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The M1 Macs: Interview and Review

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 326.

00:00:14   Today's show is brought to you by DoorDash, Pingdom, SaneBox and Remote Works.

00:00:20   My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell.

00:00:23   Hello, Myke Hurley. Ah, what a week.

00:00:26   We have a monumental, historical, groundbreaking episode of Upgrade today.

00:00:32   Product reviews, interviews, so much more.

00:00:36   We have a ton to get to. It is going to be a fantastic episode ahead.

00:00:41   But we must start, as we will every episode of Upgrade,

00:00:45   of a Snell Talk question sent in by an Upgrading.

00:00:48   And this time we'll choose Marlies, who asks, "Jason, what's your favorite mini?

00:00:52   iPad mini? iPhone mini? Mac mini? HomePod mini?

00:00:55   What's your favorite mini?"

00:00:56   Well, what I want to say to be super cool is to say the iPod mini. Remember that?

00:01:02   Ah, yes, yes. I think that would be mine.

00:01:05   But it's the Mac mini. It's the Mac mini is mine.

00:01:08   Because I've had a Mac mini in my house as a server since the first Mac mini.

00:01:14   I'm on my fourth now, third or fourth.

00:01:19   I mean, and it's been like 15 plus years since, it's been more than that actually.

00:01:23   So it's been like almost 20 years since the Mac mini first came out.

00:01:25   So it's, yeah, that's got to be my answer.

00:01:29   Because I have had a Mac mini chugging away, doing stuff in my house since the very beginning.

00:01:36   And so I think it has to be my favorite because it's been the longest, longest serving.

00:01:42   Mine is iPod mini because my pink iPod mini that I had was my entry into the Apple ecosystem.

00:01:51   That was my first Apple product.

00:01:53   I love those colors. I love the iPod mini. It was great. We had one. Loved it.

00:01:58   So thank you so much to Marleis for that question. That was a good one.

00:02:01   You can send in a question to help us open an episode of Upgrade.

00:02:05   All you have to do is send out a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade

00:02:09   or just use the command ?AskUpgrade in the Relay FM members Discord.

00:02:14   So we do have a lot to cover this week.

00:02:15   One thing we're not going to be covering is macOS Big Sur.

00:02:20   Love you macOS, but we don't have the time for you today.

00:02:22   Plus, the other thing is, Jason, I've not used it.

00:02:26   But I have my MacBook Pro coming this week, my M1 MacBook Pro, which has Big Sur on it.

00:02:31   So that's going to be my first usage of Big Sur.

00:02:35   I mean, I put Big Sur on a 16 inch MacBook Pro review unit I had.

00:02:41   But this was like beta one and I got to use it for about two weeks before I had to send it back again.

00:02:48   And, you know, the quiz I spoke about in a bunch of places,

00:02:52   Big Sur has been shaky for some types of applications.

00:02:55   Audio applications is one of them.

00:02:57   So I wasn't going to put it on any of my recording machines.

00:03:01   But my M1 Mac ships with it.

00:03:03   So we'll talk about Big Sur in a little more detail on next week's episode.

00:03:08   Right.

00:03:09   Now, one thing we do definitely must have to cover today is our iPhone,

00:03:15   the remaining iPhone reviews that we need to get to.

00:03:18   Yes.

00:03:18   So you've had the iPhone mini and the iPhone Max for...

00:03:23   I do.

00:03:24   Nearly two weeks.

00:03:25   But of course, there's been so much going on.

00:03:27   I don't think you've actually...

00:03:29   When we spoke about it, you haven't written a review.

00:03:32   I don't know if you're going to write a review.

00:03:33   When did I get the...

00:03:35   I don't actually...

00:03:36   It would have been last...

00:03:38   No.

00:03:38   Last Monday?

00:03:40   Something like that.

00:03:41   The day before the Apple event.

00:03:43   So, yeah, so a little over a week.

00:03:47   Yep.

00:03:48   I got them right here.

00:03:49   Now, obviously, I've had my Pro Max since last Friday,

00:03:54   and I have a lot of thoughts on it.

00:03:56   And so I think really to cover these,

00:03:59   I think we should probably both take one of them

00:04:01   because the mini is more of the phone for you.

00:04:04   The Max is more of the phone for me.

00:04:06   The Pro Max is not a phone for you, right?

00:04:09   Like, especially this one.

00:04:11   So I want to get your thoughts on the iPhone 12 mini.

00:04:16   Really, the question to ask is, what do you think of the size?

00:04:19   Is this the right size for you,

00:04:21   or has the ship sailed for you at this point?

00:04:24   Well, I love the size of it.

00:04:26   I'm really loving the iPhone 12.

00:04:30   I think...

00:04:33   It's hard to say.

00:04:34   I think I'm right on the edge,

00:04:37   where I see the benefit of both of them,

00:04:41   and I'm not sure which way I would lean at this point.

00:04:48   But, you know, I don't use my iPhone

00:04:52   as much as a lot of people do because I never leave the house,

00:04:56   although a lot of people don't do that now,

00:04:58   but I never did, and I still don't.

00:05:03   The iPhone 12 mini has appeal to me

00:05:06   because, first off, I like the 12.

00:05:08   I don't feel like the 12 Pro would be for me anyway.

00:05:12   It has additional features, but I prefer the feel of the 12,

00:05:16   and the 12 is cheaper. It's a better buy.

00:05:19   The mini is cheaper still, and it's delightful, right?

00:05:23   Like, it feels like an iPhone 5, kind of,

00:05:25   even though it's slightly larger than that.

00:05:27   It actually is so small that I can put my finger up on the top

00:05:32   where the on/off button used to be,

00:05:37   that they had to move to the side because it was too far up.

00:05:40   You can actually reach that part now.

00:05:43   So I guess what I'm saying is anybody who's had pause

00:05:47   about the size of the iPhone and has fought that

00:05:50   and has avoided buying iPhones

00:05:55   and always tried to find the smaller iPhone

00:05:57   and choose that one, this is the phone for you.

00:06:02   Like, if you've ever questioned the size of the iPhone,

00:06:04   this is the phone for you because it's good.

00:06:06   It's fast. It feels great to hold in your hand,

00:06:09   and it is much smaller than any iPhone

00:06:14   Apple is ever going to make.

00:06:16   Like, this is it. If you want it, this is it.

00:06:19   Yeah, so I would seriously consider buying one,

00:06:24   you know, for my own use,

00:06:27   but I would also seriously consider the regular 12

00:06:30   just because it is, you know, I'm kind of used to that size now.

00:06:34   It doesn't feel oppressively big.

00:06:36   I'm not putting it in a case,

00:06:38   which makes it feel a little bit smaller,

00:06:42   but, you know, it's totally usable,

00:06:43   and actually for people who are concerned

00:06:45   because the way the 12 screen works,

00:06:46   the 12 mini screen is a shrunken-down version

00:06:48   of the 12 screen.

00:06:50   It's actually scaled down,

00:06:51   so everything's a little bit smaller,

00:06:53   and if you're somebody who has, like, issues with your vision,

00:06:57   reading small things, that's not great,

00:07:00   although I will say there's a scaling mode in the mini

00:07:04   that makes everything bigger,

00:07:07   and it's still quite usable in that form.

00:07:11   The only limitation I would mention is I think some apps

00:07:15   are not prepared for that size of screen.

00:07:19   Some of them work better than others

00:07:20   at that smaller screen size,

00:07:23   because then it's using, like, the real smaller screen resolution

00:07:29   as opposed to just using the iPhone X resolution,

00:07:32   but in general, like, it's just an iPhone 12 except smaller.

00:07:38   It's really nice, so for now, that's sort of my review of it,

00:07:43   is it's the iPhone 12 for people who look at the 12 or the 10

00:07:48   or even the 6, 7, 8 and think, "It's bigger than I'd like."

00:07:53   Like, literally, if you've ever given, you know, some pause

00:07:57   or changed your buying patterns

00:07:59   because you're concerned about the size,

00:08:02   I think this is the phone for you.

00:08:05   -I feel like maybe if this was always a product,

00:08:09   it would have been likely

00:08:11   where you would have gravitated to naturally.

00:08:16   -I think probably so.

00:08:18   I mean, I wasn't thrilled at the size increase in the 6.

00:08:22   I wasn't thrilled with the size increase in the 10,

00:08:24   although it was subtle, so I got used to it,

00:08:27   but I'm not one of those people like you, for example,

00:08:30   who says, "Bigger screen," and so many people are like,

00:08:33   "Bigger screen. Give me more. I want more,"

00:08:35   and with my phone, I think I want less.

00:08:39   I want to have a phone, and I want to be able to look at it

00:08:41   and see what's going on in the world,

00:08:43   but I also don't feel the need on my phone

00:08:46   to have an expansive -- I just don't use my phone that way.

00:08:50   I'm going to use an iPad or a Mac or a TV for that.

00:08:54   I'm not going to be completely kind of engaged

00:08:57   in the content on my phone.

00:08:59   My phone is more utilitarian than that.

00:09:01   That's just sort of how I treat it.

00:09:03   -It's kind of intriguing to me

00:09:05   that Apple decided to make this phone now.

00:09:08   It's like, why now?

00:09:11   -I don't know. Maybe they always wanted to,

00:09:16   and it was just a matter of sort of their timing.

00:09:18   They were experimenting with lots of things.

00:09:20   They had to do the OLED transition with the iPhone X,

00:09:23   and then they wanted to do that other class of phone

00:09:25   with the XR the next year.

00:09:29   Maybe it just really was that it was always on their list,

00:09:35   and now is the time when they finally were able to do it.

00:09:41   -Yeah, it's just intriguing.

00:09:42   I'm going to be -- I have my eye on this.

00:09:46   There's been outlier phones, right?

00:09:49   So many outlier phones.

00:09:51   You look at something like the 5C into 10R.

00:09:54   These phones that are one and done,

00:09:56   so they're kind of peculiar things.

00:09:59   Even the SE to some degree,

00:10:01   whilst they've done another one of them,

00:10:05   they've both been very different.

00:10:07   The original SE to this SE is a very different product.

00:10:10   -They're recycled old products is what it is, right?

00:10:13   They're recycled old products,

00:10:14   and the 10R became the 11, essentially.

00:10:17   So that was a product transition,

00:10:20   but that product has kind of disappeared now,

00:10:23   and we're left with -- because we don't have an 11 Max

00:10:26   or something that's a little bit bigger.

00:10:28   -No. -But the Mini really does --

00:10:32   Honestly, it feels like the return of the iPhone SE 1

00:10:36   or really the return of the iPhone 5, essentially.

00:10:39   It's an iPhone 5.

00:10:40   I know it's not quite the same size.

00:10:42   I have an iPhone 5. I pulled it out.

00:10:45   It is smaller than this, but not much.

00:10:49   And they look the same because they've got the flat sides.

00:10:52   It's just -- I think it's remarkable

00:10:55   because there were a lot of us who figured Apple

00:10:57   was never gonna go back there, right?

00:10:58   Like, it's over. Just get used to it.

00:11:01   And I wonder to what extent the iPhone Mini exists

00:11:05   because Apple did keep hearing from people

00:11:08   that there was this category,

00:11:11   this subcategory of iPhone users who just didn't want a big phone.

00:11:16   And at some point, they decided, well, we need --

00:11:20   I think the source of this is that as iPhone sales stalled,

00:11:24   Apple realized the way that you continue to grow the iPhone

00:11:28   is by offering more models with more variations

00:11:32   so that you can focus on some new sort of sweet spots

00:11:36   and spread out the different slots that you're using.

00:11:39   And obviously, that's four new phones, right?

00:11:41   -You can try and find the edges and cater to the edges

00:11:46   a little bit more, maybe. -Yeah.

00:11:48   -Also, the SE has done so well for them.

00:11:51   I mean, the thing about the SE --

00:11:53   You know, 'cause Tim, in the earnings schools,

00:11:55   they always talk very highly about the SE,

00:11:57   about, you know, like, I think maybe the original one,

00:11:59   at least I remember them saying,

00:12:01   like, it vastly outperformed their expectation.

00:12:04   But the question on that, which I think it's hard to answer,

00:12:08   I don't think we can answer it,

00:12:09   is, like, what is the appetite for the SE?

00:12:11   Is it I want a small iPhone or I want a cheap iPhone?

00:12:15   Because the Mini is not a cheap iPhone, right?

00:12:18   Like, the Mini is the start of the line.

00:12:21   But it's the cheapest of the modern iPhones.

00:12:26   So it is still a little bit both,

00:12:28   but it's also not, like, dirt cheap or anything like that.

00:12:31   -Yeah, cheapest is something cheap.

00:12:32   -It'll be interesting to see.

00:12:34   I think Apple has underestimated the SE,

00:12:36   and I think maybe Apple learned the lesson

00:12:40   of the success of big Android phones a little too well.

00:12:44   Like, they learned it and they integrated it,

00:12:47   and they had great success with larger phones.

00:12:50   And maybe they just kept driving on the larger phone for a while

00:12:54   because it's like, as long as this is working for us,

00:12:56   let's keep doing it.

00:12:57   And maybe now have realized that although that drive --

00:13:00   because here's the thing, it's not like that drive was wrong.

00:13:03   People do love big phones.

00:13:04   Not everybody.

00:13:06   And those people out there who don't love them

00:13:08   are gonna roll their eyes at this.

00:13:09   But it's like you can't argue with the sales.

00:13:11   People love big phones.

00:13:12   The moment Apple made a bigger iPhone,

00:13:15   iPhone sales shot up, like, dramatically.

00:13:18   People -- and we saw it with Samsung

00:13:20   and other Android phone makers, big phones.

00:13:22   There are a lot of people who just want a big phone.

00:13:24   And so they made the right decision to go in that direction.

00:13:27   But you've got to wonder if maybe at some point

00:13:31   after that started to cool a little bit,

00:13:33   they realized that there is also a section of the market

00:13:36   that doesn't like the big phone.

00:13:38   And so making something that is a little more in tune with them

00:13:41   gives them another piece of the market

00:13:43   that maybe they were ignoring.

00:13:44   And when you're trying to get every last sale

00:13:47   out of the iPhone, which remember,

00:13:49   up until a couple of years ago,

00:13:52   Apple wasn't even trying very hard with the iPhone.

00:13:54   It did so well that Apple didn't really need even --

00:13:57   they didn't try very hard in the stores.

00:13:59   They weren't marketing the iPhone

00:14:01   because it sold itself in huge quantities.

00:14:04   And then their sales fell off a cliff, and they're like,

00:14:06   "Oh, we need to work on sales with the iPhone."

00:14:10   And then maybe in that era, they're like,

00:14:12   "What are we missing here?"

00:14:13   And they looked at the size and said,

00:14:15   "That's a place where we can attack that corner of the market

00:14:19   that seems dissatisfied with what we're doing."

00:14:21   -There's one question I did have,

00:14:23   'cause I actually had quite a few people

00:14:24   write in to ask this.

00:14:26   How does it feel to type on for you?

00:14:31   -It's more cramped to type on, for sure,

00:14:33   although I never really have felt super comfortable

00:14:37   with typing on the iPhone X either.

00:14:41   I mean, it's still not great.

00:14:43   It's still not a huge expanse to type on,

00:14:45   and you've got to wrestle with autocorrect.

00:14:47   In fact, I can maybe make the argument

00:14:49   that it's small enough that it might be more conducive

00:14:53   to leaning into the autocorrect

00:14:55   'cause you're just not gonna be precise

00:14:57   on such a small keyboard.

00:14:58   But in the end, all I can say is in my use,

00:15:01   which is it's gonna differ for everybody,

00:15:04   I thought it was fine to type on.

00:15:08   I had my frustrations,

00:15:10   but I had my frustrations typing on an iPhone, period.

00:15:13   So I don't think it was any more frustrating than it would be.

00:15:17   And, of course, for those who haven't used a big iPhone

00:15:21   in a while, the iPhone 5,

00:15:26   there was no swipe typing on the iPhone 5.

00:15:28   It might actually be a better experience now, right,

00:15:30   because you don't have to tap.

00:15:32   You could also swipe if you want to get words out that way.

00:15:35   So there's other options now.

00:15:36   But it was, for me, not a big difference

00:15:40   in that it was sort of equally frustrating

00:15:43   to typing on a regular iPhone.

00:15:45   But everybody's mileage might vary.

00:15:47   It is a smaller keyboard, for sure.

00:15:49   -Okay.

00:15:50   Can I talk about the Pro Max now?

00:15:52   -Yeah, let me -- I have one thing to say about it

00:15:55   before I hand it over to you,

00:15:56   which is I got this thing last Monday.

00:16:00   And the first thing I did -- like, the first thing I did,

00:16:03   I picked it up, I looked at it, I held it in my hand,

00:16:06   and then I went to Slack to a direct message to Myke Hurley,

00:16:10   and I said, "You are going to love this."

00:16:14   And the reason I said that is not only is it --

00:16:16   I've got the gold model, it's pretty, it's shiny.

00:16:21   But I picked it up, and the way it feels, it feels solid.

00:16:25   It is heavy, it is huge, but it is like a gold bar, Myke.

00:16:30   It's just like -- there's something really pleasing

00:16:35   about the density of this thing

00:16:38   and the uniformity of the density of this thing.

00:16:41   It's so big that I feel like I can just --

00:16:43   like, my hand doesn't just hold it,

00:16:45   but it kind of, like, wraps around itself,

00:16:48   and, you know, the fingers are against the back.

00:16:50   Like, it's so large that I feel like I can hold it in two hands.

00:16:54   And I don't know how to put it.

00:16:58   And that's why I sent you that message,

00:16:59   is because I feel like if you're going to make a big phone,

00:17:04   just embrace it. Like, make a big phone.

00:17:07   Don't go halfway and be like, "Well, it's larger,

00:17:10   but we don't want to push it too far."

