Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 379. Today's show is brought to you by Fitbod, DoorDash, and TextExpander.

00:00:17 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Hello, Myke Hurley. Congratulations on returning to Greenwich Mean Time.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Thank you so much. It's my favorite time. It's the-- I'm back in the One True Time Zone.

00:00:29 ◼   ► It's the most wonderful time of the year, or ever.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Well, you know, it's the most correct time. I would say. I see.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Is probably a better way to put it. I have a #SnellTalk question to start off today's episode,

00:00:40 ◼   ► and it comes from Carsten, and Carsten wants to know, "Do you think Ted Lasso would be equally as good

00:00:45 ◼   ► if the plot was reversed and English soccer manager traveled to the US to save an NFL football team?"

00:00:51 ◼   ► Uh, no.

00:00:52 ◼   ► No. I don't think the quaintness could exist, and I think the quaintness is part of what makes the show what it is.

00:00:59 ◼   ► I think that, uh, to say that an NFL team would be like AFC Richmond is a stretch,

00:01:07 ◼   ► just because of how franchises work in the United States and how much money there is,

00:01:11 ◼   ► whereas I feel like you could have a team that was rambling around in the lower echelon of the Premier League

00:01:18 ◼   ► or the upper level of the championship that was kind of as delightfully ramshackle as AFC Richmond is,

00:01:23 ◼   ► and have it be sort of like, I don't know. I mean, it's not like an NFL team couldn't do, um,

00:01:30 ◼   ► something as dumb as hiring Ted Lasso was, because they do that all the time.

00:01:36 ◼   ► I just think that the way the NFL, the NFL is too corporate in some ways,

00:01:45 ◼   ► and also you don't have the international flavor that you have in international soccer, European soccer,

00:01:52 ◼   ► where there's players from all over. American football players tend to be almost entirely from North America.

00:01:58 ◼   ► So, uh, you know, if I was pitching a Ted Lasso version that was set in the US,

00:02:08 ◼   ► I would probably have it be like minor league baseball or college football, maybe, or college basketball.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Something where there's a little less of a kind of monolithic corporate thing.

00:02:30 ◼   ► Like, I just wouldn't buy it, I think, for an NFL team. I mean, I'm sure you could make a pitch that way,

00:02:33 ◼   ► but I don't know. There are other sports, but I don't think the NFL would be the right fit.

00:02:39 ◼   ► If you'd like to send in a #snotalk question for us to open the show,

00:02:42 ◼   ► just send out a tweet with the hashtag #snotalk or use question mark #snotalk in the relay FM members Discord.

00:02:47 ◼   ► So we have a big show coming up today.

00:02:49 ◼   ► We are going to be talking about Apple's quarterly earnings report,

00:02:53 ◼   ► which is an interesting one as it tends to be these days.

00:02:56 ◼   ► And also coming up pretty soon, we have an interview with a couple of VPs over at Apple.

00:03:02 ◼   ► We'll talk about that in just a minute.

00:03:04 ◼   ► But before we do, let's thank everybody, Jason, who bought an upgrade logo tee or hoodie at upgradeyourwardrobe.com.

00:03:11 ◼   ► I will just say, if you're listening to this show basically immediately when it comes out,

00:03:17 ◼   ► you've got a couple more hours to buy if you want.

00:03:20 ◼   ► So you can go to upgradeyourwardrobe.com for that.

00:03:23 ◼   ► Thank you to everybody that did upgrade merch. We'll be back again next year.

00:03:26 ◼   ► I got my MacBook Pro.

00:03:29 ◼   ► Oh, how is it? How are you like?

00:03:31 ◼   ► I love it so much.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Oh man, I love this computer.

00:03:35 ◼   ► So first off, the design. I just love it. I love how boxy it is.

00:03:40 ◼   ► It's got like a real serious look to it.

00:03:42 ◼   ► It's like, like, I feel like it's business computer.

00:03:46 ◼   ► Like, I don't know what it is. It's got like a kind of retro.

00:03:49 ◼   ► It's that retro vibe, I think, you know, of like the power books and the titanium,

00:03:55 ◼   ► you know, the titanium power books.

00:03:56 ◼   ► So it's got that kind of like serious vibe to it, which I, which I really like.

00:04:00 ◼   ► The screen is fantastic.

00:04:03 ◼   ► Just overall, I think the computer when you're using it feels more modern,

00:04:08 ◼   ► just much more modern.

00:04:09 ◼   ► You know, the bezels being super thin.

00:04:11 ◼   ► The notch definitely does that as well.

00:04:14 ◼   ► I think like it just, it just makes it feel like a current modern computer.

00:04:18 ◼   ► ProMotion, you know, I'm not the first person to say this.

00:04:21 ◼   ► It is very inconsistent.

00:04:24 ◼   ► That was the surprise that I had was other than some catalyst apps,

00:04:29 ◼   ► I found very little that actually supported ProMotion.

00:04:32 ◼   ► Yeah. I think there has been some reports of like,

00:04:34 ◼   ► just like a bunch of apps not accurately supporting it yet.

00:04:37 ◼   ► But I feel like I see it in the operating system, you know?

00:04:40 ◼   ► Sure.

00:04:42 ◼   ► Which, which I enjoy.

00:04:43 ◼   ► And I think this is, I don't know if this is maybe just the thing that's unique to me,

00:04:47 ◼   ► but I'm very happy to have a lot of RAM in my machine again,

00:04:50 ◼   ► because I think I mentioned this on the show,

00:04:52 ◼   ► but I would get quite frequently a pop-up telling me that I had too many apps open

00:04:57 ◼   ► and the system was demanding I close apps.

00:04:59 ◼   ► And now I don't need to do that.

00:05:01 ◼   ► And now like I keep opening an activity monitor,

00:05:03 ◼   ► I'm like, ooh, 32 gigabytes of RAM being used.

00:05:06 ◼   ► I love it.

00:05:07 ◼   ► I, I just, I like having lots of apps open.

00:05:10 ◼   ► Like when I'm using a Mac, I just like lots of stuff open.

00:05:13 ◼   ► And I just click around to what I need.

00:05:14 ◼   ► Like maybe this makes me a weird Mac user.

00:05:17 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:05:18 ◼   ► But you know, I did, that's just how I like to run my Macintosh.

00:05:21 ◼   ► So I'm very happy to have more RAM, like just tons more RAM.

00:05:24 ◼   ► You know, I'm just doing some tests.

00:05:26 ◼   ► My tests are the same as everybody else's.

00:05:28 ◼   ► Like a lot of the audio stuff that I do is kind of around 20% faster

00:05:32 ◼   ► than I was actually, I was actually doing against my M1 iMac.

00:05:37 ◼   ► That's why I was just running some tests today.

00:05:39 ◼   ► Cause it's the machine that I'm using most.

00:05:41 ◼   ► So like for processing audio, bouncing stuff out of logic,

00:05:44 ◼   ► it was about 20% faster than that.

00:05:46 ◼   ► Which means it's kind of around that honestly for my iMac pro as well,

00:05:51 ◼   ► because the M1 and my iMac pro were shockingly similar at lot of those tasks.

00:05:55 ◼   ► So yeah.

00:05:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it's true.

00:05:58 ◼   ► So cool.

00:05:58 ◼   ► I mean, I'm, I'm really excited just to use this machine more.

00:06:02 ◼   ► I think it's just a fantastic computer and I, and I'm so happy that Apple have

00:06:07 ◼   ► gone in this direction again.

00:06:09 ◼   ► So it's really, really fantastic.

00:06:11 ◼   ► Yep.

00:06:11 ◼   ► I agree.

00:06:12 ◼   ► Mac OS Monterey is out.

00:06:15 ◼   ► I keep thinking in my mind, Monterey, like it's a person, you know, like it's

00:06:19 ◼   ► Monterey's operating system.

00:06:20 ◼   ► Flying circus.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Monterey's flying circus.

00:06:23 ◼   ► There's no available.

00:06:25 ◼   ► I think we're going to come back to Monterey on a future episode.

00:06:28 ◼   ► That's Spanish for what?

00:06:30 ◼   ► The King's mountain.

00:06:31 ◼   ► I think.

00:06:32 ◼   ► Sure.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Great timing.

00:06:35 ◼   ► The Monterey release was last Monday right after upgrade.

00:06:38 ◼   ► Of course I've been working all summer on my Monterey review and then I got a Mac

00:06:42 ◼   ► Pro, which was great, but it meant that I moved that to the side.

00:06:47 ◼   ► And so like Monday and Tuesday was my, can I please just finish this Monterey review?

00:06:52 ◼   ► I spent a lot of time with shortcuts.

00:06:54 ◼   ► So I'm sure we'll talk about it more in the future.

00:06:56 ◼   ► I wrote a couple of pieces last week on six colors about shortcuts and getting shortcuts

00:07:00 ◼   ► to work across platform, which you can't do.

00:07:02 ◼   ► I want to talk about that specifically in the next coming weeks is talking about

00:07:06 ◼   ► shortcuts.

00:07:06 ◼   ► Yeah. I figure we're going to, we're going to have time to talk about stuff the next

00:07:09 ◼   ► few weeks because the, the fuselage of Apple product releases has slowed down and we can

00:07:16 ◼   ► pick up the pieces.

00:07:16 ◼   ► All this stuff that we haven't really talked about.

00:07:19 ◼   ► Unless we have, I don't know, some real big like meaty HomePod color coverage.

00:07:23 ◼   ► The colors are coming back to talk about those.

00:07:26 ◼   ► Like a color episode.

00:07:28 ◼   ► You have to have to do that.

00:07:29 ◼   ► A bunch of new ebook readers came out.

00:07:33 ◼   ► Maybe we should just have Scott McNulty back and do a whole episode about Kindles.

00:07:36 ◼   ► I have in my, in my Apple note where I keep links.

00:07:39 ◼   ► I've been collecting links of, of, uh, different, your readers that you've been putting on six

00:07:44 ◼   ► colors.

00:07:44 ◼   ► So I do, I have, I have all the kobos and I'm getting the new paperwhite from Amazon

00:07:50 ◼   ► and I am going to do a big, uh, e-reader Roundup.

00:07:53 ◼   ► So maybe we'll just dig in.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Don't forget, while we're talking about what's come in, I have a, uh, I was looking through

00:08:01 ◼   ► my to do manager today and I saw very, uh, uh, ominous task, which was prepare for the

00:08:08 ◼   ► upgrade ease.

00:08:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:10 ◼   ► I've been thinking about the upgrade ease the last few weeks.

00:08:13 ◼   ► Actually, I've been thinking about it.

00:08:14 ◼   ► I, I, again, amid all the other things going on, I, I had this light finally turn on in

00:08:19 ◼   ► my brain like three weeks ago that was the upgrade ease.

00:08:21 ◼   ► And I was like, I'm ready.

00:08:23 ◼   ► I I'm, I mean, I'm not prepared, but I'm, I'm already working on, thinking about what the

00:08:28 ◼   ► stuff is for, uh, for the upgrade ease.

00:08:32 ◼   ► So that's going to be good.

00:08:32 ◼   ► And we have to work on what our process is going to be and all of that, but we'll, um,

00:08:36 ◼   ► we'll do that.

00:08:36 ◼   ► We'll figure that out.

00:08:37 ◼   ► We'll put our heads together and figure that out.

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00:09:56 ◼   ► So a few days ago, we got to sit down with our, I will say friends of the show, Tom Boger,

00:10:02 ◼   ► who is the Apple's VP of Mac and iPad product marketing and Tim Millet, who's Apple's vice

00:10:08 ◼   ► president of platform architecture to talk about the M1 Pro and M1 Macs chips.

00:10:13 ◼   ► So we've had Tim and Tom on before to talk about Apple Silicon stuff and so it seemed

00:10:18 ◼   ► just about right that we would have them on to talk about these new chips.

00:10:22 ◼   ► So without further ado, here is our conversation that we had with Tim and Tom.

00:10:27 ◼   ► I would really love to start off by hearing a little bit about how the M1 Pro and M1 Macs

00:10:35 ◼   ► were developed.

00:10:36 ◼   ► Like was this an expansion of the existing M1 or did you have to go back to the drawing

00:10:42 ◼   ► board to basically start again to get to these incredible chips?

00:10:47 ◼   ► It's a great question and the answers, as you can imagine, it's a little more complicated

00:10:51 ◼   ► than yes or no or one or the other.

00:10:52 ◼   ► It's actually an interesting hybrid of the two.

00:10:54 ◼   ► We absolutely started with the foundational building blocks of M1 because we've invested

00:11:03 ◼   ► in those building blocks.

00:11:04 ◼   ► They're tremendous.

00:11:05 ◼   ► Architecturally, we wanted to make sure that software written for M1 based machines was

00:11:11 ◼   ► going to translate over, that software developers would see something familiar when they looked

00:11:16 ◼   ► at the M1 Pro and M1 Macs.

00:11:18 ◼   ► But of course, familiar only in the sense that their applications ran without a snag.

00:11:22 ◼   ► The performance, we wanted to blow their minds and our goal was really to just blow the doors

00:11:27 ◼   ► off.

00:11:27 ◼   ► What we could pack into these beautiful enclosures that the Mac system team builds.

00:11:31 ◼   ► And so really it was about, okay, how do you do that?

00:11:35 ◼   ► How do you take those fundamental building blocks that made M1 great and scale them up

00:11:41 ◼   ► and really that required us to tear it all apart and put it all back together in a way

00:11:46 ◼   ► that enabled this massive memory system that we're able to deliver with M1 Pro and M1 Macs.

