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325: Johny for the Chips

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 325. Today's show is brought to you by PDF Pen from Smile,

00:00:16   Pingdom, and Ooni Pizza Ovens. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hello, Jason Snow.

00:00:21   Hi Myke Hurley. We, uh, we're three for three, you know, in our weird new world of monthly Apple events.

00:00:29   Probably the last one. Probably the last one, right? It's got a... I reckon we'll have one within the next

00:00:36   three or four months, but I don't think it's going to be until 2021. No, there was a subtle sort of, like,

00:00:42   I appreciated that Tim Cook came out right at the beginning of this event and was like, "Wow,

00:00:45   hard to believe this is our third event in two months," and I'm sitting here thinking, "It's not

00:00:49   hard to believe, Tim. We've been living it." But yeah, I think that there's some implication there

00:00:54   that it's going to be a little bit. I actually have a Snow Talk question of you of my own doing,

00:00:59   as I like to do on these events because I need something that's timely, I feel.

00:01:03   We opened this presentation today with Tim Cook in Cafe Max. So that's, like, Apple's employee cafe

00:01:10   with those incredibly large doors, those massive glass doors. What do you think Tim Cook had for

00:01:16   breakfast before the presentation began today? I don't think he had anything because clearly the

00:01:20   entire place has been cleaned out and nobody was there, so they didn't make any food. I did think

00:01:24   to myself, "Is that a day where they're just like, 'All right, no one can get lunch today, Tim? Tim's

00:01:30   shooting in here.'" I don't know who's at at Apple Park right now and what the food situation is and

00:01:36   how they handle that in terms of keeping safe and all of that. Is it little box lunches that you go

00:01:41   get or whatever? But it was immaculate, like nobody had ever been in that spot before. Just

00:01:48   Tim. That's Tim's personal. He has hundreds of chairs to choose from. All right, we have,

00:01:55   obviously, so much to get to today. But let's start with a couple of notes, programming notes,

00:02:01   really. This has been an interesting week and not only did we have an Apple event today,

00:02:07   iPhone Mini and Max reviews dropped yesterday and they're available for everybody to buy on Friday.

00:02:16   You have both the 12 Mini and the 12 Pro Max, don't you?

00:02:20   I do. Actually, I think I saw you published a little note about them on Six Colors.

00:02:24   I've been taking pictures of them and stuff, yeah.

00:02:26   I'm sure you're working on a review of some kind, maybe, or at least some kind of article about them.

00:02:32   Yeah, I mean, amid all the other things that are going on, sure, yeah. I'm working on it in the

00:02:39   sense that I have been using the phones and then all this other stuff happens. So we'll see, but

00:02:45   yeah, sure. Yeah, and I was able to order the phone that I wanted and it's coming on Friday,

00:02:51   which is the Gold Pro Max, which I know is what you have, actually.

00:02:55   I have it in my hands right now and you're going to love it.

00:02:57   Yeah, you've said that to me and also call it out in the little article that you wrote,

00:03:01   which makes me very excited. But because we have so much to talk about today,

00:03:06   we're just going to both give our full impressions/review of the devices that we have

00:03:14   next week. So on next week's episode, that's when we're going to talk about that,

00:03:18   because then I will have had time as well. Usually the way that we do this stuff is

00:03:23   one week I'll ask you and then the next week I'll follow up with my impressions,

00:03:26   but we're just going to do them all next week instead.

00:03:29   Yes.

00:03:29   Right. Which will actually be a part of a bumper episode because we're very excited that next week

00:03:38   we're going to be welcoming back friends of the show, Tim Millet and Tom Boger from Apple

00:03:43   to talk about the M1. So you may remember a few weeks ago we had Tim and Tom on to talk about the

00:03:49   A14 and looking forward to what we were calling Apple Silicon. But we're going to be bringing them

00:03:56   back to the show again next week and we're going to be talking about the new M1 chips.

00:04:02   We are recording this in advance, so we don't have a ton of notice, but if you have questions

00:04:09   that you would like us to ask, please send those in with the hashtag #AskUpgrade and we may be able

00:04:14   to pick a few to ask Tim and Tom. If you're related to either of them, free time.

00:04:20   Sure. That's right. Any surprise sibling questions, throw those in the mix. But just do it quickly

00:04:26   because we have to pre-tape that. So as you hear this, if you have any thoughts, immediately send

00:04:30   them to #AskUpgrade and we'll use them if we can. All right. Let's talk about the draft.

00:04:38   Okay. What do you want to know? What do you mean what do I want to know?

00:04:42   Like you forget how these things go every time. So you won the draft.

00:04:46   I don't. They seem to go the same every time.

00:04:48   You won the draft again. Congratulations. Thank you.

00:04:51   I did have this feeling today though, because sometimes I'm like, "Gosh darn it,

00:04:57   can't I win just one of them?" I have that feeling every now and then. But I looked at the scores

00:05:03   and we're so close that you beat me 5-4 today. We can go through them a little bit maybe, but

00:05:09   I felt a little less bad about the fact that typically these competitions are pretty close

00:05:15   and you tend to win by one or two points. So it's like, "All right. It's not like it's 5-0

00:05:20   every time. I'm getting close." Yeah. You're 0 for 2020 though, right?

00:05:25   Yeah. 0 for 2020. You have 4 for 2020. We all know this, Jason. You don't need me to say it,

00:05:31   but you want me to say it, so I've said it. Congratulations.

00:05:35   But they were all close. They were all close. They were all close.

00:05:38   Yeah. The big ones. So yeah, we scored at 5-4. I got the tiebreaker, but it didn't matter because

00:05:44   it was a short, it was a 45-minute presentation. The big ones I missed on the A14X because we ended

00:05:52   up getting the M1. We'll talk about that. Yeah. That's huge.

00:05:54   And then I threw in Greg Joswiak and over-the-ear headphones, and then you lost out on

00:06:01   a demo of iOS apps on the Mac. It was more like an image that they exist, and then goodbye.

00:06:07   When this happened, I was annoyed at myself. And the reason I was annoyed at myself is they have

00:06:13   not done any demos in any of these events. Looking back at it, previously it was like,

00:06:20   "Well, surely they're going to." They had the Game Studio guys for the iPhone,

00:06:23   right? So they did have that. That was a moment where you could go get yourself another drink

00:06:27   while they did those demos, but they didn't do that on this one. I thought you had a good

00:06:31   chance of getting that, that they would actually show that experience. They didn't. So we still

00:06:36   only know vaguely, it's going to be one of the things that's very interesting when people can

00:06:41   first start reporting about what these machines are like. One of the things that's really going

00:06:46   to be, what is it like to use an iOS app on the Mac? Supposedly it's very Mac-like, but we haven't

00:06:53   really seen it in a huge amount of detail. Anyway, you also said the return of the MacBook

00:06:57   which didn't happen. Yeah, I knew I was going to lose this draft on Tuesday because Mark

00:07:03   Gorman published a report and he named the machines, mostly, that were going to appear

00:07:09   and the MacBook was not one of them. And that was when I knew I was losing the draft.

00:07:12   He didn't mention the Mac Mini. No, he didn't.

00:07:13   So we could have picked the Mac Mini and that would have been a heck of a pick,

00:07:16   but that didn't happen. And then you mentioned Apple tags and new AirPods and it was a Mac-only

00:07:20   event. So 5-4, I'll take it. I'll take the win. I honestly thought that you were going to get this

00:07:27   one, but it didn't happen. So we'll move on to 2021. Yeah, I wonder how many there will be in

00:07:36   2021. I don't know. Yeah, I would say overall, I've actually really enjoyed doing as many drafts

00:07:44   as we have been doing. I think that's actually been pretty fun. But yeah, I think we did.

00:07:50   We did pretty well, right? Like we both did pretty well on the Mac stuff. It was on non-Mac picks

00:07:56   because there was no non-Mac anything. It was mandatory. Yeah, and the ones we got right were

00:08:01   literally just a person will appear. And, you know, I took Craig for Big Sur and you took

00:08:07   Johnny Scrooge for the chips and we got those. So yeah. Just as a couple of like meta things.

00:08:14   This event ran fast, again, faster. It wasn't much of an event in time. It's about 45 minutes,

00:08:23   but I didn't feel completely overwhelmed or confused in the same way that I did with the

00:08:28   iPhone event. Even though, again, there was still a lot of data, a lot of numbers,

00:08:32   but this one felt much easier to digest. Again, it's like, it looks fantastic. I'm sure you

00:08:38   really loved the, like, when they were going through the, like what looked like some kind of,

00:08:43   I guess, like magical elevator where they had all the six color hallways.

00:08:46   Yes. When they were going down to the chip lab and they obviously spent the vast majority

00:08:51   of the presentation, I think, in the chip lab or in front of that screen in Steve Jobs theater.

00:08:56   That was kind of the whole kind of thing. Yeah. There were some lengthy transitions,

00:09:03   right? Like the one that got me was where they, they like show Tim far away and like a crane or

00:09:10   a drone flies all the way up to get to Tim. And then he just turns and he's at the place where

00:09:16   we see him before. But there are a couple of those things there. They're experimenting and,

00:09:20   and getting more comfortable showing off. Who knew that when they spent those billions of dollars for

00:09:25   Apple park for the campus, that the number one thing that, uh, they would use it for would be

00:09:31   as a set for their video Apple. They're pretty lucky that they do have such a beautiful campus,

00:09:38   right? They are. And they're showing it off, but yeah, it's true. Because they can, it is

00:09:43   essentially a set of its own, right? Like it's not just a building, you know, like

00:09:47   infinite loop was fine, but like it didn't, it would not look the same. Uh, if they would have

00:09:54   had to have shot everything at the old campus, like the Apple park campus really does lend itself

00:09:59   to these very beautiful, uh, landscape shots that they do.

