ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► My kids were refusing to eat the purple potatoes, so I made them do blind taste tests and they

00:00:03 ◼   ► couldn't tell the difference.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I'm like, "Ha!

00:00:05 ◼   ► Eat your stupid potatoes.

00:00:06 ◼   ► It's not burned, it's purple.

00:00:07 ◼   ► Just eat it."

00:00:08 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:09 ◼   ► So, as chief summarizer in chief, that job is usually quite delightful, but on rare occasions,

00:00:17 ◼   ► it is anything but delightful.

00:00:21 ◼   ► And we are recording the night of November 9th, 2016.

00:00:25 ◼   ► night, our country made a very peculiar choice that none of the three of us agree with. And

00:00:34 ◼   ► we were debating what to do about the presidential election and how we should handle it and what

00:00:39 ◼   ► we should say about it, what we should talk about. And the conclusion the three of us

00:00:44 ◼   ► came to is we wanted to acknowledge that it is a thing and it happened and we're upset.

00:00:51 ◼   ► But otherwise, carry on.

00:00:54 ◼   ► It's gonna do me some good to forget about this for a little while.

00:00:58 ◼   ► I think it's gonna do you guys some good to forget about this for a while.

00:01:02 ◼   ► And genuinely, no snark intended, it's our hope that it'll do you, the listener, some

00:01:07 ◼   ► good to not think about that for a little while.

00:01:11 ◼   ► I'm upset, I'm frustrated, and I'm angry, but really, I'm gonna get over these Mac Pros

00:01:17 ◼   ► soon, or the MacBook Pros soon.

00:01:19 ◼   ► I ruined my own joke.

00:01:20 ◼   ► that's how upset and angry I am.

00:01:22 ◼   ► - We're off?

00:01:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, we're gonna totally fix that in post.

00:01:25 ◼   ► But anyway, but no, seriously though,

00:01:28 ◼   ► all kidding aside, we're all frustrated, we're all upset,

00:01:31 ◼   ► and I'll give you guys a chance to weigh in

00:01:32 ◼   ► if you have anything to add,

00:01:33 ◼   ► but it's gonna be business as usual around here,

00:01:35 ◼   ► and we're gonna try our best to just move along.

00:01:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I do wanna clarify,

00:01:40 ◼   ► like, you know, we're not, I'm not for a second

00:01:43 ◼   ► going to forget that this just happened,

00:01:45 ◼   ► and I'm not going to pretend that it didn't happen,

00:01:48 ◼   ► I'm not going to forget what this means,

00:01:51 ◼   ► what this signifies to so many Americans.

00:01:53 ◼   ► This is not going to be forgotten at all.

00:01:57 ◼   ► But we have a tech show to do,

00:01:59 ◼   ► so we're gonna do the tech show.

00:02:01 ◼   ► And hopefully that can help us and our listeners

00:02:05 ◼   ► temporarily get a reprieve from what has happened.

00:02:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, the show must go on, as they say.

00:02:10 ◼   ► We've talked about this before.

00:02:11 ◼   ► We will touch on social topics as they intersect with tech,

00:02:15 ◼   ► and this potentially intersects with everything,

00:02:17 ◼   ► but I think this falls more into the category

00:02:19 ◼   ► of what we mentioned on a past show,

00:02:21 ◼   ► that if something really big happens,

00:02:22 ◼   ► it would be weird if we didn't acknowledge it,

00:02:24 ◼   ► but by the same token,

00:02:25 ◼   ► especially with how all three of us are feeling today

00:02:27 ◼   ► and how a lot of our listeners are feeling today,

00:02:30 ◼   ► the overwhelming consensus is

00:02:33 ◼   ► we just want to do a regular show as a brief respite

00:02:36 ◼   ► from what we've all been dealing with today

00:02:39 ◼   ► and will be dealing with going forward.

00:02:40 ◼   ► So there you have it.

00:02:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:43 ◼   ► - So let's start with some follow-up.

00:02:45 ◼   ► Isiko writes in to say, "Apple did not ship an eDRAM/IrisPro Skylake on the 15-inch MacBook.

00:02:53 ◼   ► It is HD 530."

00:02:56 ◼   ► We're talking about video cards, is that right?

00:02:57 ◼   ► Yeah, that was in my reference to what I was talking about on a past show where I said

00:03:02 ◼   ► that Apple kind of puts itself in a difficult position by demanding the highest and fanciest

00:03:08 ◼   ► version of all the chips, especially with the biggest GPU embedded in them.

00:03:11 ◼   ► It would be better if they went with wimpier chips and just used the discrete, but that's

00:03:14 ◼   ► what they actually did on the 15-inch.

00:03:15 ◼   ► I mean, it's not wimpy, the HD 3530 is one of the better ones, but it's not the one with

00:03:20 ◼   ► the embedded DRAM and the Irish Pro things.

00:03:23 ◼   ► And no, I'm not saying "Irish Pro," which is what everyone hears and probably what I

00:03:26 ◼   ► say half the time, but I'm trying to say "Iris Pro," but it's difficult.

00:03:31 ◼   ► Goodness.

00:03:32 ◼   ► All right, moving along.

00:03:35 ◼   ► The touch bar apparently registers past the screen area, particularly on the left-hand

00:03:41 ◼   ► side where the escape key—well, I guess it's not a key anymore. The escape button would be—can

00:03:46 ◼   ► we talk about how we know this or should we not talk about how we know this?

00:03:51 ◼   ► There was a French website that posted something that someone, a listener, translated for me.

00:03:56 ◼   ► But the—this is when we were discussing, like, it's a shame that they didn't have the touch

00:04:01 ◼   ► bar go all the way to the left because you can reach the upper left-hand corner and feel for it.

00:04:07 ◼   ► but that part is not screen. We knew that for a fact from day one, that part is not a screen,

00:04:12 ◼   ► you can't draw the escape button up against the left end of the bar. The question was,

00:04:16 ◼   ► all right, so there's no image there, but is it touch sensitive? And the answer is,

00:04:20 ◼   ► it's about half touch sensitive. Like, so if you just take the blank space where you can't show

00:04:24 ◼   ► any pixels on the left side of the touch bar and divide it in half vertically, the left half of it

00:04:30 ◼   ► does nothing. You hit it, doesn't do anything, it's not touch sensitive, it's not pressure sensitive,

00:04:34 ◼   ► of doesn't light up or anything. The right half of the blank region doesn't

00:04:37 ◼   ► light up but does register your touch in some way and because it's about the

00:04:41 ◼   ► width of your finger you can pretty much take your finger and jam it on the left

00:04:45 ◼   ► side of the touch bar and it will activate the escape key. In fact it will

00:04:48 ◼   ► activate the escape key even if no part of your finger is actually touching any

00:04:51 ◼   ► of the pixels that make up the escape key or the picture of the escape key or

00:04:55 ◼   ► whatever. So it's kind of a weird compromise like they almost got it to go

00:04:58 ◼   ► edge to edge but not quite and I guess maybe when iFixit does a teardown

00:05:01 ◼   ► maybe they'll figure out why, like how do the touch sensors extend that far, how far

00:05:06 ◼   ► does the screen go, and so on and so forth.

00:05:10 ◼   ► Have either of you done with the simulated touch bar on an iPad yet?

00:05:14 ◼   ► No.

00:05:15 ◼   ► Have you seen that app that does that?

00:05:16 ◼   ► Yeah, but it's the wrong size, isn't it?

00:05:18 ◼   ► So it doesn't seem like it would be much of a test of anything.

00:05:21 ◼   ► It's interesting, like I ran that way yesterday for a while while I was working, and it's

00:05:25 ◼   ► actually kind of interesting.

00:05:27 ◼   ► I guess we'll put the link in the show notes, I forget the URL offhand, but Steven Trout

00:05:30 ◼   ► and Smith has been tweeting it a lot here and there

00:05:32 ◼   ► and different things.

00:05:32 ◼   ► And basically, you have to have Xcode,

00:05:34 ◼   ► you have to install the special build of 10.12.1

00:05:38 ◼   ► that isn't the real 10.12.1, but it's a new 10.12.1

00:05:41 ◼   ► with a different build number.

00:05:42 ◼   ► You have to download separately from those websites.

00:05:44 ◼   ► It's kind of a mess to get it working.

00:05:45 ◼   ► And then you have to get it running on an iPad,

00:05:47 ◼   ► which means you have to have a signing provisioning profile

00:05:49 ◼   ► and everything, but if you can get past all of that,

00:05:52 ◼   ► which is a lot, it is interesting to see.

00:05:55 ◼   ► And so I placed my 9.7 inch iPad Pro

00:06:00 ◼   ► on top of my keyboard kind of in the right spot

00:06:01 ◼   ► where it should be.

00:06:03 ◼   ► And it's interesting that like,

00:06:05 ◼   ► so as you mentioned, it is significantly smaller

00:06:08 ◼   ► than the real touch bar.

00:06:09 ◼   ► I've been able to estimate from pictures

00:06:11 ◼   ► that the real touch bar is 11 inches long

00:06:15 ◼   ► or 10 inches long or something like that.

00:06:16 ◼   ► And the iPad 9.7, the side of the screen

00:06:19 ◼   ► is like 7 point something inches long.

00:06:21 ◼   ► So it's substantially smaller.

00:06:23 ◼   ► And you can tell, the touch targets do feel

00:06:24 ◼   ► a little bit small when you run the simulator.

00:06:27 ◼   ► But it is really cool to see,

00:06:28 ◼   ► as you move throughout the OS, just to see

00:06:30 ◼   ► what the touch bar actually does,

00:06:32 ◼   ► and how it responds to different things that are available.

00:06:35 ◼   ► You know, as I mentioned at the end of last show,

00:06:38 ◼   ► this really is showing that Apple's putting

00:06:40 ◼   ► a lot of effort into the Mac,

00:06:42 ◼   ► and the Mac is not just some totally dead platform to them,

00:06:45 ◼   ► because they have a lot of stuff

00:06:48 ◼   ► built for the touch bar already.

00:06:49 ◼   ► Like, so much, so many of the built-in apps

00:06:52 ◼   ► already support the touch bar,

00:06:54 ◼   ► with some pretty useful stuff, like there's like one,

00:06:57 ◼   ► like an iTunes widget that's kind of always showing

00:07:01 ◼   ► whenever iTunes is doing anything.

00:07:03 ◼   ► It looks like a little equalizer and you can tap that

00:07:04 ◼   ► and it converts the whole bar into basically

00:07:07 ◼   ► an iTunes scrubber with a couple of play/pause buttons.

00:07:10 ◼   ► And you can just leave that open the whole time you're working

00:07:13 ◼   ► so if you like to scrub through songs

00:07:15 ◼   ► or to see your progress through a song,

00:07:17 ◼   ► which is important when you listen to such

00:07:18 ◼   ► incredibly lengthy songs as I do,

00:07:21 ◼   ► it's actually kind of nice to see.

00:07:23 ◼   ► And you can play with all this stuff on this iPad thing.

00:07:25 ◼   ► it actually works pretty well.

00:07:28 ◼   ► I would say if you are curious about the touch bar,

00:07:30 ◼   ► and if you have the patience and skill required

00:07:33 ◼   ► to use Xcode to open some open source thing

00:07:35 ◼   ► and provision it to actually run on an iPad,

00:07:38 ◼   ► it's kinda cool to see.

00:07:40 ◼   ► But again, I'm not sure I would recommend it

00:07:42 ◼   ► for full-time use, unless you have a 12.9 inch iPad Pro,

00:07:44 ◼   ► 'cause that actually would be big enough, I think.

00:07:47 ◼   ► I think that'd be about the right size.

00:07:49 ◼   ► But on an iPhone 7, it's pretty tiny,

00:07:51 ◼   ► but it's cool to see.

00:07:52 ◼   ► And it works surprisingly well.

00:07:54 ◼   ► it's responsive, the animations are fluid.

00:07:56 ◼   ► It's surprisingly good for this two day old hack, basically.

00:08:01 ◼   ► It's pretty amazing to have this running on an iPad.

00:08:04 ◼   ► And I will say though, having run this

00:08:06 ◼   ► on this little thing above my keyboard on my desktop,

00:08:09 ◼   ► I think Jon's concerns last episode

00:08:12 ◼   ► about the ergonomics of looking up and down so far

00:08:16 ◼   ► between a desktop screen and the front of your keyboard

00:08:19 ◼   ► and that distance being way further

00:08:21 ◼   ► and how you adjust your eyes on a laptop,

00:08:23 ◼   ► that is a real problem.

00:08:26 ◼   ► And it's a problem enough that it's,

00:08:29 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure the touch bar on desktop

00:08:32 ◼   ► is ever going to make a lot of sense,

00:08:34 ◼   ► just because that really is odd and kind of uncomfortable.

00:08:38 ◼   ► I will say though, that now that I've seen

00:08:41 ◼   ► how well this works, it is kind of an interesting idea

00:08:44 ◼   ► that what if Apple made an external touch bar

00:08:48 ◼   ► that was just it by itself

00:08:50 ◼   ► that didn't include a keyboard necessarily.

00:08:52 ◼   ► Maybe you can get a keyboard that had one with it,

00:08:54 ◼   ► but maybe they also sell an external one.

00:08:56 ◼   ► I mean, this is wishful thinking.

00:08:57 ◼   ► I don't think they actually would do that,

00:08:59 ◼   ► but once you use an iPad like this,

00:09:02 ◼   ► you see like, oh, this actually does work.

00:09:05 ◼   ► It is kind of useful,

00:09:06 ◼   ► and there could be something here if it was done well.

00:09:10 ◼   ► - Where would you put the external touch bar?

00:09:12 ◼   ► - Above your keyboard, same place I put mine.

00:09:14 ◼   ► - But that's the same problem with the whole desktop thing

00:09:16 ◼   ► of the focal distance change and everything.

00:09:19 ◼   ► What have you solved by having

00:09:20 ◼   ► just a random external touch bar?

00:09:22 ◼   ► - Well, you have quick access to,

00:09:23 ◼   ► you know, it's kind of like having media keys

00:09:25 ◼   ► on your keyboard, but on steroids.

00:09:27 ◼   ► - But you have to look at them.

00:09:29 ◼   ► - I have to look at most of my media keys

00:09:30 ◼   ► most of the time, too, 'cause I never remember what's what.

00:09:33 ◼   ► - Well, you probably just have to glance, maybe,

00:09:35 ◼   ► 'cause you know you're going for somewhere on the middle.

00:09:38 ◼   ► It's different than reading and just glancing

00:09:41 ◼   ► to see where it is.

00:09:42 ◼   ► - Well, but they're always in the same spot.

00:09:44 ◼   ► If you use a frequent item a lot,

00:09:46 ◼   ► that's always gonna be right there.

00:09:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, as long as that app is front most.

00:09:49 ◼   ► That's the tricky bit.

00:09:50 ◼   ► How did you find that in terms of the context switching?

00:09:52 ◼   ► Because if you have a particular,

00:09:53 ◼   ► especially for media keys and stuff,

00:09:54 ◼   ► I'm used to hitting play/pause on my keyboard

00:09:57 ◼   ► to pause iTunes at work, but it doesn't matter

00:10:00 ◼   ► what app I'm at.

00:10:01 ◼   ► I'm not my text editor.

00:10:02 ◼   ► I can hit play/pause and it stops the music

00:10:04 ◼   ► if someone comes over to my desk or something,

00:10:05 ◼   ► but I'm never actually in iTunes.

00:10:08 ◼   ► - Well, I wasn't using any third-party apps.

00:10:10 ◼   ► I was only using Apple ones that have support for this.

00:10:13 ◼   ► But things like having, like when I mentioned

00:10:16 ◼   ► the expanded iTunes view with the scrubber,

00:10:18 ◼   ► that stays up even if iTunes is not front most,

00:10:20 ◼   ► which is kinda cool.

00:10:21 ◼   ► Like that's just like, it's one of the modes,

00:10:23 ◼   ► you know, like there's like all these buttons

00:10:25 ◼   ► in the side that you can like--

00:10:26 ◼   ► - The control strip part, you mean, that's always there?

00:10:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, the thing on the right.

00:10:29 ◼   ► You can like toggle on certain modes

00:10:30 ◼   ► that persist until you change them,

00:10:32 ◼   ► and that's just one of those modes.

00:10:34 ◼   ► Like one of them is like the old function keys,

00:10:35 ◼   ► one of them is the iTunes thing.

00:10:37 ◼   ► - You guys never used the real control strip, did you?

00:10:39 ◼   ► - Nope. - Nope.

00:10:41 ◼   ► - I did and it was awesome.

00:10:42 ◼   ► Congratulations, John.

00:10:45 ◼   ► It was pluggable, too.

00:10:46 ◼   ► You could buy third-party things that would add new tiles to the control script and you

00:10:49 ◼   ► could configure it how you wanted.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it was really nice.

00:10:56 ◼   ► So it's come back, but now it's on my keyboard and it comes from the other side by default.

00:10:59 ◼   ► Actually, you can't move the control script, can you?

00:11:01 ◼   ► You can't make it come from the left, right?

00:11:02 ◼   ► It's always on the right side?

00:11:03 ◼   ► I'm sure there'll be a P list entry for you, John.

00:11:06 ◼   ► Don't worry.

00:11:07 ◼   ► No, well, you can't even pin the dock to the edge anymore.

00:11:09 ◼   ► Are you kidding?

00:11:10 ◼   ► This is why you never mess with those sorts of things, kids.

00:11:12 ◼   ► This is why you embrace the defaults.

