Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► *BEEP*

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:07 ◼   ► from relay FM this is upgrade episode number 31 today show is brought to you

00:00:14 ◼   ► by igloo and smile with PDF pen scan plus this is an extra special episode

00:00:20 ◼   ► today we have a second episode in the week you guys thought that we wouldn't

00:00:23 ◼   ► be back till next week to you have me but here I am I'm back from my holiday

00:00:27 ◼   ► and talking to mr. Jason snail hi Jason so hi Myke welcome back it was very

00:00:33 ◼   ► funny when I was listening to last week's episode and you're like oh Myke

00:00:36 ◼   ► be back next week and I'm like little do they know. Well did you see at the end of the uh and

00:00:41 ◼   ► that was that wasn't last week's episode that was this week's episode we just have another one um

00:00:46 ◼   ► at the end I said we'll be back next week and then I said we'll see you soon. That was foreshadowing

00:00:53 ◼   ► because I didn't want to say we'll see you next week because I knew we would actually be back

00:00:56 ◼   ► before then and so here we are. Here we are. So uh the reason we're doing this today is because

00:01:03 ◼   ► today the review embargo lifted for the new 12-inch MacBook. You have one of them and

00:01:10 ◼   ► you've been testing it out for a couple of weeks and are you happy to say that you like

00:01:14 ◼   ► it?

00:01:15 ◼   ► It's not a couple of weeks. I actually got home from my very long European journey on

00:01:20 ◼   ► Friday and Saturday morning I got it. I've only had it less than a week. I could have

00:01:29 ◼   ► have probably gotten it I think the previous Tuesday was when they were

00:01:31 ◼   ► gonna ship them out and I told them that I was in Ireland and that they should

00:01:35 ◼   ► they said we'll just ship it to have it arrive when you get home so that's so

00:01:40 ◼   ► how many days have you actually had it in your person this is day six so five

00:01:45 ◼   ► five days covering the writing of the review that I had it right and how long

00:01:51 ◼   ► so you would have had it for like maybe another four or five yeah I would have

00:01:56 ◼   ► - I would have had it for another four.

00:01:58 ◼   ► Yeah, 'cause the embargo was a Thursday

00:02:00 ◼   ► and they were gonna ship it out on Tuesday.

00:02:01 ◼   ► So, you know, really I would have had it for an extra,

00:02:04 ◼   ► yeah, extra three or four days.

00:02:06 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:02:07 ◼   ► - But I was having too much fun in Ireland,

00:02:09 ◼   ► so that didn't happen.

00:02:11 ◼   ► I asked them if they could send it to Ireland

00:02:13 ◼   ► and they said no, so it's fine, fair enough.

00:02:16 ◼   ► - Hey, it's worth the go.

00:02:17 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:02:18 ◼   ► - So I have two very quick pieces of follow up

00:02:21 ◼   ► on last week's episode.

00:02:22 ◼   ► - You mean this week's episode?

00:02:24 ◼   ► - Oh, the last episode.

00:02:25 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:02:26 ◼   ► 30, the Syracuse episode. Yeah, I got home a couple of hours ago. I'm kind of all over

00:02:32 ◼   ► the place. I don't know what day of the week it is. I haven't known what day of the week

00:02:35 ◼   ► it is for two weeks. It feels like Monday though, doesn't it? Because we're talking.

00:02:38 ◼   ► It feels like Monday now, and also I just recorded with Casey, so I don't know where

00:02:41 ◼   ► I am. I'm recording Connected later. I don't know what's going on. I know what that's like.

00:02:46 ◼   ► That was my weekend. Very confusing. I had no idea when I was recording with Casey. So

00:02:52 ◼   ► I have two sentences, that's all I have.

00:02:57 ◼   ► One, I thought that the ad reads were great

00:02:59 ◼   ► and you did a good job because you said

00:03:00 ◼   ► you thought they were bad and I thought they were very good.

00:03:02 ◼   ► - It was just weird.

00:03:04 ◼   ► You were in charge of this show.

00:03:06 ◼   ► This is the one podcast I do that I'm not in charge of.

00:03:09 ◼   ► And I had to be in charge of it, it was very strange.

00:03:12 ◼   ► - And the other thing is, I would like to issue

00:03:15 ◼   ► an open challenge to John Siracusa

00:03:16 ◼   ► to pull my beard at WWDC.

00:03:18 ◼   ► - To prove that you're the real Myke

00:03:21 ◼   ► or the, the, and not the clone.

00:03:23 ◼   ► - The twin mic.

00:03:24 ◼   ► I was on a plane doing that thing

00:03:27 ◼   ► where you're like shaking of laughter

00:03:29 ◼   ► and people think you're crazy.

00:03:30 ◼   ► - I know that thing.

00:03:32 ◼   ► - That was what was happening to me.

00:03:34 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:03:36 ◼   ► - So yeah, really great episode.

00:03:37 ◼   ► It was nice to hear you two talking together

00:03:39 ◼   ► and I'm very excited for Robot or Not.

00:03:42 ◼   ► - Yes, we're laying the foundations.

00:03:45 ◼   ► - I'm way more excited than John is, I think about that.

00:03:48 ◼   ► - We all are.

00:03:50 ◼   ► But he's warming up to it.

00:03:53 ◼   ► So we'll move this robot around.

00:03:55 ◼   ► - He was being very, very protective.

00:03:57 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:03:58 ◼   ► - He wouldn't let you spoil it.

00:03:59 ◼   ► - I think that was telling that he thought

00:04:01 ◼   ► I was gonna ruin it by talking about it too far in advance.

00:04:04 ◼   ► So that's good.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Yeah, that was good.

00:04:06 ◼   ► I should say, we also got a lot of follow up from people.

00:04:08 ◼   ► We were talking about how when one of my complaints

00:04:12 ◼   ► about one section of the "Becoming Steve Jobs" book

00:04:14 ◼   ► is they talk about the iPhone being a,

00:04:17 ◼   ► the first iPhone being a disappointment

00:04:19 ◼   ► because it didn't run apps, which fits into their whole narrative

00:04:22 ◼   ► about how the App Store was this wonderful thing,

00:04:25 ◼   ► which it was, but, you know,

00:04:26 ◼   ► I thought people really loved the iPhone

00:04:28 ◼   ► and were obsessed with the iPhone.

00:04:30 ◼   ► It was a huge talking point.

00:04:31 ◼   ► Everybody was talking about they wanted one

00:04:33 ◼   ► and could they get one, and I remember that from the time,

00:04:37 ◼   ► and it doesn't really fit with their idea that,

00:04:38 ◼   ► oh, it doesn't have third-party apps,

00:04:40 ◼   ► so we're not excited about it.

00:04:41 ◼   ► I think that's a bogus claim.

00:04:43 ◼   ► And we said during that, like --

00:04:46 ◼   ► because they said it doesn't run powerful spreadsheets,

00:04:48 ◼   ► and John and I were both laughing about like who wanted powerful spreadsheets on their phones back then.

00:04:53 ◼   ► And we heard from everybody who was using Windows Mobile at the time that had like a mobile version of Excel saying,

00:04:59 ◼   ► well, actually, I was running powerful spreadsheets on my phone, which if we said no phones ran spreadsheets in 2007,

00:05:10 ◼   ► I will apologize for that. But I think you're missing the point.

00:05:13 ◼   ► The point is, I think regular people did not think of the iPhone and think,

00:05:18 ◼   ► That is a device that I would like to run a powerful spreadsheet on, or indeed, really,

00:05:23 ◼   ► third-party apps.

00:05:24 ◼   ► I think the iPhone was quite a phenomenon in the first generation before the App Store

00:05:29 ◼   ► came out.

00:05:30 ◼   ► That was what we were saying.

00:05:31 ◼   ► I think that the book is wrong in saying that it was a disappointment.

00:05:36 ◼   ► It was a disappointment to super tech nerds and to developers that they couldn't develop

00:05:40 ◼   ► for it right out of the box.

00:05:42 ◼   ► But I remember everybody I knew asking me about the iPhone when it was coming out.

