ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► We need more investigative journalism. No one actually, I mean with the exception of

00:00:03 ◼   ► I guess 9to5Mac and Bloomberg because they got, what's his name? Like who's out there

00:00:10 ◼   ► digging through dumpsters to find out what the new Mac Pro is going to be? Let's get

00:00:13 ◼   ► some old-fashioned journalism on this. I think first Apple needs to figure out what the new

00:00:18 ◼   ► Mac Pro is supposed to be. Yeah, well you know if you dig through dumpsters and find

00:00:21 ◼   ► out like, you know, too bad they don't use paper anymore, but like find out they're just

00:00:25 ◼   ► now having meetings about what they might do about this. Like you can get timelines

00:00:29 ◼   ► on it but anyway as time passes and we wait for WWC to appear things could leak

00:00:33 ◼   ► let's you know let's find stuff out let's get some engineers drunk let's

00:00:38 ◼   ► find out some answers yeah because that always works all that gets you is a

00:00:42 ◼   ► pre-release iPhone yeah that's the only thing that works I mean I can spoil it

00:00:46 ◼   ► for you right now John you're not gonna know until like it launches the two

00:00:51 ◼   ► things that you're gonna complain about and convince yourself not to buy it

00:00:54 ◼   ► about you're not gonna know the price and you're not gonna know the GPU

00:00:57 ◼   ► The GPU choice could leak. Like if they're using NVIDIA, I feel like that could leak,

00:01:01 ◼   ► right? And if they are using NVIDIA, they're going to be using Pascal.

00:01:05 ◼   ► It might leak that they're using NVIDIA, but it wouldn't leak which one they're using.

00:01:10 ◼   ► It would leak that they're using Pascal architecture. It would just be a question of which part.

00:01:14 ◼   ► But even that would be enough to be exciting.

00:01:19 ◼   ► It's been so long since we talked. A lot has happened in the news this week of April 8th

00:01:26 ◼   ► or ninth or whatever, right?

00:01:29 ◼   ► You know, today, as we talk,

00:01:30 ◼   ► has obviously got to be April 12th, 2017.

00:01:34 ◼   ► - Of course it is.

00:01:35 ◼   ► - But rather than talk about the exciting news

00:01:38 ◼   ► that has happened this week,

00:01:39 ◼   ► we thought we'd talk more about what has happened,

00:01:43 ◼   ► say, early last week, maybe before April 6th.

00:01:47 ◼   ► - Indeed.

00:01:48 ◼   ► Yeah, we thought we'd just do a recap,

00:01:50 ◼   ► because why wouldn't we?

00:01:52 ◼   ► And so here we are.

00:01:54 ◼   ► And so that amazing news about Nintendo that happened, you know, just a couple of days ago on the 10th or the 11th,

00:02:00 ◼   ► we're gonna save that for next week.

00:02:02 ◼   ► The good news is we've covered everything that we could possibly cover about the Mac Pro,

00:02:06 ◼   ► so we don't have to talk about it until it comes out in 2019.

00:02:08 ◼   ► So, let's talk about some other things.

00:02:10 ◼   ► Wait, do we really have no follow-up trademark on about the Mac Pro?

00:02:13 ◼   ► No, let Casey get through his little song and dance.

00:02:16 ◼   ► Don't worry. Don't you worry.

00:02:20 ◼   ► All right, I can't even take this seriously

00:02:24 ◼   ► 'cause I know that I'll be murdered

00:02:25 ◼   ► if I don't bring up Mac Pro stuff, so here we go, kids.

00:02:29 ◼   ► TechCrunch, the things I do for you two,

00:02:33 ◼   ► I hope you appreciate me.

00:02:34 ◼   ► - I'm so sorry, Casey.

00:02:36 ◼   ► I'm just so sorry for you for during this time.

00:02:39 ◼   ► I know this is a very difficult time

00:02:43 ◼   ► to be on our podcast during Mac Pro Week.

00:02:47 ◼   ► - Mac Pro Week?

00:02:48 ◼   ► Mac Pro Week?

00:02:49 ◼   ► Are you (beep) me?

00:02:50 ◼   ► It's Mac Pro year.

00:02:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, I like when they call this the year of Mac Pro

00:02:55 ◼   ► and we're just gonna keep calling it the year of Mac Pro

00:02:57 ◼   ► until they release one.

00:02:58 ◼   ► Which might be a whole other year.

00:03:00 ◼   ► - Anyway, all right, let's do a little follow up

00:03:03 ◼   ► about the Mac Pro and then hopefully we can move on.

00:03:06 ◼   ► TechCrunch, Matt Panazarino and team at TechCrunch

00:03:09 ◼   ► have posted the full transcript of their meeting.

00:03:12 ◼   ► I guess he recorded it by some mechanism

00:03:15 ◼   ► and had Hammer, one of his people,

00:03:19 ◼   ► go ahead and transcribe it all.

00:03:20 ◼   ► So we will put that in the show notes.

00:03:22 ◼   ► I have yet to have a chance to even look at it.

00:03:24 ◼   ► There are definitely parts as much as I snark

00:03:26 ◼   ► that I think are interesting

00:03:29 ◼   ► that I'd like to read a little more about,

00:03:30 ◼   ► but I haven't had the chance yet.

00:03:31 ◼   ► So you can check that out in the show notes.

00:03:35 ◼   ► Is that really the only Mac Pro follow-up?

00:03:36 ◼   ► Oh, because one of you made it a topic, I see.

00:03:38 ◼   ► - The topic is, anyway, we'll get to it.

00:03:41 ◼   ► On the transcript, I read the whole transcript

00:03:44 ◼   ► and surprise, surprise, surprise,

00:03:47 ◼   ► the people they had there reporting on it

00:03:49 ◼   ► did a good job reporting on it.

00:03:50 ◼   ► Like there's not any important information

00:03:52 ◼   ► in the transcript that you're missing.

00:03:53 ◼   ► You can read it just to get a flavor of what they said

00:03:56 ◼   ► and stuff like that, but it was well covered.

00:04:00 ◼   ► It's not as if they left out major sections

00:04:02 ◼   ► that were important.

00:04:03 ◼   ► The fun thing about the transcript is you can see,

00:04:06 ◼   ► since it's a fairly faithful transcript, I would imagine,

00:04:08 ◼   ► because it's got all people's false starts

00:04:10 ◼   ► and weird sentence structures and stuff.

00:04:13 ◼   ► That's just what happens when people speak.

00:04:16 ◼   ► You can see occasionally people getting their,

00:04:21 ◼   ► reining in their instincts.

00:04:22 ◼   ► One particular instance is Craig Figueire talking about,

00:04:26 ◼   ► you know, the old Mac Pro and the architecture

00:04:28 ◼   ► with the tube and the heating and, you know,

00:04:30 ◼   ► how it was difficult to put different components

00:04:34 ◼   ► in it and everything.

00:04:35 ◼   ► And so he talks about all of that.

00:04:36 ◼   ► And then he said how they really put a lot of energy

00:04:40 ◼   ► behind that design.

00:04:41 ◼   ► And the next bit is in retrospect, that was dot, dot, dot.

00:04:46 ◼   ► And he was about to say in retrospect,

00:04:47 ◼   ► that was a mistake, that was a bad idea,

00:04:50 ◼   ► that was not the right thing to do.

00:04:51 ◼   ► But he doesn't say that because he is disciplined.

00:04:53 ◼   ► He gets into the sentence, but then he says,

00:04:55 ◼   ► "Abort, abort, in retrospect, that was new sentence.

00:04:58 ◼   ► "While that system is going to be fantastic

00:05:00 ◼   ► "for a huge number of customers, we want to do more."

00:05:03 ◼   ► There you go, and Phil smiles next to him

00:05:04 ◼   ► and says, "Good job, Craig,

00:05:05 ◼   ► "you almost landed in it there."

00:05:07 ◼   ► But anyway, they're very disciplined with their message.

00:05:11 ◼   ► Craig still manages to be funny and witty

00:05:14 ◼   ► within the bounds of being disciplined for PR.

00:05:17 ◼   ► And Phyllis is, Phyllis Fell,

00:05:20 ◼   ► he's the guy we know and love.

00:05:21 ◼   ► So if you have seen a lot of presentations

00:05:25 ◼   ► with the people who are at this meeting,

00:05:28 ◼   ► then you will definitely get the flavor of them

00:05:30 ◼   ► just reading the transcript.

00:05:31 ◼   ► And I don't know much about John Turnus.

00:05:33 ◼   ► I'm not sure I've ever seen him on stage,

00:05:34 ◼   ► but he's the other guy.

00:05:36 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:05:38 ◼   ► All right, moving on.

00:05:39 ◼   ► Just like that, we're done with Mac Pro, right kids?

00:05:41 ◼   ► Right, okay, so workflow.

00:05:43 ◼   ► So somebody that listens to our show had a conversation with the support team at Workflow,

00:05:50 ◼   ► and they received the following email, which was then forwarded on to us.

00:05:55 ◼   ► The person at Workflow said, "Blah, blah, blah, fix for your problem, blah, blah, blah.

00:06:01 ◼   ► But just so you know, we have no further planned updates for Workflow.

00:06:06 ◼   ► That being said, we are continuing to support Workflow's current functionality of no plans

00:06:10 ◼   ► to end support.

00:06:11 ◼   ► Let me know if you run across any bugs or crashes.

00:06:14 ◼   ► Cue the sad trombone here, Marco.

00:06:16 ◼   ► Womp, womp.

00:06:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, to be honest,

00:06:19 ◼   ► like, you know, when workflow was acquired,

00:06:22 ◼   ► and we did mention, like, you know,

00:06:24 ◼   ► they might just let it die or kill it outright,

00:06:27 ◼   ► and, you know, have the staff work on other stuff

00:06:29 ◼   ► built into iOS, like, that was kind of the long-term idea

00:06:32 ◼   ► that that was most likely to happen.

00:06:34 ◼   ► I will admit, I did not foresee them,

00:06:38 ◼   ► because of the way it was bought

00:06:41 ◼   ► and because of the messaging around the time

00:06:43 ◼   ► that it was bought and what they told the users,

00:06:46 ◼   ► I did not foresee them totally stopping

00:06:49 ◼   ► all updates to the app right now.

00:06:51 ◼   ► Or at least, I think the way this reads,

00:06:54 ◼   ► it's like they might do bug fix updates, but that's it.

00:06:58 ◼   ► No new features are coming to workflow.

00:07:00 ◼   ► That is unfortunate, but I guess not a huge surprise.

00:07:07 ◼   ► 'Cause that's what happens.

00:07:09 ◼   ► this was clearly an acqui-hire,

00:07:12 ◼   ► in the sense that Apple wanted the staff

00:07:15 ◼   ► more than the product.

00:07:16 ◼   ► And whether that was to make the staff work on

00:07:18 ◼   ► something boring like mail.app, probably not.

00:07:22 ◼   ► It was probably to have the staff work on

00:07:24 ◼   ► workflow-like functionality.

00:07:26 ◼   ► Automation technology is for iOS, that's my guess.

00:07:30 ◼   ► But the fact is, if you're a workflow user,

00:07:33 ◼   ► this doesn't make it any easier to take

00:07:35 ◼   ► that basically workflow is effectively dead

00:07:39 ◼   ► in the sense that no one will really be working on it anymore

00:07:43 ◼   ► unless they want to fix some bugs for some reason,

00:07:46 ◼   ► but that's about it.

00:07:47 ◼   ► So that is pretty unfortunate for workflow users

00:07:49 ◼   ► and I hope that in the end this will prove worth it.

00:07:53 ◼   ► In many acqui-hires, what happens is

00:07:58 ◼   ► the product gets shut down, the team goes to work

00:08:01 ◼   ► on something similar within the bigger acquiring company,

00:08:04 ◼   ► And sometimes that sees the light of day,

00:08:06 ◼   ► and sometimes it doesn't.

00:08:08 ◼   ► Or sometimes what eventually comes out of that

00:08:10 ◼   ► from the bigger company is not nearly as good

00:08:12 ◼   ► as the acquired app was.

00:08:15 ◼   ► And it's kind of a crap shoot, you don't really know.

00:08:16 ◼   ► So I hope that this will lead to better stuff in iOS

00:08:21 ◼   ► that will replace the need for workflow

00:08:23 ◼   ► for the people who use it today.

00:08:25 ◼   ► But honestly, that's not the most likely outcome.

00:08:29 ◼   ► The most likely outcome is iOS stuff moves forward

00:08:32 ◼   ► a little bit.

00:08:34 ◼   ► We get some part of this in a future version of iOS.

00:08:38 ◼   ► And then maybe the original staff who created it

00:08:43 ◼   ► goes to work on other things with an Apple,

00:08:44 ◼   ► or maybe after a few years they get unhappy

00:08:46 ◼   ► and leave and do something else.

00:08:48 ◼   ► That kind of thing is more likely to happen

00:08:51 ◼   ► than iOS gaining complete functionality like Workflow,

00:08:57 ◼   ► or even something close to it.

00:08:59 ◼   ► - I gotta tell you, I place much higher odds

00:09:02 ◼   ► on workflow being an Apple branded application

00:09:06 ◼   ► for some period of time.

00:09:08 ◼   ► Like that it would be brought into the fold,

00:09:10 ◼   ► workflow by Apple as a downloadable thing on the App Store,

00:09:15 ◼   ► possibly bundled with the future OS update,

00:09:17 ◼   ► while they worked on the next integration,

00:09:20 ◼   ► you know what I mean?

00:09:21 ◼   ► And just, this is pretty quick.

00:09:23 ◼   ► Like you said, the press releases,

00:09:25 ◼   ► and then very shortly after,

00:09:27 ◼   ► yeah, we're not doing that anymore.

00:09:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, what's it been, like 10 days?

00:09:30 ◼   ► Like it has not been very long.

00:09:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, sad times.

00:09:33 ◼   ► I don't know, I mean,

00:09:34 ◼   ► I don't know what to make of all of this.

00:09:37 ◼   ► It's just gonna be interesting watching Mike

00:09:40 ◼   ► have to become a real true honest to goodness programmer

00:09:43 ◼   ► and writing Pythonista scripts.

00:09:45 ◼   ► - Oh God.

00:09:45 ◼   ► - He's gonna have no other choice.

00:09:47 ◼   ► So Mike, welcome to our world.

00:09:49 ◼   ► - Well, no, 'cause workflow will keep working.

00:09:51 ◼   ► Like I think they will keep it working.

00:09:52 ◼   ► It's just like, I mean--

00:09:53 ◼   ► - It'll keep it flowing?

00:09:54 ◼   ► - You know, well, yeah.

00:09:55 ◼   ► Well, what are, were there major features

00:09:57 ◼   ► that people wanted to add to workflow?

00:09:58 ◼   ► Like you can add workflows.

00:10:00 ◼   ► people can continue to do that and share and distribute those.

00:10:04 ◼   ► The workflow app is just the engine.

00:10:05 ◼   ► So I feel like it should last people until something new

00:10:10 ◼   ► comes.

00:10:11 ◼   ► So that's a good outcome.

00:10:12 ◼   ► But if you were really excited about the engine gaining

00:10:15 ◼   ► features, then you're sad.

00:10:16 ◼   ► Well, so in the past, I remember when extensions came out.

00:10:21 ◼   ► And I think even sometime last year, for some reason,

00:10:24 ◼   ► I've discussed on this show how I

00:10:25 ◼   ► I think the future of URL scheme usage on iOS

00:10:30 ◼   ► is probably limited because now Apple has things

00:10:34 ◼   ► like universal links, which replace a lot of the need

00:10:38 ◼   ► for URL schemes for average uses.

00:10:41 ◼   ► And X-callback URL and things like that are used

00:10:44 ◼   ► only by a narrow amount of power users

00:10:47 ◼   ► for legitimate purposes, and there's lots of abuses

00:10:51 ◼   ► that they're used for.

00:10:52 ◼   ► And Apple has slowly clamped down on that over time

00:10:56 ◼   ► to the degree that they can with various iOS changes

00:10:59 ◼   ► like having to declare your URL schemes that you query for

00:11:02 ◼   ► in your info.plist file and stuff like that.

00:11:05 ◼   ► But it's no real secret that Apple is not a huge fan

00:11:09 ◼   ► of URL schemes being used for purposes like this.

00:11:11 ◼   ► That I would guess Apple probably wants to get rid of them

00:11:14 ◼   ► and make them actually impossible

00:11:17 ◼   ► for various privacy and security reasons,

00:11:19 ◼   ► which is completely reasonable.

00:11:21 ◼   ► So it would not surprise me at all if,

00:11:24 ◼   ► say, maybe not iOS 11, but maybe iOS 12,

00:11:29 ◼   ► maybe end support for calling other apps

00:11:32 ◼   ► via open URL and can open URL.