00:11:51 ◼   ► Getting to 200 gigabytes per second and stitching the CPU complex, the GPU complex together

00:11:57 ◼   ► to get access to that bandwidth.

00:11:59 ◼   ► And what's interesting about a unified memory system is the CPU is desperately interested

00:12:04 ◼   ► always in lowest possible latency to memory.

00:12:07 ◼   ► The GPU, all it wants is bandwidth.

00:12:09 ◼   ► Give it to me.

00:12:09 ◼   ► And it can tolerate a little bit of extra latency.

00:12:12 ◼   ► Building one memory system that does both has interesting properties.

00:12:16 ◼   ► One of them is it provides the GPU with an interestingly high capacity memory system

00:12:21 ◼   ► that actually has a pretty good latency picture.

00:12:24 ◼   ► And the CPU, all of a sudden, your multi-threaded applications are seeing bandwidth they've

00:12:28 ◼   ► never seen before.

00:12:29 ◼   ► And so tackling that, that was our target and doing that really did require us to do

00:12:35 ◼   ► a lot of invention, not necessarily in some of the fundamental cores that we use

00:12:39 ◼   ► to build our impressive CPUs and GPUs, but really the fabric, how you stitch it together

00:12:44 ◼   ► and connect it to the memory system, along with all the other goodies that come along

00:12:48 ◼   ► with M1.

00:12:49 ◼   ► The video accelerators, the machine learning accelerators, the display engines, all the

00:12:53 ◼   ► things that give M1 based systems the amazing battery life.

00:12:56 ◼   ► Those are all translated over into the M1 Pro and M1 Macs.

00:12:58 ◼   ► - This is, again, I'm sure one of those questions where the answer is it's a little bit of both,

00:13:02 ◼   ► but was, is it fair to say, was it more work to get the M1 Pro and Macs to where they are

00:13:11 ◼   ► than to get the M1 where it was?

00:13:13 ◼   ► Was there a lot more that had to be put into from your teams to get it to where we are

00:13:18 ◼   ► now?

00:13:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, and as you predicted, it's a complex answer.

00:13:21 ◼   ► M1 was standing on the shoulders of a decade of effort, a decade of work that was done

00:13:27 ◼   ► across starting with the phone, transitioning into the iPad Pro.

00:13:32 ◼   ► And every step we took in that direction got us closer to M1.

00:13:35 ◼   ► So you could say it was a decade of work that got us to the point where we could deliver

00:13:39 ◼   ► the M1.

00:13:40 ◼   ► But going from the previous step was not as much work as it took us to go from M1 to M1

00:13:46 ◼   ► Pro and M1 Macs.

00:13:48 ◼   ► We did that in a much shorter time period.

00:13:51 ◼   ► It required us to really scale up our engineering team, bring in some amazing players to extend

00:13:57 ◼   ► Johnny Srugi's amazing team.

00:13:59 ◼   ► And really, we packed in a couple of years a lot, a lot of amazing engineering work that

00:14:05 ◼   ► with M1, we had the luxury of time to really progress through the Apple's product lines

00:14:10 ◼   ► until we finally got to the point where we were ready to deliver M1.

00:14:13 ◼   ► - As impressive as M1 is and as impressed as we all were last year with it, I think it

00:14:19 ◼   ► might be fair to say that it was familiar in the sense that it felt like it was trying

00:14:24 ◼   ► to do some similar things to what iPad chips had done in the past, the X chips.

00:14:30 ◼   ► These two M1 Pro and Macs chips feel like it's a place that Apple's silicon design had

00:14:39 ◼   ► not been at all before.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Like you're really going out into a brand new space in a way that the M1 didn't so much.

00:14:47 ◼   ► Would that be fair to say?

00:14:48 ◼   ► - Absolutely.

00:14:49 ◼   ► I mean, I'll let Tom talk about the goals of the Mac and our focus on the Pro workflows,

00:14:54 ◼   ► but we absolutely work closely with the Mac team to identify, okay, what are the essential

00:14:59 ◼   ► pieces?

00:14:59 ◼   ► If we're going to focus our energy and reconstruct this thing, what are the workflows that matter

00:15:04 ◼   ► the most?

00:15:04 ◼   ► What are we trying to achieve with the Pro?

00:15:06 ◼   ► And it was that effort between the industrial design team, the product design team, the

00:15:10 ◼   ► system team, our amazing Pro workflow team, and then really getting all of those targets

00:15:15 ◼   ► working together with silicon engineering, my team, the architecture group, and putting

00:15:19 ◼   ► together a story that when we put it down on paper, we said, yeah, this looks like it's

00:15:23 ◼   ► going to be exactly what we want.

00:15:25 ◼   ► And so then it was execution and driving it through the amazing silicon designers and

00:15:30 ◼   ► DB and the fabrication process and packaging.

00:15:32 ◼   ► I mean, the whole thing is just this huge, huge effort to achieve it.

00:15:35 ◼   ► But yeah, it was really different.

00:15:37 ◼   ► We clearly were targeting something beyond the phone, beyond the iOS systems that we

00:15:42 ◼   ► had been targeting in the past.

00:15:43 ◼   ► And even though M1, like you said, was a breakthrough product for the entry level, our most popular

00:15:47 ◼   ► Macs, getting to the Pro was different and it required different focus.

00:15:50 ◼   ► One of the things that we've talked about on this show with you guys in the past is

00:15:55 ◼   ► the tremendous, I guess luxury would be the right term for Tim and his team to know what

00:16:02 ◼   ► systems we're designing for in advance, right?

00:16:05 ◼   ► We're not a merchant chip vendor.

00:16:07 ◼   ► We design our silicon for our products.

00:16:10 ◼   ► And so we knew that we wanted to create the world's best Pro notebooks bar none.

00:16:17 ◼   ► And from the very beginning, his team, along with the system team, product design team,

00:16:23 ◼   ► industrial design team, software teams, every part of the process were in lockstep designing

00:16:30 ◼   ► these chips specifically for these systems to deliver what our customers are now experiencing

00:16:36 ◼   ► right now.

00:16:37 ◼   ► I'm not going to ask Tim to comment on how luxurious it was.

00:16:40 ◼   ► Because I'm sure it was hard work, but I get your point.

00:16:44 ◼   ► In fact, one of the questions I wanted to ask was about some of the specific designs.

00:16:48 ◼   ► We focus so much on, you know, how many CPU cores, how many GPU cores, but as an example,

00:16:53 ◼   ► the ProRes encoder and decoder.

00:16:55 ◼   ► And I know Apple built the whole afterburner card for the Mac Pro that was specifically

00:17:00 ◼   ► designed for ProRes.

00:17:02 ◼   ► Obviously, this seems like a really good example of building things into the chip, into the

00:17:08 ◼   ► processor that's driving your systems because of professional workflows, you know, that

00:17:13 ◼   ► the users of your products want.

00:17:16 ◼   ► And if you could talk a little bit about the thought process that goes into saying, this

00:17:20 ◼   ► is so important, we're going to put it on the chip.

00:17:22 ◼   ► You know, it's a great question.

00:17:23 ◼   ► And you've had a chance to see my boss, Johnny Scruggi, up on the screen a few times now.

00:17:28 ◼   ► Hopefully, you got the impression that he's a serious individual and he is.

00:17:32 ◼   ► And he holds us accountable for every transistor we put down there.

00:17:35 ◼   ► We recommend putting down there.

00:17:37 ◼   ► And ProRes is absolutely one of those things.

00:17:39 ◼   ► You know, you can do ProRes on a CPU.

00:17:42 ◼   ► You can do ProRes probably on the GPU.

00:17:44 ◼   ► Why do we need to put a dedicated engine down?

00:17:45 ◼   ► Well, when we look at our Pro workflow users and we look at the things that they want to

00:17:50 ◼   ► do with these machines and we look at these machines and what they're capable of, we realize,

00:17:54 ◼   ► hey, we can put down a relatively modest investment in silicon to be able to have a dramatic outsized

00:18:01 ◼   ► impact on the performance of the machines.

00:18:02 ◼   ► So much so that this is a number Tom shared with me.

00:18:05 ◼   ► The 28 core Mac Pro with the afterburner card is left in the dust by these new systems with

00:18:11 ◼   ► M1 Pro and M1 Macs.

00:18:12 ◼   ► And part of that is the integration in the unified memory system, moving that engine,

00:18:18 ◼   ► which was very similar to the engine we put on our afterburner card.

00:18:21 ◼   ► You move it into a unified memory system.

00:18:23 ◼   ► It breaks all the bottlenecks.

00:18:25 ◼   ► And when we do that performance modeling, and that's a big piece of how we justify a

00:18:29 ◼   ► lot of these things and we demonstrate what's going to be possible.

00:18:31 ◼   ► Yeah, we say, yeah, this is worth it.

00:18:34 ◼   ► It's going to cost us some area, but it's the benefit outweighs the cost.

00:18:39 ◼   ► And as Johnny said in the keynote, this is a perfect example of the advantage that we

00:18:44 ◼   ► have in being able to design and build our own silicon is to do things in our silicon

00:18:50 ◼   ► to enable things for our customers that you simply can't do on any other notebook.

00:18:55 ◼   ► I had a question about memory and I know we've touched on it a little bit, but obviously

00:19:00 ◼   ► between the M1 to the M1 Pro to the M1 Macs, the unified system memory, although it's the

00:19:05 ◼   ► same in some ways philosophically is really different and that the bandwidth that's going

00:19:11 ◼   ► on there is different.

00:19:12 ◼   ► I'm wondering if you have thoughts about what, how that comes out in the day to day

00:19:16 ◼   ► experience, what will the users see?

00:19:18 ◼   ► And also the difference between sort of like what you see on the Pro and what you see on

00:19:24 ◼   ► the Macs in terms of getting that extra.

00:19:27 ◼   ► Cause I know you've got, you're going from sort of two pools of memory to four pools

00:19:30 ◼   ► of memory.

00:19:31 ◼   ► So you're getting twice the speed.

00:19:33 ◼   ► You know, how does that when I'm using one of these systems day to day, or I'm deciding

00:19:36 ◼   ► whether I need a Pro, an M1 Pro or an M1 Macs chip in my MacBook Pro, what goes into that?

00:19:42 ◼   ► How does that reflect in the world?

00:19:44 ◼   ► So I'll talk a little bit about what we were targeting and I'll let Tom talk about how

00:19:48 ◼   ► that translates to the different kinds of customers and what they might think about

00:19:51 ◼   ► with where they're choosing it.

00:19:52 ◼   ► But one of the motivators around M1 Macs, let's talk about that one, 400 gigabytes per

00:19:58 ◼   ► second.

00:19:58 ◼   ► You know, this seems like a lot of bandwidth, but if you're a customer of a Pro notebook

00:20:02 ◼   ► and you're used to integrating some of the highest performance GPUs, discrete GPUs, you

00:20:08 ◼   ► see memory systems that are like this.

00:20:10 ◼   ► You see memory systems in that 400 ish gigabytes per second range.

00:20:14 ◼   ► And so you're a Pro customer who has expectations that you're going to get a GPU with that kind

00:20:19 ◼   ► of memory system so you can get the performance out of it.

00:20:21 ◼   ► We know GPUs are large compute engines, but they feed on memory bandwidth.

00:20:26 ◼   ► If you keep them fed, you can keep the computers happy.

00:20:30 ◼   ► But if you starve them, they will fall over.

00:20:32 ◼   ► And they'll just get stuck and get slow.

00:20:33 ◼   ► And so if you are a serious Pro user interested in making sure that GPU is unconstrained,

00:20:38 ◼   ► you're going to be very happy with M1 Macs.

00:20:41 ◼   ► You know, you're going to be someone who says, this is fantastic and I can't believe I have

00:20:45 ◼   ► this in a notebook computer.

00:20:47 ◼   ► That said, the unified memory system in the M1 Pro is also fantastic and it's scaled

00:20:53 ◼   ► appropriately for the GPU.

00:20:55 ◼   ► So we're always tracking the GPU and the memory system to try to make sure we have the bandwidth

00:20:59 ◼   ► appropriate for the GPU that we've got.

00:21:01 ◼   ► And if you go down one click and you look at M1, it's the same story.

00:21:04 ◼   ► You can even go back down to the phone chip and you see it again.

00:21:06 ◼   ► We're always trying to make sure the GPU that we put down has enough bandwidth to be

00:21:10 ◼   ► unconstrained or reach that balance point that makes the most sense.

00:21:13 ◼   ► And that's what you said before about the voraciousness of a GPU and just how a GPU

00:21:17 ◼   ► behaves at once at all, as fast as it can get it.

00:21:20 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:21:21 ◼   ► It's just, you know, you want to get it to the point where it's got so much bandwidth

00:21:24 ◼   ► that it can't keep up and you find that balance point.

00:21:26 ◼   ► So you design your GPU balanced with your memory system.

00:21:29 ◼   ► But this great memory system is also available to the CPU and it will show itself in an interesting

00:21:34 ◼   ► way.

00:21:35 ◼   ► If you're someone writing heavily multi-threaded applications, it is not unusual for these

00:21:40 ◼   ► applications to stall out on a traditional PC architecture because the memory bandwidth

00:21:45 ◼   ► isn't there to keep the CPUs happy.

00:21:47 ◼   ► And we see these applications all the time on these M1 Pro, both M1 Pro and M1 Mac systems.

