00:00:00 ◼ ► I did my Apple homework. I finally watched Submerged and I did the hearing test with the AirPods Pro.
00:00:07 ◼ ► Oh, I have not done the hearing test. Lucky you, I would love to do the hearing test, but I can't.
00:00:16 ◼ ► No, it's not that I can't use them. I would gladly borrow my wife's in-ear ones and use them, but I can't use hers either.
00:00:21 ◼ ► I believe it is only AirPods Pro 2, which makes no sense to me. Yeah, I believe that's correct.
00:00:28 ◼ ► I can understand them saying maybe AirPods Pro only, although honestly all those hearing test apps that I use worked fine with my open-air ones.
00:00:35 ◼ ► But whatever, I get it. You want to be more accurate, seal the ear, fine. But AirPods Pro 1 really can't do the hearing test, Apple. Pretty crappy.
00:00:52 ◼ ► I don't even care that much about your hearing test, I kind of do, but I really want to know about Submerged.
00:00:56 ◼ ► My hearing test was fine. It's very uninteresting. All right, so Submerged was really fun.
00:01:07 ◼ ► As a reminder, this is the quick immersive video that was made for Vision Pro. It's like an original, it's like 12 minutes long or something.
00:01:19 ◼ ► A while back, I went in Manhattan, there was a performance art kind of play called Sleep No More.
00:01:28 ◼ ► Forgive me, I don't know anything about theater, really. I believe it's called Immersive Theater, where you as the audience members are just walking around the building in which the play is happening in all different rooms.
00:01:41 ◼ ► The actors are just walking through the audience doing their thing, and the audience can just walk up right to the actors and just hover right behind them like a creep or get in their way.
00:01:56 ◼ ► I only went there once, it seems like this is a thing people do a lot, where the more experienced people who have done this kind of thing before would really get uncomfortably close to the actors.
00:02:11 ◼ ► I'm standing off to the side like, "I don't want to get in the way, I don't want to do anything wrong, I don't want to get yelled at."
00:02:15 ◼ ► Of course, nothing was wrong, everyone was fine, but the people who were comfortable with it were getting very, very close, standing right behind someone.
00:02:24 ◼ ► And there were parts of Submerged that felt a lot like that Immersive Theater experience.
00:02:31 ◼ ► Parts of it that felt very much like, "Oh, I am way too close to this guy right now. I am really in his personal space. I should not be here, this is kind of creepy."
00:02:47 ◼ ► And so it was very interesting from that point of view. And I think it convinced me more than ever, you mentioned the theater angle when you first talked about it, Casey.
00:02:57 ◼ ► But this convinced me more than ever that the right format for Immersive Video is long shots, really paced and staged a lot like a play, with very little camera movement.
00:03:11 ◼ ► You can occasionally change cameras, change to a different shot completely, but the camera in my opinion should not move much at all during this.
00:03:21 ◼ ► But it really did feel like I was in a play at first, especially in a scene in a submarine in the bunks.
00:03:28 ◼ ► And so you're just watching these two guys talk to each other in the bunks of a submarine. And that felt so theater-like to me.
00:03:35 ◼ ► It was a great thing to see overall. Yes, I had some technical issues. I didn't have motion sickness. I did have a lot of issues with the wrong thing being in focus.
00:03:44 ◼ ► I do think a more infinite focus, wide angle, theater-like staging is the best move that we know of so far for this.
00:03:52 ◼ ► But ultimately, I hope we see more of it. Just like everything else in the Vision Pro, it was a nice sample of something that we might have more of someday.
00:03:59 ◼ ► It was 12 minutes long. Okay, that's great. After almost a year, that's okay. I can't wait to see more if it ever comes. Sometime, maybe. Please?
00:04:10 ◼ ► Yeah, we'll see. I mean, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a lot of fun. I think it's one of those things, like I said previously,
00:04:18 ◼ ► whether or not you have any interest in submarine films, whether or not you have any interest in short films, I think just as an exploration of a new, or new to me anyway, kind of art,
00:04:29 ◼ ► I thought it was really cool. And as with all things Vision Pro, it shows so much potential, we'll see if it's ever really realized.
00:04:38 ◼ ► And in a lot of ways, it is realized. Because this 15 or whatever, 12, 15, 17 minute short film is realizing that potential, but I still was left wanting more.
00:04:48 ◼ ► I want either more of them or just a longer film of this note. And so I just, I don't want to be down on the Vision Pro, because I think it is such an incredible piece of technology and so incredibly cool.
00:05:02 ◼ ► And yet, as we've said ad nauseam since February, you know, we want more. Give us more. You have infinite money, Apple. You don't have infinite time.
00:05:12 ◼ ► You know, it takes time to make these things happen, but you have infinite money. Do something. Please, please do something. And this is a great example of it.
00:05:25 ◼ ► And I know this does not fit their sensibilities, I'm sure. I'm sure Apple wants to do everything original and custom for this, and as a result we have almost nothing.
00:05:35 ◼ ► What I would love is just take existing experiences and bring them to us here. You know, similar to what the talk show live did at WBC this year.
00:05:44 ◼ ► Where like, they had a 3D stream of the talk show that was just like having a front row seat in the theater. It was a fixed camera and a thing was happening on stage in front of it.
00:05:54 ◼ ► That was great. Is that the only thing this headset can do? No, of course not. But it does it and it does it really well.
00:06:01 ◼ ► Make deals. Give me a front row seat to great theater productions. Give me a front row seat to concerts or sporting events or whatever.
00:06:09 ◼ ► Oh, sporting events would be so... I mean, I know that's not your cup of tea and that's fine, but...
00:06:14 ◼ ► And sporting events have unique challenges with like live broadcast bandwidth and stuff. I get that, but concerts and theater productions don't.
00:06:22 ◼ ► Make a deal. Go pre-record a great performance of some theater and some concerts and just put it on the Vision Pro. Sell it!
00:06:30 ◼ ► I mean, people paid almost four grand for this thing. You could sell those things for thirty bucks and people will buy them. Like, just get something on there.
00:06:37 ◼ ► Because like, this show is like... Just the pure 3D experience of sitting in front of a performance can be really great and really immersive and really compelling for this device.
00:06:48 ◼ ► And we already produce events out in the world that, if merely captured from a good perspective with 3D cameras and had nothing else done to them, would make great Vision Pro content.
00:07:01 ◼ ► So I hope someone in there... I hope they're at least thinking of it or trying it or laying the groundwork for it.
00:07:08 ◼ ► In the meantime, while we wait for twelve more minutes of original content to be made, we can get hours and hours of great stuff on there with some deals and some fairly simple production.
00:07:19 ◼ ► Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And to get ahead of feedback, there are some apps, some third-party apps on the Vision Pro. I don't remember what... I want to say it's like AXS Concerts or something like that.
00:07:27 ◼ ► We have so much to talk about, I'll probably forget to go back in the show notes and edit.
00:07:31 ◼ ► But there are things that exist in the Vision Pro. I've heard a lot of people say that the... I think it's National Geographic or something like that app also offers...
00:07:44 ◼ ► So there are third-party ways you can do some of this stuff, but that doesn't negate what you're saying, Marco, and I agree wholeheartedly.
00:07:51 ◼ ► And again, I absolutely concur that theater or equivalent sorts of things would be phenomenal. For those of us who never saw or really didn't pay that much attention to Hamilton up until it was released, I think it was July 4th or thereabouts of 2020, I lost my mind.
00:08:07 ◼ ► I mean, you two were front row seats to me losing my mind about Hamilton five years after everyone else did.
00:08:12 ◼ ► And you bet I would pay 20, 30, 40 bucks to be able to watch that in immersive video in the Vision Pro.
00:08:21 ◼ ► And I would absolutely kill for that. And sporting events, all by word, that would be just incredible.
00:08:28 ◼ ► And there's so many ways that people are trying to make sporting events that aren't happening literally in front of you more and more interesting.
00:08:34 ◼ ► And we've had a handful of people send us links, again, I'll forget to put it in the show notes, but links to this thing that's kind of in the spirit of the Vegas sphere.
00:08:41 ◼ ► But the idea is, is it makes you feel like you're sitting in the stands of a sporting event.
00:08:46 ◼ ► And then what's presented on the inside of the sphere is the sporting event. You know what I mean?
00:08:50 ◼ ► So you've got all these people around you, like that concert, the Phish concert you went to, which makes you feel like you're doing this as a collective group endeavor.
00:09:02 ◼ ► So I guess, quote unquote, immersive, not literally immersive or maybe vice versa. Who knows?
00:09:06 ◼ ► Anyways, you got the idea. So you've got it all around you. And it's my understanding from those who have tried it is that it's truly incredible.
00:09:17 ◼ ► But and the off chance that anyone with authority at Apple is listening more, please. It's so incredible.
00:09:23 ◼ ► Please give us more. We are so thirsty for more. And I know, again, sports is not really your thing, Marco.
00:09:28 ◼ ► But like it is worth the four minutes to watch the NBA All-Star Weekend thing, because I think these are each literally four minutes.
00:09:35 ◼ ► There's an NBA All-Star thing. There's the Super Bowl thing. Now, granted, these are all coming out months after the fact.
00:09:40 ◼ ► But still, they're so cool and it shows so much potential. And I agree wholeheartedly that maybe streaming this is a non-starter.
00:09:47 ◼ ► But oh, man, even if it was like a few hours delayed, I would really think about delaying watching a sporting event so I could see it in immersive video rather than watching it live.
00:09:59 ◼ ► Just don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Don't wait until you can have custom everything multi-shot, fancy edited.
00:10:08 ◼ ► Just a fixed camera in front of a great event. That alone could be extremely compelling.
00:10:17 ◼ ► And we are already producing in the world lots of great theater and stage shows and concerts and magic shows.
00:10:24 ◼ ► There's so many things that this could work for. Comedy shows. There's so much out there that this could work for.
00:10:29 ◼ ► Anything performed on a stage, basically. You can just put a camera in a really good spot and capture it and sell that and it would be great.
00:10:38 ◼ ► It strikes me that Apple is probably just waiting for only the really high-end content.
00:10:45 ◼ ► But please, Apple, consider the alternative here. Give us more of regular stuff because that could be really great.
00:10:58 ◼ ► First of all, if you are an American, we are recording just barely less than a week before Election Day.
00:11:05 ◼ ► We're not going to belabor this, hopefully, but I know I speak for all of us in saying, "Please go vote if you're an American."
00:11:11 ◼ ► And I'm probably speaking for all of us in saying, "If you want our opinion about it, we really endorse Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and, generally speaking, the Democratic Party."
00:11:21 ◼ ► The Republican Party seems to be intent on being racist and fascist and so on and so forth.
00:11:27 ◼ ► You can see the recent Madison Square Garden rally, which was distasteful on a trillion different levels.
00:11:38 ◼ ► But if you want people who are looking to govern rather than just do what they need to do to make themselves even more rich,
00:11:45 ◼ ► then I strongly encourage you to vote, and specifically to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and Democrats across the board, generally speaking, wherever possible.
00:11:52 ◼ ► There's, of course, exceptions here and there, but generally speaking, a vote for them is what we encourage.
00:11:57 ◼ ► There are issues with all of the candidates. Naturally, we haven't really spoken about what's going on overseas in a long time,
00:12:04 ◼ ► but that's really deplorable, what's going on in Gaza, and there's definitely some associations with the current administration for sure.
00:12:12 ◼ ► And that is gross, and I don't want to minimize that, but ultimately, no political candidate is perfect.
00:12:19 ◼ ► And for me, anyway, and now I will speak only for myself, for me, I would much rather have a Kamala Harris who has some questionable, very questionable thoughts about Gaza,
00:12:34 ◼ ► And I will take that over a man who has mostly lost his marbles, has demonstrated that he's a monster as a president,
00:12:42 ◼ ► and his intent and his party are intent on taking away the rights of all of the women in my life.
00:12:51 ◼ ► I would love very much for my wife and my daughter to have control over their own bodies. So for me, that means Harris and Walz.
00:13:06 ◼ ► So if you are eligible to vote in the United States, elections these days are won and lost, mostly based on Democratic turnout.
00:13:13 ◼ ► Republicans tend to turn out pretty consistently, and if you're out there and you're like, "I think I want to vote for Trump," most likely you are going to go show up.
00:13:23 ◼ ► It's the people who are on the left politically, typically, that have much more variable turnout rates.
00:13:30 ◼ ► And elections tend to be decided based on how many liberal-leaning people actually get out there and go vote for the Democratic candidate.
00:13:39 ◼ ► Now, this system that we have sucks. The voting system we have is horrendous, the party system we have is horrendous, it sucks.
00:13:48 ◼ ► But it's the system we have. And look, the handling of Israel and Gaza is messed up on so many levels.
00:13:54 ◼ ► And I don't know almost any American who fully agrees with everything we've done with our handling of that.
00:14:01 ◼ ► The thing is, though, you only have one choice right now. Your only choice is, "Do I want Harris or Trump?" That's it.
00:14:13 ◼ ► There is no option that says, "I'm going to send a message," or "I'm going to throw my vote away," or "I'm going to support some third-party candidate," or "I just can't support Harris because I object to..."
00:14:25 ◼ ► Because you know what? First of all, if you're concerned about the situation in Gaza, Trump is, by all accounts, by his own words, by every possible analyst, by experts in the subject, by people over there, way worse than Harris.
00:14:39 ◼ ► So if you care at all about that situation, or about Ukraine, or about any of the wars that are currently going on in the world, universally, people who know what they're talking about way more than us say, "Trump is far worse to handle those situations than Harris."
00:14:54 ◼ ► So you out there might be thinking, "I can't stomach what the Biden administration and probably Harris are going to choose to do over there."
00:15:02 ◼ ► You might think that, and I feel you, but Trump will be far worse. So if you don't vote, odds are you are probably more liberal than average.
00:15:14 ◼ ► If you don't vote, what you're saying is, "I'm okay with Trump," because that's what will happen. Like, if liberals don't turn out, what will happen is we'll get Trump.
00:15:23 ◼ ► So I urge you, even though we never have a perfect selection of candidates at this stage, that's not what this vote is.
00:15:32 ◼ ► In the future, if we have a more diverse political party situation, if we have a different voting system besides First Past the Post, or anything else, if we have other voting dynamics that allow us to make more nuanced choices, then great.
00:15:45 ◼ ► That'll be a great time, and we would love to push for that change to happen. But right now, that's not the option on the table. Right now, the option on the table is you either go vote for Harris, or we get Trump.