00:11:36 ◼   ► And at that point, workflow would,

00:11:38 ◼   ► there are still other features of workflow

00:11:41 ◼   ► as it exists today, it could do other things,

00:11:44 ◼   ► but that would lop off such a big portion

00:11:46 ◼   ► of what it could do that I think

00:11:47 ◼   ► that would effectively kill the app.

00:11:50 ◼   ► And hopefully by the time Apple does something like that,

00:11:53 ◼   ► if they're going to do something like that,

00:11:54 ◼   ► hopefully they would have some kind of replacement in mind

00:11:57 ◼   ► like maybe whatever the workflow staff

00:11:59 ◼   ► is working on at Apple now.

00:12:01 ◼   ► I hope that's how it would go,

00:12:02 ◼   ► but the thing is with big companies and with acquisitions,

00:12:05 ◼   ► you don't know that it's actually gonna go that way.

00:12:07 ◼   ► Like that could be everyone's intention and plan now,

00:12:10 ◼   ► but at big companies, things change.

00:12:13 ◼   ► In six months, something else might be a bigger priority.

00:12:16 ◼   ► They might be reassigned to work on that,

00:12:17 ◼   ► and this project just doesn't continue,

00:12:20 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:12:21 ◼   ► I mean, this is kind of just a side effect

00:12:23 ◼   ► of the economies going on here.

00:12:27 ◼   ► Early on in Instapaper's days,

00:12:33 ◼   ► I had a couple of early discussions about acqui-hires,

00:12:37 ◼   ► companies, some of the big tech companies

00:12:40 ◼   ► wanting to buy Instapaper for some

00:12:43 ◼   ► relatively insignificant amount

00:12:45 ◼   ► in order to get me to come work for them.

00:12:48 ◼   ► And these conversations always stopped pretty early on

00:12:51 ◼   ► because at that time Instapaper was making very good money

00:12:54 ◼   ► 'cause it was selling for like 10 bucks

00:12:56 ◼   ► and then later five bucks in the app store

00:12:58 ◼   ► and it was selling pretty well.

00:13:00 ◼   ► And so whenever we get to the money part

00:13:05 ◼   ► of the early conversations,

00:13:06 ◼   ► it would very quickly end the conversations

00:13:08 ◼   ► because it was like, well,

00:13:09 ◼   ► for me to stop making this money from this app,

00:13:12 ◼   ► you're going to have to pay at least X for it

00:13:14 ◼   ► and that was more than they were willing to pay

00:13:17 ◼   ► to just get some engineer to come work for them.

00:13:19 ◼   ► And the problem is that as the app economy has gotten worse,

00:13:24 ◼   ► and as the big handful of tech companies have gotten bigger

00:13:30 ◼   ► and have had more money and have even tighter competition

00:13:34 ◼   ► for engineering talent, the economics of this have shifted

00:13:38 ◼   ► so much so that it is very hard for most app developers

00:13:44 ◼   ► to turn down a decent aqua hire deal today.

00:13:47 ◼   ► Because most apps are not making that much money anymore

00:13:51 ◼   ► and these companies can now afford to pay a lot

00:13:54 ◼   ► for good engineering talent.

00:13:56 ◼   ► And they would rather,

00:13:57 ◼   ► and there's so much competition for that,

00:13:59 ◼   ► they would rather do that than let these apps continue,

00:14:04 ◼   ► I guess.

00:14:05 ◼   ► And again, as the developers of these apps,

00:14:08 ◼   ► you can't really fault them.

00:14:09 ◼   ► Because if someone comes around offering them like,

00:14:11 ◼   ► 10 times what they're making now per year

00:14:14 ◼   ► in an upfront sum to buy their app,

00:14:16 ◼   ► and then, oh, you'll also have a nice stable job with us,

00:14:20 ◼   ► instead of having to rely on the ups and downs

00:14:21 ◼   ► of your app selling on the App Store.

00:14:23 ◼   ► I don't blame developers at all for taking those offers.

00:14:26 ◼   ► In many ways, it's like, well, you can't really say no

00:14:28 ◼   ► to some of these offers 'cause they're so good.

00:14:30 ◼   ► And the only way this is ever going to change

00:14:32 ◼   ► is if the economics of app development change,

00:14:35 ◼   ► such that it is more worthwhile for people

00:14:38 ◼   ► to keep their apps and not sell them

00:14:40 ◼   ► and not take jobs somewhere else than to do that.

00:14:44 ◼   ► But I don't see that happening in the near future.

00:14:46 ◼   ► If anything, I see things going the other direction.

00:14:49 ◼   ► - Just assume the workflow developers have gone to work

00:14:51 ◼   ► on the Mac Pro, it's a safe bet, right?

00:14:53 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:14:54 ◼   ► - No, because apparently the Mac Pro

00:14:55 ◼   ► has only started a week ago,

00:14:56 ◼   ► and they went there 10 days ago.

00:14:58 ◼   ► - We're getting to that, we'll get to it.

00:15:00 ◼   ► - Oh, my word, you guys.

00:15:02 ◼   ► I didn't even start my holiday party yet.

00:15:04 ◼   ► This is gonna be a long show for me.

00:15:05 ◼   ► - Probably should.

00:15:06 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

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00:15:46 ◼   ► They go edge to edge right on this wonderful piece of glass, this thin little piece of

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00:15:55 ◼   ► You don't have to worry about it falling off the wall and shattering.

00:15:57 ◼   ► But it looks amazing because it's glass across the whole front surface.

00:16:02 ◼   ► So you don't need to frame them or get them custom framed at some expensive place or anything

00:16:05 ◼   ► like that.

00:16:06 ◼   ► own standalone thing and your photos look great.

00:16:10 ◼   ► These look so good.

00:16:11 ◼   ► Every time, you know, we have, I don't know,

00:16:13 ◼   ► probably seven or eight of these around my office now

00:16:15 ◼   ► and a few more than that around the house.

00:16:17 ◼   ► And every time somebody comes here who hasn't been here

00:16:19 ◼   ► before, they always compliment these fracture prints

00:16:21 ◼   ► and say, "Hey, what's that?

00:16:22 ◼   ► "Those look great."

00:16:23 ◼   ► So you can see this for yourself at fractureme.com/podcast.

00:16:27 ◼   ► And if you pick ATP out of that list,

00:16:29 ◼   ► we will get credit for you supporting us and them.

00:16:34 ◼   ► And then you will get a 10% discount.

00:16:36 ◼   ► I highly suggest that you check out Fracture

00:16:39 ◼   ► for all your photo printing needs.

00:16:41 ◼   ► And they're so inexpensive too.

00:16:42 ◼   ► You can just get one on a lark to just see how it is.

00:16:44 ◼   ► They make great gifts too

00:16:46 ◼   ► for all the different various holidays.

00:16:48 ◼   ► You know, Mother's Day, Father's Day,

00:16:49 ◼   ► and like birthdays, anniversaries.

00:16:52 ◼   ► They are such great gifts to give a personal photo

00:16:54 ◼   ► to someone who it's meaningful to.

00:16:56 ◼   ► Check it out today, fractureme.com/podcast,

00:17:00 ◼   ► and pick ATP to get 10% off.

00:17:02 ◼   ► Thank you to Fracture for sponsoring our show.

00:17:04 ◼   ► Tell me, Jon, about a possible explanation for increased free space with APFS on 10.3,

00:17:13 ◼   ► if you please.

00:17:14 ◼   ► Continuing the streak of APFS follow-up in, what are we on, like, five shows in a row

00:17:18 ◼   ► now?

00:17:19 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:17:20 ◼   ► We're keeping the streak alive.

00:17:23 ◼   ► Some show in the past, we talked about people upgrading to iOS 10.3 and saying, "Hey, I

00:17:28 ◼   ► have more free space available on my iOS device now."

00:17:31 ◼   ► and that could have been clearing caches or just rebooting or other things related to

00:17:37 ◼   ► the upgrade and not related to the file system itself. I heard one theory that I thought

00:17:40 ◼   ► was worth pondering and it has to do with APFS space sharing. I doubt you guys remember

00:17:48 ◼   ► what that is because I think your eyes go out whenever we want to talk about APFS.

00:17:51 ◼   ► But…

00:17:52 ◼   ► - Yup, I do.

00:17:53 ◼   ► - Hey!

00:17:54 ◼   ► - It's basically copy on write, right?

00:17:55 ◼   ► - No, no. That's one of the features, but the thing they refer to as space sharing is

00:17:59 ◼   ► where…

00:18:00 ◼   ► a thing where you can have two different partitions that both kind of share some space and so

00:18:04 ◼   ► it's kind of like whoever fills it first gets to keep it?

00:18:07 ◼   ► Exactly. So you got a 1 gig disk and you could put two partitions on it. You can put two

00:18:11 ◼   ► 1 gig partitions on it. You're like, "How can you put two 1 gig partitions on a 1 gig

00:18:14 ◼   ► disk? Can't you put two partitions that are like 500 and 500 and 250 or 750? How can you

00:18:20 ◼   ► have two 1 gig partitions? That makes no sense." That's exactly how space sharing works. I

00:18:24 ◼   ► forget what the terms are. They call it a container or something and within the container

00:18:27 ◼   ► you can have separate volumes and they share that space.

00:18:30 ◼   ► And like Marco said, whoever fills it first wins, right?

00:18:33 ◼   ► And that produces weird results for saying how much free space you have.

00:18:38 ◼   ► Anyway, so this theory goes that iOS has, I don't know if this is true, maybe Marco does.

00:18:43 ◼   ► Although I've heard it before, that it has two places where it puts stuff.

00:18:47 ◼   ► One is sort of the OS partition and one is the user space partition

00:18:51 ◼   ► and they are separate from each other.

00:18:52 ◼   ► Does that sound familiar, Marco?

00:18:54 ◼   ► >> Honestly, I've never looked that low level at the OS.

00:18:56 ◼   ► That's a question for Steve Trout and Smith, not me.

00:18:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, anyway, the idea is that, yeah,

00:19:02 ◼   ► there's that arrangement that has been there for a while,

00:19:03 ◼   ► but with APFS and space sharing,

00:19:06 ◼   ► it changes the way free space is reported

00:19:09 ◼   ► and that the increase in free space you're seeing

00:19:11 ◼   ► is related to that.

00:19:12 ◼   ► Now, I tried to think through this and say,

00:19:13 ◼   ► well, all right, how does that work exactly?

00:19:15 ◼   ► What would that do?

00:19:16 ◼   ► And what, you know, I have in the notes here,

00:19:18 ◼   ► experiments required, unfortunately,

00:19:20 ◼   ► because we just recorded two days ago,

00:19:21 ◼   ► I have not done these experiments,

00:19:22 ◼   ► But changing the way space is both shared and reported with the file system could possibly

00:19:28 ◼   ► account for discrepancies in what is reported in the OS.

00:19:32 ◼   ► You would think that Apple would work this out, but in that example I just gave, what

00:19:37 ◼   ► is the right thing to do?

00:19:39 ◼   ► If you have two 1 gig partitions on a 1 gig disk and you ask one of them how much free

00:19:43 ◼   ► space, it's going to say, "I have 1 gig available."

00:19:45 ◼   ► And you ask the other one, it's going to say, "I have 1 gig available."

00:19:47 ◼   ► And that's kind of the truth, because there's nothing in the disk that both technically

00:19:51 ◼   ► do have 1 gig available, but if they were to both start filling really fast, you're

00:19:55 ◼   ► not going to fit 1 gig into each one of those things.

00:19:57 ◼   ► So now you have like smart-ass file systems now, like well technically I have 1 gig available.

00:20:02 ◼   ► I didn't lie to you.

00:20:03 ◼   ► Right, you could put 1 gig in V as long as you put nothing in any of the other partitions

00:20:07 ◼   ► that are sharing the same space.

00:20:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:10 ◼   ► Anyway, I really, you know, I wish I had more information to provide, but I just wanted

00:20:14 ◼   ► to bring up space sharing to remind people that space sharing in APFS is a thing, and

00:20:17 ◼   ► it's weird, and this is one of those things where it's difficult from user interface

00:20:21 ◼   ► perspective to determine what is the right thing to do. It's not like, "Oh, you just

00:20:24 ◼   ► need to update your operating system to report, to understand APFS and report the right thing."

00:20:29 ◼   ► People's mental model of how space works on disks does not match how APFS file, you know,

00:20:34 ◼   ► space sharing works. So I don't know what they're going to do on Mac OS. iOS, you don't,

00:20:38 ◼   ► this doesn't manifest in any way that you can see except perhaps in this free space

00:20:41 ◼   ► thing. But further news as events warrant, maybe next week I will have some experiments

00:20:46 ◼   ► and next week is actually two weeks from now.

00:20:48 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:20:51 ◼   ► - Oh goodness, all right, fair enough.

00:20:53 ◼   ► Can we talk about t-shirts?

00:20:55 ◼   ► Because we've had a little bit of ajida

00:20:58 ◼   ► with our t-shirt rollout this year.

00:21:00 ◼   ► So you guys have been generous enough

00:21:03 ◼   ► to spend most of your time doing this.

00:21:06 ◼   ► I have been completely swamped

00:21:07 ◼   ► in all aspects of life this week.

00:21:09 ◼   ► So take me through the pain and suffering

00:21:12 ◼   ► that you've gone through to bring t-shirts

00:21:14 ◼   ► to our lovely listeners.

00:21:15 ◼   ► I don't want to go through the pain and suffering, but I do want to say that as usual, every

00:21:19 ◼   ► time we do a t-shirt launch there's something that's weird or wrong and odd about it and

00:21:23 ◼   ► we work it out.

00:21:24 ◼   ► This time it was mostly about size availability, where as far as we're able to determine, we

00:21:30 ◼   ► had no visibility into what sizes will be available until after we launch it.

00:21:35 ◼   ► And then when we launch it, you can go to the size pop-up menu, like I picked the shirk

00:21:40 ◼   ► that I want, now I need to pick my size.

00:21:42 ◼   ► And you will see all the sizes listed, all the sizes that we could see before launch.

00:21:45 ◼   ► We can see this shirt is available from extra small to 3XL, right?

00:21:49 ◼   ► And then we launch it and you go to the shirt and you see that pop-up menu with those sizes

00:21:53 ◼   ► in it, but only two of them would be selectable.

00:21:55 ◼   ► Like, usually extra small and some other weird size.

00:21:58 ◼   ► Like, none of the common sizes would be available to you.

00:22:01 ◼   ► And that's bad.

00:22:02 ◼   ► We want the shirts to be available in all sizes.

00:22:04 ◼   ► So what we had to do for a lot of the shirts is sort of delete or end the campaigns, which

00:22:10 ◼   ► by the way, some people bought shirts in those campaigns and my understanding is they will

00:22:13 ◼   ► get delivered.

00:22:14 ◼   ► weird that you you were the one of the two or three lucky people who got that shirt before

00:22:17 ◼   ► we frantically deleted it. And your shirt might be titled ATP shirt delete me in the

00:22:21 ◼   ► emails that you get about it. Yeah, if you get an email and it says delete me that's

00:22:25 ◼   ► us trying to keep track of which ones are the old bad ones and which ones are the new

00:22:29 ◼   ► good ones and anyway and we replaced them with identical looking shirts but with shirts

00:22:34 ◼   ► from a different vendor who had stock in all sizes and we've been working on that working

00:22:39 ◼   ► with Teespring to get more sizes available and recreating them and so on and so forth.

00:22:43 ◼   ► All this is to say that if you tried to buy a shirt, because you heard the show last week

00:22:48 ◼   ► or whenever, and you went there and you couldn't find the shirt in the size you wanted, or

00:22:53 ◼   ► the shirt wasn't available in any sizes, which was true in some cases, like the purple one

00:22:56 ◼   ► that I really love, was literally available in zero sizes.

00:22:59 ◼   ► Like you could, no one could order it because you could not select any sizes at all.

00:23:03 ◼   ► It would let you hit buy now, and then it said please pick your size, and they were

00:23:05 ◼   ► all disabled.

00:23:07 ◼   ► So that's fixed, you can get your purple shirts now.

00:23:10 ◼   ► We added a few shirts to be larger sizes, because some of the other shirts only went

00:23:13 ◼   ► up to 2XL and now we have 3XL and I think up to 5XL on the European one.

00:23:20 ◼   ► And also, finally, Teespring has told us that as stock comes in for different sizes and

00:23:26 ◼   ► different colors, those sizes will become available.

00:23:29 ◼   ► So technically, if you just want to wait and check back next week or something, even if

00:23:35 ◼   ► the size isn't available right now, maybe it will become available.

00:23:38 ◼   ► So we apologize for this.

00:23:39 ◼   ► It's difficult.

00:23:40 ◼   ► We'll try to do better next year.

00:23:43 ◼   ► As always, every year we have to have something.

00:23:45 ◼   ► Last year it was really expensive shipping outside the US.

00:23:47 ◼   ► This year we do not have super duper expensive shipping outside the US, which is good, but

00:23:51 ◼   ► we have some size issues.

