0:00:00So my play pop hits of every year took a very dark turn in the past week when we crossed roughly the year 2000.
0:00:09Oh, are you gonna be that guy? Alright, tell me why it took a dark turn.
0:00:13It became nearly impossible to listen with my child around.
0:00:19Oh, okay, I'll allow it. I'll allow it.
0:00:21Really? Was it foul language?
0:00:22- Oh my God, like okay, so you know, in the 80s,
0:00:27I mean, everyone singing love songs in the 80s was a creep
0:00:30and a stalker and potentially abusive
0:00:32if you listen to the lyrics.
0:00:33- Well, there's that.
0:00:34- You mean in real life or just in the song?
0:00:35- In the lyrics.
0:00:36- Yeah, but sometimes that was intentional
0:00:38on its artistic choice.
0:00:39- Right, but you know, it was a little bit more coded
0:00:43and subtle and I feel like you could listen
0:00:45with an almost 10 year old around
0:00:48and most of the creepiness would go over their head,
0:00:51Whereas, when you cross the year 2000 approximately,
0:00:56F this, F that, constant swearing,
0:00:59the N word all over the place,
0:01:01really explicit sexual stuff, it's like wow,
0:01:05it's like you can't listen.
0:01:07(laughs)
0:01:08It's bad.
0:01:09- It's funny you bring this up.
0:01:10I'd actually like to slightly pivot if you don't mind
0:01:13and talk yet again about how much I hate Apple Music
0:01:16Because I know that there exists in Apple Music
0:01:21clean versions of many, many, many albums that are explicit.
0:01:26And maybe there is a way to say from the view of an album,
0:01:31like an explicit album,
0:01:33I would like the clean version, please.
0:01:35And if there is an easy way of doing this,
0:01:38I will be damned if I know how.
0:01:40- I believe you mean darned?
0:01:41- That's, oh yes, yes, that's true.
0:01:43I would be darned.
0:01:45- Oh, fork, I made a mistake.
0:01:47So no, I would be darned if I could find the way to go
0:01:51from explicit to not explicit.
0:01:52And the only guidance I've found on this is to go into,
0:01:57well, actually, let me ask you,
0:01:59if you want to forbid Apple Music
0:02:01from playing explicit songs,
0:02:04where do you think you go to do that?
0:02:06And I will start with you, Marco.
0:02:07(laughing)
0:02:09- Oh, boy.
0:02:10Okay, so where that should be
0:02:12is in a settings menu in the music app.
0:02:15- That is the correct answer,
0:02:16but that is nowhere near where it is.
0:02:18- I have two other answers.
0:02:19I have the answer of where Apple says it should be
0:02:21and where it actually is.
0:02:23So where Apple would say it should be
0:02:26is in the iOS system settings app
0:02:29in the music section of that.
0:02:31Now where it probably actually is
0:02:33is buried in some web view that you have to access
0:02:36on your Apple iTunes account somewhere.
0:02:40- Oh no, it gets better.
0:02:41Wouldn't it be in parental controls?
0:02:43- So I will award you half credit, Jon.
0:02:45Also, I did not make it clear, Marco, in your defense
0:02:48that I was thinking about macOS, not iOS.
0:02:50So I am not honestly sure where it is in iOS,
0:02:53but in macOS, it is in screen time
0:02:57in the content and privacy section
0:03:00where you can say for stores and apps and content
0:03:03that somewhere, I'm not looking at it right this second,
0:03:06but somewhere in there, you can say,
0:03:07turn on content and privacy restrictions,
0:03:09and I would like to restrict the following.
0:03:11In screen time, because when I think about
0:03:15where I wanna go so I don't hear the F word,
0:03:17I think about screen time.
0:03:19That's what I think.
0:03:21Oh my gosh, it's so preposterous.
0:03:23- It's a good thing the HomePod sound really good.
0:03:27Because doing this through Siri,
0:03:30every day it's an exercise in,
0:03:33am I the only person ever using Siri?
0:03:36So often it'll be giving a voice response,
0:03:40now playing, and then it'll stop itself
0:03:43and say something like, let me try that again.
0:03:46- You do that on the podcast too sometimes, that's okay.
0:03:48- Fair enough, but it crashes mid-sentence seemingly
0:03:51in some way or fails some way that it has to start
0:03:53its own sentence again.
0:03:55There's also been a number of years that I'm saying,
0:03:59I'm saying every morning, play Pop Hits 2005 or whatever.
0:04:02And sometimes it'll say, "Playing Pop Hits 2006."
0:04:07It's like, "What? 2006 does not sound like 2005."
0:04:10Like, it's not like it just misheard me.
0:04:12And I'll say, "Stop," and I'll say it again,
0:04:14"Play Pop Hits 2005."
0:04:16And it'll say, "Now playing Pop Hits 2006."
0:04:20Now, almost every number gets right.
0:04:23But maybe one out of 10, it'll just do,
0:04:26and like, no matter how I say it, it will not do it.
0:04:29And meanwhile, I can go, you know, fortunately,
0:04:31You know, when you have like an Amazon cylinder
0:04:33or something, your possible remedies,
0:04:35if it's mishearing you, are much fewer.
0:04:38So at least here, when it fails,
0:04:40I can go to my phone and just find that,
0:04:42you know, go to Apple Music, go to the Apple Music app
0:04:44and do a search and type in pop it, 2005,
0:04:46and it brings it up and I just hit play and there it is.
0:04:49And I can, you know, beam it over to the HomePods
0:04:50and it's fine.
0:04:52But it fails in such weird ways.
0:04:54I just, I don't, Siri, oh, oh Apple,
0:04:58what what what are you doing? See what where is it? What happened? And and can you please
0:05:05make it unhappy? But anyway, yeah, so Siri issues aside, the home pods still do sound
0:05:09amazing. And my home pods have, I think, for some reason, stopped dying. Like they used
0:05:18to I mentioned a couple months back, they were doing that thing where they were it would
0:05:21like, make a big bass pop. And then like it would restart one of them. That hasn't happened
0:05:26now in two months maybe? So I don't know if that's if that was somehow avoided in
0:05:31software I don't know but Siri still Siri but that being said yes this music
0:05:36experiment is really showing me wow pop music first of all when when we when we
0:05:42hit the present day our plan is to go back to the beginning of you know 1950
0:05:46or 1960 and do the same thing but saying rock instead of pop to see like the rock
0:05:52charts I think are what we actually want to be hearing most of the time. Yeah I
0:05:55- I was gonna suggest, and I'm kinda surprised
0:05:57that they were cursing, I was gonna suggest
0:05:58to ask for sort of the top radio hits,
0:06:01'cause then you'd get the radio edits,
0:06:02you know what I mean?
0:06:03Like, especially for the older times,
0:06:05like, that's what people cared about,
0:06:06was what are the top songs on the radio,
0:06:09and everything on the radio was a cleaned up version.
0:06:12- Even that, I don't think would actually be what I want,
0:06:15because issue number two that I keep having,
0:06:17which I'm sure everyone's had with you streaming apps,
0:06:19is that many artists have gone back
0:06:21and re-recorded their old hits
0:06:24so that they can fully own them or something like that,
0:06:26or just to remaster them in a more dramatic way.
0:06:29The problem is that they tarnish the original recordings
0:06:33in the sense of the streaming services think
0:06:35that's what you want when you ask for that.
0:06:37And so for instance, when we blew through the 90s,
0:06:40every time it wanted to play something off
0:06:42of the Alanis Morissette album, Jagged Little Pill,
0:06:46there were like three radio hits off that album.
0:06:47It was a great album.
0:06:49Not a single one was the one that we knew.
0:06:51Not a single one was the original version.
0:06:53It was all this like more recent version that sounds all different and you know wrong to us iTunes match gone awry, right?
0:06:59Well, but I don't even own that one. Like I own the original one
0:07:02I don't know like it's basically it's iTunes match happening within the thing
0:07:05It's easy. It says you ought to know and it's like oh I can find you ought to know and it finds the
0:07:09re-recorded version right but it's but like in the playlist of
0:07:12Top 1996 or whatever hits like yeah, no, it's messed up and we heard there were there were it wasn't just that album
0:07:18There were a number of albums where we would hear like like Sheryl Crow also recently like we would hear they really wait a minute
0:07:22This is not the right version you hear within the first note you like because you you know
0:07:27You know these old songs so well, you've heard them so much like, you know instantly that this is a different recording
0:07:32This is not the original recording the matches and the buds and the clean and dirty cars, right exactly all about it
0:07:36Yeah, so anyway, that's so if they if Apple music can't even keep that straight
0:07:40I have no hopes for like giving us somehow a radio safe version of these songs that I mean
0:07:47They're so over the top nasty
0:07:50Like, I can't even imagine there would be a Radio Safe version.
0:07:54Yeah, I don't know.
0:07:55I'm trying so hard to like Apple Music.
0:07:58And what is it that Merlin says constantly?
0:08:00Like I use this more than the people who make the service or I care about the service more
0:08:03than the people who make it or whatever.
0:08:06And it's so true.
0:08:07Like, I don't even feel like my needs from Apple Music are particularly esoteric or odd
0:08:12or interesting.
0:08:14But now that I have small children that are at least slightly aware of the lyrics in which,
0:08:19of the songs in which we were listening,
0:08:22I want to be able to say, can I have only clean music?
0:08:26And perhaps, can I have only clean music
0:08:28for this listening session, or--
0:08:29- Or on this output device, like the HomePod in the kitchen.
0:08:32Maybe that shouldn't be playing swear words.
0:08:34(laughs)
0:08:35- Yeah, exactly.
0:08:36- I don't mind them in my headphones
0:08:37if I'm walking somewhere, but you know.
0:08:39- No, I couldn't agree more.
0:08:40And again, I haven't really played much
0:08:42with doing this on iOS, but on macOS,
0:08:46it is nigh impossible to go from the explicit version
0:08:49an album to the clean version of an album. And if there is an obvious way that I'm missing,
0:08:54please reach out via Twitter or something because I would love to have a cheat code
0:08:57or heck, I would even take a stupid shortcut to do this if that's what it takes. But for
0:09:02the life of me, I don't know how to be fair. I don't recall if this is a thing that you
0:09:08can do on Spotify or not. So maybe, maybe on Spotify it's just as bad. I it's only been
0:09:12very, very recently that I found myself wanting to listen to like, I don't know, a little
0:09:16Little Nas X or something like that, or The Weeknd and being like, "Ooh, yeah,
0:09:20there's some not so great, uh,
0:09:23colorful expletives in these lyrics." And so I haven't really tried this on
0:09:27Spotify either,
0:09:28but I feel like there's gotta be an easier way on Spotify than going into
0:09:32screen time in order to change your content preferences.
0:09:36I mean, this goes back to the data model we talked about before,
0:09:38like the idea that like there is an abstract idea of a song and that the song
0:09:42may have been recorded multiple times and that if it was recorded multiple times,
0:09:46there are different attributes of the different recordings,
0:09:47including which one was the first one,
0:09:49which one was on the, you know,
0:09:51which one was on an album versus a single version,
0:09:53'cause sometimes those are different,
0:09:54and also explicit and clean,
0:09:56and like your data model has to express
0:09:57all those different ideas,
0:09:58including I think what the hardest one is to realize
0:10:01that this song that appears on an album, on a single,
0:10:04on another album, on a best of,
0:10:06that that is the same song,
0:10:07but just different recordings, right?
0:10:09And then from within them,
0:10:10deciding which one is the canonical one,
0:10:13how many of them are clean, how many of them are explicit,
0:10:15And then once you have all that data in the data model,
0:10:17then the final step is somewhere in your playback application,
0:10:20you have to give access to that metadata by saying,
0:10:24you know, "Hey, Dingus, play me the clean version of the song.
0:10:27Hey, Dingus, play me the original version of the song,
0:10:29the album version of this song."
0:10:31And if it doesn't know and says,
0:10:33"This song appears on two albums, album A and album B.
0:10:36Which one would you like to hear?"
0:10:37I feel like this is an eminently solvable problem without AI.
0:10:40Just plain old, straight-up, reasonable data model,
0:10:43reasonable voice commands, you could get it done.
0:10:44But when you describe this, Mark,
0:10:46it makes you think that Apple doesn't even
0:10:47have this in the data model.
0:10:49And if you can't do it in Spotify,
0:10:50maybe Spotify has it in the data model,
0:10:51but doesn't have it in the interface.
0:10:53- Well, all I can tell you is that the early 2000s
0:10:56were terrible for pop music.
0:10:58Like a noticeable turn towards like,
0:11:02this isn't just not for me,
0:11:04this is just not as good as what came before it.
0:11:07It's clear as day.
0:11:09- I'm not sure if people who are, you know,
0:11:11a couple of years older than you would agree with that.
0:11:14I think a couple years younger than me would be more likely.
0:11:16- Oh, younger, sorry, not older, younger, sorry.
0:11:17I went the wrong direction.
0:11:18- Oh, God, and normally, whatever playlist
0:11:20we pick for the day, like today we're on 2006, I believe,
0:11:23whatever playlist we pick for the day,
0:11:24we do it mostly during breakfast,
0:11:26and then Adam's off to school,
0:11:27and then when I'm making lunch,
0:11:29I'll go over and tap the top of the HomePod so it resumes,
0:11:31and I'll hear, I'll keep playing it,
0:11:32and then maybe later, if we're making dinner,
0:11:34I'll tap it again and play it for another half hour then.
0:11:37So usually I'll go through,
0:11:39that'll be what we're listening to out loud
0:11:41all that whole day.
0:11:43And since the 2000 crossover, this has been the only time
0:11:46where we've been just not able to continue.
0:11:48Like after breakfast, we'll be like,
0:11:51we'll start at lunch, like, you know what,
0:11:52let me just play some Almond Brothers.
0:11:54I can't deal with this dirty, horrible stuff anymore.
0:11:57- All right, so real-time follow-up.
0:11:59I opened up Spotify on the desktop,
0:12:01and I searched for Montero by Little Nas X,
0:12:03which is, by the way, it's a phenomenal album.
0:12:06If I say that a modern, reasonably well-liked album is good,
0:12:12does that have the same effect as a top gear host
0:12:14buying a car?
0:12:15Like did I just instantly make this deeply uncool
0:12:18by saying I enjoy it?
0:12:19I think I did.
0:12:19- Oh yes.
0:12:20- Well sorry Lil Nas X, but anyway.
0:12:21- Yeah 'cause now you're 40.
0:12:23- Right, I know, it's terrible.
0:12:24- That's the boundary.
0:12:25I have only mere months until--
0:12:27- Until you make things uncool?
0:12:29- I have no clue, that's not the boundary
0:12:30for this particular case.
0:12:32- I think I crossed the boundary when I was 16.
0:12:33(laughing)
0:12:36- So earlier today I was looking at the show notes
0:12:40and I was scrolling through the follow-up section
0:12:43and that was seven hours ago and I'm still scrolling.
0:12:46- I believe it's called Doom Scrolling.
0:12:49- After page 34, it became Doom Scrolling for sure.
0:12:52But in the defense of one Mr. John Syracuse,
0:12:58there is a lot to talk about with regard to the Mac Studio
0:13:00and the Mac Studio Display.
0:13:03To be clear, my studio display is not here
0:13:05and is not going to be here for another couple weeks.
0:13:07Woe is me.
0:13:09John, did we cover what you have or have not purchased?
0:13:12I don't recall.
0:13:12- We covered what I planned to purchase,
0:13:16but the shipping dates are way out in the future,
0:13:18so we should just not bother to even ask me about this
0:13:21until like May or June.
0:13:23I know nothing is coming to my house anytime soon.
0:13:25- I will say, in the intervening time
0:13:27between last episode and this one,
0:13:29in-store availability opened up,
0:13:31and there are some configurations that you can get in store.
0:13:34The monitor is actually not that hard to find in store
0:13:37in a lot of places,
0:13:38and even the Max Studio computer,
0:13:41you can get the base model, of course,
0:13:43the two base models are in stock frequently
0:13:45in a lot of places, and then if you bump up
0:13:48the higher model to a few spec tiers here and there,
0:13:52some of those combinations are also available
0:13:54in person sometimes.
0:13:55- Well what if I wanna get the 32 gigabyte version
0:13:56of the monitor, do they have that in stock?
0:13:59- Nice, you're jumping ahead.
0:14:01Alright, so anyway, we've seen a lot of tear downs
0:14:04fly by of the Max Studio, this is the Max Studio section
0:14:07of the podcast, and one of the first things
0:14:09that set our corner of the internet aflame
0:14:13was that the Mac Studio has two SSD slots,
0:14:17and in many configurations, one of them is empty.
0:14:21So it's expandable, and you can add more, right?
0:14:25Right, right, right?
0:14:26- This is why more people should be familiar
0:14:29with the Mac Pro, because anyone who has a 2019 Mac Pro
0:14:32saw that and they're like, oh, yeah,
0:14:33it's just like in the Mac Pro, right?
0:14:34and if you're not familiar, if you look inside your Mac Pro,
0:14:37it's got the similar kinds of slots,
0:14:39and if you get a Mac Pro with,
0:14:40depending on how much storage you get
0:14:42from Apple and the Mac Pro,
0:14:44you know, the slots may be filled
0:14:45or filled with different sizes of things.
