Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Connected episode 273.

00:00:11 ◼   ► It's made possible this week by our sponsors,

00:00:14 ◼   ► Squarespace, ExpressVPN and Bombas.

00:00:17 ◼   ► My name is Steven Hackett and I am joined

00:00:19 ◼   ► by Mr. Myke Hurley.

00:00:21 ◼   ► - Did you get it right this time?

00:00:22 ◼   ► - I did, thank you.

00:00:23 ◼   ► - Good work.

00:00:24 ◼   ► - Thank you.

00:00:25 ◼   ► How are you?

00:00:26 ◼   ► - I am very good, thank you very much.

00:00:28 ◼   ► - Good.

00:00:29 ◼   ► notes. The end of the year, there's like excitement stuff to talk about. I'm glad

00:00:34 ◼   ► we're here together, and I'm glad that we are joined by our friend Mr. Federico

00:00:37 ◼   ► Vittucci. Hello, hi, how are you? Hi. We should say also that there is a fourth

00:00:42 ◼   ► mostly silent person on the episode this week. He can't hear us, but maybe you can

00:00:49 ◼   ► poke him, make him say something. Can you say something? Hey guys, how's it going? We can hear

00:00:55 ◼   ► John can't hear us, I assume. Yes. Well, he can hear something through my headphones.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Turn him down! He shouldn't be able to hear anything through your headphones. If he can

00:01:04 ◼   ► hear through your headphones, your headphones are too loud. The problem is the headphones,

00:01:08 ◼   ► not the... the volume is fine, but the construction of these headphones is faulty, I believe.

00:01:14 ◼   ► They leak volume. I noise gate you every week to fix it. They leak more than the White House,

00:01:21 ◼   ► really. So wow. Oh my god. Yeah. So start strong today. Okay. The problem is not me,

00:01:30 ◼   ► the headphones. I think that, I think Jon deserves to be labeled as a guest on this

00:01:34 ◼   ► episode. I think we'll do that for him. He was there. Maybe he can be, he can be the

00:01:38 ◼   ► one word commenter on the show. Maybe, like seriously, seriously, when we talk about the

00:01:44 ◼   ► Mac Pro, maybe we just swapped the two of them out. Oh yeah, let's do that. Oh, that's

00:01:48 ◼   ► Because otherwise there will just be nothing, there'll be silence from Italy, so we may

00:01:53 ◼   ► as well just swap Federico for John.

00:01:55 ◼   ► Yes, yes, this is a great idea, I'll go make some coffee, play with the dogs.

00:02:00 ◼   ► Basically you'll do all of the things that you usually do when we talk about new Mac

00:02:04 ◼   ► hardware, but this time you'll be owning up to them.

00:02:06 ◼   ► Well you don't know about that, well actually one time I did leave without telling you guys.

00:02:12 ◼   ► I honestly assume that that's what's happening.

00:02:14 ◼   ► And like I did a whole thing around the house and then I came back and Steven was still

00:02:18 ◼   ► talking so that happened but that happened once yeah usually i tell you guys if like the ups guys

00:02:26 ◼   ► here yeah so we'll have john on john would you agree with this plan john excellent plan perfect

00:02:32 ◼   ► okay we're doing this this is going so well let's start with follow-up and i think we can safely say

00:02:40 ◼   ► that the year 2020 will be the year of stephen two because you know because the rumor we're not

00:02:47 ◼   ► allowing you to Luigi this we have told you so many times. He doesn't get the reference.

00:02:52 ◼   ► I don't. Luigi's the one in green right? Yeah. Yes good job dad. Thanks. Yeah he's the one who's

00:03:00 ◼   ► like technically a different race to Mario which is like this whole thing. They are the Mario

00:03:04 ◼   ► brothers so Mario's name is Mario Mario and Luigi's name is Luigi Mario for some reason.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Like I'm not joking. Yes that's it's very upsetting. That is upsetting. Like imagine if your

00:03:14 ◼   ► name was Steven Steven or Hackett Hackett, can you imagine that? That would be upsetting.

00:03:19 ◼   ► So they're brothers, but they share a last name, but not for the reason you think they would,

00:03:24 ◼   ► and their business partner is in a plumbing operation. But they never actually do any

00:03:29 ◼   ► plumbing. But they never actually... It's like a cover. And these days Luigi is most famous

00:03:34 ◼   ► for being a ghostbuster. Yeah, or a super bad driver in Mario Kart, like super aggressive guy.

00:03:41 ◼   ► So anyway, why would 2020 be another, as you say, year of Steven, which is this terminology

00:03:49 ◼   ► that we do not officially accept, but we'll let you go with it because you seem happy about it.

00:03:54 ◼   ► Because the rumor is that the iPhone SE2 or whatever this like upcoming entry level,

00:04:00 ◼   ► air quotes, low cost iPhone would be, could be called the iPhone 9, which is something that I

00:04:07 ◼   ► put forth as a theory several months ago here on this very program and I love it as a name. I think

00:04:13 ◼   ► it's great. This is a rumor over on MacRumors that the iPhone SE2 will be the iPhone 8 form factor.

00:04:22 ◼   ► We've talked about this but be called the iPhone 9 which I think makes a lot of sense. It does make

00:04:27 ◼   ► a lot of sense. I still I don't understand like the year of this is something you said

00:04:32 ◼   ► right? About the news? Yes. Okay. Well and it could be, I'll do this now, it could be that this is one

00:04:38 ◼   ► of my yearly picks. That's coming up in a few episodes. Oh damn. So maybe I'm getting ready

00:04:44 ◼   ► for that. But as precedent is set, this obviously wouldn't be Ricky because there has been previous

00:04:49 ◼   ► reporting. Not a Ricky, but it could be a regular... You could, if this article wouldn't have been

00:04:54 ◼   ► published, that would have been a Ricky. Yeah, who wrote this article? I need to have a word with that.

00:04:57 ◼   ► Well it came from Mac Otakara which is a Japanese website with dubious credibility.

00:05:02 ◼   ► Yeah but Joe, I know Joe, Joe put it on Macrumus. Come on Joe you're killing me.

00:05:05 ◼   ► Because you've not waited two weeks Joe, really. Come on Joe.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Anyways, I think this phone seems like a lock that they're going to do this.

00:05:14 ◼   ► It's not going to to revitalize the old 4-inch iPhone form factor so those people,

00:05:20 ◼   ► if you're still holding on to an iPhone SE now, like I'm really sorry but I think that's,

00:05:25 ◼   ► times passed it by. Sad.

00:05:27 ◼   ► Federico, I feel like I'm losing my mind a little bit because I am very confident that

00:05:35 ◼   ► you said last week that your awards would be this week at MacStories. Am I wrong?

00:05:40 ◼   ► No, they were never-

00:05:42 ◼   ► Maybe I just assumed this.

00:05:44 ◼   ► They were never this week, they were next week.

00:05:46 ◼   ► El, is this one of those things where it's not late because we didn't announce the date?

00:05:50 ◼   ► That's right.

00:05:51 ◼   ► You're like Apple.

00:05:52 ◼   ► He just said fall 2019.

00:05:57 ◼   ► I just said before the end of the year, and it literally could be the 30th, but not their

00:06:01 ◼   ► next week.

00:06:02 ◼   ► Yeah, their next week.

00:06:04 ◼   ► So we had two surprises planned.

00:06:07 ◼   ► One of them that we announced is that we're doing a reader's choice award.

00:06:13 ◼   ► And if you're a Clubmax Stories member, you can vote.

00:06:15 ◼   ► There's a link in the latest issue of the newsletter.

00:06:17 ◼   ► You can vote and you can write anything.

00:06:18 ◼   ► And then I guess John and I will sift through the responses and try to count them.

00:06:24 ◼   ► I know based on Myke's experience that it's a whole thing.

00:06:27 ◼   ► I have a spreadsheet.

00:06:28 ◼   ► If you hook up with me later on and I'll give you that spreadsheet, you need it.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Trust me, it's very difficult.

00:06:35 ◼   ► John, we need to ask Myke for the spreadsheet.

00:06:38 ◼   ► Can you create a reminder for that, John?

00:06:44 ◼   ► He's laughing.

00:06:46 ◼   ► And the second surprise, which we haven't announced yet but it'll be revealed next week,

00:06:51 ◼   ► which is gonna be super awesome, they will be out, they will be announced next week,

00:06:58 ◼   ► around the, I don't wanna give you a day, because, you know, things can happen.

00:07:02 ◼   ► And there's also like, my music bot thing is going also up.

00:07:07 ◼   ► That feels like vaporware, you talked about that for months, come on, ship it man.

00:07:10 ◼   ► Do it right now.

00:07:11 ◼   ► Publish it live on the show.

00:07:12 ◼   ► It's funny because you do have music bots.

00:07:14 ◼   ► I do have it and it's incredible. It's so good.

00:07:19 ◼   ► There's a lot of things in it and in fact, and this is kind of somewhat related to that,

00:07:27 ◼   ► so something that I want to do with MusicBot is to have the, well you can call it basic

00:07:33 ◼   ► shortcut, it's really made of 800 actions. But yes, that's the basic version that will

00:07:38 ◼   ► be available for free on the website for everyone to use. I've been working on this thing since

00:07:43 ◼   ► July, really. So it was a lot of work and that will be available for free. Everybody

00:07:49 ◼   ► can use it and download it, whatever. It's free. But there will be a MusicBot Pro for

00:07:54 ◼   ► Club Maxories members that does even more and that will take advantage of the Apple

00:08:01 ◼   ► Music API. And initially I thought, I gotta write my own API actions. And in fact, I did

00:08:11 ◼   ► the last couple of issues on MacSource Weekly, I explained how to work with the

00:08:15 ◼   ► Apple Music API, but just today something happened that is gonna make MusicBot Pro

00:08:21 ◼   ► so much better. Toolbox, the app that we talked about a few episodes ago,

00:08:26 ◼   ► the shortcuts utility, got updated today with Apple Music API actions, which

00:08:33 ◼   ► means you can search the Apple Music catalog without having to generate your

00:08:39 ◼   ► own developer token, which is something that I explained in the newsletter how

00:08:43 ◼   ► to do. Everything is taken care of by toolbox, you just need to drag and drop

00:08:48 ◼   ► actions in a shortcut and you can search the Apple Music catalog for artists,

00:08:54 ◼   ► songs, playlists, anything you want. And, because this is a native app, it takes

00:08:59 ◼   ► advantage of MusicKit, which is the developer framework for Apple Music

00:09:03 ◼   ► integration, to do things like adding stuff to your library or playing music

00:09:08 ◼   ► in the background. So MusicBot Pro will have all of these features built in, and you don't

00:09:15 ◼   ► need to set up anything on your end. Initially the plan was to tell people, like, you can

00:09:19 ◼   ► use MusicBot Pro, but first you gotta generate your own developer token, and now that limitation

00:09:24 ◼   ► is gone. So if you download MusicBot Pro, just make sure that you have Toolbox installed,

00:09:29 ◼   ► and you get a whole bunch of extra features for Apple Music, including playing music and

00:09:33 ◼   ► adding stuff to your library which is pretty nice I think so yeah that's a

00:09:39 ◼   ► it's been a lot of work oh and also there's another music but surprise that

00:09:43 ◼   ► you guys have seen yesterday I think so yeah I've been up to a few things lately

00:09:49 ◼   ► you're like shortcut Santa over there hmm yeah you can call me that I like that

00:09:54 ◼   ► Wow title fishing title fishing as of this morning it's been announced that

00:09:59 ◼   ► bridge keyboards which I think all three of us like they make the they make

00:10:03 ◼   ► keyboards or other devices but we use the iPad ones they are now available in

00:10:08 ◼   ► the Apple Store which in the 10.2 the 10.5 sizes for the iPad and iPad air and

00:10:16 ◼   ► they have iPad Pro sizes as well it's a great keyboard if you use your iPad for

00:10:22 ◼   ► a lot of writing and typing it's definitely worth checking out and I

00:10:26 ◼   ► just I'm happy for them like this is a big deal and you know bridge has been

00:10:30 ◼   ► hard at work, I mean updating this thing and having support for new models and I

00:10:35 ◼   ► kind of just wanted to give them a thumbs up for for making it into Apple's

00:10:40 ◼   ► retail chain that seems like a big deal. I wonder why they're not doing the pro

00:10:44 ◼   ► ones like it's just the 10.2 and 10.5. Yeah it may I mean it may be that it's

00:10:50 ◼   ► supply thing supply thing maybe they'll add those at some point I don't know but

00:10:56 ◼   ► it's it's great and so if you have you know an iPad Air or you know maybe

00:11:00 ◼   ► you're giving an iPad as a gift this Christmas and someone's gonna be writing

00:11:04 ◼   ► on it, I think this is a better option than the Magic Keyboard if someone's

00:11:08 ◼   ► really gonna be a heavy keyboard user. Yeah I agree with that for all iPad

00:11:12 ◼   ► versions that the Brydge Keyboard is a superior product. It's great. I'm eagerly

00:11:16 ◼   ► awaiting their version with a trackpad. Me too. Maybe that's why the Pro

00:11:22 ◼   ► isn't there, maybe they're gonna... I don't know anything. It seems like

00:11:25 ◼   ► for everything that's been said about that, remember from that weird

00:11:28 ◼   ► lawsuit. It feels like Bridge are going to be selling that as a very specific product

00:11:34 ◼   ► because it's not user friendly, right? Like the cursor support is not user friendly.

00:11:41 ◼   ► Yeah, that's not great.

00:11:42 ◼   ► So you kind of have to already be an already expert user of this keyboard product,

00:11:47 ◼   ► so maybe they're going to keep that one a little more chill.

00:11:49 ◼   ► A pro iPad Pro user.

00:11:51 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:11:52 ◼   ► If you will.

00:11:53 ◼   ► Like everybody here.

00:11:54 ◼   ► I'll have a little bit of follow out and it feels a little self-serving because it's to another thing that I do

00:12:00 ◼   ► But let me do it then so on episode

00:12:02 ◼   ► 514 of the Mac power users podcast

00:12:05 ◼   ► David sparks and his partner in crime the Robin to his Batman if you will, which is Steven

00:12:11 ◼   ► You don't want to be Robin so we've Robin

00:12:18 ◼   ► Cooler but David's been doing Mac power users for longer than you. Yeah, but we're equals

00:12:24 ◼   ► Do you want to be like, what's the butler's name?