00:21:53 ◼   ► There's more than enough bandwidth to keep these amazing CPU cores going.

00:21:57 ◼   ► And so you don't see a slowdown.

00:21:59 ◼   ► You don't see a slowdown for two reasons.

00:22:01 ◼   ► We don't run out of bandwidth and we don't max out the power, which is the other key

00:22:05 ◼   ► story.

00:22:05 ◼   ► But from a, how do you choose it?

00:22:07 ◼   ► Maybe, I don't know, maybe Tom has thoughts about who are the customers that are going

00:22:10 ◼   ► to go one way or the other.

00:22:11 ◼   ► Well, first I just want to comment on the impact of the unified memory model, because

00:22:16 ◼   ► as customers are finding out now, it is profound, right?

00:22:20 ◼   ► It is profound in the way that we've changed the whole architecture for a Pro notebook

00:22:26 ◼   ► with these systems, right?

00:22:28 ◼   ► And we try to explain that in the keynote of how traditional Pro notebook is architected

00:22:32 ◼   ► and how these are so different.

00:22:34 ◼   ► And we gave a few examples in the keynote of how they have dramatically changed what

00:22:41 ◼   ► these systems can do.

00:22:42 ◼   ► One of my favorites was when Shruthi was covering performance and she talked about the fact

00:22:49 ◼   ► that, hey, in the competitive space, PC laptops top out at 16 gigs of video memory.

00:22:55 ◼   ► But with this unified memory model, our GPU has access to up to 64.

00:22:59 ◼   ► And so it allows things you simply couldn't do.

00:23:02 ◼   ► And the example that she had on the screen behind her was a real scene created by our

00:23:07 ◼   ► Pro workflow team in Octane.

00:23:09 ◼   ► It was the scene of a spaceship and it had 137 million triangles.

00:23:16 ◼   ► And the amount of memory it takes when you open that in Octane is nearly 35 gigabytes.

00:23:23 ◼   ► So you literally cannot even open that project on any other notebook.

00:23:29 ◼   ► It simply won't open.

00:23:30 ◼   ► And not only can you open it on both the 16-inch and the 14-inch MacBook Pro, but it's buttery

00:23:36 ◼   ► smooth, completely interactive, and it's in HDR, by the way.

00:23:39 ◼   ► So you're taking advantage of the amazing screen that it's paired with.

00:23:42 ◼   ► The other example that Shruthi gave in the keynote was color grading 8K ProRes 4.4.4

00:23:50 ◼   ► HDR video while on battery.

00:23:53 ◼   ► Which is the amazing thing at 24 frames per second.

00:23:56 ◼   ► And unified memory architecture makes that possible.

00:23:59 ◼   ► It's simply not possible before, especially on battery.

00:24:03 ◼   ► On a competitive system, you unplug that notebook and you're going to drop by two to three X

00:24:09 ◼   ► in terms of your performance.

00:24:10 ◼   ► So I think the unified memory model is a profound change for our users and our products.

00:24:17 ◼   ► And we're just beginning to find all the ways in which it's going to make things possible

00:24:22 ◼   ► that weren't possible before or faster and better than they were before.

00:24:28 ◼   ► So the M1 Pro and the M1 Max have two efficiency cores rather than the four that are on the

00:24:34 ◼   ► M1.

00:24:34 ◼   ► I'm interested to know how you settled on this balance and ratio between performance

00:24:39 ◼   ► and efficiency, because there's a difference there.

00:24:43 ◼   ► And do you find that for most typical workflows of just standard work, that this work is being

00:24:49 ◼   ► done just on the efficiency cores?

00:24:51 ◼   ► And it's only really when heavy work kicks in, which is when the performance cores kick

00:24:55 ◼   ► in.

00:24:56 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a great question.

00:24:57 ◼   ► And it's one that, as you can imagine, again, we don't take anything lightly.

00:25:00 ◼   ► We don't make decisions without a lot of consideration.

00:25:04 ◼   ► And in this case, I think this was really something we thought about really with regard

00:25:08 ◼   ► to the Pro.

00:25:09 ◼   ► This goes to the what's our focus for these systems.

00:25:13 ◼   ► We know that in our phones and our iPads and even, frankly, in the entry level, our most

00:25:19 ◼   ► popular Macs, those efficiency cores are workhorses.

00:25:22 ◼   ► They're taken care of a lot of background tasks.

00:25:24 ◼   ► And it's only when you have the most demanding workload that we fire up those PCores, performance

00:25:29 ◼   ► cores.

00:25:30 ◼   ► When you look at these more capable machines, when you look at the Pro, and these are sized

00:25:35 ◼   ► differently and they're bigger machines aimed at the bigger applications, they're trying

00:25:40 ◼   ► to tackle bigger problems.

00:25:42 ◼   ► The trade-off is different.

00:25:43 ◼   ► The trade-off is different.

00:25:44 ◼   ► Now, we know that our performance cores, if you look at them and you look at those curves

00:25:49 ◼   ► that you saw in the keynote that Johnny pointed out, they start in the lower left and they

00:25:53 ◼   ► go up to the right.

00:25:54 ◼   ► Well, at that most efficient point, which is at that lowest voltage point, the lowest

00:25:58 ◼   ► power point on those curves, those processors are operating at an amazing efficiency.

00:26:03 ◼   ► There actually is overlap.

00:26:04 ◼   ► The top of the efficiency core actually overlaps with the bottom of the performance power curve.

00:26:08 ◼   ► And so we know that if we really do need in these more capable systems, highly efficient,

00:26:14 ◼   ► we don't necessarily have to use efficiency cores to achieve great battery life in these

00:26:19 ◼   ► smaller systems.

00:26:20 ◼   ► But we know that those performance cores are more than twice as fast as the efficiency

00:26:23 ◼   ► cores.

00:26:24 ◼   ► And the pros and the Pro users are going to really appreciate that.

00:26:27 ◼   ► So this went into our decision to say, you know, we want to maintain some efficiency

00:26:31 ◼   ► cores for architectural consistency because they are very, I mean, they really are excellent

00:26:36 ◼   ► for a lot of background, a lot of utility work, and you know, somebody who is simply

00:26:41 ◼   ► reading their email because pros sometimes read their email.

00:26:43 ◼   ► Sometimes they're just consuming content.

00:26:46 ◼   ► And so the efficiency cores are there to make sure that they're having a really nice experience

00:26:49 ◼   ► in that case.

00:26:50 ◼   ► But we wanted to make the trade off for performance.

00:26:53 ◼   ► And so that's why we chose to double down on the performance cores.

00:26:56 ◼   ► And we recovered a little bit of the area from the efficiency cores to be able to pay

00:27:00 ◼   ► for that.

00:27:00 ◼   ► So much of your decision making watching these systems is it seems like it goes in multiples.

00:27:05 ◼   ► And so that was a choice that jumped out a little bit and that it wasn't sort of double

00:27:09 ◼   ► the M1.

00:27:10 ◼   ► A decision was made there to do a different balance.

00:27:13 ◼   ► So thank you for answering that.

00:27:14 ◼   ► There's just a nice balance between the M1 Pro and the M1 Max when you look across the

00:27:19 ◼   ► spectrum of various workloads and types of work that our Pro customers do.

00:27:24 ◼   ► Let's say you're in the music production where, you know, having a monster of a GPU that M1

00:27:31 ◼   ► Max has isn't as important to you.

00:27:34 ◼   ► And so M1 Pro is an awesome chip for that.

00:27:37 ◼   ► But let's say you're into 3D work and having an incredibly capable and powerful GPU is

00:27:44 ◼   ► something that is really germane to what you're doing.

00:27:47 ◼   ► Then we have M1 Max.

00:27:48 ◼   ► And so that's one of the things that we looked at as we were configuring these chips is the

00:27:54 ◼   ► spectrum of workloads that our customers are using and making sure we have a great solution

00:28:00 ◼   ► for that whole spectrum.

00:28:01 ◼   ► I have another question for you, Tom, which is because it's a little more product end

00:28:06 ◼   ► product focused, which is I think Apple has over the years been really disciplined in

00:28:11 ◼   ► terms of how it communicates battery life and also when making the products and sort

00:28:15 ◼   ► of targeting battery life and positioning different products with different levels of

00:28:19 ◼   ► battery life.

00:28:20 ◼   ► The battery life is great as we would expect on these systems that are running Apple Silicon.

00:28:26 ◼   ► I did notice that they're a little bit less than the rated battery life on the 13 inch

00:28:31 ◼   ► M1 MacBook Pro that was released last year.

00:28:33 ◼   ► I'm curious if there was anything in the decision making of how you balance battery

00:28:37 ◼   ► life versus the weight of the device versus the needs of the user of the larger systems

00:28:43 ◼   ► and how you kind of work through the math to get a great result at the end but have

00:28:47 ◼   ► it be different for the different computers.

00:28:49 ◼   ► Well, it's a little different between the 16 inch model and the 14 inch model with the

00:28:55 ◼   ► 16 inch model as we've done in the previous generation.

00:28:58 ◼   ► We're putting in the biggest battery we possibly can.

00:29:01 ◼   ► Right.

00:29:02 ◼   ► Take it on to a plane.

00:29:03 ◼   ► That the law allows.

00:29:04 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:29:05 ◼   ► And so the key here was to take advantage of that existing battery as much as possible.

00:29:15 ◼   ► Now, one of the things that helps that is promotion.

00:29:17 ◼   ► With promotion, it steps down the refresh rate of the display so that in those moments

00:29:24 ◼   ► where there's not a lot going on in the display, we can actually save battery life.

00:29:29 ◼   ► And so unlike the M1 based systems where it was a lot of things that were in general in

00:29:35 ◼   ► terms of typical usage of those systems, very similar.

00:29:39 ◼   ► With these systems, the workloads can be dramatically different in terms of how they

00:29:44 ◼   ► affect battery life.

00:29:45 ◼   ► And so we did a bunch of testing and measurements of various workloads and your mileage is going

00:29:51 ◼   ► to vary, to be honest, between the workloads that you're doing on these systems in terms

00:29:56 ◼   ► of battery life.

00:29:57 ◼   ► It can range all the way from the everyday thing like watching a movie where on the 16

00:30:01 ◼   ► inch MacBook Pro, you get the longest battery life we've ever offered.

00:30:05 ◼   ► You broke 20 hours.

00:30:06 ◼   ► I was predicting that.

00:30:07 ◼   ► I'm checking myself for not actually drafting that in our draft.

00:30:10 ◼   ► I was like, 20 plus hour battery life claim?

00:30:13 ◼   ► Is it going to happen?

00:30:14 ◼   ► And it did.

00:30:14 ◼   ► It did, 21.

00:30:16 ◼   ► And then there are other things where you're not going to get 21 hours of battery because

00:30:20 ◼   ► you're doing something really performance intensive.

00:30:23 ◼   ► But I guarantee you, if you compare the battery life you get with that performance intensive

00:30:28 ◼   ► workload compared to the previous generation, you're going to get two to three X the battery

00:30:32 ◼   ► life.

00:30:32 ◼   ► So, you know, we gave a couple examples.

00:30:34 ◼   ► You know, if you're ingesting, editing and images in Lightroom Classic, you'll get two

00:30:40 ◼   ► X the battery life.

00:30:41 ◼   ► If you're compiling code, you can compile four times as much code on a single charge.

00:30:46 ◼   ► So it does vary via the workload.

00:30:49 ◼   ► And it is a range of battery life.

00:30:51 ◼   ► And then on the 14 inch, you know, we size that battery.

00:30:54 ◼   ► It's a bigger battery than the 13 inch.

00:30:56 ◼   ► It's about 20% larger.

00:30:57 ◼   ► And we size that battery appropriate for the system.

00:31:00 ◼   ► So battery life and power efficiency is the secret sauce of these systems, right?

00:31:06 ◼   ► We have been trained for years and years and years.

00:31:09 ◼   ► You have to sacrifice one for the other.

00:31:11 ◼   ► And with these systems, you get amazing performance, but you're not sacrificing battery life.

00:31:17 ◼   ► And not only that, your performance on battery is the same as when you're plugged in, which

00:31:23 ◼   ► is unheard of in this space.

00:31:25 ◼   ► Which is a very Apple thing.

00:31:26 ◼   ► Like that's a very Apple thing to do.

00:31:28 ◼   ► You know, like, oh, it's a little bit faster when you're plugged in.

00:31:32 ◼   ► I hope you're all okay with that, right?

00:31:34 ◼   ► No, that's not going to work.

00:31:35 ◼   ► That's not going to work.

00:31:36 ◼   ► I remember when we spoke last time about the M1, we asked you about the ports.

00:31:41 ◼   ► And I think that we had a similar conversation when talking with Colleen about the M1 iMac,

00:31:47 ◼   ► about the M1 having a maximum amount of Thunderbolt ports that it could cope with.

00:31:53 ◼   ► Now, obviously with the new machines, with the new laptops, you have more port options

00:31:58 ◼   ► than you had available before.

00:32:00 ◼   ► So we see SD card and we also now have HDMI as well.

00:32:05 ◼   ► Did you have to do specific work to cater for pro customers in this way?

00:32:10 ◼   ► Like when you sat down to work on creating these chips again, because you're able to

00:32:14 ◼   ► work together on this, was it like for our pro customers, we want to bring more port

00:32:17 ◼   ► options back.

00:32:18 ◼   ► And so does that have to go into the work at the beginning to make sure that you're

00:32:23 ◼   ► able to have this amount of IO on the machines?