00:15:59 ◼ ► And I know we have some conservative listeners left, and there's not many of you because we've turned many of you away over the years with comments like this.
00:16:05 ◼ ► But if you are planning on going to vote for Trump, I urge you to consider that almost everyone who actually has worked with him or near him or governed with him or served in his cabinet or commanded the military under his rule, almost all those people have since come out and said, "For the love of God, do not put him back in office."
00:16:28 ◼ ► So whatever you think will happen, look at what did happen. What actually happened is he burned a lot of people, he made a lot of mistakes, a lot of people who have worked with him are now in jail for being criminals.
00:16:44 ◼ ► He is also a convicted felon on many, many counts, in addition to all of his other shortcomings.
00:16:50 ◼ ► And he has specifically said that he basically doesn't care about some pretty fundamental things about America, like democracy.
00:16:56 ◼ ► Now, in my opinion, anything that undermines democracy is the most un-American thing you can possibly do.
00:17:04 ◼ ► If you say you won't trust the results of an election, if you say certain people shouldn't be allowed to vote, if you say slogans like "taking the country back," what that tells me is you don't believe in America, you believe in dictatorship.
00:17:21 ◼ ► I am not the only person saying this. This is not hyperbole. Look around at people who know what they're talking about, because obviously we don't, but look around at people who know what they're talking about and they're all saying the same thing.
00:17:31 ◼ ► This is not vague. He's not being subtle. He's not hinting. He's directly saying he does not want freedom and democracy. He wants to be the dictator.
00:17:41 ◼ ► And what we saw when he was in the office last time is that there's a lot of potential for that, that our system is more fragile than we think.
00:17:51 ◼ ► So I strongly urge you, if you consider yourself an American patriot, there is one candidate in this election who is promising and has demonstrated the willpower and ability to undermine the fundamentals of our democracy, and there's another candidate who's pretty decent.
00:18:08 ◼ ► I don't care if Harris is not perfect for your politics. Trump is the most anti-American choice you could possibly make, and in my opinion, I know this is going to piss off a lot of people.
00:18:17 ◼ ► I don't think you can fly the American flag and call yourself an American patriot if you support a candidate who wants to clearly undermine the fundamentals of our democracy.
00:18:27 ◼ ► The Trumpists, for you, this is tribal, this is religious. You don't give a crap about anything except your team winning. Go do whatever you're going to do. The liberals out there, I urge you, everyone else, I urge you, go show up.
00:18:40 ◼ ► If you show up and we have good voter turnout, we will crush Trump. It's not even going to be close. But it's all about turnout. We have to turn out.
00:18:51 ◼ ► Even if Harris is not perfect for you, she's better than Trump, and that's the only choice we have right now.
00:18:58 ◼ ► Now it's a little bit late to register to vote if you haven't already. Some states do have same-day registration, though, however, we will put links in the show notes if you're wondering.
00:19:07 ◼ ► I would love to vote. I've never done it. I have no idea how. I have no idea what to do.
00:19:11 ◼ ► Vote.org, iwillvote.com, vote.gov, all these links will be in the show notes. They will all help you find where you have to vote, what you have to do. Hopefully you either are already registered or have same-day registration.
00:19:23 ◼ ► And even if you are very knowledgeable in saying, "None of this applies to me because I don't live in a swing state and all that matters is people who live in a swing state," show up and vote for your local elections, for your state elections.
00:19:33 ◼ ► That stuff matters a huge amount, especially as a bulwark against another Trump administration. You want to vote even if you're in a state that "doesn't count."
00:19:43 ◼ ► And by the way, what we traditionally think of as swing states, you know, whatever, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, maybe Arizona, right?
00:19:52 ◼ ► For all we know, your state could become a swing state, either now or in the future. Don't give up. If you're in Texas and think there's no point in me voting, vote. Show up and vote.
00:20:01 ◼ ► And again, even if you think it doesn't matter for the presidential election, vote for all your local and state elections.
00:20:06 ◼ ► And while you're there, check the Harris checkbox. I think my co-hosts have explained why. It's super-duper important. Please let us make the next time we record a podcast not be super sad.
00:20:20 ◼ ► Again, going off of the swing state thing, like, you might think, "It's not that important for me to vote. My state always goes super-red or super-blue."
00:20:27 ◼ ► Well, what if this is very close in the popular vote? You know that if, you know, that many times the popular vote has gone to the Democratic candidate, but the Republican candidate has won.
00:20:37 ◼ ► Hmm. That's weird. Especially recently, huh? That's unusual. Maybe we should change the system.
00:20:43 ◼ ► If it goes the other direction, if it's even close to going the other direction, if the electoral college votes in a Democrat, but the popular vote is very slightly Republican or even close,
00:20:57 ◼ ► and by the way, many votes are going to be thrown away or switched because of all the crazy machinations that have happened since the last election in, like, election boards and local government and stuff like that.
00:21:08 ◼ ► If it's close, they will take it. They will cheat. They will use their judges they've installed over all the years. Like, they will take it. It can't be close.
00:21:18 ◼ ► We have to win by a lot for it to actually count. If it is at all close, they will steal it, I assure you.
00:21:25 ◼ ► And the system is way more fragile than you think. It can't be close. For us to win, we have to win by a lot or we won't actually win.
00:21:34 ◼ ► So, even if you think your vote doesn't matter, I assure you it does. Go out there, please, for the love of God, please vote.
00:21:43 ◼ ► If you have anyone in your life that you care about that is not a white guy, please, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, please, please, please, do it for us.
00:21:55 ◼ ► He doesn't give a shit about you. He doesn't care, I assure you. Anyone who thinks Trump is working for them, look at what he has actually said and done.
00:22:05 ◼ ► People can promise all sorts of stuff when they are campaigning, but if you look at what they actually do, it's usually a much smaller set of things they've achieved and a smaller set of people they've helped.
00:22:14 ◼ ► Unless you are a very, very small group of very rich men, he's not doing anything for you. He doesn't care about you. He cares about himself and making himself richer and keeping himself maybe possibly out of jail.
00:22:27 ◼ ► Nothing. He doesn't care about you at all. He says bullshit to convince you. Trump is a paranoid narcissist.
00:22:33 ◼ ► It's very easy for anyone who's ever had a paranoid narcissist in their family or their life to identify these traits.
00:22:40 ◼ ► They are pretty good at convincing people on a shallow level to kind of be on their team, to fight for them, because they make you feel really good in a certain way for a time.
00:22:52 ◼ ► Then they turn on you. And I assure you, if you haven't had somebody like this in your life, you're very lucky. I unfortunately have.
00:23:00 ◼ ► They can always bring in new supporters. Then eventually they burn them and they have to bring in more. That's why they have to develop the skill to keep bringing in new supporters, because they burn the people who are close to them constantly.
00:23:13 ◼ ► That's why you see this guy burning everyone close to him and why he leaves a trail of imprisoned people and criminals and people behind him who he first holds close and then burns.
00:23:26 ◼ ► If you think he's working at all for you, you're being duped. I'm sorry. He's not working for you at all.
00:23:33 ◼ ► And if you don't want to believe me, that's fine. You will eventually. And I hope that time comes sooner rather than later.
00:23:39 ◼ ► And I'm sorry when that happens to you, because it's not a good feeling. But he's duping everyone who thinks he's supporting them, because he's not.
00:23:51 ◼ ► We have something happier to talk about, though, and that is that all of us, but really mostly almost entirely, John, have been doing a lot of work to bring back the ATP Holiday Store, baby. It's that time.
00:24:01 ◼ ► So here we will do the annual reminder that you can go to ATP.fm/store. You can pull the car over after signaling. You can get to the side of the sidewalk or do whatever you need to do to go to ATP.fm/store or visualize where you're going to.
00:24:18 ◼ ► And imagine as you get to your desk at work about how you must go to ATP.fm/store, because we have quite the array of holiday--well, they're not really holiday options. They're just options around holidays.
00:24:30 ◼ ► But here we are. We have quite the array of things to hopefully entice your whimsy and fancy. John, would you mind taking us through it, please?
00:24:38 ◼ ► I know it's not even Halloween as we record this, and you'll be like, "What do you mean, Holiday Store? Everything's getting earlier and earlier." This is intentional. We are trying to continue to increase the chances that if you order something, it will arrive in time for whatever holiday you celebrate.
00:24:51 ◼ ► That's why we're starting so early. So forgive us for jumping the gun a little bit on this, but it is indeed the Holiday Store.
00:24:59 ◼ ► The sale ends on Sunday, November 17th, so that is your deadline, but yeah, just do it now.
00:25:05 ◼ ► A reminder, if you are an ATP member, you have a special promo code on your member page. Good for 15% off. So please use that.
00:25:14 ◼ ► We've tried, as in last year, to make all--if you are logged into ATP.fm when you go to ATP.fm/store, we've tried to incorporate that discount code in all the links so you don't have to even remember to put it in.
00:25:23 ◼ ► But what if you're not logged in, or what if something goes wrong? Get your code, it's on your member page, copy and paste it during the checkout process, 15% off.
00:25:30 ◼ ► If you want to become a member to get the discount, you can very easily get a discount big enough to more than account for the cost of your membership. ATP.fm/join.
00:25:38 ◼ ► What do we have for sale this year? This is the first holiday season where we actually have ATP gift memberships ready. We rolled them out a little while ago, but we missed the last holiday season.
00:25:48 ◼ ► This is the holiday season when they are available. You can give someone else the gift of ATP membership. Maybe you know someone you think might like the show.
00:25:55 ◼ ► Maybe you know someone who listens but they don't care enough about the show to pay for membership themselves. Give them a membership gift. You can buy them just one month, you can buy them a year.
00:26:02 ◼ ► You can buy them seven months, unfortunately, by buying them seven individual one-month memberships. But it'll work, it'll work fine.
00:26:08 ◼ ► The system's not perfect. But the whole point is, when you buy a membership gift for anybody, whether they're already a member, have never been a member, doesn't matter, it only just adds to their membership.
00:26:21 ◼ ► If you're already a member and someone buys you a gift membership, just redeem it immediately. It'll just tack on time to the end of your membership. That's how the system works.
00:26:28 ◼ ► If you want someone to buy you a membership, even if you're already a member, but either way, if you want someone to buy you a membership, you don't want to pay for your next year membership.
00:26:36 ◼ ► Or you never wanted to be a member, but it's a perfect gift idea for you because it's something you wouldn't buy for yourself, but it's a gift idea for somebody else.
00:26:42 ◼ ► There is a link that you can give them, both on your member page and on the store page, that will help them. It's just atp.fm/gift and then a query string that puts your email address, and all it is is pre-filling a form with your email.
00:26:52 ◼ ► But the email part is important, you can read the facts, because the email address is how you get your membership. It's assigned to your account based on your email address.
00:26:59 ◼ ► Anyway, we have the fact linked, we have the, if you're logged in when you go to atp.fm store, you will see the link for someone buying you a gift membership. There you go, that's gift memberships.
00:27:07 ◼ ► This system has been exercised pretty well by all the people who have bought gift memberships in non-holiday season, but it is the perfect holiday gift.
00:27:14 ◼ ► As for the rest of the stuff, we have a lineup of M4 shirts, M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max. We made these shirts before these chips were even announced.
00:27:22 ◼ ► We were speculating that they would probably make an M4 Pro and M4 Max based on the rumors, and guess what they did? So, success!
00:27:28 ◼ ► There are no chips on the back of these shirts, it's just the logos on the front, partially because for two thirds of them we had no idea what the chips would look like, but in general we've been avoiding the chips on the back to lower costs, and because some people don't like them there.
00:27:41 ◼ ► So there you go, you know what the shirts look like if you've seen the M1, M2, or M3 shirts. It's M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max.
00:27:47 ◼ ► There is no M4 Ultra shirt or anything like that, because we don't know what they're going to make with that.
00:27:51 ◼ ► If they make a really cool M4 Ultra or M4 Extreme, you can bet we'll have shirts, but right now, only shirts for stuff that Apple has announced/shipped. M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max.
00:28:00 ◼ ► In all these things, the new thing that we have is, all these shirts are available in t-shirt, sweatshirt, tank top, long sleeve t-shirt, we're really trying to make as many varieties as possible.
00:28:14 ◼ ► So if you're like, "It's the winter, why do we want a t-shirt?" Get a sweatshirt, get a long sleeve t-shirt. Many options.
00:28:19 ◼ ► Of course, we have the M4 Monochrome, which is a cheaper version that doesn't have the rainbow stripes, it just has the all white M4 thing. Same deal, it's available in t-shirts and sweatshirts, and yes, even tank tops even though it's the winter.
00:28:30 ◼ ► Then we have all our ATP logo merch. For the first time, we have added pullover hoodies. They are shown separately on the store page, as opposed to a zip hoodie. This is a pullover hoodie, no zipper, you have to pull it over yourself.
00:28:43 ◼ ► With the rainbow ATP logo, or the white ATP logo, those are actually just new styles available on those respective shirts, like the plain old ATP logo shirt is available in t-shirt, long sleeve sweatshirt, and now pullover hoodie, and same for the other one.
00:28:56 ◼ ► But we're showing them separately on the store page, just so you know, so don't get confused by that.
00:29:01 ◼ ► ATP pixels is back! We've only sold this shirt once and people seem to like it. It's the ATP logo, rendered in tiny pixels, which was extremely difficult to figure out how to print, but it seems like the last run of these shirts worked out well and people like them, so it's back.
00:29:13 ◼ ► And guess what, now it's available in sweatshirt as well. Again, another tricky printing problem, but I saw the proofs of how it came out with our test print and it seems to look as good as the t-shirts did, so ATP pixels is back if you want that.
00:29:25 ◼ ► And like I said, we've got our plain ATP logo stuff available. We've still got the zip hoodie, if you want the zip hoodie, which is amazing, that is still available with the embroidered rainbow ATP logo on it.
00:29:35 ◼ ► The ATP polo is there with the new grey color. ATP mugs are back, it is the cobalt one, the white mug with sort of cobalt blue logo on it.
00:29:43 ◼ ► The mugs are the only item on this entire sale that are limited quantity because we had to pre-buy them, so if you want a mug, order now, because they may sell out, and when they sell out, that's it.
00:29:54 ◼ ► And then finally we have the ATP hat with the embroidered logo on it. That's all our holiday stuff, so there you go.
