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Upgrade

175: $4,999, Cheap!

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:11   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 175. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace,

00:00:17   Freshbooks and Mission U. My name is Myke Hurley and it is a pleasure to be joined again by Mr.

00:00:23   Jason Snell. Jason Snell, we are back to the regularly expected programming after a great

00:00:28   holiday season. It's good to be back and happy new year. Happy new year everybody.

00:00:35   I think we've had some great shows over the last few weeks. We've been very happy with

00:00:39   how the holidays panned out for the upgrade podcast. We were talking before the show.

00:00:44   We're already thinking about summer of fun. We have like a whole thing. But Myke,

00:00:48   nobody cares about that right now because it's time for #SnellTalk. See what I did there?

00:00:55   interesting today's Snail Talk question comes from Iann and I am asks Jason do

00:01:01   you use the dark menu bar and dock on your Mac no I figured you wouldn't but

00:01:08   if anything was gonna convince you it would be the space gray I make pro

00:01:12   because there's like a match there no no the reason is the reason is the same

00:01:18   reason that I don't use it anyway which is I actually kind of would like to use

00:01:21   I usually keep my office kind of dark. I would love a dark theme for Mac OS. The dark menu bar is not a dark theme.

00:01:31   It's not enough. It looks out of place.

00:01:35   Yeah, like, hey, we colored the menu bar! But what about all the windows? And do other apps have the ability?

00:01:43   Some apps have a dark mode. Most do not.

00:01:47   You see, I just turned it on and every other thing on my desktop uses the same coloring as the regular menu bar.

00:01:55   Right? Like all of the Chrome and all of the apps, right?

00:01:58   So like my C app, Skype, Chrome, it's all the same.

00:02:04   Like Finder, even Finder doesn't change, right?

00:02:07   Like nothing changes.

00:02:09   It just now looks weird.

00:02:11   So I agree.

00:02:12   It would be nice, I think, to use to have a darker theme, but they just...

00:02:16   Yeah.

00:02:16   it doesn't extend past those two things which is kind of strange.

00:02:20   I want a real, I want a real dark theme. I want a an empty safari window in dark mode

00:02:25   to come up black instead of white. I want the finder windows to be to be dark, right?

00:02:32   I want I want a real dark mode if they want to do a dark mode. One that is minimizing

00:02:36   the amount of really bright white stuff that happens everywhere. But the menu bar and the

00:02:40   dock, it's just it's not enough. I don't like how it looks. It seems out of place. And so

00:02:46   yeah that's that's my reasoning is not that I wouldn't consider doing something

00:02:49   like that it's like I don't like the partial measures of the what's currently

00:02:54   in Mac OS and they introduced that a few years ago and they just done nothing

00:02:57   with it I was really hoping they would just say okay developers here's how you

00:03:00   sense whether you're in dark mode or not and here's how we implemented it in the

00:03:04   finder and all that and they just didn't bother you know logic logic's got a

00:03:08   great dark mode like logic pro 10 is dark mode and it's fine and final cut

00:03:12   Yeah, exactly right there there how much blacker could they be none more black?

00:03:16   but the rest of the system just doesn't do that and I don't like I don't like

00:03:22   The piecemeal aspect of it. So that's that's why no you're right. It would be I guess extra nice on the darker

00:03:29   Darker silver of the iMac Pro versus the lighter silver of the iMac

00:03:34   But alas we are gonna be talking about the iMac Pro today before we do that

00:03:38   We do have some follow up, but I will say if you have a question to open the show

00:03:42   Just send a tweet with the hashtag Snell talk and we will pick for pick them for later episodes

00:03:47   Thank you so much to I am for their suggestion. I just wanted to thank everybody

00:03:52   for their

00:03:54   Great comments about the upgrade ease. I had a great time putting the upgrade ease together as we do every year

00:03:59   And I'm already thinking about what big and wonderful things we're gonna do for the upgrade ease next year

00:04:07   And I feel vindicated, I feel satisfied if you go to Macintosh.fm/about, which is the

00:04:16   about page for Welcome to Macintosh.

00:04:20   Marc has put a winner of the 2017 Best Tech Podcast Upgrading Award right there on the

00:04:25   page.

00:04:26   I'd love to see that.

00:04:27   I want to see more of that over the internet, the acknowledgement of the upgradees.

00:04:33   I think Canis did that with Fairite.

00:04:37   I think at the bottom of the Fairite product page is the 2015 upgrade symbol.

00:04:43   So yeah, that's right.

00:04:44   Market this thing, people.

00:04:46   We need it.

00:04:47   We need it.

00:04:48   So then people will care more and more about it.

00:04:50   We know you care.

00:04:51   We need the whole world to care.

00:04:53   Because that's the path to real trophies.

00:04:57   I want to do real trophies, but we need to see that people actually want to receive them

00:05:02   first so there you go. Yeah that is true. A lot of stuff has happened in what is usually the

00:05:08   quietest time of the year hence why we create episodes like the upgrade is in the holiday

00:05:13   Christmas special. We had some huge news in regards to iPhone batteries and Intel CPUs.

00:05:21   Most of this stuff is taken care of now. They're really long-winded topics and there are better

00:05:28   places that have been discussed even by Jason. So if you want to hear more about

00:05:32   Jason's thoughts on the iPhone battery scandal situation, I don't know any other

00:05:39   type of word to describe it. I was on this kind of obscure podcast, most people

00:05:46   haven't heard of it. Lesser known, very good but lesser known. Well it's hosted

00:05:49   by kind of a blogger who... An enthusiast. That's it. It's an enthusiast blogger, John

00:06:02   Gruber, and his strangely named podcast, The Talk Show. Anyway, I was on there on the penultimate

00:06:12   episode of 2018/17 because they had the Star Wars Holiday Special basically on New Year's

00:06:18   So on the December 30th episode, episode 210 of the talk show, Jon and I talked about the

00:06:26   battery stuff in great detail.

00:06:29   Yeah, you know, I'm very happy.

00:06:32   Sometimes you say things on the talk show and then like a week later somebody very angry

00:06:38   who only listens to the talk show and doesn't know who you are or what else you do appears

00:06:44   and says, "You made a misstatement here that shows that you know nothing about Apple.

00:06:47   you should learn about Apple." I'm like, "Okay, thanks." This time, though, I'm

00:06:52   actually extra happy with what we did because I feel like we broke it down into all of its

00:06:58   component parts, all of the issues, the places where Apple is complicit, the places where

00:07:03   Apple was trying to do the right thing. You know, I think it's a good one. So people

00:07:07   should check that out if they have not heard the talk show number 210.

00:07:13   The episodes that you two are on together tend to be my favorites. It was a very good

00:07:17   one. So there's a lot there, a lot of information there.

00:07:20   We didn't talk about baseball or keyboards almost at all, which is shocking.

00:07:23   Which is a surprise.

00:07:24   After we got to about two and a half hours, I almost mentioned baseball. And I thought,

00:07:29   I'm not going to do that, because we'll be here another hour and a half. So I waited

00:07:34   until we were done recording, and then I mentioned baseball. And we did talk for another half

00:07:38   hour, but it wasn't part of the show. So you're welcome, people who don't want to hear us

00:07:42   talk about baseball.

00:07:43   then there is this whole Intel CPU thing, the Meltdown and the Spectre. ATP episode

00:07:48   255 and download episode 36 for further information about that. I am really pleased that we did

00:07:57   not have to speak about this thing specifically because I listened to the episode of ATP and

00:08:02   I think my brain leaked out of my ears. I do not understand it.

00:08:07   I go to learn about processor architectures from John Siracusa, because he's a fan. Like

00:08:14   John doesn't drive a sports car, but he reads all the car magazines, he's also a fan of

00:08:20   processors.

00:08:21   But doesn't get them.

00:08:22   And bless him. So I like to, that was a good episode. And we did talk about it on the tablet.

00:08:29   This is just one of those things that's pretty low level that I just, it just doesn't compute

00:08:33   with me. Like, the CPUs aren't computing anymore, so you can go find out about that information

00:08:39   too if you want to. So I think we should now get into regular programming and I want to

00:08:44   discuss some media news. I like this ongoing segment that we have now. I have yet to brand

00:08:51   this segment, so I'll work on that. We'll come up with something.

00:08:55   I can do a little tiny bit of follow-out here too, just to plug, if people like us talking

00:09:00   about the future of streaming media and things like that. We did a really nice episode, I'm

00:09:06   very happy with it, December 21st on download called "Let Deadpool Be Deadpool," but it

00:09:12   is Julia Alexander from Polygon and Natalie Jarvey from The Hollywood Reporter, and we

00:09:18   basically talked the whole hour about what the Disney/Fox merger would mean for streaming,

00:09:26   and I'm really happy with how that turned out. So if people like us talking about this,

00:09:29   should check out that episode and I'm hoping to have them on again to talk about it in

00:09:33   the future because I think it's a very interesting topic, whatever we call it here.

00:09:37   So, David Letterman on Netflix. The show is called My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.

00:09:44   There was a couple of reasons I wanted to bring this up. One is that I know that you

00:09:48   love David Letterman.

00:09:49   I do.

00:09:50   And the other is the fact that this is really interesting from the way that this show is

00:09:55   going to be distributed. It's monthly, one episode at a time, which is very strange for

00:10:02   Netflix. Yeah, they made this announcement that they were doing a deal with Letterman

00:10:11   to do these specials. And the way they described it is that he was going to do a series of

00:10:18   specials and the way it was going to drop was not described and I kind of figured that

00:10:26   they might do a, you know, here are three episodes or here are six episodes kind of

00:10:31   thing because it's very Netflix. But what they're doing is, there is a precedent for

00:10:35   this, they're doing what they did with Chelsea Handler's talk show which dropped, it was

00:10:41   a, you know, their foray into like we're going to do a talk show and they dropped those or

00:10:46   kind of a talk show sort of, but they drop those regularly, not in a binge.

00:10:53   All at once.