00:05:47 ◼   ► were really excited about it. And so to say that the iPhone's first, like the

00:05:52 ◼   ► iPod, because it didn't run on PCs, the first generation, although we all thought

00:05:57 ◼   ► it was pretty amazing, it was not in the public consciousness. The iPhone was in

00:06:00 ◼   ► the public consciousness from the beginning and if your book claims that

00:06:04 ◼   ► it was kind of a swing and the miss and it wasn't until the App Store that the

00:06:07 ◼   ► iPhone caught fire, I think your book is wrong. So yeah I got to that part today.

00:06:13 ◼   ► like I've just gotten to that bit in the book and I was sitting on the plane

00:06:18 ◼   ► listening to it and like what are you talking about? Where did this

00:06:22 ◼   ► information come from? Well and you've been doing with Behind the App I mean

00:06:26 ◼   ► there's enthusiasm that developers had for it there's no doubt and we there

00:06:30 ◼   ► were several people I remember in the days afterward that I was on a podcast

00:06:34 ◼   ► with John Gruber and Merlin Mann where we we basically said there's gonna be an

00:06:38 ◼   ► app store in a year we were already talking about it's like it'll be next

00:06:41 ◼   ► year and it'll be curated and that's exactly what happened.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Where these guys, yeah, like I said, I feel like they're—the problem I have with the

00:06:49 ◼   ► book, because I don't dislike the book like John disliked the first 10% of the book.

00:06:55 ◼   ► Let's keep that in mind.

00:06:56 ◼   ► I don't feel as negatively about it, but I do have—at several points I see this narrative

00:07:02 ◼   ► they're trying to build and I say, "No, that's not real.

00:07:04 ◼   ► That didn't actually happen."

00:07:05 ◼   ► And that doesn't make me super enthusiastic about the other parts of the book that I don't

00:07:10 ◼   ► know the facts of because I have to take them at their word. And I get that they're trying

00:07:15 ◼   ► to tell a certain kind of story, but things that in it do not align with my recollection

00:07:21 ◼   ► of how the world was then. But anyway, the point is, if you used... I heard from somebody

00:07:26 ◼   ► who said they used a BlackBerry because they needed to do SSH and the first iPhone couldn't

00:07:30 ◼   ► do SSH connection. Okay, fair enough. And if you wanted to use Excel, you could do that

00:07:35 ◼   ► on Windows Mobile. Fair enough. I will grant you that, but that's sort of not... What's

00:07:40 ◼   ► not our larger point. That's all. That's all I wanted to say. So that was that was an interesting

00:07:43 ◼   ► trend that I heard that we were being dismissive of of apps generally not speaking of particular

00:07:49 ◼   ► applications with very technical people but sort of like the the mass of enthusiastic

00:07:55 ◼   ► regular people who were really excited about the iPhone even though it didn't run any apps

00:08:01 ◼   ► other than the ones that were stock.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I was dumbfounded. Because you know you're saying about how a lot of it, and I

00:08:10 ◼   ► agree with you, we were talking about it last week, that a lot of the book comes from the

00:08:16 ◼   ► place of the business writer. And we were talking about the irrelevancy in Ewan Chan's

00:08:20 ◼   ► book about that again on this week's episode. I'm so confused.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Episode 30.

00:08:25 ◼   ► episode 30. episode 30, we'll go with that. Syracuse at times. and I get that they may

00:08:33 ◼   ► be a bit blinded by that but even from a business standpoint the iFilm was an incredible success.

00:08:40 ◼   ► I don't understand who said it was a bad thing. I don't know. I think that's actually of everything

00:08:51 ◼   ► that I've read that was the thing where I was like you guys have got that so wrong and

00:08:55 ◼   ► I don't know who proofread this for you. I don't know who fact-checked this for you because

00:09:00 ◼   ► they missed this. Really, I was very, very surprised by that bit.

00:09:06 ◼   ► So Jason, I have a couple of questions for you in regards to the review of two parts.

00:09:10 ◼   ► I want to get into those in a moment. But before we do that, let's take a break to thank

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00:11:04 ◼   ► So Mr Jason Snell.

00:11:06 ◼   ► Yes, Mr iMichael.

00:11:08 ◼   ► You have two parts of your review.

00:11:11 ◼   ► this on Macworld and one lives in Six Colors this time yeah? Yeah I so Macworld said

00:11:17 ◼   ► they wanted me to write the review and I don't work for them anymore so they have

00:11:21 ◼   ► to pay me to write it which is fine because I do freelance work now and I

00:11:25 ◼   ► think me writing me writing Macworld Mac reviews is something I'm I know how to

00:11:31 ◼   ► do that so I was happy to do that and if they hadn't wanted me to I would have

00:11:35 ◼   ► written it on Six Colors but they were they wanted me to do the kind of full-on

00:11:39 ◼   ► thing for them. So I did, and then as with the iPhone actually last fall, which is for

00:11:45 ◼   ► some different reasons, as I was leaving Macworld, I did a, you know, I did sort of like bonus

00:11:50 ◼   ► track material on Six Colors with sort of, which we used to do that sort of like both

00:11:56 ◼   ► of those stories on Macworld back in the day. So that seemed to be a way for me to put some

00:12:00 ◼   ► MacBook material on Six Colors and link to my review at Macworld.

00:12:05 ◼   ► I like it.

00:12:06 ◼   ► Well, I mean, it's good because you're a six colors reader, especially, you kind of get

00:12:09 ◼   ► everything because you see the link to the main review and then you get your extra part

00:12:14 ◼   ► as well, which is good.

00:12:16 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:12:17 ◼   ► And that lets me, I wrote that, I mean, I literally wrote them in order.

00:12:20 ◼   ► I turned in my 3500 word review to Susie at Macworld at noon yesterday.

00:12:25 ◼   ► And then in the afternoon, I wrote the notebook, which is like all the stuff I couldn't fit

00:12:29 ◼   ► in and maybe a little more personal take on some of the things that I was in there.

00:12:34 ◼   ► I got to work through some of my feelings about the keyboard.

00:12:38 ◼   ► I got to talk a little bit more about the display,

00:12:42 ◼   ► which is Apple made some interesting decisions

00:12:44 ◼   ► with the display.

00:12:46 ◼   ► And yeah, so that was the idea there.

00:12:49 ◼   ► I imagine I will write some reviews for Macworld

00:12:53 ◼   ► as long as they want to do it,

00:12:54 ◼   ► and if the timing and the pay works, then that'll be great.

00:12:57 ◼   ► And other stuff I'll just review on Six Colors,

00:13:00 ◼   ► and that's fine, too.

00:13:01 ◼   ► And you know, like I said, people will notice I've written stuff in a bunch of different

00:13:06 ◼   ► places. I am definitely trying to have freelance be part of what I do in addition to Six Colors

00:13:10 ◼   ► and the podcast stuff. It's all part of a kind of a whole of me trying to figure out

00:13:14 ◼   ► the best way to get to support my family and remain independent, which is what I'm working

00:13:19 ◼   ► at here, like you are.

00:13:20 ◼   ► Yeah, and you need to spread the Jason Snow message far and wide, you know?

00:13:25 ◼   ► Well, I think it's good for Six Colors for me to appear, especially Macworld readers

00:13:29 ◼   ► who know me but might not know that I am still doing stuff, that I can provide MacWorld readers

00:13:34 ◼   ► with the review they expect, and that's good. And then also, you know, they can say, "Oh

00:13:40 ◼   ► yeah, that guy, what's he doing now?" And I think that's good for me.

00:13:43 ◼   ► Right, so we have been asking our listeners to provide—our "upgradients," as you may

00:13:49 ◼   ► say—to provide their questions via the Ask Upgrade, but I've read through both pieces

00:13:53 ◼   ► and I have some questions and comments of my own, if that's okay.

00:13:56 ◼   ► Sure. So I kind of want to start off with a big one and maybe this will help lead into

00:14:03 ◼   ► some overall feelings about how you feel about the new MacBook. You got the space grey one,

00:14:09 ◼   ► that's right? Yeah. If you were going to design this machine, if Apple came to you today and

00:14:14 ◼   ► gave you the power to change stuff about this machine, what would you change? And this is

00:14:20 ◼   ► considering your needs first and then maybe also secondarily considering the needs of

00:14:25 ◼   ► average consumer. You can design two machines if you want to.