00:23:53 ◼   ► So thank you to everybody who's bought shirts and good luck out there.

00:23:57 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, last year we had to apologize for the expensive international shipping and

00:24:02 ◼   ► this year we're having to apologize for some of these operational issues.

00:24:05 ◼   ► We are sorry that we have to deal with this and you have to deal with this.

00:24:09 ◼   ► The reality is that printing and shipping shirts

00:24:12 ◼   ► all over the world is complicated.

00:24:14 ◼   ► Every vendor who does it has different trade-offs.

00:24:19 ◼   ► We've now tried two of the major vendors

00:24:21 ◼   ► and each one has strengths and weaknesses.

00:24:24 ◼   ► We've chosen a different set of trade-offs

00:24:26 ◼   ► this year's haul, really.

00:24:28 ◼   ► But we have not yet found a perfect solution

00:24:30 ◼   ► and we hope in the future that one materializes

00:24:32 ◼   ► or that we can tweak things a little bit better.

00:24:35 ◼   ► But in the meantime, we're sorry.

00:24:36 ◼   ► Please buy our shirts now, thank you.

00:24:38 ◼   ► One more thing we are thinking about, this has not yet happened, but the thing that may happen is

00:24:44 ◼   ► that you may get your shirts earlier than you would expect. We had set all these things to be

00:24:47 ◼   ► like a time-limited campaign that we're going to end about 20 days from now. We're still going to

00:24:51 ◼   ► end it. That's still going to happen. So buy your shirts because we're going to end this thing,

00:24:54 ◼   ► right? But during the time that it is running, there is some potential, not a sure thing,

00:24:59 ◼   ► that your shirts could ship like shortly after you order them instead of having everybody wait

00:25:04 ◼   ► till the end of the 20 days and then all the shirts go out at once. And the reason we're

00:25:07 ◼   ► we're thinking about that is it it gives you more time to hopefully get your shirt in time for

00:25:11 ◼   ► WWDC if you're coming or so you don't have to wait so long or if there are issues with it, you know anyway

00:25:16 ◼   ► That's why we're thinking about that and that may be a thing

00:25:18 ◼   ► So if your shirt suddenly arrives and you didn't expect it for 20 days, don't be surprised

00:25:22 ◼   ► so

00:25:24 ◼   ► Apple's

00:25:25 ◼   ► Clips app came out today and I think we should spend a lot of time talking about that because it's my turn to talk about

00:25:31 ◼   ► Something that I want to talk about didn't I put that in there way way down below all this cool new Mac Pro stuff

00:25:37 ◼   ► Well, guess what, buddy? It just got escalated. And actually, I don't have too much to say,

00:25:42 ◼   ► if I'm really honest with you, so this is only going to take a moment. But

00:25:45 ◼   ► clips came out today. I played with it very, very, very briefly. And it's pretty cool. I like the,

00:25:52 ◼   ► I don't know what the official term for it is, but the "transcribe what you're saying as you're

00:25:58 ◼   ► saying it" feature. So you can turn on a, like, text mode or a, it's a little speech bubble.

00:26:06 ◼   ► And as you record, your speech will appear on screen.

00:26:11 ◼   ► So you can hold to record, and then as you talk,

00:26:15 ◼   ► you can make it show the words that you're speaking.

00:26:19 ◼   ► I just did that as I was saying those words,

00:26:23 ◼   ► and it says "Honda Accord" instead of "Hold While You Record."

00:26:27 ◼   ► So this is already going well.

00:26:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, automated transcription is still

00:26:32 ◼   ► a very, very long way away from being good reliably.

00:26:37 ◼   ► Like even, you know, we can criticize Apple

00:26:40 ◼   ► for like not being good at some of these things sometimes,

00:26:42 ◼   ► but nobody can do this very well yet.

00:26:44 ◼   ► You know, even like the fancy Google algorithms

00:26:47 ◼   ► that do YouTube transcription and everything,

00:26:49 ◼   ► like even they are pretty bad at this.

00:26:52 ◼   ► So it's gonna be a fun little thing finding like,

00:26:55 ◼   ► you know, funny mistranslations

00:26:56 ◼   ► in people's videos sometimes.

00:26:58 ◼   ► And otherwise, it's a cool idea,

00:27:00 ◼   ► It's a cool use of technology, but yeah,

00:27:03 ◼   ► it's gonna be pretty imperfect for possibly ever,

00:27:07 ◼   ► if not a long time.

00:27:08 ◼   ► - It's gonna make people enunciate,

00:27:09 ◼   ► that's what it's gonna do.

00:27:10 ◼   ► I tried that feature as well because I was excited

00:27:12 ◼   ► to see if I could do the thing that I talked about

00:27:15 ◼   ► when we first talked about clips,

00:27:16 ◼   ► which is make the words appear over the video

00:27:20 ◼   ► with a cadence, with a purpose,

00:27:22 ◼   ► like say things in a certain way

00:27:23 ◼   ► and emphasize certain things

00:27:24 ◼   ► to have the words appear with that rhythm.

00:27:26 ◼   ► And the lag seemed to be so big, I'm not quite sure why,

00:27:29 ◼   ► whether it's the, you know, rendering it on top of the video versus understanding the

00:27:33 ◼   ► speech or whatever.

00:27:34 ◼   ► But the lag was so much worse than, for example, when you talk to Google Now or whatever the

00:27:39 ◼   ► hell they call it, where it shows you your words in real time, or even Siri these days.

00:27:43 ◼   ► But Google Now was the first one I remember being startled by exactly how fast the words

00:27:47 ◼   ► were appearing as I spoke them, that there wasn't a delay, that it wasn't like, "Let

00:27:50 ◼   ► me just think about what you just said and make it appear," that it seemed to follow

00:27:53 ◼   ► my cadence.

00:27:54 ◼   ► And clips lags.

00:27:56 ◼   ► I found it difficult even when trying to emphasize in a very exaggerated rhythm to get that rhythm

00:28:02 ◼   ► to manifest in the video.

00:28:04 ◼   ► So oh well, the people using real video editors can continue to dominate in the perfect timing

00:28:10 ◼   ► of their word appearances and transitions.

00:28:12 ◼   ► But in the meantime, yeah, it is a cool app and the effects are really neat and it makes

00:28:16 ◼   ► it so easy to do something.

00:28:18 ◼   ► You don't need any expertise in any kind of video editing or production.

00:28:21 ◼   ► You just need to be able to tap things on the screen and hold your finger on a giant

00:28:24 ◼   ► red button and you will make cool videos.

00:28:27 ◼   ► Yeah, like I said, I only played with it briefly but really, really impressed with what I've

00:28:31 ◼   ► seen so far.

00:28:33 ◼   ► I also really like—and I think this was covered on Connected recently, I forget where

00:28:39 ◼   ► I heard it—but rather than Apple trying to make their own social network or do something

00:28:45 ◼   ► ridiculous like that, they're actually just embracing other social networks.

00:28:50 ◼   ► So this is an app to pipe your video into other places, which I think is really smart.

00:28:56 ◼   ► Did you just say you heard that on connected?

00:28:58 ◼   ► Did we talk about it?

00:28:59 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:29:00 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:29:01 ◼   ► It's all a mess.

00:29:02 ◼   ► It's like you're on the show with me when I said that same thing, but it's fine.

00:29:05 ◼   ► You can cite connected.

00:29:06 ◼   ► It's all a blur, man.

00:29:07 ◼   ► Did connected invent follow-up, Casey?

00:29:08 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, they did.

00:29:09 ◼   ► It's weird.

00:29:10 ◼   ► We appropriated it, but it was all them.

00:29:11 ◼   ► I actually heard that from somebody.

00:29:12 ◼   ► I wasn't connected.

00:29:13 ◼   ► It was, what was it, Bonanza that did the thing with like the echo and reverb?

00:29:17 ◼   ► Good God.

00:29:18 ◼   ► No, that was either the prompt or connected.

00:29:20 ◼   ► All right, well anyway, someone wrote me to say, "I totally thought they invented it because they

00:29:24 ◼   ► had a cool sound effect." Anyway, they've been set straight.

00:29:28 ◼   ► Oh, good.

00:29:30 ◼   ► So anyhow, my very brief playing with this app, I definitely like it, although it confirmed to

00:29:37 ◼   ► some degree that I'm an old man because it took me a minute to realize how to share a video that

00:29:43 ◼   ► I created because it didn't it wasn't obvious to me that in the like creation screen is

00:29:50 ◼   ► where you're doing all your modifications and edits and whatnot and from what I can

00:29:55 ◼   ► tell you have to back out to your like library screen in order to actually share something

00:30:00 ◼   ► which I thought was a little peculiar but you know whatever. But either way I in my

00:30:05 ◼   ► very brief playing with it I really really like it and I don't know that I'll use it

00:30:10 ◼   ► that much? But it was really cool. The only complaint I have about it, which actually is

00:30:15 ◼   ► probably for the best, is that I kind of wish it wasn't just square. So as an example, I had recorded

00:30:21 ◼   ► a video of myself and Declan very quickly, and I wanted to share it as an Instagram story.

00:30:29 ◼   ► And when I sucked it into Instagram, it looked awful. And it was like only the center of the

00:30:36 ◼   ► video and it took me a second to realize, oh, it's scaling it because the video is square,

00:30:43 ◼   ► but Instagram stories annoyingly are portrait only, and so it's just doing the best it can,

00:30:48 ◼   ► but that ruined my video.

00:30:49 ◼   ► And so that was a little frustrating, but to be honest, it's probably for the best that

00:30:57 ◼   ► it is square because it's kind of generic.

00:30:59 ◼   ► I also didn't see a way to share to Twitter, but that again could be user error and I only

00:31:02 ◼   ► looked for a moment.

00:31:04 ◼   ► But all in all, I definitely like it and I think it's pretty good.

00:31:06 ◼   ► >> But you gotta fix that, the Instagram story thing.

00:31:08 ◼   ► That's not a minor issue.

00:31:09 ◼   ► Because like I said, the whole point of this is to share another network.

00:31:13 ◼   ► And yeah, Instagram Stories does the particular format.

00:31:15 ◼   ► The app needs to support that in some way.

00:31:19 ◼   ► You can leave the defaults as whatever they are, but someone who wants to use this app

00:31:23 ◼   ► primarily as a way to do Instagram Stories, they're just not gonna do it.

00:31:28 ◼   ► It just won't feel right to not be able to shoot it in the same aspect ratio.

00:31:32 ◼   ► So get on that, Clipstein.

00:31:35 ◼   ► Alright, uh, let's see what else has happened recently.

00:31:38 ◼   ► No, that was your one.

00:31:40 ◼   ► You get your one.

00:31:41 ◼   ► That, oh, jeez, Dad!

00:31:43 ◼   ► Wow.

00:31:44 ◼   ► That's how it is?

00:31:45 ◼   ► Alright, fine, let me go pass out.

00:31:47 ◼   ► Alright, kids, have fun.

00:31:48 ◼   ► I'll see you next week.

00:31:49 ◼   ► Make a drink.

00:31:50 ◼   ► I can't, it's all the way downstairs.

00:31:52 ◼   ► There's non-Mac Pro stuff.

00:31:54 ◼   ► We'll clear the Mac Pro eventually and come out the other side.

00:31:57 ◼   ► What, in 2019?

00:31:59 ◼   ► the sunlight where we'll discuss patents and NVIDIA drivers and all sorts of other

00:32:05 ◼   ► things.

00:32:06 ◼   ► So I think we'll make it.

00:32:07 ◼   ► Okay, I'll see you guys next week.

00:32:08 ◼   ► So this is "more Mac Pro!"

00:32:11 ◼   ► The show notes say.

00:32:12 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure I didn't do that.

00:32:14 ◼   ► You know I didn't do it.

00:32:15 ◼   ► I think I put the word "more" in there.

00:32:18 ◼   ► The first bit is a rumor that I don't know how much, you know, worth to attach to, but

00:32:26 ◼   ► It is a rumor and it has been reblogged, as we used to say, all over the place, which

00:32:31 ◼   ► does not make it any more true.

00:32:34 ◼   ► But anyway, it's from OS News, OSNews.com, and it is a rumor cited to people and sources

00:32:42 ◼   ► who know their stuff.

00:32:44 ◼   ► So there's your source.

00:32:45 ◼   ► That instills confidence.

00:32:48 ◼   ► That definitely means it's true.

00:32:50 ◼   ► That's the way rumors should be cited because that again matches the reliability.

00:32:59 ◼   ► This says the Mac Pro is in limbo in size Apple.

00:33:01 ◼   ► The decision to go ahead and develop a modular Mac Pro replacement seems to have been made

00:33:06 ◼   ► only in recent months with development starting only a few weeks ago.

00:33:10 ◼   ► So last year we were talking about oh this, you know, seems like it must have happened

00:33:14 ◼   ► at the earliest during the last 12 months, probably during the last six months.

00:33:18 ◼   ► This one says, "In recent months, the decision was made, and development started only a few

00:33:22 ◼   ► weeks ago."

00:33:23 ◼   ► So that is the tightest timeline I have seen even suggested.

00:33:27 ◼   ► And then it goes on to say, "Why did Apple do this?

00:33:29 ◼   ► Why did Apple make a 180 on the Mac Pro?"

00:33:33 ◼   ► And the reason cited is a more specific version of a thing we've talked about a lot, that

00:33:36 ◼   ► Apple was surprised by the reaction of the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, which you've heard

00:33:41 ◼   ► from many different places in a vague sort of, "Apple thought that everyone was going

00:33:47 ◼   ► to love their product and the negative reaction in the press, if not in the sales numbers,

00:33:52 ◼   ► caught them by surprise.

00:33:53 ◼   ► And so this adds some more detail to that with some more vaguely sourced rumors.

00:34:01 ◼   ► After it says, "After announcement of the new MacBook Pro with touch bar, orders for

00:34:05 ◼   ► refurbished old MacBook Pros supposedly went through the roof.

00:34:09 ◼   ► And after the initial batch of reviews came out, they shot up even higher."

00:34:12 ◼   ► So that would be a signal that I think Apple would pay attention to.

00:34:16 ◼   ► hey, we've got the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar,

00:34:18 ◼   ► and the refurbished version of the old one

00:34:21 ◼   ► goes up really high.

00:34:22 ◼   ► Now, to believe this, you have to A,

00:34:24 ◼   ► believe this is founded on anything,

00:34:25 ◼   ► and B, you have to believe that this is not something

00:34:27 ◼   ► that always happens every time a new model is introduced,

00:34:29 ◼   ► which I'm not entirely sure,

00:34:30 ◼   ► because maybe every time you introduce a new model

00:34:32 ◼   ► that's different from the old one,

00:34:33 ◼   ► people buy the refurbished runs really quickly

00:34:35 ◼   ► because they wanna get their last chance

00:34:36 ◼   ► to get the model they know and love.

00:34:39 ◼   ► But anyway, that is a suggestion.

00:34:40 ◼   ► How that would reflect on the MacBook Pro,

00:34:43 ◼   ► it would be just basically like,

00:34:45 ◼   ► We thought we knew what pros wanted,

00:34:47 ◼   ► but we seem to be wrong.

00:34:48 ◼   ► And they say similar combined with the problems

00:34:51 ◼   ► of the LG display and stuff like that.

00:34:53 ◼   ► And then finally, to add more exciting unsourced rumors

00:34:58 ◼   ► that will make Marco happy,

00:35:00 ◼   ► if he can bring himself to believe them briefly.

00:35:02 ◼   ► - So far I can't, go ahead.

00:35:03 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:35:04 ◼   ► Apple is said to be exploring

00:35:05 ◼   ► additional retina MacBook Pro models without the touch bar.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Oh, wouldn't you love that?

00:35:10 ◼   ► So there's something for everybody

00:35:13 ◼   ► in this vaguely sourced rumor.

00:35:14 ◼   ► But, again, since people are talking about it, I do believe that the new Mac Pro decision

00:35:24 ◼   ► and project were very recent.

00:35:28 ◼   ► I'm not sure if I believe a few weeks ago, but very recent.

00:35:31 ◼   ► And I do believe that Apple was surprised by the press reaction to the MacBook Pro with

00:35:36 ◼   ► Touch bars.

00:35:37 ◼   ► As Apple emphasizes every time you talk to them about it, including in the transcript

00:35:40 ◼   ► that we cited before.

00:35:41 ◼   ► The new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is incredibly popular

00:35:44 ◼   ► and has the most orders ever of any laptop

00:35:46 ◼   ► Apple has ever produced and people love it

00:35:48 ◼   ► and it's awesome and all the numbers are great for it.

00:35:50 ◼   ► But like so many other things Apple said in that transcript

00:35:53 ◼   ► and about the Mac Pro and everything, they may be true.

00:35:57 ◼   ► But if you don't update a model for a really long time,

00:36:00 ◼   ► some of these results fall out of it.

