00:00:00 ◼ ► John, do you want to step into the corner with me, the anniversary corner? Because on episode 476, on the 30th of March, 2022, do you know what you did, John?
00:00:17 ◼ ► I always forget this is in March. I also forget the total number of years, so thank you for reminding me again.
00:00:30 ◼ ► Right, right. Anyway, happy anniversary, John. I'm glad that you are still independent and things are still going okay.
00:00:47 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't know. I don't have any wisdom to impart at this time, but I'm glad I'm still here and making it work.
00:00:58 ◼ ► Yeah, you may have to speak for me a lot tonight because I'm a little bit tired because, as I mentioned a couple aftershows ago, I'm training for this 32-mile Manhattan walk.
00:01:14 ◼ ► We're trying to schedule around Easter and spring break and stuff, and there was really no other time to record the show besides the evening of me doing a 22-mile walk that started at 6 in the morning.
00:01:41 ◼ ► Adam, by the way, I'm happy to say I don't think I'm allowed to talk about it yet, but Pedometer++ has a wonderful update coming in the future.
00:01:54 ◼ ► I know what you think Pedometer++ is, is that app that you can install on your phone and see your step count, and it still is that.
00:02:01 ◼ ► But what it also is, is an amazing walking and hiking app on the Apple Watch, and it shows you the live walking or running or hiking or whatever workout on the watch with a great map.
00:02:17 ◼ ► So, number one, I would say, like, you know, I know our friend underscore David Smith probably won't be as aggressive as I am about telling you all this, but this app is awesome.
00:02:25 ◼ ► And if you walk or run or hike and you want something on your Apple Watch to show you where you've gone and how far you've gone, it's a great app for that, especially that map view.
00:02:43 ◼ ► However, I will say that a future episode of this podcast, I will be talking about another non-Apple smart athletic sports watch.
00:03:08 ◼ ► You got to do what everyone suggested, and what underscore has done is, hey, you got two wrists.
00:03:13 ◼ ► I'm going to do a walk where I'm going to have, you know, that on one, like the Apple Watch Ultra on one, and then the, you know, the new sports watch on the other, and I'll compare them.
00:03:20 ◼ ► And by the way, the Apple Watch Ultra doing a, you know, nine hour long walk with GPS and, you know, full workout sensing mode, but with low power mode so that always on screen is turned off.
00:03:59 ◼ ► So it's basically a documentary that's just like a series of interviews with very important people in the world of AI, including Sam Altman and Dario and Daniela Amadei from, so Sam Altman, of course, from OpenAI.
00:04:13 ◼ ► The Amadei is from Anthropic, which is actually a sponsor of this episode, and a whole bunch of other people from the AI business and also like good AI thinkers and everything.
00:04:32 ◼ ► I assume it will be in theaters for a little bit, but I think this is the kind of thing that eventually you will see on YouTube.
00:04:39 ◼ ► But I would suggest if you're into this business, like the list of people that the filmmaker got to interview is pretty impressive.
00:04:47 ◼ ► So I think we're going to be seeing like, you know, clips from this over time and stuff like that.
00:04:53 ◼ ► So I watched a movie about AI and then I took a very, very, very long walk and it was pretty fun.
00:05:03 ◼ ► And thank you to John for not only putting in our internal show notes, new member special with a yellow background and obnoxious pink foreground color, but also at the top of the follow-up section, because I often jump over the pre-show section, go straight to the follow-up section, is a second instance of new member special in pink and yellow.
00:05:28 ◼ ► John had the genuinely brilliant idea of taking all of the icons from our home screens from whatever episode it was, like a month or two back, that we talked about our home screens.
00:05:48 ◼ ► Yeah, as I say at the top of the show, it's also kind of an excuse for me to try out my vibe-coded tier list app.
00:05:57 ◼ ► There was one problem that happened immediately as soon as we started that I just could not believe but couldn't deal with in the moment, which was the stupid green pencil icon from Zoom overlaying on top of my beautiful clean app.
00:06:14 ◼ ► Anyway, we have since, we believe we have since solved that problem after finishing the episode, found the setting in Zoom.
00:06:21 ◼ ► If you go to the Zoom website under Settings and Meetings, turn off the annotation feature, which is what that little pencil is for.
00:06:28 ◼ ► Also, people suggested a feature to be added to my tier list app that will show an enlarged version of the item we're talking about, which definitely helps when we're talking about something we want to look at, like a logo or an icon.
00:06:37 ◼ ► So I'll make sure I have that the next time we do a tier list, which may not be for a while because we've done a bunch of them recently.
00:06:50 ◼ ► Part of it did involve writing various scripts and web scrapers to try to get icons from the new App Store website, from the old iTunes URLs, from the App Store API that's available.
00:07:02 ◼ ► And I could get lots of icons from there, and I could get artwork from there, but they were never right.
00:07:07 ◼ ► They didn't have a transparent background or they were the wrong size or they were weirdly truncated.
00:07:14 ◼ ► And I was like, I tried that and I got messed up icons, but maybe I have to try it on Tahoe.
00:07:20 ◼ ► So if I ever have to do this again, I do have a bunch of new suggestions about where to get stuff from.
00:07:25 ◼ ► And speaking of icons, one of the icons that we discussed, I guess I won't spoil which one it was.
00:07:30 ◼ ► One of the icons, because I said a strange feature that we couldn't figure out if it was supposed to be like, is the corner of the icon peeling up?
00:07:37 ◼ ► Which totally used to be a thing in the iOS 6 days, by the way, tons of icons did that.
00:07:40 ◼ ► You know, is they trying to show a page curl and it's not working and we couldn't figure it out?
00:07:44 ◼ ► Well, silly us, it was the Ukrainian flag because the developer of that app is from Ukraine originally.
00:07:53 ◼ ► I'm not sure it helps the icon, but we didn't figure out what it was because you didn't have that key piece of additional information.
00:08:07 ◼ ► If it was the actual flag, I think we would have been a little bit less dense about it.
00:08:15 ◼ ► And, you know, and we, I mean, we are huge supporters of Ukraine in its invasion by Russia.
00:08:39 ◼ ► And for the record, I rated that icon higher than these two, setting aside the corner thing,
00:09:06 ◼ ► And even, even like transcripts with some shortcomings are better than not having transcripts
00:09:16 ◼ ► I might do like one more small bug fix build, but I'm going to basically release this version
00:09:48 ◼ ► And there's, in certain cases, chapters are shown in a sheet, like a pop-up sheet, instead
00:10:07 ◼ ► Also, since we're in the real-time feedback portion of the show, earlier today I was listening
00:10:44 ◼ ► And not only that, but there was a music bed in this particular ad, and there were little
00:11:06 ◼ ► When you start using transcripts, they pretty quickly become a way that you navigate the
00:11:13 ◼ ► Like when something comes up, whether it's an ad or maybe just like a topic that you want
00:11:18 ◼ ► to skip past or whatever it is, it's a lot nicer in many cases to navigate past it or to
00:11:29 ◼ ► And, you know, scrolling quickly, you can kind of skim the text a lot faster than you can
00:11:48 ◼ ► A lot of segments are delineated by either quick little blurbs of music or the presence
00:11:59 ◼ ► Now, in the future, you know, if I lean more into like, you know, trying to find automatic
00:12:05 ◼ ► chapter marks or automatic topic changes or things like that, then there's more I can do there,
00:12:10 ◼ ► of course, but I think regardless, having the music note indicator helps you kind of see the
00:12:51 ◼ ► We give you a file and you can navigate that file and listen to, you can navigate it however
00:13:26 ◼ ► Yeah, I didn't say anything about what particular product sold because that information cannot
00:13:31 ◼ ► But you can read between the lines there and say, yeah, they also released the M5 MacBook
00:13:35 ◼ ► Pros, but probably not as many first time Mac customers there and they released the Neo
00:13:40 ◼ ► This all, you know, and this and people reporting like, hey, I went to the Apple store and they
00:13:59 ◼ ► All right, let's talk about the MacBook Neo and kind of how it's a throwback potentially.
00:14:04 ◼ ► Adrian Bengston writes, listening to you speak about the Neo, it reminded me of the iBook
00:14:14 ◼ ► This was before the unibody and it was mostly plastic, but it felt really good in your hand,
00:14:33 ◼ ► Either PC laptops were big and freaking ugly or they were nice and small, but completely
00:14:49 ◼ ► Yeah, I think this is the one that we used to call the iBook because it was like a white
00:14:55 ◼ ► Like it was white painted on the inside with clear on the outside, if you know what I mean.
00:15:02 ◼ ► Obviously, it was giant by today's standards, but you know, 2001, it was a long time ago.
00:15:23 ◼ ► Like we have come a long way in material science since then, but for the time, I think a lot
00:15:28 ◼ ► of people have a nice impression of this, which was also a small, very rounded, adorable laptop
00:15:41 ◼ ► I think we've talked about one or two of them, but there was a new one done by the Framework
00:15:47 ◼ ► He and a coworker did a MacBook Neo teardown and they compared the MacBook Neo to their own
00:16:02 ◼ ► It's the ones that Apple was using for a while where the up and down are the same height as
00:16:07 ◼ ► the left and right, like the combination of up and down are the same height as left and
00:16:12 ◼ ► When you first mentioned this, I thought, does it have, because I was thinking like, oh, no
00:16:18 ◼ ► You guys don't remember this, but the old style for arrows, arrow keys on Apple keyboards
00:16:31 ◼ ► Before Apple made half size left and right arrow keys, there was a phase where Apple was
00:16:37 ◼ ► It's still in a technically a T shape, but the full size left and right arrow keys made
00:16:49 ◼ ► And then for his notes, complaints, et cetera, he complained, and I agree, by the way, about
00:17:09 ◼ ► You can usually make those displays go 180 degrees, you know, so life flat, you know, parallel
00:17:17 ◼ ► Whereas most Apple laptops can only go, I don't know, like 120 degrees or something like
00:17:48 ◼ ► It's like the whole thing where you can open it with one finger and the whole laptop won't
00:17:52 ◼ ► lift, but also at whatever angle you put it at, it will stay there pretty well, but it's
00:17:57 ◼ ► It's just getting that right balance between it's easy enough to move, but it also stays
00:18:06 ◼ ► Given all of that, maybe part of the mechanism that makes that work also means that it can't
00:18:30 ◼ ► like maybe it just needs another, you know, five or 10 degrees and it just doesn't have
00:18:34 ◼ ► So that's a potential future enhancement if Apple can figure out how to make the hinge still
00:18:51 ◼ ► It is stamped instead with a little machining added afterwards, making it more flexible
00:19:00 ◼ ► He was suggesting if you go into the Apple store and like pick up a MacBook Neo and look
00:19:07 ◼ ► and the rest of the case, that especially like in the middle of the seam where there are
00:19:21 ◼ ► I think the main body of the Neo is still machine, but this bottom one is apparently stamped to
00:19:29 ◼ ► And that's he was saying that's why they had like screws on all the corners and all the
00:19:39 ◼ ► I don't know why they just didn't put other screws there, but like I said, the, the regardless
00:19:43 ◼ ► of what they did to save money, the construction of it, when you pick it up in the hand, it
00:19:49 ◼ ► So I think that's the main takeaway there, but they found a way to get money out of it without
00:19:53 ◼ ► seemingly sacrificing much, except for maybe like fractions of a millimeter in the shut
00:20:01 ◼ ► And then, uh, additionally, the framework laptop 12 logic board is like four times the size
00:20:15 ◼ ► Like how you look at that is like, how could they both fit a laptop in the same case, given
00:20:24 ◼ ► Their stuff is like very serviceable and has lots of swappable parts and you can upgrade
00:20:36 ◼ ► Um, but check out this teardown if you want to see, uh, you know, obviously it's done by the,
00:20:42 ◼ ► So they're a little bit biased towards the framework, but it is really interesting to see a different
00:21:02 ◼ ► Henry writes, I agree that the MacBook Neo will not be an alternative to the Chromebook.
00:21:10 ◼ ► In the high school I teach at, every student has a Chromebook over 1,900 in one building.
00:21:14 ◼ ► When one quits working or is forgotten at home, the student goes to the library and checks
00:21:22 ◼ ► We have a couple of students who are trained to replace broken screens by salvaging parts.
00:21:26 ◼ ► The IT department is never involved at all with the Chromebooks except for student password
00:21:30 ◼ ► IT spends more time managing my graphic design classroom of 28 iMacs than they spend managing
00:21:50 ◼ ► The district uses iPads in kindergarten and first grade, Chromebooks in 2 through 7th or
00:22:06 ◼ ► Quote, there were already plans to consider moving to MacBook Airs for the middle group and
00:22:10 ◼ ► replace them every four years due to AppleCare costs not working out in the district's favor.
00:22:15 ◼ ► Even if that doesn't happen, our district is looking at between $400,000 and $500,000 in
00:22:23 ◼ ► And Ari says, they're absolutely, excuse me, sorry, no freaking way they would ever go to
00:22:35 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't think they're in conflict because one is in a school where they already have
00:22:38 ◼ ► MacBooks for everybody and I think Henry's point stands, which is like, I'm not sure how
00:22:48 ◼ ► So, the first example is, say you forgot your laptop or something or you need another one.
00:22:55 ◼ ► Chromebook, that's more of like an OS platform thing because you just sign into the Chromebook
00:23:05 ◼ ► Like, I don't think if you forgot your MacBook Neo went to the library, even if they handed
00:23:10 ◼ ► you a new one, could you have it up and running to the point where you could use it for something
00:23:14 ◼ ► in time for your class, given how long it would take for the Mac to do its whatever network
00:23:24 ◼ ► I'm not sure how people configure MacBooks in the school systems, but if it's a one-to-one
00:23:29 ◼ ► type thing, I have to imagine there's more local stuff or even if there's not any local
00:23:34 ◼ ► Like, I think a lot of, I mean, my kid only had a MacBook Air in a couple of, in the Fire
00:23:41 ◼ ► Island grades, like a couple of elementary school grades, but now we're in a bigger district.