00:11:14 ◼   ► Anyway, as for the big scrubber, that's one of my frustrations with QuickTime Player,

00:11:19 ◼   ► and one of the many reasons why I still have QuickTime Player 7 installed and hope it never

00:11:23 ◼   ► breaks, is frequently, I mean, I should probably just use a real audio editor like Vision or

00:11:28 ◼   ► something, and sometimes I do.

00:11:30 ◼   ► But sometimes you just want to open up an audio file and scrub to a particular timestamp,

00:11:33 ◼   ► and it's a really long file because it's like a podcast or something, and you just can't

00:11:37 ◼   ► do it in like when the the audio window is small so I open it in QuickTime 7 and

00:11:43 ◼   ► I stretch the audio window to really wide and suddenly I have a scrubber

00:11:47 ◼   ► that's the entire width of my screen to give me the resolution I suppose I could

00:11:50 ◼   ► do that with the other QuickTime player too but the point is I'm making a window

00:11:53 ◼   ► bigger on a non-visual medium and the only reason I'm making the window bigger

00:11:56 ◼   ► is because I want more precision in the scrubber this brings us back to our old

00:11:59 ◼   ► discussion about ideas of zooming and scrubbering stuff but anyway if you have

00:12:03 ◼   ► have a screen that is the width of a QWERTY keyboard, that's a pretty good scrubber length,

00:12:08 ◼   ► and you probably get decent resolution there. Not as big as you'd get maybe on like a giant

00:12:13 ◼   ► 5K display where you make it the entire width of the thing, but you know, I mean at a certain

00:12:16 ◼   ► point you need to just open an audio editor and zoom in on the waveform, I understand

00:12:19 ◼   ► that, but it's one of those hacks that you do.

00:12:22 ◼   ► So in summary, Marco, Touch Bar, tentatively optimistic? I mean, you sound pretty pleased

00:12:28 ◼   ► with it in principle.

00:12:30 ◼   ► - I mean, again, I didn't get to try a real one yet.

00:12:33 ◼   ► - Sure, sure, sure.

00:12:34 ◼   ► - Time will tell on this again.

00:12:36 ◼   ► It seems pretty cool.

00:12:37 ◼   ► I think what I said last episode of the one before--

00:12:42 ◼   ► - If you were buying again, your laptop.

00:12:45 ◼   ► - If I were buying a Mac laptop today,

00:12:48 ◼   ► and I intended to use it as my primary computer,

00:12:52 ◼   ► I would get the touch bar,

00:12:53 ◼   ► because I think it will probably end up being really great.

00:12:57 ◼   ► Reviewers seem to have them now,

00:12:59 ◼   ► So we should hear fairly soon from people

00:13:01 ◼   ► who have actual hands-on experience

00:13:03 ◼   ► for more than 10 minutes.

00:13:06 ◼   ► We should hear from them how these are in practice

00:13:08 ◼   ► and then hopefully sometime soon people will actually

00:13:11 ◼   ► start being able to own these things.

00:13:13 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think any of the initial orders

00:13:16 ◼   ► have shipped yet, 'cause they all had like that

00:13:18 ◼   ► two to three week ship date estimate at first.

00:13:21 ◼   ► So I don't think anybody actually has one yet

00:13:23 ◼   ► except a couple of reviewers,

00:13:24 ◼   ► but I do look forward to hearing what they say,

00:13:27 ◼   ► having used the real one, not some iPad approximation of it,

00:13:30 ◼   ► but the iPad approximation was pretty good.

00:13:33 ◼   ► - That's awesome, I'm really looking forward

00:13:35 ◼   ► to trying this one day eventually, maybe.

00:13:39 ◼   ► Jon, tell me about the next Mac Pro.

00:13:41 ◼   ► Is it gonna be an all-in-one?

00:13:42 ◼   ► - This is a topic that has come up on lots of past shows

00:13:46 ◼   ► and has been gaining steam as people hear us moan

00:13:49 ◼   ► about the Mac Pro, and Marco wrote a big piece

00:13:51 ◼   ► about the advantages of Pro and all that,

00:13:54 ◼   ► And it's seeming to me, you know, probably many months out from any potential movement

00:13:59 ◼   ► on this front, that if Apple is not going to make another Mac Pro in the style that

00:14:07 ◼   ► we expect it to be, as in a computer that doesn't have a monitor, like if they're, you

00:14:11 ◼   ► know, they're not going to make another trash can, if they're reimagining the Mac Pro as

00:14:14 ◼   ► something other than a trash can, the most likely reimagining is what everyone keeps

00:14:18 ◼   ► referring to as an iMac Pro, which is a big 5K screen with a bunch of computer crap stuck

00:14:24 ◼   ► to the back of it, and the only difference would be that the computer craps stuff to

00:14:27 ◼   ► the back of it is more pro-ish. And so then there's the question, like, can you fit a

00:14:33 ◼   ► Xeon in there? Can you actually put a decent graphic card in there? There's a lot of room

00:14:38 ◼   ► behind a 5K display. Obviously they want it to be super skinny, and they're kind of like

00:14:43 ◼   ► their own self-imposed constraints, especially on the back of the display, because you don't

00:14:46 ◼   ► even see that when you're looking at it in the front. It doesn't need to be portable,

00:14:49 ◼   ► except for that guy who brings his iMac to Panera Bread to play World of Warcraft.

00:14:53 ◼   ► natural yeah uh so you know realistically you could totally do that now if apple did it i assume

00:15:00 ◼   ► they would make their life more difficult by still trying to make it thin and using all their

00:15:04 ◼   ► skills uh honed by working on these super slim macbook pros and on their iDevices to

00:15:12 ◼   ► continue to make it skinny and use clever heat routing and venting and special fans and whatever

00:15:20 ◼   ► to make it so it doesn't melt. And so these days, as I dwell about the Mac Pro in bits

00:15:26 ◼   ► and pieces, I start thinking about a Mac Pro that looks like an iMac and thinking, "They

00:15:32 ◼   ► could fit some pretty good stuff in there. Maybe they won't even go with Xeon, so maybe

00:15:35 ◼   ► they'll just try to use better desktop chips and have a higher RAM ceiling and a bigger

00:15:39 ◼   ► GPU. Maybe it really literally is named iMac Pro. Or maybe it's just called Mac Pro and

00:15:44 ◼   ► the new Mac Pro isn't all in one." You know, like, I guess this is the bargaining stage

00:15:49 ◼   ► I'm like, "All right." - I was just about to say that.

00:15:51 ◼   ► Get out of my head, oh my gosh.

00:15:53 ◼   ► - Make me a matte black Mac Pro-shaped thing

00:15:56 ◼   ► with a decent GPU and a Xeon and ECC RAM

00:16:01 ◼   ► with a high limit, I'd buy it.

00:16:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I would love that myself.

00:16:06 ◼   ► I would absolutely love that.

00:16:07 ◼   ► And the thing is, again, this totally is bargaining,

00:16:12 ◼   ► but at this point, I'll take what we can get.

00:16:15 ◼   ► If they can make something that is Mac Pro-like

00:16:19 ◼   ► that happens to be an all-in-one,

00:16:20 ◼   ► that will cut out certain use cases

00:16:23 ◼   ► that will make certain people

00:16:25 ◼   ► who would have bought a tower Mac Pro not buy it.

00:16:28 ◼   ► And that will possibly hurt its sales.

00:16:30 ◼   ► But if that's what Apple has to do

00:16:32 ◼   ► to make it palatable to Tim Cook and Johnny Ive,

00:16:35 ◼   ► then I guess we'll, you know,

00:16:37 ◼   ► I would take that over no Mac Pro, you know?

00:16:40 ◼   ► So I don't know, but I think the question

00:16:43 ◼   ► of what you could put into that

00:16:45 ◼   ► depends entirely on the cooling setup.

00:16:47 ◼   ► You know, if you look at the way the Tube Mac Pro is set up,

00:16:50 ◼   ► which by the way, and I didn't mention this too much

00:16:52 ◼   ► in the post, but the Tube Mac Pro has a serious problem

00:16:57 ◼   ► that the GPUs die frequently.

00:17:00 ◼   ► And this has never really been much in the public eye

00:17:03 ◼   ► because not a lot of people own these machines,

00:17:05 ◼   ► relatively speaking, but there's a massive,

00:17:08 ◼   ► like, GPU death flaw in the Tube Mac Pro.

00:17:12 ◼   ► - I brought this up about your article

00:17:14 ◼   ► and you didn't add it to your article, did you?

00:17:16 ◼   ► Well, here's the thing, okay.

00:17:18 ◼   ► A lot of people have first asked me the question of,

00:17:21 ◼   ► why do I presume the Mac Pro is dead?

00:17:24 ◼   ► And I'll tell you right now,

00:17:27 ◼   ► we've heard tips from so many different sources

00:17:30 ◼   ► and they all conflict with each other.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Every single tip we've heard

00:17:34 ◼   ► is different from a different one we've heard.

00:17:35 ◼   ► Some of them are in direct contradiction.

00:17:37 ◼   ► I've heard that the Mac Pro is already dead.

00:17:40 ◼   ► I've heard that the Mac Pro is on hold.

00:17:42 ◼   ► I've heard that the Mac Pro is not dead

00:17:44 ◼   ► but going to take a different form,

00:17:46 ◼   ► that the Mac Pro is very much alive,

00:17:49 ◼   ► and that the Mac Pro is coming

00:17:50 ◼   ► between last month and next summer.

00:17:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:17:53 ◼   ► - But see, I think all of those,

00:17:54 ◼   ► I think all of those things,

00:17:55 ◼   ► the reason I'm big on the iMac Pro rumor

00:17:57 ◼   ► is because I think it fits all of them,

00:17:58 ◼   ► because the people saying it's dead,

00:17:59 ◼   ► what they really mean is the trash can is dead, check.

00:18:02 ◼   ► People say it's coming but in a new form,

00:18:04 ◼   ► that's the iMac Pro form factor.

00:18:06 ◼   ► The dates, nobody knows those, so forget about it.

00:18:09 ◼   ► Well, what I haven't heard is anything like,

00:18:10 ◼   ► is it Skylake-E or not, because that's really,

00:18:12 ◼   ► I think that is really about the death of the Mac Pro.

00:18:14 ◼   ► If it's if it's not the Xeons if it's just a desktop trips with a better CPU then it literally is just a better iMac

00:18:18 ◼   ► Which you know hey we'll take what we can get but but anyway getting getting back to cooling

00:18:22 ◼   ► like one of the things you listed on your article of why we should have a Mac Pro is

00:18:25 ◼   ► So it doesn't you know how like a laptop when you push it hard and the iMac doesn't how like a laptop

00:18:31 ◼   ► It kind of moans like an iMac like it's not

00:18:34 ◼   ► quiet in the Mac Pro and I have to say that's that's not a I keep using like luxurious or elegant or whatever but like

00:18:43 ◼   ► There if you have hardware empathy empathy for the machine, which I think I've talked about on past podcasts

00:18:49 ◼   ► And you try to do something that stresses your computer and it is just that just the fans are just going you hear it worrying

00:18:56 ◼   ► There's a certain baseline level of anxiety that I feel about that

00:19:00 ◼   ► I mean, it's kind of an annoying sound first of all and second of all you're like is this is everything okay?

00:19:06 ◼   ► Am I you know, is it good to do this? What what if your laptop sounded like that?

00:19:10 ◼   ► you know, eight hours a day while you worked. Like, it can't be good for the thing to be—and

00:19:15 ◼   ► it is an annoying sound—it feels better to get a big honking machine that you can stress to its limits

00:19:22 ◼   ► and it, you know, and it doesn't make a big racket. And so the iMac does not fulfill that criteria,

00:19:28 ◼   ► and the reason I brought up to Marco about his article is like, that is an advantage of the Mac

00:19:33 ◼   ► Pro, the idealized Mac Pro, or of course the 2008 Mac Pro that I'm sitting next to, which is

00:19:39 ◼   ► humongous and weighs 50 pounds. But the Trashcan Mac Pro fulfills the quietness

00:19:44 ◼   ► ideal but not so much the not melting ideal, which is an important part of the

00:19:49 ◼   ► power and elegance formula for the Mac Pro is you can be quiet and have good

00:19:53 ◼   ► cooling but that also means the parts that are inside it you can't die from

00:19:56 ◼   ► excessive heat. And so the current Trashcan won the current. The 2013 Trashcan

00:20:00 ◼   ► has had a history of perhaps not doing so well on removing the heat but it's

00:20:05 ◼   ► It's pretty quiet.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Yeah, but anyway, I wrote this article

00:20:10 ◼   ► with the presumption that the Mac Pro is either dead

00:20:13 ◼   ► or quote, on hold, whatever that means.

00:20:16 ◼   ► And the point of this article is not to keep people's hopes

00:20:21 ◼   ► up that it's not dead yet.

00:20:24 ◼   ► The point of this article is to help convince the people

00:20:26 ◼   ► at Apple that if this thing is truly either dead

00:20:30 ◼   ► or postponed or on hold or whatever,

00:20:32 ◼   ► to try to convince them that I don't think

00:20:35 ◼   ► the right move and basically please don't do that. And it has gotten a large response,

00:20:41 ◼   ► very large response. And so I think I've hit on something here and when you see the

00:20:48 ◼   ► article in that way that's why at the beginning I assume that it's gone. And I didn't

00:20:55 ◼   ► bring up like, you know, here's why the current trash can overheats the GPUs because

00:21:00 ◼   ► That is a real problem, but that didn't really need to be in there.

00:21:04 ◼   ► I did mention, here's why the current trash can sales might not be very good, and why

00:21:09 ◼   ► you shouldn't use that.

00:21:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think the overheating is one of them.

00:21:13 ◼   ► I think highlighting, you know, it's not that we, you know, you did bring this up, it's

00:21:16 ◼   ► not that nobody liked the Mac Pro, it's that you changed it so much, and the ways that

00:21:20 ◼   ► you changed it were maybe not palatable to all the people who buy Mac Pros.

00:21:24 ◼   ► And it's not as if, you know, well, the Mac Pro's not for you.

00:21:27 ◼   ► It's like, well, it's gotta be for somebody, and apparently the trash can Mac Pro was not

00:21:30 ◼   ► for enough people. So and one of the things is reliability. You know, one of the things you expect

00:21:34 ◼   ► is quietness, able to handle high load, and reliable. That's why you got the ECC RAM,

00:21:39 ◼   ► that's why you have the, you know, workstation class components, whatever the hell you want to

00:21:42 ◼   ► call them, and you know, that is not super duper overclock, that is supposed to be a reliable piece

00:21:47 ◼   ► of hardware, and the trashcan never quite fulfilled that. So it's yet another reason to add to the

00:21:52 ◼   ► pile of why the trashcan might not have been successful that is not, oh, you know, there's

00:21:58 ◼   ► no market for a Pro or Mac anymore because I think there still is. It's small, it's as

00:22:02 ◼   ► small as it's ever been, but you have to actually serve that market if you want to sell into

00:22:05 ◼   ► it.

00:22:06 ◼   ► Exactly. But anyway, so in summary, my article was basically a letter to Apple presuming

00:22:13 ◼   ► that they've killed the Mac Pro, trying to shoot down reasons that they might be using

00:22:19 ◼   ► internally why they shouldn't make this computer anymore. And it just so happened to be also

00:22:25 ◼   ► wrapped up in some other things that prose my like

00:22:27 ◼   ► and everything else because that's how I feel.

00:22:29 ◼   ► And my love for Mac OS and not wanting to leave Mac OS.

00:22:32 ◼   ► 'Cause like, what am I gonna do, go use Windows?

00:22:34 ◼   ► No, Windows is horrible.

00:22:36 ◼   ► Sorry all the people who responded to me

00:22:37 ◼   ► saying that that's a stupid thing to say.

00:22:39 ◼   ► No. - Oh, it's true.

00:22:40 ◼   ► - See? - It's true.

00:22:41 ◼   ► - Casey is an official Windowser.

00:22:42 ◼   ► - Well, I was and then I wasn't.

00:22:45 ◼   ► - More recently than me.

00:22:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh yeah, 'cause I installed Windows 10

00:22:48 ◼   ► just two weeks ago or something like that.

00:22:50 ◼   ► - What happened, are you okay?

00:22:52 ◼   ► - Don't even get me started.

00:22:54 ◼   ► I installed Windows 10 and I was genuinely, like, hand on heart, I'm not trying to be funny,

00:22:58 ◼   ► I was kind of looking forward to it in a way, because everyone...

00:23:02 ◼   ► Any time I'd ever seen anyone talk about Windows 10, I'd always heard, "Oh, you know, it's really good now. It's good. It's good."

00:23:07 ◼   ► You know, it's not bad at all.

00:23:08 ◼   ► And I installed it and it is just as bad as everything has always been.

00:23:13 ◼   ► And I think we talked about this already on the last show, so I won't belabor it anymore,

00:23:17 ◼   ► but it's terrible. Don't believe otherwise. It's terrible.

00:23:21 ◼   ► So anyway, moving on.

00:23:23 ◼   ► Moving on. So one of you put this in the show notes, and this is a genuinely great question.

00:23:30 ◼   ► What external monitors are Apple employees using with laptops?