00:14:29 ◼   ► Ah...

00:14:32 ◼   ► You had to start with the most, like, outlandish

00:14:36 ◼   ► question. Okay, so let me get this straight. So I can make any change I want

00:14:41 ◼   ► for me, and then I can make any change I want for everyone else?

00:14:44 ◼   ► Yeah, so because my feeling about this is, like, I think, we're talking about the

00:14:48 ◼   ► keyboard a bit more, but I think that maybe you would change

00:14:51 ◼   ► that for you, but wouldn't necessarily need to change it for the world.

00:14:55 ◼   ► Yeah, well, wow. The keyboard, for me, the keyboard is the deal-breaker, and I'm not

00:15:05 ◼   ► sure it's an actual deal-breaker or whether it's just the thing that I like the least

00:15:10 ◼   ► about it, but that keyboard is not great. And it's interesting because talking to Apple,

00:15:20 ◼   ► I get the sense that, you know, sometimes you have your conversations with people at

00:15:25 ◼   ► Apple about products and they're like, they're hitting all the like, this is revolutionary

00:15:28 ◼   ► and it's going to be, it's everybody's going to love it.

00:15:31 ◼   ► And this is the way things are going to be in the future.

00:15:33 ◼   ► I didn't get that sense from them about the keyboard.

00:15:36 ◼   ► It felt to me like they were acknowledging, look, we know that the reduced travel, you

00:15:40 ◼   ► know, the keys physically just don't move very much up and down.

00:15:43 ◼   ► We know that that's a problem.

00:15:46 ◼   ► So we've engineered a bunch of other things to try and offset it as much as we can.

00:15:50 ◼   ► can't mitigate it. So they've got the new the little butterfly mechanism and

00:15:54 ◼   ► they've got the the stainless steel things that it's they're hitting on and

00:16:00 ◼   ► it sort of makes it a little kind of clicky. It's got the the wider keys,

00:16:06 ◼   ► they're more stable, they're all these things that they're trying to do all of

00:16:09 ◼   ► which is true and I think actually does improve the feel but in the end it still

00:16:16 ◼   ► doesn't have very much key travel and feels all, you know, like I said at the

00:16:21 ◼   ► time when when I went to the event, it's like halfway between a real keyboard and

00:16:25 ◼   ► it like typing on an iPad. There's more movement than the iPad where there's

00:16:29 ◼   ► physically nothing. You're just hitting glass. But not a lot more. It's

00:16:33 ◼   ► pretty dramatic. I think it's less than half of the movement of the standard

00:16:37 ◼   ► Apple keyboard. So I would change that because when I think about buying one of

00:16:40 ◼   ► these down the road here, that's the one that I'm like, "Would I really want that

00:16:45 ◼   ► to be the thing that I was doing all my typing on. Would I write, you know, hundreds of thousands

00:16:50 ◼   ► of words on that keyboard? And I was able to type. I went to typewracer.com, which is

00:16:55 ◼   ► my choice for testing my typing speed, and I was able to do 120 words per minute on it.

00:17:00 ◼   ► So you know, it was it was perfectly fine in terms of speed, but I just don't like the

00:17:04 ◼   ► feel of it. And I don't feel like I'm a giant keyboard nerd like John Gruber and some other

00:17:10 ◼   ► people who are like super obsessive about keyboards in a way that I'm not. I actually

00:17:14 ◼   ► like the current Apple keyboard design, but the MacBook keyboard just doesn't work for

00:17:19 ◼   ► me. You know, you get used to it, but I didn't like it. So I think that would be what I would

00:17:25 ◼   ► change first off is find a way to make a computer that's roughly this thin and light, but have

00:17:30 ◼   ► a better keyboard, have more movement in the keyboard. Maybe it's a magical thing that,

00:17:35 ◼   ► you know, when the computer's closed, the keys are all nestled snugly, and then when

00:17:41 ◼   ► you open it up, they pop out to reveal Mork travel. I don't know. I mean, this is why

00:17:46 ◼   ► they engineered it the way they did, and they knew it was going to be a compromise, but

00:17:50 ◼   ► I don't love it. So that would be the thing I would change. For everybody else, I mean,

00:17:54 ◼   ► obviously I would say you need a second USB port, and that would make things easier, or

00:18:04 ◼   ► an old-style USB port, or a Thunderbolt port, or something like that, just because it would

00:18:08 ◼   ► be more flexible that way. I think a second USB-C port even would be good enough. I would

00:18:13 ◼   ► also probably put an adapter in the box. But, you know, that would be if I had like magic

00:18:20 ◼   ► superpowers and there was no like economic reality and technical reality, which is, it

00:18:26 ◼   ► is the product that it is. But, you know, that would be keyboard for me, dealing with

00:18:31 ◼   ► the port issue maybe for everyone else.

00:18:34 ◼   ► So that question and my next question, they're like, the reason I'm asking these weird questions

00:18:39 ◼   ► is because I want to try and give a sense to people for how you feel about the machine

00:18:43 ◼   ► without rehashing the review, you know?

00:18:45 ◼   ► So my next question is, you talk about, and I know you speak, you are one of the people

00:18:49 ◼   ► that speak very fondly of the 12-inch power book.

00:18:54 ◼   ► What made you love the 12-inch power book that's missing from this MacBook?

00:18:59 ◼   ► Because in theory, this is a spiritual successor to that machine.

00:19:03 ◼   ► And this is the machine that, you know, everybody wanted that machine forever, right?

00:19:06 ◼   ► They wanted the 12-inch PowerBook, and they kind of got it with the 11-inch MacBook Air,

00:19:11 ◼   ► but just still only did that little thing.

00:19:13 ◼   ► And I assume that when Apple brought this out on stage, many people were like, "That's

00:19:17 ◼   ► it.

00:19:18 ◼   ► They've given me the 12-inch PowerBook again."

00:19:21 ◼   ► What they did with the 12-inch PowerBook was they said, "This is a computer that's defined

00:19:27 ◼   ► by the width of the keyboard, and we want to make it as narrow as possible, so we'll

00:19:30 ◼   ► make it exactly the width of the keyboard."

00:19:32 ◼   ► The MacBook is kind of like that, although there's a little bit more.

00:19:35 ◼   ► The 12-inch PowerBook is still the narrowest Mac laptop ever.

00:19:40 ◼   ► There's a little more space on this than there was on the sides, and it's a slightly wider

00:19:45 ◼   ► keyboard, I believe, than the standard Apple keyboard.

00:19:48 ◼   ► Just slightly, but it spreads slightly wider.

00:19:52 ◼   ► I think the 11-inch was a perfectly fine, you know, spiritual successor to the 12-inch

00:19:59 ◼   ► PowerBook as a, you know, making this as little as possible is the goal. As light and thin

00:20:05 ◼   ► and small as possible is the goal. And the 11-inch air feels like that, and certainly

00:20:11 ◼   ► this MacBook feels like that too. You know, I think the, I don't even know what to say

00:20:17 ◼   ► beyond that. I think the 12-inch PowerBook was more of a, it wasn't entirely like fully

00:20:22 ◼   ► featured, but you know, it had lots of ports and stuff. It was from an era where you needed

00:20:26 ◼   ► to have all of the ports.

00:20:28 ◼   ► And again, the one port,

00:20:31 ◼   ► I actually am not sure which is a bigger deal,

00:20:33 ◼   ► the fact that you can't have an external device

00:20:36 ◼   ► hooked into it and charge without extra stuff.

00:20:40 ◼   ► Or whether it's just that USB-C is different

00:20:43 ◼   ► and everybody's gonna have to buy adapters.

00:20:44 ◼   ► I think one of the biggest things is going to be,

00:20:47 ◼   ► if you've got one of these MacBooks

00:20:48 ◼   ► and you do presentations,

00:20:49 ◼   ► you're gonna need to buy probably a couple

00:20:53 ◼   ► of different video adapters

00:20:54 ◼   ► and just carry them with you everywhere.

