229: Money, Time, and M1 Max Macs
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Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.
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I'm Mark O'Arment.
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And I'm David Smith.
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Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.
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So last week, or last episode, we talked about asking for money.
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And this week, at least for the first part of the show, I found another way that I'm
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going to start asking for money.
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And I think it's a good kind of one-two with last week's show.
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And then we'll probably, if we have time, which I hope we will, talk about these shiny
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new MacBook Pros that just came out.
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But to start with, I wanted to talk about something that I'm doing in WidgetSmith, which
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it's one of those funny things where if I just sort of describe what it is I'm doing,
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it sounds completely absurd that I wasn't doing this before.
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But I have my reasons, and that's what I want to talk about.
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So in WidgetSmith, there's a subscription that you can use to unlock some sort of special
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themes, weather, or tied data, and remove ads.
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This is a subscription that's been in there since the beginning, and is one of the main
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ways that the app makes money.
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However, until just a few hours ago when I released the last update to WidgetSmith, if
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you have a subscription and you had set up widgets that made use of these special features,
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those widgets would always work forever into the future, regardless of whether you had
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a subscription.
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So I would never take away your ability to, "Oh, you had a weather widget?
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You put it on your home screen?"
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So if you've signed up for one month, or I think you could have even have just had the
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free trial and never actually paid, I never took it away.
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It would just always work forever, and you could just continue to have the benefit without
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any downside.
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That's awful.
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I mean, sorry.
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You think you're being nice.
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That's just a bug.
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That's not good.
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That's a business model bug, if anything else.
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Well, and this is the thing, right?
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So this is why I think it's an interesting topic to discuss.
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It was a conscious choice I made.
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It wasn't an oversight.
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It was a conscious choice.
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And specifically, it was coming from a place where, obviously, in the best case scenario,
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I wanted to have lots of happy subscribers.
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And people who subscribe have a reason to continue subscribing.
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That they don't, there's not this weird, "Well, you can just keep using the stuff you were
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paying for even if you stop paying."
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But the thing that I got stuck on and the thing that our last discussion prompted me
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to really finally dig into is I always had this anxiety and this fear that I was going
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to take away the functionality from someone who actually, in reality, did have a paying
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subscription.
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And I had sort of over indexed and weighted myself on avoiding that rather than the business
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benefit of taking, essentially creating an environment where that would encourage them
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to subscribe more.
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And so this update was all about, A, just changing it so that it goes away.
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So if your subscription expires and your widget now says, "Subscription expired, please renew
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your subscription to keep using this widget."
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But then also building out the infrastructure to be very, very, very sure that I never show
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that unless you really truly, no joke, have an expired subscription.
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So that was the sort of journey I've gone on recently.
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As much as I'm giving you crap because that was way, way, way too generous of you, really
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at your own expense, especially because these are paid info sources for you.
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So you're actually losing money on these people.
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But I can't blame you because I actually do literally the same thing, just I think at
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a smaller scale and a smaller rate of money loss because when overcast premium subscriptions
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expire, I actually have a grace period in the code that has ranged as I've changed
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things over time.
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This grace period has ranged from like a week to two months.
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But what basically it is, is like I don't actually take away your overcast premium benefits
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for about that much time, whatever that grace period is.
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I think right now it's about two weeks.
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And part of that is because I wasn't confident in my own code, my own subscription checking
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code, the subscription checking process, the in-app purchase servers, and some of the weirdness
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that can happen with payments.
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What happens if payments get declined and then somebody reactivates the next day?
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In these kind of situations, with overcast premium, the cost to me, there's an opportunity
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cost of missing ad views if the person has ads disabled with premium.
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But the bigger cost to me is the Amazon S3 storage bill for any uploads that they have
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Because that's just hosted on S3, so I pay whatever it is per gig for people's uploads.
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And so if I'm not getting money from them, then I will slowly lose money on whatever
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their uploads are sitting there costing me.