00:23:46 ◼ ► But even districts that use MacBook Airs, I think they still just use a whole bunch of web-based
00:24:17 ◼ ► Even if there's like a network thing that just sets it up, like you just, it's single sign
00:24:21 ◼ ► on, you enter in your school email address, like the time taken to just set up the home
00:24:26 ◼ ► I'm not saying it's going to take forever, but I just feel like Chromebooks are, have an
00:24:30 ◼ ► advantage here in that they can probably let you do a Google ID, you know, log in with the
00:24:47 ◼ ► They're saying like, oh, well, we have students replacing the screens on the Chromebooks because
00:24:57 ◼ ► So first of all, as of several years ago, Apple will supply you with parts and instructions
00:25:07 ◼ ► Second, as we've covered the other teardowns, the Neo is way easier to take apart than all
00:25:14 ◼ ► You don't have to like, you know, take a heat gun to any part of it and break any seals and
00:25:20 ◼ ► A student with the appropriate weird, you know, I fix it, pentalobe, whatever things can in
00:25:26 ◼ ► fact take apart a MacBook Neo and replace, maybe not the screen, because I think all the teardowns
00:25:42 ◼ ► making it feasible to have a bunch of students whose job it is to grab from the bin of, you
00:25:48 ◼ ► know, spare lids to the Neos and take a broken screen and put it in the recycle thing and put
00:25:55 ◼ ► So, you know, I, I, I agree with Henry that it's still not quite the same, but I do think
00:25:59 ◼ ► the Neo is actually making some progress in the direction of the Chromebook advantages here.
00:26:04 ◼ ► Yeah. It'll help a lot. And, and I think whether, whether, you know, this, whether you side with
00:26:09 ◼ ► Henry or Ari on this one, I think depends a lot on the supporting infrastructure around the,
00:26:18 ◼ ► Yeah. Budget. Cause even then, like, you know, even with the MacBook Neo being about 500 bucks
00:26:23 ◼ ► for education, that's still about twice as much as most of those Chromebooks cost those
00:26:26 ◼ ► schools. Um, so you're still looking at a huge price difference. And of course, then, you
00:26:31 ◼ ► know, like, you know, at my kid's school, again, it's all Chromebooks. Um, and they have a whole
00:26:36 ◼ ► program. There's like an insurance program that we buy for damage. Uh, you know, and, you
00:26:41 ◼ ► know, there's, he, whenever something happens, you know, some, the corner of the screen cracks
00:26:46 ◼ ► or whatever, um, keys fall off. Like the weird stuff happens. These are middle schoolers.
00:26:51 ◼ ► Um, but, but like, you know, there, he brings it into some place in the school and he gets
00:26:58 ◼ ► a loaner and then he gets his original one back maybe like a month later. You know, there's
00:27:03 ◼ ► all this support around it. There are service depots. There's in school service. There's the
00:27:08 ◼ ► insurance thing that you can buy to, you know, make, get a damage waiver. Like there's all
00:27:12 ◼ ► that stuff around it. And then even setting aside the service and the damage and the price,
00:27:16 ◼ ► then there's, as you mentioned, John, the software and application and login management,
00:27:20 ◼ ► all of that. Chromebooks are popular in schools for lots of reasons. It isn't just cost, although
00:27:27 ◼ ► the cost is a big one, but all of those management things, like if you are a school that is all
00:27:33 ◼ ► invested in that ecosystem, that all of those management sides of it, they make that very easy
00:27:40 ◼ ► on the IT departments. And when you're running fleets of hundreds or thousands of these for
00:27:50 ◼ ► to manage those. And so if you have the infrastructure in place to manage Chromebooks and it works well
00:27:56 ◼ ► for you, Apple's not really going to be changing a lot with the Neo. But if, as John said, like
00:28:01 ◼ ► earlier, if you already have Apple administration, if you're already using fleets of MacBook Airs,
00:28:08 ◼ ► then the Neo is a better situation for you because it costs less and it's easier to service.
00:28:14 ◼ ► But if you don't already have all that in place, this might not move the needle that much.
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00:30:08 ◼ ► All right, let's talk about the M5 Pro and Macs and their, I guess, medium cores. We have a 9to5Mac write-up
00:30:17 ◼ ► that's about an article on the Mac and I website, which is in German. So Johannes Schuster wrote and is
00:30:25 ◼ ► quoting Anand Schimpie, who is on platform architecture at Apple. Apple's new performance core is a completely
00:30:32 ◼ ► custom-designed microarchitecture. So it differs significantly from both the super core and the efficiency core.
00:30:41 ◼ ► That's straight from Apple. They're making a straight-up claim for what we're calling the medium
00:30:44 ◼ ► core just because it makes more sense. They're saying it's actually more efficient than the old
00:30:48 ◼ ► efficiency core, which kind of leans towards maybe the M6 will use these cores instead of the old
00:30:53 ◼ ► efficiency cores, but we'll see. It remains to be seen if they're even going to use the chiplet
00:30:57 ◼ ► architecture for the plain no-suffix M6. But that's a bold claim. Don't worry about the medium
00:31:02 ◼ ► cores not being as efficient as the efficiency cores. They're actually more efficient, claims Apple.
00:31:07 ◼ ► All right. And then Doug Brooks, who is Mac product marketing, explained that while the chips do
00:31:16 ◼ ► Yeah. Usually, Apple doesn't talk about these things. Like, what standards does it use or whatever?
00:31:21 ◼ ► PCIe 5, I think, is a standard from like 2019 or something. So there are later standards that are
00:31:27 ◼ ► still in progress. But in case you're wondering if Apple's keeping up with the times, I'm not sure.
00:31:32 ◼ ► Maybe the M4 and M3 also use PCIe 5, but you just so rarely hear Apple talk about this. And unless you
00:31:37 ◼ ► find someone who's really dug into the chips, it doesn't come up, especially since it's not like
00:31:46 ◼ ► And then from the write-up on 9to5Mac, we were interested in whether two chips with the
00:31:52 ◼ ► Fusion architecture could be combined using UltraFusion to create a single system on a chip
00:31:56 ◼ ► consisting of four dies. That would then be the M5 Ultra. But Apple traditionally doesn't talk about
00:32:03 ◼ ► This is from the Mac and I website, by the way. It's not from the 9to5Mac thing. So as I said,
00:32:13 ◼ ► like this is translated by Google. So forgive us Germans if this is not like literally I'm just
00:32:17 ◼ ► using Google Translate to translate a web page. It's the best we got. And again, the quotes are
00:32:22 ◼ ► translated too. Like even though I don't think Anon speaks German, these quotes are in German and then
00:32:28 ◼ ► translated back to English. But this is as close as you'll ever get anyone from Apple to confirm
00:32:33 ◼ ► the M5 Ultra or some other M5 chip. At the moment, we have only announced the M5 Pro and M5 Max.
00:32:38 ◼ ► You sure have. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to something that's not an M5 Pro and M5 Max in the
00:32:44 ◼ ► Max Studio for WWDC. Really, John, are you now? I am. We'll get to it. All Pro and Max chips differ in the
00:32:50 ◼ ► number of GPU cores, memory bandwidth, and maximum addressable RAM. We got the impression that Apple
00:32:54 ◼ ► wanted to gain experience in experimenting with the core count. Quote, we're not trying to experiment,
00:32:58 ◼ ► figure things out that way, explained Shimpy. Ultimately, we're not commercial semi-contained
00:33:03 ◼ ► conductor manufacturers. We develop chips specifically for a particular product generation.
00:33:06 ◼ ► So many people have said this, both officially and off the record, this sentiment that Apple
00:33:12 ◼ ► builds chips for products. Apple doesn't build chips and then figure out what to do with them. That's
00:33:16 ◼ ► part of the whole deal with Apple Silicon is they're not just building, well, we should just have a,
00:33:21 ◼ ► you know, a good line of chips and figure out what to do with them. It's like, no, when a chip is
00:33:25 ◼ ► designed, it's for specific products. Now, sometimes it's easy. It's like, oh, we're making a chip for the
00:33:30 ◼ ► iPhone. You think we're going to have an iPhone? We're totally going to have an iPhone. But even there,
00:33:33 ◼ ► it's like, what features will this iPhone have? What are the requirements of this iPhone? What
00:33:37 ◼ ► things do you want us to make better than the previous one? And sometimes it goes awry, as we'll
00:33:42 ◼ ► discuss later. But even like we've heard things about chips and entire computers that were originally
00:33:48 ◼ ► designed and built and planned for a product that never shipped or shipped in a different form and
00:33:53 ◼ ► just ended up being repurposed. So, you know, things happen. But this gets back to what we're talking
00:33:59 ◼ ► about with the SOIC MH chiplet architecture thing for the M5 Pro and M5 Max, where there's separate
00:34:05 ◼ ► dies for the CPU and GPU. It's like, well, now that they've got this chiplet architecture, they can mix
00:34:09 ◼ ► and match all sorts of stuff. And they're like, no, that's not how we do it. Yes, we will mix and match
00:34:13 ◼ ► things, but only in the specific ratios, the specific combinations that we know we need for our specific
00:34:19 ◼ ► products that we're planning this for. So again, don't expect a pop-up menu on the Apple configurator
00:34:25 ◼ ► where you get to choose the CPU cores and choose the GPU cores beyond the typical like binning and
00:34:31 ◼ ► sliced up into pieces options that we get today. All right, let's talk ubiquity. First of all,
00:34:37 ◼ ► half of the internet wrote to ask, hey, Marco, why not use site to site VPN for your swarm in the data
00:34:44 ◼ ► center and your house? And I haven't spoken to Marco about this. And I don't know what your answer will
00:34:49 ◼ ► be, but I wanted to mention that former and I think future sponsor tail scale, which I am freaking in
00:34:55 ◼ ► love with. Um, that what, one of the great things about tail scale is that it's basically removes the
00:35:02 ◼ ► idea of what network are you on when it comes to connecting to your other devices. So yes, a site
00:35:07 ◼ ► to site VPN would fix Marco's problems perhaps when he's at home, but what if he leaves the home? And
00:35:12 ◼ ► yes, I'm aware that there's like unifies teleport, which by the way, I have not had a particularly great
00:35:16 ◼ ► experience with, but, uh, one way or another, what's great about tail scale is I can be with
00:35:21 ◼ ► my phone. I could be out. I could be watching Declan, uh, you know, play football and check on
00:35:26 ◼ ► something real quick. I could be in an airplane. I could be on another continent. I could be on wifi
00:35:30 ◼ ► on cellular. It doesn't matter because you're always connected to your other devices, no matter what the
00:35:35 ◼ ► networks are between them. So I'm reckoning that maybe Marco, that's why you haven't tried this option,
00:35:41 ◼ ► or maybe you're about to tell me you've given up on tail scale and that site to site is the right answer
00:35:44 ◼ ► for you. Um, I had, so this is, I actually tried this with the restaurant, uh, back about a year
00:35:50 ◼ ► ago. I just couldn't figure out a way to do it because the way ubiquity does those like site to
00:35:55 ◼ ► site bridges by default, it basically like, it lets you, you know, transfer, it lets you tunnel your
00:36:01 ◼ ► traffic through the other place to go to the internet, but it like totally blocks access to
00:36:09 ◼ ► Well, no, um, I have briefly tried this with the unified travel router, um, which I am really a
00:36:17 ◼ ► big fan of, but my problem with teleport is that, or I've never tried site to site VPN, but with
00:36:23 ◼ ► teleport, it's extremely fickle. Like even with their own device, sometimes it works and sometimes it
00:36:28 ◼ ► doesn't. And it's considerably less reliable than tail scale is, which is really weird.
00:36:33 ◼ ► Yeah. Anyway. So I, I tried, I tried teleport and I tried like various bridging options about a year
00:36:40 ◼ ► ago. I did not have any luck getting them to work, to be able to see devices on the local network,
00:36:44 ◼ ► uh, on the remote local network. So I don't, I can try it again sometime. I would love to not need
00:36:53 ◼ ► tail scale on every machine just to be able to access it remotely. Um, but there are other options too.
00:36:57 ◼ ► Like for instance, I could like tunnel through, I could like set up tail scale on one machine there
00:37:03 ◼ ► and then like tunnel to that one to access the other ones. Like I have other options. Um, but right
00:37:09 ◼ ► now this was just easy to do and it's fine. Um, and I, and I set the tail scale keys on those machines
00:37:15 ◼ ► not to expire, which is an important step. I learned, I learned that the hard way for the first few machines
00:37:21 ◼ ► I set up. Yeah. So anyway, so far the tail scale option is working fine for me in the future. If it,
00:37:27 ◼ ► doesn't anymore, then I'll look at other options. Um, or if there is something that's really,
00:37:32 ◼ ► really easy and that is reliable and flexible, then that's fine too. Um, but for the moment
00:37:37 ◼ ► it works fine. Yep. All right. Uh, we talked, I don't know, maybe a month or so ago, maybe two
00:37:42 ◼ ► about, uh, MLO. What is that? Multi link, something like that. Multi link operation, I think. There you
00:37:47 ◼ ► go. Thank you. And, uh, how basically it doesn't work anywhere as per some article that we had talked
00:37:57 ◼ ► a new product called airwire and what their release video, they're like trailer, if you will,
00:38:03 ◼ ► and they do this for both software and hardware. Um, their trailer basically said, uh, you know,
00:38:09 ◼ ► nobody could use MLO particularly because the clients were always trash. And what we're going
00:38:14 ◼ ► to do is we're going to have our own wifi client that you then plug into via ethernet, if I'm not
00:38:19 ◼ ► mistaken. So the literal quote from the video is the infrastructure was ready. Now the clients
00:38:27 ◼ ► nearly every wifi seven client today advertises MLO compatibility, excuse me, capability. Yet they only
00:38:33 ◼ ► use one link at a time. Instead of combining bands through simultaneous multi-radio operation,
00:38:37 ◼ ► they simply switch between them. Airwire, this new product is a plug and play USB-C wifi seven. Oh,
00:38:43 ◼ ► I'm sorry. It's not ethernet. It's USB-C. Uh, wifi seven client engineered for true simultaneous
00:38:47 ◼ ► multi-radio performance with STR MLO. It operates independently on five gigahertz and six gigahertz
00:38:53 ◼ ► at the same time, aggregating spectrum instead of alternating between bands. The result is a
00:39:01 ◼ ► So to describe this product, it's kind of like a, I don't know how you would describe it. It's
00:39:07 ◼ ► bigger than a phone. It's kind of like a, you know, maybe four inch, three and a half inch by
00:39:13 ◼ ► three and a half inch by one inch, a USB-C rectangle that you plug in. And it's got like a lid that kind
00:39:19 ◼ ► of opens like a laptop lid and that's the antenna. And it's like, it's basically saying your laptop's
00:39:24 ◼ ► wifi can't do this. Your max wifi can't do this. Whatever you have, can't do this because nobody
00:39:29 ◼ ► seems to ship a simultaneous MLO wifi seven clients, but we have a box that will do it.
