Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:05 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade episode 114. Today's show is brought to you by Pingdon,

00:00:15 ◼   ► Encapsula, and Mack Weldon. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined from across the pond,

00:00:21 ◼   ► from way too, too, too far away, Mr. Jason Snow.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Hi, Myke. You know, when we did our podcast last week, it was hard to believe that the

00:00:29 ◼   ► very next week we would be back in our respective places and yet here we are we're back in our

00:00:34 ◼   ► respective places I I'm I'm on the west coast I'm on the Pacific Ocean and you're there

00:00:39 ◼   ► in London so how about that? Less than seven days ago in fact. I know. Which is. Well I

00:00:45 ◼   ► I just saw you I just saw you Friday and it's Monday now. It did dawn on me yesterday evening

00:00:50 ◼   ► uh I wasn't sure if you were gonna be home for the show today and and there was just

00:00:57 ◼   ► a moment where I was like, "Have I mis-forgotten something?" Like, you know, maybe you told

00:01:02 ◼   ► me and I just hadn't remembered.

00:01:04 ◼   ► I got home last night. So, we spent yesterday in transit. It was one of those long, long

00:01:09 ◼   ► flying east to west days where you, you know, the sun goes up and it stays up for a long

00:01:15 ◼   ► time. Although, this was exciting because I got to see the coast of Greenland, which

00:01:19 ◼   ► I never see, because usually it's either dark or it's just totally covered in clouds. But

00:01:25 ◼   ► uh there was there was a a clearing in the clouds and I was actually able to see because we flew

00:01:30 ◼   ► sort of right over the southern coast of Greenland on our way over so that was pretty cool because

00:01:34 ◼   ► there's some islands and a lot a lot of snow. I like to imagine you with your head out the

00:01:39 ◼   ► looking out the window for the entire eight hours waiting for the moment where Greenland would

00:01:45 ◼   ► appear. No they have a little map that tells you where the plane is so I waited until we were by

00:01:48 ◼   ► Greenland and then I and then I looked out and I took a bunch of pictures in my iPhone and then

00:01:52 ◼   ► And it was done and I put down the shade and proceeded to do other things.

00:01:57 ◼   ► How was your jet lag?

00:02:01 ◼   ► You know, it wasn't too bad.

00:02:02 ◼   ► We managed to force ourselves to stay awake until like nine o'clock last night.

00:02:06 ◼   ► And then, uh, and then I woke up, I think I woke up at three in the morning, but then

00:02:10 ◼   ► I just kind of went back to sleep and I didn't get up until six, six AM.

00:02:14 ◼   ► So coming this way, the jet lag isn't so bad.

00:02:16 ◼   ► I did gain an extra hour of jet lag coming back because they changed the clocks here.

00:02:22 ◼   ► this weekend. So when I left it was plus seven and then I came back at minus eight. So a

00:02:27 ◼   ► little bonus, a little bonus hour of jet lag, but it's fine. It's all good.

00:02:30 ◼   ► That was one of my favorite things about all being last week because I didn't have to change

00:02:34 ◼   ► my recording times. Right, because you just didn't record or you

00:02:38 ◼   ► recorded in person and that was, that's the week that you hate, I know. So I was happy

00:02:42 ◼   ► about it too because I didn't have to go through the time change thing. I just came back to

00:02:45 ◼   ► a different time zone and that was, that was good. It's a long, you know, it's a long trip,

00:02:50 ◼   ► it's amazing that we have the ability to do that. That, you know, I had the ability to

00:02:53 ◼   ► go to Ireland for a week and see a bunch of people, including you, and we did upgrade

00:02:59 ◼   ► and Clockwise and a bunch of other podcasts and that was all good. And then just get back

00:03:03 ◼   ► on the plane and boom, we're back in San Francisco again.

00:03:06 ◼   ► SOT: Talking about a couple of the podcasts, we mentioned this at the end of last week's

00:03:10 ◼   ► show that you were creating something called All Radio whilst you were at All where you

00:03:13 ◼   ► were interviewing a bunch of people that were involved in the conference and giving talks

00:03:17 ◼   ► and you made a podcast out of it. I want to point people to it for a couple of reasons.

00:03:22 ◼   ► One, it is interesting to listen to even if you weren't at the conference because Jason

00:03:27 ◼   ► does a good job of making people kind of explain things. You know, like, it would be easy to

00:03:33 ◼   ► just be like, "wasn't it funny that thing you said?" But you actually do a really good

00:03:37 ◼   ► job of making it accessible for everyone. But I've, even if you're not interested in

00:03:42 ◼   ► that. I urge you to go and listen to the Escape Room episode. There was an escape room that

00:03:48 ◼   ► was put on as one of the special features at all by a guy called Chadwick7 who is a

00:03:53 ◼   ► genius and he created an escape room which is in the guise of a secret Apple design lab

00:04:02 ◼   ► in the hotel that we were at and it was fantastic and me and you and a bunch of other people

00:04:09 ◼   ► include in James Thompson who creates Peacow we were in a group and we did the escape room

00:04:14 ◼   ► together and you recorded the audio of that as well as interviewing Chadwick about what's

00:04:19 ◼   ► going on and you kind of mix the two of them together which is it's really is fantastic

00:04:25 ◼   ► to listen to.

00:04:26 ◼   ► That was that was a lot of fun I edited that on the train coming back and yeah so there's

00:04:30 ◼   ► seven episodes up there and most of them are interviews I tried to keep some sort of context

00:04:33 ◼   ► to it so even if you didn't go to all you'd get some sort of sense about like what was

00:04:38 ◼   ► going on our friend Kathy, Mrs. Soup in the chat room was one of the speakers and I interviewed

00:04:43 ◼   ► her, plus she was on Clockwise last week so it was a lot of Kathy and uh...

00:04:47 ◼   ► >> JEAN-MICHELLE All the great Kathy.

00:04:48 ◼   ► >> BRIAN KARDELL Yeah, and the, all the great Kathy. And the

00:04:52 ◼   ► escape room thing was fun to do. It was fun to do it too and we won. We had a little bit

00:04:55 ◼   ► of help. We were the last ones to go through. But really we solved all the puzzles. We just,

00:05:02 ◼   ► basically he gave us permission to look in a place that we were, we sort of assumed we

00:05:06 ◼   ► we weren't supposed to look because we were very polite, and then we solved all the puzzles,

00:05:11 ◼   ► including James Thompson. I mean, what a great moment when James Thompson had his iPhone

00:05:17 ◼   ► out with his app up doing calculations in order to get the secret code to unlock the

00:05:21 ◼   ► last puzzle in order to get to the end.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Matthew: Which we genuinely needed. He wasn't just doing it because he could.

00:05:27 ◼   ► David: No, no, we really needed the math, and then he did it, and you pulled the final

00:05:32 ◼   ► lever and we won. But yeah, so that episode is fun to listen to. And yeah, I encourage

00:05:37 ◼   ► people to listen. It's just a series of interviews and that was an experiment, right? I mean,

00:05:41 ◼   ► I just sent them a note saying when they asked for feature presentations and special guests

00:05:45 ◼   ► and stuff saying, "I could do these interviews of speakers." And it was kind of, it just

00:05:49 ◼   ► kind of came together. It wasn't super planned because it was hard to get everything planned

00:05:55 ◼   ► in advance of being there and knowing what the schedule was. But in the end, I'm pretty

00:06:00 ◼   ► happy with it. I think it was a fun idea to do that from a conference. And I would totally

00:06:04 ◼   ► do something like that again. Just like they always learn from their conferences, they

00:06:08 ◼   ► sort of have this TikTok approach where they kind of do it one way and then they're like,

00:06:12 ◼   ► "All right, we got that part down. Let's do it a different way." They do it and then perfect

00:06:17 ◼   ► it and then they move on to the next thing. I felt like I learned a lot from this process

00:06:20 ◼   ► and there's some things that would change, but I think it's kind of a fun idea to let

00:06:23 ◼   ► people on the outside experience some of the goodness of the conference and maybe be interested

00:06:28 ◼   ► incoming. I think that's part of it too. And then also for the people there to have this

00:06:31 ◼   ► kind of souvenir and supplement to what was on stage.

00:06:34 ◼   ► I've created a couple of vlog episodes of my time in Ireland. As of the time that we

00:06:41 ◼   ► are recording this, I've posted one of them, which was my time in Dublin.

00:06:44 ◼   ► Yeah, where's the other one that shows the live up… did you put in the live upgrade

00:06:47 ◼   ► recording time lapse?

00:06:48 ◼   ► Yep. It's in the video that will be posted later on this day. I split it into two parts

00:06:55 ◼   ► because 20 something minutes was too long for one video I think. So the second part,

00:07:01 ◼   ► which is the all part, will be up probably around the time that you might be listening

00:07:05 ◼   ► to this. If it isn't, you should still go to youtube.com/mikehurley and subscribe and

00:07:09 ◼   ► then you'll get it when it arrives. But I am going to be putting it up later on today.

00:07:15 ◼   ► Once I put it all together, 20 minutes, it just felt too long and there was a real natural

00:07:19 ◼   ► break which was the point where we went to all and there was a live upgrade recording

00:07:24 ◼   ► time-lapse there is footage of me in my Back to the Future Marty McFly costume

00:07:30 ◼   ► which I don't think I've ever been more proud of anything as I was at that

00:07:34 ◼   ► costume. There's a new CGP Grey video out today that I'll just say that

00:07:41 ◼   ► you and I had some creative discussions about while it was being made which is a

00:07:46 ◼   ► first for me and that was just fun to see the final product after we debated

00:07:49 ◼   ► there was a particular shot that was under debate about what it could contain

00:07:53 ◼   ► and yeah that was a so that was a that was a fun little moment of being in

00:07:58 ◼   ► person to be able to have that plus I posted on Twitter there's a I took a

00:08:03 ◼   ► picture of you pointing your finger at CGP gray yep like no I oppose you sir

00:08:13 ◼   ► yeah it was a lot of fun if you were at all of mine and Grace meetings you would

00:08:18 ◼   ► take that photo a lot that that picture would pop up very very frequently

00:08:23 ◼   ► That was good stuff. It's all good. Yeah, it was a good time.

00:08:26 ◼   ► There's no face spoilers in that picture by the way if you want to click on it.

00:08:28 ◼   ► No face spoilers. No, I had people say face spoilers but it's

00:08:32 ◼   ► like no no, I very carefully took it from behind so you could see that Grey has a head

00:08:35 ◼   ► and glasses and an ear. No.

00:08:37 ◼   ► The fact, yeah, ear, glasses and side of, like, back of head does not count as a face

00:08:43 ◼   ► spoiler. The only spoiler there is knowing that he indeed has a face. Or at least the

00:08:49 ◼   ► hint of one. Right. But that could be all a fraud. That

00:08:52 ◼   ► could all be a fake out for all you know.

00:08:56 ◼   ► What else do we have? Oh, I want to mention something real quick as we're in follow-out

00:09:01 ◼   ► right now. Relay FM has a new show called Mixed Feelings, which I think people listening

00:09:07 ◼   ► to the show would enjoy. It's hosted by Quinn Rose and Gillian Parker. It is a show about

00:09:11 ◼   ► news, politics, and pop culture hosted by two women who are at college, and they have

00:09:18 ◼   ► a very unique perspective on things that I enjoy very much to listen to. So I want to

00:09:23 ◼   ► point people to go to relay.fm/mixedfeelings and try it out. It is a different show in

00:09:29 ◼   ► topic and theme to the usual shows that we have here at relay.fm. They have no real desire

00:09:34 ◼   ► to talk about technology which I like a lot. And it has excellent artwork which has now

00:09:39 ◼   ► created a fantastic sticker in the relay.fm iTunes sticker pack. iTunes? Is that what

00:09:45 ◼   ► call it? I message, pick a sticker back. Sure, whatever.

00:09:48 ◼   ► I think people should go listen to the show because it's great and I think it would be

00:09:52 ◼   ► good if you listened to it because I think you'd enjoy it.

00:09:54 ◼   ► You can get it where stickers are gotten. Yeah, that's the most important thing.

00:09:58 ◼   ► You can get stickers where stickers are and shows where shows are and all the great shows.

00:10:01 ◼   ► Where are they, Jason? They're all in your podcast app of choice

00:10:04 ◼   ► or on iTunes or elsewhere or on the side of the road.

00:10:08 ◼   ► I was hoping you'd say Relay FM, but I know that you have conflicting feelings.

00:10:13 ◼   ► Other podcasts are available, Myke.

00:10:19 ◼   ► Where are all the great non-movie and TV podcasts, Jason?

00:10:25 ◼   ► Real AFM, Myke.

00:10:26 ◼   ► Thank you very much.

00:10:28 ◼   ► Talking about all the great movie and TV podcasts, Myke at the Movies is returning.

00:10:33 ◼   ► Yes.

00:10:34 ◼   ► But we have a slight twist.

00:10:36 ◼   ► So what happens is, and we're not going to reveal the secret of why Myke at the Movies

00:10:42 ◼   ► happens.

00:10:43 ◼   ► we did reveal it at all and people were shocked by the reason it happens. But we had planned

00:10:48 ◼   ► one holiday themed choice and then you revealed to me that we had a second that we needed

00:10:53 ◼   ► also during the kind of run up to Christmas. And then just in a normal give or take at

00:10:59 ◼   ► all, a little give and take, just having a conversation and you mentioned a film and

00:11:04 ◼   ► I said I haven't seen it and you just pointed me and said that's it, that's our second one.