00:36:04 ◼   ► Like we're not really selling a lot of Mac Pros.

00:36:07 ◼   ► Should people buy them?

00:36:07 ◼   ► Well, you haven't updated it in years.

00:36:09 ◼   ► It's a self-fulfilling prophecy as we discussed before and the MacBook Pro with touch bar is the best selling model ever

00:36:15 ◼   ► Well again, the MacBook Pro was a little bit overdue for an update. So there's pent-up demand for it

00:36:21 ◼   ► And the yeah, then you have to map into like the curve like is it our max sales increasing overall

00:36:28 ◼   ► I think the macro Pro is a successful product for them

00:36:31 ◼   ► But again, I do believe that Apple was surprised by the negative reaction of some of the press about it

00:36:36 ◼   ► They even emphasized in the transcript by the way

00:36:39 ◼   ► went back to the well on the battery life of like their metrics say that the battery life for the new MacBook Pro with touchbar is

00:36:45 ◼   ► Better than the outgoing ones. I believe that too. You know why because the outgoing ones are old and then the new models are brand new

00:36:52 ◼   ► I'm sure that

00:36:53 ◼   ► I'm sure they factor that in and I'm sure they can tell the age and normalize for it or whatever, but it's difficult to

00:36:59 ◼   ► To hang your hat on a lot of the stats because everyone stat they say I'm like I hundred percent believe that but I also

00:37:05 ◼   ► don't have enough information to

00:37:08 ◼   ► to really tell whether it

00:37:10 ◼   ► Shows the thing you're saying that it shows what they're trying to say it shows to say the new MacBook Pro with touch bar

00:37:15 ◼   ► Has better battery life than our outgoing model

00:37:18 ◼   ► But you haven't given me enough information to believe that all you've said is

00:37:22 ◼   ► The stats say people are getting better better battery life out of it than the old one

00:37:25 ◼   ► you don't tell me whether you've controlled for the age of the machines and

00:37:28 ◼   ► You know, you don't tell me

00:37:30 ◼   ► If it's an average or usage or what the percentiles are what the histogram looks like and all sorts of other stuff as Marcos pointed

00:37:36 ◼   ► out many other times, you can get fantastic battery life out of these new models until

00:37:40 ◼   ► you do something intensive and then they tank.

00:37:42 ◼   ► And I bet most people don't do intensive things.

00:37:44 ◼   ► People aren't playing games with their laptop unplugged.

00:37:47 ◼   ► Because if they did, their game would be over in two and a half hours if they're lucky.

00:37:51 ◼   ► And that would really bring the numbers down, but most people just don't play and don't

00:37:54 ◼   ► do that, so that doesn't show up in the stats.

00:37:55 ◼   ► So anyway, I don't want to go off on that tangent, but that's where my mind went when

00:38:00 ◼   ► reading this weird rumor.

00:38:02 ◼   ► Believe it if you want to feel good for a little while.

00:38:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, this is not an incredibly reliable source.

00:38:08 ◼   ► This is not like somebody with a great track record.

00:38:11 ◼   ► I don't lend a lot of credibility to this, basically.

00:38:15 ◼   ► It lines up with some of the other things

00:38:16 ◼   ► that we've heard here and there, but not very strongly.

00:38:19 ◼   ► And honestly, for the most part, it doesn't really matter.

00:38:23 ◼   ► I think what matters is Apple is, at least,

00:38:27 ◼   ► you know, if we believe what they said,

00:38:29 ◼   ► and I don't think we have any reason not to,

00:38:32 ◼   ► They were on a bad path before.

00:38:35 ◼   ► They have finally recognized that,

00:38:36 ◼   ► and yes, they did recognize it pretty late down that path.

00:38:40 ◼   ► They did not recognize they were on a bad path in 2013.

00:38:43 ◼   ► Like, it took a lot longer than that.

00:38:46 ◼   ► I would guess they recognized it in 2016 sometime,

00:38:49 ◼   ► possibly even 2017.

00:38:51 ◼   ► But the fact is they are on the path to fixing it.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Something has clearly switched in Apple.

00:39:01 ◼   ► something has clearly flipped over or changed

00:39:04 ◼   ► to make them make this decision,

00:39:06 ◼   ► because before this, it was very clear

00:39:10 ◼   ► that they were doing things their way,

00:39:13 ◼   ► what they thought was right, which involved a lot of things

00:39:17 ◼   ► that did not serve pro users, basically.

00:39:20 ◼   ► It involved saying no a lot,

00:39:22 ◼   ► and taking a long time to do pretty much everything,

00:39:25 ◼   ► and ignoring a lot of product lines,

00:39:26 ◼   ► and to some degree, this is still what they're doing.

00:39:31 ◼   ► Not a lot has changed in their actual actions here.

00:39:35 ◼   ► I think it probably will over the next two years or so

00:39:39 ◼   ► as some of this stuff shakes out

00:39:41 ◼   ► because clearly something has changed

00:39:43 ◼   ► to make them do this 180 on the Mac Pro.

00:39:45 ◼   ► Because again, they didn't decide three years ago

00:39:50 ◼   ► that this design needed to be replaced

00:39:52 ◼   ► and it took them three years plus

00:39:54 ◼   ► whatever it's gonna be now to do it.

00:39:56 ◼   ► No, they decided three years ago

00:39:57 ◼   ► to stop developing the Mac Pro.

00:39:59 ◼   ► and they have been effectively thinking for

00:40:03 ◼   ► whatever time span between then and

00:40:08 ◼   ► within the last few months, they have thought,

00:40:10 ◼   ► we don't need to develop Mac Pro anymore.

00:40:12 ◼   ► This is a dead product line.

00:40:14 ◼   ► It is no longer necessary for us to do.

00:40:16 ◼   ► We won't do it.

00:40:17 ◼   ► - Well, it's not like they weren't developing it,

00:40:19 ◼   ► 'cause that's another thing that came out in the transcript,

00:40:21 ◼   ► like that they further emphasized in the details

00:40:23 ◼   ► that they did think about upgrading this component

00:40:26 ◼   ► or that component.

00:40:27 ◼   ► I mean, they didn't say that they actually tried it out,

00:40:29 ◼   ► But how else would they have known that they couldn't support it?

00:40:32 ◼   ► One of the press people present asked them specifically, "Oh, so you..."

00:40:36 ◼   ► I think maybe it was Panzarinos saying, "So you were thinking like, 'Oh, well, we could

00:40:39 ◼   ► increase the GPU frequency by 300 megaserves, but that doesn't quite seem worth it, so we

00:40:43 ◼   ► won't bother updating it.'"

00:40:44 ◼   ► And one of the Apple people said, "Yeah, that's exactly...

00:40:48 ◼   ► What you said is what happened."

00:40:49 ◼   ► So they stopped developing it in terms of ever releasing products, but it seemed like,

00:40:55 ◼   ► at least in the beginning, they would love to have done a spec bump or component bump,

00:40:59 ◼   ► but they just couldn't do it because the design they had didn't support it.

00:41:03 ◼   ► What they had decided is basically, we're not going to invest in an entirely new model.

00:41:07 ◼   ► So if you can't update this one, and the engineers say we can't because they either tested it

00:41:10 ◼   ► or ran the numbers or whatever, we'll look into it again when the next round of GPUs

00:41:14 ◼   ► and CPUs comes out.

00:41:15 ◼   ► But in the meantime, no, you can't have the budget to make a new one.

00:41:19 ◼   ► So semantics say, does that mean stopping support or whatever?

00:41:21 ◼   ► But it does mean that they would have liked to have been able to offer speed bumps in

00:41:26 ◼   ► this one because it is embarrassing to offer the same high-end computer for multiple years

00:41:30 ◼   ► without making it any faster.

00:41:32 ◼   ► Well, I would nitpick a little about that.

00:41:35 ◼   ► I'm not going to go too far into it now for Casey's sake.

00:41:38 ◼   ► Thanks, buddy.

00:41:39 ◼   ► But yeah, I think they could have done more in the meantime.

00:41:43 ◼   ► They could have updated the CPU.

00:41:45 ◼   ► The CPU was thermally fine.

00:41:46 ◼   ► It was only the GPU thermal balance that was the issue with that design.

00:41:51 ◼   ► they could have updated the CPU to the same model,

00:41:54 ◼   ► like the equivalent models in the new families,

00:41:57 ◼   ► and then they could have updated the GPUs

00:41:59 ◼   ► to more mid-range, mid-temperature models over the years.

00:42:03 ◼   ► Like they didn't have to keep selling

00:42:05 ◼   ► three and a half year old parts.

00:42:06 ◼   ► Like they could have updated it

00:42:09 ◼   ► by using similar class parts

00:42:11 ◼   ► that they already used in that design.

00:42:13 ◼   ► It just wouldn't have been as competitive.

00:42:16 ◼   ► But it is even less competitive with three year old parts.

00:42:20 ◼   ► So they were saying they didn't think that trade-off was worth it.

00:42:22 ◼   ► Like yeah, the parts that would fit in there weren't better enough to warrant it.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Now arguably after three years, if you had merely done that thing that you never thought

00:42:29 ◼   ► was worth it a couple of times, then you would be farther from where you were.

00:42:32 ◼   ► Or if you waited until the end and done it, that's definitely arguable.

00:42:35 ◼   ► But at some point I think it really was so far in the back burner that they weren't even

00:42:41 ◼   ► entertaining updates to it.

00:42:43 ◼   ► But what they said in this thing was, even though we could have made incremental improvements,

00:42:48 ◼   ► incremental improvements didn't seem worthwhile. I guess they couldn't justify whatever it

00:42:52 ◼   ► would take to, you know, basically the overhead of ever doing a spec bump and making new models

00:42:56 ◼   ► and doing all this stuff or whatever. This is taking everything they set at face value.

00:43:00 ◼   ► Who knows what's actually going on and how far along they got with any kind of upgrades

00:43:05 ◼   ► to this thing, and at what point they were nixed, whether in the idea phase or after

00:43:09 ◼   ► it had been almost ready for sale. You can never tell, because all we see is what they

00:43:12 ◼   ► actually release.

00:43:13 ◼   ► - Right, but anyway, so the point I was trying to make is

00:43:16 ◼   ► obviously something has changed with Apple's philosophy

00:43:21 ◼   ► or whatever they're using to make these decisions

00:43:25 ◼   ► of whether to invest in certain product lines,

00:43:27 ◼   ► whether to update them or not,

00:43:29 ◼   ► because they were clearly going in one direction

00:43:31 ◼   ► for some time, and they are still going in that direction

00:43:34 ◼   ► for most of the product lines.

00:43:35 ◼   ► I mean, nothing has changed in the releases yet,

00:43:38 ◼   ► but it's pretty clear, if you look at the release schedule

00:43:41 ◼   ► since about 2012, everything slowed down.

00:43:45 ◼   ► And it seemed like they went from releasing

00:43:48 ◼   ► as much as they could in most of the product lines

00:43:51 ◼   ► to releasing as little as they could get away with.

00:43:54 ◼   ► And that is worrisome, and that's what we've been

00:43:57 ◼   ► complaining about for years.

00:43:59 ◼   ► And so it seems like whatever was causing that

00:44:04 ◼   ► to be the result, maybe a change has happened there

00:44:09 ◼   ► in their thinking or their decision making

00:44:11 ◼   ► or whatever else.

00:44:12 ◼   ► Something has changed to make Apple

00:44:16 ◼   ► flip around on the Mac Pro and on displays

00:44:19 ◼   ► and have this meeting and tell us what they were thinking.

00:44:23 ◼   ► I hope that doesn't just apply to placating the media

00:44:27 ◼   ► enough for the Mac Pro thing to say,

00:44:29 ◼   ► okay, well now Apple cares about us again in the end.

00:44:32 ◼   ► I hope that applies to their entire thinking about

00:44:35 ◼   ► all their products.

00:44:37 ◼   ► I'm tired of Apple seemingly thinking,

00:44:40 ◼   ► you know what, if we can't do something

00:44:42 ◼   ► incredibly innovative and awesome,

00:44:44 ◼   ► we're better off just doing nothing.

00:44:46 ◼   ► You know, I think that's the wrong approach.

00:44:49 ◼   ► I think they should be saying yes to things

00:44:52 ◼   ► that are simple updates to their products.

00:44:53 ◼   ► Like, it's one thing to spread yourself too thin

00:44:57 ◼   ► with new stuff, you know, new initiatives,

00:44:59 ◼   ► new entire product lines, things like that.

00:45:03 ◼   ► That, you could make an argument, and we have,

00:45:06 ◼   ► that they should be really careful with that

00:45:08 ◼   ► because it's a huge risk of spreading themselves too thin.

00:45:11 ◼   ► But it is not hard, it shouldn't,

00:45:15 ◼   ► if it's hard for them to update the Mac Mini

00:45:17 ◼   ► with the same processor line but the new version of it,

00:45:21 ◼   ► if that's hard, they've set that up wrong.

00:45:24 ◼   ► They are a huge company with tons and tons of money

00:45:27 ◼   ► and tons of engineering resources.

00:45:30 ◼   ► They should be able to do what I described last week

00:45:33 ◼   ► as boring updates.

00:45:35 ◼   ► If there's a new processor, put it in and start selling it

00:45:37 ◼   ► to all the products that could use it.

00:45:39 ◼   ► There is no reason why they need to do things

00:45:43 ◼   ► like what the Mac Mini is right now,

00:45:45 ◼   ► which is sitting around with ancient parts being neglected.

00:45:49 ◼   ► The last of them even made it worse than it was before.

00:45:53 ◼   ► There's nothing stopping them from doing a new Mac Mini

00:45:55 ◼   ► except high up somewhere they have decided

00:45:58 ◼   ► that that is not worth investing any resources into at all.

00:46:02 ◼   ► And I think that's a mistake.

00:46:03 ◼   ► maybe we'll see something like that turn around. Again, probably not, especially like the Mac

00:46:07 ◼   ► Mini has always been a very neglected product, but I don't think that's, that's not a good

00:46:12 ◼   ► excuse. Like if Apple really wants to like, to fulfill what they say they are and make

00:46:17 ◼   ► the best products for people that they can and only make great stuff, like they say,

00:46:21 ◼   ► that's what they say they do. That isn't always true, but that is what they say they do and

00:46:24 ◼   ► I believe that's what they want to do and that is what they want to be, then they have

00:46:29 ◼   ► They have to set up their product line in a way

00:46:32 ◼   ► that allows them, and their management structure

00:46:35 ◼   ► and their priorities, they have to set this up in a way

00:46:38 ◼   ► that allows them to not leave things

00:46:41 ◼   ► in complete neglect for years because

00:46:44 ◼   ► they aren't the most profitable product lines in the world.

00:46:48 ◼   ► They sell a lot of all these things, all these products.

00:46:51 ◼   ► We mentioned last week the 1% or whatever of max sales

00:46:55 ◼   ► is still like 200,000 a year and it's as many

00:46:58 ◼   ► the BMW X5, it is worth them, if they're going to have

00:47:02 ◼   ► a product line at all, I think it's worth them

00:47:05 ◼   ► keeping it minimally updated.

00:47:07 ◼   ► And what that means is not every four years

00:47:10 ◼   ► you make it worse.

00:47:12 ◼   ► What that means is you keep it updated every time you can.

00:47:16 ◼   ► And you don't have to do a whole new case design.

00:47:19 ◼   ► I feel like, last week we were discussing about how

00:47:24 ◼   ► Apple needs the audacity and confidence

00:47:27 ◼   ► to release boring products sometimes.

00:47:29 ◼   ► It seems like they would rather do nothing

00:47:33 ◼   ► and neglect something for years

00:47:35 ◼   ► than release something that isn't that exciting.

00:47:37 ◼   ► And I just think that's the wrong decision.

00:47:38 ◼   ► I think that they need to start thinking the other way

00:47:40 ◼   ► of like, that might be true for certain products,

00:47:43 ◼   ► I don't know, certain like mass consumer fashion

00:47:46 ◼   ► type of products, maybe the iPhone,

00:47:48 ◼   ► although that's kind of its own schedule anyway.

00:47:50 ◼   ► - It's not true with a watch,

00:47:51 ◼   ► they just gave that a speed bump.

00:47:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true. - Looks same on the outside,

00:47:54 ◼   ► better stuff on the inside.

00:47:55 ◼   ► - Actually thicker.

00:47:57 ◼   ► But yeah, I feel like they need to bring

00:47:59 ◼   ► that same philosophy to all their products.

00:48:01 ◼   ► So just like, you know what,

00:48:03 ◼   ► when there's, like, if the Mac Mini can't be updated

00:48:07 ◼   ► at least every two years,

00:48:09 ◼   ► 'cause like, you know, the stuff that goes into it

00:48:10 ◼   ► is updated like every year.

