0:00:00Can we do the Accidental Car podcast for a minute?
0:00:03Please?
0:00:04Sure.
0:00:05Pretty please.
0:00:06We had a big week last week.
0:00:08It was a good week.
0:00:09It was a huge week for everybody.
0:00:12For the show, for John Siracusa.
0:00:15For everybody who matters, it was a big week.
0:00:18I had such a great time at WWDC and I know I speak for both of you guys in saying that.
0:00:23And it was especially peculiar for me, having kind of been that guy that hangs out with
0:00:28Marco and John for the last couple years and now getting recognized occasionally.
0:00:33It was the trippiest, most flattering and awesome thing.
0:00:38I don't even know what to make of it.
0:00:39I'm still like processing it all.
0:00:40See, I told you that would happen.
0:00:42When we started this podcast, I told Casey, "Look, just so you know, if you're on a podcast
0:00:48and people listen to it, next year at WWDC, everyone is going to know who you are."
0:00:53And sure enough, that's exactly what happened.
0:00:55People were coming up.
0:00:57John and I, people have known who we were at WBC for a few years, a little bit, but
0:01:02Casey, oh my god, he was the star. Everyone's like, "Oh my god, I love you on the show!"
0:01:07Everyone was so thrilled. Nobody gave a crap about us. Everyone was so thrilled to meet
0:01:11Casey Liss.
0:01:12That is a very flattering, bold-faced lie.
0:01:14You were there!
0:01:16Well everyone was excited, but I think it was like, "Oh, you're Casey! Oh, you're Marco,
0:01:20and you're John." But no, all kidding aside, it was extremely flattering, and many thanks
0:01:25everyone who had the chutzpah to say hi. I know we talked about it a couple shows ago,
0:01:29but it was still extremely cool to meet all of these people that I perhaps wouldn't have
0:01:35had the opportunity to meet otherwise because we would have both been just faces in the
0:01:37crowd. So many thanks for all you guys and gals that said hi and had nice things to say
0:01:43no less. We only had a couple verbal complaints about Neutral, and I consider that a moral
0:01:48victory.
0:01:49I was impressed that anybody actually listened to Neutral who came up to us at that conference.
0:01:53That's true.
0:01:54And we did have a few fans who really wanted us to bring it back.
0:01:58Yeah, which was also weird.
0:02:00And as a quick aside, I drove an M3 today.
0:02:02Yeah, which generation was that?
0:02:04E90.
0:02:05Nice, all right.
0:02:06Yeah, it was really cool.
0:02:08It was like my car plus 10%, 15%.
0:02:11It was fun.
0:02:12We should do a podcast about cars sometime.
0:02:13Yeah, maybe.
0:02:14You think anyone would like that?
0:02:16Hell no.
0:02:17I don't think anyone will.
0:02:19It's not bad the pricing on the M3 is not your car plus 15%.
0:02:22No, it's not.
0:02:23No, it's not.
0:02:24Well, actually, I guess it's in the ballpark. How much does an M3 these days?
0:02:27I think a well-equipped one is something like 70 or 80, right? I mean, I think it's like
0:02:32in the 70s, something like that? I don't know. I never priced one out.
0:02:35I mean, my car plus 15% would have been... Oh, no, you're right. My car plus 15% was
0:02:41not even near 70. I'm dead wrong. Anyway, all right, so we should probably talk about
0:02:46nerdy stuff that's not cars. What did you guys think of WWDC? Let's start with Mr.
0:02:50Sirakusa.
0:02:51Didn't we do a whole show about this last time?
0:02:53Well, yeah, but a lot has happened since then.
0:02:56OK, fine.
0:02:56We can ignore everything.
0:02:58I have things in the notes.
0:03:00Consult the notes.
0:03:01The notes.
0:03:02The notes.
0:03:03Actually, I've been pulling a Marco
0:03:04and largely ignoring the notes, but I do have them up.
0:03:06So with that in mind--
0:03:08I don't even have Chrome open.
0:03:10You don't have your Chrome jail open?
0:03:12John, would you like to talk about any of the Mac Pro
0:03:15details we've learned?
0:03:16Yeah, I got a little Mac Pro follow up.
0:03:19So we talked about it at length on the last show,
0:03:23And there are two things that I want to talk about since then.
0:03:27The first one is about this article that I wrote a while ago called "The Case for a True
0:03:32Mac Pro Successor."
0:03:35And it was me arguing the point before we knew what the fate of the Mac Pro was, that
0:03:38Apple should continue to push the envelope in desktop computer performance for all the
0:03:44same reasons that car manufacturers make these ridiculous cars that nobody buys that are
0:03:52that are not practical and that cost way too much money,
0:03:57and that lose money for the companies,
0:03:59all because they want to push the limits of car technology
0:04:02and performance.
0:04:03And in the end, deep, deep down, because the people who
0:04:06work at those companies love cars.
0:04:08And that's why they want to make supercars or halo cars,
0:04:11as I call them.
0:04:12And so when the new Mac Pro was announced last week,
0:04:18I thought I had addressed this in the last week's show,
0:04:20but apparently not clearly enough.
0:04:21of people ask me, "So is this a true Mac Pro successor? Does this meet the criteria
0:04:28that you laid out in the case for a true Mac Pro successor, or are you still disappointed?"
0:04:32And the fact that on the last show I was saying how this doesn't quite look like it's the
0:04:35machine for me, so on and so forth, people are like, "Oh, I don't see how this isn't
0:04:39a true Mac Pro successor, isn't it?" Well, so to be clear and spell it out, yes, this
0:04:43is definitely a true Mac Pro successor. It completely fits the mold of the super-card
0:04:48type things. It's ridiculous, it's crazy, it does not look like a normal computer. We
0:04:53don't know the price yet, but I assume it's going to be really expensive, certainly more
0:04:57expensive than the other things there. It has compromises that most people wouldn't
0:05:01expect, like the dual GPUs that are going to be these big honking GPUs that maybe everybody
0:05:06doesn't need, but at the same time it doesn't have any internal spinning disk storage, which
0:05:10is kind of like a supercar that has like 900 horsepower but a trunk that fits one little
0:05:14tiny bag in it, right? And I'm hoping, or I'm assuming Apple hopes that they sell way
0:05:19more Mac Pros than people sell their top-end supercars, but this computer, despite or perhaps
0:05:25because of the fact that it doesn't satisfy all of the practical needs of various pro
0:05:30users and stuff, definitely fits the bill. So despite the fact that I was disappointed
0:05:35in it last week for various personal reasons, as I thought I expressed in the last show,
0:05:41I'm happy that Apple continues to innovate to use Phil Schiller's bird in this area and
0:05:48to continue to chase the high end.
0:05:50And the second thing about the Mac Pro is that my opinion of it has softened a little
0:05:55bit from my own personal views since last week's episode, in that since then I've learned
0:06:02or actually been reminded, and I don't know why I didn't think of this last week, that
0:06:07the gaming performance, the thing that's really been holding me back, like, "Oh, I'm going
0:06:09to spend all this money on this machine, and I'm going to have all these compromises with
0:06:12no internal storage and everything, and I'm going to get a machine that's not going to
0:06:16fulfill one of my main criteria, which is to be able to play PC/Mac games really, really
0:06:21well, because it's got these pro GPUs in them.
0:06:25And to people who aren't familiar with the pro GPU market, or maybe people who are familiar
0:06:30— more familiar than I was — that sounds crazy.
0:06:33It was like, "Well, these are super high-end GPUs.
0:06:35Isn't that great for gaming?
0:06:36aren't these going to be, you know, like they're, these are like $2,000 GPUs, and
0:06:40there shouldn't you have awesome gaming performance on this? And if you look at like Windows benchmarks
0:06:45and stuff for these pro GPUs that are used for like CAD and 3D programs, and they test
0:06:51Windows games on them, the gaming performance of these GPUs is terrible. And you say, how
0:06:54can I spend $1,500 on a video card and get terrible gaming performance? And the answer
0:07:01is the drivers. The drivers are made to run Maya or AutoCAD or whatever other programs
0:07:07and used for professional design. And those programs demand precision and repeatability
0:07:13and reliability. They don't demand all sorts of the performance tricks that gaming GPUs
0:07:19use. So you'll see a GPU that costs three times as much as another one not perform as
0:07:24well in a game. And on the PC side, on Windows, when you buy one of those high-end GPUs, you
0:07:30get these special, you know, certified OpenGL drivers to be used with whatever software
0:07:35you bought and it works. And when you buy just like a gaming video card, even a super
0:07:39high-end game video card, you get a totally different driver. And that one is optimized
0:07:44to make sure you get really high frame rates in Crysis 3 or whatever, because they tuned
0:07:47the driver for that. And a lot of that tuning has to do with cheating, where they can say,
0:07:50"Yeah, the OpenGL spec says we're supposed to do this and that in terms of line precision
0:07:55anti-aliasing or occlusion or whatever, but we found that in this game, we can detect when this game is running.
0:08:01I don't know if they still did that, but in the old days they would detect which specific game is running
0:08:05and perform some optimization that they knew wouldn't cause any noticeable graphical glitching in that game
0:08:09just to get more performance out of it.
0:08:13And that's why I was disappointed. Oh, pro GPUs, that means crappy game performance.
0:08:16It's like the worst of both worlds, expensive video hardware and crappy game performance.
0:08:20But, on the Mac, that is not the case.
0:08:23on the Mac, historically Apple has shipped, used the same driver for the pro cards and
0:08:30the non-pro cards.
0:08:31And in the past that's meant that Apple's game performance sucked equally across all
0:08:35the GPUs because they always optimized the drivers for correctness.
0:08:38They would say, "Okay, let's do exactly what the OpenGL specs does and correctness first
0:08:42and we'll worry about speed later and we'll try to tweak it and so on and so forth."
0:08:44But over the past several releases, I think starting in 10.7, Apple has really tuned their
0:08:49video drivers to actually get decent performance out of games by working with companies like
0:08:53Valve and stuff to sort of do all those cheaty little things that you can do to make game
0:08:56performance better.