00:11:08 ◼   ► So we have we have slated both of our movies now.

00:11:11 ◼   ► On the 28th of November, the episode for the 28th of November, we're going to be doing

00:11:17 ◼   ► Gremlins, which is a holiday-themed movie, right? It's holiday-themed.

00:11:22 ◼   ► It is. It takes place, I mean, it's kind of a horror comedy thing, but it's set at

00:11:28 ◼   ► Christmas, so yeah. Now I know I saw this movie as a kid, but

00:11:31 ◼   ► I remember literally nothing. I think I haven't seen it since it was in

00:11:36 ◼   ► the theaters in 1984 or whenever. But it is, uh, people love it and we're gonna watch it

00:11:41 ◼   ► and we'll see what we think.

00:11:43 ◼   ► And then I was mentioning one of my very favorite holiday movies, Home Alone, which Jason has

00:11:48 ◼   ► never seen and I think that that is a travesty. So, for the first time on this show, we're

00:11:53 ◼   ► going to be doing--

00:11:54 ◼   ► Turn the tables.

00:11:55 ◼   ► Jason at the movies.

00:11:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it's just Myke at the movies, but this will be Myke bringing me a movie. I think

00:12:02 ◼   ► we should-- it's still Myke at the movies in the end because you're there.

00:12:04 ◼   ► What about--

00:12:05 ◼   ► cinema. At least it's got some alliteration to it.

00:12:08 ◼   ► Sure. Whatever. That works. But I haven't seen Home Alone. There was a period, I think,

00:12:13 ◼   ► right after Home Alone came out, like a year after it came out, because it was a huge hit

00:12:16 ◼   ► that I thought I was maybe the only person in America who hadn't seen it. And I've seen

00:12:20 ◼   ► Home Alone 3. That's the true tragedy. I've seen one of the lesser sequels, but never

00:12:24 ◼   ► the original. So we'll do it. December 12th. And I'm very excited. Very excited. So it's

00:12:28 ◼   ► going to be December 12th. So you have two Myke at the Movies on the build-up to the

00:12:32 ◼   ► holiday season.

00:12:34 ◼   ► Alright this week's episode is brought to you by a new sponsor and that is Encapsula.

00:12:39 ◼   ► Encapsula is a cloud service that makes your website faster and safer. They have a worldwide

00:12:45 ◼   ► network that can inspect every packet that comes and goes from your website, blocking

00:12:49 ◼   ► attacks against your site whilst delivering your content to your customers faster.

00:12:54 ◼   ► Encapsula protects and accelerates over 4 million websites every day, from individual

00:12:58 ◼   ► blogs all the way up to Fortune 500 companies. They have tons of resources that you can take

00:13:03 ◼   ► of

00:13:17 ◼   ► around the web.

00:13:46 ◼   ► Playing with the big boys.

00:13:49 ◼   ► So you should take a look at their, if you're interested, go to the Encapsular website and

00:13:54 ◼   ► just look at who their customers are.

00:13:57 ◼   ► I think you'll be okay.

00:14:01 ◼   ► So we were talking at length about the MacBook last week and you have now completed a trip

00:14:09 ◼   ► with this thing and also you wrote a mini review I guess.

00:14:13 ◼   ► It was a shorter review than some other products that you've written recently.

00:14:17 ◼   ► Well, you know, I was traveling. It was kind of hard to find review time with it. And also,

00:14:22 ◼   ► I wasn't sure, since it's just this one model, I'm not sure how much I had to say. So it's

00:14:26 ◼   ► about a thousand words.

00:14:27 ◼   ► Yeah. Let's be frank. The exciting thing is not in this machine.

00:14:30 ◼   ► No, no, it's not. I mean, this is an interesting product that is part of, you know, is being

00:14:37 ◼   ► released along with two other products that have a much more interesting thing about them.

00:14:41 ◼   ► and since the MacBook already existed, that stole a lot of the thunder from this product.

00:14:46 ◼   ► But I did live with the, what Marco keeps calling the MacBook escape, the 13-inch MacBook Pro without the touch bar.

00:14:53 ◼   ► I got it right before I left, because I got it the day of the Apple event, and just for people's knowledge of my schedule,

00:15:02 ◼   ► I was at the Apple event Thursday, and then I flew to LA Friday for the podcast festival, and then flew Sunday to Ireland.

00:15:10 ◼   ► So I took the laptop with me and that was my I traveled with that MacBook for whatever 10 10 days and

00:15:16 ◼   ► wrote the review on it and that was my you know

00:15:19 ◼   ► I edited podcasts on it and had to copy files and connect things via USB and I did I did all of that with it

00:15:25 ◼   ► And I thought that would be since I wasn't gonna be able to turn around a review in a day

00:15:28 ◼   ► Because of all the travel and everything that I had to do

00:15:31 ◼   ► I thought that would be my next best thing would be what's an angle I can take here and the the sheer fact that I

00:15:37 ◼   ► was traveling with it for more than a week ended up being the angle.

00:15:42 ◼   ► So let me ask you then, because you know when we spoke about it last time I don't think

00:15:48 ◼   ► that you'd had too much time to really do any kind of power pro stuff on the machine?

00:15:55 ◼   ► Yeah, a little bit, not a lot.

00:15:57 ◼   ► How do you feel about the performance from doing things like editing podcasts and stuff

00:16:03 ◼   ► like that?

00:16:04 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I think that the MacBook itself is probably pretty good for editing podcasts,

00:16:08 ◼   ► but the MacBook Pro 13, yeah, I had no issues with it. It was great to have the bigger screen.

00:16:15 ◼   ► Keep in mind, I'm used to an 11-inch laptop screen, having the 13-inch Retina screen,

00:16:20 ◼   ► it was beautiful. It was heavier than I'm used to, but that's because, again, 11-inch

00:16:25 ◼   ► air and this is a--the MacBook is more of the analog for the 11-inch air, and this is

00:16:30 ◼   ► an analog for the 13-inch air. You know, I never had problems with it in terms of power.

00:16:36 ◼   ► It felt very much like it could handle anything. You know, the truth is a lot of what we do

00:16:42 ◼   ► with podcast editing is more disk-intensive than it's processor-intensive, and this has

00:16:47 ◼   ► the faster SSD in it. So even if you've got six audio files running in parallel from a

00:16:55 ◼   ► live recording or something like that, I mean, my MacBook Air can handle that. This thing

00:16:59 ◼   ► certainly can handle that. So I didn't have any problem with that. I did run some denoising

00:17:03 ◼   ► plugins which are more processor intensive, isotope denoising programs.

00:17:08 ◼   ► Yeah, even my iMac can struggle with that stuff sometimes.

00:17:11 ◼   ► Yeah, and I mean, they're not fast on it because they're not fast anywhere even on my iMac

00:17:16 ◼   ► as well, but it handled them all without any real trouble in a reasonable amount of time.

00:17:22 ◼   ► So no, it seemed really solid to me. It is exactly what you'd expect. I think the only

00:17:27 ◼   ► thing and I've written I wrote about this in a Macworld column last week and which I

00:17:34 ◼   ► wrote I think after we talked last week at ULL. It's the I think the challenge is the

00:17:41 ◼   ► price right I mean what goes into a retina laptop in terms of having to have the power

00:17:48 ◼   ► to drive that screen and the cost of the screen itself. You look at it compared to the MacBook

00:17:53 ◼   ► Air, the 13-inch Air, and it's what, $500 more? It's, you know, that's the challenge

00:18:00 ◼   ► here is that everything Retina is a little bit more expensive. But it was exactly what

00:18:05 ◼   ► you'd expect, which is more than the MacBook, but not the big MacBook Pro that is, you know,

00:18:11 ◼   ► not yet out.

00:18:12 ◼   ► So do you think that's what it is, is the Retina screen that's driving the prices?

00:18:16 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I'm sure it's more than that, but, you know, that is the line of demarcation

00:18:23 ◼   ► here is all the retina max have been more expensive than their non-retina counterpart.

00:18:30 ◼   ► And whether that's Apple saying, "Well, if it's retina, we're going to charge a premium,"

00:18:34 ◼   ► or whether that's Apple saying, "All of these parts are, in order to make this acceptable,

00:18:40 ◼   ► more expensive, and so we need to raise the prices in order to keep our margins. But,

00:18:47 ◼   ► you know, either way, that's a -- the net result is that you can get a 13-inch MacBook

00:18:52 ◼   ► Air for $999, and you can get this one for, what, $1499? So, yeah, that's the problem.

00:19:01 ◼   ► You know, we're going to talk a lot about the Mac today, as we did in previous weeks,

00:19:06 ◼   ► and I just want to take a slight aside to just mention something that I think is kind

00:19:10 ◼   ► of a little bit sad, which is that we've spent, you know, the whole year mainly talking

00:19:15 ◼   ► about iOS devices and the Mac will pop up every now and then with anything interesting

00:19:20 ◼   ► to say, right? Now we are finally in the time of the year where we thought we were going

00:19:24 ◼   ► to have a lot of interesting stuff to say about the Mac, but it's still just kind

00:19:27 ◼   ► of a little bit sad. Like a lot of the commentary around the Mac right now is sad stuff, you

00:19:34 ◼   ► know? Yeah, I feel like that's probably enough

00:19:37 ◼   ► a later topic though, right? Yeah, I mean, we're actually in the show later on today,

00:19:41 ◼   ► but I just wanted to mention it now because it's just like, you know, it's like this is

00:19:45 ◼   ► a great machine, but it's more expensive in not even a small way, like it's expensive

00:19:50 ◼   ► in a really big way. And outside of the US, that's like a lot more expensive and it's

00:19:57 ◼   ► not really a lot more computer, you know, like it's kind of, I don't know, it's a bit

00:20:05 ◼   ► of a shame really and I know why and you've made a good point as to why it would be but

00:20:10 ◼   ► it's just a bit sad right like it's just a bit I really wish there was more just overriding

00:20:17 ◼   ► good stuff to say right now.

00:20:19 ◼   ► Well I mean this is this is this was a hurdle that Apple was going to have to leap at some

00:20:26 ◼   ► point I think where we and we've seen it we've been talking about it like how do they get

00:20:32 ◼   ► a Mac, how do they get the Mac laptop product line down to a price down to a thousand dollars

00:20:39 ◼   ► when they go to retina? And the answer is, they can't, or they won't, but either way,

00:20:44 ◼   ► I mean, why is the MacBook Air still alive at $9.99? There's only one reason, which is,

00:20:49 ◼   ► they need, and the 11 for education only at $8.99, it's, because they need a cheaper laptop

00:20:56 ◼   ► than they are capable of or willing to make with retina. And so they have a non-retina

00:21:02 ◼   ► screen there. And the difference in processors is not tremendous. It is different. This is

00:21:07 ◼   ► a more modern processor. The power should be good. The battery life should be good.

00:21:13 ◼   ► All of those things should be in the mix compared to something like a 13-inch air. But the bottom

00:21:19 ◼   ► line is, they have this barrier, which is upgrading everything because they think every

00:21:26 ◼   ► computer ultimately should be Retina. But if they make every Mac that they sell Retina,

00:21:33 ◼   ► they're going to lose the lower end of the price range. And that's really tough to do,

00:21:40 ◼   ► and that's why I've seen a lot of complaints. I mean, there are a lot of complaints about

00:21:43 ◼   ► price out there, and I'm not going to—everybody's got their own budget and everybody's got their

00:21:48 ◼   ► own complaints. What I would say is there's always some percentage of complaints about

00:21:53 ◼   ► Apple that are about price, and you can kind of wave that percentage away, because there

00:21:57 ◼   ► will always be somebody out there who says, "You can configure a PC and save money." There

00:22:02 ◼   ► was an article last week being handed around about, "Look at this PC you can build instead

00:22:06 ◼   ► of buying this MacBook Pro," and it was like, "Yeah, and it doesn't have retina," and I mean,

00:22:10 ◼   ► right? It's like, we can--those arguments go back and forth. They are what they are.

00:22:14 ◼   ► But there's the other argument, which is, for what is supposed to be a mainstream Mac,

00:22:20 ◼   ► this is just more expensive than anybody expected it to be. Even if there are reasons for it,

00:22:27 ◼   ► it's disappointing, because what you're seeing now is Apple's basically saying, "We can't

00:22:31 ◼   ► make a brand new state-of-the-art Mac for the prices at the same price points like we

00:22:36 ◼   ► used to. This is too big a hurdle. So instead what we're going to do is we're going to offer

00:22:40 ◼   ► old stuff and then the new stuff is going to be more expensive. And that's just different

00:22:45 ◼   ► because there was a time when Apple would do major upgrades and then hit the price slots.

00:22:50 ◼   ► And here, they haven't hit the price slots. In fact, for the MacBook Pro, what they've

00:22:54 ◼   ► done is they've hit the bottom configuration is now what used to be the better, like good,

00:23:01 ◼   ► better, best. This used to be the good is what the better used to be in terms of price.

00:23:08 ◼   ► in terms of specs but you can't go below, you can't go down to good, they're not letting

00:23:12 ◼   ► you do that.

00:23:13 ◼   ► I feel like ever since maybe around the time that the original iPad was introduced, the

00:23:18 ◼   ► kind of "Apple is too expensive" thing hasn't really held a lot of weight. Like that's kind

00:23:23 ◼   ► of to me like the turning point that I can remember about how like we expected it all

00:23:28 ◼   ► to be like a thousand dollars and it was five hundred. And that kind of seemed to me in

00:23:33 ◼   ► my mind, at least in my memory, to be a turning point of like Apple is not just expensive

00:23:38 ◼   ► for expensive sake. And I'm not saying that that's what that is here, but this is like

00:23:42 ◼   ► the first time that I remember in a very, very long time where there has been a price

00:23:47 ◼   ► which has been harder to really kind of wrap your head around. And it is the price of these

00:23:52 ◼   ► MacBook Pros. It's tricky for them to bring the prices up on the model and then kind of

00:23:57 ◼   ► just like, that's all you have.