00:10:05   All right, let's take our first break, Jason, and we can, we can start talking about the M1 chip

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00:13:22   M1 chip. I want to just say before we get into anything that's amazing about this,

00:13:28   I will say this portion of the presentation absolutely blew my brain off. Like I was

00:13:32   flabbergasted by it. But I am so happy that I no longer have to say Apple Silicon Max.

00:13:38   Yeah. I don't need to do it anymore. It's the M1.

00:13:41   I mean, my initial thought was when they said Apple Silicon at WWDC that there was going to

00:13:49   be a brand name that came that they wouldn't just leave it like that. But it was a real debate.

00:13:54   And I actually picked that they were going to use an A14 in our draft because I just sort of

00:14:01   had given up hope that they would do something different. I definitely suggested using the M

00:14:07   name. I think I suggested they just call it the M14. And I heard from a lot of people who said

00:14:13   they can't use M because they used it for the motion coprocessor. And I guess what I would say

00:14:18   is if Apple wants to use it again, they just will. And they don't care. So M1 it is. And the motion

00:14:27   coprocessor fades into oblivion because that's the Mac chip now, M1. Start from the start.

00:14:33   There's no parity with the A14. It's just the M1. And it's good because we can talk about the M1.

00:14:40   And presumably in the long run, we can talk about the M series chips, which is a better way to do it.

00:14:46   Probably once we get to M2, M3 or whatever, we won't need to refer to it anymore because Intel

00:14:52   won't be around anymore. So we won't talk about these chips in the way that we have been for the

00:14:56   last few months of, oh, when it's Apple Silicon, when it's Intel, like that's going to fade away.

00:15:02   But I just like that there is a brand for it, which is more than calling this Apple Silicon

00:15:08   Max, M1 Max. And I like as well, because it became obvious to us, I think we spotted this in the last

00:15:15   presentation, that Apple started referring to Apple Silicon in the Apple Watch, for example,

00:15:21   right? Which is not a phrase that they had used before. It was just their own chip or their own

00:15:26   custom silicon, but they started calling it Apple Silicon. So that's clearly going to be the overall

00:15:31   name for their chips, right? And then they're going to start breaking it down.

00:15:35   - Something I want to mention about the M1 and like, is it an A14X? Is it something like that?

00:15:42   There are a few things that the developer transition kit, which was an A12Z Mac Mini,

00:15:51   couldn't do, right? There were certain things involving virtualization and involving,

00:15:57   what was it? There was different like Thunderbolt, there was no Thunderbolt where there is on this.

00:16:04   So the question is, if the M1 is kind of the A14X, and I think it could be very similar,

00:16:17   I think that they probably won't, but it's even possible that they might use the M1,

00:16:22   follow me here, in the iPad Pro. - Oh, Jason, don't do this.

00:16:26   - That would be really weird. They probably won't, but they could,

00:16:30   but there are some differences. So whether there is a third variation or not, there are things that

00:16:39   they had to do for these models that the existing A12Z that was in the developer kit didn't do.

00:16:46   So it is appreciably different in that way. I don't think it's fair to say it's just an A14X

00:16:54   because the A12X couldn't do a bunch of things. It doesn't necessarily mean that the M1 isn't also

00:17:01   basically an A14X that will be used in other things. We'll have to wait for those people

00:17:07   who take chips off of motherboards and sand them down and X-ray them and do all those things to

00:17:13   find out. But in the meantime, it is the M1, at least we know that. - I think there's a couple of

00:17:20   important things about this, which is one, Apple isn't saying that. So the marketing message at

00:17:26   least is this is its own series of chips. That's where they started. They were quite clear about

00:17:32   that. And I think for me, it's like what this isn't is what we thought it was going to be.

00:17:38   And what we thought it was going to be is this is the A14T or the A14M or whatever. It's not that.

00:17:46   And with my layman's view on this, these chips are all made by the same company. So yes, they

00:17:55   share a similar foundation, but we're not going to start saying that the chips that are in the Apple

00:18:00   watch are like the chips that are in the iPhone. They're just not. It's like how TV OS is

00:18:06   technically iOS, but we don't think of it that way. - That said, these cores are essentially the

00:18:12   same cores that are in the A14. They're not that different, but they are building up from there to

00:18:18   a different product. And we'll find out. Again, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility

00:18:23   that if there's an A14X and the M1 and people compare them, they discover that they are almost

00:18:29   exactly the same. That wouldn't surprise me. They're all in the same family, I think, the M1

00:18:34   and the A14. They're all part of the five nanometer process from Taiwan Semiconductor. They're all in

00:18:40   the family. One of the things I really like about unhitching the Mac chip from the A series is it

00:18:48   allows for growth in the Mac side that is not necessarily in parallel. - And vice versa. - Yeah,

00:18:56   well yeah, and vice versa. - Right, but you don't have to have A14 and A14X or A15, A15X

00:19:04   like year over year. You can iterate them at different frequencies, which is important.

00:19:10   - Especially now when you're rolling out new models for the Mac, you may be iterating a bit more,

00:19:16   but I do think that there will still be some criminology because it's Apple. There always

00:19:20   is criminology, but where we're like, "Is it an A14? Is that an M1? What is the M2 map to? Is that

00:19:27   A15? Is that A16? Watch the signs. Look to the skies, people." I don't know. I started as Batman

00:19:35   and I ended up as Fox Mulder there, but you know what? We're still going to do that, right? But

00:19:40   it does allow Apple to have a little bit of freedom to say, "This is the M1." Right? Like,

00:19:46   is it related to the A14? Well, I mean, it's Apple Silicon, but we're not going to tie it

00:19:52   that closely. And I think that's a good thing. We were very aware that no matter what they did,

00:19:58   the chips that they were going to produce were going to have some very impressive specs. We

00:20:03   knew that, right? Because we knew that if they took an iPhone and hid it inside of a Mac,

00:20:10   it would go great. It would be great, right? Like, we knew that. So the things that they have

00:20:16   given us, the information they've given us, whilst for me, I still expected it, I am still really

00:20:22   surprised at some of the capabilities of these chips. So there was a lot of comparisons to PCs,

00:20:32   but also comparisons to other Macs as well, which I appreciated. So it's lots of like three times,

00:20:39   four times, five times, best in class. And we'll go into some of those a little bit more when we

00:20:43   talk about the computers, but themselves. But one of my very favorite things is, you know,

00:20:48   it's got that eight core design. So it's for high efficiency, high for high performance, right?

00:20:55   We've seen this kind of like split for a while. Yeah, this is the, literally the iPad pro model

00:21:03   here, which is eight cores for performance cores for efficiency cores. Yeah. But the stat that

00:21:09   really, I couldn't believe was that like the four high efficiency cores. So the less powerful cores,

00:21:17   the ones that are working on battery life and energy performance, they have similar performance,

00:21:23   those four to the current dual core MacBook Air. Yeah. So it's like, oh, so there's a lot of head

00:21:32   room in this machine then, huh? That was amazing. If you take the fast ones away, and again, you

00:21:38   know, Apple would tell you, these aren't the slow ones, right? These are, these are more efficient

00:21:42   ones, but the more efficient cores on their own, those four will get you performance equivalent to

00:21:48   the, I'll grant you two core existing MacBook Air. But of course the MacBook Air doesn't come

00:21:53   with just the four efficiency cores. It comes with them plus the four performance cores. And

00:21:58   there's a lot of, I mean, we've been doing, we'll talk about the models more in a little bit, but

00:22:02   we've been talking about, there was, there was that one chart. There was the saddest,

00:22:06   there are lots of charts in this first off, lots of charts. If you like charts, this was the

00:22:10   presentation for you, but there was the super sad chart that was, let's look at how Mac models have

00:22:15   gotten faster over time recently, which again, they didn't mention Intel except I think our

00:22:23   friend said that in the universal apps thing, they mentioned Intel, but they almost didn't mention

00:22:29   Intel, but here is, they talk about PC performance a lot, but like they did that chart, the super

00:22:34   sad chart. That's literally like, look, the Mac got slightly faster year over year. And then,

00:22:39   you know, here we went to Apple Silicon two and a half times as fast as the old model. And like,

00:22:45   when was the last time Apple released a model that updated a previous model released within the last

00:22:50   couple of years? And it was more than double the speed. Like that doesn't happen. It doesn't happen.

00:22:55   And this is what we were saying all along about how Apple isn't going to make the move to Apple

00:23:00   Silicon unless it can go across the board and say, look how much better our own processors are.

00:23:06   And to say the MacBook Air that was sold last week is, you know, this much slower, it's less than 50%

00:23:15   the speed. I know I'm okay. 2.5 faster. The new one is like that is much more than we've seen in

00:23:24   the kind of slow march of performance improvements that the Mac has seen under Intel and then a

00:23:30   little bit more like, you know, the pace of some of Apple's progress five years ago ish with their

00:23:37   own chips. But like by making that jump, you're going to more than double performance. That's

00:23:42   pretty spectacular. Is this a bigger performance jump from power PC to Intel? Like in numbers?