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But the last thing I want to do is if somebody has a gig of uploads in overcast and then
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their credit card expired for their renewal and they missed the renewal and they have
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to do it a day or two later, I don't want all their uploads to have been deleted in
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That's a terrible experience for somebody who is trying to support me.
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So that's why the grace period is there.
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I really want to make sure that A, that their sub actually did really expire, that my code
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and Apple's code are sure that it did actually expire.
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And B, I add a little bit of grace period on top of that just so I don't too aggressively
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delete people's data.
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And I think that makes sense and I think it's also important to say I think Apple has a
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grace period option that you can enable in App Store Connect as well.
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Where I remember when I was setting up my subscriptions, there's just a checkbox you
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can check that basically says if a subscription ends because of a billing issue, would you
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like it to, I think you can have it sort of extend for seven days or something to deal
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with this situation.
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So it would sort of renew but not really up to a little bit of time.
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If it's obviously if they cancel your subscription, you won't get the grace period.
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But if it's just the credit card has expired or something doesn't go through correctly
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or whatever, I believe there's a way to do that as well built into Apple's thing.
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But I think having a grace period beyond that additionally also certainly can make sense.
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I think it's one of these, it is this funny question of like you're sort of dealing with
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the same problem of what you really don't, you don't, there's this consequence for
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taking it away from someone that you want to make sure that you are really, really,
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really sure you're doing it at the right time.
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Because there's like losing, annoying the person who liked your app well enough to actually
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start paying you money for it is the last thing you want to do.
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And so being really thoughtful and also having a good clean renewal experience, I think also
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makes sense.
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In your case, it's making sure that your previously uploaded files don't have to be re uploaded
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that there's obviously a cost and keeping them there for a little bit of time.
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But that period of time also means that if they renew, it's like boom, they're right
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back where they started.
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And similarly, for me, it's like making sure that if you renew your all your widgets that
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previously works, but you know, showing like the expiration handler, like immediately flip
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over everything's back where it was, you don't have to do anything.
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It's not like you have to re add those widgets to your home screen.
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Like making that experience really seamless definitely has an advantage.
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But it's it's a weird confidence thing.
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At least for me, that was like I had such a such anxiety that was going to be doing
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it the wrong way.
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And some somewhere somehow someone who did have an active subscription was going to be
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shown you know, the expiration handle handle thing and then they would be grumpy and I
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you know, ultimately I would lose them as a subscriber, which is probably is definitely
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like I was in I was focusing on the wrong aspect of it rather than the giving people
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free subscriptions.
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And especially, you know, it's like understanding that there's an active cost to that.
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But I think that was the lesson I've learned through this process was like, it's entirely
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it's entirely fair and reasonable to just do that.
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And if that is the case, if there are bugs that are I'm taking away features from people
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who should have them like they will let me know probably or that's just a bug that
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I should fix just like any other bug and like the individual subscriber as long as that's
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not everybody's situation, then the individual subscriber is probably not going to be you
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know, it too big of a deal if they identify some bug or some problem somewhere that I'd
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have to then go and fix.
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And this is actually this gets into like business model planning as well, that like one of the
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reasons why I'm able to give a pretty generous grace period on on like when I delete your
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your s3 uploads.
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And probably one of the reasons why you're able to not have your life ruined when these
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people's subjects expire is to build in a really healthy profit margin.
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Like if you look at the the amount of storage overcast gives you actually, I don't even
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know is it five gigs?
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I forget what I've said it at now.
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I have it at 10 gigs.
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I have it at 10 gigs of service or of storage costs on s3.
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It's it's not $10 a year.
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It's less than that.
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And that's what overcast premium charges and you know of that I get about $8 a year.
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I have a profit margin built in there.
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And part of that is because hey look it's business you're paying me like that's that's
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But also also part of it is I want to be sure that I have enough of a margin that these
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little like edge cases here will not ruin me or or similarly like you know there are
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ways to temporarily abuse my upload system.
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Like there are ways to bypass your own storage limit briefly.
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But in practice like you know nobody really does that because there's not really any benefit
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to doing that.