00:30:00 ◼ ► And again, remember those gift certificates, if people say "I never know what to buy you," even if you're only vaguely interested in ATP membership, send them the link, say "Hey, buy me this thing."
00:30:09 ◼ ► It's a thing I wouldn't buy for myself, but it'll be cool to check out the UMTeen member specials, all the overtime segments you missed, the bootleg, the ad-free version of the show, all that good stuff.
00:30:25 ◼ ► You wonder what we're talking about with that episode? There's not just one tier list episode, there are many of them, so you could go back in time to the beginning and see how it is.
00:30:32 ◼ ► When we all still liked each other. I kid, I kid. But no, seriously, please check out ATP.fm/store again up until the very end of November 17th, New York time.
00:30:44 ◼ ► So please go ahead and put in your orders. I don't know this for sure, this is just my gut, but I think, generally speaking, Cotton Bureau will ship in roughly the order they receive these things.
00:30:54 ◼ ► So you should get all of these, if you're an American anyway, you should get these comfortably before the Christmas holiday.
00:31:01 ◼ ► However, if you wanted to be quick on the trigger, so to speak, you might get it a little before everyone else. You could be the first person tooting at us saying "Hey, look at my new M4 shirt."
00:31:10 ◼ ► And again, to reiterate, new pullover hoodies, the backs of all the M4 shirts are blank, which I was very on board with the chip designs at the beginning, and now I think I'm on Team Blank back.
00:31:22 ◼ ► And so this was both because we didn't know what to put on the back, and also because it worked out well. So yeah, so please check it out, ATP.fm/store.
00:31:31 ◼ ► Alright, as per the rules, even though there wasn't a single keynote, there was enough action going on over the last three days that we are skipping follow-up.
00:31:42 ◼ ► I've been told by the person in my ear that we need to skip follow-up, and so we are going to jump into the last three days of activity.
00:31:49 ◼ ► For context, it is almost exactly noon, our time, on Wednesday the 30th, and we're going to get there in a second.
00:31:57 ◼ ► The MacBook Pro announcement just happened less than an hour ago, so when we get to the MacBook Pro stuff, we might be a little off on some of the details.
00:32:05 ◼ ► Please give us grace, because this all just happened. But what didn't just happen, or not to the same context, is what happened on Monday.
00:32:13 ◼ ► And on Monday, we got a new iMac. Several new iMacs, even. We've got a ton of new iMacs insofar as there are seven vibrant colors.
00:32:23 ◼ ► And they really do look good, from what I can tell. There's green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver.
00:32:32 ◼ ► Before we move on to the colors, if that list of colors sounds familiar to you, you may be thinking it's exactly the same colors as the iMac was available in before.
00:32:40 ◼ ► And I think the names are the same, but the actual colors are different. If you look at the new colors along with the old ones, you will see that generally what they've done is made the backs less dark.
00:32:51 ◼ ► Because it used to be there was a really dark, saturated color on the back, and then a much paler color on the front. Now the backs are not as dark as they were.
00:32:59 ◼ ► Some of the colors have shifted in tone. The green is much more green and less teal. The pink on the back no longer looks red, it looks pink on the back.
00:33:08 ◼ ► In general, I think they've improved all the colors. I kind of like the old colors. They were very dramatic, and very saturated versus very under-saturated.
00:33:16 ◼ ► Now they're more evened out. So if you wanted a pink iMac, and you're like, "But they sold the pink one!" That pink one from the back totally looked red.
00:33:24 ◼ ► Now this thing looks pink from all angles. The green looks greener, the yellow looks yellower. I think I endorse the new colors.
00:33:30 ◼ ► Every single one of the colors, I believe, except for silver, is new. So check them out the next time you're in an Apple store.
00:33:35 ◼ ► Indeed. So yeah, so we've got all these new colors, and we've got more information about the M4.
00:33:41 ◼ ► I think this is the first time it's in a computer computer, not an iPad. So these all come in the iMac with a 10-core CPU.
00:33:48 ◼ ► There's four performance cores and six efficiency cores. So there's various flavors of iMac, or you could build them in various ways.
00:33:58 ◼ ► There's the 2-port iMac, which has an 8-core CPU and an 8-core GPU. It comes with 16 gigs of RAM.
00:34:07 ◼ ► And this is the first time that I'm aware of that an Apple computer, or certainly the first time in many years, that an Apple computer starts with 16 gigs of RAM, which means what, John?
00:34:16 ◼ ► It's not... Look at the title of the graph. We always have to qualify this. People say, "What about this model?"
00:34:21 ◼ ► This is David Schaub's graph of Apple Consumer All-in-One Base RAM. Very specific. And the iMac, the Consumer All-in-One thing.
00:34:29 ◼ ► And that chart is the depressing chart that seems to go up and up and up until you get to around, whatever that is, 2012-ish, when it stops going up forever and just stays flat until 2024.
00:34:41 ◼ ► Now the iMac comes with 16 gigs of base RAM. And by the way, that name, I'm not sure if it's the official name, but it's iMac, parentheses, M4, 2 ports.
00:34:50 ◼ ► I love when they name them with ports on them. And it does, in fact, have two ports, as we'll get to in a second.
00:34:55 ◼ ► Your choices for RAM are 16, which is the base RAM, and 24. It is finally safe, entirely safe, to recommend every person in your life that it's okay to get the base amount of RAM in an iMac.
00:35:07 ◼ ► We will see this trend continue. Say it together, everyone. Thank you, Apple Intelligence.
00:35:14 ◼ ► The only thing that has dragged Apple is not the only... I mean, presumably they would have increased it eventually anyway.
00:35:19 ◼ ► It's not going to be 2275 or whatever, and they're still shipping 8 gigs of RAM. They would have increased it eventually, but I think it got a nudge from Apple Intelligence.
00:35:29 ◼ ► So hallelujah, 16 gigs of RAM as base, even on the cheapest, the cheapest of cheap, the basest of basiest model iMac, 16 gigs of RAM.
00:35:54 ◼ ► Oh, yeah. The prices are insane and ridiculous, sometimes being like, what, like six times or eight times the cost of this actual hardware.
00:36:01 ◼ ► All the margin is buried in the storage now. The RAM upgrades, by the way, are still insane, which is why it's so important for 16 to be the base.
00:36:09 ◼ ► But you're like, oh, what if it's not the base? I'll just bump it up. You'll bump it up for astronomically inflated prices, right?
00:36:15 ◼ ► So now you don't have to do that anymore. You can get someone a 16 gig. It's the base model, right?
00:36:22 ◼ ► SSDs. Now, arguably, SSDs is not as bad. People can use cloud storage. Not everybody needs a lot of space.
00:36:28 ◼ ► RAM is harder to get around because it's kind of like, you know, the programs you run dictate the RAM, but the amount of stuff you have dictates the SSD.
00:36:35 ◼ ► You can also attach external disks. There's more workarounds. You can't expand the RAM. You can't expand the storage. I get it.
00:36:41 ◼ ► But this is the new thing. This is what happens with any kind of if you ever like optimized a program and you found a bottleneck.
00:36:46 ◼ ► You're like, this is the slowest part of my program and I improved it by 10 times. Guess what? Now there's a new bottleneck.
00:36:51 ◼ ► There's always the next thing that is the worst part of your program or your specs or whatever.
00:36:57 ◼ ► And on the iMac, the worst thing about it has now moved from the base RAM to the base SSD.
00:37:03 ◼ ► Previously, this was second place for the worst thing, but now it's strong first place. 256 gigs base SSD.
00:37:09 ◼ ► It's absurd in this day and age. They should offer more. They don't. Upgrading to 512 or one terabyte costs way too much money.
00:37:17 ◼ ► Remember that you can attach external drives to this if you really need to. So it's not as bad as the RAM situation, but it's bad.
00:37:23 ◼ ► But just FYI, your choices on the base model two port M4 are 256, 512 and one terabyte.
00:37:29 ◼ ► And we continue on a gigabit ethernet is a $30 option and it's still in the power brick, right?
00:37:36 ◼ ► Yeah, like that's why it's an option because the port is not on the computer. That $30 option.
00:37:40 ◼ ► You're just getting a power brick with ethernet cord on, which I still think is kind of interesting and clever.
00:37:44 ◼ ► And it's a side effect of them making the thing too thin. See our long ago discussion of the original M1.
00:37:50 ◼ ► Was it M1? Yeah, original M1 iMac. Yeah, I believe so. So, yeah, you can get gigabit ethernet for 30 bucks.
00:38:06 ◼ ► Yeah, well, so desk view is the thing where it can, it's like a, the whole point is it's center stage camera saying it's super wide angle, like the one in the Mac studio.
00:38:13 ◼ ► It being super wide angle, they have a way where it can show you what is on the desk in front of the iMac by taking the super wide angle and like de-warping it.
00:38:21 ◼ ► So that's cool. And center stage means it will follow you. 12 megapixel. I can't, I think that's an increase in resolution.
00:38:28 ◼ ► I don't know if it's exactly the same camera as the Mac studio. Is it better than the ones in the Mac studio? Is it worse?
00:38:34 ◼ ► I would assume it's probably the same. It's confusing because everyone says the old camera was 1080, but this one is 12 megapixel.
00:38:47 ◼ ► When you say Mac studio, you mean the studio display? Yes, sorry. That is what I mean. Sorry.
00:38:57 ◼ ► This means the, the eight core iMac can support one external display with up to 6K resolution at 60 Hertz.
00:39:05 ◼ ► The 10 core iMac can do up to two external displays with up to 6K resolution at 60 Hertz or one external display with up to 8K resolution at 60 Hertz.
00:39:16 ◼ ► And those core counts were the core counts for the GPU. So here's a case where if you pick a, an, a bend or unbend SOC, you look at the number of cores in the GPU and that dictates what you can run as an external display.
00:39:29 ◼ ► So the bend one has an eight core GPU. The unbend one has a 10 core GPU and the 10 core GPU lets you run more better external displays.
00:39:36 ◼ ► And then apparently Apple's website briefly said that the 10 core could also support one external display with up to 8K resolution at 120 Hertz.
00:39:46 ◼ ► And John has provided a YouTube link with a timestamp that we'll put in the show notes.
00:39:50 ◼ ► But the, but the website was updated very shortly after that to say, no, just kidding. 60 Hertz.
00:39:56 ◼ ► So there's, we'll see some, a little bit more confusion about the display capabilities, but I believe that was an accidental over specification for this particular model.
00:40:06 ◼ ► So we also get a Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 and that is no different than the prior model, I don't think?
00:40:20 ◼ ► And there is a Bluetooth 5.4, I'm not sure if it's out yet, but you know, so this is the lowest end model. It's kind of disappointing to see them bumping a bunch of other stuff, but not going to Wi-Fi 7.
00:40:29 ◼ ► Because especially for this, these type of things where people don't buy new computers that frequently if you're getting like a base iMac or something.
00:40:35 ◼ ► But yeah, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, those specs may sound familiar. So even though the SOC is massively updated, the wireless stuff is not.
00:40:43 ◼ ► We are brought to you this episode by 1Password Extended Access Management. Quick question, do your end users always, and I mean always without exception, work on company owned devices and IT approved apps?
00:40:57 ◼ ► Yeah, I didn't think so. So my next question is how do you keep your company's data safe when it's sitting on all those unmanaged apps and devices?
00:41:05 ◼ ► 1Password has an answer to this question. Extended Access Management. 1Password Extended Access Management helps you secure every sign in for every app on every device.
00:41:16 ◼ ► Because it solves the kind of problems traditional IAM and MDM can't touch. Check it out at 1Password.com/ATP. That's 1Password.com/ATP.
00:41:37 ◼ ► Possibly my favorite news of this week, and this is not hyperbole, is we finally have a new USB-C powered keyboard and mouse and trackpad. And I am deeply excited about this.
00:41:48 ◼ ► I'm going to tell a story for the listeners. You two are not allowed to comment. About a week or two ago, I might have spilled a whole bunch of orange flavored water onto my existing keyboard and mouse.
00:42:00 ◼ ► Excuse me, no commentary. Excuse me, I'm not talking to you. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to the listeners. And the worst part of that moment was realizing I'm going to need to go buy a new keyboard and I'm going to have to get a new Lightning keyboard.
00:42:15 ◼ ► This was again like two weeks ago. Thankfully the water ingress protection on the keyboard, the big keyboard with the inverted T and touch ID was excellent.
00:42:26 ◼ ► So I'm still using it right now and it's not sticky either, which is a double bonus. But yeah, I promised myself I wouldn't tell you two that, so that's why I'm just talking to the listeners.
00:42:34 ◼ ► But yeah, now if I do it again, then I can buy, and I'm thinking about doing it again, so I can buy a USB-C keyboard and mouse, which is excellent news. However, the internet was very perturbed. John, why was the internet perturbed?
00:42:48 ◼ ► The turtle is still harpooned. We are referring to the Apple Magic Mouse, which has its charging port on the bottom, so you have to turn it over on its little hard turtle back and as it wobbles around to get the little wire in there to charge it and you can't use it while it's charging.
00:43:03 ◼ ► That remains true. Basically what they did with the peripherals, kind of like they just changed the Lightning port to USB-C, but not entirely and we'll get to that in a second.
00:43:11 ◼ ► But yeah, if you're wondering if they redesigned the mouse to be different or to move the charging port, they did not, so get used to that.
00:43:18 ◼ ► One of the things that I saw in the little specs is the way Apple refers to their cheaper keyboard that doesn't have Touch ID. It does have a key where the Touch ID thing is in the upper right hand corner, but Apple calls it "Magic Keyboard with Lock Key".
00:43:31 ◼ ► And I was like, "Is that new? What the hell is a lock key?" But they just mean the key that's in the upper right that has a lock icon on it that presumably locks your computer, that drives people a little bit batty because they accidentally hit it when they reach for the Delete Key and it locks their screen.
00:43:43 ◼ ► So you can use like, Karabiner or something to disable that key. But anyway, the cheap keyboard still has no Touch ID in it, it just has a lock key.
00:43:50 ◼ ► We have some semi-breaking news that I didn't have time to confirm, but it looks legit, from Jamie Creamexx pointing out that there is a change to the keyboard that Casey spilled his drink into. He's like, "Oh, I could just buy another one."
00:44:04 ◼ ► Well, if you did buy another one, if you bought the Apple Extended Keyboard with numeric keypad, whatever, the one with the inverted T arrow keys, apparently the new USB-C models put the little globe icon, the FN globe icon in the lower left.
