:09 ◼   ► oh, the new Mac Pros will be like the old ones,

00:27:12 ◼   ► and the cylinder was an aberration,

00:27:13 ◼   ► and I think that's still an open question.

00:27:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, you're totally right, it is.

00:27:17 ◼   ► And I think the cylinder has taught them some lessons.

00:27:21 ◼   ► I would not expect a return to a giant tower,

00:27:24 ◼   ► but I would hope that it's maybe kind of something

00:27:27 ◼   ► in the middle there, like something between

00:27:29 ◼   ► a sealed up cylinder that you can do nothing to,

00:27:30 ◼   ► and some kind of interchangeable parts thing,

00:27:33 ◼   ► maybe whether it's a tower or not.

00:27:35 ◼   ► - Perhaps a magnesium cube.

00:27:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

00:27:38 ◼   ► And so I'm not sure I wanna commit to an iMac.

00:27:41 ◼   ► Now if the Mac Pro was totally dead

00:27:43 ◼   ► and they said, okay, we're launching the iMac Pro,

00:27:46 ◼   ► the Mac Pro is discontinued,

00:27:47 ◼   ► we're never gonna make one again,

00:27:48 ◼   ► we're just doing the iMac Pro,

00:27:50 ◼   ► then this decision is easy, of course I would buy one.

00:27:52 ◼   ► But because there is a Mac Pro allegedly coming,

00:27:56 ◼   ► I wanna wait to see what that is first before I decide.

00:27:59 ◼   ► Because if it's closer to what I want

00:28:02 ◼   ► in having things separate and maybe having

00:28:05 ◼   ► even crazier CPU options and stuff like that, who knows.

00:28:08 ◼   ► If it's more what I want, I would choose that.

00:28:11 ◼   ► The other thing I'm worried about with the iMac Pro

00:28:13 ◼   ► is thermals.

00:28:15 ◼   ► This is a completely new thermal design that,

00:28:19 ◼   ► basically they are wedging much, much higher,

00:28:23 ◼   ► hotter, higher wattage, hotter running parts

00:28:27 ◼   ► inside of an enclosure that they didn't design

00:28:31 ◼   ► the size for.

00:28:34 ◼   ► Like, they took the size of the other iMac

00:28:36 ◼   ► and it seemed that they basically had as a design goal

00:28:39 ◼   ► fit these higher end, hotter parts inside of this case

00:28:43 ◼   ► that we designed for this other computer.

00:28:44 ◼   ► And while they seem to have done a lot of work

00:28:47 ◼   ► about the internal design of it

00:28:48 ◼   ► and dealing with the internal arrangement

00:28:50 ◼   ► of those thermals and everything,

00:28:52 ◼   ► the fact that they didn't design the external case for it,

00:28:55 ◼   ► that they basically said, you know, wedge this into that,

00:28:58 ◼   ► that is probably gonna have limitations

00:29:01 ◼   ► and side effects that I don't like.

00:29:03 ◼   ► So maybe things are gonna overheat and be bad over time.

00:29:07 ◼   ► That's another problem I have with my iMac

00:29:09 ◼   ► is that the GPU fan is now, or the GPU now runs too hot

00:29:12 ◼   ► and the fan goes up constantly

00:29:13 ◼   ► and it's audible in my recordings,

00:29:15 ◼   ► which is one of the reasons I finally got it fixed

00:29:17 ◼   ► because I can't have that.

00:29:19 ◼   ► And maybe that's because these parts in that case,

00:29:25 ◼   ► like I got top of the line parts when it was out,

00:29:27 ◼   ► so these are running pretty hot over three years

00:29:30 ◼   ► and eventually that starts to have problems with cooling.

00:29:32 ◼   ► And I fear whether the iMac Pro will have those problems

00:29:35 ◼   ► or not because you're taking these hot parts

00:29:38 ◼   ► and putting them into a case that is designed to be thin

00:29:41 ◼   ► for some reason even though nobody cares about how thick

00:29:43 ◼   ► their desktop display is on the back.

00:29:45 ◼   ► But it's designed to be thin rather than being designed

00:29:48 ◼   ► to hold pro components.

00:29:50 ◼   ► The Mac Pro Towers on the other hand,

00:29:52 ◼   ► with the exception of the cylinder of course,

00:29:53 ◼   ► although even the cylinder did have a really clever cooling

00:29:56 ◼   ► design that was really good as long as you didn't use

00:29:58 ◼   ► the GPUs.

00:30:00 ◼   ► but the Mac Pro towers were always like,

00:30:04 ◼   ► we're gonna design a complete enclosure,

00:30:07 ◼   ► a complete shape around being able to hold and cool

00:30:12 ◼   ► the entire range of high-end Pro parts

00:30:17 ◼   ► that we're gonna sell for this thing.

00:30:18 ◼   ► So I think it was always more likely

00:30:21 ◼   ► that there would be fewer problems with thermals

00:30:23 ◼   ► and things like that with the Mac Pro towers

00:30:26 ◼   ► than with the iMacs.

00:30:29 ◼   ► So I'm, again, like with the iMac Pro,

00:30:31 ◼   ► we still don't know how loud is it gonna be?

00:30:35 ◼   ► Like are the fans gonna spin up constantly

00:30:37 ◼   ► and be audible or not?

00:30:38 ◼   ► 'Cause the Mac Pros are the same noise level

00:30:41 ◼   ► regardless of what they're doing, pretty much.

00:30:42 ◼   ► So like a Mac Pro, you know, you don't really hear it.

00:30:45 ◼   ► An iMac, you hear it if you push it.

00:30:48 ◼   ► And that's kind of ungraceful and it kinda suggests

00:30:50 ◼   ► thermals don't have a lot of headroom and everything else.

00:30:52 ◼   ► Now there was talk, there was a weird geek bench result

00:30:56 ◼   ► that may or may not be real, we don't really know.

00:30:58 ◼   ► people are believing that it might be real,

00:31:01 ◼   ► that might be the new iMac Pro CPUs,

00:31:03 ◼   ► and they were reporting that they were basically

00:31:07 ◼   ► an alternate version of the workstation class.

00:31:10 ◼   ► So, the Xeons, typically the highest performance Xeons

00:31:13 ◼   ► for desktops, they end in W for workstation

00:31:16 ◼   ► at the end of their model number,

00:31:18 ◼   ► and this usually means the absolute highest clock speed

00:31:22 ◼   ► for that core count that is available,

00:31:24 ◼   ► because it's gonna burn lots of power,

00:31:25 ◼   ► so it's not quite great for big server racks,

00:31:28 ◼   ► but it's gonna burn lots of power,

00:31:29 ◼   ► but it's gonna be really, really fast for a desktop

00:31:31 ◼   ► and it's gonna need a huge fan.

00:31:33 ◼   ► So those parts usually end in W.

00:31:35 ◼   ► The ones in Geekbench ended in WB, or just B, I think,

00:31:38 ◼   ► anyway, and they seem to be running at lower clock speeds

00:31:41 ◼   ► than what we'd expect.

00:31:43 ◼   ► Still good, still really fast,

00:31:45 ◼   ► but it looks like they might be having to use

00:31:47 ◼   ► lower wattage chips in these iMacs

00:31:50 ◼   ► than what a full Xeon workstation chip would be

00:31:53 ◼   ► in like a tower.

00:31:54 ◼   ► And that's most likely for thermal reads,

00:31:56 ◼   ► 'cause those are 140 watt chips, 150 watt chips usually,

00:31:59 ◼   ► and an iMac chassis is usually designed to hold

00:32:02 ◼   ► I think like a 60 or 80 watt chip.

00:32:04 ◼   ► And yeah, again, they have redesigned the internals of this

00:32:07 ◼   ► to offer more cooling to fit higher wattage parts,

00:32:10 ◼   ► but they also need to leave room for the GPU.

00:32:12 ◼   ► And so there's, basically, we still don't know

00:32:17 ◼   ► what the trade-offs are to get workstation grade components

00:32:22 ◼   ► into an iMac Pro, into the same case size.

00:32:25 ◼   ► and I'm guessing the trade-offs are gonna be related

00:32:28 ◼   ► to fan noise under load and a possible heat ceiling

00:32:32 ◼   ► that might limit the range of performance

00:32:35 ◼   ► they can get out of those processors.

00:32:37 ◼   ► Whereas the full-blown Mac Pro that I hope will come out

00:32:41 ◼   ► sometime next year, that shouldn't have those limitations.

00:32:45 ◼   ► That should be able to use full wattage parts,

00:32:47 ◼   ► that should have a cooling system that has lots of headroom

00:32:49 ◼   ► and that can cool quietly under load.

00:32:52 ◼   ► I don't know if it will, but it should,

00:32:53 ◼   ► and because the previous ones did, all of them,

00:32:55 ◼   ► Even the 2013 had that.

00:32:56 ◼   ► So I hope the Mac Pro offers those things,

00:33:00 ◼   ► and if it does, that's the computer I wanna buy,

00:33:03 ◼   ► not the iMac Pro.

00:33:04 ◼   ► But because neither of these computers are out yet,

00:33:07 ◼   ► there's probably gonna be other factors that go into it.

00:33:10 ◼   ► So if possible, I hope that my iMac,

00:33:15 ◼   ► coming back from repair,

00:33:16 ◼   ► can last me until the Mac Pro comes out

00:33:19 ◼   ► so I can then decide then.

00:33:21 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:33:22 ◼   ► There's no way you will see that hot looking new iMac Pro

00:33:26 ◼   ► and say, "No thank you, I'll wait."

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00:35:08 ◼   ► - Also speaking of industrial design and cooling,

00:35:16 ◼   ► in one of the many interviews and books

00:35:18 ◼   ► that never seems to happen,

00:35:19 ◼   ► And if I could get like Johnny Ive and all of like John Rubenstein and all the people

00:35:25 ◼   ► together and ask them about like past Apple designs, I would love to know what changed

00:35:33 ◼   ► between like the, you know, nowadays and back when Apple made, you know, the cheese grater.

00:35:39 ◼   ► Because if you think about the cheese grater, and this is what I always hope that the new

00:35:42 ◼   ► Mac Pro design will be, but who knows what it will actually be.

00:35:45 ◼   ► The cheese grater, as you noted, and as Johnny Ive and his white world said, I think, in

00:35:50 ◼   ► the introduction for the original cheese grater, the Paramac G5, the design of it was not so

00:35:58 ◼   ► much like all the modern Johnny Ive, or not just Johnny Ive, but the modern Apple designs,

00:36:03 ◼   ► like by Johnny Ive's design team, where it's like, "We wanted to boil it down to its essence

00:36:08 ◼   ► and find, you know, uncomplicated, simple, direct, blah, blah, blah," all the things

00:36:13 ◼   ► they do for things that are like phones or portable things where they don't want a lot

00:36:16 ◼   ► of gigas hanging off it. Whereas the cheese grater was, we wanted to be honest about the

00:36:22 ◼   ► fact that the main job of this thing is to be a heat exchanger. Like it was modeled off

00:36:29 ◼   ► of heat exchangers or air exchangers like that are up in rooms that suck in air and

00:36:33 ◼   ► one temperature on one side and eject it out the other side a different temperature. I

00:36:37 ◼   ► think somebody said like the actual cheese grater was modeled off a heat exchanger. Right?

00:36:41 ◼   ► And so it wasn't designed to be the most sort of, well, you know, it was designed to be

00:36:49 ◼   ► true to its purpose, but its purpose wasn't to be a beautiful object, right?

00:36:54 ◼   ► Its purpose wasn't to be portable and uncomplicated and, you know, simple and obvious.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Its purpose was to exchange heat.

00:37:03 ◼   ► Like that was the purpose.

00:37:04 ◼   ► And so it was designed with that as a goal.

00:37:09 ◼   ► and it seems like so many things that Apple makes nowadays are designed with a

00:37:13 ◼   ► With a simplicity of form as a goal, which is a fine goal, especially for portable things

00:37:18 ◼   ► But as you said nobody really cares that much about the simplicity of form

00:37:23 ◼   ► like if a more honest iMac Pro on the back of it would have looked like the back of a

00:37:29 ◼   ► Transformer like it would look like a giant heatsink

00:37:32 ◼   ► it would have had bulges and flares and fins or would look like the underside of like a

00:37:36 ◼   ► Ferrari like all sorts of ground effects and like a diffuser like it would say the back of this computer is all about ejecting heat

00:37:44 ◼   ► Because honestly speaking what is the purpose of this computer? It's the iMac Pro

00:37:48 ◼   ► It's not the iMac that's simple and elegant just looks like a screen and you say where's the computer?

