00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 259. Today's show is brought to you by ExpressVPN, Bombast, and FreshBooks.
00:00:24 ◼ ► And summer of fun today brings with us a summer guest. Hi, Stephen Hackett. Hi, Summer Stephen.
00:00:31 ◼ ► There we go, he's been practicing that all day, he's been very excited about how he would say summer of fun.
00:00:43 ◼ ► #snowtalkquestion comes from Rick. Rick wants to know, "How many Macs, active or retired, now abide in the Snail Zone?"
00:00:51 ◼ ► I had to count, it's about 12. 4 are active and 1 is mildly inactive and then the rest are archival.
00:01:00 ◼ ► There's a couple of laptops that are just floating around that my family isn't using anymore.
00:01:04 ◼ ► And then I've got a few old Macs, I've got my wife's actually, it's a 512 upgraded to a plus.
00:01:12 ◼ ► And I've got a G4 iMac, I've got a Power Mac G4, those are my old ones and a titanium PowerBook G4.
00:02:18 ◼ ► Mine is on, I don't accept visitors either, but mine is on a shelf that's lit so it feels like a museum,
00:02:30 ◼ ► If you would like to send in a Snell Talk question just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk
00:02:38 ◼ ► Follow up, so on Ask Upgrade last week we had a question talking about the odds of Marco
00:02:53 ◼ ► where we gave, I mean so me and Jason gave our odds and then the guys spoke about them.
00:02:59 ◼ ► I think by and large Casey agrees with both me and you, which is a very Casey thing to do,
00:03:19 ◼ ► Casey agrees that Marco is going to buy everything within the timeframe that I specified.
00:03:48 ◼ ► But then again he threw us a curveball where he said maybe he'll just use non-retina displays on a new Mac Pro.
00:04:09 ◼ ► I mean we talk about Dongle Town, he would be in like, he'd be the engineer on the dongle train to make that work.
00:04:20 ◼ ► I'm trying to picture John Syracuse sitting in front of a non-retina display but he could use Sidecar
00:04:25 ◼ ► so like if he needs retina he could just put that on an iPad and use it there and then go back to his non-retina.
00:04:43 ◼ ► What would we call it, do you think? The ATP Fan Show? I don't know what it would be called.
00:05:02 ◼ ► There is a bullet point that somebody has entered into this document which says "Steven?"
00:05:14 ◼ ► Well, I don't know, I've talked about this on MacPowries or some, how I'm really happy with the iMac Pro.
00:05:18 ◼ ► Jason and I have the same computer. Myke, it sounds like you may have an iMac Pro in your future at some point.
00:05:53 ◼ ► So I think I've mentioned, I don't know if I mentioned this show, but I decided I wanted to get an iMac Pro, right?
00:06:10 ◼ ► That was like my plan, right? Like what if they update, you know, something in the iMac Pro.
00:06:14 ◼ ► Maybe I'll leave it to the end of the year after the Mac Pro comes out and then make my purchasing decision.
00:06:33 ◼ ► Yeah, there's an argument to be made that the current iMac Pro is the most powerful Mac that will ever be able to run 32-bit applications.
00:06:44 ◼ ► So it may be that they come with Catalina out of the box, but if there's no hardware revision,
00:06:54 ◼ ► But there's two aspects here. One, they could have like a silent revision that makes Catalina required.
00:07:05 ◼ ► And they could move Mojave or High Sierra to some sort of untrusted state for T2 Macs at some point in the future.
00:07:13 ◼ ► But if you don't want to run Catalina, which is understandable, it's not the silliest thing in the world to buy an iMac Pro before then.
00:07:22 ◼ ► That's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking I might just get it now and then still have an incredibly powerful computer running the previous version of Mac OS, which is what I prefer to do.
00:07:34 ◼ ► I think it's not a bad point. I don't think that there is much that they will probably do to the iMac Pro to turn it over.
00:07:42 ◼ ► I thought you were going to say you were worried that the existence of the Mac Pro was going to mean that they just get rid of the iMac Pro.
00:07:51 ◼ ► That's another thing. But what Stephen's saying, which I agree with, anything that they do to the iMac Pro, I probably don't need.
00:08:07 ◼ ► Maybe that would happen or maybe it only happened at the high end and they keep the $5,000 model like Jason and I have effectively the same.
00:08:31 ◼ ► We have a whole segment about the Mac coming up later and one of the things we're going to talk about is where the iMac is going.
00:08:38 ◼ ► And that's the only thing that gives me any pause at all is that the look of the iMac is unchanged for a decade.
00:08:52 ◼ ► Are they going to bother rethinking the iMac Pro or is it such a niche product that it will just stay looking like it is now?
00:08:58 ◼ ► That would be the one thing. It would be a shame to buy a new iMac Pro and then in three months they come out with a complete, you know, small bezel, totally different kind of thing.
00:09:30 ◼ ► And there was this idea that we mentioned occasionally something will happen that's a surprise, like when You Look Nice Today came back and it just went into the feed.
00:09:39 ◼ ► And so if you have a podcast you love, especially you can delete all the episodes and keep it around and it's not taking up any space.
00:09:45 ◼ ► But what if something magical happens in an episode after its death, an episode is released?
00:09:57 ◼ ► The Chernobyl podcast from HBO, which is really excellent, they did an episode about every episode, all five episodes of the series, the HBO mini-series.
00:10:07 ◼ ► They dropped another random unannounced episode last week talking to Jared Harris, one of the stars of the show.
00:10:21 ◼ ► And then this morning, Lex Friedman's personal daily podcast, Your Daily Lex, returned after 927 days of him not posting an episode to his daily personal podcast.
00:10:33 ◼ ► He says he had to update two different things of PHP in order to get it to actually work.
00:10:51 ◼ ► No, because you never know if that download feed is going to have a Fuzzy Puppy update in it someday.
00:10:59 ◼ ► It is Relay FM membership time. We spoke about this last week, but we wanted to say it again because our bonus episode, Danger Town Beatdown, the crossover with Call of Tax or to the Tax Adventure, is now available.
00:11:12 ◼ ► So if you become a Relay FM member, membership start at $5 a month, you get a lot of wonderful perks, including bonus episodes.
00:11:18 ◼ ► If you need to be enticed further into why you should become a Relay FM member to get our member specials, there is an animated trailer now of the trailer that we played in the show last week of Danger Town Beatdown.
00:11:41 ◼ ► So thank you so much for deciding to sign up and become a Relay FM member. We really appreciate it.
00:11:57 ◼ ► And also as well, we have mentioned this before, we're doing our live show in a couple of days in San Francisco.
00:12:02 ◼ ► We had to do some team selection for that because we're doing a family feud game, which is going to be amazing.
00:12:10 ◼ ► We had a team selection, which we did on Twitch, and there is a YouTube video of that as well.
00:12:23 ◼ ► So we're looking forward to seeing a lot of you there in San Francisco in just a couple of days.
00:12:40 ◼ ► So you can go and check out exactly who is going to be there by watching the YouTube video.
00:13:22 ◼ ► Because Steve Carell couldn't stop cracking jokes when he was introduced on stage, right?
00:13:29 ◼ ► And I think that that made a lot of people think, "Oh, that's what the show is going to be."
00:13:53 ◼ ► So it's looking, it's shaping up to be I think something that looks really, really interesting.
00:14:00 ◼ ► I'm getting more and more, as Tim would say, bullish on the programming that's coming out of Apple TV+.
00:14:33 ◼ ► There was like a sneak preview trailer of "For All Mankind," but it was much more kind of quick cut.
00:14:51 ◼ ► And presumably we'll get more data about when and how much at the, hopefully at the iPhone event next month.
00:15:31 ◼ ► Ironically, the reverse happened, which is that the cable company Viacom kind of lost its way in Paramount Pictures.
