ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► John, has your computer arrived yet? Didn't come today, that's for sure. Well, one would think you would hear the forklift putting it in place.

00:00:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I know. I saw the weight and the UPS tracking thing. Take a guess.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Hundred pounds? No, 82. Oh, actually I decided my estimate was

00:00:16 ◼   ► ridiculous and was gonna walk it way back, but never mind. Because the machine is only like 50, so I guess 30 pounds of packaging.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Excited? I guess not, since you don't have a monitor yet. I did, uh, did all sorts of preparing the way today.

00:00:30 ◼   ► Did I? Well, I tweeted some things here. I'll send you more stuff. If the Mac Pro arrives

00:00:36 ◼   ► before the monitor, which by current shipping estimates is likely to happen,

00:00:40 ◼   ► are you really gonna sit there and not

00:00:43 ◼   ► try it? Like, not plug it into something else just to test it out? Right? I mean, what am I gonna connect it to?

00:00:49 ◼   ► Anything! Yeah.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Plug it into your gaming monitor. I don't care, like anything.

00:00:54 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't know. I wanna have...

00:00:56 ◼   ► I'm not in a hurry. I mean, I might actually take it out of the box and set it up, kind of. Or, I don't know.

00:01:03 ◼   ► I just assume wait for the monitor to get here. I gotta see what the date is gonna be on the monitor.

00:01:07 ◼   ► So, like, you've been waiting 10 years for this computer.

00:01:09 ◼   ► It's gonna arrive in your house, and you're gonna let it, like, sit in the box for a week, like,

00:01:13 ◼   ► rather than plug it into any other monitor.

00:01:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, what's not... It's gonna keep. Like, I've...

00:01:19 ◼   ► I just have to see what the, what the ship date is. Like, if it's still gonna be within my vacation time. Like, this

00:01:24 ◼   ► holiday stuff going on too, you know? Yeah, but still.

00:01:26 ◼   ► Yeah, take a look at that picture for, that I put in our slack. That's, that's just for our slack, unfortunately, not for our listeners.

00:01:33 ◼   ► Sorry. Oh my god, is this the attic?

00:01:34 ◼   ► I did some major preparing of the way, as evidenced from all the impressions on the ground of where things used to be.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Oh my word!

00:01:41 ◼   ► I, you have a much nicer attic than me. This is, like, finished.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Yeah, this, yeah, there's carpet and, like, a regular ceiling and everything, a window.

00:01:48 ◼   ► You don't think I'm putting my, piling my computers in a dingy attic. Yeah, it's all finished.

00:01:53 ◼   ► This is, like, this is nicer than my office.

00:01:55 ◼   ► Well, I mean, the rug is obviously gross, but, you know, 80s, what can you do?

00:02:00 ◼   ► It's still, it's wall-to-wall carpeting and a finished, finished walls and ceiling and a regular window on one side, like,

00:02:07 ◼   ► that's... Windows on the other side too, yeah. This is a livable space. It is not heated or cooled, just FYI.

00:02:14 ◼   ► Oh, okay, right, that makes it difficult.

00:02:17 ◼   ► Although, like, it was below freezing today and I worked up there half the day and was fine, just because, you know,

00:02:24 ◼   ► old houses, not too much insulation, so we are heating it whether we know it or not. It's just...

00:02:29 ◼   ► The computers act as a form of insulation. They retain heat.

00:02:33 ◼   ► Now, I'm pixel peeping at these boxes here. I'm seeing a box for a Performa.

00:02:37 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. Do you see the sun fading on the Apple logo? The Apple logo on the other side of that box looks brand new.

00:02:43 ◼   ► Oh, wow!

00:02:45 ◼   ► Totally sun-scorched. Oh, yes, you can see the Mac Pro box and the Cinema Display box, those are already,

00:02:50 ◼   ► they're empty obviously, but they're already to receive my old computer and then there's a big spot for the boxes of the new computer.

00:02:56 ◼   ► Ah, so your procedure is, when you retire something, you put it back in its own box in the attic for long-term storage.

00:03:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:06 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not bad.

00:03:07 ◼   ► That's why I have all these boxes.

00:03:08 ◼   ► You're keeping a Wii Fit?

00:03:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I have a Wii Fit. Why else would I throw it away?

00:03:15 ◼   ► We have one too and I don't know why. I honestly don't know why.

00:03:18 ◼   ► But I know why we had one. I don't know why we continue to have one.

00:03:23 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure we had our Wii Fit long after we had our Wii.

00:03:27 ◼   ► And it just like, eventually we discovered it and I'm not sure we've actually located it again or thrown it away since then,

00:03:34 ◼   ► but man, I'm really impressed by this, by the diligence here.

00:03:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I had to do a lot of refactoring to try to make more efficient use of space.

00:03:43 ◼   ► Here's another shot of stuff that's in a layer that you can't see.

00:03:48 ◼   ► Wow, this is a lot of stuff.

00:03:49 ◼   ► Like, I mean, I keep a lot of boxes.

00:03:51 ◼   ► Like, generally I will keep the box to anything that I plan to resell for a non-trivial amount of money down the road.

00:03:58 ◼   ► Or that would be very difficult to ship anywhere for servicing down the road if necessary.

00:04:05 ◼   ► So like, you know, obviously like, iMac boxes.

00:04:07 ◼   ► Like, I keep the iMac boxes because that, you know, that qualifies on both counts.

00:04:13 ◼   ► So I'm counting roughly 40 boxes here, but I'm also seeing like a pile of jewel cases or something in the back.

00:04:19 ◼   ► It's hard to make out what those are.

00:04:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I used to back up everything to optical disc and I printed labels for those optical discs and nice little jewel cases.

00:04:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, not the reason that ended, but that's what those are.

00:04:32 ◼   ► I keep the boxes mostly if I think about if I ever had to move this anywhere, whether it be from a house to another or just, you know, shipping it to somebody or giving it to somebody.

00:04:42 ◼   ► How awkward would it be not to have the box and how much room does the thing take up?

00:04:46 ◼   ► So when I was going through stuff today, I was like, oh, here's a box to my two gaming monitors.

00:04:51 ◼   ► I don't need those boxes, right?

00:04:52 ◼   ► But they were skinny.

00:04:53 ◼   ► And if I ever needed to move those gaming monitors anywhere or give them away or ship them or sell them, it's much easier to have the box.

00:05:00 ◼   ► So I kept them.

00:05:02 ◼   ► So that's why you see a lot of these boxes for stuff that's out.

00:05:05 ◼   ► I keep the boxes because when it's time to retire them, you put them in the box.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Even if you're going to recycle them, it's convenient to just have the box and bring them to, you know, Apple in the box and say, here you go.

00:05:15 ◼   ► And then the box is their problem.

00:05:16 ◼   ► They probably immediately throw it away.

00:05:18 ◼   ► Like you're actually causing them more trouble.

00:05:20 ◼   ► They can recycle.

00:05:21 ◼   ► They can recycle the box, too.

00:05:22 ◼   ► Imagine how big the trash can must be in an Apple store.

00:05:25 ◼   ► It's probably like the tiniest.

00:05:26 ◼   ► It's probably a Mac Pro.

00:05:27 ◼   ► It's probably one of those, like because they what trash they throw away.

00:05:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:30 ◼   ► So this is this is a was a pretty big refactor.

00:05:33 ◼   ► Most I got rid of two G5 boxes.

00:05:36 ◼   ► Very large.

00:05:38 ◼   ► Oh, my word.

00:05:39 ◼   ► Oh, I mean, I'm seeing some old stuff like that.

00:05:41 ◼   ► You have a 15 inch MacBook Pro box that is black.

00:05:45 ◼   ► Like when was the last time they were black?

00:05:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:48 ◼   ► I also have another black portable box.

00:05:50 ◼   ► I could I didn't even know what it was from the top.

00:05:51 ◼   ► I couldn't tell.

00:05:52 ◼   ► I started to take out.

00:05:53 ◼   ► It was a power Mac.

00:05:54 ◼   ► G4 was also in a black box, but that is still in the protective brown wrapper somewhere buried in here.

00:06:00 ◼   ► You can see in the second picture, you can see my Syracuse Boulevard sign that I stole.

00:06:05 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:06:05 ◼   ► From Long Island poking out there.

00:06:08 ◼   ► That's my original Mac box on the on the bottom left.

00:06:11 ◼   ► And then next to it is another original Mac box that is not mine, but that I got later in life.

00:06:16 ◼   ► It was good to have two of those.

00:06:17 ◼   ► My actual box is fairly beat up.

00:06:19 ◼   ► So I'm curious, why are you keeping the boxes for things like the TiVo bolt or the like Sony Handycam,

00:06:28 ◼   ► things that like aren't particularly meaningful, aren't going to be particularly worth anything on resale and aren't noteworthy in any way?

00:06:36 ◼   ► The Handycam has my actual Handycam in it, and I have the tapes and everything for that.

00:06:42 ◼   ► So I think I have everything off those tapes onto the computer, but it's always good to have the tapes and the thing.

00:06:47 ◼   ► They can play them back through a series of dongles.

00:06:49 ◼   ► I get the stuff off so that the Handycam is actually in there.

00:06:52 ◼   ► That's a convenient way to store it and all the stuff.

00:06:54 ◼   ► The TiVos and everything.

00:06:56 ◼   ► Someday I'll give them to somebody.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Like I used to have more TiVos, but as they aged out, I said, "Hey, does anybody want one of these TiVos?"

00:07:02 ◼   ► And someone would say yes, and I would send it to them in the box.

00:07:05 ◼   ► The TiVo bolt is connected to television, so I'm using it.

00:07:08 ◼   ► Eventually I won't use it, and I'll put it in that box and give it to somebody who wants it.

00:07:12 ◼   ► What about like you have boxes for GameCube controllers and the Switch Pro controller?

00:07:17 ◼   ► Why?

00:07:19 ◼   ► Those are actual controllers in there.

00:07:21 ◼   ► The Switch Pro controller doesn't have anything in it, but the GameCube ones, I have many sealed in the box GameCube controllers.

00:07:27 ◼   ► For what purpose?

00:07:28 ◼   ► In the after times, those will be currency.

00:07:30 ◼   ► Gamers know these are very valuable things sealed in the box never-opened GameCube controllers.

00:07:37 ◼   ► Wait, never opened?

00:07:38 ◼   ► Yes, people are trying to figure out where I live right now so they can come to my house and steal these.

00:07:44 ◼   ► It's a hot commodity.

00:07:45 ◼   ► What is the going market value today for an unopened GameCube controller?

00:07:49 ◼   ► That depends on who's buying, but they are less valuable now that Nintendo has, I think, started making them again.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Like they made a Smash Brothers variant during the Wii era.

00:07:59 ◼   ► It's my favorite controller, so I have a couple of them.

00:08:02 ◼   ► Wow.

00:08:03 ◼   ► It's like peering into your mind, Jon.

00:08:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:06 ◼   ► And don't look at the other side. The other side is a mess.

00:08:09 ◼   ► The other side is actually larger, but I did not refactor the other side.

00:08:13 ◼   ► Baby steps.

00:08:13 ◼   ► And this thing's off-camera to your left.

00:08:14 ◼   ► You can't see it.

00:08:15 ◼   ► I've got a whole line of classic Macs over there.

00:08:16 ◼   ► To the right, I've got a bunch of other crap.

00:08:18 ◼   ► That brown box on an angle is when Apple started making the iMac boxes.

00:08:22 ◼   ► That's the 5K iMac box.

00:08:23 ◼   ► I know it's not rectangular anymore.

00:08:25 ◼   ► That's a real stacking problem for me. I haven't quite figured that out.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Ay yi yi.

00:08:31 ◼   ► That's how I spend my day.

00:08:32 ◼   ► By the way, I've been looking up on eBay, it does appear as though the value of an unopened, genuine Nintendo GameCube controller does seem to vary between about $50 and $150, depending on what it is.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Like, some of them are obviously more collectible than others, but there's actually a decent amount of these in the sold listings that have sold for pretty significant prices.

