ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► [APPLAUSE]

00:00:05 ◼   ► Can't innovate anymore, my ass.

00:00:07 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:00:09 ◼   ► [APPLAUSE]

00:00:27 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Today, we're going to talk about important things like me driving my dad's 1970 Dodge

00:00:36 ◼   ► Dart yesterday.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Yep, yeah, that's a good idea.

00:00:39 ◼   ► What about, um, I was wondering, Jon, do we have any follow-up?

00:00:44 ◼   ► We actually do, and we should actually do it.

00:00:47 ◼   ► There's only two items.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Only two.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Oh, okay, mark the time stamp, kids, because it's only two items, and by my clock, we're

00:00:58 ◼   ► seven and a half minutes into the call.

00:00:59 ◼   ► - Well, after follow up,

00:01:01 ◼   ► we can also talk about t-shirts, I suppose.

00:01:03 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:05 ◼   ► - Okay, Dad.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Why don't you kick us off, Dad?

00:01:08 ◼   ► - Can't we just eat our dessert first?

00:01:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:11 ◼   ► - No, we-- - We'll get there.

00:01:12 ◼   ► - No, I support, I'll snark aside.

00:01:14 ◼   ► We should get through the follow up.

00:01:15 ◼   ► It shouldn't be very long, hopefully.

00:01:17 ◼   ► - All right.

00:01:18 ◼   ► - So last week, we talked for the second time

00:01:21 ◼   ► about APFS file name encoding,

00:01:24 ◼   ► and you wouldn't think there would be more to say about it,

00:01:26 ◼   ► and yet here we are.

00:01:27 ◼   ► to talk about it for the third, possibly fourth time.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Are you serious?

00:01:31 ◼   ► Yes, because Apple has posted official documentation on their website answering the question,

00:01:39 ◼   ► "Hey, what's the deal with file name and coding on APFS?"

00:01:42 ◼   ► And so to summarize, and this is a little bit weirder than I would have expected, they say,

00:01:48 ◼   ► "APFS has case sensitive and case insensitive variants." We kind of assume that would be the

00:01:53 ◼   ► case but here they go they set it right outright. The case insensitive variant of APFS is normalization

00:01:59 ◼   ► preserving but not normalization sensitive which is pretty weird like basically if you send it a

00:02:06 ◼   ► file name normalized however the hell you want it pick your own Unicode normalization. APFS will

00:02:13 ◼   ► preserve that but it's not normalization sensitive this is the case insensitive variant it's not

00:02:18 ◼   ► normalization sensitive in that if you try to look something up and you say hey do you have a file

00:02:22 ◼   ► called "cafe" with a little e over the accent, and my reading of this is that you feed it that string

00:02:28 ◼   ► in any normalization you want, and it doesn't matter what normalization it is in the file

00:02:33 ◼   ► system, it will find it because the file system is not normalization sensitive, but it preserves

00:02:39 ◼   ► what you give it. Really confusing. So anyway, we'll have to get a case insensitive variant of

00:02:44 ◼   ► this on the Mac and do some tests to see what the deal is. But the case sensitive variant is

00:02:48 ◼   ► both normalization preserving and normalization sensitive. So that is straightforward. It's

00:02:53 ◼   ► case sensitive on iOS is just exactly what we said. It takes what you give it and that's it.

00:02:59 ◼   ► And they do clarify here, file names in APFS are encoded in UTF-8 and aren't normalized. So

00:03:07 ◼   ► it wants you, so it's not as if you read a directory structure in APFS and you say,

00:03:11 ◼   ► "I have no idea what encoding this is." Assuming everybody's following the rules,

00:03:14 ◼   ► and I'm not sure if this is enforced at the file system level or not,

00:03:18 ◼   ► they all have to be UTF-8 and the file system itself is not going to take your UTF-8 string

00:03:24 ◼   ► and normalize it like HFS+ does. Like whatever you give it in UTF-8, that's what it's going to

00:03:29 ◼   ► stick in the file system. Both variants will do that, but it's interesting that they're saying,

00:03:33 ◼   ► you know, no UTF-16, no UTF-32, no anything like that. I suppose if you use the lowest level APIs

00:03:40 ◼   ► you could just jam whatever the heck you wanted into there, but they're they're documented here,

00:03:44 ◼   ► utf-8 and they compare with hfs plus which has all of its weird rules and they say that in macos

00:03:52 ◼   ► 10 12 4 the apos developer preview was updated to include the case insensitive variant so this is

00:03:58 ◼   ► the first time the case insensitive variant of apfs has been available in any version of the

00:04:04 ◼   ► operating system and in ios of course in 10 3 we get the case sensitive variant and they give some

00:04:10 ◼   ► advice for avoiding bugs, I bet there will be WWDC sessions about this exact issue because I think

00:04:16 ◼   ► it's going to come up a lot. They want you to use the high level APIs, they want you to use NSFileManager

00:04:20 ◼   ► and NSURL, and they want you to use the file system representation property of NSURL when

00:04:25 ◼   ► creating and opening files with lower level file system APIs like the POSIX stuff. So

00:04:29 ◼   ► there are high level APIs to give you, you know, a character buffer or whatever to feed into lower

00:04:36 ◼   ► level APIs. So I'm glad they have some documentation on it. It's still pretty weird. This is definitely

00:04:41 ◼   ► a case where we're going to need to see a lot of sample code and a lot of sort of best practices

00:04:46 ◼   ► and anti-patterns. And still, I believe when the Mac operating system ships with a non-developer

00:04:53 ◼   ► preview version of its operating system, we will all get to find out which of our applications

00:04:58 ◼   ► are making assumptions that no longer hold in an APFS world as they slowly break. I'm going

00:05:03 ◼   ► I'm gonna bet on Adobe.

00:05:04 ◼   ► I don't know about you guys.

00:05:06 ◼   ► - I think that's a pretty safe bet.

00:05:08 ◼   ► Oh my goodness.

00:05:09 ◼   ► All right, we should do a quick bit of follow up

00:05:12 ◼   ► and talk about the situation report for WWDC.

00:05:17 ◼   ► We spoke last episode, Marco was 100% dedicated to layers,

00:05:20 ◼   ► which as far as I know still has availability,

00:05:24 ◼   ► so you might wanna check that out.

00:05:25 ◼   ► John and I had put our names in the hat for WWDC.

00:05:30 ◼   ► Jon, did you win the lottery and win the opportunity to give Apple $1600 of your money?

00:05:36 ◼   ► I did.

00:05:37 ◼   ► I'm a winner.

00:05:38 ◼   ► All right!

00:05:39 ◼   ► Congratulations!

00:05:40 ◼   ► I was very excited.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:42 ◼   ► I remember the interminable wait in years past for, you know, when other people are

00:05:46 ◼   ► getting their emails.

00:05:47 ◼   ► And this time I was distracted enough that by the time I looked at my email, there it

00:05:52 ◼   ► was.

00:05:53 ◼   ► Success.

00:05:54 ◼   ► Very happy.

00:05:55 ◼   ► Delightful.

00:05:56 ◼   ► I also won the lottery this year, which is very exciting because I did not win the lottery

00:05:59 ◼   ► last year.

00:06:00 ◼   ► So I will also be at WWDC, which I'm very, very excited about.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Before we're asked, since all three of us will be in town, we are not going to do a

00:06:12 ◼   ► live in front of people ATP.

00:06:15 ◼   ► We never really have.

00:06:17 ◼   ► The closest thing we came was when we were on the talk show.

00:06:20 ◼   ► We don't do that because even though some of us would enjoy doing so, absolutely zero

00:06:28 ◼   ► of the three of us want to have anything to do with planning it.

00:06:31 ◼   ► And so that is why it's not happening.

00:06:33 ◼   ► But all three of us will be in town.

00:06:35 ◼   ► I'm sure we'll talk about this more on the episode before WWDC.

00:06:40 ◼   ► But if you see us, please say hi.

00:06:42 ◼   ► We always enjoy it.

00:06:43 ◼   ► We may not be able to talk for very long, depending on the situation, but we always

00:06:46 ◼   ► enjoy it if you could say hi.

00:06:47 ◼   ► Any other quick thoughts about WWDC, kids?

00:06:49 ◼   ► No.

00:06:50 ◼   ► Good talk.

00:06:51 ◼   ► Everybody, wear your ATP shirts.

00:06:53 ◼   ► Oh, and wear your ATP shirts.

00:06:55 ◼   ► It is all but guaranteed you will get a high-five hug or some other interaction from at least

00:07:00 ◼   ► me if no one else if I spot an ATP shirt.

00:07:04 ◼   ► And if I remember, I'll have some ATP stickers printed, which I'll probably forget.

00:07:08 ◼   ► But if I remember, I'll have some printed.

00:07:09 ◼   ► And if I see an ATP shirt, you're getting a sticker.

00:07:13 ◼   ► And then finally, on a very, very brief but somber note, I just wanted to quickly recognize

00:07:18 ◼   ► that a member of our community, Jason Seifer, who is a fellow podcaster, a Ruby developer,

00:07:24 ◼   ► and for a long time a teacher at Treehouse,

00:07:26 ◼   ► passed away unexpectedly and tragically over the weekend.

00:07:32 ◼   ► And I just wanted to acknowledge that

00:07:34 ◼   ► and say that I know I'm,

00:07:36 ◼   ► and I'm pretty darn sure I speak for everyone.

00:07:39 ◼   ► The three of us are very sad to hear it

00:07:41 ◼   ► and we were really bummed about it.

00:07:43 ◼   ► Mike and I talked about it

00:07:44 ◼   ► on the forthcoming episode of Analog

00:07:46 ◼   ► that won't be out until the weekend,

00:07:47 ◼   ► so probably several days after this episode.

00:07:49 ◼   ► But we're really bummed out and we're really sad about it and we just wanted to take a

00:07:54 ◼   ► pause to say that.

00:07:57 ◼   ► All right.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Big week?

00:08:01 ◼   ► A little bit.

00:08:02 ◼   ► I think it's been--some things have happened.

00:08:05 ◼   ► So this morning there appears to have been some sort of an embargo that had dropped about

00:08:12 ◼   ► a meeting that happened sometime, I guess, in the last day or two with regard to the

00:08:18 ◼   ► The Mac Pro, of all things.

00:08:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, who had this on the bingo card for this week, right?

00:08:24 ◼   ► Certainly, certainly not me.

00:08:25 ◼   ► Oh my god, this was quite a big surprise.

00:08:29 ◼   ► A pleasant surprise, but certainly a sizable one.

00:08:34 ◼   ► Yeah, so there were a handful of people that were invited to Cupertino to discuss, I believe

00:08:42 ◼   ► it was phrased as a roundtable, to talk about the Mac.

00:08:45 ◼   ► Yes, a small roundtable discussion about the Mac.

00:08:48 ◼   ► So as per Jon Gruber, it was he, Matthew Panzareno, Lance Zulanoff, Ina Fre- how did I- shoot,

00:08:54 ◼   ► I pronounced that wrong, didn't I?

00:08:55 ◼   ► You're asking the wrong people.

00:08:56 ◼   ► All right, well, that's right.

00:08:58 ◼   ► I'm so sorry if I got that wrong.

00:08:59 ◼   ► Anyway, and John Pagzowski, I believe that's pretty close to right.

00:09:04 ◼   ► I should have made somebody else read those names, so I didn't have to.

00:09:07 ◼   ► Anyway, the group of them went to Cupertino to have a roundtable discussion about the

00:09:14 ◼   ► the Mac and including about the Mac Pro. So not even including the Mac Pro, I would say

00:09:21 ◼   ► it was primarily about the Mac Pro. That's absolutely right. It's interesting how they

00:09:24 ◼   ► phrase this. Like, come out, come out to Cupertino, we'll have a roundtable discussion about the

00:09:30 ◼   ► Mac. Who knows what they actually told the people about what they were going to do, but

00:09:33 ◼   ► their characterization of it, we're just going to hang out. We're just going to talk about

00:09:36 ◼   ► the Mac a little bit. Right, guys? And like Marco said, no, they're going to talk specifically

00:09:43 ◼   ► about one particular Mac that's near and dear to all of our hearts except for Casey.

00:09:48 ◼   ► And that's entirely what the thing was about, but I guess they can't come out and tell people,

00:09:52 ◼   ► "Hey, fly out Cupertino so we can tell you stuff about the Mac Pro."

00:09:57 ◼   ► They always want to have a little bit of a surprise.

00:10:00 ◼   ► I guess they did talk about the iMac.

00:10:01 ◼   ► I mean, they talked about a lot of things because you could ask them any questions you

00:10:04 ◼   ► wanted and then they could answer them however they wanted.

00:10:06 ◼   ► But the big takeaway from this and most of the headlines, with the exception of a couple

00:10:10 ◼   ► that did mention the iMac were all about the Mac Pro.

00:10:13 ◼   ► - Right, so I'm gonna do my best to summarize

00:10:17 ◼   ► and then I'll probably get interrupted

00:10:19 ◼   ► and that's for the best.

00:10:19 ◼   ► So let me start by reading a little for,

00:10:23 ◼   ► a little from what Gruber had written and he says,

00:10:25 ◼   ► "Here's how Schiller broke the news on the Mac Pro.

00:10:27 ◼   ► It's worth quoting him at length."

00:10:28 ◼   ► So let me now quote Gruber quoting Schiller.

00:10:32 ◼   ► "With regard to the Mac Pro,

00:10:33 ◼   ► we are in the process of what we call

00:10:35 ◼   ► completely rethinking the Mac Pro.

00:10:37 ◼   ► We're working on it.

00:10:38 ◼   ► We have a team working hard on it right now, and we want to architect it so that we can

00:10:42 ◼   ► keep it fresh with regular improvements, and we're committed to making it our highest-end,

00:10:46 ◼   ► high-throughput desktop system, designed for our demanding pro customers.

00:10:51 ◼   ► As a part of doing a new Mac Pro, it is by definition a modular system.

00:10:54 ◼   ► We will be doing a pro display as well.

00:10:57 ◼   ► John Saracusa, it is your lucky day.

00:11:00 ◼   ► That's me, not Schiller.

00:11:01 ◼   ► Anyway, now you won't see...

00:11:02 ◼   ► That would be amazing.

00:11:03 ◼   ► That would have been amazing.

00:11:04 ◼   ► Now you won't see any of those products this year.

00:11:07 ◼   ► in the process of that. We think it's really important to create something

00:11:10 ◼   ► great for our Pro customers who want a MacPro modular system and that'll take

00:11:13 ◼   ► longer than this year to do. In the interim we know that there are a number

00:11:17 ◼   ► of customers who will continue to buy our current MacPros. To be clear our

00:11:20 ◼   ► current MacPro has met the needs of some of our customers and we know that

00:11:24 ◼   ► clearly not all of our customers. None of this is black and white, it's a wide

00:11:28 ◼   ► variety of customers. Some it's the kind of system that they wanted, others it was

00:11:32 ◼   ► not. In the meantime we're going to update the configs to make it faster and

00:11:35 ◼   ► for their dollar. This is not a new model, we're not a new design, we're just going to update the

00:11:41 ◼   ► configs. We're doing that this week. We can give you the specifics on that. The CPUs, we're moving

00:11:45 ◼   ► them down the line. The GPUs down the line to get more performance per dollar for customers who do

00:11:49 ◼   ► need to continue to buy them in the interim until we get a newly architected system.

00:11:56 ◼   ► So there is a new Mac Pro. It is not happening in 2017. There is a small spec bump on the

00:12:04 ◼   ► existing Mac Pro, but things are happening. And the fact that Apple is addressing this

00:12:11 ◼   ► at all, I think is really exciting and really, really good news. I can continue to summarize,

00:12:17 ◼   ► but I think at this point we should take a moment and start talking. So Marco, let's

00:12:22 ◼   ► start with you. What do you think?

00:12:24 ◼   ► Marco: I have like four pages of notes here of where to begin. I mean, so we will get

00:12:32 ◼   ► get into some of the specifics but just high-level overview I'm incredibly happy

00:12:38 ◼   ► to hear this this is awesome because what this means you know for for a long

00:12:43 ◼   ► time it has seemed you know the the neglect of the Mac Pro has been going on

00:12:49 ◼   ► for three years if you measure it from the trash can but actually the neglect

00:12:54 ◼   ► of the Mac Pro started in 2010 the the well the the last like basically in 2010

00:13:01 ◼   ► was the last new cheese grater revision.

00:13:04 ◼   ► They officially did one in 2012,

00:13:06 ◼   ► but it was really the same thing

00:13:07 ◼   ► with like one more processor option at the top end.

00:13:10 ◼   ► It was actually very similar to what they just did today,

00:13:12 ◼   ► but actually what they did today was even less

00:13:14 ◼   ► because there are no new options.

00:13:15 ◼   ► But the 2012 Mac Pro really wasn't a thing.

00:13:19 ◼   ► The 2010 one was the last cheese grater update that mattered.