00:12:28 ◼   ► Alfred?

00:12:29 ◼   ► That may be worse.

00:12:30 ◼   ► You want to be the Alfred to his Batman?

00:12:31 ◼   ► That could be worse.

00:12:32 ◼   ► Well you decide which one of those you want to be.

00:12:34 ◼   ► But there's a great episode with an interview with Thomas Grove Carter who is a video editor

00:12:41 ◼   ► and Thomas had early access for a period of time to the Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR.

00:12:50 ◼   ► You know like Apple, I mean Thomas in the interviews jokes that like just him and Calvin

00:12:54 ◼   ► Harris at it. Apple seeds these things to creative people, I guess for feedback and

00:12:59 ◼   ► also I would expect, so they can give these people for interviews with people like Mac

00:13:06 ◼   ► Power users. So I think it's really cool because you get to hear of somebody who's been using

00:13:11 ◼   ► this product for a significant period of time talk about their experiences and I'm like

00:13:16 ◼   ► a third of the way through the episode and it's really really good.

00:13:18 ◼   ► Yeah it's really part two to our interview of Doug Brooks who's the product manager for

00:13:22 ◼   ► the Mac Pro, we got that at WWDC and we've been working on this for a while.

00:13:26 ◼   ► And yeah, I was really happy with it.

00:13:27 ◼   ► Thomas was awesome, really fun to talk to and I think we're definitely going to have

00:13:31 ◼   ► him back to talk more about Final Cut in particular.

00:13:33 ◼   ► Yeah, you got an expert now in the field.

00:13:36 ◼   ► Yes, and it was neat to be involved in the launch in our small way and to be a podcast

00:13:42 ◼   ► with sort of early access was really, really special.

00:13:45 ◼   ► And so we're really thankful we got to do it and let's go check it out.

00:13:48 ◼   ► I mean, I'm sure everyone listening to this.

00:13:50 ◼   ► I think it's the perfect way to have this podcast involved with the Mac Pro.

00:13:57 ◼   ► Because, you know, because it's like all of the podcasters that I know that would

00:14:04 ◼   ► buy the Mac Pro are doing it because it's like I would like to own it, where someone

00:14:09 ◼   ► like Thomas can get any kind of video producer really can get a lot of use out of

00:14:15 ◼   ► that product. So being able to talk to a very heavy video user is great.

00:14:20 ◼   ► As much as of course I would love to hear John Siracusa talk about his experiences immediately,

00:14:24 ◼   ► I think I can at least understand from Apple's perspective why they might have wanted to go down

00:14:29 ◼   ► this route, as opposed to giving you and David a Mac Pro, right? Like they actually put you in touch

00:14:34 ◼   ► with someone who could talk about it at like a more professional use case.

00:14:37 ◼   ► Yeah, Thomas is really...

00:14:38 ◼   ► ...other than just like, "This is nice."

00:14:40 ◼   ► ...is really pushing it, right? I mean, he's doing amazing high-end work, and so he can really speak

00:14:47 ◼   ► to what makes it different. And that was kind of the most interesting part of it for me was

00:14:51 ◼   ► the thing that the things that he says he can do now that were impossible before. That's what's

00:14:56 ◼   ► exciting to me about this computer. We should talk about that computer a little later on today. I

00:15:00 ◼   ► feel like I'll be gonna write with john. Yeah, yeah, it's it's in here. But first, I'm gonna

00:15:04 ◼   ► tell you about our first sponsor. And then we have some other stuff. And then we'll get to the Mac Pro

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00:17:00 ◼   ► It is the week of software updates.

00:17:03 ◼   ► I know it's unusual to have a software update for iOS 13,

00:17:06 ◼   ► but Apple's finally pushed one.

00:17:08 ◼   ► That's exciting.

00:17:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:17:11 ◼   ► There's a lot of stuff here.

00:17:12 ◼   ► Federico, what is new in 13.3 for iOS and the iPad?

00:17:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, not a lot,

00:17:19 ◼   ► but there's a few things that we could call out.

00:17:22 ◼   ► If you didn't like the inclusion of Memoji

00:17:25 ◼   ► in the emoji keyboard, you can now remove them.

00:17:28 ◼   ► - Woo!

00:17:29 ◼   ► - I'm conflicted on this.

00:17:30 ◼   ► - You are? - I'm conflicted on this.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Yeah, let me tell you why. Every now and then I like to use them, but I would forget they

00:17:36 ◼   ► existed if I didn't see them.

00:17:39 ◼   ► Right.

00:17:40 ◼   ► Right?

00:17:41 ◼   ► They have been surprisingly frequent in text messages from my friends.

00:17:48 ◼   ► I see them a lot too.

00:17:49 ◼   ► Even in WhatsApp where like they're not stickers, they're just images, but people use them.

00:17:54 ◼   ► I sometimes send them in Slack instead of an emoji. It's just this massive image.

00:17:58 ◼   ► Nice. Yeah, so obviously, you know, the kind of audience that reads Mac stories and listens to this show, you know, probably doesn't like them in the emoji keyboard.

00:18:10 ◼   ► And I get it, like, they're not emoji technically. Like, nobody asks you for those, Apple, we just want to see them emoji in iMessage.

00:18:18 ◼   ► And I get it, so there's now a setting. If you go in Settings, Keyboard, you can now disable Memoji, and the emoji keyboard will go back to just showing you emoji.

00:18:27 ◼   ► Communication limits in screen time, which I really haven't played around with because I don't care about screen time anymore.

00:18:36 ◼   ► There was a time last year when I was really using screen time to check on my habits and whatnot,

00:18:42 ◼   ► but then I realized that most of my problems were Facebook and Twitter,

00:18:47 ◼   ► and so what I'm doing now is I don't have Facebook anymore on my phone, and I have the official Twitter app,

00:18:53 ◼   ► which has basically kicked my timeline completionist habit.

00:18:58 ◼   ► I just, I'm not obsessed with reading every tweet anymore.

00:19:05 ◼   ► So I really don't need screen time,

00:19:07 ◼   ► but you have now more options for setting up

00:19:09 ◼   ► limits for communication apps like messages.

00:19:14 ◼   ► That's all I have to say.

00:19:17 ◼   ► I really don't know how it works.

00:19:19 ◼   ► I really don't wanna go through the process.

00:19:20 ◼   ► - One of the things that's also pretty good,

00:19:22 ◼   ► I mean, this stuff can be good for family,

00:19:25 ◼   ► like parental control stuff,

00:19:27 ◼   ► because you can limit who can get through and who can't.

00:19:29 ◼   ► But also if you're using it yourself

00:19:31 ◼   ► and you're using downtime,

00:19:32 ◼   ► you can now say like,

00:19:33 ◼   ► "I wanna get messages from this person,"

00:19:35 ◼   ► and like, then they can break through,

00:19:37 ◼   ► which I think is pretty useful.

00:19:40 ◼   ► I think Gray will like it.

00:19:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, it seems like a good feature.

00:19:43 ◼   ► And I'm just excited that they're doing things

00:19:45 ◼   ► with screen time and not waiting until IOS 14.

00:19:48 ◼   ► You know, that they're continuing to improve it,

00:19:50 ◼   ► because it is a big deal.

00:19:52 ◼   ► Like I've got-- my kids have an iPad,

00:19:54 ◼   ► and I have the parental stuff set up on it,

00:19:57 ◼   ► and the screen time stuff.

00:19:58 ◼   ► And it's a little clunky in places.

00:20:00 ◼   ► And they don't have an iMessage account or anything yet,

00:20:02 ◼   ► so I haven't come across that.

00:20:04 ◼   ► But it is exciting that they are getting to improve it,

00:20:09 ◼   ► because it's really easy.

00:20:10 ◼   ► Well, I mean, these were announced 13 features

00:20:13 ◼   ► that got pushed.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Oh, wow, we send all that stuff.

00:20:15 ◼   ► This isn't new.

00:20:16 ◼   ► OK.

00:20:17 ◼   ► This was like a thing that was spoken about,

00:20:18 ◼   ► and it kept getting pushed.

00:20:20 ◼   ► If only somebody wrote a really in-depth iOS 13 review I could have read. I would have

00:20:24 ◼   ► known about this.

00:20:25 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, I know. Security keys in Safari. So if you have a physical security

00:20:35 ◼   ► key for authentication purposes on websites that support it. And these are the FIDO2 compliant,

00:20:42 ◼   ► because nobody trusts FIDO1, so it's all about FIDO2 these days.

00:20:45 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean, what, are you a fool?

00:20:47 ◼   ► Yeah, right. I mean, if you're using FIDO1, get out of here. Nobody can trust you.

00:20:51 ◼   ► That's not a compliant model of security. We all know this.

00:20:55 ◼   ► FIDO2 compliant NFC, USB and lightning keys. There is this great introduction to physical

00:21:04 ◼   ► security keys by Paul Stamatiu on their blog. Really, really great article. I had no idea

00:21:11 ◼   ► that these things...

00:21:12 ◼   ► Can you imagine how few people have a Lightning security key?

00:21:17 ◼   ► I bet it's like one person on the planet.

00:21:19 ◼   ► - So there's this company called Yubico

00:21:21 ◼   ► that they make authentication keys

00:21:23 ◼   ► and they recently came out with the Lightning version.

00:21:26 ◼   ► And I've seen some blog posts about that

00:21:30 ◼   ► when I did my research about security keys.

00:21:33 ◼   ► But yeah, it's a whole world, right?

00:21:35 ◼   ► Of like, this is like an entirely different

00:21:38 ◼   ► authentication framework.

00:21:40 ◼   ► It's supported by, it's like a web standard.

00:21:43 ◼   ► It's supported by Apple, by Google, and it's like--

00:21:45 ◼   ► - Does it work within apps as well as websites, do you know?

00:21:48 ◼   ► - It works with Safari, so if an app uses Safari view

00:21:53 ◼   ► controller, for example, for authentication, it should work.

00:21:55 ◼   ► - Right, right.

00:21:56 ◼   ► - But I don't think it's like a proper iOS API

00:22:01 ◼   ► the developers can implement in their own UIs,

00:22:05 ◼   ► if that makes sense.

00:22:06 ◼   ► I think it's just Safari for now.

00:22:08 ◼   ► And you've got to assume that there's like a Salesforce or an IBM or whatever

00:22:14 ◼   ► set to Apple, like we really need you to do this if you want us to continue with the iPad rollout or whatever.

00:22:20 ◼   ► If you use Safari and if you use websites that support this different authentication system,

00:22:26 ◼   ► you can now plug a USB or lightning key into your device or use an NFC enabled one.

00:22:32 ◼   ► And, you know, this system will log you in.

00:22:36 ◼   ► But this is like a like I was fascinated by this a few weeks ago and I consider maybe I should try it out just to see what it's like.

00:22:43 ◼   ► But then I read about what the what what's required if you just want to, for example, switch your Google account to use a physical security key.

00:22:53 ◼   ► Like what happens if you change your mind and you got to like call Google and it's like there's like a one one time decision, really.

00:23:02 ◼   ► So like, if you are the type of, but this is the thing,

00:23:05 ◼   ► if you're the type of person who,

00:23:07 ◼   ► maybe because of your profession,

00:23:09 ◼   ► maybe because of other political reasons,

00:23:12 ◼   ► if you need this kind of more secure type of authentication,

00:23:16 ◼   ► I think it's great news that Safari on iOS and iPadOS

00:23:21 ◼   ► supports this.

00:23:22 ◼   ► So it's very, very nice to see this feature.

00:23:27 ◼   ► I'll never, I'm probably never going to use it,

00:23:29 ◼   ► but I think it's pretty cool.

00:23:31 ◼   ► And so yeah, that's it.

00:23:34 ◼   ► I should mention, I should file an official complaint

00:23:38 ◼   ► here on the show about short, yes.

00:23:42 ◼   ► So we're gonna talk about shortcuts later

00:23:44 ◼   ► on a more positive note because of an anniversary

00:23:48 ◼   ► that occurs today.

00:23:50 ◼   ► But before we talk about the nice things,

00:23:53 ◼   ► I wanna talk about the bad things.

00:23:55 ◼   ► Specifically, iOS and iPadOS 13.3 have been,

00:24:01 ◼   ► because I've been testing the beta.

00:24:03 ◼   ► By far the buggiest and most problematic release

00:24:08 ◼   ► of shortcuts for me in a while.

00:24:10 ◼   ► I'm running into all kinds of issues,

00:24:15 ◼   ► whether it's about a complex shortcut such as MusicBot.

00:24:20 ◼   ► Myke literally just sent me a screenshot

00:24:24 ◼   ► of an error message that he got.

00:24:27 ◼   ► And we should say Myke is the person

00:24:29 ◼   ► will always run into issues with my shortcuts for some reason.

00:24:33 ◼   ► This is very true.

00:24:34 ◼   ► And this is-- I haven't done anything, all right?

00:24:36 ◼   ► Everyone's like, oh, Myke's so stupid.

00:24:38 ◼   ► He like puts his move on.

00:24:38 ◼   ► No, he hasn't done anything.

00:24:39 ◼   ► He followed my instructions to the letter.

00:24:42 ◼   ► There's an initial setup process for MusicBot.

00:24:47 ◼   ► It's the native option called by Apple Import Questions.

00:24:51 ◼   ► It's a shortcuts feature.

00:24:53 ◼   ► He followed those instructions, and he

00:24:56 ◼   ► got this error that says nothing. It says the file "shortcuts" couldn't be opened.

00:25:05 ◼   ► Now my shortcut... Yes, the file...

00:25:08 ◼   ► I'm in shortcuts while I exceed this error, yeah.

00:25:11 ◼   ► He's in shortcuts, he taps on the MusicBot shortcut and he gets this message that says

00:25:16 ◼   ► the file "shortcuts" couldn't be opened. Now, my shortcut isn't called shortcuts. There

00:25:25 ◼   ► is no file called "shortcuts" required by MusicBot. I have no idea what this error message means.