00:32:26 ◼   ► Yeah, it's an interesting question.

00:32:27 ◼   ► And obviously, you know, we've been talking about, like you said, last year, we talked

00:32:30 ◼   ► about the ports being a chip limitation.

00:32:32 ◼   ► And then just I'll dwell for just a moment back to what we talked about before.

00:32:35 ◼   ► The system did not need more ports than the chip actually produced.

00:32:40 ◼   ► So putting extra support in the chip, we look at the chip and say, well, the chip didn't

00:32:44 ◼   ► have the support, but you actually kind of have to flip it around at Apple from a chip

00:32:47 ◼   ► developer's perspective because they decide what they need, what the work of art is going

00:32:51 ◼   ► to look like, what electronics are going to, how they're going to fit in there.

00:32:54 ◼   ► And then we get the, we sort of get the list and say, hey, give us the stuff.

00:32:57 ◼   ► If we were to put extra stuff into the chip that wasn't used by that would like, like

00:33:02 ◼   ► I said, we're held accountable.

00:33:04 ◼   ► So we want to make sure we're designing it.

00:33:05 ◼   ► So absolutely.

00:33:06 ◼   ► When we looked at the pros, Tom provided a lot of great guidance on the kinds of port

00:33:11 ◼   ► structures we want.

00:33:12 ◼   ► What makes sense?

00:33:13 ◼   ► How do you want to scale those across the different platforms?

00:33:15 ◼   ► How many displays is the right number?

00:33:17 ◼   ► And so, yeah, we go back and re-architect and re-engineer and make sure our IO system

00:33:21 ◼   ► can scale and we can add in those extra ports and the extra capabilities.

00:33:25 ◼   ► If there's acceleration that's needed, we'll go in and look at that.

00:33:27 ◼   ► But a lot of the work that was done in M1 to, you know, we talked about iPad Pro.

00:33:32 ◼   ► Well, iPad Pro didn't have Thunderbolt 4 ports in them.

00:33:35 ◼   ► And so, yeah, there's, there's engineering that had to go into just get M1 to the point

00:33:38 ◼   ► where it was the right set of IO features for the Mac.

00:33:42 ◼   ► And then with M1 Pro and M1 Macs, we made sure we were hitting those targets that the

00:33:47 ◼   ► system team was trying to achieve for IO and extensibility.

00:33:50 ◼   ► When we look at these systems, and I know that in the last week, everybody's been pricing

00:33:54 ◼   ► on them and buying them and talking about them, clicking around on that configurator

00:33:57 ◼   ► on Apple.com.

00:33:59 ◼   ► There are a lot of available options on these systems.

00:34:01 ◼   ► We've got different CPU core options, different GPU core options as well.

00:34:06 ◼   ► And then, of course, there's the Pro and Macs toggle, if you will.

00:34:10 ◼   ► What was the thinking behind offering a menu of choices for users?

00:34:16 ◼   ► And is this something that you're able to more easily decide and allow for since you're

00:34:21 ◼   ► the supplier, you're your own chip supplier now, rather than having to build based on

00:34:26 ◼   ► what's on offer from your old chip supplier?

00:34:28 ◼   ► Now you are both of those things.

00:34:29 ◼   ► So how, what's the thought process that goes into what, obviously, too many options might

00:34:34 ◼   ► confuse customers.

00:34:35 ◼   ► So you've made some very specific decisions in offering them different options for these

00:34:40 ◼   ► systems.

00:34:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I think you have to strike just the right balance in terms of the number of options

00:34:46 ◼   ► that you offer versus, like you said, you could offer too many.

00:34:49 ◼   ► And what we try to do is look across the spectrum of workloads and applications that our Pro

00:34:56 ◼   ► customers are using and make sure that we're checking all the boxes, so to speak, in terms

00:35:00 ◼   ► of if you're depending on this particular workload, we got a configuration that's really

00:35:05 ◼   ► great for you.

00:35:06 ◼   ► And the customers who purchase these products are very savvy.

00:35:09 ◼   ► They compare notes, they talk to each other about their various experiences with the different

00:35:16 ◼   ► systems.

00:35:16 ◼   ► And usually the way it works out is that you end up with some sweet spots in terms of,

00:35:21 ◼   ► hey, if you're a video editor, this is a great system for you.

00:35:24 ◼   ► If you're into music production, well, this is a great configuration and so forth and

00:35:29 ◼   ► so on.

00:35:29 ◼   ► And so we want to make sure that we have just a variety of choice for those customers.

00:35:35 ◼   ► Optimize for those workloads that we know our customers run on MacBook Pros.

00:35:39 ◼   ► MATT PORTER,

00:36:02 ◼   ► On that sense of overwhelm, in the overall PC industry, GPU, CPU, system on a chip branding,

00:36:09 ◼   ► it's a little overwhelming.

00:36:11 ◼   ► I think it can be a series of numbers.

00:36:13 ◼   ► And I think to most people, mostly meaningless names, like here's the same set of letters

00:36:18 ◼   ► and this time it's actually better than the last time.

00:36:21 ◼   ► And when we were all pontificating what you might be doing, a lot of the names that were

00:36:25 ◼   ► being banded around were like M1X, M1Z, that kind of thing.

00:36:29 ◼   ► But you went with M1 Pro and M1 Max.

00:36:33 ◼   ► What went into this branding decision?

00:36:35 ◼   ► Was it to try and make it just easier for customers to understand and be able to tell

00:36:40 ◼   ► between what was on offer?

00:36:41 ◼   ► DANIEL MCCARTHY, M.P.S., M.P.S.

00:36:42 ◼   ► Well, we spend a lot of time thinking about our naming and obviously it has to be scalable

00:36:48 ◼   ► and meaningful, but most importantly, easy to understand.

00:36:53 ◼   ► And I totally agree with you when you look at the rest of the industry in terms of the

00:37:00 ◼   ► branding and the naming.

00:37:01 ◼   ► I mean, you need a decoder ring.

00:37:02 ◼   ► No, we just wanted names that people were familiar with.

00:37:08 ◼   ► Obviously we're building on the tremendous, tremendous success of M1.

00:37:13 ◼   ► And I think it's really easy to understand.

00:37:16 ◼   ► We have this family of chips now, the M1 family of chips, M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max.

00:37:23 ◼   ► And you really understand it very easily and succinctly.

00:37:27 ◼   ► And it's just a very simple way to communicate the capabilities of the three chips.

00:37:32 ◼   ► MATT PORTER, M.P.S., M.P.S.

00:37:32 ◼   ► We also spend a lot of time thinking about product branding at Apple.

00:37:36 ◼   ► It's just that we don't make any decisions about it.

00:37:38 ◼   ► That's the big difference there.

00:37:40 ◼   ► We think about it maybe as much as you do.

00:37:43 ◼   ► It's just that, you know, then nothing happens when we think about it.

00:37:47 ◼   ► I do want to say that Myke and I have run into this already.

00:37:50 ◼   ► That's when you're talking out loud about M1 Max, various computers running M1 processors,

00:37:54 ◼   ► and then you talk about M1 Max, a processor, you're making it hard for us, I guess.

00:37:59 ◼   ► But I do think that in general, it's better to have it be called something with words

00:38:03 ◼   ► than the 3200 CZ or something, right?

00:38:06 ◼   ► Where it's like, oh, well, those numbers don't mean anything to me.

00:38:09 ◼   ► Yeah, we don't particularly expect you to make decisions for how it might sound on the

00:38:14 ◼   ► upgrade podcast with me and Jesse saying it.

00:38:17 ◼   ► And at the end of the day, it's all about the MacBook Pro.

00:38:20 ◼   ► And that's the ultimate name, if you will, for the product.

00:38:25 ◼   ► That's what people are buying.

00:38:26 ◼   ► They're buying, the chip is in there, but they're buying a MacBook Pro, and that's

00:38:30 ◼   ► a very familiar brand that they understand.

00:38:32 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:38:33 ◼   ► Yeah, nobody's talking about it as much as we are.

00:38:35 ◼   ► No one says, you know, like, the typical buyers, no saying M1 Max like 16 times in an hour.

00:38:41 ◼   ► So I wanted to mention something and talk a little bit about something that doesn't

00:38:47 ◼   ► get as much love as maybe it should, which is storage and storage speed.

00:38:50 ◼   ► And the storage speed on these systems is so much faster.

00:38:57 ◼   ► And I, when we moved from spinning hard drives to SSDs, I thought that was the sort of last

00:39:02 ◼   ► time we would ever need to talk about storage speed, but of course not.

00:39:05 ◼   ► I have an iMac Pro with a very nice SSD that was fast when I bought it and it hasn't slowed

00:39:11 ◼   ► down, but this is two and a half to three times as fast in terms of reads and writes.

00:39:16 ◼   ► So I'm curious, sort of what goes into the process of looking at the storage and the

00:39:20 ◼   ► storage speeds that you're going to put on these products.

00:39:23 ◼   ► And when you're thinking about the users, what kind of enhancements are you thinking

00:39:27 ◼   ► of in terms of boosting the storage?

00:39:29 ◼   ► Because I know when I tried it out for the first time and I pressed save on a very large

00:39:32 ◼   ► audio document and I could not believe my eyes as the progress bar flew across the screen

00:39:37 ◼   ► that the SSDs are so much faster on these systems.

00:39:40 ◼   ► We started doing our own SSD development, you know, it goes back probably close to eight,

00:39:45 ◼   ► nine years.

00:39:46 ◼   ► Interestingly, the original work was work that we did integrate into one of the early

00:39:51 ◼   ► MacBooks that came out.

00:39:53 ◼   ► And so this, when I think about the storage system on the Mac, we architecturally try

00:39:57 ◼   ► to figure out, okay, what is our fundamental core building block?

00:40:00 ◼   ► And then how do we take that core building block and scale it to the appropriate dimension

00:40:05 ◼   ► for the target that we're trying to hit?

00:40:06 ◼   ► And so for the phone, we have a, we think of fantastic solution and we scale that up

00:40:11 ◼   ► for the iPad Pro.

00:40:13 ◼   ► For M1, we feel like we really kind of dialed it in and folks were extremely happy with

00:40:18 ◼   ► the performance they're getting on their SSDs.

00:40:19 ◼   ► Again, it was about going back, looking closely at the workloads.

00:40:24 ◼   ► You know, you talk about those big files, our Pro workloads team, it tells us all about

00:40:28 ◼   ► the pain that their customers feel when they have to store big files or load large things

00:40:33 ◼   ► or, God forbid, paging in and out of the memory system because their workload is too big to

00:40:38 ◼   ► fit into the memory.

00:40:39 ◼   ► And so, you know, we pay close attention.

00:40:41 ◼   ► We try to figure out, okay, how are we going to go and make sure that the storage system

00:40:44 ◼   ► is in balance with the rest of the system?

00:40:46 ◼   ► Because it'd be a shame to have a really fast computer and a terrible IO system.

00:40:49 ◼   ► But it all really, I have to say, it goes back to the fundamentals.

00:40:52 ◼   ► We invested in the technology.

00:40:54 ◼   ► We brought the experts in-house.

00:40:56 ◼   ► We revisit the storage architecture.

00:40:58 ◼   ► And there's people on my team who drive that, the architecture for our storage controllers.

00:41:02 ◼   ► And we look at it and revisit it whenever we need to, to make sure that we're tracking

00:41:06 ◼   ► technology.

00:41:07 ◼   ► We work closely with the core technology partners who develop the NAND technology that we use

00:41:13 ◼   ► for our SSDs.

00:41:13 ◼   ► We make sure that from a competitive perspective, we're watching the new technologies, the new

00:41:17 ◼   ► interfaces that people are using.

00:41:19 ◼   ► But ultimately, we want to make sure that we can deliver in these platforms the fastest

00:41:23 ◼   ► that technology allows.

00:41:24 ◼   ► And that's kind of, I'm glad to hear that you're happy with what we've done because

00:41:28 ◼   ► we leave no stone unturned, I guess, to make sure that the system is delighting everybody

00:41:33 ◼   ► in a balanced way.

00:41:35 ◼   ► Well, the last thing you want is to have a really fast computer that you can't use because

00:41:40 ◼   ► the storage is too slow.

00:41:41 ◼   ► And there was definitely a period back a decade or two ago where I felt like most computers

00:41:47 ◼   ► were being held back by really slow spinning drives.

00:41:51 ◼   ► And SSD has made that less of an issue, but it definitely, I felt it on the MacBook Pro

00:41:56 ◼   ► with it.

00:41:56 ◼   ► It wasn't just processing.

00:41:57 ◼   ► When you process a file and you can do that and it happens incredibly quickly, and then

00:42:02 ◼   ► you choose to write it out to disk, and that's when you need to go get yourself another cup

00:42:07 ◼   ► of tea, right?

00:42:09 ◼   ► That's the worst.

00:42:09 ◼   ► You want it all to be kind of a kind.

00:42:11 ◼   ► I definitely sense that balance on these.

00:42:15 ◼   ► I also think that with a system on chip architecture, you have to make sure that every single block

00:42:23 ◼   ► of that system has to be world class.

00:42:25 ◼   ► If you're going to take on that responsibility of designing an entire system, you know,

00:42:32 ◼   ► from the display engine to the IO to, you know, in this case, the SSD controller, every single

00:42:39 ◼   ► thing about that chip has to be world class because you're designing it all in.