00:10:55   And I think Netflix likes experimenting with this. For originals, they prefer not to do

00:11:02   this. They really prefer binging, although in the UK and the rest of the world, you see

00:11:06   weekly Netflix releases a lot from mostly American television shows that get picked

00:11:11   up like a show like The Good Place is on in a bunch of countries on Netflix even though

00:11:17   it's on NBC here. We get Jane the Virgin that way too. Right, and Star Trek Discovery actually

00:11:22   works that way too although that's being released weekly in the US and Netflix is not waiting

00:11:27   until the seasons are over to drop those. They're dropping them weekly. But in the US

00:11:32   I will tell you if Netflix has any control over it they vastly prefer to drop in a binge

00:11:38   And they do with, like even, there's a sci-fi show I really like called Travelers, which

00:11:43   is from a network called Showcase in Canada.

00:11:46   And Netflix, I believe, runs it everywhere else in the world.

00:11:50   And they wait for the season to end, like all the episodes run in Canada, or almost

00:11:55   all the episodes run in Canada.

00:11:57   My understanding is that the first season they dropped it with two episodes to go, and

00:12:01   everybody in Canada freaked out because they were being spoiled on the ending by everybody

00:12:04   who was binging it in the US.

00:12:06   They didn't do that this year.

00:12:07   I think they learned their lesson this year. But this is an example where Netflix would

00:12:11   rather drop it as a bingeable set, even when in another country it's doing weekly, but

00:12:19   it's really only in the US that they're doing that. So anyway, Letterman, it sounds

00:12:23   like what they thought was best, he thought was best, was to deliver these things monthly.

00:12:30   And when you think that Letterman used to do four or five shows a week to do a monthly

00:12:35   I don't know, that sounds like a much more reasonable approach in terms of production,

00:12:41   in terms of recording, to sort of say, "We got a pace going, we're going to release these

00:12:46   things monthly." They become kind of more events that way, but there's still a pace

00:12:51   to them. So I like that idea, but it is kind of unusual for Netflix, that it's rather than

00:12:56   having a season of David Letterman specials drop in July, they're going to run one a month,

00:13:03   And the thing that really surprised me was they announced this last week, and the first

00:13:09   episode drops Friday.

00:13:12   So this is also not a "David Letterman, here's the name of his show, he'll be here in March."

00:13:17   He will be here January 12th.

00:13:19   So that was surprising too.

00:13:21   So I guess off we go.

00:13:23   And I'm looking forward to seeing what, you know, a guy who doesn't need to work essentially,

00:13:27   other than I think emotionally he needs to work, but monetarily he doesn't need to work

00:13:32   doing something that uses his skills and strikes his fancy without needing the grind and then

00:13:41   using 30 years of knowledge of doing interviews and doing a TV show and like what do you do

00:13:46   the same and what do you do differently. So I'm kind of fascinated to see what he does.

00:13:50   He did sort of half of a National Geographic special last year where he went to India and

00:13:55   I thought it was pretty great. I thought it was a nice mixture of kind of documentary

00:14:00   and also his dumb jokes. So yeah, I'm looking forward to the first episode is January 12th.

00:14:06   With Barack Obama. Yeah, first extended post-presidential interview

00:14:11   with Barack Obama. And then the way it works is it's not just an interview, like there

00:14:16   are supposedly related, like there's some man on the street stuff, because Letterman

00:14:20   always used to like doing that, and there's some related bits. So that'll be kind of interesting

00:14:23   too to see how it comes together, that it's not just like a Barbara Walters special where

00:14:27   it's a sit-down with famous people, but it's also got some other stuff. So I'm kind of

00:14:32   fascinated by how they're doing that. And I noticed that Jerry Seinfeld's show is now,

00:14:36   they made a deal with him, Netflix did, to move from Crackle to Netflix. So that's happening

00:14:44   too. So Netflix is definitely experimenting with more of this stuff too.

00:14:47   So I love, love comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. It's fantastic. It's one of my favorite

00:14:53   things I found in years that I watched the whole thing relatively recently like

00:14:57   I'd seen episodes here and there but I watched all of it but on Netflix there

00:15:02   are like there are like 12 seasons of the show they've broken them down into

00:15:05   collections yeah and the cups of coffee strange yeah it's weird the way that

00:15:10   they're doing it because they've mixed them all up yeah that it's like all over

00:15:15   the place so it's a bit weird remix them it looks like they had to had to re-edit

00:15:20   them and stuff because they had like they were all presented by Acura before but now in Netflix

00:15:25   they're not so they had to drop them as sort of like they're like re-edited or at least somewhat

00:15:30   modified versions. I did laugh because they are not seasons they're like cups of coffee.

00:15:36   Yeah, Late Night Espresso just made a fresh pot light and sweet.

00:15:40   And here's the wacky thing I was thinking about this from a programming standpoint you know how

00:15:45   normally in their interface it'll show like S2E3 season 2 episode 3. For comedians and

00:15:51   cars getting coffee it says C1E4 for cup 1. Because they're calling them collections.

00:15:57   It's four collections. They're coffee cups. It's bizarre. It's like, yeah, I don't know

00:16:03   what they're doing there. Because they're doing another season, so what do they do with

00:16:06   that one? Where do those episodes go? That'll be collection 5, coffee cup 5, season 5, I

00:16:12   I don't know.

00:16:12   But anyway, Netflix continues to do interesting things

00:16:15   as they spend a whole lot of money on content.

00:16:19   Whole lot of money.

00:16:20   Billions.

00:16:21   - Amazon are planning to bid

00:16:23   for Premier League football games.

00:16:25   So this is a pretty big deal for the UK market.

00:16:29   So they're looking to buy up a portion of them,

00:16:33   which costs billions, right?

00:16:36   But like they will just be buying a selection of games.

00:16:41   potentially 20, 32, something like that. It is unknown right now, but this would be a

00:16:48   big thing for them. I believe that Amazon bought some NFL games. Yeah, it's weird

00:16:53   because they're like rebroadcast, so if you... they're games that are on

00:16:57   television, they're not exclusive, but they got these streaming rights

00:17:04   basically, which I think it was an experiment. This is interesting, in

00:17:10   In the US, if you get NPC Sports Network, you basically get all of the Premier League

00:17:16   games. You can stream the ones that aren't aired. But in the UK, my understanding is,

00:17:21   it's much, if you've got a team that you watch, it's harder to get their games, because you

00:17:29   may need to sign up for a bunch of different services.

00:17:31   Yes. It started to change in the last few years. It used to be just Sky, mostly had

00:17:36   them all the terrestrial channels so you either had you had some of them for free

00:17:39   if you wanted all of them you got Sky then BT the the telecommunications

00:17:44   company they started buying some of it as they created their own TV and sports

00:17:49   channels now in the last couple I think maybe last year BT and Sky actually

00:17:56   shared their channels with their subscribers after being at war for

00:17:59   multiple years and the belief is because companies like Amazon are moving in yeah

00:18:03   Yeah. So now, because what will happen if Amazon buy these games, the only places you

00:18:08   will see those specific games are on Amazon Prime. There will be nowhere else.

00:18:13   Yep. So this is a pretty big move from Amazon into

00:18:16   the UK sports market. Premier League football is worth a lot, a lot of money.

00:18:21   It is. It's very, very lucrative and therefore very,

00:18:25   very expensive, right? Like if the, from Bloomberg, like if it's right, you know what they're

00:18:29   saying that you could be looking at like multiple millions if not billions just for a small

00:18:36   subset of the matches, it's worth a lot of money.

00:18:39   Right, the net rights sale in 2015 with all of the different rights purchasers rolled

00:18:46   together was more than £5 billion which is almost $7 billion.

00:18:51   It's huge and this is every year, right? That is yearly. So it is a huge market for sports

00:18:58   in the UK.

00:18:59   three years worth that they bought for that. It's billions a year. And Amazon, it sounds

00:19:06   like since they're likely to bid for a smaller package, it sounds interesting. That seems

00:19:10   like their NFL strategy here, which is, let's try it out.

00:19:14   Yeah, they want to see if it actually does anything. Like, do people just miss the games

00:19:19   or do they sign up?

00:19:20   Right, but they might do that down the road. And I thought about this with the NFL too,

00:19:25   it. They're trying this now to see how it goes, but, you know, because otherwise if

00:19:31   they want to buy an exclusive package of NFL games, there aren't that many of those and

00:19:36   it will cost them a huge amount of money. So, try it out with something cheaper, basically.

00:19:43   But it is interesting, and we're going to see more of this. I have a whole tangent I'm

00:19:48   actually going to write at some point. We had the college football national championship

00:19:51   game last night and a bunch of the bowl games earlier on New Year's Day put out by ESPN

00:19:58   here in the US and they tried this multicast format where they had a bunch of different

00:20:03   versions of the same game live on a bunch of their channels and then more versions like

00:20:08   you could get one with the home radio announcers overlaid over the ESPN telecast or you could

00:20:13   get coaches analyzing what was going on on the field the whole or just one where it was

00:20:18   Don't they do some of that like top down stuff as well?

00:20:20   They do the All 22 where you can see the whole field like you're a coach watching the game

00:20:26   film. They have the one from the little SkyCam that's on a cable. There's a whole channel

00:20:30   of just you're floating over the field. You know, a lot of it's not watchable, but it's

00:20:34   interesting.

00:20:36   My point here is live sports, this is a computer nerd thing, believe it or not, even though

00:20:40   I'm talking about live sports. Live sports is way harder to do than streaming video.

00:20:45   Netflix does, Netflix has a CDN, a content delivery network, and they put the files all

00:20:53   over the internet so that you can get them quickly. When HBO comes out with Game of Thrones,

00:21:00   it's got that file on its CDN all over the place. And so, it is prepped for streaming.