00:48:11 ◼   ► If the Mac Mini can't be updated at least every two years

00:48:13 ◼   ► to whatever's current for its form factor,

00:48:15 ◼   ► then it was badly designed and it should be redesigned.

00:48:18 ◼   ► And you know, maybe that's the problem with the Mac Pro too.

00:48:21 ◼   ► If the Mac Pro can't be updated easily,

00:48:23 ◼   ► then they did a horrible job designing it.

00:48:26 ◼   ► And so any of their products that you can say that about,

00:48:31 ◼   ► I feel like they need to, and maybe this is what it took,

00:48:35 ◼   ► they need to get some humility in the sense

00:48:37 ◼   ► that their designs need to be a little more humble

00:48:41 ◼   ► and they have to be okay releasing

00:48:43 ◼   ► a slightly more utilitarian version

00:48:46 ◼   ► of some of these products.

00:48:47 ◼   ► Not all of them, but some of them.

00:48:49 ◼   ► And then they also then have to have the confidence,

00:48:51 ◼   ► as I said last week, they have to have the confidence

00:48:53 ◼   ► that they, you know what, it's okay to release a boring Mac Pro update and a boring Mac Mini

00:48:59 ◼   ► update. That's okay. No one's gonna say Apple can't innovate anymore anybody's ass because

00:49:04 ◼   ► the Mac Mini got updated again. Like, that's--

00:49:07 ◼   ► I don't think that's true at all.

00:49:09 ◼   ► It's totally true because the thing he's talking about, speed bumps, we have a name for them

00:49:13 ◼   ► because they were so common. So, so common for a long time, for years and years and years.

00:49:19 ◼   ► This was just a thing that happened. Just like model years of cars, they would introduce

00:49:23 ◼   ► a model and then there would be speed bumps and then eventually there would be a new model

00:49:27 ◼   ► that's fancier in some way.

00:49:28 ◼   ► That's how Apple products work for a long time.

00:49:31 ◼   ► And during that time, every time there was a speed bump, nobody says, "Oh no, Apple

00:49:35 ◼   ► can't innovate anymore," because we understood what speed bumps were.

00:49:39 ◼   ► The fancy new one isn't here.

00:49:41 ◼   ► It's just a speed bump to the other one.

00:49:42 ◼   ► And people go, "Oh, this is a boring announcement.

00:49:44 ◼   ► It's just a speed bump."

00:49:45 ◼   ► But we had a word for it because it was a thing that happened routinely.

00:49:49 ◼   ► Little did we know that you may not, you may like, "Oh, I don't want speed bumps.

00:49:52 ◼   ► want a fancy new one every time. You know what's worse than speed bumps? No speed bumps.

00:49:55 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. Just nothing new at all. So I think there is no PR damage of speed bumps,

00:50:03 ◼   ► it's just that at some point Apple decided that speed bumps weren't a thing they wanted to do.

00:50:09 ◼   ► And I have my own completely unverified anonymous sources who are not the ATP tipster,

00:50:14 ◼   ► or they could be for all we know because it's just email man, I don't know where the heck this stuff

00:50:17 ◼   ► comes from, who conveyed this—again, completely unsourced information—that the high-end

00:50:24 ◼   ► iMac was a thing that Apple's been playing for a while, so there are hopes for that to

00:50:28 ◼   ► have good internals.

00:50:29 ◼   ► We'll talk a bit more about that with more unsourced rumors later.

00:50:32 ◼   ► This is the Unsourced Rumors Show.

00:50:36 ◼   ► But the decision about the new Mac Pro and the display were made fairly recently.

00:50:40 ◼   ► And the summary is, neither of these products—meaning the high-end iMac and the new Mac Pro—are

00:50:45 ◼   ► are a good financial ROI, but there is now a recognition

00:50:48 ◼   ► at the senior VP and CEO level that's important

00:50:51 ◼   ► for the company to make them.

00:50:52 ◼   ► And that's what it boils down to,

00:50:53 ◼   ► like that I can totally imagine all these products

00:50:56 ◼   ► not being a good return on investment.

00:50:58 ◼   ► It doesn't mean that they make losses,

00:51:00 ◼   ► but good ROI means I put X amount in

00:51:03 ◼   ► and I want to get X times some large number amount out.

00:51:07 ◼   ► And a bad ROI, I mean, you're like,

00:51:08 ◼   ► "It doesn't seem like we make enough money

00:51:10 ◼   ► "on Speedbump Mac Minis to even bother doing that at all.

00:51:12 ◼   ► "What if we just don't do it?

00:51:14 ◼   ► "How do the sales look?"

00:51:15 ◼   ► It's like, "Yeah, sales are flat."

00:51:16 ◼   ► It's like, "Great, we just saved some money.

00:51:18 ◼   ► I just increased the ROI in the Mac Mini

00:51:19 ◼   ► by not speed bumping it."

00:51:20 ◼   ► And they did, they did increase the ROI in the Mac Mini.

00:51:22 ◼   ► And I think they can kind of get away with that

00:51:24 ◼   ► in the Mac Mini with a reasonable amount,

00:51:26 ◼   ► but like on Mac Pros,

00:51:28 ◼   ► what if we just don't ever update the Mac Pro

00:51:30 ◼   ► because engineering says it would cost a lot of money

00:51:31 ◼   ► and require a redesign?

00:51:32 ◼   ► What did the sales look like?

00:51:33 ◼   ► Yeah, they go down a little bit,

00:51:34 ◼   ► but they're about the same.

00:51:35 ◼   ► Great, we just increased the ROI on the Mac Pro.

00:51:38 ◼   ► And you know, what this fully on source rumor now conveys

00:51:43 ◼   ► is that even though it's not a good ROI,

00:51:46 ◼   ► which is a point I've been emphasizing since 2013,

00:51:49 ◼   ► it's important for the company

00:51:50 ◼   ► to make these products anyway.

00:51:52 ◼   ► And Apple is totally on that page now.

00:51:54 ◼   ► And again, another thing you can pick up

00:51:55 ◼   ► from the transcript is everything Marco said

00:51:57 ◼   ► about frequent updates.

00:51:59 ◼   ► That was in all the summary articles,

00:52:00 ◼   ► like that Apple says they wanna make a new Mac Pro

00:52:02 ◼   ► that can have frequent updates.

00:52:04 ◼   ► It is further emphasizing the transcript,

00:52:05 ◼   ► like further in detail emphasize that like,

00:52:08 ◼   ► they wanna make a Mac Pro

00:52:10 ◼   ► that they can make the parts inside of it better

00:52:12 ◼   ► on a regular basis.

00:52:13 ◼   ► They don't commit to doing it on any particular schedule,

00:52:16 ◼   ► but they emphasize, this is a thing we did wrong,

00:52:20 ◼   ► and we're gonna fix it by doing it right.

00:52:22 ◼   ► We want a machine that without redesigning the machine,

00:52:25 ◼   ► we can regularly and steadily and easily and cheaply

00:52:28 ◼   ► do those things that we used to think are boring,

00:52:31 ◼   ► which are called speed bumps.

00:52:32 ◼   ► And so, that's why we're all so happy about this

00:52:34 ◼   ► is because they didn't just say,

00:52:35 ◼   ► we're gonna make a new Mac Pro and trust us,

00:52:37 ◼   ► you really like it, just wait.

00:52:38 ◼   ► They said specific things about it

00:52:40 ◼   ► and the specific things they said and emphasized

00:52:42 ◼   ► exactly what we want. So yay Apple, let's now fast forward for two years.

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00:54:50 ◼   ► Oh goodness. Do you have any other thoughts about this particular rumor?

00:54:58 ◼   ► I wouldn't put too much into it.

00:54:59 ◼   ► And the other parts of it are how Apple is said

00:55:02 ◼   ► to be making a non-Touch Bar 15 inch MacBook Pro option.

00:55:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's just trolling Marco.

00:55:08 ◼   ► - I honestly, first of all, I wanna be clear,

00:55:13 ◼   ► I don't hate the Touch Bar that much.

00:55:15 ◼   ► I would just, given the choice to get it or not get it,

00:55:18 ◼   ► right now I chose not get it.

00:55:20 ◼   ► And as I said, that's due to other factors also.

00:55:22 ◼   ► Like I wanted something smaller and the 13 inch

00:55:26 ◼   ► that comes in both touch bar and non touch bar,

00:55:28 ◼   ► like the non touch bar gets better battery life by a lot.

00:55:31 ◼   ► And battery life is very important to me right now.

00:55:34 ◼   ► So like, you know, it's obviously like,

00:55:38 ◼   ► you know, other factors go into this decision for everybody.

00:55:40 ◼   ► You know, there's cost considerations for a lot of people.

00:55:44 ◼   ► So like, I don't think there's actually that much demand

00:55:48 ◼   ► to make 15 inch MacBook Pros without the touch bar.

00:55:51 ◼   ► And I also would be incredibly surprised

00:55:55 ◼   ► if Apple did that for user satisfaction reasons.

00:56:00 ◼   ► Now, what they might do, you know,

00:56:02 ◼   ► there's also a lot of complaints about the pricing

00:56:04 ◼   ► of the new MacBook Pros 'cause it is higher.

00:56:06 ◼   ► So I could see them maybe offering, you know,

00:56:10 ◼   ► in the next update to the MacBook Pro generation,

00:56:13 ◼   ► whenever that comes.

00:56:14 ◼   ► I don't know when the ships are coming out,

00:56:16 ◼   ► maybe this fall or next spring, who knows?

00:56:18 ◼   ► But whenever that happens, it would not surprise me

00:56:21 ◼   ► if they made an entry level 15 inch model

00:56:24 ◼   ► that was maybe, you know, $19.99,

00:56:27 ◼   ► and that one had no discrete GPU

00:56:31 ◼   ► and no touch bar to hit that price point.

00:56:33 ◼   ► - The 15-inch escape.

00:56:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, basically.

00:56:36 ◼   ► You know, 'cause in the past, they've done that

00:56:38 ◼   ► with the GPU selection, which I've talked about before,

00:56:40 ◼   ► whereas in the past, like the retina generation

00:56:42 ◼   ► and everything, and even the one right before that,

00:56:45 ◼   ► they had the base model, which was about 2,000 bucks,

00:56:48 ◼   ► had only the Intel integrated GPU,

00:56:51 ◼   ► and you had to spend a few hundred more

00:56:52 ◼   ► to get one with a little bit more stuff in it

00:56:54 ◼   ► and the discrete GPU.

00:56:55 ◼   ► And it would not surprise me at all

00:56:58 ◼   ► to see them do the same thing here,

00:56:59 ◼   ► to just give it another one that is 1999,

00:57:02 ◼   ► so people will stop complaining about the price,

00:57:04 ◼   ► and has a few things cut out of it,

00:57:05 ◼   ► and one of them would probably be the discrete GPU,

00:57:07 ◼   ► and one of them might be the touch bar.

00:57:09 ◼   ► And that would be totally fine.

00:57:10 ◼   ► But that wouldn't be because, quote,

00:57:13 ◼   ► "Everyone hates the touch bar."

00:57:14 ◼   ► It would be because they wanna hit a price point.

00:57:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, they did also mention the transcripts.

00:57:19 ◼   ► People asked some questions about ports.

00:57:20 ◼   ► They didn't say they were going to even entertain this idea, but it was mentioned as an idea

00:57:26 ◼   ► that exists just like the Mac Mini is a product that exists in the lineup of having a MacBook

00:57:33 ◼   ► Pro with legacy ports.

00:57:38 ◼   ► Like the only things on the side of it wouldn't be the Thunderbolt 3 USB-C things.

00:57:42 ◼   ► That was brought up as a question, and Apple didn't immediately shut the door and say,

00:57:46 ◼   ► "We are never doing that."

00:57:48 ◼   ► And that's, you know, in the Apple world, it's like, wow,

00:57:50 ◼   ► they're entertaining the idea of possibly having

00:57:53 ◼   ► a MacBook Pro with different ports on the side of it.

00:57:55 ◼   ► Maybe an SD card slot, I don't know,

00:57:56 ◼   ► wouldn't hold your breath for it, but you know,

00:57:58 ◼   ► that's what Apple does.

00:57:59 ◼   ► Like they said, we make a product, we do the best we can,

00:58:01 ◼   ► see what people think of it, what their behavior indicates.

00:58:03 ◼   ► And then for the next one, you know, they said,

00:58:05 ◼   ► for the next one, we're gonna do better.

00:58:07 ◼   ► And we'll take what we've learned and, you know,

00:58:09 ◼   ► and Margo's suggestion sounds totally plausible,

00:58:12 ◼   ► both because it makes sense from a business perspective

00:58:14 ◼   ► and also because that's what people are telling them

00:58:16 ◼   ► based on this rumor of buying refurbished ones

00:58:19 ◼   ► or people buying the escape or whatever,

00:58:21 ◼   ► they'll do that to fill a market need.

00:58:22 ◼   ► And by the same token,

00:58:24 ◼   ► this is something that didn't get too much discussion

00:58:27 ◼   ► in the articles that was mentioned a few times.

00:58:29 ◼   ► Apple said, and we've been hearing about for a while,

00:58:32 ◼   ► that they have been going out to pro users,

00:58:35 ◼   ► reaching out to just regular people like,

00:58:36 ◼   ► "Hey, you use our products in a pro capacity.

00:58:38 ◼   ► "Tell us about it," for a long time now,

00:58:41 ◼   ► leading up to this Mac Pro announcement.

00:58:42 ◼   ► And they do this stuff like that all the time.

00:58:43 ◼   ► So just knowing that they're gonna make a new Mac,

00:58:46 ◼   ► They do that all the time.

00:58:47 ◼   ► They say even when you just go to the Apple store

00:58:49 ◼   ► or buy a new Mac or get a new iPhone,

00:58:50 ◼   ► sometimes they send you a random survey about it or whatever,

00:58:52 ◼   ► but they were going to people and saying,

00:58:54 ◼   ► "Tell us how you use our Pro hardware.

00:58:55 ◼   ► What do you like about it?

00:58:56 ◼   ► What do you not like about it?

00:58:57 ◼   ► What things are important to you?

00:58:58 ◼   ► What things are not important to you?"

00:59:00 ◼   ► To try to gauge whether they should make a new Mac Pro

00:59:03 ◼   ► and the decision they can't do is yes, they should.

00:59:05 ◼   ► And probably like,

00:59:06 ◼   ► what do you think about the new MacBook Pros

00:59:08 ◼   ► and if we made a new one,

00:59:10 ◼   ► what would you wanna see in it and stuff like that.

00:59:12 ◼   ► So they're doing their job.

00:59:14 ◼   ► They're doing what they're supposed to be doing

00:59:16 ◼   ► hopefully we'll see this feedback loop closed with the next round of MacBook

00:59:21 ◼   ► Pros. And I mean I don't want to call like if the next round of MacBook Pros

00:59:26 ◼   ► has the 15-inch escape and has an SD card slot and has better batteries that

00:59:33 ◼   ► they supposedly couldn't fit in this one for some reason I forget if this is the

00:59:36 ◼   ► model or it was another one that rumor was about. Anyway if they come out with

00:59:40 ◼   ► that it doesn't mean that they made a terrible mistake and have fixed it it

00:59:43 ◼   ► just means they're making their products better over time that's what they always

00:59:45 ◼   ► But, for the Mac Pro, I was thinking that this Mac Pro that comes out, that in theory

00:59:51 ◼   ► I will buy, is elevated, is worthy of being elevated to the holder of the coveted title

01:00:02 ◼   ► of Apology Mac Pro, right alongside the Apology Mouse.

01:00:06 ◼   ► People don't remember the Apology Mouse is the mouse Apple released with much fanfare

01:00:10 ◼   ► after subjecting the world to the completely circular puck-based mouse on the original

01:00:14 ◼   ► iMac and they apologized for that by making a mouse that was not completely circular and

01:00:19 ◼   ► therefore easier to align and it was under everybody's seat at a Macworld Expo keynote

01:00:25 ◼   ► and I got one because I was there and the mouse wasn't under your seat it was like a

01:00:29 ◼   ► little card and you go to the back of the room and give someone a card and they give

01:00:31 ◼   ► you an apology mouse and I still have it and it's awesome and I would love an apology Mac

01:00:36 ◼   ► Pro and it looks like I'm gonna get one.

01:00:38 ◼   ► Well you're going to have one released are you going to buy one?

01:00:41 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah. Colloquially get one. It's not going to be a card under my seat at WWDC

01:00:46 ◼   ► that says I get a free one, but yeah. Oh, and I'm on the topic of, by the way, I'm skipping

01:00:51 ◼   ► a bunch of the MacPro, more MacPro topic for you, Casey.

01:00:55 ◼   ► Yes! I mean, oh, that's too bad.

