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The Talk Show

219: ‘Top Men’ With Matthew Panzarino

 

00:00:00   I got a bunch of funny stories to start the show. Here's one Saturday afternoon

00:00:04   Jonas and I wanted to go see ready player one. He's into video games. We're into Spielberg movies

00:00:10   It looks like it's right up our alley. Our favorite theater is one that's outside the city

00:00:15   It's about a 20 20 25 minute drive from Center City, Philadelphia

00:00:19   Called the AMC Woodhaven 10. It's a great theater

00:00:23   Somebody out there when we went to see the the last Jedi there said are you John Gruber?

00:00:29   he's a listener of the show. I forget your name, good fellow, but I remember meeting him and his,

00:00:35   I think, his girlfriend or wife. It's a really great theater. It's one that you get reserved

00:00:40   seats. They're all full recliners. They have a great concession stand. It's not like you'd

00:00:48   sit there and wait 10 minutes. It's like they actually want to serve you. They have a bar

00:00:52   that serves beer, so you can have a beer, watch a movie. I just love to go there. It's a very clean

00:01:00   place. I don't know how many years it's been open, but it still looks brand new.

00:01:03   Great projection systems, great sound systems, etc., etc. So anyway, we get there to the AMC

00:01:08   Woodhaven 10, and I've got my pre-bought tickets and our perfect seats all picked out from the day

00:01:14   before. And it was telling me, instead of putting it in my wallet, which is what I've done in

00:01:20   previous times, it didn't have that option. It said, "Just use your credit card in the

00:01:26   kiosk." I thought, "Well, whatever. I'd rather just put it in my wallet, but what's

00:01:32   the difference?" It says, "Are you sure? It doesn't seem like you have any tickets

00:01:37   today." I'm looking at my email or the confirmation thing I have, and it says, "Two tickets

00:01:42   for Matt and A. I got the day right, the AMC Woodhaven 10." I think, "Well, I've

00:01:48   "Well, I gotta have to go talk to somebody."

00:01:50   And while I'm waiting in line to talk to a guy

00:01:53   at the ticket thing, I stare closely at the fine print,

00:01:56   and it turns out I bought tickets for a matinee

00:02:00   of Ready Player One at the AMC Woodhaven 10 in Michigan.

00:02:05   (laughing)

00:02:08   And so I look up--

00:02:13   - All the geolocation services in the world

00:02:15   could save you from that one.

00:02:16   I look up in the, I was like, oh,

00:02:19   maybe I could just buy tickets for the same showing here.

00:02:22   Right? Problem solved.

00:02:23   No, all I'm just out 18 bucks.

00:02:25   And it turns out they didn't have another showing

00:02:29   at that theater for like another two hours.

00:02:32   And so I was like, well, I guess we're going home.

00:02:35   I will say Jonas was an extraordinary good sport about it.

00:02:40   It actually made me feel very good about his disposition

00:02:44   and his willingness to accept.

00:02:46   up disappointing. What are the odds? I mean, and you know what the problem is? Here's the

00:02:53   problem I made was I made a couple mistakes, obviously. But the problem was in the past,

00:02:59   what I've done is I've gone to I've used the Fandango app. You ever use this app? I searched

00:03:04   for a movie. And then from the movie, I searched for the theater. And I've told this app that

00:03:10   the AMC Woodhaven 10 is a favorite, but for whatever reason, it still sorts them by location.

00:03:16   And like I said, it's 20, 25 minute drive.

00:03:18   I don't know how many miles it is, but it's, it's by far,

00:03:20   it's not the closest theater by far to us, to our house.

00:03:25   And so I always have to scroll.

00:03:26   So this time, instead of starting by searching for the movie,

00:03:29   I started by searching for the theater.

00:03:31   - And that's where everything went south.

00:03:36   - And that's where everything went south.

00:03:38   - Well, you know, when you,

00:03:39   when you launched Safari on Google or anything,

00:03:42   I mean, you would have used DuckDuckGo.

00:03:44   - I do, for the most part.

00:03:45   I've yeah, I just realized I've got at least one device that's still set to Google as the default

00:03:50   I forget which one it is might be my MacBook. Yeah

00:03:52   So I will I will say this

00:03:56   Not not to denigrate your use of duck to go which I appreciate and understand what you do

00:04:01   But when you do launch Safari with Google as your default search engine

00:04:07   the first thing it does when you do a search is often asked for your

00:04:12   access to your location. And obviously it would just do this on an Android device, on an iOS device, at least you get a warning. Like, "Hey, do you want to share your location?" And you're like, "No, I'm searching for food to bring my mistress. I'd rather not." And then hit dismiss. But you hit okay. And then of course, any search you would have done for Woodhaven Cinemas would have probably, most likely, turned up the nearest one.

00:04:36   I even said that to Jonas on the way. I was like, you know, I was reviewing the mistakes

00:04:40   I made one of them too was not noticing the

00:04:42   It should have been suspicious when it wouldn't let me put it in a wallet

00:04:46   But I who I just right right should have known something was up

00:04:50   but who would I that theater didn't do digital the one the one in Michigan must not have a

00:04:56   wallet scanner

00:04:58   What if I Michigan's like 10 years behind?

00:05:01   I

00:05:02   Only say that because one of my writers is in Michigan. I'm sure he'll hear this and love it

00:05:06   I really could not hate me off on Michigan now. We've you know, we solved the problem

00:05:10   We wound up going to a later show that afternoon at another theater closer closer to home and and enjoyed the movie

00:05:16   tremendously

00:05:18   Really enjoyed it. So you liked it. Oh, I enjoyed it. I really liked it. I liked it a lot and

00:05:23   Okay, did you see it sounds like something you would know? I haven't I haven't seen it yet

00:05:28   I want to see it

00:05:29   But I hated the book so much that I'm trying to like just work myself up to this place where?

00:05:35   I could sort of watch the movie. I have to basically have I have to bring two people

00:05:41   to movie after bring myself and then I have to bring myself that read the book, huh? And

00:05:45   They're gonna have different experiences of it. Well, you know, I'm gonna have to bifurcate my logic about it if it helps

00:05:52   I didn't really like the book if it helps though

00:05:54   I've seen a lot of complaints that it's too different from the book and Jonas room read and very much liked the book and

00:06:03   It was an interesting it was a very interesting post movie conversation with him because he he liked the movie, too

00:06:10   But was it was like the first time he was really struggling

00:06:13   I think with his disappointment that a book adaptation wasn't as faithful as he wanted it to have been

00:06:19   Even though he recognized that he liked the you know, you know

00:06:24   We talked about why some of the changes were anyway

00:06:26   I won't go on and on about it those mixed feelings that many of us have had over the years many many times

00:06:30   you know, he's getting that first brush with that, like, "Oh, the book came alive in my head,

00:06:34   and I imagined all these things." And I hear, obviously, that some of the plot particulars,

00:06:41   you know, have been movieized as, you know, broadened or, you know, sharp edges,

00:06:47   blended down to be more, you know, quick and paced well and stuff. But the minutia is what books are

00:06:53   good at, you know? That's, you know. Pete: Yeah, there's a, you know, like,

00:06:56   I don't think this is a spoiler. There's lots of stuff I could say about it that would be a terrible

00:07:00   spoiler and so I won't. But one of them is that there's a part of the book where our heroes have

00:07:06   to solve a puzzle of some sort. And in the movie, it's a car race. You know?

00:07:15   Steven: Right. It's like nail on the head, prototypical movie stuff, right? Like when you go,

00:07:21   "Oh, why didn't you like the movie? Oh, well, it dumps things down." How? Well, instead of

00:07:26   meticulously solving a decades-old puzzle,

00:07:29   they smash each other in the face with a board

00:07:31   until one of them dies.

00:07:32   - Yeah, it's effectively like the cinematic,

00:07:36   it's like the cinematic version of Mario Kart.

00:07:38   (laughing)

00:07:40   Like a more violent version of Mario Kart.

00:07:42   It's really good, it's a really good car chase.

00:07:45   It is very inventive, it's good.

00:07:47   - Well, it's good.

00:07:48   - Oh, here's my other one.

00:07:49   - Oh, yeah, I'll have to reserve judgment until I see it.

00:07:51   - All right, here's my other opening anecdote

00:07:53   that I just have to get off my chest,

00:07:54   and maybe if this hadn't happened to me today, I wouldn't be so angry about it. But

00:08:02   I literally lost a half an hour to this. So I've got a—our family account, we're

00:08:08   on Verizon. But I also have a $50 a month prepaid T-Mobile account, which I use in like

00:08:15   whatever Android phones I'm tinkering with. Sometimes I'll stick that SIM into an iPhone.

00:08:21   I'm always spooked about getting it stuck to iMessage, but you know, it's just so I can have a second phone

00:08:26   You know seems like a reasonable business expense given the racket

00:08:29   I mean I got a text I don't but I don't check that all the time because I don't you know

00:08:33   I don't it's not my daily carry. I don't carry two phones. So I turned it on

00:08:37   Over the weekend. It turned out I had a text from last week from t-mobile saying that the credit card

00:08:43   I was using for my prepaid account had an expired expiration date

00:08:48   And they need to log in and update it. So I could you know, put it on my list is crap to do on Monday

00:08:54   I log in and it says your password has expired

00:08:58   You have to create a new password

00:09:01   Passwords don't expire. That's the dumb

00:09:03   Right, and they've got these rules and the rules are you have to have at least one letter

00:09:09   You have to have at least one number you are not allowed to use spaces and it has to be between eight and fifty characters

00:09:17   Those are the rules. Okay, so I start making passwords that fit these rules and

00:09:24   paste them in and the two fields and I hit update and it says nope that's that's

00:09:33   no good and I'm like well all the rules have you know they the rules turn into

00:09:37   green check marks as you type as you fulfill them like once you write the

00:09:41   number it changes and I'm going nuts and it says it it just keeps saying the

00:09:46   password provided does not meet T-Mobile's security policy.

00:09:50   So I think, all right, maybe it's content blockers.

00:09:51   It's like they're verifying this with JavaScript.

00:09:54   Reload without contact blockers.

00:09:56   Nope, same problem.

00:09:57   So I think, all right, maybe it's Safari.

00:09:59   I'll go to Chrome.

00:10:00   I go to Chrome, log in, and I get the exact same thing.

00:10:04   And I think, what the hell is going on?

00:10:06   I was like, well, it's gotta work on an iPhone.

00:10:07   If I do it on an iPhone, everybody has, you know,

00:10:09   they have to make their password thing work on an iPhone.

00:10:12   Go on the iPhone.

00:10:13   I start searching the web to see if other people

00:10:15   have this problem is T-Mobile's website down, but they won't let me do anything else with

00:10:19   my account until I set a new password. Like I can't skip this and go to billing. I'm telling

00:10:25   you, I spent half an hour on this and I figured out eventually that they also don't allow

00:10:31   any punctuation characters.

00:10:33   But they don't tell you that.

00:10:36   No, they don't tell you.

00:10:37   You have to discover that one on your own. It's not like a fun surprise.

00:10:39   It's not listed in the rules and it's not given to you as the error when they let you,

00:10:45   they'll let you submit a password that contains hyphens.

00:10:48   - Right.

00:10:49   - I got mine, the passwords I was trying,

00:10:51   I tried Safari auto-generated passwords.

00:10:53   - The suggested ones.

00:10:54   - Which have hyphens.

00:10:55   - Yeah, they all have hyphens.

00:10:56   - And the other system I use to make passwords

00:10:59   puts hyphens between the words

00:11:01   because there's so many systems

00:11:03   that don't let you use spaces.

00:11:05   I literally lost a half an hour to that.

00:11:07   And that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard

00:11:09   because it's actually less secure.

00:11:11   Like they're the ones, the stupid assholes

00:11:13   who made me lose 30 minutes.

00:11:15   and they're the ones with a password system

00:11:17   that won't accept punctuation characters.

00:11:20   (laughing)

00:11:22   - Yeah, you gotta be extra secure,

00:11:24   so we expire this password,

00:11:26   and now we're gonna make our passwords easier to guess.

00:11:29   - This is just crazy.

00:11:31   I really thought that I was gonna have to get a new sim.

00:11:35   Just let it expire.

00:11:36   - I think I have, I'll be honest,

00:11:40   I have had bad experiences.

00:11:42   It wasn't the same exact thing,

00:11:43   but I've had bad experiences with prepaid and accounts

00:11:46   and things like that, so I think I have three

00:11:48   T-Mobile accounts, because I have abandoned

00:11:50   at least one account before,

00:11:53   because I couldn't get it to do it.

00:11:55   And in my case, I think it was,

00:11:57   I think it was the iPad auto-generated account

00:12:01   that really caused my issues,

00:12:03   'cause that thing where you buy an iPad,

00:12:06   and it comes with, in the US anyway,

00:12:08   it comes with free T-Mobile, like 150 megabytes,

00:12:11   which is like, you open one webpage these days,

00:12:13   That's it. You're done. It's open google.com with a doodle and it's like, well, that's

00:12:20   150 megabytes. This flash game in the doodle really bones you on that one. But they create

00:12:28   that account and you know, you get an enter an email and password and all that or try

00:12:32   to log in with an existing. And it's like one of those things where you try to log in

00:12:35   with your existing one and then like as you said, your password is expired, you haven't

00:12:39   logged in forever because I have the same thing. I have a prepaid that I bounce around,

00:12:42   know. And that system really led me to go like, "Fine, I'll just put in the secondary

00:12:48   email address." And now you can't log into that because I've long since gotten

00:12:52   rid of that iPad. It was either an Apple demo or one that I sold or whatever. And so you

00:12:57   have a bunch of vestigial T-Mobile accounts hanging out. I don't know why it's T-Mobile.

00:13:01   I don't know if I'd have the same problem on other networks, but I already have accounts

00:13:05   with those. I don't know. But yeah.

00:13:06   Tim Cynova Yeah. It's a weird one.

00:13:07   Jared Ranere I think they need to work on that.

00:13:09   Tim Cynova It makes me so mad.

00:13:11   Or not. Maybe they like it. Maybe they think it's fun.

00:13:16   People are such bad programmers. I mean, why would you make a system like this?

00:13:22   Did you see that T-Mobile tweet chain?

00:13:25   No, no.

00:13:26   That happened this past week? Forgive me, I'm trying to hang out less and less on Twitter,

00:13:31   but I did happen to see it as I was driving by. I don't have the whole odyssey, so if

00:13:36   there's some follow-up that's happened in the last day or so, a couple of days, I don't

00:13:39   there was basically a chain last week that was started because somebody said something about

00:13:45   their password to T-Mobile and they said, "Hey, I was on the phone with your agent and they asked

00:13:52   me for my password and were able to verify it." And obviously, as you know, most modern companies

00:13:58   don't even ask you for your password over the phone. Even if you call them or whatever, they'll

00:14:04   ask for other verification components like maybe social, which is ironic, or other things,

00:14:09   but they generally don't ask you for your password. But I guess the agent asked him

00:14:13   for his password and T-Mobile was able to verify, the agent was able to verify that

00:14:19   that was his password. And so at some point, the password was like in plain text, you know,

00:14:25   where they could see it, they could not hash, not encrypted in any way where an agent couldn't

00:14:30   just look up your password. But that's too many people to be able to look up your password,

00:14:33   You know?