00:39:34 ◼ ► Plug this box into your wireless device. Stop using the wireless radio that's in your device.
00:39:41 ◼ ► And instead have your device through the, this USB-C connection, use our box and we'll do the
00:39:48 ◼ ► wifi for you. And it's one of the clunkiest things I've seen since the track balls that would clip onto
00:39:52 ◼ ► the side of a laptop really compromises the, uh, the portability of your portable device. But if you
00:39:59 ◼ ► absolutely positively need to have simultaneously a simultaneous MLO, because it's the only thing that
00:40:04 ◼ ► can provide you that extra bit of bandwidth and lower latency that you desire, apparently Ubiquiti
00:40:09 ◼ ► will sell you this thing. Yeah. Ubiquiti sells a lot of very specialized products. Like if you have
00:40:15 ◼ ► very specific needs for this kind of thing, now here's a product for you. Almost no one should
00:40:27 ◼ ► That's exactly right. Yeah. I would say this thing looks, and it's hard to get a good idea of scale,
00:40:34 ◼ ► but it looks to me like the, uh, Mac minis that we had up until the most recent release with like a
00:40:40 ◼ ► flap on the top. Like John, it's like an Apple TV actually, but no, yeah, that's a good, that's a
00:40:44 ◼ ► better analogy. Yeah. I would say that. Uh, anyways, it does look cool, but I agree with Marco, probably
00:40:48 ◼ ► not for you or me. Uh, now a lot of you are probably already firing off emails to us because we said in
00:40:54 ◼ ► the beginning of the show that we stand with Ukraine. And yet we are also talking positively about
00:40:58 ◼ ► ubiquity. Uh, we have gotten this feedback a million and seven times. And so let's talk about
00:41:02 ◼ ► it. Uh, on January 27th, uh, what is the name of this place? Hunterbrook media, uh, reported
00:41:08 ◼ ► official ubiquity distributors appear to have continued supplying Russia after the invasion
00:41:13 ◼ ► of Ukraine, sometimes rerouting shipments through intermediaries in high diversion risk countries like
00:41:17 ◼ ► Turkey or Kazakhstan, uh, trade records show some appear to have used intermediates later sanctioned by
00:41:23 ◼ ► the U S for export control evasions. Ubiquity openly admits, quote, we do not have any visibility
00:41:27 ◼ ► quote over purchases from its distributors, but legal experts told Hunterbrook that that's not
00:41:32 ◼ ► a viable defense. U S export controls and sanctions operate on a strict liability basis, meaning even
00:41:37 ◼ ► unwitting, unwitting violations are still violations. Ignorance is not really a practical excuse or rather
00:41:42 ◼ ► a legal excuse. A former senior state department sanctions official told Hunterbrook, a sanctions
00:41:47 ◼ ► compliance lawyer added, you're doing very, you're doing very little effort. We're able to determine
00:41:51 ◼ ► that it's available for purchase by the Russian armed forces. The company's compliance team should
00:41:55 ◼ ► be taking additional steps to prevent that. Uh, this sounds really, really crappy and it might be
00:42:05 ◼ ► Yeah. There's a couple other things in the article as well. Uh, talking about how a ubiquity did actually
00:42:10 ◼ ► cut off direct sales to Russia when they invaded and all this other stuff or whatever. But here's the
00:42:14 ◼ ► thing. One of the reasons this has been in the notes forever and hasn't even made it into overtime
00:42:18 ◼ ► is because as soon as the story came out, I added it to the document and I'm like, Oh, I'll just let
00:42:21 ◼ ► that. Um, it didn't make it in time for a show, but like by next week, I'm sure we'll have more
00:42:25 ◼ ► stories and I can add more links to it. And there just weren't any. And every time someone brought it
00:42:30 ◼ ► up, I would say, where did you hear about this? And they would tell me and every single source was
00:42:34 ◼ ► always pointing back to this Hunterbrook. Is it Hunterbrook media? Oh, I gotta look up.
00:42:39 ◼ ► Hunterbrook capital. Hunterbrook media, I guess is their media arm, but it's, it's a capital fund.
00:42:44 ◼ ► Yeah. Anyway. And like everything pointed back to Hunterbrook. I'm like, there was no corroboration
00:42:48 ◼ ► from no other sources from literally every place you saw it. There's a YouTube video about it all,
00:42:52 ◼ ► but it's the person for Hunterbrook on the video. There's a blog post about it, but they're just
00:42:55 ◼ ► linking back to the Hunterbrook. Like other, is there any other source for this? And eventually it's
00:43:00 ◼ ► just like, there's never, apparently there's never going to be a second source for this. It's just
00:43:04 ◼ ► going to be Hunterbrook. So I figured we should talk about it just in case people want to know about
00:43:07 ◼ ► it. Cause we do talk about ubiquity a lot, but the disclaimer on the actual article that we will link
00:43:11 ◼ ► from Hunterbrook says, uh, based on Hunterbrook media is reporting Hunterbrook capital is short on
00:43:16 ◼ ► the stock symbol for ubiquity and long a basket of comparable securities at the time of publication.
00:43:23 ◼ ► So I forget, I couldn't look this up by Googling or, you know, I didn't, couldn't find this in our
00:43:27 ◼ ► history, but I believe we have talked in the past about a similar situation. Maybe it was also
00:43:31 ◼ ► Hunterbrook where, where it's like some company shorts a stock. And if you short a stock, you make
00:43:38 ◼ ► money if that stock price goes down and you lose potentially unlimited money, if the stock price
00:43:42 ◼ ► goes up. So some company will short a stock and then post a negative story about that company in
00:43:48 ◼ ► the hopes to make the stock go down and disclaiming it and saying, here's a big negative story about
00:43:54 ◼ ► ubiquity. And by the way, just so you know, we make money if the stock price of this company goes down,
00:43:59 ◼ ► which is fine. Maybe they're shorting it because ubiquity is doing a terrible thing. Like, you know,
00:44:03 ◼ ► it's not, it doesn't mean that they're lying to try to make the stock go down. Maybe they're saying,
00:44:06 ◼ ► hey, we're shorting it because we know they're doing a bad thing and we think people will agree
00:44:09 ◼ ► with us and that will make the stock go down and then we'll make money. But the fact that I cannot
00:44:14 ◼ ► find a single other source that doesn't eventually lead back to this one Hunterbrook media story
00:44:19 ◼ ► makes me question this a little bit. Now, I fully believe that, first of all, it's a fact that Russia
00:44:25 ◼ ► is using ubiquity stuff. Okay. The question is, what is ubiquity doing to stop that? Are they doing
00:44:31 ◼ ► enough? And again, in the article, you'll see that they have cut off direct sales to them and they,
00:44:34 ◼ ► they've banned all Russian IPs and they've done a bunch of other stuff, but still the fact remains,
00:44:42 ◼ ► claiming ignorance or whatever. So I'm not sure what to make of it because I'm not an investigative
00:44:46 ◼ ► reporter on the Russia beat. Uh, but obviously, as we noted before, we do stand with Ukraine.
00:44:52 ◼ ► Russia is terrible. Uh, they shouldn't be getting ubiquity stuff. The fact that they are something
00:44:57 ◼ ► that ubiquity should stop, but I don't know how much credence to give this report that ubiquity is a,
00:45:03 ◼ ► is knowingly acting badly for its own self-interest. It's plausible. Companies do it all the time,
00:45:08 ◼ ► but you know, do with this information what you will. The link will be in the show notes. You can
00:45:12 ◼ ► read it yourself. Let me add a bit more information here. That's I think extremely pertinent to this.
00:45:17 ◼ ► So this is a investment firm that has, has taken a short position. And again, so that means they make
00:45:24 ◼ ► money if the stock goes down. Now, if you do this to something like Apple or Google, it's going to be
00:45:32 ◼ ► hard to make a dent, but ubiquity is different. If you take a look at ubiquity stock, it's pretty
00:45:39 ◼ ► unusual in a few ways. One of the biggest ways is that the founder and CEO still owns almost all of
00:45:47 ◼ ► the company. There's very little public stock actually issued, and there's not that much liquidity and
00:45:53 ◼ ► there's not that much trading volume because there's not that many shares. So if you look at ubiquity's stock
00:46:06 ◼ ► So if you were trying to make a bunch of money on a short position, if you could put a story out there
00:46:13 ◼ ► and the stock dives 20 or 30 percent, you're going to make a lot more money than if you try to hit a
00:46:20 ◼ ► bigger stock that has a huge amount more trading volume and a huge amount more shares. And maybe you
00:46:25 ◼ ► only make it go down one percent. So if you wanted to manipulate a stock in the tech business, ubiquity
00:46:32 ◼ ► would be a really interesting choice for that because of the very unusual dynamics of its stock
00:46:37 ◼ ► relative to other well-known tech companies. So that's why you see, I think, a lot of these kind
00:46:44 ◼ ► weird stories trying to move the ubiquity stock because it works and it works pretty effectively
00:46:51 ◼ ► compared to most other targets. So I think stories like this, you have to take with a large grain of
00:46:58 ◼ ► salt. If the Russian military has equipment from ubiquity, well, everyone has equipment from ubiquity.
00:47:07 ◼ ► It's a very popular company that sells a huge amount of tech and networking gear all over the
00:47:14 ◼ ► world. If there's a huge market of demand for it. And again, this is not saying ubiquity sold it to
00:47:21 ◼ ► Russia. This is saying that ubiquity is not adequately policing its third party sellers to make sure that
00:47:28 ◼ ► third party sellers who buy it from ubiquity don't resell it to Russia. That's kind of a lot to put on the
00:47:34 ◼ ► company, honestly. I mean, that's the law. The whole point is that that's the law that you don't get to
00:47:38 ◼ ► say, well, we just give it to distributors. What they do with it after is not our problem. The question
00:47:42 ◼ ► is, are they doing enough? That's what it comes down to. Right. And it kind of sounds like they're doing
00:47:47 ◼ ► a reasonably okay job of like doing their diligence and like not like knowingly setting it that way.
00:47:54 ◼ ► But like if they sell to somebody and then that person goes and sells it, like you're never going to
00:48:00 ◼ ► get a hundred percent compliance on that. And a product like products like ubiquity products that
00:48:05 ◼ ► have, they sell in such high volumes and they sell all over everywhere. That's going to be really hard
00:48:11 ◼ ► to get a hundred percent compliance on. So given like the, the problem space that this is, and then given
00:48:18 ◼ ► that this only, only this particular media reporting seems to be about this, this issue and that the
00:48:25 ◼ ► company doing the media reporting stands to make a lot of money by a stock going down that is very volatile
00:48:32 ◼ ► and can, and swings in huge amounts based on media reporting. I have a hard time taking this story super
00:48:39 ◼ ► I mean, I take it seriously, but I just think like you don't know where the cause and effect is. If you're
00:48:44 ◼ ► trying to make money shorting a stock and you find a stock that is like, as you described, Marco, has high
00:48:48 ◼ ► volatility. Um, you would look at that and say, is there any way we can make the stock go down? And one of the
00:48:54 ◼ ► ways you can make it go down is revealing true information about a bad thing. The company is
00:48:57 ◼ ► doing. It doesn't mean the thing isn't true. Your motivation for doing it is for you to make money,
00:49:02 ◼ ► not because you're just magnanimous and want the world to know about this bad thing. But you know,
00:49:06 ◼ ► it's like doing negative, uh, you know, a research on your political opponent or whatever you're doing
00:49:11 ◼ ► it because you, you want to win, win the race or whatever, but the information can also be true.
00:49:15 ◼ ► So I don't know. That's why I said, I don't know what to make of this. Like the motivations are
00:49:18 ◼ ► clearly we're doing this to make money and we want the stock to go down. And, and the reasons we would
00:49:22 ◼ ► pick ubiquity is the reasons you say, but all that doesn't mean that the story is not true.
00:49:26 ◼ ► Um, and so that's, that's why you would, I would hope that I would see some other reporting about
00:49:31 ◼ ► it. If this is actually an issue, if ubiquity is uniquely badly policing its distributor network,
00:49:36 ◼ ► or one of the worst in policing its distributor network or something like that, but just no one
00:49:41 ◼ ► else picked up this story. No one else wanted to, I've found no other reporting. It doesn't mean
00:49:45 ◼ ► it doesn't exist. It's just that every single person who reported this to me, I always said,
00:49:48 ◼ ► what's your source for this. And they all pointed back to the hundredbrook. So that's why I say
00:49:52 ◼ ► do with it, what you will decide on your own, uh, whether you, this changes your opinion of
00:49:58 ◼ ► ubiquity or not, but the story is out there and you can read it. And it's from this particular source.
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00:51:54 ◼ ► Without further ado, John, it's a sad day. Reading from nine to five Mac. Apple has confirmed to nine to five Mac that the Mac Pro is being discontinued. It is being removed from Apple's website as of Thursday, March 26th. Apple has also confirmed to nine to five Mac that it has no plans to offer future Mac Pro hardware. I'm sorry for your loss.