0:14:47It looks like you have multiple SSDs,
0:14:49but as you know, when you buy a Mac Pro,
0:14:50you just get one quote unquote internal SSD,
0:14:52which may be made up of multiple chips.
0:14:55So I think, what is my Mac Pro?
0:14:56I think I have a four gig, four gig, four terabyte SSD,
0:14:58and I think it's like two, two terabyte modules
0:15:01stuck in the little slots.
0:15:03So yeah, when you look inside the Mac Studio,
0:15:05looks kinda like that, very similar looking slots,
0:15:06very similar looking stuff in there.
0:15:08But the mistake people were making is thinking,
0:15:10is not being familiar with the Mac Pro and thinking,
0:15:12oh, those are slots where I can buy an SSD from Amazon
0:15:14and shove it in there.
0:15:16And I think physically you might be able to,
0:15:19but that's just not the way the Mac Studio
0:15:21or the Mac Pro works.
0:15:23The way it works is you're basically just sticking
0:15:26raw NAND chips in there, not really,
0:15:28we'll get to the details in a second,
0:15:30but the storage controller is on the SOC,
0:15:33or in the case of my Mac Pro,
0:15:34like somewhere else on the motherboard.
0:15:36And unlike when you buy like a stick,
0:15:40like an NVMe stick or whatever, an M.2 stick,
0:15:43that has the NAND and also the controller to work with it.
0:15:46Like it's a complete drive basically.
0:15:49Whereas in the Mac Pro and in the Mac Studio,
0:15:52the drive is made up of these NAND modules,
0:15:55which on laptops are soldered to the motherboard,
0:15:57but in these ones are in little slots,
0:15:59Driven by the storage controller that is in my case in the tea chute ship or in the Apple silicon things inside the system on
0:16:06a chip
0:16:07So you need both of those things to work and so it's not like you can buy an SSD and shove it in there
0:16:11They have them why do they have two slots? Well if you get like the 8
0:16:13Terabyte config they probably put a 4 and a 4 right if you get a 4 they might do a 2 and a 2
0:16:18If you just get a 2 they might put a single 2 in like they can fill them as needed
0:16:22So it's not all that exotic or weird, but if you expect it to be
0:16:29place where you put a drive it's not think of it as like it's like they
0:16:32soldered it to the board but it's not soldered that's what it's like because
0:16:35if they were soldered to the board you're like can I rip those chips off
0:16:37there and and buy a drive from Amazon it's like what do you mean that drive
0:16:40right now here's some more interesting details about this that Hector Martin
0:16:43posted to Twitter and he does a bunch of porting of Linux to Apple silicon and so
0:16:49I figure he knows about these details because he's actually trying to get an
0:16:52OS up and running on it so I trust more or less that this is at least close to
0:16:56the truth, here's what he said.
0:16:58He says, about the Mac Studios things,
0:17:00quote unquote SSD slots, which is not really what they are.
0:17:04If you wanna play around with those storage modules
0:17:06in a studio, you should know that one,
0:17:07you definitely need to do a full DFU erase.
0:17:10What does DFU stand for, device firmware update?
0:17:13Yeah. - Device follow up.
0:17:15- Yeah, exactly. (laughing)
0:17:16And two, if you populate both slots,
0:17:18they definitely need to be the same size
0:17:20and they might need to be the same vendor.
0:17:22So the reason why you need to do a DFU erase
0:17:25is like, why can't I just, like, if I,
0:17:26if one of those modules breaks,
0:17:27can I just take another one off and shove it in there?
0:17:29There's a bunch of reasons for that.
0:17:31One is that everything on those things is encrypted
0:17:33with a key that's managed by the storage controller.
0:17:37So, first of all, if you take those things out
0:17:40of one Mac Studio and put them in another Mac Studio,
0:17:41they won't work because they're encrypted with a key
0:17:43that that other Mac Studio doesn't have.
0:17:45Like, this is part of the security structure of the Mac.
0:17:47It's done on purpose, right?
0:17:48And second thing is, if you take one of them out
0:17:50and put another one, it's like taking, you know,
0:17:52half of the soldered NAND off of the motherboard
0:17:55of your power book, power book, your MacBook, right?
0:17:58That's not gonna work, right?
0:18:00Think of them as one drive just split up into pieces
0:18:02in the same way that you have multiple flash chips
0:18:05on the motherboard of a MacBook Pro.
0:18:07Again, these are the same.
0:18:09They're not like individual things
0:18:10even though you can pull them out separately.
0:18:12So Hector continues, not sure if the top level controller
0:18:15cares about mismatched NAND vendors,
0:18:17just pointing it out since it might.
0:18:19Apple sources its raw flash from different vendors.
0:18:21You can find the module level controller firmware for each kind and the restore RAM disks.
0:18:26And then you post a screenshot of a bunch of files on diskies, .bin files, that have
0:18:30names like Samsung, MLC, 3D, SanDisk, ITLC, and that's like multi-level, QLC, MLC, I forget
0:18:41what the acronym is for.
0:18:42Cells?
0:18:43Yeah, it's like how many bits they write to each cell, and the more you add, the more
0:18:50tricky it is to do, and the cheaper it is.
0:18:53It's got all these different things
0:18:55for high NIC, SanDisk.
0:18:58And every one of these things is like what
0:19:01he's calling the module level firmware controllers.
0:19:05And so Apple, if you stick NAND in that matches
0:19:09one of these things, this is the little bit
0:19:10of firmware that will run on that NAND to do the job.
0:19:14Actor continues, if you populate a config that Apple would ship,
0:19:17I'd expect it to work given a full erase.
0:19:20And by the way, a reason a full erase works is
0:19:22when you do do FU and erase them entirely,
0:19:23it just wipes everything that's on them
0:19:25and puts new data on them with the security key
0:19:27that's in the SOC, right?
0:19:29If you try to do something weird,
0:19:31chances are it won't work.
0:19:33To clarify, the above firmwares are for Apple's
0:19:35raw NAND controller bridge,
0:19:37which is embedded on package with the raw NAND flash.
0:19:39That's its Ashiba Samsung Hynix bit.
0:19:41The top level SSD controller is separate, right?
0:19:44So these are the little bit of controller firmware
0:19:47that runs on the little module with the flash chips in it.
0:19:50It's not like the quote unquote SSD controller,
0:19:53which in Apple Silicon is in the system on a chip thing.
0:19:56The raw NAND controllers are called S3E, S4E,
0:19:59which are ARM32 and run Apple MSPS firmware,
0:20:03and S5E, which is Apple custom ARM64 core
0:20:07running Apple MSF firmware based on RTKit.
0:20:10The top of the SSD controller is embedded in the M1SOC
0:20:13and is ANS2 and runs Apple storage firmware.
0:20:15So these are all tiny little ARM chips
0:20:17that are running their own little firmware thing
0:20:19needs to do their tiny little job.
0:20:21And so as Hector points out,
0:20:23yes, Apple puts freaking ARM 64 inside each flash chip
0:20:26in your machine these days, that's how they roll.
0:20:28There's also at least 12 of those ARM 64 mini cores
0:20:31inside the M1 Macs.
0:20:33It has more ARM 64 coprocessor cores
0:20:35than ARM 64 main processor cores.
0:20:38One of those is ANS2, the Apple storage controller thing.
0:20:41So like in the little module with the NAND chips on it,
0:20:47There's a little tiny ARM processor
0:20:50that's job is to just manage those NAND things,
0:20:52but it's not a drive controller
0:20:53because the SSD drive controller
0:20:54that makes all that NAND appear as a single drive
0:20:57to the OS and everything, that's in the SoC.
0:20:59And that's another little ARM mini core
0:21:02alongside apparently 11 other little ARM mini cores
0:21:06in the M1 Mac's SoC that do various jobs
0:21:08inside the larger chip.
0:21:09Obviously those cores are not like computation cores
0:21:11to run your stuff, they're just little things to run.
0:21:13That's why they call it a system on a chip.
0:21:15It's not just a CPU with a bunch of, you know,
0:21:19execution units and registers and stuff.
0:21:21There's other entire other little processes
0:21:23and they're doing their things, right?
0:21:24And finally, Hector has one final tweet
0:21:26about like why Apple does this
0:21:28and what's the deal with their stuff.
0:21:29Apple's NVMe implementation is largely faster, lower power,
0:21:32and has special encryption modes,
0:21:33including features for per file key selection
0:21:36not available to standard NVMe SSDs.
0:21:38Apple goes custom because they wanna do things better
0:21:40than the competition in certain ways.
0:21:41So if you go through the Apple's big security papers,
0:21:44you can see how they have per file encryption keys,
0:21:48which is a feature basically inherited from the iPhone
0:21:50for an extra amount of security.
0:21:52And you can't do that without sort of complete understanding
0:21:55of the whole storage stack
0:21:56because NAND doesn't know about files
0:21:59and the SSD controller doesn't know about keys
0:22:02for individual files,
0:22:02but making all this stuff work together,
0:22:04lets them have not just encryption keys for the whole drive,
0:22:06but also per file encryption keys as well.
0:22:09So it's actually fairly complicated and fairly cool,
0:22:11but it also explains after seeing all this
0:22:13and getting a headache, I get why I can't buy something
0:22:16from Amazon and plug it in, 'cause it's the wrong thing.
0:22:19Like an Amazon thing is an actual commercial drive
0:22:22or whatever, I keep saying Amazon,
0:22:23but it has the storage controller, NAND,
0:22:27everything all in one, and it presents an interface
0:22:30as a drive to the host computer,
0:22:31and that's not how the MacStudio or the MacPro work at all.
0:22:35- It's wild, it's really wild, but yeah,
0:22:37it seems like there, 'cause I watched a couple of videos,
0:22:42forget who it was, but somebody posted a video about, "Oh, let me take one Mac Studio and
0:22:47take the, you know, dismantle both, sorry, take two Mac Studio hosts, dismantle them
0:22:52both and try to swap chips back and forth between them." And they concluded, "Oh, this
0:22:56must be something that Apple is doing to, you know, try to fight against right to repair
0:23:01and blah, blah, blah," which on the surface is a reasonable explanation if you don't know
0:23:05any better. But as soon as you dig into this a little bit, you realize, no, no, no, this
0:23:09has nothing to do with right to repair,
0:23:11even though it is a kind of crummy offshoot,
0:23:12that it's a little harder to do this on your own.
0:23:16But nevertheless, what it's really about
0:23:17is just making as good a system as they possibly can,
0:23:19like you said.
0:23:20- Yeah, and it's physical security,
0:23:22which historically has been almost nonexistent.
0:23:24If you have physical access,
0:23:25it was very easy to get complete access.
0:23:27Now Apple makes it much, just like with iPhones,
0:23:29much, much harder.
0:23:30Even when you have physical access to an iPhone,
0:23:31it is non-trivial to break into it.
0:23:33And the max transition to Apple Silicon,
0:23:36or actually even being with the T2,
0:23:38That's what they've been trying to do with Macs.
0:23:39And what it means is you get things like,
0:23:41what do you mean my storage is cryptographically
0:23:43locked to my computer?
0:23:44It's like, yeah.
0:23:45I mean, you can erase it.
0:23:46You can go into DFU mode and erase it,
0:23:48but then you lose all the data on it, right?
0:23:49You can't-- in the old days, you could rip a hard drive out
0:23:52of one PC, stick it into another PC,
0:23:54and voila, you've got everything, right?
0:23:56Can't do that on modern Macs.
0:23:57And that's a good thing.
0:23:58Well, the drivers would never boot, right?
0:23:59You'd have to like, rainfall windows on it.
0:24:01All right.
0:24:01Let's just say a Mac.
0:24:02You could take a hard drive out of one Mac
0:24:03and connect it to another, and you would see the contents
0:24:06really easily. Yeah. No, and to be, you know, to I think characterize Apple's motives here,
0:24:12I don't think when Apple does things that make it harder to upgrade or repair your computer
0:24:17or phone or whatever, I don't think they're doing it too, you know, maliciously. I don't
0:24:22think they're doing it because thinking like, oh, if we, if we make this one change, nobody
0:24:26will be able to buy cheap SSDs and put them in here or nobody will be able to repair this
0:24:29thing on their own or whatever. I don't think that's what it is. I think they just don't
0:24:34prioritize people self-upgrading and self-repairing enough.
0:24:38Like, they don't design for it,
0:24:39they don't think enough about it,
0:24:41or they don't care enough about it,
0:24:42or they let other factors override it.
0:24:44So if they're able to make something
0:24:46that they think is better, or that legitimately is better,
0:24:50in a way that makes it harder to repair or upgrade,
0:24:53they will choose that almost every time,
0:24:55because it is a lower priority for them
0:24:58to accommodate repairs and upgrades later.
0:25:01Now, that's certainly worth debating
0:25:04whether that should be their priority,
0:25:05but that's, I think, where it's coming from,
0:25:07not any intentions of malice.
0:25:10- Well, as part of the product brief, really,
0:25:11because to give an example, the Mac Pro is the one Mac,
0:25:15I would say, that is designed to make things
0:25:17upgradable and swappable.
0:25:19There's numbered instructions with text and stuff
0:25:22inside the thing telling you how to add and remove cards,
0:25:25telling you how to add and remove RAM.
0:25:27It is explicitly made to have parts
0:25:32on the inside of it upgraded and changed.
0:25:34Just not the SSDs, which are basically exactly like this
0:25:38and non-upgradable, but you can add a PCIe card
0:25:40and put as many SSDs as you want in there.
0:25:42And you could add, you know, seven PCIe cards
0:25:45with SSDs all over them.
0:25:46You can swap in and out hard drives.
0:25:48You can access all the RAM
0:25:49because they're on little chips that you can take in and out
0:25:51and they have instructions on how to do it.
0:25:53Pretty much no other Mac is like that anymore,
0:25:55including the Mac Studio,
0:25:56which as we've seen from the tear downs
0:25:58and maybe we'll discuss in a little bit,
0:25:59doesn't even have user accessible screws.
0:26:01you have to peel off the rubber foot on the bottom,
0:26:03you can get to the screws to let you open it, right?
0:26:06Whereas my computer has a giant handle on the top
0:26:09that you lift up and twist, right?
0:26:11It's very different, but this is the only Mac
0:26:13that has, as part of its design,
0:26:16make this thing user accessible and expandable, right?
0:26:19Every other Mac is like,
0:26:20that's not part of the requirements, right?
0:26:22And so when, like you said, Marco,
0:26:23when it comes like, oh, we can make the SSD
0:26:26faster and lower power by soldering it to the motherboard,
0:26:28do it, oh, we can make the RAM faster
0:26:30By putting it all on one big system on chip, do it.
0:26:32Because it doesn't violate any of the requirements,
0:26:34because the requirements of the system are not,
0:26:36like, let the user be able to upgrade the components.
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0:28:38- Now moving on to the depressing part of the podcast
0:28:46for one Mr. John Syracuse.
0:28:48You know, it's like you were talking about 2000s songs
0:28:52and hits, tear John's heart into pieces.
0:28:56The Max Studio is currently his last resort.
0:28:59But hey, this is bad news, John.
0:29:02- So bad.
0:29:03- Oh, because if you look at the graph,
0:29:04it will unbreak my heart, do what I did.
0:29:06- Oh, well done, well done.
0:29:08That was probably late '90s, wasn't it?
0:29:11That's a great time to ask that.
0:29:12- I know, I'm so bad with yours.
0:29:13- Oh, well done, I am very proud of all three of us.
0:29:16Look at us go.
0:29:17God, we're so proud.
0:29:18The songs I was complaining about were nothing like that.
0:29:21(laughing)
0:29:23- Ah, anyway, all right, so Mac Studio cooling and fan noise.
0:29:27I heard your heart shattering into a trillion pieces, Jon.
0:29:31At least that's the way it was,
0:29:33but it seems you've glued yourself back together.
0:29:35How do you wanna handle this?
0:29:36Do you want me to start walking through this?
0:29:37Do you wanna take this?
0:29:39- I think I can take this.
0:29:40So to start, I remember reading Jason Snell's review.
0:29:43It was one of the first ones I reviewed,
0:29:44and he's like, "Ah, it does make fan noise all the time.
0:29:47"The fans are always running.
0:29:48you hear them and it's noisier than I expected, right?
0:29:50And I think probably the next thing I saw after that
0:29:52was one of the Max Tech YouTube videos
0:29:53and they were like, "Oh, it's completely silent."
0:29:56I was like, "Well, I'll just wait to see."
0:29:58You know, I'll wait and see how this shakes out
0:30:00because lots of people have different ideas
0:30:02of what is noisy, what is quiet, so on and so forth, right?
0:30:05So here are some facts that we've gathered
0:30:08from various people looking at these things
0:30:09and taking measurements, right?
0:30:11So from the Max Tech video,
0:30:13which we'll link in the show notes,
0:30:15it seems like the fans on the Max Studio,
0:30:17and there's two of them if you look at Apple's intro video,
0:30:19there's like two fans that pull air in from the bottom
0:30:22and shove it out the back, right?
0:30:23They idle around 1300 RPM.
0:30:27And according to TG Pro,
0:30:28an app that does like a fan measurement speed,
0:30:31we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well,
0:30:33according to the TG Pro app,
0:30:35it lists the minimum fan RPM
0:30:37on the Max Studio fans as 1100 RPM.