0:08:58But at the same time, those same drivers were also driving their high-end carts.
0:09:02So it's my expectation that when I get this new Mac Pro, which I think I am going to get
0:09:06now, it's going to use the exact same drivers as a Mac Pro that had a high-end Radeon like
0:09:12a previous generation Mac Pro.
0:09:14It's not going to be a special, slow, dumb, high-precision driver just for these things.
0:09:19going to use the exact same driver as the gaming video card would use, and that means
0:09:22it should have pretty darn good gaming performance, at least as good as it would have had a Mac
0:09:29gaming card.
0:09:30Now, it doesn't quite help me that much unless Apple also does drivers for boot camp, so
0:09:33that if I reboot into Windows, I don't want to be forced to use the Windows slow drivers
0:09:37for this Pro GPU or whatever, but just having decent Mac gaming performance on the thing
0:09:43makes me feel a lot better, so I think I'm definitely getting one of these machines now.
0:09:46Now, I have to ask, for your priorities as high performance, but also significant gaming,
0:09:54now that we know what the compromises are for the next Mac Pro, at least we know most
0:09:58of them, I think, why not a high-end iMac?
0:10:02The video cards on those things are not desktop cards.
0:10:07Some of them might be.
0:10:08Don't some of them use laptop GPUs?
0:10:10I think they're actually pretty good these days.
0:10:12I mean, it's not going to be like the equivalent of like a $400 desktop card, but I think they're
0:10:18pretty good.
0:10:19Yeah, that's what I'm looking for.
0:10:20They're not powerful and they're not replaceable, so I couldn't even upgrade them.
0:10:24Not that the GPUs are in the Mac Pro replaceable, but if I'm going to buy a machine, I always
0:10:27buy it with the very fastest GPU that's in it so that I can use it for five years or
0:10:33whatever, and at the end of those five years it'll still be good.
0:10:35Like I bought the highest end non-Pro video card that I could get with my current Mac
0:10:39Pro. And to this day, I can still play modern games on it at the full resolution of my screen
0:10:44with the settings on normal or even up on high. So I just want to get mileage out of the card,
0:10:48you know? And that would be the 8800GT?
0:10:50Yeah. I mean, think of a game that came out recently. Well, not that...
0:10:55I'm the wrong person to ask. But I'm surprised that that... Because the 8800GT is now like,
0:11:00what, five years old? I'm surprised, given the pace of video card innovation,
0:11:05I'm surprised that you can still do that with a five-year-old card.
0:11:08I mean, I can't play the very latest games, but I'm not playing the very latest games.
0:11:11When Portal 2 came out, I could play it just fine.
0:11:14Full frame rate, full resolution, anti-aliasing, everything, alright?
0:11:17And that was only a couple years ago.
0:11:18I think the most recent game I played was Walking Dead, which is not a graphically intensive
0:11:23game, but it ran fine.
0:11:24Diablo 3, when that came out, ran fine.
0:11:27This is all going to be impaired by what I hope will be my retina screen on my Mac Pro,
0:11:33right?
0:11:34So then that video card maybe won't last quite as long, because, I don't know, I don't know
0:11:38how many games will take advantage of their retina resolution going forward.
0:11:42But that's what I want, especially in a machine where it's not replaceable.
0:11:45I want to get the most mileage out of it.
0:11:47So I wouldn't want to buy something that's OK performance.
0:11:50It's obvious anything I buy is going to be faster than the 8800 GT.
0:11:54But I wouldn't want to buy an iMac with a sort of mediocre desktop GPU with not too
0:12:00much VRAM in it.
0:12:01That's probably going to last me three or four years, and then I would have to not play
0:12:07PC games anymore, think about upgrading it sooner than I wanted, especially since if
0:12:10I bought an iMac, the screen will probably last me five years easy, because I would probably
0:12:13hold out for a retina iMac, right? And I would be like, "Oh, I don't want to get rid of the
0:12:16screen. The only thing that's wrong with this machine is this stupid GPU that I can't replace."
0:12:21So better to get a machine where everything is maxed out to a ridiculous degree, and then
0:12:26the whole machine will age sort of together.
0:12:29So I had a thought about the displays, and a lot of the scuttlebutt at WWDC was, "Geez,
0:12:34didn't release a retina display for the Mac Pro. I mean, they made some hand-wavy talk
0:12:41of, "Oh, this supports 4K screens," blah, three of them, in fact, if I'm not mistaken.
0:12:47But they never announced an actual Apple display. And one of the things that occurred to me
0:12:51when the three of us were at dinner one night was, if the Mac Pro is this black—I believe
0:12:57it's aluminum, anodized aluminum, whatever it is, it's black—so if they release a retina
0:13:02display. If Apple releases a retina display, is that also going to be black? And is this
0:13:06the first time that we have not aluminum-colored aluminum or aluminum devices from Apple that
0:13:13are computers, I should say, in a long time?
0:13:16Right, that aren't just iPods.
0:13:17Right, right.
0:13:18Their displays are already black, though. Like, the part you can see when you're sitting
0:13:21in front of one. I guess the foot is silver, but they've already changed the surface
0:13:24of the things to be black, like the frame around the display.
0:13:27Not all of them.
0:13:28And it goes edge to edge now, right?
0:13:29Well, not on my high-res MacBook Pros.
0:13:31I mean, your point is still absolutely fair.
0:13:33I mean, the external monitors, like the external ones.
0:13:35Yeah, they change the external monitors
0:13:37to be black when they're facing you
0:13:38with the exception of the foot.
0:13:39And I think that still matches with the black computer.
0:13:43You know, I don't think that clashes.
0:13:45I think that's-- they're neutral tones, right?
0:13:50So why no displays then?
0:13:52Oh, I don't know.
0:13:53I mean, maybe they haven't decided what they can do,
0:13:54haven't decided pricing.
0:13:55I mean--
0:13:56Well, my theory is-- and I forget
0:13:59I said this last week or not, that it's interesting that Haswell is out for laptops, but they
0:14:06only mentioned the MacBook Airs and they only updated the Airs. So my theory is sometime
0:14:11later this year, in quotes, probably alongside the Mac Pro launch, they will potentially
0:14:19also launch new Retina MacBook Pros with Haswell with Thunderbolt 2. And alongside those, they
0:14:28will launch Retina displays. And only then the new Mac Pro and the new Haswell Retina
0:14:35MacBook Pros will be able to drive them.
0:14:37Do you know if that's a possibility? Haswell, CPU, and chipset, does it support Thunderbolt
0:14:452?
0:14:46Thunderbolt 2, from what I know, which I think the best person to ask for this would be an
0:14:51An-Lol Shimpi, but the—and I'm sorry for the pronunciation if I got that wrong, which
0:14:56which I probably got at least some part of it wrong.
0:15:00I believe that the Thunderbolt 2 chip or chipset
0:15:04or whatever it is that does it is separate
0:15:06from the main motherboard chipset
0:15:08and then can be installed or integrated
0:15:11into any modern Intel board, I think.
0:15:14And therefore-- - Yeah,
0:15:16Chad Riggs says it does.
0:15:17I suppose that's, I would have to know the dates on that.
0:15:20I vaguely remember the code names
0:15:21of those two different chipsets.
0:15:23I think I only remember the, not the current one,
0:15:25the next next one which is like Falcon Ridge or something but anyway I believe
0:15:28I believe Falcon Ridge is Thunderbolt 2. I think that's the next next one. The next one is
0:15:33something else Ridge. Anyway that is a reasonable reason why they those things
0:15:37could have been delayed that they're gonna run Thunderbolt 2 but right because
0:15:40it's weird that they didn't get any mention at all and yeah and those chips
0:15:44are ready like it's what we think anyway I mean the other explanation is maybe
0:15:47that Intel can't deliver those CPUs in volume yet that that's possible that's
0:15:52certainly a more boring explanation for for the delay but Macbook Air doesn't use the same thing the Macbook Air uses the ultra low power
0:15:58Vailing correct this big honking package thing which is totally different and apparently is enough of those to say hey the Macbook Airs are
0:16:03shipping today right and
0:16:05Usually I would expect those would be like the better binned parts because those are the ones that can run at super low voltages right
0:16:11I mean like you would think if they can deliver those they can probably deliver the big ones
0:16:14yeah, you would think so I think the
0:16:18What do you call it?
0:16:19The Thunderbolt 2 chipset thing could be the delay.
0:16:22Or it could be they just have excess inventory
0:16:23of the Retina MacBook Pros they want to get rid of
0:16:25or something.
0:16:26I don't know.
0:16:27Or they're just holding it back until they
0:16:29can launch the Mac Pro, which is at least Q3,
0:16:32because the Mac Pro CPUs aren't out yet.
0:16:34And so if they can do a big Pro launch, where they satisfy
0:16:38all the Pros at once with a Mac Pro, new Retina MacBook
0:16:41Pros, and a Retina display, that would be a nice little event.
0:16:45And maybe they coincide it with a minor update
0:16:48to Final Cut X or something like that.
0:16:51Something like that.
0:16:52It would make sense to combine those timers
0:16:55and to coalesce those timers into one thing.
0:16:58That whole Mac Pro announcement was just really weird.
0:17:03I mean, it was acknowledged to be weird in the keynote,
0:17:05where they're like, we normally don't do this.
0:17:07It's like, yeah, you normally don't do this.
0:17:09Like, where you say, this product is really off
0:17:11in the distance, but we know that people
0:17:13are going to freak out if we don't say anything about it.
0:17:16It's almost as if last year at WWDC they said,
0:17:19"I know you're all waiting for a Mac Pro announcement,
0:17:21"and here's these ones that aren't really that new,
0:17:24"but trust us, next year we'll have a good one."
0:17:26I mean, they kinda did that by having a public statement,
0:17:28or not a public statement, an email response
0:17:30from Tim Cook saying, "Oh yeah, I know.
0:17:32"Next year, we'll have something nice."
0:17:33But like, pre-announcing products, it's just crazy.