00:37:52 ◼   ► No, this is the iMac Pro

00:37:53 ◼   ► its job is to be the fastest possible all-in-one computer that human beings can make and

00:37:59 ◼   ► The main problem of a fast all-in-one computer is getting rid of the damn heat

00:38:04 ◼   ► So the back of it looks crazy and just as big and chunky and as heat, you know coming out the wazoo

00:38:10 ◼   ► And that's what the cheese grater is

00:38:12 ◼   ► It is a big giant thing cold air in front hot air out back

00:38:15 ◼   ► Gigantic fans nine fans Steve Jobs was raving or however many the original one had look at all these fans

00:38:20 ◼   ► They're all computer controlled to be just the right amount of cooling at the right

00:38:23 ◼   ► So they're not all running full blast all the time

00:38:25 ◼   ► You know, there is an elegance to it

00:38:27 ◼   ► But it is so purpose-built to like you house all that hot stuff and get it cooled

00:38:32 ◼   ► So I hope the Mac Pro is not like the trash camera. It's like what is the essence?

00:38:37 ◼   ► What a form of the Mac Pro like I want it to be

00:38:41 ◼   ► functional and the function is heat exchange and things whose function is heat exchange don't look like lozenges bars of soap or

00:38:50 ◼   ► simple elegant design

00:38:52 ◼   ► I mean in many respects that the chimney Mac Pro the trash can Mac Pro

00:38:55 ◼   ► Does have a purity of purpose cold air and bottom hot air out top just like the g4 cube, right?

00:39:01 ◼   ► But it was not designed to be like how much heat can we get rid of because they just had you know

00:39:07 ◼   ► The two GPUs there in the CPU and they couldn't even cool them well enough like so it was a clever design for its size

00:39:12 ◼   ► But it was very very small if you want to build something with a massive heat exchange and capacity you make it bigger

00:39:18 ◼   ► You want to have excess capacity not be right on the borderline. So

00:39:21 ◼   ► Anyway, getting back to what I said, I would ask them like it's like the same people who were there Johnny

00:39:26 ◼   ► I've made the cheese grater, but now he's making all these beautiful featureless things with no ports on them. What changed?

00:39:32 ◼   ► Surely it wasn't Steve Jobs saying please make me something that looks like the underside of a Ferrari, right?

00:39:37 ◼   ► So someone there was like, okay

00:39:39 ◼   ► Was like in the design brief

00:39:42 ◼   ► The main job of the thing that you are making is to be an efficient heat exchanger

00:39:46 ◼   ► Do that in the most elegant way that you can and I don't imagine Steve Jobs was forcing Johnny

00:39:51 ◼   ► I have to do that Steve Jobs probably wanted it to be like the trash can like he doesn't like all the big

00:39:55 ◼   ► you know, fins and holes all over the front and back and giant fans and stuff.

00:40:00 ◼   ► He just accepts that as a cost of doing business, but they did the best job they could with it.

00:40:03 ◼   ► But it's like the same people are there, but their philosophy has changed, and Apple has stopped making computers like that whose

00:40:10 ◼   ► purpose is not to be simple, obvious, white Apple pencil with no things on it and just this

00:40:17 ◼   ► beautiful, perfect form.

00:40:20 ◼   ► So anyway, when Johnny comes on the show, I'll ask him about it and see, like, has he changed his mind?

00:40:25 ◼   ► has his philosophy evolved? Was there someone forcing him to make those older computers

00:40:30 ◼   ► the way they were? Was someone forcing him to put all those ports on the side of his

00:40:34 ◼   ► laptops? Like, I don't know. So many questions. Johnny, come on the show. We'll talk.

00:40:38 ◼   ► Yeah, that's going to happen. No, I mean, I totally agree. And I wish Apple, you know,

00:40:45 ◼   ► like, you know, Apple is, you know, famously talked about courage to remove the headphone

00:40:49 ◼   ► jack and, you know, that and Apple is considered a very bold company for the courageous designs

00:40:55 ◼   ► they make. What they lack, it seems like in the hardware design to their computers, is

00:41:02 ◼   ► not courage, but confidence. They need the confidence to know that they can make something

00:41:11 ◼   ► that sacrifices visual symmetry for functionality. That doesn't take courage, it takes confidence,

00:41:18 ◼   ► because you have to be able to know in your head that even if the press says, "Oh, you

00:41:22 ◼   ► "Oh, it got thicker."

00:41:24 ◼   ► Or, "Wow, that iMac, it looks pretty thick from the back,"

00:41:28 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:41:29 ◼   ► Apple has to be confident enough to be able to say,

00:41:33 ◼   ► "We believe in our design because it is better that way.

00:41:37 ◼   ► "Even though you're saying it doesn't look as good,"

00:41:39 ◼   ► or whatever, "we know that it works better."

00:41:42 ◼   ► And it seems like they don't have that confidence anymore,

00:41:46 ◼   ► or it's not being properly enforced somewhere on the way

00:41:49 ◼   ► or something because a great computer,

00:41:53 ◼   ► nothing about its physical form should unnecessarily

00:41:57 ◼   ► detract from how great of a computer it can be.

00:42:01 ◼   ► And there are certain models in the lineup

00:42:02 ◼   ► where you'd make a different choice,

00:42:04 ◼   ► so things like the 12-inch MacBook,

00:42:06 ◼   ► where the whole role of this computer is

00:42:08 ◼   ► what is the absolute smallest, thinnest, lightest

00:42:11 ◼   ► computer we can make and have it still be remotely usable.

00:42:13 ◼   ► So then you make different trade-offs.

00:42:15 ◼   ► But as you go up the line, as you get more and more

00:42:17 ◼   ► to the larger and higher-end and pro machines,

00:42:21 ◼   ► and especially once you get into things like desktops,

00:42:23 ◼   ► which are kind of pro by nature

00:42:25 ◼   ► and have very different physical demands around them

00:42:27 ◼   ► and very different usage around them,

00:42:30 ◼   ► the decision always has to be made the other way of,

00:42:33 ◼   ► yeah, you know what, you can make it beautiful.

00:42:34 ◼   ► Have the confidence to know

00:42:36 ◼   ► that you can make a beautiful design

00:42:38 ◼   ► while still letting it function well

00:42:40 ◼   ► as the computer that it has to be.

00:42:42 ◼   ► And it seems like Apple doesn't have that confidence anymore

00:42:45 ◼   ► Or at least, or they don't have that ability anymore,

00:42:47 ◼   ► which is even more concerning.

00:42:49 ◼   ► - I understand your point, I deeply disagree,

00:42:53 ◼   ► and I think they're showing external confidence

00:42:56 ◼   ► by doing things like going all in on USB-C, right?

00:42:59 ◼   ► Because USB-C was not, it did not have

00:43:03 ◼   ► a terribly great story when the MacBook

00:43:06 ◼   ► and the MacBook Pros went all in on USB-C.

00:43:09 ◼   ► And it's gotten better, but as you recently wrote about--

00:43:12 ◼   ► - She was like, "The story isn't that great now."

00:43:14 ◼   ► No, no, no, that's exactly what I was gonna say. It's gotten better, but without question,

00:43:19 ◼   ► there's a long way to go. And I thought your post touched on that really well. Or I shouldn't

00:43:23 ◼   ► say touched on it, it handled it really well. So I think they're showing external confidence.

00:43:29 ◼   ► But with a few tweaks, I think what I would say is, it's the internal confidence that

00:43:35 ◼   ► they lack. It's the internal confidence for some designer or whomever to go to Johnny

00:43:41 ◼   ► and say, "You know what? Maybe we should make this a little thicker," or, "You know what?

00:43:46 ◼   ► Maybe more than one port on the MacBook Adorable would be useful," or, "You know what? Maybe

00:43:53 ◼   ► MagSafe wasn't so bad." And I think the problem is internal courage to stand up to whoever's

00:43:59 ◼   ► calling the shots on why it is these things are, as it appears to us, very crippled. Like,

00:44:08 ◼   ► They're great machines. I love my MacBook Adorable. I really do. But damned if it wouldn't be great if I

00:44:13 ◼   ► had one more port on it, you know, or damned if it wouldn't be great if I had MagSafe on it, because

00:44:17 ◼   ► just yesterday, I think it was, I ripped it off my nightstand. It was charging on my nightstand.

00:44:22 ◼   ► I caught the cable with my foot and it came flying off my nightstand. It's fine, thankfully, but...

00:44:29 ◼   ► Did it land in a pool of water?

00:44:31 ◼   ► No, it did not land in a pool of water, thank goodness. The water beds are not trendy, so

00:44:36 ◼   ► We were safe there.

00:44:37 ◼   ► God, can you imagine me with a waterbed?

00:44:38 ◼   ► That'd be terrible.

00:44:39 ◼   ► They still have their fans.

00:44:40 ◼   ► Well, in any case, the point I'm driving at is I think it's the internal confidence that's

00:44:44 ◼   ► a problem that nobody's standing up to Johnny or the mythical version of Johnny.

00:44:49 ◼   ► Who even knows if it's really Johnny anymore?

00:44:51 ◼   ► But the mythical Johnny who is saying, "No, this MacBook Adorable will have only one port.

00:44:56 ◼   ► No, these butterfly switches are the only way to go."

00:44:59 ◼   ► Whoever is making those decisions, be that an individual or a committee, I think it's

00:45:04 ◼   ► It's the lack of internal confidence to say to them, "No, this isn't right.

00:45:09 ◼   ► This isn't good enough.

00:45:11 ◼   ► We do need one more port on the adorable.

00:45:13 ◼   ► We do need better keyboard switches," or whatever the case may be.

00:45:18 ◼   ► I think that's where it's lacking.

00:45:20 ◼   ► Like I said, it's like, what is the design brief?

00:45:22 ◼   ► What is the goal here?

00:45:24 ◼   ► And I think the design philosophy and the goal for a lot of portal devices is very often,

00:45:30 ◼   ► don't have so much crap on it.

00:45:31 ◼   ► Don't have a million buttons.

00:45:32 ◼   ► Don't have a million ports.

00:45:34 ◼   ► It's easier to waterproof, it's simpler, it should look simple and obvious.

00:45:37 ◼   ► Having the front be all screen is a natural evolution of not having a hardware keyboard,

00:45:42 ◼   ► why not just have a screen and a single button on the front.

00:45:45 ◼   ► That kind of elemental simplicity is very appropriate for a certain class of devices

00:45:49 ◼   ► that Apple happens to sell a lot of.

00:45:51 ◼   ► Because you don't want a phone with a million things sticking out of it for most consumers.

00:45:56 ◼   ► It's supposed to be a thing that fits in your pocket and even laptops you can see an argument

00:45:59 ◼   ► for their laptop.

00:46:00 ◼   ► simpler when there's less stuff, when there's fewer moving parts, fewer seams.

00:46:06 ◼   ► Just compare the original aluminum PowerBook G4 to a current unibody one.

00:46:12 ◼   ► The design goals and evolution of that, I was trying to say, simplify, simplify, simplify,

00:46:16 ◼   ► has made a better portable computer because it flexes less, because it has fewer seams,

00:46:23 ◼   ► it has fewer things to go wrong on it, even the hinge is more robust and everything about

00:46:28 ◼   ► it is simpler and then that extending to start taking ports off and then you start to get

00:46:31 ◼   ► into you know I'm not quite sure about that but you can see kind of an argument for the

00:46:35 ◼   ► simplicity but where this goes awry is on things like the iMac Pro and certainly the

00:46:40 ◼   ► Mac Pro the story has to be different your goal has to be different you can't take that

00:46:46 ◼   ► same design philosophy that works for phones and tablets and possibly also laptops especially

00:46:52 ◼   ► the small ones and say this same design philosophy should apply to our professional modular computer

00:46:58 ◼   ► computer, because that's not what it's supposed to do.

00:47:01 ◼   ► As Marco said, professionals don't care what the hell the back of their desk, under-desk

00:47:06 ◼   ► mounted computer does.