0:30:40Now this is a third party application,
0:30:41I don't know if it's actually true,
0:30:42but the point is the minimum is 1100
0:30:44and they're idling at 1300.
0:30:46In the testing that Max Tech did,
0:30:48under what they consider full load,
0:30:50they tried to exercise the CPU and the GPU
0:30:52as much as possible.
0:30:54The SOC temperature maxes out around 60 degrees Celsius.
0:30:58And I know we don't do Celsius around here,
0:30:59but I can just tell you,
0:31:00if you've ever done anything having to do with PC cooling,
0:31:0260 degrees Celsius is not hot.
0:31:05Like this is the maximum temperature
0:31:06where they're trying to say,
0:31:07can we put the CPU and the GPU maxed out,
0:31:10all cores, everything at the same time,
0:31:12and they got it to max at like 60 degrees.
0:31:15That is extremely cool, okay?
0:31:17And during that stress test of maxing everything out,
0:31:21the fans stayed at 1300 RPM.
0:31:23So these fans apparently never change RPM
0:31:28and even under max load at 1300 RPM,
0:31:30they can keep the thing at 60 degrees Celsius.
0:31:33- And I'm sorry, for those of us who believe
0:31:35in good temperature units, that's 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
0:31:38- Honestly, I'm a Fahrenheit proponent,
0:31:41but not with CPU temperatures.
0:31:43'Cause it is not describing ambient air temperature.
0:31:44And so the whole world describes CPU temps in Celsius,
0:31:48and it is actually useful because 100 degrees Celsius
0:31:52is roughly the limit of what you would ever want
0:31:54a CPU to reach, and you should really keep it below that.
0:31:56And so the scale actually makes sense a lot.
0:31:59- I agree, I'm just trolling for the fun of it.
0:32:02No, I completely agree with you.
0:32:03- Yeah, and so if you're listening to this
0:32:05near an Intel Mac, please go look at what your CPU
0:32:07temperature is as you sit here idle listening to a podcast.
0:32:13If you max an Intel Mac to use all the cores
0:32:17and some kind of stress test,
0:32:19it will not stay at 60 degrees Celsius.
0:32:21Chances are very good, right?
0:32:22- Well, what is your, as a lone Intel--
0:32:25- Just have Dropbox running.
0:32:26That's all you need to do.
0:32:28- And or Slack.
0:32:29What is your CPU running at right now, John?
0:32:31Do you have--
0:32:32- I have to launch TG Pro, and I will tell you,
0:32:34oh, there's an update.
0:32:34Well, I'm going to, I'm gonna click install update.
0:32:37But while I click install update,
0:32:38oh, I have to change to Celsius, I think,
0:32:40'cause it might be in Fahrenheit.
0:32:43where are the settings for TG Pro?
0:32:45I'm gonna install and relaunch.
0:32:46- So while you figure that out,
0:32:47I would say that it seems, I mean,
0:32:50I haven't been following the videos
0:32:51and everything on this yet,
0:32:52but I am certainly disappointed to hear
0:32:54that there's audible fans, but we know what these,
0:32:57'cause even not talking about the M1 Ultra version,
0:33:00even just talking about the M1 Max version,
0:33:02people say it has the same approximate fan noise
0:33:05being noticeable, and I don't know anything
0:33:09about the blowers they're using.
0:33:11I mean, it's probably some kind of weird custom thing
0:33:12that they made, but I would hope that they can
0:33:16actually spin slower than 1100 or 1200 RPM.
0:33:19And I would love to see that idle speed,
0:33:22what does it sound like when it's like 800, 900 RPM?
0:33:25Because it seems like if they're able to keep that CPU
0:33:29at 60 Celsius, even under full load, at the same speed.
0:33:33- At the same speed it idles at.
0:33:34- Right, then that tells me that they could get away
0:33:38with less cooling and therefore less noise
0:33:40when it's not under full load.
0:33:41And so meanwhile, I sit here next to my desktop laptop,
0:33:45which by the way, quick aside,
0:33:47I love the desktop laptop lifestyle so much.
0:33:50So earlier today, earlier today,
0:33:52we were about to do a FaceTime session
0:33:55with our workout trainer.
0:33:57The session was like a half hour away
0:34:00and I had a software update ready to go
0:34:02on the 14X that we would normally would use for that.
0:34:06So I said, all right, fine, installed 12.3
0:34:09or whatever it is, whatever we're on.
0:34:10I know system updates on M1 Macs are not fast,
0:34:14but surely a half hour will be enough time.
0:34:18Little did I know, after you hit install,
0:34:20well then it has to first prepare the update.
0:34:24And that took like 15 of the minutes.
0:34:26We now only have 15 minutes left,
0:34:28and I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna reboot
0:34:30to after doing this because I know as soon as I begin,
0:34:33it's gonna take longer than 15 minutes
0:34:35'cause M1 software updates are very, very slow.
0:34:38Sure enough, it finishes the preparing stage,
0:34:41and then it shows me the do you agree to these terms screen,
0:34:45and I thought, aha, I just won't agree to the terms
0:34:47until after the workout.
0:34:49So I just hid the window.
0:34:52Sure enough, a few seconds later, the computer reboots.
0:34:55So by the way, you don't have to agree to the terms,
0:34:57turns out, so we'll see what that means
0:35:00if I get a knock on the door from Apple Legal in the morning
0:35:02and then of course it blew way past the workout
0:35:05doing its random, like I don't even know
0:35:07what the progress bars are indicating,
0:35:08like when it's actually in the rebooted environment
0:35:11doing the software updates,
0:35:12it went through like four different progress bars.
0:35:14So it's displaying nothing,
0:35:17it might as well just be a spinner at that point.
0:35:18So it's not useful information.
0:35:20Anyway, so it was just so slow
0:35:21that I was at the last minute able to just
0:35:23take my desktop laptop off of my desk,
0:35:26unplug it, open it up, pop it open and use that.
0:35:29It's so nice having this dual laptop lifestyle.
0:35:33So this is one of the reasons why
0:35:36I am not envious at all about everyone else's
0:35:39Mac Studio results they're getting of,
0:35:41wow, look at compile Xcode 20% faster.
0:35:43I am so happy with my dual setup of dual laptops.
0:35:48And by the way, my 16 inch that is my desktop laptop,
0:35:53I have never heard the fan, not once.
0:35:55It is a much smaller volume of inner dimensions in there
0:36:00that it's keeping cool, it's much smaller fans.
0:36:03It should theoretically be much louder
0:36:05than the Mac studio reportedly is.
0:36:08And yet, it is dead silent
0:36:10with everything I've ever thrown at it.
0:36:12I've never heard the fan.
0:36:13- I have only heard my 14-inch a couple of times.
0:36:17I think both of them were FFmpeg-related.
0:36:19(laughing)
0:36:20But it's only been like twice, and I've had this thing,
0:36:23when did we get these, like November of last year
0:36:24or something like that?
0:36:25Whereas if I breathed wrong on my Intel MacBook Pro,
0:36:29the fans would spin up.
0:36:30No, I don't wanna continue to belabor this point
0:36:33because I feel like you and I have been gushing
0:36:35about the desktop laptop for a while now,
0:36:37but it occurred to me as we were talking
0:36:41that we were overjoyed this year
0:36:45when what ended up happening was the 13 Pro regular size
0:36:50didn't really have any compromises
0:36:54from the 13 Pro max size, right?
0:36:57Was it this year, last year, or both?
0:36:58It was this year, I believe.
0:37:00And we were overjoyed by that.
0:37:02And that I think is a reasonable expectation,
0:37:05that the two phones that are of roughly the same size,
0:37:10and I know with that size class, everything matters more,
0:37:13but two phones for roughly the same size
0:37:15have roughly the same capabilities,
0:37:17and that's really awesome.
0:37:18Never in a million years did I think I could say that
0:37:21about freaking computers.
0:37:23(laughing)
0:37:25The Ultra Accepted, it really is choose your own adventure,
0:37:28choose your own case when it comes to M1s.
0:37:31And I know that the you know, that's not entirely true because you can't get a max in certain places and so on
0:37:35But but amongst the kinds of computers that I would look at buying I can get an m1 max
0:37:41In a max studio or I can get it in my 14 inch MacBook Pro and they're the same like it never been a million years
0:37:48Did I think I would be I would be able to choose what case I wanted but have
0:37:53Effectively the exact same processor in any of them
0:37:56I mean, I've been paying attention to computers since I was eight or something like that. So since like 1990 and
0:38:03Never has this been even close to an option in my in my lifetime
0:38:07It's just so amazing and so cool that we can have these really well unless you're John, Syracuse
0:38:13Uh, these no compromise machines that that you can take anywhere. It's just phenomenal
0:38:18Yeah
0:38:19I mean even like you know the year that the year that I spent before the MacBook Pros
0:38:23using the M1 MacBook Air as my main computer
0:38:26for a lot of that time, and then using the M1 Mac Mini,
0:38:29which is the same chip for the other half of it.
0:38:31The M1 MacBook Air, that alone,
0:38:34that could have been my main computer the entire time
0:38:36if I would have gotten higher specs on it.
0:38:38And it's just like, I couldn't believe that computer.
0:38:41It was so incredibly good to have Apple's cheapest laptop
0:38:45be the best computer I'd ever used,
0:38:50and have no fan, didn't even have one,
0:38:53have this amazing performance, incredible battery life,
0:38:57it's super small and light, that's amazing.
0:39:00We're in such a good time right now for these computers.
0:39:03So let's get back to the MacStudio.
0:39:05That's why it is kind of, I wonder,
0:39:07this fan noise thing seems like a pretty big downside
0:39:10to this and I have to wonder,
0:39:13maybe this is adjustable in firmware.
0:39:15Maybe they set the idle RPM speed a little too high
0:39:20and maybe they can bring it down.
0:39:23Like again, I don't know what,
0:39:25maybe the blowers can't go that slowly,
0:39:26but they probably can.
0:39:28And I really hope that they consider that
0:39:30because this, we know what these chips do.
0:39:34We know from the laptops and from the Mac Mini,
0:39:37there is no reason why a desktop with an M1 Max,
0:39:42not the Ultra, we don't know about the Ultra yet.
0:39:44- We do know about that, I'll get to that in a second.
0:39:46- Okay, but there's no reason why the M1 Max
0:39:50in a desktop enclosure should ever be audible,
0:39:53no matter what it's doing.
0:39:54Because on a laptop, it's barely audible,
0:39:58even under the most ridiculous load.
0:40:00And it's inaudible under almost any other load.
0:40:02So we know that if a laptop can do that inaudibly,
0:40:05so can a desktop with the exact same chip.
0:40:07Now, so John, tell me about the Ultra.
0:40:09- Yeah, so the question is, okay,
0:40:10well you just told me all these things at idols at 1300,
0:40:13And again, I think this is another first.
0:40:15Can you think of a desktop computer
0:40:16whose fan runs at the same speed
0:40:18when it's under maximum load versus when it's idle?
0:40:21Like, what is the point of a cooling system
0:40:22if the fan is never going to change RPM?
0:40:24Like, you know, you would think you would tune the thing
0:40:27so like, yeah, when it gets hotter,
0:40:28the fans spin faster, right?
0:40:29But to literally be at 1300 RPM
0:40:31under full CPU and GPU load running this weird benchmark
0:40:35that's synthetically designed to do that,
0:40:37it's like one of those benchmarks
0:40:38that does stuff off screen
0:40:39so you're not even delayed
0:40:40by the refresh rate of the monitor, right?
0:40:43That is weird.
0:40:44So what is the Ultra like?
0:40:45Because that was the Max.
0:40:46The Ultra has no real difference in fan speed or temperatures than the Max.
0:40:52So both the Ultra and the Max run around 1300 RPM when they're idle, stay at around 1300
0:40:58RPM and around 60 degrees Celsius under full CPU and GPU load.
0:41:01Now obviously the Ultra has a better cooling system.
0:41:03It has big copper heat sinks that weighs twice as much.
0:41:06It has extra heat pipes that the Max one doesn't have.
0:41:10but it definitely seems like they tuned the cooling system
0:41:14so that both of those things,
0:41:16that the fans run at the same speed
0:41:17and that the system on a chip stays at the same temperature.
0:41:20Obviously the Ultra produces more heat,
0:41:22but then the cooling system gets rid of more heat from it.
0:41:25So it's scaled to be like that.
0:41:26So I totally agree with Marco
0:41:28that if these fans are capable of running slower,
0:41:32you should be able to run them slower and be just fine
0:41:34because obviously 1300 RPM is sufficient to keep.
0:41:37And this is like, I mean, it's not an hour long test,
0:41:39it's like a 10 minute test,
0:41:40But even after 10 minutes at maximum load, if the fans are still at 1300 RPM, there's
0:41:45so much headroom for you to deal with this.
0:41:47And again, we'll put links to the MaxTech videos where they show these things.
0:41:49Now, as I said before, noise, right?
0:41:53Some people say it's noisy, some people say it's not.
0:41:55These blower fans, there's, we'll get to this in a little bit too, but there's two of these
0:41:58blower fans in the Max Studio too, and everyone pretty much agrees that the Max Studio you
0:42:02can't hear the fans in.
0:42:03You can feel the air coming out the top of your hand over it, but you just can't hear
0:42:06it.
0:42:07Wait, you're referring to the studio display?
0:42:08Oh, sorry, yeah, the studio display.
0:42:09I hate the fact that they both have studio in the name.
0:42:10The studio display has two blower fans that look very similar to the blower.
0:42:14They're not the same obviously, but the same style of fan, like where it, you know,
0:42:17where it pushes air sideways from the direction of the rotation of the thing,
0:42:21is in the studio display. And everything I've read has said you can't hear the
0:42:26fans in the studio display unless you literally shove your ear on the top of
0:42:29the display, but you can feel the air coming out, right? So there's agreement
0:42:33about what constitutes silent when it comes to the display, but for the Mac
0:42:38studio computer itself, Max Tech in their video describes it as "completely silent"
0:42:44whereas many other people say "I hear the fan all the time" as Quinn Nelson says on
0:42:48his channel, this is a tweet actually, "Don't mistake this to me in the Max Studio is loud,
0:42:52it's not, but the M1 Ultra Max Studio is persistently audible at idle.
0:42:55It's louder than any Mac I've ever owned in recent memory including Intel machines."
0:42:59So lots of opinions vary on this.
0:43:02How loud does it seem to you?
0:43:03Maybe you're doing it in a loud room.
0:43:06Based on the RPM, I feel like if all these machines are idling at 1300 RPM, these subjective
0:43:11differences have to do with the people they're listening to and the rooms they're listening
0:43:15in.
0:43:16So here's this website, quietmac.netlify.app.
0:43:20This is made for John Syracuse.
0:43:22That purports to measure the noise levels of computers both at idle and when browsing
0:43:28the web.
0:43:29I will put a link in the show notes.
0:43:31What this graph shows is that the Mac Studio at idle comes in at around 24 decibels and
0:43:42the Mac Pro comes in at 27 decibels.
0:43:46So what this is saying to me is at idle the Mac Studio is quieter than my Mac Pro.
0:43:51I'm already sitting in a room with my Mac Pro.
0:43:53I'm sitting like I can touch it with my hand.
0:43:55It's not that far away.
0:43:57So if I can live with that noise, I'm hoping that my wife will be able to live in May or
0:44:03June or whatever the hell I get my computer with the noise of a Mac Studio which will
0:44:07be shoved back on her desk behind a bunch of crap.
0:44:12And even if it's running at 1300 RPM, the good news is that no matter what she does
0:44:16to her computer, apparently it will always run at 1300 RPM and never get any louder and
0:44:20it will be quieter than my Mac Pro.
0:44:22And if you compare it and this thing to the Retina 5K iMac, that's 24 decibels.
0:44:26So the difference between a 5k iMac, which is what she's got now, 23-24 decibels depending
0:44:31on what year iMac and what processor it is, to 25, and I know decibels aren't a linear
0:44:35scale, right, so 24 is not, you know, 25 is not 1/25th bigger than 24 or whatever, like
0:44:40it's not a linear scale, but it's not a huge difference between the noise level of these
0:44:46things.
0:44:47And so I'm inclined to think that I'm going to be annoyed from a philosophical perspective
0:44:52that why are you running the fans at 1300 RPM when clearly you can run them way slower
0:44:57and be just fine when the machine is idling, but I do like the fact that it appears that
0:45:01the cooling systems on both the Ultra and the Max are tuned such that even under artificial
0:45:07benchmark kind of like loads that you'll never induce even when playing a game probably,
0:45:12that they're not going to get much louder and that you're not going to get the hair
0:45:14dryer effect and during all that time it's not like they're baking the innards of this
0:45:19machine because everything is staying relatively cool.
0:45:21- I still, it's still, to me, it seems like some kind of
0:45:25either bug or mistake that, you know,
0:45:30on this Quiet Mac site, that the desktop Apple just released
0:45:33is the second loudest desktop they've released in years.
0:45:35Second loudest computer they've released in years at idle.
0:45:38- I mean, it makes sense in terms of
0:45:39if you look at the top two,
0:45:40it's their biggest honking desktop thing,
0:45:43and their second biggest honking desktop thing, right?
0:45:47I mean, like, you would hope,
0:45:48like, the laptops aren't on there.
0:45:49These are the separate desktop box type machine
0:45:53that nobody really buys.