00:21:09   And that's one of the ways you avoid crashing your service when you have an episode, a new

00:21:13   new episode of Game of Thrones is that you've got it prepped. And I was talking to somebody

00:21:16   about, we talk about how BamTech, which was previously Major League Baseball's streaming

00:21:20   service and now, or streaming tech spinoff and was majority owned by Disney now, and

00:21:27   how good they were. And then somebody said, well, BamTech does ESPN and the ESPN live

00:21:31   streams were a mess. And they were, that was on New Year's Day and they were a mess last

00:21:35   night as well, apparently. And here's the thing, live sports is hard because you can't

00:21:40   take a pre-encoded file and distribute it to your CDN. It's a totally different infrastructure

00:21:46   if the content is being created and encoded and distributed on the fly, and it's harder

00:21:52   to do that. So that's also part of the test, I think, of Amazon doing some live sports,

00:21:58   is that they have to change their infrastructure to do live TV. Amazon actually did a live

00:22:03   event on New Year's Day here in the US. They had Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon in character

00:22:10   the Pasadena Rose Parade as a kind of a parody yet also a real live coverage of the Tournament

00:22:19   of Roses parade. And again, where did that deal come from? That's totally bizarre. But

00:22:27   the live thing, I think the short version of this is live is different and Amazon is

00:22:32   really interested in experimenting with live and it could potentially change the game because

00:22:37   there's a lot of stuff on traditional TV, especially sports, that happens live, but

00:22:41   also like award shows and other events like that. And streaming, that's been one of

00:22:46   the traditional kind of like bulwarks against erosion of television by cable companies and

00:22:53   by TV channels is, well, live stuff is harder. It's like, "Oh, you can't do that. They

00:22:58   can't do that." So this is, yeah, wouldn't it be something? And it might, the truth is,

00:23:02   it might be more convenient for the, depending on what the package is, it might be more

00:23:06   convenient for UK people who like soccer to get streaming Amazon stuff than to have to

00:23:14   navigate all the other stuff. But I don't know, it depends. Breaking up the rights makes

00:23:18   it a lot harder. We have it way easier. Premier League is way easier to watch in the US than

00:23:21   it is in the UK. Yeah, because you just get it all. Because fewer people care about it

00:23:25   here, so NBC was able to just buy it, lock, stock and barrel. YouTube is off of the Fire

00:23:31   TV now so Amazon is promoting that people watch it via web browsers they

00:23:38   just shipped their own web browser silk onto the fire TV probably for this

00:23:42   purpose and they're also promoting Firefox as how you can watch YouTube and

00:23:47   then within the last couple of days another shoe is dropping in this dropped

00:23:52   in this fight which is that Google have announced partnerships with a bunch of

00:23:57   companies including JBL, Lenovo, LG, and Sony for their assistant screen smart display.

00:24:05   So they have a bunch of products that have a screen on them and they have created a new

00:24:09   interface for Google Assistant which includes YouTube.

00:24:14   So of course there's another part of it.

00:24:16   They had a thing that they were working on so the fact that their agreement wasn't that

00:24:20   great of Amazon, they don't care because it's going to help sell some products that they're

00:24:24   affiliated with.

00:24:25   is a similar story I mean I mentioned something like this which is where does

00:24:29   this arms race go next because YouTube works in web browsers and if Amazon just

00:24:34   puts YouTube in a web browser and says hey we're a web browser does YouTube

00:24:38   start selectively blocking web browsers of companies they don't like that seems

00:24:42   like it's a it's a bridge too far to me yep so maybe this is it or maybe the

00:24:49   arms race will continue yeah it's a I think it would be especially difficult

00:24:52   for them to just be like, "No, Firefox." Right? Like, I feel like they end up as

00:24:58   collateral damage in this. Yeah. It continues to move on and I think it's

00:25:02   just kicked up a gear now that Google are making their own products.

00:25:07   It's really wild. Alright, today's show is brought to you in part by a new sponsor

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00:26:48   Thank you to MissionU for their support of this show and Relay FM.

00:26:52   So we spoke about the fact that you were ordering it. It has arrived. We spent time of it.

00:26:58   The iMac Pro.

00:26:59   Yeah, it arrived on Boxing Day, Myke.

00:27:01   What a great day to unbox a computer on Boxing Day. You have an extra box.

00:27:05   I think so.

00:27:06   It's the best day.

00:27:06   Not quite a Christmas present, but close. And then the...

00:27:09   Believe it or not, the understood...

00:27:11   The history of Boxing Day is when we take our new computers out of their boxes.

00:27:17   That's what it means.

00:27:17   Since that's been that way since like the 17th century.

00:27:20   It's funny really when you think about it, but yeah, that is the understood meaning.

00:27:25   Back when computers met a person who did math, they would get in the box, they would take

00:27:29   it to the university, they'd open the box and surprise somebody with "A computer's inside!"

00:27:33   and the computer would jump out of the box and say "Boo!"

00:27:36   You know, Jason, I just learned about this.

00:27:38   Did you?

00:27:39   Because for Analog, we are now watching, we finished Firefly, and we are watching Crash

00:27:46   course computer science right and we just did the first episode which is

00:27:50   about early computers and I found out that the first computers were people

00:27:55   that's hilarious that's where the word came from it was a person who computed

00:27:59   things no computer turns out and the computer would say hey what's going on

00:28:04   how can I help you need some math alright so before we get into talking

00:28:08   about this thing I want to do a specs recap of your model just so we can frame

00:28:12   So you got the $4,999 base model.

00:28:17   Yep, I went cheap, Myke. I went cheap. I cheaped out.

00:28:20   You went to the Frift store with this one.

00:28:22   I did. That's it. It was a little tag on the side that said "Cheap $49.99."

00:28:28   Only. You got the 8 core Xeon, 32 gigabytes of RAM, and a 1 terabyte SSD.

00:28:36   Yeah, I did.

00:28:38   I will ask you. You've been using it for a couple of weeks.

00:28:40   Mm-hmm.

00:28:41   Are there any, would you change any of those specs would be my first question to you. Is

00:28:47   there anything in there that you're like, little bit of buyer's remorse, like I wish

00:28:51   I would have got this instead?

00:28:52   No. No, I mean, I've heard people say that the 10 core, Marco will tell you, the 10 core

00:28:58   is maybe the sweet spot because it's got a little bit better of the turbo boost, which

00:29:03   is the sort of single core performance. This in, in my tests, the single core, if you're

00:29:10   working on something that is not multi-threaded at all, it's essentially the same speed as

00:29:15   my old i7 from 2014. Like single core, and the 10 core is a little bit faster, so, I

00:29:23   mean, spoiler alert for my review, which might come out this week in Macworld, is if all

00:29:29   you do is single core stuff, why would you buy one of these? That's the whole point is

00:29:34   these are good at multi-core. As a single core processor, it's fine, it's like a 5K

00:29:38   it's fast, but the point is that it's got so many of these cores. So I thought about

00:29:44   the 10 core, but I was on Leo Laporte's screensaver show over the weekend, and he has the 10 core

00:29:49   because Rene Ritchie talked him into it. And he ended up spending like an extra two grand

00:29:55   putting features in it, and for me, I could only barely justify the $49.99. In fact, what

00:30:03   I would say is I probably don't need 32 gigs of RAM. If they would have let me take 16

00:30:09   and knock some money off the price, maybe that would have been my preference, but I

00:30:13   am very happy about having lots of RAM and I am very happy about having more storage

00:30:18   because I have the 512 SSD in my 5K iMac and having a little bit more elbow room with the

00:30:25   1 terabyte is really nice. So I'm pretty happy with it as is. I guess my only other regret

00:30:31   would be that I probably should have bought the mouse too because everybody wants space

00:30:35   grey peripherals and if I had bought the mouse I could have sold that to somebody.

00:30:41   Get some money back.

00:30:42   For the record I sold my keyboard to John Syracuse for the cost of that keyboard in

00:30:46   normal silver.

00:30:48   You fool!

00:30:49   And shipping.

00:30:50   You fool!

00:30:51   Because he is a friend.

00:30:52   You could have sold it on eBay for a billion dollars.

00:30:56   I had to just look up. I have 16 gigabytes of RAM in my iMac and I don't think I need

00:31:04   more than that. Like I don't know if I ever feel it. I don't even know why I would need

00:31:08   32 gigabytes of RAM.

00:31:09   The story so far in the chatroom says, "LOL, first time I've heard someone want less RAM."

00:31:13   I guess my point is that I can look in Activity Monitor. I see when we're hitting, when we're

00:31:19   swapping RAM to disk and it never happens. And it basically never happened in my old

00:31:23   computer. I am not doing things that are super heavy consumers of RAM. I mean the

00:31:30   the GPU in here is totally overkill for me too. I ran a GPU benchmark last night

00:31:38   that is one of these tests that we used in Macworld for years and it runs on my

00:31:42   5k iMac at in the highest resolution highest quality it runs at like 12

00:31:47   frames a second and it's at like a hundred degrees C when it's doing it and

00:31:53   the fan is blowing loudly and I ran that on this iMac Pro with that the Vega card

00:31:58   in it and it was doing like 35 frames a second easy and it was not even running

00:32:05   that hot so again probably overkill for what I am using this thing for but

00:32:10   that's that's the deal with this computer is they've decided to not

00:32:14   really skimp on the base specs and I think the reason is like if if you start

00:32:21   to look at it and say well I do I need eight cores do I need 32 gigs of RAM do

00:32:24   I need a terabyte SSD that's when somebody comes to you and says let me

00:32:28   show you the 5k iMac like we have a very powerful computer that you can spec up

00:32:33   to $4,000 and have all of this stuff in it and it won't be quite what this is

00:32:38   but you don't need this right like I do feel like Apple is drawing a divider

00:32:43   here because they do have a very powerful iMac that is not the iMac Pro. So if you want

00:32:49   less than this, there is a computer for you, it is not this with fewer specs in it. So

00:32:53   the base model for me is really nice because it's like, would I have splurged for 32? Would

00:32:59   I have splurged for a terabyte SSD? Probably not, maybe, but I had no choice. So, oh well,

00:33:07   I'll have to live with 32 gigs of RAM. Alright, so you didn't buy this computer because it

00:33:12   was space gray. I did not. You didn't buy this computer. That would be a terrible reason to buy this computer. Some people will. Some people will. You didn't buy this

00:33:20   computer for another reason which is this is the best Mac you can buy right

00:33:23   now right like there are you know there are many reasons that people buy a

00:33:27   computer. You bought yours for speed and for efficiency and for processing. I did.

00:33:33   So proofs in the pudding. Yes. What are the actual speed differences like? So I

00:33:40   - I, most of my tests are versus my 2014 iMac 5K,

00:33:45   which they have revved several times.

00:33:51   There is a 2017 model.

00:33:52   Steven Hackett had the, and I had the i7,

00:33:55   so the faster processor and actually the faster GPU.

00:33:59   Steven Hackett bought the new i7 of the 5K iMac,

00:34:04   and then he returned it and bought an iMac Pro.