00:16:28 ◼ ► And there's an anticipation, I think, in Hollywood that they're going to start trying to pick up some other smaller players
00:16:36 ◼ ► in order to compete with not only the big entertainment conglomerates that I mentioned,
00:16:51 ◼ ► Mindhunter is a Netflix drama series starring Jonathan Groff, Hugh McElhenney, and Anna Torf.
00:17:00 ◼ ► It is about, the executive producer is David Fincher, who directs a handful of episodes.
00:17:13 ◼ ► It is, people who are creeped out by killers, it is about FBI agents trying to figure out the minds of serial killers,
00:17:20 ◼ ► but I would say it's more, to use David Fincher movies, it's more like Zodiac than it is like Seven.
00:17:34 ◼ ► And it's a true story, based on a true story, about the creation of the concept of a criminal psychological profile
00:18:02 ◼ ► And we'll put a link in the show notes to a piece that Tim Goodman wrote in The Hollywood Reporter about this,
00:18:07 ◼ ► because I think it makes an interesting point about Netflix making no effort, essentially, to promote this thing
00:18:19 ◼ ► And I think it's an interesting data point in what Netflix chooses to just not do that is traditionally done.
00:18:34 ◼ ► A lot of people, the first they heard about it was hearing Tim and I complain about it not being promoted on the podcast we do.
00:18:42 ◼ ► Because I'm sure Netflix's view is that if they put it on the Netflix screen on Friday night, you'll watch it.
00:18:52 ◼ ► But it is fascinating to think about Netflix in this era where they're about to get a lot of serious competition,
00:18:57 ◼ ► taking this content that they spent a lot of money for, and then saying, "We don't even need to really push it.
00:19:07 ◼ ► And I'm not sure I entirely believe that because I've run into a lot of people who are completely unaware.
00:19:13 ◼ ► I talked to somebody who was saying the other day, who was saying that the first they heard about the second season of a show they liked on Netflix being available
00:19:21 ◼ ► was when they read a news article that said that Netflix had canceled the show after two seasons.
00:19:32 ◼ ► How much more high profile can a Netflix show be than "Mindhunter," with David Fincher producing it?
00:19:41 ◼ ► Although on Netflix it's easier because the whole first season is there, so you're promoting the whole show, not just the debut.
00:19:53 ◼ ► Maybe it's an experiment, although if I were David Fincher, unless he demanded there be no publicity for his show, I'd be mad.
00:20:08 ◼ ► And I figured that I look around Netflix a lot and it's just never come up or it's never grabbed me.
00:20:14 ◼ ► But it is also fascinating that it basically got no promotion from Netflix, which it's -- that's a Netflix thing.
00:20:23 ◼ ► Sometimes they do big promotions, but a lot of times the shows just get added to Netflix and you got to go find them.
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00:21:57 ◼ ► It's been a question that's popped up and then a bunch of people have kind of like thrown their thoughts into the ring.
00:22:02 ◼ ► iPhone 11, just the numbers 11 and pro, these two kind of terms seem to be decided upon with naming conventions.
00:22:10 ◼ ► Typically, the idea is that the XR will become the 11 and then what was previously the XS and the XS Max will become iPhone 11 Pro models.
00:22:24 ◼ ► I think I saw Marco say just they're both because he believes they'll both be called iPhone 11 Pro.
00:22:46 ◼ ► I think it's an interesting decision in that it's the low end model becomes the sort of standard one.
00:23:04 ◼ ► At the same time, you know, Apple really, I think, wants to position it as like this is the crowd pleaser of a model.
00:23:12 ◼ ► And why not if you're going to if you're going to split because I don't like the, you know, XR, XS kind of thing.
00:23:19 ◼ ► I think if you're going to split it, having a base and a pro feels a little more sensible.
00:23:37 ◼ ► But we've been saying this for a couple of years now that Apple is kind of trying a bunch of different things in terms of figuring out how to name their products in the iPhone area, especially.
00:23:46 ◼ ► And especially now that they're trying to have multiple iPhone versions, which they didn't have to deal with before.
00:23:52 ◼ ► I think, too, it is a an understanding or recognition of understanding that the XR is the default iPhone.
00:24:01 ◼ ► And I think the way it is now, because the XS inherited the main line name, there's sort of a penalty that comes with buying a XR.
00:24:13 ◼ ► It has maybe connotations and sort of circles that you bought the cheap one, even though it's more expensive than the iPhone eight was.
00:24:20 ◼ ► Maybe it's just an alignment of the line and the marketing to how these phones actually perform in the marketplace and the XR being sort of the default phone for most people.
00:24:39 ◼ ► I mean, well, not to get into a new iPhone, but to get an iPhone with this sort of normal sort of the quote unquote normal iPhone, then yes, that price would be more in line with previous years.
00:24:50 ◼ ► But I don't I don't think it's going to make a difference in the bottom line of the company.
00:24:53 ◼ ► No, I just look at something like this and, you know, this is the first iPhone really, or at least the first iPhone release plan since the iPhone decline.
00:25:03 ◼ ► So a lot of the stuff that they will be doing this year, you would expect is like the attempt to try and not let that happen again.
00:25:11 ◼ ► And something like that, something like that, the idea of like, well, the the standard phone now is a little bit cheaper again than the standard phone has been in the previous year.
00:25:21 ◼ ► But it's not going to be because, well, if they keep the ten hour pricing, that is more expensive than the iPhone 6S7.
00:25:30 ◼ ► Yes, but the ten and ten s weren't the default, even though Apple wouldn't you think they were like, I think we're saying the same thing from opposite sides.
00:25:38 ◼ ► And I think the whatever the internal price, people who buy iPhones via entry level price don't give much of a care about what the name is.
00:25:49 ◼ ► But I think what this does do is it does to me what it does is I feel like Apple is giving the ten R line being cheaper than the pro model for now.
00:26:05 ◼ ► They're giving that phone a lease on life that I wasn't sure the ten R would have had before we knew it was such a big success.
00:26:13 ◼ ► There was part of me that when they introduced the ten R, I think a lot of people thought this. So well, they didn't. They're going to relearn the iPhone five C lesson.
00:26:21 ◼ ► And they did it because the ten R is a really, really good phone better than the tennis tennis Max in a lot of ways.
00:26:32 ◼ ► The five C was old where I will be concerned is if they do this and the eleven eleven pro have a clear difference in spec. I think if it's just the number of cameras and the type of screen, that's fine.
00:26:45 ◼ ► But they widen the gap any. I'll be I'll be worried. Maybe the chips are different. I hope not.
00:26:51 ◼ ► So that's that's going to be the interesting thing, right? What does pro mean? What does it mean to have a jump from the 11 to the pro?
00:27:06 ◼ ► Yeah, and Apple has used pro as a word to just say it's the better one for a long time.
00:27:21 ◼ ► Yeah, it doesn't mean professional anymore. It just means better most right. Yeah, or better.
00:27:27 ◼ ► It just comes in space gray. But what are what do you I mean, you know, for let's say them for pros and what it is today.
00:27:34 ◼ ► So like better and best, you know, but the best iPhone, what should be in a in a 11 pro?
00:27:39 ◼ ► So like I saw MKBHD saying that promotion display would be something that he would want to see.
00:27:44 ◼ ► Like he really thinks that I should be in there. And I agree. Like I would love like a higher refresh rate screen on my iPhone.
00:27:50 ◼ ► And other manufacturers are pulling that off. Yeah, the Razer phone and some others have a higher refresh rate.
00:27:55 ◼ ► Yeah, there's a lot especially gaming focused phones that have like 90 or 120 hertz refresh rate.
00:28:04 ◼ ► So, you know, I'd love to see 90 or 120 on the iPhone like that would be that would look really good.