00:25:33 ◼   ► This shortcut was created on 13.3, and Myke is trying to run it on 13.2, so there's a chance

00:25:41 ◼   ► that's an issue, but it shouldn't be. But even more than that, I've been running into all kinds

00:25:47 ◼   ► of problems on 13.3 with shortcuts. Every time I share a shortcut, I have to recreate all my import

00:25:55 ◼   ► questions, because they get reset every time I share a shortcut. So what I've done is I created

00:26:02 ◼   ► an Apple note with the text of my import questions, because I'm tired of writing them up from scratch

00:26:08 ◼   ► every single time. Sometimes I add a variable to a shortcut, and you know how you can tap on a

00:26:17 ◼   ► variable and you can change its type or its property. Like if you have a variable

00:26:22 ◼   ► and you tap on it you can say this is a... I want to use this as an image or I want

00:26:26 ◼   ► to use this as a text. Sometimes I tap on it and the variable disappears. Like it

00:26:31 ◼   ► from the field it just disappears. I have shortcuts that take Apple Music links

00:26:39 ◼   ► and run a very simple regular expression on it from the share sheet to

00:26:46 ◼   ► extract a portion of the link. Those are not working anymore when I run them inside the

00:26:53 ◼   ► share sheet.

00:26:56 ◼   ► MusicBot presents a list of options when you share a song or an album from Apple Music

00:27:03 ◼   ► to the shortcut. And these options are like five options that say "do you want to save

00:27:08 ◼   ► this as a favorite?" or you know, stuff like that. Five options, not a lot.

00:27:12 ◼   ► 13.3 final stable version that came out yesterday, as soon as the list comes up, the shortcut crashes.

00:27:18 ◼   ► And there's all kinds of issues like this, and I basically spent the past two weeks

00:27:25 ◼   ► working around all these bugs from Apple, which I have filed, I'll let you know, I have filed,

00:27:33 ◼   ► in all the possible ways at my disposal through Apple, you know, feedback reporter, whatever,

00:27:42 ◼   ► feedback assistant, and other avenues. I have done my job, but these bugs do not get fixed.

00:27:50 ◼   ► And it's like, Apple, you're making it really difficult for me to write about shortcuts and

00:27:55 ◼   ► share shortcuts and, you know, maybe push shortcuts to its limits. But the thing is,

00:28:01 ◼   ► I'm not doing anything that is too crazy, I'm just using...

00:28:04 ◼   ► MusicBot is all Apple-made actions.

00:28:07 ◼   ► No third-party dependencies, no crazy base64, nothing.

00:28:12 ◼   ► Just plain actions.

00:28:15 ◼   ► And I keep running into issues and it's getting worse.

00:28:19 ◼   ► Like, I feel like it used to be better in the 13.0 beta this summer,

00:28:24 ◼   ► and it's gotten worse through the multiple releases of iOS 13,

00:28:28 ◼   ► which is sort of counter to what Apple is doing with these updates, so I don't get it.

00:28:33 ◼   ► I don't know what is going on.

00:28:35 ◼   ► I have some good news.

00:28:37 ◼   ► It's tvOS news.

00:28:39 ◼   ► The top shelf option can now be changed, so this means you can now change your... with

00:28:45 ◼   ► the Apple TV app, you're now able to... in the Apple TV, you're able to change the method

00:28:50 ◼   ► so the up next queue is just a list of things that you can scroll through, like the old

00:28:56 ◼   ► style as opposed to the auto playing video. To do this, if you want to do this, I did

00:29:01 ◼   ► this, it's great. Go to settings, then apps, then TV, and then you can change the top shelf

00:29:06 ◼   ► option. So you can get the old Apple TV look back rather than the previous auto playing

00:29:12 ◼   ► video, which I just want to say, I just want to say about this, I do not like creepy or

00:29:19 ◼   ► scary things. Like I don't like creepy and scary TV shows or movies. Apple currently

00:29:25 ◼   ► has one which is called Servant of End Night Shyamalan. I really don't want to see the

00:29:29 ◼   ► trailer. I just don't want to see it. It creeps me out. So just another reason to turn it

00:29:34 ◼   ► off. I don't want to see auto-playing video whenever I've got my Apple TV on and now I

00:29:39 ◼   ► don't have to.

00:29:41 ◼   ► MacOS Catalina, the iTunes column browser has reappeared in the music app.

00:29:46 ◼   ► Oh my god, really?

00:29:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:29:49 ◼   ► Okay, okay, let's do this live. What is the column browser? How do I find it in music?

00:29:54 ◼   ► tell you that. Don't know. I don't run Catalina. What do I do here? It's a way to view your

00:30:02 ◼   ► artists and albums and music and all that kind of stuff. Jason Snow uses it, Marco uses

00:30:06 ◼   ► it I think. It's just like a more old school version where I think you get like a bunch

00:30:11 ◼   ► of segmented views where you can choose artist and album. It's kind of like the column browser

00:30:17 ◼   ► you find in Finder. It's kind of like that. I don't know how you get it but it's in Music

00:30:22 ◼   ► now. It's impossible to find. I can't help you. So iOS 13 features that we don't

00:30:28 ◼   ► currently have shared iCloud Drive folders, right? So like as far as I'm

00:30:33 ◼   ► aware that's the only thing left. I can't think of anything else from 13 that they

00:30:37 ◼   ► said they would ship that they haven't shipped except this and I was kind of

00:30:41 ◼   ► scrolling through Apple's iOS 13 website today and that seemed to be the case.

00:30:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's right. Or at least that's the only major thing left.

00:30:55 ◼   ► Well, it's slightly related... well, it's another files feature. The ability to pin

00:31:02 ◼   ► files. Yeah, I think it's anything related to what is clearly an

00:31:07 ◼   ► underpinning's change of files has not happened. I wonder if it will.

00:31:13 ◼   ► Maybe. Who knows. "Saga of Iavist 13 containers." They said in the spring, right?

00:31:18 ◼   ► Are they saying next year or in the spring?

00:31:21 ◼   ► When I was on the iOS 13 website today it said autumn.

00:31:25 ◼   ► Still.

00:31:27 ◼   ► So that's by the end of the year I guess.

00:31:29 ◼   ► If they're sticking to that.

00:31:32 ◼   ► Alright, should we change over our co-host and talk about the micropro?

00:31:35 ◼   ► Yes, hold on. Let me do the official passing of the torch.

00:31:40 ◼   ► In this case it's not a torch, it's headphones.

00:31:42 ◼   ► Bye guys, I'll talk to you in a bit. Bye bye.

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00:33:33 ◼   ► It's MacPro Week, gentlemen.

00:33:34 ◼   ► - Finally.

00:33:35 ◼   ► - We have some links in the show notes to some stuff.

00:33:36 ◼   ► We're sort of assuming that a lot of people

00:33:38 ◼   ► have seen a lot of stuff.

00:33:40 ◼   ► There were three YouTube videos that are worth watching.

00:33:42 ◼   ► MKBHD, iJustine, and Jonathan Morrison all unboxed

00:33:47 ◼   ► and set up Mac Pros on their channels.

00:33:50 ◼   ► I think all three are gonna work on a more in-depth review.

00:33:52 ◼   ► But even the packaging of this machine is bananas.

00:33:56 ◼   ► The box is enormous.

00:33:57 ◼   ► It's held together with Velcro and has its handles.

00:34:00 ◼   ► It's cool.

00:34:01 ◼   ► It's very cool.

00:34:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, that box is really something.

00:34:05 ◼   ► It seems like it's made out of a material

00:34:07 ◼   ► that's different than some of the other packaging

00:34:09 ◼   ► some of the other Macs too from what I could tell in those videos.

00:34:12 ◼   ► It should be more premium, that's for sure.

00:34:14 ◼   ► I suppose so.

00:34:16 ◼   ► Maybe it's more recyclable.

00:34:19 ◼   ► Maybe it sounds like it's really smooth, kind of a weird soft texture or something,

00:34:24 ◼   ► almost like a plastic is what it sounded like, I don't know.

00:34:27 ◼   ► Huh, okay.

00:34:28 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if they had to change something because they did, well one, maybe

00:34:33 ◼   ► needed it to be stronger and two, because they were doing that Velcro thing.

00:34:37 ◼   ► There might have been different rigidity things that you needed to consider.

00:34:40 ◼   ► Plus it's a very, very, very heavy computer.

00:34:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:44 ◼   ► Yeah, that was definitely obvious from the videos.

00:34:48 ◼   ► People struggled to pick those things up and get them out of the boxes.

00:34:52 ◼   ► I have a question while we're talking about reviews and stuff like that.

00:34:56 ◼   ► Why do you think Apple gave every reviewer two Pro displays?

00:35:02 ◼   ► Because it's awesome.

00:35:03 ◼   ► So the three reviewers, iJustine, MKBHD, and Jonathan Morrison, they all got two Pro displays.

00:35:07 ◼   ► I mean, maybe they got one matte and one smooth, right?

00:35:10 ◼   ► So they could see the difference between them.

00:35:11 ◼   ► But like that is, how many people are gonna need,

00:35:14 ◼   ► are gonna not need, how many people are actually going

00:35:17 ◼   ► to have two of these displays?

00:35:19 ◼   ► It seems wild.

00:35:20 ◼   ► - It's a lot.

00:35:20 ◼   ► Thomas had two of them as well.

00:35:22 ◼   ► And yeah, I don't know if it's, if one,

00:35:24 ◼   ► if the difference or different finishes, I'm not sure.

00:35:28 ◼   ► But I mean, you can see like if,

00:35:30 ◼   ► I mean, Apple's really pushing that this is a computer

00:35:32 ◼   ► designed for video editors.

00:35:34 ◼   ► and those people do want like a full size preview

00:35:37 ◼   ► and I think it fits with their narrative.

00:35:39 ◼   ► I don't think it means that Apple assumes

00:35:41 ◼   ► people are gonna buy two of these displays with it,

00:35:44 ◼   ► but I'm not sure Apple assumes

00:35:46 ◼   ► that you're gonna buy one display with it.

00:35:47 ◼   ► - You can correct me if I'm wrong,

00:35:48 ◼   ► but I think the demos like in WWDC,

00:35:51 ◼   ► a lot of them had two, right, as well, is that right?

00:35:53 ◼   ► - Some of them did and others were hooked up to like one

00:35:55 ◼   ► and then like a 4K television on the wall.

00:35:58 ◼   ► There were several different scenarios,

00:36:01 ◼   ► but I think too Apple,

00:36:03 ◼   ► I mean, they also sent those three YouTubers the 28 core machine.

00:36:07 ◼   ► Thomas had the 16 core, I think, but they were flexing a little bit, you know,

00:36:12 ◼   ► cause they want to show off the highest end, uh, you know,

00:36:15 ◼   ► configurations where possible.

00:36:17 ◼   ► So I think it makes sense with the picture Apple's trying to paint, but you know,

00:36:21 ◼   ► I don't know if that has any like real indication of how people will use it.

00:36:25 ◼   ► Is the 28 core the maximum core amount?

00:36:28 ◼   ► Uh, let's see. I have the page open. Let's find out.

00:36:33 ◼   ► I don't like the update to the Apple Store app, by the way.

00:36:36 ◼   ► It's a little rough in places.

00:36:38 ◼   ► Everything is way more difficult to find.

00:36:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I found the same thing.

00:36:42 ◼   ► Yes, the 28 core, it's a $7,000 option in the United States.

00:36:47 ◼   ► But that's the most cores.

00:36:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean one of the things they did was they showed, in iJustine's video, she showed

00:36:54 ◼   ► off using the two displays where one had all the multi-cam views in one place, and then

00:37:01 ◼   ► the second display was used to show the actual footage that she was creating. So that's a

00:37:07 ◼   ► use case for it, but you're right. That's an awfully expensive use case.

00:37:11 ◼   ► I also wonder if this monitor is so much bigger than monitors people are currently using,

00:37:18 ◼   ► so maybe we could just do this with multiple windows. Because what is it, 32 inches?

00:37:25 ◼   ► 32 inches.

00:37:26 ◼   ► Which is bigger than most of the monitors that you would buy for a machine like this

00:37:30 ◼   ► currently, right?

00:37:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, 27 is sort of the sweet spot,

00:37:34 ◼   ► I think, for a lot of people.

00:37:35 ◼   ► But I mean, you know, it's, I think,

00:37:37 ◼   ► I think it's flex more than anything,

00:37:39 ◼   ► but it was fun to watch that and fun to, you know,

00:37:41 ◼   ► it's fun to watch people set stuff up and talk about it.

00:37:43 ◼   ► And all three of them shared some early benchmarks.

00:37:46 ◼   ► Thomas shared some details on MPU,

00:37:49 ◼   ► just how much faster it is at certain tasks.

00:37:53 ◼   ► And if you're in Final Cut in particular and using ProRes,

00:37:57 ◼   ► then it is shockingly faster,

00:37:59 ◼   ► like in a way that doesn't really make sense.

00:38:01 ◼   ► And--

00:38:02 ◼   ► - And that's 'cause of that card, right?

00:38:03 ◼   ► You have to burn a card?

00:38:04 ◼   ► - Yes, yeah, because the Xeons don't have,

00:38:07 ◼   ► so the Core i5, i7, i9 have a component

00:38:13 ◼   ► to speed up some video processing, and the Xeons don't.

00:38:16 ◼   ► So actually under some, so I edit in ProRes in Final Cut,

00:38:21 ◼   ► and under certain circumstances,

00:38:23 ◼   ► my MacBook Pro can actually export faster

00:38:28 ◼   ► than my iMac Pro because of this difference in the Core i9 and the Xeons, but the afterburner

00:38:34 ◼   ► basically blows all that out of the water.

00:38:35 ◼   ► And it's just basically, I mean, it's an ASIC is basically just a bunch of gates set up

00:38:43 ◼   ► to make particular tasks as fast as possible.

00:38:46 ◼   ► And so I think I think I said this last week, it would be interesting to see if Apple applied

00:38:50 ◼   ► that to other things like, what would an afterburner for something like logic look like where you

00:38:55 ◼   ► could do more and more tracks?

00:38:56 ◼   ► What would it look like for other types of jobs?