00:23:51   I would have to go back. I think it's in the ballpark. I think this is a little bit

00:23:55   more than that. I think my memory of the Intel stuff is that it was sort of

00:23:58   around 2x and they're claiming, you know, sort of two and a half here. But well, it's more than that.

00:24:05   I mean, it's two and a half just on this. But when we start getting the actual computers,

00:24:10   I think they're all around three to five. There's also three, four, five. Yeah, it's true. It's true.

00:24:15   Yeah, no, it's a big, it's a big jump. And that's what, that's why they're doing it right. That's

00:24:19   why they want to go out there and do it this way and boast about their, like they had the whole

00:24:24   thing about how the core in the M1, like a processor core, performance core is the world's

00:24:31   fastest CPU core. I thought that was a funny little detail for them to throw out there.

00:24:37   Yeah, I found that interesting. I'm going to be intrigued to see coverage from more PC led

00:24:49   outlets to see what, I want to see what that means. Fascinating. I really like Linus Tech Tips. It's a

00:24:55   YouTube channel that I've really gotten into over the last year or so ago because it's a whole other

00:25:00   world of technology that I enjoy. And this is their bread and butter, right? Speeds and feeds.

00:25:06   And I'm really intrigued to see what they make of this and what the benchmarks and stuff that they

00:25:14   do on these machines when they get them. And I want to see that kind of coverage from a market

00:25:23   that is more focused on what these CPUs are actually doing than we are. We have a base idea

00:25:30   of what's out there, but we don't really know it in depth. So I'm intrigued to see for there,

00:25:35   but I mean, I don't believe that Apple is lying, but I want to see what that means.

00:25:40   Apple frames things in interesting ways, right? Like they framed faster than the best selling

00:25:46   computer in the class, which I always thought was hilarious because that's not faster than the

00:25:50   fastest. Or faster than 98%. Well, that 2% could be a lot of machines. And it's 90% of PC sold,

00:25:59   which means that the impression I get anyway, unless they want to tell me otherwise, is that

00:26:04   they're using market size as a part of that. So, you know, if it's not 98% of all the PC models,

00:26:10   it's 98% of the PCs that were sold are models that are slower, which is again, Apple's job here is to

00:26:18   make them look as impressive as possible. And then it's our job to look at that and go, what does that

00:26:22   really mean? What's the actual like in phrase in, in, in framing it in a way that we care about,

00:26:28   how does that work as opposed to the way that they do it? Because obviously they're going to pick the

00:26:32   ways that they look best and they're going to use those. So we're going to have to see about that,

00:26:36   but it's still, you know, they're not making these claims without good reason. We'll just have to see

00:26:42   what, you know, what the details are when we get our hands on them. And you're right though,

00:26:47   the PC, seeing how PC people or people who, who view the PC industry as a whole, we're going back

00:26:53   to the pre Intel Mac days where it's a different ship architecture and it starts to look different.

00:26:59   And how do they judge it and what are they looking for? Because Macs and PCs are diverging again.

00:27:03   And, and so how are they going to read what Apple is doing now that it's not doing it on Intel?

00:27:10   Be that'll be interesting. Yeah. I mean, there are a bunch of other features that the M1 chip has,

00:27:16   of course, there was a big focus on the machine learning performance. This really isn't something

00:27:21   that I feel like I can quantify for myself. Uh, like I appreciate the Apple say they get better

00:27:28   at it. And I know that more and more of computing is being powered by this type of stuff, but it

00:27:34   doesn't mean the same to me as when you tell me CPU, GPU stuff like that. I can, you know,

00:27:40   like I can get my head around that. I know what that means. Um, but the, the machine learning

00:27:44   stuff, you know, it's not so much the integrated graphics are quite an incredible thing. It's at

00:27:51   eight cores. Um, it's the most powerful Apple's ever made. They call it a class of its own and

00:27:57   it's the fastest integrated graphics you can get, uh, is what they're saying. And there's a bunch of

00:28:02   stuff there about the, uh, the shared memory and, and which is quite complicated, but seems kind of

00:28:09   interesting, uh, about the ways where they could unified memory. So what is called unified memory,

00:28:15   uh, and apparently that can really help with the, with the graphics performance as well.

00:28:19   Right. We no longer with these systems, they don't have video Ram and then processor Ram. There's

00:28:24   just memory that's shared and it's an integrated system. The whole thing is integrated and Apple,

00:28:30   you know, built their own GPUs and they're pretty proud of them. So that'll be, and it's important.

00:28:36   We're going to get into the details here in a little bit, but like, it's also important to

00:28:40   remember this is the first drop of systems using Apple Silicon. These are the first M1 Max and the

00:28:46   first Apple Silicon Max. They fill very particular niches in the Mac product line and not others.

00:28:53   And I think it's instructive to realize what Apple picked for the first go and what they didn't pick.

00:29:00   And they're going to be people who have some hot takes when what they're going to say as well.

00:29:04   But what about this? But what about that? What about this? It doesn't do this. It doesn't do

00:29:09   that. And the answer is, well, you know, they only replaced three models and they didn't even really

00:29:14   replace them entirely. So like, it's not, it's the lowest in Mac book pro the low end laptop

00:29:22   and the Mac mini. So, you know, there's more of a story here about things like graphics, right?

00:29:28   That they didn't replace the higher end systems. Presumably that's something for 2021, but it's not

00:29:35   step one, that's step two or step three along this process of, uh, of having the whole product line

00:29:41   get overhauled and turn into M series processors. Well, on that note, so these machines support USB

00:29:48   four. They have USB four ports and USB four ports. This is very confusing. Uh, it's a USB C

00:29:56   shaped connector, but USB four has capabilities for Thunderbolt. It's now gone the other way around.

00:30:06   Yeah. It's like Thunderbolt and USB four. Thunderbolt is sort of USB four. USB four encompasses

00:30:14   Thunderbolt and you know, this is the future because everybody's so frustrated about USB C

00:30:20   and Thunderbolt and some stuff works on Thunderbolt, but not USB C, even though they

00:30:25   share a connector with Thunderbolt three, the idea here is the next generation of devices. And this

00:30:30   is it right here is using this unified Thunderbolt is USB four. Thunderbolt is the Thunderbolt spec

00:30:37   is I believe the basis of USB four. And the idea is if you have something that's Thunderbolt slash

00:30:42   USB four, it's going to work with USB peripherals and with Thunderbolt peripherals. It will work

00:30:48   with all of them. So this mess of like, is this USB C or is this Thunderbolt? How do I need to work?

00:30:54   Like that's going to go away when we move to USB four. And that's what we have here. Every machine

00:31:00   that Apple has for sale, uh, with an M1 chip in it has just two ports. There are two ports.

00:31:06   That's not true. That's not true. The Mac mini has two USB A ports in addition.

00:31:10   Sorry, I meant two USB four ports. Right. Right. So, right. And my understanding is that there,

00:31:16   uh, the, the M1 has two Thunderbolts controllers in it, integrated into it. It just, it comes with

00:31:24   two Thunderbolt controllers. Um, and each one can control one port and then those ports can do things

00:31:30   like drive, you know, that the Apple studio display XDR and, you know, other, other ridiculous stuff

00:31:37   that you can do over those two ports. So for there to be more, right. So if we're going to go to a

00:31:42   four port, uh, model, like the 13 and 16 inch or the IMAX or whatever, it would appear that they

00:31:51   could not be M1 powered. It would be, it would appear there would need to be a different chip

00:31:56   variation as far as I can tell, which is probably why the two port 13 inch Mac book pro is what got

00:32:02   replaced. Yes. And the USB A's on the Mac mini, there's probably some, you know, PCIE bridge or

00:32:09   something that goes out to give USB A like to toss those in there. Um, but the, but yeah, the two

00:32:16   Thunderbolt controllers that are embedded in the M1 are the ones that are controlling those two

00:32:22   ports. And that's why you're seeing the family resemblance where all three of these machines have

00:32:28   those two Thunderbolt ports. Uh, secure enclave is now a part of the M1. So there's no longer

00:32:34   the need for a separate T1, T2 chip. Um, it says again, like the iOS, iPadOS devices, uh,

00:32:41   all of that stuff is now dealt with in the system on a chip itself. Um, and one thing I found

00:32:47   interesting is that, uh, during Craig's portion, he was talking about instant wake from sleep so

00:32:53   that these machines will wake instantly. And I was reminded that that was one of the big things

00:32:59   about the Mac book air, right? Was that Steve jobs, Steve jobs, as sort of story goes, uh,

00:33:06   turn on an iPad and was like, why point it to a Mac? It was like, why can't this do that? Um,

00:33:11   and you know, they got much better at it, but I'm intrigued. How much more instant is this instant

00:33:16   wake from sleep? I want to say that. Yeah. That's exactly my feeling is didn't we already get this?

00:33:22   Like, Oh, look, you turn on and it wakes, it wakes right up with the, I think when they introduced

00:33:26   the Mac book, right. They're like, Oh, look from the people who brought you the iPad and it wakes

00:33:30   up instantly and all that, but didn't, it didn't really write it like the screen came on. And then

00:33:34   you sort of waited as everything kind of shook its head and rubbed the sleep out of its eyes.

00:33:39   And finally it was ready for you to use it. And, you know, they've made a new claim of instant

00:33:43   wake from sleep with, uh, Craig Viderike getting down and on one knee and listening to some Barry

00:33:48   white and then waking up the laptop. Right. So we'll see. But, um, that would be great if that

00:33:54   was one of the things that they really focused on in a big Sur on M one max was, you know, getting

00:34:02   it to be more or less an instant wake because, you know, when you wake up your iPad, you don't sit

00:34:06   there and wait for everything to refresh generally. Right. It just is back awake and you continue to

00:34:12   use it. Uh, before we get into the max themselves, Apple did do a recap of big Sur.