0:45:55And so I don't think it's surprising that they're up there,
0:45:58but it is surprising 'cause the Mac Studio
0:45:59is kind of small and you're like,
0:46:00"Oh, did they make it so small so it's so hot in there?
0:46:02"They gotta run the fans really high all the time?"
0:46:04They don't have to, they just do.
0:46:06And by the way, if anyone has this,
0:46:07I believe if you get like TG Pro,
0:46:09you can put the fans on manual.
0:46:11And I do wonder if you drag the little progress bar
0:46:13down to 1100 RPM, like can you tell a difference
0:46:16in the sound or can you go below, like to Marco's point,
0:46:19maybe they go down to 800.
0:46:20TG Pro doesn't seem to think they do,
0:46:22but you can put the fans on manual control
0:46:24and mess with stuff.
0:46:25And I finally got the TG Pro update.
0:46:26The iMac Pro right now is idling around
0:46:2940 degrees Celsius on the CPUs.
0:46:32And yeah, mid 30s, low 40s on pretty much everything
0:46:37inside my computer as it sits here idle
0:46:39while I record a podcast.
0:46:41- That's still pretty good.
0:46:43I mean, that's not bad at all.
0:46:44- But I can make them go way up.
0:46:46I just run Microsoft Flight Simulator
0:46:47and all those fans will, the temperatures will go way,
0:46:50way up and the fans will get much, much louder.
0:46:53And it seems that on a Mac studio,
0:46:54the fans will not get much, much louder
0:46:56no matter what you do to the thing
0:46:57because it just has cooling to spare.
0:47:00- That is pretty incredible.
0:47:01So I'm glad your heart is unbroken
0:47:02and Tony Braxton is also glad.
0:47:04So both of us are very excited.
0:47:06- By the time I actually get mine,
0:47:07maybe they'll change the fan firmware in a software update.
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0:49:07show.
0:49:08We got a lot of feedback and I don't know what the source of this feedback was and most
0:49:16of it was not snarky at all but a lot of feedback about why 5k? Why do people care? Why is this
0:49:24a thing? And I have an answer to this but Jon it sounds like you perhaps had something
0:49:31you wanted to start with and since this seems to be the Jon episode so far if you would
0:49:35like to kick us off and then I would like to add some things potentially at the end.
0:49:40Yeah, I saw a lot of this in a lot of Apple Studio Display reviews as well, particularly
0:49:43the reviews that were trying to say, you know, "Is this monitor a good deal?" Right? Because
0:49:48it costs $1600, which to someone who doesn't routinely shop in the Apple world seems like
0:49:53a lot for a monitor, you're like, "1600 for a monitor? I can get a good monitor for like
0:49:57$500. What are you doing? What's different about this?" And those, I think those debates
0:50:02or the reason this 5K thing kept coming up.
0:50:05Even on Twitter, I was sort of like thrown
0:50:07into a Twitter canoe, as they say,
0:50:08with a bunch of people who are arguing
0:50:10with each other about this.
0:50:11And inevitably what it would say, it was like,
0:50:13yeah, $1,600 a lot, but there's really only,
0:50:16as Casey, you've pointed out on your website,
0:50:18there's not a lot of competition for this.
0:50:21The LG is like 1,300, and the LG has a lot of problems,
0:50:25as detailed in the show, and the Apple One
0:50:28is really well built and looks nice,
0:50:30And so the couple hundred dollar difference is reasonable.
0:50:33And if you don't like either one of those monitors,
0:50:35what are your choices?
0:50:36And everyone would say, "What are you talking about?
0:50:38"That's not the only competition.
0:50:39"Look at all these monitors."
0:50:40And everyone would say, "Yeah, but that one isn't 5K."
0:50:43And you'd come back to this question.
0:50:44But why do you care about 5K?
0:50:46So you're telling me the only monitor
0:50:49that I can compare this Apple to
0:50:50is the one other 5K monitor,
0:50:51and every other monitor doesn't count
0:50:53'cause you can't compare it?
0:50:54Because the prices are not proportional.
0:50:57Like if you go down to a 4K monitor,
0:50:58You can get a really good 4K monitor for way, way less.
0:51:02And not only that, you can get a 4K monitor
0:51:05with mini LED, with HDR, with high refresh,
0:51:09all of that for less than the 5K.
0:51:10So every one of these conversations about value
0:51:12inevitably saw people talking past each other
0:51:14until they realized they didn't agree on the premise
0:51:16that the only competition to a 5K monitor
0:51:18is a 5K monitor.
0:51:19And what I wanna say about it in the context of ADP
0:51:22is the reason we, three individual people,
0:51:25keep talking about a 5K monitor
0:51:27is because it is a thing that hasn't existed.
0:51:30The only one out there was the LG
0:51:31and the one that you could build into the iMac.
0:51:33And so we didn't spend a lot of time
0:51:35talking about 4K monitors because there's tons of them.
0:51:37There's plenty of competition.
0:51:38You have many different choices.
0:51:39There's lots of different models
0:51:40with lots of different prices.
0:51:41Like I have one attached to my PlayStation.
0:51:43Casey's have them.
0:51:44Like that wasn't a problem area
0:51:46or a hole that needed to be filled, but there was no 5K.
0:51:50And the reason, I'm speaking to myself,
0:51:52the reason why I'm interested in 5K
0:51:53is because we have a 5K iMac since 2015.
0:51:57And as we said many times, once you get used to being able to see more stuff, to have more points of resolution, if not necessarily pixels,
0:52:05it's hard to go back to a smaller monitor. It feels like a downgrade, because we are accustomed in general over the course of our computing lives,
0:52:13to starting off, I start off with a 9-inch monochrome monitor, and progressively as computers have gotten better and better,
0:52:19the screen that I look at every day has gotten bigger. Obviously this will stop at some point, it's not going to be 7000 inches eventually, right?
0:52:26but it has gotten bigger over time.
0:52:28So if you spent many, many years in front of a 5K monitor,
0:52:31the idea of getting a brand new Mac
0:52:32and having to go down to a 4K monitor
0:52:36isn't particularly attractive.
0:52:38It's not the end of the world.
0:52:39What if you get two 4K monitors?
0:52:40Isn't that better?
0:52:41Maybe you don't like two monitors.
0:52:42Maybe you don't have room for two monitors.
0:52:43Maybe you're just a single monitor person like I am.
0:52:45So once you get used to 5K, it's nice to have 5K.
0:52:49And Apple made a Mac with a 5K monitor,
0:52:52but they never made a standalone 5K monitor
0:52:53and the LG was the only one.
0:52:55So the reason why we keep talking about this is one,
0:52:57it was a product that seemingly nobody made,
0:53:00which was frustrating.
0:53:00And two, for me personally, I've gotten used to 5K.
0:53:04So it was frustrating that this is what I'm used to,
0:53:06but my options are so narrow when I go to my next computer.
0:53:09I mean, it's what drove me to buy this ridiculously priced
0:53:126K monitor because hey, it's even more than 5K.
0:53:14I would have been happy with 5K,
0:53:16but at the time, literally my only option was the LG
0:53:18or this, and I wasn't gonna get that LG
0:53:20'cause I'm not as brave as Casey.
0:53:21So I got this stupid 6K, right?
0:53:23But now they have a 5K, that's why people are talking about it.
0:53:26And the people who are stuck on 5K, why do you care about 5K?
0:53:30It's basically people who have gotten used to 5K,
0:53:32probably by using a 5K iMac or maybe by using the 5K LG,
0:53:36and going to anything smaller or going to 2K 4K displays.
0:53:39Feels like to them either a downgrade or something
0:53:42they don't want to do.
0:53:44Yeah, it's tough because I think Mac users are
0:53:50a little bit different and cut from a different cloth
0:53:54than your average PC user, and that doesn't mean
0:53:56we're more right or anything like that.
0:53:58We're just a little different. - No, we are.
0:53:59We are definitely more right.
0:54:01- Fine, fine.
0:54:02And so I think another way of looking at this is that,
0:54:07you know, especially,
0:54:08when did the Retina MacBook Pros come out?
0:54:11- 2012. - 2012.
0:54:12God, was it that long ago?
0:54:1310 years ago. - It sure was.
0:54:15- Holy smokes.
0:54:17So when these Retina MacBook Pros came out in 2012,
0:54:20we got these incredibly, incredibly crisp displays,
0:54:24just phenomenally crisp.
0:54:25And the same thing happened with the phones
0:54:27and the iPads and so on and so forth.
0:54:28But it was the first time that I saw
0:54:31any sort of computer monitor that was that crisp,
0:54:33that was what people sometimes call high DPI.
0:54:36And when you have all of that data
0:54:41to make things so clear,
0:54:43but you put it in a relatively small package,
0:54:46So what was the original sales pitch of retina?
0:54:48You get four pixels where you would previously
0:54:50have only had one, if I remember correctly.
0:54:52Do I have that right?
0:54:53- I mean, that is what happened.
0:54:54I don't know if that was the sales pitch.
0:54:55- The sales pitch is you can't see the pixels anymore.
0:54:58They're so small that your eye can't resolve them.
0:54:59That's what makes it a retina display.
0:55:01- Exactly.
0:55:02And so this was true on the iPhone, it was true on the iPad,
0:55:04then it was true on Macs.
0:55:06And so from 2012, Mac OS,
0:55:10or it might've even still been OS X at that point,
0:55:12had phenomenal high DPI support
0:55:14because they were making computers
0:55:16that had these ridiculously high DPI displays.
0:55:19And as of years ago now,
0:55:22and I haven't personally tried this recently,
0:55:24although I have friends that still run Windows,
0:55:26and they say it's not great.
0:55:28As of, actually, John,
0:55:29you might even have opinions about this,
0:55:30but as of years ago now,
0:55:32Windows high DPI support was rather trash.
0:55:35Like, it would work in some places,
0:55:37it wouldn't work in others,
0:55:38and it was kinda messy.
0:55:40- Well, I can tell you my experience with it,
0:55:41'cause I always say I'm running Windows
0:55:43on a high DPI screen here.
0:55:44Windows itself does pretty okay.
0:55:46It has adjustable resolution
0:55:48and you can basically make it look,
0:55:50even more flexible than Apple,
0:55:52it's probably the same flexibility.
0:55:53It's more straightforward than Apple
0:55:54because I hate those stupid little thing
0:55:56where you have five different choices
0:55:57and it's like, default, scaled.
0:55:59And it's like, just tell me what the ratio is.
0:56:02Anyway, Windows is straightforward with that.
0:56:03But here's the problem with you
0:56:04using Windows on a high DPI monitor.
0:56:06Just because Windows, the OS,
0:56:08has reasonable scaling and handles it well,
0:56:10and I'm running Windows 10
0:56:11and I send Windows 11 is even better,
0:56:13Because Windows backwards compatibility is like their religion, tons of stuff that you
0:56:18run on Windows has no idea that it's running on a high DPI monitor and just plain shows
0:56:24itself at 1x and everything is microscopic.
0:56:26I was playing like Valorant or something, like a fairly modern game and like the Riot
0:56:33game launcher thing shows itself at 1x with retina pixels.
0:56:37It was so small, like my nose was practically touching the screen, I couldn't see anything.
0:56:41They just don't expect to run, especially gaming things.
0:56:44You don't game on a retina monitor.
0:56:46That's why most gaming monitors on PCs,
0:56:48they have these resolutions.
0:56:49When you look at them, you're like,
0:56:50"Oh, it's an awesome monitor."
0:56:50You're like, "No, that's not points, that's pixels."
0:56:52You're like, "Oh, well."
0:56:54For a Mac user, that's not how we wanna do things,
0:56:56but for a PC gamer, retina is not something
0:56:59that you crave, really.
0:57:01And so games never expect to run at high DPI,
0:57:03and sometimes they just don't care,
0:57:05and they just show themselves microscopic.
0:57:06And you wouldn't think that's a big deal,
0:57:08but if you're old and don't have great vision,
0:57:10Being able to use the tiny Windows controls on a 1x window being displayed on a 2x retina
0:57:18display is actually really difficult, and I can tell you, very frustrating.
0:57:21It's literally like you're reading an eye chart.
0:57:23So yeah, the overall experience is something to be desired, but it's mostly not the fault
0:57:28of Microsoft because they get it right in the OS.
0:57:31So if you start from the premise that you want something that's high DPI, that changes
0:57:38your requirements quite dramatically. So when I was going on a search for a retina monitor,
0:57:44when I was still at my jobby job, we landed on a bunch of different options and that was
0:57:50covered in a post of mine from 2017. And at the time there was a 24 inch 4k monitor and
0:57:58that's actually the one I'm looking at right this very moment. And it was about $300 then
0:58:02it's about $300 now. And that worked, that worked out just fine. It's not a fantastic
0:58:06monitor, but it's fine. And it's cheap. I mean, $300 is a lot of money, but given everything
0:58:11else we're talking about right now, it's pretty cheap. There was at the time a Dell 24" 4K
0:58:16that was a little more expensive and a little bit better, like a little bit better color
0:58:19reproduction and so on and so forth. That has been discontinued to the best of my knowledge.
0:58:23And there was a 27" Dell 5K monitor, which has also been discontinued. So we have the
0:58:30LG 24-inch 4k. There's also the LG Ultrafine 4k, which at the time in 2017 was like 700 bucks.
0:58:38I don't know if that is the case anymore or not. And then you had the LG Ultrafine 5k, and that was, you know,
0:58:43like 1300 bucks. I think it was like 15 or 16 when it was brand new and then they dropped the price
0:58:46shortly thereafter. And that was it. That's all you could do because, in my personal opinion, if you cross above about
0:58:5424 inches with 4k resolution, you start to get out of retina because you can start to see the pixels. And yes,
0:59:00This is the first worldiest of first world problems
0:59:02But that's the whole point is that you want to have a setup where you can't see the pixels where it really does look
0:59:08You know pixel doubled and everything is retina
0:59:10And so my rule of thumb that works for me and a lot of people like to argue with me about this
0:59:15Maybe you feel differently but for me anything over 24 inches you really need 5k
0:59:19Well, all of these monitors that people love to cite as being way more expensive
0:59:24Excuse me way less expensive and way more inches and so on and so forth
0:59:27I don't want that more inches is bad in this context
0:59:31Like that is the opposite of what I want
0:59:33There are cases where I do want that that is the opposite of what I want in this context
0:59:37And so so people will say well why not have this 39 inch curved monstrosity?
0:59:42That's you know, ridiculously large and looks stupid in my opinion. Well aside from the fact that it's aesthetically not great
0:59:48I don't want that much space unless I have you know, like an 8k resolution monitor, which would be unaffordable
0:59:54What you want is more in Apple parlance. You want more points. You don't want more inches. You want more points.
0:59:59And when we say points, it's the abstract unit that Apple uses to measure things on screen.
1:00:03They try to display everything at a fixed size in points. The number of pixels may vary.
1:00:08In an Apple simple case, if you have a retina monitor, you know, two pixels of length is equal to one point in length, right?
1:00:14And if you have a non-retina amount, one pixel is one point, right? But in that monstrosity, it's 32 inches.
1:00:20The point resolution of that in retina parlance is you take the pixels you divide by two and that's how many points wide it is
1:00:27And then that's how you would see that the width of that giant
1:00:30Really wide monitor and points is less than the width of the 5k in points not in inches
1:00:36But in points because that's how everything is measured and when we say we want retina
1:00:40We don't want a monitor or one pickle pixel equals one point
1:00:43We want a monitor or as Casey said in 2d parlance
1:00:46Four pixels equals one point a little square one two three four and a little square that is one point because that allows
1:00:52The edges of things to be drawn using pixels which are half their quarter of the size of a point again
1:00:58I'm keep switching from 1d to 2d depending on how you're measuring it
1:01:01And so that's what Mac users are looking for because all of Apple's Macs with built-in displays are within that range
1:01:07They have a DPI range that puts them in that sort of retina ish range and the point size of things
1:01:12You know the number we shop for them based on how many points because how many points is how much stuff you can see on
1:01:18Screen now you can do non-native scaling modes and get essentially more points of resolution with the same pixels
1:01:22But just starting from the native res of saying at native res in retina mode
1:01:27Here's how many points wide it is and you can go up or down a little bit in either direction by scaling
1:01:31But that's the native res when when people who?
1:01:35Don't care about retina, but there's a lot of those people including among Mac users
1:01:40but when people who don't care about retina enter this discussion, you keep telling them
1:01:45over and over again, "What I want as a retina carer is this DPI range in this size range."
1:01:53And every single time they're like, "Well, what about this?"
1:01:57And it's not that.
1:01:58And it drives you mad because you're like, "Okay, I literally want this very specific
1:02:03set of conditions.
1:02:05This small number of monitors satisfies these conditions, and literally everything else
1:02:10you've ever told me about does not.
1:02:13And I don't understand, it's not like these specs are hard to find, it's not like these
1:02:18are somehow unreasonable things to want in a monitor.
1:02:22What could be more natural to the specs of a monitor than its physical size and the number
1:02:27of pixels it has?
1:02:29Those are pretty basic specs.
1:02:31And yet it seems like the world keeps showering us with options that we should like that are
1:02:37totally outside of the specs that we want.
1:02:39It's like, no, you don't, did I not speak it correctly?
1:02:43Did I not communicate?