00:47:08 ◼   ► Like it is supposed to fulfill a job, and its job is to be really fast and capable,

00:47:15 ◼   ► and being really fast and capable means ejecting heat and having a lot of room inside and being

00:47:20 ◼   ► reliable and stuff.

00:47:21 ◼   ► And if that's your goal, like these are the most important things.

00:47:26 ◼   ► It's got to be super reliable and just chunky and very powerful and like the maximum amount

00:47:33 ◼   ► of power and flexibility.

00:47:35 ◼   ► You design a different thing.

00:47:36 ◼   ► I start thinking of things like power tools or off-road vehicles, not like cars that you

00:47:43 ◼   ► buy, but like actual like, you know, getting around on the farm or going through the jungle

00:47:47 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:47:48 ◼   ► Those things, they can be elegant and have nice designs, but they have a job to do and

00:47:53 ◼   ► their design is entirely focused around that job.

00:47:55 ◼   ► and is trying to say, can we get huge ground clearance in this off-road vehicle, but not

00:48:03 ◼   ► have like a big gap between the wheels and the wheel well? Like, could we cover that over with

00:48:07 ◼   ► something? Like, could we make it so that like, that we have like a skirt that when the wheels

00:48:12 ◼   ► compress, the skirt moves up so it looks more elegant? It's like, what are you even doing?

00:48:16 ◼   ► Are you trying to make this car look like a low slung, you know, Tesla? Like, the whole point is

00:48:22 ◼   ► it's supposed to go off-road. It's like, yeah, but it's so ugly when you can see all the suspension

00:48:25 ◼   ► bits and you can see all this air under the car. I want that skirt idea. We can make the

00:48:29 ◼   ► skirt work. It's like, no, don't try to make the skirt work. Like just huge amounts of

00:48:34 ◼   ► travel and big exposed springs and shocks. And don't worry about the skirt. Don't worry

00:48:38 ◼   ► about like the big gap. That's what it's supposed to do. Just make the best off-road vehicle

00:48:43 ◼   ► you can make. That's what I want them to do with the Mac Pro. And the iMac, it's like,

00:48:49 ◼   ► it has to be just as slim as the regular iMac. Why? Why would you make it just as slim as

00:48:53 ◼   ► the regular iMac, yeah maybe you can, we're all so smart with our cooling, like you already

00:48:57 ◼   ► have the iMac, the iMac is oh I don't even know where the computer is, it's so skinny,

00:49:01 ◼   ► and we got rid of the optical drive so we can make it even thinner and the edges look

00:49:04 ◼   ► beautiful and elegant and it does and I think an all in one computer that is very thin and

00:49:07 ◼   ► elegant and has a beautiful screen is a product they should make and they do, it's the 5K

00:49:10 ◼   ► iMac, it's great.

00:49:11 ◼   ► When they go to make the iMac Pro, why is it like design brief hasn't changed, yet supposed

00:49:15 ◼   ► to be like the fastest computer you could buy, especially remember as I pointed out

00:49:18 ◼   ► before, they weren't going to make the Mac Pro, the iMac Pro was going to be their top

00:49:22 ◼   ► of the line and still they said it's got to fit in the same case and that that's what's

00:49:26 ◼   ► wrong like they have the wrong goal even before they begin executing and I don't I don't know

00:49:32 ◼   ► where that comes from I don't know why that philosophy is extended maybe it's they just

00:49:35 ◼   ► think all technology should be like that but they didn't always think like this and the

00:49:38 ◼   ► cheese grater Mac Pro is the the perfect proof Johnny I've made that computer and talked

00:49:43 ◼   ► about it his team made that thing and it is perhaps the most brutally utilitarian thing

00:49:49 ◼   ► that Apple has ever made. It's a big silver heat exchanger with freaking handles on it

00:49:53 ◼   ► with a huge amount of space in it. That's what I want. I want, I mean not that exact

00:49:57 ◼   ► design but I want that philosophy executed well.

00:50:00 ◼   ► Yeah and the thing is like that, like that giant metal tower full of fans and everything

00:50:07 ◼   ► and ports in the back and huge air holes in the front and back, that thing is beautiful.

00:50:13 ◼   ► That is the nicest PC tower I've ever seen, bar none.

00:50:18 ◼   ► It's not even close.

00:50:19 ◼   ► And for people who love computers

00:50:21 ◼   ► and who need high-end pro computers, that is beautiful.

00:50:26 ◼   ► You don't have to make it ugly.

00:50:29 ◼   ► People who look at that and say, "That's ugly?"

00:50:32 ◼   ► are people who hate computers.

00:50:34 ◼   ► It seems like the people who were responsible

00:50:36 ◼   ► for designing computers at Apple hate computers.

00:50:40 ◼   ► And I don't say this lightly.

00:50:42 ◼   ► What I mean to say here is literally that

00:50:45 ◼   ► it seems like the computers at Apple are designed

00:50:48 ◼   ► with the goal of hiding and getting rid of

00:50:50 ◼   ► as much of the computer as possible.

00:50:52 ◼   ► And there is a place for that, again,

00:50:54 ◼   ► there's a place for that in like the ultra thin and light,

00:50:57 ◼   ► the MacBook 12 inch and everything,

00:50:59 ◼   ► and even maybe the Airs, although we're going backwards

00:51:02 ◼   ► in that direction as well in the Air range.

00:51:05 ◼   ► But at the high end, you are selling to people

00:51:09 ◼   ► who need computers, and in many cases, who love computers.

00:51:13 ◼   ► And those people don't want you to hide everything away,

00:51:19 ◼   ► especially when it comes at the cost

00:51:21 ◼   ► of practicality and functionality.

00:51:23 ◼   ► Those people are happy to see the computer.

00:51:27 ◼   ► We are happy to have ports and air holes

00:51:31 ◼   ► and a little bit more thickness in order to get

00:51:33 ◼   ► a better keyboard or better battery life or something else.

00:51:37 ◼   ► that market isn't trying to get rid of the computer,

00:51:41 ◼   ► they're buying a computer.

00:51:42 ◼   ► They like computers.

00:51:44 ◼   ► And the pros want to see,

00:51:47 ◼   ► like the pros want a pro piece of gear.

00:51:50 ◼   ► The people who buy the giant off-road vehicles

00:51:53 ◼   ► are not looking at them and saying,

00:51:55 ◼   ► man, this thing's so ugly, it's a shame

00:51:57 ◼   ► no one can make these things prettier.

00:51:58 ◼   ► No, they love the way they look.

00:52:00 ◼   ► They buy them because of the way they look partially

00:52:02 ◼   ► and their functionality as well,

00:52:04 ◼   ► some people just for the looks, but you know,

00:52:06 ◼   ► Like, so to make a honking Mac Pro tower

00:52:09 ◼   ► that's full of high powered,

00:52:12 ◼   ► the best components they can make,

00:52:14 ◼   ► you know, cooled with giant slow fans

00:52:17 ◼   ► so they can be really efficient and really quiet

00:52:19 ◼   ► even under a load, that is beautiful.

00:52:22 ◼   ► And that is good design for a high end Pro computer.

00:52:25 ◼   ► What they seem to be doing now instead

00:52:28 ◼   ► is applying the wrong design principles to,

00:52:31 ◼   ► like you know, what John said,

00:52:32 ◼   ► like what these tools are here to do,

00:52:35 ◼   ► they're applying the same principles

00:52:37 ◼   ► as they're applying to the ultra-thin

00:52:39 ◼   ► 12 inch ultra-portable, that's not good design.

00:52:43 ◼   ► Design is how it works.

00:52:45 ◼   ► A famous guy said that once.

00:52:47 ◼   ► Design is taking the requirements that the people have

00:52:51 ◼   ► who are going to use this thing

00:52:53 ◼   ► and making something that works well with those requirements

00:52:57 ◼   ► and also hopefully looks decent in the process.

00:53:00 ◼   ► But design is about those requirements

00:53:02 ◼   ► and how you literally design the work to accommodate those.

00:53:07 ◼   ► So what they're doing when they make a pro computer

00:53:12 ◼   ► that has massive practical problems

00:53:14 ◼   ► when used professionally or when used by anybody,

00:53:17 ◼   ► that's actually bad design, no matter how it looks.

00:53:22 ◼   ► And so they really need, I think, to shift this thinking,

00:53:25 ◼   ► and I hope they have with the Mac Pro,

00:53:27 ◼   ► they really need to shift this thinking back into,

00:53:30 ◼   ► it is okay to make a computer that looks like a computer.

00:53:35 ◼   ► There is nothing wrong with having a high-end pro desktop

00:53:40 ◼   ► that's probably gonna cost like $8,000

00:53:43 ◼   ► to have that be a little bit bulky

00:53:45 ◼   ► and to have that go under your desk

00:53:48 ◼   ► and to have that look like a square with ports in the back

00:53:50 ◼   ► and fans in the back, that's fine.

00:53:54 ◼   ► That's actually what people want.

00:53:56 ◼   ► And to those people, if that is designed well,

00:54:00 ◼   ► It will be beautiful no matter how it looks.

00:54:03 ◼   ► They could have a design like a Star Trek spaceship.

00:54:06 ◼   ► Like it can be cool, but it has to be fulfilling its job and its job is to eject heat and hold

00:54:12 ◼   ► lots of things and be super fast.

00:54:13 ◼   ► And it's just you end up with a different shape.

00:54:15 ◼   ► You end up with a different everything about it.

00:54:17 ◼   ► There's lots of options available, lots of things I'm imagining.

00:54:21 ◼   ► Where it gets fuzzier I think, and I was thinking about this when I was looking at the bunch

00:54:24 ◼   ► of laptops around the table at work.

00:54:26 ◼   ► A lot of people at work now have the same thing I have, the 2017 MacBook Pro with its

00:54:31 ◼   ► four little USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports all around the sides of it.

00:54:36 ◼   ► But then other people still have the 2015 ones like an earlier, right?

00:54:40 ◼   ► And honestly when they're all sitting around the table like that, other than the fact that

00:54:43 ◼   ► the new ones are space gray for the most part, they don't look that different.

00:54:48 ◼   ► You can tell that the new ones are thinner and the screens are nicer, right?

00:54:52 ◼   ► But the other ones don't look that bad.

00:54:53 ◼   ► But I look at the sides of the other ones and like they don't look that much thicker,

00:54:57 ◼   ► but then I see SD card, HDMI port, MagSafe, USB-A.

00:55:05 ◼   ► And I think again, we talked about this when they did the Mac roundtable and I was like,

00:55:09 ◼   ► but they said, didn't they say something about maybe they'll be reconsidering their choices

00:55:14 ◼   ► with the MacBook Pros and coming out with new ones that appeal to people more.

00:55:19 ◼   ► And I kept thinking like, that maybe in the future they would reconsider their decisions

00:55:24 ◼   ► and like put an SD card slot on it or like just make different decisions about ports

00:55:28 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:55:29 ◼   ► Sort of backpedal on the, you know, relentless simplification on their biggest laptop.

00:55:38 ◼   ► I'm not expecting them to make a keyboard that's not the same size as the small ones,

00:55:41 ◼   ► you know.

00:55:42 ◼   ► I'm not going crazy here, but I'm just saying like the utility of like, I think a lot of

00:55:46 ◼   ► of people are jealous at work of the people who come in with the old laptops and just

00:55:49 ◼   ► plug their thing right into the projector with no dongles, right? Or that, you know,

00:55:56 ◼   ► MagSafe are ripping the thing in and out and they get up from their desk and stuff. And

00:56:01 ◼   ► maybe they're also jealous of me with my single wire connecting with all the other stuff,

00:56:05 ◼   ► so there's advantages to Thunderbolt as well, but like, I think of it this way. If they

00:56:10 ◼   ► came out with the new MacBook Pro that had an SD card and HDMI on it, a lot of people

00:56:17 ◼   ► would love it. And I'm trying to think who would hate it. The people like, "I don't want

00:56:23 ◼   ► that additional complexity, I never use HDMI." Would they hate it? Would they just be like,

00:56:27 ◼   ► "Oh, whatever, I don't care, I don't use those ports." Like, who would really hate it, other

00:56:32 ◼   ► than saying, "You've just mucked up my perfect, clean, symmetrical design," but I don't think

00:56:36 ◼   ► people who buy them care that much about it. And the people who would love it, boy would

00:56:40 ◼   ► they love it. So in this new Mac Renaissance of where we all believe Apple's turned a corner

00:56:45 ◼   ► on the Mac and is paying more attention to it and is going to make a Mac Pro and they're

00:56:48 ◼   ► making the iMac Pro and they're doing all these things, I'm waiting to see how far does

00:56:52 ◼   ► the Mac Renaissance go. We know it goes far enough that they revived the line of computer

00:56:57 ◼   ► that they weren't going to do. So that's great. I love it. And that gives me hope for everything

00:57:00 ◼   ► else but the real test may be what happens to the 15-inch do they go more

00:57:07 ◼   ► utilitarian in any way do any ports come back is there any recognition that some

00:57:16 ◼   ► decisions made with the current line of computers may not be exact even if it's

00:57:20 ◼   ► the keyboard which is a topical conversation this week which I may or

00:57:23 ◼   ► may not to get to in the show do they change their thinking on the keyboard

00:57:28 ◼   ► and say, "We need to take another run at this in a big way."