00:38:59 ◼   ► And so some video codec, some things

00:39:04 ◼   ► won't be taking advantage of Afterburner.

00:39:07 ◼   ► But if you are working in that type of codec,

00:39:10 ◼   ► then it just destroys everything else on the planet,

00:39:14 ◼   ► it seems like, which is cool.

00:39:17 ◼   ► Because there are PCs that are faster than this

00:39:20 ◼   ► or as fast as this, and you can run Premiere on them.

00:39:22 ◼   ► But the Afterburner is really what sets it apart,

00:39:25 ◼   ► at least for now.

00:39:25 ◼   ► And I would I would guess that other manufacturers may end up doing similar things to this red actually

00:39:31 ◼   ► I'm gonna put it in present tense, but it may be past tense

00:39:34 ◼   ► I'm not sure red has some PCI cards that you can use to import and digest some of their

00:39:40 ◼   ► Video stuff on the PC side, but I don't know how

00:39:44 ◼   ► widespread that is and and maybe this will be a way that

00:39:47 ◼   ► People on the PC or using other codecs could benefit from kind of what Apple is doing as well

00:39:54 ◼   ► But it seems that even if you're not using progress or XMGB she does not use progress and his

00:39:59 ◼   ► He's like export or rendering speeds. He's rendering speeds are just right faster

00:40:04 ◼   ► Yeah, 12 minutes on the Mac Pro and four and a half minutes on the yeah

00:40:08 ◼   ► Mac Pro the iMac put in a Mac Pro

00:40:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's the core count come coming into play and the amount of RAM probably but no doubt it's faster

00:40:16 ◼   ► It just under certain circumstances. It's

00:40:18 ◼   ► bananas faster

00:40:20 ◼   ► There are some accessories that you know the big thing with the Mac Pro is that you can open it you can really customize it to

00:40:27 ◼   ► What you want what you need and some of those have popped up in the last day or so

00:40:32 ◼   ► The protospecs ER does not have an eyesight camera in it

00:40:36 ◼   ► I saw people complaining about this and I actually think that that's for good reason

00:40:40 ◼   ► I think if this is a display for people working in high-end production

00:40:46 ◼   ► You don't necessarily want those devices to have cameras on them

00:40:49 ◼   ► It keeps the bezel thin and all that other other stuff, but Logitech does have a new 4k webcam

00:40:55 ◼   ► It sticks with a magnet to the top of the XDR

00:40:57 ◼   ► Kind like the iSight camera used to do and it can be driven by both the 16 inch MacBook Pro

00:41:03 ◼   ► or the the new Mac Pro

00:41:05 ◼   ► So if you have a pro display XDR for some reason and you need a webcam, there's an option

00:41:09 ◼   ► from Logitech and I have the Logitech the 1080 camera that a bunch of people have and

00:41:15 ◼   ► And if I'm on a video thing, I even use it with my iMac Pro

00:41:19 ◼   ► because it looks better than the 1080 webcam built

00:41:22 ◼   ► into the computer.

00:41:23 ◼   ► So Logitech builds good stuff in this arena,

00:41:24 ◼   ► and I'd imagine that camera looks pretty good.

00:41:26 ◼   ► There are also a couple of RAID options from Promise.

00:41:29 ◼   ► One is a two-disk array that sits

00:41:33 ◼   ► at the very top of the Mac Pro.

00:41:35 ◼   ► They promised-- oh, god, I can't believe I said that.

00:41:37 ◼   ► I really didn't mean it.

00:41:39 ◼   ► They said that these were going to be a thing, right?

00:41:42 ◼   ► Like Apple said that there would be RAID stuff from Promise?

00:41:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, and it's just, they shipped it,

00:41:46 ◼   ► it's for sale now, so.

00:41:47 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:41:48 ◼   ► - So there's a two bay and then a four bay

00:41:50 ◼   ► that takes one of the MPX slots.

00:41:51 ◼   ► They put, they ship with spinning hard drives,

00:41:55 ◼   ► three and a half inch drives,

00:41:56 ◼   ► but I would hope that you could adapt that

00:41:59 ◼   ► to two and a half inch SSDs, but.

00:42:02 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:42:02 ◼   ► - Spinning hard drives are still way more affordable

00:42:06 ◼   ► for RAID scenarios, and in that sort of setup,

00:42:08 ◼   ► you just want capacity, so.

00:42:10 ◼   ► Those are there, that is something

00:42:13 ◼   ► I am potentially excited about because I think a lot of people have big storage needs and to bring that internally is nice

00:42:18 ◼   ► You can also

00:42:20 ◼   ► order RAM

00:42:22 ◼   ► Additional or upgraded GPUs and then the afterburner card in kits something Apple's been talking about

00:42:27 ◼   ► The afterburner by the way is two grand

00:42:30 ◼   ► I had no idea what to expect that cost to be so like I don't know if 2000 is good or not

00:42:35 ◼   ► But that's what it is. So you can

00:42:40 ◼   ► upgrade these as we talked about. So it's good. Good stuff.

00:42:44 ◼   ► Yeah, it's expensive, but the graphics cards are expensive too. I think it's in line with

00:42:49 ◼   ► those at least. If you look at some of those, they're like $2800 for the Radeon Pro Vega.

00:42:56 ◼   ► But again, is that expensive in the wider market? We're comparing Apple to Apple in

00:43:02 ◼   ► that, right? This is what Apple's charging for this stuff. Whether it ends up being those

00:43:07 ◼   ► prices on the wider market is like a different thing.

00:43:10 ◼   ► So am I right, like the Radeon Vega stuff is branded, like these are the cards that

00:43:16 ◼   ► are used elsewhere but they brand them differently when they work with Apple?

00:43:19 ◼   ► Yeah, they're branded differently and the big MPX cards are two GPUs connected with

00:43:24 ◼   ► Infinity Link, which again you can do elsewhere.

00:43:27 ◼   ► Those are kind of standard AMD things, but they're tweaked a little bit and then the

00:43:32 ◼   ► The MPX module is also using Thunderbolt 3 internally for additional power, and it passes

00:43:37 ◼   ► through Thunderbolt to the back.

00:43:39 ◼   ► So depending on the GPU you have, the numbers change, but you have HDMI, and then you have

00:43:44 ◼   ► Thunderbolt 3, additional Thunderbolt 3 ports on the video card that you can use for data

00:43:50 ◼   ► or additional video out.

00:43:53 ◼   ► So they are using Thunderbolt 3 internally in addition to PCI to power these things and

00:43:59 ◼   ► provide more bandwidth.

00:44:00 ◼   ► So you can go out and buy a regular video card and slap it in there.

00:44:04 ◼   ► There's a header in there for power.

00:44:06 ◼   ► But if you do go apples route, you get some a nicer package and something that will take

00:44:11 ◼   ► fuller advantage of what the Mac Pro can do.

00:44:14 ◼   ► Were you surprised that they didn't have any like additional IO cards or expansions that

00:44:19 ◼   ► Apple will make him?

00:44:20 ◼   ► I was so the Mac Pro ships with the half length, they're calling the Apple IO card and that

00:44:26 ◼   ► has USB A and Thunderbolt three on the back.

00:44:30 ◼   ► And that comes just comes with the Mac Pro, I expected that you could just buy one of

00:44:34 ◼   ► those outright unless I missed it this morning, you can't.

00:44:38 ◼   ► So if you need more USB A, you're going to have to break out somewhere or if you wanted,

00:44:45 ◼   ► you know, just more Thunderbolt ports, but don't need another GPU, you're kind of stuck.

00:44:49 ◼   ► And so my guess is that someone you know, OWC or somebody will ship a card that just

00:44:55 ◼   ► gives you a bunch of ports on the back, right?

00:44:57 ◼   ► because PCI can just hand out to a bunch of different ports

00:45:00 ◼   ► and you'll be fine.

00:45:01 ◼   ► So I was hoping to see that because I think people

00:45:06 ◼   ► who just use it sort of without a bunch of GPUs in it

00:45:09 ◼   ► may need additional IO and Apple doesn't have

00:45:12 ◼   ► a great solution for that currently.

00:45:14 ◼   ► There are some sort of what I'm calling weird details,

00:45:18 ◼   ► just things that jumped out at me.

00:45:21 ◼   ► The first one is that the rack-mounted Mac Pro

00:45:23 ◼   ► starts at $500 more and is quote, "coming soon."

00:45:26 ◼   ► So it does come in a rack mounted, put it in a server farm

00:45:31 ◼   ► if you're, you know, if you're the guys at a Mac stadium,

00:45:36 ◼   ► it's a viable option and way better than having

00:45:39 ◼   ► a bunch of iMac Pros in a rack like they do now.

00:45:41 ◼   ► So we don't know much about that machine.

00:45:44 ◼   ► My assumption is that the specs are all basically the same

00:45:47 ◼   ► and it's just a form factor difference

00:45:48 ◼   ► and you're paying for that, but that's kind of unknown.

00:45:51 ◼   ► Apple hasn't given a date of when that might show up. The Mac Pro is a pretty niche thing,

00:45:59 ◼   ► but the rack mounted one is going to be extremely specific. I don't know how many

00:46:04 ◼   ► those they're going to sell. But if you need it, it's coming soon.

00:46:06 ◼   ► Along with other options, the eight terabyte SSD and some of the graphics card options.

00:46:12 ◼   ► They're not. They're just coming soon to write no date, right?

00:46:16 ◼   ► So the the eight terabyte SSD first showed up on the 16 inch MacBook Pro.

00:46:20 ◼   ► Apple had previously said the four terabyte will be the max for the Mac Pro, but they're

00:46:24 ◼   ► going to have an eight terabyte option. So again, we don't know when that is, but it is coming. And

00:46:29 ◼   ► it's odd to me that they couldn't get at least that going before launch, but who knows? But yeah,

00:46:34 ◼   ► additional Radeon Pro, the W5700X will ship soon. If you need that, we should talk about the price,

00:46:42 ◼   ► because that's what that's what that's the thing with his machine, many headlines,

00:46:46 ◼   ► But I mean, but it's fun. I mean, like it's a big it's a big thing.

00:46:49 ◼   ► You know, I don't know about you, but as soon as as soon as I saw

00:46:52 ◼   ► that it was available, the first thing that I did was back up one to the maximum.

00:46:55 ◼   ► I think everybody did that right.

00:46:57 ◼   ► Like that's what everybody used to do with the old Mac Pro, like the cheese

00:47:00 ◼   ► grater Mac Pro, like how expensive can you make it go?

00:47:02 ◼   ► And you can pass fifty thousand dollars with this.

00:47:07 ◼   ► That's amazing.

00:47:08 ◼   ► And this isn't the highest price though, right?

00:47:11 ◼   ► Because I'm assuming that once the SSD options are available

00:47:16 ◼   ► and the other graphics, you might be able to make it even more expensive.

00:47:19 ◼   ► They're not going to reduce the current SSD pricing with the 8 terabytes in option, right?

00:47:23 ◼   ► It'll just add it to the top. Right.

00:47:25 ◼   ► Yeah, it's fun. That's a fun game to play. And if you need a terabyte and a half of RAM,

00:47:30 ◼   ► that's basically half the cost, isn't it? That terabyte and a half is really expensive.

00:47:34 ◼   ► It's 25. Yeah, it's 25 grand.

00:47:36 ◼   ► That's wild. Apple is giving people options, right? And it's, if you're the type of person

00:47:43 ◼   ► who needs a terabyte and a half of RAM,

00:47:44 ◼   ► now you have a solution that runs Mac OS.

00:47:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's great.

00:47:48 ◼   ► Isn't this what everyone wanted, right?

00:47:49 ◼   ► I know that it makes it very expensive,

00:47:52 ◼   ► but wasn't the whole purpose for this machine existing,

00:47:54 ◼   ► so people that have particular needs

00:47:56 ◼   ► can now have them fulfilled.

00:47:58 ◼   ► If you need 1.5 terabytes of RAM,

00:48:01 ◼   ► Apple now give you the ability to have that.

00:48:03 ◼   ► You could not do that before yesterday.

00:48:05 ◼   ► You were out of luck.

00:48:07 ◼   ► If you needed, for some reason,

00:48:08 ◼   ► 1.5 terabytes of RAM in a computer,

00:48:11 ◼   ► you could not use Mac OS to do it unless you were gonna go

00:48:14 ◼   ► with some horrific Macintosh thing, right?

00:48:17 ◼   ► But this is what was asked for,

00:48:20 ◼   ► so this is what it is now, right?

00:48:23 ◼   ► Like you don't have to spend 22 grand

00:48:26 ◼   ► to put 1.5 terabytes of RAM in there.

00:48:28 ◼   ► Like, I know there's a lot of question about want and need,

00:48:31 ◼   ► but like, I don't know, who even need, who, how, why?

00:48:35 ◼   ► - I mean, the RAM specifically, I think,

00:48:39 ◼   ► is for people who are doing big data modeling

00:48:43 ◼   ► or scientific computation.

00:48:46 ◼   ► A lot of that can be handed off to memory in this way faster.

00:48:48 ◼   ► It is incredibly niche.

00:48:50 ◼   ► And I think it's great that even for these incredibly niche use

00:48:54 ◼   ► cases, you can now buy a computer from Apple

00:48:57 ◼   ► that you can put this hardware into.

00:48:59 ◼   ► This is what the Mac Pro in 2020 should be, I think.

00:49:04 ◼   ► I think you're right, Myke.

00:49:05 ◼   ► It's absolutely something.

00:49:07 ◼   ► It's exactly what we were told we were going to get in June.

00:49:09 ◼   ► The thing I think that shocks people still though is that that base model is like buying

00:49:15 ◼   ► an iMac Pro, right?

00:49:17 ◼   ► I know that when I was trying to guess what the highest price would be, I thought it might

00:49:20 ◼   ► be like $25,000, something like that.

00:49:22 ◼   ► Yeah, me too.

00:49:23 ◼   ► Me too.

00:49:24 ◼   ► Right?

00:49:25 ◼   ► So we were talking about that in iMessage and yeah, I thought it was going to be half

00:49:27 ◼   ► of what it is and so it is kind of shocking but I'm not upset about that in any way because

00:49:33 ◼   ► Because I agree there are use cases, they're very, very narrow use cases.