0:17:36And I guess they did it for damage control,
0:17:38because if they didn't, we all would've come out.
0:17:39I mean, that's why none of us expected
0:17:41a Mac Pro announcement, we were even joking about it,
0:17:43because we knew it couldn't possibly be ready,
0:17:45because we knew what kind of CPUs it would have to use,
0:17:47and those weren't ready.
0:17:48And sure enough, those aren't ready.
0:17:50But Apple said, you know what?
0:17:51Screw it.
0:17:51We're going to show it to you anyway.
0:17:53Here it is.
0:17:53You can't buy it for a while.
0:17:54We won't even tell you if we have monitors for it.
0:17:56We won't tell you anything about pricing.
0:17:57But it's here.
0:17:58It's shaped like a garbage can.
0:18:00It's coming.
0:18:02I think a good point, too.
0:18:04QRS in the chat room said Aperture 4, maybe,
0:18:08is something to consider here.
0:18:10You know, the new Mac Pro has this pretty lopsided design where it has only one CPU
0:18:18socket, so it can get a good amount of CPU power in there, but then it has this insane
0:18:23amount of GPU power that seems, from the wording they've used and what's on their side, it
0:18:29seems as though the dual GPU setup is not optional.
0:18:33It looks like all the Mac Pros will come with the same GPU setup.
0:18:37And if that's the case, and obviously that's going to have potential cost implications,
0:18:43but that is a really lopsided power balance of, you know, you get some CPU power, but
0:18:48what you really want to buy this thing for is the GPUs.
0:18:51And what's interesting, you know, I've seen a few places report that only one of the GPUs
0:18:59is going to be used to drive the displays, and that the other one is going to be used
0:19:04exclusively for OpenCL-type computations.
0:19:09So it's interesting that you're going to have this ridiculous amount of power that today only a few apps
0:19:14really make any good use of, right? I don't think it's very widely supported yet.
0:19:19Maybe Apple's Pro apps are going to be substantially shifted
0:19:24over to put a lot of work into OpenCL, maybe more than they already are.
0:19:29already doing some.
0:19:32Aperture already uses the GPUs like crazy.
0:19:34And it's not so much that one GPU is dedicated to OpenCL.
0:19:37It's that only one GPU is connected up
0:19:39to the Thunderbolt ports.
0:19:41So what's the--
0:19:42And so they're both available for OpenCL.
0:19:44When you write an OpenCL program,
0:19:46you'll see both of those GPUs as available as whatever
0:19:48the-- I think what they call them, like computing resources.
0:19:51You see one CPU and two GPUs.
0:19:53So you can use both of them.
0:19:55It's just that only one of them has a place
0:19:58where you can plug in a display.
0:19:59So the other one is never going to drive a display, but even when one is driving a display,
0:20:04you could run OpenCL stuff on both of them.
0:20:06Right, okay.
0:20:08And then what's interesting about that is that now you'll have this Mac Pro that, for
0:20:14other reasons, it probably is going to be a pretty bad deal.
0:20:18It's probably not going to be a great value for its CPU performance.
0:20:21It's not going to be a great value for its RAM ceiling.
0:20:23There's all these different things.
0:20:24I expect this thing to cost like $3,000 or $4,000 bucks base.
0:20:30But if pro users are using these certain software
0:20:33packages that make really great use of OpenCL,
0:20:37then this machine is going to blow away
0:20:39the entire rest of the Mac lineup so much.
0:20:43Well, think about what those people would have to pay before.
0:20:46During the lunchtime demo where the guy from Pixar, W2C,
0:20:49was up there demoing that program
0:20:50and saying how great it was.
0:20:52If he wanted to get the equivalent GPU
0:20:53power in another machine, like even just the current Mac Pro, it would probably cost him
0:20:58the price of a new Mac Pro just to buy the video cards, because they're so ridiculous,
0:21:02like $3,500 for the video card.
0:21:05And that's another thing on the Mac Pro.
0:21:07I was thinking about pricing.
0:21:08I think I tweeted this at Dr. Wave this week, where when we both came out of the-- Marco
0:21:14and I came out of the keynote, we both said like $2,999 was our base price for the thing.
0:21:23But now I think I've changed that, and I think they could hit 2,500 for the lowest, lowest
0:21:29end.
0:21:30And I think the way they could do that is the AMD Fire Pro GPU line comes in a lot of
0:21:35different sizes.
0:21:36And if Apple decides to offer anything other than the super duper high-end one, they could
0:21:43reduce the price a lot.
0:21:44Because I think everything else in there is relatively cheap.
0:21:46Like there's not as many moving parts.
0:21:47There's just one Intel CPU that cuts like 500 bucks off the price right there, which
0:21:51is nice.
0:21:52Apple's going to have crazy margins on their stupid PCI Express SSD thing, I'm sure, whatever.
0:21:57The RAM middling. And if they can get the "crappy" Fire Pro GPUs in there with much,
0:22:04much less VRAM instead of the maximum, I think I read together the maximum.
0:22:07I believe there's six gigs each.
0:22:08Yeah, six gigs each. I thought it was six gigs combined. So six gigs of VRAM each. And
0:22:12again, gaming video cards at this point have two gigabytes of VRAM, like the most expensive
0:22:16gaming cards you can get. These are going to have six gigs each.
0:22:18And you know it's not gonna ship with a base RAM of the whole machine of 12 gigs
0:22:22You know like like the video cards are gonna have more RAM than the main machine
0:22:25I think the base might be 16 gigs
0:22:27But but anyway if they if they cheap out on the GPUs
0:22:29You could they could have an entry-level model that no one wants to buy including me for a 2,500 bucks
0:22:34So it sounds like both of you guys are in for one though
0:22:38Marco's gonna buy one for every room in the house doubles a ways better
0:22:44I think I'll probably buy one, but I'm not--
0:22:49the big two questions about what the price is going to be, and whether there will be retina displays.
0:22:54If this ends up being one of the only machines that can drive a retina display,
0:22:59and maybe the only one that can do it really well when those eventually come out,
0:23:04then I'll buy one, no question. Because I really want a desktop-sized retina display.
0:23:09the only one that's going to be able to play games on the right
0:23:11end of the display.
0:23:11I know how important that is to you.
0:23:13Right, yeah.
0:23:13I don't care about that at all.
0:23:15I would feel kind of like an idiot
0:23:18buying this computer that has these two
0:23:19ridiculous high-powered GPUs and using them most of the time
0:23:24to display TextMate and a web browser or Xcode.
0:23:29That's usually what I'm doing.
0:23:30Someone asked on Twitter today, won't text editor developers
0:23:35and the people who write Xcode now change their applications
0:23:38to take advantage of those dual GPUs.
0:23:40- Right, yeah, how?
0:23:42- I'm having trouble thinking of a way
0:23:45that you can use that kind of GPU power
0:23:47in your text editor unless all the text
0:23:50was like made 3D and flying through
0:23:52some kind of world as you typed, I don't know.
0:23:54- So we're getting the Matrix text editor.
0:23:57- Right, Minority Report.
0:23:59- Yeah, right.
0:24:00All right, so is that all on the Mac Pro?
0:24:03- I guess for now.
0:24:04I mean, we really don't know much about it yet.
0:24:06That's the big thing.
0:24:07Like, until we know pricing and options,
0:24:11and possibly retina question,
0:24:14I think it's gonna be hard to make any other
0:24:17really great statements about it,
0:24:18just because we don't have it yet,
0:24:20and there's so much we still don't know.
0:24:22- All right, there's another piece of follow-up
0:24:26that I think mostly John wanted to talk about,
0:24:28then maybe we can do a sponsor.
0:24:29So, John, tell me about the new Xbox
0:24:31that just came out today.
0:24:33(laughing)
0:24:34- Yeah, this is the obvious joke.
0:24:36You know, sometimes you wonder if these stories happen
0:24:42because there's a perfect name for it.
0:24:46They just couldn't resist.
0:24:47So the show note and the million headlines
0:24:50is Xbox 180, which is the obvious headline for the story
0:24:54that Microsoft has reversed its decision on all of the DRM,
0:24:58digital rights management, used game, always online things
0:25:02about the Xbox One that everyone hated.
0:25:05And so to recap, things that people hated were the Xbox had to check in with Microsoft
0:25:10servers every 24 hours you were locked out of it.
0:25:13People hated that.
0:25:14People who were like, especially the military, are people who are going to be away from an
0:25:17internet connection for a long time, even just people who didn't like the idea of having
0:25:19to check in.
0:25:21The fact that you couldn't sell games, game disks to people because the game disk was
0:25:26just a convenient way for you to get the bits onto your computer and all the rights of the
0:25:29game had to do with the DRM.
0:25:32And so if you bought a game in a store and you got the disc,
0:25:35selling that disc to your friend was pointless
0:25:36because if they put that disc into their machine,
0:25:38it would do nothing for them because it would say,
0:25:39"Oh, you don't own this game
0:25:40"because you don't have the rights to it
0:25:41"according to our servers."
0:25:43And game companies were allowed to not allow their games
0:25:45to be resold even in digital form.
0:25:48And so all these things pissed off gamers
0:25:50and at E3, Sony hammered them in their presentations.
0:25:55Sony's presentation was all about,
0:25:56"Look at how much better we are than Microsoft."
0:25:59And Sony was getting like standing ovations
0:26:01for standard features of game consoles for the past two decades.
0:26:05Like, "Oh my God, it's amazing!
0:26:07I can buy a disc in the store and then sell it to my friend! Woo!"
0:26:10Anyway, Microsoft was really getting hammered.
0:26:13I saw one online poll, maybe it was Amazon or some other site.
0:26:17It was like, "Hey guys, who's thinking about
0:26:20getting one of the next generation consoles?"
0:26:22It was just PS4 versus Xbox One, because no one cares about the Wii U.