00:34:18   Uh, they, I liked that they started using the line, which I expect they only use all the time

00:34:23   now when it comes to the Mac is this idea that Apple's have for years with the hardware and

00:34:27   software working all together, where this is like completely true with the Mac now, because

00:34:32   they build the chips now. So they're not just taking advantage of what they can from what Intel

00:34:37   have. They can really build with features in mind on both sides, which I think is great. Um, big Sur

00:34:43   is available on Thursday. Not 24 hours notice this time, but 48 hours developers. I think it was tail

00:34:50   end of last week, Apple started taking submissions, um, for big Sur anyway. So that was a very

00:34:57   different, very different scenario. And they will obviously have the developer transition kits this

00:35:02   summer in order to work on things. And so I think that'll be a much more orderly kind of,

00:35:06   kind of thing going on, but Thursday is the day for big Sur. Um, one of the things that I found

00:35:11   really interesting is when they were talking about Rosetta too, which is the, uh, the ability,

00:35:18   which is the function that will allow for applications that are not compiled to run on M1

00:35:24   that are previously Intel applications, uh, to be able to be, I don't want to say emulated,

00:35:29   but you know what I mean when I say that, right? Translated is what the code translation,

00:35:35   it sounds like what they do is when you launch them or when you download them from the Mac app

00:35:39   store, they, and we learned this at WWDC, they run Rosetta runs on them, I think via gatekeeper

00:35:47   and basically first launch or before it runs this translation process where it's looking at the code

00:35:54   and trying to build like the translation version of it. And then it runs that. And so I think

00:36:02   there's an initial hit that they don't want you to take, which is why it happens on download from

00:36:06   the Mac app store. And then that runs. So it's not quite emulation where they're running an Intel

00:36:12   binary and every command gets translated and, and, you know, and they're running it on a virtual

00:36:18   Intel chip. Instead, it's this sort of other thing where it's, you could, my understanding is you

00:36:22   could almost think of it as like a cached version. Like they're trying to cache as many of the

00:36:29   commands as possible so that they can run them most efficiently. But anyway, it's, it's Rosetta

00:36:34   2.0. We'll have to see how it goes. I'm looking forward to finding it out because this is again,

00:36:39   one of those things where Apple's just going to say, Oh yeah, it's great. And then we all have to

00:36:43   determine for ourselves if it's great or not. But, but as with funny, as with the last two chip

00:36:50   transitions on the Mac there are these quirks about how your app is built. So like they said

00:36:57   in this presentation, if an app is built using metal, Apple's graphics frameworks, the frameworks

00:37:04   will be native. So you could have an app that's not native, an app that is an Intel app, but

00:37:10   if it's a game and it's using metal, it's calling on these frameworks. The frameworks are native.

00:37:16   And that's why they said there'll be some non-native games that are, have higher frame

00:37:21   rates on M1 because, you know, they're really not, you know, they're all the graphics stuff is

00:37:28   running natively because the graphics stuff isn't Intel it's metal. It's using Apple's frameworks,

00:37:33   any framework that you call that is native is native. So that's a, that's a good thing,

00:37:38   which is the opposite of what it was in the power PC transition from a 68,000 class ones,

00:37:46   where they're like, there were whole parts of Apple's frameworks that weren't native.

00:37:49   And so you could have native code that ran slow. This is the, this is better. This is better. So

00:37:54   we'll, but we'll have to see the details, right? And all of us are going to have different apps

00:37:57   that we're going to be like, Oh man, this is the app I love. And it's, and it isn't out for,

00:38:02   for Apple Silicon yet. And what happens then? And is it good or is it bad? Um, you know, Apple

00:38:08   isn't going to talk about that because Apple just wants everybody to be happy. So

00:38:12   Yeah, because it's more than just game stuff. They're saying that because Apple Silicon,

00:38:16   the M1 chips are so much faster than the chips they're replacing.

00:38:19   A lot of applications will perform better in Rosetta because the chip is so much faster. So

00:38:26   that is, um, that's going to be a very different story to the original Rosetta, which was great,

00:38:33   but you knew, right? Like you opened Word and you knew, right?

00:38:38   It varied, I would say, and this is something that Apple, I think actually,

00:38:42   uh, hinted at today, which is if you're upgrading from a system that's three years old or like our

00:38:49   friend Dan Morin, right? Dan has had a MacBook Air, non-retina that's been kicking around for

00:38:53   a long time and he's really wanted to buy a new one. But first it was the bad keyboard on the

00:38:59   retina MacBook Air. He wanted to wait. Then they got the good keyboard, but there were the rumors

00:39:02   about Apple Silicon and, uh, and the pandemic. And he's like, I'll, I'll wait. And today he bought a

00:39:08   MacBook Air, right? Not to steal Dan's thunder. Dan's not on this podcast, so I'm going to do it.

00:39:12   He bought a MacBook Air. That's great. Well for him, Rosetta two apps are going to run faster

00:39:21   than on his MacBook Air, right? Because that's an old MacBook Air. It's a little bit different if

00:39:25   you're coming from a one-year-old Mac than if you're coming from a four-year-old Mac or a

00:39:29   five-year-old Mac. So, so it's all in your perspective. Um, but we'll see, we'll see how it compares.

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00:41:30   to Pingdom from SolarWinds for their support of this show and Relay FM. So there were three

00:41:36   Macintosh's today which was a big surprise. They you know on the whole they look the same.

00:41:44   I think that you noted in our document I think you said it to me too this is

00:41:49   just what they did with Intel as well it started with here is a bunch of Macs you know what these

00:41:54   things all look like but they're all different on the inside. Yeah like literally I think unless

00:41:59   you've got the serial number memorized if you look if I laid down two MacBook Airs two Macbook

00:42:06   Airs an M1 MacBook Air and the previous Retina MacBook Air on Intel and you could all you could

00:42:13   do was look at them and like even pick them up and and look at them no difference they are literally

00:42:20   the same and the same is true of the 13-inch two-port MacBook Pro they are no different.

00:42:27   Funny difference with the Mac Mini though it's silver.

00:42:31   Did you know that? Yeah yeah the there's in fact here's a funny thing already a conspiracy theory

00:42:39   that this opens up the possibility of a more powerful Mac Mini with the next generation.

00:42:48   Or just a small professional Macintosh. Maybe maybe but yeah the Mac Mini we'll get to it

00:42:58   I think there are a lot of questions about what they did with the Mac Mini that are it's it feels

00:43:05   like this has happened to the Mac Mini before where Apple sort of come in with a new version

00:43:10   that makes some people go well wait a second that's not as good in some ways as the old version was

00:43:15   but we should probably start with the laptops because those are those are most interesting

00:43:19   or in fact we should probably start with what these all have in common we've been speculating

00:43:24   on this show for a couple of years now about the potential future of Apple Silicon Macs and what

00:43:31   would your options be right like what are my buying options is it literally just MacBook Air

00:43:38   it comes as is next MacBook Pro comes as is next right and to a certain extent that's true but

00:43:46   there are we do have some options if you're buying a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro you or a Mac Mini you

00:43:52   have a few choices you have storage you have ram well although only 8 and 16 the unified memory yes

00:44:01   well so it's interesting you go to the product pages and they have two configurations for each

00:44:06   of them and it's this was confusing to me when I was going to the pages it was like I was not

00:44:11   expecting this and you kind of dig through them a bit and for the MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini

00:44:16   they are basically standard configurations they have different unified memory and storage between

00:44:23   them but the MacBook Air the cheaper one has a seven core GPU it's the only machine in the lineup

00:44:31   today that has that if you remember when we spoke about the a12z processor which gained an extra

00:44:41   core over the x in the 2020 iPad Pro I learned along with many of our listeners sure about a

00:44:47   thing called binning which is where as chips are made some are better and some are worse based on

00:44:52   how good the chips are made and there's like a yield thing you can get rid of them or you can

00:44:57   use them in different ways and what it seems like is being done here is that the good but less good

00:45:05   chips that have seven GPU cores that they can say yes these are great Apple are using those in the

00:45:11   very base model of the MacBook Air everything else has eight cores in the GPU yeah yeah it's a I mean

00:45:21   it's literally like well we got to put these ones that didn't pass the test somewhere we'll put them

00:45:24   in a low-end MacBook Air which is fine why not well not spoilers I think plenty of people will

00:45:31   look at that and think I do not care honestly the difference in GPU and graphics performance between

00:45:38   the 2018 Mac iPad Pro and the 2020 iPad Pro is so little as to I think make you feel okay if you

00:45:48   want to buy the low-end MacBook Air like yeah you know it's only got seven instead of eight GPU

00:45:53   cores it's fine and again probably what you're coming from which is like if it's any MacBook Air

00:45:58   in the past this thing just literally so it's not going to be an issue you know I think that from

00:46:05   the configuration this isn't the minimum I expected it's kind of in the middle like the

00:46:10   minimum level that I expected was these are your two options choose one right yeah I could have

00:46:16   seen or it was hey choose your storage which would have been the iPhone iPad right but there is a cut

00:46:23   you do get a couple of options in these M1 chips and I expect in the future there will be many more

00:46:31   options I expect so now to be clear as far as we can tell though like the memory is what it is this

00:46:36   is not a computer this is not a you know most there there are very few Macs left where you can install