00:24:00 ◼   ► And it sort of makes sense for something like the Touch Bar because you're talking about

00:24:05 ◼   ► an extra display and processor, right?

00:24:09 ◼   ► There's a whole lot in there. - Like I get it.

00:24:11 ◼   ► Like that, I totally understand why that version is,

00:24:16 ◼   ► maybe not as expensive as it is,

00:24:18 ◼   ► but I can kind of say to my,

00:24:19 ◼   ► I can wave it away and be like, it's the touch bar.

00:24:24 ◼   ► You know, that's how I kind of reconcile that in my mind.

00:24:27 ◼   ► - But then, you know, you look here

00:24:29 ◼   ► and all you can really say, like I said,

00:24:30 ◼   ► is retina seems to be the line of demarcation here.

00:24:35 ◼   ► Now the question is really, what does that mean in terms of Apple's margins?

00:24:39 ◼   ► Is that a line of demarcation that Apple has set there because it wants to make more money

00:24:44 ◼   ► on these Macs, or is it a line that they've set there because it just is way too expensive

00:24:49 ◼   ► and there's no way that they can make money on a thousand dollar.

00:24:53 ◼   ► It really struggles me to think of that though, right?

00:24:55 ◼   ► Because we've had retina screens for a long time now, and I would just feel like Apple

00:25:02 ◼   ► surely at this point has gotten those margins under control?

00:25:05 ◼   ► - Well, I think that, I think saying we've had retina screens

00:25:08 ◼   ► for a little while now distorts it a little bit, right?

00:25:10 ◼   ► It's only been two years since there was one iMac

00:25:13 ◼   ► with retina screens.

00:25:14 ◼   ► And even now there are lots of iMacs that don't,

00:25:17 ◼   ► and there are lots of laptops that don't.

00:25:19 ◼   ► It has been a challenge to bring retina to the Mac

00:25:22 ◼   ► beyond that first retina MacBook Pro, right?

00:25:24 ◼   ► It has been a challenge to get retina

00:25:27 ◼   ► into the product lineup and to have it be, you know,

00:25:30 ◼   ► at these premium prices for whatever reason.

00:25:33 ◼   ► I know it's on our iPads and it's on our iPhones,

00:25:38 ◼   ► but those are also smaller screens,

00:25:40 ◼   ► and in the case of the iPhone,

00:25:42 ◼   ► they're at much higher volumes.

00:25:44 ◼   ► - The iPad Pro and the MacBook,

00:25:46 ◼   ► the screen sizes are very similar to the MacBook Pro,

00:25:49 ◼   ► and the prices are very, very different.

00:25:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, the iPad Pro costs like $1,000.

00:25:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it's not 2,000,

00:25:55 ◼   ► and I don't know how much more,

00:25:57 ◼   ► I mean, you know, I don't understand the volumes and pricings of all this stuff, but is there

00:26:02 ◼   ► really like over a thousand dollars more computer in there than in the MacBook Pros there is

00:26:08 ◼   ► to the MacBook and the iPad? I don't know.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Well, I mean, that leads to another conversation that we might have to have at some point,

00:26:15 ◼   ► which is how is Apple's pricing logic different for iOS devices than it is for the Mac?

00:26:20 ◼   ► Yes.

00:26:21 ◼   ► Do they view the Mac as something that... Well, I mean, we don't... Unless you can tell

00:26:25 ◼   ► me what the parts cost, you can't say that, right? I mean, this is the thing, is we don't

00:26:30 ◼   ► really know, because there's a lot that went into these new Macs, but they're a lot more

00:26:35 ◼   ► expensive, so the question is, is what Apple's doing following a normal formula of "here's

00:26:40 ◼   ► what our profit margin is on these products," or is it them saying the Mac is a somewhat

00:26:47 ◼   ► captive market, that their goal is to make a nice profit from the Mac business, but not

00:26:53 ◼   ► to have thin margins in order to gain share because they don't really want to play that

00:26:58 ◼   ► game and they would rather just have the Mac be very profitable for the people who are

00:27:02 ◼   ► willing to spend a lot of money on a really nice Mac. Because that seems to be, with the

00:27:06 ◼   ► MacBook Pro, that seems to be their strategy is like, look, we're just going to make a

00:27:09 ◼   ► premium laptop. We're not going to make a sort of, we're just going to make a premium,

00:27:14 ◼   ► we're going to price a premium, we're going to put a screen on it, we're not necessarily

00:27:17 ◼   ► going to load it up with super high-end Pro features, but we want to make this like really

00:27:21 ◼   ► nice expensive laptop and that's what they made. So I think that's the question is, is

00:27:26 ◼   ► that a strategy to just have the Mac be expensive now or not? And I don't know, I don't think

00:27:31 ◼   ► any of us can really say without knowing the details of the cost of all of these parts

00:27:36 ◼   ► that Apple is putting in these things.

00:27:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, you know, like just, we could do this forever, but you know, like on a pricing,

00:27:43 ◼   ► like the pricing of even the iOS devices seems very strange. Like if you consider retina

00:27:48 ◼   ► screens being something that makes it more expensive. iPhones are more expensive than

00:27:53 ◼   ► iPads to buy outright. So again, I know that there's a lot of different technology going

00:27:59 ◼   ► into all of them.

00:28:00 ◼   ► Miniaturization goes into that. And then with the MacBook, you've got the backplate plus

00:28:05 ◼   ► you've got the entire other shell, so you're essentially building two surfaces where the

00:28:10 ◼   ► iPad only needs a single surface.

00:28:12 ◼   ► There are people that understand this way better than us, but this is just an example

00:28:15 ◼   ► of how pricing is confusing, right? It's just like pricing is a minefield and it's a difficult

00:28:22 ◼   ► road to get into.

00:28:23 ◼   ► It's always been a minefield. The difference here is that Apple seems to have either made

00:28:28 ◼   ► a change in their pricing philosophy or has been sort of led into a change in pricing

00:28:35 ◼   ► because of the technology that they've chosen to use. And that's created this line of demarcation

00:28:40 ◼   ► where if you've got a retina system, I mean, the line of demarcation is two computers that

00:28:45 ◼   ► are not that different, and one of them is the 13-inch Air, and one of them is the 13-inch

00:28:50 ◼   ► MacBook Pro new model. And although there's new tech in the MacBook Pro, you can't discount

00:28:54 ◼   ► all of it. The fact is there's a $500 spread between those systems that are kind of comparable.

00:28:59 ◼   ► And the reason is because the new tech is $500 more expensive, basically, and that's

00:29:07 ◼   ► That's where I think a lot of this is coming from, is just this retina transition.

00:29:11 ◼   ► And I'm a little surprised that we haven't, to your point, we haven't seen everything

00:29:15 ◼   ► kind of come down a little bit, but that may not be Apple's strategy either.

00:29:19 ◼   ► The only thing that I can keep coming back to on this is that they just sell way less

00:29:23 ◼   ► Macs now.

00:29:24 ◼   ► Yeah, well, that's part of it.

00:29:26 ◼   ► The prices are just going to be as they are because the people that need them really need

00:29:30 ◼   ► them.

00:29:31 ◼   ► Yeah, well, that's sort of what I was getting at, is that you make a niche product like

00:29:35 ◼   ► this and you know at some point is your goal not to just make Macs for the people who want

00:29:40 ◼   ► to buy Macs, whereas your goal with iPhones is to make a big profit but also be aggressive

00:29:45 ◼   ► in the market. Mac users don't want to hear this but the computer market is a dying market.

00:29:51 ◼   ► It will take a long time to die but it is a shrinking market, it keeps shrinking. Apple

00:29:56 ◼   ► has, except for 2016 when Apple didn't release any new Macs except the MacBook, Apple has

00:30:01 ◼   ► gain share and in many cases has grown the Mac business. And I think all of us would

00:30:08 ◼   ► like to see that continue, but from a business standpoint, like, the Mac is not where you

00:30:12 ◼   ► put a huge amount of resources expecting growth, because there are not going to be any. There's

00:30:18 ◼   ► not going to be any Mac growth. There may be a limited amount where you're taking share

00:30:23 ◼   ► away from the PC, but you know, what are they doing with it? It reminds me of when I was

00:30:28 ◼   ► at IDG and we would talk about print and online and at some point the official

00:30:32 ◼   ► mantra at IDG was you know manage print for profit like don't get caught up in

00:30:37 ◼   ► trying to grow your print business because prints gonna go away instead

00:30:42 ◼   ► manage your print business for profit and once it stops making a profit you

00:30:47 ◼   ► kill it right well is that that different from what Apple's doing with

00:30:51 ◼   ► the Mac business which is they're managing it for profit they want to be a

00:30:54 ◼   ► good successful profitable business but they're not managing it for growth

00:30:58 ◼   ► growth because there isn't any. And you know, you can say, "Well, yeah, I'm going to give

00:31:02 ◼   ► Microsoft some growth because I'm going to go buy a Microsoft product or I'm going to

00:31:06 ◼   ► switch to Linux or whatever." It's like, "Okay, but in the end, the net share of the computer

00:31:10 ◼   ► market is going down anyway." So this is the challenge, I think, for Apple right now is,

00:31:15 ◼   ► what do you do for the Mac where you're putting in enough effort to keep your Mac users, or

00:31:20 ◼   ► at least the bulk of your Mac users, happy? You can't make everybody happy, but the bulk

00:31:25 ◼   ► of them happy, while also not like overdoing it to the point where your other places of

00:31:31 ◼   ► growth like the iPhone and the iPad and the Apple Watch and the, you know, the list of

00:31:36 ◼   ► new products get uh, get shorted for this product category that while profitable is

00:31:42 ◼   ► not going to be a source of, of, of growth and in fact will probably shrink if you look

00:31:46 ◼   ► at five or ten years out.

00:31:48 ◼   ► Yeah, looking at the, the way that the pricing could change and stuff like that, like the

00:31:51 ◼   ► The iPad is a good example of this.

00:31:55 ◼   ► The iPads now, the new iPads now are more expensive.

00:31:57 ◼   ► - More expensive. - Because they're pros.

00:31:58 ◼   ► - That's right.

00:31:59 ◼   ► - And it's because it's a small market.

00:32:00 ◼   ► So Apple are increasing the average selling price

00:32:03 ◼   ► of the iPad by putting more pro features

00:32:07 ◼   ► and calling them a pro and rebranding them.

00:32:08 ◼   ► For the people that want to upgrade every year,

00:32:10 ◼   ► they're the people that really want those.

00:32:12 ◼   ► - And there will always be a cheaper product

00:32:15 ◼   ► in a category than Apple's product.

00:32:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it might just not be the one you want.

00:32:19 ◼   ► And whenever this subject comes up and there's discussion,

00:32:23 ◼   ► the people cart out the whole thing,

00:32:24 ◼   ► "Well, I can get this for that."

00:32:26 ◼   ► And it's like, you know what?

00:32:27 ◼   ► Yes, you have always been able

00:32:29 ◼   ► to get a cheaper product somewhere else.

00:32:30 ◼   ► - If that's what you want, go buy it, you know?

00:32:33 ◼   ► - Yep, exactly right.

00:32:34 ◼   ► But the challenge for Apple is,

00:32:35 ◼   ► what you want is to reach that market of people

00:32:38 ◼   ► who want their product and make a product

00:32:40 ◼   ► that is in the range where it's gonna be profitable for Apple

00:32:42 ◼   ► but that they're not gonna be turned off

00:32:44 ◼   ► and not buy the product.

00:32:45 ◼   ► And how to navigate that is hard.

00:32:47 ◼   ► But it's important to keep that in mind

00:32:50 ◼   ► that it's not really Apple's business

00:32:51 ◼   ► to set features for everybody

00:32:54 ◼   ► and set prices for everybody.

00:32:56 ◼   ► They're trying to hit a sweet spot.

00:32:57 ◼   ► Now, the reaction to these MacBook Pros

00:32:59 ◼   ► might suggest that they didn't,

00:33:00 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:33:01 ◼   ► or that it will take them a little while

00:33:03 ◼   ► and they're gonna take a hit in the meantime.

00:33:05 ◼   ► I think that what I don't wanna do is say,

00:33:07 ◼   ► oh, there's not a big deal here.

00:33:08 ◼   ► This is the same as it ever was.

00:33:09 ◼   ► 'Cause I think that's not the case.

00:33:11 ◼   ► I think there's something a little bit different

00:33:13 ◼   ► happening here because of all these other issues

00:33:15 ◼   ► that we've talked about.

00:33:16 ◼   ► but at the same time you have to pick through like the people who are

00:33:20 ◼   ► who are saying you know they missed the boat here because this is a legitimate

00:33:24 ◼   ► issue that um that i need to do my job and i

00:33:27 ◼   ► can't do it on these computers versus people who are like i had a dream

00:33:30 ◼   ► that this computer would be the most awesome thing ever and i've waited two

00:33:33 ◼   ► years for the next rev of macbook pro and now that i've gotten it it doesn't

00:33:37 ◼   ► have all my dream features because those were dream features but the dream

00:33:42 ◼   ► features are exacerbated by the fact that there were no features for so long

00:33:46 ◼   ► - Yep, that's it, which is what we said last week, right?