00:44:18 ◼ ► And that took about half the space that used to be used by the Control Key. So if you're used to having the Apple Extended Keyboard and reaching all the way down to the lower left corner with your pinky to hit the very big double-wide control key, guess what, it's not there anymore.
00:44:30 ◼ ► Now there's a single-wide control key and all the way in the corner is not the control key, it's the globe thing. The theory is that that's because the globe key is used for the window tiling and everything like that.
00:44:39 ◼ ► So that's not great because I really like the double-wide control key in the corner there, but I also like the Apple Keyboard, so I will just be very careful and not spill drinks into mine, which is very unlikely to happen because my drink is actually not on a level such that water spilled could get to my keyboard because my water is below the level of my keyboard.
00:44:56 ◼ ► Unless the water leaps out of my glass and jumps up onto my keyboard, I don't have that problem, but Casey, who seemingly cannot take the advice of his older's embedders, continues to drink in a place where it can spill onto his keyboard. And so you should be lucky that it still works because I assume you would also frown upon the globe key hogging the lower left corner.
00:45:15 ◼ ► In principle, yes. I certainly am not keen on that. And when I saw this fly by just a few minutes before recording, I was like, "Wait, what?" I think this is something I could probably get used to, but it's certainly not something I'm seeking out.
00:45:29 ◼ ► However, the window tiling thing I do really enjoy, and actually this is an aside, but I watched a video from a friend of the show, Quinn Nelson, and I will try to remember to put this one in the show notes, but he was going through some interesting Mac OS system tweaks that you can make, or something along those lines. I forget exactly what the schtick of the video was.
00:45:52 ◼ ► Here we go. Hidden Pro Tips in Mac OS Sequoia. And I have never been more excited to go into system preferences because one of the things, there were two keys to window tiling that Quinn brought to my attention, neither of which I knew were available.
00:46:08 ◼ ► First of all, if you're dragging a window around, and I believe it's you hold the option key, then instead of just dragging it willy-nilly, it will try to slot it into one of those buckets, like half the screen, quarter of the screen, etc. Rather than just freeform dragging your window around, which is an incredible improvement in my quality of life.
00:46:26 ◼ ► And then the other thing was, it's been driving me bananas that there's a gap in between the windows and around the outside of the windows when you tile them. Like, why? No, I don't need, they don't need to be cushioned. They're fine. They can touch each other. It's not like cars where there's no touching.
00:46:40 ◼ ► That's like my favorite feature of this feature that I don't use. Love the margins. I wish they were adjustable, but it's fine. I don't use this feature if it was not a big deal, but it's good that the option is there because Casey, apparently you hate the margins.
00:46:50 ◼ ► I hate the margins. And so, you can go somewhere in System Preferences, I don't recall exactly where it is, but again, we'll put a link to the video in the show notes where you can see how do you turn off the margins, which I've done, and it's amazing.
00:47:01 ◼ ► We mentioned this on the very show that you are a co-host of, so it's interesting that you had to wait for Quinn's video to learn this.
00:47:36 ◼ ► So anyway, I've used this mouse for a long time as my only mouse. The only other mice I use in my life are on gaming PCs because it's a terrible gaming mouse. But otherwise, this is it.
00:47:47 ◼ ► And I really don't like the charging port location being on the bottom. It's awful, but it's not that bad. There are ways they can improve it. I wish the low battery notice would come on a little earlier, like some of the reviews have pointed out.
00:48:03 ◼ ► I think it comes on at something like less than 10% charge, and I think if it would come on at 25% charge, that would be a lot better, or something like that. Just a little more aggressive on the reminder so that I don't as easily forget to charge it.
00:48:18 ◼ ► I think most of the people who choose not to use the Magic Mouse are choosing not to because they want a bigger mouse, not because of the charging port location. I do think it would be better if it was in a better location that would allow usage of the mouse during it like the top center, which I think would be where every other cord is.
00:48:49 ◼ ► And by the way, the reason it doesn't connect there is because it wouldn't look as pretty, so this is absolutely a case of form over function.
00:49:01 ◼ ► It wouldn't change. You'd cut out a little notch for it. It would be exactly the same height.
00:49:04 ◼ ► Well, I've been thinking if they actually did that, they would have to probably make it a two button mouse. Because I think the way they would have to do that, it would dramatically increase the front height to fit the port there.
00:49:18 ◼ ► So it could be done. I mean, obviously, you look at every other mouse that does it, so obviously it could be done.
00:49:22 ◼ ► But it would be a non-trivial change to the shape, and it would probably force the mouse to become something like whatever one actually says they want.
00:49:34 ◼ ► You just need a USB-C port on the front. You could not change the profile at all except for one little horizontal bump out for the USB-C.
00:49:42 ◼ ► It would be ugly, and that's why they didn't do it. I don't think you'd have to change the profile at all.
00:49:47 ◼ ► Nor would you have to make it an actual split two button. It's just that the one big smooth top button would now have a little flattened part in the front where the thing plugs in.
00:49:55 ◼ ► And if you don't want it to be raised at all, you'd cut a notch into the front of it, like a little toe into it or whatever.
00:50:01 ◼ ► The reason people are snarking about it is because how it's still the same place it was, which is not optimal.
00:50:08 ◼ ► But here's the thing. They didn't redesign their peripherals. It's just like with the AirPods Max or any of the other things.
00:50:17 ◼ ► If they had totally redesigned their mouse, and the new mouse, whatever the new mouse looked like, and the new mouse also had the charging port at the very bottom, then I would be very upset.
00:50:27 ◼ ► But I'm not too upset about this because they didn't redesign it. It's the same mouse as it was before. They just changed the port.
00:50:32 ◼ ► And you could be upset that they didn't redesign it, but good luck because they do not redesign their peripherals very often.
00:50:40 ◼ ► So yeah, I'm not particularly upset about it because I don't use that mouse, and it's not a redesign.
00:50:45 ◼ ► Presumably, when they do a redesign, someday, who knows when at this point, when they do a redesign, then it will be time to say, "What have they learned about the charging port location?"
00:50:55 ◼ ► And have they decided to change this from a very low-profile mouse to a taller one or whatever?
00:51:00 ◼ ► And I'm not sure everybody wants a taller one. Some people want a taller one. Some people like the low-profile one.
00:51:04 ◼ ► I don't know what the ratio is or whatever, but that is one of the compromises of the low-profile one they've always done.
00:51:10 ◼ ► It is selecting beautiful form over this one aspect of function, which may or may not bother you at all.
00:51:16 ◼ ► Most of the people, like you said, Marco, who don't use it, it's because of the shape of the mouse. That has nothing to do with the charging port.
00:51:24 ◼ ► It will continue to be the mouse that I use because, honestly, frankly, what I am hooked on in this mouse is the scrolling.
00:51:32 ◼ ► Because you can swipe your finger on the top, and it scrolls like Apple's trackpads do.
00:51:36 ◼ ► That, to me, is the reason I use it. I'm not choosing a stupid battery design. I'm not choosing a low shape. I'm choosing that.
00:52:00 ◼ ► And, you know, sometimes Apple does these kind of, like, cynical updates almost, where it's like, we so don't care about this product,
00:52:09 ◼ ► but we have some reason we need to update it, that we're going to do just the absolute bare minimum.
00:52:17 ◼ ► We're going to do the absolute bare minimum here, and just like, you know, it's like the Unix touch command.
00:52:27 ◼ ► Like, we're new. We updated it. USB-C. That's what you guys wanted, right? You know, crickets.
00:52:33 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't know if they're, like, on a schedule for updating their peripherals or their monitors for that matter.
00:52:45 ◼ ► But they do want to, you know, keep them from being embarrassingly out of date with Lightning, so they just swap the port.
00:52:50 ◼ ► When it comes time for them to make new peripherals at some point in the future, be careful what you wish for.
00:52:56 ◼ ► Maybe they'll have a totally new idea about what they want to do, and the thing that you loved about it, like, the touch scrolling will be gone.
00:53:05 ◼ ► They just choose not to because the market for such a mouse, I guess, manufacturers think it would be very small because that's not what people want.
00:53:11 ◼ ► So they want 15 actual physical buttons all over the thing, or they want gamer mice, or whatever.
00:53:23 ◼ ► In fact, a better one, because if you look at the touch services inside the Magic Mouse, it's not that sophisticated or high resolution, so they could even improve that.
00:53:32 ◼ ► So it's the Apple mouse or nothing, and someday when they change it, who knows, maybe you'll need to hoard these little sushi mice because the new ones will be not to your liking.
00:53:42 ◼ ► I mean, given that they, for years, came with desktop Macs, and everyone has like a box of it in their closet somewhere, who's ever bought a desktop Mac and not wanted to use it?
00:53:53 ◼ ► Right, like I'm sure there will never be a time where these are going to be hard to find if you want one.
00:54:06 ◼ ► No, I mean, and the thing is like, there is so much more they could have done to this mouse to update it.
00:54:14 ◼ ► You know, the modern Bluetooth standards are even more efficient and faster and everything.
00:54:24 ◼ ► And they used to have that, by the way. I think the original Magic keyboards had multi-Mac pairing, but the modern ones do not, which is like a regression, which is not great.
00:54:34 ◼ ► Sample rate, resolution of the sensor, stuff that they haven't really been aggressive in updating it.
00:54:42 ◼ ► Someday they'll do it, but that day is not today, so whatever you get, this is not a redesign.
00:54:47 ◼ ► That being said, it was very tempting for me to buy a new trackpad and mouse because they are the only thing left on my desk that I routinely use that uses lightning.
00:54:57 ◼ ► And so I have this dumb little lightning adapter that sits on top of my desk all the time just to charge up these keyboards, this trackpad and mouse that I have here.
00:55:05 ◼ ► And I'm like, I don't want to spend $250 to get rid of this one tiny thing off my desk, but God is it tempting.
00:55:15 ◼ ► And you don't have to worry about the weird globe key because you don't use that keyboard, right?
00:55:18 ◼ ► Right, right. I had the exact same thought. Then I could get black ones, which at the time I bought these, there were no black externals that had Touch ID.
00:55:27 ◼ ► And now I could. Very tempted. Holidays are coming, y'all. Holidays are coming. I'm just saying.
00:55:31 ◼ ► That's another thing, by the way, about the iMacs. Of course, all the iMacs like they always have come with color-matched peripherals.
00:55:35 ◼ ► I don't know if the color-matched peripherals have changed color. I assume they have to match the new colors.
00:55:40 ◼ ► Like the new green mouse looks different than the old green mouse, but you get a color-matched cords, a color-matched mouse and keyboard with whatever color of iMac you pick.
00:55:49 ◼ ► And you cannot buy those colored peripherals separately. So if you just have a random Mac and you're like, I would love to have a pink keyboard.
00:55:56 ◼ ► Tough luck. Apparently Apple will not sell you one, which makes me wonder if your keyboard breaks and you want to get a new one or it has a failure and you want to get a new one under warranty.
00:56:06 ◼ ► Presumably Apple has the ability to get you a new pink keyboard for your pink iMac and they will do so.
00:56:11 ◼ ► But it's weird that they don't sell them. Maybe it's just an inventory issue and it would be tough to keep all those colors in stock.
00:56:21 ◼ ► Well, I mean, first of all, Apple does typically have a mechanism by which if you give them the serial number of the Mac and you say, I broke my keyboard, please sell me a new one.
00:56:31 ◼ ► They will usually sell you one through some kind of, but you know, you have to like go to the genius people in the store and have them work it out for you and stuff.
00:56:36 ◼ ► But there is a mechanism for that usually. And second of all, as mentioned, a lot of people who buy these computers that come with these peripherals don't end up using those peripherals.
00:56:45 ◼ ► There is a healthy volume, usually on eBay, of any color you want of iMac keyboard, mouse and trackpad.
00:56:51 ◼ ► So if you ever want like, you know, the orange mouse, just go to eBay. You can usually find it for about list price.
00:56:56 ◼ ► It's kind of weird though that they don't have them as like, for example, just for mail order, like just I mean, maybe there's a wait because stock, whatever.
00:57:03 ◼ ► But I feel like they should just be something that you can either have some limited amount of stock on the shelf in an Apple store or just buy it through the Apple store online.
00:57:10 ◼ ► But instead of going to eBay or having to either legitimately or pretend you have one of the colored iMacs.
00:57:17 ◼ ► One thing I'm a little sad about is they did not, and as the same story with the Harpoon Turtle, they didn't change the design of the smaller Touch ID keyboard.
00:57:27 ◼ ► I have the, what is it, 100 whatever key, big keyboard that has a numeric keypad on it.
00:57:38 ◼ ► And I don't really need the numeric keypad and I do use it since it's here, but I would much prefer not to have it if I could.
00:57:48 ◼ ► But I'm not going back to the weirdo, you know, up down half height buttons on the little keyboard.
00:57:56 ◼ ► Going back a half step, Marco, do you, I'm sure we've talked about this at some point in the past. Hi, John.
00:58:01 ◼ ► Marco, do you ever use a magic trackpad at your desk? Like, is that just not your cup of tea?
00:58:44 ◼ ► But if you get the four port one, you get a 10 core CPU and a 10 core GPU as opposed to the binned versions of them.
00:58:57 ◼ ► You can get 16, 24 or 32, which is the thing you don't get an option for on the two port version.
00:59:17 ◼ ► I don't know if this is the same nanotexture as the iPad or the same nanotexture as the XDR because those are two different nanotexture processes.
00:59:44 ◼ ► That's because the M4 has four Thunderbolt controllers versus two in the M3 and earlier.
00:59:49 ◼ ► And obviously all these things have headphone jacks on the side because it doesn't fit.
01:00:20 ◼ ► As soon as you touch anything having to do with an option the price balloons very rapidly.
01:00:27 ◼ ► But thankfully you don't have to touch that RAM setting anymore unless you really want it.
01:00:55 ◼ ► you can use it as a monitor because it's got a really big monitor that's built into it.
01:01:11 ◼ ► Because sometimes, especially in the days of the 5K iMac, those monitors were really good.
01:01:38 ◼ ► because it only works internally with the tool display controllers and there's no external bus."
01:02:07 ◼ ► Instead of like throwing it out or trying to give it away to someone who might want an old junky computer,
01:02:14 ◼ ► It could prevent you from buying another display because, hey, you've already got a really nice display
01:02:21 ◼ ► Now, in the grand scheme, I think so few iMacs are purchased that it probably doesn't really matter,
01:02:40 ◼ ► So speaking of environment, the new iMac with M4 is designed with the environment in mind,
01:02:44 ◼ ► with 100% recycled aluminum in the stand and 100% recycled gold plating, tin soldering, and copper in multiple printed circuit boards.