00:08:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:55 ◼   ► I mean, my attic, which is not a finished attic, it's literally just like an unfinished space with raw wood everywhere.

00:09:01 ◼   ► That's where we keep all of our boxes for stuff like that.

00:09:04 ◼   ► And it is nowhere near as organized as this.

00:09:07 ◼   ► But I probably keep about maybe an eighth as many boxes as you do.

00:09:13 ◼   ► Same.

00:09:14 ◼   ► And you don't have a bunch of old computers that you never owned and used.

00:09:17 ◼   ► Like, I have, there's a Mac 2FX in there.

00:09:19 ◼   ► Off to the right, off-camera is two neck slabs, the next laser printer.

00:09:25 ◼   ► A next megapixel display, a next color display.

00:09:28 ◼   ► To your left is a next cube.

00:09:30 ◼   ► I have a lot of next stuff buried in here.

00:09:33 ◼   ► That's incredible.

00:09:34 ◼   ► I mean, just like the amount of stuff and the historical value of some of it and the complete seemingly lack of historical value of some of the other ones.

00:09:45 ◼   ► A lot of it, like I do, I keep boxes because when it's time to get rid of a thing, if I'm going to throw it away, then at that point I can recycle the box and throw away the thing or recycle the thing.

00:09:54 ◼   ► But if it's going to be carried or shipped anywhere, having the box is great because a lot of these things are ungainly and weird and have lots of little parts, but they fit perfectly into their own original box.

00:10:04 ◼   ► That's true.

00:10:05 ◼   ► I can't fault you there.

00:10:07 ◼   ► It's just...

00:10:08 ◼   ► And I do try to get the boxes, you know, I don't keep them forever.

00:10:12 ◼   ► They do leave the house like those two big G5 boxes I had.

00:10:14 ◼   ► You know, I had them because I was so optimistic.

00:10:16 ◼   ► You can hear back in Hypercritical, it's like, well, I got this 2008 Mac Pro and I'll probably get another Mac Pro in a few years and they tend to be the same shape.

00:10:23 ◼   ► So it's good to have these boxes around just as like transporting mechanisms because it's a big, heavy, bulky thing and they can get damaged in shipping or whatever.

00:10:31 ◼   ► So, hey, you know, the G5 was the same shape as the Mac Pro, which is probably going to be the same shape as my next Mac Pro, is probably going to be the same shape as my next Mac Pro.

00:10:39 ◼   ► And that did not pan out.

00:10:41 ◼   ► So those boxes, they were sort of ladies in waiting and their time was, they were never called upon.

00:10:48 ◼   ► Their time never came.

00:10:50 ◼   ► And so they are now leaving the house.

00:10:52 ◼   ► I'm actually more surprised than anything that you have this beautiful finished attic and I never knew it.

00:10:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it's really nice.

00:10:57 ◼   ► That's what all the stuff is.

00:10:58 ◼   ► Look at that awesome laptop bag.

00:11:00 ◼   ► That's how big laptop bags used to be when laptops are much larger.

00:11:03 ◼   ► Do you see it in there?

00:11:04 ◼   ► That's a Kensington laptop bag, leather.

00:11:06 ◼   ► It was made in the era of like the Blackbird, like the PowerBook G3.

00:11:13 ◼   ► I feel like it almost fit my iMac in there.

00:11:15 ◼   ► It's huge.

00:11:17 ◼   ► That's back when Kensington made really great things.

00:11:20 ◼   ► Like it's very old.

00:11:22 ◼   ► It's still as good as the day I got it.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Everything all still works on it.

00:11:25 ◼   ► It is currently holding, I believe three Mac laptops are in there right now.

00:11:29 ◼   ► Just snacked on top of each other to approximate the size of how big laptops used to be.

00:11:34 ◼   ► And there's still plenty of room.

00:11:36 ◼   ► There's a Mac portable out off camera as well in its own Apple bag that the Mac portable came in considerably larger.

00:11:44 ◼   ► I just can't believe you're going to get this computer and not mess with it.

00:11:48 ◼   ► You've been waiting 10 years. Oh, I'm not in a rush.

00:11:50 ◼   ► 10 years.

00:11:51 ◼   ► I said I might take it out and just like physically situate it and like see, does it look okay here?

00:11:56 ◼   ► Does it look okay there?

00:11:57 ◼   ► Is it, you know, does it feel like wobbly?

00:11:59 ◼   ► Is it secure?

00:12:00 ◼   ► You know, I don't know.

00:12:01 ◼   ► I might start the transfer process.

00:12:04 ◼   ► Like I might temporarily hook them on it up to it and figure out how I'm going to do the transfer.

00:12:07 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:12:08 ◼   ► I'll play it by ear, but I'm not in a super big hurry.

00:12:10 ◼   ► I don't remember exactly which computer it was that we had.

00:12:16 ◼   ► We had bought a gateway 2000 computer.

00:12:19 ◼   ► This is like early to mid nineties and we had bought a Dell computer.

00:12:22 ◼   ► I think the gateway was first and then the Dell later.

00:12:26 ◼   ► And one of these, my dad had splurged for like a 20 or 21 inch, uh, like trinitron CRT or something along those lines.

00:12:34 ◼   ► Maybe it wasn't trinitron, but it was something like a fancy, fancy, fancy CRT that weighed a billion and seven pounds.

00:12:40 ◼   ► Yup.

00:12:40 ◼   ► I've carried those a few times.

00:12:42 ◼   ► We had a situation.

00:12:45 ◼   ► That's probably why you had those back problems back in the Tumblr days.

00:12:47 ◼   ► It's for carrying CRTs.

00:12:48 ◼   ► We had this like 20 whatever inch CRT that we had ordered and it didn't come in the same time as a computer or something like that.

00:12:55 ◼   ► I forget exactly what the details were, but I vividly remember that my dad either went out and got, or perhaps ordered a literally like 10 inch gray scale monitor.

00:13:06 ◼   ► That purpose was only to get us through the time before the beautiful CRT arrived.

00:13:13 ◼   ► So we hooked up this like, for the time, unbelievably nice computer.

00:13:18 ◼   ► That's surely like one, one hundredth as fast as our iPhones today.

00:13:21 ◼   ► But at the time was amazing.

00:13:23 ◼   ► This might've been the Pentium Pro that we had.

00:13:25 ◼   ► I don't recall for sure.

00:13:26 ◼   ► But anyways, we hooked up this like wonderful, amazing computer to this like postage stamp of a monitor and used it like that for a week or something like that until the trinitron, the, what I'm calling trinitron monitor finally showed up.

00:13:38 ◼   ► And so granted I am a older and arguably more mature human than I was at, you know, 10 years old, but I am surprised, John, that you're not after 10 friggin years, you're not just waiting at the front door for the delivery carrier to arrive and take the, or take the Mac Pro into your office and come out three weeks later.

00:13:59 ◼   ► This is a thing that will come up later in the show.

00:14:03 ◼   ► But physically speaking, I'm pretty sure I can't actually connect this new computer to any monitors in my house unless I buy an adapter.

00:14:10 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:14:11 ◼   ► Because on the back of the video card are, you know, USB-C shaped ports.

00:14:15 ◼   ► And I have no monitors that accept that as input.

00:14:18 ◼   ► So I would have to get an adapter, at least one adapter, sometimes possibly two.

00:14:22 ◼   ► Does your, your cinema display, does that take DVI in?

00:14:25 ◼   ► Which one?

00:14:27 ◼   ► The, the one I'm looking at right now?

00:14:30 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:14:30 ◼   ► It's a mini display port.

00:14:32 ◼   ► Oh, right.

00:14:33 ◼   ► It's the newer one.

00:14:33 ◼   ► Right.

00:14:34 ◼   ► Okay.

00:14:34 ◼   ► So that, I think you can passively adapt that to HDMI and then you can probably get a dongle.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I can dongle for sure.

00:14:44 ◼   ► I can dongle them.

00:14:45 ◼   ► If you happen to have a Thunderbolt two to three adapter, that might work.

00:14:49 ◼   ► That's, that's what I would need is a, all I need is a Thunderbolt two to three.

00:14:53 ◼   ► I have a Thunderbolt display too.

00:14:54 ◼   ► It's buried somewhere in that thing.

00:14:56 ◼   ► All I would need is a two to three to hook that up.

00:14:58 ◼   ► And then maybe, yeah.

00:15:01 ◼   ► But I don't have any of those dongles, so.

00:15:02 ◼   ► All right.

00:15:03 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:15:04 ◼   ► The bigger question is how would you, how are you going to do the migration from the old computer to the new one?

00:15:09 ◼   ► Because the old computer lacks, like the, the fastest port it has is firewire 800.

00:15:15 ◼   ► Yeah, gigabit ethernet.

00:15:16 ◼   ► Okay.

00:15:17 ◼   ► So that's, so you're good.

00:15:18 ◼   ► Yeah, that's probably better.

00:15:19 ◼   ► That's my plan A. I have many plan B's and C's and D's and so on and so forth, but plan A is ethernet.

00:15:25 ◼   ► Like if doing migration assistant over a target disk mode is by far the best way to do it if you are in a situation where you can do that.

00:15:32 ◼   ► So anybody who doesn't know, you hold down something that means that involves T on boot and it turns the source computer into basically an external hard drive for the destination computer and you connect them via a cable.

00:15:45 ◼   ► These days you would probably use a USB C to C cable.

00:15:48 ◼   ► That has to be actual thunderbolt with the actual lightning bolts on the end, not just a USB cable.

00:15:54 ◼   ► And, uh, and then you can do the transfer that way.

00:15:56 ◼   ► When I got my new 16 inch, I did that from the old laptop and it was amazingly fast and I did it multiple times because I did first the review unit and then I got my own and I did it to that and multiple times having like a regular, like USB C thunderbolt cable, which is, you know, about 20 bucks on Amazon.

00:16:13 ◼   ► Like they're not super cheap, but not super expensive.

00:16:15 ◼   ► A regular thunderbolt three cable, uh, really was very, very, very fast and did the whole transfer for me, for me in like about two hours each time.

00:16:24 ◼   ► And that's transferring like hundreds of gigs of music and stuff.

00:16:27 ◼   ► So that was great.

00:16:29 ◼   ► Now in John's case, since the 2008 Mac pro doesn't even have thunderbolt one, uh, that option is out.

00:16:37 ◼   ► So I think any option that you would use a cable for besides ethernet would require a hilarious chain of dongles that probably wouldn't actually work.

00:16:47 ◼   ► So yeah, I guess ethernet is the way to go.

00:16:48 ◼   ► It would work.

00:16:50 ◼   ► I could do a firewire 800 to thunderbolt, which I have that adapter and then I should go to thunderbolt two.

00:16:56 ◼   ► Then I could go a thunderbolt two to three maybe.

00:17:00 ◼   ► But you have, you have a, um, like a direction flip in the firewire end of it.

00:17:05 ◼   ► Like, would that actually really work?

00:17:07 ◼   ► Cause it's made the, that adapter was made to connect to connect firewire 800 peripherals to a thunderbolt three host.

00:17:14 ◼   ► That's kind of not quite what this would be.

00:17:18 ◼   ► I mean, I know fire or firewire was like a, like kind of hostless protocol, so it actually might work way better than something like USB would work.

00:17:24 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:17:25 ◼   ► I just use that dongle today cause I was, well, this is a story for a variety of reasons involving me shuffling things around in Synology.

00:17:32 ◼   ► It had occasion to back up one of 400 gigs of data from one of my laptops to a disk image on my Synology.

00:17:38 ◼   ► Right.

00:17:38 ◼   ► So fine.

00:17:39 ◼   ► Um, so I, you know, I, that I, I got an, that's what I got that ethernet adapter.

00:17:44 ◼   ► Remember anyway, uh, I plugged in the ethernet adapter and sure enough, it's not that fast, but it's faster than my wifi.

00:17:50 ◼   ► Um, and I start the backup and it ran for three days, like three days, 24 hours a day.

00:17:56 ◼   ► Holy smokes.