01:00:59 ◼   ► One thing I want to talk about is this from, we want to hit every single person who was

01:01:02 ◼   ► in that meeting, because there's always like five journalists. This is from Lance Olanoff

01:01:06 ◼   ► at Mashable. I quoted this because I didn't have the transcript at the time, but let's

01:01:10 ◼   ► Let's give him credit, he reported and I pulled it out.

01:01:14 ◼   ► When I asked if Apple might consider a touchscreen Mac, Schiller shook his head and said no.

01:01:19 ◼   ► He told me it's simply not a big request for Mac Pro customers.

01:01:22 ◼   ► We're talking to them and the things they're most interested in, this doesn't even register

01:01:26 ◼   ► he added.

01:01:27 ◼   ► You can see the full quotes in the transcript if you're interested, but it was basically

01:01:29 ◼   ► he just like cut them off and like said no, no touchscreen Mac.

01:01:33 ◼   ► This is not something customers interested in.

01:01:35 ◼   ► How they know what customers are interested in is because they're talking to them, right?

01:01:38 ◼   ► This is a great example of, I feel like if I was in that meeting, I mean, I don't know,

01:01:43 ◼   ► it's hard to say what you would do when you're in these meetings, but in a relaxed environment

01:01:47 ◼   ► where I didn't feel pressure to be well behaved, I would say, "But come on, guys, you know

01:01:53 ◼   ► you can't just ask customers what they want.

01:01:55 ◼   ► You have to do that, but customers don't always know what they want until you show them.

01:02:00 ◼   ► No customer would have ever requested the iPhone, but guess what?

01:02:02 ◼   ► When you made it, they're like, "Yes, that."

01:02:03 ◼   ► If you asked them what they wanted, they would have been like a fancier version of whatever

01:02:06 ◼   ► Nokia smartphone they had right now, right? I think Mac Pro customers aren't requesting

01:02:13 ◼   ► a touchscreen Mac, but if it turns out that the Surface Studio is a good idea that has

01:02:18 ◼   ► legs, by the time your customers are requesting it, it's way too late because of the things

01:02:25 ◼   ► you would have to do to your OS or to your app store economy, depending on whether you're

01:02:30 ◼   ► trying to make a Mac into that or make an iOS device into that, will take you a long

01:02:34 ◼   ► time. So Apple should not be asking its customers, like, you know, not be deciding just because

01:02:40 ◼   ► its customers don't want one now, that it's not a good idea. Clearly Apple thinks it's

01:02:44 ◼   ► still not a good idea. And I'm sure they've experimented with it. I'm sure they've used

01:02:47 ◼   ► the Surface Studio Pro. They even, they even dumped on the Surface Studio's like a drawing

01:02:52 ◼   ► experience. Like they basically said the iPad Pro has a better drawing experience. I'm assuming

01:02:56 ◼   ► they mean more responsive and less parallax because this, you know, like, which is true.

01:03:00 ◼   ► Right, it's totally true, but I, you know, they may be right that this is not, uh, that the

01:03:06 ◼   ► Surface Studio idea doesn't have legs in the design community, but the reason I would cite for that

01:03:12 ◼   ► is not that the first iteration of this has flaws versus some existing tech, because that's just

01:03:16 ◼   ► like a, you know, a PR whatever, like the first version of everything is wonky, right? Um, you

01:03:22 ◼   ► know, the first Mac was, was Ramstar, the first iPhone, like didn't even shoot video, right? You

01:03:26 ◼   ► So you can't cite that, right?

01:03:29 ◼   ► That doesn't mean that.

01:03:29 ◼   ► And you also can't cite,

01:03:30 ◼   ► oh, our customers aren't asking this.

01:03:32 ◼   ► Of course they're not asking for it.

01:03:33 ◼   ► They're never gonna ask for the visionary next big thing

01:03:35 ◼   ► 'cause they don't know they want it yet.

01:03:36 ◼   ► But if the server studio starts getting penetration

01:03:38 ◼   ► and starts being used by more people,

01:03:41 ◼   ► eventually they will be saying,

01:03:42 ◼   ► hey, Apple, why don't you have something like this?

01:03:43 ◼   ► And maybe Apple will say, take this humongous iPad Pro

01:03:46 ◼   ► and try to find Pro apps for it or something.

01:03:48 ◼   ► So anyway, that bothered me a little bit

01:03:50 ◼   ► because I don't like to say no,

01:03:53 ◼   ► and then you're not thinking about it, it's fine.

01:03:54 ◼   ► But to cite those reasons,

01:03:55 ◼   ► Like those are not reasons that should be convincing

01:04:00 ◼   ► to you internally.

01:04:01 ◼   ► If there are reasons you wanna parrot back to the press

01:04:03 ◼   ► to give explanations, that's fine.

01:04:04 ◼   ► But I really hope internally, like there's that fear I get,

01:04:08 ◼   ► especially when you hear people who are good at talking

01:04:10 ◼   ► to the press at Apple, the fear I get

01:04:12 ◼   ► that they believe their own hype,

01:04:15 ◼   ► that the reasons they give externally for things

01:04:17 ◼   ► are also the reasons they use internally

01:04:19 ◼   ► to justify their decisions,

01:04:20 ◼   ► which I sincerely hope is not the case

01:04:22 ◼   ► because so many of the reasons are bad reasons.

01:04:24 ◼   ► like they're Apple 101 bad reasons.

01:04:29 ◼   ► The whole history of Apple shows that this is not how you should be making decisions,

01:04:32 ◼   ► because every success you had can, you know, defy these.

01:04:35 ◼   ► Or even just plain old Ed Catmull creativity and success hides problem reasons or whatever.

01:04:40 ◼   ► It's fine to tell them to other people, but I really hope you don't believe, because this

01:04:44 ◼   ► first server studio has technical flaws, that that's why it's a terrible idea.

01:04:49 ◼   ► If you're going to say, "We've tried the idea internally and we found out that it's terrible,"

01:04:52 ◼   ► which they have said in the past.

01:04:54 ◼   ► That at least I give more credence to

01:04:55 ◼   ► because it shows you are seriously pursuing the idea.

01:04:58 ◼   ► But anyway, that bothered me.

01:05:00 ◼   ► I still think the server studio is an idea

01:05:02 ◼   ► that has some potential.

01:05:03 ◼   ► Some artists also agree.

01:05:05 ◼   ► I just hope Apple doesn't get caught flat-footed

01:05:10 ◼   ► on this one because again, it's not like,

01:05:11 ◼   ► oh, well, so what?

01:05:12 ◼   ► If it becomes successful, Apple can make one.

01:05:13 ◼   ► They have a serious software and platform thing to resolve

01:05:15 ◼   ► to ever ship anything like that.

01:05:17 ◼   ► They have to decide whether it's a Mac or an iPad

01:05:20 ◼   ► and either decision they make,

01:05:21 ◼   ► a bunch of other software and ecosystem things

01:05:22 ◼   ► they have to do to make that work.

01:05:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, everyone I've known

01:05:27 ◼   ► who has bought a server studio or used one,

01:05:30 ◼   ► and granted, this is not a large group of people,

01:05:32 ◼   ► but it's people on Twitter and stuff,

01:05:34 ◼   ► the responses are pretty consistent,

01:05:37 ◼   ► which is, this is really cool,

01:05:40 ◼   ► there's really something to this, but Windows sucks.

01:05:43 ◼   ► Like, we all know that already,

01:05:45 ◼   ► like this is no surprise to anybody listening to this show

01:05:47 ◼   ► in all likelihood, but, you know,

01:05:50 ◼   ► It's clearly like, you know, there's something here.

01:05:54 ◼   ► And I think if Apple chose to do something with that,

01:05:58 ◼   ► they might be able to do a really good job with it.

01:06:00 ◼   ► I mean, there would be certain limitations.

01:06:03 ◼   ► Every computer input method has weird limitations to it.

01:06:08 ◼   ► The iPad has problems with text entry,

01:06:12 ◼   ► unless you do keyboards, but that's a weird hack.

01:06:15 ◼   ► Computers have problems with direct interaction

01:06:18 ◼   ► and manipulation.

01:06:19 ◼   ► There's all sorts, like everything you do

01:06:21 ◼   ► is gonna be imperfect, but I think the model

01:06:25 ◼   ► for modern computing and devices in the last decade

01:06:29 ◼   ► has really just been like, well, you know what?

01:06:30 ◼   ► We're gonna embrace that we can't get this perfect

01:06:34 ◼   ► and we're going to make things anyway, the best we can,

01:06:37 ◼   ► that take advantage of what they are

01:06:39 ◼   ► and leave what they aren't to other devices.

01:06:42 ◼   ► 'Cause if you weren't willing to do things that way,

01:06:46 ◼   ► tablets wouldn't exist, because tablets are

01:06:48 ◼   ► this kind of weird hybrid that is good at certain things

01:06:52 ◼   ► computers are good at, terrible at other things

01:06:54 ◼   ► computers are good at, but they can do things

01:06:57 ◼   ► that computers can't, you know?

01:06:58 ◼   ► So like, when Apple says like, oh, we've tried this

01:07:01 ◼   ► and it doesn't work, it can't be done,

01:07:03 ◼   ► there's lots of problems or whatever,

01:07:05 ◼   ► you could have said the same thing about tablets in 2009.

01:07:08 ◼   ► But they made the iPad anyway.

01:07:10 ◼   ► They found like a slot for it to fit

01:07:15 ◼   ► in the way people use things.

01:07:17 ◼   ► There were things that it was really good at,

01:07:19 ◼   ► and that made it worth doing,

01:07:21 ◼   ► despite all the downsides of tablets.

01:07:24 ◼   ► And those downsides are still there today,

01:07:26 ◼   ► but it doesn't matter, 'cause the things that it's good at,

01:07:28 ◼   ► it's really good at for certain people.

01:07:30 ◼   ► And so any kind of touch or pen, Mac hybrid,

01:07:33 ◼   ► might be the same thing.

01:07:37 ◼   ► It might be like, you know, this is kind of weird

01:07:39 ◼   ► for these reasons over here,

01:07:41 ◼   ► but it's really good at these things.

01:07:43 ◼   ► And I think the Surface Studio's slight success

01:07:47 ◼   ► among some artists and stuff shows that to be the case.

01:07:51 ◼   ► That drawing on Windows is weird.

01:07:54 ◼   ► You know, using a pen and touch on this giant

01:07:58 ◼   ► drafting table form factor PC, running a PC OS,

01:08:03 ◼   ► is weird and does have downsides.

01:08:05 ◼   ► But it also has really cool upsides.

01:08:08 ◼   ► So I think there might be something there

01:08:10 ◼   ► and I think it would be unfortunate

01:08:15 ◼   ► if there was something there and Apple wasn't able to

01:08:19 ◼   ► or wasn't willing to find it and deliver it

01:08:22 ◼   ► because they either are making bad assumptions

01:08:27 ◼   ► or that they aren't willing to tackle

01:08:29 ◼   ► the software integration cost that would result

01:08:33 ◼   ► in doing this kind of Mac iOS touch kind of hybrid OS.

01:08:38 ◼   ► 'cause those aren't small problems,

01:08:40 ◼   ► you know, those are big problems.

01:08:42 ◼   ► But I do think it would be kind of a shame

01:08:43 ◼   ► if there was really a product here to be had

01:08:46 ◼   ► that could be really useful to some people

01:08:47 ◼   ► and that we weren't ever gonna get it

01:08:49 ◼   ► because of these other issues, you know?

01:08:52 ◼   ► That being said, one of the other things

01:08:54 ◼   ► I'm concerned about is it does kind of seem like

01:08:59 ◼   ► at an increasing pace, Apple is being surprised

01:09:04 ◼   ► by customer reactions to what they do.

01:09:07 ◼   ► And that's a little concerning.

01:09:10 ◼   ► Like we keep, first like when,

01:09:13 ◼   ► with the 2016 MacBook Pros, those came out

01:09:16 ◼   ► and were really met with a lot of ambivalence from people

01:09:20 ◼   ► and a lot of criticism and a lot of anger

01:09:23 ◼   ► that they weren't certain other things.

01:09:25 ◼   ► And Apple was, allegedly, they were like shocked by this.

01:09:29 ◼   ► They were like, we thought this was,

01:09:31 ◼   ► and same thing with Touch Bar,

01:09:32 ◼   ► like wow, we thought this was amazing.

01:09:34 ◼   ► It seems like it's actually not being well received.

01:09:36 ◼   ► what, how did this possibly happen?

01:09:38 ◼   ► Why is this so different from what we expected?

01:09:40 ◼   ► And similar with the Mac Pro, you know,

01:09:42 ◼   ► it turns out that if you kill your pro hardware line

01:09:45 ◼   ► slowly over years with, you know, neglect after releasing

01:09:49 ◼   ► an already polarizing product,

01:09:51 ◼   ► then it turns out people get mad who like the old thing

01:09:54 ◼   ► or wanted the current thing to stay current.

01:09:56 ◼   ► And they seem greatly surprised by that as well.

01:09:59 ◼   ► - Oh, that reminds me of something else

01:10:01 ◼   ► that I forgot to address there on that exact topic of,

01:10:03 ◼   ► hey, you know, what happens if you don't

01:10:05 ◼   ► Your your Mac Pro for real time one of the things they cited in this very strange lead-up that I think a few of the journals

01:10:10 ◼   ► Who were there noted is very strange lead-up to this announcement at this meeting was let me tell you how few people

01:10:15 ◼   ► Use the Mac Pro and let me tell you how many pros use other products how many pros use MacBook pros?

01:10:23 ◼   ► I think I flubbed that let me tell you how many people

01:10:27 ◼   ► Do not use the Mac Pro and instead right use iMacs or MacBook pros, right?

01:10:32 ◼   ► That was their whole intro if you read the transcript it was all about that, right?

01:10:35 ◼   ► It's like and this is a thing where they're going to announce. Guess what? We're making a new Mac Pro

01:10:39 ◼   ► If you had just heard the intro

01:10:42 ◼   ► It's like this is leading up to them telling us why they don't need to have a Mac Pro anymore because they're saying

01:10:45 ◼   ► Look at all these pros and we're defining pros as someone who uses a pro app at least once a week or someone who uses

01:10:51 ◼   ► It every few weeks and they just all you know

01:10:53 ◼   ► The number one piece of hardware used by our pros is guess what the MacBook Pro the number two piece of hardware you buy our pro

01:10:59 ◼   ► is guess what the iMac right and a distant third is this Mac Pro that's

01:11:03 ◼   ► such a small percentage all that I hundred percent believe but if you don't

01:11:08 ◼   ► update the Mac Pro for three years of course they're gonna flee elsewhere of

01:11:12 ◼   ► course they're gonna start buying iMacs and Macs but what choice do they have

01:11:16 ◼   ► what choice like and again I totally understand from a PR perspective this is

01:11:21 ◼   ► this is the line this is the move I just sincerely hope that internally that they

01:11:26 ◼   ► that they have, they are clearer eyed about all this.

01:11:29 ◼   ► And you can't tell, they're not gonna tell you

01:11:30 ◼   ► what they talk about in their boardrooms.

01:11:32 ◼   ► What do they put up in their slides?

01:11:33 ◼   ► And I really believe they are clear eyed

01:11:34 ◼   ► because remember they had like a leak of the like slideshow

01:11:37 ◼   ► for many years ago.

01:11:39 ◼   ► - They put the Samsung thing about it,

01:11:40 ◼   ► like we don't have bigger phones and customers want them.

01:11:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, right, we do not have what customers want.

01:11:45 ◼   ► We need to make a bigger phone.

01:11:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:11:47 ◼   ► - That's how you talk to yourself internally

01:11:49 ◼   ► in a healthy way and I'm sure they do,

01:11:51 ◼   ► but like it's when you only get the external,

01:11:53 ◼   ► like the, you know, the party line of like,

01:11:55 ◼   ► here's what we have to tell you.

01:11:57 ◼   ► It makes me worry sometimes because it's just so hard.

01:12:01 ◼   ► Like they'll never tell you

01:12:03 ◼   ► what they tell themselves internally.

01:12:05 ◼   ► And you just worry that they believe in their own hype

01:12:07 ◼   ► because they are so consistent and disciplined

01:12:09 ◼   ► with their message to the outside world.

01:12:10 ◼   ► And because they choose to offer up these things like this

01:12:13 ◼   ► that are just like instantly refutable.

01:12:15 ◼   ► Like, oh, people who are moving to iMacs and MacBook Pros.

01:12:19 ◼   ► Like, well, duh, like why even tell us that?

01:12:22 ◼   ► Aren't we all smart here?

01:12:23 ◼   ► Of course they're moving.

01:12:24 ◼   ► Like, what else are they gonna do?

01:12:26 ◼   ► I guess they could go to Windows as the other choice, right?

01:12:28 ◼   ► Which is also happening, by the way,

01:12:29 ◼   ► and you're not gonna tell us about that.

01:12:30 ◼   ► So, anyway, sorry to derail there.