00:57:31 ◼   ► Even if the new keyboard is just as thin as the old one,

00:57:34 ◼   ► to just have a different philosophy of saying like,

00:57:36 ◼   ► you know, we need to rethink this.

00:57:40 ◼   ► Like, how much are they willing to reconsider

00:57:42 ◼   ► on the models that are, you know, are not the,

00:57:47 ◼   ► I was gonna say are not the very, very top end,

00:57:49 ◼   ► but the 15 inches, they're top end.

00:57:50 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right?

00:57:51 ◼   ► How much are they willing to reconsider?

00:57:53 ◼   ► And I'm still maintaining fantasies

00:57:56 ◼   ► that they're going to be willing to reconsider a lot,

00:57:59 ◼   ► that the new Mac Pro will be the giant purpose-built

00:58:02 ◼   ► heat exchanger that I was describing,

00:58:04 ◼   ► that the iMac Pro really will be amazingly fast

00:58:08 ◼   ► and competent even if it isn't the same case,

00:58:10 ◼   ► and that the new line of laptops,

00:58:11 ◼   ► like we'll see that they're learning from their mistakes

00:58:14 ◼   ► and they make different decisions about it,

00:58:16 ◼   ► and they can make a big deal out of it,

00:58:17 ◼   ► like we heard you, we know you don't want as many dongles,

00:58:21 ◼   ► so now there's HDMI and an SD card,

00:58:23 ◼   ► or whatever they decide.

00:58:26 ◼   ► That would be a huge applause line.

00:58:28 ◼   ► Tons of people would love it.

00:58:29 ◼   ► It would make the computers more popular.

00:58:32 ◼   ► Some people would be disappointed that it's not as simple,

00:58:34 ◼   ► but how many?

00:58:35 ◼   ► How many who don't work in the sealed off

00:58:37 ◼   ► frosted glass area with Johnny Ive

00:58:39 ◼   ► would actually be disappointed by those computers?

00:58:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:42 ◼   ► So, Johnny Ive, come on the show.

00:58:44 ◼   ► We're waiting for you.

00:58:45 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:58:46 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week by Betterment.

00:58:48 ◼   ► Rethink what your money can do.

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01:00:20 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:00:22 ◼   ► By the way, there was one thing about that picture

01:00:25 ◼   ► I posted about my setup that you appeared

01:00:28 ◼   ► not to have noticed.

01:00:29 ◼   ► - Your glass of water?

01:00:30 ◼   ► - Jon, how many dongles do I have?

01:00:33 ◼   ► - Uh, I don't know, there's a whole,

01:00:35 ◼   ► some of them are black and some of them are white,

01:00:37 ◼   ► so I can't really tell.

01:00:38 ◼   ► I gotta zoom in.

01:00:39 ◼   ► Am I at 100% on this?

01:00:40 ◼   ► Let's see, zoom in, I see.

01:00:41 ◼   ► - Jon, what shape are my arrow keys?

01:00:44 ◼   ► - Oh, they're not full size.

01:00:45 ◼   ► Is that the, yeah, the screen's different.

01:00:47 ◼   ► from the screen boards that's 2015 yes it is but you do you still have a dongle

01:00:52 ◼   ► is that Ethernet yeah yeah Thunderbolt Ethernet and then you've got the mag safe

01:00:57 ◼   ► what is the black thing coming out optical audio optical audio it doesn't

01:01:02 ◼   ► exist in the new ones but does exist on my iMac the trackpad is smaller and the

01:01:06 ◼   ► little cut out where you're the finger thing where you reach in to get the lip

01:01:09 ◼   ► to open it up is actually not as wide as well I believe anyway yeah now you do

01:01:13 ◼   ► Do you have a 20, I can't keep track of what laptops

01:01:17 ◼   ► you have, do you still have a 2016 or 17?

01:01:19 ◼   ► - I do, but not for long.

01:01:21 ◼   ► I'm going to sell it.

01:01:22 ◼   ► - All right, and where did this 15 come from?

01:01:23 ◼   ► Is this just one of your old ones

01:01:24 ◼   ► or did you buy another one?

01:01:25 ◼   ► - eBay.

01:01:26 ◼   ► - eBay, can't you just buy these directly from Apple now?

01:01:28 ◼   ► - You can, they still sell them.

01:01:30 ◼   ► Yeah, they still sell them brand new.

01:01:32 ◼   ► This one was, this is the base CPU, the 2.2

01:01:36 ◼   ► with the 512 SSD, which I basically,

01:01:38 ◼   ► I required a bigger SSD.

01:01:40 ◼   ► When I actually had one of these in 2015,

01:01:44 ◼   ► it was only the 256 SSD and it killed me.

01:01:47 ◼   ► One of the reasons I had to upgrade was just

01:01:50 ◼   ► because I just kept slamming into that.

01:01:51 ◼   ► 'Cause once you're doing iOS development,

01:01:54 ◼   ► you need a ton of disk space to keep up with

01:01:57 ◼   ► all the betas and everything else.

01:01:59 ◼   ► So anyway, so 512 SSD, everything else is based on it.

01:02:03 ◼   ► And it has AppleCare because it was bought

01:02:07 ◼   ► in September of 2016, like a month before

01:02:10 ◼   ► the new ones came out, so it has AppleCare 'til 2019,

01:02:14 ◼   ► the battery only had 50 cycles on it,

01:02:16 ◼   ► and it was 1600 bucks.

01:02:18 ◼   ► To get the same thing new from Apple with AppleCare

01:02:21 ◼   ► would be $2800.

01:02:22 ◼   ► - Oof.

01:02:23 ◼   ► - So I decided to go used on it,

01:02:25 ◼   ► and it's totally great, because, so here's,

01:02:28 ◼   ► basically what happened here is

01:02:29 ◼   ► my plan of getting the 2017 15 inch

01:02:36 ◼   ► and using it all summer at the beach,

01:02:37 ◼   ► and then bringing it home, and bringing the LG 5K home,

01:02:40 ◼   ► and using that as my desktop until the Mac Pro comes out,

01:02:43 ◼   ► that plan ended up being just not working for me,

01:02:46 ◼   ► because it ends up the 15-inch is not a great desktop.

01:02:49 ◼   ► It can serve as one with the LG display.

01:02:52 ◼   ► It can be a desktop, but it's not a very good desktop.

01:02:55 ◼   ► I would rather use my three-year-old iMac

01:02:58 ◼   ► that is purpose-built for that

01:02:59 ◼   ► than use the weird clamshell and everything else.

01:03:04 ◼   ► So, I'm just gonna try to keep using my iMac.

01:03:07 ◼   ► And, you know, I gave these butterfly keyboards a year.

01:03:12 ◼   ► I first had a 2016 Touch Bar, 15 inch,

01:03:15 ◼   ► sold it, switched to the MacBook Escape,

01:03:17 ◼   ► sold that to my Curly, and switched back to this this summer

01:03:21 ◼   ► when I had this harebrained desktop idea.

01:03:25 ◼   ► I gave this keyboard a year.

01:03:27 ◼   ► I've had the 2016 version and the 2017 version.

01:03:31 ◼   ► They're all just incredibly incompatible with me.

01:03:35 ◼   ► I thought I'd get used to it, I didn't.

01:03:38 ◼   ► I hated every single minute of typing on it.

01:03:40 ◼   ► Every single time I would think to use that computer,

01:03:43 ◼   ► I would be kind of, it would turn me off

01:03:46 ◼   ► from wanting to use my laptop to have that keyboard there

01:03:50 ◼   ► because every single time I typed on that keyboard,

01:03:54 ◼   ► I hated it.

01:03:55 ◼   ► And every time I said, you know, maybe everyone's right

01:03:57 ◼   ► and I'll get used to it, and I gave it a year, people,

01:04:01 ◼   ► and I didn't get used to it.

01:04:03 ◼   ► And every time I would see someone else's,

01:04:06 ◼   ► like John, what you were just saying

01:04:08 ◼   ► about the conference room,

01:04:09 ◼   ► every time I would see someone else's 2015 era,

01:04:12 ◼   ► 13 or 15 inch Redmi MacBook Pro,

01:04:15 ◼   ► I would be like, oh man, I wish I never sold mine.

01:04:18 ◼   ► I like that so much better.

01:04:20 ◼   ► Eventually, and I started browsing eBay,

01:04:21 ◼   ► I'm like, you know what, these are not that expensive.

01:04:24 ◼   ► To get one that's very lightly used,

01:04:26 ◼   ► these are really pretty inexpensive,

01:04:28 ◼   ► and I can sell the one I have

01:04:30 ◼   ► for probably like $2,800.

01:04:32 ◼   ► And so I waffled about it for a while and I was worried.

01:04:35 ◼   ► I'm like, is it gonna feel really old?

01:04:38 ◼   ► Am I gonna regret losing USB-C?

01:04:42 ◼   ► Am I going to regret that it's bigger and heavier?

01:04:46 ◼   ► Is everything gonna feel and look old?

01:04:49 ◼   ► And I'm gonna feel like I'm stepping back into the past.

01:04:52 ◼   ► My impression of this has quite surprised me, actually.

01:04:55 ◼   ► Nothing about it feels bigger or heavier.

01:04:58 ◼   ► It is, but it's such a small difference

01:05:01 ◼   ► that honestly when you go the other direction,

01:05:04 ◼   ► you don't really notice it.

01:05:06 ◼   ► It's a half pound heavier,

01:05:09 ◼   ► and it's a couple of millimeters wider

01:05:10 ◼   ► in each dimension or something like that.

01:05:12 ◼   ► It's not that much different.

01:05:14 ◼   ► For all the crazy things we gave up

01:05:19 ◼   ► to go to the super thin USB-C models,

01:05:23 ◼   ► it didn't actually get that much thinner

01:05:24 ◼   ► or that much lighter.

01:05:26 ◼   ► So, oh, and the battery life is better on 2015, by the way.

01:05:29 ◼   ► On this used 2015 model, the battery life is better

01:05:32 ◼   ► than my almost new 2017 model.

01:05:34 ◼   ► And not by a small amount either.

01:05:36 ◼   ► So, because, surprise, the battery is 20,

01:05:39 ◼   ► or actually 33% bigger.

01:05:41 ◼   ► So, it's, that actually matters, you know,

01:05:44 ◼   ► even with an older processor.

01:05:46 ◼   ► So anyway, you don't notice the size difference

01:05:49 ◼   ► when you go the other direction.

01:05:52 ◼   ► I did not notice the loss of the trackpad size.

01:05:55 ◼   ► I did not, like I, you just immediately adjust.

01:05:59 ◼   ► In fact, it's actually easier because now

01:06:01 ◼   ► there's no more accidental trackpad input

01:06:02 ◼   ► when you brush against it.

01:06:04 ◼   ► I did not notice the loss of the touch bar

01:06:06 ◼   ► because I always hated it and never really

01:06:07 ◼   ► got into using it.

01:06:09 ◼   ► I occasionally miss touch ID, but not much.

01:06:12 ◼   ► I love having the arrow keys back to the way they were

01:06:16 ◼   ► because I can feel them.