1:02:44Are we having a communication issue?
1:02:46Why would you think if I say I want this, why would you think I would want that?
1:02:50Like, it's crazy.
1:02:52It's maddening.
1:02:53- Yeah, I imagine you've written two different posts across four years about this very issue
1:02:57and how many suggestions you've gotten.
1:02:58You know Marco, I know you're interested in a four-door electric car, but have you heard
1:03:04about two-door V8 Mustangs?
1:03:06I think you would really like them.
1:03:07How about this motorcycle?
1:03:08I'm like, "No, that's not even close!"
1:03:11And by the way, the reason why we want this, like, "Well, but why do you want that thing?
1:03:14It's dumb to like that thing.
1:03:15I haven't ever had it and I think it's fine.
1:03:17I like my monitor better.
1:03:18Why don't you, why do you want that thing?"
1:03:20Basically, we've been trained by Apple to want it, because Apple has shipped monitors
1:03:23with most of its computers for a long time and you get accustomed to looking at things
1:03:28like that.
1:03:29And it's the same thing with the size thing in terms of like I had a monitor that had
1:03:32this many points on it and going to one with fewer at native res feels like a downgrade
1:03:36because either I have to scale and things are more blurry or I just don't get to see
1:03:40as much and that feels like a downgrade.
1:03:41In the same way, if you're accustomed to Apple computers since 2012 coming to you with retina
1:03:48DPI monitors with a given number of points, going back to non-retina from that doesn't
1:03:55feel, it doesn't even feel like a lateral move, it feels like a downgrade because you're
1:03:59used to years and years of not being able to see the pixels and suddenly you can see
1:04:02them again and it feels kind of like, you know, going back to your Palm PDA after using
1:04:06an iPhone.
1:04:07It doesn't feel like, it feels worse, it doesn't feel like an advancement.
1:04:12If you never got used to retina and have only used non-retina max, maybe you don't even
1:04:16care when you see your first retina Mac because at this point we're all old and we wouldn't
1:04:19but like we're used to retina we're used to 5k resolution from having 5k iMacs from having
1:04:25laptops that have retina screens in them for all these years and although it may not be
1:04:29what you're shopping for it's what we're shopping for and it's such a tiny market getting back
1:04:33to the studio display it's why the studio display looks so much more reasonable because
1:04:37it has so little competition and this competition is so bad that in the abstract it may still
1:04:43seem outrageous, but practically speaking, if you go out there looking for something
1:04:47with these specs, there are so few choices, and the Apple Studio display looks like, according
1:04:54to our taste and many other people's tastes, actually the best choice.
1:04:58Does it mean it's super awesome and a great value?
1:05:00No, but if your choices are that limited and you really want these things, it's slim pickings
1:05:04and this is the best one.
1:05:05Yeah, and another great example is, you know, I've gotten used to having the blackest blacks
1:05:10on my OLED displays, on my OLED TV, on my OLED iPhone.
1:05:14And I do prefer to have that kind of super deep black
1:05:19in the same way that you guys have it in your,
1:05:22what is the technology in the XDR that does this,
1:05:25the backlight technology?
1:05:26- It's just mini LED, it's the same thing.
1:05:27- Okay, so in your mini LED displays,
1:05:30like the, I almost said cinema display,
1:05:33the studio display does not have particularly black blacks.
1:05:37And that is annoying but for me for me that is like a tertiary or what is a quaternary?
1:05:45Priority for me. My number one priority is a monitor that works
1:05:49My second priority is one that's about 27 inches and that's 5k and like anything else is
1:05:56Subsequent to that like I in my personal list good speakers are above black blacks. I'm not saying you have to agree
1:06:03That's just the way I look at it. And so it's like you said John
1:06:07I mean you there really aren't many options and if you look at the post I wrote at the very very end of last year
1:06:12You know your options were the 24 inch 4k
1:06:15Which I've got right here the ultrafine 4k the ultrafine 5k and the Pro Display XDR
1:06:19Literally that was it and now you've got one more slotted in there
1:06:23which is the studio display, which is a touch more expensive than the ultrafine 5k and
1:06:28by any reasonable measure is
1:06:32Way way way nicer because I can tell you even though I am an LG 5k apologist even after my crummy experience with it
1:06:38the speakers on this are
1:06:41Hilariously bad the stand makes the speakers look like they're high fidelity
1:06:45Like there's so much around the panel itself. That is so bad
1:06:50Like the webcam is fine, which is apparently better than this studio display at least as exists right now
1:06:57But but like the speakers suck the stand sucks the service sucks
1:07:02Everything about the 5k other than the panel sucks and so for $300 hell yes
1:07:09I'm gonna go for the Apple version hell
1:07:12Yes, I am because that's gonna be so much nicer and you know what if it breaks
1:07:15You know what? I do instead of shipping it to friggin city of industry
1:07:19You know where I ship it in my car to the Apple Store. That's like 10 minutes away. Don't be creepy
1:07:24So it's so much better in every measurable way for the things that I prioritize.
1:07:31But you may feel differently and that's quite alright.
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1:08:32[Music]
1:08:33>> All right, so some details on this monitor that have come out in the weeks since we last
1:08:39recorded.
1:08:40So the first is this is just a tip from a friend that I don't know if this is just a
1:08:42one-off thing, but at least watching for it, when he hooked it up to his Mac, it defaulted
1:08:45to 1920 by 1080.
1:08:46He was like, "Why does this look all fuzzy?"
1:08:49And I have not heard of this happening to anyone else, so maybe this is just a one-off
1:08:53fluke, but if you get up an Apple Studio display and you hook it up to your Mac and it looks
1:08:56a little weird, just hop over to the display preference brain and make sure it's set to
1:08:592560x1440, which is the native retina res, because it might not be.
1:09:06Another one of the weird foibles of this monitor is that it apparently comes with a very short
1:09:11Thunderbolt cable, the thing that you use to connect the monitor to your computer, the
1:09:14only thing that connects the monitor to your monitor to the computer.
1:09:18It looks like it's about 3 feet or maybe 1 meter for metric folks or whatever, which
1:09:23is not particularly long.
1:09:24It's perfectly fine if you're connecting it to a laptop that's sitting next to it, but
1:09:28if for example you had a Mac Pro and it was sitting on the floor, that probably wouldn't
1:09:33reach.
1:09:34And if you look at Apple's prices for their braided Thunderbolt cables, they're outrageous.
1:09:38So if you want to get something cheaper, maybe look at an old WBC or something, you can find
1:09:43more reasonably priced Thunderbolt cables.
1:09:46You can even use a DisplayPort cable if you can get that cheaper as well, but of course
1:09:49it depends on what you're connecting it to.
1:09:52And also all the accessory stuff won't work like the camera and USB port, so maybe you
1:09:55don't do that.
1:09:56Just get a Thunderbolt, like a 2-meter Thunderbolt cable is probably going to be like 50 bucks.
1:10:00I know, but it still just seems very expensive, right?
1:10:02Okay, so speaking of cables, the power cable.
1:10:06I was actually looking at this last week before we recorded, I kept trying to find photos
1:10:09of like the back of the Apple Studio display and the only one I found was really small
1:10:14and blurry.
1:10:15What I wanted to see was, is the cable
1:10:17permanently attached or not?
1:10:18And I found a photo of the back of it without the cable.
1:10:21So I'm like, well it must be unattachable.
1:10:22And I saw like three little dots inside it.
1:10:24I'm like, that must be the plug, the little,
1:10:26what is it called Marco, N-E-M, whatever.
1:10:29What is the one?
1:10:30- Oh yeah, like the C13 or whatever it is.
1:10:32- Yeah, the little triangle E3 hole.
1:10:34Anyway, that's what I thought it was,
1:10:36but it was a really small picture.
1:10:37So now we know what the deal is.
1:10:39The cord is quote unquote non-removable,
1:10:43but you can remove it.
1:10:44And so we have a picture from Apple's repair manual
1:10:47for the tool they apparently give
1:10:49to like the Apple stores or whatever
1:10:51on how to remove this.
1:10:51And it's basically like a giant barrel
1:10:54with a handle for leverage
1:10:56and you wrap the cord around the barrel
1:10:58and then you push down on the stick
1:11:00that's coming out of the barrel
1:11:01and it sort of presses against the back of the stand.
1:11:04What it's doing is basically pull exactly straight
1:11:07out of the monitor really hard and it will come out.
1:11:11We'll have a video to Matt Panzorino of TechCrunch
1:11:15doing that to presumably his Mac Studio display.
1:11:19It's a pretty violent process, right?
1:11:21(laughing)
1:11:22It does come out.
1:11:23It is not like a normal plug connector.
1:11:25It's more like, I mean, you can do this in your home pod too.
1:11:28Like lots of things you can pull the cord out of.
1:11:31Like it's not attached by tiny little wires.
1:11:33There is an actually connector.
1:11:35So the thing you pull out has three holes in it
1:11:37and it is connected to a thing with three metal pins.
1:11:40So it's not like you're breaking it to pull it out,
1:11:42but boy, it's almost like you're breaking it.
1:11:44- You probably wouldn't want to do it unnecessarily.
1:11:47- Yeah, and the reason this comes up is
1:11:48no one wants a permanently attached cord
1:11:50'cause why do you have this expensive monitor?
1:11:51What if your cat chews through the cord?
1:11:52Do you have to get the whole monitor replaced?
1:11:54The answer is no, you won't have to get
1:11:55the whole monitor replaced,
1:11:56but you probably will have to bring it to an Apple store
1:11:58'cause it's not like you can go buy this cord.
1:12:00Like this is a part, it is not a,
1:12:02oh, I'll just go to the store and buy a power cable.
1:12:05That won't work, whatever this thing is.
1:12:07It might not even be proprietary, but whatever it is,
1:12:08not the type of thing you're going to find at a store that you can just buy and plug
1:12:12in there. So imagine, Jon, just hypothetically, if you had a desk that had your computer and
1:12:19a couple of displays on it and maybe one or two other things that might need power, and
1:12:23then you had off to the corner of the room, and it's not a very big room, but in the corner
1:12:28of the room, you had a Synology and a Mac Mini and a Switch and an Eero and things of
1:12:33that nature and you wanted all of those things to be on the same uninterruptible power supply,
1:12:39then what you might end up doing is realizing that most of the equipment that needs to be
1:12:43in the UPS is off in the corner of the room, and you would need just a couple of longer
1:12:49cables to reach to the desk.
1:12:52Imagine if you had, I don't know, a need for maybe a six-foot power cable instead of a
1:12:58three-foot power cable.
1:13:00And on the LG Ultrafine, this is all just hypothetical, John.
1:13:03On the LG Ultrafine, you can just swap out
1:13:05whatever that plug, Marco always knows,
1:13:07I never remember it, whatever that plug type is
1:13:09for like a six or 10 foot version of it, easy peasy.
1:13:12- I don't think this is, I'm not sure the power cord
1:13:14is three feet, the Thunderbolt cord is three feet.
1:13:16- No, I understand, I understand,
1:13:17but whatever the length of the power cable is.
1:13:19- I think this cord is six feet, or two meters,
1:13:20or whatever. - Well, six feet
1:13:22is potentially too short, hypothetically,
1:13:23hypothetically, hypothetically.
1:13:24- You can always buy another UPS, it's okay.
1:13:26I gave her permission.
1:13:28- But I actually don't even have a plug
1:13:30that Glagsight dev will not tell me.
1:13:31- Hey, don't talk to me about lack of plugs.
1:13:33- Actually, that's true.
1:13:34I take it all back.
1:13:35I take it all back.
1:13:35Sorry, Dan.
1:13:36- My dining room has literally one plug.
1:13:38Not one plug with two places to plug in, one plug.
1:13:42(laughing)
1:13:44And it is not an inconvenient place.
1:13:47- If we don't have a better post show,
1:13:48remind me about a adventure I went on recently.
1:13:51But anyways, I have the UPS in the corner
1:13:56and I need easily six feet, maybe closer to 10
1:13:59to get to the back of the monitor
1:14:01between the length of the wall
1:14:03and then going up the back of the desk.
1:14:06And so I'm gonna have to get like a stupid extension cord
1:14:08just from the monitor.
1:14:09- You can buy, the other end of the cord is just,
1:14:12you know, a regular, in the US, just a regular US plug.
1:14:14So it's okay to buy a sufficiently heavy duty
1:14:17extension cord, it will be fine.
1:14:19It's a lot easier than extending the Thunderbolt cable,
1:14:21let me tell you, and it'll cost you a lot less money
1:14:23and you can buy it in a hardware store.
1:14:24- Yep, all true statements.
1:14:26- So more details on the studio display,
1:14:27this time from Jason Snell, talking about the mounts,
1:14:31as we said last week, you can't,
1:14:33you have to pick them out when you buy it
1:14:34and they're not interchangeable,
1:14:35but Jason says just like in the past,
1:14:37while Apple says that the display's mounts
1:14:39are not user serviceable, it's my understanding
1:14:41that if you take a studio display
1:14:42to an authorized Apple dealer and pay a fee,
1:14:44they should be able to swap on a different mounting element.
1:14:47And of course, the way they'll probably swap that
1:14:48is they'll replace the entire back of your display
1:14:50at a cost that you probably will not wanna pay.
1:14:52But technically it is possible,
1:14:54just like with the iMacs, I believe, in the past.
1:14:56So if you make the wrong choice and decide you want to go with the Visa mount and you
1:15:01bought the one with the stand or something, it is possible, but again, probably not for
1:15:05a price that you want to pay, but how desperate are you going to be?
1:15:09And then Jason also posted a screenshot once the studio display embargo went up that is
1:15:14showing a little dialog box that says, "Your display was restarted because of a problem."
1:15:19So that is a thing that might happen.
1:15:22Do you think, like, you know, getting into that angle of it, where they have this, basically
1:15:26this entire iOS stack running on the monitor, and it can have its own software updates on
1:15:32the monitor, it can reboot itself, it can crash, all the stuff with the camera that
1:15:37I'm sure we're gonna get to in a second, like, do you think this was over-engineered, in
1:15:43the sense that, do you think they should have gone with all of this iOS-based processing
1:15:48and complexity in the monitor?
1:15:50Because the XDR does not do this, and frankly I'm really kind of happy about that.
1:15:56Like I'm very happy that when I plug in my monitor, it's just a monitor.
1:16:01And there's a relatively small amount of things that can go wrong with that, and it
1:16:06always kind of just wakes right up.
1:16:09It never, my monitor does not display its own ellipsis icon or animation when it's
1:16:15itself booting up.
1:16:16Like I kind of like things to be simple like that, if they can reasonably be.
1:16:23Do you think it was a mistake to design this with such complexity?
1:16:28Well so let me go through some of the details of the complexity you're talking about so
1:16:31we can sort of put some parameters on that and say what actually is inside there and
1:16:35how bad is it.
1:16:36And Martin posted on Twitter a picture of extracted from the studio display firmware
1:16:43showing like an icon on the screen with an exclamation point and the URL it says support.apple.com/display/restore
1:16:50for a restore percent.
1:16:51I mean this is not a thing that happened to him but like for you know if your monitor
1:16:54to your point Marco if your monitor something goes wrong with all this crap they put in
1:16:57there might I have to go restore my monitor by going to your URL that's the thing you
1:17:01can do.
1:17:02So the story underlying this is that people discovered pretty quickly that Apple Studio
1:17:06to Spray runs its quote-unquote "firmware" is version 15.4 with the exact same build
1:17:14number as iOS 15.4, which is very suspicious, making people think that it is just plain
1:17:20running iOS.
1:17:21The operating system it runs, according to Guy Rambo, reports itself as just "Darwin
1:17:26OS", which is not much of anything.
1:17:28But if the build number is the same as iOS and the regular version is the same as iOS,
1:17:32it's probably running iOS.
1:17:36And in terms of the complexity you were describing, many people who, if they got like I guess
1:17:40the early batch of manufactured ones or whatever, when they got it out of the box, they were
1:17:43prompted on their Mac for a "display firmware update" because not all of them came with
1:17:49the version that like the reviewers got, like the latest latest version, whatever it is,
1:17:53build 19e241, some of them came with an earlier version.
1:17:57And the update for the display, it looks like an iOS update, it's 632.4 megabytes.
1:18:05for the firmware, for your quote unquote firmware
1:18:09for this, but people don't remember
1:18:10when the iPhone first came out,
1:18:12it was also described as having firmware.
1:18:14And when they would update the operating system
1:18:16on the iPhone, it was a firmware update.
1:18:18Eventually they figured out,
1:18:19okay, we're not gonna call it firmware,
1:18:20we're gonna call it iPhone OS and eventually iOS
1:18:23and so on and so forth.
1:18:24And so the people who dug into this figured out,
1:18:28well, what's in there?
1:18:29Well, we already knew there was an A13 in there.
1:18:32Mentioned last time like the A13 is better
1:18:33than what's in the Apple TV.
1:18:34so the thing could like doubles in Apple TV,
1:18:36but oh, but it doesn't have everything in there.
1:18:37It doesn't have like wifi and Bluetooth or whatever.
1:18:40But we do know that it has the A13.
1:18:42And of course we could have surmised that the A13 is useless
1:18:45without some kind of storage, flash storage,
1:18:47'cause what would the A13 do?
1:18:49How does it boot?
1:18:50It has to have storage somewhere.