00:14:34   And then this thread trembled out and I guess,

00:14:39   basically it boiled down to T-Mobile was storing

00:14:42   at least some of the password in plain text.

00:14:45   I'm not exactly sure or even all of it.

00:14:48   And the answer that the T-Mobile rep,

00:14:50   and I'm assuming this T-Mobile rep is now canned,

00:14:52   unfortunately, not like I wish it on anyone,

00:14:55   but they were responding to this thread.

00:14:57   You know how they do from the official T-Mobile Australia.

00:15:00   It was Australia.

00:15:01   T-Mobile Australia account, and then, you know,

00:15:04   with the little dash MC or BR,

00:15:07   whatever their initials are, you know, for the support rep.

00:15:09   And they replied and they said,

00:15:12   well, it doesn't matter if your password's zero plate text

00:15:14   'cause our security is so awesome.

00:15:16   - I did see that, I did see, I thought it was a joke.

00:15:18   This is real.

00:15:19   - No, I don't, I mean, it's real as far,

00:15:22   I mean, unless it's an elaborate parody

00:15:24   that I am not wise to, I believe it was real.

00:15:26   And people, of course, at that point just exploded.

00:15:29   Because at that point, it's no longer about trying to figure out the truth of how much

00:15:34   of the password they could see. Can they only see the last four digits? Is that really secure?

00:15:38   Is that a thing anybody should be doing? And then, of course, the dialogue then went right

00:15:43   on to, "Oh, really? You're claiming to be un-hackable? That's your defense?" This is

00:15:50   the classic stuff. They really need to get it together.

00:15:53   uh hey i should mention uh before i forget because i keep forgetting every week uh there is going to

00:15:58   be a live episode of the talk show at wwdc uh it will be on tuesday whatever day june that is

00:16:06   uh at the california theater once again uh top top people are working on this right now

00:16:13   uh i literally top men tickets are not yet available uh but they will be soon and i'm i

00:16:23   know it's sold out very quickly uh the last few years and that's very exciting uh and in a way

00:16:30   makes me proud but it also makes me very sad because i realized that there are a lot of more

00:16:34   people who would like to be in attendance than who will be able to be in attendance and i'm

00:16:39   We're trying to figure out the best, fairest possible way to make it so sorry. But I have

00:16:47   no information to announce yet. And I guess, see, and here's the problem. Here's what I'm

00:16:54   kind of stammering around is people know that. And what people want to know is they don't want

00:16:59   to know how to get tickets. They want to know where to go to find out when I'm going to announce

00:17:06   how to get tickets. Like what is the thing that they should be reloading constantly all day every

00:17:12   day? Yeah, exactly. What should they have a monitor on? Right. And the one year I did it by

00:17:17   announcing it in the middle of a regular show. And I thought, well, that'd be fun. It would make

00:17:23   people listen to the show. But I think that was a bad idea. I don't think I thought that through

00:17:28   all the way because I think it made, you know, people started like, you know, they weren't really

00:17:31   listening to the show. They were like dancing, you know, quick download the show and like skip

00:17:36   15 seconds until you get to the part. And so I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm very

00:17:42   sorry about that. But we will try to live stream it. And I think last year's live stream was pretty

00:17:47   successful. So hopefully our experience, you know, with a year of experience under our belt, we'll do

00:17:52   even better this year for those who can't attend. And yeah, I mean, the show was great last year.

00:17:57   Good venue too. That was a fantastic. I like that venue. The loading was a little bit tight in there,

00:18:02   but after that I think everybody had a really good time. Yeah, I have to figure out how to do that too.

00:18:06   It seemed like because it's general admission and like if there was a problem with last year's show,

00:18:11   it was that everybody quick wanted to stand by the doors waiting for that. You know,

00:18:15   we let people into the lobby and then we didn't have the theater doors open and it might have

00:18:21   been like a soccer riot or something. So I don't know. I don't know how to deal with that. Yeah,

00:18:26   - Yeah, but nerds don't riot, so you're fine.

00:18:28   - Right.

00:18:29   - It's good.

00:18:30   (laughing)

00:18:30   They're just used to standing in line.

00:18:33   Stand over here, okay.

00:18:33   - I always say, I've gotten this,

00:18:36   I got this last year from the folks,

00:18:37   the fine staff at the California Theater,

00:18:40   and I used to get it at Mezzanine in San Francisco

00:18:42   when I held it there, is after every show they would say,

00:18:45   you have the nicest, politest fans

00:18:48   of anybody who's ever been here.

00:18:50   So I hope we can keep that up.

00:18:53   That makes me very proud.

00:18:55   the DF audience. Yeah. Um, you know why I have some,

00:18:59   as someone who has some experience in, um,

00:19:02   events and live events and ticketing and whatnot. Um, not, I'm nobody's expert,

00:19:06   but just a suggestion might be,

00:19:08   you might want to release them in batches at different times.

00:19:11   Cause I think that's, I mean, I'm sure you know this,

00:19:14   but that's like a common thing with dub dub is that people go, Oh, you know,

00:19:17   you recently released them at a really convenient time for the West coast,

00:19:20   but um, nobody else has a chance. Obviously now it's lottery. So not,

00:19:24   none of that is really applicable.

00:19:26   But I don't know if you wanna go full lottery at this point.

00:19:28   You might end up having better success just to saying,

00:19:31   hey, I'm gonna release one quarter of the tickets

00:19:35   throughout the day, all day on this day.

00:19:37   And that way, hopefully people will be up

00:19:39   and have their coffee and maybe get a chance

00:19:41   to buy the tickets.

00:19:42   - I did that a little bit last year.

00:19:43   I think I did two batches.

00:19:44   Maybe I should break it up into more.

00:19:46   And I made a mistake last year

00:19:47   where I broke off the main floor from the balcony.

00:19:53   and the main floor ones went first, I think.

00:19:57   But then I found out from the staff

00:19:58   that they would much prefer just general admission

00:20:01   and they'll sort people.

00:20:03   And so I shouldn't have done that.

00:20:04   - Oh, and yeah, they'll load them.

00:20:06   'Cause that way it creates like a log jam

00:20:09   with like the people trying to get upstairs.

00:20:11   - I will say from people who are in the balcony,

00:20:13   I know it sounds better.

00:20:14   It would certainly be more exciting.

00:20:15   Everybody wants to be in the front row or whatever,

00:20:17   but it's a wonderful theater and the balcony

00:20:19   is really not like second class seats.

00:20:23   It's really beautiful up there.

00:20:25   So anyway.

00:20:26   - Yeah, it is a true theater.

00:20:28   So it is meant so that the people on the balcony

00:20:31   can have a great view and great acoustics.

00:20:33   - Yeah, it's really a funny thing.

00:20:35   I don't even know if I was the first

00:20:38   to have a live show at the WWDC.

00:20:40   I'm not trying to get bragging rights.

00:20:44   But I do think I was one of them.

00:20:49   And it's really cool now how many podcasts there are

00:20:53   during the week at WWDC.

00:20:55   ATP's doing one Monday night.

00:20:59   Brent Simmons just announced that his The Omni Show podcast

00:21:05   that he does as a marketing person at The Omni Group,

00:21:09   they're gonna do one at the, what's it called,

00:21:11   the Next Door Conference right after the State of the Union.

00:21:15   So right after the State of the Union Monday afternoon,

00:21:17   there's gonna be a show.

00:21:19   There's a bunch more, the Relay FM guys have, I don't know,

00:21:22   probably dozens of shows throughout the week.

00:21:24   But I think that's so cool and it gives everybody,

00:21:26   it gives people who don't have WDBTC passes a reason

00:21:29   to go to San, you know, feel like you got something,

00:21:32   you know, you're doing something other

00:21:34   than just sitting around drinking and eating, you know?

00:21:37   - Yeah, and there's an ecosystem of events

00:21:39   that has grown up around it, as you said,

00:21:40   like podcasts, you know, the fine folks

00:21:44   at the Layers Conference, they post theirs.

00:21:46   was right. I don't know if it's going to be at the same spot this year, but it was right

00:21:49   across the street from the conference center last year, which must have been convenient

00:21:53   for folks who wanted to bounce back and forth.

00:21:55   Trenton Larkin Yeah, I don't think that the I know layers

00:21:58   is happening and it's going to be in San Jose. Last I spoke to Jesse charred, I don't think

00:22:04   they have the venue nailed down. Like I think it's in the you know, possibly at the same

00:22:08   venue, possibly somewhere else. I don't know. But it's it's a great conference too. Yeah.

00:22:14   Why don't we start by taking a break? I'll thank our first sponsor. The wonderful, wonderful

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00:25:57   had quite a week last week. We might as well talk about this for a little bit. I guess

00:26:02   so. Long story short, you got an exclusive behind the scenes. I don't even want to.

00:26:11   It's not a look. I mean, you spent a couple hours at Apple, right? Talking to their product

00:26:16   marketing and their Pro Tools group did you do was it last year was last week

00:26:20   when you went got it all put us together yes to last Tuesday okay mm-hmm so tell

00:26:29   me you know tell the story yeah so the whole premise was that I was gonna be in

00:26:36   room for a bit with four people from Apple's, which I didn't know at the time, but learned as I was there from their pro workflow group. The pro workflow group is a new group that they've created inside and literally lives in the building, where a lot of their pro products are being sort of designed and built.

00:27:06   And that group is responsible for evaluating professional workflows to figure out ways where Apple hardware or software or a combination thereof is sort of not doing what it should or not being as efficient or as effective or whatever as possible.

00:27:25   And so the four people from the group were all basically either hardware or software or oversight or marketing from that group that kind of looked over, oversaw different projects to do with their pro group.

00:27:42   their program. And so we talked for a couple of hours and then

00:27:45   went on a little tour of the system that basically, you know,

00:27:51   got to see like, Hey, where this is, this is how we view how we

00:27:56   see pros using logic. And then this is how we see pros using

00:27:59   Final Cut Pro. And then some of the actual facilities where

00:28:03   they're where the pro workflow group is doing their work

00:28:07   following. So

00:28:08   John Greenewald So you didn't know in advance that this what

00:28:10   did you know it was going to be Mac Mac related? I mean, how much did you know in advance?

00:28:14   Jay Haynes Yeah, I mean, I didn't know a ton in advance, besides the fact that yes, it would essentially be some sort of follow on to the year ago roundtable, right? Which you were at, where they basically said, Hey, the Mac Pro is not going to work, you know, out as we knew. Yeah, exactly. At that point. And so we need to restart our thinking on this and kind of start this project over.

00:28:40   So, I knew it was going to be a retrospective on that. So, obviously, you know, at that

00:28:45   point you kind of go like, "Oh, okay, well, if it's going to be that…" So, they're

00:28:49   obviously, you know, hopefully going to be sharing some sort of information about the

00:28:52   status of it, which they did. And then also, from there, it's a matter of like, "Okay,

00:28:58   what's the rest of the time going to be? Is it going to be philosophy or whatever?"

00:29:01   And I ended up finding out who I was going to be talking to shortly before, which is

00:29:06   always helpful. I always hate going into a room not knowing who it is because it just

00:29:10   like a few minutes to or or sometime hopefully that's it's to think about what good questions

00:29:17   are to ask these people it is because they don't they have wildly different jobs a lot

00:29:20   of them it is can ask the same question everybody it is standard Apple PR technique not to tell

00:29:25   you who you're meeting with. Mm hmm. It's I Yeah, I hate it. But it can be exciting.

00:29:32   Yeah, I mean, it's fine. I mean, you got to be on your toes. You know, you got to walk

00:29:35   in with, you know, hopefully with your thinking cap on and take the opportunity of the time to

00:29:41   do two things. One is, you know, get at the truth of what they're saying and get at the, you know,

00:29:46   sort of, you know, read their angle and then interpret it in your own way, hopefully. But then

00:29:51   also, theoretically, you're there to act as an advocate and an avatar for the audience, right?

00:29:56   Like, that's your job. And you're not there to be like, you know, "Oh, what is, you know, what is

00:30:02   Matthew want to know about this, although I do take my time to do that, you know, um, in these

00:30:06   interviews, like I'll ask a question. It's like, nobody on earth probably cares about this, but I

00:30:10   really do care about this. You know, I find this interesting. I would like to know the answer to

00:30:14   this, but then the, a large majority of the time you want to dedicate to, Hey, if, you know,

00:30:20   in this case, all these pro users were here, you know, what questions would they ask? What would

00:30:24   they want to know about? And you can ask the questions and you won't always get answers,

00:30:30   or the answers you get won't always be, you know, as revealing or satisfactory as you want,

00:30:35   almost never simply because of the way Apple works. And that's fine. But I have, you know,

00:30:39   you ask them, right? You try not to be an idiot and ask intelligent questions, but also don't,

00:30:46   you don't shy away from them. Even if you know that the answers may not be super satisfactory,

00:30:51   it's important that they're asked. You know? Pete:

00:30:57   And did you know it was exclusive that it was you were going to be the only one there?

00:31:01   Yes, I did know that. They did tell me it'll just be you this time. And I said, okay,

00:31:09   and didn't say anything further in case they changed their mind.

00:31:11   I'm curious what they were thinking. I like I've told you, we talked about this offline

00:31:17   for quite a while. Yeah. But I think I think you were a fantastic choice. And if there had to be

00:31:23   be only one person to get it. I mean it sincerely. I would rather it be you than me because I wouldn't

00:31:30   want to be responsible for reporting everything that went on because I'm just not good at it.

00:31:36   That's just not what I do. That's not what gets you out of bed in the morning.

00:31:43   You're like, "I want to absorb it and then kind of spirit." I think that's your talent.

00:31:50   You're like, I don't know. You know, I'm gonna throw my spear right at this point

00:31:54   Yes is very interesting right and I don't know how you got that story out from an all-day at Tuesday

00:32:01   Briefings with Apple to 8 a.m. Pacific Thursday, you know a very comprehensive story is out

00:32:09   Like I know I would have had like three paragraphs written. I'd I would still be like looking

00:32:15   There were some typos

00:32:17   I'm ashamed to admit at launch but you know, what can you do? I only had one person's name misspelled

00:32:21   Many times in the piece, but I fixed it pretty quick

00:32:26   But you know it it is rough sometimes with that but you know, you just kind of suck it up and do it

00:32:30   I mean the real kink in it is for me like the time that I do that

00:32:35   I love it, but it is I am in fact stealing time right from my

00:32:40   Hate to say this but like my I don't know

00:32:43   I don't actually mean I'm not gonna say that but like I said my ceiling time from my other duties

00:32:47   I was going to say real job, but that's not true. They're both my real job. But I do run a site,

00:32:52   you know, I have a lot of people ask questions about various important things. I mean,

00:32:55   they're working on their own important stories about a variety of other things. So it's a balance.

00:32:59   I always have to always find myself stealing time from that. And then I was going to Pixar the next

00:33:03   day. So I was like, you know, I'll just write this now at midnight. Well, speaking of Pixar,

00:33:11   - Well, hold that thought on Pixar.