0:26:28Normally those polls like on the dawn of a console generation launch are always like
0:26:3250/50 each because all the fanboys from both of the consoles go there and they all fill the ballot box and it's like you know
0:26:37Pretty pretty much a dead heat and this was like not over 90% for the ps4 and like the rest for the Xbox one
0:26:44So it looks like a blowout and that's just you know, one random poll could have just been a bunch of Sony fans
0:26:49Who knows but like you never I've never seen that at all the console launches that I've been through
0:26:53So things were looking bad for Microsoft and what they did which was kind of gutsy but also kind of
0:26:58Lame and weird or whatever was just reversed everything. It said never never mind
0:27:03It's exactly like the Xbox 360 you go to the store you buy discs and that's it
0:27:07You can sell the disc it works exactly like the 360 and they also eliminated all the good features of the Xbox one where you
0:27:13Know everyone in your family could play the game for free
0:27:15Even if they didn't live with you like up to ten people in your family could play the game
0:27:18So if you bought it then like your brother at college automatically got the game for free
0:27:23he didn't have to buy it again, you didn't have to ship him a disk.
0:27:26And pure digital downloads now, it's just like the 360 where you can do a digital download,
0:27:30but if you buy a physical disk, the disk has to be in the drive while you're playing the
0:27:33game, which sucks and is stupid because why does the disk need to be there?
0:27:36Oh, it's because they just completely reversed everything they said.
0:27:39I don't even know how they can do this at this late stage.
0:27:41It seems like all the deals involved with publishers and all the software involved,
0:27:47they're a completely reversing course.
0:27:49And most people are happy about it.
0:27:51They got rid of the Always Online thing.
0:27:52They said you have to be online when you set up your Xbox one
0:27:55But after that you can just be completely offline and as long as the game you're using doesn't need internet connectivity to run
0:28:00Then you're fine
0:28:02So this is kind of a mixed bag it it's good in that they reverse their stupid decisions
0:28:08It's bad and that they got rid of all the things that might have been cool
0:28:12And I think it's bad like long term because as I think I said when we originally talked about the Xbox one
0:28:16Everything they were doing
0:28:18It was done badly, but in broad strokes the idea that you don't own a physical disk instead you own rights to something online
0:28:25That's good for all the convenience reasons
0:28:27They just need to get the particulars of it right like once once that's the case you can't you don't use that to then give
0:28:34The publishers more power and forbid people from reselling games and everything just make it instead
0:28:38You should say okay now
0:28:39It's even easier for you to sell a game to your friend sell it through our online thing you don't have to
0:28:43You know bring the disk over to their house, and you don't have to do any of those stuff
0:28:46and it's not tied to your account or whatever, you should be able to sell games, sell used
0:28:50games, resell them, and let Microsoft take a little cut.
0:28:53I think Apple has shown that people are not opposed to the idea that the middleman gets
0:28:58some small cut from providing the convenience of buying and selling goods online.
0:29:05So it's kind of a shame that we've kind of hit the reset button because Microsoft's policies
0:29:09were so boneheaded, but the overall idea that spinning plastic disks are stupid and should
0:29:14really just be an accelerated way to download things for you and really the entire marketplace
0:29:19should be online. I mean Apple's proven. The entire marketplace is being aligned for everything.
0:29:22For their desktop operating systems, for their desktop software, for their handheld software.
0:29:25That model works. People like it. It's great. And Apple's taken 30%. I mean Microsoft could take
0:29:30like 5% of used game sales and gamers would still love them for the convenience of being able to
0:29:35one-click sell their game to their friend and get, you know, 10 bucks back or whatever.
0:29:41So that's the story. I'm kind of sad about it. I was never gonna buy an Xbox One anyway.
0:29:45It's just kind of sad to see Microsoft backpedal like that, when really what they could have done
0:29:49is just fixed everything and kept the good and just got rid of the bad.
0:29:52So thumbs up on this? I mean, it sounds like you are not pleased with this,
0:29:57but you are pleased with where it ended?
0:29:59It's better than what they had before. What they had before was just a terrible policy
0:30:04that everyone hated. They just threw out the baby with the bathwater. And, you know,
0:30:08Like, I like them trying to make progress.
0:30:11They just went a little bit off in the wrong direction.
0:30:14And their correction was history eraser button.
0:30:17This never happened.
0:30:18This thing just behaves like the Xbox 360.
0:30:20Never mind, guys.
0:30:21Marco, you want to talk to us about Squarespace?
0:30:25I would love to talk to you about Squarespace.
0:30:27This episode is brought to you, in fact, by Squarespace.
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0:30:34For a free trial and 10% off, go to squarespace.com and use offer code ATP6 for Accidental Tech
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0:31:19That's really nice.
0:31:21You don't have to give them a credit card to start your trial, and then if you forget
0:31:23to cancel it, they bill you.
0:31:24No, no, no, it's not like that at all.
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0:31:40Yeah, and I mean, our site is run on Squarespace and neutrals, and we've never had not one
0:31:45hiccup.
0:31:46It's great.
0:31:47Wait, has that worked?
0:31:48Never had not one?
0:31:49You know what I meant.
0:31:50I'm getting more and more southern with each passing day.
0:31:52It's not terrible.
0:31:53It's just different.
0:31:54Well, you have to offset us.
0:31:55Yeah, well, that's true.
0:31:56So I want to talk about iOS 7 a little bit, and we have a couple of things in our accidental
0:32:02show notes.
0:32:03And I want to go off the rails a little bit, and I want to actually go back to ATP episode
0:32:081.
0:32:09And the reason I want to do that is because ATP episode 1, before it was really a podcast
0:32:15at all, was the three of us talking about an iPhone Plus.
0:32:20And we were talking about how one could extrapolate and theorize what size it would be, whether
0:32:26or not it would exist, et cetera.
0:32:28And one of the things that's been bugging me
0:32:30in a good way about what we saw during the keynote
0:32:35was that gestures are a big deal in iOS 7.
0:32:38And specifically, there's a gesture
0:32:40to go back a screen in iOS 7.
0:32:43And there's been a lot of talk about gestures in iOS 7.
0:32:47And the thing that struck me about the gesture
0:32:48to go back a screen is if it's very easy, kind of system-wide,
0:32:52to go back one level, it may not be so terrible to have a back button that, at least for right-handed
0:33:00people, is too far away. So, in other words, if you look at the iPhone 5, for most normal-sized
0:33:07people, the back button is—and normal-sized right-handed people—the back button is way
0:33:12up and to the left and is a little bit of a stretch to reach. Well, what if you didn't
0:33:16have to reach that anymore? Then could the phone—would that be enough to make it not
0:33:21annoying to have a bigger phone. Does that make sense?
0:33:24Well, first of all, I think that you... it sounds like you're saying that right-handed
0:33:28people have to hold their phone in their right hand.
0:33:31That's true, and obviously, well, that was the assumption, but you're already making
0:33:34a great point.
0:33:35What's wrong? What? You do that?
0:33:38I hold my phone in my right hand.
0:33:39Yeah, I hold my phone in my right hand.
0:33:41That's crazy talk!
0:33:42Well, I mean, I don't have a phone, but you know what I mean. I hold my iPod touch in
0:33:44my right hand. I mean, I do it lefty too, but...
0:33:46You guys are nuts.
0:33:47Well, think about the slide to open. How do you do that with your left hand?
0:33:51That's weird. My left thumb. No, it works much better when you're
0:33:55pulling your thumb towards them when you're extending your thumb out. Agreed.
0:33:59You guys are nuts. Well, I think what's interesting also, and
0:34:03I don't know, this might
0:34:07I think I can safely say without violating the NDA
0:34:11I don't think anyone's going to complain if I say that auto layout has been
0:34:15heavily encouraged. And so you look at a few things. You look at that they're really pushing
0:34:22you to use auto layout. And the new design of iOS 7 even, and the designs they're kind
0:34:30of encouraging by example in the apps of things like shirping away ornamentation and big heavy
0:34:35textures and everything else, the designs are probably pretty stretchable. And more
0:34:41so than they used to be. You know, where it used to have, it used to be back before the
0:34:45iPhone 5 that you could design like the old Tapbots apps before Tweetbot, it was like
0:34:52Convertbot and stuff like that, where you could basically design a 320x480 screen and
0:34:58that was it. That was your whole app. You could just design this one big bitmap because
0:35:02you only had one screen size to deal with.
0:35:05It was like web development with tables when you'd slice up everything into images and
0:35:09to make everything about tables.
0:35:10Exactly.
0:35:10And iOS 7 is responsive design.
0:35:12Exactly, yeah.
0:35:13Like, iOS 7 is-- like, the visual style
0:35:17they're going for-- you know, first the iPhone 5
0:35:19told everyone, oh, crap.
0:35:20You know, if your app is not just like a scrolling view
0:35:24with bars on top and bottom, this
0:35:26is going to be non-trivial to do.
0:35:28But now I think the encouragement
0:35:32to use auto layout, plus this back gesture,
0:35:36plus the whole style of iOS 7 being so flexible, I think, more easily and breaking fewer things
0:35:45visually. I think that all is, if not pointing to different iPhone screen sizes, I think
0:35:52it would at least pave the way to make that a lot easier to do if they chose to. And reading
0:35:58the tea leaves a little bit, it would not surprise me at all if they did a new iPhone
0:36:03this fall that was, and maybe they do more than one,
0:36:07but we talked before, I think they need a bigger screen
0:36:11iPhone, because whatever Tim Cook says about the displays,
0:36:15whatever people who are big Apple fans say about phone
0:36:19sizes, the fact is the market is demanding them significantly.
0:36:23And Apple is losing a lot of the high-end market,
0:36:27which is the profitable market. They're losing a lot of that high-end market by
0:36:31not having a larger screen phone.
0:36:34- I saw a monstrous phone today.
0:36:35I'm assuming it was a Samsung,
0:36:36and it was in the hands of a young child,
0:36:38and it just made it look even bigger.
0:36:40It was like comically, yeah.
0:36:41I guess it had to be one of those note things,
0:36:43but it was ridiculous.
0:36:44It looked like an iPad mini.
0:36:45Yeah, there's a bunch of things in iOS 7
0:36:47that lend itself to this.