01:02:52 ◼ ► iMac meets Apple's high standards for energy efficiency and is free of mercury, brominated, flame retardants, and PVC.
01:03:55 ◼ ► The fact that they come with 16 gigs of RAM makes this potentially the best iMac update in years.
01:04:00 ◼ ► The M3 was already more than fast enough to do what most people are going to do with the iMac.
01:04:11 ◼ ► That's what matters for a lot of the sort of plain, boring single-core, single-task-type operations
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01:08:41 ◼ ► The M2 Mac Mini, by comparison, was 2.6 to 2.8 pounds, so a difference of 1.1 to 1.2 pounds.
01:09:05 ◼ ► all the way back to ones that had an optical drive slit in it to know how old that case is,
01:12:47 ◼ ► I mean, you'll see it in the iFixit teardown, but even look at Apple's, like, internals showing,
01:13:03 ◼ ► But you're right, Marco, that the rack, especially if they're on their sides in the rack,
01:13:07 ◼ ► or even if they're not on their sides, getting to that power button requires you to either pull the things out
01:13:13 ◼ ► so you can get at them, or if they're on their sides, to leave a big enough gap for your finger to go in.
01:13:16 ◼ ► Yeah, or even if, you know, if it's in, like, a cabinet somewhere, like, in part of your TV console,
01:13:30 ◼ ► the old Mac Mini, the power button was on a curved surface, but it was that black plastic section of the back.
01:13:42 ◼ ► and I kind of understand why, again, this is not, this is their cheapest standalone, like, non-monitored desktop thing,
01:13:52 ◼ ► The airflow for this case, according to Apple's little diagram, it's all through the bottom, right,
01:13:57 ◼ ► so there's no vents on the front, on the back, on the top, any place like that, it's just that circular vent on the bottom,
01:14:03 ◼ ► and there, according to Apple's diagrams, it pulls cold air in from the front of the circle,
01:14:10 ◼ ► swirls it around, going across all the internals, and pushes hot air out of the back of the circle.
01:14:16 ◼ ► So you could still kind of use it in a rack on its side with the cold in the front and the hot in the back,
01:14:26 ◼ ► and then on top of the logic board is the analog circuit board for the power supply and everything,
01:14:40 ◼ ► The Apple TVs that had a fan were so quiet that I literally could not hear them with my old man ears.
01:14:45 ◼ ► I believe the new Apple TV does not actually have a fan, which is why I thermal throttles all the time.
01:14:56 ◼ ► I think it is very likely to be quiet because there are no openings on the sides or top,
01:15:12 ◼ ► and this I think is more likely to throttle than a more open-air design like the Max Studio is.
01:15:20 ◼ ► this is very much like take what's in our lower-end laptops, not our very high-end laptops,
01:15:29 ◼ ► You think that would give them enough room to do cooling that's at least as good as a laptop,
01:15:35 ◼ ► Obviously if they decided, well, this is supposed to be a performance-oriented computer,
01:16:25 ◼ ► but probably I'm hoping no more than you could get the equivalent MacBook Pros to thermal throttle.
01:17:15 ◼ ► well, it's good for everything, but remember that these things use unified memory for the GPU and the CPU.
01:17:33 ◼ ► But combining them both here means that there is a good reason to keep cranking up that memory bandwidth,
01:18:00 ◼ ► there's a 14-core CPU, and then I guess you can option a binned version, is that right?
01:18:14 ◼ ► or, you know, again, there's 8 performance cores on the binned version, 4 efficiency cores.
01:18:57 ◼ ► So now the M4 Pro is 10 and 4, back to sort of very heavily biased towards performance, right?
01:19:04 ◼ ► The 6 efficiency cores sacrificing some of those transistors for more efficiency cores and fewer performance cores,
01:19:12 ◼ ► So the M4 Pro memory bandwidth is hugely increased, and it is a 10/4 arrangement instead of 6/6.
01:19:42 ◼ ► and I can't tell if they're giving new information about the width of the instruction decode
01:20:26 ◼ ► Yeah, it really does jump up quite a bit, and I would even, you know, jumping ahead a little bit,
01:20:49 ◼ ► and it starts at 256, which you may think, "Well, maybe people don't need a lot of storage."
01:20:54 ◼ ► Who cares what it starts at? You care, because getting anything bigger costs so much money.
01:21:29 ◼ ► Remember, unlike RAM, with the SSD, you do have the option to just buy an external SSD,
01:22:21 ◼ ► So, bravo for the 16, thumbs down on the storage, you know, we'll get to that some other time.
01:22:28 ◼ ► Indeed. The port situation. On the front, like the Mac Studio, there are two USB-C ports,
01:23:04 ◼ ► which allows for 80, that's twice as much, gigabits per second, symmetrical, send/receive.
01:23:24 ◼ ► which gets back to the thing of like, "All right, now we've got a Mac with Thunderbolt 5.
01:24:25 ◼ ► With all the SoC things, what the computer has is very often dictated by what's in the SoC.
01:24:49 ◼ ► You can get it from Apple, and I'm shocked to learn that it looks like it costs the same amount
01:24:53 ◼ ► as the Thunderbolt 4 cables did. It's still $70 because they have chips in the connectors and everything,
01:24:57 ◼ ► and it's pretty thick and beefy-looking. But yeah, you can get a 1-meter-long Thunderbolt 5 cable
01:25:11 ◼ ► was it Mythbusters that went through this? Or, no, it was just Adam Savage that went through this
01:25:21 ◼ ► Yeah, and they're active cables. Other people sell them as well, but active cable means there's chips
01:25:24 ◼ ► in the connectors that are doing stuff as opposed to just being metal wires that connect to conductors.
01:25:29 ◼ ► Yeah, and it's not like it's the same as a $5 USB cable. Like, any high data rate Thunderbolt cable
01:25:38 ◼ ► So for the Apple version to be $70 really is not that crazy for the Apple standard markups and quality differences.
01:25:55 ◼ ► And by the way, when you get 10 gig Ethernet, you also get 2.55, like you get the standards that are in between there as well.
01:26:01 ◼ ► So you can make, to Marko's other point, for a huge amount of money, you can make an amazing, very small server.
01:26:13 ◼ ► If you spend the money on the huge amount of storage, this is a very small premium package for a very high price
01:26:22 ◼ ► So, despite the fact that the minis, as always, are just way more expensive than you think they should be,
01:26:29 ◼ ► The rest of the networking, though, same story as before, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3. Still rhymes.
01:26:37 ◼ ► Alright, display support. So you've got HDMI video output, which supports one display with up to 8K resolution
01:26:51 ◼ ► For the M4 and only the M4, you can do DisplayPort 1.4 over USB-C. That means up to three displays.
01:26:58 ◼ ► Two displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, and one display with up to 5K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt.
01:27:06 ◼ ► Or, 4K resolution at 60Hz over HDMI. That didn't sound right to me. Did I do that right? Is that right to you?
01:27:13 ◼ ► That's the way they word these things. What they're trying to say is what combinations of displays you can use.
01:27:28 ◼ ► The point is, with what you're hearing here, it's DisplayPort 1.4, which dictates a lot of what kind of output formats
01:27:35 ◼ ► are supported. And as we noted before with the iMac where they said 120Hz at 8K, that stat is also not present here.
01:27:42 ◼ ► You see stuff like the next one with two displays, they say you can do, in this giant sentence,
01:27:47 ◼ ► one display with up to 5K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, and one display with up to 8K resolution at 60Hz or 4K resolution at 240Hz over Thunderbolt or HDMI.
01:27:56 ◼ ► So you can get up to 240Hz on 4K, but if you're looking for 8K 120 or 8K 240 or whatever, that's not happening on the M4-1. It's DisplayPort 1.4 only, it's Thunderbolt 4 only.
01:28:11 ◼ ► And again, it's great that the M4 supports this because the M4, if you look at the controller, will also eventually save us from the MacBook Air that only supports one external display.
01:28:21 ◼ ► The M4 solves that problem by having more display drivers, and the Mac Mini shows that it's capable of that.
01:28:32 ◼ ► That's very important, because if you go look at the Wikipedia page for DisplayPort 2.1, you say, "What resolutions and refresh rates does DisplayPort 2.1 support?"
01:28:39 ◼ ► It's a big expansion in capability. Do these Macs support all of the potential capabilities? It seems like the answer is no, but this is future-proofing.
01:28:47 ◼ ► I think it's just an OS issue at this point. You get a Mac with Thunderbolt 5, and it supports DisplayPort 2.1, presumably, if not today, then eventually you will have access to all of the resolutions and refresh rates that are supported by the hardware.
01:29:01 ◼ ► Yeah, so that means up to three displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt or HDMI. You could also do up to two displays, one at 6K at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one with up to 8K resolution at 60Hz, or 4K resolution at 240Hz over Thunderbolt or HDMI. It's pretty cool.
01:29:21 ◼ ► If only Apple sold some external monitors that refresh at the higher 60Hz. Imagine that.
01:29:31 ◼ ► I didn't go through every possible configuration here, but when you go to Apple's configurators, sometimes features are tied to particular models for a reason. You can't get Thunderbolt 5 on an M4, it doesn't support it, it's only in the M4 Pro, so that makes sense, but there are other weird dependencies.
01:29:46 ◼ ► If you get the M4 Mac Mini, your maximum is 32GB of RAM and your maximum is 2TB of SSD, just because Apple says so. The RAM maybe has a limitation based on the SoC on which ones they want to manufacture, but the SSD doesn't make any sense.
01:30:01 ◼ ► And the M4 Pro, imagine this, it starts at 24GB of RAM. Can you imagine? How is this even happening? The base RAM on the M4 Pro model is 24GB. It's RAM Christmas around here, it's ridiculous.
01:30:18 ◼ ► Unfortunately, the only other choices are 48GB and 64GB, they skip over 32GB, so if you had your heart set on 32GB to try to save some money on the ridiculous RAM upgrades, tough luck, you gotta go all the way up to 48GB or 64GB. And it also starts at 512GB SSD.
01:30:33 ◼ ► Wow. Obviously the M4 Pro starts to get real expensive real fast, but base RAM is higher and base SSD is higher. Still small, but higher. So, thumbs up to that. Loving the Mac Mini base bumps. They didn't have to do that. They could have started the M4 Pro at 16GB, they could have started at 256GB. I don't know why they did this. It doesn't make any sense to me. What's going on over there at Apple? But, thumbs up.
01:30:55 ◼ ► Alright. And double thumbs up to environment stuff, because this is the first carbon neutral Mac. 100% of the expected customer use, electricity use is matched with low carbon electricity. 100% of manufacturing electricity for the Mac Mini is sourced from renewable energy.
01:31:12 ◼ ► 50% or more of the shipping is non-air. More than 50% of it is recycled content. Of the stuff that's 100% recycled, there's aluminum in the enclosure in the thermal module stage. There's copper in the multiple PCBs. Multiple thermal module components, AC inlet prongs, and multiple small parts.
01:31:31 ◼ ► There's 100% recycled gold in the plating of all the Apple-designed PCBs. There's tin in the solder of multiple PCBs. Rare earth elements in all magnets are all 100% recycled. And zinc in the AC inlet prongs and multiple small parts.
01:31:46 ◼ ► 80% recycled steel in multiple components. 20% or more recycled plastic in 25 components. 100% fiber-based packaging. 42% recycled content in the fiber packaging. And no established final assembly sites generate waste sent to a landfill as part of Apple's Zero Waste program.
01:32:06 ◼ ► This is what it takes to make a carbon neutral Mac. They've been doing carbon neutral products, they've been moving up the scale, you're doing a watch, how much energy is that going to use over its life or whatever, cranking up to a Mac. It's a small Mac to start, but this is the first carbon neutral Mac and they've had to do a lot to make that happen.
01:32:21 ◼ ► And to review with their carbon neutral claims, what they're saying is, this thing will be carbon neutral over the expected lifetime of you using it. That means all the electricity it uses for all the time it's plugged in your house in addition to all the manufacturing and everything.
01:32:34 ◼ ► Obviously they're buying carbon offsets to do some of this, and carbon offsets are not the greatest thing in the world, but you can look at the effort they're putting in. They are trying.
01:32:42 ◼ ► They are, and because they've got that 2030 goal of carbon neutrality and everything. And so here's the first Mac and it's the Mac Mini. So, you know, they continue to make progress, steady progress with every new product release.
01:32:52 ◼ ► And this one notably doesn't have a screen. I wonder if they are including the power usage of the expected monitor situation. I can't imagine they would.
01:33:04 ◼ ► Yeah, because they don't know what monitor you're going to use with it. So it's the easiest one to do. It doesn't come with a screen, it doesn't even come with a keyboard and a mouse. It's just the Mac Mini and a power plug.
01:33:12 ◼ ► But this is big progress. And you're right, carbon offset credits are not amazing, but that's why Apple is also doing a lot of other stuff. I believe their carbon offset credits are only a small part of what they're doing with making things carbon neutral.
01:33:27 ◼ ► They're actually going and buying renewable energy resources and stuff like that. It's very different. So overall, this is a great thing. They're continuing to move this forward and this matters a lot and it's hard. So I'm glad they're doing it.
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01:35:37 ◼ ► Wednesday, which is today and as we said a little while ago, it was like two, three, two hours ago, something like that.
01:35:47 ◼ ► We got a very brief, a little bit of information about the existing MacBook Airs, which was a bit unexpected, but you could see it.
01:36:04 ◼ ► When is the last time Apple has done this? Take an existing Macs that they've been selling and change literally anything about them ever.
01:36:11 ◼ ► Let alone saying, hey, we've been the M2 and the M3, the two past models of MacBook Airs that they continue to sell.
01:36:19 ◼ ► They went back and they said, you know what? Drop the 8 gig model. Make the 16 gig model.
01:36:27 ◼ ► Yeah, everything starts at the same prices. Again, it's like a $200 price drop if you were going to upgrade the RAM.
01:36:41 ◼ ► And especially for a low end product, a low end high volume product like the MacBook Air, that is significant.
01:36:52 ◼ ► And the Tim Cook way of like, let's just keep selling a product until people don't want to buy it anymore.
01:36:59 ◼ ► But I think in this case, for a MacBook Air class machine, like I'm still using an M1 MacBook Air, right?