00:23:33 ◼   ► Well, for now, they're probably using Thunderbolt displays, but this question or idea was brought

00:23:39 ◼   ► up in many different forms that a surprising number of supposedly completely independent

00:23:44 ◼   ► people came up with this one scenario. Hey, Apple's got their new Spaceship Campus with

00:23:48 ◼   ► the cool-looking office that's shaped like a ring and all this open seating or whatever,

00:23:53 ◼   ► they were trying to say like what would it be like to walk into this spaceship

00:23:57 ◼   ► campus and see the Apple engineers diligently working as if you would

00:24:01 ◼   ► actually be able to see where they work because you probably can't because it's badge entry.

00:24:04 ◼   ► But anyway, these are people writing and like and presumably those people would

00:24:08 ◼   ► have laptops because hey Apple doesn't make desktops anymore and who would use

00:24:11 ◼   ► an iMac and whatever whatever but you know people with laptops as we mentioned

00:24:16 ◼   ► even Apple laptops when they're sitting at a desk might like to have a bigger

00:24:20 ◼   ► screen to do stuff on, right? Because it's one of the advantages of sitting down or

00:24:23 ◼   ► standing in a standing desk or whatever. You can have a much bigger screen or

00:24:27 ◼   ► multiple screens or whatever. And for all these people asking this question, they

00:24:32 ◼   ► couldn't envision a scenario where Apple's headquarters was filled with

00:24:37 ◼   ► people using Apple laptops connected to non-Apple monitors. Is it because non-

00:24:41 ◼   ► Apple monitors are ugly? Is it because they wouldn't match? Is it because it

00:24:44 ◼   ► wouldn't fit their ideal of these architect sketches of this beautiful

00:24:48 ◼   ► pristine Apple place where everything is all happily and perfect and the tables

00:24:50 ◼   ► are made from one giant continuous piece of wood painstakingly manufactured in

00:24:54 ◼   ► Germany or whatever that's probably part of it but the practical consideration is

00:24:58 ◼   ► you know I was brought up before Apple's monitors for a while have been made to

00:25:03 ◼   ► connect to laptops if they don't make any monitors which it seems like they're

00:25:06 ◼   ► not anymore and if the Mac Pro either disappears or becomes an all-in-one what

00:25:11 ◼   ► are all the laptops going to connect to I guess the other connected question to

00:25:16 ◼   ► this is the question of target display mode for iMacs, which used to be a thing and then

00:25:21 ◼   ► wasn't, but now with the advent of Thunderbolt 3, which we'll talk about in a little bit,

00:25:26 ◼   ► in theory you can buy an iMac and just use it as a monitor when you sit down and connect

00:25:32 ◼   ► your laptop to it, which would be the world's most expensive monitor, not really actually

00:25:35 ◼   ► because the Apple 30-inch is probably still more money, but it would be a very expensive

00:25:39 ◼   ► monitor and a total waste of the internals, but technically it is possible and that would

00:25:44 ◼   ► be an out to let Apple's campus photos continue to be completely appley from top to bottom.

00:25:50 ◼   ► Realistically speaking, as for the campus pictures, you're not going to see any except

00:25:54 ◼   ► for a reception, and those are going to be iMacs, and they're going to be all in one,

00:25:56 ◼   ► and they're going to have a big Apple logo on them, and it'll be fine.

00:26:00 ◼   ► I think I speak for all of us in saying we have some friends at Apple, and one of my

00:26:04 ◼   ► friends at Apple I know for a fact is rolling the Dell 5K display as, I believe, a child

00:26:11 ◼   ► to his 5K iMac at the office.

00:26:14 ◼   ► - The LG or the-- - No, the Dell.

00:26:16 ◼   ► - Oh, the double cable one?

00:26:18 ◼   ► - Correct.

00:26:18 ◼   ► Maybe this is his home machine,

00:26:22 ◼   ► so I might be lying unintentionally,

00:26:25 ◼   ► but I am almost positive that this is his work machine.

00:26:28 ◼   ► It's a 5K iMac connected to this,

00:26:31 ◼   ► double cabled to this Dell 5K display.

00:26:34 ◼   ► And so in the future,

00:26:35 ◼   ► I would expect it would be the LG 5K display.

00:26:38 ◼   ► - And you're never gonna see that

00:26:38 ◼   ► because he can't take you to see his office anyway.

00:26:40 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

00:26:42 ◼   ► I have no idea what an Apple developer office even looks like.

00:26:46 ◼   ► I don't think I've ever seen a single picture of one of anybody's ever.

00:26:49 ◼   ► You should go look at what they looked like in the 90s.

00:26:52 ◼   ► They were awesome.

00:26:54 ◼   ► The giant 1840 AVs with the CRT monitor with two big speakers on the bottom, because they

00:26:59 ◼   ► would hoard the fanciest Mac hardware.

00:27:01 ◼   ► I think it was more of a big deal back when Macs were just so much more expensive than

00:27:07 ◼   ► they are.

00:27:08 ◼   ► of the original purchase price of the Mac 2 FX

00:27:10 ◼   ► and convert it to 2016 dollars, you will be very surprised.

00:27:14 ◼   ► So, but if you worked at Apple,

00:27:15 ◼   ► you got access to that stuff.

00:27:16 ◼   ► So I remember a lot of like cubicle farm pictures

00:27:18 ◼   ► from the 90s, oh they had offices, not cubicles.

00:27:20 ◼   ► But anyway, very sort of, you know,

00:27:23 ◼   ► if you are listening to this

00:27:24 ◼   ► and you are a 90s era Apple employee

00:27:27 ◼   ► and have photos of your cool setups in your office,

00:27:30 ◼   ► just send them a couple of them,

00:27:31 ◼   ► send us a couple of them because I love seeing those.

00:27:33 ◼   ► And I'm sure they're not quite what they look like today.

00:27:36 ◼   ► I have not actually seen the inside of an actual human working person's office at Apple

00:27:40 ◼   ► in recent years, so I don't know what they're like, but I do know that Apple right now has

00:27:44 ◼   ► many different buildings that vary widely in how nice they are, how modern they are,

00:27:52 ◼   ► when they were built, what the accommodations are like, and the spaceship will be yet another

00:27:56 ◼   ► iteration.

00:27:57 ◼   ► I think in the spaceship they have a bunch of mockups, you can see pictures of what they

00:28:00 ◼   ► expect the work areas to be like and the offices to be like, but there is no like "what does

00:28:05 ◼   ► an Apple office look like, because Apple's campus is so much bigger than the giant one

00:28:09 ◼   ► infinite loop building.

00:28:10 ◼   ► It's so many other buildings scattered all over the place, and they are very different

00:28:13 ◼   ► from each other.

00:28:14 ◼   ► So, tell us, speaking of displays and cabling, tell us about DisplayPort.

00:28:21 ◼   ► Someone wrote in with a bunch of facts about DisplayPort, and we've talked about all these

00:28:24 ◼   ► bits and pieces before.

00:28:25 ◼   ► We've talked about how we didn't think there was going to be an external 5K display for

00:28:29 ◼   ► a long time, because you couldn't run it over DisplayPort at the current standard.

00:28:34 ◼   ► we were on display part 1.2 and it didn't have, it can only do up to 4k, and we're like

00:28:39 ◼   ► maybe when display part 1.3 comes but that's not gonna be out for a long time so what are

00:28:42 ◼   ► they gonna do?

00:28:43 ◼   ► we found out the answer to that was that they're gonna do this, you know, what they do with

00:28:48 ◼   ► the LG display.

00:28:49 ◼   ► it's one cable, it's not two cables, and they just stream multiple display part 1.2 streams

00:28:53 ◼   ► over it.

00:28:55 ◼   ► but this information we got sent as a summary brought home another reality which is that

00:28:59 ◼   ► even when display part 1.3 comes it still is not your savior, not that we need to save

00:29:03 ◼   ► because we have a solution but it is not your savior for connecting your 5k display because

00:29:07 ◼   ► display part 1.3 only does 5k at 60 frames per second at 8 bits per component whereas

00:29:14 ◼   ► display part 1.2 goes up to 4k at 60 frames per second at 10 bits per component which

00:29:19 ◼   ► is important if you're doing fancy photo and video work and don't want to see like color

00:29:23 ◼   ► banding and all that crap and also the alpine ridge thunderbolt chipset can't receive that

00:29:31 ◼   ► the display port 1.3 input anyway, so it's kind of a moot point. So we are going to be in the world of

00:29:38 ◼   ► two display point 1.2 streams being tunneled over FireWire for a while, because that's the only way

00:29:45 ◼   ► you can get 5k at 60 frames per second at 10 bits per component. So maybe display point 1.4 will do

00:29:53 ◼   ► it in a single stream, I don't know. And as for Thunderbolt, the Thunderbolt Angler, Thunderbolt 1

00:29:59 ◼   ► could send two DisplayPort 1.1 streams.

00:30:02 ◼   ► Thunderbolt 3 can send two DisplayPort 1.2 streams.

00:30:05 ◼   ► Obviously, we know it can do that

00:30:06 ◼   ► 'cause it does it with the LG display.

00:30:08 ◼   ► And when Thunderbolt 3 does that,

00:30:10 ◼   ► it still leaves 10 gigabits per second

00:30:12 ◼   ► of bandwidth left over for other stuff.

00:30:14 ◼   ► So that is the magic that makes the laptops

00:30:17 ◼   ► being connected to LG display work.

00:30:18 ◼   ► And that is like, if you were to take that back in time

00:30:21 ◼   ► and show that to someone like 15 years ago,

00:30:24 ◼   ► you're gonna say, you're gonna output how much video

00:30:26 ◼   ► over this skinny little thing?

00:30:28 ◼   ► You know, we had, we were just connecting like the ADC connector or DVI or these

00:30:32 ◼   ► big hunk and multi-pin parallel things with big thick cables at resolutions that are,

00:30:37 ◼   ► you know, a tiny fraction of the current one. And now we're able to do this, you know,

00:30:41 ◼   ► which is still kind of a hack taking those two DisplayPort 1.2 streams and streaming them over

00:30:46 ◼   ► this one cable because the standards don't have enough to fill the whole screen and then putting

00:30:50 ◼   ► them back together with the display controller and everything. That is a, that's very impressive.

00:30:54 ◼   ► And we mentioned multi-streaming, sometimes abbreviated MST.

00:30:58 ◼   ► That actually refers to the part of the display point 1.2 spec

00:31:02 ◼   ► that lets you tunnel two DisplayPort 1.1 streams over it.

00:31:06 ◼   ► And I keep saying DisplayPort 1.2, 1.1, and 1.3,

00:31:08 ◼   ► but the abbreviation that's used frequently is HBR,

00:31:11 ◼   ► which hopefully stands for high bit rate.

00:31:13 ◼   ► And DisplayPort 1.1 is HBR, DisplayPort 1.2 is HBR2,

00:31:18 ◼   ► and DisplayPort 1.3 is HBR3.

00:31:20 ◼   ► I don't know if that has any clarification,

00:31:22 ◼   ► but that's how it's referred to in this email

00:31:23 ◼   ► some of the literature. Clear as mud. Yeah. Anyway, it's a good thing we didn't have to

00:31:29 ◼   ► wait for DisplayPort 1.3, and it's really cool what Apple did to get the external 5K display

00:31:33 ◼   ► working just in time for them to not introduce a new Mac Pro. And finally, somewhat tangentially

00:31:41 ◼   ► related to this, we got an anonymous as-yet-unconfirmed tip that no, the LG display does not have

00:31:46 ◼   ► a GPU in it, which makes sense in light of the DisplayPort stuff, because why would it need a GPU

00:31:50 ◼   ► If they can output two DisplayPort 1.2 streams over the single cable, the LG Display

00:31:52 ◼   ► can just receive them and make one image out of them, and Bob's your uncle, as they say.

00:31:59 ◼   ► Okay. And then as a final note, and this is clearly for John,

00:32:07 ◼   ► tell me about the MacBook Pro as the naked robotic core, if you please.

00:32:10 ◼   ► This is another topic that many listeners have brought up. The naked robotic core,

00:32:14 ◼   ► for brief review, is the idea for the iDevices, specifically the iPhone, that Apple

00:32:20 ◼   ► wants to make the smallest, skinniest thing possible, even if it doesn't function as a

00:32:24 ◼   ► complete phone and then allow people to augment it either with cases or battery cases or colors

00:32:29 ◼   ► or whatever, that they don't sell you the entire phone, they tell you the naked robotic core and

00:32:32 ◼   ► then you dress it up to be the phone that you really want it to be. Because if Apple made those

00:32:36 ◼   ► choices and put a rubberized rugged case on the thing for you, or made it thicker and bigger and

00:32:41 ◼   ► ruggedized, the people who wanted a skinny little silver thing couldn't have it. And the people who

00:32:45 ◼   ► wanted a different color couldn't have it and so on and so forth. So they're like, "Here you go,

00:32:48 ◼   ► here's the naked robotic core add to it whatever you want that's strategy has been discussed a long

00:32:53 ◼   ► time as a you know i was trying to get into apple's head about why they keep making their

00:32:57 ◼   ► phones thinner and slippery and all this other stuff um and so a couple people brought that up

00:33:01 ◼   ► for the macbook pro is the macbook pro a naked robotic core and my initial instinct to say was

00:33:06 ◼   ► no because you don't put a case on your thing although a battery case for a macbook pro would

00:33:10 ◼   ► be awesome but you don't like they do have external batteries for it but it's not it's not like you

00:33:15 ◼   ► you put a flowery case on it so when you accidentally drop it, it doesn't get dinged.

00:33:18 ◼   ► Like it's not, it's a different size class of item than a phone.

00:33:21 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like they're selling you the skinniest thing possible and allowing you

00:33:25 ◼   ► to bulk it up by adding stuff to it.

00:33:27 ◼   ► Although I suppose you could do that and I'm sure someone out there makes a case for the

00:33:30 ◼   ► MacBook Pro.

00:33:31 ◼   ► But I thought about it a little bit more.

00:33:34 ◼   ► One aspect of it does seem kind of naked robotic, Cory, and it gets into the idea of the Thunderbolt

00:33:39 ◼   ► ports that, again, as discussed last show, I'm in favor of going to a bunch of uniform,

00:33:45 ◼   ► very small multipurpose ports that can do everything. They're cool, they're multipurpose,

00:33:51 ◼   ► they can do a lot of things, but one of the aspects of Thunderbolt ports that makes them

00:33:58 ◼   ► so multipurpose is they are like an externalization of PCI or PCI Express. That necessitates the

00:34:05 ◼   ► the externalization of certain components.

00:34:07 ◼   ► For example, like this one little tiny plug,

00:34:09 ◼   ► I can plug in here and I can do video out to DVI,

00:34:12 ◼   ► to VGA, to Mini DisplayPort, to Thunderbolt display,

00:34:15 ◼   ► HDMI, look at all these different options I have.

00:34:18 ◼   ► I don't have to put 17 different video ports

00:34:20 ◼   ► on the side of my Mac.

00:34:21 ◼   ► I can just have this one little skinny port.

00:34:23 ◼   ► But the price for doing that is that you have

00:34:26 ◼   ► externalized all the circuitry required

00:34:29 ◼   ► to make HDMI output work, to make DVI output work,

00:34:32 ◼   ► because as we've discussed and seen in the past,

00:34:34 ◼   ► lots of these adapters have chips in them.

00:34:37 ◼   ► And those chips aren't just like optional

00:34:38 ◼   ► and will go away once the world gets fixed.

00:34:41 ◼   ► It's because the thing that's coming out of that port

00:34:44 ◼   ► that lets you do that is not video

00:34:47 ◼   ► if only my projector could understand it.

00:34:49 ◼   ► It is an externalization of the PCI bus.

00:34:52 ◼   ► So there needs to be some chips to deal with that.

00:34:54 ◼   ► And that's not true for all things.

00:34:56 ◼   ► Like USB, you could connect right to it.

00:34:57 ◼   ► So when we all convert to USB-C

00:34:58 ◼   ► on all our devices everywhere, we won't have that problem.

00:35:01 ◼   ► certain devices still have some part that could have been inside the computer

00:35:06 ◼   ► if there was a big honking port, moved to the outside of the computer. Now those

00:35:10 ◼   ► computers are small and often they fit in a little adapter that you wouldn't

00:35:13 ◼   ► even see and in theory they could also be moved into the devices eventually but

00:35:17 ◼   ► for a while I think one of the prices of this beautiful uniform future, not just

00:35:22 ◼   ► the fact that we have dongles, but that Apple is pushing some logic, some active

00:35:28 ◼   ► logic outside of their computer case. It used to be in the inside, and now they're giving

00:35:33 ◼   ► you the naked, even less robotic core, because some of the roboticness has been moved outside

00:35:38 ◼   ► the case. So I've been thinking about that and thinking, is there a future where you

00:35:42 ◼   ► plop down your super skinny Mac laptop and the only thing you ever plowed into it is

00:35:47 ◼   ► super skinny, beautiful, slender cables, none of which have a big white dongle brick that

00:35:54 ◼   ► contains the impossibly small active chip to do some sort of translation.

00:35:59 ◼   ► And one thing that I think is a necessary regression of this move, though, of the move

00:36:06 ◼   ► to externalizing all of these different little things and pouring all of the complexity and

00:36:14 ◼   ► capability of adapting to different ports and protocols and adding different things

00:36:18 ◼   ► onto external devices, one of the downsides of this is that the ones that you put in the

00:36:24 ◼   ► the computer you could control the quality of.

00:36:26 ◼   ► And oftentimes they came for free with the Intel chipset

00:36:29 ◼   ► or whatever else, and you could make pretty good things

00:36:31 ◼   ► like USB controllers and HDMI outputs and everything else.