00:34:06   But while he had it, I had him run some of the same tests

00:34:09   I ran, so I could compare it to a current iMac, because I don't have to wear with all

00:34:15   of Macworld anymore where I have every Mac that I can survey before me and I can compare

00:34:19   them all. I am now on my own and I bought an iMac when I started out and have kept it,

00:34:26   and so that's my reference system. So I did a bunch of tests using real things I do. That

00:34:32   was important to me. In the end, I did run a couple of other kind of benchmark stuff

00:34:37   like Geekbench and one of these 3D tests.

00:34:40   But I tried to--

00:34:40   - That's pointless.

00:34:41   - Yeah, but--

00:34:42   - Like, you know.

00:34:43   - Yeah, I mean, I can sign off and say,

00:34:44   yes, it's faster, which we already knew.

00:34:46   But I tried a bunch of stuff.

00:34:48   So I tried a bunch of podcast stuff

00:34:49   and a little bit of video stuff.

00:34:50   'Cause the reason I bought this is for podcast stuff.

00:34:52   That a huge part of my podcast workflow,

00:34:55   prep workflow, because I do so many podcasts

00:34:58   with people who do not have pristine audio environments,

00:35:01   because they're just people--

00:35:02   - Like me.

00:35:02   - Recording a podcast.

00:35:03   - I have a pristine environment.

00:35:04   The mega office environment is entirely pristine. There are a few people I know I don't need

00:35:10   to denoise their audio file. I'm in like a podcast clean room here. Yes you are. You

00:35:15   are wearing a, it's not a clean suit, it's a silent suit. Silent suit. You zip it up

00:35:23   silently. With the microphone inside and then that's it. There's nothing, yeah, exactly.

00:35:28   But most people instead have their computer fan blowing and a heater going and somebody's

00:35:34   jackhammering outside. Well, the jackhammer, it's hard to take out. But like, I get these

00:35:38   files and I can look at them in the program I use to denoise them, which is Isotope RX

00:35:43   6. And it actually shows you like a big orange stripe that is like, "Oh, that's the heater,"

00:35:50   or "That's where the air conditioning came on," or whatever. And these are the environments

00:35:54   people are in. And I want everybody to sound as good as they can because what ends up happening

00:36:00   is you're listening to a podcast and one person talks and suddenly there's a hum

00:36:03   and then when they stop talking the hum goes away

00:36:06   it's really and there's you know hissing in the background and so it's really

00:36:09   disconcerting so I de-noise these files and that is a there's an amazing plug-in

00:36:15   in iZotope that does this and it is multi-core multi-threaded it will use as

00:36:22   many processor cores as you can give it so I use that I did some encoding a

00:36:27   video which tends to pick the processor. I used a couple of tools by Marco Arment

00:36:32   because Marco is obsessed with filling the processor cores to their fullest too,

00:36:35   so I use Sidetrack and Forecast. I did a bunch of stuff and the reality is that

00:36:44   the iMac Pro can do all that stuff in half the time as my old iMac and I would

00:36:53   say in 60% of the time as the 2017 iMac that Stephen Hackett had.

00:37:02   So it's 40% faster than that one?

00:37:05   Somewhere, but yeah.

00:37:06   Right?

00:37:07   Well, I mean, okay.

00:37:09   You could say that.

00:37:10   I would say it does it in 60% of the time because there's a great debate about it.

00:37:15   But yes, you would say that.

00:37:16   could say that it's twice as fast as my old iMac for these tasks and a little less than

00:37:24   twice as fast.

00:37:25   Like a third? You know, at least you could say it's a third faster.

00:37:29   This is the problem, there's "as fast as" and there's "faster than" and I get angry

00:37:33   letters when I phrase it a certain way. But the bottom line is...

00:37:37   But suffice to say, there is a significant speed increase no matter what you're coming

00:37:43   from.

00:37:44   - In the ways of a three hour long file,

00:37:46   took a minute 34 on my old iMac.

00:37:50   It took 86 seconds, so a little bit less

00:37:53   on Steven Hackett's iMac,

00:37:55   and 49 seconds on the iMac Pro.

00:37:58   And that's consistent across all of the other things I did.

00:38:01   You know, a handbrake decode that took 1,270 seconds

00:38:06   to encode a 1080p on my old iMac,

00:38:13   1276 and 674 on the iMac Pro, and in between 1095 on Stephen Hackett's iMac, so it's faster

00:38:22   but not nearly as fast as the iMac Pro. And this is consistent. For stuff that's really

00:38:28   multi-threaded, the iMac Pro is, even the base model, is incredibly fast. This is not

00:38:33   one of those like, "Well, you can see it in these numbers." Between 2014, when I bought

00:38:39   my iMac and 2017, Steven Hackett's iMac that he bought before he returned it. There was

00:38:46   definitely a speed boost. The iMac got a better screen, it got faster SSD, and it got faster

00:38:52   processors. That all said, the speed difference there was, you know, an improvement of, what,

00:39:02   30 seconds in my spectral denoise test and the difference between that iMac and

00:39:11   my iMac Pro is another like 40 plus seconds on that one test so this is a

00:39:19   much larger jump in performance than a normal like iMac update would be so

00:39:24   that's four years four years of iMac improvements do not match the difference

00:39:29   between the current iMac and the iMac Pro.

00:39:32   It is, you know, and that's what you're going for here,

00:39:34   is you want a leap in performance

00:39:36   to pay a leap in price tag, and it's there, it's real.

00:39:41   - All right, so look, I'm just asking you questions here.

00:39:43   I'm not trying to like, purchase shame you, but--

00:39:47   - Oh no, I have no, if you had gotten me

00:39:50   before I'd gotten this, I would have been very vulnerable,

00:39:54   but now I've used it for two weeks.

00:39:54   - But now you're good.

00:39:56   - Yeah, I'm okay. (laughs)

00:39:58   But let me ask you then, right? So like, you know, because I just want to dig into that a little bit more.

00:40:01   So some of this stuff, it's twice as fast as your previous Mac, right? Like it's doing it in half time.

00:40:07   It basically, by spending $5,000, it is twice as fast.

00:40:11   But it's saving 40 seconds, right? So, my question to you is like, on a daily basis,

00:40:21   how and if are you feeling that and how is that worth it?

00:40:25   Well, what I would say is that when I'm prepping, see, I don't do one of these when I'm prepping

00:40:29   files. Sometimes I'm literally doing seven and they're all three or four hour long audio files.

00:40:36   And it's not something that I can automate because you actually have to, there is an auto setting,

00:40:44   but it's just not as good. You need to find the noise and learn it and then apply it and it

00:40:53   it removes the noise so it's a manual process with multiple steps and this is

00:40:57   the problem is if you're doing that with a lot of this and the steps were all

00:41:00   require you to wait two three four five minutes to get through it and I didn't

00:41:05   even mention like also going on here is that the SSD performance is way faster

00:41:09   which means I can and honestly all that RAM I can open more files at once I can

00:41:14   have multiple files processing or saving at once and what it means is that this

00:41:18   this long, slow process to prep a set of files for me or for an outside editor to use used

00:41:26   to take like an hour and now it takes like 15 minutes. And that's so it's cumulative.

00:41:36   Or video encoding is a similar thing where I'm sitting down and I need to convert this

00:41:40   Final Cut that came out, Final Cut export that came out of 1080 but it's enormous and

00:41:44   I need to do a podcast version which I know I want to be small and 720p and I

00:41:48   want to a 1080 version I can upload to YouTube and I don't want to upload the

00:41:51   10 gigabyte version to YouTube because I'll be there forever

00:41:54   I want to do that that's that's a common thing for me

00:41:57   I can run that through handbrake and have it be done quickly and then move on

00:42:06   and post them as opposed to what I used to do which is start them in handbrake

00:42:10   and leave and go do other things, maybe go to bed, come back in the morning and upload

00:42:18   them. That happened a lot and that was fine. I mean the overnight task is a thing that

00:42:23   can be useful but it's nicer to have that task be so short that I can just do some other

00:42:28   stuff and then come back and it's done instead of like completely breaking because I know

00:42:34   this task is going to take hours.

00:42:36   So there are two things that are interesting to me.

00:42:39   One of them, a lot of this stuff, it's the quality of life for you and your work, right?

00:42:45   So you're getting less frustrated.

00:42:47   And then the other thing that I find really interesting is that it's not just the raw

00:42:52   power of what this machine can do, it also has a lot more headroom, right?

00:42:56   So like you're saying, okay, so I save half the time on an individual process, but I can

00:43:02   do two times more of those processes than I could do before. So it's all of that time

00:43:09   savings is adding up. So whilst it's doing it like in half the time, you're actually

00:43:14   saving three quarters of an hour, right? Like because you're doing more at once, right?

00:43:20   That's really interesting to me and I hadn't necessarily considered that.

00:43:24   Where the storage comes in is the big one for me with isotope where I'm opening multiple

00:43:28   files and the memory, I think. I think the RAM is a part of that too. I'm opening multiple

00:43:32   files and getting them to process and saving them out and the my iMac would

00:43:39   just I gave up I would just do one at a time but on this I can do that and then

00:43:44   what that means also is that it's now processing yes it's processing three

00:43:48   files at once four files at once and it can't really go any faster because it's

00:43:53   filling up the processor cores but what it means is my menial task of starting

00:44:01   those processes going is all done in a block, and then my attention can move elsewhere.

00:44:08   And this is one of those things that even if you're only saving a little bit of time,

00:44:12   if you can go from a task that is "do something and wait, then do something and wait, and

00:44:17   then do something and wait," and replace it with "do those three things all at once

00:44:21   and then do something else while the waiting happens," that's way better. That's way

00:44:26   better because I can turn my attention elsewhere instead of having to just basically sit there

00:44:31   and wait it out because I know there's going to be another step along the way in two minutes.

00:44:38   And the added storage, the SSD speed, and I think the memory too is feeding into that

00:44:46   as well. So that was a moment of realization for me because I was like, "Oh, great, it's

00:44:50   faster." And then I was like, "I wonder if I could just open more files." And the answer

00:44:54   is, "Yep, I can do that. It's fine. It totally works." Then again, to get back to the single

00:45:00   processor thing, iZotope's D-Reverb plugin, which is amazing if you've got somebody in

00:45:05   an echoey room, runs on a single processor core. And it takes me, I tested it against

00:45:13   my old iMac, within a second of one another doing a D-Echo, a D-Reverb effect. And what

00:45:20   makes me want to do is send a friendly but somewhat sternly worded email to iZotope saying

00:45:27   why are all your plugins not better optimized for multiple processor cores, please. But

00:45:34   the one I use the most is and that's one of the big reasons why I bought the iMac Pro.