1:18:52How much storage does it have?
1:18:5464 gigabytes, 64 gigabytes.
1:18:57So this has a better system on a chip than the Apple TV.
1:19:01And it has as much storage as the big expensive Apple TV.
1:19:0464 gigs.
1:19:05And how much of that 64 gigs is taken with stuff?
1:19:10Not a lot.
1:19:10People like looked at the file system output
1:19:12and it's like taking,
1:19:13this is just the operating system on there.
1:19:15It's taking like, I don't know,
1:19:16two gigs of that 64 gigs or whatever.
1:19:18As Gruber said, effectively there's a base model
1:19:21ninth generation iPad in there.
1:19:23An A13 with 64 gigs of storage.
1:19:27Just sitting inside your monitor.
1:19:29Now, as Joe Pansuo pointed out,
1:19:32My 11-year-old, this is Joe talking,
1:19:34my 11-year-old Thunderbolt display
1:19:36also has firmware updates.
1:19:37It also definitely crashes.
1:19:39Still a great external monitor.
1:19:40So he put a screenshot of a Thunderbolt display,
1:19:44firmware update, I have one of these monitors,
1:19:45I used it for years, it's non-retina, but it's 27 inch.
1:19:48Was it 5K, I forget.
1:19:50Maybe. - The Thunderbolt display, no.
1:19:51It was not retina. - No, 24 inch.
1:19:53- No, no, no, it was 27 inch, but it was non-retina.
1:19:57- Yeah, okay, that's right.
1:19:58It's 5K size in points, like,
1:20:01It's the same point resolution as a 5K monitor,
1:20:03but it was non-red.
1:20:04But anyway, it has firmware updates and it can also crash.
1:20:08And he put a screenshot of the firmware update.
1:20:10It is 923 kilobytes.
1:20:12(laughing)
1:20:14So 632 megabytes versus 923 kilobytes.
1:20:18- It's probably running like an iPod CPU in there.
1:20:21- Yeah, so this is the thing that people don't think about
1:20:24because it's the magic of language.
1:20:26When we say firmware,
1:20:27oh, I had a firmware update for my what's a hoosy thingy.
1:20:30oh, there's just some kind of firmware that it runs.
1:20:32We don't like to think of that as like,
1:20:34oh, this thing is a general purpose computer
1:20:37with an operating system.
1:20:38But of course they are.
1:20:39In the same way we don't like to think
1:20:40about tiny ARM processors on our flash memory chips
1:20:43in our Mac Studio and other tiny ARM processors
1:20:45inside the M1 that are doing other little jobs,
1:20:49anything that seems like it's got computer-y type chips
1:20:52in it and does a thing probably has some kind of software
1:20:56and operating system that makes it work.
1:20:59And so our stupid XDRs, right?
1:21:03Inside them is not just a display panel.
1:21:06There's also a bunch of circuit boards
1:21:07that run essentially the USB hub
1:21:10and the display controllers and a bunch of other stuff.
1:21:12So inside there are various little chips,
1:21:15little Turing complete machines that run software.
1:21:19And we don't think of it as like a full fledged computer,
1:21:24but it's performing the same function.
1:21:27If you make custom chips that run, quote unquote,
1:21:30"custom firmware" to do the minimum functionality required
1:21:33to do your thing, that certainly costs less money.
1:21:36I'm not gonna say it takes less power
1:21:39'cause that's not necessarily true,
1:21:40and we'll get to that in a second.
1:21:42The updates are smaller because the software
1:21:46that needs to run is probably very minimal,
1:21:48but it is a lot more work to make
1:21:50because you have to make it do exactly the thing
1:21:52that you want it to do.
1:21:53and you usually have to build it up from if not nothing,
1:21:57from some sort of foundational pieces
1:22:01that exist in the industry
1:22:02or are part of some chipset or whatever.
1:22:04The obvious reason that Apple put an A13
1:22:07in a 64 gig thing in here is because
1:22:09Apple knows how to make those, can manufacture them,
1:22:13they're a well-known thing,
1:22:14it's already got an operating system that runs on them,
1:22:17and that operating system is thoroughly debugged,
1:22:19well tested, does everything they need it to do,
1:22:22which we'll get to in a second when we talk about the camera,
1:22:24center stage, running the sneakers, spatial audio,
1:22:28they already have an operating system that does that
1:22:31and they already have hardware
1:22:31that runs that operating system.
1:22:33Why did they choose the A13,
1:22:34not the A12 or something down or whatever?
1:22:36Maybe they don't make those smaller chips anymore.
1:22:39Maybe they needed the A13
1:22:40to be able to do all the things they did,
1:22:42but it is a known quantity
1:22:43that already does everything they did.
1:22:45In some ways, it would be stupid for them
1:22:47not to put an A13 in there.
1:22:48And yet, as a customer,
1:22:50When you get a 600 megabyte update from your monitor,
1:22:53like what is going on here?
1:22:55And it also seems like it's a waste
1:22:57that they're doing it.
1:22:58Now, having had several peripherals over the years
1:23:01for Macs and other things that have had hardware
1:23:04and firmware that has been buggy,
1:23:06I am mostly comforted, not by the 600 megabyte outbite,
1:23:09but by the fact that the stuff that is running
1:23:12inside this monitor is not weird one-off stuff
1:23:15that may be awesome or may suck.
1:23:18it is iOS running on hardware that iOS has run on.
1:23:21So I have some confidence that A, it will work and be reliable,
1:23:24and B, that if it doesn't work, it will get its bugs fixed
1:23:29because it's presumably part of the iOS update cycle now.
1:23:35Especially with the same build number.
1:23:36It's not like they build a custom version of the OS
1:23:38dress for the monitor.
1:23:39I think every time iOS gets updated,
1:23:41it will include updates that help this monitor,
1:23:43because this is really like a little iPad running in there
1:23:47that's running a display that doesn't take touch and it runs the camera and it runs the speakers and it does whatever else it
1:23:52needs to do and it runs the thing where it talks to the Mac and
1:23:54Although that seems ridiculous and wasteful and expensive. It's already a pretty expensive monitor that a thirteen probably cost Apple 30 bucks
1:24:01Whatever for the whole thing
1:24:03And it's super low power because the a thirteen is built on a fairly modern process and it was built to be inside a phone
1:24:09So it's not like they're putting a you know a giant hot CPU in there
1:24:13that's a waste of energy and is, you know,
1:24:15causing the thing to burn up
1:24:16and the fans are silent and everything.
1:24:17So I have mostly made my peace with this,
1:24:20but boy is it weird.
1:24:21And you know, as many people, I was pointing out,
1:24:23oh, this could be a standalone Apple TV.
1:24:25At this point, it could also be a standalone Mac.
1:24:28'Cause I found this actually,
1:24:30that A13 is faster than, yeah,
1:24:33it is faster than the 27 inch Retina iMac, right?
1:24:37- Wow. - From 2020.
1:24:39So if you have an Intel iMac from 2020
1:24:41with a Core i7, the A13 that's in your monitor
1:24:46is faster than that in single-core performance.
1:24:48(laughing)
1:24:48- That is utterly bananas.
1:24:49- So you could just make that monitor a complete Mac.
1:24:52Now, again, I haven't seen the teardowns yet,
1:24:54but I'm pretty sure there's no WiFi chip,
1:24:55there's no Bluetooth chip or whatever,
1:24:57but there is USB input/output, there is storage,
1:25:00there is a camera, there is speakers.
1:25:03It's a little bit absurd, but in the grand scheme of things,
1:25:07I endorse the decision to do this
1:25:09if it means that we get on that iOS update train
1:25:13and that this monitor has more of a chance
1:25:16of being reliable over a long term.
1:25:18Because as pointed out by Joe who wrote in,
1:25:20the Thunderbolt display from 11 years ago,
1:25:23it also had a little mini OS and firmware, and it could crash.
1:25:27And that got abandoned way sooner than iOS will.
1:25:31It's wild.
1:25:32And I think we have a little bit more we need to go through.
1:25:36But I do want to answer the question,
1:25:37is this too complicated?
1:25:38But before we get there, Mark Christian writes,
1:25:41"I set up my new studio display today
1:25:43"and noticed that it caused an ethernet device
1:25:44"to show up under system information,
1:25:46"which is odd since the display
1:25:48"doesn't actually have an ethernet port on it."
1:25:51I would assume, and I think Mark himself had guessed later,
1:25:56that this is about sending firmware updates
1:25:59back and forth to the monitor,
1:26:00but do we have any idea what this is about?
1:26:02- Yeah, I mean, obviously,
1:26:03that's another thing people are asking.
1:26:04Why does the Mac do the firmware updates for the monitor?
1:26:07The monitor is a full-fledged computer, it could do it itself, but like, the monitor
1:26:10doesn't have, it isn't actually, like, it doesn't, you can't just boot it by itself.
1:26:15It does boot when you turn it on, as Margot alluded to earlier, when you turn on the monitor
1:26:18it boots iOS essentially, but it doesn't show an Apple logo when it's booting like your
1:26:23iPad or your iPhone would, because that would be confusing because the Mac also shows an
1:26:27Apple instead it just shows a three dots thing.
1:26:30But yeah, there is, because the Mac runs the firmware updates for the monitor, it has to
1:26:33have some way to send the firmware to the A13 and its 64 gigs of storage inside the
1:26:38monitor.
1:26:39And so what it appears to do if you look at it is it's basically a USB ethernet adapter
1:26:44inside there and so it presents it an ethernet type interface using its existing USB hub
1:26:48thing and that seems to be the way the Mac and the thing communicate with each other.
1:26:52You know, I feel like again this is an advantage of having a full-fledged iOS thing running
1:26:58in there.
1:26:59I think we've touched on this in past episodes, the, what was it?
1:27:02the lightning to HDMI adapter or something like that.
1:27:06It was like an adapter, you'd plug it into your iPhone
1:27:08and you'd be able to output to a TV through HDMI.
1:27:11That had a full operating system that would boot,
1:27:14like it was a faceless plastic dongle,
1:27:16but you'd plug it in and it would boot an operating system
1:27:19as quick as it could, start it up and do an H.264 encoder
1:27:22or whatever.
1:27:24If we never told anyone that, they would just think
1:27:26this is an adapter and it either works or it doesn't.
1:27:28But it turns out the things that we ask the adapter to do
1:27:31are often complicated enough that you need a real Turing complete machine in there that
1:27:34runs software and it turns out Apple has a bunch of those and they have an operating
1:27:39system that runs on them and it's all well tested and they probably already have software
1:27:43to do this stuff and so you know we need some hardware and we need to have an H.264 encoder
1:27:48and we need an operating system that can run it and we need software that knows how to
1:27:51do that.
1:27:52It's like they've got that.
1:27:53So they just take a shrunken version of it and shove it in a dongle.
1:27:56So the fact that it is inside a monitor is probably less ridiculous than it is in a dongle
1:27:59And by the way, don't cut open your lightning connectors,
1:28:01because there's little chips in there too.
1:28:04- It looks like I'm looking at this panic teardown
1:28:07of the lightning digital AV adapter.
1:28:10It also had two gigs of RAM, apparently.
1:28:12I had forgotten about that.
1:28:13- I guess we haven't talked about how much RAM
1:28:16is on the A13, but I think the teardowns will show us.
1:28:20- Yeah, and that brings us to our next section
1:28:23of the notes, which is, as we previously mentioned,
1:28:25it has 64 gigs of onboard storage, which is,
1:28:29I know we talked about this a moment ago,
1:28:30but golly, that is just bananas.
1:28:32- Yeah, and why 64 instead of 32 or 16?
1:28:34Probably just because they're used to manufacturing
1:28:37A13s with 64 gigs of flash, maybe it was economical,
1:28:40who knows, maybe it's there for extra storage for games.
1:28:42Again, we'll debate it just like the Apple TV.
1:28:45What is it there for?
1:28:46For caching, I don't know.
1:28:48So you can do snapshots of the last 18 versions
1:28:50of the operating system that have been put onto it?
1:28:52- Yeah, it's literally just like,
1:28:53here's what they had the most of and the parts been.
1:28:55- Yeah, I was gonna say, I think this was just about
1:28:57making it easy to make many, many, many of these same chip.
1:29:01And presumably, I don't know anything about scaling
1:29:04at this level, but presumably by just making a gazillion
1:29:07of the exact same thing, it's actually cheaper
1:29:10than making like an A13 with two gigs of RAM
1:29:13or whatever they would need alternatively.
1:29:14- Well, they wouldn't want it to not be able
1:29:16to update its software 'cause there wasn't
1:29:18much of a free space.
1:29:19- Right, exactly.
1:29:20Yeah, and apparently according to MacRumors,
1:29:22only two gigs of the 64 gigs is being used,
1:29:25as of right now.
1:29:26- Oh yeah, did I have a thing in here?
1:29:28Like someone saw, so what is this thing running
1:29:31all the time, what processors?
1:29:33- It's in the show notes under Gee Rambo
1:29:36and it says here's what the studio display OS runs
1:29:39most of the time.
1:29:39Interesting processes include Tcon Control D,
1:29:43which possibly drives the panel itself,
1:29:44CoreSpeechD_Darwin for Hey Dingus,
1:29:48and Apple Darwin Camera D for the camera system.
1:29:51- Yeah, so that's how, you know,
1:29:52how would you make the monitor run?
1:29:54We might have to make a few new demons,
1:29:55or maybe some of these already exist in iOS
1:29:57'cause it's not like we know the names
1:29:58of the various processes that are in iOS
1:29:59'cause it's not like we're running PS on our phones
1:30:01and iPads all the time.
1:30:02But that's what it's doing all the time.
1:30:05And it's probably not breaking a sweat,
1:30:07but hopefully, well, in the next second,
1:30:09maybe we'll make it break more of a sweat
1:30:11because the one Apple product scandal,
1:30:15Brew-ha-ha, that is usually,
1:30:16we hadn't had one in a while,
1:30:17but now we've got one again,
1:30:18so it feels like things are back to normal,
1:30:20is that most of the reviews of this display said,
1:30:24"Oh my goodness, the camera is terrible."
1:30:27So you can see lots of people posting pictures of it.
1:30:29Joanna Stern, The Wall Street Journal,
1:30:30had a good video review,
1:30:31and you can look at the different webcams
1:30:33of comparing this to other webcams
1:30:36that are built into other monitors
1:30:37to the ones that are built into the MacBooks.
1:30:39The Verge has a big article on it,
1:30:42and Apple basically sent the same statement
1:30:45to all these that said,
1:30:46I don't think I have a direct quote from here,
1:30:48but like, "We've found situations
1:30:49"where the camera's not working as we expect.
1:30:51"We'll be sending a software update."
1:30:53But the point is that all the reviews came out
1:30:54before the software update.
1:30:55It's still not out as we're recording this, right?
1:30:57It's not the update that we just described.
1:30:58That's just an update to bring older manufactured monitors
1:31:01up to the new one, but everyone who did a review
1:31:02had the latest and greatest quote unquote firmware.
1:31:06And what they're complaining about
1:31:07is that it doesn't look as good,
1:31:09doesn't even look as good as Apple's other hardware
1:31:11with an identical camera.
1:31:12I'm pretty sure this is the same camera
1:31:14that's used as a front-facing camera
1:31:15in one of Apple's iPads.
1:31:17And so you can do a direct hardware to hardware comparison.
1:31:20Here's the iPad with ostensibly the exact same camera hardware,
1:31:24and I'll look at myself in that camera,
1:31:26and I'll look at myself in Studio Display,
1:31:28and everyone was saying that they thought they looked worse,
1:31:30that it was sort of washed out and over noise reduced,
1:31:33low contrast.
1:31:34Sometimes people described it as grainy.
1:31:36I have to admit, after looking at lots of these things,
1:31:38sometimes I found it hard to tell
1:31:40which image they were trying to tell me was the bad one,
1:31:44because they look different from each other,
1:31:45but neither one of them was clearly worse to me
1:31:48than the others.
1:31:48And Jason Snell said when he tested it in his environment,
1:31:52lighting condition and everything,
1:31:53that it didn't seem terrible to him
1:31:54except for in one application that was not doing,
1:31:56that was like clearly doing something different
1:31:58than the others.
1:31:59I think the bottom line with this is for $1,600,
1:32:04we kind of expect there to be a better hardware camera
1:32:09in there setting aside the software issues.
1:32:11It seems like a cheap move to put a very inexpensive camera
1:32:17'cause remember it's not like this is the same camera
1:32:20that's like on an iPhone,
1:32:21it is the front facing camera on an iPad.
1:32:24iPads already have often lesser cameras than iPhones
1:32:28and almost always the front facing one
1:32:30is lesser than the back facing one, right?
1:32:32For $1,600 I feel like it should at least have
1:32:35the back camera of a recent iPhone and it doesn't.
1:32:40And then beyond the hardware,
1:32:42okay then you have to do all sorts of processing.
1:32:43Like their decision to use a super wide angle camera,
1:32:46which is what they did for center stage.
1:32:47It's like a very wide angle, fisheye type camera.
1:32:50And the way center stage works is not by moving the camera,
1:32:52it just crops a different portion
1:32:53of a very big fisheye camera
1:32:55and then unworps it and everything, right?
1:32:57The decision to do that further reduces the resolution
1:33:00because you're only ever seeing a crop.