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But be like if people do that again the margins will cover the difference.
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Like I'm not going to be sunk by that because it's fine.
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Like I have enough leeway in the margins that that's not going to suit my business.
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And I strongly recommend for anybody out there who is pricing you know an app or a subscription
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where you have like data or whatever costs on the back end for each user.
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I strongly recommend leaving a very healthy profit margin.
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Like your costs should be you know I'm ballparking here maybe 20% at most of that subscription
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Like you should have a huge margin on that because not only you know not only is that
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totally reasonable as a business person in this kind of context but also you need that
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to cover these edge cases.
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Yeah and I think too similarly it makes me think of the realities of having a trial for
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your subscription.
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Similarly you need obviously a business model such that the number of people who are using
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the trial who have not then obviously paid you anything doesn't sink your business either
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for the same reason.
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That is what you really want is lots of people to try it.
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You want lots of people to be subscribing and signing up and obviously you want them
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ultimately to be converting but some percentage of them won't.
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Or if you have periods where you have a high spike in new trial starts before you actually
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have revenue and the duration of your revenue is also something to think about.
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But it's like it definitely is one of these things that it's just good to be thoughtful
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about and think through to make sure that you know your business model is resilient
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against these types of choices.
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And you understand too that it's like yeah this is just a choice I've made and it's like
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it was a cost that I decided because you know the nice thing about the things that cost
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money for me in this case are the weather data and it scales a little bit but it's the
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individual cost of weather data is not too bad especially at the scale that I'm purchasing
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But I also just wanted to talk through slightly what I'm doing to make extra double, triple
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sure about this.
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And I think it's just a good way to think about it is I in a lot of places in my code
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in the actual app itself like I'm less resilient in it too if you if you're actually subscribed
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or not in terms of I do all the things I should do I use revenue cat for my subscription management
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previous sponsor but not this time and they're like I you know use them to make sure to periodically
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validate whether someone has a subscription.
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And if I think they don't you know I have little indicators and marks you know lock
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icons appear on some of their widgets or it shows text in different places in the app
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based on that.
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That's like the UI equivalent of a yes that's like the most subtle like polite like excuse
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me excuse me you still haven't paid your bill.
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Yeah it is and the bed but the version that's on the home screen is the like big version
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of that where I in big text I'm like nope it's not going to work.
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So if you wanted to look at the weather data inside of the app on you know in the editor
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you could like fair enough that's the choice I'm making but like I want to that's where
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I've gotten but on the flip side in the widget where I am actually showing up the you haven't
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paid screen.
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I in my widget refresh logic like before I do that I check in with RevenueCat like they
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have a call that you can make that basically is the like is this is this person a subscriber
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and I call that before I show the thing.
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So I'm doing a check in like regularly and that way I'm not dealing with a weird case
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where I'm you know this isn't a some stale data or some weird cached result is being
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So it's like before I take it away from you I make very good you know make very sure that
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it's actually truly gone.
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Okay and you've expired and then RevenueCat in my case is taking care of the you know
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keeping that data correct and accurate and they you know they register for all the web
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hooks from Apple and all the all the complicated subscription stuff that you can do but it's
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like the way that I'm structuring it is it's like I use the normal typical approach for
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managing your subscription but before I take it away like for realsies I do one final like
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actual contact your sort of contact you know contact the server say has this person really
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you know expired and if yes great I'll show the you know you need to you need to buy screen
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otherwise I sort of continue to give them the benefit of the doubt if there's some weird
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renewal issue going on or a mismatch between what I have cached locally and what's actually
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truth on the server.
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So now that we've found ways to ask our users for money we've also this this last week discovered
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a new way to spend that money specifically this is the you know Apple gives you the money
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and then takes it right back.
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This is like the you know the company's script in the mining town or whatever.
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Yeah exactly.
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Might as well just pay us an Apple store gift cards at this point.
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Yes we're putting all the money right back to them.