00:28:09 ◼ ► But I don't know if that's going to be the case right now. I feel like that's something that they could do without it leaking out.
00:28:16 ◼ ► Like nobody knew promotion was going to exist in the iPad. Even if you have the panel, it's like unless it's running.
00:28:22 ◼ ► I don't think you could tell easily that it's capable of it. Well, I was thinking about this in preparation for this.
00:28:28 ◼ ► You and I hang out with the Galaxy Note 10. We ended up in a Best Buy yesterday for reasons.
00:28:35 ◼ ► It is a very nice looking phone. But that is that phone's reason for being is the Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus are in the same size class now as the Note.
00:29:05 ◼ ► But not now. I every year I write a new piece for Tom's Guide where I say that that's one of the areas where Apple could differentiate and where Apple has.
00:29:17 ◼ ► And you look at the note, which has it, and you think Apple's got all the tech to put it in there.
00:29:20 ◼ ► It's just a matter of wanting to do more likely for 2020 because there's the rumor of the Mac's getting bigger. Right.
00:29:30 ◼ ► Yeah. And I think it's now. And we're also in this weird deal now where these these phone cycles are really three or four generations old, even though the names are still only two generations of change.
00:29:47 ◼ ► So is it like the 10 SS like that's really kind of what it would be in the old vocabulary.
00:29:52 ◼ ► So in a sense, the generational names aren't lining up with new features actually coming out anymore.
00:29:58 ◼ ► Yeah, I think fundamentally and we know this because of all the leaks and things is that at the very least, this will be differentiated by camera and display. Right.
00:30:12 ◼ ► But we the rumors are three cameras on the back and better display because it'll have the OLED display, whether or not it's at a higher refresh rate.
00:30:20 ◼ ► It'll have the it'll have the better display and that is, you know, that's enough. You could argue better camera better display is probably enough.
00:30:28 ◼ ► There are other things they could do to differentiate it. If they feel they need to, they could make it a better processor.
00:30:33 ◼ ► They could increase the refresh rate, but I feel like or they could change the sensors.
00:30:38 ◼ ► There could be some other like sensors in there that do other things that we don't even know about.
00:30:42 ◼ ► But I think it would probably be enough to differentiate it as it is not not to keep in mind the perhaps most important spec of all, which is that it'll be like $300 more expensive.
00:30:52 ◼ ► That's a good spec. It's a big spec. It's a big spec. I don't like iPhone 11 Pro Max as a name.
00:31:09 ◼ ► It's a bad name. It's never grown on me. It's a bad name. And I and Pro Max is is just as bad.
00:31:26 ◼ ► Riff with Pro Max. Yeah. That's what it sounds like. It sounds like you would see it written on one of those huge tubs.
00:31:34 ◼ ► Yeah. I'm gonna get ripped just picking that phone up every day. That's true. I don't like Pro Max. No, it's bad.
00:31:39 ◼ ► Pro Max. I think it's a mouthful. I think what we've been saying kind of all along is true here, too, which is at some point, why are you differentiating in name based on screen size?
00:31:52 ◼ ► And that's the, you know, MacBook Pro. There's a 13 inch MacBook Pro and a 15 inch Mac Pro Pro.
00:32:09 ◼ ► It seems that September 10 could be the announcement of the iPhone. There is a an image that they found called like hold for release or something like that.
00:32:22 ◼ ► There's also no app labels on these icons. Yes. I know that, too. We talk about that. That's weird, too.
00:32:28 ◼ ► I'm a little concerned. I have two thoughts about this. One is, of course, it says September 10 is by far the most obvious date.
00:32:36 ◼ ► It is Tuesday in early September. It's not the day after Labor Day, which is a holiday.
00:32:41 ◼ ► It's better if it's not. I think ideally it's also not September 11, which is often, you know, kind of an awkward day to have a big event.
00:32:48 ◼ ► September 10. It's the most logical date. We've always thought that. So this this follows.
00:32:54 ◼ ► But I want to mention the other thing, which is how are images that are marked not for a release getting through into beta?
00:33:01 ◼ ► Because we're going to get to a story about the Apple Watch in a minute. It's the same thing.
00:33:04 ◼ ► It's like, how are these images getting in beta releases? How how many times does Apple have to get its images swiped out of its product builds or off its Web server before it locks that down?
00:33:20 ◼ ► So what Jason's referencing is the same Web site, I hope, claims to have found some assets that reveal new Apple Watch cases, one in titanium or one in ceramic.
00:33:31 ◼ ► So there's like the the kind of the image that they show that kind of goes on the back of the of the watch.
00:33:38 ◼ ► You know, like it's got that kind of like back of watch look. I don't really know what to describe how to describe it, but it shows the ceramic case titanium case.
00:33:46 ◼ ► So this is apparently again come from a some screenshots found within Beta seven, I think.
00:33:53 ◼ ► So maybe this is what we're going to get this year, right? Like it feels like maybe this was an Apple Watch year where we haven't got a lot of rumors.
00:34:01 ◼ ► Like I can't put my finger on anything, you know, like any kind of sense of changes or anything like that.
00:34:06 ◼ ► We got the new design last year, so they're not going to make significant case design changes from a visual perspective.
00:34:17 ◼ ► So maybe these materials are the new look and new features that they give to make people want to buy a new Apple Watch.
00:34:24 ◼ ► Yeah, makes sense. Our friends who like watches and you're one of our friends who likes watches too.
00:34:37 ◼ ► These would probably be the high-end expensive materials that you'd pay a lot of money for but that they're very nice and that the titanium especially, you know, watch grade titanium.
00:34:46 ◼ ► And so it would be a light watch that maybe would actually even have more clear haptics and stuff in it, which is kind of cool.
00:35:08 ◼ ► But like the, you know, I know that it's all the apps store and independent apps is basically what it is.
00:35:16 ◼ ► You know, it might be okay if the Apple Watch just cooled it off a little and and advanced as a stable platform.
00:35:26 ◼ ► Like the independent watch apps and app store stuff and Swift UI like it feels like that's what it's about is really like, okay, we've got it to a decent point in terms of features.
00:35:38 ◼ ► Let's get the apps better and I would applaud that and and will there be a new Apple Watch piece of hardware?
00:35:47 ◼ ► I think probably although it wouldn't blow me away if they did variations on the existing Apple Watch hardware like these titanium and ceramic ones and maybe didn't even upgrade the series.
00:36:06 ◼ ► But do they need to unless they've got like I mean, I guess it's all incremental right?
00:36:10 ◼ ► They upgrade the upgrade the series and basically at this point there's no feature with the cellular in there.
00:36:16 ◼ ► There's no feature crying out for change, but they could as always make the processor more efficient and make the battery better and make the balance work a little bit better.
00:36:27 ◼ ► But I feel like the watch isn't crying out for that level of improvement like it has every year since it's been announced this year.
00:36:35 ◼ ► I'm intrigued because I always like the way the ceramic watches looked, you know, and I'm interested to see what they do because they did the white one.
00:36:42 ◼ ► They did like a gray one and I wonder like what is that? What kind of color are they going to do?
00:36:47 ◼ ► So like ceramic is nice and I think that's kind of an it's an interesting choice to pick back up again.
00:36:56 ◼ ► stainless steel Apple Watch and Jason you mentioned this the haptics on it weren't ever very strong because it's a lot of mass to move around to get the vibrate to your vibration to come through and wearing an aluminum watch is a totally different ballgame than that.
00:37:13 ◼ ► So be all shiny but the taptic motor actually be able to keep up with it and and be as noticeable as it is on the aluminum watches.
00:37:26 ◼ ► The watch has been on such a tear and it needed to be right the first couple were so slow and so limited and the series for feels great and ensure the five will be even faster.
00:37:36 ◼ ► But at some point I think they'll move from a every year to you know, maybe like an iPad release cycle.