00:52:16 ◼ ► I mean, it's nice that we just recorded an episode before this came out where I basically said, I can't believe they haven't killed it yet. What are they waiting for? Well, they were just waiting for us to drop the episode. Apparently, I mean, a lot of people will write again. And when people write in and say, you know, I wonder what John thinks of this. I do wonder if they're like, you know, only a sporadic listener of ATP because God, we've talked about this topic so much. And if you had listened to every episode and had not tuned out like Casey, every time I mentioned the Mac Pro, I feel like you wouldn't.
00:52:44 ◼ ► I feel like you would know how I feel about this and how I feel about it is what I said on the last episode. Like the machine has been effectively dead for a long time. Like, especially with the, you know, the past few milestones that happened when it was like, we were waiting for, you know, news and rumors or whatever. And I think it was an episode a while back where I was like, notice how there's no rumors at all about anything having to do with the Mac Pro. And sure enough, whenever the events came along, there was in fact nothing to do with the Mac Pro. And it's like, well, that's it. It's over.
00:53:12 ◼ ► Like they upgraded the studio to the M3 Ultra, which itself was weird. Did they upgrade the Mac Pro to it? No, they did not. Well, maybe they'll do it the next event. No, they didn't. And it's like, well, that's it. It's dead. It's done. Like, this is not what you do to a machine. That's a going concern.
00:53:24 ◼ ► And then it became ridiculously embarrassing. I made the snarky toot about the Neo being faster in single core than the Mac Pro because it's just so old and expensive. And of course, the price has never changed. And, you know, it just needed to be put out of its misery.
00:53:37 ◼ ► Apple, you know, Apple is clearly no longer making this product. And I would much rather see it put out of its misery and discontinued immediately rather than waiting for the Mac Studio to replace it and saying this new M5 Ultra Mac Studio replaces the Mac Pro.
00:53:51 ◼ ► They're not even waiting until then. Why wait? There's no point. So it's gone and buried.
00:53:57 ◼ ► If you want to hear me talk about the Mac Pro in the more positive sense, not the M2 Ultra one, because it's hard to say anything positive about that one.
00:54:03 ◼ ► But the 2019 Mac Pro, the one that I'm actually using, I'll put a link in the notes to episode one, two, three of the last detail on relay with Dan and Tom.
00:54:14 ◼ ► And I was their guest. And you're supposed to talk about like an item that means something to you design wise.
00:54:19 ◼ ► And I chose the 2019 Mac Pro and talked about it at length. If you're wondering why I like this machine, obviously, it's from a design perspective.
00:54:26 ◼ ► But take a listen to that episode if you want to hear me think on better days when the Mac Pro 2019 Mac Pro was a really amazing machine when it was released.
00:54:36 ◼ ► That was in 2019. We're in 2026 now. And the M2 Ultra one was really never a very good machine.
00:54:45 ◼ ► And people ask, what are my plans? Obviously, again, if you listen to the show, you know, my plans, my plans are going to get an M something Mac Studio, most likely, assuming I can stomach the RAM and storage costs, which that's not the Mac Studios fault.
00:54:58 ◼ ► That's AI's fault. But, you know, it is what it is. It's my fault for waiting too long, presumably, although I'm I'm glad I waited because not that I don't want an M4 Max, but I wanted to wait until the, you know, until all the possibilities had foreclosed.
00:55:12 ◼ ► And now they have everything. Everything has for this. There's going to be no Mac Pro. Apple says there's not going to be one.
00:55:18 ◼ ► And by the way, don't wait for a new one because that's not happening either. They're really making sure, you know, that this is an X product.
00:55:25 ◼ ► Unlike, for example, like I think Gruber gave this example, like the weird thing where they stop selling the big HomePod and it's like, well, that's it.
00:55:32 ◼ ► The big HomePod is dead. And then a little bit later, they introduced a new big HomePod.
00:55:36 ◼ ► It's like what? I thought this was a dead product. It was just dead for a little while.
00:55:39 ◼ ► But Apple wants you to know this is not a HomePod situation. This is a dead, dead situation as in we have no plans for another one.
00:55:47 ◼ ► It's not like there's going to be a new Mac Pro at next year's WWDC or something like that. Just forget it.
00:55:53 ◼ ► Yeah. And Apple doesn't often tell you they're definitely not going to make another thing.
00:55:57 ◼ ► Like, I think the only one I can think of is when they, a couple of years ago, gave a statement to some press saying that they were not going to make any more bigger iMacs. Remember that?
00:56:06 ◼ ► Yeah, yeah. That was like, don't wait for a 27-inch one when this 24-inch one is out. Like, it's not going to happen.
00:56:12 ◼ ► And, you know, these statements are always like, we have no plans, which means they currently have no plans. In five years, there could be plans.
00:56:19 ◼ ► But, you know, all they're saying is, it's not going to be a HomePod situation. We're not discontinuing this because we ran out of stock before WWDC. That's not the situation.
00:56:28 ◼ ► Yeah. And again, it shouldn't be a surprise for anyone who's watching Apple or listening to this program because the product was so incredibly dead.
00:56:35 ◼ ► I mean, obviously, as soon as they didn't put the M3 Ultra in it, to even continue the farce of it being a Mac Studio in a bigger case, they didn't even continue that.
00:56:46 ◼ ► The only thing I have to say retrospectively about it is, you know, again, a repeat of things I've said in the past, but people don't listen to every episode.
00:56:54 ◼ ► The Mac Pro is essentially the only failure of Apple Silicon because the job of Apple Silicon was to replace, you know, Intel processors with Apple processors and all of Apple's products.
00:57:06 ◼ ► And they did do that eventually to great effect in every single product, to amazing effect in every product except one.
00:57:14 ◼ ► And it's the Mac Pro. And it's not because Apple had a difference of opinion and said, well, we don't need a big computer like the Mac Pro.
00:58:09 ◼ ► I mean, part of that is Apple's decision to not support third party GPUs, but setting that
00:58:13 ◼ ► aside, especially in the AI age, I would argue that potentially having a giant case stocked
00:58:26 ◼ ► Just within the realm of is there any room in Apple's product line for something that is
00:58:39 ◼ ► Right now, we have great examples of applications that run on Macs that we wish would go faster.
00:58:52 ◼ ► Yeah, you can gang together a bunch of Mac Studios, but basically local models will use
00:59:11 ◼ ► With the new SOIC MH chiplet architecture, where Apple can do separate dies and put them into
00:59:19 ◼ ► things, they're now able to make chips that are bigger than they used to when they tried,
00:59:25 ◼ ► when they would take like the M-whatever Macs, which was close to the reticle limit, close
00:59:37 ◼ ► If the Ultra fits in the studio, there's no point in ever having anything other than the
00:59:45 ◼ ► But now, with the CPU and GPU at least being separate, the CPU can be as big as an M4 Max
00:59:52 ◼ ► The GPU can be big as M4 Max and you can combine two of those and now you've got a monster chip.
00:59:59 ◼ ► You cannot put that monster chip inside a Mac Studio because it can't dissipate the heat.
01:00:04 ◼ ► So, why does Apple still need something, whether it's a Mac Pro or whatever, something bigger
01:00:14 ◼ ► They can make, it is possible with the current technology we've seen in the M5 Pro and Macs,
01:00:22 ◼ ► Now, obviously, if they ship a chip in the Mac Studio, it's not going to be too hot to fit
01:00:26 ◼ ► But they're also not going to plan and design and build the chip that would be too hot, but
01:00:42 ◼ ► Like, you need a bigger case that can dissipate more heat just for the CPU, GPU stuff and their
01:01:09 ◼ ► In the current era, there is still a place for a Mac that is more powerful than the Mac Studio
01:01:15 ◼ ► because the Mac Studio, it's got its own little thermal corner, and it has amazing capacity,
01:01:25 ◼ ► But now I believe Apple has clearly the capability to make a chip that is more powerful but too hot
01:01:40 ◼ ► should make a Mac that has more cooling capacity than the Mac Studio so they can put a bigger
01:01:48 ◼ ► I will also separately believe that the role of slots is still potentially good or whatever,
01:01:55 ◼ ► The heat capacity thing is not nebulous, and that's why the old M2 Ultra Mac Pro was so ridiculous
01:02:04 ◼ ► You can buy it in the studio, and yet they're putting it in this cavernous case with massive cooling.
01:02:23 ◼ ► until at least the M7 generation, but that was a vague rumor, and it was a long time ago,
01:02:42 ◼ ► The one glaring to me failure of Apple Silicon is they could not figure out how to make a replacement
01:02:53 ◼ ► It's not a big deal to anyone except for me, but I still think they should shoot for that star.
01:03:09 ◼ ► I mean, I know people don't care about that, and Apple's gaming performance is amazing,
01:03:20 ◼ ► It can always just, especially GPUs, they're so embarrassingly parallel and everything.
01:03:27 ◼ ► Not that Apple's going to make an $8,000 computer to play games on or whatever, but that's, that's
01:03:38 ◼ ► part of that curve where like the models that everyone wants to use literally can't run on
01:03:44 ◼ ► They only run on $60,000 Nvidia rack mount things and probably multiple ones of those given how
01:04:03 ◼ ► I mean, I guess it could, if you, you know, spent a few hundred grand and put a rack there,
01:04:06 ◼ ► but like, it doesn't fit in a normal desktop computer of any reasonable size and dimension.
01:04:26 ◼ ► reasons, which is why we never fully converted to thin clients where everything is in the
01:04:30 ◼ ► So, um, yeah, gaming and I guess AI and saying AI is like, oh, that's just one use case.
01:04:42 ◼ ► This is, we don't even know what the full possibility space is of this technology until it
01:04:53 ◼ ► I think the, the Mac pro, you know, for Apple killing it now, it's kind of like when they
01:05:13 ◼ ► Well, but you know, the Mac pro, I'm sure the Mac pro had like five or six customers, you
01:05:17 ◼ ► know, I'm sure there, there were people who filled it up with the sound processing cards,
01:05:23 ◼ ► Um, but if you look at the arc of the Mac pro, I assert that the last good Mac pro was 16
01:05:39 ◼ ► This product from 2008, the first Mac pro, which was, you know, basically the Intel version
01:05:50 ◼ ► The power Mac G5, you know, it wasn't had some flaws, but like it had, it was a great line
01:05:54 ◼ ► of computers when they, when the Intel transition happened, the 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, those were
01:06:12 ◼ ► Um, it was just like, they kind of, they just raised the minimum spec and added one more top
01:06:18 ◼ ► end configuration option for the family that they already had been using for two years.
01:06:24 ◼ ► Um, but it was not really a new Mac pro, not really even a speed bump because the components
01:06:32 ◼ ► Um, but anyway, so you had four unique Mac pros in that old cheese grater case and those,
01:06:40 ◼ ► it was, you know, every couple of years Intel would release a new series of the Westmere
01:06:44 ◼ ► Like I said, that was one of the, they would, the new series of the workstation grade Zeons,
01:07:01 ◼ ► Like you could, if you bought like an 06 or 08 Mac pro, like my first one was the 08 one,
01:07:05 ◼ ► that 08 Mac pro not only outperformed everything else on the market for the, for the Mac user
01:07:11 ◼ ► in 08 in every way, include it in single thread, it would at least match it and multi-thread,
01:07:22 ◼ ► The Ram was ECC and everything was more reliable, like huge reasons to have the Mac pro in those
01:07:39 ◼ ► And that was reasonably competitive with high end desktops and high end laptops of the time.
01:07:46 ◼ ► That would be like a well-performing computer for, for most people, five years, maybe for
01:08:08 ◼ ► They were extremely capable for a huge variety of what Mac users needed and wanted to do.
01:08:39 ◼ ► It was no longer as capable because almost immediately after it was released, it lost single
01:08:45 ◼ ► threaded performance or maybe even it already was multi-threaded performance was good for
01:08:54 ◼ ► GPU performance was again, okay for a little while, but it was, it didn't remain competitive
01:09:07 ◼ ► The market for professional workstations was, it's, it was still a healthy market back then,
01:09:12 ◼ ► but by Apple's own choices with the trash can redesign, they shrunk its market and then they
01:09:46 ◼ ► Then in 2019, they released John's current Mac pro, the Intel 2019 Mac pro, the last Intel
01:10:03 ◼ ► So you've already, this was something that, you know, the, the previous tower version started
01:10:36 ◼ ► Like no one like John who mostly wants to use it regular ways, but wants to play games with
01:10:41 ◼ ► Like none of those people are going to buy except John, but like, so they shrunk the market
01:10:54 ◼ ► So what they did was through their own choices and their own, in some ways negligence, in some
01:11:02 ◼ ► ways just mistakes, they kept shrinking the market for this product massively by their own
01:11:08 ◼ ► Now, what was also happening in that time was the market for professional desktops was itself
01:11:15 ◼ ► shrinking, not just from Apple, but from everybody as more people were moving their work to laptops.
01:11:21 ◼ ► And as Apple was losing a lot of that high-end computing market, anything that was using
01:11:37 ◼ ► And what Apple did was design this amazing architecture that serves pretty much everything below that
01:11:48 ◼ ► We have amazing phones all the way up to amazing workstation class laptops and the Mac Studio,
01:11:56 ◼ ► which is like a pretty great overall, you know, asterisk here and there, but like pretty great
01:12:01 ◼ ► overall computer, except look at the performance of the Ultra chips versus the Max chips.
01:12:10 ◼ ► It scales up basically only in some of the GPU compute benchmarks, like the Metal and OpenCL.
01:12:20 ◼ ► And part of the Apple Silicon architecture also is you don't get upgradable RAM, so you have
01:12:39 ◼ ► So you have total lack of upgradability, everything being expensive up front, and limitations on the
01:12:51 ◼ ► So what Apple did with the entire Apple Silicon transition was lop off the high end of the
01:13:00 ◼ ► So, and so you have, you know, John's 2019 Mac Pro, then less than a year later, the Apple
01:13:06 ◼ ► Silicon transition begins, then the Mac Pro M2 Ultra generation, which, as John was saying,
01:13:19 ◼ ► If you cut off GPU expansion, and it's still insanely expensive compared to everything else,
01:13:28 ◼ ► They just kept cutting off markets, reducing the selling proposition, increasing the pricing
01:13:34 ◼ ► on everything, on everybody trying to buy it for whatever they did need it for, just cutting
01:13:49 ◼ ► So, by Apple's own failings and decisions and directions, they are doing great in every single
01:14:13 ◼ ► A lot of them were just bad execution or, you know, greedy pricing decisions from them.