01:06:18 ◼   ► Because you need arrow keys that have a different shape

01:06:20 ◼   ► than the rest of the keys because they are far away

01:06:23 ◼   ► from the home row, so when you reach over to them,

01:06:26 ◼   ► you are not as precise as you would be

01:06:29 ◼   ► with keys near the home row,

01:06:30 ◼   ► because you're moving your hand a little bit.

01:06:32 ◼   ► So you need there to be some kind of tactile feedback

01:06:36 ◼   ► so you can feel where the right keys are

01:06:38 ◼   ► in order to hit the right one.

01:06:40 ◼   ► That's why the new generation arrow keys

01:06:43 ◼   ► that have no metal gap in them

01:06:45 ◼   ► and that are all the same height

01:06:47 ◼   ► are so easy to hit the wrong one on,

01:06:49 ◼   ► because your hand is moving over there

01:06:51 ◼   ► and has nothing to anchor itself

01:06:53 ◼   ► based on feel.

01:06:54 ◼   ► So the AR keys in this are perfect, they feel wonderful.

01:06:57 ◼   ► The rest of the keyboard is perfect and feels wonderful.

01:07:00 ◼   ► For about a second it felt mushy and then it felt great.

01:07:04 ◼   ► So that took no adjustment time.

01:07:06 ◼   ► The ports are luxurious.

01:07:09 ◼   ► I got to remove, oh jeez, I mean a whole bag full of stuff

01:07:14 ◼   ► from my travel bag.

01:07:15 ◼   ► Like I got to remove so much crap, so many dongles.

01:07:20 ◼   ► My entire dongle bag is now just in storage

01:07:23 ◼   ► until I have to switch back to a USB-C sometime in the future.

01:07:26 ◼   ► So that's, like, my travel bag is so simple.

01:07:29 ◼   ► It's just the laptop and a power adapter

01:07:31 ◼   ► and a couple of the USB cables

01:07:33 ◼   ► that I was already bringing before

01:07:35 ◼   ► because nothing else in the world is USB-C.

01:07:37 ◼   ► So, like, I was already traveling

01:07:39 ◼   ► with USB to Lightning cables

01:07:41 ◼   ► so I could plug them into hotel,

01:07:42 ◼   ► you know, lamp tables and stuff.

01:07:44 ◼   ► So I'm just using those now to travel with.

01:07:47 ◼   ► And the computer and the power cable.

01:07:50 ◼   ► That's it.

01:07:51 ◼   ► I don't need an SD card reader.

01:07:52 ◼   ► I don't need any dongles, I don't need any hubs

01:07:55 ◼   ► and HDMI adapters and everything, it just works.

01:08:00 ◼   ► And it's all built in, and it looks great,

01:08:02 ◼   ► and it feels great, and it feels like a computer

01:08:06 ◼   ► that was designed for use, not a computer

01:08:11 ◼   ► that I have to adapt myself to it.

01:08:14 ◼   ► This computer was designed for me to use it,

01:08:17 ◼   ► and I am just so much happier.

01:08:21 ◼   ► The only thing I miss about the new one,

01:08:24 ◼   ► I don't miss the thinness, I don't miss the lightness,

01:08:26 ◼   ► I don't miss the space gray,

01:08:28 ◼   ► because by the way, the space gray,

01:08:30 ◼   ► you know, that's a very fragile coating,

01:08:32 ◼   ► and that'll chip pretty easily

01:08:33 ◼   ► if you even nick it a little bit.

01:08:35 ◼   ► The only thing I miss, surprisingly,

01:08:38 ◼   ► is I actually kind of miss having USB-C for power.

01:08:44 ◼   ► Even though I don't miss the USB-C brick

01:08:46 ◼   ► that doesn't have the little cable management wings,

01:08:48 ◼   ► It is nice to be able to use other third party chargers.

01:08:52 ◼   ► So for example, like the Anker 60 watt thing that I have,

01:08:57 ◼   ► it would be like, it's nice to use that.

01:08:59 ◼   ► It would be nice to be able to use USB-C batteries

01:09:02 ◼   ► if I needed to on a plane.

01:09:04 ◼   ► But ultimately, that isn't that much of a problem

01:09:06 ◼   ► because this thing has a 99.5 watt hour battery in it.

01:09:11 ◼   ► It's a pretty big battery.

01:09:13 ◼   ► The battery life is pretty good.

01:09:15 ◼   ► I probably won't ever need a battery in practice.

01:09:18 ◼   ► It's just great.

01:09:21 ◼   ► It doesn't feel noticeably slow.

01:09:22 ◼   ► It doesn't, like there's nothing,

01:09:23 ◼   ► there's no other downsides to it.

01:09:25 ◼   ► And in fact, when you buy an old one off of eBay,

01:09:28 ◼   ► not only do you save a ton of money,

01:09:29 ◼   ► all the accessories cost way less

01:09:31 ◼   ► than they did when they were new.

01:09:32 ◼   ► So like, I, long ago I got rid of my

01:09:35 ◼   ► Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter,

01:09:36 ◼   ► because I thought I would never use it again.

01:09:37 ◼   ► So I had to buy a new one to use Ethernet here at home

01:09:39 ◼   ► for this, 'cause that's how I like to run my computers.

01:09:42 ◼   ► And you know, I think when it was new,

01:09:44 ◼   ► it was like 30 or 40 or 50 bucks.

01:09:47 ◼   ► I got one on eBay new for like, I think $19.

01:09:52 ◼   ► I have another power adapter,

01:09:54 ◼   ► an extra power adapter coming tomorrow.

01:09:56 ◼   ► Also new that was $30.

01:09:59 ◼   ► Like, it's just great.

01:10:02 ◼   ► I think there's a reason they still sell this.

01:10:06 ◼   ► Because it's a fantastic computer

01:10:08 ◼   ► that I bet a lot of people are still buying.

01:10:10 ◼   ► It's just great, I'm so happy with it.

01:10:13 ◼   ► and I hope that I can use it until they make a computer

01:10:16 ◼   ► that actually is better for me.

01:10:18 ◼   ► - I have thoughts. - Of course you do.

01:10:22 ◼   ► - So first of all, this is the epitome

01:10:27 ◼   ► of different strokes for different folks, right?

01:10:28 ◼   ► Because I have basically this machine as a work machine,

01:10:33 ◼   ► and we are still buying or really leasing

01:10:36 ◼   ► this machine brand new for incoming employees,

01:10:40 ◼   ► incoming engineers.

01:10:41 ◼   ► We do not have a Touch Bar Mac that is being issued by my company yet.

01:10:47 ◼   ► I forget the reasoning behind it, but it basically boils down to it provides little to no benefit,

01:10:54 ◼   ► so why bother?

01:10:57 ◼   ► Every time I'm away from my desk and away from my wireless Magic keyboard and have to

01:11:02 ◼   ► type on my work laptop's keyboard, I hate it.

01:11:08 ◼   ► God do I hate it.

01:11:09 ◼   ► mushy, it's sloppy, and it just feels friggin' gross. And it's funny to me because you have

01:11:16 ◼   ► the exact same opinion but the other direction. In that we are like polar opposites on this.

01:11:23 ◼   ► And you know what? That's fine. Everyone has an opinion. That's okay. What works for you

01:11:27 ◼   ► is great. What works for me is great. And that's fine. But it's funny to me that you

01:11:33 ◼   ► prefer this so heavily, particularly the keyboard. Like the rest of it, yeah, that makes sense.

01:11:38 ◼   ► particularly the keyboard. I'm surprised you prefer it that much. My question for you though is,

01:11:43 ◼   ► what's your long game on this? Like, you're just going to pull a Syracuse and run this until you

01:11:48 ◼   ► can't get whatever ridiculous California code name is, like three or four versions from now? Like,

01:11:52 ◼   ► what is the long game? Because eventually, I reckon you're either—so there's only a couple

01:11:58 ◼   ► of ways to go, right? You use this until you can't anymore, and then you're going to have

01:12:02 ◼   ► have to figure out a new plan. You wait for Apple to have an "oops, we're sorry,"

01:12:08 ◼   ► which to be fair is certainly possible, but not exactly their style.

01:12:13 ◼   ► And I would say unlikely. Yeah, an unlikely. And I feel like I had a

01:12:18 ◼   ► third but I lost it. But you see what I'm saying? Like, you just go to, I guess you

01:12:21 ◼   ► buy a Lenovo? Like, you know, what is the long play for you then?

01:12:26 ◼   ► I mean, I could hackintosh it with someone else's laptop, but no, I mean, the long-term

01:12:29 ◼   ► play here is I hope this lasts me long enough that I either stop caring about having a good

01:12:35 ◼   ► laptop, stop needing a good laptop, or Apple starts making better ones. Simple as that.

01:12:41 ◼   ► I mean, I hope it lasts that long. If not, I'm going to have to figure something else

01:12:46 ◼   ► out. It could be next summer they might release a new one that I like and that I switch to

01:12:50 ◼   ► that. I have no idea. But honestly, I think that would be too soon. That would seem very

01:12:56 ◼   ► very unlikely to me.

01:12:57 ◼   ► My long term plan here is,

01:13:00 ◼   ► like when the scroll direction changed in Mac OS,

01:13:04 ◼   ► whenever that, which I'm on, was that like,

01:13:07 ◼   ► Lion or something?

01:13:08 ◼   ► It was a while ago now.

01:13:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe even earlier than that.

01:13:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, so when the scroll direction changed,

01:13:14 ◼   ► I thought, you know,

01:13:16 ◼   ► they have an option to keep it the other direction,

01:13:19 ◼   ► but we know how Apple is.

01:13:21 ◼   ► There's only gonna be a limited time

01:13:23 ◼   ► that that option's gonna be there,

01:13:25 ◼   ► so I might as well get used to the new one now and switch.

01:13:28 ◼   ► So I switched immediately, hated it,

01:13:31 ◼   ► gave it like a few days, still hated it,

01:13:34 ◼   ► and I switched back.

01:13:35 ◼   ► And I thought, you know what,

01:13:36 ◼   ► there might come a time where I don't have

01:13:38 ◼   ► this choice anymore, but that time hasn't come yet.

01:13:41 ◼   ► So let me just enjoy the way I like it

01:13:43 ◼   ► while I still have the choice.

01:13:45 ◼   ► And then when the time comes,

01:13:47 ◼   ► it forces me to make a choice I wanna make,

01:13:49 ◼   ► I'll deal with it then.

01:13:51 ◼   ► So that's kind of my philosophy with this.

01:13:53 ◼   ► This is not a sustainable plan

01:13:55 ◼   ► I just keep using the 2015 MacBook Pro forever.

01:13:57 ◼   ► Obviously, that's not a sustainable plan.

01:13:59 ◼   ► But I don't need to give it up right now.

01:14:02 ◼   ► I am way happier with this laptop right now

01:14:05 ◼   ► than I am with the 2017 model.

01:14:07 ◼   ► And so I can use this for probably a while.

01:14:11 ◼   ► I'm probably going to want to move to something else

01:14:13 ◼   ► before I'm forced to move to something else.

01:14:15 ◼   ► And so I might as well enjoy this while I can.

01:14:19 ◼   ► While it is still great,

01:14:20 ◼   ► while it is still competitive and useful and works great,

01:14:24 ◼   ► When the time comes, for whatever reason,

01:14:27 ◼   ► that stops being the case, then I'll figure it out then.

01:14:31 ◼   ► - Real time follow up, it was Lion by the way,

01:14:33 ◼   ► where they added the feature.

01:14:34 ◼   ► - Oh right.

01:14:35 ◼   ► - And I am still, I still have that

01:14:38 ◼   ► in the non-default setting as well, because I--

01:14:41 ◼   ► - Wait, wait, the two of you are saying

01:14:43 ◼   ► that you are not on natural scrolling?

01:14:45 ◼   ► You're on the scrolling from the 80s?

01:14:47 ◼   ► - Old school. - Yeah.

01:14:48 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:14:49 ◼   ► - Oh my word, you're so old.

01:14:50 ◼   ► The two of you, I'm so disappointed in you.

01:14:53 ◼   ► You're so old!

01:14:54 ◼   ► There's no reason to change it.

01:14:58 ◼   ► I didn't even try to get used to the new way because they gave you an option from day one

01:15:03 ◼   ► to not do that.

01:15:04 ◼   ► I'm like, "Oh, it's not even a PLS hack.