00:17:11   It's like, push it.

00:17:13   Make it a big slab of a phone with extra cameras,

00:17:17   like, extra zoom.

00:17:18   Do all of those things if you're going to do it.

00:17:21   And that's what -- in my mind, that's what the Pro Max is,

00:17:23   is that, like, more than any large iPhone ever,

00:17:27   Apple has just embraced, it's huge.

00:17:29   Like, you wanted a huge phone, and there is none more huge.

00:17:35   So the phrase that has kept popping into my head --

00:17:40   so I do have the Gold Pro Max.

00:17:44   This is the ultimate iPhone.

00:17:47   I'm not saying that my iPhone is better than yours,

00:17:51   but, like, this iPhone, it is everything an iPhone

00:17:54   has ever had and more of it.

00:17:56   It feels like the most iPhone there has ever been.

00:18:01   So ever since the original iPhone,

00:18:05   I have always been the kind of person to plan and save money

00:18:09   to make sure I buy the new phone every year,

00:18:11   like so many of our listeners, right?

00:18:14   Because I want the new phone.

00:18:15   I always want the new phone.

00:18:17   If I was living a completely different life

00:18:20   where I was not a technology podcaster as a living,

00:18:25   I would still get the new iPhone every year

00:18:27   because it's what I did before, right?

00:18:29   This is just one of the ways that I chose to spend money

00:18:32   in my life to either buy it or be on some kind of phone contract

00:18:36   that would make sure that I get it.

00:18:37   You know, like, I would probably be on the iPhone upgrade program.

00:18:40   That's probably what I would have chosen to do.

00:18:44   So for me, this phone, if it had nothing but the new design,

00:18:51   I would be completely happy.

00:18:53   The new design is, in my opinion,

00:18:57   the very best thing about this phone.

00:19:00   And I think that that might be the same for the whole line.

00:19:03   It's kind of strange because I feel like for the last few weeks,

00:19:08   I have overlooked it, the new design,

00:19:11   because it was an inevitability.

00:19:13   We all knew it was going to be the case,

00:19:15   that it was going to have these flat sides.

00:19:17   And I kind of just didn't really think about it.

00:19:20   I heard a bunch of people say, you know, like, you've said it.

00:19:22   I heard every review that I've listened to said it's like,

00:19:25   it changes the way that it feels to hold.

00:19:27   Some people like it, some people don't.

00:19:30   But for me, I absolutely adore it.

00:19:34   So I think this is definitely enhanced by the fact

00:19:38   that I have the flashiest one, which is the gold one.

00:19:41   So I feel like I am visually more aware of it.

00:19:45   Like, if I look at my phone face on,

00:19:48   I still see a hint of gold around the edge.

00:19:51   And I feel like maybe on some of the other phones,

00:19:54   especially the darker ones,

00:19:55   you maybe wouldn't see that so much,

00:19:57   but I can always see a glimpse of the gold.

00:20:00   - Oh yeah, it's there.

00:20:02   Like, I'm looking at this one and it's that same thing,

00:20:04   which is when you're looking at it from the front,

00:20:06   there is no mistaking.

00:20:07   - No.

00:20:08   - Even when it's just in your hand

00:20:10   and you're looking at the screen,

00:20:11   there's no mistaking that it's gold.

00:20:13   - And I think that it makes it not only feel great,

00:20:17   but it feels luxurious.

00:20:19   Like, honestly, I know this phone is so expensive,

00:20:22   but it feels like it's more,

00:20:24   it should be more expensive than it is.

00:20:26   This feels like a luxury product.

00:20:28   This is the kind of look that you have seen companies

00:20:32   mod phones and sell them for $10,000

00:20:36   for the last few years, right?

00:20:37   Like you'll see it on YouTube, right?

00:20:39   Like some YouTuber will get sent

00:20:40   like a 24 karat plated gold iPhone.

00:20:43   And it's like, there's 10 of them.

00:20:44   And you know, that's what this phone looks like.

00:20:47   It is your call as to whether you want that.

00:20:50   I do, right?

00:20:51   And I think that this phone is stunning,

00:20:54   but irrespective of the look,

00:20:57   this is the best feeling iPhone.

00:21:01   I absolutely love how this phone feels in my hand.

00:21:05   It feels so much more usable than some of,

00:21:09   like from a sense of being able to grip it.

00:21:11   I feel like I can hold it much easier than before.

00:21:15   And even though this phone, I know it's physically bigger,

00:21:19   it feels just as usable to me.

00:21:21   I don't feel like I'm struggling with this phone.

00:21:25   And I picked up my 11 Pro Max yesterday

00:21:27   and it felt small already, which is hilarious.

00:21:30   But I genuinely, like you said, I'm not kidding.

00:21:32   I picked it up and I thought that I picked up

00:21:34   a Dinos old 11.

00:21:35   It like took me a minute.

00:21:37   I was like, oh no, that's mine.

00:21:39   The camera bump is absolutely ginormous on this.

00:21:44   Like it is astronomically large.

00:21:48   You cannot conceive of it until you've seen it.

00:21:51   I look at it in images and it didn't register to me

00:21:55   that it was bigger, but it is so much bigger.

00:21:57   - It's bigger and deeper too, right?

00:21:59   Like it's not just that the square is big

00:22:02   and the square is big, but also the lenses

00:22:05   are protruding more from the square.

00:22:07   This is what I mean by, if you're gonna do a giant phone,

00:22:11   embrace it, just embrace it.

00:22:14   - But this to me though, is like, it's kind of proven

00:22:16   that the camera differences, they're here to stay again.

00:22:20   Because you couldn't put this on another phone.

00:22:24   It's too big.

00:22:25   So I expect they will find ways to trickle the technology

00:22:29   down once they can get it smaller.

00:22:31   But I think all it's going to mean now

00:22:33   for the foreseeable future is that the Max phone

00:22:37   will have some kind of differences

00:22:39   to the regular size phone in the camera now.

00:22:42   Because they've ripped the bandaid off

00:22:44   and it's massive.

00:22:46   And so they've given themselves the space

00:22:49   and the excuse to do new things with that.

00:22:53   So I expect that too to continue.

00:22:56   So the camera itself, this is a difficult one for me to test.

00:23:01   Because the way that I would usually test out

00:23:04   how good a camera is, is to go out into the world

00:23:07   and take lots of pictures, mostly of architecture.

00:23:09   That's how I like to test the camera.

00:23:12   This is not really something that I'm doing.

00:23:14   I've been taking some photos inside of boring things.

00:23:18   And I can see differences in sharpness, detail and color

00:23:22   with indoor photos.

00:23:24   I can see it, it's there.

00:23:27   The sharpness especially.

00:23:28   Like I take a picture of my office

00:23:31   and I can zoom in and more clearly see text, for example,

00:23:34   on certain images.

00:23:35   And that's great.

00:23:37   But there are, I think, more tangible benefits than those.

00:23:40   So the two biggest benefits that I've felt

00:23:43   with the camera system on the Pro Max,

00:23:45   one is the telephoto.

00:23:48   It's a noticeable difference, the 2.5 over the two.

00:23:51   And I like to have more zoom.

00:23:55   I hope to see Apple do something more aggressive

00:23:57   with this in the future,

00:23:59   but I'm happy to have an increased zoom.

00:24:02   But honestly, my favorite thing is the fact that,

00:24:06   and this is on both Profones, I believe,

00:24:09   it might be on all of them, I don't remember,

00:24:10   maybe you can correct me,

00:24:12   night mode on the front facing camera.

00:24:15   - Night mode on the front facing camera.

00:24:17   - I think it's on all of them.

00:24:18   I think that was part of the A14,

00:24:20   like all the phones got this.

00:24:21   - Yeah, it's the night mode portrait that's different

00:24:25   and you've got to have the LIDAR scanner for that.

00:24:27   And so it's only the pros.

00:24:28   - But night mode is on all the cameras now.

00:24:32   And night mode, just a one second night mode exposure

00:24:37   on a selfie is night and day different,

00:24:41   like unbelievably different.

00:24:43   Like I will take pictures on my old phone

00:24:46   and select the texture of my skin is just this blurred mush.

00:24:51   Right?

00:24:52   But with a one second night mode exposure,

00:24:55   there's so much more detail in selfies.

00:24:58   And so that is like, I've been testing that out a bunch.

00:25:01   It's like, that is a big difference.

00:25:03   And that kind of thing is something

00:25:05   that you won't see a lot of like,

00:25:09   hi, I'm doing my camera review for you kind of thing,

00:25:12   because it's not really exciting.

00:25:15   But those are the types of differences like that one,

00:25:18   this is a front facing camera.

00:25:19   That's gonna make a bigger difference on people

00:25:21   because people take lots of selfies.

00:25:23   And better selfies indoors is a good thing all the time.

00:25:27   And so that I saw that as like a real cool thing

00:25:31   and a big difference.

00:25:34   But look, the biggest change in the camera system

00:25:38   is the HDR video.

00:25:39   It is fantastic.

00:25:41   It looks so good.

00:25:43   And it's a combination of what the camera can do

00:25:45   and what screens can show.

00:25:46   But video on these phones just looks so gorgeous

00:25:51   because the screen is lit up so well.

00:25:54   And I think it's absolutely fantastic.

00:25:57   So the camera is an interesting one.

00:25:59   And I'm kind of keen to see how it goes.

00:26:04   I mean, everything else, you know,

00:26:06   I don't have a 5G plan,

00:26:07   I have no desire to upgrade to 5G.

00:26:10   A14 and LiDAR, I'm sure will be helpful when I need them.

00:26:14   MagSafe is not a thing that I'm using

00:26:17   because I like to use pop sockets

00:26:18   and there isn't an option there.

00:26:19   So I just have my pop socket on

00:26:21   and I can kind of get it to work,

00:26:24   but like I'm not interested.

00:26:26   I'm excited to try out the Apple Pro Raw

00:26:28   when I was 14.3 ships

00:26:30   and just see like, what can I make this camera system do?

00:26:33   But overall for me, like it is the physical attributes

00:26:37   of this phone that make it what I want.

00:26:41   It is bigger.

00:26:42   I get a little bit more detail,

00:26:43   a little bit more information on the screen, but not a lot.

00:26:45   But it is the overall design

00:26:47   and the way it feels in my hand

00:26:49   and the way it looks when I look at it.

00:26:52   This is without a doubt my favorite iPhone design

00:26:55   of all time.

00:26:57   Like hands down, it is in my opinion,

00:27:00   the best iPhone that they have made.

00:27:02   And I am talking personally,

00:27:04   specifically about this gold Pro Max.

00:27:07   I think the Pro Max is great overall,

00:27:09   but this gold one is amazing.

00:27:12   - So what you're saying is, I was right.

00:27:15   - Yep.

00:27:16   Yep, your instinct was bang on.

00:27:20   And I was worried because when you said that,

00:27:23   my expectations got set really high.

00:27:25   And so I was concerned, right?

00:27:29   That it's like, oh no, am I gonna,

00:27:31   as Jason kind of put that in my brain now,

00:27:34   but no, you were completely right.

00:27:37   I frigging love this phone.

00:27:38   It's fantastic.

00:27:40   - Yeah, it is.

00:27:41   Like, it's not for me,

00:27:43   but what it is is so,

00:27:47   you know, I've been doing this in the 20 Max for 2020 series.

00:27:53   I've been revisiting a lot of the kind of classic Max

00:27:56   from the early days of Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive.

00:27:59   And there is this thing that they say,

00:28:03   which is a product should be true to itself

00:28:07   and the elements of it should be true to itself.

00:28:08   So in the, what, the G4 iMac with a floating screen,

00:28:13   that was the example they used.

00:28:15   It's like, you want the elements to be true to themselves

00:28:17   and the product needs to live its best life, basically.

00:28:19   It needs to be what it should be, what it needs to be.

00:28:25   And looking at this phone, the 12 Pro Max,

00:28:30   makes me think that as successful as Apple was

00:28:35   with its large phones, with the Plus and then Max models,

00:28:40   that Apple was always a little embarrassed

00:28:44   about having a big phone.

00:28:46   Like, they were always like, well, it's a compromise,

00:28:49   but we'll do it because people want it.

00:28:53   And I'm not saying that those phones were bad.

00:28:55   They weren't, but I felt like Apple,

00:28:58   Apple wants everything to be smaller

00:28:59   and thinner and lighter, and they're like,

00:29:00   okay, bigger phone, like almost apologetic,

00:29:04   or like, how do we mitigate the fact

00:29:06   that this is such a big phone?

00:29:08   And when I started using this Pro Max, the 12 Pro Max,

00:29:11   I thought they have any remaining embarrassment

00:29:16   or limitation has been dropped.

00:29:22   Like, they have fully embraced that it's an enormous phone.

00:29:27   And I know that that sounds, it's almost intangible.

00:29:29   It's like, well, what makes you say that?

00:29:30   And it's like, I don't know, you kinda gotta feel it

00:29:32   and look at it.

00:29:33   Like, they leaned all the way in to making a gigantic,

00:29:37   full-featured, heavy slab of technology,

00:29:41   like as much as they could possibly.

00:29:45   And so I see where you're coming from,

00:29:48   which is if you like a large phone,

00:29:51   this is Apple giving you everything you like about it

00:29:55   to their fullest extent.

00:29:57   So it's not for everybody,

00:29:58   it doesn't have to be for everybody.

00:29:59   But if you like that kind of phone, and I know you do,

00:30:02   they really did a great job with this one.

00:30:04   It is unabashedly an enormous slab of technology,

00:30:09   and that's what it should be.

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00:32:17   All right, so now we would like to welcome back to Upgrade,

00:32:20   Tim Millet, Vice President of Platform Architecture,

00:32:23   and Tom Boger, Apple's Senior Director

00:32:25   of Mac and iPad Product Marketing, to Upgrade.

00:32:29   To help you tell their voices apart,

00:32:30   the first question is going to be answered by Tim.

00:32:33   We had the pleasure of being able to sit down

00:32:36   with Tim and Tom a few days ago

00:32:38   to have a great conversation about the new M1 Macs.

00:32:42   Here it is.

00:32:43   Gentlemen, welcome back to Upgrade again.

00:32:46   We're so happy to have you back.

00:32:47   It is great to be back.

00:32:49   So yeah, we got to speak not too long ago about the A14,

00:32:52   but now we have the first Apple Silicon for the Mac,

00:32:55   which is the M1.

00:32:56   The performance gains that we saw in the event

00:32:58   a few days ago, they feel like a real generational shift,

00:33:02   like a huge leap.

00:33:04   And I kind of wanted to know from your perspective

00:33:07   what it's been like to see the M1 chip come together

00:33:10   and how it felt when you first started to see the results

00:33:14   that you were looking for.

00:33:15   - Well, I mean, as you can imagine,

00:33:17   such a great feeling for me, but for my team

00:33:20   and for the broader Silicon development team at Apple,

00:33:22   this was a huge, huge step forward for us.

00:33:25   And we've obviously been seeing the results

00:33:29   in the lab a lot longer.

00:33:30   And so, you know, our excitement has been building

00:33:33   for yesterday for a long time.

00:33:36   And I think we couldn't be happier with how it's executed.

00:33:39   Now, that said, I think really what I have to give credit to

00:33:43   is the full broader engineering teams at Apple,

00:33:46   because we don't build chips to sell chips.

00:33:50   We build systems and we always do it

00:33:52   in an integrated collaborative way across hardware,

00:33:55   software, the industrial design teams,

00:33:57   the product design teams.

00:33:58   And so really it's a celebration from every perspective,

00:34:02   because, you know, in the end, if it comes out and works,

00:34:05   it's because every corner of Apple has participated in it.

00:34:09   - Yeah, and if I could add some color to that,

00:34:12   Tim sees this stuff a lot earlier than we do,

00:34:16   but as we got, you know, prototype systems in our hands

00:34:19   and we started working with him on the product marketing

00:34:23   side, when you first turn one of these systems on

00:34:27   and start using it, you are just blown away.

00:34:31   And you realize that, oh my gosh,

00:34:34   this is gonna be an amazing experience, you know,

00:34:38   from the how snappy and how performant the system is

00:34:43   and how fast apps launch and just everything about it

00:34:47   is incredible.

00:34:49   And then as you're using the system, you start realizing,

00:34:53   my gosh, my battery is not going down.

00:34:56   I mean, the battery life on these systems are insane.

00:34:59   And so we've been using these systems for a while now

00:35:03   and on a daily basis, we're blown away by what they can do.

00:35:07   And you start to get very excited about,

00:35:12   I can't wait to introduce this to the world.

00:35:16   And I can't wait for our customers to get these

00:35:19   in their hands because they're gonna love it.

00:35:21   - You know what happens at the end of the book

00:35:23   and everybody else has to wait.

00:35:24   - Exactly, it's a very good analogy, but we have to,

00:35:27   you know, we have to bite our tongue and wait for our moment

00:35:30   and tell the world all about it.

00:35:33   And then it's really interesting because you,

00:35:37   you know, you keep things under wraps

00:35:39   and you keep things a secret.

00:35:40   And then in an instant, the whole world knows

00:35:43   what you've known and you just feel the excitement

00:35:46   and you get, you know, the text messages

00:35:48   and you see the posting on Twitter and everything.

00:35:52   And it's just incredibly exciting for us.

00:35:54   And, you know, it was such a big moment on Tuesday

00:35:58   for what we announced and it was a huge day for the Mac

00:36:03   and a huge day for Apple.

00:36:05   - So now on the Mac, we are all going to have to change

00:36:09   the way we think of describing Macs and what's in a Mac.

00:36:13   And I'm thinking in particular of how we're so used

00:36:16   to seeing specs when we're looking at Macs about, you know,

00:36:20   it's got the i3 or the i5 or the i7,

00:36:23   or it's got a particular gigahertz clock speed

00:36:27   that's attached to it and all of that.