0:36:49Even like the lock screen with the gesture for swiping,
0:36:52where you don't have to swipe in that one particular region,
0:36:53you can swipe anywhere.
0:36:55The icons in the home screen are bigger.
0:36:57So, I mean, anything they make bigger,
0:37:00you're like, oh, well, this will look more normal on a larger size.
0:37:03Even in the navigation bar, the text that's in the buttons that would say the word "back"
0:37:08for the back button, that text is larger because the buttons don't have borders around them.
0:37:13And anything that they make larger, you think, okay, well, when this is on a larger phone,
0:37:17it will fit in better there.
0:37:19It's not going to complete extremes because they do have the adjustable text sizing.
0:37:22Did they show that in the keynote?
0:37:23I hope so.
0:37:24I just broke it in the A.
0:37:25I thought they did.
0:37:26But whatever.
0:37:28adjustable text sizing doesn't actually alter the size of things like navigation elements,
0:37:33because that would force people to use auto layout.
0:37:34You really use auto layout.
0:37:35Right, like the bar metrics are all, I think, permanent.
0:37:38Right, but like I said, the button text is bigger.
0:37:41So they're trying to strike a balance.
0:37:42They don't want everything to be bigger, because then it would look wrong on the smaller phone.
0:37:45They don't want everything to scale, because that will make app development a nightmare.
0:37:48But you know, auto layout combined with larger icons, combined with bigger text on the navigation,
0:37:52but with the same nav bar sizes and all that stuff, it's like, I mean, as we were discussing
0:37:57in the first episode of ATP, we don't expect a humongously bigger phone, just a little
0:38:01bit bigger, and bigger in two dimensions.
0:38:05And so I think iOS 7 is perfectly suited for an ever so slightly bigger iPhone that both
0:38:09has a slightly higher resolution and also like a lower dot per inch, because then you
0:38:13could, you know, those two factors combine, those two relatively small factors combine,
0:38:18give you a phone that is bigger than the iPhone 5, but is not comically large.
0:38:23Right, and before, when we were talking about this,
0:38:26whenever that was, like five months ago,
0:38:28or whatever that was, I had my theory about,
0:38:31well, they can keep the same resolution,
0:38:33just make everything a little bit bigger,
0:38:35and everyone would be fine with that.
0:38:37Now, I'm not so sure that's the case.
0:38:39I think you're right that they could just increase
0:38:41the resolution a little bit, and just make the panel,
0:38:44give us, what is it now, four inches diagonal?
0:38:47Give us maybe like a five inch one,
0:38:49or even four and a half inch would look substantially larger.
0:38:52larger. And I think they could do that and even just scale the resolution up proportionally
0:38:58if they really want to. And I think now they're obviously preparing for non-fixed resolution
0:39:07iPhones, if that makes sense. Or rather, for multiple sizes of iPhones. I think the pieces
0:39:13are in place now that the T-leads are starting to line up to say, "This is probably where
0:39:18they're heading."
0:39:19It still doesn't quite address the Andy and Nocko issue that I think we discussed in that
0:39:22first episode, which is that the reason he loves Android phones with larger screens is
0:39:25not just that it's larger, which I think is at least half of it, but there's another part
0:39:29of it is that Android phones, when running on larger screen, or Android software running
0:39:34on larger screen phones, put up more UI, and a miniature version of what iPad version of
0:39:40apps do.
0:39:41Because once you have the iPad version, "Oh, I've got all this space, I can have a totally
0:39:43different UI," well, a slightly bigger phone, if it's bigger enough, maybe you have room
0:39:48room for a toolbar and before you didn't. Maybe you have room for one more toolbar button.
0:39:52There are things that you can do to actually give you an application that doesn't just
0:39:55give you more viewable area for your content, which is great and everything, and doesn't
0:39:58just have larger text sizes and larger buttons, but also says, "Oh, this is room for a little
0:40:02bit more information and maybe a feature that didn't fit on the phone can fit there." I
0:40:06don't know if Apple's phone would be bigger enough to even give you one more toolbar icon
0:40:11for the space or one more toolbar word in the new world of iOS 7 where they like to
0:40:15words sometimes instead of icons, but it's possible. It's possible that applications,
0:40:20like you've got optimized for iPad, right? So it's a totally different application, basically,
0:40:24even though under the covers it might be very similar, but the UI can be very different.
0:40:27And then you have your iPhone 5 size version of it, and then you have your iPhone 6 Plus
0:40:32or whatever, where you get one more toolbar icon, or you didn't have a toolbar before
0:40:36and now you do, or you have another little row of things on the right side or something
0:40:39like that. I would really be interested in seeing that, but that's the last piece of
0:40:42the puzzle. I don't think that's necessary. I think simply making a larger screen is plenty.
0:40:47Bigger resolution, larger everything. People will still love that. But if it's possible
0:40:52to optimize your app for it, the apps that do that to provide a little bit more UI and
0:40:56features, I think that will be the icing on the cake.
0:40:59Yeah, we'll see what happens. I just thought it was interesting that all the signs are
0:41:04pointing more towards yes. And that gesture, I don't know why, but for me it really made
0:41:09me think, you know what, this iPhone Plus or whatever they're going to call it, that
0:41:12really could be a thing.
0:41:14The other thing that's been noodling at me all week since I left the keynote was their
0:41:19talk about iOS version adoption.
0:41:22And the general gist of it is that, oh, everyone upgrades to the latest version of iOS immediately.
0:41:27And of course, immediately is defined as a few weeks or whatever the case may be.
0:41:32But people upgrade to the latest version of iOS very quickly.
0:41:35And that's generally true, especially on point releases.
0:41:38But what occurred to me was, I remember reading David Smith's iOS version stats and seeing
0:41:44that adoption of iOS 6 was not that quick at all because everyone was freaking out about
0:41:49Apple Maps.
0:41:50Well, I think that's actually not supported by the data.
0:41:54Oh yeah?
0:41:55That's a very, very common theory.
0:41:58But like, so basically the theory was, okay, everyone's holding back because they don't
0:42:03want iOS 6 maps, etc.
0:42:05And then the theory was that once Google Maps app comes out,
0:42:10then you should see a big bump in 6 adoption.
0:42:13And you didn't.
0:42:14Like there was almost no change in the rate of adoption
0:42:17when the Google Maps app came out for iOS.
0:42:22And so it looks like that probably was not the reason.
0:42:26I mean, for me, I think the biggest reason
0:42:28why iOS 6 adoption-- I think it climbed
0:42:31at a relatively normal rate.
0:42:33And then it just kind of peaked at like 92 or whatever percent
0:42:36that it is now.
0:42:37And if you look, iOS 5 adoption-- like iOS 4 adoption
0:42:41has shrunk proportionally, as you'd expect.
0:42:43iOS 5 adoption has kind of hit a wall.
0:42:46And my theory there is all about the iPad 1.
0:42:49Granted, Apple has sold a lot more devices
0:42:55that run everything else than the iPad 1.
0:42:57But there still are a lot of iPad 1s in use.
0:43:01because the iPad 1 was sold until like what, two and a half years ago?
0:43:05Like it wasn't that long ago that it was still sold
0:43:08and people were buying this like $500+ computer type device.
0:43:15And it's not on a contract, it's not subsidized,
0:43:19so they expect that to last more than two years.
0:43:23So there are still a lot of iPad 1s in use that can't run iOS 6
0:43:27And I don't know how much of the percentage of people still on five that represents. Probably
0:43:33not even the majority of it, but I bet that's like a big solid chunk in there that just
0:43:38is not going away anytime soon.
0:43:41And you know what, you're probably right. I just know whether or not it was dated back
0:43:45or not, maybe I made that up. But certainly anecdotally, I know a lot of my mildly nerdy
0:43:51friends had said, "Oh, I can't get that new Apple Maps thing. It's terrible. I won't have
0:43:55And either way, I mean, I was just trying to build up to the question, not argument,
0:43:59of what do we think about iOS 7 adoption?
0:44:02Do we think it'll be quick?
0:44:03Do we think it'll be really, really slow by comparison to other versions of iOS?
0:44:07My inclination is I feel like it will be kind of in the middle, which is, of course, the
0:44:13worst hedging ever.
0:44:15But I really think it'll be less quick than a lot of the less remarkable major releases.
0:44:21But I think a lot of people are going to really like it.
0:44:23And I think that, yeah, I think it'll be all right,
0:44:26but I'm curious to hear what you guys think.
0:44:28- I think it'll probably be driven,
0:44:30like a lot of these things are,
0:44:31they're driven and aided by the fact
0:44:33that Apple continues to sell more and more phones.
0:44:35Now, granted, the growth rate has leveled off a little bit,
0:44:38but assuming iOS 7 launches with a new phone,
0:44:43like, and the new phone's gonna come with iOS 7,
0:44:47and people will very quickly stop buying the old one,
0:44:49and so you get this immediate boost
0:44:51just like all the iPhone 5s or 6 or whatever the heck it is, especially if it's an iPhone
0:44:566.
0:44:57If they don't do a 5s and it's actually a different form factor, and if it's like a
0:44:59bigger one or something, that will give iOS 7 a huge boost out of the gate and skew the
0:45:05statistics.
0:45:06But I have to think that the adoption will probably be about the same as it was for 6,
0:45:11if only because that thing where they push the updates at you...
0:45:15I mean, I know iOS 7's going to have automatic updates, and same for Mavericks and everything.
0:45:19Again, I think these are in the keynote.
0:45:23That will drive adoption going forward even more.
0:45:26But even just the current model where they're like, "Hey, there's a new version of iOS.
0:45:29Do you want to upgrade?" and people hit a button and then it does it, that's what's
0:45:33driving all this adoption.
0:45:34It's like Jeff Atwood's post from, I guess it's years ago at this point, of the infinite
0:45:40version.