00:46:42   more memory oh I checked this on the website if you if you in the configurator there's a little

00:46:49   i button if you press it it's like you cannot change the memory on this if you think you might

00:46:54   want more get more it's effectively paraphrasing yeah this is this is the world that at least we

00:47:00   are in right now with these Macs which is you can have eight or sixteen that's all you can have

00:47:07   those are your choices and once you've made it that's it these are close integrated system yeah

00:47:13   it's like we don't think about the fact that you know oh I would love to put more RAM in my iPhone

00:47:18   you can't do that you know there are there will be pros and cons of moving to Apple made chips and

00:47:23   this is going to be one of those things like I mean outside of maybe a Apple Silicon Mac Pro

00:47:32   maybe an iMac maybe but like especially in the laptops you're not going to be able to get in there

00:47:38   and right change anything around like this this is how they're going to be yeah I would say even

00:47:43   if we end up in a situation where you can choose 8 16 you know 32 64 I would not be surprised if

00:47:52   it's literally the same as it is right here which is congratulations that's the choice you made

00:47:57   you're buying you're literally buying a package that's got an amount of memory in it and that's it

00:48:03   that's not a thing that I know that on the way that we used to make computers you could change

00:48:07   that but not the way we make computers now right like I think that's where they're headed storage

00:48:12   is a little bit different and there's more variation in storage you can go like on the

00:48:16   MacBook Air and the and the macbook pro you know you can go up to a terabyte or two terabytes like

00:48:20   you can do all of that but the the memory thing is a very limited selection in fact to be honest

00:48:25   I'm a little surprised and kind of impressed that they even give you the option I was kind of

00:48:30   assuming the MacBook Air would just be like no 8 that's it you want you want 16 get the MacBook Pro

00:48:38   but they those options are there but they're very limited this is so I guess it's in between we we

00:48:45   had mused about the idea of it will apple just have these very segmented models and each model

00:48:52   has its own set of specs and that's it and it's not quite that but it's very close to that and

00:48:57   also notice these are new computers that have no clock speeds attributed to them in any way

00:49:04   right nope just all m1 it's all m1 yeah because there's no comparisons to be made so why would

00:49:12   they give you them and in fact we're going to get into the MacBook Pro here in a second but when we

00:49:16   talk about the and the air but like one of the things that apple talked about was the cooling

00:49:21   system so the MacBook Air has no fan yeah it's still got vents it's got all the like again you

00:49:25   can't tell it apart if you just look at it but there's no fan in there anymore there used to be

00:49:29   one if you didn't know yes yes oh yes and if you if you worked your MacBook Air hard you would hear

00:49:34   it blowing right the MacBook Pro still has a fan and what apple said in the event if you missed it

00:49:41   is that you get the impression that they both have exactly the same performance the MacBook Air and

00:49:47   the MacBook Pro because they're both using the m1 the difference is in cooling so for like a quick

00:49:56   spike in performance doing something that requires a big processor burst for a short period of time

00:50:02   they'll both perform the same however if you're let's say encoding video some doing some other

00:50:09   job that is going to have a huge amount of performance required for a very long period

00:50:13   of time 20 minutes 15 minutes whatever the MacBook Air is going to have to throttle itself because it

00:50:19   doesn't have a fan it's going to have to it's going to slow everything down to stay cool and

00:50:24   the MacBook Pro because it's got a fan won't and that's and so it's it's a case where the MacBook

00:50:30   Pro for certain kinds of tasks is going to be faster but it's not really about clock speed

00:50:37   as we normally discover when we talk about chips right it's it's about thermal throttling and

00:50:45   if you remember the first wave of touch bar macbook pros back in the day there was this whole

00:50:51   thing about how they they seem to be slower than expected because of thermal throttling and like

00:50:57   this has been an issue in computers for a while now but i think this is a fascinating example where

00:51:02   the pro and the air have the same chip it's the same chip unless you get the the bend one with

00:51:08   the seven GPUs but like if you get the hgpu model it's literally the same the difference in

00:51:12   performance is entirely attributable to the thermal envelope to the fact that the the air is going to

00:51:17   have to cool itself down by uh slowing down whereas the pro won't because it'll just blow that fan

00:51:24   so to dig into the computers a little more i'll give some highlights and we can talk about them

00:51:31   so the macbook air is 3.5 times faster than the machine that it's replacing with five times

00:51:38   graphic performance 15 hours web browsing battery life they called out two times longer for video

00:51:47   conferencing which was a good statistic but i will follow it up with a less good statistic for video

00:51:52   conferencing improved image signal processor for better video but no new camera these machines do

00:51:58   not have performance improvements to the actual cameras they're not going up so i think they're

00:52:03   not even going up to 1080 cameras but apple are saying that there are improvements there there's

00:52:08   still 720p cameras also my understanding is that that's a webx video conferencing test so it's

00:52:14   still out there we can all test it out with zoom and see how that goes but um but yeah the webcam

00:52:20   didn't change they they are using an isp which they've been talking about for a while now that

00:52:24   you know if you use the iphone esque image signal processor you can make the lousy webcam look

00:52:30   better still lousy webcam though and that's disappointing that but again i think i think

00:52:36   there was probably no way for them to do it without changing the shell right and they didn't

00:52:40   change the shell these are the same laptop shells as they were before and i think maybe that's the

00:52:46   reason why um because surely apple is well aware that that webcam isn't very good and i would

00:52:52   imagine that a new generation of laptop would probably have a better webcam in them but these

00:52:58   aren't that and they don't so that's that's disappointing but the bat but the battery the

00:53:03   battery i mean this was one of your bat your draft picks and it's right on like we we've been saying

00:53:07   whoa what will an arm mac look like and what will the battery life look like and we've got it right

00:53:13   which is we're talking about like in many cases two three four times faster and they're quoting

00:53:19   battery life that in some cases is is twice as long as it was before or it's or or half again

00:53:25   as long like these are these are claims you said a lot of battery life improvement like with sort

00:53:31   of your draft pick we left it as just like suffice it to say it'll be big i think what we said is

00:53:36   we'll know when we see it and it's like yeah and and i had that moment where they were talking i

00:53:40   was like oh battery life they haven't really and then it's like oh okay yep that's it that's

00:53:44   substantial substantial battery life improvements for sure because as i think we've been talking

00:53:49   about for so long especially when it comes to battery life it's like do not do this like if you

00:53:56   cannot achieve these kinds of numbers like this is the thing this is what people care about right

00:54:02   you know most most users i think even sometimes me to a point there isn't so much that i care about

00:54:09   with my gpu performance right what in my laptop what i want is the most battery i can get that's

00:54:18   what i want and that is what they have done with these machines it seems i do wonder if at some

00:54:25   point you know because they didn't they didn't announce much to much to a certain co-host of

00:54:29   yours uh sadness a low power mode in mac os but i would not be surprised if we get there and this

00:54:36   is sort of like how marco armand runs that app that that changes the the chip profile so that he

00:54:43   can eke out as much battery life as possible on his macbook pro i feel like once you've got

00:54:48   maxed with four efficiency cores and four performance cores you are a software update away

00:54:55   from letting the user say please just maximize battery life at the at the cost of performance

00:55:01   right the system controller is going to try to do that but i could also see that you know with this

00:55:06   hardware you could definitely make that a user option it's just like please please please never

00:55:10   turn on the high performance course just yeah i want this to run like last year's macbook air

00:55:15   please right like i just want because i but i want it to last for 24 hours because that's

00:55:20   you know that's a good point right just look i i loved my network here it was great let me run

00:55:26   this thing for a week right well because the computer like the system controller is going to

00:55:32   know oh you're doing a big job you're doing xcode compile whatever we're gonna we're gonna ramp up

00:55:38   the system controller doesn't know you just got on an airplane yeah and are going across an ocean

00:55:45   and well you might have and you might have charge but in some cases you don't have charge or the

00:55:49   ability to charge you're somewhere where you don't have the ability to charge you know that so you

00:55:53   could be able to i i just it's an interesting direction the mac has never had something like

00:55:57   this before right these these two banks of course so there's a lot of interesting stuff that could

00:56:01   potentially happen working on a feature like that but they didn't need it to be today because

00:56:05   they've done such incredible gains in the battery like don't don't blow it all at once exactly

00:56:10   exactly and they did have to get an entire operating system running on a new chip architecture

00:56:15   this summer so yeah p3 color display has come to the macbook air so you'll get a better display

00:56:21   nice gray silver gold sorry jason no green or blue boring boring where's the blue macbook air

00:56:27   next time not yet maybe 999 dollars uh you can order it today shipping next week

00:56:35   yep pretty good pretty good they did the uh make them all look the same and cost the same with a

00:56:41   couple quirks here and there but i think remember the 999 thing is what kept the old macbook air

00:56:48   around for so long because they couldn't do a retina macbook air for 999 they couldn't do it

00:56:54   and they finally have gotten it there and they weren't gonna abandon that price point because

00:56:59   that's that's why it's the best selling mac that they make it's because it's 999 so they hit it and

00:57:06   good for them they they need to hold that down at 999 so i was very intrigued i was like oh yes

00:57:12   i like the sound of this machine but then i got to see a macbook pro and i was like aha

00:57:19   i want you more uh 2.8 times faster doesn't get the same kind of gains because the macbook pro

00:57:25   13 pack pro is obviously more powerful but it's still good gains three times faster basically five

00:57:31   times faster graphics but this is where again we've got we've got an interesting this is