00:13:23 ◼   ► - And if you've ever seen the old logo of our show,

00:13:25 ◼   ► by the way, it was a cheese grater Mac Pro

00:13:28 ◼   ► with a little new label stuck on it,

00:13:30 ◼   ► sarcastically because we were waiting for the Mac Pro the new Mac Pros to be announced at WWC we had been waiting for a

00:13:36 ◼   ► While and they did announce new Mac Pros or maybe it was like a press release update or not even on stage

00:13:40 ◼   ► I forget but they were only new, you know conceptually like technically yeah, there's one new configuration is one new CPU

00:13:47 ◼   ► That was the I think that was the very first icon this podcast ever had it was right

00:13:52 ◼   ► and

00:13:53 ◼   ► So this show was founded on dissatisfaction

00:13:57 ◼   ► With the with the offerings of the Mac Pro see it so that people who date it back to the trash can yeah

00:14:01 ◼   ► The trash can has had problems and we'll talk about that

00:14:03 ◼   ► But even as far back in the cheese grater

00:14:05 ◼   ► It seemed like they took everybody off the cheese grater and said, you know, we've been steadily updating this cheese grater for a while

00:14:10 ◼   ► You know every time there's a new CPU upgrading the GPUs every year just like clockwork

00:14:14 ◼   ► But we're not gonna do that anymore and maybe they all went off to make the trash can which is really weird and complicated or maybe

00:14:21 ◼   ► they were just

00:14:22 ◼   ► You know pulling back a little bit and slowing down the updates again

00:14:25 ◼   ► it's hard to know what goes on inside Apple, but this phenomenon of the Mac Pro no longer

00:14:31 ◼   ► being updated steadily is, as Marco said, not a phenomenon that goes back to 2013, it

00:14:38 ◼   ► goes all the way back to 2010, so it's a long time.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:14:42 ◼   ► And so, clearly one of the reasons why there was a long delay between the 2010 one and

00:14:47 ◼   ► the 2013 redesign, which was really, it was announced in mid-2013, but it wasn't really

00:14:52 ◼   ► available it went for sale in late December of 2013 and wasn't actually

00:14:57 ◼   ► shipped to anybody until the first couple months 2014 so it was you know a

00:15:01 ◼   ► good three and a half years between like July 2010 when that other one came out

00:15:06 ◼   ► and this new one and that was presumably because they were doing this big

00:15:09 ◼   ► redesign and everything and also by the way they they pre-announced the 2013 Mac

00:15:14 ◼   ► Pro mostly because we felt like or Apple felt like it like they had to because we

00:15:19 ◼   ► were waiting and like what's the deal what's the deal with the Mac Pro you did

00:15:22 ◼   ► this update and it was barely an update it was like you know they call that an

00:15:26 ◼   ► update whereas the real new Mac Pro and we were waiting what it then seemed like

00:15:30 ◼   ► such a long time for it they felt like they need to say at WWDC here's the new

00:15:36 ◼   ► Mac Pro and this amazing thing we're like yay finally and said oh by the way

00:15:39 ◼   ► not really like shipping for a long time but but still they like why didn't they

00:15:43 ◼   ► hold it until it was it was somewhat close to shipping because they felt like

00:15:47 ◼   ► you know that whatever dissatisfaction there was among that customer base they

00:15:50 ◼   ► had to reassure them by saying, all right, we're going to announce a thing.

00:15:54 ◼   ► We're going to show you the pictures of it.

00:15:55 ◼   ► Here it is.

00:15:56 ◼   ► We're going to put it in a little glass tube outside of the Presidio at Moscone.

00:16:01 ◼   ► And so you can look at it and see that it's a real thing, but you're not getting

00:16:03 ◼   ► one for months.

00:16:04 ◼   ► But we all felt better because it's like, well, at least we know now that the Mac

00:16:08 ◼   ► Pro isn't dead.

00:16:09 ◼   ► That is not there.

00:16:10 ◼   ► The reason they weren't upgrading the cheese grater is could have been because

00:16:13 ◼   ► they were working on this and this is a fancy new thing and it will be coming

00:16:16 ◼   ► soon.

00:16:16 ◼   ► And I think we all basically felt better about that,

00:16:21 ◼   ► even though there was a delay.

00:16:24 ◼   ► And this current announcement is like,

00:16:26 ◼   ► everything that happened before,

00:16:28 ◼   ► but stretch all the timelines out even farther.

00:16:29 ◼   ► At the time, we thought they don't care about Mac Pro users.

00:16:32 ◼   ► They don't care about the Mac Pro.

00:16:36 ◼   ► And then they released the 2013 one,

00:16:37 ◼   ► and we thought, okay, great.

00:16:39 ◼   ► They released a new one, and this is awesome.

00:16:41 ◼   ► However, it doesn't meet a lot of people's needs

00:16:42 ◼   ► in a bunch of ways that we'll get into in a minute.

00:16:45 ◼   ► And so then that was now, it's been now about the same delay

00:16:49 ◼   ► between 2010 and that one and between that one and now,

00:16:52 ◼   ► you know, about three and a half years or so.

00:16:55 ◼   ► The assumption that we've all been making,

00:16:57 ◼   ► and I totally own this, I have been number one

00:17:01 ◼   ► on the list of complainers on this show at least,

00:17:04 ◼   ► the assumption that we've all been making

00:17:07 ◼   ► is that Apple is being run really just by the numbers

00:17:11 ◼   ► Tim Cook and that, you know, this fairly small product line that is, you know, something

00:17:18 ◼   ► like 1% of Mac sales was just not enough of a blip on the radar for Tim Cook to care about

00:17:26 ◼   ► updating ever again. That is how it seemed until this morning to all of us Mac Pro users,

00:17:33 ◼   ► and that has manifested itself with a number of side effects, one of which I think might

00:17:39 ◼   ► contributed to Apple finally you know getting into gear on doing an update

00:17:42 ◼   ► here is that when the MacBook Pro was updated last fall the 2016 MacBook Pro

00:17:49 ◼   ► with the touch bar and everything else it was clearly not as well received as

00:17:54 ◼   ► Apple thought it would be there was quite a lot of outcry and part of that

00:17:58 ◼   ► is because of legitimate downsides of that product part of that's temporary

00:18:02 ◼   ► part of it won't be temporary but I think a big part of the of the angst

00:18:06 ◼   ► over the 2016 MacBook Pro was also that pros had been neglected on the desktop for so long.

00:18:13 ◼   ► That not only were they kind of already mad at Apple not serving their needs, but it sure

00:18:20 ◼   ► looked like they were going to have to now wedge their needs into these other products

00:18:25 ◼   ► that weren't very good at serving them.

00:18:28 ◼   ► And so if I had to guess, it was during the 2016 MacBook Pro launch with all this kickback

00:18:35 ◼   ► that Apple finally decided to go ahead

00:18:38 ◼   ► with the new Mac Pro project.

00:18:39 ◼   ► Craig Federighi made some comments during these interviews

00:18:42 ◼   ► that it's been longer than six months

00:18:45 ◼   ► they've been working on it,

00:18:46 ◼   ► but that doesn't mean it had the green light

00:18:48 ◼   ► to go ahead as a product for more than six months.

00:18:51 ◼   ► - I don't think it was long as six months

00:18:52 ◼   ► they've been working on it.

00:18:53 ◼   ► This round table was a bunch of journalists, right?

00:18:55 ◼   ► So the journalists are asking questions,

00:18:57 ◼   ► and one of the big questions that everyone wants to know

00:19:00 ◼   ► is we out here in the community

00:19:05 ◼   ► who are interested in the Mac Pro have been upset about it

00:19:07 ◼   ► for a long, long time.

00:19:09 ◼   ► How did it come to pass that so much time elapsed

00:19:14 ◼   ► between the 2013 Mac Pro and now, and there was nothing,

00:19:18 ◼   ► literally no updates, no price changes,

00:19:20 ◼   ► no announcement or anything.

00:19:22 ◼   ► And then just now you call a round table?

00:19:24 ◼   ► So everyone wants to know the timeline.

00:19:26 ◼   ► How long ago did you decide

00:19:29 ◼   ► that this was a thing you were gonna do?

00:19:30 ◼   ► And they did it like, well, it's not like

00:19:32 ◼   ► there's any one decision or one meeting.

00:19:33 ◼   ► and each of us went through our own journey

00:19:36 ◼   ► of like deciding, what was it, quick fitteries,

00:19:39 ◼   ► we went through like denial and acceptance.

00:19:41 ◼   ► So I can imagine there were people like,

00:19:43 ◼   ► well, like the denial thing would be like,

00:19:45 ◼   ► well, the new Mac Pro is weird and all,

00:19:47 ◼   ► and people complain,

00:19:48 ◼   ► but I bet if we just leave it out there,

00:19:50 ◼   ► people will come to accept it as the new way

00:19:53 ◼   ► that Pro hardware is going to work on the desktop.

00:19:55 ◼   ► And then eventually I have to say,

00:19:56 ◼   ► you know, it looks like they're not really accepting it.

00:20:00 ◼   ► And so the six month thing seems to me

00:20:01 ◼   ► of a timeline of like when when did you come to this realization they never actually answered

00:20:06 ◼   ► how did you go so many years with like basically your heads in the sand right because that's why i

00:20:11 ◼   ► mean just two shows ago i was asking us all if we had consensus that basically there's not going to

00:20:16 ◼   ► be another new mac pro there's just going to be an iMac pro which by the way there will be and they

00:20:20 ◼   ► talked about it um you know basically an iMac uh bent towards pro people because look if there was

00:20:25 ◼   ► going to be a new mac pro they wouldn't have left this one there for like four years with no updates

00:20:30 ◼   ► right? Like surely they wouldn't do that. With no communication or whatever, and it's like at a

00:20:36 ◼   ► certain point they're communicating to you by saying, "We updated the iMac." You know,

00:20:40 ◼   ► dropping the Apple monitors and sort of back channel communicating to some journalist somewhere

00:20:48 ◼   ► that, "Hey, Apple's not doing monitors anymore," and offering the LG one. That's another big sign.

00:20:52 ◼   ► Like, "The iMac, it's the future," right? And so we were just all like, we were in the acceptance

00:20:58 ◼   ► or at least I was like, well, you know, no more Mac Pros.

00:21:02 ◼   ► And we all wanna know that because we all kind of wanna

00:21:05 ◼   ► like be, you know, vengeful and say,

00:21:07 ◼   ► how could you have made this mistake?

00:21:08 ◼   ► Because on the one hand, we're all ecstatic

00:21:11 ◼   ► that the announcement they made was not,

00:21:13 ◼   ► hey, by the way, we just wanna let you know

00:21:15 ◼   ► we're not making the Mac Pro anymore.

00:21:17 ◼   ► Like we wanna make it official.

00:21:18 ◼   ► That could have been what they said at this meeting.

00:21:20 ◼   ► This meeting could have also been, you know,

00:21:22 ◼   ► where we're just giving up on the Mac.

00:21:24 ◼   ► Like the most pessimistic ideas of what could it mean

00:21:27 ◼   ► to go to a Mac roundtable, an ominous sounding Mac roundtable, if you were accepting there

00:21:32 ◼   ► was going to be no Mac Pro, it could have been like terrible bad news. Instead it was

00:21:34 ◼   ► good news, but the good news just immediately makes you ask the question, "What took you

00:21:40 ◼   ► so long?" And that's the question that, you know, "When did you figure it out? Like, what

00:21:44 ◼   ► was your plan before six months ago? What were you doing? Like, what's another year,

00:21:48 ◼   ► guys? This current Mac Pro that we never update will, you know..."

00:21:53 ◼   ► It's going to set the world on fire. Just wait.

00:21:55 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

00:21:56 ◼   ► And so they didn't-- they're not going to go into, like, you know, their deliberation

00:22:00 ◼   ► process and, you know, because they don't really realize stuff.

00:22:02 ◼   ► But they did go into a couple of aspects of, like, why is the current trash can-- why didn't

00:22:09 ◼   ► you ever update it?

00:22:11 ◼   ► And so Craig Federighi had said-- this is a quote from him-- "I think we designed ourselves

00:22:15 ◼   ► into a bit of a thermal corner."

00:22:17 ◼   ► And he was talking about the design of the trash can, which is a big cylinder.

00:22:21 ◼   ► And inside the cylinder is kind of like three boards, three vertical boards that make a

00:22:24 ◼   ► triangle shape if you're looking down on top of it two of them are GPUs and one of them is a CPU board

00:22:28 ◼   ► he was saying that the uh this is quoting from uh matt panzerino's article the unique triangular

00:22:34 ◼   ► design of the mac pro's thermal core provided proved to be the limiting factor um it wasn't

00:22:38 ◼   ► built to have for one of the three sides of the triangle to get super hot so if they if they wanted

00:22:42 ◼   ► to have a really hot GPU on one side and then cooler parts it was supposed to be like equal

00:22:46 ◼   ► distribution of heat from the two mid range you know mid heat GPUs and the CPU on the other side

00:22:52 ◼   ► But basically I think the problem is the little cylinder with the one fan on top,

00:22:55 ◼   ► there was just not enough cooling capacity unless you probably crank that fan up to the point where

00:22:59 ◼   ► they didn't like it. But the story they gave was they couldn't update it. Like the faster GPUs

00:23:07 ◼   ► they could have put in there, it couldn't handle a thermal load, maybe even also the CPUs.

00:23:10 ◼   ► And Federighi also emphasized that this wasn't like someone had an idea to make a trash can

00:23:17 ◼   ► shaped computer and then they just put all their marbles in that basket without thinking about it.

00:23:20 ◼   ► There's another quote from Federiga.

00:23:22 ◼   ► Federighi, "We didn't start with a shape and say,

00:23:24 ◼   ► "Well, here's the fastest machine we can put in that box.

00:23:27 ◼   ► "We actually started with a target for performance

00:23:28 ◼   ► "and came up with what we think was a very clever design

00:23:31 ◼   ► "for that thermal core and thermal architecture."

00:23:33 ◼   ► So they had a target of like two GPUs with lots of cores

00:23:38 ◼   ► and one CPU, and then they tried to figure out,

00:23:42 ◼   ► which again, you can say was one of their mistakes,

00:23:46 ◼   ► what is the smallest, quietest thing we can get that in?

00:23:49 ◼   ► They emphasize that in the 2013 Mac Pro launch.

00:23:51 ◼   ► Look how much smaller this trashcan Mac Pro is

00:23:55 ◼   ► than the giant cheese grater.

00:23:56 ◼   ► I remember when they put up the image

00:23:57 ◼   ► of the two things next to each other, it looked fake.

00:23:59 ◼   ► It was like, what is that, an airport hub next to a Mac Pro?

00:24:04 ◼   ► No, that's the new Mac Pro.

00:24:05 ◼   ► It seemed impossibly small compared to the size

00:24:08 ◼   ► of the cheese grater.

00:24:09 ◼   ► And they did, they made it, packaging-wise,

00:24:11 ◼   ► it is super quiet and super small

00:24:13 ◼   ► compared to a tower computer.

00:24:16 ◼   ► And of course, they sacrifice all the internal storage

00:24:18 ◼   ► and all the other stuff,

00:24:18 ◼   ► that basically by making that design and all the tooling and all that fancy factory in the US that

00:24:23 ◼   ► makes all this stuff and you know all the money they put into that the story they gave was that

00:24:28 ◼   ► basically they couldn't update it because none of the better stuff that they could fit in there

00:24:33 ◼   ► could be cooled inside that case so they had to design a new one but they didn't they just they

00:24:38 ◼   ► i don't know what they did they just sat on their hands for several years mulling over what to do

00:24:43 ◼   ► all the while continuing to sell that thing until they finally came to this realization so

00:24:48 ◼   ► I don't, you know, again we have to wait for people to retire and get the tell-all books, but

00:24:51 ◼   ► something went wrong inside Apple. Something went wrong with the Mac Pro because it is

00:24:58 ◼   ► not a good look to sell the same computer for the same price for so many years. And it's also

00:25:02 ◼   ► not a good look to only realize your mistake many, many, many years later. Way, way too late.

00:25:10 ◼   ► So late, in fact, that you are forced to do a thing that Apple never ever does, which is

00:25:15 ◼   ► call a bunch of journalists together and tell them about a computer you're going to release

00:25:19 ◼   ► in the next year, like not this calendar year. Like, A, let me tell you about something that's

00:25:24 ◼   ► not released yet. We can't even show you a picture of it. And B, it's not going to be released this

00:25:28 ◼   ► year. They also, by the way, didn't say as far as they were able to determine that it's going to be

00:25:32 ◼   ► released next year. All they said is not this year. And everybody's like, oh, that totally

00:25:36 ◼   ► means next year. Probably does, but they're covering their bases. And so that means that

00:25:41 ◼   ► that says to me that they decided very, very, very recently

00:25:46 ◼   ► on the sort of the no go, no go on the Mac Pro,

00:25:50 ◼   ► because if they had come and said,

00:25:52 ◼   ► guys, we just wanna tell you,

00:25:53 ◼   ► there's not going to be another Mac Pro.