00:17:57 ◼   ► Uh, it just, it, it got to like the 99% mark after the first day, but apparently like as I was using super duper, I think super duper sorts files by size.

00:18:05 ◼   ► That's my impression anyway.

00:18:06 ◼   ► So it was towards the tail end.

00:18:08 ◼   ► It was tons of little files and doing that over the network was really killing it.

00:18:11 ◼   ► So that finally got updated.

00:18:13 ◼   ► Um, but, uh, and then I said, then I was trying to mount that image and it would take forever too.

00:18:17 ◼   ► So I'm like, maybe I'll need a local copy of this image.

00:18:19 ◼   ► So I pulled out an external fireware 800 drive, which of course I have hanging around and I connected it to my five K iMac with a firewire 800 thunderbolt two connector.

00:18:27 ◼   ► That worked fine.

00:18:28 ◼   ► And I felt like I was getting full speed out of that.

00:18:31 ◼   ► So I'm just one dongle away from connecting that to the Mac pro, I suppose if that's what I want to do.

00:18:36 ◼   ► But so I've gotten myself lost.

00:18:38 ◼   ► So what is the missing dongle to get anything shaped like USB-C?

00:18:43 ◼   ► I don't have the only dongles I have that have USB-C on one side.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Like that's what I need to plug into the Mac pro.

00:18:48 ◼   ► Right.

00:18:49 ◼   ► USB-C shape connector.

00:18:50 ◼   ► The only adapters in the entire house I have that have that shape connector on one end are, uh, USB-C to USB-A, which of course is not particularly useful to me.

00:19:01 ◼   ► So what, what would you want the other end to be?

00:19:03 ◼   ► So USB-C to what?

00:19:04 ◼   ► I want it to be Thunderbolt three to Thunderbolt two.

00:19:07 ◼   ► If such a thing exists.

00:19:09 ◼   ► It does.

00:19:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:10 ◼   ► Apple makes one.

00:19:10 ◼   ► I think it's like 50 bucks.

00:19:11 ◼   ► It's I used for something.

00:19:13 ◼   ► I like I've used it.

00:19:14 ◼   ► I bought it back when the USB-C transition happened and I ended up using it.

00:19:18 ◼   ► I think like three or four times since then for like, and I was really glad I had it each of those times.

00:19:22 ◼   ► It isn't something that you would typically need very often unless you want to continue to use any firewire peripherals in your post Mac pro world here.

00:19:29 ◼   ► I mean, I'll just, I'll just harvest the drive mechanisms out of that plan on doing a mr.

00:19:33 ◼   ► Palmer in the chat says he's migrated multiple computers using fire right.

00:19:36 ◼   ► A hundred to Thunderbolt two to Thunderbolt three and it works fine.

00:19:39 ◼   ► So if I want to do that, it could, but for 50 bucks, I'm just, I'll pass.

00:19:42 ◼   ► Probably I'll just use the ethernet.

00:19:44 ◼   ► Well, you'll use it until the first two tries where it hangs at three quarters of the way complete for three days.

00:19:51 ◼   ► And then you realize, okay, nevermind.

00:19:52 ◼   ► I just did USB-C to ethernet, which is like maxes out of like 300 megabits and that ran for three days and it was fine.

00:19:59 ◼   ► I think I'm thinking not in a hurry.

00:20:01 ◼   ► So now it's good that the monitor is going to be slow plugin, HDMI, anything, start the migration.

00:20:06 ◼   ► And then by the time the migration finishes, your monitor should be there.

00:20:09 ◼   ► Is there HDMI out on my video card?

00:20:11 ◼   ► I don't know if there is.

00:20:12 ◼   ► You don't have any dongles that go USB-C or Thunderbolt to HDMI.

00:20:15 ◼   ► Uh, no.

00:20:17 ◼   ► What do you use for projectors at work?

00:20:19 ◼   ► Let me think.

00:20:20 ◼   ► Uh, oh no, maybe, let's see.

00:20:21 ◼   ► Maybe I have one at work.

00:20:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I could probably bring that in.

00:20:23 ◼   ► Just go pick up any computer bag, turn it upside down and shake it.

00:20:27 ◼   ► And certainly like an HDMI USB-C adapter is going to fall out of it.

00:20:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I think I have one of those at work.

00:20:33 ◼   ► I suppose I could do that.

00:20:34 ◼   ► I do have one HDMI monitor, my gaming monitor.

00:20:36 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:20:37 ◼   ► So just like plug that in, start migration.

00:20:38 ◼   ► Yeah, we'll see.

00:20:41 ◼   ► The worst patient.

00:20:44 ◼   ► I saw, I saw the shop for a mouse.

00:20:46 ◼   ► So I'm a little bit behind on my stuff here.

00:20:48 ◼   ► What was the, you're actually going to upgrade from your 30 year old mouse.

00:20:53 ◼   ► I shouldn't make fun of you.

00:20:54 ◼   ► I'm excited about that.

00:20:54 ◼   ► My, my old mouse is so gross.

00:20:56 ◼   ► It just, I need a new one.

00:20:57 ◼   ► May I make a daring suggestion?

00:20:59 ◼   ► What?

00:21:00 ◼   ► Just use the magic mouse and see how long you last.

00:21:03 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I'm glad.

00:21:04 ◼   ► That's my, that's my immediate plan is I'm going to, you know, use the

00:21:08 ◼   ► peripherals that come with it, but I know I'm not going to like it.

00:21:11 ◼   ► I'm very familiar with that mouse.

00:21:12 ◼   ► So.

00:21:13 ◼   ► I like it.

00:21:15 ◼   ► I'm using one right now.

00:21:15 ◼   ► I flipped it upside down and charged like a turtle just this morning.

00:21:18 ◼   ► I thought you were using some sort of more bulbous mouse, Marco.

00:21:22 ◼   ► No, I've tried them over time here and there, but what really got me was,

00:21:27 ◼   ► um, uh, years ago, like kind of like in the middle of my time at Tumblr, I

00:21:32 ◼   ► discovered the, whatever the Logitech, I think it was the something, uh, MX

00:21:38 ◼   ► revolution, that's what it was.

00:21:38 ◼   ► Logitech MX revolution.

00:21:40 ◼   ► When they first gave it that weighted flywheel as a scroll wheel.

00:21:42 ◼   ► And the cool thing about that is that you could, you could flick it kind of

00:21:46 ◼   ► harder than you would normally scroll, kind of like give it a good flick up or

00:21:49 ◼   ► down and the wheel would detect the velocity and it would unlatch itself and

00:21:53 ◼   ► just freewheel like free spin.

00:21:55 ◼   ► And you could use that.

00:21:56 ◼   ► And then you could like, you know, just kind of like touch it back and it would

00:21:58 ◼   ► like lock back into place wherever you wanted to stop it.

00:22:00 ◼   ► So you could use that to scroll.

00:22:02 ◼   ► Inertially.

00:22:03 ◼   ► And it would like, you know, without Apple's like, you know, touch devices,

00:22:07 ◼   ► which is before, before that, the only way to do that inertial scrolling on a Mac

00:22:11 ◼   ► was to use one of Apple's magic things, which I didn't like at the time.

00:22:14 ◼   ► So I had, I had that, like that kind of flywheel thing and would, it would, it

00:22:19 ◼   ► was great for very quickly scrolling through web pages and everything.

00:22:21 ◼   ► It was fantastic.

00:22:22 ◼   ► Um, what let it down is that to do it well on the Mac and to make it work right

00:22:28 ◼   ► in a few different ways required their stupid software.

00:22:32 ◼   ► And it just, it was fine for like six months and the software would break and

00:22:36 ◼   ► the next update wouldn't be as good or whatever.

00:22:38 ◼   ► And then next, eventually an OS update killed it in some way.

00:22:41 ◼   ► Like I made it so that I had to use software that didn't work or something like

00:22:45 ◼   ► that. So somehow I forget, I forget how it, how it ended up dying, but somehow I

00:22:48 ◼   ► couldn't do it anymore.

00:22:48 ◼   ► And then it seemed like Logitech then failed to make any other mice that were

00:22:53 ◼   ► as good as that one for like 10 years after that.

00:22:55 ◼   ► I don't know what happened, but whatever, whatever happened in, in the intervening

00:23:00 ◼   ► time, I had switched to Apple's magic mouse and I liked that it had that

00:23:05 ◼   ► inertial scrolling without any of the BS.

00:23:08 ◼   ► And I also like now as a podcaster and you know, once I edit a video, I, um, I

00:23:13 ◼   ► like being able to scroll horizontally cause the editing programs use horizontal

00:23:20 ◼   ► timelines. And so it's nice to be able to scroll horizontally with that same

00:23:23 ◼   ► inertial feeling. All the stuff you can do on a track pad on a laptop, you know,

00:23:26 ◼   ► I can do that on my desktop with either the track pad or the magic mouse with

00:23:30 ◼   ► just, you know, one little finger across the top.

00:23:31 ◼   ► So I like it a lot and all the additional features of the big bulbous mice,

00:23:36 ◼   ► like the, you know, like 10 different buttons and gaming features,

00:23:39 ◼   ► I don't use any of that stuff. So losing that wasn't a big deal for me.

00:23:42 ◼   ► Um, I used to back when I was a gamer, but that was long, long, long time ago.

00:23:46 ◼   ► Uh, so you know, now the magic mouse is perfectly fine for me.

00:23:50 ◼   ► And it's one of those many ways where like if you are okay going with Apple's

00:23:55 ◼   ► default setup or Apple's ideal setup,

00:23:58 ◼   ► a lot of things just become easier for you. And so that's how this is for me.

00:24:02 ◼   ► Like I don't want to seek out any other mice or anything because this one works

00:24:07 ◼   ► just fine. Uh, and it solved my needs very well.

00:24:10 ◼   ► I'm used to it and going to anything else would require giving up some of that

00:24:15 ◼   ► inertial stuff or making it more complicated in ways I don't want.

00:24:17 ◼   ► Real time follow up from the chat room, uh,

00:24:20 ◼   ► expressly points out a photograph of the back of a Mac pro and depending on

00:24:24 ◼   ► video card, you might actually have HDMI out on that video card itself.

00:24:28 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. I forgot about that. Yeah. Cause it, cause all the video cards,

00:24:31 ◼   ► I think every MPX video card has the same port arrangement.

00:24:35 ◼   ► I think they all have the four USB thunderbolt three ports and the,

00:24:40 ◼   ► uh, I think it's HDMI. Yeah, that's HDMI. Well that's nice. Yeah.

00:24:45 ◼   ► So there you go. I don't even need an adapter for it. There you go. Cool.

00:24:47 ◼   ► Problem solved. All right. Speaking of follow up,

00:24:50 ◼   ► we should probably start the show, do some follow up actually, you know,

00:24:54 ◼   ► before we leave the topic, it would be, it is kind of cool though that with,

00:24:57 ◼   ► with the new Mac pro that the way they've designed the thunderbolt architecture

00:25:01 ◼   ► for it,

00:25:02 ◼   ► each video card you add also adds four USB C ports or you know,

00:25:08 ◼   ► four thermal three ports. And so if you want more ports,

00:25:11 ◼   ► you can just add a video card. So I, I wonder like, I wonder like the,

00:25:15 ◼   ► the market for people like John who buy it with the base card and then later

00:25:19 ◼   ► throw it away and get a better card. I like,

00:25:21 ◼   ► I would buy a couple of those secondhand cards just to get the base GPU with four

00:25:26 ◼   ► more ports just for the ports. I wouldn't even use the GPU.

00:25:29 ◼   ► Like just give me the points. Well,

00:25:30 ◼   ► we won't actually be leaving this topic as you'll see in a minute,

00:25:33 ◼   ► but we'll more on that in a bit. All right. All right. Goodness. See Marco,

00:25:37 ◼   ► you're convincing yourself to buy a Mac pro just like, no, not yet.

00:25:39 ◼   ► Give me at least another week. Yup. I'm waiting for next.

00:25:42 ◼   ► One of these episodes of ATP, you're just going to say, Hey,

00:25:45 ◼   ► I got a new computer and I'm talking to you right now. It's the Mac pro. No,

00:25:48 ◼   ► it's going to be like, it's going to be like the, uh, like the contest.