01:37:05 ◼ ► The M2 MacBook Air is so good as a low end laptop. Like the M2 is not like holding it back because it's too slow or it's missing some features.
01:37:14 ◼ ► Like it's fine. The only thing that might be holding back an M2 is, oh, you didn't buy with enough RAM and Apple intelligence is choking your Mac or whatever.
01:37:21 ◼ ► And so then bumping it and continuing to sell it is very Tim Cook. It's like, we should keep selling that M2 one.
01:37:29 ◼ ► The only thing that's bad about it is the SSD storage and the RAM and they fix the RAM situation.
01:37:35 ◼ ► A 16 gig M2 MacBook Air is an amazing machine for someone to take off to school or use for their work.
01:37:41 ◼ ► You could do full fledged Xcode development on it. No problem. Like don't think like, oh, you can't do high end things.
01:37:50 ◼ ► I can tell you, like I so my my like, you know, lightweight travel laptop is an M2 MacBook Air.
01:37:54 ◼ ► And with 16 gigs of RAM, I have been able to do all of, you know, overcast development.
01:38:00 ◼ ► I can do it on there. I don't you know, when I'm when I'm at my big laptop, I'd rather use that because it's faster.
01:38:05 ◼ ► But if I'm like, you know, on a trip or something, I can and do use the M2 MacBook Air. No problem.
01:38:10 ◼ ► It is, you know, again, it's slower, but it's fast enough and I can get a lot of work done on it.
01:38:15 ◼ ► And certainly if I was on a budget trying to get started with iOS development, no question, I would say get get the MacBook Air.
01:38:26 ◼ ► Like the Apple intelligence that must be the Apple intelligence ram ferry just wandering through Apple, his magic wand saying, even Max, we've been selling for years.
01:38:41 ◼ ► They need minimum of eight gigs of RAM. And you're like, well, why can't Mac OS use minimum of eight gigs of RAM?
01:38:50 ◼ ► There is no out of memory killer wandering around hitting things with hammers and killing them off or whatever.
01:38:54 ◼ ► There is a potentially aggressive use of swap, although they added that to, I believe, iPad OS and later releases.
01:39:06 ◼ ► Applications are free to use more RAM than they are allowed to use on those other more constrained platforms.
01:39:12 ◼ ► That's why Macs probably need more than eight when iPad only, quote unquote, needs eight.
01:39:18 ◼ ► Obviously, all these systems could use more. But, yeah, like you might have 19 windows on your screen on the Mac.
01:39:24 ◼ ► And if those windows are on your screen, the OS cannot just kill those apps in the background because they are there.
01:39:34 ◼ ► Chrome has a new lower memory mode for its tab things. I shouldn't be defending Chrome because I have 96 gigs of RAM and don't think about it anymore.
01:39:45 ◼ ► Yeah. And also, you know, and just, you know, things like Electron apps, like desktop apps now use so much RAM.
01:39:53 ◼ ► Oh, my God. Yeah. Slack, Discord, like all those all the various like, you know, Electron are similar frameworked apps.
01:39:58 ◼ ► They your desktop apps use way more RAM than you think they should. So, yeah. Yeah. Macs need a lot of RAM.
01:40:04 ◼ ► And the OS is not going to like the Marcos point. The OS is not going to kill them off when they're not visible, which is the thing that happens all the time on even on iPad OS.
01:40:11 ◼ ► And iPad OS generally makes it so you can't actually even see that many apps or that many windows at the same time.
01:40:16 ◼ ► So there is so much more constraints there. But yeah, that's why they're bumping even the MacBook.
01:40:23 ◼ ► They should either stop selling them and introduce an M4 MacBook Air at 16 gigs, which is not out yet.
01:40:28 ◼ ► Spoiler alert or do what they did, which is we're going to keep selling them because we love Tim Cook.
01:40:48 ◼ ► They could they could have done that incremental bump years ago. But if you're going to increase it now, 16 is the new floor.
01:40:53 ◼ ► So enjoy the few brief years where the base RAM is going to be satisfactory on Apple's computers.
01:41:08 ◼ ► We've got space black and silver are the only colors because they're professional or something.
01:41:17 ◼ ► RAM situation. So you've got three different tiers. You've got that like not really entirely a MacBook Pro,
01:41:24 ◼ ► but I guess it's the MacBook Pro, which is an M4. No adjective that can offer 16, 24, 32 gigs of RAM.
01:41:31 ◼ ► The what I consider to be the base of MacBook Pros, the M4 Pro models have 24, 36, 48, 64 and 128 as options.
01:41:38 ◼ ► Starting at 24, just like the Mac Mini M4 Pro starts at 24. That's the base RAM is 24. What is going on?
01:41:46 ◼ ► It's amazing. Well, it's a miracle. Triple channel memory is what's going on. But yes, go on.
01:41:55 ◼ ► That's the thing you would think they would always do is they charge you so much for the M4 Max models that can't you just bump the base?
01:42:00 ◼ ► Can't you just bump the base RAM? The base RAM is 36 on the M4 Max. Amazing. What a time to be alive.
01:42:13 ◼ ► Are they allowed to do that? Are they allowed to sell a base model MacBook Pro with more than 256 gigs of SSD?
01:42:23 ◼ ► Base storage is 512 on an M4, which is still too little. The base should have been a terabyte like five years ago, but whatever.
01:42:29 ◼ ► The numbers are going up. They're not going up for so long. The numbers are going up. Love it.
01:42:34 ◼ ► I think maybe they had done it with the M3 as well, but I'm just excited about all of these, the base numbers going up.
01:42:39 ◼ ► Yeah, it really is incredible. So for the M4 Pro, half a terabyte, one terabyte, two terabytes, four terabytes, M4 Max, one, two, four and eight. Those are your options.
01:42:48 ◼ ► M4 Max starts at one terabyte. That's where the M4 Max should start. It's also where the M4 Pro should start. It's also where the M4 should start.
01:42:54 ◼ ► But anyway, any Mac that includes Pro in the name should start at one terabyte and all the rest should start at 512.
01:43:00 ◼ ► Especially because of how inexpensive one terabyte of the particular SSD chips they're buying, how inexpensive that is.
01:43:07 ◼ ► And how much cheaper is it than a 256 than a 512? It's like they're pinching so many pennies.
01:43:13 ◼ ► And again, why do we care about this? Because A, this is a portable computer and attaching an external drive is much more of a hassle than it is on an iMac or a Mac Mini that you have on a desk.
01:43:23 ◼ ► And B, if you want any of these upgrades, they charge you fantasy prices that just, you know, eight times the real cost of them or six times or whatever it is. It's ridiculous.
01:43:33 ◼ ► So yeah, that's where all the money goes with these models. But yeah, we've got all these great options and the RAM situation is looking better.
01:43:41 ◼ ► Yep, yep. It's really incredible. The display has a nano texture display option. This is the first time in years that I'm aware of a MacBook Pro having any sort of anti-glare display.
01:43:54 ◼ ► I definitely checked that checkbox. Wow, let me try that again. I definitely ticked that checkbox. There we go. Several years ago, many years ago. Probably almost 10 years ago now.
01:44:04 ◼ ► Yeah, I believe it's been since the retina came out because the retina never had an anti-glare option. The last matte screen option on the MacBook Pro was, you know, like 2014-ish or no, 2011-ish before the retinas came out.
01:44:18 ◼ ► Although Apple would tell you that all their displays are anti-glare, but I know what you mean. Matte finish versus anti-glare is different. There's anti-glare coating that they can put on screens when they're still glossy versus making the screens essentially textured so it's more of a matte finish.
01:44:32 ◼ ► Yeah, and this is the first one to appear in an Apple laptop since then. It isn't like it was in the MacBook Air or anything. No, it was not available in any Apple laptop for 13 years or whatever and now it's back.
01:44:45 ◼ ► It makes sense because they just added it to the iPad Pro as well when that was last updated a couple of months ago.
01:44:51 ◼ ► And the iMac's got it so they would have to put it in here. And again, we don't know if this is the same nanotexture process as the XDR or the one that's on the iPad. We do know those are two different processes. I would assume they're using the one on the iPad but we'll find out when someone gets these under the microscope and/or gets an Apple person to answer their question.
01:45:11 ◼ ► Yeah, and the MacBook Pro one costs $150. I'm guessing it's the cheaper one on the MacBook Pro.
01:45:16 ◼ ► Well, it's a smaller screen. I mean, the iMac one is $200. So for a 24-inch screen and for a 32-inch screen. Well, everything about the XDR is priced ridiculously.
01:45:25 ◼ ► But yeah, I'm assuming the XDR one is more expensive and more fragile than the ones they would put on the consumer displays.
01:45:30 ◼ ► I am personally glad that I don't prefer nanotexture so I never have to pay for this option. But for people who do, it's great to have it as an option. And a pretty reasonably priced option. You can't get a RAM upgrade for those prices, I'll tell you that.
01:45:41 ◼ ► Yeah, the one thing I'm curious about is like, and maybe this will only be known over time, you know, one of the challenges in MacBook screen management over time is trying to prevent or clean off the keyboard imprint that you get on the screen.
01:45:55 ◼ ► I am a little wary because normally I would think this would be a great option to order for me because most of the time I'm using my laptop closed in clamshell mode with a monitor at my desk.
01:46:07 ◼ ► So I don't care about the color and sharpness loss when I'm at my desk most of the time. But then when I go out into the world with it, then I would love to have this option.
01:46:15 ◼ ► So it seems like a no-brainer except I am a little concerned that maybe those keyboard imprints might get harder to clean off or become permanent more easily.
01:46:24 ◼ ► Yeah, the keyboard imprints, you may be thinking to yourself, "Why does Apple still have this problem where the keyboard puts your greasy finger grease on the screen? Why don't they just leave a gap between the keycaps and the screen?"
01:46:33 ◼ ► And the answer is backpacks. They do leave a gap, but that is a huge expanse of very thin metal and screen.
01:46:39 ◼ ► And when you put any kind of pressure on a laptop, in the sandwich closing force as Marko would say, you press the screen into the keyboard.
01:46:47 ◼ ► If you want to avoid it, try not to squish your MacBook. That's hard to do. It's hard to put it in any kind of bag where it's not squished at all.
01:46:55 ◼ ► But that's the problem they're facing. There's no unobtainable metal that they can put in a huge 16-inch expanse of extremely thin screen that doesn't flex at all in the middle.
01:47:03 ◼ ► I'm assuming that they're using the more durable nano texture from the iPad, which literally lets you swipe your fingers and a pencil across it. I'm assuming they're using that and I think it won't be that bad.
01:47:16 ◼ ► By the way, there is a way to avoid that problem, which is use one of those pieces of cloth that you stick on your keyboard when you close it up. That does avoid the problem. It's just a pain in the butt.
01:47:27 ◼ ► You gotta make sure you put the cloth in the right direction because if you turn it around, now you're pushing the grease against the thing and it doesn't let your thing close all the way. It's not a reason not to buy laptops.
01:47:35 ◼ ► I was worried, if there's a little wrinkle in it, is that going to be just enough stress to crack the screen when it closes? I think the risk profile is a little bit higher with those.
01:47:49 ◼ ► Indeed. I'm very enthusiastic. I am not in the market. We'll probably get to this at the end, but I'll cut ahead. I'm not looking to buy any of these computers. I want a new MacBook Pro, but I have an M3 Max MacBook Pro. There's no reason for me to upgrade.
01:48:04 ◼ ► I also want a Mac Mini as my Plex and Channels workstation, but again, no need to upgrade. If I were to upgrade, you bet your bottom I would tick the nanotexture display option because I occasionally use my computer outdoors.
01:48:18 ◼ ► I don't do it often enough that it's an egregious problem, but I would love to have an antique layer screen. That sounds great.
01:48:35 ◼ ► Yeah, this is the thing about these displays. It's still HDR max of 1,600 nits, which has been for years, which is also what the XDR is.
01:48:45 ◼ ► But the user interface is not in HDR. The user interface is in "SDR", standard dynamic range.
01:48:51 ◼ ► And it's just essentially a choice, a power saving and potentially image retention choice of when you're not in HDR mode, how bright should you get? And they've slowly been cranking up the "how bright you're allowed to put it in SDR", which obviously costs battery and obviously has to be safe for the screen with image retention and stuff like that.
01:49:10 ◼ ► But because they're not also raising the high dynamic range ceiling, they're narrowing the gap. So now there's a 600 nit difference between SDR and "HDR", whereas before I think they started at like 500, then 600, and now it's 1,000.
01:49:23 ◼ ► But it's important if you're outdoors with a laptop and it's bright sun and you can't even see your screen. You just want to lean on that brightness button and you're going to be sacrificing battery life, but it's worth it to be able to actually see your screen and work in it.
01:49:36 ◼ ► And there have been utilities, you know, third party utilities for all these Macs that had 1600 nits screens where it's like, "Do you want to run your Mac UI at 1600 nits? You can!"
01:49:45 ◼ ► You know, Apple is not going that far, but built into the OS now, if you lean on that brightness button, you'll get up to a thousand nits.
01:49:52 ◼ ► I will say that I've, and I think we've talked about at least pieces of this story before, I've gotten into getting USB-C power cables that have like a little watt meter on them. I don't need this information, and it's the sort of thing that in one side of my mouth, I will tell you the people who have battery percentages on are monsters, and then in the other side of my mouth, I'll tell you I want to know exactly how many watts are going into my devices.
01:50:14 ◼ ► It's very, very contradictory and silly, but here we are. And I will say that there's been a handful of times that I have been using my MacBook Pro while connected via one of those cables and not a MagSafe cable.
01:50:27 ◼ ► And I will turn the brightness way down, and I don't remember numbers offhand, but I'll watch the wattage that it's using when it's idle go to like, I don't know, call it 10 watts.
01:50:36 ◼ ► That might be twice what it is, it might be a third what it is, but you know, just for the sake of discussion, it'll go down to 12 or 10 watts. Then I'll go bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, and bring the brightness all the way up and suddenly it's like 50 watts or something like that.
01:50:49 ◼ ► Yeah, exactly. Well, whatever the M3 Max will do. But yeah, you get the idea. It's, it's a stark and surprising difference that brightness makes on how much power the device is using. It's very surprising.
01:51:02 ◼ ► The camera is also way better. We were privately talking about this before we got on the air. We're not entirely sure what the prior situation was. We didn't have time to go look it up. But they are saying that the new camera is 12 megapixels and it is center stage supported.