00:36:35 ◼   ► In the current way of doing things,

00:36:38 ◼   ► of externalizing to all these dongles and adapters and stuff

00:36:41 ◼   ► you are basically forcing people to buy something

00:36:46 ◼   ► from someone, who knows who,

00:36:48 ◼   ► and who knows who's making the thing on the inside,

00:36:51 ◼   ► to get the capability it used to get

00:36:53 ◼   ► with nice, reliable, built-in stuff.

00:36:56 ◼   ► And some of the, or many of the things that you are

00:36:59 ◼   ► adding onto are these cheap, no-name brands

00:37:04 ◼   ► from Amazon or eBay or whatever.

00:37:05 ◼   ► And I feel like it's gonna be a similar problem

00:37:10 ◼   ► as finding a good USB hub, which is very difficult.

00:37:15 ◼   ► Good USB hubs do exist, but they're so hard to find,

00:37:19 ◼   ► reliably that they basically don't exist.

00:37:22 ◼   ► And so like USB devices in practice,

00:37:25 ◼   ► once you need more of them than what your computer

00:37:27 ◼   ► has ports for, they just become less reliable

00:37:29 ◼   ► because your hub is probably less reliable

00:37:32 ◼   ► and it's very hard to find one that isn't

00:37:33 ◼   ► or very hard to diagnose that problem.

00:37:35 ◼   ► And once you require fairly pricey Apple dongles,

00:37:39 ◼   ► and we will get to this, but fairly pricey Apple dongles

00:37:42 ◼   ► to do basic things everyone needs like,

00:37:46 ◼   ► or not everyone, basic things that a lot of people need

00:37:48 ◼   ► like USB-A adapters or HDMI or things like that,

00:37:52 ◼   ► because the first party ones are so expensive,

00:37:56 ◼   ► many people in reality are going to go buy

00:37:58 ◼   ► third party ones for Amazon or whatever,

00:38:00 ◼   ► and they're going to be less reliable,

00:38:03 ◼   ► they're going to be less controllable,

00:38:04 ◼   ► they're gonna be less predictable,

00:38:06 ◼   ► in many cases, not all, but many cases.

00:38:09 ◼   ► And I feel like that's kind of a step backwards

00:38:11 ◼   ► in a lot of ways.

00:38:12 ◼   ► Like we used to have these nice reliable internal ports

00:38:15 ◼   ► for all these things, and while it's great

00:38:17 ◼   ► to have the versatility of these kind of everything ports

00:38:19 ◼   ► now, and while it's great to save the thickness of them

00:38:22 ◼   ► if you want a thinner laptop, it is definitely a step

00:38:25 ◼   ► backwards to have to rely on some 50 cent chip inside

00:38:29 ◼   ► of a God knows who made it cable for something that you find

00:38:33 ◼   ► pretty important to getting your work done.

00:38:35 ◼   ► - Well, okay, that's certainly possible, but I don't know

00:38:39 ◼   ► if the sky is really falling yet, Chicken Little.

00:38:41 ◼   ► I mean-- - No, I didn't say it was.

00:38:44 ◼   ► - Well, we don't know what the quality of these things

00:38:46 ◼   ► going to be. And I think that in general, like, USB hub is a good counter argument that

00:38:50 ◼   ► I don't have a good answer for. But in general...

00:38:53 ◼   ► Well, the USB is built in though. That's the, that's the, the USB will be inside the thing.

00:38:57 ◼   ► It's when you externalize PCI express and say this adapter works by pretending it's

00:39:02 ◼   ► like a device on the PCI bus and it has a chip for translating the video, you know,

00:39:07 ◼   ► pulling the video off. And what was that one that had like, well, the iPad 100, like an

00:39:10 ◼   ► H.264 encoder thing in there or a tiny little iOS device and like that kind of stuff goes

00:39:17 ◼   ► on.

00:39:18 ◼   ► That's where you're moving stuff outside.

00:39:19 ◼   ► USB should be just a matter of everyone please update your connectors to not be those big

00:39:22 ◼   ► old things.

00:39:23 ◼   ► Like I see a light at the end of the tunnel for the USB angle, but I see less light for

00:39:28 ◼   ► things like display adapters or even something as people mentioned like Ethernet, which is

00:39:33 ◼   ► very common and standard and you expect to just work.

00:39:37 ◼   ► But if there has to be a chip in your Ethernet adapter,

00:39:40 ◼   ► then it's like Marco said,

00:39:41 ◼   ► you are kind of at the mercy of the quality of the adapter.

00:39:45 ◼   ► The bright side is if it breaks,

00:39:47 ◼   ► unlike the little chip breaking on your motherboard,

00:39:48 ◼   ► you just buy a new adapter.

00:39:49 ◼   ► So there's up and downsides.

00:39:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I don't think that we should go

00:39:55 ◼   ► and assume that the quality is gonna be subpar

00:39:58 ◼   ► right out of the gate.

00:39:58 ◼   ► And certainly there will be one or two

00:40:01 ◼   ► of any kind of device, one or two Ethernet adapters,

00:40:04 ◼   ► one or two SD card readers, et cetera, that will be crappy.

00:40:07 ◼   ► But I think it's a bit premature to just assume that anything outside of the case is going

00:40:11 ◼   ► to be crap.

00:40:12 ◼   ► And even if there's a glut of things that are crappy, I mean, that's, in principle,

00:40:18 ◼   ► why Amazon has reviews and why you can ask your friends, "Hey, does this one work for

00:40:23 ◼   ► you?"

00:40:24 ◼   ► And hopefully Apple would only carry things that they feel are of a decent quality, even

00:40:30 ◼   ► if it doesn't have the Apple logo on it.

00:40:33 ◼   ► It's certainly possible that this stuff will all be crap, but I think it's way too soon

00:40:36 ◼   ► to get worked up about.

00:40:37 ◼   ► - Well, Apple will make stuff anyway.

00:40:39 ◼   ► So if you just want the Apple quality ones,

00:40:40 ◼   ► Apple will make them and sell them to you

00:40:42 ◼   ► for way too much money.

00:40:43 ◼   ► - But there's an interesting side effect to that too.

00:40:45 ◼   ► If you noticed, they've outsourced

00:40:47 ◼   ► a lot of the current ones to Belkin.

00:40:49 ◼   ► Like they've outsourced the Ethernet to Belkin.

00:40:52 ◼   ► I think one-- - Dual lightning.

00:40:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, the dual lightning, that horrible splitter

00:40:56 ◼   ► that lets you charge and listen to your lightning headphones.

00:40:59 ◼   ► It's the worst thing ever.

00:41:01 ◼   ► You pay like 40 bucks for this thing.

00:41:05 ◼   ► this giant thing that has two lightning ports out,

00:41:07 ◼   ► one lightning port in, so that you plug it into your iPhone,

00:41:10 ◼   ► you have this giant dongle, and then you also have

00:41:13 ◼   ► to have the headphone dongle to plug that

00:41:15 ◼   ► into the second lightning port.

00:41:17 ◼   ► Why couldn't they just have it be lightning out

00:41:22 ◼   ► and headphone out?

00:41:23 ◼   ► Why did, ugh.

00:41:24 ◼   ► That thing-- - That's another angle,

00:41:26 ◼   ► and as I was like, I would mind the chips and the adapters

00:41:30 ◼   ► and the externalization of all this active logic

00:41:34 ◼   ► less if it was smaller. That adapter in particular is comically large for functions. I understand

00:41:40 ◼   ► you have to have active logic. Ideally it would be like the little, what do you call it, the

00:41:45 ◼   ► lightning head-foot adapter where it's like, "I didn't even know there was a chip in there,

00:41:48 ◼   ► it's so darn small." That's how they should all be. When it's a giant white brick, then it is,

00:41:53 ◼   ► you know, that makes me feel bad about externalizing it. I assume that stuff will go down

00:41:57 ◼   ► over time and they'll shrink and they'll get better and so on and so forth. So there is some

00:42:01 ◼   ► sunlight at the end of the tunnel there, but I still do think about the pushing

00:42:05 ◼   ► of the chips outside of the laptop case, especially since on a 15-inch laptop

00:42:10 ◼   ► that's a pretty big case. So at some point if we can't get the world to get

00:42:15 ◼   ► on board with putting these chips in their devices and we still have to have

00:42:18 ◼   ► an adapter with a dongle, it would be nice to maybe move one or two of the

00:42:23 ◼   ► most often used ones to the side of that thing. Or if you're not gonna do that, put

00:42:27 ◼   ► three more of those ports on the side because there's so much room on the 15-inch MacBook

00:42:32 ◼   ► Pro. Things are looking kind of lonely there with just those two tiny little openings.

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00:45:00 ◼   ► Since the last show, Apple has made a very curious move.

00:45:09 ◼   ► They have cut the prices on USBC peripherals.

00:45:13 ◼   ► And we'll put a link in the show notes to a post on iMore

00:45:16 ◼   ► from a friend of the show, Renee Ritchie, that breaks down

00:45:19 ◼   ► the price changes that have happened.

00:45:22 ◼   ► And so as a couple of examples, the USB-C to traditional USB-C went from $19 to $9.

00:45:30 ◼   ► The USB-C to Lightning cable went from $25 to $19, et cetera, et cetera.

00:45:35 ◼   ► But what's particularly interesting about this is that the LG displays, the 4K and 5K

00:45:44 ◼   ► displays are also getting discounted.

00:45:46 ◼   ► I don't recall how much the 5K was before.

00:45:48 ◼   ► Was it like $1,300?

00:45:49 ◼   ► I think it was $1,300, yeah.

00:45:51 ◼   ► And now it's $974.

00:45:53 ◼   ► Still not available for order quite yet, but it's going to be $974 until the end of the

00:45:58 ◼   ► year.

00:45:59 ◼   ► And that's how long all of these discounts will be going on.

00:46:03 ◼   ► That's a really interesting move.

00:46:07 ◼   ► And I feel like there's a pessimistic and an optimistic take on this.

00:46:11 ◼   ► The optimistic take is Apple's listening and they're responding and they're trying to make

00:46:19 ◼   ► all of our grumbling go, well maybe not go away, but make it easier on us for those of

00:46:25 ◼   ► us who are professionals or think we're professionals and need a whole bunch of dongles.

00:46:30 ◼   ► And so on the plus side, Apple's listening and they're trying to react.

00:46:36 ◼   ► That's one way of looking at it and I'm assuming that you guys will have alternative ways of

00:46:41 ◼   ► of looking at it?

00:46:42 ◼   ► - Well, I think it's damage control to some degree.

00:46:45 ◼   ► I think it's pretty clear that Apple

00:46:49 ◼   ► released these new MacBook Pros.

00:46:50 ◼   ► I think the reaction to the new MacBook Pros

00:46:54 ◼   ► has been less positive than Apple expected.

00:46:57 ◼   ► I think that's pretty safe to say.

00:46:59 ◼   ► And you can read between some lines on that,

00:47:01 ◼   ► and I think Phil even came just about to saying that

00:47:04 ◼   ► in some interview somewhere.

00:47:05 ◼   ► Basically, the reaction has been

00:47:09 ◼   ► not as positive as they wanted.

00:47:10 ◼   ► And so they're trying to do damage control.

00:47:12 ◼   ► And that's what, you know, they begin on their statements

00:47:14 ◼   ► basically by saying how well this MacBook Pro is selling.

00:47:17 ◼   ► That's great, and there's all these qualifiers,

00:47:19 ◼   ► like it's the best selling Pro laptop

00:47:23 ◼   ► that we've ever had on our website.

00:47:24 ◼   ► And you know, so there's all these qualifiers

00:47:26 ◼   ► and everything, but obviously it's selling well.

00:47:27 ◼   ► It's not gonna be a flop or anything.

00:47:29 ◼   ► But they are getting a lot of criticism for it.

00:47:31 ◼   ► So this is obvious damage control.

00:47:33 ◼   ► And I think, you know, I think Gruber's tip,

00:47:35 ◼   ► or Gruber's note about it, I think on Twitter somewhere,

00:47:38 ◼   ► was that he thinks maybe they don't want it to appear

00:47:41 ◼   ► like a money grab.

00:47:43 ◼   ► Like the reason they moved to USBC,

00:47:45 ◼   ► they don't want it to appear like it was purely

00:47:47 ◼   ► for profit reasons to sell a bunch of adapters and stuff.

00:47:49 ◼   ► And I believe that.

00:47:51 ◼   ► I think, you know, I'm sure Apple is not sorry

00:47:56 ◼   ► that they're gonna make a lot more money

00:47:57 ◼   ► from adapters and stuff than before.

00:47:59 ◼   ► I think that's a happy side effect.

00:48:01 ◼   ► I don't think that was the primary reason why they did it.

00:48:03 ◼   ► I think the primary reason they did it was to make

00:48:05 ◼   ► the laptop a thinner, lighter, and simpler,

00:48:07 ◼   ► save on component costs to enter onto the laptop,

00:48:09 ◼   ► make it easier to engineer by having fewer ports

00:48:11 ◼   ► on the outside, easier to service,

00:48:12 ◼   ► fewer things that will die or break

00:48:14 ◼   ► or have things stuck in them

00:48:16 ◼   ► or otherwise need warranty service,

00:48:18 ◼   ► and then finally, of course,

00:48:19 ◼   ► because they believe in the future of whatever.

00:48:21 ◼   ► I believe those are all reasons why they made only USB-C

00:48:25 ◼   ► plus a couple headphone jacks,

00:48:27 ◼   ► why they made those things all the standard ports

00:48:29 ◼   ► and nothing else.

00:48:31 ◼   ► However, you could very easily look at this

00:48:33 ◼   ► and you could say, well, you know,

00:48:35 ◼   ► they did this just to make money on adapters.

00:48:37 ◼   ► So I think that was probably one of the things

00:48:41 ◼   ► they were trying to combat with this.

00:48:42 ◼   ► I think they were also just trying to apologize

00:48:47 ◼   ► maybe to power users in a very small

00:48:50 ◼   ► and relatively inexpensive way

00:48:52 ◼   ► that doesn't admit any fault about anything.

00:48:54 ◼   ► You know, like it's basically, it's a PR feel good move,

00:48:58 ◼   ► similar to the free bumper case for the iPhone 4

00:49:00 ◼   ► with antenna gate.

00:49:01 ◼   ► Like it's a PR like make you feel better

00:49:05 ◼   ► and make it look like we're not just being greedy

00:49:07 ◼   ► for adapter prices.

00:49:08 ◼   ► That being said, these dongles and stuff

00:49:10 ◼   ► are still very expensive.

00:49:11 ◼   ► Like they're still Apple prices.

00:49:14 ◼   ► They're still more expensive than they need to be.

00:49:15 ◼   ► And I think it's weird that the price cuts are temporary.

00:49:19 ◼   ► The fact that it only runs 'til the end of the year,

00:49:23 ◼   ► like if they really wanted it to not look

00:49:25 ◼   ► like it was about dongle profits,

00:49:27 ◼   ► they should have made the price cuts permanent.

00:49:29 ◼   ► 'Cause these price cuts are not,

00:49:31 ◼   ► they don't appear to be unsustainable.

00:49:34 ◼   ► Knowing roughly what margins tend to be at retail,

00:49:36 ◼   ► things like this, and knowing that most of these

00:49:39 ◼   ► probably have very few parts in them

00:49:41 ◼   ► and are probably very inexpensive

00:49:42 ◼   ► and are probably very profitable to begin with,

00:49:44 ◼   ► it wouldn't surprise me if most of these had

00:49:47 ◼   ► at least a 50% margin and probably a larger one.

00:49:50 ◼   ► And they've cut the prices by like 25 to 50% basically.

00:49:53 ◼   ► So I would be very, very surprised if any of these things

00:49:58 ◼   ► were actually losing money at the current prices.

00:50:00 ◼   ► - But that's not sustainable by Apple standards

00:50:02 ◼   ► because they need 40% margin on everything.

00:50:04 ◼   ► So I agree that the margins are probably way over 40% for accessories and they've cut them

00:50:08 ◼   ► down to what I think is below 40%.

00:50:10 ◼   ► Although I think they should maybe revisit that because if they can't make them, like

00:50:14 ◼   ► if they're getting 50% margins on these things, they're spending perhaps too much money making

00:50:19 ◼   ► them.

00:50:20 ◼   ► Not that I'm saying they should make them crappier, but...

00:50:22 ◼   ► Then 50%, that was being, that was a conservative estimate.

00:50:25 ◼   ► I'm guessing the margins are more like 80%.

00:50:27 ◼   ► They're a lot on this kind of stuff usually.

00:50:30 ◼   ► They do make like all their stuff.

00:50:32 ◼   ► They make their, even their little adapters very carefully.

00:50:35 ◼   ► Not so much in terms of reliability, as a million people who will send us pictures of

00:50:38 ◼   ► their totally destroyed things will come, but in terms of tolerances and industrials

00:50:42 ◼   ► on their precision engineered products.

00:50:46 ◼   ► There's not a lot of plastic mold lines on them.

00:50:49 ◼   ► All the edges are straight and crisp.

00:50:53 ◼   ► They look like little pieces of art, which also makes them bad adapters in many cases.

00:50:56 ◼   ► But I'm just saying like, it costs money to do that.

00:51:00 ◼   ► And they come in little, and the reason I know this is I bought a bunch of them, I'll

00:51:03 ◼   ► get back to the temporary pricing in a second.

00:51:05 ◼   ► They come in little rectangular boxes that are beautiful origami folded and you know,

00:51:10 ◼   ► they're just, they're not just like a little plastic bag that you get like with Amazon

00:51:14 ◼   ► Basics and the frustration free packaging of just this cable thrown in there, right?