00:25:51 ◼   ► And I'm going to walk in like Kramer and just smack my $10 on the table.

00:25:54 ◼   ► I'm out. I'm out. We are sponsored this week by Linode,

00:25:59 ◼   ► my favorite web host. If you need to run servers,

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00:26:41 ◼   ► if you need it and they have all sorts of plans, you know, ranging from, you know,

00:26:44 ◼   ► simple things all the way up to specialized needs.

00:26:46 ◼   ► But it's also an incredible value and it has been this entire nearly decade I've

00:26:52 ◼   ► been with them.

00:26:53 ◼   ► It's not like they're running a temporary sale and they're going to raise the

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00:27:46 ◼   ► See why I love them so much.

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00:27:50 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Linode for running all my servers and sponsoring our show.

00:27:53 ◼   ► All right.

00:27:57 ◼   ► I would like to spend a quick moment and just say a genuine thank you to the

00:28:00 ◼   ► many, many,

00:28:01 ◼   ► many listeners who wrote in to say nice things about last week's episode.

00:28:05 ◼   ► If you think about it on paper,

00:28:07 ◼   ► it was two hours of a man taking us on a tour of the unbelievably obnoxiously

00:28:12 ◼   ► overpriced computer that he just bought. And yet somehow,

00:28:17 ◼   ► because that man is John Syracuse, the episode was riveting for me.

00:28:21 ◼   ► And certainly it sounded like a lot of listeners thought the same thing.

00:28:25 ◼   ► And I just genuinely wanted to say thank you to all the people who reached out

00:28:28 ◼   ► and said such nice things. It made me feel really, really good.

00:28:31 ◼   ► And I'm sure I speak for the other two as well and saying it made us all feel

00:28:35 ◼   ► extremely good. And I wanted to thank everyone for that.

00:28:37 ◼   ► Yes, you're all very strange people in exactly the way that we like.

00:28:40 ◼   ► Exactly. And exactly the way that we adore. All right.

00:28:45 ◼   ► I meant to talk about last episode, but it was,

00:28:48 ◼   ► it was such an exhilarating ride that I just completely forgot.

00:28:51 ◼   ► After the episode before last when I had said, Oh, you know,

00:28:55 ◼   ► I've got this iMac Pro coming and I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do

00:28:58 ◼   ► with the iMac. I'm thinking I'm just going to sell it to Apple for a gift card

00:29:01 ◼   ► or what have you. And you know,

00:29:04 ◼   ► I said I don't really want to give it to anyone or sell it to anyone because it's

00:29:07 ◼   ► clearly haunted.

00:29:08 ◼   ► I got between 10 and 15 different offers from people saying,

00:29:12 ◼   ► I am aware that your iMac is haunted.

00:29:15 ◼   ► I would like it either for a challenge or because I have some need where

00:29:20 ◼   ► somebody doesn't want to spend a whole pile of money on what this would probably

00:29:23 ◼   ► be worth if it wasn't haunted or whatever the case may be.

00:29:26 ◼   ► Sitting here right now,

00:29:28 ◼   ► my plan is to just give it to Apple because even though all of these people have

00:29:33 ◼   ► said they're aware of the issues, I don't know,

00:29:35 ◼   ► it just seems wrong to take somebody's money and give them something broken.

00:29:38 ◼   ► My favorite were the ones who thought they could like fix it.

00:29:41 ◼   ► It's like people want to get into bad relationships where they can change the

00:29:43 ◼   ► person, right?

00:29:45 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, I know it's, but I think I'm going to figure it out.

00:29:48 ◼   ► I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to fix whatever is wrong.

00:29:51 ◼   ► Wow.

00:29:53 ◼   ► Saving you from yourself by not giving you the songs at Mac.

00:29:56 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. So yeah, there's a gift card.

00:29:59 ◼   ► There is a slim chance that there's somebody that would, that was local that I,

00:30:03 ◼   ► that I think is well aware of the issues and I was contemplating that because I

00:30:06 ◼   ► wouldn't have to ship it or anything, but we'll see what happens.

00:30:08 ◼   ► In all likelihood,

00:30:09 ◼   ► I would just take the gift card and walk away and not,

00:30:11 ◼   ► and not curse anyone else with this computer.

00:30:14 ◼   ► Uh, I also wanted to quickly talk about a last episode. You guys rightfully so.

00:30:19 ◼   ► We're trying very strongly to convince me not to install Catalina.

00:30:23 ◼   ► And during the show I received a text message from Kyle's the gray,

00:30:28 ◼   ► wherein there was a bit of emoji that I could not decode on my old and busted

00:30:33 ◼   ► Mojave based computer. I'm out. And, Ooh,

00:30:37 ◼   ► you guys know how I like the emotes, how I like my emoji.

00:30:40 ◼   ► So I have not upgraded yet, but Ooh, I'm sweating.

00:30:44 ◼   ► I'm sweating. I'm sweating real bad. So, uh, that might be,

00:30:48 ◼   ► that the weakest link is me and my emoji. Uh, speaking of important followup,

00:30:54 ◼   ► Marco, tell me about your lamp. I have very important lamp followup.

00:30:57 ◼   ► Yes please. So a few episodes back I was discussing my lighting situation in my

00:31:02 ◼   ► office wanting more light and the solution I come up with, uh,

00:31:05 ◼   ► was to get like a four way bulb splitter and install four light bulbs sideways in

00:31:12 ◼   ► my Ikea not lamp. Uh, it's like,

00:31:14 ◼   ► it's Ikea is like $10 floor lamp that you've seen everywhere.

00:31:17 ◼   ► And I had mentioned that I had bought a second not lamp to go on the other side

00:31:20 ◼   ► of my desk and that in the intervening years between when I bought my first one,

00:31:24 ◼   ► probably, you know, in 2006 and today they had actually revised the design of

00:31:29 ◼   ► the not lamp to make the shade like the big bowl that points up towards the

00:31:33 ◼   ► ceiling to make that big bowl shorter.

00:31:36 ◼   ► And so the same arrangement of four bulbs that's in my old lamp that rests

00:31:41 ◼   ► comfortably below the lip of the dome such that you don't see them and then they

00:31:44 ◼   ► don't look harsher or bad.

00:31:45 ◼   ► That same arrangement of bulbs in the new lamp stuck out the top a little bit.

00:31:49 ◼   ► Listener Dan Engler wrote in to say, uh, if the not lamp fits the old shade,

00:31:55 ◼   ► I recently took apart an old not lamp for parts and I'll ship you the shade and

00:32:00 ◼   ► Sharon, I took him up on the offer. Thank you Dan. And then sure enough,

00:32:05 ◼   ► I put the old shade on the new lamp.

00:32:08 ◼   ► It fits just fine and it is indeed, you know, taller. And so I now have my same

00:32:13 ◼   ► four bulbs set up on each side and you can't see the bulbs from the room so they

00:32:19 ◼   ► don't look harsh and ugly. And so now I have a 800 watt equivalent led light

00:32:24 ◼   ► bulbs in my two not lamps on either side of my desk and it's wonderful.

00:32:30 ◼   ► So thank you very much to listen to Dan Engler for shipping me an Ikea.

00:32:34 ◼   ► I love this. Like this entire lamp from Ikea costs $10 at regular price and he

00:32:39 ◼   ► shipped the giant plastic dome that goes in the top of it across the country.

00:32:45 ◼   ► You know, it had to cost probably at least seven or eight bucks to shipping,

00:32:50 ◼   ► but this is a hilarious solution, but an amazingly effective one.

00:32:55 ◼   ► So thank you again to listener Dan Engler.

00:32:58 ◼   ► I'm keeping game cooping controllers and somebody who's keeping not lampshades.

00:33:02 ◼   ► He didn't keep it. He sent it to me for reuse.

00:33:04 ◼   ► Oh, well now he's got five more to sell to you later.

00:33:07 ◼   ► Just like I have all those Apple extended keyboard twos that I'm going to sell to

00:33:10 ◼   ► Gruber.

00:33:11 ◼   ► So do you feel your, uh, what is it? Seasonal affected disorder, sad,

00:33:16 ◼   ► seasonal affective disorder, whatever.

00:33:18 ◼   ► Do you feel that that's better now that you're being radiated by all of the LEDs

00:33:22 ◼   ► known to man? It helps. I gotta say it actually,

00:33:26 ◼   ► it actually does help to have a truly ridiculous amount of light in my office.

00:33:30 ◼   ► Most of the time I feel like I want to see a picture of the brightness level of

00:33:34 ◼   ► your office, but I don't know what we would use as like a control.

00:33:37 ◼   ► You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I'm sure if you take a picture,

00:33:39 ◼   ► it wouldn't be that remarkable because it would just look like a bright room.

00:33:42 ◼   ► But I wonder if you could like stick a regular like floor lamp in there and take

00:33:47 ◼   ► a control shot and then, you know,

00:33:50 ◼   ► use your not lamps and take the experimental shot if you will and share those if

00:33:55 ◼   ► you're willing sometime. Cause I bet you it would be shocking how bright it is.

00:34:00 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:34:01 ◼   ► And I still have to put up my white acoustic foam panels and I was thinking maybe

00:34:05 ◼   ► also changing my desk top surface to white if I can find some giant white board.

00:34:09 ◼   ► So yeah, we'll see.

00:34:10 ◼   ► How does your office mate feel about this over abundance of illumination?

00:34:15 ◼   ► My office mate is extremely tolerant of my additions of light and I I'm very

00:34:20 ◼   ► thankful.

00:34:20 ◼   ► You could have stopped with extremely tolerant.

00:34:22 ◼   ► Oh yeah. Yeah. All right. John, do you tell me why you why you,

00:34:28 ◼   ► even if you tried, you are not actually dodging taxes.

00:34:32 ◼   ► We got a very interesting and a fairly punchy email about this and I assume you

00:34:36 ◼   ► would like to defend your honor.

00:34:37 ◼   ► Lots of people are telling us about the implications of buying something in a

00:34:42 ◼   ► tax free state that you don't actually happen to live in. Just to be clear,

00:34:45 ◼   ► I didn't actually do this as one of the items I didn't do.

00:34:48 ◼   ► Mostly because it was too much of a hassle, but also because if you do that,

00:34:52 ◼   ► if you go to a neighboring state where there's no sales tax and buy something

00:34:55 ◼   ► and then bring it back to your state where you live and use it,

00:34:58 ◼   ► there is a thing called a use tax,

00:34:59 ◼   ► which conveniently is exactly the same as your estate sales tax.

00:35:02 ◼   ► So you are in fact supposed to pay tax on it in your state.

00:35:06 ◼   ► If that's where you take it back and use it,

00:35:07 ◼   ► you can always move to that state and then you don't have that problem.

00:35:10 ◼   ► You know, but if you already live in that state, then you know,

00:35:13 ◼   ► you don't have to pay tax at all. So anyway, I did pay, uh,

00:35:16 ◼   ► the tax of the state that I live in, uh, on this particular computer.

00:35:20 ◼   ► But if you're thinking about doing it, um, I mean either, uh,

00:35:25 ◼   ► buy it in another state and don't tell anybody. Uh, but if the IRS finds out,

00:35:29 ◼   ► certainly not on a podcast, if the IRS finds out, uh,

00:35:32 ◼   ► they are going to make you pay the use tax for that item.

00:35:36 ◼   ► What is even the mechanism for doing that? Like, let's say I go to an,

00:35:41 ◼   ► I don't even know what state around me doesn't have sales tax,

00:35:43 ◼   ► but for the sake of discussion, I go to another state.

00:35:46 ◼   ► It does not have sales tax.

00:35:47 ◼   ► I don't even know where I would go within Virginia's world to, to,

00:35:51 ◼   ► to pay a use tax. Like what would you do in Massachusetts?

00:35:55 ◼   ► When you file your taxes?

00:35:56 ◼   ► So in New York, New York is very,

00:35:59 ◼   ► very strict about that kind of thing cause they really want their sales tax.