00:33:14   I'll make a note of this.

00:33:15   That we have to talk about the fact

00:33:19   that one of the lead takeaways from this briefing

00:33:22   was that they confirmed that the new Mac Pro

00:33:26   is not gonna come out this year.

00:33:28   It'll come out next year.

00:33:30   And I think that took a lot of people by surprise

00:33:34   and it took even more people

00:33:37   to get as a major disappointment.

00:33:39   that even people who were like, well, I don't know,

00:33:41   I know they didn't say 2018, but I sure hope they do.

00:33:44   How hard can it be, you know, blah, blah, blah.

00:33:47   So it, you know, obviously got,

00:33:50   that aspect of the announcement got a lot of attention.

00:33:52   But you and I talked about this.

00:33:55   Last year at the round table, who was there?

00:33:59   It was me and you and Lance Ulanoff and Ina Fried

00:34:04   and somebody else, right?

00:34:08   - John Pekowski.

00:34:09   sorry, John Paskowski from Buzzfeed.

00:34:11   And there was a point, and I believe, I don't know,

00:34:14   did you ever look at the transcript?

00:34:16   My recollection of this was that you asked a question,

00:34:19   like they said, "Hey, blah, blah, blah."

00:34:21   We hit the reset button,

00:34:22   we backed ourselves into a thermal corner.

00:34:24   We've got a very compelling pro version of the iMac

00:34:29   for pros coming later this year,

00:34:34   which we now know is the iMac called the iMac Pro.

00:34:39   but that we're going back to the drawing board on Mac Pro.

00:34:42   And they said, and it won't,

00:34:47   this is something that will not ship this year.

00:34:49   And you asked a question that said something

00:34:51   about the Mac Pro and at this point last year,

00:34:54   quote unquote, next year.

00:34:55   And I believe that we were corrected

00:34:58   and the correction was we didn't say next year,

00:35:01   we said not this year.

00:35:02   And oh, it's like, you know.

00:35:05   So, and there've been people on Twitter accusing me

00:35:07   of spinning this whole thing in Apple's favor

00:35:10   because I've said this overall,

00:35:12   your story on TechCrunch about this whole thing

00:35:14   is very good news for serious Mac Pro users.

00:35:17   The part that I'm saying is good news

00:35:20   is not the part that the Mac Pro isn't shipping this year.

00:35:23   That's obviously bad news.

00:35:26   The part that is good news is all this stuff

00:35:28   about the Pro Workflows group

00:35:29   and how they're working hand in hand

00:35:31   with actual professional film editors

00:35:34   and music producers and musicians.

00:35:37   in Cupertino, in Apple's, you know, at Apple Park,

00:35:41   working hand in hand with them as Apple employees

00:35:43   or as full-time contractors, if it's a shorter term thing,

00:35:46   so that they can learn and study what these people need,

00:35:49   not just from the apps that they're using,

00:35:51   but that they're actually, these people are,

00:35:55   these true pros are informing the design

00:35:59   of the new Mac Pro itself.

00:36:01   And I think that is undeniably very good news.

00:36:04   But this aspect about it not coming until next year,

00:36:07   it's clear in hindsight that they were kind of setting this up for that my bottom line is that I

00:36:13   think what they were trying to say is that we're shooting for late 2018 but you know it could be

00:36:19   2019 so we're not going to say anything other than not this year. Right and you know my and I did go

00:36:26   back and look and the the phrasing was definitely clear or not I shouldn't say clear but it was

00:36:32   definitely not clear that it was 2018, right? If that makes sense. And then I believe I asked for

00:36:38   confirmation. And basically it was like, you know, hey, exactly what was said. And when you

00:36:45   read what was said, it said, it's not a product for this year. That's basically what they said.

00:36:51   And that was in 2017. And that basically is a means that it may not have been,

00:36:59   it may have been a 2018 product, but it also they weren't promising that. And clearly, obviously,

00:37:05   it's not. They said 2019. Now, the trashcan Mac Pro is obviously, you know, it's how much do you

00:37:13   think that they that they hate that in the product design group, they must love that it's called the

00:37:19   trashcan macro. I mean, it must be excited. I'm sorry, go. Well, it's Yes, the trash came back.

00:37:24   It's clearly heading towards the trash can of history. The jet turbine super polished awesome

00:37:29   mech pro. No, go ahead. In addition to its striking looks, it was in architecture, it was a very

00:37:40   unusual computer. It was not like the PC workstations from companies like Dell or

00:37:48   or whoever else makes them. And it wasn't like any Mac previously made, you know, maybe

00:37:54   in spirit closest to the cube, you know, just in terms of density and being like an artifact

00:38:00   that you would really that you want on your desk. I mean, they even said this at the introduction

00:38:06   of it, that it's, this is something you're going to want on your desk. You're not going

00:38:09   to want to put it on the floor.

00:38:10   Yeah, it turns out I want it on my desk. It's just, right. But it turns out, I can do anything

00:38:15   with it.

00:38:16   You know, the, you know, I, it's simplistic to reduce it to just one thing. But basically,

00:38:25   they overlooked the, at the time they designed it, they overlooked the growing importance

00:38:29   of GPUs to pro computing. And that just was a Mac, you know, there were just so many GPU

00:38:36   problems with people who have these Mac pros, and they couldn't keep up with the state of

00:38:40   art and they couldn't massively parallelize by adding more because it was designed for

00:38:46   this very specific amount of GPU heat output and that's it. And so they more or less told

00:38:54   us this last year, really. I mean, actually no more or less about it.

00:38:58   Jared Ranerelle - You used the phrase "thermal corner" specifically.

00:39:00   Jon Moffitt - Yeah, that was Federighi, right?

00:39:01   Jared Ranerelle - And that was in relation to the GPU.

00:39:02   Jon Moffitt - Right, we painted ourselves into a thermal corner. And so it was very,

00:39:08   know, and they didn't have anything to say about what will the new Mac Pro look like

00:39:13   other than they did use the word "modular" as an adjective, you know, that it would be

00:39:18   a modular design. But unsurprising, you know, it's given as it was, you know, extraordinary

00:39:24   how much information they gave us. It was extraordinary that they, you know, more or

00:39:28   less admitted to a major mistake on a product that sells to very few people, but it is extraordinarily

00:39:35   important to them because it's, you know, their livelihood is done on these machines.

00:39:42   I think there was an assumption on an awful lot of people's parts that they were just

00:39:45   going to, you know, more or less go back to the philosophy of the cheese grater MacPros

00:39:52   and we'll just make a big aluminum box and we'll just put the most powerful Intel Xeons

00:40:00   that we can buy from Intel in there

00:40:02   and have a bunch of slots for other stuff

00:40:05   and call it a day.

00:40:09   Now I don't think people are expecting it

00:40:11   to literally look like the cheese grater

00:40:14   that preceded the trash can.

00:40:17   I'm sure they love all these terms,

00:40:19   cheese grater's trash cans.

00:40:21   But if I use these terms, you'll know what I mean.

00:40:24   Like somebody on Twitter who is clearly frustrated

00:40:27   and I see it as they, somebody tweeted at me

00:40:30   I did laugh like they're obviously angry but I appreciated the joke is that they said that they could literally just put it into

00:40:35   into old

00:40:38   Power Mac g3

00:40:40   Boxes that they still have lying around and I would be perfectly happy, you know go back to the old Bondi blue

00:40:46   Right our magic three boxes and just as long as you stuff it to the gills with you know, powerful workstation stuff

00:40:53   You know it I lost count of the number of people saying how hard can it be?

00:40:59   You know, and I think if what they announced next year is just a big big PC workstation box

00:41:05   You know, that's more or less just put a big put everything in a big box and cool it I

00:41:12   Guess we will have to ask. Hmm. Why did that take two years?

00:41:16   I just get the feeling that they've got something else in mind that no they are not, you know

00:41:22   They are definitely going in a very different direction from the trash can but that they still have a very ambitious

00:41:28   plans for something that is not just the Mac OS running on a workstation you could buy

00:41:38   from Dell.

00:41:39   Steven: Yeah, like not an officially licensed Tackintosh, so to speak, of just kind of generic

00:41:47   parts. I mean, I know everybody wants like Nvidia GPUs and they want them in a box and

00:41:53   they want to maybe be able to add one more and then replace it when a new one comes out.

00:41:57   I appreciate that and I don't disagree necessarily. I mean, I

00:42:01   certainly I have a PC and I use it for gaming. I don't use it

00:42:06   for much else to be honest, because I can't stay in Windows.

00:42:09   But I is modern Windows, especially like last version of

00:42:13   Windows, I like was like 95. It was I use like, like, it was

00:42:17   okay. But the the feature of being essentially feature of

00:42:23   being able to replace that GPU and get an upgraded gaming experience for me has always led me to,

00:42:29   you know, keep a PC around and say, Hey, if I want to play destiny at 60 frames per second,

00:42:35   you know, with all of the water droplets and all of the cool stuff turned on, I can do that.

00:42:40   And the fact is that I don't, I don't see that as the way that Apple is thinking about their

00:42:50   machines at all. And I know, obviously, I'm talking about

00:42:53   consuming games, not making games, but people that build

00:42:56   games use roughly this, you know, similar hardware. I think

00:43:00   that it is the the term modular keeps sticking in my mind,

00:43:04   because they did emphasize again, in this chat, I asked, I

00:43:09   said, you know, hey, you know, obviously, you know, whatever

00:43:13   you want to say about it, or not say about it is up to you.

00:43:16   But can you characterize this modular thing? How important is

00:43:19   is this still stand in other words? Have you have you changed fundamentally your thought process on

00:43:26   the Mac Pro since we last talked? And the basic gist is, no, we haven't changed the fundamental

00:43:31   architecture of what we wanted to build since we last talked. Now, of course, I don't know how much

00:43:36   of it they had done then. But you know, the the arc of it seems to be continuing on whatever

00:43:42   trajectory they had set a year ago. But they said that modularity was absolutely a core part of it,

00:43:50   whatever it is. I just don't know if the idea of modular that Apple has in mind is going to be the

00:43:57   same modular that, you know, your average pro who wants a cheese grater with multiple slots has in

00:44:05   in mind.

00:44:06   Yeah. I don't want to put you on the spot, but so I'll just speak for myself and I

00:44:12   will say that there are times when people at Apple will answer my questions but answer

00:44:18   them off the record or on background or something like that. I will say on the whole iMac Pro

00:44:25   and Mac Pro front, everything—and it's extraordinary how much they told us—but

00:44:32   Everything that they told me about it was on the record.

00:44:35   I didn't know anything about the iMac Pro before it was unveiled at WWDC other than

00:44:41   what we wrote about from the roundtable last year, that they have just had a pro-minded

00:44:47   config of the iMac, 27-inch iMac in the works.

00:44:52   They did say last year it would be later this year and that they think it's going to be

00:44:57   the most commonly bought desktop for professional Mac users,

00:45:02   for the most number of Mac users.

00:45:05   I don't know, I didn't know anything else about it.

00:45:08   I don't know anything else about the upcoming Mac Pro

00:45:11   other than what is on the record.

00:45:13   So I have no inside information.

00:45:15   I don't have any little birdies who work on that team.

00:45:17   So what I'm speculating here is entirely my speculation.

00:45:23   This is not really, there's no background information.

00:45:27   My guess is that they decided that the trash can was a mistake a while before the round table,

00:45:38   maybe even a year. I mean, because they knew how many hundreds of years that they'd gone without

00:45:44   even like a speed bump. I mean, I'm sure that they were embarrassed by that. They certainly didn't

00:45:50   let on that they were embarrassed last year. I mean, they're Apple, they're pros. But they knew,

00:45:56   I mean, so they must have thought, here's what I think happened is that, you know, obviously

00:46:01   when they launched the trashcan, they certainly didn't anticipate that they were never going

00:46:05   to do a significant update to it.

00:46:08   Um, they, they thought this was the future and we'll update it.

00:46:11   And then it turned out that they made a very strong editorial bet on the way compute was

00:46:16   going and it just went left instead of right.

00:46:19   It went left instead of right.

00:46:21   And then at a certain point, I think they started working on this.

00:46:26   what we now know is the iMac Pro.

00:46:27   'Cause one thing we now know about the iMac Pro

00:46:29   is the iMac Pro is not just a slightly faster

00:46:34   regular iMac with black anodized aluminum.

00:46:38   It is a completely different architecture,

00:46:40   totally different thermal architecture.

00:46:42   And it uses an entirely different class of CPU and GPU.

00:46:49   And the totally different thermal system

00:46:53   is exactly why that was necessary, right?

00:46:55   If you put the iMac Pro's internals into a regular iMac,

00:46:59   it would melt, it wouldn't work.

00:47:01   I think that at some point internally,

00:47:07   either their official plan or their,

00:47:10   this is probably the plan plan,

00:47:12   was that the iMac Pro would be the pro desktop.

00:47:17   That we'll just stretch,

00:47:19   we'll stretch it out with the trash can

00:47:22   until we get this iMac Pro out,

00:47:24   and then that's our new Pro desktop.

00:47:27   And I think what happened in hindsight,

00:47:29   you know, I mean, I think at some point last year,

00:47:32   probably around March, I think it was probably

00:47:34   right before they called us in for the round table,

00:47:37   they had like a come to Jesus moment

00:47:39   where they were like, you know what,

00:47:40   here's the type of Pros who even this, you know,

00:47:43   iMac Pro, which is shaping up to be a great device.

00:47:46   I mean, I haven't seen a bad review of the iMac Pro.

00:47:48   Everybody-- - No, it's very well received.

00:47:50   - Very well received.

00:47:51   And I think by early last year,

00:47:54   I think they must have been far enough along

00:47:56   to know exactly how good it was going to be.

00:48:00   But I think they had a moment internally

00:48:02   where they were like, but wait, here's a use case,

00:48:06   here's a use case, here's somebody who this isn't enough.

00:48:09   And that we're gonna lose these people to Windows

00:48:13   or Linux or other platforms because they need things

00:48:18   that even the iMac Pro can't give them.

00:48:21   and those machines are out there on the market,

00:48:23   they just don't run Mac OS X.

00:48:25   I think they had that moment and then thought,

00:48:29   well, shit, what do we do?

00:48:30   We're stuck.

00:48:31   We cannot make that happen in this enclosure.

00:48:34   I think that's when they convened the round table.

00:48:37   I think that round table was convened

00:48:40   very shortly after they decided to make a new Mac Pro.

00:48:43   And I think that's why they're still not done

00:48:44   because I really think that as of like the round table,

00:48:48   entire plan was like the words "New Mac Pro," "mat modular," written on a notepad.