00:51:18 ◼   ► And you know, and like I said, in terms of how they perform as actual adapters, I don't

00:51:22 ◼   ► think they're actually better than the other ones, but I do see that where some of the

00:51:25 ◼   ► money is spent on them.

00:51:26 ◼   ► So I think they would, in general, they would be better off finding a way to manufacture

00:51:32 ◼   ► their adapters for less money, giving up some of the beauty and elegance, and at the same

00:51:37 ◼   ► time making them more reliable adapters.

00:51:39 ◼   ► And the reason I bought a bunch of them is what you're getting at, the temporary pricing.

00:51:43 ◼   ► If you want a pessimistic take, this is what I thought when I saw it.

00:51:45 ◼   ► "Oh, it's nice.

00:51:46 ◼   ► They're doing something to be nice to all those people who are posting horror stories

00:51:50 ◼   ► that I bought a new MacBook Pro and also $300 worth of adapters so I could use the damn

00:51:54 ◼   ► thing."

00:51:55 ◼   ► Right?

00:51:56 ◼   ► So like now you won't have to spend $150 worth of adapters,

00:52:00 ◼   ► but only until the end of the year.

00:52:01 ◼   ► So what happens at the end of the year?

00:52:03 ◼   ► By the end of the year,

00:52:04 ◼   ► has everyone updated all their offices

00:52:05 ◼   ► to have connectors that don't require these dongles?

00:52:08 ◼   ► No, they just go back to the old pricing,

00:52:10 ◼   ► the old pricing, which was really, really expensive,

00:52:12 ◼   ► especially for some of the simpler adapters.

00:52:14 ◼   ► The reason I bought those, the USB-C to plain old USB-A,

00:52:18 ◼   ► because that's gonna,

00:52:19 ◼   ► I don't even have a computer with ports that require that.

00:52:22 ◼   ► I mean, I got my Apple TV, I suppose I could plug it into it,

00:52:24 ◼   ► but it would do nothing.

00:52:25 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:52:26 ◼   ► But someday I will have a computer that does that.

00:52:29 ◼   ► And they were half off basically.

00:52:30 ◼   ► It was like $19 to $9.

00:52:32 ◼   ► So I bought two of them because I'm going to use them.

00:52:35 ◼   ► And $9 is a price I will pay for that little adapter.

00:52:39 ◼   ► Will I pay $20 for that adapter?

00:52:41 ◼   ► Hell no.

00:52:42 ◼   ► I will not pay $20.

00:52:43 ◼   ► I'll go to Monoprice and find whatever,

00:52:45 ◼   ► you know, Amazon Basics was mentioned.

00:52:47 ◼   ► I'll find a cheaper one because it's not worth that much money.

00:52:50 ◼   ► $20 for a USB-C to USB-A adapter?

00:52:53 ◼   ► No.

00:52:54 ◼   ► So I bought them because they were temporary, maybe their system is working, adding some urgency or

00:52:59 ◼   ► whatever, but it would be much nicer if they didn't see this as a PR thing that needs to be addressed

00:53:06 ◼   ► in the short term, but rather as a long-term issue. Because I think they're going to be selling dongles

00:53:11 ◼   ► for a long time, and that's going to be factored into the price of people buying laptops, especially

00:53:15 ◼   ► the next laptop that people buy after this one, because they'll know, "Oh, when you buy an Apple

00:53:19 ◼   ► laptop also reserve 100 and X dollars for dongles maybe more and the prices

00:53:25 ◼   ► just go right back up it's it's not a good it's not a good situation I mean I

00:53:29 ◼   ► know they kind of get away with in the iOS devices where it's like oh you can

00:53:32 ◼   ► buy the iOS device because you want the one with lots of memory we're just gonna

00:53:34 ◼   ► add a couple hundred bucks and you want AppleCare and then you want the front

00:53:37 ◼   ► case in the back case in your iPad like it adds up really fast but for some

00:53:41 ◼   ► reason and maybe this is illogical the adapters seem like you know relatively

00:53:46 ◼   ► more expensive. And maybe it's because I don't see the little chips in there and don't understand

00:53:51 ◼   ► how expensive it is to get them all integrated into that, but this is a problem of Apple's

00:53:54 ◼   ► own making. And when I see third-party ones that can come in for less, especially for

00:53:58 ◼   ► the simpler adapters, it makes me think that Apple is choosing the wrong trade-offs when

00:54:03 ◼   ► it comes to making its own adapters. They're too expensive, too precious, and not sturdy

00:54:09 ◼   ► enough.

00:54:10 ◼   ► It's funny you say that you went and picked some of these up because on my to-do list

00:54:15 ◼   ► this week, which I haven't had time for,

00:54:18 ◼   ► is I wanted to go to the Apple Store

00:54:20 ◼   ► and pick up a handful of these adapters

00:54:23 ◼   ► because I have the exact same thought.

00:54:25 ◼   ► I probably won't have a MacBook Pro or a Mac

00:54:28 ◼   ► that uses USB-C for at least a year or two,

00:54:31 ◼   ► but that time will come,

00:54:33 ◼   ► so why not just pick up a few of these?

00:54:35 ◼   ► And I intend to do that very thing sometime soon.

00:54:39 ◼   ► - The reason I'm laughing is that I did that very thing.

00:54:43 ◼   ► Also, all three of us did this.

00:54:45 ◼   ► So none of the three of us have one of the new MacBook Pros

00:54:48 ◼   ► or have ordered one or likely are planning to buy one.

00:54:51 ◼   ► - Well you briefly ordered one.

00:54:52 ◼   ► - I did.

00:54:53 ◼   ► - You briefly ordered one.

00:54:55 ◼   ► - And I ordered it with two adapters,

00:54:58 ◼   ► a USB C to A and a C to Lightning.

00:55:01 ◼   ► Those both shipped and arrived

00:55:03 ◼   ► before I even canceled the laptop.

00:55:05 ◼   ► So and I'm like, well I could return them,

00:55:07 ◼   ► but well I'm gonna use them anyway.

00:55:08 ◼   ► And then the price drop was announced

00:55:10 ◼   ► and they credited me the difference.

00:55:11 ◼   ► I'm like, okay, that's even better.

00:55:13 ◼   ► And so I went and I bought, I now have two C to A adapters,

00:55:17 ◼   ► the C to Lightning, gigabit ethernet,

00:55:20 ◼   ► the SanDisk card reader, and the Thunderbolt 2 adapter,

00:55:23 ◼   ► 'cause I have an external sound device

00:55:25 ◼   ► that we record ATP at WBC with at a Thunderbolt.

00:55:28 ◼   ► And 'cause I made all the exact same calculations

00:55:31 ◼   ► as you guys, it's like, well,

00:55:33 ◼   ► I'm gonna need these eventually,

00:55:35 ◼   ► and they're probably not going to get cheaper over time.

00:55:38 ◼   ► Like this is probably, I'm going to need these soon,

00:55:41 ◼   ► probably within the next two years,

00:55:43 ◼   ► I will need these adapters.

00:55:45 ◼   ► And things like the C to Lightning cable,

00:55:48 ◼   ► that's just the new Lightning cable.

00:55:50 ◼   ► I need tons of Lightning cables, they're all over the place.

00:55:53 ◼   ► So to pick up one of these at whatever it is,

00:55:56 ◼   ► $19 instead of $25, that was a small price drop on that one,

00:55:59 ◼   ► but like, well, I'm gonna need these,

00:56:01 ◼   ► so I might as well get one or two.

00:56:03 ◼   ► - You should make like a Papercraft MacBook Pro

00:56:05 ◼   ► and plug all your dongles into it.

00:56:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:56:08 ◼   ► Like you'll have like a pretend computer.

00:56:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, but again, I do admit though, I agree, John,

00:56:13 ◼   ► that it is very strange that these price drops

00:56:15 ◼   ► are only temporary in the dongles.

00:56:17 ◼   ► 'Cause again, they're still not making them

00:56:19 ◼   ► like mono-price level pricing or anything.

00:56:21 ◼   ► Like they're still expensive compared to the no-name ones.

00:56:24 ◼   ► And that's fine, they are better.

00:56:26 ◼   ► - They dropped them down to the same price

00:56:28 ◼   ► as good quality third-party peripherals.

00:56:30 ◼   ► Like that's all you did.

00:56:31 ◼   ► It's not like it's a super duper bargain.

00:56:33 ◼   ► It's just like, oh, this is the price I would expect to see

00:56:35 ◼   ► if I found whatever the best third-party one is out there,

00:56:38 ◼   ► a similar price to this.

00:56:39 ◼   ► And they botched the PR on this too because they did the right thing and credited everybody,

00:56:44 ◼   ► but the way we found that out was like, "Oh, they're dropping the prices, but what about

00:56:48 ◼   ► the people who already ordered them?"

00:56:49 ◼   ► And then we had to wait for people to start getting credit.

00:56:51 ◼   ► That's got to be part of your message.

00:56:53 ◼   ► We've lowered all the prices, and by the way, if you bought one in the past X days, we're

00:56:57 ◼   ► going to credit you, which they obviously did.

00:56:59 ◼   ► They did the right thing.

00:57:01 ◼   ► When you're going to do the right thing, Apple, tell us about it because it's good PR.

00:57:05 ◼   ► leave people wondering like, "Oh, now I feel bad that I bought them. Hey, but what

00:57:09 ◼   ► happened to the poor suckers who bought them?" or whatever. And, you know, we found out a

00:57:11 ◼   ► couple hours or a day later that Apple did the right thing, but why, like, that was another

00:57:16 ◼   ► drop of all.

00:57:17 ◼   ► Yeah, but I, I don't know. Regardless, this is a good move. I wish they would make the

00:57:23 ◼   ► price cuts permanent. They might still do that. Like, they haven't, they said till

00:57:27 ◼   ► the end of the year, they could change their minds or they could cut the prices later,

00:57:31 ◼   ► you know, after some period of time, again.

00:57:33 ◼   ► The funny thing about the end of the year thing is that

00:57:37 ◼   ► I was honestly tempted to order the LG display too,

00:57:40 ◼   ► the big 5K display, because like,

00:57:42 ◼   ► well, that is only gonna be available for ordering

00:57:45 ◼   ► at this $300 discount for a couple of weeks maybe,

00:57:49 ◼   ► 'cause you can't even order one yet.

00:57:51 ◼   ► The website currently says it'll become available

00:57:53 ◼   ► in December, and the price drop is till the end of the year.

00:57:56 ◼   ► So you're gonna have like a few weeks in December

00:57:58 ◼   ► when you can actually order this thing at a discount.

00:58:01 ◼   ► Who knows when it would actually ship and arrive?

00:58:03 ◼   ► And I'm thinking like, well, will there ever be a time,

00:58:06 ◼   ► like if they make a new Mac Pro next year,

00:58:09 ◼   ► I'm gonna want one of those displays

00:58:11 ◼   ► if it's still a standalone Mac Pro.

00:58:12 ◼   ► But I'm not confident enough that it will be

00:58:15 ◼   ► a standalone Mac Pro that will exist,

00:58:17 ◼   ► that will be out next year,

00:58:19 ◼   ► to actually order one of these things

00:58:20 ◼   ► like six months ahead of time.

00:58:22 ◼   ► - You just hook that up to your Papergraph MacBook Pro

00:58:24 ◼   ► and you'll have a complete setup of the computer part.

00:58:27 ◼   ► You'll have the dongles, you'll have the screen.

00:58:29 ◼   ► It'll be beautiful.

00:58:30 ◼   ► - You can use your iPad as the pretend touch bar.

00:58:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

00:58:34 ◼   ► - It'll have the whole computer except the screen,

00:58:35 ◼   ► the keyboard, and the trackpad, and the CPU, and the GPU.

00:58:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's gonna be a rough transition.

00:58:40 ◼   ► Once we get to the other side,

00:58:43 ◼   ► we're in these heavy transitional eras.

00:58:45 ◼   ► First we went retina and SSD,

00:58:48 ◼   ► and we still have not finished those transitions.

00:58:51 ◼   ► We're close, but we still have not completed

00:58:54 ◼   ► those two large transitions completely.

00:58:57 ◼   ► you can still go out and buy not even just one,

00:59:00 ◼   ► but many Mac models that either don't have retina,

00:59:04 ◼   ► don't have SSDs by default, or even both,

00:59:07 ◼   ► which is embarrassing.

00:59:09 ◼   ► But those transitions are almost done.

00:59:13 ◼   ► Once you have a retina computer with all SSD storage,

00:59:17 ◼   ► not Fusion Drive, all SSD storage,

00:59:19 ◼   ► it is a thing of beauty, it is amazing.

00:59:22 ◼   ► It's such a good computer from that point forward.

00:59:24 ◼   ► And USB-C is gonna be the same thing for ports.

00:59:26 ◼   ► It's like we have this kind of cumbersome,

00:59:29 ◼   ► annoying transition that's going to break a lot of things

00:59:31 ◼   ► like old monitors that you won't be able to use anymore.

00:59:34 ◼   ► It's putting up this big barrier, changing all the ports,

00:59:37 ◼   ► requiring this dongle sale and everything else.

00:59:40 ◼   ► But once we get to that promised land of all USB-C ports

00:59:45 ◼   ► and all or mostly USB-C peripherals,

00:59:48 ◼   ► it's going to be really nice.

00:59:50 ◼   ► And the benefits of the new MacBook Pro,

00:59:51 ◼   ► like being able to charge it on both sides,

00:59:53 ◼   ► like that's cool, that's a useful thing.

00:59:55 ◼   ► It's going to be a really nice road when we get there, but the transition is going to be uncomfortable, just like all these other ones have been.

01:00:01 ◼   ► Well, you still have our new thing in our future world will be confusion about the USB-C to Lightning cable, which end is which, because they're different sizes, and you can tell if you look at them.

01:00:12 ◼   ► But if you're not paying attention, and you just pick the skinny little cable up with the two skinny little ends, we don't have the problem of like USB-A where you keep flipping it over three times to get it in right, because they're both bi-directional.

01:00:22 ◼   ► but you might find yourself sticking the lightning plug into the side of your MacBook Pro

01:00:26 ◼   ► maybe just once or twice before you realize what's going on.

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01:01:48 ◼   ► [Music]

01:01:52 ◼   ► We had talked, I think, briefly last week, and then we ended up shelving it so we could

01:01:58 ◼   ► discuss this week, about the thought of ARM processors on the Mac.

01:02:04 ◼   ► And I think I might have brought this up because I was saying that, you know, if you look at

01:02:10 ◼   ► a lot of the angst that's been floating around the community with regard to the MacBook Pro

01:02:16 ◼   ► and the Mac Pro, there is a way that you can blame a lot of these troubles on Intel. Not to say that

01:02:23 ◼   ► Apple's blameless by any stretch of the imagination, but you can paint a picture in which Intel holds a

01:02:29 ◼   ► lot of the blame. And it's in Apple's... It's Apple's modus operandi to control everything it can.

01:02:36 ◼   ► and so it controls the chips on the iOS lines,

01:02:40 ◼   ► why wouldn't it make sense for them to try to control

01:02:44 ◼   ► the chip on the MacBook Pro, or really just the Mac lines?

01:02:48 ◼   ► And so that makes you think, well,

01:02:50 ◼   ► why wouldn't they use an ARM chip

01:02:52 ◼   ► like they have in the iOS lines and throw that on?

01:02:55 ◼   ► It's presumably going to be very low power,

01:02:59 ◼   ► and the modern iOS devices

01:03:03 ◼   ► are nearly as fast as modern Macs,

01:03:06 ◼   ► And so it seems on paper to make sense.

01:03:11 ◼   ► Why wouldn't they give it a shot?

01:03:14 ◼   ► I mean, the transition would stink,

01:03:15 ◼   ► but we've already done this once with the transition

01:03:18 ◼   ► from PowerPC to Intel and fat binaries and blah, blah, blah.

01:03:21 ◼   ► - Twice. - Why not try again?

01:03:23 ◼   ► Twice, right?

01:03:24 ◼   ► So why not try again?

01:03:25 ◼   ► - We need like an old Mac sound effect.

01:03:28 ◼   ► Whenever John schools us on something

01:03:30 ◼   ► that came across the Mac before 2004.

01:03:33 ◼   ► - PowerPC transition was awesome.

01:03:35 ◼   ► graphing calculator was a miracle.

01:03:37 ◼   ► - We could use a startup chime

01:03:39 ◼   ► since it's not a thing anymore.

01:03:40 ◼   ► - There you go.

01:03:42 ◼   ► So we discussed this ARM and the Mac thing so many times,

01:03:44 ◼   ► and we're probably gonna say all the same things here,

01:03:45 ◼   ► but the reason I think it was worth bringing up again,

01:03:48 ◼   ► the reason we delayed it to this show

01:03:49 ◼   ► is because like things change surprisingly quickly

01:03:52 ◼   ► in the world of ARM CPUs.

01:03:54 ◼   ► And just like to briefly summarize

01:03:56 ◼   ► all the things that we've said in the past,

01:03:57 ◼   ► x86 is important for Windows compatibility.

01:03:59 ◼   ► How important is that still, but it is a thing.

01:04:03 ◼   ► why would Apple spend money producing ARM chips for the Mac?

01:04:08 ◼   ► Because the Mac doesn't sell enough volume

01:04:09 ◼   ► to be worth creating your own chips,

01:04:11 ◼   ► whereas the iOS chips do.