00:42:44 ◼   ► And so, you know, that's a tremendous responsibility for Tim and his team to make sure that every

00:42:50 ◼   ► component is world-class, industry-leading, and therefore the entire system itself is

00:42:57 ◼   ► amazing.

00:42:58 ◼   ► And because we build these things in a unified way, an architecturally consistent way, when

00:43:03 ◼   ► we target a particular platform and we hit that target, every other platform benefits.

00:43:09 ◼   ► We don't have to do it for every chip we build.

00:43:11 ◼   ► We can do it in a way that we know is going to lift up everybody, all the systems that

00:43:15 ◼   ► we build chips for.

00:43:16 ◼   ► So to wrap up today, I want to think back again to when we spoke about the M1 chip.

00:43:22 ◼   ► And I remember we were having a conversation about how there was some surprise at first

00:43:27 ◼   ► about just how powerful it ended up being.

00:43:29 ◼   ► And I wanted to know if that's happened again this time around, because looking at these

00:43:35 ◼   ► MacBook Pros, to be incredibly impressive, they didn't need to be as fast as they are

00:43:43 ◼   ► again.

00:43:43 ◼   ► And so I wonder, was there any of these moments when developing these products where you were

00:43:48 ◼   ► like, "Oh boy, look what we've done."

00:43:52 ◼   ► You know, I think for these chips, for M1 Pro and M1 Max, I have to say there is less surprise

00:43:59 ◼   ► because our effort was so intentional.

00:44:01 ◼   ► All the other chips that we had built up to these has been fantastic.

00:44:06 ◼   ► But we knew that we had to prove ourselves here with M1 Pro and M1 Max.

00:44:09 ◼   ► We're entering into a different arena.

00:44:11 ◼   ► This is the pro space.

00:44:12 ◼   ► These are the fastest machines out there, not just the fastest machines Apple ever built.

00:44:17 ◼   ► And so we wanted to make sure we came out and people weren't chuckling about, "Oh, isn't

00:44:21 ◼   ► it cute how they took a phone chip and put it in a computer?"

00:44:24 ◼   ► I would talk to my team about this and say, "Hey, we're going to re-architect this and

00:44:28 ◼   ► we're going to blow the doors off this."

00:44:30 ◼   ► And so I would say less surprise, but it's always a pleasant surprise when Tom and his

00:44:36 ◼   ► team go and figure out what the actual ratios and deltas are, because we don't always know

00:44:41 ◼   ► where we're going to land relative to where previous systems were, where the competition

00:44:45 ◼   ► is.

00:44:45 ◼   ► And definitely, wow, very satisfying to see that we did.

00:44:51 ◼   ► And I feel like to some degree, what we have demonstrated is this is what technology allows

00:44:57 ◼   ► today.

00:44:57 ◼   ► We feel like we have left nothing on the table.

00:44:59 ◼   ► And to some degree, it's not that we did something unnatural.

00:45:03 ◼   ► We did something that was possible.

00:45:04 ◼   ► We just leaned in on the technology and enabled the performance in our great platforms that

00:45:09 ◼   ► should always have been able to achieve this on this date, because the technology was there

00:45:15 ◼   ► to enable it.

00:45:15 ◼   ► And I would make the comment that we've talked in the past about the pro workflow team.

00:45:21 ◼   ► That team consists of people who are award-winning photographers and videographers and 3D artists

00:45:28 ◼   ► and music production, et cetera.

00:45:29 ◼   ► And for the kind of things that I personally do on a daily basis, I'm not going to push

00:45:35 ◼   ► these systems, but the pro workflow team does.

00:45:38 ◼   ► And so as these systems got into their hands, they were absolutely blown away and just thrilled

00:45:46 ◼   ► and just giddy of taking the most demanding parts of their workflow, throwing them at

00:45:53 ◼   ► these machines and just seeing them respond and be able to do things that prior till now,

00:45:58 ◼   ► they needed a incredibly high spec Mac Pro to do.

00:46:02 ◼   ► And so they, in just putting these systems through their paces were tremendously...

00:46:09 ◼   ► Obviously, we knew what we were working on, but to see it actually perform is for them

00:46:15 ◼   ► game-changing and really that's what it's all about with these systems.

00:46:19 ◼   ► It's being game-changing in this space and game-changing for our pros.

00:46:24 ◼   ► Now, customers are getting these systems in their hands.

00:46:28 ◼   ► One of the things we love to see is when people are making videos, et cetera, where they're

00:46:33 ◼   ► trying parts of their workload and they're just shocked at, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe

00:46:38 ◼   ► the system.

00:46:39 ◼   ► Did I have the settings right?

00:46:41 ◼   ► Let me apply that again, because I'm not sure I had the settings right."

00:46:45 ◼   ► And then it happens instantly.

00:46:46 ◼   ► And that is the reward for us.

00:46:49 ◼   ► That's why we all come to work every day and work so hard on the Mac, because we know

00:46:54 ◼   ► that our pro users, their livelihood depends on a Mac.

00:46:59 ◼   ► Their life is on that Mac.

00:47:00 ◼   ► And so we want to make it the best it can possibly be, in every way it can possibly

00:47:05 ◼   ► be, as much as we can.

00:47:07 ◼   ► And so that is the reward for us.

00:47:10 ◼   ► And that's what we're thrilled to do when we make systems like this.

00:47:14 ◼   ► Tim, Tom, thank you so much for joining us again.

00:47:16 ◼   ► It's always such a pleasure to talk to you.

00:47:18 ◼   ► We love to be able to prick your brains for a little while.

00:47:20 ◼   ► So thanks for joining us.

00:47:21 ◼   ► Yes, thank you.

00:47:22 ◼   ► Yeah, it's been a pleasure.

00:47:23 ◼   ► Thanks for having us back.

00:47:24 ◼   ► It's fun to be on the show.

00:47:25 ◼   ► Okay, that was great.

00:47:27 ◼   ► But Myke, my favorite part was when you asked, "Were you surprised at the performance of

00:47:35 ◼   ► the MacBook Pro?"

00:47:36 ◼   ► And Tim's response was basically like, "No, we did that on purpose."

00:47:43 ◼   ► "No, we knew that.

00:47:44 ◼   ► We knew it would be like that.

00:47:45 ◼   ► That was what we were shooting for."

00:47:47 ◼   ► Not a surprise.

00:47:48 ◼   ► I was really happy to get to talk to them again.

00:47:50 ◼   ► I think it's really exciting.

00:47:52 ◼   ► You know, the Pro Max chip stuff is really exciting.

00:47:54 ◼   ► And I genuinely love to hear about what is going on inside of Apple and how they approach

00:48:00 ◼   ► it.

00:48:01 ◼   ► Because, you know, like we touched on this, I think we are a pretty important time for

00:48:07 ◼   ► computers again, which is like such a weird thing to think about.

00:48:10 ◼   ► But like desktop computers are a point that they've never been before and are continuing

00:48:15 ◼   ► to change and evolve.

00:48:16 ◼   ► And I'm just really happy that we get to hear a little bit more about the inside as to what

00:48:21 ◼   ► they're thinking about when they're putting the stuff together.

00:48:23 ◼   ► Yeah, for sure.

00:48:24 ◼   ► All right.

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00:50:26 ◼   ► So Apple had posted the Q4 results for 2021.

00:50:30 ◼   ► This is what is this calendar Q3?

00:50:35 ◼   ► Calendar Q3.

00:50:35 ◼   ► It's their end of their fiscal year because their fiscal year begins with the holiday

00:50:40 ◼   ► quarter because you want to start off with a bang, I guess.

00:50:43 ◼   ► And Q4 always includes the iPhone.

00:50:46 ◼   ► Well, if they deliver on time.

00:50:48 ◼   ► If the iPhone comes out on time, this is the iPhone quarter.

00:50:51 ◼   ► So usually a big quarter and this one was a big quarter.

00:50:54 ◼   ► Keep in mind it's the end of the quarter where the iPhone comes out.

00:50:58 ◼   ► So it's only like that little launch portion of the iPhone revenue and then it rolls into

00:51:03 ◼   ► the holiday quarter.

00:51:04 ◼   ► But you got to assume that's a big chunk of it.

00:51:06 ◼   ► But yeah, and then it goes into the holidays.

00:51:08 ◼   ► $83.4 billion in revenue for the quarter, which is a 29%, 29% year-over-year increase,

00:51:17 ◼   ► makes it the biggest fourth quarter ever.

00:51:19 ◼   ► Yeah, and they've been breaking quarterly records for a while now, every quarter it

00:51:23 ◼   ► seems.

00:51:24 ◼   ► This was interesting to me also because I looked back at the year-over-year growth the

00:51:29 ◼   ► last two fourth quarters and they were like 1% and 2%.

00:51:33 ◼   ► So I think that's actually kind of interesting that this wasn't just a record quarter,

00:51:37 ◼   ► but it was a lot more than they made the last two fourth quarters.

00:51:42 ◼   ► So for what it's worth, Apple's business is kind of seasonal, but there's a lot of

00:51:47 ◼   ► pickup here over the last couple of years in terms of this fall, late summer, early

00:51:53 ◼   ► fall quarter.

00:51:53 ◼   ► The iPhone was up 47% year-over-year.

00:51:56 ◼   ► I think this big jump, a big jump like this during this quarter would suggest that the

00:52:01 ◼   ► iPhone has done really well and it seems like the 13 has done really well, which is

00:52:07 ◼   ► interesting to me because it seems like so much of the general conversation about the

00:52:13 ◼   ► 13 like you see in videos and articles and you see in like just comments from people

00:52:18 ◼   ► online is that it's a boring iPhone, but people were buying them it would seem.

00:52:24 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, that's it.

00:52:26 ◼   ► And also that Apple is getting really good at maximizing revenue, although I'll point

00:52:30 ◼   ► out that during the conversation with analysts, the analysts like to freak out every quarter

00:52:35 ◼   ► they freak out about it, especially this time of year.

00:52:37 ◼   ► They freak out about the fact that the product they talk about product, the margins on

00:52:45 ◼   ► products going down and they get really concerned.

00:52:48 ◼   ► They're like, why are your margins going down?

00:52:49 ◼   ► And every year they have to say that this is how Apple does it, which is when new product

00:52:55 ◼   ► comes out at first, the margins are a little lower.

00:52:59 ◼   ► Because it's more expensive to make them.

00:53:01 ◼   ► And then over time, the margins increase because it ends up being cheaper for Apple to make

00:53:07 ◼   ► a product nine months into it being on the shelves or a year or a year and a half than

00:53:12 ◼   ► it does on day one because they're getting up to speed and they're buying the components

00:53:16 ◼   ► and all that.

00:53:16 ◼   ► And then it kind of smooths out over time.

00:53:19 ◼   ► So this is a case too, where this is a new product and to have the revenue be up that

00:53:24 ◼   ► much, assuming it's driven in part by a lot of those initial iPhone 13 sales, keep in

00:53:31 ◼   ► mind that the margins might be down a little bit, but they're optimizing the revenue.

00:53:35 ◼   ► The revenue is Apple's getting more money out of everybody for these sales and they're

00:53:40 ◼   ► selling a lot of them.

00:53:40 ◼   ► And that's part of the story here too, right?

00:53:43 ◼   ► It's not just that they're growing the iPhone, which is still growing, but it's also that

00:53:47 ◼   ► they're growing how much money they make.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Because keep in mind, they don't share with us the numbers of unit sales anymore.

00:53:53 ◼   ► It's all just about the revenue, but that means that there's more cash coming in for

00:53:58 ◼   ► iPhone.

00:53:58 ◼   ► So every time I read a story that talks about the iPhone, it puts Apple's moves in the context

00:54:05 ◼   ► of the iPhone running out of steam or something like that, I just sort of shake my head.

00:54:10 ◼   ► I'm like, "No, not really.

00:54:13 ◼   ► It hasn't really run out of steam."

00:54:14 ◼   ► It's not increasing by, like the business isn't doubling or anything every quarter.

00:54:19 ◼   ► That doesn't happen, but it's still growing.

00:54:21 ◼   ► It's still growing and throwing off just enormous revenue and profits for Apple.

00:54:26 ◼   ► So I've just realized that it wouldn't have been hard to be up 47% because the iPhone

00:54:33 ◼   ► 12 wasn't out at this point.

00:54:35 ◼   ► Yeah, well, that's true.

00:54:35 ◼   ► I just realized that.

00:54:36 ◼   ► What is that?

00:54:37 ◼   ► It's a tough compare or it's a good compare?

00:54:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's a false compare, right?

00:54:41 ◼   ► Right, which means that they have more to do to make up for it in the holiday quarter.

00:54:45 ◼   ► The actual key to what I just said about whether people were interested in the phone or not

00:54:49 ◼   ► wasn't correct, well, no next quarter.

00:54:51 ◼   ► Yeah, and I'm always a little hesitant to ascribe too much iPhone to this quarter because

00:54:57 ◼   ► if you think about it, again, we're talking about a quarter that ended at the end of September

00:55:02 ◼   ► or near the end of September and the iPhone, you know, the iPhone was just out.

00:55:09 ◼   ► And it's always about how many can they make as well, right?

00:55:12 ◼   ► Like, that's just a story we're going to get to in a bit.

00:55:16 ◼   ► Anyone that they could ship, I believe the revenue is counted for this quarter.

00:55:21 ◼   ► Anything that was back ordered into the next quarter goes to the next quarter.

00:55:26 ◼   ► So always, I think you got to take it with a grain of salt.