00:20:55 ◼   ► which is a fact of life that many Mac laptop people

00:20:59 ◼   ► had to do in the past.

00:21:01 ◼   ► But for the last few years, you could, you know,

00:21:04 ◼   ► people, maybe not everywhere,

00:21:06 ◼   ► but that mini DisplayPort plug

00:21:08 ◼   ► had had a long time to propagate.

00:21:10 ◼   ► And so it was a lot easier to assume

00:21:12 ◼   ► that the right adapter would be there.

00:21:14 ◼   ► And you know, that's a change with this.

00:21:17 ◼   ► Although I think maybe the 12 inch PowerBook

00:21:18 ◼   ► had a weird video, like a mini VGA or mini DVI

00:21:22 ◼   ► or something that you always had to carry the adapter around.

00:21:25 ◼   ► It's in the ballpark.

00:21:26 ◼   ► I think these are all, the 12 inch, when it went away,

00:21:28 ◼   ► there was sort of nothing for a long time.

00:21:30 ◼   ► And like, I used an iBook for a while,

00:21:32 ◼   ► even though I consider myself a pro user,

00:21:35 ◼   ► I used an iBook for a while because it was small.

00:21:37 ◼   ► And then the 11 inch MacBook Air,

00:21:41 ◼   ► and the MacBook definitely fits into that genre.

00:21:44 ◼   ► It's very much of the kind.

00:21:46 ◼   ► And it is the first one,

00:21:47 ◼   ► 'cause the Air had a lot of extra space

00:21:49 ◼   ► on the sides of the keyboard.

00:21:50 ◼   ► It is the first Mac laptop since the 12 inch PowerBook

00:21:54 ◼   ► have it like the keyboard is really the constraining feature of the product.

00:21:59 ◼   ► I want to come back to the keyboard because there's some other stuff that you talk about

00:22:04 ◼   ► in regards to that but this is something that many people have spoken about but I'm interested

00:22:09 ◼   ► for your take on it. Do you think it's fair to say that this Mac is the first Mac to take

00:22:15 ◼   ► big steps towards being closer to iOS? Like the software has been moving in that direction

00:22:21 ◼   ► But this machine seems to take hardware cues from it too.

00:22:24 ◼   ► And I know this is kind of crossing the line, but you mentioned that when you plug in the charging cord,

00:22:28 ◼   ► it chimes at you rather than giving you the light.

00:22:31 ◼   ► So it feels like, you know, with the battery and the way that you configure it,

00:22:34 ◼   ► where you buy it on the store page and you've got colors and you're taking away the illuminated logo.

00:22:42 ◼   ► And, you know, do you feel that this is maybe the first Mac which is kind of starting to bridge the gap?

00:22:49 ◼   ► Yeah, this is a Mac designed with...

00:22:53 ◼   ► I mean, this is the iPad of Macs.

00:22:57 ◼   ► That's how I feel like it is.

00:22:58 ◼   ► It's the iPad of Macs.

00:23:00 ◼   ► It comes in the iPad and iPhone colors.

00:23:03 ◼   ► When you plug it in, you plug it in with a little thing,

00:23:08 ◼   ► and it's, you know, the USB-C is bigger than Lightning,

00:23:10 ◼   ► but it's the same kind of shape, and you plug it in,

00:23:12 ◼   ► and it's got the one port,

00:23:14 ◼   ► and that port you use for any peripherals you want

00:23:16 ◼   ► or for power, just like the iPad.

00:23:18 ◼   ► It's got a headphone jack.

00:23:19 ◼   ► That's the only other jack on it.

00:23:21 ◼   ► It, you know, it chimes when you plug it in like an iPad.

00:23:25 ◼   ► If you've got it shut down and you plug it in,

00:23:27 ◼   ► the screen will actually light up briefly

00:23:29 ◼   ► and tell you how much battery is left.

00:23:30 ◼   ► That's a very iPad and not Mac kind of thing to do.

00:23:34 ◼   ► It definitely, the feel of it, it's informed by the iPad.

00:23:38 ◼   ► It's not an iPad. It's a Mac laptop, absolutely.

00:23:41 ◼   ► But this feels like the premise behind this product was,

00:23:45 ◼   ► can we take everything we've learned from the iPad

00:23:48 ◼   ► and put it in a in a in a MacBook. So let's go back to the keyboard. So right at

00:23:55 ◼   ► the start you kind of open your piece and you're talking about just

00:23:58 ◼   ► then with the PowerBook in that having a full-size keyboard dictates so much

00:24:02 ◼   ► about the design. It gives you dimensions and in some respects gives you a

00:24:07 ◼   ► thickness and that kind of stuff. If you want to have a full-size keyboard in

00:24:10 ◼   ► this thing it will dictate a lot of the stuff that you do. And then a quote from

00:24:15 ◼   ► review you say if you're not a keyboard snob you may not even notice the

00:24:19 ◼   ► difference but if there's any single feature that would make me reluctant to

00:24:22 ◼   ► buy a MacBook it would be the keyboard so I find it interesting that like you

00:24:26 ◼   ► know you you appreciate and it's definitely I think is the case that like

00:24:31 ◼   ► Apple constrained themselves from a design perspective to incorporate the

00:24:35 ◼   ► keyboard and as full a design as it can but actually in then in trying to do

00:24:40 ◼   ► other things they've made the keyboard worse do you think that Apple for did

00:24:44 ◼   ► themselves by insisting so much of the design focus on the keyboard that in and of itself

00:24:50 ◼   ► makes an inferior typing experience.

00:24:53 ◼   ► So they've pushed certain—they've made like, "It'll be this big because we want a full-size

00:24:57 ◼   ► keyboard," but the keyboard's still not as good as it could be or should be anyway.

00:25:01 ◼   ► So should they have actually then just made the keyboard smaller or made the whole thing

00:25:04 ◼   ► smaller?

00:25:05 ◼   ► Well, there's a philosophy at work here that is interesting, and it's design.

00:25:11 ◼   ► It's all about choices.

00:25:12 ◼   ► decided that thinness was important. They decided, and this is something that I believe

00:25:17 ◼   ► Apple has felt for a long time, which is the size of the keyboard is inviolate. You cannot

00:25:26 ◼   ► shrink the keyboard. Which I had somebody who at one point I wrote a story where I was

00:25:31 ◼   ► using a netbook that has shrunk down keys, and it was just, it was awful. Like, I could

00:25:39 ◼   ► not use it because all the keys now are in completely different positions than I had

00:25:44 ◼   ► learned how to type on, and every other keyboard in the world was not like that, but this one

00:25:50 ◼   ► was different, and it was terrible, and I hated it. And I think Apple said, "Look, we're

00:25:56 ◼   ► not going to mess with that. That is where we're starting here, is the keyboard is the

00:25:59 ◼   ► size that it is, and that's just how it's going to be. What else can we do?" And from

00:26:04 ◼   ► Apple's perspective, the reducing the travel but doing these other things to kind of offset

00:26:09 ◼   ► some of the issues with it was, that was the trade-off that they wanted to make in order

00:26:14 ◼   ► to get that, you know, physically to have it be that much thinner so that they didn't

00:26:20 ◼   ► have, you know, because the way it works, they have very little room to work here. And

00:26:25 ◼   ► so these keys are barely above the metal and they go down to, you know, essentially flush.

00:26:33 ◼   ► not a whole lot, and then there's whatever is under there, the mechanism and the light,

00:26:39 ◼   ► it's super narrow. So they decided that they weren't willing to sacrifice the thinness

00:26:43 ◼   ► of the computer to have key travel, but they weren't, you know, they weren't willing to

00:26:49 ◼   ► go beyond that. They were not willing to sacrifice the key layout. And, you know, fair enough.

00:26:55 ◼   ► an interesting set of trade-offs to make. And for me, as somebody who, you know, and

00:27:04 ◼   ► I want to put this in perspective, I do a lot of writing on a keyboard. This is, you

00:27:10 ◼   ► know, other than the talking part that you and I are doing, the other part of my professional

00:27:14 ◼   ► life is typing things. In my personal life, because I write books and stuff that one day

00:27:21 ◼   ► day, maybe I'll get back to when I'm not doing all these podcasts.