01:12:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, anyway, so all that is to say

01:12:37 ◼   ► that it certainly has seemed in recent times

01:12:41 ◼   ► that Apple seems to be increasingly surprised

01:12:44 ◼   ► that people don't universally love

01:12:46 ◼   ► what they put out there.

01:12:48 ◼   ► And that concerns me, and I hope,

01:12:51 ◼   ► In whatever has kind of flipped around or changed

01:12:55 ◼   ► that has caused them to decide to do the Mac Pro again

01:12:58 ◼   ► and to start really serving pros well, hopefully, again,

01:13:02 ◼   ► whatever has changed to cause that,

01:13:05 ◼   ► I hope it has also fixed whatever was causing them

01:13:09 ◼   ► to put out products with a very different internal impression

01:13:14 ◼   ► of what was going to happen or how they were gonna be

01:13:18 ◼   ► received than what the public actually delivered.

01:13:20 ◼   ► 'cause that is worrisome.

01:13:22 ◼   ► Apple should not be that caught off guard

01:13:26 ◼   ► by their reactions to their products.

01:13:28 ◼   ► Apple is really good most of the time at product design.

01:13:33 ◼   ► They have a huge history doing it very well.

01:13:35 ◼   ► The track record is very, very good.

01:13:37 ◼   ► They have incredible talent within the company.

01:13:40 ◼   ► If they're gonna do something like the Apple TV remote

01:13:44 ◼   ► that is incredibly bad, just terrible.

01:13:48 ◼   ► - Good thing they update the Apple TV every year.

01:13:50 ◼   ► So we won't have to deal with that bad remote

01:13:52 ◼   ► for a long time, right?

01:13:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, to get something like that out into the world,

01:13:57 ◼   ► there are people inside of the company who are smart enough

01:14:00 ◼   ► and clear-headed enough to look at that and say,

01:14:03 ◼   ► you know what, this is kind of a bad idea and here's why.

01:14:06 ◼   ► But for some reason, they weren't listened to.

01:14:09 ◼   ► So I hope something, whatever has changed

01:14:12 ◼   ► that caused this Mac Pro thing is also going to let them

01:14:16 ◼   ► be a little bit more honest about their own product reactions internally before they decide

01:14:22 ◼   ► to release things or go ahead with things so that they are less surprised when the public

01:14:27 ◼   ► doesn't love every weird, beautiful, useless thing they release.

01:14:31 ◼   ► Chat Room points out a quick real-time follow-up that Federighi said in the thing that the

01:14:36 ◼   ► Mac Pro sales didn't fall off. That's what I said before when I said, "Oh, you're releasing

01:14:39 ◼   ► Mac Pro in a trash can and the sales are kind of level." It's another one of those facts

01:14:44 ◼   ► it could be 100% true, but it doesn't tell you what the initial value was.

01:14:47 ◼   ► So if the Trash Can Mac Pro was only appealing to a certain very small subset of people and

01:14:52 ◼   ► those people were trapped into repeatedly buying it year after year even though it didn't

01:14:55 ◼   ► get updated, that would result in flat sales.

01:14:57 ◼   ► And because it's such a small percentage, it would result in, "Look how many people

01:15:01 ◼   ► who we classify as pros according to this weird metric buy our much more popular machines."

01:15:06 ◼   ► Well of course they do, those are your most popular machines.

01:15:09 ◼   ► Anyway, stats that are true, but do not necessarily prove the thing you're saying that they prove.

01:15:15 ◼   ► It's frustration.

01:15:16 ◼   ► Go ahead, Casey.

01:15:20 ◼   ► It's curious to try to reason through what Apple is thinking with regard to their products

01:15:27 ◼   ► and how they're received, because anyone I've ever spoken to who has spent any amount of

01:15:32 ◼   ► time as an Apple employee has always vehemently said that their biggest critics are themselves.

01:15:40 ◼   ► And I completely agree with you guys that from the outside, it seems clear that they

01:15:46 ◼   ► offered up this, you know, Touch Bar MacBook Pro and a platter and said, "Look at this

01:15:49 ◼   ► magnificent piece of electronics. You should be blessed enough to be able to give us a

01:15:54 ◼   ► whole pile of money for one of these." And then it did seem from the outside like they

01:16:00 ◼   ► surprised that people were like, "Yeah, we're good." But I don't know, on the inside, it's

01:16:05 ◼   ► a bold claim for any of us to make if we think that on the inside they were really taken aback

01:16:11 ◼   ► by it. Because as you said, Jon, the messaging to the outside will always be, "Oh no, this is

01:16:16 ◼   ► exactly what we planned." But the inside, I bet that they're being pretty darn honest with

01:16:23 ◼   ► themselves. And maybe the expectation was different, but I don't think it took them

01:16:27 ◼   ► very long to realize that, "Ooh, this didn't go the way we thought it did." And now they're

01:16:32 ◼   ► turning around. Now I will concede that it certainly seems like the Mac Pro something

01:16:37 ◼   ► just went totally wrong there, because I concede and agree that it took way too long, way, way,

01:16:43 ◼   ► way too long for them to make any statement about what's coming. And the consistent reports,

01:16:50 ◼   ► you know, be that rumors that it's been in the last six weeks to six months that they've really

01:16:56 ◼   ► gotten in on a new Mac Pro, like that's kind of alarming, but at least they're turning the ship

01:17:01 ◼   ► around. I don't know, it just seems weird. It seems weird to me for us to assume that there

01:17:09 ◼   ► aren't some very vocal critics within Apple, of Apple. Well, they totally are. Like, even Mark

01:17:14 ◼   ► was saying that they are. It's just a question of like, they don't win the argument because we can

01:17:17 ◼   ► tell who wins by what they actually ship. And like I said, I think that the presentation about the

01:17:23 ◼   ► the iPhone before they had a big iPhone with it. That slide I was trying to quote was like,

01:17:27 ◼   ► you know, "Customers want what we don't have," or something similar phrasing like.

01:17:31 ◼   ► They were just totally brutal about, "We don't have big phones. Customers want them.

01:17:35 ◼   ► We should make one." And they did, and guess what? It sold really, really well. So, like,

01:17:39 ◼   ► I believe internally that everything we're saying has been said internally by multiple

01:17:43 ◼   ► people and it's just a question of who wins the argument. And my general frustration is

01:17:47 ◼   ► because they have executives who are so good at talking to the public, so good at talking

01:17:53 ◼   ► to the public in terms of they'll never get off message, and also, like, they're willing

01:17:58 ◼   ► to throw out things that don't actually support what they're saying but sound like they do

01:18:02 ◼   ► at first glance, and I find it frustrating to never be able to get to the, "No, seriously,

01:18:06 ◼   ► just talk to me like a human being." Like, I guess that would have to be off the record.

01:18:09 ◼   ► On the record, they're never going to do that. Because in the end, it doesn't matter. Like,

01:18:13 ◼   ► who cares about the internal politics? The products are what they are. When you ask me

01:18:17 ◼   ► questions about it, I'm not going to trash my own products, and I'm not going to tell

01:18:19 ◼   ► you about future ones.

01:18:20 ◼   ► They could be working on a Surface Studio-style computer.

01:18:23 ◼   ► They could have had it in the works for three years now and they're just trying to get it

01:18:26 ◼   ► right.

01:18:27 ◼   ► They're never going to tell you that.

01:18:28 ◼   ► They're just going to say right up to the point when they release it Steve Jobs-style,

01:18:31 ◼   ► that's not a good idea.

01:18:32 ◼   ► We don't think it's a good idea until they come out and say, "We finally cracked it.

01:18:35 ◼   ► Here it is, and now it's a great idea because we did it."

01:18:37 ◼   ► That's just the way they work and it can just be frustrating from the outside.

01:18:40 ◼   ► But yeah, when the stuff that's coming out, that tells you.

01:18:45 ◼   ► that tells you who won arguments

01:18:46 ◼   ► and what decisions were made,

01:18:47 ◼   ► and that we can judge them based on.

01:18:50 ◼   ► So, yeah.

01:18:51 ◼   ► - It's also, it's hard too, like, you know,

01:18:53 ◼   ► like if you are like, you know, an engineer working on,

01:18:58 ◼   ► you know, photos.app or something like that,

01:19:01 ◼   ► are you really gonna be willing to take the,

01:19:04 ◼   ► the political hit internally to criticize a remote

01:19:08 ◼   ► that was designed by Johnny Ive or Richard Howarth?

01:19:11 ◼   ► Like, is that really gonna be a wise career move,

01:19:14 ◼   ► You know, like the company is set up in a way,

01:19:17 ◼   ► you know, it's a big company, there's rank,

01:19:20 ◼   ► there's politics internally, there's, you know,

01:19:22 ◼   ► every big company has this stuff.

01:19:24 ◼   ► So like, not everybody can get their voice heard

01:19:29 ◼   ► if they have a criticism about a product

01:19:31 ◼   ► that is being considered or being designed.

01:19:33 ◼   ► Like, it's up to, like, there have to be people who,

01:19:38 ◼   ► it has to be set up in a way that like,

01:19:40 ◼   ► high up people can criticize.

01:19:42 ◼   ► And the people who are at the high up levels

01:19:45 ◼   ► need to criticize when necessary.

01:19:47 ◼   ► And this is, you know, like we've talked before

01:19:50 ◼   ► about this is one of Steve Jobs' greatest strengths.

01:19:53 ◼   ► And one of the reasons why he had such a great relationship

01:19:58 ◼   ► with Johnny Ive and with the engineering

01:20:00 ◼   ► is there was a great balance of editing and criticism

01:20:05 ◼   ► and honesty internally that resulted in mostly

01:20:08 ◼   ► only great stuff coming out.

01:20:09 ◼   ► The hit rate was pretty good there.

01:20:11 ◼   ► And when things did come out,

01:20:12 ◼   ► there weren't a lot of controversial or polarizing

01:20:16 ◼   ► attributes of new products as there are now.

01:20:19 ◼   ► Now it seems like almost everything that comes out,

01:20:23 ◼   ► there's great advances in some areas,

01:20:26 ◼   ► but almost all those advances come at some kind of

01:20:29 ◼   ► massively polarizing cost.

01:20:32 ◼   ► And I feel like that's happening more recently

01:20:34 ◼   ► than it used to.

01:20:35 ◼   ► And maybe that's because the collaboration or the editing

01:20:40 ◼   ► top is not happening with the same health and same balance that it used to.

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01:22:02 ◼   ► You know, I wanted to go back just briefly.

01:22:08 ◼   ► I thought that the statistic that Jon had talked about earlier very quickly was just

01:22:14 ◼   ► fascinating and this is quoting from Gruber.

01:22:17 ◼   ► Apple's research shows that 15% of all Mac users use at least one pro app frequently.

01:22:23 ◼   ► These are apps for things like music creation, video editing, graphic design, and software

01:22:26 ◼   ► development.

01:22:27 ◼   ► Basically, apps that are performance intensive.

01:22:29 ◼   ► An additional 15% of all Mac users use Pro apps less frequently, but at least a few times

01:22:35 ◼   ► per month.

01:22:37 ◼   ► That 30% of the overall Mac user base is what Apple considers the Pro market.

01:22:41 ◼   ► I don't really have a lot to extrapolate from this, but I just thought it was very, very

01:22:45 ◼   ► interesting that according to Apple, 15% of users uses a Pro app frequently, whatever

01:22:54 ◼   ► that definition is, be that daily or multiple times a week or what have you.

01:22:58 ◼   ► and then another 15 that uses them at least a few times a month.

01:23:02 ◼   ► And I just thought that was a really fascinating statistic that I never expected to come out

01:23:08 ◼   ► of that meeting.

01:23:09 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a lot higher than I would have guessed, especially the 30% total.

01:23:14 ◼   ► That's kind of amazing.

01:23:15 ◼   ► Well, they didn't clearly communicate that, because if you read the transcript—and there

01:23:19 ◼   ► was much debate about this, many people interpreting, but now having read the transcript, it is

01:23:23 ◼   ► no more clear to me.

01:23:25 ◼   ► The question is, first one is clear, 15% use what they classify as a pro app at least once

01:23:30 ◼   ► a week.

01:23:32 ◼   ► Totally clear.

01:23:33 ◼   ► The second one is the problem because they say this group of users uses a pro app like

01:23:39 ◼   ► once every few weeks or whatever, some longer period.

01:23:42 ◼   ► And the question is, does that second group of users include the first?

01:23:45 ◼   ► Gruber clearly thinks it does because what Apple said was 30% use it in the longer period

01:23:51 ◼   ► and 15% in the shorter.

01:23:52 ◼   ► I can't tell if the 15 is part of the 30.

01:23:55 ◼   ► Like are they exclusive groups or are they inclusive?

01:23:57 ◼   ► And so you can't tell if the total is 30% or 45.

01:24:01 ◼   ► Apple could have communicated that better, like perhaps in text or in some other fashion

01:24:05 ◼   ► or it could have been clarified.

01:24:06 ◼   ► So depending on how you interpret what they said in the transcript, and I think it's a

01:24:11 ◼   ► big difference.

01:24:13 ◼   ► Are 45% of Mac users classified as occasional or frequent Pro users or is it 30% and 15

01:24:22 ◼   ► of them are once a week.

01:24:23 ◼   ► - Either way, these are very nice high numbers,

01:24:26 ◼   ► higher than I would have guessed.

01:24:27 ◼   ► - But Apple picks what it means to be a pro user.

01:24:29 ◼   ► They use a pro app, which they don't tell us what it is,

01:24:31 ◼   ► they just say, oh you know, like one of those apps

01:24:33 ◼   ► you use to make things, right?

01:24:34 ◼   ► - Well, I think it's pretty clear that what they mean

01:24:37 ◼   ► by pro app is anything Apple makes ends in pro,

01:24:40 ◼   ► so Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, also probably like I would say

01:24:44 ◼   ► Adobe Creative Suite apps would make sense there,

01:24:45 ◼   ► and I think it was also very clear they meant Xcode.

01:24:48 ◼   ► And that includes a lot of people.

01:24:50 ◼   ► - Yep, I would agree with all of those,

01:24:52 ◼   ► but how many other things are in that category?

01:24:54 ◼   ► Is that didn't give us an exhaustive,

01:24:55 ◼   ► like you're just going by their metrics

01:24:57 ◼   ► and I bet they're picking something pretty broad.

01:25:00 ◼   ► For example, there could be just one application

01:25:02 ◼   ► that is frequently used that they happen to classify as pro

01:25:05 ◼   ► that pulls up the average for everything else.

01:25:06 ◼   ► These are, you know, we have no visibility to these,

01:25:08 ◼   ► Apple has all the information.

01:25:09 ◼   ► So I'm not surprised by that number.

01:25:11 ◼   ► It sounds about what I would think they would

01:25:13 ◼   ► because of their very broad definition of pro.

01:25:15 ◼   ► Everything you've defined, like I don't think that's broad,

01:25:17 ◼   ► but I'm just trying to think of like one other application

01:25:19 ◼   ► could throw in there, they would be like, "Oh, if you ever launch Terminal, you count

01:25:23 ◼   ► as a pro app."

01:25:24 ◼   ► Yeah, you could argue for that, but there's millions of people who are launching Terminal

01:25:27 ◼   ► just so they can use their Mac to SSH into something to do something, and they're not

01:25:31 ◼   ► using their Mac in a pro capacity.

01:25:33 ◼   ► It's a, you know, it's a glass TTY, as we used to say back in the day, and that is not

01:25:38 ◼   ► a pro use because you can do that from a MacBook, adorable, and it works fine.

01:25:42 ◼   ► But if you classify Terminal as a pro app, suddenly that brings up your numbers.

01:25:46 ◼   ► Probably pro as a state of mind.

01:25:48 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:25:50 ◼   ► Oh my goodness.

01:25:52 ◼   ► Alright, what else do we have to talk about with regard to the Mac Pro?

01:25:56 ◼   ► Well, we can move on to the iMac Pro, because there was another completely unsourced rumor, and this is the place where we're dumping them all on this show, right?

01:26:02 ◼   ► This is from... Yes, all of them on this episode. All of them, John.

01:26:07 ◼   ► This one also got reblogged everywhere. I'm surprised, like, people...

01:26:10 ◼   ► - The free blogging, I thought that the Mac blogosphere

01:26:13 ◼   ► had gotten over that.

01:26:15 ◼   ► Like there'll be one completely unsourced rumor

01:26:17 ◼   ► and some random thing that everybody else will grab it

01:26:19 ◼   ► and you'll see it appear at every site.

01:26:21 ◼   ► And sometimes you'll have to like pour over the site

01:26:24 ◼   ► to try to figure out, are they just signing that one thing

01:26:26 ◼   ► I read on that totally unsourced blog?

01:26:28 ◼   ► And sometimes they don't link to it

01:26:30 ◼   ► and sometimes they don't source it until the very end

01:26:32 ◼   ► and you're trying to figure out

01:26:32 ◼   ► and you see it in so many places.