00:48:54   I don't know. What do you think about that with the timing? I'm pretty sure that that's the timing,

00:49:02   but I don't have any confirmation of that. - So you're saying like, give me a quarter,

00:49:09   that you think that this basically, this project started in earnest. You think it started

00:49:13   like, get cute cute to have last year. Yeah, I do. Because when

00:49:18   was our when was our roundtable March? Or was it? Yeah, I thought

00:49:26   April, April. Yeah, either late March or April. Okay. Yeah, I

00:49:29   think early. I think that they started putting the band

00:49:32   together to make it you know, at like the end of March, you know,

00:49:35   they're like, Okay, okay. So I agree. I mean, I and once again,

00:49:40   I can't actually tell you in this case, like, you know, it's not like I couldn't tell you if I if I knew right back I don't know, you know, they didn't they didn't tell me they're not very keen on going Oh, well, we started this project this date and edited on that one. I mean, I I one one person that I can't remember who it is, I'm not gonna say the name. So like, I'm afraid to say the name, but one one person one Apple exec said during the iPhone 10 roundtables they had they didn't on the record one with a bunch of

00:50:10   international journalists and a couple from the US. And one of

00:50:13   the things that they had said they explicitly said when they

00:50:16   started, basically when they locked, and one of the PR people

00:50:20   there was like, you know, like, they don't want to know when

00:50:23   designs are locked, and when they're shipped, not honestly,

00:50:25   because the that lock date is all that secret or special,

00:50:29   because it's really not. It's just like an arbitrary date

00:50:31   where they're like, okay, you know, begin the things we can

00:50:33   begin now. We think we have this design pretty much set. And it's

00:50:38   more about not giving away competitive information like, Hey, if we lock this, Apple was able to lock

00:50:43   this in November, and ship it in December of the next year, whatever, you know, that, that or

00:50:50   September the next year, that information is maybe mean nothing to the average person, to be honest,

00:50:55   like, even if you were a reporter, and you found it out and put it in the story, the average person

00:51:00   may not know or care, you know, who cares, right? It's like, okay, great, you know, it took him

00:51:05   like nine months to build this thing. All right. But for another manufacturer or for an analyst,

00:51:11   this is incredibly valuable information that they can reverse engineer essentially into a lot of

00:51:16   additional competitive advantage, you know, competitive information that can give them

00:51:21   advantages, either in purchasing or manufacturing. So that said, there was none of that slippage

00:51:28   here. Like they didn't say, "Oh, we started the project in X and, you know, we're gonna ship in

00:51:32   in 2019, none of that. So my conjecture basically is the same as yours, also based on just my

00:51:39   vibe and not any actual information.

00:51:42   Jon Moffitt Yeah. My favorite story like that was after

00:51:47   the Antennagate press conference. That must have been 2010, right? Because 2007 was the

00:51:56   The iPhone 2008 was the 3G, 2009 was the 3GS, so 2010 would be the iPhone 4.

00:52:04   So there's the Intenagate press conference.

00:52:06   I'm out there.

00:52:07   It's in town hall.

00:52:10   And I think they took about a dozen of us on a backstage tour, a lot like the audio

00:52:15   tour.

00:52:16   I told you this before, but when we took that tour of their audio facilities for the HomePod

00:52:21   earlier this year?

00:52:24   Where's that last year?

00:52:25   well, a couple months ago. They took us on a tour of their antenna testing labs, and

00:52:31   it was guided by their head and tenant engineer. Really interesting, really cool stuff, but

00:52:36   only about a dozen of us. And then at one point during the tour, somebody asked him

00:52:40   and he did a great job. It's like a typical Apple person is both good at their job and

00:52:47   able to explain what they do very well. And it's like, I forget whose adage it is, but

00:52:55   If you can't explain it in terms that a lay person would understand, then you don't

00:52:58   really understand it. I don't know. It might be Einstein. It might be…

00:53:01   Steven: Yeah. If you can't explain it to a five-year-old, you don't understand it

00:53:05   or whatever the case.

00:53:06   Jay Haynes Right.

00:53:07   Steven: Yeah.

00:53:08   Jay Haynes You know, did a great job, but obviously was

00:53:13   not used to talking to the press. You could see a sense of certain nervousness. Apple

00:53:18   people, they know. It's their instincts. Their instincts tell them, "You don't

00:53:24   to the press. You don't talk to the press." And then all of a sudden, like, Katie Cotton

00:53:28   is there and they're like, "Hey, what would you think about leading a tour of the press

00:53:33   on the record?" But somebody asked him how long they'd been working on the external design

00:53:40   of the iPhone 4 antenna. And he just said, "About three years." And Schiller was on

00:53:46   the tour, not speaking, but just walking around with us. And Phil Schiller jumped in and just,

00:53:50   he was ready for it. And he just said, "We're not here to talk about timelines." He didn't

00:53:53   bark at him or anything. But I noticed that he immediately jumped in and was like, "We're

00:53:57   not here to talk about timelines." Because they just, even when they were like, "Let's

00:54:01   open the kimono here and let you see how we test these antennas and revealing all sorts

00:54:05   of things we'd never revealed before." They don't want to talk about how long they were

00:54:08   working on something.

00:54:10   Steven: Yeah. And I think that is an expectation thing. Like you don't want somebody to go,

00:54:16   "Oh, well, let me count backwards from next September."

00:54:19   - I think it's competitive.

00:54:21   I think it's competitive.

00:54:22   It's all competitive.

00:54:23   It's both competitive in terms of letting competitors

00:54:25   know how long they work on something.

00:54:27   And for anybody trying to look at their strategy,

00:54:30   like you just said, like look at the calendar,

00:54:32   go back three years, what did it look like then?

00:54:35   What would have happened then

00:54:36   that would make them decide to do this?

00:54:38   - Yeah, and even the layman now,

00:54:41   I mean, for instance, the iPhone 10 thing,

00:54:45   you know, there was some stuff around that

00:54:46   set on the record that basically told you,

00:54:48   like we've been working on this for three years.

00:54:50   They very explicitly said things like,

00:54:52   this year's, that whole context,

00:54:56   the context for that conversation was around the FaceTime,

00:54:59   or not FaceTime, the Face ID thing.

00:55:03   And everybody was like, oh, you just threw Face ID

00:55:05   and then at the last minute,

00:55:06   like these reports came out and they're like, no,

00:55:09   first of all, you can't, it's impossible.

00:55:11   And second of all, like we locked this thing way before,

00:55:14   like you even published your piece, so you know.

00:55:17   know? And like that, that situation, I think, is it allowed us to see a little bit more of,

00:55:24   hey, this really is like they're deciding these things three years ahead. And yes, they can,

00:55:30   because they're nimble, they can make final decisions on things as late as lock date,

00:55:36   right? They could say, hey, this thing. And what I heard basically, and this is this is not on the

00:55:42   record is not an official and it's not even off the record. It's just what I heard through people,

00:55:45   right, is that they had a phone without the second camera in it when they launched the two camera

00:55:55   phone. What was that? Six or seven? They all blur together. Whatever the plus was with the two

00:56:02   cameras. They had one without, right? Because, you know, what if it doesn't work? Right? They had a

00:56:08   design ready to go. And then at the last minute, they're like, "Ah, let's just do it." Right? Like

00:56:12   they felt they could do it and they felt they could get it done. And so they locked that design

00:56:17   and essentially stepped off a ledge, you know, and eventually, of course, shipped the twin lens.

00:56:21   But you know, that that kind of, you know, takes it takes guts, it takes like a supreme handle on

00:56:28   your supply chain, it takes the ability to like, inch that thing, that kind of major decision later

00:56:33   and later and later. And I think people that treat that as like, oh, they don't know what they're

00:56:37   doing, it really is it does a disservice to like, the engineers

00:56:42   actually trying to push the envelope as far as they can, you

00:56:45   know, to the bleeding edge of what's possible. And then they

00:56:48   ship that thing that's barely possible. And then people are

00:56:51   like, Oh, well, you just did this at the last minute, just

00:56:53   for giggles. And it's like, No, man, you know, no, we had to try

00:56:57   really, really hard to do this. And then we did it. And sure,

00:57:02   like, it works like 80% as well as we say it does on stage,

00:57:05   right. But then we get it there the next iteration and yada yada. But yeah, I think that's the same

00:57:10   kind of thing they're working on with this that if they're making decisions on the Mac Pro, I think

00:57:14   that they you know, they would have had to made major architectural decisions a while ago now.

00:57:18   But I think they could definitely make some real gutsy calls still late in the game, you know,

00:57:24   and I think at this point, those are done. Maybe maybe you got a couple more months to figure that

00:57:27   out. If you're shipping 2019, and let's say you assume maximum potential, like in other words,

00:57:34   they're going to ship it late 2019. I'm not saying they are, they did not give any indication.

00:57:38   But if they're going to announce it, like it's a dub dub and then ship it later in the year,

00:57:42   you know, you figure right now, it's not as I mean, I don't know what the design is, maybe it

00:57:47   is, but I would imagine it's not as mission critical as like a smartphone to get, you know,

00:57:53   that that kind of lineup done where you're doing that really fine tooth like, you know, 16 different

00:57:59   components coming together all into one component, which goes into another 250 components. And

00:58:05   I'm probably not at that level, but it's still got to be pretty soon that they're locking that down.

00:58:10   And if so, if they're locking it down in another four or five months, let's say, or a little bit

00:58:15   more than that, they have a few months left to actually make major decisions about what they're

00:58:19   going to do. And, you know, if that's not the case, then they figured it out. And they're plowing

00:58:24   ahead and whatever, they're just doing manufacturing, testing and whatnot. But I don't

00:58:27   think so yet. I think they're not done yet, in other words.

00:58:29   Yeah, and I don't think we're going to see a preview of it at WWDC. I could be wrong. I mean,

00:58:36   they obviously did it last year with the iMac Pro and shipped later that year. And I guess if they

00:58:42   think they're shipping early 2019, they could. But I don't think so. I think it's a different

00:58:50   situation this year. I feel like with the iMac Pro, they could show it and everybody knows what

00:58:58   an iMac looks like. The iMac Pro looks like an iMac. It's just black and therefore cooler.

00:59:03   Whereas I feel like they're doing something with this that they don't want to spoil too far in

00:59:08   advance. One thing you have to recognize is when Apple makes a successful hardware product,

00:59:16   all of a sudden a lot of other competing products start looking very similar.

00:59:21   Even if they have absolutely no reason to do so.

00:59:24   Like, have you seen all of these Android phones coming out with a notch?

00:59:27   Yeah.

00:59:28   It's really like, it's like...

00:59:30   It's amazing.

00:59:31   It's like a tag. Like, I have like a tag in my...

00:59:33   A lot of them don't even have anything special out there.

00:59:36   It's just like regular cameras.

00:59:38   Like, you can just put a regular camera in the frame. Nobody's gonna kill you.

00:59:43   it's they're copying the worst aspect of the iPhone 10. Like in

00:59:48   hindsight, now months into it, I'm fine with the notch. I get

00:59:51   it. You know, I still think though, it's the worst part of

00:59:54   the phone. I can't wait for them to figure out a way to do all

00:59:58   this without a notch and just have the screen go edge to edge

01:00:01   corner to corner. They're copying the one part of the

01:00:06   phone that everybody agrees is actually

01:00:08   I don't think anybody Apple likes it either. I never had a

01:00:11   single person tell me, oh, the notch is great and lovely. And we

01:00:14   love it. Right. It was we the notch needs to be there. We think

01:00:17   the the cost of the notch or whatever you want to call it,

01:00:20   they don't even call it a notch. They hate it.

01:00:21   That's another word that they they call it the same. They call

01:00:25   it the sensor. Right.

01:00:26   Yeah, whatever it is. Yeah. But that area. That area on the

01:00:33   phone is there. Nobody loves that it's there, including the

01:00:38   people that had to put it there. They were like, "Hey, we could do this, what we think

01:00:42   is a really awesome forward-looking thing. And we could, you know, all of this kind of

01:00:47   works. Like the corners could be used for things and we could push the rest of it edge

01:00:50   to edge and this is the way we chose to do it." And it makes sense completely with Apple's

01:00:56   design language that they're going to utilize those little corners instead of putting black

01:01:00   all the way across because they're like, "We don't need black here, so why put it there?"

01:01:05   that's their, you know, that's the, gets to the core of what, how they're, they design

01:01:09   products and like that, that whole thing was literally just in service of those cameras.

01:01:16   It was not by any means because they thought it looked cool and looked awesome. And so

01:01:21   for somebody who has no need of it to put it there, it's like, you know, really, I don't

01:01:27   know. It's like putting a spoiler on a mini-van.

01:01:28   The Android phones that are coming out with notches are both the most like I

01:01:32   Slapped my head on the forehead

01:01:35   I slapped my forehead on the table like I cannot believe they did this and

01:01:39   Simultaneously the least surprising thing of the year. I

01:01:44   Love the stories. They had stories the verge had stories I think from

01:01:47   Was it mobile World Congress? Whatever the the big cell phone?

01:01:52   Conference was that was a couple weeks ago where where these handset makers show off upcoming phones that haven't been seen before

01:01:58   And there were several of them.

01:02:00   - Right, yeah, MWC.

01:02:01   - There were several of them that had fake iPhone 10

01:02:03   style notches that didn't even have a version

01:02:06   of Android installed that was aware there was a notch there.

01:02:09   So it was like drawing underneath of a notch,

01:02:12   like all those notifications that line up on the Android.

01:02:16   - Right, that's awesome.

01:02:17   - And it was one where like the date or time was clipped.

01:02:21   (laughs)

01:02:22   It's just like, what are you doing?

01:02:24   I can't believe it.

01:02:26   All right, hold on a second, I'm gonna take a break here.

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01:05:05   What is your take?

01:05:08   What is your take on this angle, before we drop it,

01:05:11   of why are they bothering to over-engineer?

01:05:15   Are they gonna just make a different type of mistake

01:05:17   the trash can Mac Pro by over engineering this and not doing, you know, they have the

01:05:22   humility to admit they made a mistake and they're starting over. But is it a problem

01:05:26   perhaps that maybe they lack the humility to just do the obvious thing? I guarantee

01:05:32   you there are thousands of people listening to the show right now who are saying yes that

01:05:36   yeah, just do that thing please. And second, second part, second part of the question is,

01:05:43   Okay, if you want to go and have John Ternus and his team go off and build the supercomputer of Apple's

01:05:50   ambitious dreams

01:05:53   Okay, but in the meantime, how about you just stick a big Xeon in a box call it the Mac Pro and sell it to me

01:06:00   Right, right. Yeah, but like put your B team on just

01:06:05   popping this thing out while your a team goes off and you know applies quantum mechanics to

01:06:12   Aluminium and comes up with something new. I mean, I think

01:06:17   there's two major possibilities. One is that they

01:06:20   are, in fact, figuring out the best possible way to build what

01:06:24   we have considered to be a PC, you know, box like a tower

01:06:30   computer, right? There's one possibility. They're just

01:06:33   taking every angle of that thing and examining how could this be

01:06:37   better? What are the problems? It's like when case

01:06:40   manufacturers went from making you screw everything in to like to those member.

01:06:45   They moved to those big, I don't know how many PCs you've built over the years,

01:06:48   but they moved to those big thumb screws and then I know, I know. Yeah. And then,

01:06:52   and then they moved from thumb screws to clip in.

01:06:55   So like almost all modern PC cases now you don't, they're called tool this cases,

01:06:59   right? You just, you get them, pull them out of the box.

01:07:01   You can unclip all of the stuff that you need.

01:07:03   You can pull out the motherboard tray.