01:14:34 ◼ ► I know it was a shame that it got Apple Siliconed, but like, when it was released, there was no
01:14:39 ◼ ► So, we can only, you know, even though Apple knew that it was coming, whatever, at 2019 Mac
01:14:55 ◼ ► that Apple realized we have to move up market because that's where, that's where the people
01:15:00 ◼ ► who are going to be able to afford this computer that we want to make exist and the other users
01:15:07 ◼ ► You know, at that point, you could do Final Cut on an Intel laptop still, even though it wasn't
01:15:14 ◼ ► You can go up market with a high-end computer, but the 2019 Mac Pro is what they promised
01:15:24 ◼ ► How long will it be before Apple ever makes another computer with the capabilities of the
01:15:46 ◼ ► this, before there was ever a Mac that could contain as much GPU processing power as the
01:16:01 ◼ ► I have to look up the stats to see how close it is to being competitive with the M3 Ultra,
01:16:10 ◼ ► I have to look up, but the thing is like, well, what am I going to do with all those GPUs?
01:16:30 ◼ ► But like the 2019 Mac Pro, when it was released, had capabilities that were so far above any
01:17:06 ◼ ► And by 2019, we were no longer in an era where power users were even interested in desktops.
01:17:26 ◼ ► And how long will it be before, at this rate, how long will it be before any Mac can hold
01:17:33 ◼ ► But like, you know, how long will it be before you can add as much GPU capability, like relative
01:17:41 ◼ ► Like in 2019, the amount of GPU you can fit in here, scale that linearly with, you know,
01:17:52 ◼ ► And you cannot like, you know, how many watts of heat of GPUs could you put inside this?
01:18:30 ◼ ► Like, I'm not, I wouldn't want Apple Silicon to have been delayed for the honor of the 2019
01:19:00 ◼ ► But it was fine when it had a bigger sibling next to it or when Apple was pretending they
01:19:06 ◼ ► But now they're basically saying, like, the Mac Studio is the highest end desktop we're
01:19:26 ◼ ► But I think the market will not push back against the Mac Studio the same way they did about the
01:19:32 ◼ ► So and as you noted, Apple has so thoroughly abandoned and screwed over the market that
01:19:37 ◼ ► would buy a $7,000 expandable computer that it will be a long time before they're receptive
01:19:46 ◼ ► I'm not saying it has to be a tower, but like for the people who would buy a Mac Studio, would
01:19:56 ◼ ► A lot of people would say, yes, they would say, give me twice as much RAM, give me twice
01:20:00 ◼ ► as much GPU, give me twice as much CPU so I can run my local models that are twice as big
01:20:08 ◼ ► I don't think Apple has anything like that planned, but that's what I'm looking forward to sometime
01:20:12 ◼ ► You know, to build on something you said earlier, you know, what if you had the ability to be
01:20:25 ◼ ► But I think there is an interesting thought exercise that we may or may not ever get to
01:20:31 ◼ ► experience or see the end of, which is, you know, the A series of chips, I think we can
01:20:46 ◼ ► And to extrapolate from what John was saying earlier, you know, what if there was a chip
01:20:51 ◼ ► where perhaps power efficiency just wasn't, or if it was on the priority list at all, it
01:21:01 ◼ ► Because these Apple chips, you know, the, the, the H series chips, the M series chips, they're
01:21:12 ◼ ► Imagine what it would be like if they took the, the, the gloves off and said, you know what,
01:21:22 ◼ ► make the most power efficient thing possible because think of how many more, how much more
01:21:32 ◼ ► The, the computation that is done in like the M whatever max chips, CPU and GPU compared to
01:21:41 ◼ ► When you compare it to a standalone Intel or AMD CPU and a standalone AMD, AMD or NVIDIA
01:21:48 ◼ ► GPU, like the total amount of heat dissipated by like those discrete components versus the
01:22:13 ◼ ► Imagine what you could do with that exact same check and just put twice as much in and make
01:22:22 ◼ ► I want them to use their power efficiency to say, this means we can put more GPU cores in.
01:22:27 ◼ ► This means we can add, because I mean, maybe some more CPU cores, maybe they've used too many,
01:22:31 ◼ ► although Threadripper would say there's still room for more CPU cores, but there's always room
01:22:39 ◼ ► And so take advantage of this amazing technology you have, especially with the chiplets.
01:22:44 ◼ ► Because before you could say, well, that's all well and good, but they're already making
01:22:54 ◼ ► At the very least, the limit should have just doubled because they have, they're doing separate
01:23:03 ◼ ► But I agree with you, Casey, that I think they could do great things, but I think the reason
01:23:10 ◼ ► And that's an advantage that lets you put more stuff in before you run out of like whatever
01:23:30 ◼ ► And it's like, it's competing with like these giant PC towers with a thousand fans and 900
01:23:37 ◼ ► And keep in mind, like, you know, as like to kind of expand on that, like, you know, efficient,
01:23:49 ◼ ► It is total power use is like, you know, for what gates the performance of modern processors
01:23:55 ◼ ► is basically how much heat can you, how much power are you allowed to consume and how much
01:24:08 ◼ ► Um, I think the bigger issue with, with Apple's limitation here is architectural that as I was
01:24:16 ◼ ► saying earlier, like Apple Silicon, it, it scales up really well through the whole low end of the
01:24:21 ◼ ► performance, uh, line and well into the mid range and, and well into what most people would consider
01:24:26 ◼ ► But once you start trying to go past some of these upper limits, again, look at, look at
01:24:33 ◼ ► benchmarks of the M3 ultra versus the M3 max and certainly versus the M4 max, which came out at the
01:24:40 ◼ ► same time. Um, and the ultra is not very competitive unless you have very specific workloads.
01:24:48 ◼ ► And even those, even the GPU workloads that scale the best for the M3 ultra, the M4 max comes very
01:24:58 ◼ ► close. So the, the actual need for the M3 ultra is very, very small. The main reason to buy it is that
01:25:06 ◼ ► it raises other limits like the Ram limit. Although I don't know if you've looked recently at Mac
01:25:11 ◼ ► studio availability and shipping times, you can't even get the high Ram ones. And you know why,
01:25:16 ◼ ► by the way, if you currently, uh, if you currently try to spec a one 28 gig Mac studio, it says pick
01:25:22 ◼ ► up Wednesday, August 26th. Oh my word. Yeah. Like that makes perfect sense because, uh, as we said,
01:25:29 ◼ ► like, uh, uh, you know, Apple does component deals for, uh, locked in the price for a long period of
01:25:36 ◼ ► time. And that's an advantage to them at the early stages of this terrible Ram crisis. But I can bet
01:25:42 ◼ ► you they are not pre-purchasing and locking in purchases for the, the, whatever one 28 gig Ram
01:25:48 ◼ ► modules for the Mac studio. That's more of a, like, if anyone orders, this will get it built. Well, guess
01:25:53 ◼ ► what now they can't get that stuff because like they don't keep, they don't, you know, when they're
01:25:57 ◼ ► selling like the laptops or whatever, they're like, yeah, we're going to pre-order X number of million
01:26:01 ◼ ► of these. Cause we know that's how many you're going to sell. How many max Ram max studios do they even
01:26:06 ◼ ► sell? So like, ah, when those, when those orders come in, we'll just, we'll just buy them at the
01:26:09 ◼ ► market price at the time. Oops. Now the market price is insane. Maybe you can't even get those things.
01:26:14 ◼ ► So yeah. Yeah. Cause you can get like the one 28 gig, uh, MacBook pro the new MacBook pros. You can
01:26:20 ◼ ► get those like next week. Yeah. Cause they probably pre-order and have a deal for those, but not for
01:26:23 ◼ ► the next studio. Yeah. Yeah. But like when you look at the scaling up of Apple Silicon, like the way
01:26:30 ◼ ► they've designed the architecture with unified memory and everything being like part of why it's so fast.
01:26:35 ◼ ► There's a lot of integration here. A lot of the controllers are on the die with the processor. Like
01:26:40 ◼ ► there's, there's a lot of integration of all the different components that if you look at modern
01:26:45 ◼ ► PC architecture, there's a lot less of that. Like some things have moved onto the processor that used
01:26:51 ◼ ► to be separate chips. Like there used to be something called a North bridge and a South bridge. And like,
01:26:54 ◼ ► I don't, I don't, I haven't been paying too much attention to PC architecture recently, but like
01:26:58 ◼ ► on the PC side, they're, they're starting to look a lot more like Apple Silicon these days.
01:27:01 ◼ ► Yeah. Like stuff does like over time, like more stuff from the, what used to be called the North
01:27:05 ◼ ► bridge move into the processor and stuff like that. But like, as you scale up the performance of
01:27:10 ◼ ► these architectures, integration gets you a lot of wins. And, but the problem is the more stuff you
01:27:16 ◼ ► integrate into the main SOC or the main CPU die, the less like expansion you have to, to like broaden
01:27:24 ◼ ► with some of the horizons here, unless you make a whole bunch of different, you know, parts of the
01:27:30 ◼ ► whole bunch of different processors that have a whole bunch of different controllers integrated into
01:27:33 ◼ ► them. And so like, you know, you, you, you will see that like on high end data center CPUs,
01:27:38 ◼ ► you're not going to see it in from Apple. You're not going to see them make 12 different
01:27:46 ◼ ► the Apple Silicon architecture is great for the bottom 90% of what people need, but for that top
01:27:55 ◼ ► 10% of the market that needs like, again, what if you need the 1.5 terabytes of RAM that the old Mac
01:28:01 ◼ ► Pro supported you still, even, even before this current Ram shortage, the Mac studio maxed out
01:28:06 ◼ ► at five 12, a third of it. And that's years after the 29th. Yeah. 29th. That was that, you know,
01:28:11 ◼ ► that again, that's seven years ago. And until a few weeks ago, the highest you could get on a Mac
01:28:17 ◼ ► studio was a third of its Ram ceiling. And that's because the architecture is different. Like to,
01:28:21 ◼ ► because to put that much Ram in Apple Silicon, you need, you need a whole bunch of the Apple Silicon
01:28:26 ◼ ► chips fuse together. And because they have all the controllers built in, like there's all the level
01:28:31 ◼ ► of integration they have. It's just, it's again, it's different architectural decisions. It is fantastic
01:28:36 ◼ ► for all the computers that all the rest of us use, but it, it precludes them from offering these very
01:28:44 ◼ ► high configurations. And I don't think the architecture scales well. So I don't, I don't even think that if
01:28:50 ◼ ► they did like the quad max chip, I don't even think that would be competitive. I think I'm guessing
01:28:56 ◼ ► the reason why they didn't end up shipping that was probably partly because it would cost a lot,
01:29:02 ◼ ► but I bet also, I bet it just wasn't worth it for enough people. Like I bet they learned that when
01:29:09 ◼ ► they scaled things up, it didn't scale up enough to be worth that cost to any buyers. I bet that's the
01:29:14 ◼ ► real reason. I don't think you're saying like, Oh, the Apple Silicon architecture can't scale up or
01:29:18 ◼ ► whatever. Everything you cited for the problems with scaling linearly and stuff, that's all to do
01:29:23 ◼ ► with the fusion architecture where they take two maxes and stick them together end to end, right?
01:29:26 ◼ ► And that is their problem with scaling. The first time they did that, they screwed something up with
01:29:30 ◼ ► the GPU and that didn't even scale linearly. And then they fixed that. But like that architecture of
01:29:34 ◼ ► saying, we don't want to build, we either don't want to, or can't build a chip this big on a single
01:29:40 ◼ ► die because we're at the reticle limit or whatever. So we're going to take two of these other things to
01:29:44 ◼ ► your point, two of these other chips that we already have to build for our laptops. And we're not going to
01:29:47 ◼ ► do a whole separate chip, but we're just going to take two of the laptop chips. And we've also designed
01:29:51 ◼ ► it in a way for them to talk to each other with this, you know, fusion architecture where they stick
01:29:54 ◼ ► to each other end to end, just like our old, uh, shirt says with the two maxes flipped over and stuck
01:30:00 ◼ ► together. That architecture does not scale well, but that's not Apple Silicon. That's whatever it is,
01:30:07 ◼ ► the Silicon interposer fusion architecture thing. I think we're beyond that now, as evidenced by the
01:30:14 ◼ ► chiplet architecture on the M5 pro and M5 max. And so I'm not saying what Apple is going to do,
01:30:19 ◼ ► but if they wanted to, they could totally abandon the Silicon interposer to maxes stuck together
01:30:25 ◼ ► architecture and just build a big dedicated CPU on its own die with no GPUs and a big dedicated GPU on
01:30:32 ◼ ► its own die with no CPUs and make them both at the reticle limit and stick them on a chip. And there's
01:30:37 ◼ ► your M5 ultra. I would love for them to do that. I don't think they're going to, but I would love for
01:30:41 ◼ ► them to do that. And that is still Apple Silicon. So there's nothing inherent in Apple Silicon that
01:30:46 ◼ ► says you have to do that end to end thing. And that is the linear scaling barrier. That is the thing
01:30:51 ◼ ► that is costs, costs tons of money, but doesn't give you the bang for your buck. And so I think the,
01:30:56 ◼ ► you know, the runway is clear for them to do something better, especially with like two nanometer or
01:31:01 ◼ ► whatever they end up going to. And like the M6 or M6, I figure when that's going to happen.