00:37:42 ◼ ► It's every 18 months or so, you know alternating spring and fall where you get a new watch and they can still keep the bands refresh and they're still doing that every season so you can still keep interest there and refresh the materials right like that's the thing I keep thinking is there they could totally not saying they will but they could totally just say we've got some new series for watch materials and it's titanium.
00:38:05 ◼ ► And it's ceramic and who knows maybe there's some different colors on the aluminum and it's still just series for because they've shown with those watch bands like interesting.
00:38:14 ◼ ► They can keep selling watch bands in different colors and they just keep doing it and I'm not saying they'll do it this year.
00:38:19 ◼ ► But I agree with you Steven they could lengthen out the cycle and they could even like drop in a mid cycle set of changes and that would serve to lengthen out the cycle right and then maybe in six months or a year.
00:38:32 ◼ ► There's a series 5 I because I struggle to think what earth-shattering feature update has to be in a series 5 Apple watch and I can't come up with anything.
00:38:44 ◼ ► The hardware is pretty good and I've sort of given up on the you know, eternal battery life and the screen always stays on thing.
00:38:52 ◼ ► I think that Apple has just decided that they're not close to that yet and short of a breakthrough like that where the battery is going to last, you know, they had sleep tracking and a battery that you can.
00:39:01 ◼ ► Run for 36 hours or something like that and leave the screen on until they get to that point.
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00:41:02 ◼ ► I thought we would just take a little time with Steven and talk about the Mac and talk about hardware and software.
00:41:07 ◼ ► And Myke and I do talk about the Mac, but Steven, I feel like is our go-to, excited about the Mac, Mac Power Users co-host friend.
00:41:16 ◼ ► And so I thought we would use this segment in the Summer of Fun to talk about the Mac a little bit.
00:41:21 ◼ ► And I wanted to start with sort of hardware, where we are now, where we're going with that.
00:41:37 ◼ ► When we did our interview back in the Spring, we were really expecting maybe that the iMac would finally have that generational moment, and it didn't.
00:41:46 ◼ ► And so here we are speculating about where the iMac goes from here and the iMac Pro, which we talked about earlier.
00:41:58 ◼ ► Is this what the iMac is just going to keep on looking like, or do you think that there is a new conception of the iMac waiting in the wings?
00:42:08 ◼ ► I mean, the general recipe of the iMac, you know, aluminum foot, LCD screen, computer glue to the back of it.
00:42:21 ◼ ► It was the first flat one, and that was back in, you know, the early 2000s, 2004, somewhere in there.
00:42:36 ◼ ► They did the optical drive, they went from, they have a white plastic iMac G5 over there behind Myke, and then they went to aluminum, and now it's all aluminum with glass and much thinner.
00:42:51 ◼ ► I think they, the iMac, okay, it's the all-in-one, the way you make all-in-ones is you put the screen in front of the computer, different than like the Microsoft Surface Studio, which put the computer in the base, like the iMac G4.
00:43:06 ◼ ► However, the ingredients may always stay the same, but I do think there's room for revision.
00:43:17 ◼ ► It's been 12 years, basically, that the iMac has looked more or less the same. It's gotten a little bit thinner.
00:43:23 ◼ ► But the front of it, I'm looking, I have a 2007 iMac in my office, and I can look at it from here, and it doesn't look that different, other than silver versus space gray, from my iMac Pro.
00:43:34 ◼ ► Yeah. You know, they went to widescreen and some other things, but yeah, basically the same.
00:43:38 ◼ ► And I think it's time for that sort of change again. You know, when they went from 2007 to whenever it was, when they got thinner, you know, maybe it's time for one of those types of things again, where you bring the bezels down, maybe make the chin a little bit smaller again.
00:43:54 ◼ ► You know, sort of tighten things up a little bit. But I think the iMac as we know it is how the iMac will be.
00:44:00 ◼ ► I think the far more interesting story is what's going on inside the iMac. And I think you guys did a really good job in that interview and the coverage after that.
00:44:08 ◼ ► Like, the iMac in a sense is the every man's computer, right? Like, they sell them to families and schools and businesses and individuals, and they reach a really wide audience.
00:44:20 ◼ ► You know, that base iMac, the spinning hard drive all the way up to a 5K monster, then of course the iMac Pro.
00:44:26 ◼ ► But it sure feels like it's time for them to bring even those base configs into the modern world. Get rid of the spinning hard drives, revamp the cooling, put a better FaceTime camera in it.
00:44:38 ◼ ► Like when we did that Twitch video the other day, like we did on the iMac Pro because it has a 1080p camera, but that's the only Mac with a 1080p camera in it. All the others are 720. The poor old MacBook was 480.
00:44:48 ◼ ► It's time for Apple to do those sorts of things that they've just really let linger for a long time.
00:44:53 ◼ ► Yeah, I agree. I do wonder about the bezel thing. Like, it feels like there's something that they could do on the outside that it's been.
00:45:04 ◼ ► And I looked, 2012 I believe is when the thin design that we have right now came in. It's still seven years.
00:45:17 ◼ ► But I don't know what they're waiting for. And this gets into the conspiracy theory land of like, is Apple's ultimate goal to make its non-Pro products all ARM-based at some point?
00:45:31 ◼ ► And would they wait for a really massive platform change to bother revving the iMac? Maybe.
00:45:39 ◼ ► I figured when the iMac Pro looked the same as the 27-inch, just in space gray, that this design was going to be locked in for several more years.
00:45:49 ◼ ► If you're going to have a new fancy iMac design, you debut it on the iMac Pro and then it trickles down to the 5K and 4K. But that's not how it works.
00:45:59 ◼ ► You would think, again, unless there's a plan for like an ARM iMac that looks totally different. But I also agree.
00:46:11 ◼ ► In the end, it's a screen, right? Like, I mean, there is only so much they can do. They could bring in the bezels and lose the chin if they really wanted to. They could do that.
00:46:20 ◼ ► It's like one of the things where it's like, yeah, they could do that. But then that introduces issues with the iMac.
00:46:25 ◼ ► It's like, oh, well, we could make it smaller. But if we do that, it's like a ton of work and effort into trying to fit everything back in again. So is it worth it?
00:46:33 ◼ ► And I guess that's the question. Is it worth it? I mean, if you look at the desktop line, you have the Mac Mini and you have the iMac and the iMac Pro. Soon to be Mac Pro as well.
00:46:42 ◼ ► The iMac's got to be the most popular of those. But compared to notebooks, it's nothing. I mean, their notebook sales are...
00:46:50 ◼ ► Yeah, I bet notebook sales are easily three quarters of their sales now. And even there, they move more slowly than we would like.
00:46:58 ◼ ► So I think just in the amount of attention and resources Apple has, the iMac, unfortunately, is just going to get less attention than some of us.
00:47:21 ◼ ► The Mac Mini underwent the iMac Pro transformation where my old 5K iMac and my Mac Pro, other than the color, they're the same on the outside.
00:47:30 ◼ ► But as soon as you crack one open, it's like, "Oh, this is a totally different ballgame."
00:47:34 ◼ ► And I guess it's like, when does the iMac benefit from that previous work? They've already done it with the enclosure. You just have to trickle it down.
00:47:40 ◼ ► Yeah, that does feel like that's inevitable, right? Is that inevitably there will be a better, an SSD-only and better-cooled iMac that will just use the tech that's in the iMac Pro.
00:47:51 ◼ ► That does seem to be something that will have to happen. But for that to happen, Apple is going to have to grapple with the idea of not making spinning hard drives in iMacs.
00:48:06 ◼ ► And they sell, my impression is, they sell a lot of those. That if you were to do a chart of what the price point of the iMac is that's most popular, it would be shifted way down from what we would buy.