01:07:05   I think some of the,

01:07:06   mostly the motherboards still need to be like punched in or screwed in cause

01:07:09   they've got the posts for electric insulation and whatnot, and standoffs from the metal

01:07:17   cases and stuff. But I think even some of those are clip-in now. And you can clip in

01:07:21   pretty much every major component, like a hard drive and all of this stuff. But there's

01:07:27   a lot about PCs that are still complete BS. Like, cable routing is dumb. It's so stupid,

01:07:34   right? Like that you have to figure out how to route cables inside this case for work for airflow.

01:07:39   And I know some people like that's their that's catnip. Right? Like, I had a buddy who would route

01:07:45   his cables for weeks before he actually finished his piece. But he's like, he would route it and

01:07:50   then like, put it aside to come back to the next day. Like, hmm, yeah, they do a good job. I get

01:07:55   all that. It's like people who have a hobby, like painting miniature figurines. Yes, I get it. I

01:08:01   I don't I don't I I don't have that hobby, but I don't I don't mock it

01:08:05   I totally get how it might be extremely satisfying to spend days at a time on a single tiny little figurine and that you've got

01:08:13   This entire army of them ahead of you and I think that for like the people who like building their own PCs

01:08:18   Like you're saying the cable

01:08:20   Management is you know routing is is sort of like that hobby, you know, yeah

01:08:25   Yeah, the air flow the cable management

01:08:27   I mean, you know, testing airflow and all that figuring all that stuff out.

01:08:30   Like, and those are that's like self built PC PCs. But I think a lot of the

01:08:33   same principles apply to when you buy one. So if you buy one, and you say

01:08:37   want to upgrade it, it still requires that you open it up that you have to

01:08:40   look at a PC slot that you have to look at a motherboard, you know that you

01:08:45   have to like figure out these the guts of this thing and say, Okay, well,

01:08:48   what do I want to change here. And I know there are some pros that build

01:08:52   their own PCs that are very vocal, you know, or have built their own

01:08:55   machines over the years that are very vocal on the web about how, you know, they just

01:09:01   want this thing, this, you know, let me figure it out, sell me, go buy an NVIDIA card and

01:09:06   throw it in if I want to upgrade all this. That's great, but they are also being myopic

01:09:12   and they don't want to hear this and I'm sure I'll get an email, but I firmly believe that

01:09:17   pros are some of the most myopic consumers out there on an individual level because each

01:09:23   one of them is so immersed in their skill. They're incredibly skilled, incredibly good

01:09:31   at the thing that they're doing. They've steeped themselves in it. They've made their

01:09:35   lives work to figure this thing out. And frankly, usually they're intelligent, they're driven.

01:09:41   You know, they have a lot of things that kind of make them that kind of person. But that

01:09:46   doesn't necessarily come part and parcel with, you know, any number of other professional

01:09:52   pursuits outside of say, software engineering, or even hardware engineering or engineering at large,

01:09:58   right? Like, they're definitely pro pursuits that lend themselves to being willing or able or

01:10:05   desirous of sort of being able to manipulate the innards of a machine, you know, in that way.

01:10:10   And then there are a bunch of pros in other fields who are just as driven and intelligent and

01:10:16   capable and, and, you know, just masters of their craft, who couldn't give a flying F about what

01:10:22   that what's inside the machine or how it looks, or how to, you know, install a graphics card or

01:10:28   want to do any of that, right. And so you I think you have to like one thing that I was told, you

01:10:34   know, that they mentioned several times was that pros are an incredibly diverse bunch, you know,

01:10:39   that the pros as a group are not a monolith at all. And that some pros may love the iMac Pro, and

01:10:48   that'll service them. Other pros do not want that at all. And they want this more modular design.

01:10:53   And that's understood. But the fact that Apple sees the breadth of that, and I know that people

01:11:00   think, Oh, yeah, just give me this thing that I can throw a card in. And it's good. And it's all I

01:11:04   I want is power and all of that. But I believe that it is biopic to think that that is all all

01:11:11   pros want. And pros are a very diverse group that utilize computers to create art and to do

01:11:18   finance and do all kinds of things that could benefit from from more power and more

01:11:23   capability and yes, more expansion and modularity. I just think that there's a

01:11:28   discussion to be had about what form that takes. And that maybe, you know, making somebody

01:11:33   stick a new PCI card in a PCI slot is not the way to go about it. And I think that's

01:11:39   basically the discussion that happened inside Apple, which is why we didn't end up with

01:11:43   that or haven't ended up with that yet.

01:11:45   Yeah. I guess, you know, I feel like it goes hand in hand with the eGPU revolution. Right?

01:11:57   I don't know at some point

01:11:59   Not too long ago

01:12:02   The idea of an external GPU wouldn't even make any sense

01:12:05   It would be like it would be like a line of dialogue on it unlike

01:12:09   CIS and you'd be like, oh my god who wrote that external GPU what the hell that wouldn't work, you know

01:12:14   It's not that long ago that it would have just sounded like they threw to get you know

01:12:18   some screenwriter threw together some words and

01:12:20   Thought it made sense, you know

01:12:23   But

01:12:26   That was a that was a big part of what they were talking about last week with you, right?

01:12:30   Yeah, so that okay so that the shape of the discussion went from okay, you know

01:12:36   We want to get this out of the way at the top or you know recap

01:12:38   We want to get this out of the way at the top Mac Pro 2019

01:12:41   You know still a modular design don't have much more to say about it now

01:12:46   You know

01:12:47   That's what we have to say

01:12:48   The second part of the discussion was really about the pro workflows group and the group is designed to literally hire professionals

01:12:55   We're talking award winning video editors, award winning musicians slash, you know, mixers, basically producers, audio producers, people that that handle and manipulate and use Apple's products in their workflow.

01:13:14   they gave examples, of course, of people outside in the professional world that are still using them. You know, people that are making music for Star Wars movies and cutting commercials and Golden Globe award winning TV shows on Final Cut Pro, you know, etc. Right? Like this, this is their ecosystem that they're thinking about in some ways, because it is in their universe, right? They make software that that these pros, these types of pros use.

01:13:43   logic, of course, Final Cut Pro, etc. But they don't, they know that's not the complete universe

01:13:49   of pros. That's sort of just where they've begun. And they've also begun a bit with 3D design as

01:13:54   well, and 3D work like, you know, AR/VR, 3D gaming, you know, work in 3D spaces, let's call

01:14:02   it right. And so that is kind of where they've begun their work to create this group and to have

01:14:09   this group create feedback and create, you know, sort of theses that are then incorporated into

01:14:16   Mac hardware. And the Mac Pro is absolutely being informed by this group. The iMac Pro was informed

01:14:24   by some of the work that this group did early on. And so like the this is it's existed for a while,

01:14:30   it's not completely brand new, but they are planning on expanding it to encompass more

01:14:36   arenas of professional use down the road. And that as a part of that, I got like basically kind of a

01:14:43   tour, just a very small tour of a couple of components of how they use that. And each of

01:14:49   you use for everywhere in that. Yeah. I think it goes without saying, although, but it I guess it

01:14:54   doesn't go without saying because I got asked by a couple of people after they read your story of

01:15:00   Well, that's great. I'm sure that, you know, that's great for movie editors and music producers. But

01:15:06   what about developers? You know, why don't you know, and I think what I think goes without

01:15:10   saying is Apple is full of developers. You know, they say like, they're probably one of the foremost

01:15:16   customers of Apple products, right? They, you know, they don't need to do that. There's one

01:15:21   group of pro users, they don't have to set up a specialty team of people to study and work hand

01:15:26   in hand with its software developers. They've already got that. They're going to build something

01:15:31   that is a great system for developers. And I will reiterate, when the iMac Pro came out in December

01:15:38   and they were giving us, you know, had some press in New York and we got to meet, you know,

01:15:44   see a whole bunch of use cases for the iMac Pro, software development was a huge aspect of that.

01:15:52   that. It was a big part of the tour, and it was in fact presented by an Apple engineer,

01:16:03   somebody who works at Apple in software engineering. But they even showed us things on the iMac

01:16:08   Pro, and presumably the Mac Pro is going to even be better at this. But even things that

01:16:12   weren't just like, "Well, everybody at Apple is using Xcode and building iOS apps and Mac

01:16:18   but they were showing us, you know, like the workflow for like a web developer who's

01:16:24   running virtualized. Here's three VMs. There's a bunch of running copies of Chrome running.

01:16:30   Yeah. Here's like three VMs running windows and running Linux and running another version of

01:16:34   windows and running, you know, different, you know, different browsers and different things

01:16:40   and doing all these automated tests. And, you know, here's, here's the whisper quiet, not hot

01:16:45   iMac handling it with a plum. So they've got developers backs. Any hint?

01:16:51   Jay Haynes Yeah, and then other areas, you know, those will come. And so if you're a game developer, and you're like, oh, you know, they don't understand my 3d needs. Well, that's what this is about. They hired literal game developers, they hired literal, literal, you know, technicians that use this stuff to their maximum potential to have them create real projects, to, you

01:17:15   know, utilize them in a way that they would in their real life in their real workflows,

01:17:19   because engineering test cases often do not catch or do not highlight the problems that come with an

01:17:27   organic workflow. And that is the core tenet, I think of this. Yeah, I one of my favorite

01:17:33   anecdotes in your story. I think it was john turner's telling you but that they realize after

01:17:39   they brought this this these people in and they had one of the groups is a bunch of 3d artists

01:17:45   people you know i guess making stuff for games or maybe visual effects people probably similar

01:17:50   workflows but 3d artists they're doing real work there at apple and they observed that one of the

01:17:57   i don't know what he wasn't going to throw the whatever the software package is under the bus

01:18:01   but whatever software package they're using there's a palette that they open and it turns

01:18:05   Turns out professional 3D artists open this palette like 100 times a day.

01:18:10   And it took like, what do you say, like five seconds every time?

01:18:13   Right, six, six seconds to six to 10 seconds or something to open it every time.

01:18:16   Right, so that's a six second delay to do what you want to do 100 times a day.

01:18:21   And even if he's fudging some of the factors, even if it's only three seconds and maybe

01:18:25   you only open it 25 times a day, that still is the sort of thing that it really annoys

01:18:29   you.

01:18:30   And so they like dug deep into it and it turned out it was all the way down at like the software

01:18:35   driver level where it had to get fixed, but they fixed it. And now it's like they hit the key to

01:18:39   open the pallet and the pallet is instantly there.

01:18:42   Yeah. And I think that's the kind of, you know, the, I was obviously an anecdote. It didn't seem

01:18:48   prepared. Maybe it was, but you know, that kind of anecdote is like a, an example of hopefully the

01:18:53   things that they're trying to suss out, but it speaks to something larger, which is that,

01:18:57   you know, they're when you notice, no matter how many like listening tours you go on, right? Like

01:19:03   when you get into a room with Apple, as a developer, or as a

01:19:08   inch, you know, software engineer, or yeah, software

01:19:10   engineer, or as a audio engineer, or as a as a, an

01:19:15   editor, you know, film editor, whatever, if you get into a room

01:19:17   with Apple, and they're like, Okay, tell us, you know, what

01:19:19   you want, right? You're going to go big picture, right, you're

01:19:22   going to go like, Oh, I'd love for you to support this format,

01:19:25   or I'd love for you to, you know, to launch a version of it

01:19:29   that supported my dream feature or whatever. And that's great. And feature requests are wonderful,

01:19:37   and yada yada. It's good to have that input, which is why they do those listening tours. They go

01:19:41   around listening to professionals, external to the company. But it cannot give you the same insight

01:19:48   into an average workflow and how that workflow is being negatively impacted. Or frankly, it could be

01:19:54   just fine. And they could be finding massive ways to improve it, or it could be telling them, "Oh,

01:19:58   this is how people use their machines, we can lean into this, you know, for either future hardware or

01:20:03   future software updates, bug fixes, features, whatever. But you can't get that in a in a

01:20:09   hour long conversation or whatever with some pro randomly, you have to bring them in house,

01:20:14   you have to get them to sit down and do their work. And the problem as was brought up to me

01:20:19   was with that is that these people are working on proprietary stuff. And you cannot ask them to just

01:20:27   bring the footage of the next season of Game of Thrones to

01:20:30   Apple and edit it there. He can't do it right. It's not

01:20:34   possible. They won't. They are not allowed by any way, shape or

01:20:37   means. And so they that's the reasoning they felt for bringing

01:20:41   people in. And I don't know exactly what projects they're

01:20:43   shooting or whatever, but they're shooting literal movies

01:20:46   and stuff at Apple and editing them there. And that that is,

01:20:51   you know, informing, of course, their their understanding of the

01:20:53   workflows that these people go through.

01:20:56   any hint from them because one thing they revealed last year at the round table was that in addition

01:21:01   to deciding to work on an all new Mac Pro, they were also at the same time working on an all new

01:21:08   pro display, standalone display. Any word on that? I didn't see anything in your story about it.

01:21:16   Jared Ranere: No, I didn't mention it simply because I did ask and they basically said yes,

01:21:20   that you know, it's coming, which we already knew, you know, or at least they had, they had said that

01:21:25   that it was coming a year ago,

01:21:27   and there was no major change.

01:21:28   So, you know, editing, you gotta leave something out,

01:21:30   you know, usually.

01:21:31   And so, no, basically yes, but no real additional--

01:21:36   - Just confirmation that that's still part of the plan.

01:21:38   - Yeah, exactly.

01:21:39   - And you don't expect them to give you the details,

01:21:41   like, you know, oh yeah, it's gonna be--

01:21:43   - No, there was a teleconferencing screen in the room

01:21:45   that was like, I don't know, 12 feet across,

01:21:48   and I was like, is this the one?

01:21:49   (laughing)

01:21:50   They're like, no, no.

01:21:52   Do you think it's possible that it could be an 8K display?

01:21:56   I think it's absolutely possible. I mean, I think the hardware is capable of driving it. I think you could drive an 8K display off of a MacBook Pro with an eGPU. You know, somebody is a film editor and they want to edit 8K. And I will say that they emphasize that Final Cut Pro, the performance improvements after they stripped it to the bolts, right, a few years ago, and have slowly built it back up. The performance improvements, which they

01:22:22   demonstrated for me in their edit bay there, one of their edit bays, after

01:22:26   cleaning it out, basically, it seemed very sterile for an edit bay. If you

01:22:30   know edit bays, they're notoriously dirty with food and everything

01:22:33   everywhere. And that but they showed on an AK display, you know, the iMac Pro

01:22:40   handling all of these streams of simultaneous footage, you know, AK

01:22:46   footage, color graded, non rendered, live, you know, footage, which is

01:22:52   I think the new display is really great. I don't know how big it'll be, but I think it's got to be

01:22:55   8K because I think they just want, you know, 5K, they did that years ago, you know, like,

01:22:59   and it's still, it's, I still am using my original generation iMac 5K, you know, like the first iMac

01:23:07   5K that came out is still my daily, that's on my desk in my office and I love it. But they've done

01:23:14   that already, you know, so I kind of feel like, yeah. And they're, I mean, the 8K TVs are out

01:23:19   there. You know what I mean? And I'm not saying they're everywhere. They're not abundant, but

01:23:23   they are. The displays are out there. I think even Dell has an AK monitor now. And the TV that they

01:23:30   showed me was AK. And like, AK HDR is what most people are like editing in, or most modern

01:23:39   shooters who have like these red cameras and other high-end cameras. And then everything, because

01:23:45   then you can master it down to anything and it looks amazing. You know, you have its future

01:23:50   proofing, you know, you have that archive, as it let's say you shoot your movie, your

01:23:55   feature film in 8k, you're able to then, you know, in 10 years or six years or five years,

01:24:02   whatever, remaster that and offer it as an upgrade. It's the same thing where that happened

01:24:07   with 4k. When, you know, Apple said, Oh, hey, iTunes can support 4k now. And all these studios

01:24:12   came out with 4K stuff pretty quickly. Well, that didn't happen because they figured out

01:24:18   a way to make it 4K. It happened because they shot it or scanned it from film at very high

01:24:23   res and then were able to offer that stream pretty quickly.