00:25:57 ◼   ► That would make perfect sense,

00:25:58 ◼   ► 'cause it's like, well, we debated for a long time,

00:26:00 ◼   ► while we debated, we kept selling this thing,

00:26:02 ◼   ► but in the end, we're, you know, it's down the toilet,

00:26:06 ◼   ► down the toilet with the trashcan.

00:26:08 ◼   ► No more Mac Pros, the iMac is the future,

00:26:10 ◼   ► We just want to let you know and let's talk about it and let's explain to you why we think pros can use this other stuff

00:26:15 ◼   ► Or whatever because at least that would make sense for the trajectory instead

00:26:18 ◼   ► They hemmed it hard for four years realized the error of their ways, which is good

00:26:23 ◼   ► But realized it's so late that they have nothing to say to us except

00:26:27 ◼   ► We will we will make good and I'm glad they did what of course. I'm glad that they're they're gonna do this

00:26:33 ◼   ► I love the Mac Pro

00:26:34 ◼   ► I'm glad they went into specifics instead of saying we're going to make new pro hardware

00:26:39 ◼   ► They went into specifics by saying this new pro hardware will be modular in their parlance

00:26:44 ◼   ► There will be a separate monitor and a separate computer

00:26:47 ◼   ► So it's not gonna be like oh there's gonna be an awesome iMac you like no

00:26:50 ◼   ► They said that is a separate thing where we are gonna do a newer iMac with fancier stuff that pros might like but also

00:26:54 ◼   ► There's this thing which is modular and we're gonna make our own displays

00:26:58 ◼   ► which so recently they seem to be moving away from and I guess because they want me not to wake in the middle of the

00:27:05 ◼   ► night and

00:27:06 ◼   ► tremble in fear of having to get a non-apple monitor, they're going to make an apple monitor.

00:27:09 ◼   ► And the final point they made is whatever this design is, which they didn't go into details

00:27:15 ◼   ► about, we're going to make sure that with this design we can upgrade the internals on some kind

00:27:23 ◼   ► of schedule other than never ever upgrading them. Right, so those are the few bits of information

00:27:27 ◼   ► they gave about this. I get the impression that the same brief that they gave these journalists

00:27:32 ◼   ► was given to Apple's newly formed team not too long ago to say, "We need a Mac Pro. Needs

00:27:38 ◼   ► to be modular. We need a new Apple monitor. And we don't want the same thing that happened

00:27:42 ◼   ► with the trashcan to happen with this. We need the internals to be upgradeable on a

00:27:45 ◼   ► reasonable schedule." All of that is music to my ears because those are all the things

00:27:48 ◼   ► I want to hear. Like the only thing they could have said more was like, "We're going to have

00:27:55 ◼   ► multiple internal drives and multiple internal slots." They didn't say that, and I doubt

00:27:59 ◼   ► They will do that, but that's the only other thing that I could have even asked for in my wildest dreams

00:28:04 ◼   ► I am very very happy

00:28:05 ◼   ► But also very disappointed in Apple because they know what they did they done goofed

00:28:11 ◼   ► Yeah, they they did not do well on this whole Mac Pro thing. I'm glad but I'm glad they came

00:28:19 ◼   ► You know, I they messed up like they even said it themselves. They apologized. They said sorry, when does Apple ever do that because

00:28:26 ◼   ► It's not a coherent

00:28:29 ◼   ► thing like it it would be coherent if they said we slowly phase out the Mac Pro and it disappeared and

00:28:34 ◼   ► Let me tell you why we're not gonna be in that business anymore, but to

00:28:38 ◼   ► Neglect the Mac Pro like that and then have a change of heart at the very last minute

00:28:42 ◼   ► Certainly better from my perspective than not having a change of heart. That's not good for the company

00:28:47 ◼   ► It's not good for the image. It's not good for the pros

00:28:48 ◼   ► It's not good for Apple that they have to pre announce this product which is not a comfortable position for Apple to be in

00:28:52 ◼   ► So this was this was kind of a

00:28:58 ◼   ► example of Apple being humble and coming hat in hand and saying

00:29:02 ◼   ► We're sorry. We messed up this Mac Pro thing

00:29:06 ◼   ► Let us make it up to you by doing all the good things for you

00:29:09 ◼   ► And that's why everybody's happy because you know happy and also curious about what went along

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00:31:24 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:31:27 ◼   ► - So here's the thing, like on the whole, I agree with you.

00:31:32 ◼   ► And even as someone who sitting here now

00:31:34 ◼   ► doesn't foresee ever buying a Mac Pro,

00:31:37 ◼   ► I'm excited about this, I really am.

00:31:39 ◼   ► Like I joked a lot on Twitter about,

00:31:41 ◼   ► oh God, this episode's gonna be terrible.

00:31:43 ◼   ► But no, I'm actually excited to talk about it

00:31:45 ◼   ► because this is good for everyone

00:31:48 ◼   ► when Apple commits to the professional market.

00:31:52 ◼   ► It's good for me as, by some definition, a professional

00:31:56 ◼   ► because I think they actually cited Xcode

00:31:59 ◼   ► as one of the apps they consider to be a professional app

00:32:02 ◼   ► and one of the apps they look for in their analytics

00:32:04 ◼   ► to see who's a professional and who isn't.

00:32:06 ◼   ► But anyway, I definitely unequivocally think

00:32:11 ◼   ► that this was way, way, way too late.

00:32:16 ◼   ► But I don't know, a lot of people on Twitter

00:32:18 ◼   ► We're jumping straight to like, "Oh, Apple is just..."

00:32:21 ◼   ► You know, they weren't doing anything until yesterday,

00:32:25 ◼   ► and then they finally decided to do something.

00:32:28 ◼   ► I think it's unfair for us to assume how long it takes to build an entire new computer with

00:32:35 ◼   ► an entirely new design from the ground up.

00:32:38 ◼   ► I agree that they should have started on this a while ago.

00:32:41 ◼   ► I agree that we should never have gotten to this point.

00:32:45 ◼   ► But I think it's a bit presumptuous for us to just assume they can go to some parts bin

00:32:50 ◼   ► somewhere, throw a few things together, and call it good.

00:32:53 ◼   ► I think that we're perhaps assuming the worst where it may not be necessary.

00:32:58 ◼   ► This should have absolutely happened at least a year ago, if not two.

00:33:02 ◼   ► But it doesn't mean that they didn't start work on it a year ago, if not two.

00:33:06 ◼   ► What if they just didn't feel compelled to tell us about it until now?

00:33:11 ◼   ► Because a bunch of whiners, like those guys on ATP, God, what a bunch of whiners the three

00:33:15 ◼   ► of them are.

00:33:16 ◼   ► What if a bunch of whiners just got to the point that they felt like they needed to address

00:33:21 ◼   ► it once and for all?

00:33:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I, I, you know, we can put a lot where we think the decision was made to do something

00:33:28 ◼   ► different, but it's got to be pretty recent.

00:33:31 ◼   ► I mean, just use the LG monitor as an example.

00:33:34 ◼   ► The monitor for most people is a sideshow here.

00:33:36 ◼   ► For me, it's like the main show because I can tell you that if they, if they had said

00:33:41 ◼   ► we're gonna make a new Mac Pro, but we're still not making Apple monitors, I would still be like,

00:33:45 ◼   ► maybe we'll get an iMac, right? That's just me personally, right? But very recently, as recently

00:33:50 ◼   ► as when was it like? October? I don't know, whenever they came out with the new Mac Pro Pros

00:33:56 ◼   ► with the LG display, right? And they talked to the press about it and the press would ask them,

00:34:00 ◼   ► so, you know, should we get an Apple monitor? We're like, no, this LG monitor is the one we want,

00:34:06 ◼   ► it's on our store, we're fully behind it, so on and so forth. And then through back

00:34:10 ◼   ► channel communication to someone on Twitter to say basically Apple's out of

00:34:13 ◼   ► standalone display business. This is recent stuff. If, as you suggested Casey,

00:34:18 ◼   ► that perhaps they've been working on this new Mac Pro for over a year, there's

00:34:21 ◼   ► no way they would have told everybody that Apple's out of the standalone

00:34:26 ◼   ► display business through whatever back channels they did. Maybe they still would

00:34:29 ◼   ► have said buy the LG one anyway because the new Apple monitor isn't coming out

00:34:33 ◼   ► for a long time, but yeah there are long lead times in these things, but not... it

00:34:38 ◼   ► it doesn't take three years to make a monitor, right?

00:34:40 ◼   ► Like the time was when Apple would make new products

00:34:43 ◼   ► every year and yeah, they have overlapping schedules

00:34:45 ◼   ► and stuff like that, which by the way is why I think

00:34:48 ◼   ► the time that Apple needs to start making the next trashcan

00:34:50 ◼   ► is before the previous one is released.

00:34:52 ◼   ► Like that's usually how these things overlap.

00:34:53 ◼   ► Like the new iPhone is in the works at the time

00:34:56 ◼   ► that the current iPhone is released.

00:34:58 ◼   ► That's the only way you could have

00:34:59 ◼   ► UGLE releases of anything, right?

00:35:01 ◼   ► So it's not as if you can release the trashcan, right?

00:35:04 ◼   ► In late 2013.

00:35:06 ◼   ► And then after the trash cans release,

00:35:08 ◼   ► start working on the next one,

00:35:09 ◼   ► you're already late at that point.

00:35:11 ◼   ► Let alone release the trash can, wait a year or two,

00:35:14 ◼   ► and then start working on the successor.

00:35:16 ◼   ► That's just too long.

00:35:17 ◼   ► If you're, one of the things that,

00:35:18 ◼   ► the commitments of the pro market,

00:35:19 ◼   ► and it's what they talked about is,

00:35:22 ◼   ► you have to have a product that you can update.

00:35:25 ◼   ► Because the whole point of this product is,

00:35:27 ◼   ► the biggest, fastest computer Apple sells.

00:35:31 ◼   ► And if you don't update it,

00:35:34 ◼   ► Eventually your phone has faster single-threaded performance than that. You know, I mean like in the most extreme case you you have to update it

00:35:41 ◼   ► It's the role of this computer

00:35:42 ◼   ► The only reason it exists is to be the biggest fastest thing as soon as it's not biggest fastest people like well

00:35:47 ◼   ► Why am I buying this?

00:35:47 ◼   ► Why don't I buy a 13-inch laptop that has a better CPU speed or a faster SSD or has you know?

00:35:54 ◼   ► Thunderbolt 3 and this top-end thing doesn't like it loses its purpose without updates. So

00:35:59 ◼   ► They were super duper late and it seems to me that if they can't even promise a 2018 release of this thing

00:36:06 ◼   ► They started sometime

00:36:08 ◼   ► You know in in the past year

00:36:11 ◼   ► Oh easily you may maybe in the past six months because it's not like the thing we're asking about

00:36:17 ◼   ► When did they make the call?

00:36:18 ◼   ► When did they make the decision because they seem to make no decision for a really really long time and then they made a decision

00:36:23 ◼   ► And part of that decision was given that we made this decision

00:36:27 ◼   ► Look at our timelines. When will we actually be able to show a product?

00:36:30 ◼   ► It will hurt us a lot to just do the normal Apple thing

00:36:34 ◼   ► Which is not telling anybody until the product comes out because by then everyone will completely have written off Apple as a pro hardware vendor

00:36:41 ◼   ► So we need to make a decision and then the even harder decision

00:36:45 ◼   ► We're just now we have to tell people we have to tell people that we kind of started this new project because if we don't

00:36:49 ◼   ► By the time we release it, they'll all be gone. They all will have left

00:36:52 ◼   ► So be like hey guys, we have a new Mac Pro

00:36:54 ◼   ► We didn't want to tell you about it for the past year and a half that we've been developing it

00:36:56 ◼   ► but we totally have a new one.

00:36:57 ◼   ► It's like too late, we all left, you neglected us, right?

00:37:00 ◼   ► So they had to come out and tell us

00:37:02 ◼   ► that at some point in the future,

00:37:04 ◼   ► defined as not this year, there will be a new Mac Pro,

00:37:07 ◼   ► which was the right thing to do.

00:37:09 ◼   ► But it is them coming from a position of weakness.

00:37:12 ◼   ► And it makes me think that this decision was not made

00:37:15 ◼   ► and that the team to make this new Mac Pro

00:37:17 ◼   ► was not tasked with doing so

00:37:19 ◼   ► anytime longer than maybe like 12 months ago.

00:37:24 ◼   ► And I would guess maybe six months ago.

00:37:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would say that's, 'cause like, you know,

00:37:28 ◼   ► we know from various like tips and rumblings here and there

00:37:32 ◼   ► that like there were occasional efforts in Apple

00:37:36 ◼   ► to investigate new Zeons and stuff,

00:37:39 ◼   ► but that there was never any suggestion by anybody,

00:37:42 ◼   ► any rumors, any tips or anybody

00:37:44 ◼   ► that that was actually becoming a product for, you know,

00:37:47 ◼   ► and you were close to a product.

00:37:49 ◼   ► I really do think that this probably

00:37:52 ◼   ► became a priority six months ago.

00:37:53 ◼   ► - And that's how they determined, by the way,

00:37:55 ◼   ► That's how they determined probably their thermal limits.

00:37:58 ◼   ► Like they had the cylinder and we kept hearing rumors

00:38:01 ◼   ► from all sorts of weird sources like,

00:38:03 ◼   ► "Oh, they're looking at this chip.

00:38:04 ◼   ► "Oh, they're looking at that chip.

00:38:05 ◼   ► "They're looking at this GPU."

00:38:06 ◼   ► Like maybe they tried all sorts of like component upgrades

00:38:10 ◼   ► to the trashcan and every time they tried it,

00:38:12 ◼   ► it was either not a big enough win

00:38:13 ◼   ► or they couldn't deal with the thermals, right?

00:38:16 ◼   ► And it was just kind of like,

00:38:16 ◼   ► "Well, do we wanna bother going through with this?

00:38:19 ◼   ► "Should we make it a product?

00:38:20 ◼   ► "Maybe wait for next year.

00:38:21 ◼   ► "Maybe it'll be better.

00:38:22 ◼   ► "We have these problems."

00:38:23 ◼   ► Like Federighi's explanation is basically like they couldn't put better stuff in that

00:38:28 ◼   ► cylinder.

00:38:29 ◼   ► They had designed ourselves into a bit of a thermal corner and the fact that they continued

00:38:37 ◼   ► to try to tinker with that every time there was a new CPU or GPU but never actually released

00:38:42 ◼   ► anything fits with that idea.

00:38:44 ◼   ► It wasn't like they were opposed to making new Mac Pros.

00:38:48 ◼   ► They couldn't make new Mac Pros without a major investment and they come back and say,

00:38:51 ◼   ► "Well, we can't put new stuff in this cylinder.

00:38:54 ◼   ► Sorry about that.

00:38:55 ◼   ► Oops, can we make a totally new Mac Pro?"

00:38:57 ◼   ► And then it was like, "Well, that seems like expensive

00:39:01 ◼   ► and not a lot of people buy this."

00:39:02 ◼   ► And they just kept doing that and doing that.

00:39:03 ◼   ► And you know, externally, we see nothing.

00:39:05 ◼   ► We just, you know, we have the same Mac Pro as always

00:39:07 ◼   ► and just a bunch of, you know, rumors.

00:39:10 ◼   ► And eventually has to come to a head and say,

00:39:12 ◼   ► "Look, are we in this business

00:39:13 ◼   ► or are we not in this business?"

00:39:14 ◼   ► And the decision that they made,

00:39:16 ◼   ► which I'm very happy with is,

00:39:17 ◼   ► "Yes, we are in this business.

00:39:19 ◼   ► We're gonna rededicate ourselves.

00:39:21 ◼   ► and we're not gonna make the same mistake twice.

00:39:23 ◼   ► Nobody puts new Mac Pro in a corner, in a thermal corner.

00:39:26 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:39:28 ◼   ► And that's--

00:39:28 ◼   ► - Reference acknowledged.

00:39:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, so, boy, it's, I would not want to have been

00:39:35 ◼   ► in these meetings, but I am so glad,

00:39:37 ◼   ► I'm so glad that they made, I can't even say

00:39:39 ◼   ► it's the right decision, I don't know if it's the right

00:39:41 ◼   ► decision for Apple, but it's the decision that I wanted.

00:39:43 ◼   ► Actually, yes I can, I think it is the right decision

00:39:45 ◼   ► for Apple, because if Apple's not gonna be

00:39:47 ◼   ► in the pro market, then what the hell's the point of Apple?

00:39:50 ◼   ► like, which is gonna be a phone company,

00:39:51 ◼   ► I think that's not the Apple we all believe in,

00:39:54 ◼   ► and it's clearly not the Apple that all the people

00:39:57 ◼   ► who come to these meetings and profess

00:39:59 ◼   ► undying love for the Mac believe in either.