00:48:23 ◼ ► Because they sell a lot of them into education, but also, you know, if they're trumpeting how great they look on desks and hotels, like, you're not ordering the i7 for the hotel check-in desk, right? You're not. And you're not ordering the terabyte SSD.
00:48:44 ◼ ► And that's the real crime in the iMac line to me is that, okay, if you're going to put hard drives in it, at least do 7200 RPM. But they're 5400 RPM. Those iMacs are painfully slow.
00:48:55 ◼ ► They are. I don't like them. But then, I look at the Mac Pro, which is like, looks so different, right? Like, they really kind of went for it with that thing.
00:49:10 ◼ ► Well, yeah, no, but like, even then, though, if you compared the two of them together, like, it's like, oh, okay, you took a design and you updated that design and made it new.
00:49:20 ◼ ► Which is kind of what we're talking about with the iMac, right? Where, like, they could take that design and make it more new. They could make it look more like the Pro Display XDR, right?
00:49:35 ◼ ► Ignore the holes on the back, because in theory, an iMac wouldn't need those, unless they use that in the iMac Pro. That's the way they call the iMac Pro, right? Because they have to call the monitor, like, you know.
00:49:44 ◼ ► But that is a data point of like, well, they did that with a Mac Pro, but I just, I don't know. I would love to see a change to the iMac, but they might just keep making the computer better, as opposed to necessarily changing a design.
00:49:57 ◼ ► And I think the audience for the iMac, except for us who live on the very high end of the iMac line, those people Jason was describing, put them in hotels and schools and offices. They just don't care the design's the same.
00:50:13 ◼ ► In some ways, it's a benefit that it doesn't change, because you can, if you have a 2012 and you buy a 2019, you can just drop it in place, and all your cables reach, and you can just keep going. And there is benefit to that, and no doubt at this point, the enclosure is pretty cheap to build for them, right? They've got that process down.
00:50:34 ◼ ► So, I think there's part of this, like the people who would benefit from a design change kind of don't care about it, and at some point, Apple will get around to it, but clearly there's other issues in the Mac line that require attention first.
00:50:53 ◼ ► So, in writing a piece for Macworld last week, two weeks ago, I came to this realization that, you know, Apple is trying, we talked about it, whatever 75, 80%, who knows how much of the Mac is laptops, and the entire consumer laptop market for Apple, which is presumably really large, is this MacBook Air that's essentially a single configuration.
00:51:23 ◼ ► And that's, I mean, it has a little bit of variation, but it's like, here is one product that is designated to fulfill the needs of every consumer who wants a Mac laptop.
00:51:37 ◼ ► I mean, I think the 13-inch MacBook Pro picked some of that weight up, especially in the era before the MacBook Air was good again.
00:51:45 ◼ ► But yeah, you're right, you know, but even thinking sort of historically, that's kind of mostly been the case. I mean, the iBook, they had two different sizes, but there was only one MacBook, you know, the white and black plastic one. There was only very little variation in that as well.
00:52:09 ◼ ► But I think that's the outlier. I do think there is room for something else. I mean, not the 12-inch MacBook clearly, but could they take the 13-inch MacBook Air and have a 13 and like a 14 and a half or, there was a room, remember that weird rumor a couple years ago, there was going to be like a 15-inch MacBook Air, and that never went anywhere.
00:52:35 ◼ ► The first MacBook Air. When the MacBook Air got good, the MacBook had kind of was going away.
00:52:41 ◼ ► But where I look at the MacBook Air in terms of what they should do with it, if that's the lens we're looking through today, clearly there's still room for a cheaper model.
00:52:50 ◼ ► 1099 is pretty good. 999 is better, but you can't decontent that 1099 anymore. It has a tiny SSD.
00:53:06 ◼ ► Because, yeah, they're on sale at Amazon or Best Buy or Woot or wherever. You can find them for 999 pretty often if you look.
00:53:17 ◼ ► At least for now. But, you know, maybe there is room for a notebook, you know, designed really for education because like the MacBook Air is still pretty expensive to repair.
00:53:28 ◼ ► It's, you know, aluminum and an ice cream and a fragile keyboard. Like maybe there is room for something other than a beautiful carved piece of aluminum at the really low end.
00:53:39 ◼ ► But Apple has never really played in that space in the notebooks. I mean, the cheapest notebook in like modern Apple history probably is that 999 MacBook Air for a while.
00:53:54 ◼ ► So you could, I mean, I think it'd be really interesting like what would a 699 education notebook look like from Apple?
00:54:02 ◼ ► Well, the answer of course is, well, it's an iPad with a keyboard, which is that is always going to be the basement of the Mac line is they're not going to be willing to get Mac peanut butter in their iPad chocolate too much in these markets.
00:54:23 ◼ ► We would expect that there'll be a complete turnover of the entire Mac laptop line within a year anyway to change the keyboard.
00:54:41 ◼ ► I have a 2019 MacBook Pro. It's here on this table in front of me. It's the 15 inch 8 core.
00:54:51 ◼ ► And the keyboard is bad in the sense that I still don't like the travel and feel. But that aside, I have not had any sticky keys or any failure and I've had it for several months now.
00:55:00 ◼ ► So even if they did fix it with this revision, which is still not enough data, we need to know years and years of how they operate.
00:55:08 ◼ ► Even if they fixed it this time, I still think they have to really revise this line because people are never going to trust the butterfly keyboard.
00:55:17 ◼ ► And there are issues with this notebook past that. There are issues with thermals. There's issues with just limiting it to Thunderbolt.
00:55:25 ◼ ► A lot of those aren't going to get addressed. Like if you're out there thinking, "Oh, the 16 inch MacBook Pro is going to bring USB-A back in the SD card slot."
00:55:36 ◼ ► But there are things they can do within their current set of restrictions to make this notebook more palatable.
00:55:55 ◼ ► Yeah, I'm afraid that a lot of people have put all their hopes and dreams on a 16 inch MacBook Pro.
00:56:17 ◼ ► And I feel like that is the product cycle for a lot of Mac products, especially Apple products in general.
00:56:27 ◼ ► And instead of being excited about the reality, you're disappointed that it isn't the fulfillment of a dream, which is silly.
00:56:34 ◼ ► I do, if we look out with the MacBook line into the future, yeah, it does seem like the keyboard is going to get changed.
00:56:42 ◼ ► I take that 16 inch MacBook Pro rumor and I kind of assume that there will also be like a 14 inch MacBook Pro next year.
00:57:13 ◼ ► I honestly like a lot about the 13, like a lot about this 15, but a 14, which is a size of the 13, but with a small bezels around it.
00:57:29 ◼ ► Yes. The one that is speculated about endlessly that's still floating out there too is that, you know, what if there's an arm transition and what if it happens with an arm transition laptop that can do probably ridiculous battery life compared to the existing laptops.
00:57:45 ◼ ► And, you know, I'm still kind of a believer that that might be the other product that doesn't that doesn't exist right now with a MacBook going away that could potentially exist in addition to two MacBook Pros and the MacBook Air.
00:58:00 ◼ ► Do you think that we're ever going to see that, you know, our MacBook that everybody has speculated about for like five years now?
00:58:09 ◼ ► It feels inevitable that if they move to arm, they would start with the low end. When they went from PowerPC to Intel, all the Intel machines were so much faster than the G4s and even the G5s.
00:58:22 ◼ ► They could move the whole they moved the whole product line in a year, including like the Xserve and the Power Mac to the Mac Pro.
00:58:29 ◼ ► Unless Apple has some sort of secret arm chip that we're just unaware of and that is unlike anything on the market right now, they can't keep up with an iMac Pro, let alone the upcoming Mac Pro with an arm based machine.
00:58:44 ◼ ► And so I'm torn on this. Part of me thinks, well, they would split the line and the MacBook Air and the iMac would would go arm and the iMac Pro, the MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro would stay Intel for a while.