0:45:41Google Chrome is one of the pioneers in this where you don't do anything, you don't have
0:45:45to make any choices, you use it and if you don't know anything about it, if you use it
0:45:50and quit that program and relaunch it, it is updating itself, unbeknownst to you. They'll
0:45:53put a little colored arrow or whatever in the toolbar and if you notice that you can
0:45:57go, "Oh, I can update Google Chrome now," or whatever. It used to be more intrusive.
0:46:00Now it's just like, "Look, we're going to update your Google Chrome. There's nothing
0:46:03you can do about it." I mean, maybe there is some way to stop it, but the defaults are
0:46:07you're going to get updated. What version of Google Chrome you're using? Who knows?
0:46:11The latest. That is the idea that you don't have versions of software that you get confused
0:46:15comfortable with, like where you buy a 2002 car.
0:46:18Sorry about the cars again.
0:46:19And you're like, oh, I'm happy with this car.
0:46:21If you went out in your driveway and it was replaced with a 2003
0:46:23model, you'd be like, but I like the 2002 one.
0:46:25I like the way the shifter worked,
0:46:26and the seat fabric was nicer, and the radio controls were
0:46:29better.
0:46:29You just get used to what you have.
0:46:31And software in the past has been like that,
0:46:33where you get Photoshop version 3.0,
0:46:37and you're like, oh, wow, layers, this is awesome.
0:46:39And this program is great.
0:46:40And then 4.0 comes out, and you're like,
0:46:42oh, that's just weird.
0:46:43I don't like it.
0:46:43Actually, I should have done 2.5 to 3,
0:46:45because maybe you like channel operations and not layers.
0:46:47But anyway, you get used to a piece of software,
0:46:50and you say, OK, well, this is the software.
0:46:53And it continues to work, and I like it.
0:46:55Why would I ever want it to change?
0:46:57And if it changed underneath you, you're like, whoa,
0:46:58what's this?
0:46:59The menus change, and the keyboard shortcuts change,
0:47:01and they change all sorts of things about this program.
0:47:03What happened to my old program?
0:47:04I want that one back.
0:47:06Because you think of software as this one thing
0:47:08that you get, like a physical thing, like a car.
0:47:10Whereas with Chrome, you've shown
0:47:13people can be trained not to think of software that way.
0:47:16If you use Chrome, the program that you're using now is not like the one you were using
0:47:19several years ago, and you didn't do anything about that.
0:47:22You could have just never touched any button, never said yes to any updates, it just updates
0:47:25itself.
0:47:27And you come in and you're like, "Oh, Chrome is different today."
0:47:28And for the most part, it's different, it's faster, it's better, it's more stable, it
0:47:31has more features.
0:47:33But also, it changes stuff.
0:47:34Like, "Oh, the menus are different, and the preferences are different."
0:47:37On the Mac version, things kept moving into browser tabs and out of real UI as they tried
0:47:42to make everything web-based and that kind of annoyed me.
0:47:45But I think that's the future of software and that's what's driving this adoption.
0:47:50More than people saying, "Oh, iOS is 6, I want to get it."
0:47:53It's because every single iOS device that can upgrade to iOS 6 showed a prompt that
0:47:57says, "Do you want to upgrade to iOS 6?"
0:47:59And it showed it again.
0:48:00And I don't know how persistent it is, but people eventually hit the button.
0:48:03Android has eight bazillion ancient versions because those phones can't even run.
0:48:06Like, you know, it's up to the carriers to upgrade them and they're like, "Ah, screw
0:48:09it, we're not doing anything."
0:48:10If all those phones had little prompts, they'd all be running the latest version of Android
0:48:13too, but they can't and they don't have those prompts, so they're not.
0:48:16Well, and also, I mean, one of the biggest things, like you touched on earlier, one of
0:48:21the biggest things driving iOS adoption is that all new iOS devices are always sold with
0:48:26the latest OS.
0:48:28And because the sales of iOS devices tend to still be growing quarter by quarter or
0:48:33year by year, every year there's way more iOS devices added into the pool of actively
0:48:40used devices and everything added past an OS's release date has the newest OS. Whereas
0:48:46Android, you still have phones that are sold today that are running not the current version
0:48:51of the OS. And sometimes they're running versions that are like six months or a year or even
0:48:55more old. So iOS, as long as sales of iOS devices stay strong and you remain not able
0:49:03to downgrade them, I think we're always going to see very, very strong version adoption.
0:49:08Yeah, Apple had some stuff that I can't remember.
0:49:10It was something like, you know, the number of iOS devices sold in the past year is more
0:49:14than the number of iOS devices sold in all of history before that, or something like
0:49:18that.
0:49:19Right, and they've claimed that a lot, because in many years that is the case.
0:49:24Right, I mean, growth has leveled off a little bit, so maybe they won't be able to claim
0:49:28that next year, but that combined with the fact that they can upgrade, and like you said,
0:49:32all the new versions, all the new hardware comes with the newest version, that drives
0:49:36adoption.
0:49:37it as a point like, "Our adoption is great because users really love our latest version
0:49:42of the OS." And I don't really think it's the case. Not that it matters, but iOS 7 will
0:49:47freak people out. But they're going to upgrade it anyway because the button's going to come
0:49:50on the screen and they're going to press it and they can't downgrade. And it's going to
0:49:53come on their new—when their contract expires, it's going to come on their new iPhone. So
0:49:57guess what? 90% adoption. All right, I have more to say on that, but
0:50:01first let me break for a minute to talk about our second sponsor for today. It's An Event
0:50:05They are the design conference for people who make websites.
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0:50:42an Event Apart is the conference you've been waiting for.
0:50:45Go to an eventapart.com/atpfm.
0:50:49Thanks a lot to an Event Apart for sponsoring the show.
0:50:52I'm sad I can't go to that this year.
0:50:54I tried to get finagle work into paying for me to go, but no luck.
0:50:58Oh well, maybe next time.
0:51:00So, back to iOS 7 for a minute.
0:51:05So, you know, WBC happened, we did our show and we all gave our opinion of it.
0:51:09Then I went home and I showed my wife the beta on my iPhone 4S.
0:51:15And her immediate reaction was, ew, this looks really cheap.
0:51:20You know, looking at the home screen, looking at those often terrible icons, like, she really
0:51:25was very turned off by the appearance of the home screen.
0:51:30And I think it was mostly because of the crappy icons.
0:51:33And her initial experience was, I don't really
0:51:35want to keep using this.
0:51:36Like, I don't really want to play with this.
0:51:38This is kind of gross, and I'm a little scared
0:51:40of where they're going here.
0:51:42And she played with it for another couple of minutes
0:51:45at my urging.
0:51:48And then later on that evening, she's
0:51:50using her regular iPhone with iOS 6 on it.
0:51:54And she's like, you know what?
0:51:55This looks old.
0:51:58And she's like, you know, I actually, I want the new one.
0:52:03And I want a white iPhone now.
0:52:07Because the current one's black.
0:52:08The worst part of iOS 7 is it encourages people
0:52:11to buy white iOS devices.
0:52:13And I couldn't agree more.
0:52:14I bet that's-- first of all, actually, I
0:52:16have a white iPad Mini.
0:52:17Because the new style-- so I have a black iPhone 5.
0:52:21But I think, ultimately, I think the black aluminum is not
0:52:25aging well.
0:52:26The edges get the scratches.
0:52:28and you can start seeing the color underneath.
0:52:30And I don't know.
0:52:32I'm not crazy about the way the black ones look in practice.
0:52:36But anyway, I think this is going
0:52:39to probably reflect a lot of people's opinion of iOS 7,
0:52:42because when you first see it, you're kind of like, huh,
0:52:45that home screen's kind of ugly looking.
0:52:49But then once the whole OS sinks in,
0:52:52and once you start to use it, you start to realize, OK, well,
0:52:55some of those home screen decisions are pretty bad.
0:52:57But overall, this really does look very modern, and it starts to really show you how dated
0:53:04the old iOS appearance has become.
0:53:08So did Tiff get deeper than just looking at the home screen?
0:53:11Like, did she actually play with a few apps?
0:53:12Yeah, I opened up Calendar and Mail and stuff like that.
0:53:15I didn't have any third-party apps really installed on it, but I opened up a few built-in
0:53:19stuff and she was poking around with that.
0:53:22It was not a very long interaction, I will give you that.
0:53:25But just having seen that, and only having seen that for a few minutes, she was then
0:53:34able to recognize, "Oh crap, my current iPhone looks old by comparison."
0:53:40And so she wanted the new one, just because it really is new and fresh and modern.
0:53:46And I really think that's going to be a very common reaction.
0:53:50Well, and I know Tiff pretty well, and she doesn't strike me as the "ooh, shiny"
0:53:56kind of person, but is that going to be the reaction from your average Joe or Susie that
0:54:03it's just new and shiny, or do you think it's deeper than that?
0:54:06I happen to think it's deeper than that, but I'm a nerd, and so that's not unexpected.
0:54:10I think it's going to be shocking to people who aren't paying attention.
0:54:14They're going to be like, "Well, this doesn't look like my iOS," but at that
0:54:19point they will have no choice and they will use it for a week and get used to it and three
0:54:24or four things will continue to annoy them just like three or four things annoy them
0:54:27about the old one but they'll get used to it.
0:54:30It's going to be a differentiator.
0:54:33That's the most important feature of this change from the regular person's perspective
0:54:38is that it is unmistakably different than the previous one and as I said in the past
0:54:42podcast, Apple needed to make a change.
0:54:45is a change, that is an essential feature of this that customers can identify at a glance
0:54:50that is different. Because that's what iOS needs at this point. It needs a clean break
0:54:55with the past and something new. And as long as it's not completely unusable or just seen
0:55:01as horrendously ugly, it'll be fine. I mean, think about Windows 8, which I think has some
0:55:05horrendously ugly parts of it, but that's not what annoyed people. People weren't
0:55:08more annoyed that Windows 8 was ugly. They were annoyed they couldn't find anything and
0:55:11nothing worked and stuff like that. So as long as Apple gets the functionality part
0:55:14of it right, and I think they're on the right track there, the individual decisions
0:55:20about aesthetics are not as important as the fact that it is just immediately identifiable
0:55:27as a different thing.