00:57:34   interesting i don't know why is this way but i guess it's just a bigger battery 17 hours

00:57:39   web browsing battery is the 10 hour increase in battery life this is the one that doubled so like

00:57:46   you can see it on apple's um compare your mac thing you've gone from typical 10 hour battery

00:57:51   life to typical 20 hour battery life yeah from best best mac battery life ever it's pretty good

00:57:58   it's pretty good right and little again this is a heavier larger laptop it's not it's still

00:58:03   only a three pound laptop but compared to the macbook air it's the heavy laptop

00:58:08   yep but uh that that weight it's a lot of battery a lot of battery in there and this one's 1299

00:58:16   uh yeah this machine like you know macbook pros they're great right they're nice and powerful

00:58:23   uh people like the 13 like the 16 um people really like that new 13 right when we thought we were

00:58:29   gonna get 14 or whatever but the 13 came out people really liked it nice and powerful uh

00:58:35   improved on the previous generation this machine is gonna make a lot of people really really happy

00:58:43   yeah so conspiracy corner here oh yes please first off it is replacing the low-end two-port

00:58:50   13-inch macbook pro yep that's the word slots in remember there's still the four-port 13-inch and

00:58:57   you can still buy that so yes and you can and again not a surprise apple's going to keep some

00:59:02   intel max around for a while because there's going to be some buyers who who need intel max for their

00:59:08   fleet of computers and they'll keep those around for a while and it's fine they do that all the

00:59:12   time but first off i will wager that this 13-inch macbook pro will be faster than the 16-inch macbook

00:59:21   pro the the high-end macbook pro will be slower than the low-end macbook pro which is fun this

00:59:26   is just to think about what a transition is like seems like if it that wasn't the case i would be

00:59:31   more surprised i think right yeah and then um conspiracy corner really is um what happens to

00:59:39   the rest of these systems because obviously you've got this two-port 13-inch and we talked about how

00:59:48   the the m1 is has the two thunderbolt controllers so presumably we talk about the other shoe dropping

00:59:57   with like there's got to be an ipad pro coming obviously there's got to be an m1 something coming

01:00:06   next year maybe probably that is going to enable that four-port model on the 13 and the 16 and

01:00:17   a little extra bonus conspiracy this may be where that 14-inch macbook pro rumor is the yeah the

01:00:24   two-port 13 and the four-port 13 which has been and remember it was the macbook escape before it

01:00:29   got the touch bar the idea that apple for a few years now has had two 13-inch macbook pros which

01:00:33   is just dumb and confusing well what if the four-port model running on apple silicon is a 14

01:00:44   and not a 13 and then you've got 13 14 16 for macbook pros and you have three models which

01:00:51   you already have three models it's just two of them are the same size screen so maybe that's what

01:00:55   we'll see next year i could imagine that machine is the best part of a year away it could be it

01:01:02   could be um we'll we'll see i mean who knows what pace they're going to take here um now that they've

01:01:07   got these laptops out there they said two years again today they could they could overshoot that

01:01:14   i mean last time in the intel transition they happened it all happened faster than they they

01:01:18   claimed um but laptops are super important to apple so i wouldn't put it past them to

01:01:23   roll the rest of the laptops over um sometime next year but based on what we know about the m1

01:01:31   it does mean presumably another variant chip and and you know when is that going to be ready and

01:01:38   how are they going to roll that out because one of the things i'm sure is going to hurt a lot of

01:01:42   people is 16 gigabytes of ram maximum in this machine exactly and this this is something that

01:01:48   is also true of the mac mini which used to go up to 64 right and but this model only goes up to 16

01:01:54   that's the that's part of the the missing piece here right is this is the low-end model

01:02:00   and even though it's a macbook pro it's the low-end model it's the two port and it's maxing out

01:02:04   right now at 16 so presumably an m1x or whatever you want to call it a variant that has more ports

01:02:12   probably supports more ram that's far more likely to go into a higher-end macbook pro

01:02:19   that's not what we got today those those systems and those slots remain you know that's that's a

01:02:26   a test to be taken at another time in 2021 like we'll get there but until then it's just it's

01:02:34   going to be an object of speculation obviously but that would seem to make a lot of sense that

01:02:39   more ram more ports all these things are the there's something that you put in a higher-end

01:02:45   product and they're starting out with the m1 and the m1 is the base right and then they'll

01:02:51   presumably start to build a stack of m1 related processors in 2021 and when we look at it this way

01:03:02   we look at it as this m1 and we can draw a line between you know all the macbook as the base level

01:03:08   macbook pro it makes sense that the mac mini would slot into that uh kind of product offering even

01:03:17   though i don't think any of us were like me and you were not expecting a mac mini today it just

01:03:23   wasn't really something i'd thought we would see although on one level it kind of makes sense

01:03:31   because of the the dtk right and like the idea of it doesn't require anything like obviously because

01:03:40   the mac mini they already did this with an ipad chip so why don't they do it with the with the new

01:03:45   m1 and stick it in there it wasn't rumored um but you know it it makes it makes sense it makes a

01:03:53   lot of sense now that we know what we know about the m1 chip especially right where it's like oh

01:03:59   okay right like i see why you would do this but it does it does take a step back like okay so

01:04:08   the mac is a weird one right because the price went down the base price went down to 699

01:04:13   and if you remember the mac mini originated as a 499 mac and then the next year went up to 599

01:04:18   and got intel but 699 is down from the 799 that the old model started at so that that's good i

01:04:26   really like that the mac mini is a little bit cheaper but as has been pointed out by a bunch

01:04:31   of people our friend christina warren did it you know where does this thing go like if you're a

01:04:36   high-end person you're using a mac mini and you want to have it in a you know wherever you're

01:04:41   going to use it you want to load up with ram and all that like it you can't load it up with ram it

01:04:46   is a 16 gig ram max system uh it's faster than the old mac mini there's no doubt about it but it's

01:04:53   also got this ram limitation so it's sort of a low-end mac mini that is faster but it's also kind

01:04:59   of limited in that way i have to imagine that there will be a new mac mini at some point in the

01:05:06   next couple of years in fact i think now that apple's making the chips maybe it's easier for

01:05:10   apple to update the mac mini but um and so maybe it'll happen more often but um but yes if you're

01:05:17   somebody who like uses the mac mini in a very particular way where you want a lot of ram in it

01:05:24   this one's not going to do it for you there are also a lot of people who don't use the mac mini

01:05:29   that way and use it in all sorts of other contexts where this is going to be just fine plus it's

01:05:34   100 less to get started which was one of the big criticisms of the old mac mini so i think it's

01:05:38   like apple give an apple takeaway happening here but um i love the mac mini and i am uh kind of

01:05:47   thrilled that they have these uh on day one for apple silicon i also have to wonder if maybe this

01:05:53   is what everybody who every developer who got an apple silicon uh test system is going to get as a

01:05:59   replacement for that right like can they can they turn theirs in and get this back or something like

01:06:04   that we'll see uh this is three times faster in performance six times faster in graphics

01:06:10   and is a hundred dollars less than the machine it replaces 699. yeah our um another comment from

01:06:17   twitter that i liked uh steve trotton smith um seemed thrilled about this because he said you

01:06:23   know with bumped ram and a terabyte of ssd um he's he can pay about half of what he needed before

01:06:30   to price up a competitive model to replace his iMac um he says 16 gigs of ram is a bummer but

01:06:36   with the increased io i'm not worried apple should have performance per dollar charts so like i mean

01:06:44   what he said is the the power of the m1 in affordable max cannot be emphasized enough and

01:06:50   i think he's right about that so it's it's in the eye of the beholder but i think there's a lot of

01:06:54   things to be excited about about that mac mini while understanding that for some people they're

01:06:58   they're gonna look at its limitations and be sad because they there are people who spec up the

01:07:04   mac mini an awful lot and there's only so high up you can spec this first apple silicon mac mini

01:07:09   yeah and here's my thinking on that patience you don't have to i mean i know look we all want one

01:07:17   right but we all want one because we want to see what this thing is like um we just don't have that

01:07:24   option yet i believe it will come and the reason i believe it will come is because you can still

01:07:30   buy the old one right uh that's there for a reason apple clearly knows people want more from these

01:07:36   machines so they will continue to allow you to get them until they have a bigger offering and the

01:07:45   reason that i feel confident in this is you can't buy an intel uh macbook air because the macbook air

01:07:54   has been fully replaced right the capability right you can buy an intel macbook pro and you can buy

01:08:00   an intel mac mini so this is i think a very clear signal that apple are like look we know that there

01:08:06   will be some of our customers who need more than what the m1 can provide from an expansion

01:08:11   perspective right from like from what the ram can do that kind of stuff or from how many ports you

01:08:17   might want to have on the machine uh just wait right for that but for everybody else you're

01:08:23   going to get a lot out of these machines so that is why these various intel models remain available

01:08:30   but yeah the mac mini was the biggest surprise for me i was expecting macbook pro i was expecting

01:08:38   a consumer laptop whether it's the macbook or the macbook air i wasn't expecting the mac mini it just

01:08:44   just you know i just i just thought this was going to be a laptop event um i i wasn't expecting to see

01:08:51   anything other than these right like and i'm not surprised that we didn't see the imac for example

01:08:56   because i think because i probably you would agree with me the imac will most likely to be the first

01:09:04   new mac i think the smaller imac that has been untouched for years and is sad is crying out for

01:09:15   a rethink and i would be i would probably put money down that early next year first half of next year