00:40:01 ◼   ► - Well, and I think it's more than that.

00:40:03 ◼   ► It's that, like, if Apple decides that iOS

00:40:06 ◼   ► is the only OS in their future, then that's one thing.

00:40:09 ◼   ► But if the Mac, as a platform, is going to continue,

00:40:13 ◼   ► they need to keep building pro hardware.

00:40:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, but is the iMac pro enough?

00:40:19 ◼   ► I think we'll talk about that more later. But the one thing that that strikes me about this like I

00:40:23 ◼   ► Suspect you guys are right and that it was very recent in the last 12 months or so that that Apple got really serious

00:40:30 ◼   ► About replacing the Mac Pro, but it seems a little disingenuous to me for us to say

00:40:36 ◼   ► Oh, surely they have Mac OS running on ARM, you know, surely they're doing that. Why would they not?

00:40:42 ◼   ► I mean, I know hardware is different

00:40:44 ◼   ► But don't you think they would have been doing more than just piddling with a new Mac Pro for all this time?

00:40:51 ◼   ► Maybe there were only a handful of people on it

00:40:53 ◼   ► Maybe they weren't taking it too seriously

00:40:55 ◼   ► But if I feel like why wouldn't you at least have that in the hopper just in case now?

00:41:00 ◼   ► To your point a minute ago both of you

00:41:02 ◼   ► Maybe that didn't start until like two years ago or one year ago or what have you but I feel half a year ago

00:41:08 ◼   ► Well, that's not gonna be not gonna be two years ago

00:41:11 ◼   ► They would be they would be done by now if it was two years ago, especially since this like in the I know

00:41:15 ◼   ► So here's the thing. There's a tension with Apple between

00:41:17 ◼   ► Make an amazing new thing

00:41:20 ◼   ► Which I think trash can qualify as I like and you haven't seen a PC like this before look at this thing

00:41:24 ◼   ► Isn't it weird and crazy and awesome?

00:41:25 ◼   ► Like they want to do that, but then there's schedule pressure

00:41:28 ◼   ► So as many people pointed out they can make a rectangular box with nice finishes on it shove a bunch of crap in it

00:41:33 ◼   ► And be done, but they don't want to do that

00:41:34 ◼   ► So they're going to take longer than it would take to just slap together some basically a PC that runs Mac OS, right?

00:41:40 ◼   ► The question is how much longer will they take and if they had started two years ago even with the most obsessive

00:41:47 ◼   ► You know

00:41:49 ◼   ► Apple craftsmanship they could they could have had something to show today, right? So that makes me think again

00:41:55 ◼   ► They had to have started this in the last calendar year

00:41:58 ◼   ► You know, that's the longest I'm gonna say this goes back and probably even closer. Yeah, and so I think it's also worth

00:42:06 ◼   ► kind of putting the 2013 trashcan in context a little bit

00:42:10 ◼   ► to figure out like why they still care

00:42:14 ◼   ► and maybe what they can do to avoid another problem like this

00:42:19 ◼   ► so in addition to the reasons that John always likes to say

00:42:23 ◼   ► about like you know the Halo car analogy

00:42:25 ◼   ► and everything else which I agree with.

00:42:27 ◼   ► So it actually sells better than I thought.

00:42:29 ◼   ► So one of the things that came out in this meeting

00:42:31 ◼   ► with this said that desktops are 20% of max sales

00:42:34 ◼   ► which that alone is higher than I would have guessed.

00:42:38 ◼   ► Laptops are most people's computers these days,

00:42:41 ◼   ► so the fact that desktops still have 20%

00:42:44 ◼   ► is pretty good, I think.

00:42:46 ◼   ► They said that the Mac Pro is in the low

00:42:49 ◼   ► single digit percentage of those Mac sales.

00:42:52 ◼   ► If that's 1%, which is the lowest that their estimate

00:42:56 ◼   ► would really mean, that is about 200,000 Mac Pros a year.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Now that I think is like 1% of Mac sales and 200,000,

00:43:06 ◼   ► I think that's actually really good for,

00:43:08 ◼   ► 'cause that's not the sales of the Mac Pro

00:43:11 ◼   ► in its launch year when it's updated,

00:43:14 ◼   ► that's the sales of the Mac Pro now.

00:43:16 ◼   ► Like this three year old lame duck machine,

00:43:19 ◼   ► that's the sales of that now.

00:43:22 ◼   ► So I think it's remarkable that it still sells that well.

00:43:25 ◼   ► And that says that the market for these things

00:43:28 ◼   ► is probably bigger than a lot of us were estimating.

00:43:32 ◼   ► Because if this machine that's three years old

00:43:34 ◼   ► and wasn't even that compelling when it was new

00:43:37 ◼   ► for various reasons, I'll get into it in a second,

00:43:38 ◼   ► if that can still sell 200,000 units a year, that's amazing.

00:43:43 ◼   ► And so I decided to look up a couple of stats,

00:43:47 ◼   ► I did some homework, that is roughly--

00:43:49 ◼   ► - What?

00:43:51 ◼   ► - That is roughly equivalent, I translated this

00:43:52 ◼   ► into terms you understand, Casey,

00:43:54 ◼   ► to the sales volume of the BMW X5.

00:43:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:43:59 ◼   ► - Well done, well done.

00:44:00 ◼   ► - That's roughly what the X5 sells every year worldwide.

00:44:03 ◼   ► And that's a fairly popular model in their lineup.

00:44:06 ◼   ► So the fact that a car can,

00:44:09 ◼   ► oh and by the way, it's also double

00:44:11 ◼   ► the total sales volume of Tesla.

00:44:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:44:15 ◼   ► So if it's selling in this kind of volume,

00:44:19 ◼   ► if a car company can justify having a car,

00:44:22 ◼   ► an entire car model with all the customization

00:44:24 ◼   ► that goes into that and support and everything else,

00:44:26 ◼   ► Apple can justify having a machine that only sells

00:44:28 ◼   ► to this relatively small audience

00:44:31 ◼   ► compared to their whole product line.

00:44:33 ◼   ► - Well, but what's the profit off of each of these devices?

00:44:36 ◼   ► You know, the profit off of an X5, one would hope,

00:44:38 ◼   ► would be many, many, many thousands of dollars.

00:44:40 ◼   ► What's the profit off a trash can Mac Pro?

00:44:43 ◼   ► - Oh no, I mean, no question.

00:44:44 ◼   ► The raw, well actually, I wouldn't assume

00:44:47 ◼   ► that the profits are that massive on cars,

00:44:49 ◼   ► maybe on luxury cars, especially if you get the floor mats,

00:44:52 ◼   ► But I think the costs of developing a new Mac Pro line,

00:44:56 ◼   ► especially if it's kind of reasonably done,

00:45:02 ◼   ► are probably low enough compared to developing a whole car.

00:45:05 ◼   ► I think they're probably okay there.

00:45:09 ◼   ► But anyway, I did wanna briefly go into exactly

00:45:13 ◼   ► what went wrong with 2013 Mac Pro,

00:45:16 ◼   ► so that we and as commentators,

00:45:19 ◼   ► and hopefully if anybody at Apple is listening,

00:45:22 ◼   ► I assume, you know, they're all smart people,

00:45:23 ◼   ► they're considering these things too,

00:45:25 ◼   ► but I just wanna say it just in case,

00:45:26 ◼   ► 'cause I think there's important lessons to learn here,

00:45:29 ◼   ► and I really hope they have learned them.

00:45:32 ◼   ► So, quick summary, when the 2013 came out,

00:45:35 ◼   ► it cost more than the previous model,

00:45:38 ◼   ► but it accommodated fewer people's needs.

00:45:41 ◼   ► And so that'll, even when it was brand new,

00:45:44 ◼   ► on day one, once all the configs and pricing were up,

00:45:48 ◼   ► a lot of people did not like it very much,

00:45:50 ◼   ► and a lot of pros said, "Ooh, never mind,"

00:45:52 ◼   ► because it was so much more limited

00:45:54 ◼   ► than the previous ones.

00:45:55 ◼   ► It gave up all the drive bays, all the slots,

00:45:58 ◼   ► a lot of the RAM expansion capabilities,

00:46:00 ◼   ► GPU replaceability, GPU options, dual CPU,

00:46:05 ◼   ► dual socket options.

00:46:06 ◼   ► There was so much stuff that was given up.

00:46:09 ◼   ► So it really did a lot less, and it cost more.

00:46:13 ◼   ► And so that's like, whatever Apple does next,

00:46:16 ◼   ► they have to learn a lesson from that.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Whether they choose to follow it or not,

00:46:20 ◼   ► something to learn. Also it also suffered from just kind of bad market timing

00:46:25 ◼   ► relative to the rest of the industry so almost immediately the 5k screen right

00:46:31 ◼   ► you know revolution happened it was like it was like nine months into the Mac Pro

00:46:35 ◼   ► when when 5k screens came out in the iMac and the Mac Pro has no good way to

00:46:40 ◼   ► drive a 5k screen and and Apple doesn't sell one stuff and and when they did

00:46:45 ◼   ► finally get around to launching one last fall it doesn't work with 2013 Mac Pro

00:46:49 ◼   ► at least, we keep hearing random hacks about how

00:46:52 ◼   ► the stores are kind of hacking it to work,

00:46:54 ◼   ► but basically it doesn't work.

00:46:57 ◼   ► And so it missed the 5K revolution by a very short time.

00:47:01 ◼   ► And a lot of pros, like myself, prioritized having

00:47:06 ◼   ► that retina screen over having those additional cores

00:47:08 ◼   ► and everything.

00:47:09 ◼   ► Also, right after that model came out,

00:47:11 ◼   ► the next generation of processors that Apple,

00:47:14 ◼   ► of course, didn't use, increased single-threaded

00:47:16 ◼   ► performance noticeably.

00:47:18 ◼   ► And so what happened was, within a very short time

00:47:20 ◼   ► of the Mac Pro being released, within about a year,

00:47:23 ◼   ► it was unable to drive the best screens

00:47:25 ◼   ► that the highest end buyers wanted,

00:47:27 ◼   ► and it was defeated in a lot of single-threaded

00:47:31 ◼   ► performance tasks and a lot of benchmarks.

00:47:33 ◼   ► It was either beaten completely,

00:47:36 ◼   ► or in the case of the 6-core,

00:47:38 ◼   ► it could barely edge out in multi-threaded,

00:47:41 ◼   ► but that wasn't all work.

00:47:43 ◼   ► So it badly timed in the market.

00:47:46 ◼   ► - Don't forget about USB-C.

00:47:48 ◼   ► One more revolution that happened across the product line.

00:47:50 ◼   ► USB-C also came along and guess who didn't get that?

00:47:53 ◼   ► The Mac Pro.

00:47:54 ◼   ► Like terrible timing in terms of peripheral.

00:47:56 ◼   ► Like it wouldn't have been terrible timing

00:47:57 ◼   ► if it was on a yearly update schedule.

00:47:59 ◼   ► It'd be like, oh, next year the Mac Pro will get updated,

00:48:01 ◼   ► it will get the new chips, it will get USB-C,

00:48:03 ◼   ► it will get Thunderbolt 3,

00:48:05 ◼   ► it will be able to drive a 5K display.

00:48:07 ◼   ► But again, the thermal corner.

00:48:10 ◼   ► Apparently they just plain couldn't do that.

00:48:13 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:48:14 ◼   ► And then also, by limiting it to a single CPU

00:48:18 ◼   ► and dual GPU configuration,

00:48:20 ◼   ► they were making a big bet that this is going to be

00:48:25 ◼   ► the future of pro computing.

00:48:26 ◼   ► Unfortunately, it wasn't the present of pro computing

00:48:29 ◼   ► at the time, and the future took a different direction.

00:48:32 ◼   ► And they were betting that just having this one set

00:48:35 ◼   ► of trade-offs, this one CPU, two workstation GPUs,

00:48:40 ◼   ► that was gonna solve all pro needs,

00:48:42 ◼   ► These are all needs of the Mac Pro customers, at least.

00:48:44 ◼   ► That was wrong even in 2013, and it never became correct.

00:48:49 ◼   ► They were betting big on OpenCL,

00:48:51 ◼   ► and that really didn't pan out beyond

00:48:53 ◼   ► a very small number of specialized uses.

00:48:56 ◼   ► And they never really supported it very well

00:48:58 ◼   ► in Mac OS either.

00:49:01 ◼   ► And so I think another lesson to learn here

00:49:03 ◼   ► is that whatever direction the Mac Pro takes,

00:49:07 ◼   ► it can't rely on highly specialized OS features very much,

00:49:12 ◼   ► because chances are it's never gonna have the priority

00:49:16 ◼   ► within Apple and the engineering priority

00:49:19 ◼   ► to devote a lot of engineering time

00:49:21 ◼   ► to optimizing the OS for this machine

00:49:23 ◼   ► that sells to 1% of the user base.

00:49:25 ◼   ► Like, they're never gonna do that.

00:49:27 ◼   ► So it can't depend on weird, like,

00:49:31 ◼   ► edge case technologies like OpenCL has turned out to be.

00:49:36 ◼   ► If it can handle it well, that's one thing,

00:49:37 ◼   ► that can't be the main focus of the machine.

00:49:39 ◼   ► They did do a lot of OS changes to support the dual GPUs,

00:49:43 ◼   ► because remember one of them was like,

00:49:44 ◼   ► "Oh, you could address them individually and use one for compute and one for graphics."

00:49:48 ◼   ► And they have that whole demo of the 3D application that Pixar was using.

00:49:51 ◼   ► So they actually added OS APIs to make it so that people could write programs

00:49:56 ◼   ► to take advantage of this machine.

00:49:57 ◼   ► But the only way anybody, like any pro app vendor,

00:50:01 ◼   ► is going to change their program to take advantage of this new fancy hardware

00:50:07 ◼   ► is if doing so gives them some kind of advantage.

00:50:10 ◼   ► Like, okay, well this is weird hardware.

00:50:12 ◼   ► But Apple gives us APIs and we can address these two GPUs

00:50:16 ◼   ► and control them and do interesting things.

00:50:19 ◼   ► If we do this, if we make this big investment

00:50:21 ◼   ► and rejigger our application and use these new APIs,

00:50:23 ◼   ► what is the payoff?

00:50:24 ◼   ► And if the payoff is performance that still doesn't match

00:50:28 ◼   ► a plain old Windows PC with a big stonking single GPU in it,

00:50:33 ◼   ► well, why would we do that?

00:50:34 ◼   ► Why would we spend all this time rewriting our thing

00:50:36 ◼   ► to get worse performance than we could get

00:50:38 ◼   ► if we just leave our application exactly the way it is

00:50:40 ◼   ► and get a G-Force 1080,

00:50:44 ◼   ► whatever the top of the line thing was at the time,

00:50:47 ◼   ► why would we bother doing that?

00:50:49 ◼   ► So people didn't rewrite their programs,

00:50:51 ◼   ► even though there were APIs,

00:50:53 ◼   ► and those APIs themselves didn't get expanded

00:50:56 ◼   ► and supported and everything

00:50:57 ◼   ► because there was no one writing for them.

00:50:58 ◼   ► So it was an ecosystem that never materialized

00:51:01 ◼   ► for hardware that was never good enough

00:51:03 ◼   ► to justify the investment

00:51:04 ◼   ► and very quickly became embarrassingly not good enough,

00:51:08 ◼   ► as you mentioned.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Every other standard and peripheral and capability

00:51:13 ◼   ► just passed it by, even on Apple's own

00:51:15 ◼   ► infrequently updated machines.

00:51:17 ◼   ► - Right, and they also had execution flaws

00:51:20 ◼   ► even with this one model.

00:51:21 ◼   ► They're talking now about how the thermals

00:51:25 ◼   ► prevented them from updating it very, very well.

00:51:28 ◼   ► The thermals were a problem then too.

00:51:30 ◼   ► This machine, anybody who's ever owned one of these,

00:51:32 ◼   ► or especially anybody who's had to manage

00:51:34 ◼   ► more than one of them, like certain developer studios

00:51:37 ◼   ► or visual effects places that have had multiple

00:51:40 ◼   ► 2013 Mac Pros, the GPUs die all the time.

00:51:44 ◼   ► Apple's doing tons of warranty replacements on those.

00:51:46 ◼   ► The only reason it hasn't become like a big known

00:51:49 ◼   ► scandal or thing is because this is a relatively

00:51:52 ◼   ► unpopular product, so not a lot of people have them.

00:51:54 ◼   ► But anyone who does have it knows that there's tons

00:51:57 ◼   ► of GPU overheating problems and they die all the time.

00:52:01 ◼   ► And on top of that, to make a GPU focused machine

00:52:05 ◼   ► that takes this huge bet on GPUs being the future

00:52:09 ◼   ► and then not updating it for three years,

00:52:11 ◼   ► like GPUs change like every nine months.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Like it's a pretty fast moving part of hardware development.