00:49:37 ◼   ► But now people have a machine that they can configure to be the most powerful Mac on the

00:49:42 ◼   ► planet to do whatever they want.

00:49:44 ◼   ► And I think it's great that it exists.

00:49:47 ◼   ► Yeah, there's been some hand wringing, as you would imagine, and I think this is the

00:49:52 ◼   ► goodest time ever to talk about that.

00:49:54 ◼   ► If you look back, and I wrote a piece about this years ago, I will try to dig it up for

00:49:59 ◼   ► the show notes about the starting price of the old Mac Pro, the the cheese

00:50:05 ◼   ► grater not the 2013, and you could get an entry-level Mac Pro in, you know, not a

00:50:14 ◼   ► great, not a great configuration, but one that started, you know, that started less

00:50:22 ◼   ► and, you know, $2,500, $3,500, and obviously you can't do that. Oh, this is why I

00:50:28 ◼   ► couldn't find it. I didn't write it. Ed Cormany did. It was a guest post. Thank you, Ed.

00:50:35 ◼   ► It's an expensive machine and it's a little bit of a bummer that there's not

00:50:39 ◼   ► a sort of hobbyist price point entry-level model. I think the specs on

00:50:44 ◼   ► the entry-level model show that Apple just couldn't do that, at least with this

00:50:47 ◼   ► hardware, because the base Mac Pro is $1,000 more than the base iMac Pro and not as

00:50:52 ◼   ► good, right? A quarter of the storage space and a GPU

00:50:58 ◼   ► that at least under some circumstances isn't as good and that's and no display

00:51:02 ◼   ► and that's a bummer I really was hoping before we knew the price that when this

00:51:07 ◼   ► machine was theoretical that there would be an entry-level machine that a

00:51:10 ◼   ► hobbyist could buy or someone who just wants a tower and they could build up on

00:51:15 ◼   ► their own over time and you can do that with this but the price of entry is

00:51:19 ◼   ► really high and that's a bummer okay I I myself am sad about that because I'm

00:51:27 ◼   ► I'm interested in this machine and if I want to buy it,

00:51:30 ◼   ► then I have to spend a lot of money out of the gate

00:51:32 ◼   ► where I would prefer to spend half that money

00:51:34 ◼   ► out of the gate and then build it up over time.

00:51:36 ◼   ► I just can't do that.

00:51:37 ◼   ► However, John, I think your point is well made

00:51:41 ◼   ► that this is a machine, yes, well, the price is higher

00:51:44 ◼   ► than we expected.

00:51:46 ◼   ► It means that it can solve all sorts of problems for people

00:51:48 ◼   ► that Apple just couldn't address previously

00:51:52 ◼   ► and just couldn't do it.

00:51:53 ◼   ► And that's fine, but it does mean that what the Mac Pro is

00:51:58 ◼   ► and how people define the Mac Pro

00:52:00 ◼   ► is different than it was 10 years ago.

00:52:02 ◼   ► And I think the sooner that we all accept that,

00:52:06 ◼   ► the better, right?

00:52:07 ◼   ► Jason wrote this really interesting thing

00:52:08 ◼   ► about want versus need and how if you just want it,

00:52:10 ◼   ► that's fine, but most people don't actually need it.

00:52:13 ◼   ► And I feel like that article has been used

00:52:16 ◼   ► as a weapon on every side.

00:52:18 ◼   ► And even Jason and I have argued about it.

00:52:20 ◼   ► But I think that understanding this machine

00:52:23 ◼   ► is really specific.

00:52:25 ◼   ► And if you just need a fast Mac, you can spend a lot less money

00:52:30 ◼   ► and get, in some cases, a better computer.

00:52:33 ◼   ► That's just where we are, right?

00:52:34 ◼   ► It's just different than it used to be.

00:52:36 ◼   ► And while that's a bummer, I think

00:52:38 ◼   ► it's time to realize that this computer is what it is.

00:52:40 ◼   ► And if it's for you, that's great.

00:52:42 ◼   ► And if it's not, the iMac Pro or even the high-end 5K iMac

00:52:45 ◼   ► is a really good computer.

00:52:47 ◼   ► The iMac Pro I'm sitting in front of

00:52:48 ◼   ► is the best computer I've ever owned.

00:52:50 ◼   ► It should not be overlooked.

00:52:52 ◼   ► - Right, I find this to be a really cool computer

00:52:55 ◼   ► that I think is really interesting to talk about,

00:52:57 ◼   ► but I have no desire to buy it myself.

00:52:58 ◼   ► When I was working on the story for Mac Stories about it,

00:53:02 ◼   ► I specced it up and put it into the shopping cart,

00:53:06 ◼   ► and I've never been so nervous

00:53:07 ◼   ► that I might accidentally click buy and spend,

00:53:11 ◼   ► I have to then explain to my wife

00:53:12 ◼   ► that I just spent $7,000, or God forbid,

00:53:16 ◼   ► $50,000 on a computer that I had

00:53:18 ◼   ► somehow return. But yeah, it's cool. I enjoy seeing what it's capable of and I'm really

00:53:23 ◼   ► looking forward to more in-depth hands-on. We got a little bit of a taste of that from

00:53:27 ◼   ► some of the things like MacPowers users with the interview and the videos that came out,

00:53:33 ◼   ► but I really want to see what the full capabilities of these different configurations really are.

00:53:38 ◼   ► Yeah, and with the third-party stuff, I mean, no two MacPros will be identical, right? Like,

00:53:44 ◼   ► Like you can really do, and that is,

00:53:47 ◼   ► Stephen John Smith was talking about this earlier,

00:53:49 ◼   ► that is the case for a tower,

00:53:50 ◼   ► that you can have exactly what you need.

00:53:53 ◼   ► The complaint is you have to buy way more than you need

00:53:55 ◼   ► to get the flexibility, and that's something

00:53:58 ◼   ► that Apple just chose not to address with the system,

00:54:00 ◼   ► and they clearly think that if you need power

00:54:04 ◼   ► but are on less of a budget, then there's other options.

00:54:07 ◼   ► And that's not to say that iMac Pro is cheap,

00:54:09 ◼   ► 'cause it's not, but they've decided to solve this

00:54:12 ◼   ► in this way and because Apple's the only company

00:54:15 ◼   ► that makes hardware that supports macOS officially,

00:54:18 ◼   ► then we have to make the decisions within that matrix.

00:54:21 ◼   ► Whether we agree with the matrix or not,

00:54:23 ◼   ► that's kind of how it is and I found the arguments

00:54:28 ◼   ► about it sort of exhausting because like,

00:54:29 ◼   ► what are you gonna do?

00:54:30 ◼   ► Like if you wanna run macOS and you know,

00:54:32 ◼   ► people say all the time, like well, you can build this PC,

00:54:34 ◼   ► you can have this laptop that cools better.

00:54:36 ◼   ► Well, if you want to run macOS and I do,

00:54:39 ◼   ► that limits your options and it puts you in a arena

00:54:43 ◼   ► that Apple fully controls and for better or for worse,

00:54:46 ◼   ► that's how it is.

00:54:47 ◼   ► - You know, Steven, you mentioned the wheels

00:54:49 ◼   ► and there's another tidbit about the wheels

00:54:51 ◼   ► that I thought was really interesting,

00:54:52 ◼   ► which is if you order the wheels,

00:54:54 ◼   ► it's gonna take an extra month for you to get your computer,

00:54:56 ◼   ► which I thought was kind of humorous.

00:54:58 ◼   ► Obviously, they didn't have the wheels quite ready yet,

00:55:01 ◼   ► I guess, for shipment right away.

00:55:03 ◼   ► - That slipped.

00:55:04 ◼   ► Initially, it was basically of the same date.

00:55:06 ◼   ► So the wheels are $400, they cannot be added later.

00:55:10 ◼   ► I had this funny idea of I was just gonna buy the wheels

00:55:13 ◼   ► and review them on YouTube, but you can't do that.

00:55:17 ◼   ► It seems like the, it seems like the frames--

00:55:20 ◼   ► - Put them on a skateboard or something?

00:55:21 ◼   ► - Well, I was gonna like build a thing

00:55:23 ◼   ► and then like put my cheese grater on it, but--

00:55:25 ◼   ► - Oh, that would have been good.

00:55:26 ◼   ► - Or the trash can, but the video will never happen.

00:55:30 ◼   ► My assumption is that the wheels or the feet

00:55:33 ◼   ► are actually different frames, because Apple says,

00:55:36 ◼   ► if you need wheels later, you can go to an Apple store and get it done.

00:55:39 ◼   ► And I would assume that it's way more than $400 at that point.

00:55:42 ◼   ► And they're going to replace the frame, basically build your computer on a new frame.

00:55:45 ◼   ► I don't know that I think iFixit will tear it apart and tell us if they're actually removable.

00:55:50 ◼   ► But my guess is they're actually two different frames.

00:55:52 ◼   ► And that's a, so you got to make the wheel decision at the beginning.

00:55:56 ◼   ► And as, as I noted yesterday, if you want wheels now, it's a delayed quite a bit.

00:56:01 ◼   ► So yeah, if the way even Apple describes it on the website makes it seem like

00:56:06 ◼   ► that it's an entirely different case, right?

00:56:10 ◼   ► Because they describe it as like, do you want the case

00:56:13 ◼   ► or do you want the case with the wheels?

00:56:14 ◼   ► And it's like, it feels like it's a different thing.

00:56:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that stainless steel space frame or whatever

00:56:19 ◼   ► is two different parts.

00:56:22 ◼   ► So yeah, you can't add wheels later, which is a bummer.

00:56:25 ◼   ► But--

00:56:26 ◼   ► I've been thinking about it, and I really

00:56:28 ◼   ► don't know why you wouldn't get wheels.

00:56:31 ◼   ► If it's going on the floor, if you're

00:56:33 ◼   ► somebody buying this computer and it's going on the floor,

00:56:36 ◼   ► I feel like wheels are a good idea.

00:56:37 ◼   ► If you're putting it on a table or a desk,

00:56:40 ◼   ► then don't get wheels, obviously, unless they lock.

00:56:42 ◼   ► Look, I've seen this thing.

00:56:43 ◼   ► It's enormous.

00:56:44 ◼   ► Do not put it on your desk.

00:56:45 ◼   ► Put it on the floor.

00:56:46 ◼   ► Because I was thinking, right?

00:56:48 ◼   ► It's big and heavy.

00:56:50 ◼   ► If you had to get behind it, it's

00:56:52 ◼   ► not going to be a real thing to get it out there.

00:56:54 ◼   ► But if you had the wheels, you can just pull it out.

00:56:56 ◼   ► Yep.

00:56:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:56:58 ◼   ► I think it makes a lot of sense to put wheels on it.

00:57:00 ◼   ► It's a real question.

00:57:02 ◼   ► I think the wheels being backdated is a sign that maybe people really do want them.

00:57:07 ◼   ► Or maybe they only made six of them, right?

00:57:10 ◼   ► Assuming they made the same number that people who are buying these want them,

00:57:14 ◼   ► I think there is a real pent-up demand for this machine.

00:57:16 ◼   ► If you look at the ship dates, they are sliding.

00:57:18 ◼   ► People who have been holding on to old cheese graters or using the trash can or using the iMac Pro

00:57:24 ◼   ► who really need this, I think they're really excited.

00:57:27 ◼   ► And I think those people overlap heavily with people who really will use the wheels

00:57:31 ◼   ► because they are using these on set or in flexible offices that you know you're

00:57:37 ◼   ► gonna go to one editing bay then the other and the wheels make that way

00:57:40 ◼   ► easier. Moving on a little bit the base Mac Pro CPU uses slower RAM than the

00:57:46 ◼   ► others and the terabyte and a half option is only available on the 24 or 28

00:57:51 ◼   ► core CPU so that's those the CPU parts are slightly different from Intel so

00:57:57 ◼   ► So something to be aware of the Apple store won't let you make a mistake there.

00:58:01 ◼   ► I tried as like, you know, like you have the CPU, so you're limited to this or that.

00:58:06 ◼   ► So but if you're upgrading later, of course, make sure that the RAM you buy is the RAM

00:58:11 ◼   ► that matches with your CPU.

00:58:15 ◼   ► There is a PCI utility that ships with the Mac Pro, the icon of that leaked a while ago.

00:58:22 ◼   ► But the About This Mac window has been updated on this machine to show the RAM slots and

00:58:28 ◼   ► the PCI slots and it gives you directions for add-ons.

00:58:31 ◼   ► These are three channel systems and so you can't just slap RAM in any slot you want because

00:58:39 ◼   ► it looks good.

00:58:40 ◼   ► You have to put them in specific slots and as you add RAM you have to do it in a specific

00:58:43 ◼   ► order and the Mac will help you through all that.

00:58:46 ◼   ► So it will show you what to do.

00:58:49 ◼   ► Which is good.