01:09:25   the that that smaller imac anyway is going to get an m m series treatment and not look like the old

01:09:32   imac but we'll see and it'll be interesting to see if it's m1 in that one first right i mean that's

01:09:39   that's the question right is is uh are we going to see the next wave be m1 variants with more ports

01:09:45   and stuff or are we going to see more m1 based machines or both maybe maybe both who knows we've

01:09:53   never seen apple roll out a mac product line with their own chips before this is our first time and

01:09:58   they've got lots of choices to make that they made obviously years ago but now we get to see what

01:10:02   those choices are so it's going to be very interesting to watch the next couple of years

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01:12:00   for their support of this show and relay fm just as like an overall thought of this event

01:12:06   i was the most excited for this event that i have been for any of the events this year

01:12:14   of the three that we've had so the september october november the event and overall i have

01:12:23   left this event feeling the most excited excited about the products that they should love i'm

01:12:28   excited about what we have now and i'm very excited for the potential of these products

01:12:34   in a way that the other events not that they've left me lacking but that there's less to grow

01:12:40   immediately obvious to me than what i see in the apple silicon mac chips so i don't know how you

01:12:48   feel but that's kind of where i am with uh this event today well yeah this in terms of the three

01:12:56   fall events what we got is a lot of incremental improvement right it's the latest apple watch it's

01:13:02   a little better than the last one the latest ipad air it's better than the last one a little more

01:13:07   like an ipad pro the latest iphone models they're better than the last one i think the most

01:13:11   interesting things about that are there's now a little one and that's very exciting um but it's

01:13:17   still just an incremental iphone update and then on the max side it's these max that look like their

01:13:25   previous versions and therefore shouldn't be exciting and from a design standpoint it's not

01:13:31   exciting at all but it's an entirely new platform and these max are going to behave like no max

01:13:38   before them and these huge speed benefits and huge battery benefits and a whole chip transition

01:13:46   that's happening and it's the start of a two-year process where every mac is going to get turned over

01:13:51   like i just it is to me as well the most exciting thing that apple has done all fall this is the

01:13:57   story of 2020 for apple i think is announced a chip transition and started to make it happen like

01:14:03   those are the big moments for apple remember in the spring you know we got the ipad pro that wasn't

01:14:08   really new and like this is the big one i think this is the the number one event of 2020 for apple

01:14:15   other than you know the global event of dealing with the pandemic and how do you do that but in

01:14:19   terms of like their product releases and their strategies and all of that i think it would be

01:14:23   hard to look at this and not say this was their big move is going to their own chips and shipping

01:14:29   a new version of mac os that supports the new chip design and and starting the migration you've got

01:14:37   to imagine that there is as well for apple themselves like a feeling of monumental achievement

01:14:43   here right like a history thing you know like you know we we are the mac company that's where we've

01:14:50   come from and then we've had these great successes with these products that we've made that we have

01:14:56   controlled the whole thing on even more than we've ever controlled products in the past and now

01:15:02   they're able to take those successes and bring them back to the mac and take the mac further by

01:15:07   fully owning it and i imagine that that makes this similarly when you say it's a big event for apple

01:15:13   i'm sure for many of the people that have worked on this stuff it is important and i think as an

01:15:18   observer and as a fan it's one of the things that i am so excited about for this is because

01:15:24   show me what you can do you know and that excites me because even step one what we have seen today

01:15:33   is a is i'm blown away by i think it's amazing i i wasn't expecting the sheer

01:15:40   results that they have shown today you know like the doubling tripling uh of performance

01:15:48   and doubling battery life i didn't think we'd get both of those you know i thought there was

01:15:55   going to be a little bit more uh tuning of that right like hey this is faster and gets more battery

01:16:03   i didn't think it was going to be like you want all of it again we'll just give you it all again

01:16:07   it's like you have two computers now right like it's it really is like i i was very i'm very

01:16:13   excited about it i really really am i think they blew me away today yeah you say show me what you

01:16:19   can do i think that that is um a big part of this is apple obviously has a huge amount of pride in

01:16:26   the quality of their chip design team and i have to think that within the chip team there's probably

01:16:34   been a let me add it kind of attitude toward the mac looking at what intel is doing which is has

01:16:42   been not much and thinking like we could do better than them you know we are doing better than them

01:16:47   let us do better than them on the back too and and you know this is their chance to shine this

01:16:53   is their chance to show our way is better our way is best here and the mac is going to be improved

01:17:00   because apple can control that part which is you know such a dramatic change from the intel

01:17:05   transition where it was very much like the apple ibm motorola alliance it kind of foundered with

01:17:09   power pc and the apple had to go to intel for help here it's apple taking the ball back from intel

01:17:15   and saying no no we make our own chips now and they're better than your chips and that's a huge

01:17:19   it's a huge thing because in the long run in the short run it's battery life and

01:17:24   performance and all of those things that we talk about about computers

01:17:27   but in the long run it's also apple controlling all of the pieces and able to plan what it wants

01:17:34   its computers to be based on apple's priorities and not based on intel's priorities and you saw

01:17:40   them straining with something like the t2 where they're like can we just put our own chip in there

01:17:44   to do a bunch of this stupid stuff instead of relying on anyone else and then and now they've

01:17:50   got the whole thing but if you think about what they when they talk about ipad product strategy or

01:17:57   iphone product strategy and they talk about how they build the neural engine and they build the

01:18:03   image signal processor for the for the photography and the iphone like they're able to on their um on

01:18:10   on their charts of like where are we going with this product and what do we need in terms of

01:18:15   software and hardware and processor functionality they're able to plan it out and take the product

01:18:20   where they want it to go and the mac they couldn't because in the end they had to get apart from

01:18:26   intel and probably intel told them it would be available on x date and it turned out to be later

01:18:33   like always later and that's gone like they know when they're available they know what they want

01:18:38   to do and so the max are going to be faster and they're going to have better battery life but what

01:18:44   i think is really exciting is the next step they take which they didn't take today which is um

01:18:50   adding things to the mac that apple thinks are important and would make a good experience for

01:18:57   a computer and they don't have to worry about anybody else being involved in that they can just

01:19:02   prioritize that themselves and that will probably involve some things that it believes in general

01:19:07   are important and that they're pushing on the ipad and the iphone and the mac and probably some

01:19:12   things that are specifically for the mac because you know they do have to do some things that are

01:19:18   a little different on a mac than on an ipad or an iphone so the whole thing is yeah super exciting

01:19:23   very uh very important day in the history of the mac very important but it's also day one of a

01:19:32   process that will probably take you know five or six hundred days to complete so there's more to

01:19:38   come like i'm not trying to get soppy uh but there's something important to me here that

01:19:43   like this is my first full processor transition i came to the mac for intel now there you go now i

01:19:51   get to say goodbye and there's something kind of for me personally there's something nice in that

01:19:57   um that like you know my first mac was the first intel iMac that was my first mac and i mean that

01:20:06   was a long time ago 15 years ago or something there are thereabouts and there's just something

01:20:13   nice now where i can move on to the next transition and you know it makes me it just feels good i just

01:20:23   i like that yeah yeah it's coming up 15 years it'll be 15 years in january so it's been a long

01:20:28   time now i was 18 years old that was a big like somebody posted a couple of mac world covers from

01:20:34   that period and i was like yep i remember making those and here we are again but this is um and

01:20:41   these transitions are exciting you right if you're a developer it can be really frustrating and a lot

01:20:46   of hard work but as a user um if you need to stay behind you need to stay behind but if you get the

01:20:53   chance to step forward and try something new that can be really exciting and you get the benefit

01:20:57   like people are going to buy macbook airs for 9.99 not knowing anything about apple silicon right

01:21:01   that's the funny thing is this this winter people are going to buy macbook airs for 9.99 and they're

01:21:06   going to get something that is twice as fast as the computer that they had or that they would have

01:21:11   bought if they had bought one last month that's pretty cool that's pretty great i would hope

01:21:18   that you will uh have some of these products to review i hope so but are there any of them just

01:21:26   on the face of what we've seen today that you may want to buy oh i already bought one oh you did you

01:21:33   see i did this you know why because okay usually like so i come connected we just start this

01:21:38   conversation with what did we buy and usually it's pointless having this conversation with you

01:21:43   because you tend not to buy things like you will try them out i don't need to buy one right now

01:21:47   right because presumably i'm going to get them to try out so you usually you don't have to send them

01:21:52   back so by then i'll buy one and all of that this is a surprise to me well i mean i could have waited

01:22:00   and i could still cancel it i suppose but i decided a little while ago that i needed a macbook air

01:22:07   an apple for so a few things first off um mac product loans when they happen are for a short

01:22:16   period of time you can hold you can hang on to an iphone for a while if you need it and you want to

01:22:21   test it and you want to test it against other iphones and stuff like that they'll let you hang

01:22:25   on to that for a while they will want it back eventually but you can hold on to that for a while

01:22:28   ipads you can hold on to it for a while max you can't they will they will want them back and so

01:22:34   i know that i want to have an apple silicon mac in my house to write about this stuff and i'm going

01:22:41   to have to give those back after a few weeks right so i know i want one and i know i know i want one

01:22:46   this fall and on top of that i have um spent the last month or so in a few cases where i've really

01:22:55   wanted to work on something not at my desk and uh it's something that only works on a mac and i love

01:23:03   my ipad and i use my ipad in the rest of the house and if i were to travel which i haven't um i would

01:23:10   use my ipad as much as i could but um there is some stuff that i would like to do elsewhere that