01:51:16 ◼ ► I could have sworn that was the case already, but it seems not. But center stage is the thing where it'll like pan zoom and whatnot in order to get you and whoever else is in front of the camera in the frame. And so apparently that's a whole lot better.
01:51:27 ◼ ► Well, I see. I would, I would issue caution on this because when, you know, what we saw with the studio display and you know, and the, those, what was the, was the first product to have the center stage camera was one of the iPads, right? The one that turns landscape.
01:51:41 ◼ ► The problem is the way center stage works is it has an ultra wide camera and then it basically crops in a region of it that it detects that you are in. So it, it is a, it is a crop from a wide angle camera that you are seeing the output of.
01:51:55 ◼ ► And the problem with that is that you lose a ton of resolution when you do that because obviously you're cropping a wide angle camera.
01:52:03 ◼ ► So, you know, so what you get then is a blurrier picture and typically you also get much more aggressive denoising in medium and low light. So it ends up being a far worse picture quality.
01:52:15 ◼ ► So I would use, you know, until we, until these things are actually in people's hands and being reviewed, I don't know that this is going to be a meaningful upgrade in camera quality.
01:52:25 ◼ ► It might just be, they had to make the camera optics better just to give it enough, you know, headroom to crop it down for center stage mode and have it not look really bad like those first center stage cameras did.
01:52:38 ◼ ► Yeah, Apple's not good about like making it clear when the camera hardware has improved. They just want to tell you what it has.
01:52:46 ◼ ► And the way they phrase it is like 12 MP center stage, which is like code, you know, center stage, you know, is this brand new thing with the wide angle and the cropping and 12 megapixels tells you something.
01:52:56 ◼ ► But you're like, what was it 12 megapixels before? Is it different 12 megapixel sensor? Is the sensor bigger?
01:53:01 ◼ ► Like they don't really want to give you lots of technical details about the camera. So the we'll find out when people get these in their hands and start testing them and do a side by side with the previous MacBook Pro cameras.
01:53:19 ◼ ► Yeah, because I was wondering like, because then you got to figure like, what's the angle of the screen?
01:53:23 ◼ ► Like, like, like, is it showing your keyboard or it's kind of shooting past your keyboard because the iMac one, it seems like it's like, I wonder where the angle is because you would want desk view to show the desk, not the trackpad. Right.
01:53:38 ◼ ► Yeah. But yeah, basically, do not order this, assuming the camera is better, you know, order it and order it now if you don't care if the camera is better, because that first batch of center stage cameras were terrible.
01:53:50 ◼ ► So hopefully, these are at least as good as the outgoing non center stage ones after the cropping has occurred. But honestly, I, I don't I don't think that's, I don't think it's super likely.
01:54:01 ◼ ► Yeah, Zmocks in the chat says it was 1080p before. The problem with that is, I think these cameras are also advertising is supporting 1080p video.
01:54:09 ◼ ► Right, because the output the cropped output, the cropped output is 1080, right, but in the sensor is 12.
01:54:15 ◼ ► Yeah, but we're basically getting there is a sensor size shrink, right? Because you're taking the inner crop of what's probably about the same size camera sensor.
01:54:24 ◼ ► So that's probably going to mean more noise and more aggressive noise reduction, which was the biggest problem with that first batch of center stage cameras to begin with.
01:54:31 ◼ ► Apparently desk view is right at the top of the web page, which I hadn't seen. Again, these these computers came out just as we started recording. So forgive us for not being on top of everything, but we're we went as fast as we could.
01:54:40 ◼ ► Yeah, so 24 hours of battery life, I presume that's just for the M4, not the M4 Pro and M4 Max, but again, I'm not 100% clear.
01:54:51 ◼ ► That was just in their press release. I'm sure there's on the tech spec page, you'll see much more granular breakdowns. But the point is they're advertising really good battery life.
01:54:58 ◼ ► They're not what they're not doing is saying, hey, we got all these new great M4 CPUs, but sorry, you're gonna have to sacrifice a ton of battery life. That's not what they're saying at all.
01:55:06 ◼ ► They're actually quoting very similar battery life between the CPUs on the compare page. It's like, you know, the in the 14 inch that has the base M4, that's 24 hours.
01:55:14 ◼ ► And then the M4 Pro version on that same computer is 22 hours. So they're quoting, you know, 10% difference between the two. And that might be all it is in practice, I guess we'll see.
01:55:23 ◼ ► I mean, as usual with, you know, any kind of modern computer battery life claim, it depends a lot on what you're doing with it. So it's not super useful to try to compare absolute numbers.
01:55:36 ◼ ► It's more of a relative thing. So yeah, maybe you can assume maybe the higher end chips might get 10% less battery life overall doing more idle things.
01:55:49 ◼ ► Yeah, I always assume with Apple's numbers in these modern years, just assume those numbers would be you using your computer in pretty much the most casual way.
01:55:59 ◼ ► Email, web browsing, and that's it. No video conferencing, no compiling in Xcode, no, you know, audio or video editing, right?
01:56:07 ◼ ► The number is for just casual, like office style. You can be in a word processor, you could be in a spreadsheet, you could be browsing the web.
01:56:14 ◼ ► And that's what those numbers are kind of based on. So, and the more hardware they put in these, we've talked about this many times, the more hardware they put in the SOCs, the more cores, the more GPU things, the more anything that's in there.
01:56:26 ◼ ► When that stuff is sitting idle, it doesn't take as much power. But when you crank all of those things up, it will destroy your battery, right?
01:56:34 ◼ ► And that's what you want it to do. You want it to use the energy that's there to get your work done faster.
01:56:38 ◼ ► And what it means is that you can, you know, would you rather have fewer cores and it take longer to compile your thing? Or would you rather have it use way more power for a shorter period of time?
01:56:48 ◼ ► And in general, it's better to use way more power for a shorter period of time because A, it gets your job done faster, and B, sometimes that actually saves more energy.
01:56:56 ◼ ► So, you know, it's, again, don't assume if you buy this, you only have to charge your laptop once per day.
01:57:04 ◼ ► That may be true on your average normal day, but if you have a very intensive day with lots of Zoom meetings, even, that can really eat into that battery life.
01:57:13 ◼ ► So, although I think maybe Zoom uses enough hardware acceleration that it's not that bad. Maybe it's actually just the Electron app that Zoom is built on that I assume will eat all your battery life.
01:57:21 ◼ ► But anyway, battery life still looks good. And these are, remember, these are not, we haven't talked about it yet, we didn't mention anything about it, but I'm assuming, based on what I saw on the website, they didn't change the case.
01:57:30 ◼ ► It is not a redesigned case, it is not a thinner case, it is the same one the previous M3 and M2 and M1 MacBook Pros were in, as far as I can tell.
01:57:38 ◼ ► As far as I know, that is correct. Connectivity, M4 gets Thunderbolt 4 and DisplayPort 1.4.
01:57:45 ◼ ► The M4 Pro and M4 Max gets Thunderbolt 5 and DisplayPort 2.1. And it still rhymes, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.
01:58:00 ◼ ► The MacBook Pro, I would have liked to have seen Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth. And I don't know what dictates this, is it just a Broadcom chip? I don't think this stuff is in the SoC.
01:58:09 ◼ ► So it's just like, they're just, this generation, this round of revisions, the M4 ones, they're just not, this is not the year that they go to Wi-Fi 7 everywhere, right?
01:58:18 ◼ ► Even though Wi-Fi 7 has been out for a while. And the only machines I'm disappointed on are the MacBook Pros, especially the high-end MacBook Pros.
01:58:25 ◼ ► Because that's where you'd want to see this stuff. Doesn't matter for the other ones, here, a little disappointment.
01:58:29 ◼ ► But remember, Thunderbolt 4 versus 5, if you use those ports, if you want to drive a big display at high refresh rate, or you want to have super fast storage, or some kind of like, RAID array of SSDs or something, go to the M4 Pro.
01:58:44 ◼ ► Because they're not holding it back from you, the M4 literally only supports Thunderbolt 4 and DisplayPort 1.4.
01:58:49 ◼ ► So if you want Thunderbolt 5 and DisplayPort 2.1, M4 Pro or M4 Max, it's part of the SoC. You should definitely do it, it's a big upgrade if you care about those things.
01:58:57 ◼ ► All right, let's talk about display support for the M4 Max. There are up to four external displays, up to three displays with 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 144Hz over HDMI.
01:59:12 ◼ ► A secondary option you can choose is up to three external displays, up to two external displays with 6K at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, and one with up to 8K at 60Hz, or one with 4K at 240Hz over HDMI.
01:59:26 ◼ ► They really need a chart. I know you said that a few minutes ago, they need a darn chart.
01:59:29 ◼ ► And the M4 and the M4 Pro, I didn't put them in here because they're just the same as you heard before.
01:59:33 ◼ ► Basically, the external display support is dictated by the SoC, so the only one you haven't heard about before is the M4 Max for the M4 and the M4 Pro. It's the same as it was in the Mac Mini, I believe.
01:59:44 ◼ ► All right. M4 Pro is a 14-core CPU, or 12-core if you elect for the BIN1, and 16-core GPU, or 14-core in the BIN1.
01:59:54 ◼ ► And one thing with the BIN1s is, I'm assuming, obviously the BIN1s are cheaper, and they charge you a lot for the upgrade, and we really have no basis for judging the margins on the upgrade of the cores, except to say that they're probably really expensive, but who knows.
02:00:08 ◼ ► Anyway, my assumption is that one of the advantages of the BIN1s, aside from being cheaper, is that I assume they also use less power at maximum, because you can't crank up 14 CPU cores because you literally only have 12 that work.
02:00:26 ◼ ► And that may be something to consider to console you, if you're like, "Oh, do I want to pay the extra whatever $100 to get the one with all the cores that work?"
02:00:35 ◼ ► Do you care about that? What difference is it going to make in your life? Are you doing jobs that take an hour and now they're going to take 40 minutes instead?
02:00:42 ◼ ► Or are you doing jobs that take 3 minutes and now they're going to take 3 minutes and 5 seconds?
02:00:48 ◼ ► Get the cheaper one with fewer cores to save you from burning your battery if you don't care about having maximum power.
02:00:55 ◼ ► The M4 Max gets 546 GB/s memory, which is compared to the 410 GB/s on the M3 Max. This is actually the thing that makes me most jealous about these, but that's neither here nor there.
02:01:10 ◼ ► It's not as big a jump as the M4 Pro or the M3 Pro. I don't know the percentages, someone can do the math in the chatroom, but it's not a 75% jump, but it is a jump.
02:01:19 ◼ ► 16-core CPU or 14-core BIN, 12 performance cores, we're assuming 10 performance cores in the BIN version, 4 efficiency cores, and Apple claims a +20% multi-threaded performance over M3 Max.
02:01:34 ◼ ► Seems like 4 efficiency cores is what Apple thinks is sufficient. Because the efficiency cores are doing the stuff that's not very intensive, low priority stuff in the background.
02:01:43 ◼ ► Apple's efficiency cores are actually fairly powerful these days, and they gave you 6 of them at one point, but now with the Pro and the Max chips, it's 4 efficiency cores for both of them, and all they just keep doing is giving you more and more of those power cores.
02:01:57 ◼ ► So this one has 12 performance cores or 10 in the BIN version. That's a lot of very powerful cores, this is a big chip.
02:02:05 ◼ ► Yep, and then 40-core GPU or 32-core in the BIN version, and again about 20% performance improvement over the M3 Max.
02:02:18 ◼ ► Environment, 100% recycled aluminum in the enclosure, 100% recycled rare earth elements in all the magnets, 100% recycled tin, soldering, gold plating, and copper in multiple printed circuit boards.
02:02:28 ◼ ► And the packaging for the 14-inch MacBook Pro is now entirely fiber-based, joining the 16-inch MacBook Pro in bringing Apple closer to its goal to remove plastic from its packaging by 2025.
02:02:38 ◼ ► I hope there's not anything we missed on these MacBook Pros, again they were released as we started recording so the timing wasn't perfect for us.
02:02:44 ◼ ► But overall, it's hard for me not to get distracted by the 16GB of RAM on the MacBook Air because selfishly from my perspective it makes my life so much easier when recommending a computer for someone to buy because the answer is always, they probably want a laptop, they should just get the MacBook Air, and now I don't have to give them a speech about why it's really important for them to spend $200 on another 8GB of RAM.
02:03:07 ◼ ► I can just tell them to get the base, maybe check in with them about how much stuff they have, but again with cloud storage and everything, a lot of people can actually get by with 256GB, especially on a low-end thing.
02:03:17 ◼ ► And then the MacBook Pros, clean upgrade. They took the M3 ones, they put M4 in them, and guess what, the M4 SoCs, the M4 line is good.
02:03:27 ◼ ► We heard the rumors months ago that Apple is going to put every one of its Macs on the M4, which may not sound exciting, like don't they always do that? The answer is no, they don't always do that.
02:03:39 ◼ ► Sometimes Macs get left behind, the poor Mac Studio and Mac Pro still have the M2 in them, the MacBook Air still has the M3 in them, but eventually there will come a time when the top-end products that Apple sells in all of its categories will have M4 something in them.
02:03:53 ◼ ► The plain M4 is an amazing chip, amazing single-core performance, it made up for a lot of the problems of the M3, especially the dual displays, support and everything.
02:04:02 ◼ ► M4 Pro takes a different approach than the M3 Pro, seems like a huge jump, great chip, and the M4 Max is exactly what you would think it would be.
02:04:09 ◼ ► It is not the same as the M4 Pro, as far as I know, we'll look at the die shots to see if the Pro and the Max are just shrunk conversions of each other, but anyway, the M4 Max has got more stuff.
02:04:18 ◼ ► The Pro starting at higher base RAM than the M4 and the Max starting at higher base RAM still is great.
02:04:24 ◼ ► This is a great update to a bunch of Macs that the rumors are they might be introducing new slim versions of these and there will be other potential, you know, there's uncertainty in the future of this one.
02:04:34 ◼ ► They go to the M5 or the M6, maybe they'll redesign the cases, maybe they'll take different choices, maybe they'll take away the SD card, this is not that. This is the macro pros that you've known and loved with what I think is the best, obviously, it's the best M series set of chips they've made.
02:04:48 ◼ ► But I think the trade-offs from looking at how they've arranged these things, the trade-offs are great for these and I really do think the fact that this is the year Thunderbolt 5 starts rolling out really makes the M4 Pro and M4 Max, Max, very attractive to people who care at the moment.