00:58:50 ◼   ► get it wrong, it will still boot and it will just give you an error when you log

00:58:53 ◼   ► in saying that there's a memory configuration issue and it will prompt

00:58:58 ◼   ► you to to fix it. So it seems pretty idiot-proof to upgrade these, which is

00:59:03 ◼   ► nice because that wasn't always true before. I've got both a G5 and a Mac Pro,

00:59:07 ◼   ► you saw them in my video last week or earlier this week, and it was a little

00:59:12 ◼   ► confusing. There's markings on the case of where to add the RAM, but you could

00:59:16 ◼   ► totally overlook that. And then those systems would just beep at you if you

00:59:19 ◼   ► got it wrong and not boot and then you have to figure out what happened which

00:59:22 ◼   ► is not a good user experience right you open your computer and then the next

00:59:25 ◼   ► time you powered on just beeps and won't come on that's scary so they seem like

00:59:28 ◼   ► they're handling it better now lastly the pro display XDR there was a

00:59:34 ◼   ► desktop about this yesterday about what computers can drive it the Mac Pro of

00:59:39 ◼   ► course can drive it the 15 inch 2018 or later can drive it the 16 inch MacBook

00:59:44 ◼   ► Pro can drive it and then the 2019 iMacs can drive it. Or any Mac with a

00:59:51 ◼   ► Thunderbolt 3 port using a Blackmagic or Blackmagic Pro eGPU. There is one

00:59:57 ◼   ► computer that is suspiciously absent from that list and it's the iMac Pro and

01:00:01 ◼   ► best I can tell there are two reasons for this. One, the iMac Pro came out in

01:00:08 ◼   ► 2017 it has Thunderbolt 3 but it uses an older Thunderbolt 3 controller all these

01:00:15 ◼   ► other systems use the Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3 controller and that's

01:00:19 ◼   ► stupid that Intel did and Apple didn't change the name but effectively what it

01:00:24 ◼   ► means is the iMac Pro doesn't have the bandwidth or the video output to drive

01:00:28 ◼   ► this display at 6k and so you could do it with an eGPU but as it stands today

01:00:34 ◼   ► the iMac Pro can't drive it. There's also a question about the GPUs. The GPUs

01:00:39 ◼   ► and all the other systems end in an X and maybe that's some sort of mark that

01:00:46 ◼   ► they're upgraded somehow, but again the iMac Pro is two years old so it's

01:00:51 ◼   ► GPU apparently is not supported. This makes me sort of hit start on

01:00:58 ◼   ► the countdown to an iMac Pro update because it's a) it's been two years but

01:01:02 ◼   ► But it seems like this is a pairing that would be popular.

01:01:07 ◼   ► And I was honestly a little surprised because I thought about this before that, oh, the

01:01:11 ◼   ► iMac Pro, you know, it's two years old, we'll be able to drive it.

01:01:15 ◼   ► I was also surprised we didn't see an iMac Pro update with this.

01:01:19 ◼   ► And maybe it's coming soon.

01:01:21 ◼   ► And I don't think Intel has parts ready yet.

01:01:23 ◼   ► But there are GPUs that will support it.

01:01:27 ◼   ► Now I don't know if Apple can continue to ship the same Xeon parts and upgrade the Thunder

01:01:32 ◼   ► Bolt 3 controller. I cannot find anything useful about that because Intel's website is a disaster,

01:01:37 ◼   ► but I feel like the iMac Pro is now an update watch for me and hopefully it is not a one-off

01:01:43 ◼   ► because I still think that's possible. Hopefully it's not, but if you have an iMac Pro and you

01:01:49 ◼   ► wanted to produce PlayXDR, you're out of luck. Do you think there were a lot of people that wanted

01:01:53 ◼   ► to do that? I mean thinking about like Thomas's work environment where they have a bunch of iMac

01:01:58 ◼   ► pros and you want to drop some of these into editing bays you can't do it so I

01:02:03 ◼   ► mean not many people but it's the exact people who would be buying this computer

01:02:06 ◼   ► so at least you can't do it easily you need to have the GPU in the middle of

01:02:11 ◼   ► a was right right and which is like a total other can of worms so we will see

01:02:15 ◼   ► if that if that iMac Pro update shows up I hope it does because I think it's a

01:02:19 ◼   ► great computer yeah the other computer that's not on here is the iPad Pro I

01:02:22 ◼   ► know that we had heard rumblings that maybe that was going to be a thing but

01:02:25 ◼   ► Apparently not or at least hope exactly you know

01:02:28 ◼   ► Just for funds because it would be hilarious. Yeah, I went to the Apple store and plug one in

01:02:33 ◼   ► Yes, yeah the pro display XDR is is a thunderbolt display. It's using DisplayPort over Thunderbolt

01:02:41 ◼   ► It's not right USB C and then the chat rooms asking if you plug in a different machine will it run at lower resolution

01:02:48 ◼   ► I do not know that I've asked and I've not gotten an answer

01:02:52 ◼   ► So maybe that will be known by the time this this goes up or in the next few days

01:02:55 ◼   ► But I think if you're buying a produce play XDR

01:02:58 ◼   ► The point is to run it at 6k and not to run it at a lower resolution

01:03:03 ◼   ► So, I don't know if anyone would want to do that

01:03:06 ◼   ► Even if it's possible my guess is that it won't work or that Apple

01:03:10 ◼   ► Basically blocks it in software because they want you to run it at 6k

01:03:14 ◼   ► But I don't know I find it so funny that the 21 and a half inch iMac can support it, but the iMac Pro can't

01:03:20 ◼   ► I know the internals, but like there is just something funny about that. Yeah. Yeah, it's not great

01:03:25 ◼   ► You know, I'm sure some people are frustrated by that. But it's um, that's where things are right now

01:03:32 ◼   ► I have a question about you see it says like the Mac Pro with the MPX model GPUs

01:03:38 ◼   ► Is it possible to have a Mac Pro that doesn't have those?

01:03:41 ◼   ► Well, the base model Mac Pro just comes with a regular video card now whether whether they

01:03:48 ◼   ► Consider that an MPU module. I don't know so let's go

01:03:51 ◼   ► Because then like do you also have to like not every Mac Pro will work?

01:03:57 ◼   ► With the pro display XDR like you you have to meet a minimum GPU requirement

01:04:03 ◼   ► Which is not the minimum GPU that the Mac I see what you're saying it's with let me see

01:04:08 ◼   ► While you're saying that I said there is also an article

01:04:11 ◼   ► It's like one of those things it seems like a fun headlines a lot of people write about it

01:04:14 ◼   ► But I think it makes perfect sense for the if you get the nano texture one

01:04:18 ◼   ► so the one where Apple have done that like that the matte one where they've done the weird like glass laser

01:04:22 ◼   ► Texturing you can only clean it with a cloth that Apple give you which is like a specific cloth that they've made

01:04:29 ◼   ► I do not I think that that makes perfect sense like

01:04:32 ◼   ► You you shouldn't touch that display. You shouldn't do anything to that display

01:04:38 ◼   ► It's like an incredibly high-end thing. I would only ever want to clean it with a cleaning cloth that came with it

01:04:44 ◼   ► right? Like, I can't imagine spending £7,000 on a thing and then just getting like some

01:04:50 ◼   ► kitchen towel and rubbing on it, right? Like, jeez, let me have the cleaning cloth and I'll

01:04:56 ◼   ► keep it in a tiny little box next to the computer, right? Like that's, it's like,

01:05:00 ◼   ► only clean my glasses with glasses cleaners for the same reason.

01:05:03 ◼   ► Sure. My guess is, I wrote this in my link to it, is that the nano texture would like pull

01:05:09 ◼   ► off bits of like regular cleaning cloths and then you have fuzz all like embedded in your display,

01:05:13 ◼   ► Which would be bad that would yeah, that would be great. That would be bad

01:05:16 ◼   ► well winter charm in the chat, which also makes sense to me is like

01:05:19 ◼   ► If you use something too rough, it could smooth out the nanotech maybe

01:05:22 ◼   ► It's like it's one way or the other but like just don't touch it fuzzy and blurry

01:05:28 ◼   ► I have an answer about the the so the base

01:05:32 ◼   ► GPU in the mac pro is the AMD Radeon pro 580x. Here's what apple says about it, uh that it can drive six 4k displays

01:05:41 ◼   ► two 5K displays or two Pro Display XDRs.

01:05:47 ◼   ► So the base Mac Pro can drive two of them.

01:05:51 ◼   ► So I think what Apple says with an MPX module,

01:05:53 ◼   ► maybe they were just having fine print around.

01:05:56 ◼   ► If you put a third party GPU in this--

01:05:58 ◼   ► I think that's what it is.

01:06:00 ◼   ► It's not going to work.

01:06:00 ◼   ► It's not going to work.

01:06:02 ◼   ► Because I figure technically that is possible, right?

01:06:05 ◼   ► Technically you can do that.

01:06:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:08 ◼   ► They call the 580X a half-height MPX module.

01:06:12 ◼   ► So maybe it has to do with that Thunderbolt port being used,

01:06:15 ◼   ► and if it's not in use in an regular GPU, it won't work.

01:06:17 ◼   ► So that's a good question.

01:06:19 ◼   ► I'm glad you asked it,

01:06:20 ◼   ► because that would have had been a follow-up.

01:06:22 ◼   ► - So what is your ideal configuration then?

01:06:24 ◼   ► Come on.

01:06:25 ◼   ► Well, if you were today,

01:06:26 ◼   ► if somebody put the money in your hand and said,

01:06:28 ◼   ► "Here you go, you can buy one," what would it look like?

01:06:30 ◼   ► - I would buy--

01:06:31 ◼   ► - Realistically.

01:06:33 ◼   ► - I would only change two things from the base model.

01:06:36 ◼   ► would do the 12 core Xeon. I have an 8 core iMac Pro now so part of it is I

01:06:40 ◼   ► would want to like have something faster and I have the faster RAM which would be

01:06:45 ◼   ► nice and I would go to the either 2 or 4 terabyte SSD. I have the 1 terabyte in my

01:06:54 ◼   ► iMac Pro now and I'm forever running out of space and that's with two external

01:07:00 ◼   ► SSDs that are also filling up so I would I would probably I mean probably go for

01:07:04 ◼   ► 4 terabyte SSD. 580x is not a great GPU but as far as starting out like I

01:07:12 ◼   ► wouldn't upgrade and upgrade at some point in the future if I felt like I needed it but

01:07:16 ◼   ► that's where I would go. Yeah the GPU feels like the thing that's probably the

01:07:20 ◼   ► easiest thing to upgrade anyway. You can just go get it and yeah that's something down the

01:07:25 ◼   ► road. I would definitely do AppleCare which is only $299 on this machine which

01:07:28 ◼   ► doesn't seem right it seems like it should be more expensive. But it's $499

01:07:33 ◼   ► on the display, which I do understand because I figure the display is probably replacement

01:07:39 ◼   ► only in most instances.

01:07:41 ◼   ► Yeah, and they're not combined.

01:07:43 ◼   ► So in the past you could buy AppleCare for your Mac Pro and it would cover the Apple

01:07:47 ◼   ► Display if you bought it at the same time.

01:07:49 ◼   ► Not true this time.

01:07:51 ◼   ► So that SKU that I would build is $8,548.

01:07:57 ◼   ► I'm looking at it in a shopping cart right now.

01:08:00 ◼   ► So do you want to know what mine would be?

01:08:01 ◼   ► Yes, please.

01:08:02 ◼   ► So I would do the same, I would do the 12 core GPU.

01:08:07 ◼   ► I would bump up to 48 gigabytes of RAM because it's like 200 pounds more.

01:08:12 ◼   ► I'm already in so deep, I might as well double the RAM for not that much more money compared

01:08:17 ◼   ► to the overall machine.

01:08:19 ◼   ► I would do 2 terabytes of storage, because that's what I have in my iMac Pro, and I would

01:08:23 ◼   ► put the wheels on it.

01:08:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I thought about the wheels a lot.

01:08:26 ◼   ► In my studio, where it would sit, there's like a rug, and it's kind of...

01:08:31 ◼   ► I don't know how to describe it. It's slippery like it's not a big like thick carpet

01:08:35 ◼   ► It's like it's like a rug you see like in a doorway like coming in and out of a shop or something

01:08:40 ◼   ► I have that because my studio is in the backyard and basically it's like leaves and stuff coming here

01:08:45 ◼   ► I didn't want something that would get torn up and so it would actually slide really easily on the feet

01:08:50 ◼   ► I think I do have a little bit worried about the height and so the wheels make it taller

01:08:55 ◼   ► so I would do the feet I think but

01:08:58 ◼   ► Yeah, the RAM like and the GPU for my needs I could needs I don't need this computer right the iMac Pro is

01:09:06 ◼   ► Enough computer for me. I max out the iMac. Oh, yeah on a regular basis, but it's fine like I don't this is not about need

01:09:15 ◼   ► Jason I don't need this computer. I understand that but I would like to have it like it is desire

01:09:23 ◼   ► the thing that I would like to have because I really like the Mac and this it would be fun to have the nicest Mac available

01:09:30 ◼   ► And I've never had that before until the iMac Pro. So this is one of those situations where the the

01:09:37 ◼   ► Exchange rate stuff is so guilty of the value, right? Yes. You're so much money that it's gonna be very difficult. So your

01:09:45 ◼   ► configuration, right so it was

01:09:48 ◼   ► Twelve twelve core and two terabytes, right? They're the only two things you added

01:09:53 ◼   ► that would come out to $9,771.

01:09:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:58 ◼   ► Like, because it would be $7,418 for me.

01:10:02 ◼   ► So it's like $1,000 more.

01:10:04 ◼   ► It is very expensive, and there's, like, it's just, it's hard to talk about money, right?

01:10:07 ◼   ► Like, so it's like embarrassing to be considering this.

01:10:11 ◼   ► I'm not.

01:10:13 ◼   ► I mean, you can if you want to, like, you go ahead and consider it, but like, I'm not

01:10:18 ◼   ► even thinking about it.

01:10:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:21 ◼   ► like I would want the monitor too.

01:10:24 ◼   ► And I'm not gonna do that.

01:10:27 ◼   ► - That's something I wanna talk about.

01:10:28 ◼   ► So the reasonable choice is the LG 5K, right?

01:10:33 ◼   ► The Pro Display XDR is not,

01:10:35 ◼   ► it's so overkill for what I need, it's really expensive.

01:10:38 ◼   ► I don't want a 32 inch display,

01:10:40 ◼   ► so I'm not considering that at all.

01:10:42 ◼   ► I will say though, I feel like a lot of people

01:10:45 ◼   ► poop all over the LG 4K and 5K displays

01:10:48 ◼   ► who don't actually have them.

01:10:49 ◼   ► So we have a 4K in our house,

01:10:51 ◼   ► my wife uses it with her MacBook Air.

01:10:53 ◼   ► And you know what, it's not the most beautiful display

01:10:56 ◼   ► on the planet, it's a little clunky.

01:10:58 ◼   ► It's ugly and black plastic.

01:11:01 ◼   ► The panel is good though.

01:11:02 ◼   ► It is not glass covered, so it is shiny,

01:11:07 ◼   ► but not covered in glass shiny.

01:11:09 ◼   ► So it's a different type of deal.

01:11:12 ◼   ► But it's integrated really well with Mac OS,

01:11:14 ◼   ► so the volume and brightness buttons all work.