00:55:31 ◼   ► And yes, you're right.

00:55:31 ◼   ► This is the proverbial tough compare or good compare, whichever one where they, I guess

00:55:37 ◼   ► it's the good compare.

00:55:39 ◼   ► It's the beneficial compare, they would say.

00:55:41 ◼   ► I'm not using that phrase.

00:55:43 ◼   ► I think it's ridiculous, but they use it.

00:55:45 ◼   ► And it's when the events of last year and this year don't overlap.

00:55:49 ◼   ► And so you can't do a one-to-one comparison.

00:55:52 ◼   ► And that's, you're absolutely right.

00:55:53 ◼   ► The two of the iPhone models got delayed a lot last year and two of them got delayed

00:55:59 ◼   ► a bit last year, but they all got pushed into October and November, which means they're

00:56:03 ◼   ► not in Q4 of 2020.

00:56:04 ◼   ► We'll make a financial analyst out of you yet, Myke.

00:56:07 ◼   ► We're trying.

00:56:08 ◼   ► We're trying hard over here.

00:56:09 ◼   ► Then you're going to have to get on the phone and try to trick Tim Cook into telling you

00:56:12 ◼   ► what the next iPhone has.

00:56:13 ◼   ► You'll say no and it'll be fun.

00:56:17 ◼   ► The iPad is up 21%.

00:56:19 ◼   ► Yeah, this is a business that seems to have really settled down for Apple.

00:56:23 ◼   ► Remember, remember you and me talking about, oh, what's happening with the iPad?

00:56:28 ◼   ► One day it will improve.

00:56:29 ◼   ► I'm sure one day it will improve.

00:56:33 ◼   ► And I was looking, so in terms of revenue, the average, the little four quarter rolling

00:56:39 ◼   ► average has just kept going up.

00:56:41 ◼   ► And so at this point, Apple is making on average $8 billion a quarter on the iPad, at least

00:56:48 ◼   ► for the last year.

00:56:49 ◼   ► So $32 billion almost, I think it was $31.8 or something billion dollars on the iPad in

00:56:59 ◼   ► four quarters.

00:56:59 ◼   ► And so it's a much more stable and growing product line than in that period where it

00:57:09 ◼   ► was sort of really trying to find its way.

00:57:11 ◼   ► And Apple was kind of redefining what an iPad was and stretching out its product line.

00:57:17 ◼   ► But if you look at it now, it's what, six straight quarters of double digit growth for

00:57:22 ◼   ► the iPad year over year.

00:57:24 ◼   ► It's 10 out of 12 of growth for the iPad and 14 out of, what is that?

00:57:37 ◼   ► 18 is growth.

00:57:41 ◼   ► So the iPad is in a good place right now is I guess what I'm saying.

00:57:47 ◼   ► And it wasn't like three years ago, we were like, what is happening with the iPad?

00:57:53 ◼   ► And is there a bottom?

00:57:54 ◼   ► And it hit bottom and it has since come back up from the bottom.

00:57:59 ◼   ► Now keeping in mind, the bottom was sort of like still kind of five, four or $5 billion

00:58:05 ◼   ► a quarter, but now it's $8 billion a quarter.

00:58:08 ◼   ► And that's happened in the last four years.

00:58:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think it's the first it was easy, I think, or possible to try and prescribe

00:58:16 ◼   ► this to different things, right?

00:58:18 ◼   ► Like all this because of this, that's because of this.

00:58:20 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:58:20 ◼   ► - But now I think there's been enough potential reasons that have come and gone.

00:58:26 ◼   ► You know, like I think at first it was maybe, oh, this is coronavirus related, which I think

00:58:31 ◼   ► definitely contributed.

00:58:33 ◼   ► But at this point you would have assumed that most people that wanted one for one of those

00:58:39 ◼   ► reasons would have gotten one, but yet they continue to keep selling them.

00:58:42 ◼   ► - I will say that, so holiday quarter last year, Apple made $8.4 billion on the iPad.

00:58:47 ◼   ► Apple has forecast that they will not make that much.

00:58:51 ◼   ► So there will not be a seventh straight quarter of iPad growth.

00:58:56 ◼   ► Apple says that's entirely because of what we'll talk about in a little bit, I'm sure,

00:59:01 ◼   ► which is supply chain issues.

00:59:03 ◼   ► They feel like the supply chain issues for iPad will mean they can't make enough to have

00:59:07 ◼   ► it be a growth quarter for iPad.

00:59:10 ◼   ► Not that they won't sell probably like $8 billion worth, but it won't be what they think

00:59:16 ◼   ► they could sell.

00:59:17 ◼   ► - It's going to be as many as they have, but no more.

00:59:20 ◼   ► - It's the one category where they say that they're not going to be able to grow next

00:59:24 ◼   ► quarter because of supply chain issues.

00:59:26 ◼   ► - The Mac is up 2% to $9.2 billion this quarter, which is their all-time record quarter again.

00:59:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is literally the best Mac quarters of all time are the last five Mac quarters.

00:59:46 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:59:46 ◼   ► - The last five, because the holiday Q4 last year was 9 billion.

00:59:51 ◼   ► And since then it's been 8.7, 9.1, 8.2, 9.2.

00:59:56 ◼   ► So this is not only the best Mac quarter of all time beating the one like two quarters

00:59:59 ◼   ► ago, beating the one a year ago, like those in that order.

01:00:04 ◼   ► But still it's just the Mac is going really well right now.

01:00:07 ◼   ► And they obviously ascribe that to the M1.

01:00:09 ◼   ► I think what's going to be interesting is holiday quarter is when all of those Mac Pro

01:00:14 ◼   ► sales are going to hit.

01:00:15 ◼   ► And I think they're going to be a lot of them.

01:00:17 ◼   ► - That's a lot of expensive computers.

01:00:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, they'll probably be constrained a bit because that's the world we live in.

01:00:22 ◼   ► We're already seeing things getting deferred out by a month or two, but those are expensive

01:00:29 ◼   ► computers with a lot of pent up demand.

01:00:31 ◼   ► And I think it's going to be another huge Mac quarter next time for them.

01:00:36 ◼   ► - Services up 26% year over year.

01:00:42 ◼   ► They're just, it's just obscene.

01:00:44 ◼   ► It's 18.3 billion.

01:00:46 ◼   ► - 18.3 billion.

01:00:48 ◼   ► The number just goes up.

01:00:49 ◼   ► Even sequentially it almost always goes up.

01:00:53 ◼   ► Year over year it always goes up.

01:00:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was funny.

01:00:56 ◼   ► I saw a couple of articles where it was like, "Apple's best quarter ever."

01:01:00 ◼   ► I'm like, "This is every quarter."

01:01:02 ◼   ► It was weird to me.

01:01:04 ◼   ► I think it's only been one.

01:01:07 ◼   ► There was one blip.

01:01:08 ◼   ► But otherwise, pretty much every single quarter for services is Apple's best quarter ever

01:01:13 ◼   ► for services.

01:01:14 ◼   ► Because it's just, it doesn't go up and down.

01:01:17 ◼   ► They just add new people in and it just continues to increase.

01:01:20 ◼   ► - Because it's not seasonal.

01:01:21 ◼   ► They keep charging your credit card over and over again.

01:01:23 ◼   ► And so all it does is just keep growing.

01:01:25 ◼   ► And there's churn where people drop out.

01:01:28 ◼   ► But basically they're able to keep that growing in a way that doesn't require individual product

01:01:33 ◼   ► sales.

01:01:34 ◼   ► And yeah, this entire fiscal year services grew by more than 20% every quarter year over

01:01:42 ◼   ► year, which is bananas.

01:01:45 ◼   ► And if you look, my chart goes back to '17 and there's not a below double digit growth

01:01:53 ◼   ► quarter in that entire span.

01:01:55 ◼   ► So it just keeps going up, like up, up, up.

01:01:58 ◼   ► They're just, yeah, that's what it's doing.

01:02:01 ◼   ► That is a business that in the first quarter of '17 was an $8 billion business and is now

01:02:09 ◼   ► an $18 billion quarterly business.

01:02:12 ◼   ► That's a lot.

01:02:13 ◼   ► - So services accounts for 22% of quarterly revenue now.

01:02:19 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:02:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, the iPhone's 47.

01:02:22 ◼   ► - And they've doubled it in four years.

01:02:26 ◼   ► In four years, that business has doubled from Q4, literally Q4 of '17, it was a $9 billion

01:02:31 ◼   ► business and Q4 of '21, it's an $18.3 billion business.

01:02:34 ◼   ► So that's how quickly it's doubled, doubled in four years.

01:02:37 ◼   ► - So my question is in four to five years, could it be more than the iPhone?

01:02:42 ◼   ► Could they do this again?

01:02:45 ◼   ► - That's a long reach.

01:02:47 ◼   ► - Well, here's another question then.

01:02:49 ◼   ► Do you think at some point services will make a larger revenue split than the iPhone in a

01:02:57 ◼   ► quarter?

01:02:57 ◼   ► - I don't because I think that there's, I mean, never say never, it could happen eventually,

01:03:03 ◼   ► but there's a huge gap between services and iPhone.

01:03:06 ◼   ► And of course, devices also drive services revenue.

01:03:09 ◼   ► So at some point, that would be a weird world to be in.

01:03:13 ◼   ► It's possible.

01:03:14 ◼   ► It's certainly possible, but it's a long way off because of the fact that one,

01:03:19 ◼   ► selling products for Apple does drive the people into the services.

01:03:23 ◼   ► And two, the iPhone is just so far out there.

01:03:24 ◼   ► Because keep in mind, the iPhone is throwing out, I get really excited that the iPad is

01:03:28 ◼   ► throwing out a billion a quarter.

01:03:30 ◼   ► The iPhone does way more than that.

01:03:35 ◼   ► So that's, yeah, it's good.

01:03:39 ◼   ► It's really good.

01:03:41 ◼   ► But the iPhone is 40 and the iPad is eight.

01:03:48 ◼   ► And then services is what did we say?

01:03:50 ◼   ► 18.

01:03:50 ◼   ► - 18.

01:03:51 ◼   ► - So it's half, so yeah, your question is basically, well, in four years, will it double

01:03:55 ◼   ► again and surpass the iPhone?

01:03:57 ◼   ► And I don't, I doubt it, but it's going to be, I think, safe to say an increasing percentage.

01:04:07 ◼   ► How about that?

01:04:07 ◼   ► - I think at some point it could happen.

01:04:10 ◼   ► - It could, it could at some point.

01:04:11 ◼   ► - Like even if it could hit one of the lower quarters, right, for the iPhone.

01:04:16 ◼   ► - Sure, sure.

01:04:18 ◼   ► That's more likely, right?

01:04:20 ◼   ► Yeah, because the holiday quarter, the iPhone is usually doing 50 or 60 billion, but in

01:04:24 ◼   ► one of these lesser, quote unquote, lesser quarters where it's only like $39 billion.

01:04:28 ◼   ► Sure, I mean, that is part of, services is fascinating because I think at its core, Apple

01:04:36 ◼   ► is not a services business, although they're trying to be more of a services business.

01:04:40 ◼   ► But services, when we talk about financials, services is the thing that makes Wall Street

01:04:46 ◼   ► happy because it keeps growing.

01:04:48 ◼   ► - It's growth, it's the growth area, right?

01:04:49 ◼   ► It's the whole reason it exists.

01:04:51 ◼   ► - And it's like 70% profit.

01:04:53 ◼   ► So it's just, they like to hear it and they put it in their reports.

01:04:59 ◼   ► And I think what Apple views it as is more that this is the ongoing, you make your money

01:05:04 ◼   ► of selling the widget, but you also make money ongoing from the person who bought the widget.

01:05:08 ◼   ► And that that's how they're kind of viewing it.

01:05:11 ◼   ► I think that's a little bit dangerous because if you're a maker of premium hardware, like

01:05:17 ◼   ► Apple is, you risk turning your hardware into an empty box that you have to buy in order

01:05:25 ◼   ► to pay more money to fill the box.

01:05:27 ◼   ► And like, that's not a very good product.

01:05:30 ◼   ► So I think that that's the danger that Apple always faces in an era of growing services

01:05:36 ◼   ► is if services becomes super important to you, at some point, do you skimp on your hardware

01:05:44 ◼   ► or make your hardware product inferior either because you are not worried about it over

01:05:49 ◼   ► services or because you wanna get more of them out there to sell more services.

01:05:53 ◼   ► And you might end up in a situation where the product is degraded.

01:05:58 ◼   ► And I think that's something that if I were inside Apple in a position to look out for

01:06:03 ◼   ► that, that would be a thing that I would wanna be really vigilant about is sort of making

01:06:08 ◼   ► sure that while we're making money on services, that the product is all good on its own because

01:06:15 ◼   ► that I think is a real danger is you lose track of the products because you're so focused

01:06:20 ◼   ► on services.

01:06:20 ◼   ► - The last category is like wearables and home.

01:06:23 ◼   ► It was up 12% year over year, which is the smallest year over year increase since Q2

01:06:33 ◼   ► of 2017.

01:06:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, since Q1 of 2017.

01:06:37 ◼   ► - Sorry, yes, Q1 of 2017.

01:06:39 ◼   ► - It's four plus years then since they...

01:06:42 ◼   ► That was the last time that this category back when it was probably called other was

01:06:47 ◼   ► down year over year.

01:06:48 ◼   ► It had a lot of quarters of 30 plus percent growth.

01:06:53 ◼   ► And then this was only 12.