00:36:01 ◼   ► And over the years, like, like New York was the state that first, you know,

00:36:04 ◼   ► started giving crap to Amazon about not showing sales tax and everything. Anyway,

00:36:08 ◼   ► so New York on the state income tax that you have to file every year,

00:36:12 ◼   ► the state return, they have like, I think they have a line for like, you know,

00:36:16 ◼   ► purchases you've made out of state and you're supposed to put all of your

00:36:19 ◼   ► internet purchases that were made from places that don't charge sales tax.

00:36:22 ◼   ► You're supposed to account for all of them on that line. And I don't know anybody

00:36:25 ◼   ► who does,

00:36:26 ◼   ► but that's increasingly becoming a moot point as so many online retailers are

00:36:29 ◼   ► charging tax in New York anyway for other pressure that they've gotten.

00:36:32 ◼   ► Interesting. I did not know that.

00:36:34 ◼   ► But yeah, so, but the answer is probably you put it on your state tax return.

00:36:36 ◼   ► And the, the federal IRS probably doesn't give a crap about this.

00:36:40 ◼   ► They're not the ones who would catch you.

00:36:41 ◼   ► The ones who would probably catch you would be when you go to file your state

00:36:44 ◼   ► taxes and they see on your business,

00:36:46 ◼   ► you've deducted some amount for equipment and they're like, wait a minute. You,

00:36:51 ◼   ► you know, like they, I don't know, actually,

00:36:52 ◼   ► I guess they don't really have any way to any way to know whether you paid sales

00:36:55 ◼   ► tax on it or not. So I don't know. That could be, yeah.

00:36:58 ◼   ► Cause like when you buy it at the store, they don't know who you are.

00:37:00 ◼   ► It just depends on if you don't,

00:37:01 ◼   ► if you don't get audited or if they don't, if no one is paying attention,

00:37:04 ◼   ► you slide by. But you know, yeah.

00:37:06 ◼   ► Either way not paying taxes you owed has a certain legal and moral implication.

00:37:11 ◼   ► So some people have a problem with that. If you have a problem with that,

00:37:14 ◼   ► pay your taxes.

00:37:14 ◼   ► John, are you worried about buying a first generation Apple product?

00:37:18 ◼   ► Yeah. A lot of people are asking about that.

00:37:20 ◼   ► We've discussed it in the past and I'll just reiterate. Yeah.

00:37:23 ◼   ► The normal amount that I'm concerned, I bought a first generation, uh, power,

00:37:26 ◼   ► power Mac G five, uh,

00:37:28 ◼   ► for similar reasons cause I had a G three and I had been waiting and waiting and

00:37:31 ◼   ► waiting and the G five came out and it was amazing, but it was also a very,

00:37:34 ◼   ► very first gen product.

00:37:35 ◼   ► That is probably the first gen product that I quote unquote regret the most.

00:37:38 ◼   ► I don't really regret it,

00:37:39 ◼   ► but it certainly was idiosyncratic and had all sorts of issues.

00:37:44 ◼   ► It was a little bit weird. Um, but yeah, that's,

00:37:49 ◼   ► that's what happens if you wait really long time between buying computers.

00:37:52 ◼   ► When the new fancy one comes out,

00:37:55 ◼   ► that is the generational leap that you were looking for. In this case, the,

00:37:59 ◼   ► you know, a return to a form factor that you like,

00:38:02 ◼   ► you could wait another two, three years and or however long it takes. Uh,

00:38:07 ◼   ► but that starts to be ridiculous.

00:38:08 ◼   ► So I bought first gen product and I'm just going to deal with the first gen

00:38:13 ◼   ► problems. I'm hoping there aren't many, but I am definitely aware of it.

00:38:16 ◼   ► I'm going in with eyes open. So yeah, I'm a little bit worried about it,

00:38:19 ◼   ► but what can you do? I really, I really backed myself into this corner.

00:38:22 ◼   ► One, um,

00:38:24 ◼   ► really encouraging thing here is that if you look at Apple's products,

00:38:28 ◼   ► the version ones usually aren't bad. Like the ones that are bad,

00:38:33 ◼   ► we remember them, they stick out and like we,

00:38:35 ◼   ► and we kind of use them as like horror stories forever or like morning signs.

00:38:38 ◼   ► But the reality is that especially in recent times,

00:38:41 ◼   ► most of the version ones have actually been pretty solid. I mean,

00:38:45 ◼   ► if you look at, you know, the most obvious examples here are the most recent max,

00:38:49 ◼   ► they've made the Mac mini, which wasn't a version one technically,

00:38:52 ◼   ► but it was a pretty big redesign from the one before it.

00:38:54 ◼   ► They have the iMac pro,

00:38:56 ◼   ► which was a complete redesign from any iMac that came before it.

00:38:59 ◼   ► So it definitely qualifies as a V one I would say. Um, and they have,

00:39:03 ◼   ► the Mac book pro 16 is not quite a V one, but it's still like, you know,

00:39:06 ◼   ► a very recent pro Mac they've made. And if you look at all of those,

00:39:09 ◼   ► they really haven't had any major problems. You know, look at the, the, uh,

00:39:14 ◼   ► last year's iPad pros, same thing, totally new designs,

00:39:18 ◼   ► no real problems. As far as I'm aware, you know, they, most of the time it's,

00:39:23 ◼   ► it's pretty rock solid stuff. You know, the iPhone 10,

00:39:26 ◼   ► that was a whole new design of the iPhone. Not really any problems.

00:39:29 ◼   ► As far as I'm aware, you know, they, they really are quite good most of the time.

00:39:33 ◼   ► And especially like when you look at the iMac pro,

00:39:37 ◼   ► I think that brings up another side of this, which is as we,

00:39:39 ◼   ► as we mentioned before,

00:39:41 ◼   ► we don't know if the iMac pro is ever going to be updated again.

00:39:45 ◼   ► It might not. It wouldn't surprise me at all if it wasn't.

00:39:49 ◼   ► I hope it is because I really still want to keep buying them. Uh,

00:39:52 ◼   ► but it might never be updated again. And so if,

00:39:56 ◼   ► if you're trying to avoid version one of a product,

00:39:58 ◼   ► a you can look at the look at the iMac pro and say, well,

00:40:01 ◼   ► version one of that has been totally solid. I mean, I,

00:40:04 ◼   ► not only do I have two of these at my house,

00:40:07 ◼   ► but I think I know way more people than the average person would who own these

00:40:12 ◼   ► also themselves. As far as I know, I have literally,

00:40:15 ◼   ► I have heard of zero problems with the iMac pro in the two years it's been out

00:40:20 ◼   ► so far. I have never heard of anyone having a problem with it. And again,

00:40:23 ◼   ► I probably know people. I can probably, you know,

00:40:26 ◼   ► hear from about 10 of their owners like, and I, I have no,

00:40:31 ◼   ► I don't know, no problems with them. And so, you know, the Mac pro,

00:40:37 ◼   ► it has a pretty good track record behind it so far of like, yeah, you know what?

00:40:40 ◼   ► So far it seemed like the team doing this,

00:40:42 ◼   ► it seems like they're on the ball these days.

00:40:44 ◼   ► The stuff they're making seems pretty rock solid.

00:40:46 ◼   ► The first reviews of the iMac pro of the Mac pro are out so far from people

00:40:51 ◼   ► who've had it for like a few weeks, like various YouTubers and stuff.

00:40:54 ◼   ► They've reported zero problems so far.

00:40:56 ◼   ► And this might be the only Mac pro ever made. So,

00:41:01 ◼   ► and the price isn't likely to change much over time.

00:41:04 ◼   ► So if you're going to buy it, you might as well buy it now.

00:41:07 ◼   ► You know, I, on a slight tangent,

00:41:10 ◼   ► I had the occasion to transcode something for the first time earlier today.

00:41:13 ◼   ► The way my house is arranged,

00:41:15 ◼   ► there's like a little hallway leading up to the office and,

00:41:17 ◼   ► and generally speaking when the old iMac,

00:41:21 ◼   ► the not pro iMac was transcoding something within a pace or two of the,

00:41:25 ◼   ► of getting to the guest room slash office, uh,

00:41:28 ◼   ► you could hear those fans screaming, absolutely screaming.

00:41:33 ◼   ► I had my face within six inches of the iMac pro and mind you,

00:41:37 ◼   ► all 10 cores are firing on all 10 cylinders, if you will. Uh,

00:41:42 ◼   ► and I could not hear this thing at all. Now, unlike you two,

00:41:44 ◼   ► I actually don't really care about fans. I mean, I, I obviously don't like it,

00:41:50 ◼   ► but you know, it doesn't have,

00:41:51 ◼   ► I don't have that visceral reaction that it seems the two of you do.

00:41:53 ◼   ► You don't care whether your computer stays on by itself or not.

00:41:56 ◼   ► Well, that's true too. But anyway,

00:41:58 ◼   ► the point is I'm not nearly as offended by fan noises.

00:42:01 ◼   ► Either of you guys are, but I was stupefied that I had all of these cores,

00:42:06 ◼   ► just absolutely screaming. And the, uh, the fan was not audible at all.

00:42:11 ◼   ► And I even are the exhaust vents on the bottom on this or are they on the back?

00:42:15 ◼   ► I believe the, I think the intake's on the bottom and I think this,

00:42:18 ◼   ► it shoots it out the back. Okay. Okay. That's what it is. Okay.

00:42:22 ◼   ► I was going to say cause I felt the bottom and it didn't occur to me until I was

00:42:25 ◼   ► just talking a moment ago that it might be coming out the back,

00:42:27 ◼   ► but I felt the bottom and I didn't feel anything warm, but that makes sense.

00:42:30 ◼   ► If that's intake rather than a exhaust. But anyways,

00:42:33 ◼   ► I tweeted a screenshot of I-STAT menus,

00:42:36 ◼   ► which is John Syracuse's favorite application of all time.

00:42:38 ◼   ► And you can see that this thing is just getting absolutely hammered.

00:42:42 ◼   ► And I can assure you that I could not hear a thing. And that was pretty cool.

00:42:46 ◼   ► Welcome to the iMac Pro world, Casey. It's really nice here.

00:42:49 ◼   ► It is pretty nice until they update in like three weeks.

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00:44:56 ◼   ► What is bad about the new Mac pro that you expect? Are there any,

00:45:03 ◼   ► is there anything that's yucking your yam at the moment?

00:45:05 ◼   ► I don't like that phrase, but anyway, um, yeah, this,

00:45:09 ◼   ► this is another thing that's been mentioned in the past,

00:45:11 ◼   ► but it's been top of my mind again,

00:45:13 ◼   ► as this machine is about to arrive at my home, uh,

00:45:16 ◼   ► getting at the inside of this computer while it looks real cool.

00:45:19 ◼   ► And then Apple shows the demo with the little latch thing and it comes off.

00:45:22 ◼   ► It is actually less convenient than the old side panel coming off.

00:45:27 ◼   ► For a long time,

00:45:28 ◼   ► Apple had a series of tower computers where the side either opened up or came

00:45:32 ◼   ► off, um, where you could get it, the stuff.

00:45:35 ◼   ► And that was convenient because in general you didn't have to move your

00:45:40 ◼   ► tower computer from wherever it was. It was on the floor, on the desk.

00:45:43 ◼   ► You could take, especially when you take the side off,

00:45:46 ◼   ► but even if you couldn't, if you could, you know, move it down,

00:45:48 ◼   ► just sort of shift stuff out of the way and they would, you know, fall down.

00:45:51 ◼   ► You can get it all the stuff. This thing comes off the top.

00:45:55 ◼   ► So if your tower is under your desk,

00:45:57 ◼   ► you can't get at the internals while it sits on your desk because you can't get

00:46:01 ◼   ► the top off. You have to lift vertically. That's why you have wheels, John.

00:46:05 ◼   ► Yeah. So anyway, mine is, if mine's on the side table,

00:46:08 ◼   ► in theory I could take the thing off,

00:46:09 ◼   ► but it might be kind of awkward to lift it up.