00:36:28   And one of the things that I think is notable

00:36:31   about the announcement is we got the M1

00:36:35   and that's the story is it's the M1 with a slight variation

00:36:39   on the low end MacBook Air having seven GPU cores

00:36:41   instead of eight, otherwise this is the M1.

00:36:44   So I wanted to ask you directly,

00:36:46   is there truly just one M1?

00:36:49   And if we see speed differences across these systems,

00:36:53   is that mostly due to the thermal envelope,

00:36:56   just as we saw some speed differences between the iPad Air

00:36:59   and the iPhone with the A14?

00:37:02   Yes, there is one M1, that chip.

00:37:06   As you mentioned, there is a variant to it on the MacBook Air

00:37:09   where the 999 config of MacBook Air starts

00:37:12   with a seven core GPU and the 1249 configuration

00:37:16   has an eight core GPU for even more performance.

00:37:19   But it's the same chip from the Air to the Mini to the Pro,

00:37:24   and you will see differences in performance

00:37:26   based on the thermal characteristics of the system.

00:37:29   Now in the MacBook Air, as we talked about in the keynote,

00:37:33   it is incredible the performance that the Air now has

00:37:37   with the M1 chip.

00:37:39   It's the largest generational leap in performance

00:37:42   the Air has ever gotten, three and a half times faster CPU,

00:37:47   five times faster GPU, nine times faster ML performance.

00:37:51   It is crazy how much the performance of the Air

00:37:55   has gotten with M1.

00:37:57   And it literally means that you can do things

00:37:59   you would never think of doing with a MacBook Air.

00:38:03   One of the stories I tell is,

00:38:05   I think your listeners all know

00:38:07   that we have a pro workflow team.

00:38:09   And one of the guys on our pro workflow team,

00:38:11   he's a professional photographer.

00:38:14   And he got one of the MacBook Airs with M1 in it.

00:38:18   And he said, you know what?

00:38:19   I'm gonna just try to move my entire pro workflow onto this,

00:38:23   my photography workflow.

00:38:24   And using things like Lightroom, et cetera.

00:38:28   And he was blown away.

00:38:30   He could take his whole workload, put it on an Air.

00:38:33   And he's one of those photographers that goes out

00:38:36   and shoots on location all the time.

00:38:38   And so now he's gonna bring an Air with him

00:38:41   wherever he goes.

00:38:42   And he is incredibly excited about it.

00:38:44   But when you get to the other part of the product lines,

00:38:48   like Mac mini and the 13 inch MacBook Pro,

00:38:52   they have an active cooling system.

00:38:53   So what you're gonna see is for those demanding workloads

00:38:56   that are more sustained workloads,

00:38:58   workloads that operate over time,

00:39:01   that active cooling system is gonna allow that M1

00:39:04   to just maintain that great performance indefinitely.

00:39:07   And so customers will see the difference there.

00:39:11   But it is profound how much performance

00:39:15   the M1 is bringing to these systems.

00:39:18   And I'm sure we're about to talk about it,

00:39:19   but what's even more profound

00:39:21   is the incredible power efficiency that these systems have

00:39:25   because of M1 at the same time,

00:39:27   they're getting a gigantic increase in performance.

00:39:30   - Right, one of the things that we've been talking about

00:39:33   and speculating about Apple Silicon since WWDC

00:39:36   and before that when we called it our Macs

00:39:39   is this idea of what will Apple choose?

00:39:41   Will Apple choose more performance

00:39:44   and to blow us away with the performance

00:39:46   in the first Apple Silicon Macs?

00:39:47   'Cause we knew you could do that if you wanted to.

00:39:50   And then there was this tantalizing idea that these,

00:39:54   the chips that you use in the iPhone and the iPad

00:39:56   are so well optimized for power consumption

00:40:00   because those are battery devices

00:40:03   and you wanna have good battery life.

00:40:04   And so there were a lot of conversations that were which,

00:40:07   where will Apple choose to land

00:40:10   in terms of performance and battery life?

00:40:13   And in looking at what you've rolled out here,

00:40:16   it's kind of funny.

00:40:17   It feels like the answer was both.

00:40:20   - Yeah, it's interesting to hear this question

00:40:24   because the idea of optimizing performance

00:40:27   without considering power is sort of,

00:40:29   it almost doesn't make sense to us

00:40:32   because we have been so focused

00:40:34   over so many generations of iOS products

00:40:37   where you don't get to deliver more performance

00:40:41   unless you've managed the power.

00:40:42   We think about them together.

00:40:45   You kind of heard that in some of the keynotes

00:40:47   from www.dc and in the keynote on Tuesday

00:40:51   where efficiency equals performance.

00:40:54   That's the way we think about it.

00:40:55   If you're not introducing performance in an efficient way

00:40:59   in an Apple product,

00:41:00   you're not gonna get to recognize the performance

00:41:03   because in an iPhone,

00:41:04   my team doesn't get to go talk

00:41:06   to the industrial design team to say,

00:41:07   "Hey, could you make it a little bit thicker

00:41:08   "and maybe add a fan?"

00:41:10   Because we really wanna boost the performance of the machine.

00:41:12   So instead, what we do is we focus obsessively

00:41:15   on moving the performance up

00:41:17   and locking in on that power target.

00:41:19   And for M1, the beautiful thing

00:41:23   about an active cooling system

00:41:25   is not that we built a bigger power burning chip,

00:41:28   it's that we always build some margin into the chips

00:41:33   to make sure that we can get the burst performance

00:41:35   on something like an iPad Pro, for example.

00:41:38   And that burst performance is huge

00:41:39   because you can do a really interesting scroll

00:41:42   or a very complex game transition.

00:41:44   And if you're doing it in a brief period of time,

00:41:46   you can sustain that, you can absorb that power.

00:41:49   But what's beautiful about the active cooling system,

00:41:51   that extra boost, that margin on top of the CPU and GPU,

00:41:54   we can sustain it now.

00:41:56   We can actually, for pro-like workloads,

00:41:58   you can run at that performance level for a lot longer.

00:42:01   And so that's super exciting.

00:42:02   - Would it be fair to say that the discipline

00:42:04   that you had to exercise in building chips for a phone

00:42:09   is sort of what has led to this philosophy?

00:42:11   That you were in a limited space with limited battery,

00:42:15   you needed to be as efficient as possible in that context.

00:42:17   - Absolutely.

00:42:19   Like I said, we didn't have an option.

00:42:21   And so our focus on delivering increased performance

00:42:24   for user experience,

00:42:25   'cause that's what it's all about at Apple.

00:42:26   It's not about selling chips,

00:42:27   it's about participating in the delivery

00:42:30   of this amazing product and the amazing experience.

00:42:32   Well, our part, we deliver the performance

00:42:34   that software needs to deliver the experience

00:42:36   that our HI team wants to deliver.

00:42:39   And so for us, the only way,

00:42:41   it's really in the end, it's those constraints.

00:42:44   It's the thermal constraints and the power constraints

00:42:46   that led to the invention,

00:42:49   the methodologies that have led us to this point,

00:42:52   because it wasn't that we didn't want

00:42:54   to increase performance every generation.

00:42:56   It's just that we had to do it

00:42:57   with that one hand tied behind our back.

00:42:59   And so, okay, that's fine.

00:43:00   We're gonna get really good at designing these chips

00:43:03   within those constraints.

00:43:05   And frankly, I think great designs

00:43:08   come from those kinds of constraints.

00:43:10   And I think that's really, really what led us to,

00:43:13   the culmination where we were able

00:43:14   to deliver our first SoC into the Mac.

00:43:17   - And as we said in the keynote,

00:43:19   M1 was specifically designed for our most popular

00:43:24   and affordable systems where power efficiency

00:43:27   is incredibly important, right?

00:43:29   And so M1 going into the MacBook Air,

00:43:34   13 inch MacBook Pro and Mac Mini,

00:43:35   those were conceived from the beginning.

00:43:38   And so to Tim's point, they're perfectly matched

00:43:42   in terms of providing this tremendous increase

00:43:45   in performance while at the same time,

00:43:47   giving our customers ridiculously good battery life.

00:43:51   - While we're talking about performance and efficiency,

00:43:54   you have four cores of each of those things in this.

00:43:57   This is a new thing for Mac users to experience.

00:43:59   We've had multi-core computers for a long time,

00:44:02   but what we haven't had is the balance

00:44:04   that's been in existence on the iOS side for a while now

00:44:08   of cores that are focused on performance

00:44:10   and cores that are focused on efficiency.

00:44:12   Just as the system has to arbitrate what goes on what core,

00:44:16   and that's been true for a long time,

00:44:18   these systems have to arbitrate sort of what goes where

00:44:21   in terms of performance and efficiency.

00:44:24   How does that work?

00:44:26   And is there a way for individual apps

00:44:30   or individual user preferences or anything to influence

00:44:34   what gets prioritized?

00:44:35   Or is it more that the system handles it

00:44:37   and it's a black box?

00:44:38   - Yes and yes.

00:44:40   - Okay.

00:44:43   - The efficiency cores have been a part of the story

00:44:45   for iOS, like you said, for many years.

00:44:47   And part of my group and the architecture team

00:44:51   is to build part of that power controller.

00:44:54   You hear about the power management controller

00:44:56   that works very tightly with the operating system scheduler

00:45:01   to try to figure out what to place where

00:45:03   and how to make decisions about that.

00:45:05   It is a new domain for the Mac

00:45:06   and it's gonna be an interesting experience

00:45:09   to see developers get their heads around what it means.

00:45:12   We think for multi-threaded workloads,

00:45:14   it's gonna look like an extension of the high performance

00:45:19   that we're getting from our performance cores,

00:45:21   just like it does, for example, on our iPad Pros.

00:45:24   I think in other cases, we have more control

00:45:28   over background tasks that the operating system can schedule

00:45:31   and we can constrain them and say,

00:45:32   "Hey, we can make choices about where we place these things

00:45:36   because we think this would be a more appropriate thread

00:45:38   to run on an E-core if we're in control of it."

00:45:41   Ultimately though, I think we do try to figure out

00:45:44   how to just treat those cores

00:45:45   as just part of the scheduling targets.

00:45:48   It's giving us that additional performance and efficiency

00:45:52   in the background when it's necessary.

00:45:54   And we find that we try to drive as much as possible

00:45:57   down into the E-cores.

00:45:59   I mean, that's sort of the philosophy.

00:46:00   If you can run something on the E-core, why not?

00:46:01   Because it's gonna end up, on average,

00:46:04   giving you a better, efficient story.

00:46:06   And frankly, these are not to be trifled with.

00:46:08   These E-cores are, I think there was a comment,

00:46:11   if you turned off the P-cores and just ran the E-cores,

00:46:13   you'd still have an amazing experience.

00:46:15   - Yeah, but what we said in the keynote was, on their own,

00:46:18   the four efficiency cores is providing the performance

00:46:22   equivalent to the dual-core,

00:46:25   previous generation dual-core Mac with GARE.

00:46:27   - That was easily my favorite stat.

00:46:28   Like, I felt like I was having to bring myself

00:46:33   back to Composure again, 'cause it was like, wait a second.

00:46:35   (laughing)

00:46:36   Is that what they said?

00:46:37   Yeah, that was the thing, I think, that really,

00:46:40   like 2x, 3x, 5x, they sound great, right?

00:46:43   But that was really something where it was a great statistic

00:46:47   for contextualizing, just the sheer power of these chips.

00:46:51   I thought that was super cool.

00:46:53   So we asked for some questions from our audience,

00:46:55   and we got lots of questions

00:46:58   about the new unified memory architecture.

00:47:01   So I wanted to dig into that a little bit.

00:47:03   We're all used to RAM and, more recently, video RAM,

00:47:08   and that becoming a thing that people think about

00:47:10   in the products that they may or may not purchase.

00:47:13   Does the new system, the M1,

00:47:15   does it change how we should think about RAM,

00:47:18   RAM amounts, and what they're capable of?

00:47:20   - Yeah, I love this question.

00:47:22   As you can imagine, we've been, for the iOS computers,

00:47:25   we've been living in this unified memory world

00:47:26   from the beginning.

00:47:28   And the challenge and opportunity of a unified memory system

00:47:32   is we need to make sure the graphics system, the GPU,

00:47:36   has the bandwidth it needs to really demonstrate its strength.

00:47:40   In a lot of ways, the bandwidth from the main memory system

00:47:43   is the fuel that allows the GPU to do its work,

00:47:46   and we build them in balance.

00:47:47   We make sure that the great eight-core GPU inside M1

00:47:52   is balanced with the bandwidth it needs to be great.

00:47:55   Those go hand in hand.

00:47:57   We also appreciate CPUs.

00:47:59   We need to make sure the memory system has the capacity

00:48:02   to make a reasonable platform.

00:48:04   And I think the 16-gigabyte capacity that we get out of M1

00:48:08   is a really great solution for the broad set

00:48:12   of the MacBook Airs, the MacBook Pro 13,

00:48:15   and the Mac Mini that we released.

00:48:16   But what unified memory does, and the opportunity really,

00:48:20   is that if you were a developer who was ever frustrated

00:48:23   by the fact that the memory system the CPU had access to

00:48:26   was relatively low bandwidth and was limiting

00:48:28   your multi-threaded performance,

00:48:30   well, a unified memory system gives you the bandwidth

00:48:33   of a GPU, but it's available to the CPU.

00:48:36   And if you were ever a GPU developer

00:48:38   and you were always frustrated by the capacity

00:48:40   that you ever got out of a video RAM,

00:48:42   because they tended to be high bandwidth

00:48:45   but relatively low capacity

00:48:46   compared to the main memory system,

00:48:48   well, all of a sudden, you got the capacity

00:48:49   of the main memory system at the bandwidth that the GPU needs.

00:48:53   That by itself is super interesting,

00:48:55   because now developers don't have to choose.

00:48:57   But the third dividend is, from a performance perspective,

00:49:00   if you're a developer that's using both engines

00:49:03   and you have a mixed workload,

00:49:04   then you're trying to move frame buffers back and forth

00:49:06   between CPU and GPU, you're kind of constrained,

00:49:09   both in performance and copying the data back and forth,

00:49:12   and in the extra energy it takes

00:49:14   to copy the data back and forth.

00:49:15   So it's a double whammy in a constrained platform.

00:49:19   So unified memory is, in a lot of ways, a developer's dream.

00:49:23   - This is super interesting.

00:49:25   It's also, it's complicated because it is challenging

00:49:30   something that I feel like I've known about

00:49:32   for as long as I've known about computers, right?

00:49:34   Which is like what memory is and how we think about it.

00:49:38   But it does seem, I mean, like with the way

00:49:40   that you explain it, it seems incredibly interesting.

00:49:44   And I guess, you know, like something that,

00:49:46   you mentioned iOS devices, you know,

00:49:48   like iOS devices have long outperformed,

00:49:52   like Android devices that claim huge amounts of RAM in them.

00:49:55   I imagine it's a similar idea, right?

00:49:58   Which is, I think it was Craig in the presentation

00:50:00   who mentioned the line about like the software

00:50:02   and hardware working together

00:50:04   and how that's Apple's greatest strength.

00:50:06   And it seems like that the M1 is really allowing that

00:50:09   better than ever for the Mac.

00:50:10   And I guess this is one of those things, right,

00:50:12   that comes out of that.

00:50:13   - Absolutely. I think the Metal,

00:50:15   the software team that does the Metal API frameworks

00:50:19   and the drivers for the GPU,

00:50:21   this is, again, we've been working in concert

00:50:24   with those same, that team really from the beginning

00:50:27   in the iOS chips and the transition into M1

00:50:31   has really just been a long dream come true

00:50:34   for both our teams.

00:50:36   And we think developers are gonna love it.

00:50:38   - Yeah, one of the very important points

00:50:41   that was made in the keynote is,

00:50:43   and Craig made this point,

00:50:45   is this is the first time where we've been able

00:50:48   to optimize macOS for our own silicon, right?

00:50:53   And we also talked about the fact that

00:50:55   as we've been designing M1,

00:50:58   we've been analyzing and running workloads from macOS

00:51:02   so it can inform the design.

00:51:04   And so this unified memory architecture

00:51:07   is a perfect example of the synergy of that.

00:51:10   So Craig mentioned the fact that,

00:51:12   first of all, we use similar data types in Big Sur

00:51:16   to make sure that we're not doing expensive copying

00:51:20   and translation of the data.

00:51:22   And also we can make more memory available to apps

00:51:27   for graphics so that they can run at incredible speeds.

00:51:32   So this ability, the strategic advantage we have

00:51:37   of designing and building our own hardware

00:51:40   and integrating it with our software

00:51:43   really, really shines now that we have brought

00:51:46   our own silicon architecture to the Mac.

00:51:49   - Follow up for that, listener Zach asked,

00:51:52   Craig Federighi mentioned that some apps

00:51:54   will perform better on the M1,

00:51:57   even though they're Intel apps running under Rosetta 2,

00:52:01   which is the translation engine,

00:52:03   better than they do natively on Intel machines.

00:52:07   Now you've mentioned the metal team.

00:52:10   I think that that's what's going on here,

00:52:11   but could you talk a little bit about how it's possible

00:52:14   that you're gonna have scenarios where software

00:52:17   not written for this platform,

00:52:21   at least the chip architecture,

00:52:22   is actually gonna outperform on it?

00:52:25   - Absolutely, so one of the great stories of the Mac

00:52:28   and Apple software in general is that we develop

00:52:30   these rich set of frameworks

00:52:32   for application developers to leverage.

00:52:34   So if you're thinking about a typical application

00:52:37   that, especially something that's using metal,

00:52:40   well, metal is actually,

00:52:42   if they're calling into the metal framework,

00:52:44   that is native code.