01:24:26   Trevor Burrus I keep thinking in the back of my head that

01:24:29   I sort of hope that what they're building is a modern day Mac 2FX. The Mac 2FX was sold

01:24:35   from 1990 to 1992. It was the fastest Mac ever made at that point. And it retailed starting

01:24:42   recording price was $9,000. It was priced from $9,000 to $12,000 according to Wikipedia,

01:24:49   and which is how I recall it. I just recall it with some number that made me want to die

01:24:55   because I was picking up my brand new Mac LC. But the basic idea, all I mean by it is

01:25:10   let's make the fastest computer we can make, right? And we've got, you know, if $10,000 computer is

01:25:18   out of your budget, we have other, we have great iMac systems for the desktop that start at a very

01:25:23   reasonable price. You know, let's build a machine for people who have the money and the need

01:25:30   professionally to get something truly extraordinary. Like what could we do if we made a $15,000 Mac

01:25:38   Pro. I'm not suggesting that would be the starting price. I'm just saying—but what

01:25:43   if the starting price was quite higher than the iMac Pro, and that it's worthy on the

01:25:50   performance front?

01:25:51   The Mac 2 effects, you look at it—and I'll put a link in the show notes—it was from

01:25:56   the beige box era at Apple. It didn't really look all that much different, and I wouldn't

01:26:03   say it looked better than other Mac 2s in the Mac 2 family, but the performance was

01:26:11   extraordinary. For some people, that was worth it.

01:26:15   But the other thing that made me laugh is talking about 8K displays. Look at the display

01:26:20   on that picture from the Wikipedia thing. I don't even know what display that is.

01:26:26   I don't think that's a 13-inch display. It looks like it might be a 12-inch display.

01:26:33   And as is big bezel, displays have gotten so much better.

01:26:39   It's so bigger.

01:26:40   Well, the entire width of the display is 18 inches, so it can't be much more than 12.

01:26:49   I think I might be misremembering my timeline, but it might be the case that in 1990 there

01:26:54   still weren't such things as 17-inch displays.

01:26:57   Or I guess we had 15-inch for a while, too, but 13-inch might have been the most you could

01:27:02   get? You could buy a $10,000 computer in 1990 dollars. So it's probably at least like a

01:27:15   $15,000, $16,000, $17,000 computer in today's dollars. I don't even care.

01:27:19   **Ezra Klein:** Yeah, Wikipedia says that it was equivalent to $16,800 in 2017.

01:27:24   **Beserat Debebe-Rice:** All right, there we go. So it's a $17,000 starting price in today's

01:27:27   dollars and you'd use it with a display.

01:27:30   - Pros, are you ready for Apple's $18,000 Mac Pro?

01:27:35   - Right, and the best display you could get

01:27:38   was the size of an iPad Pro.

01:27:39   (laughing)

01:27:42   - Yeah, and about 1/16th the resolution at the most.

01:27:46   - Yeah, what, like 640 by 480 probably.

01:27:49   - Yeah, not even resolution, technically CRT, but.

01:27:54   - Right.

01:27:56   - Yeah, I mean, I think that there's,

01:27:58   think there's an opportunity here to look at this. And, you

01:28:01   know, I digress back to what I said, there was two ways they

01:28:04   could go in one way was like, Hey, what's the best way you

01:28:07   could build that box? Like, what if what if you could just slide

01:28:09   the card in from the back, and it would make contact and it

01:28:12   felt beautiful to do and they're able to convince AMD or Nvidia

01:28:16   to like, you know, change architecture slightly on the

01:28:19   cards that they work better with the machine and, you know,

01:28:22   whatever, right, who knows what they could do with their

01:28:24   leverage, you know, to make these experiences of having this

01:28:28   modern machine feel as good as possible. Just like the modern cheese grater, let's call it, right?

01:28:32   You know, can't cut your fingers. It's impossible. Don't have to screw anything in,

01:28:38   you know, you can clip everything in. Dead silent, you know, whatever, whatever the case,

01:28:43   water cooled, you know, etc. But then you the other way you could think of it as like, hey,

01:28:48   what if, you know, the because they were very hot on eGPU right now. And yes, admittedly,

01:28:55   it had just shipped, you know, support for it had just shipped. And so they were highlighting it

01:28:59   for me just like, hey, we've got you here. So we're going to show you a few things that utilize

01:29:04   the GPU, which is totally understandable. One of the demos that I got was this, you know, kind of

01:29:10   insane, you know, detailed, I mean, it wasn't that insane. It's like a typical graphics card stress

01:29:16   test type thing. But it had like a planet with a bunch of asteroids around it that were actual

01:29:20   geometry, not a particle effect. And they pushed that on a Mac, on a MacBook Pro, and obviously,

01:29:26   very poor frame rates on a MacBook Pro natively for a stress test like that,

01:29:31   using the internal graphics card. And then they did a demonstration, which was fairly impressive.

01:29:38   If you know anything about the way that systems recognize graphics cards, if you remove a graphics

01:29:46   card from a system, usually the computer crashes just immediately because it's like, I have

01:29:51   no idea what you just did to me.

01:29:54   Trevor Burrus You've just taken off one of the lobes of

01:29:56   my brain.

01:29:57   Trevor Burrus Yeah, exactly. It would be like, yeah, you

01:30:00   separated. Right. The rest of your brain's like, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey," right?

01:30:08   So you know, it's immediate shutdown, just falls over like a ragdoll. And it's like,

01:30:11   I don't whatever man I'm I quit. And so what the what they demonstrated though was they had two e

01:30:17   GPU units, one with the like an AMD 580 or something in it. And then the other one had the

01:30:25   Vega part, the one that's in the iMac Pro or something like it. I think they said it was the

01:30:30   Vega part. So but that basically is like one of the beefier GPUs you can buy. And so they had those

01:30:37   two lined up. You plug in one, it takes over the rendering. Obviously, it hands off any

01:30:44   modern application, relatively new application built for OS X. I can't remember whether it

01:30:51   works out of the box or whether there's some small change you can make to where it understands

01:30:55   this. But they also said, actually, I'll dig it, I'll get to that in a second. But yeah,

01:30:59   so that it'll understand the handoff and says, "Okay, I'm going to quit using this GPU here

01:31:05   on board. I'm going to start using this one." And then they had a monitor plugged into the

01:31:10   back of the GPU, the eGPU, and then of course the monitor comes active and it's pushing

01:31:15   that monitor and also pushing the content on the MacBook. So it's actually really

01:31:20   clever the way they handle it. Just one Thunderbolt cable, boop, right? Just plug it in. You now

01:31:24   have a new GPU. You unplug it and if it's an older application, it just destroyed. And

01:31:32   it's a new application, it completely handles it fine. They actually have a dialogue for

01:31:36   older applications where it says, "Hey, yo, you know, this if you want to, if there's

01:31:41   like, you know, a little GPU icon that appears in the bar and you eject it, you know, you

01:31:45   click on the icon and eject it before you unplug it. And when you go to eject it, it

01:31:49   says, "Wait, you're going to want to save anything you're doing here because the moment

01:31:53   you unplug this, it's going to go into psychosis and just quit, you know, just crash on you."

01:31:58   And I told them, of course, nobody has ever removed any peripheral without first ejecting

01:32:03   it properly.

01:32:04   So this is going to be fine.

01:32:05   There's no problem here at all.

01:32:09   But newer applications will handle it gracefully.

01:32:11   You unplug it.

01:32:12   There's a small, essentially a suspend.

01:32:15   And then it says, "Hey, I'm on a new machine now."

01:32:18   That's literally the thought process of the of the app.

01:32:21   It says, "Oh, you just opened me up on a new machine that's configured differently

01:32:26   with this new graphics card."

01:32:27   then it takes off and unsuspends and goes from there. It's like a safe state. But

01:32:33   it happens incredibly quickly and gracefully, from what I observed. But then they did one

01:32:38   further, which is that they plugged in two. So they plugged in one that was the 580 and

01:32:43   then one that was the Vega. And so you have two Thunderbolt ports, essentially, and utilizing

01:32:49   the bandwidth of those, you know, beefier controllers, which is the whole reason they

01:32:54   went with 4 thunderbolts and not legacy stuff, which some people will complain, and whatever,

01:33:00   I'm not your complaint department. But the, well I got a bunch of flack on Twitter, like,

01:33:06   why, you know, I don't use these GPUs, and it's like, well, I don't know, you may, you

01:33:10   never know, right? Like, maybe you will. Anyhow, that's the decision that they made to enable

01:33:15   this kind of thing. And they plugged in both parts, they fired it up again, and of course,

01:33:21   know, you could see that the most powerful one takes over and

01:33:25   it says, Hey, this one can handle the most load. But then

01:33:28   they loaded up Cinema 4D, which is a 3d rendering application

01:33:33   that is used by visual effects people to render scenes for

01:33:37   movies or high end commercials and things like that. And you

01:33:40   saw that. We saw that together.

01:33:42   The iMac. The highest, they were saying, hey, but literally the

01:33:46   highest of the high end visual effects. I mean, I'm not saying

01:33:49   that there aren't competitors to Cinema 4D. I'm just saying that there are people using Cinema 4D

01:33:54   to make movies like Star Wars and whatever else you want to say.

01:33:59   Jared Ranere: Right, exactly. And so the way that it worked is you plugged in both GPUs,

01:34:04   and you have the machine, and then you told the window, the viewport, which is the way it works

01:34:10   in 3D software, you tell a viewport to start rendering, or you tell it how you want it to

01:34:14   render. And so you start the viewport rendering. And then what happened is they actually had

01:34:19   three little thin green lines that popped up on the screen. And this is a Cinema 4D

01:34:24   feature, right? It's not an OS X feature. But the green lines, obviously supported by

01:34:28   OS X, popped up on the viewport and it essentially showed you a slice of the viewport was being

01:34:37   given to each GPU. And I asked them whether it was, like, this was allegorical, you know,

01:34:45   or actual. And I think it's actual, but if somebody out there wants to correct me, that's

01:34:50   totally fine. You know, that's all good. But basically, a small sliver of the viewport

01:34:56   on the left, which was, this was a car dashboard that they were rendering, a picture of a car

01:35:00   dashboard. And so the small sliver on the left, which is just a strip of like pebbled,

01:35:05   you know, plastic texture, was being rendered by the GPU of the MacBook. Then a larger chunk

01:35:11   was being rendered and it's like, you know, everything to the right of that green line

01:35:15   is being rendered by the 580. And then the largest chunk of the viewport was being rendered

01:35:19   by the Vega part. So it essentially allowed you to like utilize three GPUs at once just

01:35:25   by plugging them in and then it would apportion out the work to whatever, you know, load that

01:35:32   those each can handle.

01:35:33   I like the idea of the built-in, was it a MacBook? I love the idea of the MacBook's

01:35:40   10 GPU, it's like, I can help tell us. Yeah, that was basically it. It was a tiny sliver.

01:35:46   Yeah, let me let me help out guys.

01:35:50   I'll handle the notifications menu. Give me the notifications. I'll handle those for you boys,

01:36:02   if you get an iMessage while we're doing this. But that that was very interesting to me,

01:36:07   this philosophy of like, "Hey, how much compute power do you need GPU-wise for GPU-bound instruction?"

01:36:16   And you can have that instantly and not have it when you don't want it. When you want to move away

01:36:22   from your desk or walk away or carry your work with you or whatever. It's not about like, "Okay,

01:36:26   got to transfer files and do all this stuff." If you're doing truly GPU-bound work, you can get a

01:36:32   MacBook Pro and still do that work, which is amazing. And if it's, especially if it's not very

01:36:39   CPU bound, your two year old MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt, you know, by the time each GPUs

01:36:45   really get out there, your two year old MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt three is an immensely capable

01:36:51   machine for rendering work and stuff still like the effectively extended the life of people's

01:36:56   MacBook Pros massively, or enable them to do things that they wouldn't be able to do otherwise.

01:37:01   and it works for everything. It works for gaming. If you got a

01:37:04   MacBook Pro and you want to game, there's this company that

01:37:07   makes this little puck thing that you can take with you and

01:37:10   plug it into your machine in a hotel room and boom, you got a

01:37:12   gaming rig.

01:37:13   And that works. That works now. That works.

01:37:14   Cool. Yeah, yeah, it just the OS 10. The latest update to OS 10

01:37:19   enabled the GPU support. Apple has two pages up on the website

01:37:23   about it, one that's developer focused, and then one that's

01:37:25   consumer focused. So you could check on the website. I don't

01:37:28   know what the exact URLs are off the top of my head.

01:37:30   put it in the show notes. But yeah, it's basically like, hey, here's, you know, take your machine

01:37:36   running the latest version of OS X that obviously has the ports to support it. And you're golden,

01:37:44   you know, plug it in, and it'll know what to do. It'll take over that. Obviously, if you have stuff

01:37:48   where the CPU is handling a lot of additional computation, it's still being limited, you know,

01:37:55   to you and to the age of your computer. But the fact that it can say, hey, give me this beefy ass

01:38:03   job, I'll figure out which GPU to throw it to whether it's the one on board or the one off board.