00:46:11 ◼   ► And so I understand why they did the design. It's be able,

00:46:13 ◼   ► it's great to be able to get it all sides, not just one side,

00:46:16 ◼   ► but I think I might kind of miss the door for that internal accessibility.

00:46:20 ◼   ► Occasionally what I usually find myself doing is peeking in there to remind

00:46:25 ◼   ► myself which drive mechanism is hooked up to which,

00:46:27 ◼   ► or to look for like warning lights on the things or to see if fans are spinning.

00:46:31 ◼   ► And you know, that's not going to be as frequent an occurrence with,

00:46:35 ◼   ► this whole new thing. And also as we discussed WWDC,

00:46:39 ◼   ► a thing that I used to do with all my computers that had sides that opened up,

00:46:43 ◼   ► which is open them up while they're turned on,

00:46:45 ◼   ► that will not happen with this one to get the case off everything shuts off

00:46:49 ◼   ► hardware wise. Like it cannot be on with the case off as far as I'm aware,

00:46:53 ◼   ► unless you defeated that mechanism.

00:46:54 ◼   ► So a slight downgrade in terms of internals accessibility. I'm so sorry.

00:46:59 ◼   ► I would imagine that probably for thermal reasons to make sure the airflow is

00:47:02 ◼   ► going correctly and everything.

00:47:03 ◼   ► Yeah. Who knows electric shock. Like, I don't know,

00:47:06 ◼   ► I don't know what's going on inside there.

00:47:07 ◼   ► All right. Why don't you tell me about,

00:47:09 ◼   ► what was it the Belkin aux power cable kit that we saw an image of a, uh,

00:47:14 ◼   ► of a GPU within the Mac pro. And we apparently have some followup about that.

00:47:18 ◼   ► Yeah. Logan Hall tells us that that is actually the, uh,

00:47:21 ◼   ► the Radeon 5,700 XT reference card that's pictured in there.

00:47:26 ◼   ► And I'll take his word for it. Cause I can't identify GPU is just by,

00:47:29 ◼   ► from the side view like that. But that was, yeah, Marco found that image.

00:47:32 ◼   ► It on a product shot for just like the power cable that provides power to that

00:47:37 ◼   ► type of card is saying, Hey, if you, if you buy, essentially,

00:47:40 ◼   ► I keep calling them PC graphics cards, but you know,

00:47:42 ◼   ► if you just buy a graphics card that has nothing to do with the Mac and you stick

00:47:46 ◼   ► it in there and it needs power,

00:47:47 ◼   ► use this Belkin cable to get the power in a nice cool,

00:47:49 ◼   ► exactly the right length black type of thing.

00:47:52 ◼   ► And then the product shot they show the Radeon 5,700 XT,

00:47:56 ◼   ► which is a car that I was actually interested in as a sort of fairly cheap

00:48:01 ◼   ► gaming, uh, card, which brings us to the next topic,

00:48:06 ◼   ► which is what I spent a lot of this week, uh, thinking about.

00:48:10 ◼   ► I don't even have this computer in my house yet and already I'm plotting on what

00:48:14 ◼   ► I'm going to shove inside it because there's so much room in there. Um,

00:48:17 ◼   ► and I listened back to last week's episode and like, I'm not going to update,

00:48:20 ◼   ► upgrade the GPU right away, but let me tell you,

00:48:22 ◼   ► PC GPUs are really cheap. Like I can get a good gaming card for like good,

00:48:27 ◼   ► you know, a fine, perfectly fine.

00:48:32 ◼   ► We'll do everything I needed to do gaming card that is way faster than the sort

00:48:37 ◼   ► of base GPU that the thing comes with for like 300 bucks. Like it's,

00:48:41 ◼   ► this is peanuts, right?

00:48:43 ◼   ► It costs less than like that bracket with a hard drive in it that you can buy

00:48:46 ◼   ► calls less than the wheels. Um,

00:48:50 ◼   ► so that led me down the alley of what can I buy to stick inside this computer?

00:48:55 ◼   ► What kind of video card, what are my video card options? Uh,

00:48:59 ◼   ► and this like so many things having to do with this Mac is made much more

00:49:03 ◼   ► complicated by my stupid choice of monitor,

00:49:05 ◼   ► which is the pro display XDR. Now let's, you know,

00:49:09 ◼   ► the pro display XDR is a six K monitor. Um,

00:49:13 ◼   ► and on the back of it,

00:49:15 ◼   ► it just has power that goes into the wall and then it has a bunch of little tiny

00:49:20 ◼   ► USB C shaped holes and that's it.

00:49:22 ◼   ► There's no other holes on the back of this monitor.

00:49:25 ◼   ► So if you're going to connect to this monitor to a computer,

00:49:31 ◼   ► you've got to get six K worth of pixels at 60 Hertz at either eight or 10 bits

00:49:36 ◼   ► per component from your computer into this monitor.

00:49:40 ◼   ► And it has to somehow end up coming out of a cable that fits into a little USB

00:49:46 ◼   ► C shaped Thunderbolt three shaped, you know, whatever connector.

00:49:50 ◼   ► If you look at any quote unquote PC video card,

00:49:54 ◼   ► all these inexpensive cards for a couple hundred bucks,

00:49:58 ◼   ► they tend not to have any USB C shaped characters on the back of them.

00:50:02 ◼   ► So the question is if you buy a PC graphics card and you stick it in your Mac

00:50:07 ◼   ► pro, which you certainly can do,

00:50:11 ◼   ► can you connect it to your plug pro display XDR and drive it at its native

00:50:16 ◼   ► resolution? That is, it turns out to be quite a tall order, right?

00:50:21 ◼   ► So here's the deal with driving this monitor.

00:50:24 ◼   ► And this is reminding me of our discussions back when the trash can came out and

00:50:28 ◼   ► we were like, Oh, can that run like a retina at a five K display? Uh, you know,

00:50:31 ◼   ► does it have enough bandwidth and Thunderbolt?

00:50:33 ◼   ► And we kept going around in circles about this.

00:50:34 ◼   ► So I did a lot of research on this. I know I'm not supposed to, but I did.

00:50:39 ◼   ► Uh, cause my computer was coming. So here,

00:50:42 ◼   ► here's what I've been able to determine so far. All right.

00:50:44 ◼   ► So six K pixels at 60 Hertz at 10 bits per component for like the,

00:50:49 ◼   ► you know, the, the, the best picture quality that if you do all the math and that,

00:50:55 ◼   ► that barely fits into Thunderbolt threes, 40 gigabits per second bandwidth,

00:50:59 ◼   ► without the use of display stream compression. Right?

00:51:02 ◼   ► So if you have an uncompressed stream, you want to do six K at 60 at 10 bits,

00:51:05 ◼   ► um, and you have a Thunderbolt three connection, you can make that work, right?

00:51:11 ◼   ► All USB-C cables of any kind have one set of low speed lanes that's used for

00:51:17 ◼   ► USB two speeds, regardless of whatever protocol,

00:51:20 ◼   ► the high speed lanes are carrying. So that's not just Thunderbolt cables,

00:51:23 ◼   ► but all just USB-C shaped cable holes that aren't just power cables or whatever.

00:51:28 ◼   ► Right?

00:51:29 ◼   ► Charging cables only have that low speed USB-C thing plus power and ground like

00:51:33 ◼   ► so the quote unquote high speed lanes aren't there just use for power and

00:51:36 ◼   ► ground. Full featured USB-C cables have four high speed lanes and then the low

00:51:40 ◼   ► speed and then power and ground active Thunderbolt cables,

00:51:43 ◼   ► the ones with the little chips in the, in the, in the connectors.

00:51:46 ◼   ► Those are the ones you referring to before they had the little Thunderbolt

00:51:48 ◼   ► symbol on the connectors are bigger because they actually have chips inside

00:51:51 ◼   ► there. That's why they're active.

00:51:52 ◼   ► Those are the four high speed lanes. Uh, and then the, you know, the chips,

00:51:56 ◼   ► and then the, uh, the low speed USB two things, right? So

00:52:00 ◼   ► in the case where you have a Thunderbolt three connection without display

00:52:06 ◼   ► stream compression to your six K pro display XDR,

00:52:12 ◼   ► you're only going to get USB two on the ports in the back because that's all

00:52:15 ◼   ► there is left. You're using all of the high speed lanes just to carry the video

00:52:19 ◼   ► signal. All you've got left is that that's low speed lanes.

00:52:22 ◼   ► For USB two and that connects to your purpose,

00:52:25 ◼   ► black XDR and it uses it as a hub and you get your USB two ports on the back of

00:52:29 ◼   ► it, right? Because remember,

00:52:30 ◼   ► you're not just sending a video signal to this monitor. Ideally,

00:52:33 ◼   ► it has ports in the back of it. If you want to use any of those ports,

00:52:37 ◼   ► you also have to send some kind of USB C USB type signal for it to be a hub,

00:52:42 ◼   ► right?

00:52:43 ◼   ► And also for things like software brightness control or firmware updates or other

00:52:47 ◼   ► things like that. If you just send it video, if you can get that to work at all,

00:52:52 ◼   ► those other features, uh, don't work, right?

00:52:54 ◼   ► So if you had a plain old display port cable, not Thunderbolt,

00:52:58 ◼   ► but just display port, if you buy a PC video card,

00:53:00 ◼   ► a lot of them come with multiple display port, not many display port,

00:53:03 ◼   ► but big display port either way. Like just display port. It's not Thunderbolts,

00:53:07 ◼   ► not USB. It doesn't know anything about Thunderbolt.

00:53:08 ◼   ► There's nothing about USB. It is display port maxi display port. Yeah.

00:53:12 ◼   ► You can't drive more than five K at 60 Hertz,

00:53:16 ◼   ► eight bits per pixel without display stream compression because the display port

00:53:19 ◼   ► doesn't have enough bandwidth, right? So you, if you have a,

00:53:22 ◼   ► a PC video card with display port on the back,

00:53:25 ◼   ► you cannot drive the XDR without display stream compression,

00:53:28 ◼   ► display stream compression, which I'm not going to say over and over again,

00:53:31 ◼   ► a DSC, uh, is an essential feature for driving six K display.

00:53:35 ◼   ► So with DSC, if you had plain old display port cable,

00:53:40 ◼   ► you can drive the XDR at six K 60 Hertz at 10 bits per pixel, right?

00:53:44 ◼   ► But for display stream compression to work, sort of the,

00:53:49 ◼   ► the O S and the card and the drivers,

00:53:51 ◼   ► everything needs to know that that's there to make it work.

00:53:53 ◼   ► So you need some minimal level of O S support to say, Hey, I bought a,

00:53:58 ◼   ► a card that has displaced ring compression and B the O S knows about that card

00:54:02 ◼   ► and knows about the compression and then they can talk to each other. Right.

00:54:05 ◼   ► But if you did that, like I said,

00:54:06 ◼   ► the USB ports on the monitor won't work because all it's getting is the,

00:54:10 ◼   ► the image being displayed. Right? So those USB, uh, things are totally inert. Uh,

00:54:14 ◼   ► none of the software features like software brightness control would work and you

00:54:18 ◼   ► can't do any firmware updates and this is assuming you could get it to work at

00:54:20 ◼   ► all. I don't even know if the XDR will even accept just the video signal. Right.

00:54:24 ◼   ► But if you wanted to have that, you have to have display stream compression.

00:54:27 ◼   ► Right. That's one of the reasons, by the way,

00:54:29 ◼   ► that I think that the iMac pro can't drive it. Um, because it's,

00:54:33 ◼   ► if it treats it as a display port thing, uh,

00:54:36 ◼   ► you can only drive that at five K without display stream compression. Anyway,

00:54:39 ◼   ► so Thunderbolt three with display stream compression, right?

00:54:43 ◼   ► So now you've got Thunderbolt three,

00:54:44 ◼   ► but instead of using every ounce of its 40 gigabits per second to fit your

00:54:47 ◼   ► video signal over, just leaving that little side lane for USB too.