01:15:06 ◼   ► It's a GUI option.

01:15:07 ◼   ► Uncheck, never think about it again."

01:15:09 ◼   ► And they've sustained that.

01:15:11 ◼   ► It's still there.

01:15:12 ◼   ► Still, you can do the opposite way, and so that's the way I like it.

01:15:16 ◼   ► I also remapped command-n to the new folder because I've been doing that since I was 10

01:15:20 ◼   ► years old and there's a feature in the operating system that lets you assign keyboard shortcuts

01:15:24 ◼   ► to any menu in any application and it's a supported thing so of course I'd do it.

01:15:28 ◼   ► Like I don't see why I wouldn't.

01:15:30 ◼   ► That's part of a computer being a computer.

01:15:32 ◼   ► That's what separates us from the multi-pad mongrels, right?

01:15:37 ◼   ► You don't like the keyboard shortcut?

01:15:41 ◼   ► Guess what?

01:15:42 ◼   ► I can reassign it and not by hacking something.

01:15:45 ◼   ► It's a feature of the operating system.

01:15:46 ◼   ► There's a workflow for that.

01:15:47 ◼   ► It's system preferences.

01:15:48 ◼   ► You just go there and type like it's a real thing anyway

01:15:51 ◼   ► Yeah, and I kind of feel the same way about scroll direction like if forced I am you know

01:15:57 ◼   ► They take it away and there's no p-list hack or whatever

01:15:59 ◼   ► I probably won't go to heroic links to get it back, but I might grumble but uh, you might grumble

01:16:05 ◼   ► yeah, I think Marcos plan is mostly sustainable because

01:16:09 ◼   ► like I again I still

01:16:13 ◼   ► keep thinking perhaps wrongly that we are in the beginnings of a Mac Renaissance and that

01:16:19 ◼   ► It's gonna take a while because computers take a long time like the pipeline is long, but that Apple is indeed

01:16:26 ◼   ► reconsidering some of its broad decisions about how it makes Macs and so the new keyboard that has more travel and

01:16:35 ◼   ► Is more reliable and is more pleasing to people who don't like the new one and is only on the 15-inch model or whatever

01:16:42 ◼   ► That's not coming like anytime soon

01:16:45 ◼   ► But if they start on it now in three years, it will be here and that's you know, like them reconsidering

01:16:52 ◼   ► How they build their computers and what people want out of them like satisfying Mac users again that Mac roundtable

01:16:59 ◼   ► Everything they said in that Mac roundtable was essentially

01:17:02 ◼   ► We hear you

01:17:04 ◼   ► We've realized we've been doing things in the wrong way and we're going to change course and try to do them in the right way

01:17:09 ◼   ► Like the way that will make everybody happy starting with hey the Mac Pro we were gonna get rid of it

01:17:15 ◼   ► We didn't think it was necessary. But actually it is how far that goes. I don't know but

01:17:20 ◼   ► If you're a little patient, I like I think you have to give it time because takes, you know

01:17:25 ◼   ► there's a long pipe, but you know the pipeline takes a while to

01:17:28 ◼   ► To flush all this bad stuff out of the system before you see the new ones

01:17:32 ◼   ► And it's just a question of how far they'll go

01:17:34 ◼   ► The Mac Pro is gonna be a great test if the Mac Pro comes out and it's another cylinder type

01:17:39 ◼   ► Exercise that does not bode well for Marco's eBay computer because he's gonna be hanging out for a while

01:17:46 ◼   ► while he waits for the you know, oh like one approach they could take is

01:17:50 ◼   ► We know a lot of people love the new keyboard and I kind of like it too, by the way

01:17:54 ◼   ► Like I almost never use it

01:17:56 ◼   ► So I think my laptop at work is actually a great test case because of my laptop keyboard at work dies

01:18:01 ◼   ► That's a bad sign because I type on it. So

01:18:04 ◼   ► little like I type on my other keyboard all the time and she's a desktop but

01:18:09 ◼   ► It could be that a lot of people like that and one way they could go is we'll just make that reliable

01:18:13 ◼   ► Find a way to make that keyboard that feels like that the case you really likes and a lot of other people really like

01:18:17 ◼   ► And that I kind of like to other than the arrow keys and all the other laptop keyboard crap that I hate just because of key

01:18:23 ◼   ► layout

01:18:24 ◼   ► Just make that reliable if that's what they do in three years again bad sign for Marco

01:18:29 ◼   ► So we have many things to be watching but I I'm you know

01:18:33 ◼   ► I'm still entertaining fantasies that they are really turning the ship here and

01:18:38 ◼   ► and they're gonna let the Mac be the Mac in hardware and in software and make all of us

01:18:44 ◼   ► old school Mac users happy because honestly like who are you trying to make happy with

01:18:49 ◼   ► the Macs? Who is super happy with these new computers? Maybe people might like them and

01:18:53 ◼   ► I know a lot of people do like the new keyboard but I don't think anybody's head over heels for

01:18:58 ◼   ► the new laptops and nobody was really head over heels for the new Mac Pro either so

01:19:03 ◼   ► there's some work to be done there and Apple says they're gonna do it and I feel like I want

01:19:07 ◼   ► I want to give him a chance to bowl me over.

01:19:09 ◼   ► - Before we leave this topic, we should also mention

01:19:12 ◼   ► the amazing article by Casey Johnson at the Outline

01:19:15 ◼   ► about the keyboards that came out yesterday.

01:19:19 ◼   ► That basically going through her process

01:19:22 ◼   ► of having to get keys repaired multiple times

01:19:25 ◼   ► at the Genius Bar, the crazy things they tell her,

01:19:27 ◼   ► the feigned surprise, oh, it must be a speck of dust.

01:19:32 ◼   ► Come on, this is a widespread issue.

01:19:36 ◼   ► They should know about this by now.

01:19:39 ◼   ► It's a great article that I think everybody should read.

01:19:42 ◼   ► It spawned a lot of discussion around

01:19:44 ◼   ► the other blogs as well.

01:19:45 ◼   ► Pretty much everyone linked to it and said,

01:19:47 ◼   ► "Yeah, me too."

01:19:48 ◼   ► So it's pretty great.

01:19:51 ◼   ► Just to add to this,

01:19:55 ◼   ► there are a lot of people when stuff like this comes out,

01:19:58 ◼   ► like when we complain about the keyboard here

01:20:01 ◼   ► or when other people complain about it

01:20:03 ◼   ► or even when people report problems with it,

01:20:05 ◼   ► there's a lot of people who are like,

01:20:06 ◼   ► "Oh, I love it, it's my favorite keyboard ever

01:20:08 ◼   ► "and the old ones all feel like crap to me now."

01:20:10 ◼   ► Not that different from Case's opinion of it.

01:20:12 ◼   ► And I wanna just state two separate things here.

01:20:15 ◼   ► Number one, you can love it.

01:20:18 ◼   ► You can love the way the new keyboard feels.

01:20:21 ◼   ► That is a separate thing from is it reliable or not.

01:20:25 ◼   ► Like if the new keyboard has as many problems

01:20:28 ◼   ► as it appears to have anecdotally,

01:20:31 ◼   ► from almost everyone I know who has one

01:20:33 ◼   ► and almost everyone who I've asked on Twitter,

01:20:36 ◼   ► Problems are widespread with keys getting stuck or breaking.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Widespread.

01:20:42 ◼   ► It certainly seems like this is a pretty big problem.

01:20:45 ◼   ► And it's also important to point out,

01:20:47 ◼   ► these laptops aren't very old,

01:20:49 ◼   ► and they're having these problems already.

01:20:50 ◼   ► In many cases, they have these problems

01:20:52 ◼   ► within a few months of ownership.

01:20:53 ◼   ► So it's, you know, there are problems with this keyboard.

01:20:57 ◼   ► You can like it, you can like the way it feels,

01:21:00 ◼   ► but if it has problems with reliability,

01:21:03 ◼   ► it's a bad keyboard, regardless of what you think

01:21:06 ◼   ► of yours personally.

01:21:08 ◼   ► My second thing to point out is that these aren't

01:21:11 ◼   ► the only two choices we have.

01:21:13 ◼   ► You have the 2015 and earlier keyboard,

01:21:17 ◼   ► and you have the MacBook hard as a rock keyboard

01:21:20 ◼   ► that breaks constantly.

01:21:21 ◼   ► There are other options for keyboards that Apple can use,

01:21:25 ◼   ► and in fact, they already have one,

01:21:27 ◼   ► and Casey already loves it.

01:21:29 ◼   ► It's called the Magic Keyboard 2.

01:21:32 ◼   ► The Magic Keyboard 2 is very, very thin.

01:21:36 ◼   ► It has Johnny's dumb layout where there's no space

01:21:39 ◼   ► between any of the keys and the arrow keys are all the same

01:21:41 ◼   ► so they're all square and have no gap

01:21:43 ◼   ► so you can't feel to where they are.

01:21:45 ◼   ► So it satisfies Apple's needs to be thin

01:21:48 ◼   ► and be symmetric at the cost of feeling good.

01:21:51 ◼   ► It has pretty shallow travel, feels very precise,

01:21:54 ◼   ► has a much more precise click and less wobbliness

01:21:58 ◼   ► than the old 2015 laptop keyboards.

01:22:01 ◼   ► thing is, that uses scissor switches. The old, reliable scissor switches that didn't

01:22:07 ◼   ► die when one spec of dust got in one key. Apple already has the solution to this problem.

01:22:13 ◼   ► They can have a modern clickier feel with lower travel, they can have the stupid layout

01:22:19 ◼   ► that they want of the keys with no space and bad arrow keys, and it can be super thin,

01:22:24 ◼   ► but it can also have reliable key switches that also do provide a little more travel

01:22:29 ◼   ► than the MacBook keyboard and a little less travel

01:22:31 ◼   ► than the 2015 keyboard.

01:22:33 ◼   ► So it's kind of this nice happy medium there

01:22:36 ◼   ► and it should be way more reliable.

01:22:39 ◼   ► So all they have to do is take that keyboard

01:22:42 ◼   ► that they already make and find a way

01:22:44 ◼   ► to put that into laptops.

01:22:46 ◼   ► And if you go to a store and you look at a Magic keyboard,

01:22:49 ◼   ► they're pretty damn thin.

01:22:51 ◼   ► I have a feeling that Apple can figure out how to do that.

01:22:55 ◼   ► - So being the optimist again,

01:22:58 ◼   ► I think that, you know, again, it takes a while for these decisions to make it from,

01:23:02 ◼   ► like we've decided to do a thing to manifest any product, so it still could be years.

01:23:07 ◼   ► But their recent changes in the iOS device line give me some optimism here.

01:23:13 ◼   ► One of the best examples is both the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 10, and I guess the 8s as

01:23:18 ◼   ► well.

01:23:19 ◼   ► Like the iPhone 7 prioritizing battery life and going with the same form factor for the

01:23:24 ◼   ► third year in a row and getting so much better battery life than the 6 and also the 10. The 10

01:23:30 ◼   ► not being you know even thinner than the 7 like saying we're going to you know either make it

01:23:38 ◼   ► thicker or keep it the same thickness and we're going to spend that on battery. The two extra

01:23:42 ◼   ► hours of battery life shows a change in philosophy from every single year we're going to keep making

01:23:48 ◼   ► it thinner and thinner and just try to maintain. Past two iterations have been, we're not going to

01:23:55 ◼   ► try to make it thinner at all costs and just maintain. We want to increase battery life.

01:24:00 ◼   ► Seven was better than the six and this ten is way better than the seven. Two hours they advertise

01:24:04 ◼   ► and that's what exactly we've been asking them to do. You're making the wrong choices, you're making

01:24:07 ◼   ► it too thin, go in the other direction. And it took many many years for that to happen, but they did

01:24:13 ◼   ► it. So I am optimistic that even if it's not the exact magic keyboard that three years from now

01:24:21 ◼   ► the new professional laptop will have a keyboard that is reliable and maybe that also

01:24:27 ◼   ► has more key travel. Maybe not because I don't know what the percentages are for people who like

01:24:32 ◼   ► the new one and people who don't and like I said I kind of like it. But certainly the reliability

01:24:38 ◼   ► whatever they have to do there and by the way on the reliability front if someone who's been using

01:24:41 ◼   ► scissor switch keys for a long time and who's had them on laptops for a long time.