01:23:16   i can't do on my ipad because the app doesn't exist on the ipad and uh it made me think okay

01:23:22   well now i've got two reasons that i kind of wish i had a macbook air and then the third reason is

01:23:27   i think about me going to new york back in the day i remember i'd fly to new york and then we'd

01:23:32   do an interview or i'd do an interview with somebody and then we put it together and we

01:23:36   do the show and all those things and i would have to bring a mac for that because it was too many

01:23:40   too many pieces to leave it to just an ipad and i thought okay my macbook air is so old at this

01:23:45   point that i don't think i i trust it for stuff like that anymore it's an old 11-inch macbook air

01:23:51   so um for all of these reasons i thought i should get another macbook air and maybe somebody else in

01:23:58   my house maybe maybe lauren gets it eventually um to replace her macbook air because she has a first

01:24:04   generation retina macbook air but i could i could put it to use plus i don't want to be writing about

01:24:12   the mac without having an apple silicon mac in my house right and and i i'll have one presumably a

01:24:19   review unit for a while right but not that long and then what and then i really need to have one

01:24:26   so these are my these are my reasonings for doing it and the reason i chose a macbook air is because

01:24:31   i want it to be a laptop it doesn't need to be a macbook pro um so yeah i bought a macbook air i

01:24:37   bought a uh seven gpu core but upgraded to 512 storage and 16 gigs of memory uh macbook air and

01:24:46   the order is in so it'll get here in a couple weeks i guess i ordered two laptops today

01:24:54   you win you got me so i see your laptop and raise you a laptop okay so uh adena has been using

01:25:03   a and has continued to be using a 2013 macbook pro um and that thing

01:25:10   if it was a car it's will sort of fallen off by now like at this point it needs to stay plugged in

01:25:19   she cannot use it on battery because the battery drains so fast and it was unfortunately she was

01:25:25   caught in that cycle of having a husband who pays too much attention to computers and telling her no

01:25:32   no there's you don't want this computer right like we've all been there you don't want this macbook

01:25:38   because the keyboard's bad and you and she's used it and hates the keyboard right so it was also her

01:25:43   decision as well she didn't want their keyboard and then they finally replaced the keyboard but

01:25:48   it was like yeah but i know they're gonna do something it's just around the corner right and

01:25:56   apple silicon has been just around the corner for unfortunately a little bit too long um so we uh

01:26:03   went with the seven core gpu model because if you're coming from this is what i was talking

01:26:11   about earlier if you're coming from a 2013 macbook pro you do not need the eight core gpu uh you're

01:26:19   probably good and uh we increased the storage i think we did 16 gigabytes of ram and the 512

01:26:28   gigabyte ssd that's coming uh at the end of the month basically and then i ordered for myself a

01:26:36   13 inch macbook pro uh and i went with 16 gigabytes of ram and a terabyte ssd and it's coming next

01:26:45   week which is interesting because even though it was built to order i think that that is a

01:26:50   build to order specification that apple probably assumes it's going to get enough of that when i

01:26:56   it was saying it was going to be two weeks and when i changed it to a terabyte ssd

01:27:01   it changed to 17th to 18th of november to arrive and my plan is this machine

01:27:08   well okay i have a little bit of a secret over the last few months i have been doing the vast

01:27:16   majority of my work on a mac because in my studio setup it's just easier for me to work on a mac

01:27:27   because i'm still actually pretty far away from getting the full setup that i want for an ipad

01:27:33   workstation um just because i've you know part of it is actually the fault of these max because

01:27:42   i have what i've had this idea in my mind for how i'd have my studio set up but i was waiting for

01:27:48   a apple silicon mac before i could make the setup exactly the way that i want but now i've been doing

01:27:54   it for so long that like when i'm at the studio i'm using a mac when i'm working at home it's as

01:28:02   i have been for the last week or so mostly or if i'm you're spending a day at home or whatever i'm

01:28:07   using the ipad a lot and there are certain tasks where like for example preparing for this show

01:28:12   i find it my workflow is much better for doing this on ios so i'll take my ipad and we'll use

01:28:18   that at the studio but the vast majority of my work recently has been done on a mac

01:28:23   and so i've kind of had this feeling of like well imagine if i could also get all my favorite ios

01:28:30   apps on a mac that might be kind of all i need because it's the apps that i love most um on on

01:28:41   ios and ipad os so you know basically i feel like now i am more in the jason snell camp than the

01:28:48   frederico vertigy camp team both rather than team ipad um but i'm gonna wait and see like there's

01:28:56   still a lot there's still a lot of stuff that's gonna change for me work-wise like with work setups

01:29:00   and stuff over the next few months uh and i wanted to have a this machine was always going to become

01:29:08   like this is the machine that i will record from and eventually not yet i'm not trusting the

01:29:15   podcast it's too big sir for a while so i would just be using this machine as like a machine to

01:29:22   use and i'm gonna see but like basically i have rediscovered a love for the mac over the last

01:29:30   three or four months and and now very very intrigued by an apple silicon mac because if

01:29:39   it can run all the ios apps that i want as well it kind of feels perfect so i don't know so i went

01:29:46   with uh the macbook pro so it's really and so i'm very excited about that machine and uh i i kind of

01:29:55   like the idea a lot of having this these more shared experiences between my ipad and my mac so

01:30:02   when i do because what i do notice is when i do move between them i do feel the differences a lot

01:30:07   more and i think from a visual design perspective and from a functionality perspective and from what

01:30:13   apps i can use i think it's actually going to be just a much nicer computing experience for me

01:30:18   to be able to what i feel would be more seamlessly move between ipad os mac os so i am really excited

01:30:26   once you've got everything that you rely on presumably and this is something that we're

01:30:30   going to follow starting next week which is what apps opt out of being what ios apps opt out of

01:30:36   being on the mac because there will be some that'll be very frustrating but you eliminate

01:30:43   what we currently have which is this schism where a bunch of stuff is just not on the mac and it's

01:30:49   on your ipad you're like well wait a second i need to go back to my ipad for that and then now it

01:30:53   doesn't feel like home because if the ipad is your home or part of your home and then pieces of that

01:30:58   just are not available or not easily available it gets frustrating and so having it be feel like a

01:31:04   little bit more of a hole is uh it's a good thing i i agree i'm not going to start just carrying

01:31:12   around a macbook air and using it everywhere like that's not going to happen but i have

01:31:18   you know in buying this i want to have the ability to especially you know for for certain stuff that

01:31:26   is not available on the ipad to be able to do that and to have that flexibility so i can you know the

01:31:32   i i don't even know why i'm being oblique about this i'm using dscript to edit 20 max for 2020

01:31:37   and it doesn't work on the ipad and so i really did not want to on a warm day we don't have those

01:31:43   anymore because the weather has turned now but we had our late summer warm days and i really didn't

01:31:48   want to be sitting in my office i wanted to be in the backyard but i needed to edit 20 max for 2020

01:31:53   and i couldn't do it i couldn't do it i did not have a computer that could work with it and so

01:32:01   now i will and you know will i use does that mean i'll use my mac more than you know than i use my

01:32:07   macbook air it would be hard for that not to be the case because my poor little macbook air never

01:32:12   gets used but um yeah so we're both you know i i think it'll be interesting to see where this takes

01:32:19   us right like this is this is the unification of of so many ios apps with the mac is really changing

01:32:25   the meaning of what the mac is and i've seen a lot of old line kind of mac fans and i mean i'm one of

01:32:32   them in a way but like bemoan the idea that this stuff is going to come in but i would imagine that

01:32:38   there's also going to be a huge audience who like the mac okay and all but now they're going to be

01:32:42   able to get their favorite apps on the mac too and that's going to change how they use their mac so

01:32:47   we'll see how it goes i'm very excited the next week is a bigger week i've got a new iphone on

01:32:55   friday and a new mac next tuesday or wednesday yeah so yeah it's incredibly unlikely that i

01:33:04   will even be able to give first impressions of that mac on the show next week it's probably

01:33:08   going to have to be uh the week after that right because we'll be releasing the next episode on the

01:33:14   16th monday which by the way we give you a reminder on that episode of the show we will be once again

01:33:21   joined by tim millet and tom boge from apple to talk about the m1 from people responsible for it

01:33:28   and so if you do have any questions get them in fast with the hashtag ask upgrade but if you have

01:33:34   any questions for us as part of the regular course of the episode maybe stuff focusing on the new

01:33:40   iphones the home pub mini i don't know when mine is coming but i did order one of those as well

01:33:45   man i'll tell you it's been i'm pleased that i haven't had to pay for any airfare this year

01:33:52   because it's really helped with the very expensive final quarter of this year uh as all of the

01:34:00   technology has been released so that's been nice at least it's the silver lining i suppose um so

01:34:06   yeah if you have regular ask upgrade questions you can send those in as well uh thank you so much for

01:34:12   listening to this week's episode of upgrade i hope that you've enjoyed our coverage of the event if

01:34:17   you would like to get longer episodes of upgrade with even more wonderful content and without any

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01:34:26   that supports the show this way and i would also like to thank our sponsors that is smile pindom

01:34:32   and uni for their continued support of this show but most of all thank you for listening you can

01:34:37   find jason's work at sixcolors.com and he's at jason now j s n e double o and so jason will have

01:34:44   many words written over the next week so make sure you keep it locked to six colors and i am i mike

01:34:50   i m y k e we'll be back next time until then say goodbye jason snow goodbye mike early