00:52:18 ◼   ► So it was a huge design flaw even then

00:52:21 ◼   ► to design something that could barely cool the GPUs it had

00:52:26 ◼   ► and then with not only apparently no headroom

00:52:28 ◼   ► cool future ones but also to not update this machine at all for three and a half

00:52:33 ◼   ► years at least and probably what's probably gonna end up being four and a

00:52:36 ◼   ► half to five that's a massive just error in just how it was an execution flaw

00:52:42 ◼   ► simple as that I will say though like as much as I bag in this machine like

00:52:48 ◼   ► redesigning the tower like the cheese grater typical PC tower I mean it was

00:52:54 ◼   ► more than typical, it was a really good one,

00:52:55 ◼   ► but redesigning the tower in 2013 was a good idea,

00:53:00 ◼   ► and it remains a good idea today.

00:53:02 ◼   ► They should not just put new components

00:53:06 ◼   ► in the old cheese grater and ship that as the new thing,

00:53:09 ◼   ► because there's lots of old baggage

00:53:12 ◼   ► that is no longer necessary in the PC tower.

00:53:16 ◼   ► So doing a redesign is the right move.

00:53:19 ◼   ► They just didn't do the right one.

00:53:22 ◼   ► They chose a bad redesign.

00:53:23 ◼   ► They went the wrong direction and they admitted that yeah those like my blog post back and before the new Mac Pro in 2013

00:53:30 ◼   ► Begging for them to make a new Mac Pro

00:53:32 ◼   ► The case for a new true Mac Pro successor like everything you said about the the trash can I agree with and you know

00:53:38 ◼   ► It was kind of you know, you could have predicted these mistakes at a time because it didn't suit our needs

00:53:43 ◼   ► But like well, maybe there's other audiences for them. It could have worked out but either way whether it worked out

00:53:47 ◼   ► It didn't they made mistakes. They were there were bad time with 5k displays in USB C and Thunderbolt 3

00:53:52 ◼   ► You can't say that we make fun of the can't innovate anymore my ass the Phil Schiller thing

00:53:58 ◼   ► But that was mostly because they failed to update it. This was right an innovative machine

00:54:03 ◼   ► They tried something new and bold and daring and they were trying to make

00:54:09 ◼   ► The best Mac that there could be it was so different from any other Mac that there ever had been before

00:54:15 ◼   ► And there have been since so different in so many ways that I give them full marks for

00:54:22 ◼   ► doing what I asked them to do, which is try to do your best.

00:54:25 ◼   ► Turns out this wasn't a good idea,

00:54:27 ◼   ► but you can't say they didn't try.

00:54:28 ◼   ► You can't say like, and again,

00:54:30 ◼   ► I would have been more disappointed to say,

00:54:32 ◼   ► oh, here's another cheese grater, right?

00:54:33 ◼   ► Like, 'cause that's not really trying.

00:54:36 ◼   ► That's just kind of a business as usual status quo,

00:54:38 ◼   ► which is better than nothing.

00:54:40 ◼   ► But I do give them full marks for introducing it,

00:54:45 ◼   ► which is why even though I didn't buy one,

00:54:46 ◼   ► I was very happy that it existed.

00:54:48 ◼   ► I was pinning my hopes on,

00:54:49 ◼   ► okay, they're either gonna keep updating this

00:54:51 ◼   ► I'll buy the one that can drive the retina display remember those days when I was talking about that

00:54:54 ◼   ► Mm-hmm and same thing for this new one in the same way

00:54:57 ◼   ► It's like well they could make some kind of rectangular box and sell it and they could get that out sooner

00:55:01 ◼   ► I'm willing to wait for them to try something innovative

00:55:05 ◼   ► They just need to make a different set of trade-offs with this design building on what they've learned

00:55:10 ◼   ► But I totally like the idea of them because if they're just gonna make a box

00:55:14 ◼   ► I know people want them to do that just make me like a rectangular PC that I can run Mac OS on which I'm sure some

00:55:20 ◼   ► people would like, but I want more than that from Apple.

00:55:24 ◼   ► I mean, even the cheese grater is, like you said, Mark,

00:55:26 ◼   ► it's not just a tower case, it is a really cool,

00:55:28 ◼   ► really good, really interesting tower case

00:55:30 ◼   ► that has many innovations inside and out

00:55:33 ◼   ► and turned out to be a good design

00:55:36 ◼   ► that they kept for a long time.

00:55:37 ◼   ► Just do that again, Apple, is that so hard?

00:55:39 ◼   ► Just be successful all the time, that's the deal.

00:55:42 ◼   ► - Well, and I think, looking back, as you said,

00:55:45 ◼   ► they did something, as Federighi said in this interview,

00:55:48 ◼   ► he said, "We wanted to do something bold and different

00:55:49 ◼   ► with the 2013 one.

00:55:51 ◼   ► And he said, "It's good for some,

00:55:53 ◼   ► "but it does not address the full range

00:55:54 ◼   ► "of Mac Pro customers."

00:55:56 ◼   ► And I think this is the nut right here.

00:55:57 ◼   ► Apple is really good at being bold and different.

00:56:01 ◼   ► And they pride themselves on that.

00:56:04 ◼   ► They really try to do that with much of what they do.

00:56:09 ◼   ► The problem is that if you only make

00:56:12 ◼   ► bold and different product line choices,

00:56:15 ◼   ► then the overall product line will suffer,

00:56:17 ◼   ► because you need general purpose products to fill the gaps

00:56:21 ◼   ► and satisfy the most needs.

00:56:24 ◼   ► And the Mac Pro, the purpose of this machine

00:56:27 ◼   ► is to serve a bunch of those edge cases.

00:56:30 ◼   ► And you can't just make one super focused design

00:56:34 ◼   ► like this one CPU, two Pro GPUs, no slots, nothing else.

00:56:37 ◼   ► You can't do that kind of bold and different design

00:56:41 ◼   ► for this particular product line

00:56:42 ◼   ► because all of the different edge cases

00:56:45 ◼   ► that the Mac Pro needs to satisfy

00:56:46 ◼   ► they're all different from each other.

00:56:48 ◼   ► So no single narrow design like this can satisfy them.

00:56:51 ◼   ► The old Mac Pro cheese grater could be configured

00:56:54 ◼   ► in completely different ways,

00:56:56 ◼   ► depending on what the customer needed.

00:56:58 ◼   ► And there was a huge range of what that could do.

00:57:01 ◼   ► And that's the kind of flexibility this product line needs.

00:57:05 ◼   ► Mac Pro buyers, they don't need cool and bold and different,

00:57:09 ◼   ► they need versatile, powerful, and kept up to date.

00:57:13 ◼   ► - And it can be innovative too,

00:57:14 ◼   ► like the Yosemite case.

00:57:16 ◼   ► Before Yosemite was the name of an operating system.

00:57:19 ◼   ► It was a code name for a tower case designed by Apple

00:57:22 ◼   ► that was like, oh, a tower.

00:57:23 ◼   ► It's like a vertical rectangular solid,

00:57:26 ◼   ► but Apple did its thing.

00:57:27 ◼   ► Hey, ours has handles on all four corners,

00:57:29 ◼   ► and ours has a side panel that folds down,

00:57:31 ◼   ► and the motherboard was on the side panel at that point.

00:57:33 ◼   ► Look how easy it is to open this thing up,

00:57:35 ◼   ► and here's the RAM, and here's the GPU,

00:57:37 ◼   ► and you can change your hard drives,

00:57:38 ◼   ► and they use that design for two generations,

00:57:40 ◼   ► the G3 and the G4, and well,

00:57:42 ◼   ► more if you count like a mirror drive door and the wind tunnels and all that other stuff.

00:57:47 ◼   ► And then came the cheese grater with the power Mac G5.

00:57:49 ◼   ► Still four handles, but a different design, aluminum.

00:57:52 ◼   ► And look how easy it is to slide the hard drives in and out.

00:57:54 ◼   ► And there's a little panel that comes off the side and look how much room we have for

00:57:56 ◼   ► fans and the computer controlled fans and all this other stuff.

00:58:00 ◼   ► Like both of those designs were innovative and interesting.

00:58:03 ◼   ► But like Marco was saying, they were modular, they could be configured to different needs.

00:58:09 ◼   ► You could choose what you wanted to put in them and make the computer that you needed.

00:58:13 ◼   ► If instead they had made an innovative, like the G4 Cube is a good example.

00:58:17 ◼   ► The G4 Cube is basically a trash can before it's time.

00:58:20 ◼   ► Here's one computer with one specific set of trade-offs and you can't change those trade-offs

00:58:23 ◼   ► at all and if it doesn't suit your needs, you're out of luck.

00:58:27 ◼   ► The G4 Cube did not do well in the market despite being a cool, cute little computer.

00:58:34 ◼   ► To address the pro market, you either need to have a bunch of different models, each

00:58:37 ◼   ► which satisfies a need or some kind of system that you can configure to serve different

00:58:43 ◼   ► people's needs.

00:58:44 ◼   ► So either they can configure themselves with third-party things or they can configure on

00:58:46 ◼   ► your store by picking from pop-up menus.

00:58:49 ◼   ► How much storage, how many drives, how many GPUs, what kind of GPUs, how much memory,

00:58:53 ◼   ► all those things.

00:58:54 ◼   ► And I think too, like, it's important to recognize when they were designing the trashcan in 2013,

00:59:01 ◼   ► I don't think they necessarily forgot what pros need.

00:59:05 ◼   ► I think they were swayed by both a bit of hubris

00:59:10 ◼   ► and also the times.

00:59:12 ◼   ► Back then, the reason why Phil Schiller said,

00:59:15 ◼   ► can't innovate anymore, my ass,

00:59:17 ◼   ► and the reason that got a huge applause,

00:59:19 ◼   ► besides the fact that it's hilarious hearing that from him,

00:59:21 ◼   ► is that at the time, there was a huge, overwhelming

00:59:26 ◼   ► press and analyst narrative of Apple not being able

00:59:29 ◼   ► to innovate anymore, and that Samsung was doing

00:59:32 ◼   ► all the innovation.

00:59:33 ◼   ► This was a huge thing in 2013,

00:59:35 ◼   ► that Samsung was taking the innovation crown.

00:59:37 ◼   ► And of course, we were all trying to figure out,

00:59:39 ◼   ► what do they mean by innovation, exactly?

00:59:40 ◼   ► But that was a massive thing that everybody was saying

00:59:44 ◼   ► about Apple, the press, the stock people,

00:59:46 ◼   ► everyone was saying, Apple can't innovate anymore.

00:59:48 ◼   ► Samsung's innovating.

00:59:50 ◼   ► And it turned out that all that was was big phones,

00:59:52 ◼   ► 'cause Apple didn't have the big phones yet.

00:59:54 ◼   ► Turns out, all Apple needed to do to innovate Samsung

00:59:57 ◼   ► was to make the same size phones that Samsung makes.

01:00:00 ◼   ► But that pretty much solved that problem for them.

01:00:03 ◼   ► But I feel like that narrative really got to them

01:00:06 ◼   ► and that helped sway their decision

01:00:08 ◼   ► into taking a much bigger risk with this product

01:00:11 ◼   ► than they should have.

01:00:12 ◼   ► I think Apple, and maybe this has changed now,

01:00:15 ◼   ► I'm not sure it has,

01:00:16 ◼   ► Apple needs to be confident enough in itself

01:00:20 ◼   ► to release boring products sometimes

01:00:22 ◼   ► when that's actually what certain types of customers need.

01:00:26 ◼   ► And the Mac Pro is the biggest example of that.

01:00:28 ◼   ► Like they can totally do, not only can they,

01:00:30 ◼   ► they should probably do a relatively boring line of Mac Pros because that's like what

01:00:38 ◼   ► comes along with boringness is what pros need.

01:00:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm struggling because it's so clear to me how right you are in retrospect, but

01:00:51 ◼   ► if you're Apple and you're looking at what's coming in 2013, which here again, I mean 2013

01:00:57 ◼   ► like forever ago and that's when this thing was that was released oh my god

01:01:00 ◼   ► this is so bad but anyway when you're looking at the future in 2013 and you're

01:01:04 ◼   ► looking at like open CL and all these different options it makes sense to me

01:01:09 ◼   ► to bet the maybe not at the house that's probably a little aggressive but bet big

01:01:14 ◼   ► on open CL and and say you know what this is probably the future and we're

01:01:19 ◼   ► gonna give you the best possible machine that will be as fast as it possibly can

01:01:24 ◼   ► can for that future that is so obviously coming. Unfortunately, that future never came. But

01:01:30 ◼   ► sitting where Apple presumably was sitting in 2013, I think it does make sense to do what they

01:01:39 ◼   ► did. But unequivocally, looking at it in hindsight, you are absolutely correct that the boring machine

01:01:45 ◼   ► was the writer machine. And maybe the cleverness is what Jon was talking about and having a

01:01:49 ◼   ► a motherboard on the door or whatever, or what have you, or making it easily upgradeable

01:01:53 ◼   ► or whatever the case may be. But I don't think we could necessarily fault Apple for the way

01:01:58 ◼   ► they were thinking in 2013, given the facts they had in front of them.

01:02:03 ◼   ► I think you can fault them by saying like, if they thought OpenCL was the future, wouldn't

01:02:08 ◼   ► they have to release a machine that the next year they could make it run OpenCL faster?

01:02:13 ◼   ► And then the year after that they can make it run OpenCL faster? Even if they had kind

01:02:16 ◼   ► of an idea of what the GPU compute future was going to be like. It doesn't seem like

01:02:21 ◼   ► they had a roadmap of like, when this future arrives, we should be poised to make the fastest

01:02:28 ◼   ► thing that you can run OpenCL on year after year. They weren't even poised to do that,

01:02:31 ◼   ► even if it had materialized. By the time this machine slipped, like I said, you can get

01:02:37 ◼   ► a single GPU PC that beat it, right? In the things that people cared about, right? And

01:02:43 ◼   ► people didn't have to rewrite their applications. And they seem to have no plan. I mean, it's

01:02:47 ◼   ► a surprise to me because this type of chimney design where you pull in cool air from the

01:02:50 ◼   ► bottom and exhaust the hot air out the top with a really big fan that goes slowly, I

01:02:55 ◼   ► would think that would have more thermal capacity than it apparently has. So we're taking what

01:02:59 ◼   ► they said in face value that like they had, you know, thermal problems with it and they

01:03:03 ◼   ► couldn't get new stuff in it. That's pretty darn bad. And I have a hard time envisioning

01:03:09 ◼   ► good plan for the Mac Pro that does not include the ability to make it faster

01:03:13 ◼   ► next year and faster the year after that and faster the year after that in an

01:03:16 ◼   ► incremental way because again the whole point of this product is to be the

01:03:19 ◼   ► fastest thing out there and I know what Mark was saying with the boring updates

01:03:23 ◼   ► I wouldn't use that word to characterize it because as far as I'm concerned

01:03:26 ◼   ► having the best performance in the product line is not boring even if it's

01:03:30 ◼   ► not in a in a spiral shaped underwater case right you know or whatever you want

01:03:35 ◼   ► to say is like oh we can put it in a sphere and it rolls around your desk

01:03:38 ◼   ► like whatever, if every year it gets faster and faster,

01:03:42 ◼   ► speed is not boring, capability is not boring.

01:03:45 ◼   ► Like, you know, my renders or compiles

01:03:47 ◼   ► took x amount of time.

01:03:49 ◼   ► If I buy a new one in a year or two years,

01:03:51 ◼   ► they should take x divided by some number amount of time,

01:03:55 ◼   ► it's something that's greater than one, right?

01:03:58 ◼   ► I wanna see things happen faster, and that's not boring.

01:04:01 ◼   ► I think what you're getting at with the boring is like,

01:04:03 ◼   ► be innovative, but don't try to change things

01:04:07 ◼   ► for the sake of changing them.

01:04:08 ◼   ► And I think what they tried to do

01:04:10 ◼   ► is kind of what they tried to do with Final Cut Pro X,

01:04:12 ◼   ► which is let's not be constrained

01:04:15 ◼   ► by what defines pro computers today.

01:04:17 ◼   ► It could be that we are holding on to baggage

01:04:20 ◼   ► that is not actually necessary anymore.

01:04:22 ◼   ► If we start basically from a clean slate and say,

01:04:24 ◼   ► what do our pro users really need?

01:04:27 ◼   ► What can we eliminate?

01:04:28 ◼   ► What is it just there?

01:04:29 ◼   ► Because like, oh, everyone expects to have floppy drives

01:04:32 ◼   ► and parallel ports and whatever.

01:04:33 ◼   ► Like what if we drop things and just leave the essence,

01:04:37 ◼   ► can we get it a simplification?

01:04:39 ◼   ► And they dropped too many things on the wrong things, right?