00:54:50 ◼   ► If you have Thunderbolt three with display stream compression,

00:54:53 ◼   ► you can get six K at 60 Hertz at 10 bits per component plus USB 3.1 speeds.

00:54:58 ◼   ► And at that point,

00:55:00 ◼   ► the USB ports in the back of the XDR become USB 3.1 ports. So for example,

00:55:04 ◼   ► if you have a 16 inch MacBook pro, that GPU has DSC.

00:55:09 ◼   ► So if you connect that to the pro display XDR,

00:55:11 ◼   ► you get USB 3.1 speeds on the back. Whoa, really? The monitor. Yes.

00:55:15 ◼   ► That's right. Straight from Apple's website. Now wait, with,

00:55:18 ◼   ► does display stream compression, God does DSC, um,

00:55:22 ◼   ► does it introduce noticeable quality loss? Like it seems like it would, right.

00:55:25 ◼   ► Or it could at least. I am told that, uh, that it is,

00:55:30 ◼   ► that any losses that it introduces are imperceptible. That's what I'm told.

00:55:35 ◼   ► It's probably one of the things like, you know,

00:55:36 ◼   ► what if it displays like the static HBO intro? Like, you know what,

00:55:39 ◼   ► like there's probably some,

00:55:40 ◼   ► some pattern where you would possibly be able to notice something.

00:55:43 ◼   ► I am told that it's imperceptible. I can imagine that even just with lossless

00:55:47 ◼   ► compression, you could get, you can get some savings out of it. But I'm,

00:55:51 ◼   ► I'm told that, uh, that it meets Apple's rigorous standard. Like it's not,

00:55:56 ◼   ► Apple's not making up DSC. DSC is a thing in the industry.

00:55:59 ◼   ► So I'm assuming it is,

00:56:00 ◼   ► it's kind of like texture compression on consoles where it's a thing.

00:56:03 ◼   ► People don't know it exists because it is literally imperceptible. Like it's

00:56:06 ◼   ► anyway.

00:56:07 ◼   ► Oh wait. But so the MacBook pro 16 uses compression and therefore has fast USB

00:56:14 ◼   ► ports on the, if they, if it uses this monitor. That's right.

00:56:16 ◼   ► But the Mac pro doesn't. Well, that's the thing.

00:56:19 ◼   ► It depends on what GPU you buy. So I'm getting the base GPU,

00:56:22 ◼   ► the five 80 X GPU, that MPX module. It's an MPX module.

00:56:28 ◼   ► So it talks to the XDR using Thunderbolt three,

00:56:30 ◼   ► but it five 80 X does not have DSC.

00:56:33 ◼   ► It's such an old GPU that doesn't support DSC at all. So the five 80 X,

00:56:37 ◼   ► when it talks over Thunderbolt three uses all Thunderbolt three's bandwidth just

00:56:40 ◼   ► for the video signal and just the side band, a little low speed USB two thing.

00:56:44 ◼   ► Right? So when I connect my XDR to my Mac pro with the base GPU,

00:56:49 ◼   ► I'm getting USB two speeds in the ports, right?

00:56:51 ◼   ► Now the thing about buying those cheap cards from sort of those PC cards is in

00:56:57 ◼   ► general,

00:57:00 ◼   ► there's probably not going to be a big market for PC video cards with

00:57:05 ◼   ► Thunderbolt three ports on the back of them with display screen compression,

00:57:10 ◼   ► compression and drivers for the Mac,

00:57:12 ◼   ► because gamers don't want a six K monitor. It's too big.

00:57:16 ◼   ► Like you don't want to run your game with that resolution.

00:57:18 ◼   ► That native res is too many pixels and gamers want more than 60 Hertz.

00:57:23 ◼   ► What gamers want is like four K at 144 Hertz or whatever. Right?

00:57:27 ◼   ► And if you're going to do that, you can do that. First of all,

00:57:31 ◼   ► with display port and second of all display stream compression is probably not

00:57:35 ◼   ► even needed at that resolution.

00:57:37 ◼   ► And there's no reason to invest in this sort of, I mean,

00:57:41 ◼   ► this is the thing Apple's monitors had done for a long time,

00:57:43 ◼   ► which is don't just send video to the monitor.

00:57:45 ◼   ► Also send a bunch of other crap because the monitor is also a hub and it has

00:57:48 ◼   ► some weird software control from, from Apple display connector, ABC.

00:57:51 ◼   ► Remember that back in the day where it was a single cable that had a bunch of

00:57:54 ◼   ► stuff over it to my current thing. I just earlier in the show, I said, Oh,

00:57:57 ◼   ► my monitor has a mini U S mini display port. Yeah, it has many display port,

00:58:01 ◼   ► but it also has this weird cable that splits into this rat tail of multiple

00:58:05 ◼   ► things because it also has USB hub and everywhere.

00:58:07 ◼   ► And the way they did it with my monitor is they just ran multiple cables and

00:58:11 ◼   ► then wrap them up in one big fat cable. And when it comes to the computer,

00:58:15 ◼   ► it splits off into one thing that connects to USB,

00:58:18 ◼   ► a port and one thing's an X, a mini display port.

00:58:21 ◼   ► I think there might even be another one in there. And then like the power thing,

00:58:23 ◼   ► right? Uh,

00:58:24 ◼   ► with the pro display XDR powers its own separate cable and everything else has

00:58:29 ◼   ► to come in through that one cable.

00:58:30 ◼   ► So your only options are display port, uh,

00:58:34 ◼   ► somehow natively shoving into the monitor and working in the degenerate mode

00:58:38 ◼   ► where none of the ports work and none of the software features working on the

00:58:40 ◼   ► firmware stuff works or Thunderbolt three,

00:58:44 ◼   ► which gives you USB either the low speed lane for two or with display screen

00:58:49 ◼   ► compression enough room for high speed USB.

00:58:51 ◼   ► And the number of video cards out there from anybody other than Apple that speak

00:58:57 ◼   ► Thunderbolt, I don't even know if there are any, right? So I,

00:59:02 ◼   ► my market for,

00:59:03 ◼   ► for aftermarket GPU's that actually drive the XDR and native res may be down to

00:59:08 ◼   ► just whatever Apple decides to offer. So far they have a bunch of options,

00:59:14 ◼   ► but all of them are quote unquote workstation options as we discussed last show.

00:59:17 ◼   ► And even though the other one they were thinking of rolling out,

00:59:20 ◼   ► I looked at the quote more closely at the specs and that it's not that great.

00:59:23 ◼   ► And as many people point out the five 80 X, like the base GPU that I'm getting,

00:59:27 ◼   ► my thing, it's slower than the GPU and the iMac pro. Like it's not,

00:59:31 ◼   ► it is really, it is a really old GPU. It is the basis of base GPU,

00:59:37 ◼   ► right? It's not slower than the 16 inch,

00:59:39 ◼   ► but at least a 16 inch MacBook pro supports a display stream compression.

00:59:42 ◼   ► So anyway, um,

00:59:44 ◼   ► the good thing of course about the Mac pro is I can get a gaming card that just

00:59:47 ◼   ► supports display port and hook it up to a gaming monitor. I can have two,

00:59:51 ◼   ► three display video cards in there. You know what I mean?

00:59:53 ◼   ► I can have one hooked up to the XDR and another video card in my computer at the

00:59:56 ◼   ► same time connected to 144 Hertz gaming monitor, right?

01:00:00 ◼   ► I'm not sure I'll do that, but I have that option. So if I,

01:00:03 ◼   ► it's not like I'm boxed out of the $300 good gaming card market.

01:00:07 ◼   ► I could buy a $300 gaming card, shove it in there,

01:00:09 ◼   ► connected to my gaming monitor and I'm good to go. Um, obviously,

01:00:13 ◼   ► ideally I wouldn't rather not have multiple GPUs for different purposes as I have

01:00:17 ◼   ► my computer.

01:00:18 ◼   ► Ideally I could buy one GPU and a cool black MPX module that speaks Thunderbolt

01:00:23 ◼   ► three and also is good GPU.

01:00:26 ◼   ► But I don't know if it's such a card is forthcoming.

01:00:29 ◼   ► So that's what I've got my eye on and having delves even further into this world

01:00:33 ◼   ► of cables that all look exactly the same,

01:00:36 ◼   ► but do do very different things in mysterious ways.

01:00:39 ◼   ► I feel like some of the mystery has been removed.

01:00:41 ◼   ► Now I know what to look for other than just looking for a little Thunderbolt

01:00:45 ◼   ► three shaped holes. I have to know if things are support DSC.

01:00:48 ◼   ► You have to know if the os supports them. And now it's more explicable to me.

01:00:52 ◼   ► How and why the other ports in the back of the XDR work the way they do.

01:00:56 ◼   ► Wow. I had no idea.

01:01:00 ◼   ► I am. I've never been more excited to have an all in one computer than I am.

01:01:05 ◼   ► Right now. My goodness. Well, I mean it like, it is excited that, you know,

01:01:09 ◼   ► desk space is my main problem.

01:01:11 ◼   ► It is exciting because I can buy a $300 gaming card right now,

01:01:14 ◼   ► slam it in there and get high frame rate, good game performance over a display,

01:01:19 ◼   ► port connector to a gaming monitor,

01:01:20 ◼   ► which is exactly what if I was planning on playing destiny on my Mac,

01:01:23 ◼   ► that's what I should do. I shouldn't be playing it on my six K a XDR.

01:01:28 ◼   ► Cause no, you know, people don't game at six K,

01:01:30 ◼   ► unless you're making some sort of over the top, you know,

01:01:32 ◼   ► gaming PC where you just want to go to the max, everything.

01:01:35 ◼   ► It's just too much resolution, right?

01:01:37 ◼   ► You want to go with the four K and then get higher frame rates.

01:01:39 ◼   ► So the fact that I have that option is cool,

01:01:42 ◼   ► but I'm still out there searching for, and this is,

01:01:44 ◼   ► this is part of what I enjoy about these computers. I was, you know,

01:01:47 ◼   ► Steven Hackett was just sending me some more stuff about things inside of

01:01:50 ◼   ► computers that he's getting. Like what kind of storage can I put in there?

01:01:53 ◼   ► How many different cards can I put in? Like not just those cards.

01:01:57 ◼   ► If there's a card with a, to your point earlier, Marco,

01:01:59 ◼   ► it is a card that comes out with a bunch more USB ports.

01:02:02 ◼   ► I might shove that in there. I've got a lot of card slots to fill.

01:02:05 ◼   ► And a lot of interesting things that could possibly go in there.

01:02:07 ◼   ► So I know I shouldn't be spending any more money on this computer,

01:02:11 ◼   ► but that's what I'm thinking about now. This is, this is like a giant,

01:02:14 ◼   ► a giant green field for me to fill with stuff over the next many years,

01:02:19 ◼   ► which is exactly what no one wants to hear that now this thing gives me an

01:02:23 ◼   ► opportunity to spend more money, but that is really true.

01:02:25 ◼   ► And that's the main advantage and attraction to this computer for me and my sort

01:02:31 ◼   ► of hobbyist stuff.

01:02:32 ◼   ► It certainly isn't the performance because another thing I pointed out in the

01:02:35 ◼   ► last show and I'll reiterate again,

01:02:37 ◼   ► this computer is not the fastest Mac that they sell in terms of single core

01:02:42 ◼   ► performance. The phone is faster than in single core.

01:02:44 ◼   ► Most of the other top end Macs are faster than in single core,

01:02:46 ◼   ► even in multi-core people were doing tests and saying,

01:02:48 ◼   ► it's not even as fast.

01:02:50 ◼   ► Like the eight core Mac pro is not as fast as the eight core iMac Pro in a couple

01:02:54 ◼   ► of benchmarks. Like it's close, but it's not exactly there. Like these are,

01:02:57 ◼   ► these are old CPU's and they're,

01:03:01 ◼   ► they're single core performance is fairly bad. Their clocks are low.

01:03:05 ◼   ► It's not the speed demon you think it is.

01:03:07 ◼   ► It's all about the slots and everything else. So keep that in mind.