00:52:46   Though their application might be an Intel native code base,

00:52:49   when they make that framework call,

00:52:51   it calls into the operating system

00:52:53   and it's taken over by the native metal code.

00:52:56   Now, if it's a metal app, it's probably using the GPU.

00:52:59   It doesn't take much time spent on a 5X faster GPU

00:53:03   for you to accelerate an application

00:53:05   that's depending on GPU performance.

00:53:07   So there's another explanation for why.

00:53:10   Though on the surface, it might seem surprising.

00:53:12   You can kind of get your head around,

00:53:14   ah, I see how this is happening.

00:53:16   And the third, just to be clear,

00:53:19   Rosetta 2 is really something special.

00:53:22   This is a tool that we developed starting in my group,

00:53:27   just at the same time we started thinking

00:53:29   about this transition, just to make sure.

00:53:31   And we developed really, really something special

00:53:34   from a translation perspective.

00:53:35   It shares the name with Rosetta 1.

00:53:37   It's a complete rewrite from scratch,

00:53:40   focused on this transition,

00:53:42   and we couldn't be happier with how well it's performing.

00:53:44   So it's quite good,

00:53:46   even for code that isn't running through the frameworks.

00:53:50   - When it comes to apps on M1, along with Big Sur,

00:53:54   one of the things that I'm really excited about

00:53:57   is iOS apps running on the Mac.

00:54:00   Kind of wanted to get a little bit of discussion about that.

00:54:03   Like, how are these apps running?

00:54:06   What kind of experience can people see?

00:54:09   I just wanted to kind of get your feelings

00:54:10   on that a little bit,

00:54:11   'cause I know it's something that I, many of our listeners,

00:54:14   are really excited to try out.

00:54:15   - Yeah, this is one of the great features

00:54:18   that every Mac with M1 will get,

00:54:21   and that's the ability to run unmodified iPhone

00:54:25   and iPad apps, right?

00:54:27   So this is the great benefit

00:54:29   of having this scalable architecture

00:54:32   that we bring over from our iOS devices to the Mac.

00:54:35   And so customers will be able to simply

00:54:38   go to the Mac App Store and search for their favorite app.

00:54:43   And if the developer has agreed

00:54:47   to let it be available on the Mac App Store,

00:54:49   they just download it and it runs, and away they go.

00:54:52   And so it is gonna open up hundreds of thousands of apps

00:54:57   to our Mac users on day one.

00:55:01   And it means that a Mac with M1

00:55:05   is gonna be able to run a wider variety of software

00:55:09   than any Mac ever.

00:55:11   - I think the translation of some of these apps

00:55:13   into the Mac, if you needed the gyro,

00:55:16   obviously there's gonna be certain applications

00:55:17   that we didn't add a bunch of stuff to the Mac,

00:55:20   as far as I know, to make it something

00:55:23   you could pick up and turn.

00:55:25   They've really done a nice job

00:55:26   in doing the translation of the touch UI,

00:55:27   and I think a lot of the great work we've done on iPad

00:55:30   in the last few years has really helped make that

00:55:33   even better.

00:55:34   - Got a couple of questions from listeners

00:55:36   who are concerned about changes to the platform

00:55:39   going into the new Apple Silicon era.

00:55:42   Listener Ben wanted to know about if there is any support

00:55:46   or plan for it for virtualizing Windows

00:55:49   on Apple Silicon Macs.

00:55:51   And Leighton wanted to know about support for eGPUs,

00:55:56   external GPUs, because that doesn't seem to be supported

00:55:58   in this first round at least.

00:56:00   Things that Mac users are maybe used to

00:56:02   from previous generations, what's the status of these?

00:56:06   - Virtualization technology is built in M1,

00:56:09   and we've been working closely with Parallels

00:56:13   so that they could bring the ability to Mac users

00:56:17   to run other environments like Linux and Docker.

00:56:20   And so that's one of the foundational features of M1

00:56:24   is virtualization.

00:56:26   In terms of Windows, nothing's been announced

00:56:29   at this point.

00:56:30   And in terms of eGPUs, eGPUs are not supported

00:56:35   on systems with M1.

00:56:37   Keep in mind that the systems with M1

00:56:40   are getting a massive, massive increase in performance

00:56:45   from the incredible GPU that we have in M1.

00:56:49   5x faster on Air, 5x faster on the 13-inch Pro,

00:56:54   and 6x faster on Mac Mini.

00:56:56   And so we think our customers who are using those products

00:57:01   are gonna see phenomenal graphics performance

00:57:05   on those systems.

00:57:05   - We're all using video conferencing more and more and more.

00:57:10   So one of the things that everybody cares about

00:57:12   maybe more now than they ever have is their webcam.

00:57:16   It doesn't appear that there was any change

00:57:18   to the webcam itself, but there was talk in the presentation

00:57:22   about some additional work that's been done.

00:57:25   What kind of improvements do the laptops see?

00:57:28   And is there kind of any reason for the time being

00:57:31   why there's been no change to the actual camera hardware?

00:57:34   - So the 13-inch MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air

00:57:38   do have 720p cameras.

00:57:39   However, the ISP in the M1 chip

00:57:44   does a phenomenal job increasing the quality

00:57:49   of the video experience from those cameras.

00:57:52   Our users are gonna see a noticeable difference.

00:57:55   It brings auto white balance and greater dynamic range

00:57:58   and face detection and other things that you're gonna see.

00:58:03   The camera's quality on these systems really look great.

00:58:07   And on the MacBook Air, we even made some changes

00:58:12   to the display itself to allow more light

00:58:17   to get to the sensor in the camera.

00:58:20   So we think our customers are gonna be really delighted

00:58:24   with the camera quality in these new systems.

00:58:28   - Yeah, I think that Tom strikes that point.

00:58:30   I think the ability for us to leverage all the work

00:58:34   we're doing on the camera software for the ISP

00:58:38   and our iOS products is now finally coming to the Mac

00:58:40   in full force.

00:58:42   This is just gonna create the foundation

00:58:45   on which we're gonna make it even better.

00:58:46   But I think the M1 systems are already gonna see

00:58:49   a huge uplift from that.

00:58:50   - So this is obviously step one was said in the event.

00:58:54   Step one of a, Apple has a two year process.

00:58:58   This is the first set of products, the first processor.

00:59:01   There's a lot of runway here.

00:59:03   What are you most excited about when you think about

00:59:06   what Apple Silicon and the M1 and future,

00:59:10   the future path this is setting us on

00:59:13   is gonna bring to the Mac?

00:59:14   What makes you excited when you're thinking about

00:59:16   the world we're just entering right now,

00:59:18   which is the Apple Silicon Mac world?

00:59:21   What excites you about that?

00:59:23   - So from the beginning, and we've talked about this

00:59:27   relentlessly over the number of years.

00:59:29   At Apple, we're all about the user experience, right?

00:59:33   And that's what's most important to us.

00:59:36   And with the advent of Apple Silicon,

00:59:39   and in this case, M1 in the Mac,

00:59:42   the user experience that our customers are gonna have

00:59:45   is what we're incredibly excited about.

00:59:48   As I mentioned earlier, you're gonna,

00:59:51   first of all, you're gonna open,

00:59:52   if you have one of the notebooks,

00:59:53   you're gonna open it and you're gonna get instant wake.

00:59:56   It's like, wow, just like my iPhone, just like my iPad,

00:59:59   boom, it's ready.

01:00:00   And then you're gonna start noticing how incredibly snappy

01:00:05   and fast and fluid it is.

01:00:07   You're gonna launch an app and bam, it's there.

01:00:10   And bam, it's there.

01:00:11   You're gonna open large apps like Final Cut Pro,

01:00:15   and it's gonna open like instantaneously,

01:00:17   and you're gonna be blown away.

01:00:18   You're gonna say to yourself, did that really just happen?

01:00:20   I'm gonna quit it again and I'm gonna launch it again.

01:00:24   And you're gonna be able to do things on these Macs

01:00:26   that you've never even thought you could do before

01:00:29   on an Air, on a Mini, on a 13-inch MacBook Pro.

01:00:32   So you're gonna be blown away with the performance.

01:00:34   And then you may use a feature in an app like Pixelmator

01:00:39   where you can sharpen the resolution of a photo

01:00:43   and the neural engine's gonna kick in and bam,

01:00:46   it's gonna happen so fast

01:00:47   and you're gonna be blown away about how fast that is.

01:00:51   And this whole time as you're using your Mac,

01:00:55   it's the Mac that you know and love,

01:00:56   but there's so much better in every way.

01:00:59   And the whole time you're using it and experiencing it,

01:01:02   you're gonna be just so delighted by that.

01:01:05   And then at some point you're gonna look up

01:01:06   to the upper right and you're gonna look

01:01:07   at your battery indicator.

01:01:09   And you're gonna go, is something wrong?

01:01:12   I've been using this system for a couple hours now

01:01:14   and my battery hasn't really even ticked down.

01:01:18   And then each day you're gonna be blown away with,

01:01:21   I can't believe I just did that.

01:01:23   And I can't believe how much battery life

01:01:25   I have this system has.

01:01:27   And it's almost like discovering your Mac all over again.

01:01:31   It really is.

01:01:33   And that's what I can't wait for customers

01:01:36   to get these products in their hands

01:01:38   because they're just gonna be blown away.

01:01:40   - I couldn't agree more.

01:01:42   And the other shout out I would make,

01:01:45   and we talked a little bit about this in the last time

01:01:47   where my brother sort of sent in that trick question.

01:01:49   My brother and I were hackers on the Apple II early.

01:01:53   There was that TRS-82 weeks, but we put that behind us.

01:01:57   But the exciting part for me as a person

01:01:59   who's been building into this iOS

01:02:01   and just the surprise and delight

01:02:02   we've been able to deliver is,

01:02:04   well, now we're able to expose some of the cool stuff

01:02:06   we're doing to the tinkerers, the hackers,

01:02:08   the Mac is this great platform for people

01:02:12   who are scientists and students and developers

01:02:15   who really just wanna understand

01:02:16   what's going on underneath the hood.

01:02:18   And now they're gonna get access to our neural engine

01:02:20   and they're gonna be able to do really, really cool,

01:02:23   interesting things on that platform

01:02:25   in ways that are beyond the amazing things

01:02:28   they're doing on the iOS products.

01:02:30   They're gonna be able to learn and explore.

01:02:33   And that's one of the other big differences

01:02:35   that the Mac has always played for Apple and for the world

01:02:40   is this really great hobbyist spirit is there.

01:02:43   And now we're gonna be able to expose

01:02:44   some of this cool stuff to them as well.

01:02:46   - I'll give you another example of what this means,

01:02:51   kind of a more personal example.

01:02:53   I can still remember to this day,

01:02:55   and it was a long, long time ago when I got my first Mac.

01:02:59   And I took it up to my room.

01:03:02   I was much, much younger than I am today.

01:03:04   And I opened it up and I was so blown away by it,

01:03:08   I literally pulled an all-nighter

01:03:10   and used it till the next morning.

01:03:12   And that feeling that you get

01:03:14   when you first experienced in that.

01:03:16   And with these Macs with M1, it's the same feeling, right?

01:03:21   It's like, oh my gosh, this is incredible.

01:03:24   I love this thing.

01:03:25   And I'm just so looking forward to people

01:03:29   to get it in their hands

01:03:31   because they're gonna have the same feeling.

01:03:33   And that's what's so exciting.

01:03:35   - I know that I speak for so many people,

01:03:39   our entire audience to say,

01:03:40   this is a very exciting thing.

01:03:42   And we have an audience of people

01:03:45   that are diehard Mac users.

01:03:47   And this really feels like something super exciting and new.

01:03:52   So we're really excited to see it.

01:03:55   Can't wait until we can start using them.

01:03:57   And I wanna thank you both for the work that you've done

01:04:01   in making this happen and also for coming on the show today

01:04:03   to share some of these stories of our audience.

01:04:06   Thank you so much guys.

01:04:07   - Well, this is why we do what we do.

01:04:10   It is just making our users' lives better

01:04:15   and just giving them that delight

01:04:18   when they use our products.

01:04:19   And that's why we do what we do and we work so hard.

01:04:21   And we just hope that they love these systems

01:04:26   as much as we do and we're very confident they will.

01:04:29   - Yeah, and thank you for the opportunity

01:04:31   to come in and talk about it.

01:04:33   - My favorite subject.

01:04:34   - Anytime.

01:04:35   - To paraphrase Apple, we can't wait to see

01:04:37   what you will do next so that you can come back here

01:04:40   and talk about that too.

01:04:41   - Okay, we'll make this a regular thing.

01:04:43   All right.

01:04:44   Yep, great talking to you guys again.

01:04:46   - This episode is brought to you by Pingdom from SolarWinds.

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01:06:23   Jason Snell, you have all the Macs.

01:06:25   - I have all the Macs.

01:06:28   I've had them for a while.

01:06:30   I just, not to lord it over everybody,

01:06:31   but for the last kind of week,

01:06:34   I've had a MacBook Air, a MacBook Pro,

01:06:36   and a Mac Mini surrounding me running M1 chips.

01:06:39   I got all the M1 chips everywhere.

01:06:42   - You did send me an iMessage

01:06:45   with just a picture of a huge box.

01:06:48   - Oh God. - I was like, oh man.

01:06:50   So jealous.

01:06:51   So let's review these things.

01:06:53   Let's talk about them.

01:06:54   I wanna get probably the most boring part out of the way

01:06:57   first, which is just to talk about the hardware real quick,

01:07:00   and then we'll dig into what's inside of these machines.

01:07:03   Do you have any real thoughts on the hardware?

01:07:06   I mean, I know they haven't really changed anything,

01:07:10   but what are your kind of thoughts

01:07:12   about the way these things look,

01:07:13   the ports that they have, that kind of stuff?

01:07:17   - Well, I feel like it is, you could call them boring

01:07:20   or you could call it reassuring and familiar.

01:07:23   And I think that's what Apple is going for, right?

01:07:27   They want to reassure everyone that these are just Macs.

01:07:31   And so the MacBook Air looks like a MacBook Air,

01:07:36   couldn't tell it apart.

01:07:37   The MacBook Pro looks like a MacBook Pro,

01:07:38   couldn't tell it apart.

01:07:39   The only way you can tell the Mac Mini apart is

01:07:41   it's silver and not space gray,

01:07:43   and it only has two instead of four Thunderbolt ports on it.

01:07:46   But the laptops are just, they're the same,

01:07:50   and that's on purpose, right?

01:07:52   Apple has decided with this round

01:07:54   not to try and reinvent the personal computer

01:07:58   on the outside anyway.

01:08:00   And I think Apple's goal is that if somebody were

01:08:04   to make an Apple Store order or in parts of the world

01:08:09   where they could do this, go into an Apple Store

01:08:12   and buy a MacBook Air before Christmas,

01:08:15   bring it home, that they would basically not notice

01:08:20   that it was using a new chip architecture,

01:08:22   that most people don't care.

01:08:24   All they should really care about is the speed

01:08:26   and the battery life, really.

01:08:29   And even then they probably don't care about speed as much,

01:08:32   which means they'll just notice

01:08:33   that the battery lasts longer.

01:08:35   And I think that's the goal, is like, it's just a Mac,

01:08:37   but it is better, and otherwise it's exactly the same.

01:08:40   So in that way, it's not much of a story.

01:08:45   Writing a review about these products is fascinating

01:08:47   because they mean a lot, and yet a lot of the things

01:08:49   that normally are interesting and different

01:08:51   about new computers are not interesting

01:08:54   or different about these.

01:08:56   It's clear that the M1 is constrained.

01:09:01   It is, you know, we'll get into the details

01:09:04   of how fast they are, but they are low-end chips.

01:09:09   These are low-end models with a low-end chip in them.

01:09:13   And the first Apple Silicon chip we're seeing is the M1.

01:09:17   It is the slowest M1, the slowest Apple Silicon chip ever.

01:09:21   To ever be made in a Mac, right?

01:09:24   Ever.

01:09:25   It will very rapidly be outpaced by other chips.

01:09:28   There's no doubt about it, right?

01:09:31   And this is how they've chosen to go out.

01:09:33   What gets confusing is, in some ways,

01:09:36   these are the fastest Macs ever, with a few exceptions.

01:09:40   And so it gets really confusing.

01:09:43   It's like, well, they're so limited, but they're so fast.

01:09:46   And the answer is, well, yes,

01:09:47   the next ones will be even faster.

01:09:50   But this is the new floor.

01:09:53   And so they are constrained.

01:09:54   It's eight or 16 gigs of RAM.

01:09:56   Like, clearly, this chip can't do more than that.

01:09:59   It can't do more than two Thunderbolt ports.

01:10:02   It's got two full-channel, full-speed Thunderbolt ports

01:10:05   that it can do, and that's it.

01:10:07   And then the Mac Mini, they're using another means

01:10:11   to do HDMI out and two USB-A on top of it.

01:10:15   But it's limited in that way.

01:10:18   It'll only support two displays.

01:10:19   So on the Mac Mini, you can do two external displays,

01:10:22   and on the laptops, you can do one external display,

01:10:24   and then the laptop display.

01:10:25   Like, that's just, it's how they're built.

01:10:28   So in all those ways, it's funny, 'cause they're familiar,

01:10:33   they're low-end, but they feel high-end

01:10:36   when you put them in the context of Intel Macs.

01:10:39   They're limited because these are the first models out,

01:10:41   and presumably, they can handle these limitations

01:10:45   and the future computers and future Apple Silicon processors

01:10:48   won't have those limitations.

01:10:50   And then the other funny thing about them just in general

01:10:52   is that they are all the same.

01:10:53   They're not only the same compared to the look and feel

01:10:57   of the previous models, but they're the same

01:10:58   with each other.