00:45:41   So that's the important part of the way in my opinion, right, which is like the performance

00:45:45   of it. Let's talk about the looks. So, I mean, from a visual perspective, the biggest change

00:45:51   is the color, and then maybe secondary to that is the holes in the back, right? The

00:45:56   vents. Yeah. How do you feel about those two things? I mean, everything else is like, if

00:46:00   you like the iMac, you're going to like this one because it's the same. It is so much the

00:46:04   same that I just, you know, it's not like my... I'm using a 27-inch 5K iMac suspended

00:46:13   on an arm above my desk it's literally not any different from what I've been using for

00:46:18   the last four years. The only difference is that the aluminum is darker and it's way faster

00:46:24   but like just in terms of the visual of it. A lot of people are very excited about the

00:46:30   darker aluminum. My issue is what my issue always is with this stuff which is space gray

00:46:38   like an amazing cool idea and it is nice to have some variation but you know when

00:46:43   you've got a space gray something next to a regular something it really is just

00:46:48   a darker shade of silver like I mean it's not and out of context you get used

00:46:55   to it really fast so I actually think that's one of the reasons why they do

00:46:58   the dark peripherals and everything is like it extends that makes you feel like

00:47:05   like everything's a little bit something a little bit more like my my macbook pro

00:47:09   is space gray and I could swear to you that every macbook pro I've ever had was

00:47:14   that color exactly no I think I think there's truth in that I think the old

00:47:19   one now my gold macbook 12 inch right now that's that's right that's different

00:47:24   yeah exactly I'm not saying they should make a gold iMac but you know

00:47:29   The iMac Pro was gold.

00:47:30   Disgusting.

00:47:31   Oh, God.

00:47:32   Oh, boy.

00:47:33   The hot takes.

00:47:34   I would so get it, though.

00:47:35   The hot takes.

00:47:36   I would so get it.

00:47:37   Just because.

00:47:38   Get a gold trackpad, my word.

00:47:41   Oh, no.

00:47:42   And you have yours mounted on the VESA?

00:47:45   Yeah, yeah.

00:47:46   So there's an extra, unlike the 5K iMacs, and the modern iMacs, but exactly like the previous

00:47:53   generation model where you could pop off the stand and put on a little extra purchase mounting

00:48:01   bracket that turned it into a VESA mountable thing. iMac Pro has that. It's literally they

00:48:07   just brought it back. And I don't know why they took it off of the last generation iMac

00:48:11   and I'm not entirely sure. I think they brought it back because they know that for a lot of

00:48:15   professional applications, people do want to put these things on walls or on arms. And

00:48:21   I do too. So I was able to do that. So now I have... You have yours mounted to your desk,

00:48:26   right? Yes. Anybody want a space gray IMAX stand? No, I have to keep it in case I want

00:48:31   to convert it later. But yeah, it's just on an arm floating on my, the arms clamped to

00:48:36   my desk. Yeah. I might do that next time. Next time I get a machine. Although I was

00:48:43   just saying I'm connected today, so I'm just repeating myself now. I've been thinking about

00:48:48   this Jason especially when I was preparing for this episode and I think

00:48:51   that then my next computer will probably be a Mac Pro like a new Mac Pro because

00:48:57   for what I want out of a computer the idea the perceived idea of what that

00:49:02   machine will be as like parts upgradeable over time is more appealing

00:49:06   to me as I am less interested in cool Mac hardware but want the thing that I

00:49:11   can use the best it is the best workhorse for me and over time in that

00:49:17   might make sense if it is truly upgradeable. So that's what I've been thinking about.

00:49:22   I wanted to ask, because I don't know, what is the I/O like on the iMac Pro? Do you get

00:49:28   more ports? There are more ports. You have four USB-A and four Thunderbolt/USB-C. And

00:49:42   that's two controllers on the Thunderbolt. So you've got potentially a lot of really

00:49:46   high-speed external stuff on there and lots and lots of ports. It does mean

00:49:53   though that if you have Thunderbolt peripherals or displays that are external

00:49:59   on your existing setup, if you get an iMac Pro you're gonna have to buy some

00:50:02   dongles because there's no, you know, there's no Thunderbolt that matches

00:50:09   Mini DisplayPort or if you've got a Mini DisplayPort or Thunderbolt 2 to VGA

00:50:15   or DVI or whatever else you've got like those adapters don't work anymore really

00:50:20   I mean you may be able to adapt to them I don't know don't do it you're gonna

00:50:24   have to buy some some Thunderbolt 3 adapters USB-C adapters so but they are

00:50:30   there's a lot of a lot of I/O a lot of ports on the back plus that what is it

00:50:38   10 gigabit Ethernet which is my understanding is it's sort of like how

00:50:44   Gigabit Ethernet was back in the day, which is esoteric and only for like really high-end

00:50:48   applications. But if you want basically network storage that feels like local storage, and

00:50:53   if you're in something like video or anything that's crunching through huge amounts of data,

00:50:58   they want that and that Ethernet will let them have it. But, you know, I just have Gigabit

00:51:02   in my garage, so alas.

00:51:08   The stickers, you know it in your kind of first impressions, the stickers were black.

00:51:15   Yes, just like on the Mac Pro.

00:51:17   As one of the poor fools who bought the Mac Pro, I just wanted to mention that they are,

00:51:21   I have still have one, I kept one.

00:51:23   Oh nice.

00:51:24   I used one, kept one.

00:51:26   They were black there too.

00:51:27   I had the trash can Mac, it was a tale of woe.

00:51:31   iFixit gave the iMac Pro a 3 out of 10 on repairability.

00:51:37   always just a beautiful thing to just look through right like what just

00:51:42   wonderful images I wanted to break down a couple of those things though Jason so

00:51:46   from looking at the teardown the RAM and CPU are modular and upgradeable you can

00:51:52   do it the SSD is modular but it is custom so you kind of stuck there but

00:51:59   take well you know like it's it's not as not stuck but it's not you can't put

00:52:03   anything in it. You have to get something that fits it. You can't just get anything.

00:52:09   What Apple did with the SSD is they did these NAND modules. They don't have a disk controller

00:52:14   on them. The T2 processor, which is the ARM, Apple built ARM processor that's inside this

00:52:19   thing, it's the disk controller along with the system controller and a lot of other things.

00:52:25   I wrote a whole article at Macworld about it. But the, so they're NAND chips. So I don't

00:52:34   want to say never because history shows us that there are companies out there that will

00:52:43   make a great effort to build Apple compatible parts that were were Apple only when they

00:52:52   came out and I you know there are a bunch of companies that do that sort of

00:52:57   thing and so in two years if you wanted a much larger SSD and an iMac Pro could

00:53:05   somebody pop off the glass on the front and take those chips out and put new

00:53:10   chips in maybe I wouldn't recommend that people under spec this thing and then

00:53:17   plan on immediately specing it up because it's not, it is that like complete disassembly

00:53:24   to do it.

00:53:25   So you should spec this thing if you're going to buy one with all the RAM you want and all

00:53:28   the disk you want.

00:53:30   But I'm kind of optimistic that in two or three years if you decide, "Well, I really

00:53:35   need to refresh this thing and give it more RAM, more SSD," that there will be opportunities

00:53:39   to potentially do that.

00:53:41   I fix it.

00:53:42   Do note that taking a thing apart is incredibly difficult and requires a lot of very careful

00:53:46   disassembly. So, you know, bear that in mind. It's for a repair shop or an Apple store to

00:53:54   take apart, not for you to do. It's not user upgradable, but upgradable, but just not,

00:54:01   you know, you got to leave it to the professionals. And they did note that there is no GPU upgrade

00:54:06   possible because of the way that it's like sort of to the board or something like that.

00:54:09   You just can't take it out. So when they talk about it being modular, like with a RAM and

00:54:14   CPU it means you can take those things out but yeah the GPU you cannot remove

00:54:19   so yeah and the CPU is is removable but it by all accounts is a custom part

00:54:26   being made for Intel for Apple by Intel so I think that's one of those same

00:54:32   thoughts of like okay well maybe in two years or three years when you want a

00:54:35   faster processor maybe you could find one but probably not like don't again

00:54:40   don't count on it but but you never know like it's possible but I wouldn't bank

00:54:48   on it so I guess one other thing this machine is so powerful and it has a

00:54:54   bunch of holes in the back how often do you hear the fans so I don't hear the

00:55:00   fan at all unless I stick my ear right up to it in which case the fan is

00:55:05   running. Even when you're doing six simultaneous processes of isotope? Here's one of the interesting

00:55:12   things. This computer seems to have been designed to run the fan all the time. Okay. And really

00:55:23   quietly. Two, I think, enormous kind of blowers suck air in up by the, where the stand connects

00:55:31   and then, or blow it out there and suck it in down below. And they've got this whole,

00:55:37   like, all of this space is devoted to that. But it's quiet. It was designed to be quiet.

00:55:43   It seems to be designed to basically run all the time. And so when I tested this thing

00:55:48   out and when I stress it out, the volume doesn't change. If you, it's not to say that there

00:55:56   might not be scenarios where it cranks up, but I've not heard them. Like I said, if you

00:56:02   listen carefully in a quiet room and you put your ear close to the computer, you can tell

00:56:06   that there is a fan, sort of "Syracusa" style if you're that sensitive, but in a normal

00:56:11   room environment in my office, I can't tell. I have to go looking for it in order to hear

00:56:17   it. But it's the same sound all the time, so it's consistent. You're not sitting there

00:56:21   doing work and suddenly the fans blow blow like um like the iMac 5k where that

00:56:27   absolutely happens and if I put my hand back there in normal operation I feel

00:56:33   air blowing out and it's cool air and then when heavy work is going on the air

00:56:39   is warmer but that's about it like what's changing is not the sound of the

00:56:44   fans showing that this thing is laboring what's changing is the temperature of

00:56:48   the air being blown out the back. Now on a 14 core system where the all the cores

00:56:54   are hitting and the GPU is maxed out, does it crank up the fan? I don't know.