01:38:08   And you plug this into your fantastic high resolution monitor, put your MacBook in a

01:38:14   clamshell. And it's like you're using a much beefier machine. To me, seeing it live and the

01:38:20   way that they're just swapping in and out and all of that. It says a hell of a lot to me about the

01:38:25   the way they think about modularity. So I don't know that the new Mac, I mean,

01:38:29   don't believe me to be honest, I say all of this and then I'm like,

01:38:33   don't believe me because I was the person who were the original Mac pro was

01:38:36   coming up. The trash kid thing. My feeling was like, Oh,

01:38:39   it's going to be module all modular. Right. And like, they're going to,

01:38:42   you're going to plug in your GPU if you want it. And, and hell,

01:38:45   maybe even the cinema display will have its own GPU,

01:38:48   which that doesn't make any guidance says,

01:38:49   cause then you got to replace your CPU, your set of a display, you know,

01:38:52   So don't listen to me about this, but I did find it compelling and interesting, you know, to see that happen live

01:38:58   I thought it was cool and it does sound

01:39:00   philosophically Apple like Apple likes to ship devices that you don't go inside and

01:39:08   I'm not saying that you're not gonna be able to open your Mac new Mac Pro. I mean

01:39:12   I'm not but I'm just saying if most of the quote-unquote modularity is a

01:39:20   Philosophically about plugging in external GPUs and then other external things that sounds more Apple like to me

01:39:27   Philosophically then put a card in the case, you know shut that machine down right plug it

01:39:31   Put a card in the case hot swap ability. Just plug it unplug it, you know, you're doing this stuff, you know that requires

01:39:39   you know the best external GPU money can buy but you're you've got to get out of the office because the

01:39:47   Cleaning people are coming through gonna be running vacuum cleaners and stuff

01:39:50   So you just unplug go to a coffee shop for an hour and work on something an aspect of the project. That's not

01:39:56   GPU intensive, you know, you're like at the wireframe level or something

01:40:00   But that you just don't unplug it and pick up your macbook and go that's actually kind of amazing

01:40:06   like you don't have to say you said you don't have to save I

01:40:10   shuffle the files around and

01:40:13   switch to a different machine because now you're on a MacBook and open this thing up and you know

01:40:18   You could just go to a different part of the building and you know

01:40:21   Just keep using the machine

01:40:24   Right and you could do setups like a lot of the stuff they talked about some of it was with logic as well

01:40:28   but a lot of the stuff they talked about was

01:40:30   You know being able to do setups and things like that. I mean think about it like

01:40:34   From a rendering perspective like the MacBook Pro can handle a decent amount of geometry

01:40:42   you know, in bare polygonal form, right, or wireframe or whatever. So you could do a lot

01:40:48   of setups and play around and all of this stuff. And then when you're ready to render,

01:40:52   you have that at your fingertips, but it doesn't mean you need it all the time. And in fact,

01:40:57   for bigger units where you have like, you know, two GPUs plugged in and you're rendering

01:41:02   or you're basically treating it as a rendering farm, a miniature one. And I was talking to

01:41:06   some smart people in and I don't think it's that secret or not, but I was really talking

01:41:14   to some smart folks that work at like Pixar and whatnot. And they were saying that there's

01:41:17   probably a really nice market in between a company like Pixar that has its own render

01:41:23   farm or another VFX house which uses AWS or one of the bigger server services like Google's,

01:41:30   which a lot of them do now. And then then all the way down to the person who's just

01:41:35   using their onboard GPU. In other words, there's probably a really solid long tail market for

01:41:42   people that need GPU bound instruction stuff, work done, that want to build their own miniature

01:41:47   render farm. And you could do a render, build a little render farm for yourself with just

01:41:52   a few of those GPUs for a few grand and have quite a good time of it, turnaround wise,

01:41:58   in getting your proofs out and all of that. Even if you used, for your final render, you

01:42:02   used a bigger farm or spun up servers, you could definitely get your dailies out of that,

01:42:08   so to speak. So it's very interesting, compelling for certain types of pro.

01:42:13   What do you think—this is where I'm going over my head, because I'm not a gamer and

01:42:17   I'm not a 3D professional. What is the deal—even the iMac Pro comes with Radeon, the Vega 56

01:42:25   and the Vega 64 graphics processor. What's the deal with Apple's relationship with

01:42:30   with Nvidia. It seems to me like there's some people who prefer Nvidia for… I don't

01:42:38   know if it… But it's like Apple's never really had a good relationship with them.

01:42:42   Wasn't there a thing like many, many years ago in the Steve Jobs era where Nvidia blew

01:42:46   a… There was like a Mac coming out with an Nvidia card and Nvidia preannounced it

01:42:51   before Apple did and they were like, "Screw them!"

01:42:54   I don't remember that. I'm sorry. I don't remember that.

01:42:57   I could be misremembering, but what do you make of that? Is it a thing or is it not a thing?

01:43:06   You mean like the Nvidia versus Apple type thing?

01:43:08   Yeah. Or does the new Mac Pro need to support Nvidia?

01:43:13   Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, I sure as heck would like it to.

01:43:19   I mean, I think that there's a lot of, you know, Nvidia is thinking correctly about a lot of stuff and they are smart. I mean, they, the Nvidia and all GPUs sort of got really kind of blindsided by the cryptocurrency or crypto industry at large, you know, and they really, you know, we're steamrolled in and really skewed the prices and availability and everything of all these cards.

01:43:46   And so I think they're still kind of dealing with being that and trying to

01:43:50   establish a place for themselves among purpose-built AI processing as well,

01:43:54   like AI CPUs, because CPUs that are purpose-built for AI or co-processors

01:44:00   that are purpose-built for AI is a huge thing. And it's going to be like the

01:44:03   next big wave in chip growth. At least that's the conjecture. But I think that

01:44:08   they are, they are in a position of strength when it comes to games and

01:44:12   gamers, all of that, because they, but they do support, you know, Mac, right? Like they,

01:44:17   and they have for a while, the Nvidia GPUs have supported Mac since, I mean, like early last year,

01:44:24   I think there was a nice wave of like additional support for Mac. So I don't think that there's any

01:44:28   acromony there. I don't know if it's an absolute must that it should support Nvidia cards, but I

01:44:33   sure as hell would hope so. I would say that like, you know, if the GPU that's Nvidia, like, there's

01:44:41   no reason that should work any different from an AMD GPU that you plug into your dear machine. So

01:44:49   I'd say it's a must that that works. But I don't know whether or not they will use the part if it's

01:44:56   of that model where the cards are internal, you know, they may just go with one partner.

01:45:00   And that partner at this point will probably be AMD. I mean, it's on the wall, right?

01:45:04   The alternative is, of course, is that there have been rumblings forever that Apple wants to build

01:45:09   build their own GPUs. But I think that will come very, very, very far down the road for

01:45:14   anything but their smartphones, or their small devices, their compact devices, because

01:45:19   that's where all of the advantages like power, you know, and battery usage have come into

01:45:26   play. That's what they're building it for. They're not building it because they can make

01:45:29   the most powerful one. They're building it purpose built. Yeah.

01:45:31   All right. Let me take a break here and thank our third and final sponsor of this show,

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01:48:05   All right, you mentioned that there's rumors that Apple is getting into making their own

01:48:10   GPUs.

01:48:11   They started doing that with the iPhone.

01:48:16   The other recent rumor that I think we have to talk about is there was a Bloomberg report

01:48:22   a week or two ago that said Apple plans to switch the Mac to their own.

01:48:29   in-house chips starting in 2020, which people have inspected. The timing, putting a specific

01:48:38   year on it is obviously news, but you'd have to have your head in the sand or be totally ignorant

01:48:44   not to have been thinking ever since the Apple A series chips started coming out for the iPhone

01:48:51   that Apple might switch to doing their own chips for everything because Apple likes to have control

01:48:57   and Apple has different priorities than the rest of the industry. There have been Macs

01:49:03   over the years that have been held up by Intel's ability to ship on time. So it makes all the

01:49:11   sense in the world as a simple, would they do this if they could? Yes, of course they

01:49:16   would. The question is, and I've gotten it from a lot of people, you probably have too,

01:49:23   do you think this new Mac Pro that's not coming until next year? Is that the explanation for

01:49:29   why the new Mac Pro isn't coming until next year? Because it'll be the first thing that

01:49:34   they build in house, you know, but the in house CPUs or whatever. I think the answer

01:49:39   to that is a definite no. And here's why. Because 2019 is not 2020. You know, and so

01:49:47   So however much faith you put in the Bloomberg story, which Mark Gurman, I forget who else's

01:49:55   byline was on it, but I really, really doubt that if that story is completely true, I really

01:50:02   doubt that it's going to come out early. You know, like I would guess that if the current

01:50:07   plan, if there really is a plan, if that story is completely true, and Apple is planning

01:50:11   to ship to in-house designed CPUs for Macs by 2020, I think that that means it'll come 2020

01:50:18   at the earliest and maybe 2021 because these things sometimes take longer than you think they

01:50:25   will. And if they're already saying, and they started last year on a new Mac Pro, that has to

01:50:33   be two separate things. It just doesn't make any sense to me that they would be related. I sort of

01:50:38   think this is people just desperately trying to understand the how hard can it be to ship a work

01:50:45   station? Like, right, not so much that they want this to be true. It's not so much that they they've

01:50:52   thought through all of the technical aspects of it. Like, would these be a series arm chips? And

01:50:56   would this you know, all the complications that that would entail of, you know, having a new

01:51:01   process, a new architecture for the max?

01:51:04   blah, blah, blah. Forget that. I mean, ARM is just not designed for high power, you know, use it,

01:51:10   it would basically be a redesign chip completely. I mean, we're talking like, it can't be any

01:51:16   iteration of what they built before. Because ARM is specifically Apple went with ARM not because it

01:51:21   was different, but because very specifically, it's sipped power. Right. And it's, you know,

01:51:27   useful for making devices like iPads and phones and watches, right? Like what makes Apple's

01:51:36   in-house design team so good at like, "Wow, this new series three Apple Watch is so much

01:51:41   faster than just two years ago." Like that skill set doesn't really translate to, "Let's render

01:51:48   a scene from the new Star Wars movie." Yeah. I mean, it doesn't, I will say like the chip

01:51:53   on the subject of the chip team,

01:51:55   I don't care how many times it has come up

01:51:59   or somebody has posted some fluff piece about like,

01:52:02   oh, Apple's chip team or whatever.

01:52:04   I don't care how many of those you publish.

01:52:05   I don't think anybody understands exactly

01:52:07   how amazing that team is.

01:52:10   And I'm not saying this to blow smoke.

01:52:11   I'm talking about the individuals involved.

01:52:13   Like Apple has assembled an insane group of talent

01:52:18   in that team.

01:52:19   And like everybody I've talked to who actually knows

01:52:22   what the hell they're talking about

01:52:23   is like that team is a beast.

01:52:25   Like it is, not only is their output insane,

01:52:28   like the amount of improvements that they're building

01:52:31   on processors that nobody else has.

01:52:33   Like this is not where they can,

01:52:34   oh, we'll take this design and improve on it 10%, right?

01:52:37   Like they are literally building purpose-built,

01:52:39   brand new chips at a very rapid clip

01:52:43   and making them better and better and better.

01:52:45   It is very impressive output for a chip design team,

01:52:49   which is, chip design is like one of the hardest things

01:52:51   do in tech, in hard tech. It's like a pinnacle of difficulty on an engineering level.

01:52:58   Right. Because somebody, whether if you take your, if you make a misstep as a chip maker,

01:53:03   or just start resting on your laurels, somebody else is going to stay. The history of the computer

01:53:10   industry is showing that somebody else is going to come in with their pedal to the metal and make

01:53:14   a chip that is the state of the art in every aspect, you know, you know, and, and eat your

01:53:22   lunch, right? Right. Yeah, I think these are two totally unrelated stories. If it's true that

01:53:29   Apple is switching to in-house chips, whether they are ARM or they're their own in-house x86

01:53:35   or whatever, I don't think that has any relation to a Mac Pro that started being engineered last

01:53:42   year. I mean, I'm sure if they have this roadmap...

01:53:45   I have a hard time believing it, for sure.

01:53:47   Right. I'm sure that they're, you know, it... I'm sure they're also not happening in isolation,

01:53:52   because I'm sure that it's John, you know, John Turnus's team at Apple doing hardware,

01:53:58   if this is true, and I have no idea, but if it is true that there is a plan to switch to in-house

01:54:03   CPUs in 2020, I'm sure he's already aware of this.

01:54:08   Yeah, I think those Venn diagrams significantly overlap.

01:54:12   Right. I'm pretty sure. And so I'm sure they're thinking about it, but I don't think that,

01:54:17   you know, you know, there's an art to shipping, whether it's software or hardware, right. And

01:54:21   it's, you know, to ship one of these in 2019, you've got to, you know, you start cutting things

01:54:26   off early, you know, like, okay, we'll use this, we'll use this, we'll use this.

01:54:32   using in-house CPUs that don't exist yet isn't something you can do now to ship in 2019.

01:54:39   Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah, good luck with that one. I don't believe that either. I think it's

01:54:46   definitely something along the lines of, you know, the GPU in their own iDevices thing. That's not

01:54:55   theirs either, right? It's not a completely Apple-built part yet by any means. But it is

01:55:00   certainly closer to custom, whatever you want to call it. You know, they did a lot of work

01:55:07   on that and they will continue to fully I'm convinced that at some point they will be

01:55:12   their own in house GPU. Right now I think it still uses a lot of

01:55:16   Unknown Speaker 10.

01:55:17   templatization and in kind of similar structures as other existing GPUs. But the the fact that

01:55:24   they're building that thing is is a given and the fact that they're working on other

01:55:27   chips as a given. But like, if you look at that situation, I can imagine that if they chose like

01:55:34   a manufacturer, an x86 manufacturer of some sort, to build the CPUs in that, let's say it's Intel,

01:55:40   and they're going to build them a chip for that computer, I can imagine them having extensive

01:55:47   custom requirements that make it wildly different than a normal off the shelf Intel part. You know,

01:55:54   for this release in the future, you know, whatever. But definitely, I don't believe

01:56:00   that there's going to be like some anal arm part in this in this pro computer. No.

01:56:05   Trenton Larkin I wouldn't be surprised. Now, Apple's gone through two

01:56:11   major CPU transitions with the Mac. And the first Macs ran on Motorola 6800 family chips,

01:56:20   or 68,000 family chips. And then in the 90s, they switched to the PowerPC platform.

01:56:27   And they switched everything, not all at once, but in the course of a year, everything went from

01:56:33   being Motorola 68,000-based to PowerPC-based. And gosh, I even forget what it was called,

01:56:41   but there was an... But you could run your 68,000 software in emulation for a couple of years.

01:56:48   So that's, you know, what apps am I going to use if nothing's been recompiled yet?

01:56:51   And then they sort of did the same thing when they switched in 2005 from the PowerPC to Intel.

01:57:01   And they had a—I remember the name of that one. It was called Rosetta. And Rosetta would let you

01:57:07   run your PowerPC code. And I don't believe it was—I think technically speaking,

01:57:13   and I'm sure John Sirquisa will appreciate my exactitude here. It was not an emulator,

01:57:19   it was a transcoder. It transcoded 68,000 instructions set to, no, I mean PowerPC

01:57:30   instructions set to Intel on the fly. But effectively it's an emulator from the user's

01:57:34   perspective. But then again, within a year, the entire product line had been moved to Intel.

01:57:40   every single Mac, you know, after the first one shipped a year later, when you'd go in an Apple

01:57:45   store, every Mac was on an Intel processor. I'm not 100% sure if they switch to ARM chips,

01:57:52   in-house designed ARM chips for Macs. I'm not sure that they would switch all of them. I could see

01:57:58   them and I think that I don't think the developer story would be all that complicated by it. I mean,

01:58:05   It might be because you'd have to be able to it might have a lot of games for example that only run on the

01:58:11   x86 max and don't run on the just plain MacBook that has an Apple designed arm CPU. I

01:58:19   Don't know that might be too confusing for people

01:58:22   But if philosophically I could see them doing that because the like the MacBook I

01:58:29   Think would be a better computer if it had iPad

01:58:33   CPU the iPad Pro CPU then the Intel whatever wimpy whatever it has

01:58:39   But I don't I

01:58:43   could see them saying but then at the high end for like the iMac Pro and for the

01:58:47   Upcoming Mac Pro and stuff that you know will just stick with Intel and let them do what they do best

01:58:51   Which is the high performance stuff? I don't know. Mm-hmm. I could be wrong

01:58:56   It might just be that if they do switch they will switch everything and they'll figure out a way to get high performance

01:59:01   I don't know

01:59:03   I didn't intend to spend that much time on this rumor.