01:31:04 ◼ ► Like the next process shrink with the chiplet architecture frees them up to leave behind the
01:31:10 ◼ ► ultra, the, what has been the ultra architecture, which is taking two maxes and sticking them
01:31:15 ◼ ► together. Because I think that is a cost savings and it's been cool, but it has essentially run its
01:31:19 ◼ ► course. It was never as good as it could have been, but it was a reasonable compromise to get
01:31:24 ◼ ► something out better. And by the way, one of the other big advantages of the ultra has, which you see
01:31:28 ◼ ► in some of these reviews is, and we don't talk about that much because it's not in the world we're in,
01:31:31 ◼ ► but it has twice as many media units and lots of people who do like these, uh, you know, benchmarks
01:31:36 ◼ ► of like, Oh, I'm exporting from final cut. And like, huh, no matter which M chip I use, it exports from
01:31:41 ◼ ► final cut at like the same speed or like the pro versus the max. Why is it the same speed? Cause
01:31:45 ◼ ► that's all happening on the stupid media engine. And the only way to get it to go faster is get the ultra
01:31:50 ◼ ► cause it's got double the amount of that stuff because it's two maxes stuck together. And lo and behold,
01:31:54 ◼ ► it goes twice as fast. Again, if you built a dedicated high end chip, maybe you'd put four media
01:31:59 ◼ ► engines. You know what I mean? Like you'd make different decisions, but to your point, it's like,
01:32:04 ◼ ► are they, are they ever going to, is it ever going to be economically feasible to make anything custom
01:32:09 ◼ ► for the max studio? Or is even the max studio stuck with, you just get the leftovers from what the
01:32:15 ◼ ► laptops use. And maybe we can stick two maxes together and you should be happy with what you
01:32:18 ◼ ► get happy with your nonlinear scaling, whatever. It's better than a max. It is. Uh, and people who pay
01:32:25 ◼ ► for it. If you want something better than a max, here's our ultra, but that's not the promised land
01:32:29 ◼ ► of this, you know, of, of performance. And so I do hope, especially with the Mac pro gone for good now
01:32:34 ◼ ► that they have some better plans for the studio. Cause I do. And I, you know, the silicon interposer
01:32:40 ◼ ► thing with the two maxes end to end, that's also not particularly power efficient. And there's a bunch
01:32:45 ◼ ► of stuff we've talked about. There's a bunch of stuff on those chips that is, you don't need twice as
01:32:50 ◼ ► many of those, but you get them because it's two maxes, right? It would be better if you could
01:32:54 ◼ ► consolidate the parts that are in common and yada, yada. So that's what I'm hoping for. And I don't
01:32:58 ◼ ► think it's a limitation. Apple silicon is just a limitation of the, the cost saving approach they
01:33:03 ◼ ► have been using for the ultra since the M one ultra. And I agree with you that the, the, the quad one
01:33:08 ◼ ► that they abandoned, they abandoned it for a reason, not just for the hell of it. They wanted to do it.
01:33:11 ◼ ► They tried to do it. They had visions of, you know, putting it together, but like if the scaling
01:33:16 ◼ ► on two of them was bad, the scaling in four would be even worse and the cost would be even
01:33:20 ◼ ► higher. And yes, it would have been faster than an ultra, but it wouldn't have been twice as fast
01:33:24 ◼ ► as an ultra. And so it's a point of diminishing returns. So basically they couldn't, they couldn't
01:33:28 ◼ ► pull it off. They couldn't deliver what the 2019 Mac pro delivered, which is something that has
01:33:32 ◼ ► a big multiple of the capability of its contemporary max. They just couldn't do it in a, in a feasible
01:33:42 ◼ ► is if it's not, if it's still two M5 maxes stuck together, that'll still be the most powerful chip
01:33:48 ◼ ► that Apple makes. And it'll still be really good. And we'll check the benchmarks and see
01:33:51 ◼ ► is the scaling better than it was, even if it's still not linear, but you know, I need something
01:33:57 ◼ ► to hope for. So I'm here, I'm out here hoping that the M5 ultra will not simply be two M5 max
01:34:02 ◼ ► stuck together, but I would not put money on it. So when do you think you're buying a new computer
01:34:06 ◼ ► then? It depends on how much the eight terabyte SSD costs. Uh, as soon as they introduce the,
01:34:12 ◼ ► uh, I'm going to try to get like a friends and family discount from Apple, uh, from folks
01:34:17 ◼ ► that I know who work there. Um, and sometimes the friends and family discount is not available
01:34:21 ◼ ► immediately. Like you can't pre-order with it or whatever. So it might be a while after the
01:34:26 ◼ ► M5, whatever max studios come out. I have to wait around until they show up with the friends
01:34:31 ◼ ► and family discount. But when that happens, I will buy one and will I get the max, which
01:34:37 ◼ ► would be fine for me? If, will I get the ultra if such a thing exists? We'll talk about that
01:34:41 ◼ ► on the show. I'm sure. But that's the plan. M5 something max studio appearing on my desk
01:34:47 ◼ ► whenever I can, whenever I can order it. And, uh, assuming I can afford the eight terabyte
01:34:54 ◼ ► SSD, because that's honestly, I mean, look, it's not a coincidence that I made an app that saves
01:34:59 ◼ ► disk space. I am pressing up real hard against the four terabyte limit on my SSD. I use my app
01:35:05 ◼ ► a lot, like for real, like I use it to save disk space. I need more disk space. And the next size
01:35:12 ◼ ► up that Apple offers is eight and it's going to cost so much money. Um, yes, it is. Can confirm
01:35:17 ◼ ► been there. That's what I'm planning for. And you know, I've said, I think months and months ago,
01:35:22 ◼ ► I've said, I'm planning on getting an M something max studio. Cause I had no faith that the Mac pro
01:35:31 ◼ ► about the physical parts of the Mac pro? Like, cause you have your, like your time machine drive
01:35:36 ◼ ► internal to the Mac pro, don't you? I sure do. Yeah. I have my super duper clone and like internal
01:35:41 ◼ ► storage is for sure. The thing I'm going to switch sounds silly. Cause my internal storage is incredibly
01:35:44 ◼ ► slow. Like it's not, it's like it's connected to SATA for crying out loud, but they are SSDs and the,
01:35:50 ◼ ► the trouble free nature of internal storage and internal buses. I just, I'm going to miss that
01:35:56 ◼ ► the most because it's not like I'm getting the amazing performance out of it. It's not like I
01:35:59 ◼ ► can't, but just, it's all inside the box. I don't have any wires hanging out. They never like unmount
01:36:04 ◼ ► weirdly or do weird stuff. They don't have their own power supplies. My aunt, I have an internal time
01:36:09 ◼ ► machine SSD and I have an internal super duper clone, which, and they're SSDs, but then they're
01:36:14 ◼ ► slow, but having that inside the case is something that I will miss. And I, you know, that's, that's a
01:36:21 ◼ ► niche market or whatever, but I really do wish there were better external storage options because when I
01:36:26 ◼ ► get my Mac studio, I'm going to want to have a, an SSD time machine drive. And I'm going to want to have
01:36:31 ◼ ► an SSD, uh, super duper bootable clone drive. And, you know, I can go try to buy those and buy a
01:36:40 ◼ ► thunderbolt enclosure or something and put a NVMe as it's just, it's a whole, it's a whole bunch of,
01:36:45 ◼ ► you know, computer nerd hobbyist stuff that I'm actually not that interested in having,
01:36:49 ◼ ► you know, bought bear spinning hard drives and put them into enclosures since the days of like the,
01:36:56 ◼ ► classic Mac. Like I've done that a lot. I would just prefer to have reliable, uh, trouble-free
01:37:02 ◼ ► storage that I can use for this. I mean, hell I'll probably, I can't, I always, I'll probably take
01:37:08 ◼ ► those SSDs out of this Mac Pro and use it, but I can't because if I have an eight terabyte SSD,
01:37:11 ◼ ► it's not going to fit on my four terabyte backup drive, but that's going to cost me even more money
01:37:16 ◼ ► after I buy Apple's eight terabyte prices. Then I have to buy, then I have to pay actual market prices
01:37:21 ◼ ► for non-Apple storage to get my, uh, you know, time machine drive and my clone drive. I might even
01:37:26 ◼ ► have to buy new spinning discs for my Synology to fit the backup. So this is going to be an expensive
01:37:30 ◼ ► year and I may have to space, I may have to space this out a bit. Uh, we'll see how it goes.
01:37:41 ◼ ► Well, I'm just saying, uh, given that you spent as much as a freaking Civic on that thing.
01:37:49 ◼ ► All right. Well, all, all snark aside, I am sorry for you. I'm glad for you that you have an answer
01:37:55 ◼ ► because it is, as you mentioned, Apple style, just kind of let this thing fade into the night as it
01:37:59 ◼ ► had been doing, but I'm glad you have an answer, but I'm sorry. It's not the answer you wanted.
01:38:03 ◼ ► I already have the answer. Like, let's like the very last, the very previous episode, we had the
01:38:08 ◼ ► answers. No one, no one was confused about what was going on with the Mac pro is just a question of
01:38:12 ◼ ► what are they waiting for? And they were, yeah, they were waiting for us to post that episode.
01:38:16 ◼ ► We are sponsored this week by Claude. Let me tell you a true story. A couple of weeks ago,
01:38:22 ◼ ► I had a moment that I didn't have locked in for something else. And I thought, you know,
01:38:27 ◼ ► I really wish that call sheet had better support for intense, better support for shortcuts actions.
01:38:32 ◼ ► And I wanted to be able to give call sheet or an intent within call sheet, like an ID and a,
01:38:39 ◼ ► any media type, you know, TV or person or whatever, and have it emit information about that movie or show
01:38:46 ◼ ► person. And I have bounced off this API like five times. I just couldn't make heads or tails of it.
01:38:50 ◼ ► And so I thought, you know what, let me try Claude code and see if Claude code can do it.
01:38:54 ◼ ► And so I set Claude code off with a very, very basic spec and asked it, hey, can you make this
01:38:59 ◼ ► happen? And it did. And then I was mad with power. And now I've got a whole bunch of intents in beta,
01:39:05 ◼ ► all thanks to Claude code. So Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the
01:39:11 ◼ ► collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, whether you're debugging code at
01:39:15 ◼ ► midnight or strategizing your next business move. Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems
01:39:19 ◼ ► that matter. Let me give you another example. I also asked Claude to generate kind of a plan for
01:39:24 ◼ ► me to use Apple search ads. I haven't done that yet. Well, I'm, I have now thanks to Claude, but I
01:39:29 ◼ ► hadn't done it at the time. And it put together a little like information packet and not worksheet,
01:39:34 ◼ ► but kind of worksheet of what I should do and what I should look into. And it did it very quickly and
01:39:37 ◼ ► very easily. I also literally an hour ago had it write a shell script for me to take all the chapters in a
01:39:44 ◼ ► video, extract, uh, uh, the, the songs, basically all the extract the audio from all these chapters
01:39:50 ◼ ► and dump them on disc. It's incredibly, incredibly impressive what Claude and also Claude code can do
01:39:55 ◼ ► things like coding, things like developing whole new things, things like doing audits. It'll do
01:40:01 ◼ ► everything. It really, truly is incredible. So if you're ready to tackle bigger problems, get started
01:40:05 ◼ ► with Claude today at Claude.ai slash ATP. That's C-L-A-U-D-E dot A-I slash ATP. And check out Claude Pro,
01:40:12 ◼ ► which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode, Claude dot A-I slash ATP. Thank
01:40:17 ◼ ► you to Claude for sponsoring the show. All right, let's do some Ask ATP. And Alex Kent writes,
01:40:25 ◼ ► you occasionally remind me that running iOS apps on Mac OS is a thing. I was excited about this
01:40:29 ◼ ► capability before it shipped. Years later, I find zero iOS apps that I regularly run on Mac OS. I can
01:40:34 ◼ ► partly blame the allow this app to run on Mac OS checkbox and App Store Connect that apparently most
01:40:38 ◼ ► corporate developers disable out of habit. But I'm also not sure that the experience of running iOS
01:40:43 ◼ ► apps on Mac OS beats using the corresponding web app or picking up my phone. What iOS apps do you find
01:40:47 ◼ ► useful to run on Mac OS? You know, I echo a lot of what Alex is saying here. I was pretty excited about
01:40:52 ◼ ► the thought of doing such things when it was a, you know, the sparkle in Apple's eye. But in reality,
01:41:00 ◼ ► I almost never use this. And for a lot of things I would reach for iPhone mirroring before I would reach for,
01:41:09 ◼ ► That being said, the only thing I can think of offhand is channels, which does have a web app, but it's mostly
01:41:16 ◼ ► about management. It's not really about consumption. And if there was any weak part of channels, which,
01:41:32 ◼ ► particularly for the purposes of consumption, isn't really not great. And so I've installed
01:41:36 ◼ ► the iPad app on my Mac and use it every great once in a while. I don't think there's any easy way for
01:41:42 ◼ ► me to tell. Is there what other apps I have installed? So I don't even know. I can't think
01:41:50 ◼ ► Oh, I did use that all the time. And then I mostly just use my phone either with the phone
01:41:55 ◼ ► speakers, god awful as that is, or occasionally via iPhone mirroring. That's a good point.
01:41:59 ◼ ► This is one of those ideas that when Apple Silicon first came around and this was one of the features
01:42:07 ◼ ► of it, I thought this is going to be really useful. And yeah, I think the combination of
01:42:14 ◼ ► so many apps opting out of it and also like if you actually use iOS apps on Mac, it's not that useful.
01:42:22 ◼ ► It's not that great. Like if it, if it patches a need that otherwise you would not be able to serve.
01:42:29 ◼ ► So for instance, like my Overcast app runs that way. I personally don't really use it because I don't
01:42:36 ◼ ► listen to podcasts on my Mac. But more people than I expected use it, like significantly more than I
01:42:44 ◼ ► expected. I never would have guessed it would have the use that it has, but it's still not like the
01:42:49 ◼ ► majority of the user base or not even close. Like, you know, most people don't use it, but it does have
01:42:55 ◼ ► some utility. But if you actually like try to use iOS apps on the Mac, they don't work that well.