01:04:13 ◼   ► And that leads to, okay, well, all you gotta do

01:04:15 ◼   ► is wait until you can do the investment,

01:04:18 ◼   ► design your own fancy ARM chip

01:04:20 ◼   ► that you use in your iOS devices,

01:04:22 ◼   ► and basically use that same chip or the same architecture,

01:04:24 ◼   ► maybe with more cores and more fancy stuff.

01:04:26 ◼   ► But basically, like the work you did for your iOS devices

01:04:29 ◼   ► transfers directly to the Mac.

01:04:30 ◼   ► And then you solve the investment problem

01:04:32 ◼   ► because you're like, oh, I'm doing this work anyway

01:04:34 ◼   ► for the next iPhone.

01:04:35 ◼   ► It doesn't cost that much more to make a bigger,

01:04:38 ◼   ► more parallel version of it and throw it in

01:04:40 ◼   ► to a Mac type thing.

01:04:41 ◼   ► It solves the problem of relying on Intel

01:04:43 ◼   ► like Casey was getting to,

01:04:44 ◼   ► because it's been a bad run lately with delays

01:04:47 ◼   ► and everything like that.

01:04:48 ◼   ► Apple's the master of its own destiny,

01:04:51 ◼   ► and you just have the x86 compatibility stuff to deal with.

01:04:54 ◼   ► And the reason I think it's worth revisiting again

01:04:56 ◼   ► is because just one year since the last time

01:04:59 ◼   ► we probably discussed it,

01:05:00 ◼   ► the chip that's in the latest iPhones is, I think,

01:05:04 ◼   ► faster than some Macs, and it's clocked lower in most cases.

01:05:09 ◼   ► And I think we're kind of at that, not quite at the point,

01:05:12 ◼   ► but getting close to the point where the work they do

01:05:15 ◼   ► for the iPhone CPU is directly transferable to the Mac

01:05:19 ◼   ► in terms of what kind of performance could you get out of it

01:05:23 ◼   ► with making a bigger version, clocking it higher,

01:05:26 ◼   ► maybe putting in a couple more cores.

01:05:29 ◼   ► I think we're there for the low-end Macs,

01:05:30 ◼   ► and if they don't even make any high-end Macs anymore,

01:05:32 ◼   ► maybe it doesn't matter.

01:05:33 ◼   ► So as this equation keeps changing,

01:05:36 ◼   ► and as we depressingly look at the Geekbench scores

01:05:39 ◼   ► for the latest phone and compare them

01:05:40 ◼   ► to whatever Mac we're sitting in front of and go,

01:05:42 ◼   ► "What is going on here?

01:05:44 ◼   ► The world is upside down."

01:05:46 ◼   ► The balance of all those factors that I discussed at Apple

01:05:51 ◼   ► have to be changing.

01:05:53 ◼   ► It really depends on the weight you give to them

01:05:56 ◼   ► to decide, is this the go or no-go moment?

01:05:58 ◼   ► And again, we all just assume that Apple has either been working on or understand the challenges

01:06:05 ◼   ► of converting macOS to ARM, if it hasn't done so already.

01:06:11 ◼   ► But especially with the integration of the ARM chip for the Touch ID, the viability and

01:06:16 ◼   ► desirability of an ARM-based Mac to both Apple and consumers only increases over time.

01:06:22 ◼   ► And I feel like this has to come to a head eventually, unless Intel gets back in gear

01:06:27 ◼   ► and there's another two process levels ahead of everybody else.

01:06:31 ◼   ► And I guess the wildcard is that 3D XPoint stuff, which I don't know if it's proprietary

01:06:36 ◼   ► in any way or tied to Intel in any specific way. But there are many ways that Intel could ensure

01:06:43 ◼   ► that it keeps Apple's business. But especially with this recent delay and the new MacBooks and

01:06:48 ◼   ► looking at the scores for the new iPhones, in my mind anyway, things are shifting much more towards

01:06:55 ◼   ► the possibility of Arm Max in the future than I would have thought of even just a year ago.

01:06:59 ◼   ► I completely agree with you.

01:07:01 ◼   ► And it's worth noting, as I have in the past, that to switch to Arm would incur some

01:07:08 ◼   ► pretty significant costs for a lot of developers, which admittedly are a very, very, very small

01:07:14 ◼   ► part of the market.

01:07:15 ◼   ► But doing virtualization on an Intel box for Windows, which is really now only running

01:07:23 ◼   ► on Intel again, that's easier than trying to do some sort of cross-compilation from

01:07:29 ◼   ► ARM to X86—I'm sorry, from X86 to ARM.

01:07:33 ◼   ► So if old me, the me that was still writing code in Windows, which actually happened earlier

01:07:40 ◼   ► today, but we'll leave that aside, the old me that was doing it professionally 40-plus

01:07:45 ◼   ► hours a week, I would probably have to go back to a PC, because presumably it would

01:07:49 ◼   ► be just awful to have to cross-compile or really—what's the term I'm looking for?

01:07:54 ◼   ► It's not cross-compile.

01:07:55 ◼   ► >>TIM

01:08:12 ◼   ► some people plugged into their Macs so they could run Windows on them. And so

01:08:16 ◼   ► there are definitely costs to this. There's costs in software, pain, you know,

01:08:20 ◼   ► you would have to have some sort of emulation layer for x86 or the... what was

01:08:26 ◼   ► the thing they did for PowerPC on top of Intel? What was the name of that?

01:08:30 ◼   ► Rosetta. Thank you. I've got just a solution for you, Casey. Yeah. It's a dongle, and inside it is a Raspberry Pi.

01:08:37 ◼   ► I mean, you just mentioned that basically PCI card, I think it was Anubis card.

01:08:44 ◼   ► You could fairly easily put a reasonably powerful x86 computer inside a dongle connected to

01:08:50 ◼   ► a Thunderbolt 3 port, and the only people who'd have to have that dongle are the people

01:08:53 ◼   ► who needed to do that.

01:08:56 ◼   ► It's not just that.

01:08:57 ◼   ► It's also people who want to run software on their – if you just want to run – I

01:09:02 ◼   ► ran into this at work recently, which is depressing.

01:09:04 ◼   ► Docker does not run on my Mac at work because it's too old,

01:09:07 ◼   ► because it doesn't have the hypervisor stuff or whatever.

01:09:09 ◼   ► But anyway, Docker is not gonna run.

01:09:12 ◼   ► Docker for deploying on x86-based servers

01:09:14 ◼   ► is not gonna run on our Mac.

01:09:16 ◼   ► And so I would need to get that down a little too.

01:09:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, fair enough.

01:09:19 ◼   ► I didn't think that that way.

01:09:20 ◼   ► Also doing a quick search,

01:09:22 ◼   ► it looks like the first time that we spoke about this

01:09:25 ◼   ► that I could quickly find was episode 35,

01:09:28 ◼   ► almost exactly three years ago on October 18 of 2013,

01:09:33 ◼   ► where we discussed, where is it,

01:09:36 ◼   ► how Touch ID could be used in Macs,

01:09:38 ◼   ► and whether ARM MacBooks would be worth the transition costs.

01:09:41 ◼   ► - So does that make this follow-up?

01:09:43 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:09:44 ◼   ► - We crossed over into topics, believe it or not,

01:09:46 ◼   ► when we talked about the peripheral price cuts.

01:09:47 ◼   ► Everyone in the chat room wants to tell us all

01:09:49 ◼   ► that Thunderbolt is an Intel thing.

01:09:51 ◼   ► Like all things are solvable with money though.

01:09:53 ◼   ► I truly believe this.

01:09:53 ◼   ► Like it's like we talked about last week.

01:09:55 ◼   ► Apple could make x86 chips and get off the Intel bandwagon.

01:09:59 ◼   ► And you know, there's lots of possibilities here

01:10:02 ◼   ► that involving money changing hands and licensing deals

01:10:05 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

01:10:06 ◼   ► And another thing that factors into this,

01:10:08 ◼   ► I forgot to mention in the little summary,

01:10:10 ◼   ► is that for a long time, Intel has had

01:10:13 ◼   ► this massive advantage that they were on

01:10:15 ◼   ► the new process size before everybody else,

01:10:17 ◼   ► sometimes like a year or more before everybody else.

01:10:21 ◼   ► So everything they made had just like a built-in advantage

01:10:24 ◼   ► of being lower power and smaller, you know,

01:10:27 ◼   ► and like they were first at whatever the process size is.

01:10:31 ◼   ► And lately, I've been seeing lots of stories

01:10:35 ◼   ► and collecting them in the show notes,

01:10:36 ◼   ► then eventually deleting them or aging them off.

01:10:38 ◼   ► Lots of stuff about like,

01:10:39 ◼   ► well, Intel is not gonna be first to 10 nanometers

01:10:42 ◼   ► or Intel already is in first 10 nanometers.

01:10:43 ◼   ► Like, no, those are just promises.

01:10:45 ◼   ► Intel will still be first and Intel is the only one

01:10:47 ◼   ► who's gonna be able to proceed beyond that

01:10:48 ◼   ► because they've done the deep R&D.

01:10:49 ◼   ► And like, back in that show 36 or whatever,

01:10:53 ◼   ► one of the topics we've probably talked about is like,

01:10:55 ◼   ► does Intel just wanna be a fab for everybody else?

01:10:57 ◼   ► Because they have the best process.

01:10:59 ◼   ► Wouldn't it be great if Apple could have Intel fab

01:11:01 ◼   ► of its, you know, A-series chips on their fancy new process, and, you know, Intel is

01:11:07 ◼   ► making some of the chips in phones, but not the big one, not the A-series chip, they're

01:11:11 ◼   ► just making what, like a radio chip that is not as good as the Qualcomm one yet, but anyway.

01:11:15 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, yep, that's the one I have that doesn't work.

01:11:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:18 ◼   ► Same.

01:11:19 ◼   ► Well, I don't know if that's why you're having your drop calls, but either way, like, it

01:11:22 ◼   ► used to be that Intel was unquestionably the best place to fab your stuff, because Intel

01:11:25 ◼   ► was like, "We're not gonna just fab your stuff, we wanna sell you chips that we make,

01:11:29 ◼   ► because we make way more money off those.

01:11:30 ◼   ► We're not just gonna be a stupid fab.

01:11:31 ◼   ► That's not what we are.

01:11:32 ◼   ► We're not just a fab, we're Intel, we make chips.

01:11:35 ◼   ► And I'm not gonna say that Intel

01:11:37 ◼   ► is losing its lead in fab tech,

01:11:40 ◼   ► but it seems less clear cut to me

01:11:41 ◼   ► as a fairly casual observer of the Silicon chip industry

01:11:46 ◼   ► that Intel's lead on process

01:11:49 ◼   ► is no longer as big as it used to be.

01:11:51 ◼   ► And I forget what are the A10 being made at?

01:11:55 ◼   ► Are they 14 nanometer?

01:11:56 ◼   ► I forget what size they are,

01:11:57 ◼   ► but I keep reading stories about, you know, Taiwan's semiconductor will be at 10 nanometer

01:12:01 ◼   ► before Intel is and stuff like that.

01:12:04 ◼   ► >> 16 nanometer.

01:12:05 ◼   ► >> Is it 16?

01:12:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:07 ◼   ► Maybe they still have a lead, but it just doesn't seem as big to me as it used to be.

01:12:09 ◼   ► And also Intel seems to be more open now to fabbing things for other people.

01:12:13 ◼   ► There was some other story out in the show notes about that a while back.

01:12:16 ◼   ► So add that to yet another set of variables that are slowly shifting more towards being

01:12:23 ◼   ► in favor of Arm Max.

01:12:25 ◼   ► I don't think any of this stuff is at a tipping point yet,

01:12:27 ◼   ► but when we revisit this topic in a year,

01:12:29 ◼   ► it may be a slam dunk.

01:12:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, at this point,

01:12:32 ◼   ► I would say that the processor itself

01:12:36 ◼   ► is probably no longer the reason why they're not doing it.

01:12:39 ◼   ► It's everything around the processor.

01:12:41 ◼   ► It's all the memory controllers and the Thunderbolt,

01:12:45 ◼   ► if they want, they have to move away from Thunderbolt

01:12:47 ◼   ► in all likelihood, which, by the way,

01:12:49 ◼   ► yeah, I mean, Apple did just make a pretty big bet

01:12:51 ◼   ► on Thunderbolt with the USB-C transition.

01:12:54 ◼   ► That's a big bet, but Apple changes their mind

01:12:56 ◼   ► when they need to.

01:12:57 ◼   ► Like they can totally say, you know what,

01:12:59 ◼   ► Thunderbolt was great last year,

01:13:00 ◼   ► this year we can't do it anymore.

01:13:02 ◼   ► Too bad, buy new dongles.

01:13:03 ◼   ► - Wow, they don't have to change their mind.

01:13:04 ◼   ► Like I said, these are all solvable problems with money.

01:13:08 ◼   ► Like I'm sure Intel could come to some agreement

01:13:11 ◼   ► with Apple involving exchanges of money

01:13:14 ◼   ► that would allow someone somewhere to build

01:13:16 ◼   ► an ARM chip with Thunderbolt.

01:13:17 ◼   ► Like I don't think there's anything specifically

01:13:20 ◼   ► X86 specific about it, even if it's like Biodow and crap.

01:13:23 ◼   ► Like these are solvable problems technically and monetarily.

01:13:25 ◼   ► It could be another barrier and that's another variable like on the against side and maybe

01:13:29 ◼   ► it's a big barrier because Intel is like, "No, we're never going to license it and,

01:13:33 ◼   ► you know, tough luck."

01:13:34 ◼   ► Like we don't know the constants that apply to all these different factors, but I don't

01:13:40 ◼   ► say it rules it out.

01:13:41 ◼   ► And I wouldn't say that Intel is incredibly flexible on things like that.

01:13:46 ◼   ► But the other thing too is like it would be possible, although I don't think it would

01:13:51 ◼   ► would last very, I think it would be a transitional thing,

01:13:54 ◼   ► but it would be possible to only make some models

01:13:58 ◼   ► with ARM chips, like only the MacBook One,

01:14:00 ◼   ► or only the MacBook One and Escape.

01:14:02 ◼   ► And so you keep the pro models on Intel,

01:14:05 ◼   ► so they could just say, you know what,

01:14:07 ◼   ► if you need to virtualize Windows or whatever,

01:14:09 ◼   ► you could use the pro model, and if you need Thunderbolt,

01:14:11 ◼   ► use the pro model, and if you are willing to get

01:14:14 ◼   ► the smallest, lightest thing that doesn't have

01:14:16 ◼   ► all the pro features, then you can have these two models

01:14:20 ◼   ► that are ARM-based.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Maybe the Mac Mini becomes ARM-based as well, who knows?

01:14:24 ◼   ► They have lots of options there

01:14:25 ◼   ► if they wanted to go that route.

01:14:27 ◼   ► I don't know if, again, I don't know if they will,

01:14:29 ◼   ► I don't know if it makes sense for them to put

01:14:32 ◼   ► so much effort into this transition

01:14:34 ◼   ► if they're not really hurting badly from Intel,

01:14:38 ◼   ► but I think there have been times over the last couple years

01:14:41 ◼   ► where they have been really hurting badly because of Intel.

01:14:44 ◼   ► And I, especially, I mean, if they care about the Mac Pro

01:14:47 ◼   ► more, it would be even more pressing there

01:14:49 ◼   ► because the Mac Pro has been historically

01:14:51 ◼   ► even more limited by Intel,

01:14:53 ◼   ► even before Apple started skipping generations.

01:14:55 ◼   ► You're right, money does solve a lot of things,

01:14:57 ◼   ► they could make a deal,

01:14:58 ◼   ► but Intel really is pretty inflexible

01:15:01 ◼   ► on certain things these days,

01:15:02 ◼   ► and it doesn't seem like Apple is a large enough

01:15:05 ◼   ► or profitable enough Intel customer

01:15:08 ◼   ► for Apple to be able to dictate terms to them anymore,

01:15:10 ◼   ► if they ever were.

01:15:11 ◼   ► - Apple's big bargaining chip though is that they could say,

01:15:14 ◼   ► "Hey Intel, I know you don't wanna be a fab,

01:15:16 ◼   ► "but if you were gonna fab something,

01:15:18 ◼   ► the A-series chip that's in our iOS devices,

01:15:21 ◼   ► it's pretty good volume there.

01:15:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:15:23 ◼   ► - Fair point.

01:15:24 ◼   ► Also, to go back a half step, Marco, you had said,

01:15:27 ◼   ► you could make just the MacBook One have the new ARM chip

01:15:32 ◼   ► just for the sake of discussion.

01:15:34 ◼   ► And I agree with you,

01:15:36 ◼   ► but wouldn't we run into the same sort of problem

01:15:38 ◼   ► with this USB-C transition where,

01:15:40 ◼   ► if the MacBook One is running ARM, but nothing else is,

01:15:44 ◼   ► what is incentivizing the software developers

01:15:47 ◼   ► to rebuild their apps for the ARM platform and make fat binaries and blah, blah, blah,

01:15:53 ◼   ► if only one presumably low-volume Mac is on ARM and everything else is still on Intel.

01:15:59 ◼   ► The Mac App Store rules, if only Mac developers actually sold things for the Mac App Store

01:16:04 ◼   ► anymore.

01:16:05 ◼   ► Right.

01:16:06 ◼   ► But I mean, I'm sure they would do that.

01:16:07 ◼   ► That would be their thing.

01:16:08 ◼   ► They would mandate it in the Mac App Store.