0:55:28Yeah, I think that's right. And the fact is, it still does work roughly the same way.
0:55:35There are a few little tweaks here and there, and there's slightly more updated or more
0:55:40modern things like the back gesture, a more updated navigation structure and stuff like
0:55:46that, but it all still works pretty much the same way.
0:55:51And for people who have never seen the multitasking bar in iOS 6, they will continue to not see
0:55:56it in iOS 7 and they won't notice that it's any different.
0:56:00We look at every single thing that's different because we know every nook and cranny of iOS,
0:56:03but I even wonder about, I mean, it kind of explains why Apple put that little upward-facing
0:56:08arrow to say "hey guys, control center is down here" and it's a convenient way for you
0:56:12to change stuff.
0:56:13But that's another one of those features.
0:56:16Maybe it's like notification center where the first time most people activate notification
0:56:19center it's probably an accident and they're like "what's this thing?
0:56:22I was in this app and this little thing peaked down from the top for a second and then I
0:56:25went back to using it.
0:56:26What is that?
0:56:27And I did another app and this thing is up there!"
0:56:29Eventually people will discover this thing down there but unlike probably notification
0:56:33center, once people discover control center they'll be like "oh, fast way to turn Wi-Fi
0:56:37on and off, like things that people can understand, you know, or change the volume or whatever.
0:56:43I'm hoping that that will be a feature that people will latch onto.
0:56:47For the people, again, for the people who don't know that you can open the multitasking
0:56:50tray and go to the left and there's stuff over there that's useful, right?
0:56:53Right, right, right.
0:56:54Control Center is the much larger, nicer version of that.
0:56:58Oh, yeah.
0:56:59I mean, we—so I got my mother-in-law for this past Christmas.
0:57:04She has this nice radio, this nice little radio thing in their living room, and she's
0:57:11been using the iPad and she was getting it to Pandora.
0:57:13So I got her an airport express so that she could then airplay the Pandora to the little
0:57:18radio in the living room.
0:57:21And having to describe to a relatively non-technical person all the steps involved in turning on
0:57:28it, because of course Pandora on the iPad doesn't have an AirPlay button because their
0:57:32their apps are extraordinarily mediocre,
0:57:34but trying to explain to a regular person
0:57:38how to go to the multitasking tray,
0:57:41swipe over, find the AirPlay button, tap that,
0:57:44tap the room, like now, it's swipe up, tap AirPlay.
0:57:47Like there's like three fewer steps than there were before,
0:57:50and it's way more clear.
0:57:52And there's gonna be so many interactions like that
0:57:54that are just so much easier with that.
0:57:57- Yeah, and the other thing I wanted to note
0:57:59was if you look at Apple's iOS 7 page, there's the big image of a white iPhone 5 with the
0:58:07home screen.
0:58:08There's a couple paragraphs of text, and then there's, what is this, 3, 6, 9, 12 images
0:58:14of all the familiar apps.
0:58:16Well, they're not images, actually.
0:58:17I think they're little videos.
0:58:19But they're all the familiar apps that they're showing.
0:58:23The headline is "See iOS 7 in Action."
0:58:25So it's clear that they're trying to—shop isn't the right word—but familiarize people
0:58:30with what's coming.
0:58:32So whenever the time comes that iOS 7 is out, then it won't be so jarring.
0:58:37And I think Apple's a little nervous about it, and I think they should be, but I think
0:58:40all in all it won't be bad.
0:58:42Anyway, do we want to talk about Neven Mergen's thing?
0:58:47I do, I do.
0:58:48Sure.
0:58:49Because I put it in the notes, that's why.
0:58:51You're preparing a little too much, John.
0:58:53It's one sentence and a link, and it's not even a sentence.
0:58:58Getting a little nervous.
0:58:59It's not long.
0:59:00All right, so Nevin's post is another in a long series
0:59:03of people with design backgrounds
0:59:06and not commenting on iOS 7 about what they like,
0:59:09what they don't like, and trying to divine the philosophy
0:59:12behind it and reconcile what Apple
0:59:13has said with the reality of the OS and all that stuff.
0:59:16And Nevin's post was very focused,
0:59:18and it's clear that he has chewed
0:59:20on this design in his head for a long time,
0:59:23and finally decided that some of it just looks wrong to him.
0:59:26And he focused on the icons showing--
0:59:28I think he showed the App Store icon, the little circle.
0:59:31And the A conforms to the grid that Johnny Ive and his team
0:59:36supposedly laid out for iOS icons
0:59:37to make them all look the same, where they have
0:59:40concentric circles and boxes.
0:59:41And they made a point of showing how,
0:59:43even though all the home screen icons look different,
0:59:45they all sort of touch on important points in this grid
0:59:48and conform to it in the right way.
0:59:49And he was saying, but the grid is wrong.
0:59:52look at that circle in the App Store, if I was designing this, it would be smaller.
0:59:56And it should be smaller because it looks wrong when it's bigger.
0:59:58And I read that post and I thought there was a couple of really obvious
1:00:03RDE design type replies to it.
1:00:06And I found one of them, I was glad to see someone tackle a lot of it.
1:00:09This is from Ari Warner. We'll have his links in the show notes.
1:00:13This is up on Medium, a site which I don't really like the URLs from
1:00:16because you can't read them. But anyway, he responded to Nevin's post explaining how
1:00:20wrong, this is not really applicable in cases of design because you need to talk about it
1:00:25in context and whether it fulfills the role. It's not a piece of art, it's not just supposed
1:00:28to be pleasing to the eye, it has a functional aspect and so on and so forth. And so both
1:00:33those links will be in the show notes.
1:00:37My main reaction to Nevin's thing was, and I think people, I'm not going to call myself
1:00:41an artist, but I did do a lot of art-related things early in my life and still sort of
1:00:46have that bent, believe it or not, as a programmer.
1:00:50And one of the things I always found myself
1:00:51doing when I was doing visual artwork, and even visual design
1:00:55stuff, is trying to prevent myself
1:00:59from giving in to the feeling that Nevin has, which
1:01:02is when you make something and you're sort of artistically
1:01:07inclined, you can look at it and see that it's not quite right.
1:01:11And if you have a little bit more experience and a little
1:01:13bit more skill, you can see that it's not quite right
1:01:15and know what's wrong with it and fix it.
1:01:17So that's what he did with the App Store.
1:01:19I kind of said, this doesn't look right to me.
1:01:22And actually, I can go further than that.
1:01:23I know why it doesn't look right.
1:01:25It's because the space around the circle is not quite right.
1:01:28If I change the circle to this size,
1:01:29now it's more pleasing to me.
1:01:31And it's sort of like an intuitive sense that you have.
1:01:33That's the word that Nevin used.
1:01:35He made another tweet about intuition
1:01:36being a data-driven process running
1:01:39on a machine with thousands of years of evolution
1:01:41behind it or something to that effect.
1:01:42But you look at it, and you just feel that's wrong.
1:01:44So what you can do if you're making a piece of art is just keep changing it until you
1:01:51feel happy with it.
1:01:52"Oh, that doesn't look quite right.
1:01:53Oh, that doesn't look..."
1:01:54And if you know what it is about it that's wrong, you can keep moving it more and more
1:01:56towards that idea until you look away and you're like, "Now, that's it.
1:01:59That looks beautiful."
1:02:01And some people just don't have that.
1:02:02They can look at one logo and another logo.
1:02:04Like, "Ah, they're about the same."
1:02:06Another person, one logo with a circle that's 5% bigger can look totally wrong and the other
1:02:10one is like, "Oh, that's the one."
1:02:12But if you give in to that feeling when you're making something, if every single aspect of
1:02:16it you just use your intuition to say, "Okay, that's not right.
1:02:21I'm going to make it better.
1:02:22That's not right.
1:02:23I'm going to make it better."
1:02:24What you end up doing is painting the entire design with a sameness, especially like in
1:02:29web design.
1:02:30But even just when you're drawing a picture or something, then you step away from it and
1:02:34you're like, "Oh, now I have made this entire thing pleasing to the eye in all aspects,
1:02:39and it looks bland and boring."
1:02:41So one of the first impulses I can remember having when I was taking art lessons as a
1:02:46kid is that sometimes when you're drawing something or designing something, you take
1:02:51some aspect of it and you intentionally make it look "wrong."
1:02:57Not wrong in the sense of ugly or anything, but you push the limit of it.
1:03:02This would look perfect and right and nice and beautiful and be like the golden ratio
1:03:06and it would look like a beautiful woman and it would look like nature and it would look
1:03:09like a fractal and it would just be so pleasing to the eye, but I want to push
1:03:13it slightly more along one axis because it creates a kind of visual and emotional
1:03:18tension. You can't do that with all aspects, then you just make something
1:03:21ugly, right? But if you take one aspect of it and you press it a little bit,
1:03:26sometimes with the purpose, but sometimes just because you're like, "You know what?
1:03:29This will be more interesting if I make this one aspect of it not conform to
1:03:34this ideal of beauty that I have in my head." And you're knowingly doing that, and
1:03:37And I'm not sure that's what iOS 7 is doing, but when I look at it, I think there are parts
1:03:43of this design that's unsettling, or some would say ugly.
1:03:46Colors are easier to be ugly.
1:03:48But the circles, yes, I saw them and they looked too big to me as well.
1:03:51But I thought, look, they know that these circles seem too big.
1:03:56Perhaps it's for readability, the icon needs to be readable instead of just visually pleasing,
1:04:03because if you made it smaller, it wouldn't look quite as nice.
1:04:05But it also could be that a design where everything is made to conform to that beautiful ideal
1:04:10is more boring and lacks character.
1:04:14And I'm willing to believe that some aspects of IOSM's design were done with that in mind.
1:04:21That a design that is beautiful in all aspects and perfectly conforms to our ideal of beauty
1:04:26is boring.
1:04:27And I like it to push the envelope in some aspect, because that's more interesting.
1:04:33alternative there is that maybe Johnny Ive isn't that good at graphical design, which
1:04:37is a lot less interesting.