01:24:46 ◼   ► They are way more reliable obviously than the butterfly ones have proven to be, but

01:24:51 ◼   ► they're also less reliable than their predecessors.

01:24:53 ◼   ► I have broken keyboards with these scissor switches multiple times.

01:24:58 ◼   ► I've worn through at least one, possibly two because one of my keys is sometimes wonky

01:25:03 ◼   ► at work, aluminum Apple extended keyboards.

01:25:06 ◼   ► I have broken keys on PowerBook G4 era computers, which also had scissor switches under their

01:25:13 ◼   ► very different looking key caps, right?

01:25:15 ◼   ► I have never broken a key switch on an Apple Extended 2, which I used for years and years

01:25:21 ◼   ► and years, since like 1989 or whatever when the SC30 came out.

01:25:25 ◼   ► I have never broken a key switch on any keys before that.

01:25:28 ◼   ► So if you want to compare reliability for the little plastic scissor switch things compared

01:25:32 ◼   ► to the "mechanical keys" and other keyboards, another term that drives me nuts, as if decision

01:25:38 ◼   ► switches are not mechanical.

01:25:41 ◼   ► It is a downgrade in reliability for size.

01:25:44 ◼   ► It's just a question of, is it an acceptable downgrade?

01:25:47 ◼   ► Me using an Apple aluminum extended keyboard for seven years and then I break a key, I'm

01:25:53 ◼   ► like, all right, I've been pounding on this keyboard eight hours a day at work for seven

01:25:56 ◼   ► years.

01:25:57 ◼   ► I accept that I have now broken one of the very commonly used keys, and I can kind of

01:26:02 ◼   ► get it to fix because I'm pretty good at like prying off these key caps and putting it back

01:26:05 ◼   ► on but it's always a little bit wonky and you know what seven years good job keyboard

01:26:09 ◼   ► you're filthy anyway because I haven't been cleaning you well enough buy another keyboard

01:26:13 ◼   ► fifty bucks and you're fine that we're willing I think we're all willing to trade that even

01:26:19 ◼   ► though Apple extended to you could you know defend yourself from a mugger with and it

01:26:24 ◼   ► will still work fine like it's just there is no you know what I mean like literally

01:26:28 ◼   ► never broke I remember I dropped the pocket knife off a high shelf and it landed on the

01:26:33 ◼   ► keyboard with like the blade out because I don't know I had my knife with my blade out

01:26:38 ◼   ► and it like cut off like the corner of one of the keys the thing was still fine like

01:26:45 ◼   ► enough force to actually cut the plastic of the key cap of the key switch was fine so

01:26:49 ◼   ► the thing was like a tank but you know so there's there's leeway for Apple to be thinner

01:26:55 ◼   ► be more elegant, be lighter weight, reduce reliability,

01:27:00 ◼   ► just don't reduce it quite that much.

01:27:01 ◼   ► And it feels like they've gone too far with this one.

01:27:04 ◼   ► So I have some hope that they are gonna turn the ship

01:27:09 ◼   ► on this one.

01:27:10 ◼   ► And it frustrates me that none of us know

01:27:13 ◼   ► how widespread this problem really is.

01:27:15 ◼   ► We just, you know, it's all anecdotes and like,

01:27:17 ◼   ► oh yeah, of course, you know, everyone who's gonna respond

01:27:19 ◼   ► to Casey's article, not this Casey, the other one,

01:27:21 ◼   ► is gonna be like people who have keyboard problems.

01:27:24 ◼   ► And the same thing with like when Marco was complaining

01:27:25 ◼   ► about the keyboard, you know, a year ago. Of course we heard from all the other people who

01:27:30 ◼   ► hate the keyboard and all the other people who have reliability problems, right? But we can't

01:27:34 ◼   ► tell percentage-wise. It's not a representative sample. It's just the people who are at the

01:27:43 ◼   ► extremes and probably mostly people that agree with us. But Apple knows. And I think Apple geniuses

01:27:50 ◼   ► probably kind of know because they're just there taking all the repairs and stuff.

01:27:55 ◼   ► So, I wish we knew exactly how much we're overreacting to this or not, but anecdotally,

01:28:02 ◼   ► it just seems so clear that, like Marco said, these are new computers, the keyboards are

01:28:08 ◼   ► already failing.

01:28:10 ◼   ► Casey Johnston's article, like, it is of a type.

01:28:14 ◼   ► It's a very typical article where if you are in the industry of writing about these types

01:28:20 ◼   ► products and you personally have to bring your brand new computer back three times because

01:28:27 ◼   ► the keyboard won't work?

01:28:30 ◼   ► That's like, you know, I'm writing an article about this because this is way outside the

01:28:34 ◼   ► realm of expectation.

01:28:35 ◼   ► Three times?

01:28:36 ◼   ► Like fine, some of you get it and it doesn't work once, you get it repaired like now that

01:28:38 ◼   ► it's repaired it'll be fine.

01:28:40 ◼   ► Especially if it's like you bring it in, oh well this is the new 2017 keyboard with the

01:28:44 ◼   ► rubber blah blah blah, now it's repaired, it's fine.

01:28:46 ◼   ► But if you bring in and they replace a huge piece of the computer at great expense and

01:28:51 ◼   ► it's just all you've done is start the timer again and go, "Oh, six weeks have passed,

01:28:56 ◼   ► now bring it back in again.

01:28:57 ◼   ► That will be another $300 to $700 and new one."

01:29:02 ◼   ► That's just a bad design.

01:29:03 ◼   ► There's no hope.

01:29:04 ◼   ► If you feel like bringing it in and getting huge parts of your computer replaced because

01:29:07 ◼   ► it's all one giant thing doesn't make you feel like now this problem is fixed, all it

01:29:13 ◼   ► you feel like as you just started a timer on the next failure again, that's just a bad design.

01:29:17 ◼   ► And that's, I like, I really hope that, you know, we're capturing these devices and we're looking

01:29:25 ◼   ► at the issue and we're taking stock and it's actually not that big a percentage and blah,

01:29:29 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah. Like I don't know what to believe, but I do know the hopelessness of that

01:29:34 ◼   ► feeling. I kind of felt it with my Thunderbolt display when I would bring it in and get it

01:29:38 ◼   ► quote unquote repair with huge amounts of the guts replaced, but then I would get it back and

01:29:41 ◼   ► of the same problem would be there.

01:29:43 ◼   ► And I had to bring that in three times as well, but luckily the third time was the charm,

01:29:46 ◼   ► and that did it.

01:29:48 ◼   ► But these keyboards, I have very little faith that your third repair is going to be any

01:29:52 ◼   ► more successful than your first or second repair, especially if you've got the "new

01:29:57 ◼   ► keyboard" on the second repair and the third repair.

01:30:00 ◼   ► So this is all the type of thing that makes me believe that Apple will change its mind

01:30:06 ◼   ► on this, design a new keyboard or adapt the magic one that the other Casey, oh this is

01:30:12 ◼   ► so confusing, that Casey Liss loves. And in two to three years we will see a new 15-inch

01:30:18 ◼   ► with these new keys and Apple will talk about it in a subtle but not particularly self-deprecating

01:30:25 ◼   ► way, and we will all cheer and it'll be safe for Marco to buy one unless it still has no

01:30:29 ◼   ► ports, in which case he'll still be angry.

01:30:32 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:30:34 ◼   ► - Well, just for the record,

01:30:36 ◼   ► I have not used a Touch Bar MacBook Pro

01:30:40 ◼   ► for more than about 45 seconds in an Apple store.

01:30:42 ◼   ► So that could be the utter filth and dumpster fire

01:30:46 ◼   ► that everyone says it is.

01:30:47 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:30:48 ◼   ► But I do freaking love my MacBook Adorable.

01:30:52 ◼   ► Are there things I would change short?

01:30:54 ◼   ► I would love to have one more port.

01:30:56 ◼   ► I would love to have MagSafe.

01:30:59 ◼   ► But in the grand scheme of things,

01:31:00 ◼   ► I freaking love this computer.

01:31:02 ◼   ► It's all of the good parts of the iPad,

01:31:04 ◼   ► except without that iOS thing that holds you back.

01:31:07 ◼   ► And so I love this computer.

01:31:10 ◼   ► I am looking forward to one day in like two years

01:31:12 ◼   ► or something like that,

01:31:13 ◼   ► eventually getting a Touch Bar MacBook Pro at work

01:31:15 ◼   ► and seeing what that's like.

01:31:17 ◼   ► - Don't look forward to this. - I love my iMac.

01:31:19 ◼   ► Well, you know what I mean.

01:31:20 ◼   ► I love my iMac.

01:31:21 ◼   ► I am hopeful, however,

01:31:25 ◼   ► that especially this keyboard that I think,

01:31:29 ◼   ► Marco, you made a really great point earlier.

01:31:31 ◼   ► you, really me, I do like it.

01:31:34 ◼   ► I absolutely like it, but I also concur

01:31:37 ◼   ► that it is not as reliable as it should be.

01:31:39 ◼   ► And I had to buy, and we talked about it on the show,

01:31:42 ◼   ► I had to buy a can of compressed air,

01:31:43 ◼   ► which is the first time I bought one in probably a decade,

01:31:46 ◼   ► because I needed to blow out this microscopic piece of dust

01:31:51 ◼   ► from under the keyboard such that

01:31:53 ◼   ► it would operate properly again.

01:31:55 ◼   ► And it turns out I just moved it to a different key.

01:31:57 ◼   ► And the second time I blew it out,

01:31:59 ◼   ► and I think that actually did it.

01:32:00 ◼   ► But that's not an acceptable answer, right?

01:32:04 ◼   ► I've never had to blow out an Apple keyboard before.

01:32:07 ◼   ► And I just hope that Apple is willing,

01:32:11 ◼   ► and I think they are, is willing to revisit this

01:32:14 ◼   ► in the future, but I love this iMac

01:32:17 ◼   ► and I love this MacBook Adorable.

01:32:18 ◼   ► And we'll see what happens with my next computer

01:32:21 ◼   ► whenever I buy it.

01:32:21 ◼   ► The other thing I wish this MacBook Adorable had though

01:32:25 ◼   ► was Touch ID or Face ID question mark?

01:32:30 ◼   ► art. That would be cool. Do we think that's coming?

01:32:33 ◼   ► Yeah, before we turn to the Mac show, which happens occasionally. Sorry, people. We're

01:32:38 ◼   ► Mac users. I mean, have they seen the show art? It shouldn't be that much of a surprise.

01:32:43 ◼   ► So Face ID as a Mac has been in here for a while, and I just want to touch on this, especially

01:32:47 ◼   ► in light of Marco talking about iMac Pro versus Mac Pro. I forget how we know that the iMac

01:32:55 ◼   ► Pro is going to have a secure enclave. Did Apple just announce that, or did people just

01:32:58 ◼   ► asked the person who was in front of the computer at WWDC.

01:33:01 ◼   ► - I think it was in some firmware reference,

01:33:03 ◼   ► some EFI reference somewhere.

01:33:06 ◼   ► - Well, anyway, one of the potential advantages

01:33:09 ◼   ► of an all-in-one computer,

01:33:10 ◼   ► kind of like the advantage that Apple leveraged

01:33:14 ◼   ► to bring the 5K iMac at first,

01:33:16 ◼   ► is that you can do a lot of stuff

01:33:18 ◼   ► when everything is inside the same case.

01:33:20 ◼   ► So a weird display controller with the timing controller

01:33:25 ◼   ► and the dual internal cable,

01:33:27 ◼   ► you can do all that and it's like it's all in one box you don't have to worry about that

01:33:30 ◼   ► they can give you a 5k screen in the iMac before they can give it to you on the Mac Pro or some

01:33:36 ◼   ► other computer with an external thing because they don't want to have two wires connecting it and

01:33:40 ◼   ► elegant and blah blah blah. Well one of the other things that you can do is stuff like face ID where

01:33:45 ◼   ► you've got this here enclave and you're guaranteed to have a camera and you know where the camera is

01:33:49 ◼   ► and you know what the quality of it is and you've got it pointed at the person's face and you've got

01:33:55 ◼   ► all the sensors and the IR dot thing and so on and so forth. So, Face ID starts to take off and works

01:34:02 ◼   ► well. I really do want to see it on Macs and, you know, the all-in-one computers, both laptops and

01:34:09 ◼   ► the iMac, are a perfect place for it to appear. We were talking about Touch ID and the Touch Bar

01:34:14 ◼   ► on Macs, like on a separate keyboard, but that poses a lot of problems. Can the Touch Bar work

01:34:22 ◼   ► over Bluetooth, if the secure enclave is inside the keyboard,

01:34:26 ◼   ► how does that communicate?