01:11:16 ◼   ► It's got some USB-C ports out the back,

01:11:19 ◼   ► So I have her time machine and she has an external SSD

01:11:21 ◼   ► for her photos library.

01:11:23 ◼   ► She has one cable to plug in her MacBook Air.

01:11:25 ◼   ► It's not ideal.

01:11:26 ◼   ► I wish Apple would basically take the iMac,

01:11:30 ◼   ► or take the Pro Display XDR design,

01:11:32 ◼   ► even if you don't need all the fans and stuff,

01:11:33 ◼   ► make a 5K 27 inch version and put it on sale.

01:11:37 ◼   ► And I think people like developers

01:11:40 ◼   ► or anyone not a video editor looking at this computer

01:11:42 ◼   ► would buy that in a heartbeat.

01:11:44 ◼   ► I don't understand why it's not for sale now.

01:11:47 ◼   ► I think Apple's clearly aware the Pro Display

01:11:49 ◼   ► is not for everybody, and I think they understand

01:11:52 ◼   ► that they've left a hole in the market.

01:11:54 ◼   ► So maybe it's coming, maybe it's not.

01:11:56 ◼   ► But the 5K LG, yeah, it's not awesome.

01:11:59 ◼   ► It's not beautifully Apple-crafted aluminum.

01:12:03 ◼   ► Johnson & Cuse can't sit in front of it,

01:12:05 ◼   ► but it's a good panel, and it's the best thing out there

01:12:09 ◼   ► if you wanna use it with Mac OS,

01:12:10 ◼   ► 'cause it has the integration.

01:12:12 ◼   ► And it's something that I could put on my desk,

01:12:14 ◼   ► And yeah, if they release something nicer, it'd be tempting, but it doesn't spoil the

01:12:20 ◼   ► rest of the system for me.

01:12:21 ◼   ► Like some people seem so allergic to it.

01:12:23 ◼   ► And I think a lot of people haven't had actual time with it.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Like the 4K that my wife has is great.

01:12:28 ◼   ► And she wanted the smaller size, I offered her the 27 5K and she wanted where her desk

01:12:33 ◼   ► is like she just wanted something a little smaller.

01:12:35 ◼   ► It's a totally fine display.

01:12:36 ◼   ► So I think that you can do the Mac Pro and put the LG on it and you're not spoiling it

01:12:43 ◼   ► somehow.

01:12:44 ◼   ► a little bit silly.

01:12:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I think like just in this fantasy world where I would spend that kind of money on

01:12:50 ◼   ► buying one, my kind of thinking would be like the thing that I purchased that I like and

01:12:56 ◼   ► is cool sits under the desk.

01:13:00 ◼   ► And then I'm looking at a monitor which isn't as cool.

01:13:03 ◼   ► And there is a matching cool monitor.

01:13:06 ◼   ► And I think it would bother me too much.

01:13:08 ◼   ► That's what it's like super wild, right?

01:13:10 ◼   ► And again, I am not justifying that money, right?

01:13:13 ◼   ► Because in no world should a monitor cost as much as the computer that I'm pairing it

01:13:19 ◼   ► with.

01:13:20 ◼   ► That just seems madness.

01:13:23 ◼   ► But it's just like I can see how people get into that situation where if you're dead set

01:13:27 ◼   ► on buying one and there is this matching screen, it just is like, "Ah, it's desktop set."

01:13:33 ◼   ► Yeah, well, the produce specs there are tips Apple's hand that this is a system designed

01:13:38 ◼   ► for video editing. Right? Like that is there. And maybe that's the makeup of the pro workflow

01:13:44 ◼   ► team. Maybe it's that that's, you know, they have data saying that's a really big audience.

01:13:49 ◼   ► You know, Apple does have has said that their biggest pro market is developers. This is

01:13:53 ◼   ► not a computer for developers. It's a computer for video editing. And that's, that's its

01:13:59 ◼   ► primary purpose. I think that's definitely the very least, that's the narrative Apple's

01:14:03 ◼   ► telling you about it. Because everyone who got one is a video editor, they didn't give

01:14:07 ◼   ► one of these to someone writing an iOS app. I think that's telling. They didn't give it

01:14:11 ◼   ► to photographers. They gave it to people making video.

01:14:14 ◼   ► And they don't have an afterburner card for Xcode.

01:14:17 ◼   ► Right, right. It's SwiftUI could probably use it because it seems like SwiftUI is very

01:14:21 ◼   ► difficult to develop with. So we can have that argument about who the computer's for,

01:14:28 ◼   ► who Apple had in mind. And there's no doubt in my mind that the Pro Display XDR is the

01:14:33 ◼   ► biggest sign that this is not necessarily a computer for people like me and you, it's

01:14:38 ◼   ► not necessarily a computer for developers, it's not even a computer for enthusiasts because

01:14:42 ◼   ► it's too expensive for that sort of market.

01:14:45 ◼   ► Now was that the right call?

01:14:47 ◼   ► I don't know, time will tell.

01:14:48 ◼   ► I think if Apple has a 5K display at WWDC that matches this in design but is way less

01:14:55 ◼   ► expensive then maybe they've got the message.

01:14:58 ◼   ► And so I want to make it clear from my point of view that Apple should have a less expensive

01:15:02 ◼   ► display that doesn't have all the knits and all the color stuff, like make a nice display,

01:15:10 ◼   ► hollow out an iMac, put a thunderbolt port in the back of it and call it a day.

01:15:14 ◼   ► Whether we see it or not is a different story, but that's, you know, who this computer is

01:15:20 ◼   ► for, the display says a lot about, I think.

01:15:22 ◼   ► This is, sometimes on the show we buy things, that's not happening today.

01:15:26 ◼   ► Oh, come on, come on.

01:15:29 ◼   ► It's done.

01:15:30 ◼   ► I have it in a cart, but I'm walking away.

01:15:33 ◼   ► You have it in the cart?

01:15:34 ◼   ► What did you put it in the cart for?

01:15:35 ◼   ► Because I wanted to see it with tax and everything.

01:15:38 ◼   ► So I wanted to...

01:15:40 ◼   ► You can check it out with Apple Pay.

01:15:41 ◼   ► That's a very expensive Apple Pay purchase.

01:15:44 ◼   ► That wouldn't work.

01:15:45 ◼   ► No, no, this is a deal where you have to call your bank because they lock your card instantly.

01:15:50 ◼   ► But you know, people have asked me what I'm going to do.

01:15:53 ◼   ► I'm not doing it right now.

01:15:54 ◼   ► I want to see how it goes.

01:15:56 ◼   ► And my iMac Pro has a home if I do this, which helps offset the price, obviously.

01:16:03 ◼   ► But I feel like I'm in violation of Snell's Law.

01:16:07 ◼   ► This is something that I'm not doing out of need, but he'll settle down.

01:16:12 ◼   ► Jon Voorhees, any closing words on the Mac Pro from you?

01:16:17 ◼   ► Not on the Mac Pro, but I just want to give an update.

01:16:18 ◼   ► I think Federico has fallen asleep.

01:16:22 ◼   ► You know, he's got to take his power naps.

01:16:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I woke him up, I'm sorry.

01:16:26 ◼   ► - Well John, thanks for joining us.

01:16:27 ◼   ► - Sure, no problem.

01:16:28 ◼   ► - You're staying with your Mac Mini setup,

01:16:29 ◼   ► it sounds like you're not pulling the trigger.

01:16:32 ◼   ► - No, I'm not.

01:16:33 ◼   ► Mac Pro is not in my future at all.

01:16:36 ◼   ► I mean, I'm really happy with my Mini.

01:16:37 ◼   ► It's been really the best Mac I've had in a while.

01:16:40 ◼   ► I was not that happy with, like a lot of people,

01:16:42 ◼   ► with my MacBook Pro.

01:16:43 ◼   ► - Oh, weird. - And I'm still using that.

01:16:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I brought it with me to Rome,

01:16:47 ◼   ► but, and I'll use it when I'm on the road,

01:16:49 ◼   ► but the Mini is my day-to-day Mac and I love it a lot.

01:16:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's solid, and if you don't need

01:16:55 ◼   ► a lot of GPU performance, 'cause it just has

01:16:57 ◼   ► integrated Intel graphics, the Mac Mini's awesome.

01:17:00 ◼   ► - Right.

01:17:00 ◼   ► - I think if you're a developer

01:17:02 ◼   ► where you're mostly using CPU,

01:17:04 ◼   ► a loaded Mac Mini is a much better choice, budget-wise.

01:17:08 ◼   ► - And I figure, too, I can always use an eGPU

01:17:11 ◼   ► if I wanted to with that box, with the Mac Mini.

01:17:13 ◼   ► I don't really have the need for that right now,

01:17:16 ◼   ► but it's good to know that I've got it there if I want it.

01:17:18 ◼   ► So I've been keeping my eye on those

01:17:21 ◼   ► to see what the options are, but no plans on buying that either right now.

01:17:25 ◼   ► Okay, I just wanted to check in.

01:17:27 ◼   ► So you're my, I think you're my closest friend running a Mac Mini full-time.

01:17:31 ◼   ► Like I've got one, but it's a home server, so it's a little bit different.

01:17:34 ◼   ► And Myke has one that is a home server, but you're using it every day.

01:17:37 ◼   ► And Federico has one, but he's not my friend.

01:17:39 ◼   ► No, and he doesn't use it every single day either.

01:17:42 ◼   ► It's just for podcasting.

01:17:43 ◼   ► Right.

01:17:44 ◼   ► Well, Jon, thank you for joining us.

01:17:47 ◼   ► Thanks for having me, guys.

01:17:48 ◼   ► If you're not following Jon online, Jon Work people find you real quick before we let you

01:17:51 ◼   ► go.

01:17:52 ◼   ► They can find me at maxstories.net writing and I'm @JonVoorhees on Twitter and Instagram.

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01:19:54 ◼   ► Federico, are you back?

01:19:55 ◼   ► - Yes, I'm back.

01:19:56 ◼   ► I was following really carefully the entire conversation.

01:20:01 ◼   ► I bought a Mac Pro in the meantime.

01:20:04 ◼   ► - Wow.

01:20:05 ◼   ► - Oh, we influenced you.

01:20:06 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:20:06 ◼   ► Do you think that I bought one during that segment?

01:20:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I think you did.

01:20:10 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:20:11 ◼   ► I did not.

01:20:12 ◼   ► He's probably returned it already though.

01:20:13 ◼   ► He did not.

01:20:14 ◼   ► Yeah, he's probably bought two of them because then he got it figured out.

01:20:17 ◼   ► And he's gonna break one of them because that's what he does.

01:20:20 ◼   ► Drop it down the stairs.

01:20:21 ◼   ► Federico, I have a piece of Mac Pro related content for you specifically.

01:20:26 ◼   ► Please do share.

01:20:27 ◼   ► I have done a complete flip on the Mac Pro and Cybertruck.

01:20:33 ◼   ► You have seen the light?

01:20:35 ◼   ► So now that I've seen pictures of the Cybertruck in the real world, I hate it.

01:20:43 ◼   ► And now that I'm seeing the Mac Pro in the real world, I've come to like the design.

01:20:48 ◼   ► So I have done a complete flip on both of those things.

01:20:51 ◼   ► That the staged photos of the Mac Pro, or like in a stage environment, I didn't like

01:20:57 ◼   ► it.

01:20:58 ◼   ► And in the stage environment, I kind of was interested in the Cybertruck.

01:21:01 ◼   ► But now there's those pictures of Elon driving around in a car park and he drove over a traffic

01:21:07 ◼   ► cone or whatever.

01:21:08 ◼   ► It just looks...

01:21:09 ◼   ► In around other cars it is ludicrous.

01:21:13 ◼   ► On its own I still think it's got a coolness to it.

01:21:16 ◼   ► But in a movie prop kind of way, when you see it in the real world it just doesn't work.

01:21:23 ◼   ► But the Mac Pro I think in an office or whatever or in a cool studio, Mac Pro looks awesome.

01:21:29 ◼   ► when it was just like on its own on a plinth or in a video I didn't like it.

01:21:33 ◼   ► So that's where I am with those. I'm very pleased to hear this. I think the

01:21:37 ◼   ► Mac Pro in real life office setups it commands a certain attention that

01:21:43 ◼   ► really makes it stand out and you can tell like it's one of those objects that

01:21:47 ◼   ► you can tell at a glance oh this is expensive and powerful. Like you can just

01:21:52 ◼   ► tell. The Cybertruck you look at it and you and you see well this is the like a

01:21:56 ◼   ► combination of all human evil in the form of a car.

01:21:59 ◼   ► So I guess the police are taking over, I suppose is what's happening.

01:22:03 ◼   ► It's like a futuristic police car.

01:22:05 ◼   ► It looks too scary, it's too intimidating.

01:22:07 ◼   ► Look, I think the cyber tracking...

01:22:10 ◼   ► I really do believe the most acceptable use case will be as a police vehicle.

01:22:15 ◼   ► It's perfect for that, it's intimidating, it's big and bulky and it can probably go

01:22:20 ◼   ► fast.

01:22:21 ◼   ► You can throw a lot of criminals in the back.

01:22:22 ◼   ► You can throw a lot of criminals in the back like, "Come on guys, let's go to the station."

01:22:27 ◼   ► Yeah, sure.

01:22:29 ◼   ► Oh boy.

01:22:31 ◼   ► Yeah, it's going to be perfect for that.

01:22:35 ◼   ► Now the topic today is not the Cybertruck.

01:22:38 ◼   ► Unfortunately, I would love to talk more about that, but it's not.

01:22:42 ◼   ► Today, so I created a reminder in the Reminders app for these months ago.

01:22:49 ◼   ► I don't remember how I remembered, but it was there today.

01:22:53 ◼   ► Today marks the fifth anniversary of the launch of Workflow

01:22:58 ◼   ► on the App Store five years ago, December 11, 2014.

01:23:03 ◼   ► Workflow.

01:23:04 ◼   ► - After like a 12 year beta period.

01:23:07 ◼   ► - After a year long beta period.