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Yeah and in this case I am happy to report that I'm recording this show on a brand new
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14-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Max processor which is the worst name for anything.
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It's the M1 Max for M1 Max.
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But it's the M1 maximum we have to use the full word the M1 maximum.
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So I have an M1 maximum in front of me.
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Or is it Maximilian maybe?
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Yeah and it is great I mean it's a weird thing like it's I've had it for about a day I think
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yours is on a boat somewhere.
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It's going to be loaded onto a boat in an hour and I will get it a few hours after that.
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But yeah it's like this is the like it's like the Apology Mac.
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This is the it's great in so many ways and it's been it's fascinating to see Apple's
00:18:23
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professional version of Apple Silicon that we had the M1 which I think we both love and
00:18:27
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I think had both been using as our primary development machine for the last whatever
00:18:33
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first year essentially.
00:18:36
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And it's been fabulous.
00:18:37
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I've loved it and it was a night and day improvement from Intel.
00:18:42
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And this is less I would say night and day but is noticeable and meaningful.
00:18:48
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But you know coming from an M1.
00:18:50
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So for me so as I can speak to it more specifically in my own experience in the first day so a
00:18:56
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clean build of Widgetsmith which is an entirely SwiftUI app but is quite extensive and has
00:19:02
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tons of SwiftUI views and everything.
00:19:05
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On my M1 it takes about 40 seconds and on this it takes about 20 seconds.
00:19:10
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So oh man you're killing me.
00:19:17
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And like it was one of those funny things where it's like sure it's you know it's
00:19:22
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a little bit expensive and compared to an M1 which is incredibly inexpensive in many
00:19:27
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ways like getting a MacBook Air with an M1 is an amazing machine for the money.
00:19:33
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Whereas this it's like I don't know if it's this cost this machine that I'm using
00:19:37
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now probably costs like five times what that machine costs or something.
00:19:41
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And it's obviously not five times faster but I am noticing the sort of I always get
00:19:46
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confused how to say this it's like it's 50 percent faster or twice as fast.
00:19:50
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I don't know.
00:19:51
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It's frustrating.
00:19:53
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It's the reality is is it is noticeably faster for operations like compilation.
00:19:58
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You know the changes that we saw going from Intel to M1 around just general responsiveness
00:20:07
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I think are less noticeable that they were just you know the kind of like responsiveness
00:20:11
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of applications or the speed at which they took to launch and things.
00:20:14
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I've noticed a lot less of that this time around.
00:20:18
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But for the purposes of things like compilation or I mean I'm not a video editor but I imagine
00:20:23
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if that's the case or when you're bouncing a logic project reading podcast editing for
00:20:27
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you I guess like it's going to be noticeable and it's going to be great.
00:20:30
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I'm I'm so envious I can't wait to get mine in literally a few hours.
00:20:37
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But oh man I'm looking forward to this because I've seen a big range of gains for people
00:20:43