1:04:40He didn't draw the zycons himself.
1:04:43There are more boring explanations.
1:04:44They made them bigger so they're more readable, and they're going to refine them.
1:04:47And the colors are harder to go by, but it's the same kind of thing in colors.
1:04:51Sometimes you just—especially if you've done art for a really long time, you get burned
1:04:56out on just everything being beautiful and perfect.
1:04:59Sometimes you make something intentionally unsettling.
1:05:00And I think there's a tension in that kind of design that tickles the brain nether regions
1:05:07of artists who look at it, and they find that nicer.
1:05:10And you end up with something that's polarizing.
1:05:13Regular people probably don't care, except maybe about the colors, which people will
1:05:16probably interpret as ugly.
1:05:17But I think these icons and everything else about it will be refined over time.
1:05:21But I hope they don't do a lot of the revisions that you see, like, "Oh, I've redesigned
1:05:26iOS 7.
1:05:27See how it's better this way?"
1:05:28And there's just this sameness to them of just making everything boring in beautiful
1:05:33and conventional ways, or desaturating the colors and making it all beautiful and low
1:05:39contrast and pale and grayscale and lots of other designer-y tendencies that, if applied
1:05:44en masse to an entire OS, make the whole thing boring.
1:05:47Yeah, I don't know.
1:05:51I think it's too early to say whether they're just bad at this right now, or whether this
1:05:57is intentionally along one side, I think time will tell.
1:06:04I'm certainly interested to see what the fallout is from all the complaining about the icons.
1:06:10Are they going to do a Microsoft Xbox 180 or are they just going to plow forward and
1:06:14see what happens?
1:06:15Convert them back.
1:06:16I mean, Microsoft's design of Windows 8 was kind of, we have this bold direction, but
1:06:22try to, like, in terms of shapes, I guess, if not in terms of colors, try to make things,
1:06:27you know, reasonable. Like, there are no equivalents of those icons with the two big circles in
1:06:31Windows 8 that I've seen, right? They fit things inside the boxes with, you know, correct
1:06:36spacing and margins, and nothing is uncomfortably too big or too small within the borders, you
1:06:42know, whereas some of those icons, like the grid itself, I mean, that outer circle is
1:06:46just too darn close to the edges of that round rack, right? And it's uncomfortably close
1:06:50for people with design sensibilities. And surely everyone inside Apple who has any design
1:06:55sensibilities knows what Nevin put in there, that that isn't the most pleasing visual
1:07:02arrangement. But I can think of lots of reasons why they would intentionally do that. So we'll
1:07:08see.
1:07:09Is that it?
1:07:10I believe so.
1:07:11Good deal.
1:07:12All right. Thanks a lot to our two sponsors for this week, Squarespace and An Event Apart.
1:07:19And I guess we'll see you next week.
1:07:26They didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental.
1:07:30(Accidental)
1:07:31Oh, it was accidental.
1:07:33(Accidental)
1:07:34John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, 'cause it was accidental.
1:07:40(Accidental)
1:07:41Oh, it was accidental.
1:07:43(Accidental)
1:07:44And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.
1:07:49And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
1:07:59So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:08:03Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse
1:08:10It's accidental (accidental)
1:08:14They didn't mean to, accidental (accidental)
1:08:19Tech Podcast So Long
1:08:24For the live listeners, we should specify that the second show this week will be an
1:08:29early recording. I know you kind of implied this, but it's an early recording because
1:08:34Jon's traveling next week.
1:08:35Right, so we're recording next week's episode this Friday, so in two days from now.
1:08:41Hopefully Apple will not buy Nintendo on Monday.
1:08:45What the hell made you think of that?
1:08:46That would be hilarious.
1:08:47I'm thinking of a story that it would kill me not to be able to talk about in a timely
1:08:52manner and then you'd publish the show for next week and it would not be about Apple
1:08:57buying Nintendo.
1:08:58People are like, "What the hell is this?"
1:09:00Well, Marco, has your Tumblr money come in?
1:09:03Why don't you just buy Nintendo yourself?
1:09:04It hasn't yet.
1:09:05And then you can sell it.
1:09:06Yeah, there you go.
1:09:07I've gotten good at that.
1:09:08Yeah, right.
1:09:09Do you guys see this Mac Pro benchmark that was leaked like an hour, like 15 minutes after
1:09:17we stopped talking about the Mac Pro? Oh, awesome. I clicked on it, but we had moved
1:09:20on by then. I didn't get to read it, but... Show me the number. That's what I was so annoyed
1:09:25about. Yeah, here they're doing it again. Don't compare the new Mac Pro to the old Mac
1:09:28Pro. We all agree the old Mac Pro sucks. We want to compare it to like... I don't know
1:09:33what to compare it to. Well, there's a few things that are interesting
1:09:34about this benchmark. First of all, it is the first time we've seen, as far as I know,
1:09:41it's the first time we've seen any benchmarks of the Xeon E5
1:09:45V2 series.
1:09:47Right?
1:09:48I mean, this is--
1:09:49I haven't been keeping up.
1:09:50It's possible.
1:09:50I don't even think--
1:09:51I think this is the first time that a particular Xeon E5
1:09:55model has even been leaked.
1:09:56So now, if this is correct, now we
1:09:59know there will be a model called the E5 2697.
1:10:03It'll be 2.7 gigahertz, and it'll have 12 cores.
1:10:06As far as I know, that's all new information.
1:10:09But beyond that, I think the performance here
1:10:13is really impressive.
1:10:14It's obviously very impressive to get a Geekbench overall
1:10:17score of almost 24,000 out of one socket.
1:10:21Isn't that testing less than one third
1:10:23of the transistors in this thing, though?
1:10:25Well, there were multi-core tests and stuff.
1:10:28No, but I mean the GPUs.
1:10:29Most of the compute power in that device is in the GPUs.
1:10:32Right, that's true.
1:10:33I don't know how much Geekbench is stressing those.
1:10:34So this is more of a CPU benchmark.
1:10:35I don't think it does any GPU.
1:10:36Or maybe it has a different mode for it.
1:10:37I don't know.
1:10:38But yeah, this doesn't mention GPUs at all. So I'm guessing it's all it's only a CPU benchmark
1:10:42So it's kind of like it's like weird. It's like, you know
1:10:44Come up with a good car analogy. It's like
1:10:47Bench benchmarking
1:10:51Benchmarking the the gas mileage of the Veyron. It's an interesting benchmark
1:10:55But maybe not what that car is designed to do
1:10:58And so this machine come right like it's basically a bunch of GPUs RAM and SSD
1:11:02And oh by the way a CPU attached to the thing to run it all
1:11:05In terms of like transistor count and may print like as Marco pointed out perhaps in terms of RAM count as well. I
1:11:11mean the sad part is like
1:11:14What they've been able to pull off this really great score that with one socket
1:11:19blows away the the previous 12 core by something like 10 or 15 percent that did with two sockets, but
1:11:25Imagine if they made a two socket version of this
1:11:29Then you could have obviously have like a forty five thousand geekbench score
1:11:34Well, can you find software that uses 24 cores? That's pretty difficult to find.
1:11:39Video encoding software.
1:11:41What about your magical script that you wrote way back when? I remember seeing that fly
1:11:47by during your Tumblr days when you were trying to encode something.
1:11:50Parallelize? Yeah, it's a script that you use. I think there's now an argument for X-ARGS
1:11:55or something that does roughly the same thing.
1:11:57Just make -j 25.
1:12:03You know what annoys me when I edit this show is that MP3 encoding is not well parallelizable.
1:12:10Because there's this bit reservoir or something. I don't know. There's some reason I was looking
1:12:15into it why the lame encoder is just single threaded.
1:12:20Why it's lame?
1:12:21Yeah.
1:12:22Because any compression scheme, the data depends on the data that comes both before and after it.
1:12:28it so it's not easy to break it up into chunks because the chunks are related to each other.
1:12:33And the video encoders are so insanely CPU intensive that I would imagine they were
1:12:40designed from the very beginning to be more parallel-friendly.
1:12:44But they have the same thing. Video codecs have the thing where the current frame depends
1:12:48on the past frame and the future frame. Obviously these are parallelizable.
1:12:52But there's blocks. There's the B frame or something and then there's a block and you can
1:12:56you can pass one block to a different thread and--
1:12:59- Yeah, like it's parallelizable,
1:13:00but it's not as simple as something like,
1:13:02you know, just chop the data up into pieces,
1:13:04have those pieces process independently,
1:13:06reassemble the results,
1:13:07which would be like strict linear parallelization.
1:13:10- Right, exactly.
1:13:11But yeah, I don't know.
1:13:13I think what concerns me about this 12 core
1:13:17is that, let me see, I wonder if we can get,
1:13:19let me pull up a comparison between the,
1:13:23like the single threaded tests
1:13:25of this versus my current 3.33 GHz, two generations old Xeon,
1:13:31this might be slower in certain things.
1:13:33Because I just have that raw clock speed advantage.
1:13:35Who knows?
1:13:35Anyway, I'll do that after the show.
1:13:37But this is very interesting.
1:13:39Or clock speed.
1:13:41This is very interesting, though, that this tells us
1:13:44quite a lot of new information.
1:13:45That I think most people are like, oh, good,
1:13:46the new Mac Pro is faster.
1:13:48But if you look, this announces details about the Xeon.
1:13:51It confirms certain percentage improvements
1:13:55the previous Zeons. So this is very interesting to see.
1:14:00So on a wildly unrelated note, Sam the Geek in the chat was asking how you and Marco you
1:14:04and I met. And then I said it's a long and mostly uninteresting story. And then Simon
1:14:11Kao, I said, and John Siracusa will tear apart why the friendship is not really that great.
1:14:16Which I thought was pretty awesome. I don't feel like we should tell the story because
1:14:21I think I'd rather watch all our friends in the chat just invent answers.
1:14:26It's probably more interesting than the real story.
1:14:28Oh, it's so much more interesting than the real story.