01:34:27 ◼   ► And similarly with Face ID and the IR sensor

01:34:29 ◼   ► and the camera and everything,

01:34:30 ◼   ► if Apple makes an external display, which they are,

01:34:32 ◼   ► they're making an external display,

01:34:33 ◼   ► but they want to put Face ID in it, they could do it.

01:34:38 ◼   ► But how does that communicate back to those computer?

01:34:40 ◼   ► I guess the answer is like,

01:34:41 ◼   ► oh, it'll just be Thunderbolt 3 and there'll be no problem.

01:34:43 ◼   ► But that's an additional complexity

01:34:45 ◼   ► that makes that monitor even more complex and more fraught

01:34:49 ◼   ► and more like potentially flaky

01:34:52 ◼   ► than if everything is in the same box.

01:34:54 ◼   ► So I don't know if the iMac Pros will have Face ID.

01:34:58 ◼   ► Kind of seems like they wouldn't

01:35:01 ◼   ► just because I feel like the timing of their production

01:35:03 ◼   ► and the timing of the iPhone 10 production

01:35:06 ◼   ► don't match up in a way that I would expect

01:35:09 ◼   ► the first iteration of the iMac Pro to have them.

01:35:11 ◼   ► But I fully expect, and I think Apple should,

01:35:16 ◼   ► Integrate face ID into all of their Macs eventually if it works well much more so than touch ID

01:35:21 ◼   ► Which has been integrated into the laptops, but hasn't made it to the desktops and having you have you know

01:35:27 ◼   ► A laptop with touch ID now and it's not the best implementation. It's a little bit slow

01:35:31 ◼   ► But I would love it if I just open the lid on my laptop and it unlocked by seeing my face because it's the perfect

01:35:38 ◼   ► Scenario when you lift the lid on your laptop

01:35:40 ◼   ► Chances are even better than when you use a phone that you will be facing it

01:35:43 ◼   ► Like that's how you open the lid on your laptop when it's facing you, right?

01:35:46 ◼   ► It's like here I am you open it up and your face comes right into view

01:35:50 ◼   ► Whereas your phone you could like pull out of your pocket or whatever might be facing a weird direction much more challenging there

01:35:54 ◼   ► And similarly on iMac you sit down in front of your computer boy

01:35:58 ◼   ► It's got a great view of your face. It can spray those IR dots all over like it's just it's right there

01:36:02 ◼   ► Everything's built into one thing. And so I really hope they do

01:36:06 ◼   ► Bring that to max. I really hope they kind of like skip touch ID and say well

01:36:10 ◼   ► "Well, we brought Touch ID to our laptops and it's okay,

01:36:12 ◼   ► "but you know what, let's just skip right to Face ID."

01:36:14 ◼   ► Because even more so than Casey's beloved watch unlock,

01:36:17 ◼   ► Face ID is the ultimate.

01:36:19 ◼   ► - I was gonna say, because it's super quick now,

01:36:22 ◼   ► super quick, between the new watch and the new OS,

01:36:25 ◼   ► it is super fast.

01:36:26 ◼   ► - But you don't have to have your watch on

01:36:28 ◼   ► and you can just sit down and different people can sit down

01:36:30 ◼   ► and can recognize who they are and switch to their account.

01:36:32 ◼   ► Like if they can do that well and fast,

01:36:34 ◼   ► that is a better future for authentication on the Mac

01:36:38 ◼   ► touch ID ever could be and it solves so many problems. The only downside is it's more difficult

01:36:45 ◼   ► to do on the Mac Pro. Supposedly they're top end computer now you have to figure out a

01:36:48 ◼   ► way to you know get those cameras and maybe it may be overblown. Maybe Thunderbird really

01:36:54 ◼   ► does solve this problem entirely for them. Maybe they have plenty of bandwidth and side

01:36:57 ◼   ► channels for all these weird sensors and everything and there's no problem with the drivers. I

01:37:00 ◼   ► just I just worry it will be less reliable than it is in the iMac where they've got everything

01:37:05 ◼   ► inside the same case.

01:37:07 ◼   ► - The other problem is with laptops,

01:37:08 ◼   ► is that you have a pretty severe thickness limitation

01:37:10 ◼   ► on the screen lid.

01:37:12 ◼   ► You know, the screen lid is extremely thin.

01:37:15 ◼   ► You know, they can't even fit a decent front-facing camera

01:37:18 ◼   ► in the laptops.

01:37:19 ◼   ► Like, you can get like, you know, a $3,000 MacBook Pro

01:37:22 ◼   ► that's brand new, and the FaceTime camera on it

01:37:25 ◼   ► is worse than like the iPhone 5S's FaceTime camera.

01:37:28 ◼   ► It's really, really bad front cameras on the Macs.

01:37:32 ◼   ► Possibly for cost reasons, 'cause they just don't care.

01:37:34 ◼   ► but most likely also because of thickness reasons,

01:37:36 ◼   ► that those screen lids are super thin.

01:37:38 ◼   ► And I don't know if they can fit good enough sensors

01:37:41 ◼   ► into those screen lids on the laptops

01:37:44 ◼   ► to actually achieve Face ID anytime soon.

01:37:47 ◼   ► - I think the camera is probably good enough already.

01:37:48 ◼   ► It's just, I don't know how thick the IR sprayer

01:37:51 ◼   ► or depth thing is.

01:37:52 ◼   ► I mean, as soon as we get the iFixit teardown on the phone,

01:37:54 ◼   ► like, are they using all that thickness

01:37:56 ◼   ► for the additional sensors?

01:37:57 ◼   ► Or are actually those sensors super thin

01:37:59 ◼   ► and it's no problem?

01:38:00 ◼   ► I feel like it can fit.

01:38:03 ◼   ► There's not as much room as there is on a phone, but you know, like you can always make

01:38:09 ◼   ► it a millimeter or two thicker.

01:38:10 ◼   ► I wouldn't say that they should go with the Bulge, but maybe not the first generation,

01:38:16 ◼   ► but down the line, those sensors, there's nothing inherent about the sensors like optically

01:38:19 ◼   ► speaking that makes me think they can't have it, and I think the camera is plenty good

01:38:23 ◼   ► enough already.

01:38:24 ◼   ► It's just the auxiliary sensors, the multiple cameras or the IR thing that I don't think

01:38:30 ◼   ► they are.

01:38:31 ◼   ► on the iMac, plenty of room there, and so that should be the first place it appears

01:38:35 ◼   ► is on their big desktops because you've got more room, more power, and so that's

01:38:40 ◼   ► what they should do.

01:38:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I have this slight fantasy that maybe the iMac Pro does have Face ID and that's

01:38:48 ◼   ► why it's not out yet. They were holding it back until the iPhone unveiled with its

01:38:52 ◼   ► Face ID. But I think in reality that's very unlikely.

01:38:54 ◼   ► Yeah, the timing just doesn't seem to work out because you know everything having to

01:38:58 ◼   ► to do with Face ID is coming first on the X,

01:39:00 ◼   ► and that is everything that the company is focused on.

01:39:02 ◼   ► The iMac Pro was started so long ago,

01:39:04 ◼   ► like it just seems like their flagship phone

01:39:06 ◼   ► is going to blaze the path for this.

01:39:08 ◼   ► And then like, it just doesn't work out timing-wise.

01:39:11 ◼   ► I feel like even the second generation iMac Pro

01:39:15 ◼   ► that may be in the planning stages,

01:39:17 ◼   ► even that one might not have Face ID incorporated,

01:39:19 ◼   ► but I would love to be surprised too.

01:39:21 ◼   ► I mean, it's not like any of us scrutinize the forehead

01:39:24 ◼   ► of the iMac Pro model and that thing

01:39:27 ◼   ► to look for tiny little impossible to see

01:39:30 ◼   ► slightly differently colored black areas in the forehead

01:39:33 ◼   ► to see if we could see an IR sensor.

01:39:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's way more likely

01:39:37 ◼   ► that Face ID does come to the Mac,

01:39:38 ◼   ► but that it's in like three years, probably not soon.

01:39:42 ◼   ► - Oh, I don't wanna wait that long.

01:39:43 ◼   ► Next year I wanna see it in an iMac.

01:39:45 ◼   ► - Maybe that can be in the Pro display.

01:39:48 ◼   ► We have speculated on the show,

01:39:51 ◼   ► they mentioned in the Mac Pro briefing last spring

01:39:53 ◼   ► that they're working on a Mac Pro

01:39:55 ◼   ► and also a new Pro display.

01:39:57 ◼   ► we know nothing about that display except that they said it's going to

01:40:01 ◼   ► exist so we don't know like what size it is it could be 8k we don't know like we

01:40:06 ◼   ► we have no idea what size it is what resolution it is what features will it

01:40:10 ◼   ► have when will it come out what will it cost like we have no idea one of the

01:40:15 ◼   ► obvious questions is what would make someone buy the Apple Pro display

01:40:20 ◼   ► instead of the LG you know mediocrity box and face ID could be a great answer

01:40:25 ◼   ► 'cause you know it's gonna cost more

01:40:28 ◼   ► 'cause it's gonna be an Apple display.

01:40:29 ◼   ► So if Apple's gonna sell,

01:40:31 ◼   ► if LG's still selling theirs,

01:40:33 ◼   ► let's assume this thing comes out next summer,

01:40:34 ◼   ► let's say the LG 5K display next summer is 1,000 bucks.

01:40:37 ◼   ► I think at best it's gonna be maybe 900,

01:40:39 ◼   ► but it's probably gonna be about 1,000 bucks next summer.

01:40:42 ◼   ► Apple comes out, let's say their display is 5K,

01:40:44 ◼   ► it's probably gonna be at least 1,500 bucks.

01:40:47 ◼   ► So what can they do to help justify that cost?

01:40:50 ◼   ► If LG's is gonna be 1,000, Apple's not gonna be 1,000.

01:40:53 ◼   ► So one of the things they can do that no one else can do

01:40:57 ◼   ► is face ID, they can build that in.

01:40:59 ◼   ► Like that would be an incredible selling point

01:41:01 ◼   ► that would make pretty much everyone at the high end

01:41:04 ◼   ► choose that display over some other thing from somebody else.

01:41:08 ◼   ► So that's something they can do, we don't know.

01:41:10 ◼   ► Until, you know that's the thing,

01:41:11 ◼   ► until we get actual information

01:41:14 ◼   ► and hopefully actual product releases

01:41:16 ◼   ► from the Mac Pro and this Pro display,

01:41:19 ◼   ► there are so many unanswered questions

01:41:21 ◼   ► that make it very hard to contextualize the iMac Pro

01:41:25 ◼   ► and to decide whether to buy the iMac Pro or the other things.

01:41:29 ◼   ► - So you said you'll be buying 13 iMac Pros.

01:41:32 ◼   ► - Well, thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:41:34 ◼   ► Betterment, Hover, and Away, and we will see you next week.

01:41:38 ◼   ► ♪ I'm pressing the space bar ♪

01:41:41 ◼   ► ♪ I'm pressing the space bar ♪

01:41:44 ◼   ► ♪ I am pressing the space bar ♪

01:41:47 ◼   ► ♪ I'm pressing the space bar ♪

01:41:49 ◼   ► And nothing is happening

01:41:54 ◼   ► This computer is about a year old

01:41:58 ◼   ► And it was very expensive

01:42:01 ◼   ► I had been waiting to upgrade for a long time

01:42:06 ◼   ► And now you're telling me

01:42:09 ◼   ► That it would need extensive

01:42:12 ◼   ► Surgery for a speck of dust

01:42:15 ◼   ► Lodged beneath the butterfly

01:42:18 ◼   ► I found your instructions, they were not helpful

01:42:23 ◼   ► I bought this can of air, I feel like an idiot