00:33:50 ◼   ► That's just because some of the feelings about this product

00:33:55 ◼   ► might be kind of unreasonable

00:33:58 ◼   ► because they're based on kind of wishing.

00:34:00 ◼   ► It's not that Apple isn't at fault

00:34:02 ◼   ► for leading them to do that because Apple sent no signals

00:34:06 ◼   ► and let them sit there and spin and get worked up

00:34:11 ◼   ► and dream and get angry and all of those things

00:34:14 ◼   ► by being so lax in updating the product line.

00:34:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I mean, what choice do people have

00:34:19 ◼   ► except to just dream of what their Mac could be, right?

00:34:22 ◼   ► Because there was nothing happening.

00:34:24 ◼   ► This actually leads into this happening again

00:34:28 ◼   ► in both directions now with the Mac Pro.

00:34:30 ◼   ► Now, there has been a lot of discussion

00:34:35 ◼   ► since the MacBook Pro came out

00:34:37 ◼   ► about Apple's approach to the Mac.

00:34:39 ◼   ► We spoke about that a little bit last week

00:34:40 ◼   ► about like, does Apple care about the Mac?

00:34:43 ◼   ► And I think that we both came to the conclusion of yes,

00:34:45 ◼   ► Apple does care about the Mac.

00:34:47 ◼   ► But there is an asterisk on this.

00:34:50 ◼   ► And I think maybe the question should be,

00:34:53 ◼   ► does Apple care about all Mac users?

00:34:56 ◼   ► And what I mean by this is not like individually,

00:35:00 ◼   ► I'm sure they care about all of us.

00:35:02 ◼   ► But it's, do they care about every single use case

00:35:05 ◼   ► for the Macintosh?

00:35:06 ◼   ► And this is coming up quite a lot in the consternation

00:35:11 ◼   ► to whether there will be another Mac Pro. Would you say that that is a fair description

00:35:16 ◼   ► of this discussion?

00:35:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's a very broad question to say, "Does Apple care about

00:35:23 ◼   ► every Mac user?" Because the fact is, companies choose their target audience. And the angriest

00:35:30 ◼   ► people are the people who are not inside it. But that's how it goes. That's the way

00:35:36 ◼   ► it goes. And companies make decisions saying, "You are not in our target audience," or

00:35:42 ◼   ► "You once were, but now you're not." And then people get to make decisions and say,

00:35:46 ◼   ► "Well, I know I'm not in their target audience, but I really want to use this computer or

00:35:49 ◼   ► product or whatever, and I can make it work." Or they say, "Well, I can't use your products

00:35:55 ◼   ► then because this is a deal breaker for me and I'm going to go somewhere else." And

00:36:00 ◼   ► I think that's perfectly valid. I think companies need to make, and this I want to

00:36:06 ◼   ► specify here, I want to describe Apple's thought process. I'm not saying it's necessarily

00:36:11 ◼   ► that they got it right, but I want to describe the thought process here, because the thought

00:36:14 ◼   ► process here is kind of this holistic, what is our high-end laptop going to be? What features

00:36:22 ◼   ► do we want to have? What balance do we want to have to have the broadest use of that product?

00:36:28 ◼   ► With everything else, like what available technology and what it costs and all of that,

00:36:31 ◼   ► like, within all of that, here's what we want. And they will take a shot. And they

00:36:37 ◼   ► may get it wrong, but they're saying, you know, the bulk of people, this will do it.

00:36:42 ◼   ► And then for some people, it's not going to touch them. So that's when you end up

00:36:47 ◼   ► in a situation when those people are kind of mad, because they feel like they've been

00:36:50 ◼   ► let down by Apple. This is not the Apple, Apple's not making this product for them.

00:36:57 ◼   ► The issue here and the danger here in kind of losing perspective is if you start to get

00:37:02 ◼   ► into this approach where you believe like, "How dare they not make a product for me,"

00:37:08 ◼   ► because Apple is not entitled to make a product for everyone. Apple is not obligated to do

00:37:13 ◼   ► that. Apple's going to pick its shot. And I see stories where people will say, "I'm

00:37:20 ◼   ► angry at these medical pros. I'm going to go buy a PC," or "I'm going to buy a laptop

00:37:25 ◼   ► and install Linux on it. And those people, well first off, how many of those people will

00:37:30 ◼   ► actually do that? My guess is that some percentage of them are talking big, but then when the

00:37:35 ◼   ► reality of what that would mean hits them, they realize they would rather compromise

00:37:39 ◼   ► and stay on the Mac than go to that new platform. But for some of them, they'll go. But then

00:37:43 ◼   ► you end up with other people pointing at them and saying, "See? Apple failed." It's like,

00:37:48 ◼   ► you know what? Nobody likes to say, everybody likes to say the customer's always right,

00:37:52 ◼   ► But the fact is, Apple didn't fail. If Apple chose to have 16 gigabytes as the maximum

00:37:58 ◼   ► amount of RAM, and again, maybe not the right decision, but they chose that for power reasons,

00:38:02 ◼   ► for battery reasons, they wanted to use the lower power chipset. Guess what? Apple is

00:38:07 ◼   ► saying if you need more than 16 gigabytes of RAM in your MacBook Pro, we can't help

00:38:13 ◼   ► you go somewhere else. That's not a failing of Apple, that's a choice. And you may not

00:38:18 ◼   ► like it and it may be a bad choice, but they chose it. That was not--so you can't point

00:38:23 ◼   ► at people saying, "I'm just gonna go use a--buy a PC," and say, "Oh, look, at Apple--how Apple

00:38:30 ◼   ► blew this," because, like, Apple made that decision, and I would like to think made that

00:38:34 ◼   ► decision knowingly. Again, maybe it was a bad decision, we can argue the details, but

00:38:39 ◼   ► come on, like, that's a choice. Apple doesn't have to serve every user, and some users who

00:38:44 ◼   ► are not gonna be served are gonna get bent out of shape about it, and that's fine. That's

00:38:47 ◼   ► valid. I totally get their frustration.

00:38:50 ◼   ► Yeah, like, as you say, it is, there are people inside of Apple that know this stuff more,

00:38:57 ◼   ► way more than we could ever wish, right? They understand that by limiting it at 16 gigabytes,

00:39:02 ◼   ► they're going to be cutting off people that need more. They know that. That wasn't a surprise

00:39:07 ◼   ► to anyone, I'm sure.

00:39:08 ◼   ► No, they clearly debated it, right? They decided to go with the chipset that was limited to

00:39:13 ◼   ► 16, the Intel chipset, because of the low power, because of their trying to have it

00:39:19 ◼   ► to be small and light, which again, some people will be like, "No, give me a 10 pound laptop."

00:39:24 ◼   ► It's like Apple wasn't going to do that. They made this decision and they knew what

00:39:27 ◼   ► the trade-off was going to be, which is you're going to get this more power-efficient laptop,

00:39:31 ◼   ► but you were not going to be able to have more than 16. And that was their call.

00:39:36 ◼   ► But it is that same knowledge that will then concern people. Marco Arment wrote a great

00:39:42 ◼   ► post where he kind of out laid his feelings as to why he believes the Mac Pro should continue

00:39:49 ◼   ► to exist and I think this conversation kind of percolated in his head after ATP. It's

00:39:55 ◼   ► always fun. I get to see this with you, like me and you have a conversation and then a

00:39:58 ◼   ► really great article pops out at the other end of it, right? Like, it just percolates

00:40:01 ◼   ► in your brain. And I think that it is, Marco knows exactly what we do, right? And he can

00:40:07 ◼   ► see or can at least assume what we will assume and can see that Apple made a decision in

00:40:14 ◼   ► which they knew they were going to be cutting off some of the top end of the market and

00:40:17 ◼   ► does that type of decision and this is the same for like the displays and stuff right

00:40:21 ◼   ► that Apple were making a decision to cut off a certain type of user that would really want

00:40:27 ◼   ► an Apple display for their desktop as opposed to an LG and are these decisions are they

00:40:32 ◼   ► red flags to indicate that the desktop power Mac, whatever it might be, you know, like

00:40:39 ◼   ► whether it's the Mac Pro or something else or whatever it would, you know, whatever that

00:40:43 ◼   ► product is, like maybe even an even higher end iMac or something, are those days over?

00:40:50 ◼   ► What do you think?

00:40:52 ◼   ► Uh, so, I like Marco's piece, I retweeted it, I think he makes a good case, I hope people

00:40:58 ◼   ► from Apple are seeing this case. My guess is-

00:41:00 ◼   ► I also really like the way that he wrote this in such a way of like, "let me sensibly

00:41:04 ◼   ► outlay all of this without a lot of emotion," and then kind of, he presented it to the world

00:41:10 ◼   ► and he's like, "get this out there," and I can see what he's doing, right? The idea

00:41:13 ◼   ► being that if he can show there is a critical mass of support for this, it might highlight

00:41:19 ◼   ► something inside of Apple that they don't necessarily know, which is the feelings of

00:41:24 ◼   ► people, right?

00:41:25 ◼   ► Well, yeah, I think that's unlikely. I think most likely what this, if this has any effect,

00:41:29 ◼   ► will be that the people who argue on this side of this, if there is a debate inside

00:41:33 ◼   ► Apple about the Mac Pro, and I think that's a big if, if there's a debate about the Mac

00:41:38 ◼   ► Pro inside Apple, what this article does is get, give those people ammunition to say,

00:41:45 ◼   ► "See? This is what I've been saying."

00:41:47 ◼   ► - They can print out Marco's tweet and take it to a meeting.

00:41:52 ◼   ► - That's right. I had this tweet made for you. I'm gonna pass it out now. Everybody

00:41:55 ◼   ► gets a Xerox of this tweet that happened and then you should listen to this guy because

00:42:00 ◼   ► he is a guy on the internet. No, I think he makes good arguments and I think it's one

00:42:03 ◼   ► of those things that it's another item on the pile of users saying we are concerned,

00:42:11 ◼   ► we want you to show our commitment to this market and it may have an impact. I mean this

00:42:17 ◼   ► sort of thing actually is the kind of thing that can have an impact even if it is as simple

00:42:22 ◼   ► a level as somebody gets a little more ammunition to say, "No, no, we do need to do this update

00:42:27 ◼   ► now, not put it off again," or, you know, "We need to keep this product and not kill

00:42:31 ◼   ► it if that's the debate." My quibble with Marco's piece is that it begins with something

00:42:37 ◼   ► that I would consider just a complete fallacy. It's a little bit like saying, lots of people

00:42:43 ◼   ► are saying, and then you list something and you don't cite it. He says, "It's looking

00:42:47 ◼   ► increasingly likely that there will never be another Mac Pro. Come on. Where does that

00:42:52 ◼   ► come from? That is just invented. We've all talked about the scenario here where Apple

00:42:57 ◼   ► thought that they could get away with letting the Mac Pro lay there for a long time, and

00:43:02 ◼   ► then they got caught between processor cycles and they look really bad. But I don't--I mean,

00:43:07 ◼   ► yeah, the Mac Pro not getting updated in a couple of years is really dumb. Three years,

00:43:11 ◼   ► whatever it is, it's bad. But I'm not sure that I can take that as information that the

00:43:17 ◼   ► Mac Pro will never exist and will be eventually quietly removed from price lists because the

00:43:23 ◼   ► Mac Pro is dead. I just, call me an optimist, but I don't think there's information there.

00:43:29 ◼   ► I think it's just frustration that is leading to, "Geez, it's been a thousand days since

00:43:32 ◼   ► the Mac Pro got updated. It's probably never going to get updated again." And I get the

00:43:37 ◼   ► emotion there, but I just don't, I don't see it logically. I feel like this is coming from

00:43:44 ◼   ► fear and frustration, and those are valid emotions, but I don't feel the factual backing.

00:43:52 ◼   ► I don't see that.

00:43:54 ◼   ► I can see how you could be led to believe it, right? Like, just in the conversation

00:43:57 ◼   ► that me and you have had, right? About, like, decisions and the amount of products that

00:44:02 ◼   ► are sold.

00:44:03 ◼   ► Well, I mean, so the right thing to say is given that the Mac Pro hasn't been updated

00:44:07 ◼   ► in a few years, I'm really concerned that it's not going to ever be. Yeah. I'm afraid

00:44:13 ◼   ► that it's not going to ever be. I'm frustrated that it's not going to ever be, but I mean,

00:44:19 ◼   ► correct me if somebody can cite a reliable inside Apple source of a story saying that

00:44:24 ◼   ► Apple's killing the Mac Pro, but as far as I can tell Apple's radio silence on this and

00:44:29 ◼   ► has been for three years or whatever since they said "Can't innovate my ass." The

00:44:35 ◼   ► Mac Pro's, it's been so long since the Mac Pro was updated that I worked it.

00:44:40 ◼   ► I think it won't innovate now. I don't think it's gone.

00:44:43 ◼   ► Yeah, well, they can, but will they?

00:44:45 ◼   ► They just won't. They just won't.

00:44:46 ◼   ► Yeah, it's true. I just, I think those all make sense to me. Like, is this what's

00:44:51 ◼   ► going on? We haven't heard anything. It's making me afraid and all that. But factually,

00:44:55 ◼   ► I don't know. I'm willing to guess that this is very much like when we were told, what,

00:45:01 ◼   ► eight years ago, seven years ago, that the Mac Mini had been discontinued. No, it hadn't

00:45:05 ◼   ► been. It was just sleeping. It came back. It was just on a very long cycle. I get that

00:45:10 ◼   ► the Mac Pro, I mean, I'm not going to defend the way the Mac Pro has been treated. It's

00:45:13 ◼   ► really unacceptable that it, like, is still being sold in its current form at its current

00:45:18 ◼   ► price. It's a joke. It is embarrassing for Apple to have that product and not be updated.