01:43:02 ◼ ► It's kind of a weird experience. The lots of things are just worse about them or clunky or don't fit
01:43:10 ◼ ► the platform or don't quite work the way you expect them to work. Because when you design apps for iOS,
01:43:16 ◼ ► you're designing for touch on a totally different platform. It just, it doesn't translate as directly
01:43:22 ◼ ► and as well as I think people want it to. I don't even use like the iPhone mirroring thing that they
01:43:26 ◼ ► added last year. Um, I don't even use that because I find that to be too clunky and I'd rather just pick
01:43:32 ◼ ► up my phone out of my pocket and, you know, use it that way. These are features that to me, like I
01:43:37 ◼ ► will use in a pinch, but I don't have that many pinches. Yeah. I don't run any iPad apps on my Mac
01:43:47 ◼ ► because I can't run iPad apps. Oh, John. Uh, yeah. So, I mean, obviously I do have Apple Silicon,
01:43:53 ◼ ► uh, uh, Macs here. Um, and I, I think the only one, uh, I think the only iPad app I have
01:44:00 ◼ ► knowingly installed is overcast. And that was actually to work on, uh, to, to correctly file
01:44:06 ◼ ► Apple's bugs. Cause they had a bunch of bugs related to the APIs I was using in switch class
01:44:11 ◼ ► when it came to, um, iPad apps. Like if you asked to get the icon for an iPad app, their API would
01:44:17 ◼ ► vend you, uh, a dimmed icon with like the circle with a line through it, buster over it, which is not
01:44:24 ◼ ► great. It's not really what you want. Uh, and they fixed that bug thankfully, but there was, there was
01:44:29 ◼ ► a bug like that for like a year and a half and I had to work around it or whatever. There was also
01:44:33 ◼ ► some weird stuff with like the way the notification thing that switch glass uses to say like when an app
01:44:38 ◼ ► was launched, tell me. And when an app exits told me because of whatever weird way that iPad apps are
01:44:43 ◼ ► handled on Mac OS, the notifications for those apps launching and quitting were different and caught
01:44:49 ◼ ► like the timings were different and different events came at different things. So I had to work around
01:44:52 ◼ ► that. And so that's why I have overcast installed is essentially to debug my app switcher app when it
01:44:59 ◼ ► comes to, uh, iPad apps. If I had an Apple Silicon Mac, which I will eventually, um, I, and we were back
01:45:07 ◼ ► in time. One of the things I would have looked forward to using on it is let's say status board
01:45:11 ◼ ► by panic, a discontinued app that I have since, uh, vibe coded replacement of on the web. So I don't
01:45:16 ◼ ► need that anymore, but I would absolutely use that. And that's a perfect use case because as Marco said,
01:45:20 ◼ ► like iOS apps or iPad apps on the Mac, talk about not behaving like a Mac app. They just absolutely
01:45:27 ◼ ► do not behave like a Mac because they're not, they're not, it makes sense. Like, but they don't,
01:45:31 ◼ ► but, and they also don't behave like an iOS app. Like if you, if you're like an iOS developer and
01:45:36 ◼ ► you've used the iOS simulator, you might think the Mac apps would behave like they do in the
01:45:40 ◼ ► simulator. They don't, they don't even let you do the option thing to use a little virtual pinchy.
01:45:44 ◼ ► Yeah. It's, it's even because of course, like that would be a little bit weird too. So it's even
01:45:48 ◼ ► different from the simulator. There are so many little things that are different and the supporting APIs
01:45:54 ◼ ► and the way they behave is also different. So you have things like background downloads and background
01:46:00 ◼ ► refresh and push notifications and services, different kinds of extensions, lots of like airplay, lots of stuff
01:46:07 ◼ ► that either doesn't work on the Mac at all or works very differently. Context menus, another great example,
01:46:13 ◼ ► pull to refresh. Like there are so many things on the Mac that just don't work the right way as they do in
01:46:25 ◼ ► Yeah. And Apple could do things to make those APIs better so that they will behave better when they're
01:46:30 ◼ ► running on the Mac. But like things like status board are ideal because it's essentially like a big widget.
01:46:34 ◼ ► It's mostly read only. It's an app that didn't exist on the Mac at all. And there used to be no web
01:46:39 ◼ ► version of it before I had my thing slapped together. Um, and so I would, I absolutely would run status
01:46:45 ◼ ► dashboard on my Mac as an iPad app and just had it up there as a little dashboard of stuff, just like the old,
01:46:50 ◼ ► just like I used to run dashboard. But that's the type of app that I would do. Like if there was some kind of
01:46:54 ◼ ► app, if there was a social media app that didn't have a native Mac version, maybe I would use that. But I vastly
01:47:00 ◼ ► prefer to just have like, you know, ivory on Mac as opposed to, you know, iPhone mirroring ivory on my phone or
01:47:05 ◼ ► something like that. But like, that's, that's where I'd be using it. Like you said, it's gap filling. This isn't
01:47:15 ◼ ► version mirrored is better than nothing. And there are apps where that is true. A status board
01:47:20 ◼ ► totally would have been the case before I had the web version. So yeah. And developers not opting
01:47:25 ◼ ► into it. It's like, you know, there's a million incentives for them not to do it. And Apple didn't
01:47:30 ◼ ► really make it attractive for them to do it. Like there was, there were plenty of sticks and not a lot
01:47:34 ◼ ► of carrots for doing that. And so I don't really blame developers for not checking that box, but you
01:47:39 ◼ ► know, it is what it is. And this is the argument for like, you know, these are separate platforms with
01:47:43 ◼ ► separate strengths and being able to use them, uh, use any app anywhere is convenient, but it
01:47:49 ◼ ► doesn't suddenly make the platforms the same. They're just not like fundamentally one is a touch
01:47:52 ◼ ► based thing that you carry around with you. And one uses a much more precise pointer on bigger screens
01:47:57 ◼ ► and yada, like those differences will never go away. If there was a grand unification and there
01:48:02 ◼ ► was one Apple OS, those platform differences would still exist. And that one, uh, Apple OS would have to
01:48:09 ◼ ► handle those platform differences. One Apple OS can't be like, Oh, it's a big phone everywhere.
01:48:20 ◼ ► Yeah, right. I use it constantly, but, uh, you know, so anyway, so I I'm having it, I'm having my,
01:48:26 ◼ ► this is my vibe code of reminder app. I'm having it be, uh, cross compiled with Swift UI there.
01:48:32 ◼ ► It compiles on Mac and it compiles on iOS. And many of the things that I have had the AI do for me,
01:48:39 ◼ ► um, is customize the behavior between the two and have, have it behave differently and look
01:48:44 ◼ ► differently and have different controls between the Mac version and the iOS version because they're
01:48:49 ◼ ► just different. They're like one of the things I added the other day was, um, like a swipe to
01:48:55 ◼ ► snooze or, you know, swipe the other way to delete an iOS on, on the, on the row of the reminder,
01:49:00 ◼ ► standard iOS swipe actions. Um, and on the Mac, of course it dutifully added that on the Mac where
01:49:06 ◼ ► it makes no sense because you never want to, to like swipe your mouse over a table row on,
01:49:12 ◼ ► on the Mac and have it swipe to delete accidentally. You never want that on the Mac. That's the wrong
01:49:21 ◼ ► Wait, let me, tell me, tell me that you are a mouse user without telling me you're a mouse user
01:49:26 ◼ ► because I, as a trackpad or touchpad, whatever it's called user, uh, I don't have any problems
01:49:33 ◼ ► Well, lucky you, but anyway, um, on the Mac, that is not a useful or that is not like the
01:49:41 ◼ ► standard correct metaphor for actions on the Mac. The standard correct metaphor for quick actions on
01:49:46 ◼ ► an item is usually a context menu, keyboard shortcuts or visible controls. And so I'm having
01:49:53 ◼ ► different, like I'm on the Mac. I have the right click menu to do those same actions or I'm, you know,
01:49:58 ◼ ► at some point I might add keyboard controls. Like you develop software and you develop interfaces
01:50:03 ◼ ► differently for these two platforms because they work differently. So anything that tries to
01:50:08 ◼ ► run the same code, the same app with the same interface or almost the same interface on both
01:50:15 ◼ ► of those platforms, it's going to result in mediocrity. And that's what this is. It's a well-intentioned
01:50:22 ◼ ► system that doesn't work very well and therefore isn't that compelling most of the time.
01:50:27 ◼ ► All right. And then finally tonight, Michael Brescher Jr. writes, if you were in charge of
01:50:32 ◼ ► the Mac and iPhone software teams, how would y'all balance new features needed to keep up with the
01:50:36 ◼ ► industry with keeping design native to people who have used the Mac for over 30 years, like John?
01:50:44 ◼ ► It's a tough thing, right? It's, and this is what makes engineering so fun and so challenging
01:51:03 ◼ ► um, Volvo just released for Aaron's car, a new version of the infotainment software that
01:51:09 ◼ ► really aggressively rejiggers where everything is on screen. And in some ways, I think that these,
01:51:18 ◼ ► these, uh, the rearranged deck chairs are an improvement, right? And it's for the best,
01:51:23 ◼ ► but I can tell you for Aaron, it's been very frustrating because she, as the primary driver
01:51:28 ◼ ► will mash on a particular portion of the giant touchscreen in the center dash in order to see
01:51:35 ◼ ► her like backup camera, for example. And now that button somewhere else. And that's frustrating for
01:51:39 ◼ ► her. And I get that, uh, liquid glass pissed off most of the community. And I don't, I mostly don't
01:51:46 ◼ ► agree with that. I mostly think liquid glass is actually pretty good. Um, but it certainly made
01:51:50 ◼ ► everyone upset and it definitely moved things around. And so I don't necessarily think new is
01:51:56 ◼ ► bad. And I'm kind of of the opinion, like actually a great example of this, God help me. I'm going to
01:52:00 ◼ ► get so much email, please email someone else. Uh, but the icons, the icons in the menu bar, like,
01:52:06 ◼ ► I don't think they're particularly additive, but I am not deeply morally offended by them. Like it seems
01:52:11 ◼ ► most of our peers are that doesn't make me right for the record. I'm just telling you my personal
01:52:16 ◼ ► opinions about it. And so I, I don't think that new is necessarily bad where, where it becomes
01:52:23 ◼ ► frustrating to me. And this is not a particularly hot take is new for the sake of new. And I think
01:52:30 ◼ ► Michael was touching on that, you know, new features needed to keep up with the industry.
01:52:35 ◼ ► Well, the, a great example of that is let's AI all the things. And I think there's appropriate
01:52:40 ◼ ► times for AI and there's inappropriate times for AI. And do I really need what? I don't even remember
01:52:47 ◼ ► what the stupid thing is called was like something playground. What's the, the image playground,
01:52:50 ◼ ► image playground. I couldn't even remember the darn thing. Cause I've used it like twice,
01:52:53 ◼ ► but it's here, but it's here, baby. I cannot tell. I have dismissed image playground is here 48 times.
01:53:00 ◼ ► Yep. Exactly. Um, so you see where I'm going with this, right? Is that I don't think adding just
01:53:07 ◼ ► because you're keeping up with the Joneses is necessarily the right idea. And Apple in the past
01:53:11 ◼ ► had usually been very good about, yes, that's wonderful for you, but we don't need that. It's
01:53:16 ◼ ► not additive for our users, not helpful for our users. So I'm kind of meandering around the question
01:53:21 ◼ ► rather than answering it because I don't, I think every decision would be different. It would,
01:53:25 ◼ ► it would have to be on a case by case basis. But I think generally Apple's thrust to move forward
01:53:32 ◼ ► isn't by itself unhealthy. I think the problem is that sometimes there's a little too much new shiny
01:53:40 ◼ ► and not enough improvement of what was already there. And I think what makes it even more aggressive
01:53:47 ◼ ► or worse is when the new shiny is just for the sake of new shiny rather than actually additive.
01:53:54 ◼ ► So I think the, the, the big challenge here is like if we're in charge of the Mac and iPhone software teams
01:54:04 ◼ ► are we talking about 10 years ago, five years ago or now? Cause right now the hot new stuff,
01:54:14 ◼ ► admittedly, you're right, Casey, like keeping up with, with hot new stuff is it can be wasteful
01:54:19 ◼ ► and it can be misguided. Um, but right now the hot new thing is AI integration and AI based features.
01:54:26 ◼ ► And that is no matter what you think of AI, uh, there's, there are three things that, that are real.
01:54:42 ◼ ► And number three, it is not as good as you think it is. It is a really, really big deal. Despite
01:54:49 ◼ ► all of those, all of those dynamics going on, it's here. It's going to define and direct a huge amount
01:54:58 ◼ ► of what is, what we use computers for, what they can do, what we can do. Like it's a big deal.