00:58:57 ◼ ► But that's not really a sustainable solution. Maybe they'd be willing to do it for a few years, but I think they'd only start down that path if they knew in 24 months we can be all in on arm.
00:59:10 ◼ ► I don't think they want to keep it's bad for developers is bad for the platform. I think to be split that way because you have Macs that may look a little bit different, but are vastly different in terms of what they can do.
00:59:21 ◼ ► That's really that's I just can't wrap my mind around that being something that Apple would do.
00:59:26 ◼ ► See, I think that it's very unlikely that the high end is going to ever leave Intel. I got to be honest. I don't think Apple's chip designers even want to make something that's the equivalent of like a Xeon.
00:59:39 ◼ ► So I'm kind of coming around to the belief that Apple is going to differentiate consumer and pro in the Mac and it's going to be arm and Intel and that if you want a pro system that runs Intel and will run Windows and boot camp and we'll do all of those things.
00:59:52 ◼ ► We sell those but our you know our laptop that we sell to college students and presumably at some point our iMac that's on the desk in a hotel check in is just going to be arm and and I think they could get away with it because of what they've done in terms of how developers work.
01:00:11 ◼ ► I mean developers already they're all in Xcode on iOS. They're already there simulator builds run on Intel and then their final builds run on arm. I feel like it wouldn't necessarily be crushing to their maintenance or as the platform developer or the app developer maintenance if they can do it right.
01:00:31 ◼ ► You're just building and then we know from what they do with the app store on iOS like they can even on the app store just send you the binary that you need even though presumably for outside of the app store you need like a universal binary.
01:00:43 ◼ ► I feel like they could get away with it and and the reason I've come to this conclusion is I try to imagine the high-end MacBook Pro user and the Mac Pro user and a processor that's going to be Apple designed that fulfills them and I just I just don't think Apple's ever going to try to make that processor.
01:01:00 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't know it's it's maybe the most interesting question about the Mac in the last decade and it's one that feels like it's it will always feel like we're six months away like it always feels.
01:01:14 ◼ ► And in any WWDC this will be the one and they're moving that way and some of their software stuff and we can talk about that that maybe they are looking to bridge the gap between the iPad and the Mac a little bit more but there's something about Apple that's interesting and different from other companies that they want to control the stack they want as much of the key technology in-house as possible to the extent that they you know bought Intel's 5G modem division.
01:01:40 ◼ ► They do huge moves to make that possible and so I think it's an Apple's DNA to move from Intel to ARM.
01:01:59 ◼ ► Mac OS big releases coming in the fall with Catalina it's going to have catalyst in it, which we all thought would be huge and then Apple said hey catalyst and also look over there.
01:02:18 ◼ ► What do you think about about Catalina this fall it feels to me like it's going to be a pretty disruptive OS release in a in a bunch of different ways.
01:02:34 ◼ ► Where I struggle with this is I fundamentally dislike the annual release cycle for Mac OS releases and the last several years they've been so quiet.
01:02:44 ◼ ► That's like, you know, you sitting out in front of anything from El Capitan to Mojave be hard-pressed to notice anything as an average user.
01:02:55 ◼ ► Is it going to work because it's 32-bit and you've not really paid attention to the warnings you've gotten in Mojave.
01:03:01 ◼ ► It it feels like a very big release just to be shoved down the throat of the annual cycle and I wish that they could.
01:03:10 ◼ ► Slow that down not because I don't want them back to get updates but because I think that there is benefit to having longer cycles in terms of stability and when you bring something new you can really make sure you've had the time to get it right, you know Catalina is so complex because it brings the end of 32-bit apps and it brings catalyst apps and it brings Swift UI support.
01:03:37 ◼ ► And for some time Apple has known they were all going to be in one OS but that may not have been the always the plan but when you have to release annually things get pushed around and teams work on different things and all of a sudden you have a mega release.
01:03:52 ◼ ► That to the user just at home on their iMac with a spinning hard drive. It's just a pop up in the Mac App Store and they do it and then you know they've got serious things to contend with so I am nervous about the release of Catalina from that perspective and I wish that there was a way to really give users a heads up of the changes that are coming.
01:04:15 ◼ ► There are still a lot of 32-bit apps out there my iMac Pro is full of them some of them I use on a pretty regular basis and I'm going to find the time to find replacements and be able to to rework some of the things I do.
01:04:27 ◼ ► But there are other people who are going to be caught by surprise and if you if you skip Mojave a lot of users go every other release you won't have been living in a world with a year of notices every time you open this app that it's getting ready to die and all of a sudden it doesn't work and that is going to be quite the fun time for Apple support.
01:04:44 ◼ ► I think they put in some notices actually in a late build of High Sierra for that reason. I remember writing a new story that actually they rolled that into High Sierra and it's a good thing right because you'll be getting that but I agree I am I'm really worried about Catalina and it's a beta so I'm not saying I'm worried about bugs that are in Catalina but I'm worried about the fact that there are all these new security entitlements that are being applied to all apps not just apps that are in the Mac App Store.
01:05:13 ◼ ► It's going to get in people's faces unless they make big changes between now and release getting people's faces in a way that the system hasn't before they're going to lose all their 32-bit apps if they update and then separately from that is the catalyst thing where there's going to be software that's going to be coming in from iOS in there will be good and bad in that but it feels like enough of a transitional moment that I wonder.
01:05:42 ◼ ► If we're going to see less migration less upgrading to this version and more complaints from people who do make the upgrade perhaps not understanding how big a step it is then we've seen in a while and that's not you know Apple doesn't like that Apple wants everybody updating as much as they can as fast as they can but with this amount of change it's going to be hard for that to happen I think absolutely I mean we've been talking about how to handle this for Mac power users.
01:06:11 ◼ ► And I think our advice is going to be to hold off or to really do your homework before you upgrade and one thing that's unclear to me at this point is I'm running the Catalina beta on external SSD still.
01:06:22 ◼ ► I've been traveling a lot and need my machines to work but in the past when you've updated a version of Mac OS and you have incompatible software you get an error at the end of the installer the OS is already on your computer as BT dubs this scanner software you've used for 20 years doesn't work anymore.
01:06:43 ◼ ► And I really hope I just don't know but I really hope that in the Catalina installer that happens first that it does a sweep of your desk it says oh hey if you hit upgrade these eight apps are going to quit working and if it's still at the end that's a mistake on the part of that team because people need to have information before they go into this.
01:07:06 ◼ ► Your 32 bit printer driver that allows you to print to that printer you've had for eight years that's perfectly fine. It's not going to work anymore. So good luck right like the last thing you want to do is get through that whole process from which you cannot recover easily and discover that these apps don't work.
01:07:23 ◼ ► And this one hasn't been updated and this one has been updated but it's going to be weird you know we're in capabilities with the stuff you've been doing and you're going to have to pay for it and you're going to pay for these other ones and this one just isn't doesn't exist and so you can't print or use the scanner or whatever like you don't want Myke and I did one of my favorite episodes of upgrade was that upgrade experience episode where we talk about how sometimes it was frustrating to get a new iPhone and to Apple's credit.
01:07:50 ◼ ► And with some new stuff that's in iOS 13 like they have done such a good job of making that process so much easier in the last few years but on the Mac I'm worried that you're going to get this bad experience where you you update your software and then on the other side of it it's just awful.
01:08:09 ◼ ► And I'm with you I don't know what form this beta is going to ultimately take but if I if it doesn't change from what I've seen this summer I feel like I'm going to have to say you should probably not update because it's such a radical change that unless you have used to be like yeah it's got some new features and it's fine so why don't you update this one's going to really be unless there's something you have to have in Catalina don't update because of all the things that are going to break or change or be different in ways that you don't have to update.