00:45:23 ◼   ► and I think it goes to Apple's gut response to issues like this which is just don't talk

00:45:31 ◼   ► about it until you have something to say. And I think that's a mistake. I think this

00:45:34 ◼   ► is from the classic Apple marketing playbook which is just don't say anything and this

00:45:40 ◼   ► is one of those cases where it really hurts them, I think, to not say anything because

00:45:44 ◼   ► people like Marco are just led to finally be like, "Okay, I guess, well, I guess it's

00:45:48 ◼   ► never going to get updated. I guess I need to move on with my life and do something else."

00:45:52 ◼   ► when all they would need to say is "yes" or "no" and instead it's just kind of sitting there,

00:45:58 ◼   ► probably because they are working on something and that's why they've remained silent about it.

00:46:02 ◼   ► So I think that the real tell will be when the iMac gets updated, which I think will happen before

00:46:08 ◼   ► the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro, if the website comes back to life and those two products are still on

00:46:14 ◼   ► the page, I would then say "yeah, they're still working on stuff" because that would feel like

00:46:20 ◼   ► the perfect time to remove them, right? Like, we've updated the desktop Mac. There is only

00:46:26 ◼   ► one desktop Mac. It is this one. If we're talking about premium products at premium prices with big

00:46:31 ◼   ► profit margins, the Mac Pro is a great product to keep around for all of your clients that have,

00:46:37 ◼   ► that are not going to buy iMacs because they want, you know, for biotech or whatever, all these

00:46:41 ◼   ► other markets that they want to be in. And it may be, now, another theory that I've heard, which I

00:46:47 ◼   ► I think is not a bad one, is their brilliant idea for the Mac Pro three years ago. They

00:46:52 ◼   ► realized after a year was a mistake and that having all those extra GPUs didn't actually

00:46:58 ◼   ► serve their customers. And they've been in the background, they've been building a new

00:47:02 ◼   ► Mac Pro because they kind of need a do-over on that. And that's not a bad theory either.

00:47:08 ◼   ► And which point it would kind of explain why it's sitting there is that they kind of don't

00:47:14 ◼   ► want to keep updating it.

00:47:15 ◼   ► They're updating it because they're working on a new one and if they update it they're

00:47:19 ◼   ► gonna lose even more money than they're already losing having spent all this time on it.

00:47:22 ◼   ► I just I find all of these more likely scenarios than the Mac Pro is just gonna get shut down.

00:47:27 ◼   ► So I mean what I said in my Mac World column last week is basically you know check in with

00:47:31 ◼   ► me in six months and if there's still nothing check in like if by WWDC let's say next year

00:47:39 ◼   ► there's still no moving on this front then I'm gonna then yeah okay I believe you but

00:47:44 ◼   ► I just, I can't imagine that that will be the case.

00:47:46 ◼   ► I imagine that the iMac and, you know,

00:47:49 ◼   ► maybe or maybe not the Mac mini,

00:47:50 ◼   ► but the iMac and the Mac Pro,

00:47:51 ◼   ► something will happen in, you know, maybe the spring.

00:47:54 ◼   ► Just, I just can't, I just can't envision it.

00:47:56 ◼   ► And I love, but again, I love that Marco made the case,

00:47:59 ◼   ► because yes, it's absolutely true.

00:48:01 ◼   ► We, Mac users, one segment of Mac users

00:48:04 ◼   ► does need the flexibility

00:48:06 ◼   ► that a computer like the Mac Pro can offer,

00:48:08 ◼   ► and that an iMac can't.

00:48:10 ◼   ► And there should be something around

00:48:13 ◼   ► that can serve those people.

00:48:15 ◼   ► - I feel like we are at the point right now

00:48:17 ◼   ► that Apple need to say something

00:48:20 ◼   ► because the only people that care about this product--

00:48:22 ◼   ► - We're past the point.

00:48:23 ◼   ► We're past that point.

00:48:25 ◼   ► I think they should have said it on stage

00:48:26 ◼   ► and even then it would have been too late,

00:48:28 ◼   ► but that was why I think we had it as a draft item, right?

00:48:31 ◼   ► Is like, I really just wanted Phil Schiller to say,

00:48:33 ◼   ► and we've got some great,

00:48:34 ◼   ► like the Chuck von Rossbach post

00:48:36 ◼   ► that got linked last week from a bunch of places.

00:48:39 ◼   ► And I think we mentioned it maybe even on the show last week

00:48:41 ◼   ► It's like, all you need is the little head nod.

00:48:43 ◼   ► All you need is to say, and we've got some great stuff

00:48:46 ◼   ► for the desktop coming early next year,

00:48:48 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:48:49 ◼   ► You don't have to be specific.

00:48:50 ◼   ► You can just send a, you know,

00:48:52 ◼   ► you can't wait until you see the new update

00:48:55 ◼   ► to the Mac Pro that we're working on.

00:48:56 ◼   ► Just something that says,

00:48:59 ◼   ► here's a signal that we haven't forgotten about you.

00:49:02 ◼   ► But there's been nothing, because again,

00:49:04 ◼   ► I think Apple just kind of falls back on radio silence.

00:49:07 ◼   ► - Because this product does not matter

00:49:09 ◼   ► in the realm of Apple exciting product launches. Like an iPhone would. Like you wouldn't say

00:49:16 ◼   ► that you've got an iPhone plan for X because of all the problems in doing that and how

00:49:20 ◼   ► much of your messaging lose.

00:49:22 ◼   ► What PR mileage did they get out of the Mac Pro launch the last time, right? I mean, people

00:49:26 ◼   ► covered it, but it's like such an esoteric computer that, you know, nobody, the volumes

00:49:32 ◼   ► on them are very small. It's like it didn't really matter. So I'm agreeing with you that

00:49:36 ◼   ► Like they did that, right?

00:49:37 ◼   ► They did that with the new Mac Pro

00:49:39 ◼   ► and kind of nobody cared.

00:49:41 ◼   ► You know, the Mac Pro, like the Mac Mini honestly,

00:49:43 ◼   ► is part of this,

00:49:44 ◼   ► it's like a gestalt of the Mac, right?

00:49:48 ◼   ► It's like on its own, it's not a very interesting product

00:49:52 ◼   ► to the whole product line, but it fills a part of it out.

00:49:56 ◼   ► And so it's important to have it around.

00:49:58 ◼   ► And the Mac Mini is the same way.

00:49:59 ◼   ► Like is the Mac Mini a very important product to Apple?

00:50:02 ◼   ► No, but it's good to have it around.

00:50:04 ◼   ► It probably doesn't take a lot of work to keep it,

00:50:07 ◼   ► you know, updated every two or three years

00:50:09 ◼   ► and just kind of keep it there.

00:50:10 ◼   ► I know a lot of people who have them.

00:50:11 ◼   ► Now that doesn't necessarily mean

00:50:13 ◼   ► that it's a popular product,

00:50:14 ◼   ► but nerdy people often will have one.

00:50:18 ◼   ► It's relatively cheap,

00:50:20 ◼   ► so that gets them into other areas

00:50:22 ◼   ► that maybe they sell those,

00:50:23 ◼   ► that they might not have sold to Mac otherwise.

00:50:25 ◼   ► And the Mac Pro, honestly,

00:50:26 ◼   ► it's a very different product than the Mac Mini,

00:50:27 ◼   ► but it's like that.

00:50:28 ◼   ► It's like, it's not important on its own.

00:50:30 ◼   ► It's important as part of the whole platform.

00:50:33 ◼   ► And Marco made some of those points too.

00:50:36 ◼   ► It's like the iMac 5K is great,

00:50:37 ◼   ► but there are some people who can't use an iMac 5K.

00:50:39 ◼   ► And let me throw in another thing of it,

00:50:41 ◼   ► which gives me confidence that the Mac Pro

00:50:43 ◼   ► is gonna really be a thing and get an update again,

00:50:45 ◼   ► is now we've got the 5K display, external display,

00:50:49 ◼   ► that does USB, so Thunderbolt 3 anyway.

00:50:51 ◼   ► Now we've got that out there.

00:50:54 ◼   ► So that's perfect for a Mac Pro update.

00:50:58 ◼   ► And I believe according to Marco,

00:51:00 ◼   ► the Xeon processors that the Mac Pro would use would, are going to get revved sometime

00:51:08 ◼   ► next year. Although I agree, just put in the last generation. But that, that, that speaks

00:51:13 ◼   ► to maybe that there's a bigger story here of them making more revisions to this product.

00:51:17 ◼   ► I don't know. I mean, if you listen to ATP, kind of, John and maybe Marco if I'm remembering

00:51:23 ◼   ► correctly kind of say that the, the LG monitor is a signal that they're not working on it.

00:51:28 ◼   ► they've kind of given up. I know they say that. I couldn't disagree with them more.

00:51:35 ◼   ► I think it is not true at all. Apple makes computers, Apple doesn't have to make monitors.

00:51:41 ◼   ► Is the lack of existence of an Apple printer evidence of Apple giving up on something?

00:51:45 ◼   ► No. It's not a market they need to be in. The argument on that is there isn't an iMac

00:51:51 ◼   ► where there's a printer built into it, but there are lots of iMacs with big screens built

00:51:54 ◼   ► into them. Yeah, so? I'm just saying like the argument of like they don't make a printer

00:51:59 ◼   ► I don't think holds up so much. No, it holds up it holds up because it's a category that

00:52:04 ◼   ► is not important to Apple. Okay. That Apple's never going to be the leader in. Apple might

00:52:07 ◼   ► make one of it and at some point I think you look at it and say why are we doing this especially

00:52:12 ◼   ► if they can make a deal with LG to put in all the features that they would normally

00:52:16 ◼   ► roll into a product like that and then they just get to walk away and not worry about

00:52:19 ◼   ► it and that's what they did without LG monitor. I do agree with you that the I

00:52:24 ◼   ► think the LG monitor is a good flag not a bad flag.

00:52:27 ◼   ► Yeah I do agree with that. I mean now we've got an external 5k display for

00:52:32 ◼   ► Macs that Macs will support any Mac that's got Thunderbolt 3 on it. That

00:52:36 ◼   ► sounds to me like all of the Macs that come out next year are going to are

00:52:41 ◼   ► going to work with that monitor and that may include especially if they're

00:52:44 ◼   ► turning over the whole product line to Thunderbolt 3 then then I think that

00:52:49 ◼   ► increases the chances that we're going to see a Mac Pro and a Mac Mini next year because

00:52:52 ◼   ► they're going to want to put Thunderbolt 3 on them.

00:52:55 ◼   ► Because I think the fact that they worked with LG specifically is more than like, they

00:53:00 ◼   ► could have just said, "Oh, and our new computers support this and this and this. We are releasing

00:53:05 ◼   ► some technical documentation for monitor manufacturers to make stuff that will work with this."

00:53:09 ◼   ► Like if they truly didn't care, like I feel like you could do that, right? And just be

00:53:13 ◼   ► like, "Well, support standards, people should just sign up for our Made for MacBook program

00:53:18 ◼   ► and you know?

00:53:20 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:53:21 ◼   ► - I mean they could have done that but they didn't.

00:53:23 ◼   ► They took what I think is,

00:53:25 ◼   ► it seems to me anyway to be clearly

00:53:27 ◼   ► what they were going to do for their next monitor

00:53:30 ◼   ► and gave it to LG and said,

00:53:32 ◼   ► "Can you do this for us please?

00:53:34 ◼   ► Because we just can't and don't want

00:53:36 ◼   ► to deal with this anymore,

00:53:38 ◼   ► but we still want a good product to exist.

00:53:41 ◼   ► We just don't want to be the ones

00:53:42 ◼   ► to put it in our stores anymore

00:53:45 ◼   ► because it's big and heavy and stupid."

00:53:47 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:53:48 ◼   ► I'm sorry John, but that's just the way it's gonna look.

00:53:51 ◼   ► And if you don't like, and I've seen lots of people

00:53:54 ◼   ► complaining about the way it looks.

00:53:55 ◼   ► I've seen lots of pictures of it from the side.

00:53:57 ◼   ► I just don't know why, okay, I know why that matters

00:54:01 ◼   ► to people, but just like, you know, I'm sorry,

00:54:04 ◼   ► but that's your monitor now, you know?

00:54:07 ◼   ► - Apple has decided not to do that.

00:54:09 ◼   ► Also, I get the complaints about AppleCare,

00:54:12 ◼   ► and I was actually thinking about that,

00:54:14 ◼   ► thinking one way that Apple could perhaps

00:54:17 ◼   ► soothe professional users would be to do something like

00:54:22 ◼   ► allow people to purchase some kind of support

00:54:25 ◼   ► for those monitors, like as an add-on to AppleCare.

00:54:30 ◼   ► You know, essentially like if you buy a,

00:54:32 ◼   ► one of those monitors with a Mac Pro, question mark,

00:54:35 ◼   ► or a MacBook Pro that you can pay an extra whatever

00:54:40 ◼   ► and you know, your AppleCare will cover that monitor too,

00:54:43 ◼   ► or something like that. I don't know if that will work given that it's not an Apple monitor,

00:54:46 ◼   ► it's an LG monitor, but I can see how you'd almost want your professional users to kind

00:54:51 ◼   ► of be in the, be all in, be in the family. Like yeah, if you buy that monitor from us

00:54:55 ◼   ► bundled with one of our computers, then you can spend money and we will make sure that

00:54:59 ◼   ► if it breaks, you can bring it to the Apple store and we will do something.