01:59:08   Yeah, I think it's an interesting one and it's compelling every time it comes up because

01:59:15   people are like, well, hopefully they're thinking this and it's not just from a shock and awe

01:59:20   perspective, right? Which is like, oh yeah, they're switching from Intel and it's going

01:59:24   to upset the business world. That's all fine, right? But it doesn't really matter to most

01:59:28   users. And I think that the the compelling part of it is what could Apple accomplish

01:59:33   if it was freed from, you know, completely from Intel architecture and able to do to

01:59:39   build a processor that was part and parcel with every other decision they made on their

01:59:43   hardware. And if it's not at a point where that they could do that, and then where that

01:59:47   contributes to significant gains in performance, or, frankly, if it's Apple, we're talking

01:59:53   about whether the fans turn on or not. You know, if they can

01:59:59   feel that they could get a significant lead in that stuff,

02:00:01   and users will notice a difference. That is when it

02:00:05   makes sense. And I think there's a lot of attention paid to, oh,

02:00:09   when will they switch away from Intel without considering the

02:00:13   why so much right, you know, like the why would they you

02:00:16   know, and, and yes, part of it is fiscal, right? Like if they

02:00:20   can, if they can do their own in and have their own whitelist providers make their own chips, they

02:00:26   don't have to rely on Intel, there's only so many boundaries in the world, though. And I'm sure

02:00:30   they're already getting a pretty damn good deal. And so the financial aspects of it are just going

02:00:36   to be relatively speaking, although there will probably be the size of a small company of its

02:00:42   own, right, will be a relatively drop in the bucket for Apple. And so I think it would all really

02:00:47   hinge on performance-based or experience-based improvements. And, you know, that is where you

02:00:55   have to like concentrate your ideas and your thoughts. And just for me, like, there's not a

02:01:00   lot of clear ones on a desktop right away, you know, in that regard. And I think we've seen from

02:01:08   the coprocessor aspect of the MacBook Pro, that Apple has charted a way forward for them to be

02:01:15   be able to do things like utilize stuff purpose built for

02:01:18   arm on iOS, like, you know, the face, let's say face ID, for

02:01:22   instance, they've charted a course forward for them to be

02:01:25   able to do that without switching wholesale. So they

02:01:29   bought themselves some time or whatever you want to call it. So

02:01:32   I don't know if the transition is as eminent as it seems, or if

02:01:35   there's something else going on, where they have another class of

02:01:38   compute device that is going to be using an arm computer, all

02:01:41   the aka new product lines,

02:01:43   Think it's safe to say that all the other high-end phones use Qualcomm Snapdragon processors if Apple's in-house

02:01:51   like a series processors weren't

02:01:54   Notably superior and had you know many advantages probably cost included since they don't have to you know

02:02:00   They're in control of it if they were just roughly equivalent to the current generation snapdragons

02:02:05   I don't think I think Apple would shut the effort down, you know, like they're not doing it

02:02:09   Just so they can have their own, you know

02:02:12   to put a cool name on it like A12 Nitro.

02:02:16   I don't know, whatever they're gonna call this year's chip.

02:02:18   - Right.

02:02:19   - They're not doing it just so they can put a name on it.

02:02:22   They're doing it because it's an advantage.

02:02:25   We'll undertake this incredible expense and effort

02:02:28   of designing our own personal chips,

02:02:30   but we're doing it because we're getting,

02:02:32   and the end result that the customer has in their hands

02:02:35   is gonna be a better product.

02:02:36   - Right, and I think that the experience

02:02:41   or advantage often expresses itself in ways that are not obvious to users or frankly even

02:02:50   analysts in many cases. Once you explain it, you know, everybody sort of, the meme catches

02:02:57   on and the, you know, people understand. But like the recent chip, what the hell is it

02:03:02   called? It's not fusion. It's not, that's a drives.

02:03:06   lives. What's it called? What's the buzzword? A11? So this A11 chip, they said bionic. It's

02:03:20   bionic.

02:03:21   No, no, no. I thought that was the A10.

02:03:22   Is it? I thought it was A11.

02:03:24   I think it was A10.

02:03:26   No, no, no. It's A11 bionic. Which just goes to show you how dumb these names are, right?

02:03:32   names are really just to kind of say, "Hey, like it's, you know, this is a new version

02:03:35   of the chip. And we want you to know that there's more going on here than just a new

02:03:39   chip." And there is more, right? It is, it does have dedicated sections of the chip

02:03:44   that are used for things like security and used for things like processing, specifically,

02:03:50   machine learning style instructions. You know, I talked earlier about the AI chips being

02:03:54   bigger and bigger things. And by AI, I really mean at this point, machine learning and computational

02:03:59   chips that are designed to run these types of instructions very efficiently. And to see a large

02:04:05   portion of the reason that Bionic works the way it does or is the way it is, is because it could

02:04:10   do things like it can handle instructions that don't need a full cycle and it can run them,

02:04:16   sort of more efficiently. Because a lot of these, a lot of machine learning instructions

02:04:22   are really low-rent, not high-powered instructions, but you need to run an absolute

02:04:29   junkton of them. And so it allows you to run these instructions on essentially a half of what

02:04:36   a normal swing would be. It'd be like a batter going up to the plate and you're like, "We really

02:04:40   do not want you to hit a home run on this one. We need you to hit it between third and fourth,

02:04:45   right? Or between second and third base." Third and fourth, that's hilarious. "Between second

02:04:48   second or third base. I just invented a base. We need you to hit it there, out there. And

02:04:55   this is going to do wonders for our strategy. It's exactly what we need right now. And

02:04:59   you have that hitter who's like, "No problem. I could hit this home run for you, but this

02:05:03   is what you want." And so here it is. And so it hits those base hits because the swing

02:05:07   is shorter. And you can hit 50 or 100 of those at the time it takes them to hit one home

02:05:11   run. And that is what's going on here. So that is then if you spool that out, what it

02:05:17   allows Apple to do is run a lot of these instructions on device and do things like

02:05:22   figure out whose faces are whose or whatever without popping it up to the cloud and making

02:05:29   the cloud run all these instructions instead. And that, of course, dovetails with their security and

02:05:34   privacy angle, with their whole philosophy, all of this stuff. And these types of interconnected

02:05:39   tissues of the decisions that Apple makes on a hardware level are not only not possible,

02:05:45   but not even in the realm of understanding for most companies that build an Android phone or

02:05:51   another mobile device. I'm not saying those phones are bad. I'm not saying the people that like them

02:05:56   are horrible human beings. I'm just saying that you cannot do this on those devices.

02:06:02   Now you will be able to eventually, right? Because usually Apple does the thing and then

02:06:05   a year or two later, everybody figures out how to do it. And that's great. But right now,

02:06:10   these purpose-built devices each year that come out like chips and all this stuff are built in

02:06:15   this way where they're not just saying, "Oh, we built this because X." It's, "We built this

02:06:20   because X, Y, Z, alpha, beta, gamma, delta all connect to this." And that, I think, is the way

02:06:27   you got to look at their chip design, the way you got to look at the desktop. If they're going to

02:06:31   switch to ARM, it's not going to be because, you know, one win, right? It has to be a dozen wins.

02:06:40   on different angles. And not all those wins will be evident right up front.

02:06:44   Right. It feels like a show. It feels like we've covered this completely. I'll just say,

02:06:50   I just feel like this whole thing, and again, I'll go back to what I said before, that I felt like

02:06:54   your story was such good news for people who love the Mac and who are really, you know, again,

02:06:59   to abuse a term that I sometimes cringe at, but I don't know what else to say, power users of

02:07:04   of various sorts, whose big fear is that Apple is moving to this "everybody will use an iPad

02:07:12   and like it" mentality. I just felt like your story and this commitment they have to the

02:07:18   pro market shows how committed they are to the Mac. And maybe not the Mac exactly as

02:07:23   we know it, but the Mac that has these Mac-like aspects that aren't like iOS that we know.

02:07:31   I don't see iOS devices moving to support extra external GPUs. It just doesn't make sense. You

02:07:39   know, right. I mean, you know, in the near term,

02:07:41   Jay Haynes I, you know, I'll be honest. No, probably not. But I, you know, an iPad Pro with

02:07:49   an eGPU would be pretty cool. Yeah. You know, and then that's, that's one with like, there's a last

02:07:55   addendum to the whole discussion about that, that thing, you know, that, but that story is that one

02:08:00   One of the things that they showed me, which was very cool there, and which does also tap

02:08:05   into the way that Apple thinks about pros and pro computers and follows along with this

02:08:10   eGPU line of reasoning, is that they had an iMac Pro there running Logic, and they had

02:08:17   two iPad Pros paired to it wirelessly.

02:08:20   I was told you could pair up to five devices wirelessly to an iMac Pro on Logic.

02:08:25   know, I think all you know, all of the above work with up to five devices. And, you know,

02:08:31   everybody's encouraged to buy four iPad Pros with every iMac purchase, of course. But you could put

02:08:38   them together. And what the way they were using them is that they they were up to the left of the

02:08:43   right of the iMac. And they had logic displays, they were served by logic. But they were not the

02:08:49   same displays that you saw on the iMac, they were purpose built for iPad screens. And they those

02:08:54   screens could show you, you know, large tappable buttons

02:08:57   that allowed you to do things like time, you know, do like,

02:09:01   you know, either metronome metronome timing, jump to a

02:09:04   particular portion in a track, do a scratch pad, you know,

02:09:08   whatever the case may be, whatever you need to do to, to

02:09:10   tweak your stuff that works better by touch. And to do

02:09:14   things like reference the manual live, I mean, you could hover

02:09:18   over a device or a knob on the iMac, and the manual would live

02:09:23   update to that particular section for that knob

02:09:26   on the iPad Pro.

02:09:27   It was really cool.

02:09:28   - That's very cool.

02:09:29   And then you could just like pick--

02:09:30   - Yeah, and just--

02:09:31   - And the iPad's wireless, so you could pick it up

02:09:32   and just like, if you wanted to read about that setting,

02:09:36   you know, you could just like pick it up

02:09:37   and take a stretch and walk around with the iPad.

02:09:39   You don't have to like unplug it or unmount it.

02:09:41   It sounds pretty cool.

02:09:42   - Yep.

02:09:43   Yeah, I mean, it was neat.

02:09:44   It was just, and I'm not saying this will work for everybody

02:09:46   and some people are gonna be like,

02:09:47   "Ah, you know, my work does not use, you know,

02:09:49   "there's no feasible way I could possibly utilize

02:09:52   that set up in my work. But that just goes back to this thing. Pros are diverse. And most of them

02:09:57   just want to work in the way that feels right in their workflow. And I think iPad Pros have a lot

02:10:03   to do with that and will have a lot to do with that in the future. And it really typified why

02:10:07   Apple believes that touchscreen Macs are not in its immediate future, you know, they're not the

02:10:12   way it wants to go. It's instead, why not take this touchscreen that is incredibly high resolution

02:10:19   and incredibly responsive, that you know, adding to a Mac would

02:10:23   not be feasible and or, you know, cost wise effective. And

02:10:27   utilize that, you know, if you want to do touch there, you

02:10:29   could, you know, activate your your all of your controls you

02:10:34   want on there, walk around and control your iMac with it while

02:10:36   you're producing music or whatever. And then when you want

02:10:39   to walk away from it, you go walk away and use GarageBand,

02:10:41   you know, and then come back.

02:10:42   I know, I just I'm so glad I thought of it. There's one more

02:10:44   point I wanted to make. And you mentioned it explicitly. I think

02:10:48   somebody at Apple told you this, but that one of the reasons they wanted to, "Hey, call you in

02:10:51   and get this story out that the new Mac Pro is going to be a next year thing," is that they're

02:10:58   aware that people are making buying decisions now. And if you've been thinking, "Well, I need a new

02:11:04   Pro desktop, and the new iMac Pro looks like I could make do with that, but maybe I'll hold my

02:11:11   breath and wait for this Mac Pro." If you need work, you know, something for this year, you know,

02:11:17   now you know get them you know rigada iMac Pro and I think that's pretty cool and it's definitely

02:11:22   a new Apple thing right like Apple has not in the grass been all that interested in helping people

02:11:28   with their buying decisions when there are uh curiously long in the tooth products in the in the

02:11:36   you know yeah everybody's got to be the tea leaves and I don't think it makes for a very welcoming

02:11:42   environment for institutional buyers. I really don't think that that like, I think you're

02:11:47   absolutely correct that it was expectation setting and all of that stuff. But I don't

02:11:52   think that it was necessarily even aimed at the individual buyer, you know, because the

02:11:56   individual buyer at this point, they're going to take away from this, you know, exactly

02:12:00   the same thing. But it really was aimed at those institutional buyers who are like, I

02:12:05   have a 2018 budget, do I spend it now? Or wait? That's really their simple question.

02:12:11   And they'll find ways to spend it, whether that's on iMac Pros or some other thing that

02:12:16   they need to spend it on this year.

02:12:18   But it's a message saying, "If you've got a budget set aside, utilize it for other Apple

02:12:26   products."

02:12:27   Hopefully, obviously.

02:12:29   But then in 2019, earmark your budget for the Mac Pros that you've been waiting for.

02:12:34   We're talking research.

02:12:36   We're talking schools.

02:12:38   We're talking R&D departments, these places that really need this raw compute power that

02:12:46   buy a bunch at a time, movie studios, whatever you want to call it, and these production

02:12:52   houses.

02:12:53   Wait, buy it in 2019.

02:12:56   Don't worry about saving your budget now in 2018.

02:13:00   Spend it on what you got.

02:13:01   And then when you get your new budget for 2019, you know what to look for.

02:13:05   That's really the major market it was aimed at, I think.

02:13:08   - All right, Matthew, thank you so much for your time.

02:13:10   Thank you for writing such a great story.

02:13:11   I'm so glad you came here to talk about it.

02:13:13   Everybody can-- - Thank you for the kind words.

02:13:14   - Everybody can get all the panzerino they want

02:13:17   on Twitter at @panzer, P-A-N-Z-E-R.

02:13:21   And you can read his work and the work

02:13:23   of his excellent team at techcrunch.com.

02:13:27   - Exactly, and if you want all 100% shoe content,

02:13:31   you can follow me on Instagram, @panzer.

02:13:34   And he is not kidding.

02:13:36   - No, it's all shoes all the time, so.

02:13:38   (laughing)

02:13:41   I used to have my kids on there

02:13:42   and I just archived all my kids.

02:13:44   It's just all shoes now.

02:13:45   - You don't even put your A material on there.

02:13:46   (laughing)