01:04:43 ◼   ► If they had found the correct essence

01:04:47 ◼   ► and dropped some things but left others,

01:04:49 ◼   ► like, you know, they could have come up

01:04:51 ◼   ► with a better balance and it still could have been

01:04:53 ◼   ► in a cylinder case for all we know,

01:04:54 ◼   ► and it still could have had no internal storage.

01:04:56 ◼   ► Like some of the bets I think were reasonable,

01:04:57 ◼   ► like no 3.5 inch internal base,

01:05:00 ◼   ► no optical drive, obviously, like all those things,

01:05:03 ◼   ► all those things that they removed from the Mac Pro

01:05:05 ◼   ► compared to the cheese grater, those were correct things to drop. It's like you don't have to keep

01:05:10 ◼   ► having three and a quarter inch drive bays, you don't have to have any kind of drive bays. You

01:05:13 ◼   ► can, you know, we see the future as being PCI Express SSDs or, you know, Optane, whatever things

01:05:19 ◼   ► from Intel. That is an example of a simplification that isn't possible if you say super boring,

01:05:25 ◼   ► which is basically like, well, Pro computers got to have a bunch of PCI slots and a bunch of 3.5

01:05:29 ◼   ► inch bays and a bunch of five and a quarter. You'll never, you'll never make anything interesting

01:05:32 ◼   ► there. It's just that they dropped other things as well and it didn't work out. And I think

01:05:37 ◼   ► to, to try to make different trade-offs, we can start talking about what we think a new

01:05:44 ◼   ► Mac Pro as vaguely sketched by Apple's words in this meeting would look like.

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01:07:35 ◼   ► (jazzy music)

01:07:38 ◼   ► I wanted to talk a little bit about the iMac,

01:07:41 ◼   ► because they had some interesting things

01:07:42 ◼   ► to say about that too.

01:07:44 ◼   ► You know, to me, what was probably one of the most

01:07:48 ◼   ► parts of this briefing is that it sounds like

01:07:52 ◼   ► they're not working on one Mac Pro,

01:07:55 ◼   ► that they're working on two different Pro desktops.

01:07:58 ◼   ► One of them is new, like higher end configurations

01:08:02 ◼   ► of the iMac, which is probably why they seem to have

01:08:06 ◼   ► apparently canceled the iMac revision that's been

01:08:09 ◼   ► like mostly done, and you know, like the USB-C

01:08:11 ◼   ► Kaby Lake revision, it seems like they're now

01:08:13 ◼   ► just gonna hold that, maybe until the fall, whenever,

01:08:16 ◼   ► 'cause what they said was that there's gonna be

01:08:18 ◼   ► new, more pro configurations of the iMac this year.

01:08:22 ◼   ► So I'm guessing that maybe gets announced every Tuesday,

01:08:26 ◼   ► but probably the fall, and that probably,

01:08:29 ◼   ► whatever iMacs we're gonna come out this past winter

01:08:33 ◼   ► or spring have probably been delayed

01:08:35 ◼   ► to just make one big update then.

01:08:37 ◼   ► Which I'm not sure that's necessarily the right move,

01:08:39 ◼   ► but I see that is typical of Apple,

01:08:40 ◼   ► so that's plausible, right?

01:08:41 ◼   ► But anyway, I wanted to kind of get an idea of

01:08:46 ◼   ► If they're going to do pro configurations of the iMac

01:08:50 ◼   ► and also do a modular Mac Pro,

01:08:53 ◼   ► and we'll talk about what that might mean also,

01:08:56 ◼   ► what would the iMac configurations actually be like?

01:09:00 ◼   ► So I was thinking they could put Xeons in there

01:09:03 ◼   ► to get higher core counts and more PCI lanes and everything,

01:09:06 ◼   ► but I figure that might become a Mac Pro only thing,

01:09:10 ◼   ► so maybe the Intel Extreme series,

01:09:11 ◼   ► like we keep getting told about,

01:09:13 ◼   ► like the X99 boards and the Extreme Edition processors

01:09:16 ◼   ► that have like six to 10 cores,

01:09:19 ◼   ► that are basically Xeon's, but not in official name.

01:09:22 ◼   ► And so they don't have ECC RAM support,

01:09:25 ◼   ► they don't have quite as high of cores as Xeon's do,

01:09:29 ◼   ► and they don't usually max out

01:09:30 ◼   ► at quite as high of clock speeds.

01:09:32 ◼   ► But that would be one way,

01:09:35 ◼   ► like if they wanna keep these two different things,

01:09:38 ◼   ► they have the regular iMac,

01:09:39 ◼   ► which the regular iMac already has usually the fastest,

01:09:43 ◼   ► like typical desktop processors that Intel sells.

01:09:47 ◼   ► GPUs, they have more headroom.

01:09:49 ◼   ► GPUs, they usually use like a low-power desktop GPU

01:09:52 ◼   ► 'cause the big honkin', like the 1080 kind of equivalents,

01:09:56 ◼   ► like the big things with the big green plastic fans

01:10:00 ◼   ► from the overclockers, like those GPUs don't fit

01:10:03 ◼   ► in the iMac enclosure, like space or heat-wise.

01:10:06 ◼   ► So if they make the enclosure thicker

01:10:10 ◼   ► and have bigger heat capacity,

01:10:13 ◼   ► maybe larger, slower fans with massive heat sinks somehow.

01:10:17 ◼   ► If they do that kind of thing,

01:10:19 ◼   ► then they could increase the capacity enough

01:10:22 ◼   ► to maybe have at least mid-range desktop class GPUs.

01:10:26 ◼   ► And that could also add more.

01:10:28 ◼   ► But again, how high would that actually be able to go

01:10:33 ◼   ► before it questions the need for the Mac Pro Tower?

01:10:36 ◼   ► So I'm guessing it would probably be obviously limited

01:10:39 ◼   ► just one GPU, but maybe again,

01:10:42 ◼   ► limited to the PC mid-range,

01:10:44 ◼   ► the kind of PC GPUs you can usually get for 200 bucks,

01:10:47 ◼   ► like that kind of class.

01:10:48 ◼   ► And maybe it might have a higher RAM ceiling,

01:10:53 ◼   ► 'cause right now the iMac is 32,

01:10:56 ◼   ► maybe the iMac Pro, in finger quotes, goes to 64,

01:11:00 ◼   ► and the Mac Pro goes to 128, stuff like that.

01:11:03 ◼   ► The iMac Pro probably wouldn't have

01:11:05 ◼   ► all of the Thunderbolt bandwidth,

01:11:07 ◼   ► and the Mac Pro has like three Thunderbolt buses.

01:11:11 ◼   ► The new one would probably have a different arrangement,

01:11:13 ◼   ► but suffice to say that they would max out

01:11:15 ◼   ► however many PCI Express lanes and Thunderbolt,

01:11:18 ◼   ► however much Thunderbolt bandwidth they could get,

01:11:21 ◼   ► the Mac Pro would have the most,

01:11:23 ◼   ► and the iMac Pro would probably have closer

01:11:24 ◼   ► to a consumer level of them.

01:11:27 ◼   ► And maybe the iMac Pro would retain older ports for longer,

01:11:32 ◼   ► maybe like if they drop Ethernet, say,

01:11:34 ◼   ► or the SD card or whatever.

01:11:35 ◼   ► I think you've got a better example.

01:11:37 ◼   ► If they drop ethernet off the iMac in the consumer line,

01:11:40 ◼   ► maybe they keep it in the iMac Pro line.

01:11:42 ◼   ► Or if they drop upgradeable RAM out of the consumer line,

01:11:45 ◼   ► maybe that gets kept in the Pro line.

01:11:46 ◼   ► So I think there are ways they can do the iMac Pro

01:11:51 ◼   ► that doesn't interfere with the Mac Pro,

01:11:54 ◼   ► but not only am I very surprised that they're doing two,

01:11:59 ◼   ► but I'm very excited to see what the iMac Pro is,

01:12:01 ◼   ► because that might end up being

01:12:02 ◼   ► the computer that's right for me.

01:12:04 ◼   ► Because I actually don't need a lot

01:12:05 ◼   ► what the Mac Pro offers, I really just need

01:12:08 ◼   ► the massive CPU power.

01:12:10 ◼   ► That being said, as I stare at my 5K iMac

01:12:12 ◼   ► with the horrible image retention,

01:12:15 ◼   ► I'm starting to wonder maybe that would still

01:12:17 ◼   ► go that way anyway.

01:12:19 ◼   ► - The big question with the iMac Pro for me is,

01:12:22 ◼   ► was this product planned before or after they decided

01:12:26 ◼   ► they were doing the new Mac Pro?

01:12:28 ◼   ► Because that really dictates the design.

01:12:29 ◼   ► Because if I think about it in the new world

01:12:31 ◼   ► where they're saying, hey, we're gonna have

01:12:32 ◼   ► a new modular Mac Pro, I think,

01:12:35 ◼   ► well then this iMac with stuff for pro people is just going to be like a little bit faster

01:12:41 ◼   ► internal SSD, you know, Thunderbolt 3, a little bit faster GPU, a little bit faster CPU, all the

01:12:48 ◼   ► same classes, just like better components all around, a new high end, what we used to call

01:12:54 ◼   ► a plain old speed bump, right? But if this new iMac was planned and, you know, because this new iMac

01:13:01 ◼   ► is coming this year, right? So this is not like a distant thing. It's coming this year.

01:13:04 ◼   ► If this new iMac had been planned at a time when Apple was like, "We're not doing the Mac Pro

01:13:09 ◼   ► anymore," and this was going to be their replacement to satisfy everybody, then I start

01:13:14 ◼   ► thinking, "Well, maybe they could put a Xeon in it. Maybe they could put an actual slightly higher

01:13:21 ◼   ► end GPU." All the things that you said, like, "Use the X99 series and use a desktop class GPU."

01:13:25 ◼   ► That's the only reason I think we would get that, and that machine I think makes

01:13:30 ◼   ► less sense for Apple to invest in,

01:13:32 ◼   ► in a situation where they really are making new Mac Pro,

01:13:36 ◼   ► because who in the world would buy that

01:13:38 ◼   ► when they have the option to buy a new modular Mac Pro?

01:13:40 ◼   ► Like if you need that stuff,

01:13:41 ◼   ► if you feel like you need tons of cores

01:13:43 ◼   ► and you need a faster GPU and stuff,

01:13:45 ◼   ► like why wouldn't you go with the modular one?

01:13:47 ◼   ► It's so much better, you know,

01:13:48 ◼   ► 'cause then if your monitor does have image retention,

01:13:49 ◼   ► you can just, you know, ship the monitor back

01:13:51 ◼   ► or get a different monitor

01:13:52 ◼   ► instead of chucking the whole machine.

01:13:53 ◼   ► Like all in one is not pro-friendly

01:13:56 ◼   ► in terms of how to configure a system

01:13:58 ◼   ► to your specific needs, right?

01:14:00 ◼   ► So really this machine,

01:14:03 ◼   ► depending on when it was created

01:14:07 ◼   ► and what Apple's plan for it was,

01:14:10 ◼   ► it could end up being this weird one-off

01:14:11 ◼   ► where somehow by some miracle,

01:14:14 ◼   ► we get an iMac with a Xeon in it,

01:14:16 ◼   ► but then that goes away as soon as the new Mac Pro comes,

01:14:18 ◼   ► 'cause like what the hell's the plan

01:14:19 ◼   ► of an iMac with a Xeon in it when you've got the Mac Pro?

01:14:21 ◼   ► But for the most part,

01:14:23 ◼   ► I'm thinking that this new iMac will basically be

01:14:26 ◼   ► like the current top of the line 5k iMac,

01:14:28 ◼   ► but every component of it just be a little bit better

01:14:30 ◼   ► and also have Thunderbolt 3.

01:14:32 ◼   ► And I think they could sell that as saying,

01:14:34 ◼   ► this is a iMac that has more appeal to pro users

01:14:38 ◼   ► than the previous one.

01:14:39 ◼   ► But to me, it would just be a speed bump in the old style

01:14:44 ◼   ► where we just took it for granted that every year,

01:14:46 ◼   ► the computers that Apple sells, at the very least,

01:14:49 ◼   ► would have all their components upgraded

01:14:50 ◼   ► to be slightly better.

01:14:51 ◼   ► And every couple of years,

01:14:52 ◼   ► they would get a new generation, kind of like cars,

01:14:54 ◼   ► although they don't tend to get horsepower bumps.

01:14:56 ◼   ► But you know, there's a generation of car

01:14:58 ◼   ► and they improve it year after year after year,

01:15:00 ◼   ► and then there's a new generation.

01:15:01 ◼   ► They used to have them with Max too.

01:15:03 ◼   ► Every year, they would get a little bit faster.

01:15:05 ◼   ► We used to be disappointed in speed bumps.

01:15:06 ◼   ► Remember that?

01:15:07 ◼   ► It was like, oh, they just did a speed bump.

01:15:08 ◼   ► But now we would kill for speed bumps.

01:15:10 ◼   ► Please just make every component,

01:15:11 ◼   ► make every component a little bit faster.

01:15:13 ◼   ► Make, you know, just make everything a little bit better.

01:15:17 ◼   ► And that will hold us over until next year.

01:15:19 ◼   ► Instead they just don't update stuff at all anymore.

01:15:21 ◼   ► So yeah, for the iMac, I'm interested

01:15:26 ◼   ► in what it will be as well,

01:15:27 ◼   ► but the promise of a real new Mac Pro

01:15:31 ◼   ► is probably going to keep me away from an iMac

01:15:34 ◼   ► no matter what.

01:15:35 ◼   ► A real new Mac Pro with an Apple monitor.

01:15:37 ◼   ► The only way I'll end up with that iMac

01:15:38 ◼   ► is if my computer dies, I will get an iMac,

01:15:40 ◼   ► and then I will get the new Mac Pro after that.

01:15:42 ◼   ► But if my little 2008 Mac Pro can hold out,

01:15:46 ◼   ► as I've said, joked about in many past shows,

01:15:48 ◼   ► We can go for the full decade, 2008 to 2018,

01:15:52 ◼   ► 10 year service life of a computer.

01:15:55 ◼   ► If I can make it, I will.

01:15:57 ◼   ► And if not, I'll get an iMac.

01:15:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think you guys are right

01:16:01 ◼   ► that an iMac Pro would just be more of

01:16:05 ◼   ► whatever the top of the line 5K iMac is.

01:16:08 ◼   ► It would potentially have more ports.

01:16:10 ◼   ► I think Marco, your example of ethernet is a phenomenal one

01:16:13 ◼   ► because I think Apple's itching to get rid of that

01:16:15 ◼   ► for the most part, but a pro user is the kind of person

01:16:19 ◼   ► that would want to move humongous bits of data around.

01:16:21 ◼   ► - Didn't they already get rid of it?

01:16:22 ◼   ► I don't think my 5K iMac has either.

01:16:24 ◼   ► - No, the iMacs still have it.

01:16:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, the iMacs have it.

01:16:27 ◼   ► - I think the Mini still does too,

01:16:28 ◼   ► but who cares about the Mini?

01:16:29 ◼   ► - I gotta go look, I don't think mine does.

01:16:31 ◼   ► Continue talking, I'll be back in a second.

01:16:33 ◼   ► - Jon, I have the most modern 5K iMac, I believe,

01:16:36 ◼   ► and it absolutely has an Ethernet port.

01:16:38 ◼   ► - It definitely still has it, you don't have to check.

01:16:40 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:16:42 ◼   ► I think it would have more ports, like Marco said,

01:16:44 ◼   ► potentially more RAM.

01:16:45 ◼   ► The other thing I wanted to bring up though is, and I don't know anything about this,

01:16:50 ◼   ► so maybe this is completely bananas, but what about like VR?

01:16:54 ◼   ► So I know that VR is super intensive and it requires just tremendous GPU power, but is

01:17:00 ◼   ► it feasible to have a 5K iMac Pro that maybe does VR?

01:17:05 ◼   ► Because VR is kind of that in-between, right, where you need tremendous hardware, but you

01:17:11 ◼   ► You don't necessarily need to go all the way to a Mac Pro for that sort of thing, do you?

01:17:16 ◼   ► So maybe that's the target, is you could use an Oculus with an iMac 5K or something.

01:17:21 ◼   ► I understand that at last I heard Oculus isn't supporting macOS, but just for the sake of

01:17:26 ◼   ► conversation—

01:17:27 ◼   ► That's because Apple doesn't make any hardware that's fast enough.

01:17:28 ◼   ► And like I said, I don't think you can fit a VR-capable with current VR standards, VR-capable

01:17:34 ◼   ► GPU inside the iMac.

01:17:37 ◼   ► Unless, again, unless the iMac we're talking about was the one that was designed and planned

01:17:43 ◼   ► and executed for an age without the Mac Pro.

01:17:46 ◼   ► Because there's plenty of room back there to add stuff to the back of that monitor.

01:17:49 ◼   ► They could put much more capable cooling.

01:17:51 ◼   ► They have a lot of area, especially between the 5K one.