00:56:59   How hot is the air coming out of it? I don't know. But on the base model I tried

00:57:05   to max out the GPU. I certainly maxed out the CPUs. It sounds like the GPU is a

00:57:10   bigger issue in terms of power and heat than the CPU by the way. Like that GPU is

00:57:15   a, you know, it's throwing off a lot of heat. I think the thermal stuff in the iMac Pro

00:57:21   is basically more concerned about the GPU than the CPU, but regardless, I just found

00:57:26   the fan a non-issue. It's quiet and constant and, you know, it's built to just keep blowing

00:57:35   air through the system whether you're taxing it or not and as quietly as possible. So,

00:57:42   For people who need absolute silence, it's, I guess, not going to work for them, but I

00:57:47   don't think that most people will notice or care.

00:57:50   And the beauty of it is that when it's really working hard, I still can't hear it.

00:57:57   It's just keeping on doing what it was doing.

00:58:01   So I think, overall, it sounds like you really like this machine.

00:58:04   Yeah, it is.

00:58:07   I just keep coming back to the disclaimer, which is if you don't know, if you want one,

00:58:10   you don't want one.

00:58:11   like the 5K iMac is a very powerful computer and you can spec it up pretty far. And in

00:58:22   terms of single core performance, you're not going to get much of a benefit out of this

00:58:26   thing. You're not going to get any benefit out of it versus a new iMac Pro, basically,

00:58:31   or a new iMac, 5K iMac. So, in talking to Leo about this last weekend, I mean, he said

00:58:38   that, and I immediately agreed with him, which is, you know if this computer's for you, and

00:58:47   if you don't know, it's not for you. And it really is that simple. Like, you need to know

00:58:51   --

00:58:52   So when you hear people talk about it, if you're going, "Oh my god, I need one now,"

00:58:57   it's for you. Otherwise, you're probably good.

00:59:00   Because I suspect that the people who know that they're using high-performance stuff

00:59:06   taxes the GPU and taxes the processors across multiple cores. Like, I feel like

00:59:11   those people know who they are. That if you're somebody who is just working in a

00:59:16   word processor, you really don't need this, right? But if you're somebody... so for

00:59:21   me it was like, "Oh my god, I have those isotope plugins and the video encoding

00:59:27   and they could really benefit from all those cores and the faster SSD and the

00:59:31   extra RAM, like, "All right, let's do it." But that was what did it for me. If I was

00:59:37   just thinking, "You know, I've had my iMac for three years, and maybe I should get a

00:59:41   new iMac," then I would just get a new iMac, new 5K iMac. But I, you know, instead I was

00:59:50   thinking about all of this stuff that I've started to do for audio and video, and that

00:59:54   was the difference. So it is a really fast Mac. I like it a lot. It's got some quirks

01:00:03   because it's got that T2 processor, so like the startup is different and rebooting onto

01:00:09   other volumes is a little bit different. But it's all carefully thought out on Apple's

01:00:14   part. It's just different from the previous Mac experience. I suspect that all future

01:00:18   Macs will probably have something like the T2 in them and that this will be a new way

01:00:22   for Apple to build Macs with this ARM chip doing most of the controller stuff and security

01:00:28   stuff. But yeah, I like it a lot. And strangely, I'm now running the 10.13.3 beta, and it feels

01:00:41   to me like everything on this iMac got a little bit faster and a little bit better when I

01:00:47   went to the 10.13.3 beta, so I feel like it is, this is in Apple dialect, iMac Pro 1,1.

01:00:58   So this is the first of its name, and I suspect that the OS is still, I mean, there are going

01:01:07   to be some quirks too, because it's brand new and it's got a bunch of stuff that's kind

01:01:11   of new like the T2. So the beta seems to have moved things along. The logic and Final Cut

01:01:18   Pro updates that came out are kind of directly addressing this system and have made improvements

01:01:24   there and I think there'll be some more of those along the way too. But yeah, I'm loving

01:01:28   it. It's great. It is like my old iMac except for a lot of the hardest processor-intense

01:01:35   stuff I do twice as fast. So that's not bad.

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01:03:12   So with all of the Apple battery stuff there was a Goermann report from our friend Mark

01:03:20   Goermann over at Bloomberg that kind of got lost in the shuffle because it basically happened

01:03:25   on the same day. And of course it got covered, but I don't think maybe to the extent that

01:03:30   it would have otherwise, because the whole battery thing was bigger news. I think it

01:03:36   was actually something that was definitely happening and was affecting people. But there's

01:03:41   nothing to speculate about on the battery problem anymore. There is stuff to speculate

01:03:45   on a unified app platform between iOS and Mac OS. According to people familiar with

01:03:52   the matter in 2018 developers will be able to design an app that works on both

01:03:57   iOS and Mac OS and this may be announced at WWDC this year so Apple would in

01:04:03   theory be joining Microsoft and Google as platform vendors that are trying to

01:04:07   get their developers to bring mobile apps to the desktop or do write once run

01:04:12   anywhere or some variant of that right like Microsoft have tried it Google have

01:04:16   tried it because they're like you can put Android apps on Chrome OS computers

01:04:21   So what's going on here? What are the ramifications of this? Are we gonna have

01:04:25   a truly universal app now? Do we just buy one app and it's everywhere?

01:04:32   So I'm gonna do a little follow-up people if they don't listen to ATP all

01:04:37   the time, listen to episode 254. They did a really great job of covering this

01:04:40   story so I want to throw that in there because I kept nodding as I was cooking

01:04:47   dinner listening to them. I don't know, this is an interesting report, right? Because on

01:04:52   one level, it's obviously something that is in the works, and people give Gherman a lot

01:04:58   of guff for some of this stuff where he says, "It could happen this year," or "It could

01:05:04   never happen," and they're like, "Wow, that's really hedging your bets here," but the problem

01:05:09   is he's not a prognosticator, right? He knows that people are working on this at Apple now.

01:05:15   people at Apple don't know if it's going to be approved, if it's going to ship, or

01:05:19   if they're just trying it out. His leak is telling them that Apple is working on

01:05:23   it, and so when people are like, "Oh, he reported this thing and it didn't happen,

01:05:26   he's wrong," it doesn't mean he's wrong, because he didn't say it would happen. He

01:05:29   said people at Apple are working on this thing and it might happen, but it also

01:05:33   might get shut down. They might work on this, and then some executive at Apple

01:05:37   looks at it in March and goes, "No, we're not going to do this. This was a bad idea."

01:05:41   idea, and then that'll be the last we hear about it. So, up front, I wanted to say that.

01:05:47   He was very good in this report at disclosing, like, "This may not happen. They're working

01:05:53   on it, but it's unknown whether this will actually happen or when." And good for him

01:05:59   for doing that, because the irresponsible way to do this story is to say, "I had somebody

01:06:03   tell me they're working on this project. This is what Apple's doing." Because you don't

01:06:07   know that. You don't know. This is not far enough along that you know that Apple's going

01:06:11   commit to this line of thinking. You only know that people are working on it. Maybe

01:06:17   they'll commit, maybe they won't. Is this good or bad for developers? So let's assume

01:06:21   that this is going to happen in some way, right? Like that there is going to be some

01:06:26   kind of new platform, maybe it's some extension of what they use to make photos with, you

01:06:32   know. Let's break down why you do this if you're Apple. Number one reason that you do

01:06:37   this if you're Apple is because, well, there's there's some possibilities here.

01:06:41   One of them is you're frustrated that there's so much iOS software and there

01:06:48   is so little Mac software. That would be one reason. And the idea there is we have

01:06:53   a thriving platform for apps on iOS and it's not... and then we've got this other

01:07:00   platform and we have no way for those people to write for that platform. They

01:07:04   have to work very hard and do something very different to get to the Mac because

01:07:08   the Mac is using a completely different approach than iOS is. So what if we made

01:07:14   it that writing apps for the Mac was a lot more like writing apps for iOS?

01:07:20   Would that... and there's a real open question there, which is like, would that

01:07:24   make any difference? Are the people who are writing iOS apps going to then say,

01:07:27   "Oh, well, now let's invest some time in bringing those over to the Mac," because

01:07:34   it presumably wouldn't be compile once run everywhere it would presumably be

01:07:39   like you'll still need to do a Mac version but it will be you know you can

01:07:44   base it more on the code that you wrote for iOS so there's some skepticism there

01:07:49   about it but I could see that like I mean if anybody who has listened to ATP

01:07:53   knows like Marco as a as an iOS developer looks at developing a Mac app

01:07:58   and is like, "Maybe I'll do a command line app instead," right? Finally, he's done a

01:08:04   couple, you know, Forecast actually has a UI, although it's a very stock UI, but like,

01:08:09   there's not a lot of comfort in being a long-time iOS developer and looking at the Mac, even

01:08:16   as all developers on iOS are, a Mac user. Like, the Mac is just disconnected from--people

01:08:25   the Mac to develop on iOS, but developing on the Mac it's like totally a different world.

01:08:30   So I get that that might be Apple's motivation. I also kind of think that Apple, if you look

01:08:38   at the big picture, Apple, it doesn't make a lot of sense for Apple to have many platforms

01:08:46   with many completely different ways of writing software. Like, you'd like the Apple platform

01:08:52   to feel like a platform to feel like a family where there's a bunch of stuff that is shared

01:08:58   well especially when there already is except for one right like writing for the watch writing

01:09:04   for the TV iPad iPhone they're all similar they're all similar but not the same you have

01:09:10   the similar and then Mac because Mac because of the legacy there so so this is the question

01:09:16   is would they do that do they think people would take advantage of it and what does that

01:09:22   look like? Do they want it to be... like, because one level would be like, I feel this

01:09:27   way, I have apps on... this is my frustration, I have like great video apps on iOS that'll

01:09:34   do picture-in-picture, and they have access to all this content, and on my Mac I have

01:09:39   to use Chrome with Flash in it, and then there's no picture-in-picture support to watch videos

01:09:45   on my Mac, because they didn't write a... they didn't bother to write a Mac app, they're

01:09:49   just use our website but on iOS they wrote a great iOS app. So I understand the appeal

01:09:56   of just saying, "Look, the Mac can run iOS apps now." Like, you want to be in the Mac

01:10:01   App Store? Guess what? Check the box, say Mac, it runs, we've done the work, we, you

01:10:06   know, I don't think that's realistic because like a mouse and a keyboard is not a finger

01:10:12   unless they're going to start making touchscreen Macs that all the touchscreen is for is for

01:10:16   for iOS mode, but I don't think that's a good idea. That's a really weird mix metaphor that