01:08:46 ◼ ► Yeah no it is you mentioned Lion broke a lot of apps especially if you had audio apps that broke all my audio apps.
01:09:02 ◼ ► What do you think about catalyst I mean separate from the upgrade pain of Catalina one of the things that I found fascinating about the summers I expected to be kind of pelted with iOS ports to the Mac and instead most of the apps that I would want from iOS.
01:09:18 ◼ ► The developers have said I want to make a good Mac app and so it's not going to be there I'm going to update first I'm going to update my iOS app to be good on iOS 13 that's going to take my summer and then in the fall maybe I'll work on the Mac port for early next year or late this year.
01:09:34 ◼ ► Surprising surprising to me that I just expected it to be a little more dramatic than it's been what's your experience been and what do you anticipate for catalyst I don't think I've tried a single beta from a developer and I'm on a bunch of iOS test flights like I'm in this world.
01:09:50 ◼ ► I think it's encouraging the developers are saying we'd rather take the time to get it right the rush out something that's garbage so that hopefully is a signal that we were worried of just on to shovel where coming onto the Mac right being a bad experience I feel like is going to happen but.
01:10:05 ◼ ► You know I but I agree I'm encouraged that the developers that we know and care about their software there they are they're going to be careful and they're going to do it right.
01:10:17 ◼ ► Yeah so I think catalyst is important I think those out there saying that it is you know a temporary stopgap to Swift UI are underestimating the time it will take for Swift UI to take over that is a years long transition and that doesn't mean that skipping catalyst is a good idea so I think that the developers are doing it taking their time are going to be the ones who are rewarded in the marketplace for having good Mac apps even though they started life on the iPhone or iPad.
01:10:43 ◼ ► I am concerned that this potential slow uptake is going to take the wind out of the sails though right so like when Catalina launches and there are no decent catalyst apps that people are just like that's junk and then that's that.
01:11:01 ◼ ► From the average user perspective who don't know anything about catalyst it will just be over time there'll be more Mac apps that's good I think for those of us who are a little bit more than know there may be the people who already poo pooing it now who haven't run anything just because they're angry.
01:11:15 ◼ ► But I think that the worst thing that's not great for catalyst but I think the worst thing is being a bunch of bad apps and it gets a rep for oh catalyst is the way that people write crummy Mac apps and hopefully this taking longer will help limit that but time will tell right like who knows this is uncharted territory in a lot of ways.
01:11:37 ◼ ► There could be a bunch of really bad Mac apps like immediately. And there already are but you know I would rather have a few good catalyst apps I think that's better for the platform than a bunch of cruddy ones on day one.
01:11:49 ◼ ► Yeah, what's funny when I say like people are going to maybe be told not to upgrade to Catalina and just wait it out what's going to be funny is that moment when some app you know overcast ferrite whatever comes out and it only runs on Catalina and then then that's going to be that moment it's like well is there an app that you want to want to run on your Mac well then you're going to need to upgrade to Catalina that'll that'll push it but it may not happen on day one although it may right like Major League Baseball.
01:12:18 ◼ ► Major League Baseball could be there with their baseball app on day one Netflix could be there or Amazon or something like that with an app version on day one those are a little less since there's a web equivalent it's it's a little less of a thing but there will be some but I think over time there will be more apps that are interesting and worth considering and will require Catalina.
01:12:43 ◼ ► It's going to be a summer of interesting fun for the Mac I think this I'm really intrigued to see what Catalina does right like we've been talking about security stuff on and off over the last few weeks.
01:12:54 ◼ ► Which is potentially going to frustrate people along with like this big technology that might because kind of going to like launch of a bit of a whimper and then a bunch of applications that going to stop working this is like a minefield.
01:13:08 ◼ ► Yeah, yeah. So Steven one last thing before we close out the the special summer of Mac portion of the show which is what do you think Mac OS is going from here.
01:13:19 ◼ ► Do you think the Mac OS iOS kind of collision that's not totally not them becoming the same OS but becoming more alike and sharing software and all that are we just going to keep seeing that is the pace of Mac OS update going to speed up or is it going to slow down.
01:13:42 ◼ ► I don't think Apple, I don't think Apple wants to merge the Mac OS and iOS, like the actual operating system themselves. I don't think they're they have much interest in doing that anytime soon. I do think we will continue to see the veneer over both of them continue to be more of more in alignment, if not the exact same thing.
01:14:04 ◼ ► Now that leaves a lot of interesting questions like touchscreen Max and our Max and all those other things. But even if you just looked at Swift UI is as an early example of you do something one way at one place and it kind of works everywhere.
01:14:19 ◼ ► I think Apple is more interested in that sort of solution as opposed to what maybe what Microsoft has done with Windows where Windows 10 sort of spans the gamut between you know, tiny little touch surface go all the way up to a big desktop, you know, with RGB fans in it.
01:14:36 ◼ ► And the UI sort of changes and adapts to where you are. I think I was more interested in in aligning the underlying technologies and keeping the UI level and the OS level separate at least for now. I don't see you know, 10 years out, who knows, but I think we're safe and sound for a while.
01:14:53 ◼ ► We'll see. I keep thinking about touch screens and if they will ever go down that path on the Mac. But you know, iOS, Mac OS, maybe they just, you know, continue to be defined by those basic differences and that will just you better recall just have to learn to live with it.
01:15:11 ◼ ► Today's episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. Our friends at FreshBooks can help you save tons and tons of time, hundreds of hours of the super simple cloud accounting software. They simplify tasks like invoicing and expense tracking, even getting paid online.
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01:15:56 ◼ ► I also really love the late payment email reminders as well. Like if you don't want to be chasing people because they're paying you late, you can set it up to work for you automatically so it will chase it for you.
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01:16:42 ◼ ► Alright, it is time for some #AskUpgrade questions and a lot of these are... Thank you. Oh, that was a lot of lasers. The guest lasers get a bit wild.
01:16:52 ◼ ► These are mostly Macintosh-focused questions because that was what I asked before on Twitter and the upgradings obliged.
01:16:59 ◼ ► And I'll start with Eogan who asks, "How do you set up a new Mac? Do you have a script to install all of your programs to set it up just right or do you do it manually? What do you do?"
01:17:08 ◼ ► I use Migration Assistant and I have for a really, really long time. I just plug it in with a Thunderbolt cable or in the old days a FireWire cable and a bunch of adapters and I let it do its thing and it's been super reliable for me for as long as I can remember.
01:17:23 ◼ ► Yeah, I use Migration Assistant if I'm setting up a new Mac from an existing Mac. Occasionally I am setting up a new Mac and I decide I don't want to migrate because it's like a review unit or it's a new computer that I'm going to end up giving to a family member or something like that.
01:17:37 ◼ ► And then I just do it the old-fashioned way which is every time I hit something and think, "Oh, I need…" I go and install that.
01:17:43 ◼ ► So it's like I need one password so that I can find all my serial numbers so that then I can enter in the serial numbers for the software I bought and it just kind of snowballs and I do it that way.
01:17:53 ◼ ► But yeah, I have a couple of computers that if you looked in the preferences you would probably find files from more than a decade ago because they've just migrated over the years.
01:18:06 ◼ ► Rick asks, "I'm using an i5 Mac Mini with 8GB of RAM as my primary machine since December for development. What size kit should I get from iFixit to upgrade the memory? How hard is the memory to upgrade and is there anything that I need to be watching out for?"
01:18:23 ◼ ► I think I glanced at the pricing and I think the 32GB is kind of the sweet spot price-wise. If you've gotten by with 8GB for 9 months, 10 months, you don't need 64GB, right? Like you wouldn't be able to do what you needed to do.
01:18:40 ◼ ► The upgrade itself isn't too bad. You watch the videos, but this is something that if you're at all uncomfortable with completely taking apart a computer, just take it to the Apple Store and pay the fee because...