01:10:59   Like, performance-wise, they really don't differ that much.

01:11:02   These are kind of the same computer

01:11:04   in a few different wrappers.

01:11:06   - Yeah, it's kind of funny, really, right,

01:11:10   that this high-end, low-end in the same product

01:11:14   is such a strange thing.

01:11:16   It's like, these are all the most basic Macs that Apple make,

01:11:20   but they are absolutely unbelievably powerful.

01:11:26   - Yeah. - Right, and that mixture

01:11:28   is so strange, and that's kind of like the,

01:11:32   I guess, the story behind these Macs, right?

01:11:36   - Yeah, yeah, it is, Apple had to do it one way or another,

01:11:40   and this is the way that they chose to do it.

01:11:41   I think it makes sense.

01:11:42   The first Apple Silicon Mac chip out the door, the M1,

01:11:47   is, you know, it's kind of a baby step in a way.

01:11:50   It really is, I think, based on everything we know,

01:11:54   the equivalent of the A14X, right?

01:11:59   It's the A12X and Z are the chip used in the iPad Pros.

01:12:05   And as far as we can tell, this is sort of the descendant

01:12:10   of that two chip generations forward.

01:12:13   Obviously, Apple has done some additional work

01:12:15   knowing that this was gonna be used in Macs.

01:12:16   There are features that the Mac needs

01:12:18   that maybe an iPad doesn't need that they've rolled in here.

01:12:20   That's why they've chosen to call it the M1.

01:12:23   But if you look at it that way, look at it as kind of

01:12:27   the next generation iPad chip,

01:12:28   but with some added Mac compatibility.

01:12:31   Like, we've been saying for a couple of years now,

01:12:33   well, obviously you could use an iPad chip in a low-end Mac,

01:12:36   but what about the higher-end Macs?

01:12:37   And we can still say that,

01:12:38   'cause that's essentially where we are.

01:12:39   These are the low-end Macs.

01:12:41   And if you look at the benchmark scores

01:12:44   and all the different tests and see how fast they are,

01:12:47   it's very easy to get caught up in them and say,

01:12:51   well, these are high-end, obviously,

01:12:54   because they're so much faster than the other,

01:12:56   like that MacBook Air is faster than all the MacBook Pros

01:12:59   that run Intel chips.

01:13:00   But it's still a low-end, still MacBook Air, right?

01:13:03   It's still a 999 MacBook Air.

01:13:05   That doesn't change.

01:13:06   It's just that we're in a chip transition for two years

01:13:08   and they've started at the low end.

01:13:11   And that's exciting,

01:13:13   'cause imagine where they go from here, they go up.

01:13:16   But also it's frustrating, I get it,

01:13:20   because we're looking at this new generation

01:13:24   and being like, oh, it's only two Thunderbolt ports,

01:13:27   oh, it's only 16 gigs of RAM and all those things,

01:13:30   or memory, if you wanna call it memory,

01:13:31   since the memory is all shared now.

01:13:32   - Unified memory.

01:13:34   - Unified memory, although we'll see how they approach that

01:13:36   going forward, if it's all unified memory

01:13:38   or if there are some configurations

01:13:39   that aren't in the future.

01:13:40   But in these systems, they kept it simple,

01:13:42   because they're the first ones

01:13:44   and they got them out the door shortly after announcing

01:13:47   that they were doing this transition.

01:13:49   I think that makes sense.

01:13:49   And any more radical changes and future steps forward

01:13:54   will have to wait for '21.

01:13:57   - Let's talk about performance

01:13:59   and let's talk about benchmarks.

01:14:01   This is not a thing that we typically

01:14:03   would pay any attention to,

01:14:06   except when there's some kind of outlier.

01:14:09   I cannot remember ever talking about a new Mac with you

01:14:13   and we've spoken about Geekbench numbers.

01:14:15   - I'm sure it's come up, I'm sure it's come up.

01:14:17   - But not with the focus that we're gonna put on it now.

01:14:21   And the reason for that is because

01:14:23   these scores are particularly outstanding.

01:14:30   So do you wanna tell me kind of what is going on?

01:14:33   We don't need numbers, but just to stack them up

01:14:36   against where they're sitting

01:14:38   with other Macs and general competition.

01:14:40   - There are a couple charts that are in my review

01:14:43   that are not, so I did the usual charts

01:14:45   with the little green bars for people who see my charts

01:14:48   on six colors, green means Mac, orange means iPad.

01:14:52   Like I have a, there's a system,

01:14:53   there's a method to my madness.

01:14:55   So there are the green bars that are like,

01:14:57   here are these three M1 computers,

01:14:59   which are almost identical.

01:15:01   The variance has to do with the variance on the computer.

01:15:04   Like if we tested them a thousand times,

01:15:06   I think that they would have exactly the same scores

01:15:09   with the exception of the GPU test on the seven core GPU

01:15:12   on the MacBook Air, which is,

01:15:14   you'll be shocked to discover one eighth slower.

01:15:18   It's like seven eighths the speed of the others.

01:15:21   Funny that the seven core is literally that much slower.

01:15:26   Like it's just, that's just what it is,

01:15:29   which means it's still way faster

01:15:32   than the other integrated Intel graphics computers

01:15:36   that Apple makes or has made.

01:15:38   But the other set of charts that I made

01:15:41   are these charts about where the M1 fits

01:15:43   in the existing sort of Mac product line.

01:15:46   And I did two of those,

01:15:48   single core and multi-core for Geekbench,

01:15:50   where I went through the Geekbench browser

01:15:52   and I found like historic scores

01:15:54   for mostly sort of shipping products

01:15:57   and then compared them to the M1 Macs.

01:15:59   And this is where it gets kind of wild,

01:16:02   but I think this also puts them in the best context,

01:16:05   which is the single core.

01:16:07   Apple, when they announced this product last week said,

01:16:11   it's the fastest core in the world, basically,

01:16:15   in a computer.

01:16:16   And the tests bear that out.

01:16:18   The single core score,

01:16:20   where you're only running one processor core,

01:16:22   is faster on the M1 than any Mac

01:16:25   that is made with an Intel chip in it.

01:16:29   Now, performance is generally,

01:16:31   on an eight core system, right?

01:16:33   Performance is not on one core,

01:16:35   it's on all the cores.

01:16:36   So this is academic in a way,

01:16:38   although there are inefficient processes

01:16:41   that only run on one core,

01:16:42   and those will run really fast on these,

01:16:44   but you wanna look at the multi-core, right?

01:16:45   Because that's where you've got a 28 core Mac Pro, right?

01:16:49   Or an 18 core iMac Pro.

01:16:50   And they're so fast

01:16:52   because they have so many processor cores to do the work.

01:16:55   And these M1 Macs have eight cores.

01:16:58   They've got the four efficiency cores

01:17:00   and the four performance cores,

01:17:01   and they can use all eight at a time if they want to.

01:17:03   And if you look at the Geekbench scores there,

01:17:06   this is, I think,

01:17:07   the most interesting thing about these computers,

01:17:09   which is they are what we thought they would be, by the way.

01:17:13   They are faster than any Mac ever made

01:17:18   in multi-core performance,

01:17:19   with the exception of the Mac Pro,

01:17:24   the current Mac Pro,

01:17:27   the iMac Pro,

01:17:29   so the Xeon processor-based multi-core Pro

01:17:32   workstation monsters, the Mac Pro and the iMac Pro.

01:17:35   And this year's i9 iMacs,

01:17:40   the high-end build-to-order configurations

01:17:43   of i9 at eight and 10 cores,

01:17:45   and last year's i9 iMac

01:17:50   with, I think, eight cores.

01:17:53   So basically, those are the only Macs that I could find

01:17:56   that actually beat the M1 Macs.

01:17:58   It's the highest end.

01:17:59   - It's basically all desktop professional Macs.

01:18:02   - Yeah, right, 'cause those high-end iMacs

01:18:04   are essentially the ones

01:18:06   that touch the iMac Pro in performance,

01:18:08   and that's literally the highest configuration,

01:18:10   and then you need to spec up the processor even higher

01:18:13   to get there, and that's it.

01:18:15   Like, everything else, every MacBook Pro,

01:18:18   every other iMac,

01:18:19   every other Mac Mini is slower at multi-core performance

01:18:25   than the M1 Macs.

01:18:26   And keep in mind, these are the low-end Macs.

01:18:30   - It's unbelievable.

01:18:32   I knew they were gonna be good.

01:18:33   - Like, if you draw the chart,

01:18:34   like I've done on "Six Colors" a couple of times,

01:18:37   sort of like plotting out A series performance

01:18:41   and A series X performance,

01:18:44   it was gonna be kinda in this ballpark,

01:18:47   but it's one thing to see that and be like,

01:18:49   "Oh, theoretically, they could do this,"

01:18:50   and it's another thing to see them land it

01:18:53   and land it where they did,

01:18:55   where a 999 MacBook Air is, for most tasks,

01:19:00   faster than any Mac ever made

01:19:02   that isn't a Mac Pro or an iMac Pro.

01:19:05   - Well, let's talk about that, though, 'cause you say,

01:19:08   it's one thing to think it,

01:19:10   it's one thing to see the benchmark scores,

01:19:15   but it's a whole other thing to see the performance

01:19:19   doing tasks that you do on a computer, right?

01:19:23   Because scores don't mean anything, right?

01:19:26   - Yes, I have no context.

01:19:28   - Exactly.

01:19:29   So what have you been able to do?

01:19:32   How has it performed, and how has it performed

01:19:35   against not only just old Macs, but the three Macs,

01:19:39   the three M1 Macs, how have they performed

01:19:41   against each other?

01:19:42   - Well, against each other, they're almost identical.

01:19:44   I mean, that's the bottom line,

01:19:46   other than the graphics part,

01:19:47   and the battery is less in the MacBook Air

01:19:51   than in the MacBook Pro, and that does show up.

01:19:53   And I did a battery test,

01:19:56   and definitely the MacBook Pro has a better battery.

01:19:59   It's pretty simple.

01:20:00   But what I tried to do is some tasks

01:20:04   that would show off this power

01:20:08   in kind of conditions you would actually do, right?

01:20:12   Because a benchmark chart isn't doing work.

01:20:15   It's trying to simulate doing work.

01:20:16   So for the 20 Macs for 2020 series,

01:20:20   I've been editing all of those in Final Cut Pro,

01:20:24   and there was a new Final Cut Pro update

01:20:27   for Apple Silicon last week that I downloaded

01:20:30   and I used to edit this week's 20 Macs for 2020 video,

01:20:34   which is from a new batch that Steven and I shot.

01:20:37   We shot our last batch of those for the top six.

01:20:40   We shot them in 4K.

01:20:42   He shot his in 4K HDR,

01:20:45   which we talked about earlier.

01:20:47   You said how great the HDR video was,

01:20:49   and I'll just say matching HDR video

01:20:52   to non-HDR video is not fun.

01:20:55   - Yeah, that's a pain.

01:20:57   I understand that the idea of the new,

01:21:00   it can be difficult to take the HDR video from iPhones

01:21:04   and edit them into non-HDR purposes,

01:21:08   but most people are not doing that.

01:21:11   - No, exactly right.

01:21:12   It's a lesson that I learned.

01:21:13   Anyway, it's 4K video that we've got,

01:21:17   and I've been editing these videos on my iMac Pro,

01:21:21   and some of them not even 4K, some of them just 1080,

01:21:24   but I think the last one I shot in 1080

01:21:27   and Steven shot in 4K, so his file was 4K,

01:21:30   and I had to make a proxy workflow

01:21:32   where I re-encoded those videos at a lower resolution

01:21:36   and edited using the lower resolution

01:21:39   because otherwise I got way too many hiccups

01:21:42   when I was editing on my iMac Pro.

01:21:44   - It just couldn't handle the file size, right?

01:21:47   - Yeah, yeah, exactly.

01:21:48   It's just like, it's a lot of data,

01:21:50   and it has to decode the video, and it was too much,

01:21:53   so I stepped down the quality, essentially.

01:21:55   So on the Mac Mini, I brought my project over,

01:22:00   and I set it to use the non-optimized,

01:22:06   full resolution files, and even the setting

01:22:09   that was a better quality instead of better performance,

01:22:12   to have the video look crystal clear while I was editing it.

01:22:16   And I never had a hiccup, not one, the whole time.

01:22:22   And that was that moment where I thought,

01:22:24   oh, this little Mac Mini that costs whatever, 699,

01:22:28   I'm not sure which configuration I have,

01:22:29   I'll have to look that up, but--

01:22:30   - Let's just say it was $750, right?

01:22:32   I just pluck a number out, yeah.

01:22:34   - Sure, it did all these things

01:22:36   that the $5,000 iMac Pro from three years ago

01:22:39   behind me couldn't handle.

01:22:41   - It's unbelievable, unbelievable, because, right,

01:22:45   what you are doing there is exactly

01:22:48   what the iMac Pro is made for, right?

01:22:51   - I know, yeah, that was two streams of 4K video,

01:22:53   and it didn't flinch, it was not a problem.

01:22:55   - Oh, God.

01:22:56   - And so I did that, I also did a video in code

01:23:00   where I took an Apple ProRes file of actually that episode

01:23:06   of 20 Macs for 2020 video, and I encoded that,

01:23:10   I just used QuickTime to encode an H.264 1080 version of it.

01:23:15   And again, it's an eight-core iMac Pro, it's good at this,

01:23:20   and it was about 10 seconds slower at it

01:23:25   than the other systems.

01:23:26   And again, it's not a lot, but the fact that they're,

01:23:31   even in the ballpark of my eight-core, now deprecated,

01:23:34   but eight-core iMac Pro is ridiculous,

01:23:37   because these are low-end systems.

01:23:39   Another test that I hear,

01:23:42   'cause we know a lot of developers, is Xcode compile.

01:23:45   - Yes.

01:23:46   - And I did an Xcode compile, our friend James Thompson

01:23:50   sent me the source code to dice by PCALC.

01:23:52   It's very nice of him to trust me not to sell that

01:23:57   on the black market, but I ran an Xcode archive

01:24:03   where it's basically building everything

01:24:05   that it needs to build for a project.

01:24:07   And people complain a lot about how slow Xcode is

01:24:10   at compiling software.

01:24:12   And it's another one of those cases where compared to,

01:24:17   so they did that job in a little less than 30 seconds.

01:24:20   My iMac Pro did it in 42 seconds, which is really fitting,

01:24:24   given that it's James Thompson.

01:24:27   The 2020 high-end 13-inch MacBook Pro,

01:24:30   the 13-inch that they released earlier this year

01:24:34   with four ports, 51 seconds.

01:24:37   And I think that that says it all right.

01:24:38   This year's top-of-the-line 13-inch MacBook Pro Intel system

01:24:43   was almost twice as long to do it.

01:24:48   Not quite, but in that ballpark.

01:24:51   And I can't tell you how impressive that is.

01:24:54   That's huge.

01:24:57   Like if you bought a 13-inch high-end MacBook Pro

01:25:00   earlier this year thinking, this is really great.

01:25:05   I mean, it's fine, but that MacBook Air,

01:25:09   I did it by a lot.

01:25:11   And that's the story, right?

01:25:14   Like across anything that you need that kind of performance.

01:25:17   Obviously, if you're just editing text

01:25:19   or doing Microsoft Word or something like that,

01:25:21   or working with graphics,

01:25:22   you're not necessarily gonna notice it.

01:25:23   You're gonna notice the places

01:25:24   where it used to stutter a little that it doesn't,

01:25:27   or that there used to be a pause that there now isn't.

01:25:30   But when you're using it for like these higher-end things,

01:25:34   it's just a lot faster than computers

01:25:39   that by all accounts in the past

01:25:42   should have beaten the pants off

01:25:44   of these little low-end Macs.

01:25:46   And they just, they don't.

01:25:47   This is the new...

01:25:49   In fact, I'm starting to wonder

01:25:50   if we need to redefine what a low-end task is,

01:25:52   because obviously a MacBook Air can handle,

01:25:55   and a 699 Mac Mini can handle editing

01:26:00   multiple 4K video streams.

01:26:01   So is that a low-end task now?

01:26:02   Probably not, but that's the kind of thing you need to do

01:26:06   to stress these things out.

01:26:07   - So it makes the Mac Mini a kind of a weird outlier to me,

01:26:12   because, all right, so the MacBook Pro,

01:26:15   it's the clues in the name,

01:26:16   it's a machine for professionals.

01:26:18   Do your professional work here.

01:26:19   And now that professional machine can do these tasks

01:26:24   so much more efficiently than ever before.

01:26:26   And the MacBook Air is typically a machine

01:26:29   for the majority of people.

01:26:31   I mean, I'm sure lots of MacBook Airs

01:26:33   use Photoshop, for example,

01:26:34   which I'm sure will run much nicer

01:26:36   when Adobe put the version of Photoshop out there

01:26:40   that is native for the M1.

01:26:42   But the MacBook Air benefits from much greater battery life,

01:26:46   which is something that people, all MacBook Air users

01:26:50   will benefit from.

01:26:50   But the Mac Mini is in this weird spot, right?

01:26:53   Where it's not really a professional machine,

01:26:56   neither does it have to worry about battery life.

01:26:59   It's like it is in this peculiar, in the middle spot here

01:27:03   with kind of what we expect of it,

01:27:06   where these other two machines, the two laptops,

01:27:09   maybe are more catered to this particular benefits

01:27:13   when you think about where it lives in the overall lineup,

01:27:16   which is kind of like a funny little anomaly.

01:27:18   - It's gonna work its way out, right?

01:27:20   Like, eventually Apple will, once the transition is over,

01:27:25   I think you'll look at the product line

01:27:26   and it'll make more sense than it does now.