00:55:03 ◼   ► Yeah, like don't worry, we've got this. We've got you taken care of. Alright, there was

00:55:08 ◼   ► more news around the display and some other stuff that ties into this in an interesting

00:55:16 ◼   ► way regarding dongles. So we're going to take a visit to dongletown after we talk about

00:55:23 ◼   ► Mac Weldon. Mac Weldon is better than whatever you're wearing right now. Mac Weldon is a

00:55:30 ◼   ► company-

00:55:31 ◼   ► But I'm wearing Mac Weldon, Myke! I'm wearing Mac Weldon right now!

00:55:33 ◼   ► You made the right decision, Jason Snell. You made the right decision. So Mac Weldon

00:55:37 ◼   ► believe in smart design, premium fabrics and simple shopping. They have a super simple

00:55:42 ◼   ► shopping experience. It's so easy to just go to their website which is MacWeldon.com

00:55:47 ◼   ► M A C K W E L D O N .com. You just choose all of or any of the beautiful products that

00:55:54 ◼   ► they have. They're going to arrive at your door and you are going to feel more comfortable,

00:55:58 ◼   ► you're going to look better and you're going to feel better as well. Now I want to tell

00:56:01 ◼   ► you a very little, very quick story Jason. Now I've mentioned on the show before that

00:56:05 ◼   ► I bought some lovely MacWarden sweatpants to travel in. Now I bought these because I

00:56:11 ◼   ► take lots of flights, so lots of long flights when I go out to the states. Now I figured

00:56:15 ◼   ► to myself I've only got a short flight coming up to Ireland so it's going to be fine. I

00:56:19 ◼   ► won't need to bring them, I'll just wear my jeans. What a mistake I made because I was

00:56:25 ◼   ► not comfortable for my travelling. I have now realised that it doesn't matter how far

00:56:29 ◼   ► I go on a plane, I'm silly to not wear my MacWarden sweatpants because they are the

00:56:34 ◼   ► the most comfortable things that I can wear in public. I absolutely love these things,

00:56:40 ◼   ► they've got great zip pockets on them so I can put my passport in them and it's nice

00:56:43 ◼   ► and safe and secure. I was a fool for not wearing them and I will never make that mistake

00:56:49 ◼   ► again. Mack Weldon make the most comfortable underwear, socks, shirts, undershirts, hoodies

00:56:54 ◼   ► and sweatpants that you will ever wear and I can attest to that. They also have a line

00:56:59 ◼   ► of silver underwear and shirts that are naturally antimicrobial. They eliminate odour. Macworld

00:57:10 ◼   ► and want you to be comfortable. They truly believe in that. Their products are made for

00:57:13 ◼   ► that and so is their return policy. If you don't like your first pair, keep it and they

00:57:17 ◼   ► will still refund you.

00:57:22 ◼   ► questions asked they'll just give you the money back.

00:57:25 ◼   ► They're good, Macworld and stuff is good for working out, going out, going to work, it

00:57:29 ◼   ► doesn't matter what you're doing you're going to look and feel great at all times and you

00:57:33 ◼   ► know what's even better than all of this is that as a listener of Upgrades you can get

00:57:36 ◼   ► 20% off at macworldon.com by using the code upgrade at checkout. Thank you so much to

00:57:43 ◼   ► Macworldon for their support of this show and Relay FM.

00:57:47 ◼   ► Yay!

00:57:48 ◼   ► Man, it was sad times for me. I was not, I was just not comfortable.

00:57:53 ◼   ► Well now you've learned something about yourself.

00:57:54 ◼   ► I've learned a very, very important lesson about myself.

00:57:57 ◼   ► Important things about traveling and yourself. Time was you used to get dressed up for the

00:58:01 ◼   ► airplane back in the olden days. Now, sweatpants.

00:58:06 ◼   ► Apple discounted a bunch of dongles. Here we are, we have arrived at dongle town.

00:58:11 ◼   ► So to get to dongle town you have to make a bunch of connections and like get off of

00:58:14 ◼   ► one train and go to a different train that's a different size and then you can get there

00:58:18 ◼   ► it just takes a little extra work you gotta you gotta pack for dongle town you gotta have

00:58:21 ◼   ► your big back you do you gotta bring two different cards for two different train systems and

00:58:26 ◼   ► if you forget one card you gotta go home now we're done pushing this metaphor to its absolute

00:58:31 ◼   ► extremes i'm not done no i'm done okay fine this is very surprising to me and and it goes

00:58:38 ◼   ► against a bunch of stuff that we were just saying uh apple have cut prices on usb-c and

00:58:44 ◼   ► Thunderbolt 3 accessories and dongles until the end of the year. That actually also includes

00:58:50 ◼   ► the display we were just discussing. Apple have cut the price of that by I think it's

00:58:54 ◼   ► like 25% which is a huge discount. Yeah it's down under a thousand dollars now. Which is

00:59:00 ◼   ► crazy. Oh however. It makes me want to go buy one. I can't use it but it makes me want

00:59:03 ◼   ► to go buy one. Go get one. I'll just look at it because I hear that the case is beautiful

00:59:08 ◼   ► and I should just stare at it from the side.

00:59:11 ◼   ► Oh, just trolling, trolling snow.

00:59:15 ◼   ► It's interesting though about the monitor because these discounts are

00:59:18 ◼   ► through until the end of the year and the discount

00:59:20 ◼   ► the monitor doesn't go on sale until December.

00:59:23 ◼   ► So, on the one hand.

00:59:25 ◼   ► However, so there are a bunch of peripherals, the

00:59:28 ◼   ► USB-C to USB adapter, lightning cables and other

00:59:32 ◼   ► many myriad adapters have been reduced in price and also in a

00:59:37 ◼   ► in a really good move, I think they didn't have to do this but I'm really pleased that

00:59:40 ◼   ► they did. People that bought online through Apple received credits for the difference

00:59:47 ◼   ► of these which I- thumbs up. Silly old me for buying while on Amazon Prime to get it

00:59:52 ◼   ► quickly. That will be my fault for- wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah

00:59:56 ◼   ► wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah

00:59:57 ◼   ► wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah

00:59:58 ◼   ► That's the next, that's the next guys who's shipping gate.

01:00:02 ◼   ► Anywho, they have reduced the prices on these.

01:00:05 ◼   ► Basically, from the statement that Apple gave out,

01:00:09 ◼   ► kind of just seemed like we had no idea

01:00:12 ◼   ► people were gonna be so upset.

01:00:13 ◼   ► And the line is, we recognize that many users,

01:00:15 ◼   ► especially pros, rely on legacy connectors

01:00:17 ◼   ► to get work done today and they face a transition.

01:00:20 ◼   ► We want to help them move to the latest technology

01:00:22 ◼   ► and peripherals as well as accelerate the growth

01:00:24 ◼   ► of this new ecosystem.

01:00:25 ◼   ► David in the chat room is surprised

01:00:28 ◼   ► discount is only temporary, I think a temporary discount is all that's needed. If Apple

01:00:34 ◼   ► discounted this permanently, I think it would raise more questions than it answers.

01:00:39 ◼   ► It's like a holiday promotion and a transition to the new thing and maybe it's also a way

01:00:45 ◼   ► for them to encourage people if they're wondering if they should buy a MacBook Pro to do it

01:00:49 ◼   ► now before the end of the year. So, right? It's like, oh, but if I buy it later, then

01:00:53 ◼   ► and all those adapters will be more expensive.

01:00:55 ◼   ► Oh, maybe I should just go now.

01:00:57 ◼   ► This, is it, Myke, tell me if I'm wrong.

01:01:00 ◼   ► This all happened while we were in Ireland,

01:01:01 ◼   ► but I looked at this story on a Friday night, by the way,

01:01:04 ◼   ► is when they did this.

01:01:05 ◼   ► It was like a Friday afternoon release thing,

01:01:08 ◼   ► which is typically when you bury bad news,

01:01:11 ◼   ► which is kind of weird.

01:01:12 ◼   ► It's hard to read this as anything but damage control,

01:01:15 ◼   ► right?

01:01:16 ◼   ► - It's 100% damage control.

01:01:18 ◼   ► Let me read you a quote from Phil Schiller

01:01:20 ◼   ► to the Independent.

01:01:21 ◼   ► "We took a bold risk, and of course,

01:01:23 ◼   ► with every step forward, there is also some change to deal with. Our customers are so

01:01:26 ◼   ► passionate, which is amazing. We care about what they love and what they're worried about,

01:01:30 ◼   ► and it's our job to help people through these changes." That is purely saying this was damage

01:01:36 ◼   ► control. Our customers are so passionate. It's like, "No, our customers were super mad

01:01:40 ◼   ► and wouldn't shut up, and now we're discounting dongles."

01:01:44 ◼   ► So now, a few things here. First off, why not anticipate this? Because it is the most

01:01:49 ◼   ► anticipatable thing ever that Apple chains ports on a product and people get upset. So

01:01:54 ◼   ► why not anticipate that? They anticipated it for the iPhone 7 and put the adapter in

01:01:58 ◼   ► the box. Well, their anticipation on the iPhone was telling us about it a year in advance,

01:02:03 ◼   ► basically. Right, but they still put the thing in the box, right? They put the adapter in

01:02:07 ◼   ► the box. Now, with this, you've got a much more expensive product, presumably it's got

01:02:13 ◼   ► better margins? One, why not put a USB A to C adapter in the box? I think that

01:02:19 ◼   ► that would be my question number one. And two, this is damage control but doesn't

01:02:23 ◼   ► it also strike you that this is deflection? Because it doesn't seem to me

01:02:26 ◼   ► that the number one complaint people have about the MacBook Pros is the cost

01:02:31 ◼   ► of dongles, right?

01:02:33 ◼   ► Dungletown is like a distraction for, you know, frustration about MacProTown and

01:02:39 ◼   ► maximum amount of Ram town and GPU, middling quality GPU town. These seem to be the other

01:02:50 ◼   ► suburbs that are more likely to have unease, but instead, sort of like the quick fix, quick

01:02:58 ◼   ► damage control is, we got you some cheap dongles.

01:03:01 ◼   ► Yeah, because I think people are complaining about the fact that there are all these dongles,

01:03:05 ◼   ► this is a complaint added on to the base complaint. This is like a "I'm really annoyed about this

01:03:11 ◼   ► and I also have to buy a bunch of dongles and connectors."

01:03:14 ◼   ► It's true. And it is showing… So what it does, so we complain about Apple not sending

01:03:20 ◼   ► a signal earlier. What this does do, and I'm going to give them credit for that, it sends

01:03:25 ◼   ► a signal, right? It sends at least a little bit of a "we hear you, we get that you're

01:03:30 ◼   ► upset kind of signal. And that's good, and does it in a better way than, I'm thinking

01:03:37 ◼   ► of like Antennagate where Steve Jobs said something like, "You can have a case if you

01:03:44 ◼   ► really want it." You know, you can have a bumper if you want.

01:03:45 ◼   ► Well, I expect that this came out of PR and marketing the way this did, but Steve on stage

01:03:49 ◼   ► just couldn't help himself.

01:03:51 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think you're exactly right with his disgust about it, and I think Phil was

01:03:55 ◼   ► better at messaging that part of it. Although I will I want to put in a

01:04:00 ◼   ► little footnote here which is it goes back to what we said a little while ago

01:04:03 ◼   ► which is why do people get so upset about things like the max RAM and the

01:04:07 ◼   ► GPU in the Mac in the MacBook Pro? One of the reasons is because they're concerned

01:04:12 ◼   ► that when Apple updates their products now there won't be another update for

01:04:16 ◼   ► years and that they're gonna be stuck with this not just if they buy this but

01:04:21 ◼   ► like the line won't get any better over time. This will not be, this is just going to be

01:04:26 ◼   ► like this for three years or something like that. Again, that's kind of on Apple because

01:04:31 ◼   ► Apple has not shown more attentiveness to updating Macs to the latest and greatest.

01:04:37 ◼   ► But regardless, I mean, I think it's great that the adapters are cheaper. I do think

01:04:40 ◼   ► that the USB A to C adapter should have been put in the box. I do think there's also this

01:04:44 ◼   ► great question about like I know that Apple doesn't care about connecting Macs to you

01:04:51 ◼   ► know Macs to iPhones and stuff but we now have iPhones and iPads shipping with a USB

01:04:58 ◼   ► A cable and their computers are USB C it's a little bit strange too so they're gonna

01:05:05 ◼   ► have to deal with that there's more adapters on the horizon basically. And they discounted

01:05:09 ◼   ► those cables for the time being. For the time being. So get them while they're hot I guess.

01:05:16 ◼   ► So again, making products cheaper is good. Making that monitor cheaper is great I would

01:05:22 ◼   ► say. That's surprising me. I don't know why they did that part. I can see the dongles and

01:05:27 ◼   ► stuff, but I don't know if they had to make the monitor cheaper. I wonder if maybe that

01:05:31 ◼   ► was a planned price cut that they might do a like Black Friday or something like that.

01:05:36 ◼   ► Let's bring out all the deals now. I don't know. That's just a complete speculation.

01:05:42 ◼   ► My thought was like, this is a real easy way to hit the minimums you agreed of OG. Keep

01:05:47 ◼   ► them off your back.