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with Xcode benchmarks like it seems like for extremely large projects it seems like the
00:20:48
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gains are actually not as big of a percentage but for more medium sized stuff like what
00:20:53
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you and I are compiling I'm seeing a lot of people report like you know roughly twice
00:20:57
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as fast and and if that's true for my for my project then I'm going to be extremely
00:21:03
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happy with this and this is like my my frustration here and I know this is you know the the first
00:21:09
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worldiest of first world problems my frustration here is that they did not release this chip
00:21:15
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in any desktop and so if I want this chip and you know I'm not expecting this has to
00:21:21
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come out like next month or anything it seems like I think Apple's done for the year with
00:21:25
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hardware releases and so I think the the soonest we could expect desktops with this would be
00:21:31
◼
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in probably mid to late spring and that is you know six months away so so you know the
00:21:39
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►
question is like do I wait six months and leave my Mac mini as my desktop you know my
00:21:44
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M1 Mac mini which I love leave that as my desktop the only thing with the M1 Mac mini
00:21:49
◼
►
is you know I do have slower compile times than these new ones will have probably and
00:21:55
◼
►
more important to me is that my RAM ceiling of 16 gigs with the M1 series of chips I'm
00:22:02
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really up against that much of the time and so I would definitely benefit from more RAM
00:22:07
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►
and so I my my theory so far and I'll you know you'll hear me here at on ATP waffling
00:22:13
◼
►
about this probably for the next couple of weeks but I'm thinking you know one option
00:22:17
◼
►
would be to just get a higher powered configuration of this laptop and use it as my desktop you
00:22:24
◼
►
know plug it into the XDR and plug it into all my stuff which is actually what I did
00:22:28
◼
►
with the MacBook Air the M1 MacBook Air for a little while before I had the Mac mini but
00:22:34
◼
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I love desktops and I love like how they're always they're always installed in the same
00:22:40
◼
►
place they have more ports although not as big of a difference anymore they have they
00:22:45
◼
►
have more ports they have you know hardware Ethernet built in you know they they're you
00:22:50
◼
►
never have to wear like oh is the internal screen woken up but the external screen isn't
00:22:54
◼
►
like no because there is no internal screen like it just it makes so many things easier
00:22:57
◼
►
and more reliable and that's what I'm hoping to get someday in a in a you know a Mac Pro
00:23:05
◼
►
with Apple Silicon like that's that's my long term goal is you know spec'd up Mac Pro with
00:23:11
◼
►
you know as the numbers indicate possibly like two to four of these M1 Macs chips that would
00:23:16
◼
►
be amazing but that doesn't exist yet and it's probably not going to exist for at least
00:23:21
◼
►
six months and probably more like 12 months so that is that that's the problem for me
00:23:26
◼
►
is like do I actually want to have limited RAM and slow compile times for the next six
00:23:31
◼
►
to twelve months or do I want to you know change things up and maybe put a laptop as
00:23:35
◼
►
my desktop again and just have it in clam shell mode most of the time so I don't know
00:23:39
◼
►
I'll see what happens when I actually get mine to test and see how fast it is.
00:23:43
◼
►
Sure and I feel like too it's this transitional period like between essentially the next for
00:23:48
◼
►
the next year probably is in my mind I've just kind of accepted the fact that I may
00:23:56
◼
►
never it's like at each point in this in the Apple Silicon rollout I am not necessarily
00:24:03
◼
►
buying the perfect machine for my needs as we go but I'm buying the best machine that's
00:24:11
◼
►
And that is going to essentially for the next year that's just going to be the case that
00:24:16
◼
►
whatever the last machine that Apple released it's like in some ways starts to be it's
00:24:20
◼
►
like that's the best one and that's the best one and it's better just in fundamentals
00:24:24
◼
►
and then hopefully you know this time next year we will hit a point where now we can
00:24:30
◼
►
start to make those individual choices about which machine is the actual best one for my
00:24:34
◼
►
needs for my circumstances my setup however I actually like like it in practice and it's
00:24:40
◼
►
weird because it's like I think for me I think for me personally this 14 inch that
00:24:45
◼
►
I have here is probably the machine that I expect to continue buying and like if there's