01:18:55 ◼ ► No, you take the logic board out, you take the blower off. There's a lot of really tiny connectors that even I, as someone who has done this for a long time, was nervous about breaking. I know Jason and everyone else who ever opened the old style broke lots of things.
01:19:13 ◼ ► The new Mac Mini has those fragile connectors too. I would really say unless you're really comfortable, I would spend probably some of the money and have either an Apple Store or an Apple Authorized Service Provider do this.
01:19:26 ◼ ► The $100 or whatever will give you ease of mind, it'll protect your AppleCare status, and if they damage something, they're on the hook, not you.
01:19:34 ◼ ► Yeah. G. Mesner asks, "Any love for the Power Mac 7000 series? They were boring outside, but I like how they unfolded internally."
01:19:43 ◼ ► Yeah, they were awesome. I'm going to find something in the show notes so we can see how these opened up.
01:19:47 ◼ ► They were beige, baby, beige computer, mid-range, mini tower, beige. It was like a desktop, right? It was not even a mini tower. That was in the era where there was Pizza Box, desktop, and tower were the three Macs.
01:20:02 ◼ ► I said under your screen, under your CRT, what this question is getting to though is the design of how it opened. You took the cover off and then basically the machine folded open like a flower and you had access to all the components so you could upgrade it really easily.
01:20:15 ◼ ► Way easier than that Mac Mini in the previous question. If you have one of these, upgrade the RAM yourself. Go crazy.
01:20:21 ◼ ► How much RAM can you put in a Power Mac 7000? Stick in a new SCSI drive, do what you want.
01:20:26 ◼ ► That was in an era where Apple really was trying to develop. They were not particularly innovative in this pre-jobs era in terms of how they looked. Like I said, this was a very beige computer, but they did try to do some things on the inside that were interesting.
01:20:40 ◼ ► There was also a computer that had the whole CPU on a tray that you could slide out the back.
01:20:50 ◼ ► Yeah, there was a Pizza Box that had that, that had a TV tuner and a bunch of other stuff and you could slide it out the back of the computer, which is very clever.
01:20:59 ◼ ► It led to the first blue and white Power Mac G3, but even the beige Power Mac G3 had some folding tricks that it could do in order for you to get at the insides without having to unscrew panels and things that you had to do on PCs during that era.
01:21:17 ◼ ► I just had one of those pointed to me while you were talking and now I'm looking at it and it's really ugly.
01:21:37 ◼ ► Yeah, that was like Johnny Ive's little design flourish, is that he's like one little plastic bit. We saw the signs, it was like proof of life for Johnny Ive.
01:21:45 ◼ ► There was that, there was the molar, the Power Mac G3 all-in-one that had the translucent plastic, right?
01:21:54 ◼ ► If you don't like teeth, I guess. And then finally with the blue and white G3, it was the breakthrough of like, yes, yes, we can make clear plastic blue things and stick them on a computer and it went from there.
01:22:05 ◼ ► Next question comes from Majd who asks, "Which old Mac would you like to see Myke try and use?"
01:22:16 ◼ ► I think you did use that. I think anything Mac OS 8 or earlier, right? Like you get system 6 or 7, it's a real exciting time. The older the better.
01:22:33 ◼ ► I just think it would be fun because it's going to be running system 7 and it's got a trackball for the pointing device and...
01:22:44 ◼ ► CM Finley asks, "I have a closet full of my uncle's old Macs, like an Apple IIGS through to the iMac G5. Where is the best place to go to ensure they end up in a good home?"
01:23:13 ◼ ► I mean, lots of people email me in these situations and I may take a few off your hands.
01:23:26 ◼ ► And, you know, honestly though, yes, please email me because I may take a few off your hands.
01:23:31 ◼ ► But in your community, there will be some sort of technology recycling program and if you don't donate them to me or you can't find a place to house them,
01:23:41 ◼ ► or if it's at the end of its life, you know, it's just in bad shape, any old technology, please recycle it.
01:23:45 ◼ ► Don't simply put it in the dumpster because they have bad things in them and you want to make sure that that's handled correctly to protect our planet.
01:24:10 ◼ ► Eventually, as Steven knows from collecting old Macs, eventually Macs just smell like where they've been.
01:24:21 ◼ ► The white iBook G3, the adhesive that held like stickers on underneath the keyboard, smelled like body odor after a while.
01:24:31 ◼ ► Some of the plastic Macs of a certain era, the plastic would get weird and sometimes turn yellow and smell like body odor.
01:24:43 ◼ ► And finally, Brian asks, "What current Apple product would you want to have an iMac style line of whimsical design and fun colors, hard mode, not the iPhone?"
01:24:59 ◼ ► I mean, I don't know, laptops you got to carry around. We don't need handles on laptops anymore.
01:25:05 ◼ ► I guess the Mac Pro kind of is. I don't think colors, but it's a unique design. It's a very functional design.
01:25:13 ◼ ► I think honestly that we're just past the era in our computing evolution where this is going to happen beyond electronic devices like the iPhone.
01:25:21 ◼ ► So I'm going to say that all of y'all who stick stickers on your computers, you're just trying to fill a hole that hasn't been fulfilled in a long time because Apple doesn't make computers that are fun.
01:25:32 ◼ ► And so I'm thinking with my daughter going off to college and she's got her MacBook and it's nice and all, but I want Apple to make a consumer laptop that has colors and maybe has the Apple logo light up again.
01:25:48 ◼ ► Because why not? Because it's fun. Let's have fun and a couple different shades of monochrome anodized aluminum.
01:25:58 ◼ ► And maybe if you're lucky, the model you want has a gold or something like that. It's like it's not good enough. It's not fun enough.
01:26:06 ◼ ► So since the iPhone is the obvious answer here, I'm going to go with hard mode and say consumer laptop. I want those to come in colors, anodizing aluminum in colors.
01:26:15 ◼ ► Apple knows how to do it. They've known how to do it since the iPod mini and the iPod nano. Like you can do this. You can make this happen.
01:26:24 ◼ ► And who wouldn't want to go off to college or whatever with their blue or red or whatever laptop with the glowing Apple screen? It would be great and people would want it and Apple would sell more laptops.
01:26:37 ◼ ► Bring back the clamshell is what Jason is saying. It doesn't need to have a handle. I want the Apple pencil in different colors. The Apple pencil will be great in a bunch of different colors. Oh yeah, that's a good one. That's mine. That's my one.
01:26:49 ◼ ► All right. Thank you everybody who sent in #AskUpgrade questions today. If you would like to do that for a future episode of the show, they could be about the Mac, but they could be about anything. They were Mac today because Steven was here.
01:26:59 ◼ ► Just send out a tweet with the #AskUpgrade and they will go into a sheet and could be pulled out for a future episode. I think that about does it for this very special episode here, Jason.
01:27:08 ◼ ► Yeah, I think so. Next week's episode will be recorded in person in the Snell Zone, I believe.
01:27:14 ◼ ► It will indeed. Thank you so much to ExpressVPN, Bombas, and FreshBooks for their support of this show. And Steven, thank you so much for joining us.
01:27:25 ◼ ► That's an interesting phrase. Steven is the host of many shows here on Real AFM, including Mac Power Users Connected, Liftoff, and Ungeniusd. Is that all of them?
01:27:36 ◼ ► There we go. Did it in one. Look at me. You can find Jason online. He is at SixColors.com. He is @Jason now on Twitter. Steven is @ismh.
01:27:45 ◼ ► And I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E. And me and Jason, we're back next week, but we're all going to be live on stage in San Francisco on Thursday.
01:27:55 ◼ ► If you want to check that episode out, it's going to be going out in the Connected feed, probably on Friday. So that's going to be a real fun time to get some exciting stuff planned.