00:27:27 ◼   ► And so for me, the keyboard really matters.

00:27:30 ◼   ► And I type really fast, and so I have lots of opinions about keyboards.

00:27:34 ◼   ► So Apple's saying, "Look, most people aren't going to care.

00:27:37 ◼   ► Most people aren't going to care, and we've done some things to offset it, so it's not

00:27:40 ◼   ► that big a deal."

00:27:41 ◼   ► That could be wrong.

00:27:42 ◼   ► They could just—people could—you know, they'll do research.

00:27:44 ◼   ► I'm sure they'll do research and find out that people, you know, people's satisfaction

00:27:49 ◼   ► with the MacBook, maybe it goes down. And one of the reasons why is they don't like

00:27:53 ◼   ► the keyboard. Or maybe it doesn't change at all because nobody cares. And then they're

00:27:57 ◼   ► like, "All right, we made the right call there." The people who really care can use a different

00:28:01 ◼   ► device with a different keyboard. But, you know, the market for this, they're fine with

00:28:07 ◼   ► it. And I'm sure they will look at that. And honestly, if what they find is that this keyboard

00:28:13 ◼   ► is too great a compromise for a lot of people, then they'll put that on their list of, "Is

00:28:18 ◼   ► there's something else we could do to make the keyboard better. And they may already

00:28:21 ◼   ► think that. I mean, it doesn't sound very Apple to just accept, "Well, it's compromised,

00:28:25 ◼   ► but whatever. What are you going to do?" And then move on. They may still be thinking,

00:28:29 ◼   ► "Are there ways that we can make this better?" I hope that they're not thinking it's the

00:28:33 ◼   ► best and all of our keyboards will be like this from now on. I hope they're not thinking

00:28:37 ◼   ► that. But like I said, I got the vibe when I talked to some people at Apple that Apple

00:28:44 ◼   ► was aware that this is a compromise and that the other things they put into this keyboard

00:28:50 ◼   ► were maybe meant to offset the fact that they were taking all that key travel away.

00:28:56 ◼   ► Because at some point you might as well just have it be a touchscreen down there with the

00:29:00 ◼   ► Taptic Engine on it and just not even move and just have it be glass.

00:29:04 ◼   ► At some point, why even bother with having keys and calling them keys if they travel

00:29:09 ◼   ► almost nothing at all?

00:29:11 ◼   ► could just fool us like they do with the Force Touch trackpad at that point.

00:29:16 ◼   ► Had you thought of that before you just said that, like the idea of them just putting a

00:29:21 ◼   ► touchscreen down there?

00:29:22 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. I mean, at some point, you know, you could do that and then you could

00:29:30 ◼   ► say, oh well, and it's programmable, it can be anything down there and it can be a control

00:29:33 ◼   ► surface and all that. I think that's a long way to go and I think there's a lot of extra

00:29:37 ◼   ► technology and that's another screen you have to drive and, you know, I don't know if that'll

00:29:40 ◼   ► ever happen on a Mac, but at some point your keyboard isn't much more than a touchscreen.

00:29:49 ◼   ► When you've got no travel left, or almost no travel, then why is it even there, other

00:29:54 ◼   ► than to fool you into thinking that the keys move?

00:29:58 ◼   ► And now Apple has technology that can fool you.

00:30:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:02 ◼   ► It's an interesting thought experiment.

00:30:05 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:30:06 ◼   ► And so everybody should try it for themselves.

00:30:08 ◼   ► to the Apple Store and just type around on it a little bit, and you'll see it's a very

00:30:13 ◼   ► different kind of experience. The keys don't move very much. And, you know, for a lot of

00:30:16 ◼   ► people, they probably don't care. And I think that's what Apple's banking on, is that most

00:30:21 ◼   ► people aren't going to care about this. I thought I would get over it after using it

00:30:25 ◼   ► for five or six days. I thought I would be used to it, and then I went back to my other

00:30:29 ◼   ► keyboard briefly, and I was like, "Oh my, oh thank God." You know, it was just like

00:30:32 ◼   ► a huge relief. And then I went back to the MacBook keyboard and I'm like, "Oh no, this

00:30:36 ◼   ► thing again and that's when I knew like I hadn't adapted to it. I had endured it but

00:30:41 ◼   ► I hadn't adapted to it.

00:30:42 ◼   ► Are you worried that we're gonna see new keyboards in this style? Do you think that Apple are

00:30:49 ◼   ► going to take things they've learned from this keyboard and adapt it out to the rest

00:30:53 ◼   ► of the line?

00:30:54 ◼   ► You know the Force Touch trackpad I think would be great everywhere and I think we will

00:30:58 ◼   ► see that everywhere eventually. This keyboard I don't know. If you had asked me when they

00:31:04 ◼   ► announced it. I've been worried about that they were going to think that this is the

00:31:07 ◼   ► thing that they should roll out everywhere. Now, you know, like I said, it seems like

00:31:13 ◼   ► Apple is aware that this is a compromise for thinness and that I hope that means, you know,

00:31:21 ◼   ► I hope that's code for we're only going to use this when we really absolutely need something

00:31:26 ◼   ► that's super thin and otherwise we're not because it feels like it's too far. I think

00:31:32 ◼   ► pushing this into every... if all the new Apple Bluetooth keyboards and all the, you

00:31:36 ◼   ► know, even on big laptops have this little tiny thing, I think that would be unfortunate.

00:31:41 ◼   ► But you know, I don't make the rules. So I'm hopeful that they're aware that it is a compromise

00:31:47 ◼   ► for thinness and maybe they wouldn't push it into other parts of the line.

00:31:52 ◼   ► What about the design? So like the bigger key caps and the San Francisco font?

00:31:57 ◼   ► Yeah, we're pretty far down in the weeds when we're talking about the font that letters

00:32:02 ◼   ► are printed on a keyboard. It's fine. It's nice. It's nice. The bigger keys take some

00:32:08 ◼   ► getting used to. I don't like the full-sized left and right arrows with the half-sized

00:32:13 ◼   ► up and down arrows. There are a bunch of us who have talked about this today on the internet.

00:32:17 ◼   ► Jim Dalrymple mentioned it. John Gruber mentioned it. Turns out that I navigate arrow keys.

00:32:23 ◼   ► I orient my fingers on the arrow keys based on the spacing around the arrow keys, which

00:32:28 ◼   ► is now gone.

00:32:30 ◼   ► So now you have to orient based on the fact that there's one key that is split in half,

00:32:35 ◼   ► and that's the up and down arrow key.

00:32:37 ◼   ► And it's just different.

00:32:38 ◼   ► I don't particularly like it.

00:32:39 ◼   ► I think all of it I would get used to.

00:32:43 ◼   ► You can, you know, the bigger spread keys mean you can miss more and still hit the key

00:32:50 ◼   ► key. If you're a less precise typist, that's a good thing. I think it's all fine. For me,

00:32:57 ◼   ► it all comes back to the travel. Also, I should say the backlighting, I find problematic.

00:33:05 ◼   ► They've got this new backlighting, everything's individually lit, and that's nice, but some

00:33:09 ◼   ► of the keys feel like they're not uniformly lit. Like the escape key, the E is sort of

00:33:16 ◼   ► half lit and there's some other keys where like the bottom part or the bottom left corner

00:33:22 ◼   ► or the bottom right corner it sort of gets darker which I don't think is good. I think

00:33:28 ◼   ► I you know that doesn't seem to be up to Apple standards. Does it matter in the end that

00:33:32 ◼   ► the escape key is not entirely equally evenly lit from behind? No probably not but it doesn't

00:33:38 ◼   ► sound very Apple-like.

00:33:40 ◼   ► We've got a bunch of Ask Upgrade MacBook focused questions so we should get to those.

00:33:47 ◼   ► But before we do that let's take a moment to thank our second sponsor of this week's

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00:36:18 ◼   ► So Jason, I'm going to run through some questions from the Upgradians.