01:55:05 ◼ ► It's very, it's a very disruptive and promising area of technology. And so right now trying to
01:55:14 ◼ ► figure out like, Hey, how do we, how do we like add new features to like the finder or something like
01:55:20 ◼ ► that's, that is something that people should occasionally be considering. But like, if you're
01:55:26 ◼ ► the head of Mac and iPhone software, that's the, that kind of thing is the last thing you should be
01:55:32 ◼ ► considering whether we put icons in the menu items, that's a terrible design decision to have
01:55:38 ◼ ► them there. And especially the way they're, you know, the choices they've made, et cetera. But
01:55:41 ◼ ► like, that's not a good use of anyone's focus right now. There's huge shifts happening in the tech
01:55:48 ◼ ► industry. There will be huge shifts happening for the next, you know, number of years. This is a,
01:55:54 ◼ ► you know, no matter what you think of AI, it is going to be as disruptive as things like the internet
01:56:01 ◼ ► mobile. It is on that level of the amount of disruption that this is going to cause to our
01:56:09 ◼ ► business and many other businesses. When the internet first came out, if a leading computer company maybe
01:56:17 ◼ ► spent a lot of time doing a lot of other features and things that didn't matter as much,
01:56:21 ◼ ► and maybe missed the internet, that could be a problem. They might have to like really scramble
01:56:26 ◼ ► and catch up later. Um, let's say maybe that same company, maybe a little while later missed mobile
01:56:33 ◼ ► and mobile was exploding. The smartphone revolution was exploding and they just weren't in that game
01:56:40 ◼ ► and stumbled around for a while and kind of never got in that game. And it reshaped their business
01:56:46 ◼ ► forever. And they missed out on that entire thing. That's Apple right now with AI. Apple has missed the
01:56:52 ◼ ► main part of it so far. They're scrambling. We'll see where they get, but right now that needs to be
01:56:59 ◼ ► their focus. And we can debate all we want about the crappy Tahoe redesign they did to Mac OS, which they
01:57:06 ◼ ► did and it needs attention. But if you're the head of software, that kind of thing is not what you should
01:57:12 ◼ ► be paying a lot of attention to right now because the entire industry like has this massive earthquake
01:57:17 ◼ ► shaking it all up. And you're worried about like whether your corner radius should be smaller or
01:57:22 ◼ ► not. Like, no, that's not your job. Delegate that to the designers. Hopefully they have, you know,
01:57:27 ◼ ► better leadership now and they have better heads in their shoulders and hopefully they'll fix this
01:57:30 ◼ ► problem. But your job as the head of software needs to be, what do we do to embrace AI, to make good
01:57:38 ◼ ► features with this, to keep ourselves competitive and to, and to move our platforms forward in the actual
01:57:50 ◼ ► I don't think I would, uh, concentrate quite that much on the AI stuff, especially considering how badly Apple is
01:57:55 ◼ ► doing there. But yeah, this is one of those things where it's like, it would have been better if 10 years ago,
01:58:00 ◼ ► they had struck a better balance between, uh, you know, new features and keeping up with industry trends
01:58:04 ◼ ► because that would put you in a better position. And I would argue that having paying attention to
01:58:09 ◼ ► the plumbing, especially on the Mac, but even on the iPhone or whatever, like really just, you know,
01:58:12 ◼ ► uh, polishing up the basic functionality release after release is super essential in a world where
01:58:20 ◼ ► you're going to drop in a bunch of agentic AI because the cleaner you can provide interfaces to
01:58:26 ◼ ► your functionality, like that you have stuff that it's works, it's proven, it's reliable,
01:58:30 ◼ ► putting, you know, allowing AI to start controlling that or having access to it. Like, you know,
01:58:36 ◼ ► for example, what Apple has done with security, like they weren't doing it for AI, but having a good
01:58:40 ◼ ► security architecture allows them, you know, potentially, cause we don't know what they're
01:58:45 ◼ ► actually going to do, but in theory puts Apple in a good position to have AI features integrated with
01:58:52 ◼ ► the phone in a way that is privacy preserving. Let's say they didn't do anything with privacy.
01:58:55 ◼ ► And then AI came along and they said, Oh, well, we should really just concentrate on AI now. It's
01:58:59 ◼ ► like, no, you should have been concentrating over the past 20 years on privacy stuff. Because if you
01:59:03 ◼ ► want this, you know, unreliable LM things to control any aspect of the phone, you need to have a good
01:59:09 ◼ ► privacy architecture in place. And they do thankfully. Right. And that's that same philosophy. I think is
01:59:14 ◼ ► what they should be doing over all their platforms, which is it behooves you to maintain and polish and
01:59:20 ◼ ► improve the basic architecture because whatever the next thing is, it will be easier to integrate
01:59:26 ◼ ► it into your stack. If you're not building on a house of cards, if you didn't neglect privacy for
01:59:31 ◼ ► 20 years, if you didn't, let's say neglect the finder for the entire history of Mac OS 10, it'll be way
01:59:36 ◼ ► easier to hook up an AI into that. If it wasn't like this terrible, fragile house of cards, it's buggy,
01:59:41 ◼ ► nobody likes anymore. And so, you know, you can't go back in time and fix that. But like, uh, to answer
01:59:46 ◼ ► Michael's question, like the balance between like new features and keeping up with the industry,
01:59:49 ◼ ► every one of my like Apple report cards have ever done. I've said that Apple is not correct,
01:59:53 ◼ ► not striking the right balance between essentially maintenance stuff, like, you know, taking existing
01:59:57 ◼ ► features and eliminating bugs and improving the design and new features that continues to be the
02:00:02 ◼ ► case. It is exacerbated by what Marco said, which is like, Oh, guess what? There's a bunch of really
02:00:06 ◼ ► new stuff that you should get on right now. It's a lot easier to strike that balance when you're kind
02:00:10 ◼ ► of in a quiet period when you're not, that's when you're, you know, all those chickens come home to
02:00:13 ◼ ► roots. Like, Oh, we totally should have been keeping Mac, you know, more ship shape for all those
02:00:19 ◼ ► years. Cause now we're going to try to hook up this agent stuff to it. And it's just, it's,
02:00:22 ◼ ► you know, it's terrible setting aside. That's probably not what Apple's problem is. Their
02:00:26 ◼ ► problem seems to be just with the basic AI stuff or whatever. But, uh, yeah, I would, I would,
02:00:30 ◼ ► you know, this is the type of thing where like, if you keep making a mistake in one direction,
02:00:34 ◼ ► you keep overcooking something, just try to undercook it. Just try to undercook it once,
02:00:40 ◼ ► like go in the other direction because people like correct for it. And they're like, Oh,
02:00:43 ◼ ► we're doing too far to a, we need to go to B and they go like slightly less far to a. And it's like,
02:00:49 ◼ ► can you make them, can you at least make a mistake in the other direction? Uh, and you know, the mistake
02:00:54 ◼ ► in the other direction of being like, you know, snow leopard, no new features or whatever. Let's
02:00:57 ◼ ► actually do this as a marketing push. And that was kind of a one-time thing. So I think they need to
02:01:02 ◼ ► massively correct currently in the direction of shoring up existing functionality, which is exactly the
02:01:07 ◼ ► opposite of a market was saying. It's like, you just got to ignore stuff because you're behind that AI.
02:01:13 ◼ ► second point here, which is, would you change to a one-time-five or two-year cycle or whatever?
02:01:18 ◼ ► I have said for years and continue to say, based on my 25 years experience in the software industry
02:01:23 ◼ ► and releasing products on schedules and deadlines, that it is absolutely possible to have annual
02:01:29 ◼ ► releases by smartly choosing what goes in those releases or not. You can stagger them. You can have
02:01:35 ◼ ► two-year plans, three-year plans. It's not like, Oh, you can only do things that fit in one year.
02:01:38 ◼ ► No, this is a scheduling possibility. You can have things take three years to come to fruition
02:01:43 ◼ ► and still release on a yearly schedule. It's just a question of being smart about picking what's in
02:01:48 ◼ ► and what's not. Apple's problem is not the annual schedule. Apple's problem is their inability to
02:01:54 ◼ ► correctly pick stuff that will fit in a year. That's always been their problem. And that is,
02:01:59 ◼ ► you know, that's most organizations' problem. Like, I don't know how many times I've had this exact
02:02:04 ◼ ► discussion in my jobby jobs about like deadlines and schedules and what can fit and resources
02:02:09 ◼ ► available or whatever. Like, it's like Casey was saying, it's a trade-off. It's like, we have this
02:02:13 ◼ ► many people, we have this much money, we have this much time, we have these people and who have these
02:02:16 ◼ ► skills. Like, it's not, you know, everyone's not just fungible, right? You have this set of people
02:02:20 ◼ ► and this set of skills and this set of resources and this time or whatever. What can you fit? Can you
02:02:25 ◼ ► get X by this date? Can you get Y by that date? If you have to have something out by this date,
02:02:30 ◼ ► what can, what can you fit in? Don't be ambitious and say, we're going to be done by this date and
02:02:35 ◼ ► we're going to have all the stuff, you know, like you're not going to have all the stuff. So you have
02:02:39 ◼ ► to start to cut things. And Apple has been really, really bad. And I feel like worse over the past
02:02:45 ◼ ► several years at figuring out what can we actually fit into an annual release? And instead they just
02:02:51 ◼ ► like, they overstuff it. Then they trickle stuff out over the course of the next year, which bleeds into,
02:02:56 ◼ ► which pulls resources and people who should be working on the next year's release. They're too busy
02:02:59 ◼ ► releasing the rest of this year's release, which trickles out over the year. That's their problem.
02:03:04 ◼ ► Their problem is one of, you know, it's, it's not just them. It's every, everyone has difficulty of
02:03:08 ◼ ► like estimating software projects and figuring out what will fit it within a schedule. So I don't think
02:03:14 ◼ ► it's the annualness of it. If you did two year, they would do the exact same mistake. They would
02:03:18 ◼ ► just do it over two years and it would be an even bigger disaster or three years or four years. So
02:03:21 ◼ ► that's the challenge. I would not necessarily like, I think a Mac OS could use two, two year cycle,
02:03:26 ◼ ► but it wouldn't remove the problem because their problem is if given a finite period of time,
02:03:31 ◼ ► choose features that you'll be able to be done with by the, by the end of that cycle. And Apple
02:03:36 ◼ ► is not very good at that. And nobody is, it's a difficult problem, but it is frustrating to see
02:03:42 ◼ ► Apple continue to have difficulty getting that done. And like I said, if you know, the only time they
02:03:48 ◼ ► didn't have this problem was when they didn't have any regular cadence whatsoever, which generally is a
02:03:53 ◼ ► sign of an unhealthy organization. If you're like, well, we can't build to a deadline. It's just done
02:03:58 ◼ ► when it's done. Oh, nice, you know, nice work if you can get it, but that's not usually not the real
02:04:02 ◼ ► world. Usually you can't just have that luxury in the early Mac OS 10 days. It was like, eh, we're
02:04:07 ◼ ► working on another version of Mac OS, but we're doing a lot of other things too. And it'll be done when
02:04:11 ◼ ► it's done. And Apple was smaller then, and people were paying less attention and it wasn't that big of a
02:04:16 ◼ ► deal. And the phone pulled resources off the Mac and Mac OS releases would take 18 months, 16 months,
02:04:22 ◼ ► 13 months, like whatever, whenever it's done, whenever it's ready, no big deal. But that is not
02:04:26 ◼ ► the sign of an efficient, effective organization. We can't build to a schedule. We just do stuff. And
02:04:33 ◼ ► we, when we finish it, we release it. That is a little bit too touchy feely for whatever trillion
02:04:43 ◼ ► actually hitting deadlines with a set of realistic features that you can finish, not just barely
02:04:51 ◼ ► finish so it barely works, but finish to a degree of quality that you would be proud of
02:04:55 ◼ ► within the allotted time and being honest with yourself about what you can actually do.
02:05:01 ◼ ► Thanks to our sponsors this episode, Masterclass, Factor, and Claude. And thanks to our members who
02:05:07 ◼ ► support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join. One of the many perks of ATP membership
02:05:14 ◼ ► is our weekly bonus topic, ATP Overtime. This week on Overtime, we're going to be talking about
02:05:20 ◼ ► we have an update to the egg. What is happening with Johnny Ives' OpenAI product or products?
02:06:29 ◼ ► There's a historical contention between Marco and I about naming things on Long Island.
02:06:41 ◼ ► But there is one particular naming thing that he's been doing for years that has just been
02:06:47 ◼ ► bothering me. And he did it again in this show. And I figured we need an after show. So let me see
02:06:52 ◼ ► I know the argument will probably be that this is not just a you thing. This is just a common thing.
02:06:58 ◼ ► And you're just doing what other people do. And so you're fitting in with the culture and yada yada.
02:07:13 ◼ ► But the definition of the word mainland, reading from Merriam-Webster here, is a continent or the main part of a continent
02:08:04 ◼ ► Okay, most Long Islanders don't even know Fire Island is there and they've never even been there.
02:08:18 ◼ ► I actually don't have a horse in this race, but let's just remind ourselves that your whole oeuvre
02:08:28 ◼ ► Sure, but let me assure you that most people on Long Island don't know Fire Island exists.
02:08:45 ◼ ► And here's why, because Long Island, which partly undermines your point here, is really
02:09:16 ◼ ► I mean, I'll just take the dictionary definition and print it out at the ferry terminal.
02:09:59 ◼ ► Can you imagine that there's a definition depends on the size of things that a very small
02:10:04 ◼ ► thing is like a pebble in the water is not an island, but then like Pangaea is not an island,
02:10:23 ◼ ► And they like to say the mainland is just they just happen to pick the wrong word because
02:10:26 ◼ ► It would be interesting to see if like someone from Hawaii could tell me whether they use mainland
02:10:37 ◼ ► Well, the big island in Hawaii compared to those little tiny ones, it's probably a similar
02:10:42 ◼ ► Well, I mean, but I mean, they use the term the big island because that's more descriptive.
02:10:51 ◼ ► But it's similar in nature in that when you're going from some tiny little speck to something
02:11:02 ◼ ► But I just want to say that in addition to all the other things that you do nomenclature
02:11:06 ◼ ► wise related to Fire Island and the referring to Long Island as the mainland is nonsensical
02:11:15 ◼ ► If you were on Long Island and you referred to the mainland, nobody would have any idea what
02:11:46 ◼ ► And nobody, nobody in Manhattan would ever say, like, if they were going to New Jersey,
02:12:06 ◼ ► You could have said that correctly in that instance, but you didn't because it's not a thing that's
02:12:11 ◼ ► But if you did say it, it would be correct because that is a continent or the main part
02:12:18 ◼ ► Next time I'll pull all the bikers that are whizzing past me to see, hey, are we going to
02:12:58 ◼ ► But to me, I don't own the podunk little town in Western Connecticut that I grew up in.
02:13:28 ◼ ► I mean, it's just, it's funny to me how devoutly, John, in particular, you believe in this balls
02:14:06 ◼ ► I'm saying if it was like that when I was there was also wrong, because it's not the definition
02:14:37 ◼ ► There are so many times on this show that I know, and it's not just me, that I know something
02:14:44 ◼ ► that, you know, we either I misspoke or one of us misspoke or perhaps spoke in a not entirely
02:15:06 ◼ ► And there's so many times that I'm like, oh, I got to make sure I say blah, blah, blah.
02:15:09 ◼ ► And then one of the great parts of being on the show is that I get to listen to the show