02:05:03 ◼ ► To people who care at all about external peripheral speed or future proofing for really high resolution, really high refresh rate monitors.
02:05:10 ◼ ► Yeah, but overall, I love this lineup now. This is so solid because as Jon said, you don't have to try to steer people away from the 8GB base models anymore.
02:05:21 ◼ ► The only thing I would strongly recommend pushing people to 512. Now that it's only a $200 upgrade that I'm pushing for instead of a $400 upgrade that it used to be, maybe it'll be a little bit easier.
02:05:32 ◼ ► To me, if you're gonna do any kind of substantial power usage at all on one of these laptops, the one to get I think is either at the low end, get the MacBook Air, but they have another tier up that has 16, 512 for $1,300.
02:05:52 ◼ ► Get that one. That's the new budget model for people who care about computers. $1,300, MacBook Air with 512. And then honestly, if you want the MacBook Pro features and experience, Jon's right that if you care about things like display, future proofing and everything, Thunderbolt 5 is a big deal.
02:06:10 ◼ ► For most of us, that's not usually the case. One of the best deals typically in Apple's lineup in terms of bang for the buck that you get has historically always been the base model of the biggest laptop.
02:06:26 ◼ ► So it used to be the old 15 inch MacBook Pro and PowerBook, now it's the 16 inch MacBook Pro. And the base model 16 inch has for $2,500, which is around where it has been for quite some time, $2,500, you get the best screen, you get the best speakers, you get the best microphones, all that other stuff that is the best in the MacBook Pro.
02:06:46 ◼ ► You get all that. And then it's that's the M4 Pro with 24 gigs now and 512 gigs as the base. That's a really great all around computer that can do pretty much everything most people need to do now.
02:07:00 ◼ ► Yes, if you spec it up, you can get more RAM, you can get more disk, whatever. You can always do that. This can you can go up to $7,000 easily with this thing. But if what you're looking for is like best bang for the buck, I think it's the Air and the base model 16 inch.
02:07:14 ◼ ► And this is also the last one or two years where we can not yell at the MacBook Air for not having an HDR screen. And that's allowing for Apple being behind.
02:07:23 ◼ ► It's the thing that people, I think, underestimate about the pros is that that screen, the screen on the MacBook Pros has been great. Having HDR, I think is just increasingly important in the Apple world because all their phones take HDR pictures.
02:07:38 ◼ ► Right. You really want to see them in full HDR on your screen. Yeah. And the laptop screens are great. MacBook Air. Who knows? Maybe the M4 MacBook Air will have an HDR screen. We'll find out. But right now they don't.
02:07:49 ◼ ► And so people wonder, hey, should I get a really spec'd up MacBook Air or should I get the base model M4 MacBook Pro? What's the difference? Do I care about the Pro?
02:07:57 ◼ ► And I was like, the main thing that you will probably care about is the screen. You will notice the screen when you look at your pictures on the screen, you will notice most of the time people don't notice anything about the screen like viewing angles, color saturation.
02:08:09 ◼ ► No one is ever going to notice that. But when they pull up a picture they took on their iPhone in HDR, it looks different. And in a way that people will notice even not even not even just side by side.
02:08:19 ◼ ► Just bring up the photos app and bring up an HDR picture and people will go whoa in their eyes. It makes a difference. So I hope just like this year we have all risen up to 16 gigs ram base in the Apple world.
02:08:32 ◼ ► Someday the promised land where every Mac will have an HDR capable screen with 120 hertz refresh rate. We're a long way from there.
02:08:43 ◼ ► But we can get there. I believe I believe speech Martin Luther King I believe speech that we can get every Apple device. I mean rumor is the iPhone 17 is going to be 120 hertz across the whole like even the non-pro models and everything.
02:08:56 ◼ ► So the phones will probably get there first because the screens are smaller. But right now XDR 60 hertz, Studio display 60 hertz. All of the non MacBook Pros are in 60 hertz like the iMac screen 60 hertz. No HDR.
02:09:08 ◼ ► Like we need to get there. That's that's another mountain. We have to climb but for right now the MacBook Pros have it. They've always had it those screens are great. That is a reason to consider even the basis of base model MacBook Pro if you care about HDR at all.
02:09:24 ◼ ► Yeah and also and when you go up to the ones that have the pro or Mac ships you also get more ports you get ports on both sides you get the SD card that you get all these upgrades upgrade to the MacBook Pro that is kind of you know better for convenience or connectivity or you know just quality of life.
02:09:40 ◼ ► So yeah if you can swing the MacBook Pro it's a great buy and now the MacBook Air is also a great buy again just get 512 please for the love of God especially if you if you think like oh I need something for Xcode you definitely want a lot of storage if you're going to be using Xcode.
02:09:55 ◼ ► Just just you know do not get the 250 I don't care if you're like a young person you're like I want to get into coding but I don't need storage.
02:10:02 ◼ ► You know I have like I stream all my music I have my cloud photos trust me Xcode eats disk space like crazy you need the 512 if you're doing any kind of Xcode work at all.
02:10:15 ◼ ► And in terms of eating space like I said with with a iMac or Mac Mini you can just attach a very fast SSD to one of those Thunderbolt ports and give yourself more storage it's the advantage of having desktop with a laptop you are not going to want to do that you're not going to want to do the Velcro thing where you Velcro an SSD to the back of your like you can but it's very awkward.
02:10:33 ◼ ► And when you run out of space a Mac OS gets very angry and be you will get very angry because you'll feel like my computer is full doing it a new computer now it's not that easy to deal with that what should I delete should I delete anything am I making a mistake by deleting precious memories of my children to fit within the stupid 256 gig SSD or like should I delete some SDKs that I'm not using or did I just screw up my build or I shouldn't have deleted that one I need to redownload it like.
02:10:58 ◼ ► When you fill your disk it's a bad situation on portable computers or devices on your on your phone or your laptop and yeah so maybe you can fit within two to six like look into your heart look at your actual computer see how much storage you're actually using see what you actually can fit within.
02:11:13 ◼ ► But this is this is the next bottleneck that every time you remove a bottleneck the next one just rise to the services the number one number one new bottleneck on base model Max 256 gig SSD.
02:11:23 ◼ ► Yeah but don't let us poopoo this entire week of incredible releases like this is an incredible and we've said this consistently for years it's an incredible time to be a fan of the Mac and it just keeps getting better and better and and I'm really really pleased that I suffered through the dark ages of the late teens in order to in order to reap the rewards here in the early twenties it's been it's been an incredible phenomenal time to be a fan of the Mac and I hope it continues I mean Apple is it's not perfect but darn if they're not firing.
02:11:52 ◼ ► Darned if they're not firing on almost every cylinder so really really good work this week this this is an above average year for upgrades above average easily but and these were already great computers like their laptops were already really good and this is an above if you're wondering we're saying like when is the right time to buy when are they the good computers these again we're not going to say right now because people haven't test them for all we know they thermally throttle and blow up and catch fire something but they probably don't right but wait read see the actual reviews of people get these in their hands wait for Marco to buy one have you tell you about it right.
02:12:21 ◼ ► This is an a from looking at the specs this is an above average year of updates in terms of how much better they are than the ones before and the ones before were already really good.
02:12:31 ◼ ► All right thank you to our sponsors this week tip top uncommon goods and one password extended access manager and thank you to our members who support us directly you can join us atv.fm/join one of the perks of ATV membership is overtime in addition to our cool merch discount which we mentioned earlier so you might want to join just for that but.
02:12:50 ◼ ► You also get overtime this is our bonus topic every week this week overtime is about the recent news on the security research that's been done with Apple's private cloud compute that they are debuting now so there's been some security research updates and we're going to talk about those in overtime.
02:13:32 ◼ ► And you can find the show notes at atv.fm and if you're into mastodon you can follow them at c a s e y l i s s so that's casey lis m a r c o a r m anti marco arman s i r a c u s a syracusa it's accidental.
02:14:27 ◼ ► I told you last week I was buying one and why. I'm buying it to replace my one ancient and my other recent but broken sinologies.
02:14:38 ◼ ► Sorry I blocked it from my memory because I was so sad at the anti-sinology snark but here we are.
02:14:46 ◼ ► I got close to the base. The only thing I touched was I went to 512 and I went to the 10 gig ethernet.
02:14:56 ◼ ► I have 10 gig wiring in the walls now and I'm starting like I have some of the ports I think on my big router are 10 gig compatible but I think only the wan ports or something so I'm starting to lay the groundwork for that and I intend to keep this thing for a long time and it was only like 100 bucks or something.
02:15:13 ◼ ► So I'm like alright I'll upgrade that and that gives me a reason to start maybe look at upgrading my thunderbolt dock that I have for my mapbook pro maybe that would be easy to get a 10 gig ethernet situation going on there.
02:15:28 ◼ ► It isn't as far as I'm aware. Like you can get 10 gig ethernet adapters but to my knowledge there are no docking station style things that have 10 gig ethernet so like my beloved CalDigit TS4 has 2 and a half gig as an example.
02:15:45 ◼ ► Yeah I should clarify I would even just going to 2.5 would be a substantial upgrade from what I have now and since I'm planning on using this Mac Mini basically as a fancy NAS for the most part I do want to start experimenting on it with things like running background jobs for overcast.
02:16:03 ◼ ► So if I wanted to start trying to transcribe podcasts in mass obviously the way to do that correctly is in a data center but I can start experimenting with it in my house and then see.
02:16:13 ◼ ► Or one Mac Mini. It's either a data center full of M2 Ultras or one Mac Mini in a closet. Where is this one going to be by the way?
02:16:33 ◼ ► Well I'm excited for your purchase. What does it come on Friday then as far as you know?
02:16:42 ◼ ► The reason I asked where you were going to put it is because I was wondering if you'd have an assessment of the fan noise but if it's in a closet you probably won't notice.
02:16:53 ◼ ► Well the garage it's our new garage is semi conditioned. It is fully insulated and it has a split unit to keep it from reaching temperature extremes in either direction so it is semi conditioned and mostly fine so I'm going to try it there.
02:17:19 ◼ ► We're just going to move right along. Why did you put a mini split in the garage? Like what were you trying to guard against?
02:17:28 ◼ ► Yeah so because it was. Okay the way Long Island works. Everyone like knows a guy and when you ask a contractor like hey can we install a split in this room? Sometimes what happens is he comes back and he's like hey I got a unit it's no more money but there's one that has two heads do you want it?
02:17:45 ◼ ► And I'm like it's no more money really? Yeah I got it it's ready to go right now. Okay sure we can put the second head in the garage. That's what happened.
02:17:53 ◼ ► There was a room next to the garage that you know a regular room that needed a split installed in it so we put one there and they were like we could do it right here for no extra money we'll put one in the garage too and I said fine whatever.
02:18:07 ◼ ► Yeah so I don't know like you know it like in the summertime we were running it in dehumidify mode you know like it's just it's kind of nice to have certain options like that so it's fine.
02:18:22 ◼ ► Yeah exactly. No I actually I'm in full support of this idea so my parents in their house which Marco briefly saw many years ago now but they have a three bay garage that the ceiling is like 20 feet in it or something like that it's an absurd amount of space and when our kids were much littler they wanted to have like an extended family thing like it was Christmas or Hanukkah or something I forget exactly what it was specifically but they realized that well this is going to be tough.
02:18:51 ◼ ► Because the very young kids are going to wake up with the hear us all whooping and hollering and whatnot and it's wintertime so we can't exactly just go outside whooping and hollering and whatnot might be the most southern thing you've ever said.
02:19:05 ◼ ► Well you never know what y'all get into but anyways but one way or another what dad ended up doing was putting a single mini split in this very very large garage and that's where he would set up you know like just folding tables and you know like chairs and whatnot in there and you know mom and dad mean my brothers and family and whatnot would all chill in there and it was great because we were far enough removed from the interior of the house that the hootenanny wasn't hurt inside.
02:19:34 ◼ ► And we could still live in there not live but you know be in a conditioned space so I I've been wanting to find a reason to do it in my house but we are never in the garage for any long duration of time so I haven't done it because there's no need for it whatsoever but I kind of want to just in principle.
02:19:51 ◼ ► All your cars are in there right keep your cars cooler so when you get it I guess you can turn them on remotely and cool them off but still like I just feel like cars especially in the south are places that are really hot where just stuff bit the interior of your car baking it like over 100 degrees or 120 degrees is not.
02:20:07 ◼ ► Oh no it's it's not bad because it's not in the sun so it's there the hood might be in the sun because we back into the garage because that's who we are so the you know the hood might be in the sun but not the the passenger component is not in direct sunlight but still like if it's not a conditioned space it's just it's an enclosed space in the summer I can imagine like I mean they're designed for that.
02:20:26 ◼ ► It's not as bad as you think it's actually worse I know I know they're designed for it I just I just feel bad for the car it's much worse than the winter for the people yeah I mean like yeah all those all those glues and materials that are made to withstand 170 degrees without degrading too much we've all seen old cars where those dashboards they put up a good fight but you know decade in they start to fall apart and if you and if you keep them if you don't you know expose them to extremes of temperature they will be nicer for longer.
02:20:54 ◼ ► That is very true but no it's not nearly as bad as you think around where we are anyway the worst part at least for people anyway is during the winter because it will still be properly cold out there in the mornings and so Aaron's car I can run on electricity if it's plugged into the house it'll it'll warm itself up over the span of a half an hour if I want it to or I can actually start the gasoline engine as long as the garage doors open and warm it up that way.
02:21:22 ◼ ► Is this the garage where your water heater is? Yes. So you're worried it's getting so cold in there it seems like it's probably not getting that cold.
02:21:29 ◼ ► It's no I mean compared to what you two are used to. Your water heater is in there. Compared to what you two are used to it's not that bad but. Well actually so I have a heat pump hybrid water heater now.
02:21:38 ◼ ► So what it does is it steals heat from the garage to heat the water which means it air conditions the garage. So I actually have to be careful you know whatever choices I make with the split unit that I'm not basically just undoing my energy savings.
02:21:52 ◼ ► That's wild. But yeah so I can run Aaron's car if it's plugged in for you know like 20-30 minutes and warm it up however you and I suffer from the same problem with our cars in so far as if I were to turn on my car remotely it would drive itself through the front of the garage.
02:22:11 ◼ ► So that's not a possibility. Unless you don't park your cars in gear John in which case we have a whole new world of things to discuss.