01:17:53 ◼   ► There's a lot of area behind that monitor to put stuff.

01:17:55 ◼   ► You can spread it out far away from each other.

01:17:57 ◼   ► You can get lots of air flowing over things.

01:17:59 ◼   ► You have tons of options.

01:18:01 ◼   ► But the only way such a thing would exist is if it was something that was supposed to

01:18:05 ◼   ► to be in a lineup that doesn't include the Mac Pro,

01:18:09 ◼   ► and in which case I think it would be a one-off.

01:18:11 ◼   ► - So you think Apple's official message is,

01:18:14 ◼   ► if you ever wanted to do VR, we have an answer for you,

01:18:17 ◼   ► and it's a $5,000 Mac Pro?

01:18:19 ◼   ► - Maybe, I mean, it depends.

01:18:21 ◼   ► I think VR is, right now, even in the PC world,

01:18:25 ◼   ► VR requires the highest-end hardware,

01:18:28 ◼   ► because it's really new,

01:18:29 ◼   ► and it's incredibly taxing on GPUs.

01:18:32 ◼   ► but everything that comes out that's like a new type

01:18:37 ◼   ► of thing you can do with GPUs requires the best GPUs.

01:18:41 ◼   ► And if you look at gaming, which is what VR

01:18:44 ◼   ► is obviously involved with, typically what happens is,

01:18:48 ◼   ► in a few years, more pedestrian GPUs will be able

01:18:52 ◼   ► to handle VR in the same way that today,

01:18:55 ◼   ► you can run a 3D game on a MacBook Pro,

01:18:58 ◼   ► but you maybe just can't turn all the settings up,

01:19:00 ◼   ► so you can't have all the super high resolution,

01:19:02 ◼   ► super high detail levels, things like that.

01:19:04 ◼   ► So VR's gonna be the same way.

01:19:07 ◼   ► Right now it requires these massive things,

01:19:09 ◼   ► but in two years, and Apple's patient.

01:19:13 ◼   ► They're not gonna design a whole new product line

01:19:16 ◼   ► with this iMac Pro that would be only able to do VR

01:19:19 ◼   ► with this massive thing on the back of it,

01:19:22 ◼   ► but then in two years that wouldn't be necessary anymore.

01:19:25 ◼   ► So basically I think that by the time

01:19:29 ◼   ► the new Mac Pro comes out, and we see the kind of stuff

01:19:33 ◼   ► that whatever the new Mac Pro balance with the Pro iMac

01:19:36 ◼   ► and the regular iMac is, I think by the time

01:19:38 ◼   ► that all gets settled out, VR will run fine

01:19:42 ◼   ► on mid-range hardware, and so that question

01:19:45 ◼   ► will be kind of moot.

01:19:46 ◼   ► Now, if you want a really good VR setup,

01:19:49 ◼   ► you're probably gonna want a high-end gaming PC

01:19:52 ◼   ► or the equivalent hardware in a Mac Pro,

01:19:54 ◼   ► but that's a different story.

01:19:55 ◼   ► - We're still early in VR because there is so much

01:19:58 ◼   ► just in resolution. Like it's so grainy, it's like not going back to Doom where the pixels are the

01:20:02 ◼   ► size of boulders, but like you need a high-end rig just to get the current best VR, you know,

01:20:10 ◼   ► goggle setups to show you something that looks incredibly grainy from the perspective of what

01:20:16 ◼   ► you would expect from like a modern 2D regular PC game. So there is a huge amount of capacity for

01:20:23 ◼   ► for a new GPU power that will purely be absorbed by making things less ridiculously dotty.

01:20:28 ◼   ► And it doesn't mean, like, you can be able to do VR as it exists today on a mid-range

01:20:32 ◼   ► system, so at least it will be possible, right?

01:20:34 ◼   ► So you're right about that, that like suddenly it's possible on a mid-range system, but the

01:20:37 ◼   ► appetite for high-end will not go away for a long time, just because, you know, at the

01:20:42 ◼   ► very least you're doing twice the work for VR because you have two different images or

01:20:45 ◼   ► two different eyes, and it just goes up from there in terms of sensor fusion and response

01:20:50 ◼   ► times for getting things to your eyeballs as fast as possible in a very demanding environment

01:20:55 ◼   ► where every millisecond counts.

01:20:58 ◼   ► So that's why I feel like you always need a high-end rig to wring the best out of this.

01:21:01 ◼   ► Either a high-end rig or something like PSVR where it is a purpose-built system that is

01:21:05 ◼   ► not a general purpose computer but that is designed specifically to do VR and that has

01:21:09 ◼   ► strict constraints on latency and frame rates and all that stuff.

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01:22:25 ◼   ► So let's talk about the whole idea

01:22:31 ◼   ► of what is this modular design?

01:22:35 ◼   ► So they mentioned, they were very clear

01:22:37 ◼   ► on a number of times during this briefing

01:22:40 ◼   ► that the new Mac Pro that's coming out

01:22:43 ◼   ► sometime after this year, is going to have a,

01:22:46 ◼   ► quote, modular design.

01:22:48 ◼   ► What does that mean?

01:22:51 ◼   ► One of the things that people online have been

01:22:54 ◼   ► thinking about and asking about and suggesting

01:22:57 ◼   ► and even predicting for the future for years now

01:23:00 ◼   ► is a kind of set of stacked components

01:23:03 ◼   ► that would look kind of like Mac Minis

01:23:05 ◼   ► that you'd stack up and like,

01:23:06 ◼   ► one would be your CPU module,

01:23:08 ◼   ► and one would be your GPU module,

01:23:09 ◼   ► and stuff like that, right?

01:23:11 ◼   ► Here's a storage one.

01:23:11 ◼   ► You kind of like build your own assembled stack of parts,

01:23:16 ◼   ► each one of which is its own independent box

01:23:18 ◼   ► that you could buy and upgrade and customize as needed.

01:23:22 ◼   ► The more I thought about this kind of thing,

01:23:24 ◼   ► the more I think that this is not only not what Apple

01:23:27 ◼   ► probably has in mind, but that it actually might be

01:23:30 ◼   ► terrible and impractical in reality.

01:23:33 ◼   ► - I can't believe you were ever entertaining it enough

01:23:35 ◼   ► to discuss it as a show topic, because you're right.

01:23:37 ◼   ► The people have been talking about this for a year,

01:23:39 ◼   ► 'cause it sounds like a cool sci-fi thing.

01:23:42 ◼   ► Kind of in the modern incarnation of this

01:23:44 ◼   ► that people may be more familiar with

01:23:45 ◼   ► is like the Project Era, whatever it was, those phones.

01:23:48 ◼   ► Like we're gonna make a cell phone

01:23:50 ◼   ► by having a bunch of modules that we snap together

01:23:51 ◼   ► and you can pick your camera and you pick your CPU

01:23:54 ◼   ► and your GPU and how much storage and how much battery.

01:23:56 ◼   ► And you'll just be able to build your phone

01:23:58 ◼   ► from a bunch of these little modular capsules

01:24:01 ◼   ► that snap together to build a phone.

01:24:02 ◼   ► It's like, no, it's an interesting idea,

01:24:06 ◼   ► but the tech for that simply does not exist.

01:24:08 ◼   ► And so with the advent of Thunderbolt 3, everyone says,

01:24:11 ◼   ► well, the tech for that does exist.

01:24:13 ◼   ► Everything you just described,

01:24:14 ◼   ► they can get a bunch of Mac Mini type things

01:24:15 ◼   ► and they snap together with the cool Thunderbolt 3 thing.

01:24:17 ◼   ► And I have my GPU and my CPU and my storage,

01:24:20 ◼   ► and it just snaps together.

01:24:22 ◼   ► But it's like, what is that buying you

01:24:24 ◼   ► versus just having a regular computer

01:24:27 ◼   ► that you can pull things in and out of?

01:24:29 ◼   ► Like, what do you get by putting them

01:24:31 ◼   ► in separate little modules?

01:24:32 ◼   ► What does Apple get?

01:24:33 ◼   ► What do you get?

01:24:34 ◼   ► It has always been a pipe dream.

01:24:36 ◼   ► And as the technology comes closer

01:24:38 ◼   ► and it goes from pipe dream to potential reality,

01:24:41 ◼   ► then you have to say, if we could feasibly do it,

01:24:43 ◼   ► what do I get out of it?

01:24:44 ◼   ► And other than it being really cool and futury,

01:24:48 ◼   ► I think we don't get enough out of it

01:24:50 ◼   ► with today's technology for it to be worthwhile

01:24:53 ◼   ► for Apple to even consider this approach.

01:24:55 ◼   ► - Well, and if you even think about

01:24:57 ◼   ► what it would actually be, if you think through,

01:25:00 ◼   ► okay, what would these things actually require?

01:25:02 ◼   ► How would this be sold?

01:25:03 ◼   ► How would it be supported?

01:25:05 ◼   ► So number one, obviously, is how do they connect

01:25:09 ◼   ► to each other, over what kind of interface

01:25:13 ◼   ► do they talk to each other that is actually

01:25:14 ◼   ► fast enough to do this stuff.

01:25:16 ◼   ► And if you're putting a disk on there,

01:25:19 ◼   ► Thunderbolt's fast enough.

01:25:20 ◼   ► But if you're putting a GPU or a CPU,

01:25:23 ◼   ► or things that need lots and lots of bandwidth,

01:25:26 ◼   ► then you're gonna need, either you're gonna have to deal

01:25:29 ◼   ► with the limitations of Thunderbolt,

01:25:33 ◼   ► because Thunderbolt is PCI Express over a cable,

01:25:36 ◼   ► but it is not nearly as much bandwidth

01:25:39 ◼   ► as the internal slots for a GPU and desktop have.

01:25:43 ◼   ► And furthermore, the standards for PCI Express itself

01:25:48 ◼   ► and the Thunderbolt standards, those change every few years.

01:25:53 ◼   ► So you'd have the set of pods,

01:25:55 ◼   ► I guess that's the word I'll use,

01:25:58 ◼   ► you'll have the set of component pods

01:26:00 ◼   ► where there'll all be different speeds

01:26:02 ◼   ► if you mix and match over the years.

01:26:03 ◼   ► And if you're not gonna mix and match over the years,

01:26:05 ◼   ► there's no point in doing this.

01:26:07 ◼   ► Not to mention, every one of those pods

01:26:09 ◼   ► would need its own power and cooling.

01:26:12 ◼   ► And so maybe you could have some interface

01:26:15 ◼   ► where the big honking one on the bottom

01:26:18 ◼   ► has a giant power supply and powers all the other ones.

01:26:22 ◼   ► You still need to put fans in all of them.

01:26:24 ◼   ► So that's gonna be more noise, more size.

01:26:27 ◼   ► They're all gonna have their own metal casing

01:26:29 ◼   ► and whatever hardware is involved

01:26:31 ◼   ► with the interconnection between them

01:26:32 ◼   ► and keeping them securely mounted

01:26:34 ◼   ► so your GPU doesn't pop out of the socket

01:26:36 ◼   ► in the middle of using it if you nudge the desk

01:26:38 ◼   ► or your catwalks over or whatever.

01:26:39 ◼   ► Like, it is so challenging to build a system like that

01:26:43 ◼   ► that works at all.

01:26:45 ◼   ► And it would end up, these pod things would end up being

01:26:49 ◼   ► so cumbersome and expensive and loud.

01:26:54 ◼   ► And it would, and then not to mention like,

01:26:57 ◼   ► imagine the support nightmare of like,

01:27:00 ◼   ► You think it's bad now when we have to know,

01:27:02 ◼   ► well, if you have a 13 inch MacBook Pro,

01:27:05 ◼   ► the two Thunderbolt ports on the right side

01:27:07 ◼   ► are a little bit less bandwidth

01:27:08 ◼   ► than the two Thunderbolt ports on the left side.

01:27:11 ◼   ► You think that's bad.

01:27:12 ◼   ► Imagine a system where, well, you can stack

01:27:16 ◼   ► three GPU modules, but only if you have

01:27:19 ◼   ► this one high-powered CPU module,

01:27:20 ◼   ► and only from this year forward,

01:27:22 ◼   ► and not if you have a disk module

01:27:23 ◼   ► between any of the two GPU modules.

01:27:25 ◼   ► It would be crazy to support,

01:27:27 ◼   ► and it would be crazy as a user

01:27:28 ◼   ► to figure out what would work with what else

01:27:30 ◼   ► and whether you could do things.

01:27:31 ◼   ► And it would just be a nightmare.

01:27:33 ◼   ► And there would be weird limits of like

01:27:36 ◼   ► how many of something you could have,

01:27:37 ◼   ► what order they'd have to be stacked in,

01:27:39 ◼   ► what the certain like main module would have to be

01:27:42 ◼   ► to support the other ones.

01:27:43 ◼   ► It would be a mess.

01:27:45 ◼   ► So that entire idea of stacking these external boxes

01:27:50 ◼   ► that you could just combine into whatever you want,

01:27:53 ◼   ► I don't think that's ever going to happen.

01:27:54 ◼   ► It just, in practice, it just doesn't work.

01:27:58 ◼   ► - I completely agree with you,

01:27:59 ◼   ► and I think that that reading of modular

01:28:03 ◼   ► is grossly overcomplicating

01:28:06 ◼   ► what Apple's probably talking about.

01:28:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, they just mean a separate monitor.

01:28:09 ◼   ► That's all they mean.

01:28:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's it, just a separate monitor.

01:28:12 ◼   ► - Well, and I think what they mean,

01:28:14 ◼   ► it turns out if you can describe the configurability

01:28:18 ◼   ► of a PC tower that we've had for decades,

01:28:21 ◼   ► like that is modular.

01:28:23 ◼   ► I think what they mean--

01:28:24 ◼   ► - That's exactly what I was gonna say.

01:28:25 ◼   ► I think it just means like user replaceable RAM,

01:28:28 ◼   ► maybe user replaceable CPU, maybe.

01:28:30 ◼   ► User replaceable graphics card,

01:28:32 ◼   ► it's basically a cheese grater Mac Pro,

01:28:34 ◼   ► but presumably done in a much more modern fashion,

01:28:37 ◼   ► but with the same amount of upgradeability.

01:28:40 ◼   ► - And I would say it doesn't even necessarily need

01:28:42 ◼   ► to be user replaceable on all these parts.

01:28:44 ◼   ► I think what Apple means by modular is,

01:28:47 ◼   ► they can configure the same general case

01:28:52 ◼   ► in different ways to suit different types

01:28:54 ◼   ► of needs at purchase.

01:28:55 ◼   ► So the old Mac Pro Tower could be configured with

01:28:58 ◼   ► one or two CPUs, three or six RAM slots,

01:29:02 ◼   ► any number up to five, I think, of PCI express cards,

01:29:05 ◼   ► two of which have GPU,

01:29:06 ◼   ► or three of which could have GPU bandwidth, I think.

01:29:09 ◼   ► Four disks, two opticals,

01:29:11 ◼   ► there were all these different configurations,

01:29:13 ◼   ► and this one product that Apple,

01:29:15 ◼   ► this one case with this one power supply,

01:29:18 ◼   ► with this one set of supporting components,

01:29:20 ◼   ► could be configured by Apple in a modular fashion

01:29:24 ◼   ► to solve a bunch of people's needs differently

01:29:27 ◼   ► in one product.

01:29:28 ◼   ► That's what the PC tower gave Apple.

01:29:30 ◼   ► That's what the Mac Pro had until 2013.

01:29:33 ◼   ► And so when they say modular,

01:29:35 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that's the kind of thing they're describing

01:29:38 ◼   ► as opposed to the 2013, which is with this model,

01:29:42 ◼   ► you get one CPU and two mid-range GPUs and that's it.

01:29:45 ◼   ► Like it was one configuration you could make with that one.

01:29:48 ◼   ► So that is what I would expect by the word modular.

01:29:51 ◼   ► so I wouldn't get your hopes up, anybody out there,

01:29:54 ◼   ► about the stacked components idea,

01:29:56 ◼   ► or even as you were saying, even like user-replaceable stuff,

01:30:00 ◼   ► like, you know, I'm sure like the RAM probably will be,

01:30:04 ◼   ► storage maybe, processors probably not,

01:30:08 ◼   ► I mean, it's like CPU upgrades haven't really been

01:30:12 ◼   ► a practical thing for quite some time,

01:30:14 ◼   ► because basically like sockets that the CPUs plug into,

01:30:17 ◼   ► and like the motherboard chipsets and everything,

01:30:20 ◼   ► Those change so frequently that you can't really upgrade

01:30:24 ◼   ► to a processor that is newer than the one you have.

01:30:27 ◼   ► You can move laterally, like within the same family.

01:30:30 ◼   ► Like if you bought the low end one in the family,

01:30:33 ◼   ► and then two years later you can find the high end one

01:30:35 ◼   ► for sale somewhere, you could put that in,

01:30:37 ◼   ► but the gain usually isn't that big.