01:23:09 ◼   ► So Ari and Conrad and the rest of the team,

01:23:14 ◼   ► Very famously, they had a teaser for Workflow,

01:23:19 ◼   ► for the app that would eventually become Workflow.

01:23:22 ◼   ► I believe they showed it off at a hackathon or something,

01:23:25 ◼   ► and they were like 14 or 15.

01:23:27 ◼   ► - That was in 2014, January 2014.

01:23:30 ◼   ► - January.

01:23:31 ◼   ► And so they show off this app at this hackathon,

01:23:35 ◼   ► and a bunch of people on Twitter are sending me this video,

01:23:38 ◼   ► and this link, like, "Hey, have you seen this?

01:23:40 ◼   ► This is incredible."

01:23:41 ◼   ► And John and I were just talking about it actually.

01:23:44 ◼   ► When I first saw that demo, I thought it was fake.

01:23:48 ◼   ► I thought it was one of--

01:23:48 ◼   ► Because the video's super weird.

01:23:50 ◼   ► I'm looking at it now, and it's like all warped and stuff.

01:23:53 ◼   ► I don't know what it's like.

01:23:54 ◼   ► It's like some weird optical image stabilization

01:23:56 ◼   ► thing, which makes it look like it's like After Effects.

01:23:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:24:00 ◼   ► It's very strange.

01:24:00 ◼   ► It looks very strange, and it looks like one

01:24:02 ◼   ► of those jailbreak utilities.

01:24:05 ◼   ► Yes.

01:24:05 ◼   ► And I remembered getting in touch with those guys

01:24:08 ◼   ► and saying, I think it's awesome,

01:24:11 ◼   ► but if this is a jailbreak thing, I'm afraid I don't want to use it because I don't jailbreak

01:24:15 ◼   ► my phone anymore. And I remember Ari saying, no, no, this is all native Apple APIs. And

01:24:22 ◼   ► we're basically taking inspiration from automator for the Mac and we're doing a version for

01:24:27 ◼   ► iOS. And I thought that was crazy. And I thought, you know, these kids, maybe they have this

01:24:32 ◼   ► idea. Apple is never going to approve them. Let's see what they do and let's see what

01:24:36 ◼   ► of course, they go silent and, silly me, I thought, yeah, of course, you know, the idea

01:24:43 ◼   ► didn't work out, they're never gonna do workflow. Then at some point in July of 2014, I got

01:24:50 ◼   ► an email from Ari saying, so I don't know if you remember, we sent you a demo, a proof

01:24:57 ◼   ► of concept of workflow a few months ago, and we're now ready to have a beta. And so I think

01:25:02 ◼   ► it was August 2014 that I got the first beta of Workflow, and they, you know, they

01:25:10 ◼   ► needed a... they went through a bit of a... bit of a issue with Apple. The rocky...

01:25:16 ◼   ► rocky start of the relationship, because the app wasn't getting approved, it was

01:25:20 ◼   ► supposed to launch at some point in September or October, but it launched in

01:25:25 ◼   ► December. Now, I was looking back through my review of Workflow 1.0, and I think

01:25:33 ◼   ► it's really remarkable to see just how much of the foundation of the app

01:25:39 ◼   ► that is now called Shortcuts was already right there in Workflow. Because if you

01:25:45 ◼   ► look past the UI changes, which, by the way, the app kind of looked better than

01:25:51 ◼   ► And all the buttons look like buttons.

01:25:54 ◼   ► - I don't think so.

01:25:56 ◼   ► - I don't wanna be one of, look,

01:25:58 ◼   ► I don't wanna be one of those people.

01:25:59 ◼   ► - The Composer looks way better.

01:26:01 ◼   ► - The Composer looks way better.

01:26:03 ◼   ► It's so much more cleaner.

01:26:04 ◼   ► I do like the natural language editor of iOS 13,

01:26:08 ◼   ► but man, those variables and the fact that the variables

01:26:12 ◼   ► have a blue background and the blue background blends in

01:26:15 ◼   ► with another blue background, that's horrible design.

01:26:18 ◼   ► Like who came up with that?

01:26:19 ◼   ► Anyway, besides the visual aspect, it's really incredible just how much was already right

01:26:25 ◼   ► there.

01:26:26 ◼   ► So like conditional blocks and repeat blocks.

01:26:29 ◼   ► But really, at the core of it, the editor design and the idea of taking system features

01:26:36 ◼   ► and exposing them as steps, as actions.

01:26:41 ◼   ► And at the very core of Workflow was the content graph engine, which Shortcuts is still using

01:26:47 ◼   ► today.

01:26:48 ◼   ► So the reason why you can put together a shortcut, and whether you're dealing with a photo or

01:26:55 ◼   ► a URL, and if you put an action after that that requires a specific type of file, you

01:27:02 ◼   ► don't have to care about that.

01:27:03 ◼   ► Shortcuts takes care of the entire conversion for you.

01:27:07 ◼   ► That engine is still in shortcuts today, and it's grown more powerful, of course, but it's

01:27:12 ◼   ► still right there.

01:27:13 ◼   ► the content graph, it's part of the reason, you know, part of the technologies that Apple

01:27:17 ◼   ► bought and brought along with Workflow and turned into shortcuts. All of that was already

01:27:23 ◼   ► right there in the first version of Workflow. And of course, you know, the app has changed

01:27:28 ◼   ► a lot over the years since they became an Apple product. The Siri integration and, you

01:27:36 ◼   ► know, automation this year, they've been able to do things that they were probably never

01:27:41 ◼   ► going to be able to do if they stayed independent. Maybe they would have gone a different route

01:27:48 ◼   ► with Workflow. Maybe if they hadn't been acquired, they would have gone the web service and subscription

01:27:54 ◼   ► route. Maybe Workflow would have become like the new Zapier for iOS, entirely web-based

01:28:00 ◼   ► and web-based actions. Maybe they would have done what Pushcat is doing today with notifications

01:28:07 ◼   ► and subscriptions and all that stuff. But instead, going with Apple allowed them to

01:28:12 ◼   ► dig even deeper into the system and come up with these new system hooks, which is why,

01:28:20 ◼   ► thinking about it five years on, like, what's next for shortcuts? And I do believe that

01:28:26 ◼   ► more than ever we need to see what happens. And in fact, I believe, Myke, you talked about

01:28:31 ◼   ► this with Jason maybe two weeks ago on upgrade.

01:28:35 ◼   ► The first year of the transition from workflow to shortcuts,

01:28:38 ◼   ► we saw the Siri integration and the Siri shortcuts.

01:28:41 ◼   ► And that was fine.

01:28:43 ◼   ► But then we saw this year the new editor

01:28:46 ◼   ► and the new natural language approach

01:28:48 ◼   ► to building, putting together actions and automation

01:28:52 ◼   ► and some new system integrations.

01:28:55 ◼   ► But it feels like this first couple of years

01:28:58 ◼   ► was really the shortcuts team getting their affairs

01:29:01 ◼   ► in order and building or maybe sort of rebuilding the foundation of the app to make sure that

01:29:06 ◼   ► it works better with iOS.

01:29:08 ◼   ► But I feel like now it's time to build upon it and to build new stuff.

01:29:14 ◼   ► And automation is a first step, but there's so much more that they can do.

01:29:19 ◼   ► And we mentioned this before on the show.

01:29:21 ◼   ► Every Apple action, every Apple app should have shortcuts actions.

01:29:26 ◼   ► If it's an iOS feature, it should also be a shortcuts action.

01:29:30 ◼   ► there's still so much more on iOS and iPadOS that is not integrated with shortcuts. And

01:29:36 ◼   ► so I just wanted to mention this anniversary on the show while Siri just dictated all that

01:29:44 ◼   ► I said on my watch.

01:29:46 ◼   ► Perfect.

01:29:47 ◼   ► The shortcuts team, they're looking out for you. They want to know what's going on.

01:29:51 ◼   ► It is actually a pretty accurate dictation, but at the end it said, "I'm sorry."

01:29:55 ◼   ► Oh, it's okay, iPhone.

01:29:59 ◼   ► It's all right, you can activate yourself every once in a while. I think it's remarkable

01:30:06 ◼   ► what the workflow team was able to do as an independent company. I think it was, well,

01:30:13 ◼   ► maybe it's too soon to tell right now, but I think it was a good idea to go with Apple.

01:30:18 ◼   ► Because we have the third-party shortcuts utilities today, the web-based, the notification

01:30:25 ◼   ► stuff, I think if Workflow stayed independent and went in that direction, I think we were

01:30:34 ◼   ► better off with this solution, with shortcuts becoming...

01:30:38 ◼   ► They would have been distracted. They would have had to have made it a profitable business

01:30:42 ◼   ► in the long run, right? Like that was going to be difficult for them. Not as difficult,

01:30:48 ◼   ► that is a difficult thing to maintain, right? Like it takes a lot of work and maybe they

01:30:53 ◼   ► are better placed focusing on the product inside of Apple than they would be trying

01:30:58 ◼   ► to create a product which is useful to investors or to customers?

01:31:03 ◼   ► My big question for the next five years, right, of shortcuts, I guess I want to see what Apple

01:31:10 ◼   ► is going to do in terms of like, what's the real direction for the app here? Because it

01:31:16 ◼   ► It feels like on one hand, Apple wants to push this idea of shortcuts for the masses,

01:31:23 ◼   ► so everybody can use shortcuts, and you see the simplification of the editor and the natural

01:31:29 ◼   ► language UI for actions and parameters and automation and this idea that shortcuts is

01:31:35 ◼   ► more than features for power users.

01:31:41 ◼   ► But on the other hand, I have to wonder just how many so-called "regular" people are actually

01:31:47 ◼   ► using shortcuts.

01:31:48 ◼   ► And so should maybe Apple double down on the power user aspect of it and say, "Look, we

01:31:54 ◼   ► get it.

01:31:55 ◼   ► Shortcuts is used by power users, and so we're going to make it a professional app for everybody."

01:31:58 ◼   ► Or maybe they can do both at the same time, though.

01:32:01 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:32:02 ◼   ► It will be interesting to see what happens in terms of, "Is this going to be simplified

01:32:10 ◼   ► more and more as time goes on and it becomes this system feature to build automations for

01:32:16 ◼   ► HomeKit and for your Apple Watch and for Siri, that kind of stuff.

01:32:21 ◼   ► Or is Apple going to get back to saying, "Look, we need to do more power user features like

01:32:30 ◼   ► we used to before, like the Workflow team used to before?"

01:32:33 ◼   ► Because if you think about it, it's been a while since we got real power user actions

01:32:41 ◼   ► and features in shortcuts.

01:32:44 ◼   ► All the scripting actions, for example, that we have today in shortcuts, most of them,

01:32:50 ◼   ► really, 90% of them, they were built by the workflow team.

01:32:53 ◼   ► They weren't built by Apple.

01:32:55 ◼   ► They were carried over by Apple, but not built by shortcuts as an Apple product.

01:33:00 ◼   ► So I want to see what direction Apple goes with for the next five years.

01:33:05 ◼   ► I feel pretty optimistic at the moment, though, you know, things can always change and we've

01:33:11 ◼   ► seen Apple try these experiments for a couple of years and then sort of forget about them

01:33:17 ◼   ► and be like, "Yeah, we tried, didn't really work out."

01:33:19 ◼   ► So the fact that it's a built-in app inspires confidence.

01:33:24 ◼   ► The fact that it's so integrated with Siri inspires confidence.

01:33:28 ◼   ► I don't think it's going away anytime soon, but I want to see what happens in terms of,

01:33:35 ◼   ► you know, now that we've redone the editor, and now that we have serial integration, and

01:33:39 ◼   ► now that we have parameters, what's next?

01:33:41 ◼   ► So that'll be my question for the next year and beyond.

01:33:46 ◼   ► That's sort of the opposite of how I felt in the beginning.

01:33:49 ◼   ► I was worried early on that it was like, "Oh, this is doing like weird edge case stuff,

01:33:53 ◼   ► and Apple's just going to shut them down."

01:33:54 ◼   ► Right?

01:33:55 ◼   ► hesitant to trust workflow for a lot of stuff

01:33:59 ◼   ► in those early days, like,

01:34:01 ◼   ► I don't want to build a whole system in here

01:34:03 ◼   ► and then it get killed from on high.

01:34:05 ◼   ► 'Cause we've seen that over the years

01:34:07 ◼   ► and that fear, to your point,

01:34:10 ◼   ► has been totally taken away now that it's a system app

01:34:13 ◼   ► and now it's all your concerns.

01:34:15 ◼   ► Will Apple continue to push it forward?

01:34:18 ◼   ► Will they have bug fixes on a regular basis?

01:34:22 ◼   ► All those sort of Apple app questions

01:34:24 ◼   ► have replaced his early fears for me.

01:34:26 ◼   ► - So yeah, I think that's pretty much it.

01:34:28 ◼   ► Five years of workflow.

01:34:30 ◼   ► Congrats to the team who actually made it happen.

01:34:33 ◼   ► And you know, I didn't believe it at the time,

01:34:37 ◼   ► and I'm glad I was wrong.

01:34:38 ◼   ► And now I guess best of luck for the next five years.

01:34:42 ◼   ► I think we're all curious to see what happens.

01:34:47 ◼   ► So I'm optimistic, but also you never know with Apple.

01:34:51 ◼   ► So we'll see.

01:34:53 ◼   ► Well, I think that does it for this week.

01:34:55 ◼   ► Uh, if you want to find links to stuff we spoke about, head on over to

01:34:58 ◼   ► relay.fm/connected/273 while, while you're there, you can get in touch.

01:35:04 ◼   ► There's an email link where you can find us on Twitter.

01:35:07 ◼   ► You can find Myke.

01:35:08 ◼   ► There is I M Y K E you can find Federico on Twitter, VITG V I T I C C I.

01:35:15 ◼   ► And you can follow me there as I S M H special.

01:35:18 ◼   ► Thanks to our guest, uh, John Voorhees and to our sponsors,

01:35:22 ◼   ► Squarespace, ExpressVPN, and Bombas.

01:35:25 ◼   ► Until next time, gentlemen, say goodbye.

01:35:28 ◼   ► - Adios. - Adios.

01:35:29 ◼   ► - Cheerio. - Adios.