1:33:02And if you saw the whole resolution,
1:33:03you'd look all weird and fisheye and everything.
1:33:04So you don't want that.
1:33:05And so it's really hampering the hardware.
1:33:09They didn't put great hardware in there to begin with.
1:33:11It's not terrible, but it's not great.
1:33:12And then they're making it be even worse
1:33:15because it's a fisheye type thing.
1:33:16and it's using center stage.
1:33:18And so, what that comes up with is a camera experience
1:33:22that is less than people expected.
1:33:23People's Mac, they're saying my MacBook Pro
1:33:25that I just got, which has a camera that fits
1:33:27within a little tiny skinny lid,
1:33:28it looks better than this.
1:33:30The $400 iPhone SE front facing camera,
1:33:32it looks better than this.
1:33:33The iPad that ostensibly has the same hardware,
1:33:35it looks better than this.
1:33:37And Apple says, oh, there's some kind of software problem
1:33:39'cause there is a ton of software processing going on.
1:33:41And by the way, all that software processing is happening
1:33:43in the monitor on the A13.
1:33:45your Mac is not doing that.
1:33:47So this is a way to get center stage,
1:33:49even if you have an Intel Mac or whatever connected to this,
1:33:52because all that happening is happening in iOS
1:33:56running on the A13 inside the monitor.
1:34:00And that's why you need a monitor update
1:34:01and not a Mac OS update to solve this problem,
1:34:04because whatever the problem is
1:34:05with aggressive noise reduction
1:34:07or bad lighting compensation
1:34:08or whatever the heck is wrong with it,
1:34:10that has to happen inside the monitor
1:34:12and it'll be another 600 meg update.
1:34:14So it's disappointing, but I have to say,
1:34:18I mean, I'm on a 2015 iMac
1:34:20with this built-in front-facing camera.
1:34:22That one's not great either.
1:34:23If this is an upgrade for that, I'll take it, right?
1:34:27I think it should be better, but the other thing is
1:34:31I have a fairly expensive 4K Logitech camera
1:34:34on top of my XDR.
1:34:36I don't think that camera looks very good either.
1:34:38I mean, I just don't have good lighting in this room.
1:34:39Most people don't. - Really?
1:34:40- Like, it's not, I mean, it looks okay, it's 4K,
1:34:43But like, you know, you only look,
1:34:47I don't have a ring light,
1:34:48I don't have multi-source lighting,
1:34:49I just, it's not good lighting for video.
1:34:51So I spent all this time on Zoom calls
1:34:53and I see myself, I'm like,
1:34:54this is not flattering lighting conditions,
1:34:56I'm not in a studio.
1:34:58It is only, and that's part of the reason
1:34:59why Apple does all this processing,
1:35:01'cause they're trying to make people
1:35:03in their normal houses, which are not, you know,
1:35:05television studios, trying to make them,
1:35:08trying to make it look okay,
1:35:09trying to be able to be able to see their faces
1:35:11so they're not completely hidden in shadows,
1:35:13so they don't look terrible, and that's a hard job,
1:35:15and it seems like they're not doing it very well
1:35:18with the studio display, but if they put a 4K camera
1:35:22like this Logitech one in there,
1:35:23I don't know how much it would change my experience
1:35:25of Zoom calls, because my main barrier
1:35:27to looking good on Zoom calls, aside from my actual looks,
1:35:29is the lighting conditions that I'm in.
1:35:34I don't have good lighting here.
1:35:35Anyway, I'm not excusing it, I'm just saying,
1:35:37for me personally, this is not a big deal.
1:35:38I'd much rather have a Kreddy built-in camera
1:35:40that's slightly better than the 5K iMacs
1:35:42than no camera at all, but people are absolutely right
1:35:44to say there's no reason that on $1600,
1:35:47A, we shouldn't have better hardware,
1:35:48and B, even if we don't have better hardware,
1:35:51it should at least look as good as the same hardware
1:35:52in other Apple devices.
1:35:54- Yeah, but I think the current explanation of like,
1:35:58okay, something is wrong in software,
1:35:59so they will issue an update,
1:36:02I think that is very plausible.
1:36:05When you look at the same comparisons,
1:36:09that seems very plausible,
1:36:11But I think also, as you mentioned earlier,
1:36:13I think the choice to do center stage on this
1:36:17was itself a bad move.
1:36:20Because again, the way that works is it has
1:36:23the super wide camera and it crops in.
1:36:25Now, that works okay on an iPad, I'm sure.
1:36:29Although, you know, reviewers have often said,
1:36:31like, yeah, the way it kind of like has to like
1:36:33drift around and follow you doesn't always work very well.
1:36:35So that's a problem for sure.
1:36:37But when you think about on a display,
1:36:39like on a 27 inch display on your desk,
1:36:42the distance the camera is from your face
1:36:45is probably significantly further
1:36:47than if you were using an iPad with FaceTime
1:36:49like on a table or something, or in your hands.
1:36:52It's a much longer distance to go,
1:36:55usually the way most people set up displays in desks,
1:36:57to go from the top of the monitor to their head
1:37:00compared to an iPad in their hands.
1:37:02You figure the amount of cropping it would have to do
1:37:05on that same sensor is probably more.
1:37:09And so most of the quality problems of this camera
1:37:13are not going to be solvable in software.
1:37:15What I suspect is that it's just cropping more
1:37:17and therefore you have way less sensor area to work with.
1:37:22So it's gonna be way noisier
1:37:25and it's gonna have to over process in software
1:37:27which is what we're seeing.
1:37:28That like the images people are posting,
1:37:31the sample images and everything, what they're posting,
1:37:33it's exactly what you'd expect from something
1:37:34that is just working with very little resolution
1:37:38and a very bad signal to noise ratio,
1:37:40and it's having to really, you know,
1:37:42de-noise like crazy, blur things,
1:37:45you know, really you get that smeary,
1:37:47you know, watercolor kind of effect.
1:37:48That's the effect of just over-processing
1:37:51because the signal is just too bad physically.
1:37:53Like you can't, you're not getting enough light,
1:37:55you're not getting enough pixels,
1:37:56that's what you end up with.
1:37:58And I think this is where like the part spinning aspect
1:38:01and the, or you know, the part reuse aspect,
1:38:04and also just the marketing consistency I think here,
1:38:07where I think they really wanted to put center stage
1:38:10in this and they wanted so badly to say that look,
1:38:13we now have center stage on the Mac
1:38:14and here's how great it is.
1:38:16I think they wanted to do that so badly
1:38:18that they didn't think to consider, well, wait a minute,
1:38:20is this even, first of all, is center stage necessary
1:38:23on any stationary desktop computer?
1:38:26And then second of all, is the physical difference
1:38:29of where the camera is compared to an iPad,
1:38:32is that even gonna work in that context?
1:38:35And of course, and you can say like,
1:38:36why don't they put a bigger camera, a bigger sensor?
1:38:39I understand why they didn't.
1:38:40It's clear when you look at the form factor of this monitor,
1:38:45they probably can't fit much in that bezel
1:38:48without making the bezel bigger,
1:38:49and that looks ugly and people would say it looks old.
1:38:52So it makes sense why they have
1:38:54a little skinny camera in there.
1:38:55And certainly my XDR with Logitech magnetic camera
1:38:59on top of it, which frankly, John, you're nuts,
1:39:02it looks awesome.
1:39:03Like the Logitech camera-- - That's what I'm saying.
1:39:05it's not the camera that's bad,
1:39:06it's the lighting conditions that dominate.
1:39:08It doesn't matter how good a camera you have,
1:39:10it's not like a full frame sensor behind there.
1:39:12So if I'm in a dim room constantly in shadow,
1:39:15it's not gonna be able to rescue that.
1:39:16Especially since it doesn't have, as far as I'm aware,
1:39:18any kind of processing to try to help.
1:39:20So what I'm seeing out of the camera
1:39:21is more or less what the sensor is seeing, you know?
1:39:24- Yeah, that's fair, but like,
1:39:27I used to open a photo booth to show mine.
1:39:29This thing looks incredible.
1:39:30It's just, this is the best webcam
1:39:33I've ever seen anywhere ever.
1:39:34But it's also huge.
1:39:36And something, that size lens and presumably
1:39:39whatever sensors behind it, that would never fit
1:39:42in the bezel of the studio display, not even close.
1:39:44And so I understand why they wanted
1:39:47to put something small in there.
1:39:48And so putting an iPad camera in there makes some sense,
1:39:52but using the ultra wide angle iPad cameras
1:39:55that are made for center stage,
1:39:57that I think was the wrong move.
1:39:58And I don't think any software update's
1:40:00gonna make that really good.
1:40:02- Well, so that's something I didn't see
1:40:03in a lot of the reports.
1:40:04of people are saying, I mean Gruber even said like, "Oh here I'm using the iPad
1:40:06with sensibly the same camera and it's in the same lighting conditions, in the
1:40:09same room, at the same time, here's the iPad and here's the studio display." But one
1:40:13thing he didn't mention is, "Are these two things the same distance from me?" Which
1:40:17gets to your point. Was he holding the iPad closer just because it's natural to
1:40:19hold the iPad closer? Like was he holding the iPad between, like in front of him in
1:40:23his hands, but well in front of where the studio display is, you know what I mean? Or
1:40:27did he push the iPad back to be in the same plane as a studio display to try to
1:40:31to get an apples to apples comparison.
1:40:33I'm not sure about that.
1:40:34- I can't even reach the top of my monitor
1:40:36from where I'm sitting.
1:40:37Like if I don't lean forward,
1:40:38if I'm just sitting straight up,
1:40:39I cannot reach the webcam.
1:40:41- Well, you're very small and it's a big monitor.
1:40:43(laughing)
1:40:45So the next thing about center stage though,
1:40:47I think the use of center,
1:40:49like the use of center stage for a desktop Mac,
1:40:53a lot of people were saying exactly what you said.
1:40:54It's like, well, aren't you sitting right in front of a thing?
1:40:56Why do you need center stage to track people's faces around
1:40:59or whatever?
1:40:59I think the use of center stage is aspirational
1:41:02and forward-looking for,
1:41:03because I think in many real scenarios,
1:41:07when you're using the camera on a desktop display,
1:41:10sometimes you have more than one person
1:41:12sitting in front of it.
1:41:13There's probably one desk chair
1:41:15in front of your desktop computer,
1:41:16but when other people come in to say hi to the relatives,
1:41:19or you just wanna sit and have a call,
1:41:20or you're on Zoom meetings with multiple people,
1:41:22parent-teacher conferences during COVID times,
1:41:25very often my wife and I have both been sitting
1:41:27in front of her iMac on Zoom calls, right?
1:41:30And it's sometimes difficult to get us both
1:41:32into the frame and everything.
1:41:34And so that's where center stage can help.
1:41:36And the second thing is,
1:41:37if you're not within the range
1:41:39of the non center stage camera,
1:41:41it actually is fairly difficult,
1:41:43especially with Apple stupid stands,
1:41:45to reposition the camera that is built
1:41:47into your giant desktop display to point at a person,
1:41:49oh, here's somebody just came.
1:41:51Oh, I can't see them.
1:41:52They have to crouch down 'cause it's not like
1:41:54you can just grab the neck of your iMac G4
1:41:56or grab the monitor and just point it towards them.
1:41:59Apple's monitors do not move that way on their stands.
1:42:01They are not fully articulated.
1:42:03And so it actually is kind of tricky to do that.
1:42:05So it would be great if we had good cameras
1:42:09with high enough resolution to be able to tolerate that crop
1:42:12because I think center stage is the right choice
1:42:14for a big desktop display,
1:42:16but with a camera with low resolution,
1:42:19whether you have to crop in even more on it,
1:42:21and it's not even a good camera,
1:42:23that is maybe not the best choice.
1:42:25Now, as I saw some people post with all these Apple blowups
1:42:29about whatever the scandal of the day,
1:42:31about some hardware flaw or whatever is,
1:42:32or some product flaw, eventually someone comes in
1:42:35and is just sick of seeing it all, and they're like,
1:42:38today I'm learning that people care
1:42:39what they look like on their webcam.
1:42:42Basically saying, who cares what you look like?
1:42:44Can they see your face?
1:42:45Can they see who you are?
1:42:46Can they see your expression?
1:42:47It's not a beauty contest or whatever,
1:42:50but that, obviously, if you're listening to a tech podcast,
1:42:53you probably care about the progress of technology.
1:42:56The progress of technology is cameras and sensors
1:42:58and stuff should get better over time.
1:43:00And to Marco's part spin comment,
1:43:03Apple has a part spin filled
1:43:04with much better cameras than this.
1:43:06And yes, some of them are a little bit bigger
1:43:07and maybe they wouldn't have fit into the thing.
1:43:10I do not, repeat Apple, don't listen to this,
1:43:12close your ears, Apple,
1:43:14I do not want them to put a notch on the next version of this
1:43:17so they can fit a bigger camera sensor.
1:43:19If Apple, you would like to reach into your part spin
1:43:21and use like the back camera from the iPhone 13
1:43:24or two of the back cameras from the iPhone 13
1:43:26on the next version of this, make a camera bump.
1:43:29A vertical camera bump.
1:43:30I give you permission because it'll be smaller
1:43:32than this Logitech thing that's on top
1:43:33of my display right now.
1:43:35Do not, I repeat, do not put a notch on this monitor.
1:43:40You'll never hear the end of it, at least for me.
1:43:42But it is possible to, you know,
1:43:44not make the bezels bigger on it,
1:43:46but just have a bump for the camera or whatever.
1:43:48And eventually technology will catch up
1:43:49to be able to fit a much better quality camera with center stage in the top of their monitors
1:43:54ten years from now.
1:43:55I'm hoping, or maybe twenty knowing Apple, I'm hoping this problem will be solved.
1:43:59But for now, they give you a not so great camera on your $1600 monitor.
1:44:03The good thing is, if you hate that camera and never want to use it, you can buy this
1:44:07Logitech 4K camera for a great expense and plug it into your Mac, because it's a Mac,
1:44:11not an iPad, and you can replace the front facing camera with one of your choosing.
1:44:15It also comes with the microphones, although most people didn't comment about that, they
1:44:18that the tri-microphone system on these displays is actually pretty good.
1:44:21So maybe you would just use camera from Logitech and the microphone from the monitor or from
1:44:25your AirPods.
1:44:26Again, these are all great things you can do through the magic of having a Mac and not
1:44:29an iPad.
1:44:30Sorry iPad people.
1:44:31All right, I'm getting sleepy, so let's speed run through the latest Mac Pro rumors.
1:44:38I figure if I set an alarm for, set a timer for like an hour and a half, then you should
1:44:42be done at that point.
1:44:43Is that fair?
1:44:44Yeah, you can make it less than that, I think.
1:44:47Okay, go ahead, the clock is ticking.
1:44:49- Last week I talked about my pessimistic,
1:44:51like nightmare scenario for the Mac Pro.
1:44:54Like, oh, all these things they said,
1:44:56they can make a machine that's like this,
1:44:57and that machine is dumb and doesn't make any sense,
1:44:59and I really hope they don't do that, right?
1:45:01And I described a bunch of different rumors
1:45:02from different videos saying,
1:45:04oh, they could take two M1 ultras
1:45:05and stack them on top of each other,
1:45:06but then there was this rumor tweet about them
1:45:08that being alongside, and it didn't make any sense,
1:45:10and we didn't, you know, whatever.
1:45:12Things change fast in the Mac Pro rumor world,
1:45:13so this week I just wanted to touch on
1:45:15what the new optimistic rumor for the Mac Pro,
1:45:20the previous, this is again from Max Tech,
1:45:22the previous Max Tech video was like,
1:45:23they're gonna take two M1 Ultras
1:45:25and put them on top of each other.
1:45:26Like, nope, nevermind, that's not gonna happen,
1:45:28I misread the patent.
1:45:29Here's the new rumor.
1:45:30And this new, I'm saying it here, it's optimistic.
1:45:33So a lot of this stuff is gonna sound fantastical,
1:45:36it's gonna sound like things that I've said
1:45:37that I would really like but seem unlikely,
1:45:38but take it or leave it, here it is,
1:45:40we'll put links in the show notes to the video,
1:45:42you can take a look at it.
1:45:43And the rumor is, don't worry, it's an M2, not an M1.
1:45:47Yes, the M2 will be ready.
1:45:49And there's gonna be four M2 max size types of things.
1:45:52And they're gonna be next to each other.
1:45:53And they're gonna be connected with that daisy interconnect
1:45:55so that they're all connected with each other.
1:45:57And how can they all be connected?
1:45:58I thought there was only connections on one edge.
1:46:00Ah, that's the M1 you're thinking of.
1:46:02This is the M2.
1:46:03Yes, I said the M2.
1:46:04And there's four of them.
1:46:05And they can be connected together.
1:46:06And they have RAM all around them.
1:46:08How are they gonna deal with the RAM situation?
1:46:10There's not gonna be enough room
1:46:11for 1.5 terabytes of RAM.
1:46:13The rumor there is, oh, there'll be a huge amount of RAM
1:46:15shoved around these things.
1:46:16In fact, there might even be HBM3,
1:46:18which would cost $24,000 for a terabyte of it, maybe not.
1:46:21But either way, there'll be a bunch of really fast RAM,
1:46:24even if it's just LPDDR5,
1:46:26but also there's an external RAM controller
1:46:28so you can have RAM in slots.