00:36:22 ◼   ► We have @mjedi.

00:36:25 ◼   ► Is the MacBook a good second Mac, for example travel or around the house?

00:36:30 ◼   ► Jedi has a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, is this something, if somebody has the means

00:36:34 ◼   ► and the desire to have a second laptop which is easy to use, nice and portable, would you

00:36:42 ◼   ► recommend it in this case? Like how you have your 11.

00:36:47 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. I think what I would say is what matters more to you, the keyboard or the screen?

00:36:58 ◼   ► If the screen matters more to you, I think the MacBook or the 13-inch Retina.

00:37:04 ◼   ► And if the keyboard matters more to you, it's the MacBook Air or the 13-inch Retina.

00:37:10 ◼   ► And if power matters more to you and ports and things like that, then it's the Air or

00:37:14 ◼   ► the Retina MacBook Pro and not the MacBook.

00:37:18 ◼   ► So it really depends on sort of like what you're looking for.

00:37:21 ◼   ► And there are choices, which is great.

00:37:22 ◼   ► You know, there are a lot of cranky people talking about this MacBook.

00:37:25 ◼   ► "Ah, bro, Apple did this. It's terrible and awful because I can't use it." You know,

00:37:30 ◼   ► we've talked about that before. It's not—maybe it's not for you. There are a lot

00:37:33 ◼   ► of people—it's just—it's not—it's not a computer for everyone. It definitely

00:37:36 ◼   ► isn't. The screen's great, and if you don't care about the kind of—the issues

00:37:41 ◼   ► that I have personally with a keyboard, then, you know, it's light and thin

00:37:44 ◼   ► and nice. If you don't care about retina, you know, you can get a MacBook Air

00:37:49 ◼   ► for cheaper that's faster so you know depends on what your priorities are

00:37:56 ◼   ► Timothy BT do you know I mean I've tried to look this up I can't see on the

00:38:01 ◼   ► website do you know how much the upgrade to the 1.3 gigahertz processor will cost

00:38:06 ◼   ► yeah yeah I think it's 250 okay somebody looked that that was reported I think

00:38:10 ◼   ► it's 250 to make it slightly faster okay we have MJ Huber jr. I'm gonna go with

00:38:18 ◼   ► Basically asking, with a multitude of adapters,

00:38:23 ◼   ► will the cinema display work?

00:38:25 ◼   ► And they list off a bunch of different adapters

00:38:28 ◼   ► from third parties and Apple,

00:38:31 ◼   ► and if you chain them all together,

00:38:33 ◼   ► do you have any idea if this machine

00:38:35 ◼   ► can power a cinema display at all?

00:38:37 ◼   ► 'Cause what I'd understood is that the chipset

00:38:41 ◼   ► just wouldn't allow for certain things.

00:38:45 ◼   ► - What do you mean?

00:38:46 ◼   ► Do you mean like the Thunderbolt display,

00:38:48 ◼   ► or some other display.

00:38:50 ◼   ► - Let's go with a Thunderbolt display,

00:38:51 ◼   ► which I'm pretty sure it can't do.

00:38:52 ◼   ► - My understanding is, yeah, my understanding

00:38:54 ◼   ► is Thunderbolt and USB-C don't talk to each other.

00:38:56 ◼   ► I think otherwise, if you can chain things together,

00:39:00 ◼   ► it may support it.

00:39:01 ◼   ► It does support one external monitor,

00:39:03 ◼   ► and Apple sells a couple of adapters,

00:39:05 ◼   ► and I think it would probably drive,

00:39:10 ◼   ► I don't know the details of how big a,

00:39:14 ◼   ► I don't have an adapter to drive a monitor with it,

00:39:16 ◼   ► So there's nothing I've been able to test with it.

00:39:18 ◼   ► But I'm sure it'll—if you can get it out in the right form,

00:39:21 ◼   ► it'll drive sort of a normal-sized monitor.

00:39:24 ◼   ► It's not going to drive a, you know, 4K display or something.

00:39:29 ◼   ► But I'm sure it will drive your usual kinds of monitors

00:39:34 ◼   ► if you adapt them properly.

00:39:37 ◼   ► -Joe Historia has asked,

00:39:39 ◼   ► "Would you say that the new MacBook could be a good choice

00:39:42 ◼   ► for someone who's not used to using computers,

00:39:45 ◼   ► like a first computer? Is it a good choice?

00:39:47 ◼   ► Is it maybe better than an iPad or not?

00:39:52 ◼   ► -Oh, wow. I don't know.

00:39:54 ◼   ► It's for people who want to use a computer.

00:39:57 ◼   ► It's not an iPad. It doesn't have a touch screen.

00:40:00 ◼   ► It doesn't run those apps. It's a computer.

00:40:03 ◼   ► And if it's for somebody

00:40:04 ◼   ► who hasn't really had a computer before,

00:40:07 ◼   ► I don't know, the MacBook Air is cheaper,

00:40:08 ◼   ► but it doesn't have the beautiful display.

00:40:10 ◼   ► And then there's, you know, the MacBook and the MacBook Pro

00:40:13 ◼   ► that have the beautiful display.

00:40:15 ◼   ► So it depends on what, again, it depends on what your priorities are.

00:40:17 ◼   ► One of the nice things about the MacBook is that it is fitting into a product line.

00:40:22 ◼   ► This is not the only laptop.

00:40:23 ◼   ► This is one of, if you count the different sizes, one of five essentially choices that

00:40:29 ◼   ► you have on Apple's laptop line now.

00:40:32 ◼   ► So Fraser Spears is interested about video performance and how it holds up under thermal

00:40:37 ◼   ► stress and he's kind of given the idea of like if you're watching continuous flash video,

00:40:41 ◼   ► let's say you're watching Netflix or something like that.

00:40:43 ◼   ► you had any any kind of problems watching video for long periods of time

00:40:48 ◼   ► maybe when the machine starts to get hot and also supplementary question has the

00:40:52 ◼   ► machine got hot? So Fraser after he after Fraser asked that I I ran Major League

00:40:58 ◼   ► Baseball in Chrome streaming video via flash for an hour and a half and it

00:41:04 ◼   ► didn't stutter and it was perfectly smooth and it doesn't make any noise

00:41:07 ◼   ► because there's no fan and the bottom got warm but just warm and sounds like

00:41:13 ◼   ► you really wouldn't have enjoyed that homework.

00:41:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I was doing other things. I was listening to you and Casey, but I left it on because

00:41:21 ◼   ► I wanted to... It was like the New York Mets. I don't care about the New York Mets, but

00:41:26 ◼   ► there was. Sorry Mets fans, it's your team, not mine. People in the chat room, by the

00:41:30 ◼   ► way, are saying that according to Apple, it will drive up to 3840 by 2160 on an external

00:41:40 ◼   ► So, that's pretty impressive. So you just got to get the cabling right.

00:41:45 ◼   ► Yeah, you can have like 20 adapters all chained together, but if you can get it, you can get

00:41:50 ◼   ► it. Yeah, if you can get it to work, or probably,

00:41:53 ◼   ► or buy a cable. My guess is going to be, or buy a cable.

00:41:58 ◼   ► So yeah, my second question is, have you had it get warm or hot at all? Because this is

00:42:02 ◼   ► a fanless computer. Yeah, just like I said about the MLB streaming

00:42:08 ◼   ► that Fraser had me try, you know, flash video streaming just because that makes computers

00:42:12 ◼   ► cry. And it was warm on the bottom. Your mileage may vary. It felt warm to me. It didn't feel

00:42:19 ◼   ► uncomfortably hot. And it was sort of spread across a lot of the back, which is the I think

00:42:24 ◼   ► the idea there is to they've got some material that is like acting as the heat sink that's

00:42:30 ◼   ► drawing it across the back. And that's the whole idea is that that's where the heat goes

00:42:34 ◼   ► out as it radiates out of the metal on the back side of the bottom of the laptop. And

00:42:41 ◼   ► it was warm, but it wasn't hot. I don't think there's going to be one of those "Oh, I burned

00:42:45 ◼   ► my legs with my MacBook." I don't think that's an issue.