00:24:50
◼
►
an M2 maximum that comes out like I will buy that as well when it's like it'll be the
00:24:56
◼
►
sort of the one that I'm sort of focused around because I like the portability I like
00:25:02
◼
►
that I can I don't have to have two setups that I manage which is just a different preference
00:25:07
◼
►
for me but I definitely also have in my mind that whatever they come out with that's
00:25:12
◼
►
better like I want because the difference in my productivity my ability to do my job
00:25:20
◼
►
is tangibly impacted by having a machine that compiles so much faster that that is a noticeable
00:25:28
◼
►
thing that in a given month there's only so many hours of time that I will be able
00:25:34
◼
►
to be productive just in terms of like psychologically and logistically like that's all I've got
00:25:40
◼
►
whatever that ID number is I have a say I have a hundred hours a month of like true
00:25:44
◼
►
productive time and if I can get the tooling set out of the way of that time so I can be
00:25:51
◼
►
more productive so that I can get more done that is a tangible impact on my business and
00:25:55
◼
►
that you know it may makes a lot of sense and so you know if the rollout had been flipped
00:26:01
◼
►
around such that the say like the 21 inch IMAX had come out first and then the MacBook
00:26:08
◼
►
the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with the M1 and have had to come out second it's like
00:26:12
◼
►
I probably would have bought one of the you know the IMAX and then potentially skipped
00:26:17
◼
►
or maybe would have gotten the M1 but it's like understanding that the first machine
00:26:21
◼
►
was not the machine that I ultimately want but it's like it's just gonna be that's
00:26:24
◼
►
the best one that's available right now and these are the best machines that are
00:26:27
◼
►
available right now they're probably gonna be the best machines that are available for
00:26:32
◼
►
nice things or six months and so it's like I'm excited to get it I think and I can
00:26:37
◼
►
start to have those benefits now because future benefits of a theoretical machine in the future
00:26:42
◼
►
like don't do me any good because at that point if there is a better choice I can make
00:26:47
◼
►
that choice then I can sell this machine like I have choices that I can make then but for
00:26:52
◼
►
now like it's amazing it's great and I'm I couldn't be happier.
00:26:56
◼
►
Yeah that to me that's kind of the calculus I'm going through in my head too is like
00:27:00
◼
►
you know it feels wasteful to to buy a machine that I might replace in six or 12 months but
00:27:07
◼
►
when you like I'm doing so much development work right now and every single time I build
00:27:13
◼
►
like to know that it could be twice as fast and as I see myself like crashing into my
00:27:17
◼
►
RAM ceiling constantly I'm like oh boy like you know it becomes potentially worth it you
00:27:23
◼
►
know because for a lot of people you know money is the more scarce resource than time
00:27:29
◼
►
and for me that was true for you know the first half of my life at least not two thirds
00:27:34
◼
►
of the first but but now time is is the more scarce resource for me and I'm very fortunate
00:27:40
◼
►
that's the case but but you know what that means is that the calculus for this decision
00:27:45
◼
►
changes and if there is some way for me to save a substantial amount of time over the
00:27:50
◼
►
next six or 12 months that I that I otherwise would you know that things would otherwise
00:27:54
◼
►
just be slower during that time there is a big value to that to me and that value very
00:27:59
◼
►
well might and probably will cover the cost of this machine minus you know what I would
00:28:03
◼
►
get from sales and trade and stuff like that.
00:28:06
◼
►
Yeah and I think that's yeah it's like that's just reality and it's like if you
00:28:10
◼
►
someone of those like it you know if you can afford it great do it I think you'll have
00:28:14
◼
►
a tangible impact if you can't like fair enough then you know get a MacBook Air and
00:28:19
◼
►
it's costs which is what is it 1099 or something like that it's a great machine you won't
00:28:26
◼
►
be it's like you you you'll be getting a lot of great impact from this but if you
00:28:30
◼
►
can afford one of these like go for it and like get it to get 64 gigs of RAM because
00:28:36
◼
►
that is I think by far the my biggest frustration with the M1 was that that I would periodically
00:28:41
◼
►
just hit hit the RAM the RAM limit and all of a sudden it's like my computer is unresponsive
00:28:46
◼
►
and broken until I work out what I need to shut down and deal with and so it's like
00:28:50
◼
►
64 gigs that's a lot I don't expect to run into that limit hardly at all.
00:28:55
◼
►
Yeah me too well I am very much looking forward to getting mine and also just I'm as I've
00:29:01
◼
►
said on ATP like I'm so happy so far with these machines not again not having used one
00:29:06
◼
►
yet but all the reviews seem to support that it's as good as they say it is and it they
00:29:11
◼
►
finally fixed the MacBook Pro it seems and I cannot wait to get my hands on mine I'm
00:29:18
◼
►
So thank you for listening everybody and we will talk to you in two weeks.
00:29:22
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[BLANK_AUDIO]