1:46:29And that RAM in slots will be slower and more distant,
1:46:32but it'll act as a kind of a RAM hierarchy.
1:46:34128, 256 gigs of really, really fast RAM
1:46:37next to these four M2 max things
1:46:39that are all tied together,
1:46:40and then an even bigger pool of like a terabyte of RAM
1:46:42in DIMS that is slower, probably even slower
1:46:45than it is in the current Mac Pro Xeon,
1:46:47but it will be there.
1:46:48How are they gonna deal with GPUs?
1:46:50The rumor here is, oh, there's actually a GP,
1:46:53what looks like might be a standalone GPU from Apple,
1:46:56code named Lifuco, and the code name for the M1 chip
1:46:59was apparently Tonga, and Lifuco is a smaller island
1:47:02in the kingdom of Tonga, and the idea is like,
1:47:05oh, it's a bunch of GPU cores,
1:47:07but it doesn't live inside the M1,
1:47:08that's outside it, as in an Apple branded separate GPU.
1:47:12So the Mac Pro would have four M2 Maxes,
1:47:15a bunch of RAM around it, maybe some external RAM,
1:47:18slots that can take GPUs and those GPUs
1:47:21to add onto the massive amount of GPUs
1:47:22that are in the system on chips.
1:47:23Those GPUs would be Apple GPUs made from Apple GPU cores
1:47:28that would go in slots to augment the GPUs
1:47:30that are already built into the thing.
1:47:32That is the optimistic Mac Pro rumor,
1:47:34which is like, just take everything
1:47:36that has ever been mentioned that sounds cool
1:47:38and say yeah they're gonna do all of that.
1:47:40Oh and by the way it'll come out in September or something.
1:47:43So-- - Yeah, I don't think--
1:47:45- That's a lot of stuff.
1:47:47- It'd be nice but that seems optimistic.
1:47:50- It has the benefit of saying that
1:47:53the timeline doesn't make sense
1:47:55but the technology makes sense
1:47:56because we can't figure out
1:47:57how they're gonna put four M1 based chips in there.
1:47:59Apple said it's done with the M1 based things.
1:48:01The M2 we know is coming.
1:48:03If you take four M2 maxes
1:48:05And they are able to connect in a four by four grid
1:48:08with these new daisy connectors and everything,
1:48:10like the rumors say.
1:48:11And you could have an external pool of RAM,
1:48:12and Apple could make its own external GPU.
1:48:14These are all plausible things.
1:48:16The only thing that doesn't make any sense is the timeline.
1:48:18But hey, those are the two rumors.
1:48:19You heard the pessimistic one last week,
1:48:21you heard the optimistic one this week.
1:48:23Now we just gotta watch the calendar and see what we get.
1:48:26- That's it?
1:48:28- That's it.
1:48:29- Three and a half minutes, Jon, I'm impressed.
1:48:31You made it.
1:48:32- Yeah, talk fast.
1:48:33- That's the secret.
1:48:34Thanks to our sponsors this week, Collide, JumpCloud, and Quesada by Lutron.
1:48:40And thanks to our members who support us directly, you can join at atp.fm/join.
1:48:43We will talk to you next week.
1:48:46Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental, oh it
1:48:57was accidental.
1:48:58John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him
1:49:04'Cause it was accidental, it was accidental
1:49:09And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:49:14And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them
1:49:19Follow them @CASEYLISS
1:49:24So that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:49:28Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C
1:49:33USA, Syracuse
1:49:36It's accidental
1:49:39They didn't mean to
1:49:41Accidental
1:49:44♪ Tech podcast so long ♪
1:49:47- I spent today kind of cleaning up,
1:49:51I had finally shipped the next version of Overcast
1:49:55to the App Store, it's being released on Friday,
1:49:57so finally shipped it, and so I've been cleaning up,
1:50:00like just catching up on paperwork, email,
1:50:04and my digital cleanup things,
1:50:06cleaning all the files off my desktop
1:50:07and archiving all the old ATP episodes that I had
1:50:10still sitting on my desktop instead of
1:50:12in the archive drive where they belong.
1:50:13So going through all this stuff,
1:50:14and I decided I'm finally going to set up Synology backup,
1:50:18and I'm not gonna do it in any kind of weird,
1:50:20complicated, convoluted way where I can use Backblaze.
1:50:24I'm just gonna pay for B2 storage per gig.
1:50:27- Oh.
1:50:28- Well, because I saw that what I actually need
1:50:32and want to back up on it--
1:50:33- Do you mean B2 or Synology's things?
1:50:35Because B2 is Backblaze's thing.
1:50:37- Yes, but I mean rather than using Backblaze's
1:50:39regular backup client where it's unlimited, you know?
1:50:41- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:50:42- So you're gonna do what I do,
1:50:44which is I pay for B2 storage
1:50:45and my Synology backs up to it.
1:50:47- Yeah, because what I actually need from B2
1:50:50is gonna end up being something like 40 bucks a month.
1:50:52It's like eight terabytes roughly,
1:50:54which is about 40 bucks a month.
1:50:56And you know what, I'll just pay that.
1:50:58I'd rather pay that than have to deal with something
1:51:00that is much more complicated than that.
1:51:03And I've been doing those complicated solutions
1:51:05for years now and I'm done with them.
1:51:07I do not wanna do them anymore.
1:51:09So I'm just gonna pay the 40 bucks a month
1:51:11or whatever it ends up being,
1:51:12to back up my massive Synology collection to B2.
1:51:15- And the reason I mention Synology is I think,
1:51:17don't they have like C2 or something that's there?
1:51:19So you should compare prices,
1:51:20'cause both of them are just as straightforward.
1:51:21You just, you pay per byte that you store
1:51:24and just compare the rates.
1:51:26I think Synology might have its own thing.
1:51:28- Maybe, and there's other things,
1:51:29there's like Glacier and stuff, and I don't like Glacier.
1:51:32I've used it before.
1:51:33I really don't like it.
1:51:34- Wait, so tell me why not.
1:51:35I'm not arguing, but tell me why not.
1:51:37- 'Cause the restore times are ridiculous,
1:51:39And the way Glacier used to be implemented terrifies me,
1:51:42so I don't like to think about it.
1:51:43- So I also, because I keep bouncing
1:51:46between these two locations,
1:51:48I was looking into options for
1:51:50synchronizing the two synologies,
1:51:53the really ancient one in location one,
1:51:55and the tiny little new one in location two.
1:51:58And so I think, I set up the app on the Synology
1:52:03is called Cloud Sync.
1:52:06and that is backing it up to B2, but that says that it
1:52:10offers a two-way sync option.
1:52:12So could I set up Cloud Sync on both of them
1:52:15and have them synchronized that way and back up
1:52:18at the same time?
1:52:18So I have my two synologies syncing one of their volumes
1:52:23bidirectionally to each other, but they're
1:52:25sitting next to each other connected
1:52:26to the same ethernet switch.
1:52:27Now, that probably means this would also
1:52:28work over the internet, because it's probably just TCP/IP,
1:52:31and assuming I set up all the networking, that would work.
1:52:35But the problem is, the problem with all Synology things
1:52:37that Kasey can relate to,
1:52:39I don't remember what the name of the app is
1:52:40that I used to show syncing,
1:52:42'cause they're all called some variation
1:52:44on sync cloud drive.
1:52:46- Well, and Synology drive does this.
1:52:49But I looked into setting that up
1:52:51and it was so much more complicated
1:52:53and I couldn't get it to--
1:52:54- I can tell you the sync thing that I'm using,
1:52:57every time I make a modification
1:52:59to the drive that I know is syncing,
1:53:01I get an email that says,
1:53:03"Oh, Synology, or a notification on this,
1:53:05"and I'll do this."
1:53:05Synology drive sync had a problem,
1:53:07'cause it doesn't like it
1:53:08when you change files out from under.
1:53:10It's like, "What kind of syncing system is this?"
1:53:11I'm like, "I know, the file was probably partial
1:53:14"when you went to sync it,
1:53:15"or it got yanked out from under you
1:53:17"while you were in the middle of syncing,
1:53:18"but don't tell me that, just deal with it and resync."
1:53:20And it does, it eventually gets the disks to be right,
1:53:23but it gets upset every time it happens.
1:53:25And again, I wish I could tell you
1:53:26which feature of the umpteen features in Synology
1:53:29that does this that I'm using,
1:53:30but I set it up in 2013 and I don't remember.
1:53:33- Yeah, 'cause I mean, for whatever it's worth also,
1:53:36I would almost never be changing the contents of it
1:53:40from a different location.
1:53:42The other location would most likely be read-only.
1:53:46- Yeah, so the problem, as much as I love Synology,
1:53:50and I love my devices,
1:53:52I have a small collection of them at this point,
1:53:55but as much as I love the Synology--
1:53:56- Everyone mail Casey your old Synologies as well.
1:53:58- Oh, that's not a joke, I am in.
1:54:00your old 5Ks and all your own Synologies, mail them to Casey. Bring them in, bring
1:54:03them on baby. Synology's Achilles heel is that they are the worst at naming
1:54:11things and they love, they love to regurgitate old names as new things and
1:54:18just have like, Synology Drive has meant 15 different things across five
1:54:24different years, like it's preposterous. To more directly answer your question, so
1:54:29So I know that there are ways to have basically live syncing
1:54:34between Synologies.
1:54:35That is not what I am doing.
1:54:37And it sounds like Jon would be a better tutor for you
1:54:39if that's what you're looking to do.
1:54:40And I think it is.
1:54:41- If I could remember what the hell app was.
1:54:42- If you can remember what the hell it is.
1:54:44For what I'm doing is I'm just making a cold storage backup
1:54:48from one Synology to the other.
1:54:50And that's using hyper backup on both devices.
1:54:53There's a hyper backup server and a hyper backup client.
1:54:57But on the server side, which is the cold storage side,
1:55:02it is not easy to get at the files.
1:55:05They're not just sitting on the file system
1:55:07like what I think you would prefer.
1:55:09So my solution is not helpful for you.
1:55:11And to go back a half step on a quick tangent,
1:55:14there is Synology C2, and it is $60 a year for one terabyte.
1:55:19How big is your backup set, did you say, two terabytes?
1:55:21- About eight.
1:55:22- Eight terabytes, okay, so yeah,
1:55:23you're screwed just like me.
1:55:24- Yeah, I forgot.
1:55:25That's fifty five dollars a month or five hundred and fifty dollars a year for me sitting at about 12 terabytes right now
1:55:33It's eight hundred dollars a year, which is a lot of money like for that money
1:55:38I would just buy another Synology send it to you into this duplication
1:55:43You know what? I mean? Like it's just not it's not worth it to me. What's also by the way?
1:55:47What's also really nice about using b2 is that?
1:55:52I can use, on the desktop, I have the wonderful app
1:55:56Transmit by Panic.
1:55:58That has B2 as one of its storage engines.
1:56:00And when you just back up to B2 with the Cloud Sync thing,
1:56:04it's not doing anything strange with the file structure
1:56:06or anything like that.
1:56:07You can just go and open up the bucket and browse the files.
1:56:09They're right there.
1:56:10And so anywhere I am, if I happen to be away from home
1:56:13and not able to reach my Synology,
1:56:15and I need a file off of it, I can just open up Transmit
1:56:18and log into my B2 bucket,
1:56:20and the files are just sitting there.
1:56:21So that's really nice, and anything that's super complicated
1:56:25or managed in a higher level way
1:56:27might not necessarily do that.
1:56:29Like when Arc does stuff, for instance,
1:56:30the wonderful backup app Arc for Mac,
1:56:32Arc has its own whole file structure,
1:56:34and it's kind of an opaque structure
1:56:37if you're just trying to use something like Transmit,
1:56:39like you'll never find what you need.
1:56:41Whereas this, the files are just sitting there in folders.
1:56:44- While we've been talking here,
1:56:45I've been going through the Synology UI
1:56:46trying to find the place where I sync
1:56:48my two Synologies to each other.
1:56:49I did find the B2 one that's in Cloud Sync.
1:56:52It's not in Storage Manager,
1:56:54it's not in Control Panel that I can find.
1:56:55I'm still looking for it.
1:56:57Maybe it's in File Station?
1:56:58Let's see.
1:56:59- No, it wouldn't be in File Station.
1:57:01Do you have Hyper Backup installed?
1:57:02That would be, I would guess that's where it would be,
1:57:05but that might be exclusively Synology to Synology backup,
1:57:08so I'm not sure.
1:57:10But anyway, so I'm looking at B2 for 12 terabytes,
1:57:13which again is roughly my backup size,
1:57:15and no downloaded data for month to month,
1:57:18which is probably what it would be.
1:57:19It's $720 a year, which is a lot of money.
1:57:22I mean, that's 60 bucks a month.
1:57:24I mean, after a couple of years,
1:57:26I might as well just have a different Synology.
1:57:29- This is one of those things where like,
1:57:29I'm just gonna throw money at it
1:57:30because I don't want to actually deal with
1:57:33like multiple complex convoluted options anymore.
1:57:37'Cause again, like that's what I've been doing.
1:57:38I had my crazy iSCSI setup.
1:57:41Like I just, and then there's things
1:57:43that you can try to like hack the Synology to run,
1:57:46you know, the backblaze client.
1:57:47It's like, I don't wanna do any of that.
1:57:49I don't want to deal with any of that.
1:57:50I don't want to maintain it.
1:57:51I don't want to deal with it when it breaks.
1:57:52I just want this to work.
1:57:54And I think the B2 option is going to do that for me.
1:57:57And for 40 bucks a month for eight terabytes, fine.
1:57:59Just fine, I'll do it.
1:58:01- I found it backwards.
1:58:02I have a new idea.
1:58:03I'm like, I should just look for one of those emails
1:58:05that I described with the sync and the email says,
1:58:07shared folder sync has failed.
1:58:09Please check the DSM log, blah, blah, blah.
1:58:11I have a million of those messages.
1:58:12So it's shared folder sync.
1:58:13So I'm on the, I'm hot on the trail here.
1:58:15Where is the shared folder stuff hiding in the UI?
1:58:17You should know this.
1:58:18- Shared folder control panel?
1:58:20- There is a control panel.
1:58:21- There you go, control panel, file sharing, shared folder.
1:58:26And then there is...
1:58:30- There is a high availability package for Synology
1:58:33that you might end up using if you wanted to do
1:58:36like a primary secondary style setup, Marco,
1:58:41would if you wanted to make like the one on the mainland,
1:58:46your secondary and the one near you,
1:58:48your primary or something along those lines.
1:58:50I know there's ways to do this.
1:58:52The problem is, again, as much as I love Synology,
1:58:55they change the mechanisms for doing this
1:58:58and the apps you use on the Synology for doing this
1:59:00as often as you change computers.
1:59:02And so it's impossible to keep up with
1:59:04what is the current best advice for these sorts of things.
1:59:09But honest to goodness,
1:59:11as much as I'm slamming Linus Tech Tips,
1:59:14the video they did on this,
1:59:15which I don't think is exactly what you want,
1:59:18but it's worth, you know, it's like a quick,
1:59:19it's a relatively quick video.
1:59:22You really should dig that up
1:59:24and see if they answer your question,
1:59:25'cause I think that might help.
1:59:27- Yeah, I probably should.
1:59:29- Oh no, I mean, the easiest answer, absolutely,
1:59:31without a shadow of a doubt, is just put it all on B2,
1:59:33but that's solving backup,
1:59:36but that's not solving local availability.
1:59:38If you don't care about local availability, then yes,
1:59:40that's the easiest answer by far, just do that.
1:59:44The problem is I don't even,
1:59:45I think, what is it, Cloud Sync to put it in V2?
1:59:47I don't even know where you put it, how you get it there.
1:59:49- Yeah, Cloud Sync.
1:59:50- This is why I keep making backups of my Synology config
1:59:53is I don't know any of this stuff.
1:59:54I know it's called shared folder sync.
1:59:56I'm in the shared folder control panel.
1:59:57I can't find anything that has to do with sync.
1:59:58If I ever had to set this up again,
2:00:00God, it would take me so long to,
2:00:01I would suggest that hyper backup
2:00:03definitely seems like a better solution
2:00:05to what you're doing, especially since I can't find
2:00:07where I configured share folder sync.
2:00:08But I know it's happening 'cause I get the emails
2:00:10when it complains whenever something changes.
2:00:12And I know it's working 'cause it does eventually sync them
2:00:15because then I would look at the two different synologies
2:00:16and I'd say, "Yep, they have the same contents
2:00:18in that shared," quote unquote, "shared folder,"
2:00:20which is really the top level and entire volume.
2:00:23- So on Hyper Backup, when I choose,
2:00:26or when I go to make a new backup destination,
2:00:28I get Rsync, I've got Web Dev, OpenStack Swift,
2:00:32whatever that is, and then Cloud Service,
2:00:34Dropbox, High Drive, Azure S3, Hubic,
2:00:38High Cloud S3, Rackspace, JD Cloud, and Google Drive.
2:00:42I do not see B2 here, but I know there is a way
2:00:45to get on to B2.
2:00:46They may have their own package for all I know,
2:00:48I'm not even sure.
2:00:49But there's gotta be a way to do it, I'm almost sure of it.
2:00:52(beeping)