01:16:09 ◼   ► And honestly, developers would do it, if it's as easily as just changing some settings and

01:16:13 ◼   ► filling some stuff around.

01:16:14 ◼   ► like at this point, most conscientious Mac developers should not have architecture specific

01:16:19 ◼   ► code. And like, they still had W2C sessions to say, how to tell if you're doing something

01:16:23 ◼   ► that relies on, you know, word size or byte order, and especially with Swift and stuff

01:16:27 ◼   ► with this stuff being abstracted away and not having to worry about C ints and shorts

01:16:30 ◼   ► and whatever the hell those are, right, you know, on different architectures and all that

01:16:34 ◼   ► crap. I think it wouldn't be that bad. And developers would do it because if you want

01:16:37 ◼   ► to sell to those people, you'll do it, right? Like, maybe the people making ProOps wouldn't

01:16:41 ◼   ► because they don't want to sell to the MacBook escape people, but it is surmountable and

01:16:45 ◼   ► I think there are incentives for people to get on board.

01:16:49 ◼   ► As time goes on, it becomes less and less difficult to make relatively portable code.

01:16:55 ◼   ► Like you know, we have moved up so many layers of abstraction in so much of our code. We

01:17:00 ◼   ► do so little custom assembly or byte order assumptions or you know, binary operations

01:17:04 ◼   ► at that level at all anymore that it's less and less work now. And you know, I think developers

01:17:10 ◼   ► I think developers are gonna do more work

01:17:12 ◼   ► to support the touch bar than they would need to do

01:17:15 ◼   ► to make an ARM version of almost any app.

01:17:17 ◼   ► - Except for game developers, they'd be screwed.

01:17:19 ◼   ► - What gets delivered to the App Store?

01:17:21 ◼   ► 'Cause I haven't looked at this in a while,

01:17:24 ◼   ► but doesn't Swift compile to its own intermediate language,

01:17:27 ◼   ► then gets compiled to an LLVM intermediate language?

01:17:30 ◼   ► Is that what gets pushed to the App Store,

01:17:32 ◼   ► and then that's what bitcode is all about?

01:17:33 ◼   ► - I think you're mixing bitcode up with the CIL stuff,

01:17:36 ◼   ► which is a whole different thing.

01:17:37 ◼   ► - I think you're right, I think you're right.

01:17:38 ◼   ► - I forget what the Bitcode policy is.

01:17:40 ◼   ► Do you remember, Marco?

01:17:42 ◼   ► - Bitcode is required on the watch, I believe.

01:17:47 ◼   ► I think it's optional for iPhones still.

01:17:50 ◼   ► And I don't know if the Mac App Store,

01:17:53 ◼   ► may it rest in peace, even supports it?

01:17:56 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:17:58 ◼   ► Anyway, but Bitcode, a number of people

01:18:00 ◼   ► have looked at it and basically determined

01:18:02 ◼   ► that Bitcode is probably not a very good way

01:18:05 ◼   ► to just automatically generate a whole ARM thing,

01:18:09 ◼   ► 'cause Bitcode I think is too low level.

01:18:12 ◼   ► It's beneath the compiled level,

01:18:13 ◼   ► and so basically assumptions about byte order and stuff

01:18:17 ◼   ► would not translate automatically.

01:18:19 ◼   ► - Gotcha, okay.

01:18:20 ◼   ► But you see where I'm driving at though.

01:18:21 ◼   ► I wasn't sure if this could solve that problem for you.

01:18:24 ◼   ► - I'm pretty sure Bitcode is not the answer

01:18:26 ◼   ► to an automatic ARM build of everything in the store.

01:18:29 ◼   ► If it doesn't work.

01:18:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, what was it?

01:18:32 ◼   ► Is it mostly, I used to know this about Bitcode,

01:18:35 ◼   ► but not running these OS X reviews for a long time

01:18:37 ◼   ► lets you forget all these things.

01:18:38 ◼   ► I don't remember the details,

01:18:38 ◼   ► but Apple's motivation for doing it

01:18:40 ◼   ► was so they have more flexibility

01:18:42 ◼   ► with fiddling with instructions

01:18:44 ◼   ► from one generation to the next of the S1 chip

01:18:46 ◼   ► or the S2 and so on and so forth,

01:18:48 ◼   ► that because you're not delivering machine code

01:18:50 ◼   ► that they just run as is.

01:18:52 ◼   ► They have some flexibility if they change an instruction

01:18:54 ◼   ► or remove an instruction and replace it with another one

01:18:56 ◼   ► that's slightly different,

01:18:57 ◼   ► that they can do the final machine code generation business.

01:19:00 ◼   ► Anyway, developers were all antsy about it

01:19:03 ◼   ► And who knows how long it will be a thing.

01:19:05 ◼   ► But on the watch, that's the one I was thinking on.

01:19:06 ◼   ► The watch, like it is a thing, it has been from day one.

01:19:09 ◼   ► Everything for the watch is delivered as bit code,

01:19:11 ◼   ► which gives Apple more flexibility with hardware design

01:19:14 ◼   ► than they would have if everyone was shipping

01:19:15 ◼   ► just binaries that are run as is.

01:19:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I thought that the pitched reason for bit code

01:19:21 ◼   ► was that this way, as a user, you would only download

01:19:26 ◼   ► the version of the binary that's built for your platform

01:19:29 ◼   ► rather than having to get,

01:19:31 ◼   ► kind of building on what you were saying,

01:19:32 ◼   ► rather than having to get the A6 version,

01:19:34 ◼   ► A7 version, A8 version, or what have you,

01:19:36 ◼   ► you would just have the version of the app

01:19:39 ◼   ► built against the processor that you have.

01:19:42 ◼   ► - Yeah. - And thus,

01:19:42 ◼   ► it would be a smaller download.

01:19:44 ◼   ► - That's true too.

01:19:45 ◼   ► Although, like with binary, in most cases,

01:19:49 ◼   ► as most of Marco's apps prove,

01:19:50 ◼   ► because he doesn't like to include graphics

01:19:51 ◼   ► 'cause he uses paint code for everything,

01:19:53 ◼   ► the size of your application is not determined

01:19:55 ◼   ► by the size of your code these days.

01:19:56 ◼   ► Like your icons are bigger than a lot of your code, right?

01:19:59 ◼   ► - I will say that a lot of apps

01:20:01 ◼   ► involve a large quantity of advertising and tracking SDKs.

01:20:06 ◼   ► And those can actually add a non-trivial amount

01:20:09 ◼   ► of binary size.

01:20:11 ◼   ► I mean, and a lot of their size is assets as well.

01:20:13 ◼   ► But yeah, a lot of those can get pretty sizable

01:20:16 ◼   ► and make the binary pretty ridiculous.

01:20:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, the Swift standard library,

01:20:19 ◼   ► I think which I think still has to ship

01:20:21 ◼   ► with the applications 'cause they haven't worked out

01:20:22 ◼   ► the ABI compatibility yet.

01:20:23 ◼   ► - That's true.

01:20:24 ◼   ► - Is another big thing that's in there.

01:20:26 ◼   ► But for applications of appreciable size,

01:20:29 ◼   ► when you're thinking of things like,

01:20:30 ◼   ► you know, a one gigabyte game. That's not code. That's all assets.

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01:21:48 ◼   ► there's been a couple of calls for a terrifying strategy from the past to

01:21:55 ◼   ► come back John should there be Mac clones again this is a was mentioned

01:22:01 ◼   ► last show as a measure of exactly how deep the dissatisfaction in some quarters

01:22:08 ◼   ► was about the new MacBook Pros. They're saying, "Look, if you're not

01:22:11 ◼   ► gonna make the Pro Mac that I want to make, how about letting other people make

01:22:16 ◼   ► Mac hardware? That way, Apple, you don't have to worry about it anymore. Someone

01:22:20 ◼   ► else will address my needs and everyone will be happy." Isn't that great? Mac

01:22:24 ◼   ► cloning was done. We did it once before. We can do it again. Just license the Mac

01:22:28 ◼   ► operating system, and I will gladly buy from some other company that actually cares about

01:22:32 ◼   ► my needs and will make me the big honking computer that I want.

01:22:36 ◼   ► And we've been down this road before in the past.

01:22:40 ◼   ► For most of Apple's history with the Mac, people have been clamoring for them to clone

01:22:44 ◼   ► it because that was IBM's half-accidental strategy.

01:22:48 ◼   ► IBM and Intel and Windows, like that whole big mess.

01:22:51 ◼   ► The way it ended up through no particular grand plan of anybody except perhaps Microsoft

01:22:56 ◼   ► that you could buy a PC from companies other than IBM.

01:23:00 ◼   ► They were IBM compatible, and they all would suit your needs.

01:23:05 ◼   ► They could all run MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows eventually and all that other stuff.

01:23:09 ◼   ► And so the hardware vendors would compete with each other and have their own little race

01:23:13 ◼   ► to the bottom until they all went out of business except for Dell and Lenovo and anyway, blah, blah, blah.

01:23:16 ◼   ► Everyone was saying during the go-go late 80s, early 90s, hey, Apple, IBM, Microsoft,

01:23:24 ◼   ► whoever are eating your lunch because they let anybody make hardware and they have competition

01:23:28 ◼   ► and capitalism and yay, 80s, you should license your operating system." And Apple said, "No,

01:23:35 ◼   ► we're not going to license our operating system." And every time Apple did something that someone

01:23:38 ◼   ► didn't like, it would say, "See, if you just license your operating system, you'd be doing

01:23:43 ◼   ► much better." In the end, eventually, I think Apple, now making so much more money than

01:23:49 ◼   ► the other PC makers, has come out the other side and saying, "I guess our strategy was

01:23:53 ◼   ► pretty good but in the middle there couple of Apple CEOs were convinced that

01:23:57 ◼   ► this is a good idea I think spindler started it maybe I forget I'm blaming

01:24:00 ◼   ► the wrong CEO for starting Mac cloning they said when Apple was getting

01:24:07 ◼   ► increasingly desperate I still didn't have a new operating system and Windows

01:24:10 ◼   ► 95 98 and so on and so forth were taking over the world and I hadn't yet bought

01:24:13 ◼   ► next one of the panic plans they made was all right people keep saying license

01:24:18 ◼   ► in the Mac operating system let's do that and they did that with

01:24:22 ◼   ► predictable results because Apple was not licensing for a position of power.

01:24:26 ◼   ► It allowed a bunch of third parties to make Mac clones very often based on Mac or Apple-derived

01:24:32 ◼   ► reference hardware design. So these clone companies sometimes didn't even have to do the

01:24:35 ◼   ► hard work to build their own hardware. They could just sort of make hardware that was like Apple's

01:24:38 ◼   ► but a little bit better and do a little bit of work in addition to that. It didn't help Apple

01:24:43 ◼   ► make more money. The license fees did not make up for the loss in hardware sales. When Steve Jobs

01:24:48 ◼   ► Jobs came back, yeah I think it was Steve Jobs came back, he canned it.

01:24:52 ◼   ► It may have been canned before then, should have been canned before then.

01:24:56 ◼   ► And the brief MacClone experiment ended.

01:25:00 ◼   ► And for most people looking backwards on it, they're going to be like, "Oh, MacClone,

01:25:03 ◼   ► that was such a big mistake.

01:25:04 ◼   ► It didn't actually help Apple, it actually hurt Apple."

01:25:08 ◼   ► And it was kind of cruel to do MacClone's and then a year or two later say, "Oh, just

01:25:14 ◼   ► kidding, no more MacClone's."

01:25:15 ◼   ► And so all those companies that sprung up around making Mac clones had a brief moment

01:25:20 ◼   ► in the sun and then had to disappear because their entire business was gone.

01:25:23 ◼   ► Motorola even made them, for crying out loud.

01:25:24 ◼   ► Motorola made Mac clones.

01:25:27 ◼   ► And so I would imagine for you people who didn't live through it, you silly millennials,

01:25:32 ◼   ► it just seems like a cautionary tale.

01:25:34 ◼   ► But to me who lived through it, I do have some fond memories.

01:25:37 ◼   ► And I think most Mac users who lived through the cloner do have some fond memories of it

01:25:42 ◼   ► for just the reasons we just talked about, like with the MacBook Pro and dissatisfaction.

01:25:47 ◼   ► There was a time when if Apple didn't make a Mac that was like you wanted to buy, like

01:25:53 ◼   ► it didn't have the right balance of features and price and so on and so forth, there was

01:25:56 ◼   ► a chance there would be another company that would.

01:25:59 ◼   ► And these companies, the Mac cologne makers were no dummies, they tried to fill market

01:26:06 ◼   ► initiatives that Apple didn't want to.

01:26:09 ◼   ► And so they would clock their CPUs a little bit higher.

01:26:12 ◼   ► They would make boring looking tower boxes that were nevertheless much more expandable

01:26:16 ◼   ► than Apple's designs.

01:26:18 ◼   ► They would sell computers for less money than Apple.

01:26:21 ◼   ► They would do all sorts of things that Apple wasn't going to do or just giving you different

01:26:24 ◼   ► combinations of size and hard drive space and video capabilities.

01:26:29 ◼   ► It was actually a fairly exciting time to be a Mac user and I know a lot of people actually

01:26:34 ◼   ► bought those clones and were they as nice as Apple's computers? No. And the companies

01:26:39 ◼   ► weren't around very long because Apple stopped cloning but for a brief moment there we were

01:26:44 ◼   ► in that world where if you were an enthusiast who liked to run the Mac operating system

01:26:50 ◼   ► you had more choices and it was kind of fun. Now this doesn't mean we should do it again

01:26:56 ◼   ► now it's a silly overreaction to a new product that some people were mildly dissatisfied

01:27:01 ◼   ► with. But I guess maybe just my main point in this is to say that Mac clones weren't

01:27:09 ◼   ► actually all bad. And if Apple ever loses total interest in either the Mac entirely

01:27:13 ◼   ► or the high end of the Mac market, some kind of limited licensing plan could work. Just

01:27:23 ◼   ► like the LG monitor is currently the only one you can buy that works with a MacBook

01:27:26 ◼   ► Pro, and I assume there will be other ones. But imagine if one company was blessed as

01:27:29 ◼   ► the company that makes the pro Mac hardware and it was blessed by Apple and

01:27:32 ◼   ► it was the only it was it was no it's not like you had 50 more choices but

01:27:36 ◼   ► merely you had two choices where before you would have zero or before you would

01:27:41 ◼   ► just have one that's the thing I think pro users would find reasonably

01:27:47 ◼   ► acceptable and Apple might find advantageous why don't we make some

01:27:51 ◼   ► money off this mark and let someone else do the heavy lifting without increasing

01:27:55 ◼   ► our support burden too much. Obviously, this is totally outside the realm, philosophically

01:28:00 ◼   ► speaking of, I think, anything that Apple would ever consider, but from a consumer perspective,

01:28:05 ◼   ► it seems viable to me.

01:28:06 ◼   ► I don't see the Apple of today doing it, but everything you just said does make sense.

01:28:11 ◼   ► Craig Hockenberry had an article about it, Apple should pull Lenovo and this exact thing,

01:28:16 ◼   ► just have one company do its hardware stuff if Apple's not interested anymore. I think

01:28:20 ◼   ► mostly it's just an overreaction. "Oh, you're not going to make the hardware I want? Why

01:28:23 ◼   ► let somebody else do it. Like, totally an overreaction. But, they're kind of like the

01:28:28 ◼   ► arm on the Mac. Like, there's something to it, and it's not the time to do it now, but

01:28:33 ◼   ► we'll check back in five years and see how things have changed.

01:28:37 ◼   ► So for reference, I have configured a MacPro-like workstation at Dell.com.

01:28:45 ◼   ► I'm so sorry.

01:28:46 ◼   ► If you've tried to configure anything complicated at Dell.com recently, wow, my goodness. So

01:28:54 ◼   ► I have a few errors in my configuration that need to be fixed according to this popover

01:28:59 ◼   ► dialogue. Now, one of those is the PCIe solid state drive boot drive requires the hard drive

01:29:05 ◼   ► to be the PCIe boot drive. Please update it as needed. Of course, it can't update it for

01:29:08 ◼   ► me. The PCIe solid state drive is not compatible with the dual video card. Please update the

01:29:12 ◼   ► internal hardware configuration requires a PCIe boot drive and a PCIe solid state drive

01:29:16 ◼   ► boot drive, please update as needed.

01:29:17 ◼   ► Please be sure to update the selection for boot drive,

01:29:19 ◼   ► hard drive, and also the selection of boot option

01:29:20 ◼   ► from the PCI-E Solid State Drives.

01:29:22 ◼   ► That being said, if I could somehow make

01:29:25 ◼   ► this configuration work, I have configured

01:29:29 ◼   ► what I think would be a modern version

01:29:31 ◼   ► of the high-end Mac Pro, the 12-core Mac Pro.

01:29:33 ◼   ► Now the current 12-core Mac Pro,

01:29:35 ◼   ► which is three years old and slow,

01:29:37 ◼   ► 64 gig, one terabyte PCI Express SSD.

01:29:41 ◼   ► Base video card, which is the D500-ish.

01:29:44 ◼   ► That is $8,800 for this.

01:29:48 ◼   ► - Holy cow. - And that D500, by the way,

01:29:50 ◼   ► I think is now less powerful than the GPU in the iPad Pro.

01:29:53 ◼   ► Or maybe it's close.

01:29:54 ◼   ► - Probably, yeah.

01:29:55 ◼   ► So the similar Dell with a brand new Broadwell E Xeon,

01:30:00 ◼   ► oh crap, I'm sorry, I had the eight core selected.