01:05:49 ◼   ► And again, I think it's also providing motivation for people to upgrade. So the people are a

01:05:56 ◼   ► little restless about our MacBook Pro announcement, more than we thought. What can we do to make

01:06:02 ◼   ► them feel better. Well, we can't put in a new chipset, right? It's not going to happen.

01:06:07 ◼   ► What we could do is make all of the accoutrements to upgrading cheaper, and that will not only

01:06:12 ◼   ► maybe soothe them a little bit, but it also, by making it expires at the end of the year,

01:06:19 ◼   ► more likely that they're going to jump than not, because they want to take advantage of

01:06:23 ◼   ► this stuff being cheaper in the next two months.

01:06:25 ◼   ► So but this press release and round of the press, where they get the little comments

01:06:33 ◼   ► and interviews etc. only serves to concern people more in some instances though right?

01:06:41 ◼   ► Because Apple are looking at what people are saying and the message they've chosen to address

01:06:48 ◼   ► is dongle town, not where's my Mac Pro.

01:06:52 ◼   ► you can see how this will upset people as well, right?

01:06:54 ◼   ► 'Cause at the same time, they could also say,

01:06:56 ◼   ► and we've heard people's complaints about,

01:07:00 ◼   ► they wouldn't use that phrase, but you know,

01:07:02 ◼   ► they would all say, oh, and we also wanna say

01:07:04 ◼   ► that we have some other really exciting Mac announcements

01:07:07 ◼   ► due for next year.

01:07:09 ◼   ► - Well again, right?

01:07:11 ◼   ► If they do have them,

01:07:13 ◼   ► it would have been an opportunity to do that,

01:07:15 ◼   ► but I don't know, I don't know.

01:07:18 ◼   ► It's something.

01:07:19 ◼   ► I'll just say, you know, Phil, if you're listening,

01:07:22 ◼   ► we've offered this before, if you wanna come on this show

01:07:25 ◼   ► and just say that one thing to everyone,

01:07:28 ◼   ► our door is always open for you, my friend, anytime.

01:07:32 ◼   ► You just give Jason a call.

01:07:34 ◼   ► I know that you have his personal phone number,

01:07:36 ◼   ► I know you two speak a lot. - I think he does.

01:07:37 ◼   ► I think he may.

01:07:38 ◼   ► He certainly has my email address.

01:07:40 ◼   ► - You can just give Jason a call and anytime,

01:07:45 ◼   ► we'll have you on and you can tell the world

01:07:49 ◼   ► that there's something.

01:07:51 ◼   ► It's all you gotta say is we're working on something

01:07:52 ◼   ► and then you can just hang up, it's more than enough.

01:07:55 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:07:56 ◼   ► - So, ladies and gentlemen, buy your dongles

01:07:59 ◼   ► whilst they're cheap.

01:08:00 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:08:01 ◼   ► - Get on down to dongle town.

01:08:02 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:08:04 ◼   ► - It's all the discounts at dongle town.

01:08:06 ◼   ► I wanna, before we go into Ask Upgrade this week,

01:08:09 ◼   ► I wanna shift gears, talk about something

01:08:10 ◼   ► a little bit more optimistic and happy,

01:08:12 ◼   ► which is NaNoWriMo.

01:08:13 ◼   ► Because I know this is something very near and dear

01:08:16 ◼   ► to your heart.

01:08:17 ◼   ► For people that may not know, what is NaNoWriMo, Jason?

01:08:20 ◼   ► JASON: NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. It is an event that takes place in

01:08:24 ◼   ► November, although there are a couple of satellite events that happen in the summer for people

01:08:28 ◼   ► who can't write in November. And the idea, I'm on, it's run by a non-profit and I'm

01:08:32 ◼   ► on the board, because I did it like six, seven times, something like that. The idea is like

01:08:38 ◼   ► climbing a mountain or running a marathon. It's something you can set for yourself

01:08:44 ◼   ► as a goal and achieve it and sort of unlock your personal creativity by doing it. You

01:08:49 ◼   ► write a novel in a month. So the idea is you write 50,000 words of a novel in the month

01:08:54 ◼   ► of November. I did this several times. It's pretty cool. You can go on to nanowrimo.org

01:09:00 ◼   ► and sign up. Signing up is free. You can join a local chapter. There are people all over

01:09:05 ◼   ► the world who are writing and they have little write-ins where people come to cafes and things

01:09:09 ◼   ► and hang out with other writers and then they do word sprints where everybody puts on their

01:09:13 ◼   ► headphones and they write 2,000 words or they write as much as they can in the next 30 minutes

01:09:18 ◼   ► or whatever. And the goal is, yeah, like I said, to set this goal of 50,000 words by

01:09:23 ◼   ► the end of the month, which is now that it's later in the month, the pace would be higher

01:09:29 ◼   ► if you got started today, but for the 30 days it's basically 1667 words per day, which is

01:09:37 ◼   ► not an unreasonable amount, believe it or not, you just have to kind of commit to doing

01:09:41 ◼   ► it every single day.

01:09:43 ◼   ► So, you, I don't know if you're working on any novels, but I know you have in the past,

01:09:48 ◼   ► and I'm sure you always had that little idea bubbling around. What apps and services do

01:09:53 ◼   ► you use today to write novels, or what would you, what apps and services would you recommend

01:09:57 ◼   ► to listeners that are getting started with this?

01:10:00 ◼   ► Well, today, today I use Scrivener, and I use Scrivener, I'm editing and rewriting existing

01:10:06 ◼   ► novels. I decided I don't want to keep stuffing new novels in the drawer when I have three

01:10:11 ◼   ► novel manuscripts that I've written that I need attention.

01:10:13 ◼   ► >> But you leave this as a time to take care of book stuff, right?

01:10:17 ◼   ► >> Yeah. Yeah. I have, you'll love this, I have a little time on my calendar every week

01:10:22 ◼   ► to do some book stuff.

01:10:23 ◼   ► >> Of course you do. Where else have I got it?

01:10:24 ◼   ► >> Because it's part of my organizational system, is to work on the book stuff.

01:10:26 ◼   ► >> Yep.

01:10:27 ◼   ► >> At a particular time, right? That's what calendars are for, aren't they? So I use Scrivener.

01:10:32 ◼   ► It's now on iOS as well. I love it. That's my number one choice. If you're looking to

01:10:36 ◼   ► buy a tool that is both an organizational tool and a writing tool kind of combined into

01:10:42 ◼   ► one that's great. But you could use anything. I mean, that's the beauty of it. If you've

01:10:45 ◼   ► got Microsoft Word, if you've got BB Edit, if you've got any text editor, you can do

01:10:49 ◼   ► it. There are websites that will let you do it. You could use Google Docs. There's all

01:10:54 ◼   ► sorts of—if it takes text, you can write a novel in it, quite frankly. And that's

01:11:00 ◼   ► all that really is required. There's no novel that is going to—or no app that's

01:11:06 ◼   ► to solve you writing your novel. You have to put your mind to it and commit to doing it.

01:11:11 ◼   ► Now, I did get by with—I started with OmniOutliner before I went to Scrivener and just wrote in

01:11:16 ◼   ► BBEdit, and I also had an Excel spreadsheet because there's this tool that you can get from

01:11:21 ◼   ► the NaNoWriMo website, but you can also, like, I built my own version of it, which you put in

01:11:26 ◼   ► your word count every day, and it tells you sort of, like, what your pace is, how many words you're

01:11:34 ◼   ► you're gonna need to write every day for the rest of the month in order to hit the goal,

01:11:38 ◼   ► how far ahead of pace or behind pace are you, how many good days have you had, like low

01:11:43 ◼   ► numbers turn up in red and good numbers turn up in green, stuff like that. So I did some

01:11:48 ◼   ► personal motivation stuff too. Scrivener has a progress tracker so you can actually just

01:11:54 ◼   ► tap a couple of things and see whether you've met your quota for the day.

01:11:59 ◼   ► What if I wanted to write 25,000 words? Can I still take part in NaNoWriMo?

01:12:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they're not going to judge you. I mean, the goal is 50,000, but I think they're

01:12:08 ◼   ► very open to people setting other goals for themselves, whether it's less or more. But,

01:12:14 ◼   ► you know, everybody needs a goal. A novel is actually, a full-on, full-sized novel is

01:12:20 ◼   ► probably more like 75,000 words than 50,000, but 50,000 is an achievable goal, I would

01:12:26 ◼   ► say in 30 days. But you know, I think they're open. During the Camp NaNoWriMo events in

01:12:32 ◼   ► the summertime, I think you get to pick a goal. And the Young Writers Program for kids,

01:12:38 ◼   ► the kids get to pick a goal.

01:12:39 ◼   ► I feel like I should do the Young Writers Program.

01:12:41 ◼   ► Yeah, you could do that.

01:12:43 ◼   ► I'm a young writer, right? I got to write, you know.

01:12:45 ◼   ► Little nipper, little snapper.

01:12:47 ◼   ► Got my first story about Myke going to Dungletown.

01:12:52 ◼   ► Myke, that's right. Myke the Vlogger goes to Dungletown.

01:12:56 ◼   ► So go check it out at NaNoWriMo.org, there'll be links in the show notes.

01:13:00 ◼   ► I thought it was something worth mentioning.

01:13:02 ◼   ► I would love to know if listeners out there are working on novels.

01:13:06 ◼   ► Let us know, you can just tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade and it will go into our little

01:13:10 ◼   ► sheet.

01:13:11 ◼   ► I would love to know if listeners out there, Jason, are working on their NaNoWriMo novels.

01:13:14 ◼   ► I think that would be cool to find out.

01:13:16 ◼   ► That's cool.

01:13:18 ◼   ► Speaking of Ask Upgrade, this episode and this section of Ask Upgrade is brought to

01:13:22 ◼   ► you by our friends at Pingdom.

01:13:24 ◼   ► You can start monitoring your websites and servers today at pingdom.com/upgrade, you'll

01:13:28 ◼   ► get a 14 day free trial and you'll get 20% off your first invoice with the offer code

01:13:33 ◼   ► "upgrade" at checkout.

01:13:34 ◼   ► Now why do you want Pingdom?

01:13:35 ◼   ► I'll tell you why you want Pingdom because if your website goes down you kind of want

01:13:38 ◼   ► to know about that.

01:13:40 ◼   ► If you run any type of website, it doesn't matter whether it's your personal blog or

01:13:43 ◼   ► it's a company with a store and everything else, you want to know.

01:13:48 ◼   ► If your website is down, if people cannot get to it, you want to know first.

01:13:52 ◼   ► you don't want to have to be told by email and tweets. You just don't want to have to

01:13:56 ◼   ► deal with that. Also if a website is down you just don't want that stuff accumulating.

01:14:00 ◼   ► You don't want people coming to your website being like "oh these guys they don't know

01:14:04 ◼   ► what they're doing" and then they leave again. You don't want people, you want to look professional

01:14:08 ◼   ► because that's what it's all about. Pingdom use more than 70 global test servers that

01:14:13 ◼   ► emulate your visits to your site, check its availability as often as every minute. With

01:14:18 ◼   ► If they are powerful tools and services, they will monitor the availability of your server,

01:14:23 ◼   ► database or website.

01:14:25 ◼   ► You just give them the URL that you want to monitor and ping them to take care of the

01:14:28 ◼   ► rest.

01:14:29 ◼   ► You will be alerted immediately to any outages so you can fix the error before that downtime

01:14:34 ◼   ► negatively affects you.

01:14:37 ◼   ► They also can monitor interactions of your site they call them.

01:14:42 ◼   ► So let's say that you have your whole website but your store is hosted on another server

01:14:46 ◼   ► for security reasons or just for redundancy reasons and the store goes down but the website

01:14:51 ◼   ► is up and you're on the website and the website is fine and little do you know that your store

01:14:54 ◼   ► is down. Pingdom can monitor all of these parts independently and can let you know about

01:14:58 ◼   ► any of them that are struggling or having trouble. Pingdom detects around 13 million

01:15:03 ◼   ► outages every single month, there's more than 400,000 a day. Stuff on the web breaks all

01:15:08 ◼   ► the time, that's why you need Pingdom. Check it out today and you'll be the first to know

01:15:11 ◼   ► know when your website is down. Go to pingdom.com/upgrade for a 14 day free trial and use the code

01:15:17 ◼   ► "upgrade" at checkout to get 20% off. Thank you so much to Pingdom for their continued

01:15:22 ◼   ► support of this show and Relay FM.

01:15:25 ◼   ► So we have some Ask Upgrade questions. First off comes from Eric "Couldn't a third party

01:15:31 ◼   ► make a breakaway magnetic USB C cable now that MagSafe is dead? Why isn't this a thing?"

01:15:36 ◼   ► I have to say, so I have a MacBook now, which I'm trying out, and those USB-C cables, they

01:15:42 ◼   ► go in and stay in. Like, those things do not pop out. If someone steps on that cable, that

01:15:47 ◼   ► thing is going to fly in.

01:15:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I've heard some people say different things about it. Glenn Fleischman did a whole

01:15:53 ◼   ► story at Macworld about, like, the ha—you know, pulling it out. The new MacBooks are

01:15:59 ◼   ► heavier, so it might provide a little more leverage than the little MacBook. I will say

01:16:08 ◼   ► Griffin technology has a breakaway USB-C cable called BreakSafe for $40. So it's not cheap,

01:16:18 ◼   ► and it leaves you with a little dongle sticking out of your USB-C port. But if you really

01:16:23 ◼   ► want it, you can get it. But yeah, it's, it's, uh, I'm going to miss MagSafe, but we'll see.