00:42:50 ◼   ► It's not like the original MacBook Air. My brother actually got a burn mark on his leg

00:42:55 ◼   ► from using the original MacBook Air. But that's a story for another day. We have @Scribb,

00:43:03 ◼   ► I've got a USB A to C cable.

00:43:06 ◼   ► Could the MacBook charge from a USB charger with it?

00:43:09 ◼   ► Do you know, have you tried any of this?

00:43:11 ◼   ► Like those external Mopi packs?

00:43:13 ◼   ► In theory, could you do it?

00:43:14 ◼   ► - I don't have any adapters that will allow me

00:43:17 ◼   ► to do any of those things.

00:43:18 ◼   ► In theory, yes.

00:43:20 ◼   ► It might take forever.

00:43:21 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:43:22 ◼   ► - Or charge it only a little.

00:43:24 ◼   ► But in theory, yes, you could charge it.

00:43:26 ◼   ► In theory, you could charge it

00:43:27 ◼   ► from another computer probably,

00:43:29 ◼   ► if you have the right cables.

00:43:31 ◼   ► but I haven't been able to try a lot of that

00:43:33 ◼   ► because all I really have is the one USB adapter

00:43:36 ◼   ► and it is an adapter to a USB-A female,

00:43:40 ◼   ► which means that I can plug in other USB devices

00:43:43 ◼   ► like a DVD drive or something,

00:43:45 ◼   ► but not connected to a computer

00:43:48 ◼   ► 'cause I don't have a USB-A to USB-A cable.

00:43:52 ◼   ► They didn't really make those.

00:43:55 ◼   ► They do exist, but nothing really shipped with one

00:43:58 ◼   ► because generally what you have on a USB device

00:44:00 ◼   ► is you've got the -- you know, you're either going

00:44:03 ◼   ► from the USB-A to, like, a mini or a micro,

00:44:06 ◼   ► or you're going to that big USB-B,

00:44:10 ◼   ► the square instead of the rectangle.

00:44:13 ◼   ► And I don't -- so I don't have the right cables

00:44:15 ◼   ► to try a lot of this stuff, unfortunately.

00:44:17 ◼   ► And Monoprice just announced that they've got those cables,

00:44:20 ◼   ► but that was too late for my review.

00:44:24 ◼   ► -Kay Bradnam asked, "The trackpad looks bigger

00:44:27 ◼   ► with a wider aspect ratio.

00:44:28 ◼   ► Did this make any difference in day-to-day use?

00:44:32 ◼   ► -Nope.

00:44:33 ◼   ► Feels like a trackpad.

00:44:35 ◼   ► Feels -- feels -- and that's saying something,

00:44:37 ◼   ► given that it doesn't actually, you know, depress.

00:44:40 ◼   ► It's all in your head.

00:44:41 ◼   ► But it feels like a trackpad.

00:44:43 ◼   ► It doesn't -- it doesn't feel -- it feels exactly --

00:44:46 ◼   ► as somebody who uses a MacBook Air,

00:44:47 ◼   ► it feels exactly the same.

00:44:50 ◼   ► -OJPUK, how's the performance of photos,

00:44:53 ◼   ► scoring for a large library and stuff like that?

00:44:55 ◼   ► Does the MacBook hold up?

00:44:57 ◼   ► So I haven't had a chance to spend any time in photos

00:45:01 ◼   ► on the MacBook because the MacBook I got came with 10.10.2

00:45:05 ◼   ► and I only updated it to 10.10.3 yesterday

00:45:09 ◼   ► because of course they have to build these things

00:45:10 ◼   ► and put things on the drive, image the drives

00:45:12 ◼   ► and put them in there and then ship them from the factory.

00:45:15 ◼   ► And since 10.10.3 came out yesterday,

00:45:19 ◼   ► all these MacBooks did not ship with 10.10.3,

00:45:21 ◼   ► they shipped with 10.10.2.

00:45:23 ◼   ► So my guess is that it works fine

00:45:25 ◼   ► because everything else, everything I did try,

00:45:27 ◼   ► and I got a lot of questions that were like,

00:45:28 ◼   ► well, what about this app?

00:45:29 ◼   ► Well, what about this app?

00:45:30 ◼   ► Which I totally understand,

00:45:32 ◼   ► but it's not possible for me to use every app.

00:45:34 ◼   ► And the reality is the amount of time you spend

00:45:37 ◼   ► testing a bunch of different apps,

00:45:39 ◼   ► what you find is the exact same thing with all of them.

00:45:41 ◼   ► So I did use Logic, for example,

00:45:43 ◼   ► because that's an app that I know pretty well

00:45:46 ◼   ► and that I can recognize the performance issues,

00:45:49 ◼   ► and it didn't have any.

00:45:51 ◼   ► Mostly, I mean, one of the big reasons is Logic

00:45:53 ◼   ► is so disk-based and having an SSD

00:45:55 ◼   ► means, you know, it runs pretty well. But photos in particular I didn't get a chance

00:46:03 ◼   ► to use because I didn't have 1010.3 on it until yesterday afternoon, and so I just haven't

00:46:09 ◼   ► tested it. But generally, everything's been fine that I've used. Yeah, it's a little slow.

00:46:13 ◼   ► I find the interface not slow at all, but anything that's like a super-intensive calculation,

00:46:17 ◼   ► like bouncing a track out of logic, you know, it takes a lot longer than on my Retina iMac,

00:46:24 ◼   ► for sure. It's slower when it gets into the processor-intensive kind of

00:46:28 ◼   ► cranking away at something, you know, it doesn't go as fast. But I never in my

00:46:33 ◼   ► regular use of it thought, "Oh, this thing is so slow." It just never

00:46:36 ◼   ► happened. If you try to play a game on it, you would, you know, even though the

00:46:40 ◼   ► graphics processor in it is fine, you know, it's, you know, it's slow. It's

00:46:45 ◼   ► not gonna blow you away. It's not a game machine. Don't buy it if you want to use

00:46:48 ◼   ► it to play games. That would be dumb. Don't do that. But anyway, so photos,

00:46:53 ◼   ► Photos, though, in particular, I can't say because it didn't ship with photos.

00:47:00 ◼   ► It shipped with 10.10.2, and I spent most of the time using 10.10.2 and not 10.10.3.

00:47:06 ◼   ► We have an email from Van Dan.

00:47:09 ◼   ► Van Dan has said, "I use an iPad for practically everything.

00:47:12 ◼   ► I end up using my MacBook only at work thanks to Xcode and OmniGraffle and some other software.

00:47:18 ◼   ► Because of this, I've noticed that the applications that I use tend to have a Mac app, an iPhone

00:47:22 ◼   ► and an iPad app. Considering the MacBook spec, and I'm sure that he said he's sure a lot

00:47:28 ◼   ► of users will be looking at getting the MacBook to replace their iPads, do you think that

00:47:32 ◼   ► people will feel that way? And if they do, does it make sense to do this?

00:47:39 ◼   ► You know, the iPad and the MacBook are just totally different products. They're totally

00:47:45 ◼   ► different products. I don't think there's a continuum there. I think you use a Mac for

00:47:50 ◼   ► Mac things, and you use an iPad for iPad things. And so, you know, this—I don't

00:47:58 ◼   ► think this is as dramatic a change as maybe you could make it out to be. The

00:48:03 ◼   ► 11-inch MacBook Air is already really small, you know, and it's really thin and

00:48:07 ◼   ► it's really light. It's not as small and thin and light as the MacBook, but it is

00:48:10 ◼   ► pretty close, and it doesn't have a retina display. That's the big difference.

00:48:14 ◼   ► But, you know, this is not an iPad. This is a—this is a laptop, and you're gonna

00:48:18 ◼   ► to make judgments about it based on whether you want to use a laptop or an iPad. I don't

00:48:21 ◼   ► think somebody would say, "Well, I've been using an iPad, but I'd really rather just

00:48:25 ◼   ► use a Mac, but the MacBook Air is not good enough for me. Oh, now, but now that there's

00:48:30 ◼   ► this MacBook, now I'll make the switch." I don't think that's going to be a main—I

00:48:33 ◼   ► mean, maybe somebody will say that, but like those people who have spreadsheets on their

00:48:38 ◼   ► Windows mobile phones in 2006. But I don't think that's a broad statement that lots of

00:48:46 ◼   ► people would make. So, you know, I have a—I don't know how to answer that question other

00:48:51 ◼   ► than to say that this is a continuation of Apple making the laptops thinner and lighter.