01:26:34 ◼   ► Like, well, it must be true.

01:26:35 ◼   ► I've seen every Mac site I've seen

01:26:36 ◼   ► has been telling me about this,

01:26:37 ◼   ► these the specs of this new iMac Pro

01:26:40 ◼   ► it's like you trace it all back and it's just this one completely unsourced thing

01:26:43 ◼   ► anyway

01:26:44 ◼   ► this completely unsourced thing is giving us supposed specs

01:26:47 ◼   ► for the iMac Pro and this one says it will have

01:26:50 ◼   ► an Intel E3

01:26:52 ◼   ► 1285 V6 I have no idea what the hell that is

01:26:55 ◼   ► uh... it's nothing

01:26:56 ◼   ► 16 gigs of RAM, upgraded to 32 or 64, ECC memory

01:27:00 ◼   ► faster SSDs

01:27:02 ◼   ► uh... and uh...

01:27:04 ◼   ► up to two terabytes for the SSD size

01:27:06 ◼   ► and AMD graphics with support for VR and Pro apps,

01:27:09 ◼   ► whatever the hell that means.

01:27:10 ◼   ► Thunderbolt 3 USB-C Gen 2 with, ta-da,

01:27:13 ◼   ► a brand new keyboard for Casey.

01:27:15 ◼   ► - All right.

01:27:16 ◼   ► - That's something for everybody.

01:27:17 ◼   ► - All right, so basically, just to summarize quickly here,

01:27:21 ◼   ► Xeon E3, it might as well not be a Xeon.

01:27:25 ◼   ► The Xeon E3 is only barely different

01:27:30 ◼   ► from the consumer chips that the iMac already uses.

01:27:33 ◼   ► The only thing that would get you is support for ECC RAM.

01:27:36 ◼   ► - That's pretty good though.

01:27:38 ◼   ► - So that is something.

01:27:39 ◼   ► And so like that, I feel like if the iMac Pro,

01:27:45 ◼   ► just assume whenever we say iMac Pro, it's in finger quotes.

01:27:50 ◼   ► If the iMac Pro is something to handle like heavy horsepower,

01:27:55 ◼   ► then that's not gonna do it.

01:27:58 ◼   ► That's what the old iMac already has had.

01:28:01 ◼   ► If it's something to add check marks to make pros stop complaining about certain things,

01:28:06 ◼   ► it helps a little bit in that area in the sense that it enables ECC RAM.

01:28:10 ◼   ► But that's about it.

01:28:11 ◼   ► And Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C, like I'm assuming it has a lot of PCI Express lanes.

01:28:16 ◼   ► Does it have more?

01:28:17 ◼   ► I don't, no, I don't think it has any more.

01:28:18 ◼   ► You have to go to the E5 series.

01:28:21 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure it has the same PCI Express configuration as the regular i7 high-end chips.

01:28:26 ◼   ► Because it really is just an i7 with like ECC compatibility basically.

01:28:31 ◼   ► there's really nothing else to it.

01:28:33 ◼   ► That's literally all it is.

01:28:35 ◼   ► It is a way, the E3 line is mostly,

01:28:40 ◼   ► it mostly exists to make cheap server options.

01:28:43 ◼   ► 'Cause servers almost always want ECC,

01:28:46 ◼   ► and server needs almost always use that

01:28:49 ◼   ► like in data centers and stuff.

01:28:51 ◼   ► And it's a way to basically bring the wonderful economy

01:28:54 ◼   ► and power of the consumer i7 line

01:28:56 ◼   ► into cheap 1U rack mount servers.

01:28:59 ◼   ► So there's not really a huge benefit.

01:29:03 ◼   ► And that's why, remember about two years ago,

01:29:06 ◼   ► they started selling, not Apple,

01:29:08 ◼   ► but the PC industry started selling Xeon laptops.

01:29:12 ◼   ► And that was the same kind of thing.

01:29:13 ◼   ► It was like using this E3 line where it's like,

01:29:16 ◼   ► yeah, that's not really anything more

01:29:18 ◼   ► than what we had before.

01:29:19 ◼   ► It's not really anything more than the consumer line.

01:29:21 ◼   ► So that's, same thing here, it would enable ECC,

01:29:24 ◼   ► but that would be the only advantage that it would have

01:29:27 ◼   ► over what we already have in the iMac.

01:29:28 ◼   ► That being said, it would also not require

01:29:32 ◼   ► any additional thermal headroom,

01:29:33 ◼   ► because it isn't a bigger chip,

01:29:36 ◼   ► it doesn't have more cores, it doesn't have a higher TDP.

01:29:40 ◼   ► It would be very easy for Apple

01:29:41 ◼   ► to configure an iMac with an E3.

01:29:43 ◼   ► So if the idea of the iMac Pro

01:29:47 ◼   ► is to do as little work as possible

01:29:49 ◼   ► and check off a few more boxes for pros

01:29:51 ◼   ► while changing almost nothing about the iMac,

01:29:53 ◼   ► then okay, maybe.

01:29:54 ◼   ► But that's probably not,

01:29:57 ◼   ► That wouldn't be a very compelling product for almost anybody.

01:30:00 ◼   ► So I hope that isn't what they're doing.

01:30:01 ◼   ► I hope they're doing more than that.

01:30:03 ◼   ► Well, if it's the only one that comes with Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C, then suddenly that

01:30:07 ◼   ► becomes a lot more attractive because it's not just people who are looking for a pro

01:30:10 ◼   ► who are buying it.

01:30:11 ◼   ► It's like anybody who wants basically a modern 5K iMac would buy it.

01:30:14 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, if that's the only one that has all the new ports on it, I'll get it."

01:30:17 ◼   ► And if they want that fancy new keyboard, right?

01:30:21 ◼   ► Other ancillary rumors attached to this, and I keep seeing this.

01:30:23 ◼   ► I haven't traced this back to the origin, to the fantastical origin, but the 8K display.

01:30:29 ◼   ► Apple's working on an 8K display for the next generation of Mac Pros.

01:30:32 ◼   ► 8K display has been floating around for a long time.

01:30:36 ◼   ► Is that a thing that anyone is asking for?

01:30:40 ◼   ► Well Dell just shipped one.

01:30:41 ◼   ► You see, Dell just shipped one for five grand.

01:30:43 ◼   ► I know, I know, alright.

01:30:45 ◼   ► My question is, does the size math work out to be something reasonable?

01:30:51 ◼   ► Like how big would it have to be to keep the current DPI?

01:30:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it would have to be like 40 inches.

01:30:56 ◼   ► It would have to be pretty big.

01:30:58 ◼   ► I think we learned from past monitor things

01:31:01 ◼   ► and some current day ones where you have that one LG,

01:31:06 ◼   ► super wide 35 inch or whatever it is, right?

01:31:09 ◼   ► So we've seen a rough idea of what monitor sizes are

01:31:15 ◼   ► and what works and what doesn't.

01:31:16 ◼   ► We can probably agree, actually I'm curious, John,

01:31:20 ◼   ► 'cause you're probably the contrarian here.

01:31:22 ◼   ► What do you think is the largest inch diagonal measurement

01:31:27 ◼   ► that a single monitor could reasonably be

01:31:31 ◼   ► for practical desktop computer use,

01:31:33 ◼   ► where you wouldn't have to sit so far back from it

01:31:35 ◼   ► that the resolution would be wasted?

01:31:38 ◼   ► So my answer to that question would probably be

01:31:41 ◼   ► maybe like 32 inches, maybe at most 35?

01:31:46 ◼   ► What do you think?

01:31:48 ◼   ► - I would go up to 42 because I know people

01:31:50 ◼   ► use televisions as their monitors. Obviously the resolution is horrendous, right? But they're using

01:31:54 ◼   ► like actual televisions as their monitors because they can get them in really big sizes. And why?

01:31:59 ◼   ► Because if you have any kind of vision impairment, you can't buy a computer monitor

01:32:03 ◼   ► that makes things as big as you want that doesn't make it look like you're looking through a tiny

01:32:06 ◼   ► little porthole. So they will get a 42-inch television and put it at like a resolution

01:32:12 ◼   ► that we would run a 23-inch display at and keep it like normal computer distance from them and just

01:32:17 ◼   ► just lets them see things better. So I think it's actually surprisingly big.

01:32:22 ◼   ► But that wouldn't be a use case for 8K, though. 8K is talking about like—

01:32:25 ◼   ► Right, no, no. But you just asked about the inch sizes right now. 8K specifically. The

01:32:28 ◼   ► reason I'm skeptical of the 8K thing is not because I think 8K is not a thing, right?

01:32:32 ◼   ► But just when I envision Apple making a monitor for its Mac Pro, I envisioned 8K as a thing

01:32:38 ◼   ► that only people who are working at ILM get, so they can look at their 8K video composites

01:32:43 ◼   ► or whatever, like that, you know, people who are working with source material shot in 8K,

01:32:47 ◼   ► but traditionally Apple has left that market to like the super duper high end color calibrated

01:32:53 ◼   ► weird monitors with hoods over them and like that type of thing.

01:32:57 ◼   ► Apple has never sold one of those.

01:32:59 ◼   ► They've always sold a really good monitor for regular people that has great color calibration,

01:33:03 ◼   ► but always during the entire history of Apple, if you go into a very fancy place that even

01:33:08 ◼   ► just does stuff with Photoshop or with special effects or whatever, you will see one of those

01:33:12 ◼   ► really weird I don't think any makes a bunch of them or you know one of those

01:33:15 ◼   ► really weird monitors just for this specific industry and right now I feel

01:33:20 ◼   ► like 8k is in that category the only people who need 8k are people who are

01:33:24 ◼   ► shooting 8k footage who want to see it displayed in 8k so you want 8k monitor

01:33:29 ◼   ► but like I'm not gonna be sad if Apple makes one I think it'll be awesome but

01:33:33 ◼   ► that seems such like such a narrow thing that Apple's gonna go from we're not

01:33:38 ◼   ► making a monitor at all to guess what we're making an 8k one and to get back

01:33:41 ◼   ► to what you were saying Marco, if they do make an 8K one, I hope it's not the only one

01:33:45 ◼   ► because I really don't, I personally don't actually want a 40-inch monitor.

01:33:51 ◼   ► And I think 8K at 27 or 30 inches is overkill for my needs.

01:33:55 ◼   ► So if they only make an 8K monitor, A, it's going to be super expensive and B, oh God,

01:34:00 ◼   ► I probably would actually buy it too, wouldn't I?

01:34:02 ◼   ► Like –

01:34:03 ◼   ► Oh, you would.

01:34:04 ◼   ► Oh, you would.

01:34:05 ◼   ► Like it's not what I want out of a monitor and I'm thinking they're going to make a

01:34:07 ◼   ► 5K display, because I think 5K is in the spot where Apple usually makes monitors, and they

01:34:12 ◼   ► leave 8K to Dell and NEC and ViewSonic and whoever else is making these monitors for

01:34:17 ◼   ► professional things that you can already buy today.

01:34:21 ◼   ► But we'll see.

01:34:22 ◼   ► The 8K rumor won't die.

01:34:24 ◼   ► Anything else on the Mac Pro, kids?

01:34:26 ◼   ► There's always—why do you even keep asking that?

01:34:29 ◼   ► If you just stopped asking that and just moved on, you would catch us off guard.

01:34:33 ◼   ► No, because there's more, unfortunately.

01:34:36 ◼   ► I'm watching for Casey.

01:34:38 ◼   ► Two related stories that were in the notes last week,

01:34:40 ◼   ► or at least one of them was, and we didn't get to it,

01:34:43 ◼   ► that may or may not be related.

01:34:45 ◼   ► The more recent one is Nvidia's announcement

01:34:48 ◼   ► that their new graphics cards have Mac support.

01:34:51 ◼   ► And you're like, what?

01:34:53 ◼   ► What do you mean by that?

01:34:55 ◼   ► There are no Macs with card slots.

01:34:56 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

01:34:57 ◼   ► How can you have Mac support?

01:34:59 ◼   ► Right, it's like, oh, yeah, all those cheese graters.

01:35:02 ◼   ► Yeah, you can put those things in there.

01:35:04 ◼   ► So Nvidia is offering drivers for its Pascal-based GPUs.

01:35:08 ◼   ► That's their latest architecture of GPUs.

01:35:10 ◼   ► And this is the, the Titan, Nvidia Titan XP

01:35:12 ◼   ► is their product they're launching.

01:35:13 ◼   ► But the drivers they're making will work

01:35:16 ◼   ► with any Pascal-based GPU, apparently, on the Mac.

01:35:19 ◼   ► And why would they do that?

01:35:21 ◼   ► I mean, people with cheese graters can buy them.

01:35:24 ◼   ► And, you know, or people with Hackintoshes, right,

01:35:26 ◼   ► who wanna run macOS and do all this stuff.

01:35:29 ◼   ► And Apple didn't ship drivers for this

01:35:32 ◼   ► because they don't ship any machines with Pascal GPUs in them, as far as I'm aware.

01:35:36 ◼   ► Like do they have a Pascal based one in one of the portables?

01:35:38 ◼   ► I forget.

01:35:39 ◼   ► Maybe the chat room will be able to tell me.

01:35:40 ◼   ► But anyway.

01:35:41 ◼   ► - I don't think Apple ships Nvidia anything right now.

01:35:44 ◼   ► Apple and Nvidia seem to have some kind of major fallout and I think they ship ATI stuff

01:35:49 ◼   ► or AMD stuff now everywhere.

01:35:52 ◼   ► Which is kind of a problem.

01:35:53 ◼   ► You know, we keep hearing, I don't want to steal what you're going to say if you're going

01:35:57 ◼   ► to say this, but we keep hearing from people who know this stuff that like really Nvidia

01:36:01 ◼   ► has kicked AMD's butt so hard in GPUs

01:36:04 ◼   ► and things like GPUs,

01:36:06 ◼   ► like those parallel computing cards recently,

01:36:09 ◼   ► that Apple really, really apparently,

01:36:12 ◼   ► if they wanna be competitive in these high-end GPU areas,

01:36:16 ◼   ► they should really consider going back to Nvidia.

01:36:20 ◼   ► And it seems like for whatever reason,

01:36:23 ◼   ► possibly some kind of weird business disagreement

01:36:25 ◼   ► or history, they have been unwilling to do that so far,

01:36:28 ◼   ► but maybe they should reconsider

01:36:30 ◼   ► out of their trade address pros better.

01:36:33 ◼   ► So that balance of power between AMD and Nvidia, it has swung around.

01:36:36 ◼   ► It's not like Intel and AMD, where Intel just dominated, has come back from the bruising

01:36:43 ◼   ► of the Athlon age, as we discussed in a past show, and it's just dominated for a really

01:36:46 ◼   ► long time, and like Ryzen is just like the turnaround, possibly now.

01:36:51 ◼   ► But AMD and Nvidia have traded the lead many times, and specifically for Apple's purposes,

01:36:58 ◼   ► talking about the highest at the high end, which Apple's been ignoring anyway.

01:37:01 ◼   ► Very often the ATI or AMD part actually is the right choice for specific things.

01:37:06 ◼   ► But if your concern is, "I want the best performance in a given thermal envelope or

01:37:13 ◼   ► whatever, and that thermal envelope isn't really, really low," NVIDIA is currently

01:37:17 ◼   ► the leader.

01:37:19 ◼   ► That could change with the next generation of GPUs.

01:37:22 ◼   ► But either way, Apple has nothing in any of its products and hasn't for many, many years

01:37:27 ◼   ► that could be considered a high-end GPU.

01:37:29 ◼   ► None, just they don't sell them.

01:37:31 ◼   ► Even when the 2013 trash can Mac Pro was brand new,

01:37:36 ◼   ► the day it was released,

01:37:37 ◼   ► the day it was announced for that matter,

01:37:40 ◼   ► you could buy faster cards and put them in PCs.

01:37:42 ◼   ► Single cards, double cards, everything.

01:37:44 ◼   ► - I'm pretty sure, like the last time

01:37:46 ◼   ► they had competitive GPUs was when you,

01:37:49 ◼   ► and at the time I, bought the 2008 Mac Pro,

01:37:52 ◼   ► and you could for $200 get an NVIDIA 8800 GT.

01:37:56 ◼   ► And at the time, that was like an upper mid-range card.

01:37:59 ◼   ► And we were like, oh, that's a nice option, thanks.

01:38:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was, it was a decent card.

01:38:02 ◼   ► - That was a long time ago.

01:38:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, and always there have been third-party people

01:38:06 ◼   ► like buying PC cards and flashing the firmware and stuff.

01:38:09 ◼   ► And it was just a matter of like,

01:38:10 ◼   ► does Apple support this GPU architecture?

01:38:12 ◼   ► 'Cause if they supported it,

01:38:13 ◼   ► sometimes the drivers would work with the higher-end cards

01:38:15 ◼   ► that were just overclocked