01:27:27   But yes, this is another one of those leaps

01:27:30   where it used to be, you said,

01:27:32   "Oh, well, you need a pro laptop to do that work."

01:27:35   And there'll be new work.

01:27:36   You know, Apple was talking about like 8K video and so like,

01:27:39   there will always be new high-end work

01:27:41   that the low-end systems aren't gonna be able to accomplish.

01:27:45   But the story of computing over the last couple of decades,

01:27:48   you know, even longer, three or four decades,

01:27:51   is always there's this task that is impossible to perform

01:27:54   and then it's only possible to perform it

01:27:55   on a high-end system.

01:27:57   And then you just wait long enough

01:27:58   and it's possible to do it on a low-end system.

01:28:00   - Right, but isn't it wild that Apple is the company

01:28:06   that's first to being able to produce the machines

01:28:10   that can run this future work, whatever it is?

01:28:13   That doesn't seem like the normal way

01:28:14   that things have been done.

01:28:15   - Well, the overarching story of the M1

01:28:18   and of the Intel to Apple Silicon transition in general

01:28:22   is going to be that Apple came up from the streets.

01:28:27   And by that, I mean the mean streets

01:28:30   of smartphone development,

01:28:33   where every bit of processing power

01:28:36   and every bit of energy savings was vitally important.

01:28:39   And they're trying to make the iPhone and the iPad

01:28:42   as successful as possible through their own chips.

01:28:44   And like, that's tough.

01:28:47   And you get to the end of that story

01:28:48   and you've got something really remarkable

01:28:52   that you could apply to the Mac and see huge benefits.

01:28:55   So if you've been following Apple story,

01:28:57   it actually does kind of make sense,

01:28:59   but from the, you know, it's an advantage

01:29:03   that came from the other side of the street,

01:29:06   basically from the mobile side

01:29:09   and now is being applied to the Mac

01:29:10   because Apple has done such a good job

01:29:12   with their chips on the other side

01:29:15   that they've rocketed past where Intel was on this side.

01:29:19   And I feel like I mentioned this in my review,

01:29:22   I feel like that moment at that Brooklyn event in 2018,

01:29:26   where they started boasting about how the iPad Pro

01:29:29   was faster than most PC laptops,

01:29:31   that was the clear moment where we all went,

01:29:33   oh, they're doing this.

01:29:35   'Cause like if they've reached the point

01:29:36   where they can compare themselves to Intel's processors

01:29:41   favorably, then it's only a matter of time

01:29:45   before they just replace Intel's processors.

01:29:47   And that's where we are.

01:29:48   - Unified memory, I think is something that,

01:29:50   I mean, you know, we got so many questions about it

01:29:52   and we asked Tim and Tom a little bit about it too,

01:29:55   but I think this is something that a lot of our audience

01:29:57   is really getting hung up on.

01:30:00   I know that it might be too difficult to tell right now

01:30:02   with just a week's worth of usage,

01:30:04   but did you come across any scenario

01:30:07   where you felt the machine struggling in a way

01:30:11   that you could attribute it to differences in RAM?

01:30:15   - I haven't.

01:30:17   I think this is one of those things that's very hard

01:30:19   to detect.

01:30:20   I haven't noticed anything like that.

01:30:22   I'm sure that there are people who load enormous files

01:30:27   into memory who are going to be curious about it.

01:30:30   I would say that the combination of having

01:30:33   this memory, which is very fast

01:30:35   and doesn't have to do some of the tricks that you do

01:30:39   when the memory is off the die, off of the package.

01:30:44   Also, the SSD speed,

01:30:50   a lot of times I hear people complain about

01:30:54   running out of RAM who are using like

01:30:57   traditional hard drives instead of SSD.

01:30:59   Like it's easier to page out to SSD.

01:31:01   It's not the same, but it's better.

01:31:04   I am sure there are workflows and people who use

01:31:06   huge amounts of RAM who will look at these systems at 16

01:31:10   and will run into some walls and say,

01:31:14   "Oh, this is frustrating."

01:31:15   And to them, I would say,

01:31:17   "Yeah, there will be pro systems later,

01:31:22   "clearly that will support more memory than this."

01:31:25   But I never ran into any of those things.

01:31:28   I did not open gigantic image files

01:31:32   that I don't quite frankly, I don't have.

01:31:34   I did not run 15 different apps

01:31:38   and have a bunch of tabs open.

01:31:39   I haven't done any of that.

01:31:40   So I can't say on that side.

01:31:43   All I'll say is that I think for most regular use,

01:31:46   especially given that these are essentially low end systems,

01:31:49   16, did I detect a difference between eight and 16?

01:31:53   I didn't, but I still bought a MacBook Air with 16

01:31:56   because I felt like that was something I wanted to do

01:31:59   just because I do use my Mac for some more serious stuff,

01:32:03   but I didn't run into anything.

01:32:05   It's very hard to do that.

01:32:06   And honestly, I'm probably not the best person.

01:32:10   I'm not somebody who leaves a million tabs open.

01:32:12   I'm not somebody who works with enormous image files.

01:32:15   It's very rare that I run into a moment.

01:32:18   It does happen occasionally,

01:32:19   but it's very rare that I run into a moment

01:32:21   where I think, "Oh no, I've run out of RAM

01:32:23   "and now everything is slow."

01:32:25   It doesn't happen very often.

01:32:27   And I haven't been able to coax these systems into doing that.

01:32:31   - I think that that specific thing

01:32:35   with the differences between the unified memory and the RAM

01:32:39   and how that's gonna shake out,

01:32:41   that's going to, I think that's gonna take a while

01:32:43   and it's going to take people sharing very specific use cases

01:32:48   for us to be able to see it.

01:32:49   - Right, we're gonna see the edges

01:32:51   'cause people are gonna push these things.

01:32:52   But I will say if you're somebody who never, ever, ever,

01:32:55   ever buys a Mac with less than 32 gigs of RAM, wait.

01:33:00   At least wait until your colleagues who are more

01:33:04   on the cutting edge than you dive into these things

01:33:09   and say, "Oh, it's actually not so bad."

01:33:11   Or, "Oh yeah, this doesn't work."

01:33:13   And find out what they say.

01:33:15   Or if failing that, wait until the next ones,

01:33:19   which will presumably have a higher RAM limit.

01:33:23   That's what I would say.

01:33:25   These, I would not bet against these things surprising you,

01:33:29   but also they are low end systems.

01:33:31   That said, other than waiting

01:33:36   'cause I know there's something better coming along

01:33:37   'cause there always is, but there definitely is this time.

01:33:40   I was thinking today about how if I really wanted

01:33:44   to maximize the efficiency of my workflows,

01:33:49   I would be better off using the Mac mini than my iMac Pro.

01:33:54   Because it's faster.

01:33:57   - What about battery life?

01:34:01   - I only had a chance to do one test

01:34:03   and battery life is so variable because the fact is,

01:34:06   mostly what we use our laptops for is a lot of stuff

01:34:09   and there are quiet times and there are more intense times

01:34:12   and it depends on what set of apps you're using

01:34:15   and what kind of data you're processing.

01:34:16   And there's so many things there that it's unique.

01:34:19   You can't really measure one person's battery life.

01:34:24   That said, I wanted to sort of check Apple

01:34:28   and check Apple's work because Apple makes these big claims

01:34:31   and their video playback claim is based on the video playing

01:34:35   in the TV app.

01:34:37   My guess is that it's the most optimized experience,

01:34:40   'cause Apple controls the app

01:34:42   and has probably updated the TV app to use all

01:34:44   of the decoders that are in the M1 and it's perfect.

01:34:49   All right, and what I did was open a Safari window

01:34:54   and stream video.

01:34:55   I streamed it from Plex, but you know,

01:34:57   basically web streaming video in a browser window.

01:35:00   And the MacBook Air lasted for nine and a half hours,

01:35:06   which I will tell you is a lot for a MacBook Air.

01:35:12   It just kept going and I got 13 hours and 15 minutes

01:35:16   out of the MacBook Pro.

01:35:18   So these are numbers that are smaller

01:35:19   than Apple's quoted numbers,

01:35:21   but I would say suggest that Apple is not wrong

01:35:24   when it says these things have long battery life,

01:35:27   but exactly how much battery life it will be

01:35:29   in the way that you use it.

01:35:30   Like how long is it if you are intensely editing 4K video

01:35:34   the whole time, how long is it gonna last?

01:35:37   I didn't test that, I don't know.

01:35:38   My guess is a lot less than nine and a half hours,

01:35:41   but it's still probably a lot more

01:35:43   than the last generation would be.

01:35:45   But the battery life is very hard to test

01:35:47   and I have not had enough time to do.

01:35:49   It would literally have taken all my time

01:35:51   just to run battery tests and I have to run other tests

01:35:54   and write a whole review.

01:35:55   So that's all I got.

01:35:56   - Yeah, 'cause again, like, you know,

01:35:59   like people could say like, hang on a minute,

01:36:01   they said it was 17 hours for video or whatever,

01:36:04   but it's what type of video did they use, you know?

01:36:08   - And Apple is quoting the tests that best benefit Apple.

01:36:12   - Yeah. - Right?

01:36:13   They're not, I said this last week, they're not lying,

01:36:17   but did their video test happen in their app

01:36:22   that has been written, has been updated to perform the best

01:36:27   and be the most efficient on M1?

01:36:31   Of course, that's why they quoted that one.

01:36:34   If they quoted Netflix in a browser window,

01:36:37   they probably tested that and they're like,

01:36:38   oh, this isn't as good, this is only 13 hours

01:36:40   and we got 20 hours for the other one, so let's say 20,

01:36:43   which is fine, I mean, it's the same battery.

01:36:46   It's just that every use case is gonna be different.

01:36:48   But I will say, as somebody who has used a Mac,

01:36:50   we hear a lot and we have lots of MacBook Airs in my house,

01:36:54   nine and a half hours of playing movies on Plex

01:36:57   throughout a whole day, it's pretty good.

01:37:00   That's pretty impressive.

01:37:01   I do think that this is, depending on the workload,

01:37:04   it's gonna vary, but like, this is the kind of computer

01:37:06   where you're gonna sweat the battery a lot less.

01:37:09   - All right, this episode is brought to you by Remote Works,

01:37:12   a podcast that tells extraordinary stories of teams

01:37:15   that have made the shift to working remotely.

01:37:18   On this season, you'll hear how the pandemic didn't slow down

01:37:21   Aston Martin Red Bull racing drivers and their teams,

01:37:24   which I'm very excited to hear that episode personally,

01:37:26   how two women working in a tiny trapper's cabin in the Arctic

01:37:30   are dodging polar bears while fighting climate change,

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01:37:49   That's what Remote Works is all about,

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01:37:55   I got a sneak peek of season two of Remote Works,

01:37:59   and the episode that I listened to was the one

01:38:02   about the two women in the trapper's cabin in the Arctic.

01:38:05   They're in Arctic Norway,

01:38:07   and this is a beautifully produced episode.

01:38:10   It has really great sound effects and music,

01:38:12   helping to really like tell the story,

01:38:14   and it really brings it to life.

01:38:16   And some of these stories are absolutely wild,

01:38:18   like how if you're remote enough,

01:38:21   you could encounter a polar bear in your work day,

01:38:23   and that's what happens to these people.

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01:38:33   The interesting stories are right here in this show,

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01:38:44   Search for Remote Works anywhere that you listen to podcasts

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01:38:53   Okay, so we've spoken about how the machines look

01:38:59   and how they perform,

01:39:01   but there are apps that run on these machines.

01:39:03   Now we've spoken about the most optimised applications,

01:39:06   right, we've spoken about Apple's apps,

01:39:09   you know, talking about Final Cut and stuff like that.

01:39:12   What about apps in Rosetta 2?

01:39:13   What do they like to use?

01:39:15   How do they launch?

01:39:16   What is the experience like?

01:39:17   Well, the first time you launch them,

01:39:19   it will say, "Would you like to install Rosetta 2?"

01:39:24   And then you have to say yes,

01:39:25   and then it installs Rosetta 2.

01:39:27   And I think that's interesting

01:39:28   that there's a little bit of a gap there

01:39:29   where they wanna--

01:39:30   Is that the first time for every app

01:39:32   or just the first time-- No.

01:39:33   Okay.

01:39:34   The first time you launch a non-universal app,

01:39:38   that's what they do.

01:39:39   And then they launch and it's fine,

01:39:40   but they make you go through that one,

01:39:42   that one little extra step.

01:39:44   And then after that, it's just apps.

01:39:47   And they're a little bit slower.

01:39:49   I mean, it's gonna vary.

01:39:51   So what it's doing as far as I can tell

01:39:53   is it's caching like common commands, essentially.

01:39:58   And so if the app is really repetitive

01:40:01   and it only really does the same thing,

01:40:03   it's gonna be a lot faster.

01:40:05   And if it's really sort of having to change

01:40:09   based on big data sets and stuff like that,

01:40:10   it's gonna be a little bit slower.

01:40:12   But still, I managed to run the Intel test on Geekbench

01:40:17   and the Intel benchmark test was still faster

01:40:23   than the previous MacBook Air and the previous 13 inch,

01:40:27   the four port 13 inch.

01:40:29   So it's fast.

01:40:30   It's gonna vary, but it's fast.

01:40:33   I didn't find that I was frustrated.

01:40:36   I'm sure again, if you're running an app that's not native

01:40:38   that requires every ounce of CPU

01:40:40   that you can possibly give it,

01:40:43   that it's gonna slow it down.

01:40:46   But keeping in mind that you're coming from a system,

01:40:48   presumably that was much slower,

01:40:51   you're gonna pick up some of that.

01:40:52   So like if you're running a non-native app

01:40:55   and you're coming from a two or three year old MacBook Air,

01:40:58   I would wager it will probably be the same speed or faster,

01:41:00   but it's gonna vary.

01:41:02   What I would say is don't sweat Rosetta

01:41:06   because I think Rosetta just works

01:41:08   and it works fine.

01:41:09   And in most use cases, it's not gonna matter.

01:41:12   I also used it with command line stuff.

01:41:14   I've got a couple of command line utilities

01:41:15   that are compiled for Intel obviously

01:41:17   that I use for like audio stuff.

01:41:19   And they all just work because Rosetta.

01:41:22   So it's pretty transparent.

01:41:26   There are edges like Homebrew where people can like download

01:41:30   and compile and build all sorts of command line apps.

01:41:33   Homebrew first off, it doesn't really work on Big Sur

01:41:35   and they're working out how to handle

01:41:37   two different processor architectures.

01:41:39   And like, it's gonna take a while

01:41:40   for stuff like that to clear up.

01:41:41   But for the regular person, it's just, you know,

01:41:43   you take that old app and you double click it

01:41:45   and it launches and it's fine.

01:41:47   - Do you encounter anything that doesn't work like at all?

01:41:51   - Not that I can think of.

01:41:53   Like I said, Homebrew is a good example

01:41:55   where that is still in this process of them updating it.

01:41:58   And I think that they're gonna be some things like that

01:42:00   that are really on the edge.

01:42:03   - And then I guess like any virtualization stuff.

01:42:06   - Is a thing that is still to come,

01:42:09   although they have shown it and talked about it.

01:42:12   And there's definitely gonna be parallels

01:42:13   in VMware Fusion in Apple Silicon.

01:42:17   The question is, what are they emulating?

01:42:19   And right now all they've ever shown

01:42:20   is they're emulating Linux, I think, in a virtual machine.

01:42:24   I don't think they're even emulating it.

01:42:26   They're virtualizing an ARM build

01:42:28   of a Linux operating system.

01:42:30   So it remains to be seen.

01:42:32   Like, I feel like Apple's playing a little coy now

01:42:35   about Microsoft.

01:42:37   I'm still a believer that Windows running

01:42:40   on Apple Silicon systems is going to happen.

01:42:43   Not sure it'll happen on the M1,

01:42:46   but I feel like everybody is inclined to make that work.

01:42:51   Like the challenge is, do you wanna emulate Intel Windows,

01:42:55   which is gonna be slow, as anybody who used soft Windows

01:42:59   or virtual PC on PowerPC Max will tell you.

01:43:05   And then in the long run, can Apple and Microsoft

01:43:07   work together so that they might be able to virtualize

01:43:11   Windows for ARM, which would run at full speed.

01:43:15   And I feel like they will.

01:43:17   - Windows for ARM exists in case people don't know that.

01:43:19   It is a thing that exists.

01:43:21   - It's, I think, inevitable.

01:43:23   I really do.

01:43:24   I don't think that this is a case.

01:43:25   People wanna make drama about it and all that,

01:43:27   but not only is Microsoft Office in beta

01:43:29   with native versions for Apple Silicon now,

01:43:32   but Microsoft knows that Apple's platforms

01:43:35   are a place for them to pick up more customers

01:43:37   and that some of their customers who use Windows

01:43:39   also wanna use Mac.

01:43:41   And they've had those customers for 15 years

01:43:44   straddling those two platforms,

01:43:45   and they would probably like to let them continue.

01:43:47   And while I'm not sure I think we'll ever see bootcamp,

01:43:50   although that's possible, but I doubt it,

01:43:53   at least for a long time.

01:43:55   Okay, at least for a while.

01:43:56   But within a virtualization system,

01:44:01   like Parallels of VMware,

01:44:02   yeah, I think it's gonna happen.

01:44:05   I just, I don't know the timeframe,

01:44:07   and I don't know what all the technical hurdles will be

01:44:08   and what Microsoft's priorities are,

01:44:10   but I think that's almost inevitable.

01:44:14   Like, I think Microsoft wants it.

01:44:15   I think Apple wants it.

01:44:16   I do think it will happen, but it's not today, right?

01:44:19   Like, if you're relying on bootcamp

01:44:20   or relying on running Windows in a virtual machine

01:44:25   at near native speeds, do not buy Apple Silicon.