01:10:23   would be a very different way for Apple to go. So more likely Apple's going to say, "Here

01:10:28   are the tools, here's a new development environment for, let's say, the Mac that is much more

01:10:33   like the tools you're used to using on iOS." So you've got all the stuff that you would

01:10:43   on iOS is like it's basically the same like with photos like you mentioned with

01:10:47   you that's UX kit right instead of UI kit the okay you know maybe but you're

01:10:56   still requiring those developers to do that extra work and it's like is slack

01:10:59   gonna do extra work so that they can take their iOS app and move it to the

01:11:03   Mac when they've got a Mac app that's just a web instance and it's fine is

01:11:07   Comcast gonna take their video tool and you know the video app with all of those

01:11:12   streams or they just gonna be like "why would we do extra work? We've got this

01:11:15   stupid website that works fine in Flash and we're just gonna leave it there

01:11:17   until Flash dies in two years." I think it's a real question. Like, if you

01:11:23   have to do extra work, do they want to do that to get on the Mac? Maybe some do, and

01:11:27   maybe that's good enough. So that's possibility one. Possibility two is that

01:11:33   this is not about that. That this is about starting a process of doing the

01:11:38   next-generation app development environment that's got stuff that is

01:11:42   neither Mac nor iOS as we know it today but it's like a new set of frameworks a

01:11:48   new way of developing apps that you can then deploy across all of Apple's

01:11:52   platforms and I feel like when we start talking about this we come back to the

01:11:57   question of what's the future of Apple's OS strategy because I feel like it's the

01:12:01   same thing which is what does Apple do they've got iOS and Mac they're very

01:12:05   different. They try to bring them together when they can, but they're very different

01:12:08   things. And are they just going to—is Apple going to invest in these two different platforms

01:12:14   for the long run? Or are they going to let the Mac kind of fade away and focus on iOS?

01:12:20   Or are they going to do something that's new, that is going to be unifying, that's a little

01:12:24   like—you know, capable of doing desktop Mac-y things and phone-in-your-pocket iPhone-y

01:12:30   but is a new platform. And in the end I'm not sure whether there's a huge

01:12:38   difference between evolving iOS to be more capable and replacing iOS and Mac

01:12:46   with new OS. You could do either. Apple's going to be strongly motivated

01:12:54   to keep all of its app developers who have been working on iOS for a long time

01:12:59   and have all the developers who develop for iOS and are familiar with it. So, from a pragmatic

01:13:04   standpoint, it seems more likely that they would want to kind of keep evolving iOS and

01:13:08   evolving the app development tools. So maybe that's what this is. It's not about getting

01:13:14   iOS stuff to run on the Mac, but to kind of like create a new set of frameworks that are

01:13:21   a little more independent and say, "This is our new app. This is our new app. This is

01:13:26   a little more independent and say, "This is our next gen," just like with Swift being a new

01:13:31   language, like, "This is our next thing that we're doing." And it's not a new OS yet, but it is a way

01:13:37   for you to write for these different platforms. I don't know. I think what's fascinating about

01:13:41   this story is I don't think there's one clear right answer. There's whatever Apple may be doing,

01:13:50   but I just when I try to put myself in Apple's shoes, this is hard. Like, I don't think there's

01:13:56   an obvious solution because if there was, Apple would be doing that and we would know

01:14:01   it, right? I think it's a set of hard decisions about how do you evolve, how do you keep the

01:14:06   Mac going, do you keep the Mac going, how do you evolve iOS, do you do that, where are

01:14:11   your platforms in five or ten years, how are apps being developed for them? Because the

01:14:17   The fact is there's a huge swath of Apple platform developers now, but almost all of

01:14:23   them are iOS developers.

01:14:25   And then there's this other platform.

01:14:26   Because I see there's like a couple of other reasons to do this.

01:14:29   You know, so you started this discussion was like, what, what are the reasons?

01:14:32   You know, like one I see is you have an app store, which is mostly a laughing stock in

01:14:37   the community, which is the Mac app store.

01:14:39   Right.

01:14:40   But yet you have another app store, which is, I know it's the only game in town, but

01:14:45   is considered to be pretty good.

01:14:47   Right. Like I think people tend to like the

01:14:49   iOS app store and

01:14:51   maybe it would be good if you could try and get

01:14:53   some of those people that like that app store to

01:14:55   make applications for your overall one as well.

01:14:57   And the other thing that I see is if

01:15:00   you are developing the tools

01:15:02   to the point that they could run on the Mac as

01:15:05   well as iOS, right, you're kind of like bridging

01:15:08   the gap between them.

01:15:09   It could be an interesting way to allow for

01:15:12   more powerful iOS apps to exist.

01:15:15   You know, like, people may push iOS further because this tool also runs on the Mac.

01:15:21   So here, I mean, I've talked about and written about the idea of doing an iOS laptop or one day doing an iOS desktop.

01:15:28   And like, part of the stumbling block there is you're really going to do that?

01:15:33   Like, there's no pointing device.

01:15:37   You're going to be, are you just going to be keyboard in touch?

01:15:39   Are you going to add a pointing device to iOS?

01:15:41   That's really weird.

01:15:43   if if Apple starts down a version of this path what they're telling developers is

01:15:49   look think about your app in different contexts think about in small screen

01:15:53   contacts and large screen contacts think about it in

01:15:58   contacts where there's a keyboard like iOS developers can do some of that now

01:16:01   there's a there's the the big iPad and there's the iPhone SE right like

01:16:06   there's a huge gap between them different sizes different use cases if

01:16:10   if you're on iPhone X, it's different. All of those things are happening, right?

01:16:14   Then there's things that also iOS developers have to deal with, like, is

01:16:18   there a keyboard? Like, iOS developers can now say, "Oh, there's a keyboard. I've got

01:16:21   keyboard shortcuts, the keyboard on the screen slides away, I've got

01:16:26   more room to put other stuff." That's a thing that they could do. Well, you go

01:16:29   down this path further and you say, "What if there's a pointing device? What if

01:16:34   you're on an iMac size screen?" And the answer for now would be, guess what? You

01:16:39   can make an iMac app now. You can make a Mac app. What is it on a laptop? What is it on

01:16:44   an iMac? What is it with a mouse and a keyboard versus touch? And you're building one app-ish

01:16:52   that you're thinking about all these different scenarios where it might run across Apple's

01:16:58   platforms. That opens the door not just for that app to run on the Mac, but for that app

01:17:06   to run on iOS in a context that doesn't exist right now, like a laptop with a trackpad or

01:17:14   an iMac-shaped iOS device with a keyboard and a mouse or a trackpad. I'm not saying

01:17:21   they will do that, but that's one of the ramifications of something like this. And that may be the

01:17:26   long game for Apple, is rather than ripping off the Band-Aid and saying, "In two years

01:17:31   we have a new OS, everybody go to it," say, "We're adding these tools, and then we're

01:17:34   gonna add these tools, we're just gonna incrementally push toward the point where it won't matter

01:17:39   whether it's a Mac or it's running iOS because it's capable of doing either. And the apps

01:17:46   that you write can run on either in the proper context. That's kind of the dream. I just

01:17:53   keep coming back to the fact that I'm not sure if I'm a random iOS developer. Maybe

01:17:58   they don't need the random iOS developers, but part of the goal is like, if I've got

01:18:01   a game on iOS?" And Apple says, "Here's some things you can do to make it run on the Mac."

01:18:05   And I look and I'm like, "Well, what's the size of the Mac audience, and does my game

01:18:09   really match, and it's touch-based, and do I really want to change it to be something

01:18:13   different?" Eh. And they just all kind of don't bother. But for people committed to

01:18:18   Apple's platforms, I think that is, um, I think, in the end, it may be just a sneaky

01:18:25   way of getting Mac developers to move to a new, more modern framework that allows a transition

01:18:37   to happen down the road where the Mac is something very different or goes away and is replaced

01:18:42   by iOS doing everything the Mac needs to do, which could happen.

01:18:49   I kind of see it slightly differently, but similarly.

01:18:53   This seems like a logical step to me

01:18:57   as the first towards Apple OS, the unified OS.

01:19:02   So it's not iOS, but it's not macOS either.

01:19:08   It's both.

01:19:09   - Right, and that's what I meant by saying

01:19:10   that I'm not sure there's much of a difference

01:19:13   between saying, "Will Apple do a new OS

01:19:15   "that's neither iOS or macOS?"

01:19:17   or will Apple just keep evolving iOS until it can do all the things the Mac can do? The

01:19:22   answer may be yes, right? The answer may be that Apple is not going to, like I said, rip

01:19:27   the band-aid off and say, "New OS is here," but just, "Here's a new framework. Here's

01:19:31   some changes we made to iOS," and just keep pushing everything up to the point where the

01:19:34   distinctions don't matter anymore.

01:19:36   - Yeah. I don't know if we're going to see this this year, but this certainly feels like

01:19:41   a sure thing to me eventually. I really think that.

01:19:45   And in terms of what it would mean for users, because we've been talking a lot about it

01:19:49   from the developer side, my gut feeling is that if this happens at WWDC this year, what

01:19:55   it's going to be is we've got a bunch of great new frameworks. We've got a whole new framework

01:19:59   that lets you apply your knowledge of writing on iOS and apply it to the Mac. And for Mac

01:20:04   developers who are also working on iOS apps, this is a great way for you to make your apps

01:20:10   more understandable across platform as a developer like you can you know they'll

01:20:15   be a spiel like that there'll be a sales job of we made a new thing for

01:20:19   developers from a user perspective it may be invisible like I think people

01:20:23   jumping to assumptions like oh this means iOS emulation is happening in the

01:20:27   Mac or the apples giving up on Mac app the Mac app environment at all and in

01:20:34   the future the Mac is going to be 15 pro apps and then otherwise it's just going

01:20:39   run iOS apps. Maybe, I doubt it, but maybe, I think it's more likely that it's going to

01:20:44   be a developer announcement about tools that'll be a first version that you'll be able to

01:20:52   use experimentally in the fall, but that full support won't really be there for another

01:20:58   year, and it'll be a long, slow rollout creeping toward a new thing. I think that's more likely.

01:21:09   from Apple. They surprise us, but that feels the most likely to me,

01:21:13   is that they'll just say, "Good news everyone, we're finally gonna make it

01:21:16   so that either Mac people can use a lot of the same concepts as iOS people

01:21:22   or that we have a new thing that you can use for both."