01:30:03 ◼   ► Let me change that.

01:30:05 ◼   ► Switch the Mac Pro to eight core.

01:30:06 ◼   ► All right, Mac Pro is $7,300 in the eight core config.

01:30:09 ◼   ► $7,300 for the Mac Pro, $5,400 for the Dell

01:30:13 ◼   ► with the brand new parts that are faster.

01:30:16 ◼   ► So there is a substantial price gain here

01:30:20 ◼   ► for if you wanted to do PC hardware

01:30:24 ◼   ► that was similar in many ways better.

01:30:26 ◼   ► - But don't let Dell do it.

01:30:28 ◼   ► I would like Lenovo or even HP or anybody else

01:30:32 ◼   ► would be better.

01:30:32 ◼   ► - No, the only reason I went to Dell on this

01:30:34 ◼   ► was I checked earlier in the week

01:30:35 ◼   ► and HP does not seem to offer the Broadwell EZ-ons yet.

01:30:38 ◼   ► They're all the V3s and Broadwell's V4.

01:30:40 ◼   ► Anyway, it doesn't matter.

01:30:41 ◼   ► But yeah, for the purpose of building hackintoshes

01:30:45 ◼   ► or workstations or anything else,

01:30:47 ◼   ► man, if Apple licensed the OS to clone makers,

01:30:49 ◼   ► even if they charged like $300 for it,

01:30:52 ◼   ► like some large price for the OS,

01:30:55 ◼   ► it would still be pretty price competitive

01:30:58 ◼   ► to go with a clone maker.

01:31:00 ◼   ► But that's probably the reason they're not gonna do it.

01:31:02 ◼   ► Now that being said, you can look at what they're doing.

01:31:04 ◼   ► As mentioned earlier, it is very noticeable

01:31:07 ◼   ► that they are outsourcing some of their dongles to Belkin,

01:31:10 ◼   ► that they are outsourcing their new monitor to LG.

01:31:14 ◼   ► I think it's very clear that Apple is trying

01:31:17 ◼   ► to get themselves out of businesses.

01:31:19 ◼   ► Like they're exiting businesses,

01:31:21 ◼   ► they're exiting the display business,

01:31:23 ◼   ► they're outsourcing that,

01:31:23 ◼   ► they're exiting some of these dongles, outsourcing that.

01:31:26 ◼   ► And like the Belkin Ethernet Adapter Box,

01:31:29 ◼   ► it looks like an Apple product.

01:31:31 ◼   ► It looks like an Apple product box,

01:31:32 ◼   ► it looks like the product itself.

01:31:34 ◼   ► Like this is clearly like Apple is trying

01:31:37 ◼   ► get themselves out of these non-core, maybe unprofitable businesses. It wouldn't surprise

01:31:45 ◼   ► me if they actually did do some kind of weird partnership with IBM or something to, or you

01:31:51 ◼   ► know, HP or whatever, to offer something like this. I mean, it seems crazy to tell Mac people

01:31:57 ◼   ► that Apple would ever do some kind of clone program again, but if you look at what they're

01:32:02 ◼   ► actually doing today, that isn't totally out of the question. Now, I still think it's

01:32:06 ◼   ► - I think it's incredibly unlikely, I do.

01:32:08 ◼   ► I would not count on it because I would assume

01:32:12 ◼   ► that if Apple wanted a computer like this to exist,

01:32:15 ◼   ► they would just make it themselves.

01:32:16 ◼   ► But there is now precedent in what they're doing

01:32:20 ◼   ► in their lineup to effectively outsource

01:32:24 ◼   ► less interesting parts of their business

01:32:26 ◼   ► to other companies to make it their problem

01:32:27 ◼   ► whenever something needs service

01:32:29 ◼   ► or to manage the margins or whatever else.

01:32:32 ◼   ► - That's the most interesting part of their business

01:32:33 ◼   ► to some people though, like the high-end hardware

01:32:35 ◼   ► kind of like getting back to the Halo car thing like that they should be making that

01:32:38 ◼   ► in house because as a even as just as a motivational tool for their for their internal tech team

01:32:43 ◼   ► and for their customers but I think it would have to be it couldn't just be like a licensing

01:32:47 ◼   ► arrangement because it's not just that Apple wants to make like 300 bucks in each one they

01:32:50 ◼   ► sell there's a support burden to every new model that's out there they have to support

01:32:55 ◼   ► with the OS and everything so I think it would have to be more of a partial ownership profit

01:33:00 ◼   ► sharing type thing which would probably mean that these machines would not be like the

01:33:04 ◼   ► Mac clones, they wouldn't be less expensive for the same hardware. They would be just

01:33:07 ◼   ► as expensive as if Apple made it. The only difference would be, like you said, that Apple

01:33:12 ◼   ► outsources some portion of it. And with stuff like the Belkin connector, and like I said,

01:33:16 ◼   ► the early Mac Pro, you wonder how much of that is Belkin's work and how much of it is

01:33:21 ◼   ► Apple's. A lot of the original Mac clones were Apple reference designs modified. And

01:33:26 ◼   ► a lot of companies do that, give you like a reference board and then you can tweak it

01:33:29 ◼   ► and add your thing. But like for the Belkin on the LG display, how much involvement did

01:33:33 ◼   ► Apple have in the creation of those peripherals? Was it purely, here you go company, you're

01:33:37 ◼   ► now allowed to make this, here are the specs, figure it out? Or did Apple cooperate with

01:33:42 ◼   ► them very closely? Surely for the software integration for the LG screen, they had to

01:33:45 ◼   ► do something. Was there any cooperation at the hardware level? Like, you don't really

01:33:48 ◼   ► know what goes on in these relationships. But as I said before, like monetary deals

01:33:52 ◼   ► could be worked out. And I would hope the Apple today, bargaining from a position of

01:33:56 ◼   ► strength and not from a position of Michael Spindler, would make the arrangement so that

01:34:01 ◼   ► it is very profitable to Apple and that the company that they're partnering with just

01:34:05 ◼   ► feel itself lucky to even be allowed to work with Apple because Apple is so awesome and

01:34:09 ◼   ► that Apple would come out ahead on it financially while removing whatever burdens they feel

01:34:14 ◼   ► are put on them. I think, by the way, for the high end, it's totally a wrong move because

01:34:17 ◼   ► Apple should totally be doing the high end in-house because, you know, we've discussed

01:34:22 ◼   ► this. I think we mostly discussed it in Slack, but all I'm just doing is reiterating my Halo

01:34:25 ◼   ► car thing in seven different ways to get people to understand how this works and having them

01:34:29 ◼   ► complained to me. Even Casey was like, "I don't buy my car because there's a high-end

01:34:33 ◼   ► car from the same maker." I don't know. I don't want to have that discussion again,

01:34:36 ◼   ► but we'll go along.

01:34:37 ◼   ► That's what I sound like?

01:34:38 ◼   ► Yeah, and Slack. You don't know you have that voice plug-in put on?

01:34:42 ◼   ► Wow.

01:34:43 ◼   ► Yikes.

01:34:44 ◼   ► That's unfortunate.

01:34:45 ◼   ► Wow. All right. I think that's it for this week. Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this

01:34:52 ◼   ► week, Betterment, Eero, and Hover, and we will see you next week.

01:34:59 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:35:04 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:35:06 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

01:35:09 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:35:14 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:35:17 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

01:35:20 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:35:25 ◼   ► If you're into Twitter, you can follow them @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:35:34 ◼   ► So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:35:38 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-Uza

01:35:46 ◼   ► It's accidental (It's accidental)

01:35:49 ◼   ► They didn't mean to accidental (It's accidental)

01:35:54 ◼   ► Tech podcast so long

01:35:59 ◼   ► Sorry for the people waiting for Surface Studio and Switch. I think we have exactly,

01:36:02 ◼   ► actually exhausted all the follow-up and tangential topics related to the MacBook Pro announcement

01:36:08 ◼   ► now, and I'm not going to take all the blame for this because people keep sending us feedback about

01:36:12 ◼   ► it. Because, so it's not just us that's like, "Well, you got to get off this MacBook Pro issue."

01:36:16 ◼   ► They, the listeners are still talking to us about it, but I think we're through it all.

01:36:20 ◼   ► So next week, for sure, unless something big happens, Microsoft Surface Studio, Nintendo Switch.

01:36:27 ◼   ► when are they gonna get to the fireworks factory?

01:36:29 ◼   ► - That's a Simpsons thing, isn't it?

01:36:32 ◼   ► - You got it, good job.

01:36:34 ◼   ► - The only reason I got it is because you've used that on,

01:36:36 ◼   ► it's like seven times since--

01:36:37 ◼   ► - Way more than seven, way more.

01:36:39 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:36:40 ◼   ► - All right, so what else is going on

01:36:41 ◼   ► other than the obvious that we'd really rather not discuss?

01:36:45 ◼   ► - I will say, you know, thank you audience and you guys,

01:36:49 ◼   ► this has been nice to, you know,

01:36:51 ◼   ► get my mind off of that stuff.

01:36:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

01:36:56 ◼   ► Grand Tour is coming back, not this coming Friday, but a week from this coming Friday.

01:37:01 ◼   ► But coming back? Has it already aired the first episode?

01:37:03 ◼   ► Yeah, sorry. No, no, no, no, no. That was a poor choice of words. It's starting. I say

01:37:08 ◼   ► coming back because I think of it as Top Gear again. But anyway, that's a week from Friday,

01:37:14 ◼   ► so that's super exciting.

01:37:15 ◼   ► Yeah, you're going to remind me of that or else I'm going to miss it. Is it Amazon only,

01:37:19 ◼   ► right?

01:37:20 ◼   ► It's Amazon. I don't know what time of day it's happening, but it is the 18th of November.

01:37:28 ◼   ► They're streaming one episode per week for six weeks, and I believe there's going to be two seasons per calendar year.

01:37:36 ◼   ► So presumably we'll have a spring and a fall season since we're getting kind of a fall season now.

01:37:42 ◼   ► I'm really looking forward to it. It should be good.

01:37:45 ◼   ► Speaking of TV, although I don't want to get onto depressing politics topics, but one of

01:37:50 ◼   ► the analogies and the jokes and the snarks that have been made involving this election

01:37:55 ◼   ► has been the show Black Mirror, which is a show made in the UK.

01:38:00 ◼   ► I don't want to say it's a BBC show because then you get yelled at because there's other

01:38:03 ◼   ► places to make it.

01:38:04 ◼   ► Anyway, whatever.

01:38:05 ◼   ► It's a show made in England.

01:38:07 ◼   ► And it's like, do you guys remember Amazing Stories?

01:38:10 ◼   ► Maybe you're too young for that.

01:38:11 ◼   ► No, we're too young.

01:38:12 ◼   ► But I've seen some of Black Mirror episodes, and I think given what just happened, it's

01:38:18 ◼   ► going to be a long time before I'm in the mood to watch any more of them.

01:38:21 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:38:22 ◼   ► So, like, Amazing Stories is like—Twilight Zone is the older reference.

01:38:26 ◼   ► Every week there's a new episode, and it's a usually sci-fi-related premise, and there's

01:38:31 ◼   ► no carryover characters.

01:38:32 ◼   ► There's no, you know, through-line stories.

01:38:34 ◼   ► It's just like, "Here's a little sci—" It's like sci-fi short stories for TV.

01:38:37 ◼   ► And Twilight Zone had a particular bent to it, and so did Amazing Stories, which was

01:38:40 ◼   ► a Spielberg-esque thing.

01:38:42 ◼   ► mirror is bent is sci-fi-ish independent stories that are usually really depressing, like it's

01:38:47 ◼   ► Black Mirror, like it's right in the title, right? And so, like Marco said, maybe you're

01:38:51 ◼   ► not in the mood to watch them right now, and Black Mirror, me personally, I find it a little

01:38:56 ◼   ► bit silly and overblown because I've seen all these same ideas and stories before and

01:39:00 ◼   ► they take them to the nth degree and it just gets a little bit ridiculous, but sometimes

01:39:03 ◼   ► they're fun ones, whatever, I'm not as big a fan as other people are. But, on the specific

01:39:06 ◼   ► topic, this current season of Black Mirror, season three, that, they come out all at once,

01:39:11 ◼   ► like the uh the grand tour but they're not you know they make them ahead of time um and it's

01:39:15 ◼   ► a scripted show more scripted than anyway whatever um there is one episode of this season of black

01:39:24 ◼   ► mirror this third season of black mirror which is like all the previous seasons just a grim

01:39:28 ◼   ► terrible slog of overblown sci-fi but there's one episode that i think actually i watched it and i

01:39:36 ◼   ► felt good after watching it i'm not gonna say it's happy and you can judge for yourself whether it is

01:39:41 ◼   ► like you know the feel-good story of the century but I think it would be safe for

01:39:46 ◼   ► people to watch even if you're feeling bad and that episode is San Junipero

01:39:50 ◼   ► which I with my favorite episode of Black Mirror ever which probably means

01:39:54 ◼   ► that I just don't like Black Mirror because it is the least Black Mirror of

01:39:57 ◼   ► any Black Mirror episode but I would encourage you if you're looking for a

01:40:02 ◼   ► sci-fi short story on TV and don't want to be super depressed Black Mirror season

01:40:07 ◼   ► three San Junipero which is episode wait seven seconds for the chat room to look

01:40:12 ◼   ► it up for me episode number four episode number four Casey beat them to it

01:40:16 ◼   ► because he's listening to be in real time cheating and there's a chat room

01:40:20 ◼   ► and so what was the summary of this episode no no no no anything about Black

01:40:26 ◼   ► Mirror episodes you just start watching them so nothing you don't want to tell

01:40:29 ◼   ► us any no you can't no everyone's it no no spoilers Black Mirror my goodness I

01:40:34 ◼   ► My mistake. So I forget who it was. Shoot. It was one of the New York City-based developers, and I'm drawing a blank which one it was.

01:40:41 ◼   ► It might have been Brian Irais had

01:40:44 ◼   ► guilted me into watching

01:40:47 ◼   ► one of the episodes of Black Mirror, and the one that I watched, this was a couple years ago now, was

01:40:54 ◼   ► about the British Prime Minister being black.

01:40:57 ◼   ► Episode one. That's the first episode.

01:40:59 ◼   ► Yeah, that's I had no desire to go back. That's a tone that sets a tone for the show. That is the appropriate tone for the show

01:41:06 ◼   ► Except for Sanjana peril. I'm not saying it's a bad show. I'm just saying yeah, I still watch that and I was like

01:41:12 ◼   ► This is not for me. Nothing. Did you watch all season three yet Marco or no?

01:41:15 ◼   ► No, I've I don't think I'm even all the way through season two

01:41:18 ◼   ► I think we watched all of season one at least

01:41:21 ◼   ► It's a good thing like you can skip to any episode at any time because there is no through line

01:41:25 ◼   ► Yeah, you can just pick one out

01:41:26 ◼   ► But some of the season three episodes are just so grim.

01:41:29 ◼   ► Like it's almost a parody of itself at this point.

01:41:32 ◼   ► But "Sanjay De Pero," thumbs up.

01:41:34 ◼   ► - No, it's the kind of show, it's such a downer

01:41:38 ◼   ► and it's so dark that if you have anything bad

01:41:43 ◼   ► or stressful going on in your life,

01:41:46 ◼   ► it's not a good show to watch.

01:41:47 ◼   ► And so I have had not a ton of opportunities

01:41:50 ◼   ► where I really wanted to watch shows like that recently.

01:41:53 ◼   ► And that's not going to change in the next few weeks,

01:41:55 ◼   ► That's for sure.

01:41:56 ◼   ► I said try this episode.

01:41:58 ◼   ► It is not-- I think you will watch it and not curse my name

01:42:02 ◼   ► after you watch it.

01:42:03 ◼   ► I think it will make you feel better.

01:42:04 ◼   ► That's a high bar.

01:42:05 ◼   ► OK.

01:42:06 ◼   ► That's right.

01:42:07 ◼   ► You will improve your mood.

01:42:10 ◼   ► OK.

01:42:11 ◼   ► I will give-- I will maybe give a shot.

01:42:15 ◼   ► Part of the reason it improves your mood is the context.

01:42:17 ◼   ► It's like, wait, this is a Black Mirror episode.

01:42:19 ◼   ► It should be terrible and grim.

01:42:20 ◼   ► And it's not.

01:42:21 ◼   ► I feel awesome about it.

01:42:22 ◼   ► It's like you expect the worst, and then you

01:42:24 ◼   ► this thing that is like it like it like redeems the rest of Black Mirror briefly

01:42:28 ◼   ► who would have thought that this episode would end with a recommendation of an

01:42:32 ◼   ► uplifting Black Mirror episode yeah I was as surprised as anyone I got to the

01:42:36 ◼   ► end I even went to the internet to say maybe it's not actually uplifting and

01:42:40 ◼   ► I'm reading it wrong and so you go on the internet if you're like no actually

01:42:43 ◼   ► it's super dark here's the ending but the creators of the show were like no

01:42:46 ◼   ► it's actually uplifting just accept it yeah no I mean I I wouldn't be opposed

01:42:53 ◼   ► to watching an uplifting one, but after having watched the very first episode, like I said,

01:42:59 ◼   ► I decided it was not for me. Not to say it's not for you or anyone else, it just wasn't

01:43:02 ◼   ► for me. I have enough to be depressed about, and poor choice of words, I have enough to

01:43:07 ◼   ► be sad about. I don't need to be sad while I'm watching television as well.