00:48:55 ◼   ► I don't think it has any impact on the iPad. I doubt there are people using an iPad saying,

00:49:00 ◼   ► "I'd really rather use a Mac for this, but, you know, the existing Mac offerings are just

00:49:04 ◼   ► too big for me." It's, you know, it's still a MacBook. It's not some weird hybrid.

00:49:11 ◼   ► So my last question comes again from MJ.

00:49:15 ◼   ► I've said his second question today.

00:49:17 ◼   ► If you could get only one, which would you choose, the Apple Watch or the new MacBook?

00:49:21 ◼   ► Well, I have a MacBook Air 11, so the Apple Watch.

00:49:25 ◼   ► Are you going to be pre-ordering?

00:49:27 ◼   ► An Apple Watch?

00:49:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:29 ◼   ► Probably, probably, because I need to have one.

00:49:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:37 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I'm still hoping that I can talk somebody at Apple into giving me a review

00:49:42 ◼   ► unit to try out, but I can't count on that, and I do need to have one to write about,

00:49:47 ◼   ► so I will probably pre-order something.

00:49:51 ◼   ► So I think in summary, the way that I feel from talking to you about this, I wouldn't

00:49:56 ◼   ► say you sound down on this machine, but you're not super excited about it, which I think

00:50:01 ◼   ► echoes our original expectations, which is this is not your machine, so you're not crazy

00:50:07 ◼   ► about it, but it's got things that are good about it that will be good for some people,

00:50:11 ◼   ► but this is not one for you.

00:50:13 ◼   ► The USB-C thing is not a hang-up for me. In the end, what I would say, what surprised

00:50:17 ◼   ► me is that I think only the keyboard is the thing that really is bothering me. If you

00:50:21 ◼   ► had the MacBook Air's keyboard on this thing, then I would say yes, absolutely, the next

00:50:25 ◼   ► laptop I buy -- again, having a recent model MacBook Air, it's not going to be for a while

00:50:29 ◼   ► would be the MacBook. With this keyboard, I'll think about it. I'm not, you know, I'm

00:50:34 ◼   ► not entirely sold on it, but I think, I do think the keyboard is its

00:50:39 ◼   ► weakest point, and for a lot of people it won't matter, and so that's good

00:50:43 ◼   ► for them because the weakest point is irrelevant to them, and then don't worry

00:50:47 ◼   ► about it. But to me, the USB-C stuff is gonna take care of itself. I think the

00:50:52 ◼   ► battery life is pretty good. I know that there are some people who reported that

00:50:55 ◼   ► they did like serious battery tests and said that it didn't live as long as the

00:51:01 ◼   ► as the MacBook Air. That does not, I think Joanna Stern reported that and

00:51:07 ◼   ► ReCode reported that, that does not match with my usage at all. I suspect that this,

00:51:13 ◼   ► the power saving in here is doing some very interesting things that mean it has

00:51:19 ◼   ► a long battery life when you use it like a regular person, but that if you crank

00:51:22 ◼   ► everything up and and try to deplete the battery really quickly, it depletes

00:51:27 ◼   ► quickly. But I don't know if that's something that anybody would really see.

00:51:32 ◼   ► For me it felt like it lasted a lot longer than my 11-inch air. Take that for

00:51:37 ◼   ► what you will because I didn't run any formal tests because I'm only one person

00:51:40 ◼   ► and if you run a lot of formal battery tests you've just lost half of your time

00:51:44 ◼   ► with a product so I can't do that. Couldn't do that in Macworld, can't do it

00:51:49 ◼   ► now, it's just, it's not worth it. If you're really going to do it right, it takes way

00:51:54 ◼   ► too much time, it's not worth doing when you're initially reviewing something. So, you know,

00:51:59 ◼   ► I think that for a lot of people, running it without it plugged in and occasionally

00:52:06 ◼   ► plugging in an external USB device, which I don't think a lot of people are doing anyway,

00:52:10 ◼   ► I just don't think it's a big deal. And it's going to take care of itself in the next six

00:52:14 ◼   ► months or in the next year. It's already starting to take care of itself. You buy an adapter,

00:52:18 ◼   ► buy a cable, you move on. So I don't think any of those are really roadblocks.

00:52:23 ◼   ► The screen is great. I actually ended up running it on the biggest, or I

00:52:30 ◼   ► guess littlest scaled mode, so I got a little more screen real estate and

00:52:33 ◼   ► everything's just a little bit smaller. Looks great. All the space of like a 13

00:52:38 ◼   ► inch laptop on a 12 inch laptop. You know, there are a lot of things to commend it.

00:52:44 ◼   ► I think for me I am just hung up on the keyboard and that's just that's that's my

00:52:49 ◼   ► that's my cross to bear and if you're somebody who cares about keyboards then

00:52:52 ◼   ► you may care about it too but I think probably most people won't care.

00:52:56 ◼   ► I want to try it out I want to see if I can feel it. I don't think I'll be able to.

00:53:01 ◼   ► Like at least I'll maybe feel a difference but I don't think it will

00:53:05 ◼   ► wother me as it bothers you so I'm interested I'm interested. That's my

00:53:08 ◼   ► hypothesis so whenever it is I go into the Apple store to try on an

00:53:13 ◼   ► Apple Watch. I'll also play around with with the MacBook and I'll let you know

00:53:17 ◼   ► what I think about the keyboard because I'm just not... I'm just... obviously I type

00:53:22 ◼   ► like everybody does but I don't type nowhere near as much as you do and I

00:53:27 ◼   ► think that maybe that I might may be less sensitive to it than you but we'll

00:53:30 ◼   ► see we'll see. Yeah. Thank you Mr. Jason Snell thank you for doing this today

00:53:36 ◼   ► it's been an interesting experiment into getting a little bit more director's

00:53:42 ◼   ► commentary out of this little bonus upgrade time. But we'll be back

00:53:48 ◼   ► at our usual time next week for our usual upgrade. Yeah our regularly scheduled

00:53:55 ◼   ► programming will continue on Monday. I just couldn't be away from the show for any

00:54:00 ◼   ► longer I just couldn't allow it. Yeah I approve I appreciate it. After our two

00:54:04 ◼   ► you know you couldn't stay away after our two podcasts in person you just

00:54:09 ◼   ► couldn't you couldn't let it go. If you want to find the show notes for this

00:54:12 ◼   ► week's episode of course you can check in your app of choice you'll find links

00:54:16 ◼   ► to Jason's review I put Jim Darrowpool's review in there as well because you

00:54:19 ◼   ► mentioned that I'll put you on a stands in too because you mentioned those so

00:54:21 ◼   ► you can get some differing opinions if you would like to so you can grab those

00:54:27 ◼   ► or you can go to relay.fm/upgrade/31 and you'll see that lovely link

00:54:33 ◼   ► list there for you so you can check all those out if you want to find us on

00:54:37 ◼   ► social media as a couple of days you can do that you can go to @JSNEL

00:54:40 ◼   ► J S N E double O you can find Jason on Twitter there I am @imike I M Y K E and

00:54:45 ◼   ► of course Jason is the editor-in-chief of the fantastic sixcolors.com where

00:54:50 ◼   ► you'll find all of Jason's great work oh don't forget the incomparable too

00:54:54 ◼   ► because you just should never forget the incomparable because it's the best.

00:54:58 ◼   ► Award-winning. Award-winning. Award-winning the incomparable. You win the award of my heart too

00:55:04 ◼   ► Jason, for the work that you do there. So thank you for doing all of that. And thank

00:55:09 ◼   ► you so much for listening to this very special episode and we'll be back next week. Bye-bye.

00:55:14 ◼   ► Goodbye.

00:55:14 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:55:18 ◼   ► [ Music ]