01:30:38 ◼   ► The difference between the low and the high end

01:30:40 ◼   ► within a single family, like in a single year,

01:30:42 ◼   ► isn't that big, it's like 5% most of the time.

01:30:44 ◼   ► You could get more cores with the Mac Pro,

01:30:47 ◼   ► But again, it's not as big of a gain

01:30:50 ◼   ► as just buying a new one would get you.

01:30:53 ◼   ► And doing a CPU upgrade on a modern computer,

01:30:56 ◼   ► especially a Mac Pro with these giant Xeons in it,

01:30:59 ◼   ► involves so much like messing with delicate

01:31:02 ◼   ► and very important thermal management things,

01:31:04 ◼   ► giant heat sinks moving the fans around,

01:31:07 ◼   ► dealing with these little fragile sockets

01:31:08 ◼   ► and the thousand pins in the bottom of them.

01:31:11 ◼   ► It would be such a crazy ordeal to put most people through.

01:31:15 ◼   ► I would not expect anybody today to consider the CPU

01:31:19 ◼   ► in an average person's computer to be user-replaceable.

01:31:22 ◼   ► So I definitely would not expect that

01:31:24 ◼   ► to ever happen again with Apple.

01:31:26 ◼   ► That's, you know, it wouldn't surprise me

01:31:27 ◼   ► if the CPU was soldered to the board.

01:31:28 ◼   ► Probably not for component management reasons,

01:31:30 ◼   ► but wouldn't surprise me.

01:31:32 ◼   ► - So I don't want to poo-poo the external stuff too much,

01:31:35 ◼   ► because you're just like,

01:31:36 ◼   ► "Oh, nothing's ever gonna be external."

01:31:37 ◼   ► It's probably the right choice for the Mac Pro,

01:31:39 ◼   ► but Thunderbolt 3 does let you have things

01:31:44 ◼   ► were previously inside the case, outside the case.

01:31:47 ◼   ► And so it is conceivable, but ill-advisable,

01:31:51 ◼   ► that Apple could say, hey, we've solved the GPU upgrading

01:31:54 ◼   ► problem by putting it in a separate box.

01:31:57 ◼   ► And we already talked about that Thunderbolt 3 does not

01:32:00 ◼   ► have enough bandwidth to fully satisfy the very, very, very

01:32:03 ◼   ► top-end cards in a specific application

01:32:06 ◼   ► where they need all the PCI Express lanes

01:32:08 ◼   ► that they could have internally, because the external does not

01:32:11 ◼   ► have as many lanes as internal.

01:32:12 ◼   ► Maybe you could gang cables together or something like that, but they could do that, but as you said

01:32:18 ◼   ► Another external power supply cooling like it's awkward

01:32:21 ◼   ► The role of that is to make a laptop have a decent GPU if Apple was ever going to do

01:32:27 ◼   ► Something like that. They would do it for a laptop because you can't put it inside the case

01:32:31 ◼   ► wouldn't it be cool if you could put your laptop down and then

01:32:34 ◼   ► Connected with Thunderbolt 3 to a GPU that is not the highest of the high-end

01:32:39 ◼   ► But is so much faster than the GPU that's inside your case that it's a win

01:32:44 ◼   ► So my hope my first hope with the modular thing, which I interpreted

01:32:49 ◼   ► This is the same as Casey which is basically them just saying it has a separate monitor. I'm not even talking about the internals

01:32:53 ◼   ► I'm just saying if there's a box that doesn't have a monitor and there's a monitor connected to it

01:32:57 ◼   ► That's my interpretation of modular modular. That's no different than the current Mac Pro, right?

01:33:02 ◼   ► But it's not the iMac

01:33:03 ◼   ► That's that's what I say

01:33:04 ◼   ► Like we're gonna make a new Mac Pro and that's their way of saying and it's not gonna be an iMac Pro like that's how I

01:33:09 ◼   ► I read their statement at the broadest level, right?

01:33:12 ◼   ► So what I hope, my first hope is that they do not have an external GPU connected with

01:33:17 ◼   ► Thunderbolt on the new Mac Pro.

01:33:19 ◼   ► Because again, the whole point of this computer is to be the absolute fastest thing that money

01:33:24 ◼   ► can buy.

01:33:25 ◼   ► And if you connect a GPU with a Thunderbolt 3 cable, you are already down behind all the

01:33:30 ◼   ► people who have internal stuff.

01:33:31 ◼   ► Forget about having a CPU connected separately from this and that and get like, just plain

01:33:35 ◼   ► old taking the GPU outside the box is a bad idea from packaging and it's a bad

01:33:40 ◼   ► idea from performance perspective. Right, that I think to me as we think through

01:33:45 ◼   ► like what the new Mac Pro should be and what it's likely to be the question of

01:33:50 ◼   ► whether the GPU is internal or external I think decides a lot of it for us and

01:33:55 ◼   ► and I'm with you John I think once you think it through and think through the

01:33:59 ◼   ► realities like no question that Thunderbolt is great and you can do

01:34:03 ◼   ► external GPUs over Thunderbolt now.

01:34:05 ◼   ► And they actually, if you look up,

01:34:07 ◼   ► like I know barefeets.com did a bunch of tests

01:34:10 ◼   ► a few months back, and it turned out that external GPUs

01:34:14 ◼   ► for a lot of applications that didn't involve tons

01:34:16 ◼   ► of transfer to and from main memory,

01:34:19 ◼   ► they actually did pretty well in the external boxes.

01:34:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, they can be just as fast.

01:34:23 ◼   ► If you're not constrained by bandwidth,

01:34:25 ◼   ► they're exactly as fast as if they were internal.

01:34:27 ◼   ► But again, the whole point of this computer

01:34:29 ◼   ► is to be the absolute fastest at everything,

01:34:31 ◼   ► and say you're doing some workload

01:34:33 ◼   ► that does take advantage of all those lanes,

01:34:35 ◼   ► now you're down some number of PCI express lanes,

01:34:37 ◼   ► now you're down bandwidth.

01:34:38 ◼   ► Why take that hit?

01:34:40 ◼   ► For what advantage?

01:34:40 ◼   ► It's like, oh, well, if it's external,

01:34:42 ◼   ► we can upgrade it easily.

01:34:43 ◼   ► Well, guess what?

01:34:43 ◼   ► If it's internal, you can upgrade it easily

01:34:45 ◼   ► through this amazing technology we call cards.

01:34:47 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:34:48 ◼   ► - Well, we'll get to that.

01:34:49 ◼   ► - Not that Apple's gonna get into the upgrade business,

01:34:51 ◼   ► but like you both said, Apple can upgrade it.

01:34:54 ◼   ► Maybe they'll never let you upgrade it,

01:34:55 ◼   ► but next year, they can swap out one of the GPUs

01:34:58 ◼   ► and put in a new one and say,

01:34:59 ◼   ► here's the speed bump to Mac Pro.

01:35:01 ◼   ► We're now with new GPU options

01:35:03 ◼   ► because we built them with enough cooling capacity.

01:35:05 ◼   ► That's what we're talking about here.

01:35:06 ◼   ► Not even like, oh, you'll be able to take your GPU out

01:35:09 ◼   ► and put a new one yourself,

01:35:10 ◼   ► which you probably will be able to do

01:35:11 ◼   ► by taking PC GPUs and flashing them and all the other stuff.

01:35:14 ◼   ► But in terms of Apple-supported stuff,

01:35:16 ◼   ► internal versus external does not give Apple

01:35:20 ◼   ► any more flexibility in terms of modularity.

01:35:23 ◼   ► - Right, and I also, kind of like product-wise,

01:35:27 ◼   ► I cannot see Apple shipping a portion of a computer

01:35:31 ◼   ► that does not contain a GPU.

01:35:33 ◼   ► - It would contain the internal one

01:35:35 ◼   ► and they would do switching.

01:35:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh god.

01:35:37 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:35:38 ◼   ► A computer these days needs a GPU to do anything.

01:35:42 ◼   ► You're not gonna use a computer without a GPU.

01:35:44 ◼   ► Sorry Linux people or embedded routers,

01:35:46 ◼   ► but I'm not talking about that.

01:35:48 ◼   ► And so they're not gonna sell you the base Mac Pro box

01:35:53 ◼   ► that doesn't have a GPU.

01:35:55 ◼   ► They're going to put one in there.

01:35:57 ◼   ► That's not the way Apple would do things without that.

01:35:59 ◼   ► So if you're gonna have a GPU that comes with the computer,

01:36:03 ◼   ► it might as well be internal.

01:36:04 ◼   ► Like that, they would make no sense to put it external.

01:36:05 ◼   ► So I think once you have kind of realized like,

01:36:09 ◼   ► okay, there's going to be an internal GPU,

01:36:12 ◼   ► and they've already talked about modularity,

01:36:14 ◼   ► and they've talked about upgrades easily in the future,

01:36:17 ◼   ► you know, for them, updates, I should say,

01:36:18 ◼   ► updates easily in the future,

01:36:20 ◼   ► they're basically going towards a PC tower, right?

01:36:24 ◼   ► So what other parts of a PC tower

01:36:27 ◼   ► still needed today. You know, we mentioned earlier, they needed, there's

01:36:31 ◼   ► lots of things like, you know, optical drive bays that you don't really need

01:36:34 ◼   ► anymore, right? Upgradable RAM is an easy one, that's gonna be in there, but we

01:36:39 ◼   ► already have that. You don't need to make a tower to have, you know, you have it in

01:36:41 ◼   ► the iMac. You had it in laptops until very recently, so we already have

01:36:45 ◼   ► upgradeable RAM, you know, you can just have a little tiny door somewhere and

01:36:48 ◼   ► have that be it. So you don't need a tower for that. You don't need optical

01:36:53 ◼   ► you, John you said earlier that you don't need

01:36:57 ◼   ► three and a half inch bays.

01:36:58 ◼   ► I think you're probably right, but I'm not 100%

01:37:01 ◼   ► confident in that because here's the thing.

01:37:03 ◼   ► When I first, when I was first trying to think about this,

01:37:05 ◼   ► I was thinking, you know, you don't really need

01:37:07 ◼   ► three and a half inch drive bays anymore

01:37:09 ◼   ► because you can, today you can get a four terabyte SSD.

01:37:13 ◼   ► Right, and it's not, it isn't even that

01:37:15 ◼   ► ridiculously expensive.

01:37:16 ◼   ► And the two terabyte ones, which is about as much space

01:37:18 ◼   ► as most people need on their desktops most of the time,

01:37:21 ◼   ► two terabyte SSDs are actually inexpensive now.

01:37:23 ◼   ► They're actually like only a few hundred dollars.

01:37:26 ◼   ► And by the time this thing comes out in 2018 or beyond,

01:37:30 ◼   ► that'll be even cheaper.

01:37:33 ◼   ► And so at first I was like,

01:37:34 ◼   ► "Well, you don't really need three and a half inch bays."

01:37:36 ◼   ► 'Cause if SSDs can be that cheap,

01:37:38 ◼   ► they can put a couple of like the stick kind.

01:37:40 ◼   ► 'Cause I'm not even saying like,

01:37:42 ◼   ► if you're building a computer to have a bunch of SSDs in it,

01:37:44 ◼   ► you might use 2.5 inch drive bays,

01:37:47 ◼   ► which is like the little one

01:37:48 ◼   ► that SSDs and laptop hard drives use.

01:37:50 ◼   ► - That's storage skeuomorphism right there.

01:37:53 ◼   ► 2.5 inch SSDs, come on.

01:37:55 ◼   ► - Right, like you don't even need that anymore

01:37:57 ◼   ► because not only are the SSDs a lot smaller,

01:37:59 ◼   ► but also like the interface standards,

01:38:01 ◼   ► like the SATA standards.

01:38:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, you're the PCI Express,

01:38:04 ◼   ► you're not coming through SATA, that's not a spinning disk.

01:38:06 ◼   ► - Exactly, so like you're gonna have some kind

01:38:09 ◼   ► of directly connected PCI Express SSDs,

01:38:11 ◼   ► and whether they're on little slots,

01:38:12 ◼   ► like those little M2 stick things or whatever they are,

01:38:15 ◼   ► they're probably gonna be on slots, right,

01:38:16 ◼   ► at least for Apple to service and replace them when they die.

01:38:19 ◼   ► So, and it would be nice to have more than one of those.

01:38:22 ◼   ► It'd be great to have two SSD slots maybe

01:38:24 ◼   ► so you can configure it at purchase time probably

01:38:27 ◼   ► with more storage, 'cause that'd be awesome.

01:38:29 ◼   ► But I wouldn't expect more than that for SSDs.

01:38:32 ◼   ► However, you can kind of make an argument that,

01:38:36 ◼   ► you know, if they would just put like one or two

01:38:38 ◼   ► three and a half inch bays in there,

01:38:40 ◼   ► you know a 10 terabyte hard disk

01:38:43 ◼   ► is just 400 bucks right now.

01:38:45 ◼   ► - But it's just too slow.

01:38:48 ◼   ► It is really slow to be your boot drive, right?

01:38:51 ◼   ► But like, but pro users, so many pro users

01:38:55 ◼   ► need to work with very large files

01:38:57 ◼   ► that they almost all of them use these,

01:39:00 ◼   ► these, you know, incredibly expensive,

01:39:02 ◼   ► complicated, loud, giant external raid boxes and stuff.

01:39:06 ◼   ► If you would put two three and a half inch bays

01:39:08 ◼   ► inside this machine, that could accommodate

01:39:11 ◼   ► lots of that in a really nice way.

01:39:12 ◼   ► Now, I'm not saying necessarily

01:39:14 ◼   ► that this is definitely what Apple should do,

01:39:16 ◼   ► and I'm almost certainly not saying

01:39:17 ◼   ► this is what they will do.

01:39:18 ◼   ► I bet they, there's no, I really don't think there's any chance that they would do this.

01:39:22 ◼   ► But a three and a half inch bay inside something that's big enough to have a GPU on a slot

01:39:28 ◼   ► is nothing.

01:39:29 ◼   ► It's like three and a half inch bays aren't that big, right?

01:39:32 ◼   ► And so, you know, it wouldn't take a lot for Apple to fit this into whatever shape this

01:39:38 ◼   ► is going to take.

01:39:39 ◼   ► That being said though, again, I don't think they will.

01:39:41 ◼   ► I don't think it's very realistic.

01:39:42 ◼   ► But I would go the reverse of what you said.

01:39:44 ◼   ► I would say that I don't think they should do it, but I can actually envision them doing

01:39:49 ◼   ► it because they really are having this self-reflective moment about the Mac Pro and atoning for mistakes.

01:39:56 ◼   ► I think they would actually entertain the idea, which is inconceivable from the perspective

01:40:02 ◼   ► of the trash can that they would entertain this idea, but I think they should not do

01:40:05 ◼   ► it.

01:40:06 ◼   ► Like my vision of what – if I had to advise them both what they should make and what I

01:40:10 ◼   ► I want, which coincidentally are very close to the same thing, is I think all they need

01:40:16 ◼   ► to do to atone is all the things they already said they're going to do, which is make it

01:40:19 ◼   ► so that you can change the parts year over year to make them faster, which necessitates

01:40:23 ◼   ► a certain amount of cooling and power structure.

01:40:26 ◼   ► And honestly, for the past – since the Power Mac G5, the pro Apple desktop line has – you

01:40:36 ◼   ► Johnny I've even said in his little intro video for the power Mac t5 has been basically

01:40:40 ◼   ► Making a box to extract heat from components like that. It was modeled after a heat exchanger

01:40:47 ◼   ► Like that's why the cheese where it looks the way it does

01:40:49 ◼   ► he actually talked about heat exchangers like, you know up and up in a room or whatever take air one temperature in and

01:40:55 ◼   ► extract heat from it and you know

01:40:57 ◼   ► Like that's what these boxes are all about the the cheese grater is about that the the the trash can is about that

01:41:03 ◼   ► It's a chimney, right? So

01:41:05 ◼   ► Make a box or doesn't have to be a box make make a case that can support the thermal load of all the parts that you

01:41:10 ◼   ► Could possibly put in it. That means you have to support two really hot GPUs

01:41:15 ◼   ► Maybe also two really hot GPUs some combination thereof so you can upgrade them year over year

01:41:20 ◼   ► You have to have excess capacity and one great thing about the cheese grater is it has excess cooling capacity

01:41:25 ◼   ► Like it was made for chips on such an old process that were so incredibly hot

01:41:29 ◼   ► Like I mean they made a water-cooled one at one point, you know, there was room for that in there

01:41:34 ◼   ► There's so much, you know, you can cool almost anything in this box. It is huge

01:41:37 ◼   ► It has direct airflow from back to front. It, you know works great

01:41:41 ◼   ► You have plenty of room for different arrangement of fans

01:41:42 ◼   ► Not that I'm saying they're gonna make something that big but so make a box with adequate cooling

01:41:46 ◼   ► and you know