01:44:29   Like, that's a simple one.

01:44:31   - I'm nervous to ask this.

01:44:34   - Okay.

01:44:35   - What are iOS apps like on the Mac?

01:44:38   - So you get them by searching

01:44:42   and then toggling over to like iOS from Mac,

01:44:45   which is the default search.

01:44:46   Or if you look in your purchased list,

01:44:48   you can also click on iOS,

01:44:52   and then it shows you your purchased iOS.

01:44:54   There are a few things going on here.

01:44:56   So first off, developers can opt out.

01:44:59   So most of the apps I looked for

01:45:02   the first time I got on one of these systems

01:45:04   and the App Store had been turned on for iOS stuff,

01:45:08   almost every app I looked for is just not there.

01:45:12   - Like what, what were you looking for?

01:45:14   - So, Ferrite, the audio editor that I love on the iPad,

01:45:19   it's not there because the developer has opted out.

01:45:23   You know, Netflix is a good example.

01:45:27   When they highlight HBO Max,

01:45:28   that is a strong suggestion that Netflix is not there.

01:45:32   And that's an example of why you can just run Netflix

01:45:34   in a browser.

01:45:35   It's like, yeah, but I don't want to,

01:45:36   I'd rather run it in the Netflix app,

01:45:37   which is nice and is in its own app.

01:45:40   And I don't know whether some of that is like paranoia

01:45:43   on Netflix's part that it's gonna lead to piracy

01:45:46   or something like that,

01:45:47   which is dumb because there's piracy anyway,

01:45:48   and not sure when the browser's any different.

01:45:50   But like that's a little frustrating to me

01:45:52   that there aren't more video apps available.

01:45:55   And some of the productivity apps

01:45:56   that I was looking for aren't there.

01:45:58   So you end up with some games, which are nice.

01:46:00   Like all of, all the games like Flip Flop

01:46:04   and Really Bad Chess, all the Zach Gage games are there.

01:46:09   And that's great 'cause they weren't on the Mac before.

01:46:13   And I think that's maybe what Apple is really focusing on

01:46:17   is getting a bunch of games

01:46:19   that are just not on the Mac on the Mac.

01:46:21   But when I was looking at productivity stuff,

01:46:23   like yes, Timery is there.

01:46:27   - Hooray.

01:46:28   - At least last time I checked.

01:46:29   But like a bunch of apps that I like are not there.

01:46:34   And that bothers me, right?

01:46:36   'Cause it's the developer's decision, of course.

01:46:39   But I wonder like, are you not there

01:46:41   because you just don't want to be on the Mac?

01:46:44   Or are you not there because you're working on something?

01:46:48   'Cause I do think, oddly,

01:46:50   I do think that this is going to maybe give developers

01:46:53   more of a reason to embrace Catalyst

01:46:56   because they're gonna look at how their app runs on the Mac

01:47:02   and think that's not good enough.

01:47:04   And maybe we need to add some stuff in

01:47:07   to make it more Mac-like

01:47:08   and that leads down a path to Catalyst.

01:47:10   It also maybe improves their iPad version.

01:47:13   So that's all up in the air.

01:47:15   And it took some of the wind out of my sails

01:47:17   to find out that a lot of the apps

01:47:19   that I was kind of interested in seeing

01:47:20   how they worked on the Mac just don't work on the Mac,

01:47:23   that they've been opted out.

01:47:24   - I could imagine a lot of developers

01:47:25   wanted to wait until they actually got one as well.

01:47:28   - It could be, it could be.

01:47:30   I am concerned that like Netflix was just saying,

01:47:33   well, forget it.

01:47:34   Forget it, we don't want to do that.

01:47:38   But like HBO Max, I tried to do full screen.

01:47:43   It doesn't do full screen.

01:47:44   I tried to resize the window.

01:47:47   I'm actually trying that right now.

01:47:48   It doesn't resize the window.

01:47:49   So you get like a single size sort of a window

01:47:51   with a movie playing in it.

01:47:53   It's just, I don't, why?

01:47:55   Why would you do that?

01:47:57   So that's frustrating, the ones that do work.

01:48:01   Games, I've had some issues.

01:48:03   Like I downloaded flip-flop solitaire

01:48:05   and it shows up in like one orientation

01:48:09   and it's covered by the dock at the bottom

01:48:15   and I can't resize it.

01:48:16   So I have to hide the dock in order to get it to show up

01:48:19   like the part where the cards are,

01:48:21   which is kind of important.

01:48:23   - Can you not full screen it?

01:48:24   - If I hit the full screen, oh, this is great.

01:48:26   If I hit the full screen, it changes orientation

01:48:29   into a better orientation, which is a landscape.

01:48:33   Then I can play it.

01:48:35   - Oh, that's better.

01:48:36   - But when it opens, it opens in portrait

01:48:38   and it's under the dock.

01:48:39   And I would argue that the full screen widget

01:48:42   is not made for changing orientation.

01:48:45   That's weird.

01:48:46   There's just, it's a lot of that.

01:48:48   A lot of that stuff is weird.

01:48:49   There's this whole touch alternatives mode,

01:48:53   which is like, I don't fully understand it,

01:48:55   but like there's a second mode that makes,

01:48:58   that changes how the app behaves

01:49:00   in order to better emulate a touch experience.

01:49:03   And then you have to like use the track pad

01:49:05   or hold down the option key to like essentially emulate

01:49:09   touches on the screen.

01:49:12   And if you turn that mode on a bunch of other things,

01:49:16   turn off and break.

01:49:18   So don't turn it on.

01:49:20   So I use Twitterific, which is an app I wanted to try out

01:49:23   because I use it on the Mac all the time.

01:49:25   And I started using it and I was like,

01:49:27   why is it not working right?

01:49:28   It's the keyboard shortcuts aren't working

01:49:31   and I can't scroll right and all that.

01:49:32   And it turns out I had touch alternatives turned on.

01:49:35   Now I turned it off and it was like,

01:49:36   oh, now it scrolls fine.

01:49:38   Now it's got all of the same keyboard shortcuts

01:49:41   that it had on the iPad.

01:49:42   And they're taking advantage of all of those features

01:49:46   that they made available on the iPad.

01:49:47   So there's a lot to learn as a user

01:49:53   and I think developers have a lot to learn.

01:49:55   And I guess what I would say is it's really early days

01:50:00   for iOS apps on the Mac.

01:50:02   And you're probably going to be disappointed

01:50:05   that some of the apps that you wanted to see aren't there.

01:50:08   Some of the apps you see are gonna work great.

01:50:11   Some of them are gonna work less than great.

01:50:13   Some games will probably be good.

01:50:16   Some things you'll get frustrated by

01:50:17   because they have a Mac version and an iPad version

01:50:20   and you bought the iPad version,

01:50:22   you don't get the Mac version.

01:50:23   Buy it again, I guess.

01:50:24   So they've taken those out of the store.

01:50:26   So there's gonna be indications.

01:50:29   You know, it's gonna be a rough ride, I think.

01:50:30   I think this is the place where it's untested.

01:50:33   Developers are gonna have to learn about it.

01:50:35   My hope is that it drives people who are developers

01:50:38   to make their Mac apps better and maybe support Catalyst

01:50:41   and get them to be a little bit better.

01:50:44   Because even a really good iPad app

01:50:47   running on Apple Silicon,

01:50:49   like Twitterrific's got all the keyboard shortcuts,

01:50:51   but it doesn't have any menus, right?

01:50:53   Like, 'cause it has no menus on iOS.

01:50:57   - I expect we're gonna see a big take-up

01:51:00   in Catalyst post Apple Silicon Mac.

01:51:02   - I think some developers are gonna just not bother.

01:51:06   And they're gonna take their apps out of the store

01:51:07   and they're gonna be like, "We're not gonna play that game.

01:51:08   Use the web browser," or whatever.

01:51:10   But I do think you're right.

01:51:11   I think some developers are gonna look at their apps

01:51:14   on the Mac and be like, "Oh, we can make this better."

01:51:18   And that's what Catalyst is meant to do.

01:51:19   In fact, looking through what we see now,

01:51:23   I would say maybe this is what Catalyst

01:51:25   was really meant to do all along,

01:51:26   which is have you run iOS apps on the Mac

01:51:29   and then make them look more like Mac apps.

01:51:32   Because now you can see,

01:51:34   with an app that is not running Catalyst really,

01:51:37   it's just stock loaded from the app store off of an iPad.

01:51:41   You look at it and you're like,

01:51:42   "This could really use some fit and finish from the Mac."

01:51:44   That's what Catalyst is, right?

01:51:46   That's literally what Catalyst is.

01:51:47   So it's weird and yeah, it's weird,

01:51:52   but it's got potential.

01:51:57   It's gonna take a while to shake out.

01:51:59   And people should prepare to be a little disappointed

01:52:02   when some of the apps that they're kind of hoping

01:52:04   will run on their Mac may not be there.

01:52:07   And if they are there,

01:52:08   they may not work like you're hoping they will.

01:52:10   But I do think in the long run,

01:52:12   opening up the app store and getting those apps on the Mac

01:52:15   is gonna be a good thing.

01:52:16   It may take a little while.

01:52:17   - Yeah, I think this still remains something

01:52:21   that I'm really interested by

01:52:22   'cause there aren't a lot of apps that I want,

01:52:23   but there are apps that I do want.

01:52:25   And the reason I want them is because

01:52:27   there is not a good Mac app for it, right?

01:52:29   And I still believe a kind of wonky iOS app

01:52:34   is better than no app, right?

01:52:38   Or a very bad Mac app.

01:52:39   Like for example, you mentioned Timery,

01:52:41   which is the time tracking app that I love.

01:52:44   You sent me a screenshot of that.

01:52:46   - Yeah. - That it's there

01:52:46   in the app store.

01:52:48   And that's one that I really want

01:52:52   because the toggle, which is the service that I use,

01:52:55   their Mac app is garbage.

01:52:58   And so even if Timery only kind of works,

01:53:01   I know I'm gonna be happier than what I got.

01:53:04   But the stuff that's, you know,

01:53:05   there's no shortcuts for the Mac, right?

01:53:07   And so like, I wonder how that's going

01:53:10   to affect my experience.

01:53:11   And I think that you're right.

01:53:13   I think that there might be things that developers see

01:53:15   and then like, oh, you know what?

01:53:17   If I make this change to my iOS app,

01:53:19   it will actually impact the way that it works on the Mac here

01:53:22   and stuff like that.

01:53:23   Like, I think this is going to be a thing

01:53:25   that's going to take a little bit of time to shake out

01:53:27   and is also going to take a lot of time to test,

01:53:30   you know, like over the next few weeks

01:53:32   to see how these things operate.

01:53:35   I still remain excited about it.

01:53:38   I lowered my expectations

01:53:42   when I heard about how you get these apps, right?

01:53:46   So that you mentioned how they're downloaded

01:53:48   and I'd heard that last week,

01:53:50   that it's like a very conscious choice you have to make

01:53:56   to get one, right?

01:53:57   Like you go to the app store and you hit the toggle

01:53:59   or you go to the purchases thing and you choose.

01:54:01   It's like, that's not as front and center as I was expecting

01:54:05   and that would indicate to me,

01:54:07   I mean, that along with the fact that Apple

01:54:09   haven't really shown these things off in running in any way.

01:54:13   It's just like, here's a picture of a iOS app.

01:54:17   Kind of made me feel like, okay, this is very 1.0

01:54:20   and there's a thing they're doing because they can do

01:54:23   and is hopefully another kind of carrot on the stick

01:54:28   for developers to take advantage of Apple's tools

01:54:32   that are meant to generate better

01:54:34   cross-platform applications.

01:54:36   So I'm just hoping that this is just like another step

01:54:39   in that kind of a larger push of making applications

01:54:43   that work and run great everywhere.

01:54:45   - Also, this just in for people who are looking for this,

01:54:48   I believe Twitterific, which I described,

01:54:51   which actually is in better shape on Mac OS

01:54:55   with Apple Silicon than I thought,

01:54:57   appears to have been removed from the Mac app store on iOS.

01:55:02   So they seem to have opted out just a little bit later,

01:55:06   but I got it.

01:55:07   You can't take this away from me.

01:55:09   But I don't know what that means either.

01:55:13   So we'll see, it's just, it's gonna be like that.

01:55:14   I think it's gonna be like that where you're gonna have apps

01:55:16   that like the developers like, oh, what, we're where?

01:55:18   No, take that down.

01:55:21   And that's honestly, that was my first disappointment

01:55:25   with this whole thing was just a lot of the apps

01:55:27   that I thought would be there aren't there

01:55:29   because the developers have opted out.

01:55:31   And they probably have good reasons for it.

01:55:33   I get it, but it's also disappointing

01:55:35   when it might've been good enough for me,

01:55:37   but it's not good enough for them.

01:55:39   I hope that's what it is and not just, let's just pull it

01:55:42   and not be there on the Mac.

01:55:46   That would make me sad.

01:55:47   But I can't explain HBO Max though.

01:55:49   I can't explain that there's a video app

01:55:51   that can't go full screen as far as I can tell

01:55:53   and that can't be resized.

01:55:55   I don't know why that app exists

01:55:58   other than for Apple to point to a video app.

01:56:00   - But anyway, to wrap this up,

01:56:03   overall, how does this first set of M-chip Macs

01:56:08   make you feel about the future of the Mac platform?

01:56:12   - I think the future of the Mac is really bright.

01:56:13   I think that Apple is going to be able to dominate

01:56:17   PC performance at a bunch of levels

01:56:20   in a way that they've dominated smartphone

01:56:22   and tablet performance.

01:56:24   I think that there are long-term questions

01:56:25   about the highest of the high end,

01:56:27   but we're going to have to see,

01:56:29   like this is the famous, what is an Apple Silicon Mac Pro

01:56:33   and how does that work and what does that product look like

01:56:35   and who is it for?

01:56:37   And we also have to see the mid range, right?

01:56:40   We need to see what an iMac looks like

01:56:42   and what a higher end MacBook Pro looks like.

01:56:46   We don't have the answers to those questions either,

01:56:48   but I think that this is,

01:56:50   given how impressive these are as low end systems,

01:56:54   that the future is incredibly bright,

01:56:56   but there's still work to do.

01:56:58   Like, I do think that it's a real question

01:57:00   about how is Apple's architecture going to handle,

01:57:03   are they going to scale up their GPU?

01:57:06   Are they going to do discrete graphics?

01:57:08   How do they do expansion cards in a Mac Pro?

01:57:11   Is that a thing they're going to do?

01:57:12   Are they going to leave Pros behind

01:57:14   or are they going to cater to the Pros?

01:57:16   My gut feeling is they will cater to the Pros

01:57:19   and give them what they want

01:57:20   because that's why they embarked

01:57:21   on the whole Mac Pro thing in the first place.

01:57:24   So, and it also, as we mentioned earlier,

01:57:28   sets Apple up to be more innovative

01:57:31   with its hardware in the future

01:57:33   now that it's got this platform.

01:57:35   We may see touchscreen Macs.

01:57:36   We may see Mac laptops that are convertible

01:57:40   and turn into things that are more like iPads

01:57:43   and then back into laptops again,

01:57:45   which is not a design

01:57:47   that Apple has experimented with before.

01:57:50   We may see an iMac that also supports touch

01:57:53   or supports Apple Pencil and is more like a Surface Studio.

01:57:57   There are lots of things we have an opportunity

01:58:02   to see in the Mac that maybe we didn't have before.

01:58:05   And I don't believe that it's going to be a case

01:58:09   where Apple rests on its laurels

01:58:11   and gets surpassed by other chip makers

01:58:16   just because it's in Apple's best interest

01:58:18   to keep this whole architecture moving forward

01:58:22   for the iPhone and the iPad, as well as the Mac.

01:58:25   And they all, you know, the Mac is,

01:58:27   the processor inside the Mac

01:58:28   is now central to Apple strategy,

01:58:30   whereas the Intel processors

01:58:31   were not remotely central to Apple strategy.

01:58:34   And when you're a company that is making unified products

01:58:37   that are software and hardware

01:58:40   and all the product of your process,

01:58:43   you can get better products.

01:58:47   Apple has showed that on the iOS side for a while now,

01:58:50   and now the Mac gets to do that too.

01:58:52   So I think it's really exciting.

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02:00:54   Jason Snell, "Should we finish out today's episode

02:00:57   with some #AskUpgrade questions?"

02:00:59   Andrew asks, "Do you think that Space Gray or other colors

02:01:04   will come back to the Mac Mini

02:01:05   when Apple Silicon chips are available

02:01:07   in high-end configurations,

02:01:09   maybe as like a Mac Mini Pro or something like that?"

02:01:11   - So, okay.

02:01:15   So last week, apparently,

02:01:17   I was skeptical about whether there would be other Mac Minis.

02:01:22   I don't actually remember saying that,

02:01:24   but I did listen to Connected last week where Steven said,

02:01:27   "I know Jason says that there's not gonna be

02:01:28   any other Mac Minis, but I don't think he's right."

02:01:30   And I was like, "One, how dare you?

02:01:32   And two, I agree with you."

02:01:33   So if I said that, I'm gonna recant it now

02:01:37   and agree with Steven, which is,

02:01:39   I think that the fact that the Intel Mac Mini

02:01:43   remains in the product line

02:01:44   because the M1 Mac Mini only supports up to 16 gigs of RAM

02:01:49   and only has the two Thunderbolt ports.

02:01:51   In every instance where Apple

02:01:54   has left an Intel product behind,

02:01:56   I think that's a sign that Apple doesn't think

02:02:00   they've got a product to replace that product.

02:02:02   So there's still the four-port 13-inch MacBook Pro.

02:02:05   There's still the space gray four-thunder-port Mac Mini.

02:02:10   All of those still are there.