01:06:57 ◼   ► - I think I know why.

01:06:58 ◼   ► - Why?

01:06:59 ◼   ► - I mean, I believe this segment now is like the AirPods segment by and large or the Apple

01:07:07 ◼   ► Watch segment.

01:07:07 ◼   ► - It's AirPods and Apple Watch primarily.

01:07:09 ◼   ► - I would expect that people were awaiting the new products in this category, especially

01:07:17 ◼   ► the AirPods.

01:07:17 ◼   ► - I'm not gonna sound an alarm about 12%.

01:07:22 ◼   ► I saw somebody refer to this as decelerating growth, which is you gotta describe it that

01:07:26 ◼   ► way, right?

01:07:26 ◼   ► Because the sales weren't down.

01:07:28 ◼   ► It was up 12%.

01:07:29 ◼   ► - 12% is great.

01:07:30 ◼   ► - It was just up by less than it's been up every quarter for the last four years.

01:07:36 ◼   ► And so what I would do is say, put this on the watch list of let's see how they do next

01:07:41 ◼   ► quarter 'cause it's a holiday quarter and they could...

01:07:43 ◼   ► AirPods, the new AirPods 3, the new Apple Watch, they could blow out the holiday quarter.

01:07:49 ◼   ► This is a more seasonal business.

01:07:51 ◼   ► Wearables, the holiday quarter does the best by far for this category.

01:07:57 ◼   ► So let's watch it and see if it matches the 13 billion or how much it exceeds the 13 billion

01:08:04 ◼   ► that they did in the holiday quarter last year.

01:08:06 ◼   ► But I'm mostly tagging this and saying, I wonder if wearables after four years of just

01:08:13 ◼   ► enormous growth, I wonder if it's entering a period where the growth is more modest.

01:08:19 ◼   ► That's sort of it.

01:08:20 ◼   ► 'Cause it sort of surpassed services for a while there in terms of the rocket ship inside

01:08:25 ◼   ► Apple that was growing the most.

01:08:27 ◼   ► But this last year it's settled down a bit.

01:08:30 ◼   ► And then this number at 12% being the lowest in this whole four plus year span.

01:08:36 ◼   ► Again, still growing, but is it calming down?

01:08:41 ◼   ► And I think I'm not ready to say that yet because I think that the holiday quarter will

01:08:47 ◼   ► tell all.

01:08:47 ◼   ► - So let's talk about next quarter.

01:08:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, so quite a thing.

01:08:52 ◼   ► So Apple continues to refuse to forecast and then gives a forecast, which I love.

01:08:57 ◼   ► They forecast that it's gonna be a record quarter.

01:08:58 ◼   ► It's gonna be an all time record, the biggest quarter Apple's ever had, which is not that

01:09:02 ◼   ► shocking a forecast because it's a holiday quarter and almost every holiday quarter that

01:09:07 ◼   ► Apple has had over the last decade has been the best holiday quarter ever in Apple history

01:09:12 ◼   ► and the best quarter in Apple history.

01:09:13 ◼   ► - Just to state how obscene it's gonna be, the current record is $111 billion.

01:09:18 ◼   ► So they're saying they're going to make more than $111 billion in a few month period.

01:09:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:09:25 ◼   ► So it's gonna be a record and they said that even though they wouldn't specify exactly

01:09:30 ◼   ► what it was 'cause they're unsure because of COVID, but they said really it's the supply

01:09:35 ◼   ► chain issues and everybody, you've seen those stories about containers stacking up at ports

01:09:40 ◼   ► and you go to the store and your favorite cereal isn't there and like all of these things

01:09:45 ◼   ► that happen with supply chain issues.

01:09:47 ◼   ► And we've talked about it here about Tim Cook blaming the legacy nodes.

01:09:51 ◼   ► - Don, you legacy nodes.

01:09:52 ◼   ► - The legacy nodes, they're the worst.

01:09:54 ◼   ► - Now it's one of those things that's interesting, right?

01:09:56 ◼   ► 'Cause we've been talking about it for most of the last year and ultimately to this point,

01:10:02 ◼   ► Apple has kind of gotten around it, whatever it was, right?

01:10:06 ◼   ► Like they've gotten around it.

01:10:08 ◼   ► - They said they had some cash, right?

01:10:13 ◼   ► They had some inventory on hand to protect against, 'cause we talk about just in time

01:10:20 ◼   ► and like literally every component comes in and then it goes right back out.

01:10:23 ◼   ► But the truth is that's an ideal and what all tech companies, especially Apple have tried

01:10:29 ◼   ► to do is just reduce the amount of time you've got parts sitting in a bucket somewhere.

01:10:33 ◼   ► You want them put into the process, but they do because there's like, well, what if the

01:10:38 ◼   ► truck doesn't come one week?

01:10:40 ◼   ► What if that factory that we rely on for this part has a blip and they, on average, they

01:10:46 ◼   ► ship us the right number, but one week it's down and the next week it's way up.

01:10:50 ◼   ► What do we do for the down week?

01:10:51 ◼   ► Do we shut down and not make?

01:10:53 ◼   ► So they build in an amount of cash.

01:10:57 ◼   ► But what they warned three months ago when they did their report is that the reason that

01:11:00 ◼   ► they were able to not have a drop-off in terms of availability of a lot of their products

01:11:07 ◼   ► is that they burned through the cash.

01:11:08 ◼   ► They used it all.

01:11:09 ◼   ► And that meant that now they were on the razor's edge in terms of manufacturing.

01:11:14 ◼   ► And what we saw with this quarter is that the shortages continue for Tim Cook's favorite

01:11:21 ◼   ► phrase, legacy nodes, which is basically a COO speak, which he he's a former COO for

01:11:28 ◼   ► old stuff, old stuff that everybody buys because everybody's just buying a cheap Bluetooth

01:11:33 ◼   ► chip or a cheap, you know, whatever, some little part to put in their car or their washing

01:11:37 ◼   ► machine or their computer.

01:11:39 ◼   ► And those Apple sort of treated as totally available and fungible and just like, we'll

01:11:46 ◼   ► get the legacy nodes.

01:11:47 ◼   ► Who cares?

01:11:49 ◼   ► And in fact, we have a new bit of Tim Cook speak to put in to the jargon file, which

01:11:55 ◼   ► is leading edge nodes.

01:11:56 ◼   ► Normally, Tim Cook says, primarily, we buy leading edge nodes and we're not having issues

01:12:03 ◼   ► on leading edge nodes.

01:12:05 ◼   ► But on legacy nodes, we compete with many different companies and it's difficult to

01:12:09 ◼   ► forecast when those things will balance.

01:12:11 ◼   ► So the end result is Apple is having supply issues.

01:12:15 ◼   ► And while they said they think that all their products other than the iPad are going to

01:12:18 ◼   ► be growing next quarter year over year, and that's again, year over year from the holiday

01:12:23 ◼   ► quarter last year, which was the biggest Apple quarter ever.

01:12:25 ◼   ► Two pieces of information that I think set a chill through the Wall Street analysts.

01:12:33 ◼   ► One is, even though this was the best quarter ever for Apple, or best fourth quarter ever

01:12:38 ◼   ► for Apple, this last one that they're reporting on, they say there's about $6 billion of sales

01:12:45 ◼   ► that they didn't make because of the supply chain.

01:12:50 ◼   ► So they say, I know it's great that we made 83.4 million in revenue last quarter, but

01:12:57 ◼   ► it should have been more like 89.4.

01:12:59 ◼   ► And it wasn't because we couldn't sell those products, but we just didn't have them on

01:13:04 ◼   ► hand.

01:13:05 ◼   ► And the Wall Street analysts are like, that's not good, right?

01:13:08 ◼   ► Because they're also looking at the broader tech sector.

01:13:10 ◼   ► And this is a story from all over.

01:13:12 ◼   ► It's not just Apple.

01:13:14 ◼   ► Phase two though, is then they said in the call, and I thought this was the moment where

01:13:17 ◼   ► everybody leaned forward.

01:13:19 ◼   ► They said they expect it to be more next quarter.

01:13:22 ◼   ► And there was a question that was like, what do you mean more?

01:13:25 ◼   ► Do you mean more than subtracting this from this?

01:13:27 ◼   ► Do you mean more proportionally or do you mean more than $6 billion?

01:13:31 ◼   ► And Tim Cook was like, yeah, we mean more than $6 billion.

01:13:34 ◼   ► Next year, we're going to leave more than $6 billion, or next quarter, we're going to

01:13:37 ◼   ► leave more than $6 billion on the table because we can't fulfill those orders because of the

01:13:42 ◼   ► supply chain.

01:13:43 ◼   ► And that's pretty wild.

01:13:45 ◼   ► That's a very large number.

01:13:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, so if you're wondering why was Apple stock down, this is why.

01:13:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's not limited to Apple.

01:13:54 ◼   ► This is happening everywhere, but Apple came out and said, we're going to have our best

01:13:57 ◼   ► quarter ever next quarter, but it's not going to be as good as it could be because we're

01:14:01 ◼   ► going to have demand that is unfulfilled.

01:14:04 ◼   ► And they said also, and I think this is a good peek into Apple's thinking, but also

01:14:09 ◼   ► if you understand the holiday quarter and how huge it is, what Tim Cook said was, it's

01:14:16 ◼   ► not that our supply isn't going to grow.

01:14:20 ◼   ► Our supply over the next quarter is going to grow a lot, but demand's going to grow

01:14:25 ◼   ► more, right?

01:14:27 ◼   ► Because it's the holiday quarter and the demand for our products is going to be greater than

01:14:31 ◼   ► the growth in supply that we're going to bring in.

01:14:34 ◼   ► And as a result, by the end of December, we're going to have more than $6 billion in sales

01:14:40 ◼   ► that we're not going to be able to make.

01:14:42 ◼   ► Now, I think philosophically, the question is, are those sales that just get deferred

01:14:50 ◼   ► or are those sales that go away?

01:14:52 ◼   ► And for this past quarter, I would say it's probably deferred, right?

01:14:56 ◼   ► A lot of that is probably like, I want my iPhone and it's like, we can't ship it to

01:14:59 ◼   ► you into October.

01:15:00 ◼   ► And so they look at the books and there are all these pre-orders for things that they

01:15:04 ◼   ► can't fulfill in time.

01:15:05 ◼   ► And they do some math and they say, that's about $6 billion that we left on the books.

01:15:09 ◼   ► And then it probably has already come off the books.

01:15:12 ◼   ► Those sales probably were made, but of course now they're backed up and they're going to

01:15:15 ◼   ► have new set of things rolling into January where they're not going to fulfill.

01:15:19 ◼   ► My only hesitation there is at the holidays, there is stuff that only gets bought if it's

01:15:28 ◼   ► available for the holidays, right?

01:15:31 ◼   ► It's gifts.

01:15:32 ◼   ► It's something you want, it's the proverbial present under the tree.

01:15:35 ◼   ► I know there are lots of different holidays, but just to use that, it's like, if I can't

01:15:40 ◼   ► buy you an Apple watch for Christmas, let's say, well, I'll get you something else.

01:15:44 ◼   ► And then that Apple watch sale may never happen.

01:15:47 ◼   ► So I do think that there is more of a risk for Apple in the holiday quarter to lose sales,

01:15:53 ◼   ► some percentage of that sale than it was in the existing quarter.

01:15:57 ◼   ► But just to step back, this is the kind of weird stuff that's going on in the supply

01:16:01 ◼   ► chain right now.

01:16:02 ◼   ► And Apple, even with all its preparation and all the stuff it buys in advance and all of

01:16:06 ◼   ► that stuff that it puts on the nodes that are less legacy, the nodes that are more leading

01:16:12 ◼   ► edge, the legacy nodes still are biting them.

01:16:15 ◼   ► That's just the bottom line of what's happening right now.

01:16:17 ◼   ► And Tim Cook, I will bet you Tim Cook is waking up in the middle of the night and going, "Legacy

01:16:23 ◼   ► nodes!"

01:16:24 ◼   ► And that's just where they are right now.

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01:17:23 ◼   ► Jason Snow - Well, I'm looking here and I'm going to select 1230 p.m. today because then

01:17:28 ◼   ► it'll just get delivered when I want.

01:17:30 ◼   ► And it's going to give me a list of all of the restaurants near my house.

01:17:35 ◼   ► So I can look for, let's say Mexican.

01:17:39 ◼   ► Gregor

01:17:39 ◼   ► Jason is literally ordering lunch.

01:17:41 ◼   ► Jason Snow - This is happening live.

01:17:42 ◼   ► I'm going to order a burrito right now.

01:17:44 ◼   ► High-tech burrito.

01:17:45 ◼   ► Let's see, which, which, what do I want at high-tech burrito?

01:17:49 ◼   ► I think I want a, let's go with the grilled chicken burrito.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Gregor

01:17:57 ◼   ► Oh man, that sounds good.

01:17:58 ◼   ► Jason Snow - Right.

01:17:59 ◼   ► Grilled chicken burrito sounds good.

01:18:01 ◼   ► I'm going to say, well, I'm going to choose because it's going to let me, I have, I have

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01:18:08 ◼   ► That's one of my options here is good is, is bean options.

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01:18:15 ◼   ► I have a, what kind of salsa I'm going to go with the sub nuclear salsa.

01:18:21 ◼   ► That sounds scary.

01:18:22 ◼   ► I'm just going to keep the normal salsa there.

01:18:24 ◼   ► I get this with, can I guess Spanish rice options?