01:21:26   Which, again, may be pretty much the same thing.

01:21:29   And it's better in ABC-wise.

01:21:31   Yeah, and the big selling point will probably be iOS developers who want to bring their apps to the Mac

01:21:37   that it's very confusing because there's a whole different paradigm over there.

01:21:39   Guess what? There isn't now. Yay! That may be the sales pitch,

01:21:43   regardless of how many people actually pick up that sales pitch. It may end up

01:21:48   being that it's a lot of people who just the people who care about the Mac who

01:21:52   look at that and say, "Okay, well, this is where they're going, so I'm

01:21:55   going to go there." But we'll see. But I think that's the most likely thing is

01:22:00   it'll be a developer message and it's not going to be that Apple is suddenly

01:22:03   injecting iOS apps into 10.14. Yeah and I think the key thing now is to see

01:22:14   which one of us will pick this in the draft. In our WWDC keynote draft, sure.

01:22:19   Yeah, that'll be... There's many options to choose from too, so that'll be good.

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01:24:18   Alright, so it is time for us to return to #AskUpgrade.

01:24:25   Hooray, we're back.

01:24:26   Rajeev asks, "Is there a shortcut of any kind on the Apple TV remote to mute the television

01:24:33   audio?"

01:24:34   This is like the only thing that an Apple TV user needs a regular remote for, right?

01:24:43   I could watch all of my television just using the Apple TV remote except for

01:24:50   something like muting. Yeah I don't think there is I think it's mashing the down

01:24:55   button until it's quiet or pausing. Pressing and holding and eventually it will go down. If there is

01:25:01   some magical command I've yet to come across it I don't think they exist. It's

01:25:06   just a shame.

01:25:09   Mark asks, "Can you recommend a charging station that can handle three or four USB devices or cables at a time?"

01:25:17   So, I'm not completely sure what Mark means by charging station, but I have a product that I think will probably suffice, which is something that Anker makes.

01:25:30   And they make a couple of different versions of this, some that have USB-C and some that don't.

01:25:34   don't, but I use it is the Anker 6 port USB wall charger. You just plug one of these into

01:25:40   a power outlet and you get six USB cables to like well USB ports that you can plug cables

01:25:47   into this is part of my permanent travel kit. Whenever I'm traveling, I typically need at

01:25:53   least three USB cables, right? Like I need one for my iPhone, one for my Apple watch

01:25:58   and one for my iPad and to carry around three different adapters all with different like

01:26:04   country adapters and all of the cables is too much. I just have one little kit that has one

01:26:12   of these anchor things and the three cables and a US or Europe power adapter and I'm good to go.

01:26:17   Big fan of this product. Yeah, I did for a while until actually we got iPhone 8 and iPhone 10 and

01:26:23   switch to wireless charging, the inductive charging pads. Before that we actually had a...

01:26:30   I replaced one of the outlets in our wall with one that is a 4 USB outlet instead.

01:26:40   Well, nice.

01:26:41   Instead of plugs, it just was 4 USB, and we used that for a while. But I'm not using that anymore

01:26:48   because we're back to that. But I have that anchor thing, and it is part of my travel kit when I

01:26:53   travel and it otherwise it's actually by my bedside so that I can charge my iPad

01:26:58   and Kindle and Apple watch overnight that I use that rather than having three

01:27:04   separate plugs they're all plugged into the anchor Scott asks Jason what

01:27:09   standing desk do you use and what arm do you have your iMac on I am looking

01:27:18   excuse me while I search my own site because the answer is there's an article called "What's

01:27:25   on my desk on six colors" that I wrote in 2014 and it details everything that's on my desk including

01:27:34   I bought a desk from it's a vert desk from beyond the office door the wire cutter raved noticeably

01:27:43   cheap. But Lex Friedman had one and it's a convertible standing sitting desk, and so

01:27:51   he recommended it to me. If I were buying it today, I would not buy this desk because

01:27:55   there are nicer desks, and I was buying it thinking it might be a home office or it might

01:28:00   be my workspace, and here I am three years later and I'm still using it. I wish it was

01:28:07   a little bit bigger. I do wish it was a little bit nicer, but it's fine. And it came with

01:28:13   an arm which is the hover series 2 from a company called Right Angle. It was

01:28:18   just sort of bundled with a desk and it supports weight up to like 24 pounds or

01:28:23   something like that so it supports an iMac just fine. So that's what I use but

01:28:27   I also recommend the wire cutter. They have some nicer choices than this one.

01:28:32   This one's okay but I would probably buy. I've actually thought about now that I'm

01:28:36   in here all the time I've thought about replacing this with another desk and

01:28:40   about to go visit my father-in-law down in LA and he has a adjustable sit-stand desk.

01:28:46   He bought the wire cutters selection and it's really nice. So I'm going to spend a few days

01:28:52   down there looking at that and that may tempt me. But I do like the adjustable desk and I really

01:28:58   like having my monitor or in this case iMac on an arm because it gives me the entire desk space to

01:29:06   to put stuff on instead of working around and the other with that stand on

01:29:10   the iMac account blocks it's low it blocks what's behind it and I use this

01:29:15   iMac Pro for a week ish with just with the normal stand and I hated it it

01:29:21   reminded me once again why I prefer the arm plus you can like just make the

01:29:25   screen higher or lower tilted or whatever and that's actually kind of

01:29:29   nice so those my answers but just check out the what's on my desk story it's

01:29:33   more or less accurate even now right down to the right down to the iPod

01:29:38   HiFi that I know any orange and the orange brain the microphone is not is

01:29:42   the same that's true it's it's back it's my old setup look at that with the Yeti

01:29:46   and the little pop filter no good times all right Todd asks any guess as to why

01:29:52   Apple doesn't offer free trial versions of logic Pro a final cut how do they

01:29:58   expect to bring in new users my answer to this Jason is I think that the free

01:30:03   versions of logic pro and final cut a garage band and iMovie yeah i guess you could look at it that

01:30:10   way i think this is i have heard in the last month or two from a couple people who said i read your

01:30:16   stuff about logic and then i found out that the only way for me to try logic is to buy it and i'm

01:30:21   just gonna buy it i'm just gonna go try this other thing and use it instead and i think they make a

01:30:27   good point. I think it's stupid that Apple doesn't offer a trial.

01:30:31   Well, but they can't now because they're App Store apps.

01:30:34   Well, that's right.

01:30:36   That's why, I mean, that's the technical reason for why it doesn't happen.

01:30:40   In my response to one of those people, I literally used the phrase "hoist" on their own

01:30:45   petard because that is what's happened here is Apple made the rules and now they have to

01:30:49   live by the rules and that means no free trials. Now, what I would argue is maybe Logic and

01:30:55   Final Cut should be free with in-app purchase or they should be a subscription

01:31:00   app it wouldn't surprise me can they can you do subscription apps on the Mac yet

01:31:04   if you if they if they introduce that so if they introduce that that'll be the

01:31:08   first thing that they do right but I think they like that it's a

01:31:11   differentiator and that they're competing against products that have

01:31:14   subscriptions and they don't but I will know like just just as a point I mean

01:31:18   this doesn't make it better but they brought the price down significantly and

01:31:21   they put those in the App Store. They were like three or four times at least

01:31:25   more expensive than they are now. No, they're way cheaper than they were.

01:31:30   Logic used to be like $700 or something. Yeah, but still I think this is a good

01:31:35   point which is it's very hard to commit to a brand new piece of professional

01:31:39   software sight unseen. It is. It took me a while to be at this like you know I

01:31:45   think... You're right though GarageBand is essentially a cut-down version of Logic.

01:31:50   It's just so cut down.

01:31:51   It is.

01:31:52   And it's the way you learn and then you can make the jump.

01:31:57   But like the, the real, like, you know, non tongue in cheek version, the real

01:32:02   reason is because Apple cannot give you a free version if they want to put it in

01:32:06   the app store, because I would also expect that those applications are so

01:32:10   complex, especially logic.

01:32:12   They're trying to break stuff out into an app purchase is it will probably be

01:32:15   impossible at this point without a significant underwriting like a rewrite

01:32:20   of the underpinnings of the application so you must use layers and layers of old

01:32:24   code now surely a final cut maybe a bit newer they maybe could have done it

01:32:29   there but they decided not to Jordan asked final question today how do you

01:32:33   guys wake up your iPhone 10 do you raise to wake it you tap on the screen or do

01:32:37   you use the side button Jason I generally raised to wake raise it sees

01:32:44   me flip I'm in generally that's what happens sometimes I will tap to wake if

01:32:50   it's already in my hand I don't lower it and then raise it again I will tap it

01:32:54   but generally that's what I use is raised awake I use raised awake and I

01:33:00   use tapping a lot more than I expected like my phone is kind of just on the

01:33:05   desk or it's like on the sofa next to me yeah I'm like playing a video game and

01:33:08   I just tap it and you know what I've realized I've started doing in the last

01:33:11   few days can you guess what I'm doing tapping on your iPad tapping on my iPad

01:33:15   it's really annoying me too hey buddy what you doing oh I don't know where

01:33:22   Myke I don't know where to slide to get control center anymore I'm I can't tell

01:33:26   you how many times I pull down notifications that are on my iPad and

01:33:30   I'm like why is this oh yeah that doesn't happen to me as much as other

01:33:35   people it does happen I do do it but like most of the time I know where I'm

01:33:40   going. Alright if you want to submit a question for Ask Upgrade just send a

01:33:44   tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade and we will provide hopefully a good answer

01:33:47   for you at the end of the show or an answer good maybe an answer probably. If

01:33:53   you want to find us online as a few places you can do that you can go to

01:33:56   @JACE now on Twitter you can go to sixcolors.com the incomparable.com or

01:34:01   relay.fm/shows. Jason hosts a great selection of shows here at Relay FM

01:34:06   including liftoff and free agents and download as well as upgrade so you can

01:34:11   go and check those out I am @imike and I host a lot of shows at Relay.fm

01:34:19   to go to Relay.fm/shows find something new I bet there's gonna be

01:34:23   something in there that you will enjoy thanks to Squarespace and FreshBooks and

01:34:27   MissionU for their support of this show and we'll be back next week until

01:34:32   Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:34:33   Happy New Year, everybody.

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