02:02:13   So the answer is yes.

02:02:17   I suspect that at some point

02:02:20   there will be a pro-ish Mac Mini again.

02:02:25   When remains to be seen.

02:02:27   Is it in the spring or summer

02:02:30   where they do a potentially modified M1 chip

02:02:34   that enables higher-end, sort of mid-range Macs?

02:02:38   Is it next year sometime, in the next cycle,

02:02:42   an M2 of some form that has more features,

02:02:45   and they do that and roll out a Mac Mini?

02:02:47   But I now would say it's more likely than not

02:02:51   that they will have a more capable Mac Mini at some point

02:02:54   because that's why that Intel Mac Mini is still there.

02:02:58   And would they choose to have that be a space gray

02:03:01   instead of a silver?

02:03:03   Maybe so, that might be the tell there.

02:03:05   So, and I like that because,

02:03:08   remember one of the criticisms of the Intel Mac Mini

02:03:10   when it got updated last time was it was too expensive.

02:03:15   And that's because Apple really sold it

02:03:17   as being this product for pros.

02:03:19   And that like a lot of pro environments,

02:03:21   people wanted more power in the Mac Mini

02:03:22   and they wanted to give that to them, which is great.

02:03:26   Except the other part of the market is mad

02:03:30   because the Mac Mini used to be more affordable.

02:03:33   So I wonder if this is where they're heading,

02:03:35   which is now they've made a Mac Mini

02:03:37   that's more of a truly low-end Mac Mini

02:03:39   using Apple Silicon and in silver.

02:03:43   And it leaves open the space to do a more capable Mac Mini,

02:03:47   maybe in space gray down the road.

02:03:49   And I would be surprised if the Mac Mini

02:03:54   didn't end up with a more capable

02:03:56   Apple Silicon version eventually.

02:03:58   - I go back and forth on this a little bit

02:04:02   because that like professional Mac Mini

02:04:07   only really existed because they had a hole to fill

02:04:11   that might not be a hole in the future.

02:04:14   So like, depending on what the iMacs look like,

02:04:20   depending on if the Mac Pro changes,

02:04:22   you know, like they could bring the starting price

02:04:25   down a bit, they might not need that Mac Mini Pro anymore.

02:04:29   - The Mark Gurman report about the smaller Mac Pro, right?

02:04:34   They might not need a pro-level Mac Mini.

02:04:36   I still feel like, yeah, something has to replace

02:04:39   that higher-end Mac Mini and it might not be a Mac Mini.

02:04:42   That's true, that's true.

02:04:44   That is one of the uncertainties here.

02:04:46   - It could be that really the Mac Mini becomes

02:04:49   what it has always been again, which is the entry Mac,

02:04:53   right, the switcher's Mac, 'cause like this is a thing

02:04:55   that exists or for people that, you know,

02:04:57   have interesting use cases and that we still have

02:05:02   a desktop professional machine,

02:05:04   but it's more like what it used to be,

02:05:09   which was the Mac Pro wasn't cheap to get into,

02:05:13   but it was much cheaper than it is now.

02:05:16   And I could imagine it going that way.

02:05:19   Like I think there will be something

02:05:22   on a higher-end configuration for a lower starting price.

02:05:26   Could be a Mac Mini, might not be the Mac Mini.

02:05:29   We've only ever had the thought of a professional Mac Mini

02:05:33   once, which is the current one.

02:05:36   And our needs were served by other products before that.

02:05:39   So we'll see.

02:05:40   Brian asks, "The Air, the new MacBook Air

02:05:44   does not have a fan, the MacBook Pro does.

02:05:46   Do you think there will be thermal issues

02:05:48   in the future with the Air?

02:05:50   Could you give specific use cases in which a user

02:05:52   might consider the Pro rather than the Air?"

02:05:55   - Well, it's hard to say, but my guess is that Apple,

02:06:01   like Apple makes the chip and Apple makes the computer

02:06:04   and Apple chose not to put a fan in it.

02:06:06   So are there gonna be thermal issues?

02:06:08   I don't think issues is the way I would phrase it,

02:06:11   but it's very clear that because the Pro has a fan,

02:06:15   the Pro will be able to do sustained performance

02:06:18   at longer, at higher clock speeds.

02:06:22   Whereas the Air, eventually it's gonna get so hot in there

02:06:26   that they're gonna have to scale it down

02:06:28   and reduce the clock speed.

02:06:31   And it won't be as fast as the Pro,

02:06:34   but having the MacBook Air not be as fast as the Pro

02:06:37   in certain circumstances when there's sustained actions,

02:06:41   like I don't know what video encoding

02:06:42   or something like that,

02:06:43   something that super stresses the processor for a long time.

02:06:46   Like, I mean, to me, that is a natural distinction

02:06:51   between the Air and the Pro.

02:06:53   When Brian uses the word issues here,

02:06:57   I think it's suggestive of what's happened

02:07:01   with some of the Macs with Intel processors in them,

02:07:04   which have had to really severely constrain themselves

02:07:09   because of the thermal limitations of Apple's designs.

02:07:12   And I guess to that, I would say the MacBook Air

02:07:15   was designed by the company that made the chip

02:07:17   that they put in it and they took the fan out on purpose.

02:07:21   So I don't think there's anything

02:07:22   that you would call an issue there.

02:07:23   I think that Apple must be exactly aware

02:07:27   of how that performs and they don't have a problem with it.

02:07:31   - Yeah, and I think people are focusing on the fan

02:07:36   too much as a differentiating thing

02:07:38   between the Air and the Pro.

02:07:40   Like there is more, right?

02:07:42   The battery life is longer and it has a touch bar.

02:07:45   These can be benefits.

02:07:48   I personally do consider the touch bar a benefit

02:07:52   as you've spoken about in the past.

02:07:53   I actually kind of like it.

02:07:55   I think that it adds something.

02:07:57   It can be very frustrating, but I think it adds something

02:07:59   and some people will want that.

02:08:01   Like these are different products.

02:08:03   And I give you, so like the issues thing,

02:08:05   I can see why you might say that.

02:08:06   There have been thermal issues

02:08:07   with some Apple products in the past,

02:08:09   but I think that they must have been very aware

02:08:13   of this going into it.

02:08:14   They didn't have to do this.

02:08:16   They chose to do this.

02:08:17   - Yeah. - Right?

02:08:18   I can't imagine that they put something else

02:08:20   to fill that space up really.

02:08:22   - It seems unlikely that Apple said,

02:08:26   "Well, what happens if we take the fan out?"

02:08:29   And then looked at it and said,

02:08:30   "Oh no, it's a disaster, let's ship it."

02:08:32   Like that's not, because it's their chip

02:08:35   and they're aware of it.

02:08:36   And let's just say it, it's a mobile chip.

02:08:40   It's not gonna do what the Intel chips do.

02:08:44   It is that they're taking advantage of the fact

02:08:46   that they've been making iPads

02:08:49   with no cooling system in them and getting along just fine.

02:08:53   So they should be able to do the same.

02:08:55   But again, that is also why the Air has no fan

02:08:59   and the Pro has a fan is it's a differentiator.

02:09:01   And that's basic chip logic

02:09:04   that if you have the fan,

02:09:06   you're gonna be able to sustain performance

02:09:07   and not underclock the processor in order to cool it down.

02:09:09   So that's why you get a Pro if you're worried about that.

02:09:14   - Roger asks, "What do you think about the next iPad Pro

02:09:16   becoming a dual boot machine with iOS and macOS?

02:09:20   This could placate people who have been wanting a touch Mac."

02:09:23   - I think it's not ever gonna happen

02:09:27   or at least not anytime soon.

02:09:29   I think Apple has been very clear

02:09:31   that the iPad is the iPad.

02:09:33   And it's a touch first device.

02:09:35   The idea of making it a dual boot

02:09:38   so you'd like go into the settings in the iPad

02:09:40   and say, now be a Mac.

02:09:42   And it would basically not work right

02:09:43   unless you attached stuff to it and turned it into a Mac.

02:09:47   I mean, there's nothing stopping Apple from doing it.

02:09:49   I just can't envision.

02:09:51   It would be a radical change in direction for Apple

02:09:55   and in their product philosophy.

02:09:56   I think it's far more likely that Apple would one day do

02:09:59   something like a convertible Mac

02:10:01   that you could fold over and put in touch mode

02:10:04   and it would basically behave like an iPad.

02:10:06   Then that you would take an iPad Pro and boot it into macOS.

02:10:10   That seems super weird to me.

02:10:13   And I'm not sure dual booting an iPad

02:10:15   is gonna placate anyone who wants a touchscreen Mac

02:10:18   of any kind.

02:10:21   So I think it's highly unlikely in the short term anyway.

02:10:26   And I would say even in the long term,

02:10:28   it's not an iPad if it boots macOS, it's something else.

02:10:31   And you wouldn't call it an iPad.

02:10:33   - I think I've been seeing this argument a lot

02:10:36   from people that don't want touchscreens on Macs.

02:10:40   So the thinking is, oh, we'll just,

02:10:44   the people that want touchscreens on Macs,

02:10:45   what they really want is just an iPad, right?

02:10:48   Like the people can't conceive of these things

02:10:50   as being able to be shared.

02:10:51   So the solution is just put macOS on the iPad Pro.

02:10:56   Like, well, that, I didn't really solve the problem

02:10:58   that I was looking for.

02:10:59   What I want and what I do want is a touchscreen on my Mac

02:11:03   so I can use the touchscreen when I want to,

02:11:05   not that I assume that I will be using a touchscreen

02:11:08   all the time.

02:11:09   Like, I do firmly believe touchscreens are coming

02:11:13   to the Mac.

02:11:14   I do 100% without a shadow of a doubt.

02:11:16   And I think to think that that's not happening

02:11:19   is wild to me.

02:11:20   Like the march of progress will suggest

02:11:24   that this is something that is happening.

02:11:26   It is wild to me that it is argued differently from that.

02:11:29   Like we don't have them yet, it's coming.

02:11:32   - Yeah.

02:11:33   - I believe it.

02:11:34   - Let's not forget too that Apple's whole kind of direction

02:11:37   in terms of development is toward catalyst

02:11:41   and toward running iOS apps on the Mac under Apple Silicon.

02:11:45   Apple's not making an effort to back port,

02:11:49   to build a bridge backward from Mac to iOS.

02:11:54   And I know that implicit in this question is dual boot.

02:11:59   Which is basically saying,

02:12:00   can I make my iPad not an iPad

02:12:03   so I can run Mac software on it?

02:12:05   And not only do I think Apple wouldn't do that,

02:12:07   I also have a hard time imagining that Apple

02:12:09   would make any sort of bridge to bring old Mac software

02:12:12   back to the iPad.

02:12:13   'Cause what Apple wants to do is push people forward

02:12:16   to adopting new technologies and new ways of developing apps

02:12:20   that run across all their platforms,

02:12:22   instead of providing this sort of backward bridge

02:12:25   for Mac compatibility.

02:12:27   So are there weird things that Apple could do?

02:12:29   Sure, I mean, Apple could build a virtualization engine

02:12:33   that ran Mac OS inside of iPad OS on iPad Pros

02:12:38   so that you could have a virtual Mac that only worked

02:12:41   when you had your, you know, a pointy device

02:12:43   and a keyboard attached.

02:12:45   They won't, but they could.

02:12:47   I think it's far, far, far more likely that the Mac,

02:12:51   you view the Mac as the set of Apple's technologies

02:12:54   and the iPad as a subset.

02:12:55   And that throwing the Mac inside the iPad

02:12:58   is not what they would do.

02:12:59   It's far more likely,

02:13:00   since they're going down this route already,

02:13:02   that you would have a Mac that would have a different shape,

02:13:05   a different design in terms of the hardware

02:13:08   than it currently does.

02:13:09   Whether that's just a touchscreen on a laptop

02:13:11   or whether that's something more like a convertible,

02:13:13   it's already got the ability to run iOS apps.

02:13:16   And so I feel like you already have a device

02:13:19   and an operating system that does all of this, it's Mac OS.

02:13:22   And I don't think the iPad is a product

02:13:25   that's meant to run Mac OS.

02:13:26   It's meant to be this simpler subset

02:13:30   that is not gonna run old software like that.

02:13:33   So I never say never, but I'm very,

02:13:36   I think it's very unlikely.

02:13:38   - Yeah, I don't see them going that way, right?

02:13:41   Like I don't see them going iPad Pro to Mac,

02:13:44   what they really are going.

02:13:45   Like it's the other way around.

02:13:47   Like iPad software is coming to the Mac,

02:13:50   Mac software is not coming to the iPad

02:13:52   because the future of Apple's platforms is that,

02:13:57   well, now all of our software is gonna be closer

02:14:00   to what iPad software is than the other way around.

02:14:03   - And honestly, I was thinking about this.

02:14:05   I advocated for a while for an iOS laptop,

02:14:07   like just build a laptop that runs iPad OS

02:14:10   and it's got a cursor now, cursor support and all that.

02:14:13   You could totally do it.

02:14:14   I think Apple is ever gonna do that

02:14:16   because I think it's far more likely

02:14:18   that Apple will just release.

02:14:20   I mean, we already have this week Mac laptops

02:14:23   that run iOS apps.

02:14:24   There they are.

02:14:26   So what's left?

02:14:29   And the answer is, like I said,

02:14:31   maybe you can fold the screen back

02:14:33   or turn it around or something.

02:14:34   Maybe we add a touch to the mix

02:14:36   and Apple pencil support to the mix.

02:14:38   But those are all things that Apple can do

02:14:39   in the context of the Mac that already exists

02:14:42   instead of building an iPad laptop or anything like that.

02:14:48   And so I think Apple is gonna define the iPad

02:14:51   as touch tablet that can be attached to other things.

02:14:54   And I think that's great.

02:14:55   I love the iPad, but I don't know if it,

02:14:59   I just, I can't see it.

02:15:00   I just can't see it.

02:15:01   - All right, and final question today comes from Parker

02:15:04   who asks, I always hear people say, quote,

02:15:07   this is not a huge year on year upgrade

02:15:10   when talking about new iPhones.

02:15:12   In your opinion, which iPhone was the largest

02:15:15   year over year upgrade?

02:15:17   - Oh, largest year over year upgrade?

02:15:21   - I have a thought on this if you'd like me to start.

02:15:23   - Yes, please.

02:15:25   - The iPhone 10, that was a massive year over year upgrade.

02:15:29   - Yeah.

02:15:30   - It's like, how about we take your iPhone,

02:15:33   we get rid of the home button which you've had for years,

02:15:35   we extend the screen out, we give you an OLED screen,

02:15:37   it's got stainless steel sides and now has face ID,

02:15:41   like massive year over year upgrade.

02:15:43   - And two cameras for those of us

02:15:46   who had not been using the Plus.

02:15:48   - And it's bigger.

02:15:49   - I think that's a good answer.

02:15:49   - For the people that hadn't been using the Plus.

02:15:51   My other one is the iPhone 6 because it included

02:15:55   the larger screen, like the larger option, right?

02:15:58   The iPhone 6 Plus, so like that was also like a huge step

02:16:01   as well in my opinion because it added a whole new model

02:16:05   but I think the biggest will, for a long time,

02:16:10   will be the 10, it was like the biggest year over year jump.

02:16:13   That was like a truly very different iPhone.

02:16:16   Like honestly, I couldn't imagine another one bigger

02:16:22   until they have another new form factor.

02:16:24   You know, like if Apple ever do a folding phone,

02:16:28   there have been rumors that apparently Apple

02:16:30   are moving forward with this for something in 2022.

02:16:33   I saw these today.

02:16:35   That apparently they're getting their suppliers

02:16:37   to do some testing on some demo units that they've made.

02:16:41   That would probably be the next massive jump

02:16:43   if they do change the form factor again.

02:16:46   I think that's what it takes to be considered

02:16:48   like year over year no brainer upgrades.

02:16:51   It's like, well, you couldn't have had an iPhone

02:16:53   that was even close to this one, right?

02:16:55   Other than that, they are iterative

02:16:57   because there is only so much you can do,

02:17:00   just so much you can do every year

02:17:02   and it still make sense as a product to continue pushing.

02:17:05   So there you go.

02:17:07   Nice.

02:17:09   If you would like to send in a question

02:17:11   for a future episode of the show,

02:17:13   just send out a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade

02:17:15   or you can use question mark #AskUpgrade

02:17:18   in the Relay FM members Discord.

02:17:20   I want to thank again, Tim and Tom from Apple for joining us.

02:17:25   It was a great conversation.

02:17:26   I'm really happy that we got to be able to spend that time

02:17:29   with them again to talk about the wonderful new Macs.

02:17:32   I'm looking forward very much to next week's episode

02:17:35   when we all talk about Big Sur

02:17:37   and also I would have had some time as well

02:17:39   with one of these M1 Macs.

02:17:40   I cannot wait to get my hands on one, Jason, very excited.

02:17:44   I also want to thank our sponsors for this episode,

02:17:48   DoorDash, Remote Works, Pingdom and SaneBox.

02:17:51   Don't forget, if you want to have longer episodes of Upgrade

02:17:55   with additional bonus content and no ads every single week,

02:17:59   go to getupgradeplus.com, become a member

02:18:02   and support the show.

02:18:03   And I want to thank everybody that has done that.

02:18:06   If you want to find Jason's work online,

02:18:08   go to sixcolors.com and he is @jsnell on Twitter,

02:18:11   J S N E double L.

02:18:13   I am @imike, I M Y K E, and we'll be back next week.

02:18:17   Thank you so much for tuning in

02:18:19   to this bumper episode of Upgrade.

02:18:21   Until then, say goodbye Jason Snell.

02:18:23   - Goodbye everybody.

02:18:24   (upbeat music)

02:18:27   (upbeat music)

02:18:29   [Music]