01:18:29 ◼   ► No rice.

01:18:29 ◼   ► I don't like rice and burritos.

01:18:30 ◼   ► I know it makes me a monster, but I just want more beans.

01:18:33 ◼   ► People.

01:18:33 ◼   ► I want more beans.

01:18:34 ◼   ► I think rice is the garbage.

01:18:36 ◼   ► It's the filler of a burrito.

01:18:37 ◼   ► I know it makes the burrito messy, but

01:18:39 ◼   ► aren't you just replacing filler for filler?

01:18:42 ◼   ► Now the beans are the filler.

01:18:43 ◼   ► Jason

01:18:43 ◼   ► No, but beans are good, man.

01:18:45 ◼   ► I love beans.

01:18:46 ◼   ► No, it's just, it's just filler.

01:18:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

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01:18:56 ◼   ► I want a wheat tortilla.

01:18:57 ◼   ► That's one.

01:18:57 ◼   ► Oh no, flour tortilla, please.

01:18:59 ◼   ► Thank you.

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01:20:04 ◼   ► Let's do some hashtag ask upgrade questions.

01:20:06 ◼   ► First comes from Adrian who asks someone who prefers dark terminals and code editors.

01:20:12 ◼   ► What does white text on a dark background look like on the new Mac book pro screens

01:20:16 ◼   ► how visible is a glow around the text if at all?

01:20:19 ◼   ► What do you think?

01:20:20 ◼   ► Have you tried this?

01:20:21 ◼   ► Yeah, cause I am a, I mean, I have everything in dark mode all the time.

01:20:25 ◼   ► I haven't noticed any glow at all.

01:20:27 ◼   ► I think this is the bloom, right?

01:20:30 ◼   ► The people were talking about of a mini led.

01:20:32 ◼   ► I saw, but you know, in a bunch of reviews that I've been watching, people were saying

01:20:36 ◼   ► that there was, you know, you could see bloom in certain circumstances, usually for movement,

01:20:41 ◼   ► but there's seems to be less than there was on the iPad pros is what I've is, is kind of

01:20:47 ◼   ► the overall consensus that I've seen.

01:20:49 ◼   ► So it seems like maybe Apple have tweaked that technology for the mini led for these

01:20:54 ◼   ► screens.

01:20:54 ◼   ► And I, uh, I see it on my iPad pro, but it doesn't really bother me because it's bright

01:21:02 ◼   ► text in the middle of a field of black.

01:21:03 ◼   ► And so a little bit of a glow I'm like, oh yeah, it's glowing, right?

01:21:07 ◼   ► Like that's sort of a, almost like a natural kind of feeling, but yeah, I haven't noticed

01:21:11 ◼   ► it on the Mac book pro either.

01:21:12 ◼   ► And I am a green.

01:21:15 ◼   ► This is a thing we haven't talked about.

01:21:17 ◼   ► Have we, I, I, my terminal is green on a black background.

01:21:20 ◼   ► Cause I want that old school monochrome terminal vibe, not the white text.

01:21:25 ◼   ► I want the green text in there.

01:21:26 ◼   ► I mean, I'm not in the terminal.

01:21:28 ◼   ► I'm just like in the notes app.

01:21:30 ◼   ► Sure, sure.

01:21:31 ◼   ► No, it looks, it looks pretty good.

01:21:33 ◼   ► There's a photo in my Mac book pro review of the notch that was taken on the, uh, taken

01:21:39 ◼   ► with my camera, my iPhone camera, because you can't see the notch in screenshots.

01:21:44 ◼   ► And, uh, you know, there's no bloom in there either.

01:21:47 ◼   ► So I don't know.

01:21:48 ◼   ► It's it's, uh, I think it's fine, but if you're super sensitive to it, maybe it'll bother

01:21:53 ◼   ► you.

01:21:53 ◼   ► I don't know, but it certainly doesn't feel like that to us.

01:21:55 ◼   ► I haven't seen any of this.

01:21:57 ◼   ► I mean, I would recommend, I guess, if this is something you're particularly worried about,

01:22:00 ◼   ► they have them in stores now and go look.

01:22:02 ◼   ► Also, I would imagine the bloom is like the, the screen is so bright, way brighter than

01:22:08 ◼   ► if you're working in a darker environment and in dark mode, you're not gonna, if you've

01:22:13 ◼   ► turned the screen up all the way, I bet you, there would be a lot more visible bloom, but

01:22:16 ◼   ► also the each individual pixel that's lit up would sear itself into your retina.

01:22:21 ◼   ► Cause you're probably not going to run it at a hundred nits while you're in the dark

01:22:25 ◼   ► or whatever, a thousand nits, thousand nits full, full brightness, a hundred percent brightness.

01:22:29 ◼   ► Not going to happen because like, I think I run it at like 20% brightness most of the

01:22:33 ◼   ► time.

01:22:34 ◼   ► It's such a bright display.

01:22:35 ◼   ► And I bet you that that's part of the, uh, part of the issue too.

01:22:38 ◼   ► Brilliant asks, you mentioned that you use Jason, a USB-C magnetic, like MagSafe alternative

01:22:45 ◼   ► for your Mac book.

01:22:46 ◼   ► Some of the early ones that this person used did not work very well.

01:22:48 ◼   ► Which brand do you recommend?

01:22:50 ◼   ► So yeah, I used one that was a first initially, uh, that was like this little block that plugged

01:22:56 ◼   ► into your USB-C and then it got, uh, it had a little, uh, magnetic-y thing that came off

01:23:01 ◼   ► of it that you plugged on to a USB-C cable.

01:23:05 ◼   ► And that was okay, but it was a little bit chunky and it came apart after three months

01:23:10 ◼   ► of using it, the pieces, it kind of felt the pieces.

01:23:13 ◼   ► And then I bought what John Syracuse recommended, which is basically, it's a very nice, uh,

01:23:19 ◼   ► fabric wrapped cable with magnet on the end.

01:23:25 ◼   ► And then it comes with a little tiny metal USB-C thing that you plug in to your USB-C

01:23:33 ◼   ► port and it sticks out a very tiny amount with the magnetic connector.

01:23:37 ◼   ► Um, and that's great.

01:23:40 ◼   ► We bought two of them.

01:23:41 ◼   ► So Lauren's got one.

01:23:42 ◼   ► I've got one.

01:23:43 ◼   ► Um, it works really well.

01:23:45 ◼   ► It is unfortunately, and we'll put the link in the show notes, but it's out of stock on

01:23:51 ◼   ► Amazon right now.

01:23:51 ◼   ► I think, cause I mentioned this last week and I don't know if they're making them anymore

01:23:55 ◼   ► and I can't recommend another one because I couldn't find one that's similar to it.

01:23:59 ◼   ► I found some that are, that do what it does, but the cables look kind of crappy and this

01:24:03 ◼   ► cable is really good.

01:24:04 ◼   ► So, uh, we'll put the link in the show notes.

01:24:07 ◼   ► It's from a no name company, but, uh, John Syracuse, I liked it.

01:24:11 ◼   ► I like it.

01:24:12 ◼   ► I hope they make more of them because a lot of us don't have new fancy MagSafe laptops

01:24:18 ◼   ► and having MagSafe is, uh, it's nice.

01:24:21 ◼   ► It's nice to have it on the old laptops too.

01:24:23 ◼   ► Kevin asks, do the new Mac Pro spell the end of dongle town?

01:24:28 ◼   ► It's a good, it's a good question.

01:24:30 ◼   ► I've been thinking about this a lot, Kevin and Myke and I have been thinking about what

01:24:33 ◼   ► the future of our dongle town merch is, right?

01:24:35 ◼   ► Like, I mean, it's still USB-C and people still have issues with it, but the USB-C anger

01:24:42 ◼   ► is abating because USB-C is taking over and USB-A was terrible.

01:24:46 ◼   ► And even though we had a lot of USB-A cables, USB-C connector is way better.

01:24:50 ◼   ► Every time I have to plug in a USB-A connector and I still always get it wrong the first

01:24:55 ◼   ► time.

01:24:56 ◼   ► I have to flip it over and I'm reminded that USB-C doesn't do that.

01:24:59 ◼   ► But Kevin dongle town abides.

01:25:02 ◼   ► Dongle town is always with us.

01:25:03 ◼   ► Anywhere someone has a USB-A cable dongle town is there.

01:25:09 ◼   ► Anywhere someone needs to convert like VGA or some other monitor standard to HDMI dongle

01:25:15 ◼   ► town is there.

01:25:15 ◼   ► Anytime you need to plug in a hub in order to get more ports and connect to a monitor

01:25:21 ◼   ► and all of those things that you're doing, you're in dongle town.

01:25:26 ◼   ► Anytime you need to connect wired headphones to an iPhone or iPad dongle town is there.

01:25:33 ◼   ► Dongle town will never really ever leave us, but it is receding into the distance a little

01:25:43 ◼   ► bit for now on at least the MacBook pro.

01:25:46 ◼   ► And bronze asks, do you think Apple will ever release AirPods or AirPods pro in a color

01:25:53 ◼   ► other than white?

01:25:55 ◼   ► I don't know about this one, right?

01:25:56 ◼   ► Because the AirPods max, they come in a bunch of colors.

01:25:59 ◼   ► And I think one of the reasons this is because it's mostly aluminum and Apple's really

01:26:03 ◼   ► good at aluminum color, right?

01:26:05 ◼   ► And I thought maybe they would release different color AirPods, but they never did with the

01:26:12 ◼   ► iPhone and iPod earbuds.

01:26:15 ◼   ► They were always white.

01:26:16 ◼   ► I think I could imagine them saying always white.

01:26:19 ◼   ► They just like that statement of the always white.

01:26:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm of two minds on this.

01:26:24 ◼   ► This is a very much a color, hashtag colors are a question.

01:26:27 ◼   ► The white earbuds thing has just been a thing for a very long time.

01:26:34 ◼   ► And I think Apple likes it.

01:26:37 ◼   ► And these are, I don't know.

01:26:41 ◼   ► So, so I think, wow, ever is a long, long time.

01:26:45 ◼   ► And I keep thinking it would be Apple is experimenting with all of this color and all of the other

01:26:51 ◼   ► places that its identity for consumer products has changed to have more color in it.

01:26:58 ◼   ► The HomePod now is coming in orange and blue and yellow.

01:27:03 ◼   ► So I'm going to hold out hope, France.

01:27:09 ◼   ► I'm going to hold out hope that Apple is moving in a direction where offering color options

01:27:17 ◼   ► of AirPods will one day be a thing.

01:27:20 ◼   ► But it's going to be, I wouldn't give it a huge amount of a chance of happening just

01:27:26 ◼   ► because they seem so committed to the white earbud thing when I think it would be so easy

01:27:31 ◼   ► for them to say, you know, what about, what about blue?

01:27:35 ◼   ► What about red?

01:27:37 ◼   ► But even when they made the iPod nano in a million colors, the earbuds were still white.

01:27:42 ◼   ► So maybe that's the fate of the AirPods too.

01:27:47 ◼   ► If you would like to send in a question for us to answer in a future episode of Upgrade,

01:27:51 ◼   ► just send out a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade or use question mark #AskUpgrade in the RelayFM

01:27:55 ◼   ► members Discord, which you can get access to if you sign up for Upgrade Plus.

01:28:00 ◼   ► Go to GetUpgradePlus.com and you'll be getting yourself longer ad-free episodes of Upgrade

01:28:05 ◼   ► every single week.

01:28:08 ◼   ► Thank you so much to everybody who supports the show this way.

01:28:11 ◼   ► I want to tell you about another show here at Relay FM before we wrap up today.

01:28:15 ◼   ► And that is the wonderful Roboism hosted by Alex Cox and Kathy Campbell, serious friends

01:28:20 ◼   ► of the show.

01:28:21 ◼   ► And on Roboism, they explore how artificial intelligence, machine learning and digital

01:28:25 ◼   ► assistance are affecting our culture.

01:28:28 ◼   ► You can explore the humanity behind the bots that are becoming a part of our everyday lives

01:28:33 ◼   ► at RelayL

01:28:37 ◼   ► or search for Roboism wherever you get your podcasts.

01:28:39 ◼   ► They are wonderful people and you should go and check out their show.

01:28:42 ◼   ► Thanks so much to our sponsors of this week's episode.

01:28:45 ◼   ► That is the fine folk over at DoorDash, TextExpander and Fitbot.

01:28:49 ◼   ► If you want to find, I don't usually say this, but if you want to find show notes for this

01:28:53 ◼   ► week's episode, they should be in your podcast app of choice or at Relay.fm/upgrade/379.

01:28:59 ◼   ► I say that on some of my other shows, Jason.

01:29:01 ◼   ► I know.

01:29:01 ◼   ► Mostly the pan addict against that one.

01:29:03 ◼   ► Click on that MagSafe thing and I'll get all that sweet, sweet affiliate revenue from a

01:29:07 ◼   ► product that is out of stock and may never work.

01:29:09 ◼   ► Incredible.

01:29:12 ◼   ► You're going to be rolling in it.

01:29:13 ◼   ► It's going to be wonderful.

01:29:15 ◼   ► If you want to find Jason online, you can go to SixColors.com and he is @jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L.

01:29:21 ◼   ► I am @mike_yke and we'll be back next time.

01:29:26 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye Jason Snell.

01:29:27 ◼   ► Goodbye Myke Early.

01:29:29 ◼   ► [MUSIC]