01:16:30 ◼   ► We'll see how it goes. It's, uh, it's, yeah, it was, it was a fun feature, although it

01:16:35 ◼   ► also popped off a lot. So here's the thing, Jason. So I am, I'm nearly 30 years old. I've

01:16:43 ◼   ► never had a Mac laptop without MagSafe. Well, you do now. And that's weird to me. It's weird

01:16:52 ◼   ► to me. I mean it started to become weird when I moved to iOS mostly right and iOS devices

01:16:58 ◼   ► have never had that and my iOS devices are big, you know I had the big iPads and that's

01:17:03 ◼   ► a strange thing. But yeah it's um it is something that I think is awkward I really wish Apple

01:17:08 ◼   ► could have worked out a way to do it you know in some magical way you know even if the cable

01:17:13 ◼   ► broke off at like a point on the cable I don't know what it would be but I wish that there

01:17:18 ◼   ► could have been a way to make that work but obviously it's they would have done if it

01:17:22 ◼   ► it was easy enough to make it work reliably because they created this technology. You

01:17:26 ◼   ► know, nobody else has had it. It would be really great if they could continue it, but

01:17:31 ◼   ► obviously in this new USB-C future they can't. And I do say, like I do think it's a shame,

01:17:37 ◼   ► and I'm sure I will have more bad things happen than I've had in the past, because I've never

01:17:42 ◼   ► had to think about it, right? Like it's just never been something that's popped into my

01:17:45 ◼   ► head because one of my laptops has been that way. However, I really do like the USB-C idea,

01:17:50 ◼   ► the idea that I could use external batteries and all that sort of stuff and it could be

01:17:53 ◼   ► more universal and in the future more likely that I can just charge my laptop wherever.

01:18:01 ◼   ► You know like I now I have USB-C cables that can work in a bunch of different places like

01:18:06 ◼   ► I have I have a brick that I can plug my iPad or my iPhone into because I have USB-C to

01:18:11 ◼   ► lightning cables. That's how I travel. My Android phone is all USB-C right I like this

01:18:17 ◼   ► I mean it goes back to like, there is a, I think we have a question in here, yeah it's

01:18:21 ◼   ► actually the next question, which is Chris's question, which is how long until Lightning

01:18:25 ◼   ► gets replaced on iOS devices.

01:18:27 ◼   ► I think we mentioned this in the past, I really wish that we could have USB-C on our iOS devices,

01:18:35 ◼   ► so just have the same connector everywhere, that'd be amazing.

01:18:37 ◼   ► I can't see it happening for a long time, I think Apple had to go through a lot of,

01:18:44 ◼   ► You know, if we think dongle town is bad now

01:18:46 ◼   ► and the reaction to that,

01:18:47 ◼   ► when Apple took the 30 pin away,

01:18:49 ◼   ► a lot of upset people, right?

01:18:51 ◼   ► Which makes, and I understood it at the time, right?

01:18:53 ◼   ► Because so much of everything had a 30 pin connector on it.

01:18:57 ◼   ► Like we had devices strewn across our homes

01:19:00 ◼   ► and cables and such,

01:19:01 ◼   ► which are the 30 pins sleeping around for so long.

01:19:04 ◼   ► But I really wish that all of my devices

01:19:07 ◼   ► charged via USB-C now,

01:19:09 ◼   ► because it has a lot of benefits that lightning does.

01:19:11 ◼   ► super small, it's reversible, but even better than that, you can get a lot of data and power

01:19:18 ◼   ► and stuff all passed through as one thing. Imagine the world of iPad peripherals if we

01:19:24 ◼   ► could have USB-C. Imagine that.

01:19:25 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the one that I'll throw out there as a possibility, as I feel like the iPad

01:19:30 ◼   ► Pro, it wouldn't shock me if the iPad Pro ended up with a USB-C port at some point.

01:19:36 ◼   ► That would take a lot of extra iOS work.

01:19:38 ◼   ► I think it's gonna happen. I think it's gonna happen.

01:19:41 ◼   ► I don't know why I have nothing except my own opinions on this.

01:19:45 ◼   ► The counter argument would be Apple really cares about its leverage and the growth of

01:19:49 ◼   ► iOS and on the Mac it's like, yeah, it's a computer.

01:19:53 ◼   ► Like we were saying before, it's like they're okay with giving in to the standard.

01:19:57 ◼   ► They already were using a standard on the Mac anyway, so might as well have it be this

01:20:01 ◼   ► nice new standard.

01:20:02 ◼   ► Going to a standard on iOS when they have their own thing that they control, that's

01:20:06 ◼   ► a harder sell.

01:20:08 ◼   ► But I do think, I have those moments when I think, if the iPad Pro is truly like a laptop

01:20:14 ◼   ► basically it's a professional computer, then why not put USB on it? I don't know. Instead

01:20:21 ◼   ► of like little lightning dongles to convert to everything.

01:20:24 ◼   ► Let's go with both. I know it'd be crazily confusing.

01:20:27 ◼   ► Two ports on an iPad Pro. How about that?

01:20:29 ◼   ► Come on, it's big enough. It's big enough. Frank asks, "Could the iMac and Mac Pro merge

01:20:34 ◼   ► into a new Mac line. Something we didn't discuss. I don't, so Frank, my feeling would

01:20:39 ◼   ► be if Apple were going to do this, they would not merge the iMac and Mac Pro. They would

01:20:45 ◼   ► merge the two monitorless Macs into one.

01:20:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree. I think that that was what I was going to say too is I think it's more

01:20:53 ◼   ► likely that Apple says, okay, there's a market for these monitorless Macs. So we're just

01:21:00 ◼   ► gonna make a monitor-less Mac, and it's not gonna be the Mac Mini or the Mac Pro, or maybe

01:21:05 ◼   ► we'll call it the Mac Pro, but it's gonna be this thing. And--

01:21:09 ◼   ► I'd like it if they just called it the Mac.

01:21:11 ◼   ► The Mac?

01:21:12 ◼   ► You can, you know, you can go for the Pro Bundle, you know, when you put a bunch of

01:21:15 ◼   ► stuff in it and it costs six gajillion dollars.

01:21:18 ◼   ► Yeah, and this goes back to, for like the last decade, all sorts of people have been

01:21:22 ◼   ► talking about what, um, I think Rob Griffiths at Macworld back in the day called it the

01:21:27 ◼   ► mythical mid-range mini tower. People call it the XMac. Yeah, it's possible, right? I

01:21:33 ◼   ► mean the problem is that it's not a very focused product at that point, it's just sort of an

01:21:37 ◼   ► all things to all people kind of product, and I'm not sure Apple makes that product

01:21:40 ◼   ► rather than a whizzy Mac Pro and a, you know, also existing Mac Mini. But I think that would

01:21:46 ◼   ► be more likely than like the iMac and the Mac Pro. The iMac is pretty powerful, but

01:21:50 ◼   ► they would need to do a pretty big redesign of the iMac to let it do some of the stuff

01:21:54 ◼   ► that a Mac Pro can do, and I don't think they're going to do that.

01:21:57 ◼   ► Googleish has turned up an 11 year old, 11 year, one week old article from John Siracusa

01:22:05 ◼   ► on Ars Technica called "Night of the Living Ex-Mac".

01:22:08 ◼   ► See? Yeah, it's been going around for a long time. I'm looking now at an article by Dan

01:22:16 ◼   ► Frakes from, so not Rob Griffiths, although those guys were both agitators for this a

01:22:21 ◼   ► lot. The mythical mid-range Mac mini-tower on Macworld from June 2007. So that's another

01:22:28 ◼   ► classic.

01:22:29 ◼   ► It's out there.

01:22:31 ◼   ► It's out there, and again, I think it hasn't happened yet and it probably won't, but that

01:22:36 ◼   ► would be--

01:22:37 ◼   ► I think it's more likely to happen now than ever that they would just say, "We're just

01:22:39 ◼   ► gonna make one of these," you know, like--

01:22:41 ◼   ► And you can build to order it with whatever, and put it wherever, put it under your desk,

01:22:46 ◼   ► we don't care, just because--

01:22:47 ◼   ► then like the reason was we just want something in the middle but at the time

01:22:52 ◼   ► those two product categories were both selling

01:22:56 ◼   ► but now I just don't think Apple really has the bandwidth

01:23:00 ◼   ► in 2016/17 to do both a Mac Mini and a Mac Pro it just doesn't feel right to

01:23:07 ◼   ► me yeah I wonder which one of them sells

01:23:10 ◼   ► more

01:23:14 ◼   ► I bet you have. Well, I mean, who can tell now too, because nobody should buy Mac Pro now, but my guess is that when they're both refreshed and selling,

01:23:21 ◼   ► um, that the Mac Pro makes Apple more money.

01:23:24 ◼   ► Oh, definitely makes more money. I wonder how many more units they sell.

01:23:27 ◼   ► Uh, I don't know.

01:23:28 ◼   ► Blacklin wonders, uh, what updates are you expecting in the spring?

01:23:32 ◼   ► And it's given us a bunch of options. iPad Pro 9 7 12 9, MacBook, iMac, Mac Pro, something else?

01:23:39 ◼   ► You think everything?

01:23:41 ◼   ► You think we're gonna get in the spring what I thought we were gonna get two weeks ago?

01:23:45 ◼   ► Yep. Really. I do. New iPad Pros, updated MacBook, updated iMacs, and with any luck,

01:23:53 ◼   ► updated Mac Pro, although that's the question there is does that come in the spring or does

01:23:57 ◼   ► that come at WWDC or you know when what is the timing with Intel stuff and I would I would say

01:24:04 ◼   ► I think all of those that Lachlan listed I would say I think are gonna get updated.

01:24:10 ◼   ► the only products in that list that I would say are surefire are the iPad Pros, 9.7 and

01:24:16 ◼   ► 12.9.

01:24:17 ◼   ► And I would throw the mini in there as well.

01:24:19 ◼   ► I think we're going to get a new mini.

01:24:21 ◼   ► I don't think it's going to fall into the pro line as I've seen some people speculating.

01:24:25 ◼   ► I think that would just...

01:24:27 ◼   ► iPad mini pro just doesn't make any sense to me.

01:24:31 ◼   ► I think there's going to be an update to the MacBook because I think that they can do it.

01:24:36 ◼   ► I think they could do it now, but that they've got more planned and that's why it didn't

01:24:41 ◼   ► get revved when the MacBook Pros got revved.

01:24:44 ◼   ► Because they could have put a next generation, I think there's a new chip generation now

01:24:48 ◼   ► that they could have put in there, and they didn't.

01:24:51 ◼   ► So after two years I'm holding out some hope that it will be slightly redesigned to perhaps

01:24:58 ◼   ► have two ports.

01:24:59 ◼   ► I know, crazy right?

01:25:02 ◼   ► wants to know how often do you completely power down your iOS devices? My iOS devices

01:25:09 ◼   ► only ever get powered down when they run out of battery or I have to reboot them. I never

01:25:15 ◼   ► turn them off.

01:25:17 ◼   ► Every now and then I will have a phone or iPad, usually it's a phone that is draining

01:25:22 ◼   ► battery rapidly and seems warm and I'll be like okay something weird is going on here

01:25:27 ◼   ► and I will power it down, but it usually is photos, I will power it down and bring it

01:25:32 ◼   ► back up. But that's basically a restart. So yeah, basically never, unless there's

01:25:39 ◼   ► an OS update or something like that. Just never.

01:25:46 ◼   ► And finally today, Dylan wants to know, "Has anyone come up with a reason to get the big

01:25:49 ◼   ► Apple TV yet?" In case you don't know, because I'd forgotten completely until this

01:25:54 ◼   ► question came in there are what is it what's what's the sizes of the Apple TV's

01:25:58 ◼   ► it's something like 64 128 or something like that was it 32 and 128 I don't know

01:26:06 ◼   ► that there are two sizes and yeah storage storage on the device yeah so

01:26:13 ◼   ► you can load it up with apps so there's a 149 32 gig model and a 199 64 gig

01:26:19 ◼   ► model for those extra 50 bucks you get more storage for whatever for apps lots of apps

01:26:28 ◼   ► I guess but then like even like you know you think oh games but all of the games do the

01:26:33 ◼   ► app slicing thinning thing yeah I don't know the reason no Dylan the answer is no no one's

01:26:39 ◼   ► come up with a reason to get the big Apple TV yet sorry if you out there the listener

01:26:46 ◼   ► have a legitimate reason other than I just wanted the bigger one. Let us know. You can

01:26:50 ◼   ► let us know as you can ask us questions every single week. We always get many and we really

01:26:55 ◼   ► appreciate them by just tweeting with the hashtag #AskUpgrade and we will try and answer

01:27:00 ◼   ► as many as we can on the show every week. If you want to catch up with our show notes

01:27:04 ◼   ► for today just go to relay.fm/upgrades/114. Jason is on twitter he is @jsnell j s n e

01:27:12 ◼   ► I am @imike, I am Y-K-E. You can find Jason's work online at sixcolors.com.

01:27:20 ◼   ► I want to take one last moment to thank our sponsors again for this week.

01:27:23 ◼   ► That is Pingdom, MacWalden and Encapsula.

01:27:26 ◼   ► We will be back next time.

01:27:27 ◼   ► As always, thank you for listening.

01:27:30 ◼   ► Until next week, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

01:27:33 ◼   ► Goodbye, Myke Hurley.

01:27:34 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:27:37 ◼   ► [ Music ]