01:03:12 ◼   ► And you know,

01:03:13 ◼   ► I'll try not to get too depressed when the arm computers come out and trounce

01:03:16 ◼   ► it in every possible way. And like a 10 inch laptop.

01:03:18 ◼   ► All right. Why don't you tell me about the only other thing we haven't talked

01:03:24 ◼   ► about putting in your computer RAM?

01:03:26 ◼   ► Yeah, we're trying to figure out, this was just a theory,

01:03:28 ◼   ► but it sounded right to me.

01:03:29 ◼   ► So I threw it in the notes trying to figure out why they didn't offer a 64 gig

01:03:31 ◼   ► option. Um, and maybe it's because they have to be either,

01:03:35 ◼   ► you have to either fill in six slots or 12 slots. Uh,

01:03:38 ◼   ► and so you can't get 64 because they don't sell 10.66 gigabyte sticks of Ram.

01:03:42 ◼   ► So it'll divide evenly by six or 12. Um, I,

01:03:46 ◼   ► I suppose I'll launch that cool, like, what was it?

01:03:49 ◼   ► Like the card slot configurator. There's like a,

01:03:51 ◼   ► there was like a software app on the Mac pro that shows what you have installed

01:03:55 ◼   ► and what you can upgrade to.

01:03:56 ◼   ► But that makes sense to me that maybe you have to install things in,

01:03:58 ◼   ► in match sets and you can only do threes or sixes. Um, I'll find out,

01:04:02 ◼   ► but I think 96 gigs will hold me over for awhile.

01:04:05 ◼   ► So that's one thing I'm not actually looking into upgrading.

01:04:08 ◼   ► Oh, good.

01:04:09 ◼   ► You're not looking into upgrading one component of your $17,000 computer.

01:04:13 ◼   ► Not until the second five years. Yeah. The second five years.

01:04:16 ◼   ► I'll put more Ram in it maybe.

01:04:18 ◼   ► Wonderful. And then now why don't you tell me about thermodynamics if you don't

01:04:21 ◼   ► mind?

01:04:22 ◼   ► Popular Mechanics magazine somehow had an article on the Mac pro cause why not?

01:04:27 ◼   ► I mean, I guess, I don't know. I don't know how these things work.

01:04:31 ◼   ► Somehow Apple's connecting with popular mechanics and they talked to Chris

01:04:36 ◼   ► Leitenberg, uh, the senior director of product design about the Mac pro.

01:04:39 ◼   ► And in particular,

01:04:40 ◼   ► they were talking about the fans and the whole cooling system,

01:04:42 ◼   ► which is interesting to me. Um, and they said all the right things.

01:04:45 ◼   ► They're talking about, uh, dynamically balancing the blades.

01:04:49 ◼   ► So they're actually randomized so that they,

01:04:52 ◼   ► they sort of resonated different frequencies to sort of produce a over the broad

01:04:57 ◼   ► spectrum to produce noise instead of just in a particular frequency.

01:04:59 ◼   ► So it gets annoying and to avoid harmonics and everything. We saw that at first,

01:05:02 ◼   ► I think the first time that Apple talked about that was the, uh,

01:05:04 ◼   ► the original retina 15 inch, uh,

01:05:07 ◼   ► that made more of a wishing noise instead of a whining noise.

01:05:10 ◼   ► And I like that. And they're doing the same thing with these much,

01:05:13 ◼   ► much larger fans, obviously. Um,

01:05:15 ◼   ► they also said they borrowed the solution from automobile tires,

01:05:18 ◼   ► but that apparently proved something similar.

01:05:20 ◼   ► So you don't get drones when going over the highway where the tread patterns are

01:05:23 ◼   ► randomized a little bit to sort of distribute the noise across the spectrum

01:05:26 ◼   ► spectrum. Um,

01:05:29 ◼   ► uh,

01:05:29 ◼   ► the article says that one advantage of having noisy fans is that noisy,

01:05:33 ◼   ► you know, regular fans, uh,

01:05:35 ◼   ► can handle resistance caused by filtration systems.

01:05:38 ◼   ► So if you have some kind of mesh or filter or something that makes it harder to

01:05:42 ◼   ► suck the air through, if you have just a plain old regular noisy fan,

01:05:46 ◼   ► it can handle that. But these very delicate, beautiful, uh,

01:05:49 ◼   ► sort of gentle quiet fans don't like having their airflow impeded.

01:05:53 ◼   ► So both the Mac pro and the pro display don't have any kind of filters.

01:05:57 ◼   ► This was noted by a couple of YouTube was like,

01:05:59 ◼   ► you look through those giant gaping holes. There are the fan blades,

01:06:02 ◼   ► like that you could stick your finger through there. You know, cat hair, dust,

01:06:06 ◼   ► anything it's going in there. Right. Um, and this is a turn us,

01:06:10 ◼   ► what's his name? John Turner, John Turner, uh, speaking here, he says, uh,

01:06:15 ◼   ► speaking of the, the filters, he says, we don't have a need for that.

01:06:18 ◼   ► We create geometries that can deal with a certain amount of material getting on

01:06:22 ◼   ► them. And you know, that may sound a little bit silly. It's like,

01:06:27 ◼   ► so you know, you're going to get crap in your computer, but you're like, yeah,

01:06:30 ◼   ► we make it so the crap finds its way out. But honestly,

01:06:33 ◼   ► that is incredibly refreshing. And, uh,

01:06:36 ◼   ► coming from the company that made the butterfly keyboard where it can't get

01:06:40 ◼   ► out. This thing has made the, I mean,

01:06:42 ◼   ► I don't think you can shove buckets of sand into it,

01:06:45 ◼   ► but the whole point is the holes are so big on the entrance and exit. Yeah.

01:06:48 ◼   ► Some stuff's going to get in, some stuff's going to go out. We designed it so

01:06:52 ◼   ► that, you know, it's easy for stuff to get through it.

01:06:56 ◼   ► Hopefully there's no little place where it all catches. Hopefully it'll just be,

01:06:59 ◼   ► you know, large airflow going through it. And in practice,

01:07:02 ◼   ► like I'm sitting here with a cheese grater that has many more tiny holes,

01:07:05 ◼   ► but it also has no filters or anything on it. Stuff goes in, stuff comes out.

01:07:09 ◼   ► This has been running for 10 years. It's dusty inside,

01:07:11 ◼   ► but I have seen way worse even on Macs.

01:07:14 ◼   ► I've seen way worse on a previous tower max.

01:07:16 ◼   ► I've seen way worse on desktop max for a much shorter period of time. Uh,

01:07:20 ◼   ► having a huge amount of air flow into it and also a huge amount of air flow out

01:07:25 ◼   ► the back, like the whole front and the whole back are open to the air,

01:07:28 ◼   ► is actually a good system for keeping things moving and for not allowing stuff

01:07:33 ◼   ► to build up. So I'm not too worried about debris. Um, I wouldn't, you know,

01:07:37 ◼   ► run your Mac Pro while you're putting a new drywall,

01:07:40 ◼   ► as they say in the article, like obviously within reason. Uh,

01:07:44 ◼   ► and it would be cool if there was like a HEPA filter or something inside there,

01:07:47 ◼   ► but honestly I'd rather have the quieter fans than the HEPA filter because again,

01:07:51 ◼   ► 10 years running this other Mac Pro with no filter whatsoever and it's not

01:07:55 ◼   ► fine. It's been fine. So I'm convinced that, uh, this is a reasonable solution.

01:08:00 ◼   ► I think it's interesting. Like it's an interesting, uh, design trade off that,

01:08:04 ◼   ► like, you know, whether you,

01:08:05 ◼   ► whether a filter is better to try to keep everything out. Cause like for me, in,

01:08:08 ◼   ► in my experience, having desktops for years and years and years,

01:08:11 ◼   ► usually that I built myself with these fancy, like, you know,

01:08:13 ◼   ► high end enthusiast cases and all these cool fans and everything is that usually

01:08:18 ◼   ► the, by, by having a filter in there, you just give it,

01:08:23 ◼   ► give all the dust and everything one place to collect that you can ignore and

01:08:26 ◼   ► never clean. And I would imagine, you know, in, in most cases,

01:08:31 ◼   ► people aren't cleaning their filters. And so in most cases,

01:08:34 ◼   ► the used have less airflow very quickly after,

01:08:37 ◼   ► after ownership of one of these computers.

01:08:39 ◼   ► And so like I'm sure they probably had to do some kind of risk analysis of like

01:08:42 ◼   ► what's worse in practice,

01:08:44 ◼   ► having a dirty filter plugging up airflow or having dust go through the computer.

01:08:49 ◼   ► And cause the thing is like even computers with filters in every case I've ever

01:08:54 ◼   ► seen, there is still a ton of dust inside. Like,

01:08:57 ◼   ► I don't know if it's coming in through other, other paths or, or what,

01:09:01 ◼   ► what happens, but, or if the filters just aren't very good or if they aren't,

01:09:05 ◼   ► you know, if they don't cover the whole opening enough, who knows.

01:09:07 ◼   ► But I've never seen a filter that stayed clean for very long.

01:09:11 ◼   ► I've never seen anybody change or clean a filter themselves.

01:09:14 ◼   ► And I've never seen a computer with a filter that didn't have a whole bunch of

01:09:18 ◼   ► dust inside anyway. So maybe this is kind of just like admitting like, yeah, okay.

01:09:21 ◼   ► And practice the way to do a desktop is to just make it handle the amount of

01:09:25 ◼   ► dust and crap that's going to be sucked through it anyway.

01:09:27 ◼   ► And that argues for making the holes bigger or not smaller because you want

01:09:31 ◼   ► everything to pass through. Like the thing with filters is once they get clogged,

01:09:34 ◼   ► the reason you see dust inside is the,

01:09:36 ◼   ► the air will flow through the place that has the least resistance and a clogged

01:09:40 ◼   ► filter puts up a lot of resistance. So the cracks around the filter,

01:09:43 ◼   ► that's where the air will start going and then the dust will go through there.

01:09:45 ◼   ► It's much better to have it pass through. So, I mean,

01:09:50 ◼   ► obviously the cheese grater has a ton of holes,

01:09:51 ◼   ► but they're actually kind of small and you can get some dust collecting on them.

01:09:54 ◼   ► Same thing with heat sink fins.

01:09:56 ◼   ► If you have the heat sink fins very close together,

01:09:58 ◼   ► dust will get between them. If they're more widely spaced,

01:10:00 ◼   ► the air will pass through. But you know, I said 10 years with,

01:10:04 ◼   ► I've not been nice to this computer.

01:10:06 ◼   ► It's on the floor where all the dust is in a house that has had a dog for many

01:10:11 ◼   ► years during that in two different dogs during, during that period of time.

01:10:15 ◼   ► And it's fine.

01:10:16 ◼   ► Like occasionally I open up and then I see some dust and maybe blow it out,

01:10:19 ◼   ► but you know, hasn't been an issue. So I'm not particularly worried about it.

01:10:22 ◼   ► If,

01:10:23 ◼   ► if they ever made something that was meant to be used in like high dust

01:10:26 ◼   ► environment, you'd probably need to do something,

01:10:28 ◼   ► because you could get like conductive bits in there that can screw stuff up.

01:10:32 ◼   ► But that's not what this is made for.

01:10:34 ◼   ► It's made to be indoors in an office like environment.

01:10:38 ◼   ► And I think it'll, it'll do just fine.

01:10:40 ◼   ► But mostly I'm happy that they spent so much time trying to make the fans very

01:10:44 ◼   ► quiet and pleasant sounding when they make any noise at all.

01:10:46 ◼   ► And the YouTube reviews have said it is dead silent. You know,

01:10:51 ◼   ► we'll see. Same thing with the monitor.

01:10:52 ◼   ► I'm glad to see people who have said they literally cannot hear anything inside

01:10:55 ◼   ► the monitor. So when I get them, I will give you my judgment.

01:10:59 ◼   ► And hopefully my old man hearing has gotten bad enough that I will also find

01:11:02 ◼   ► them silent.

01:11:03 ◼   ► All right. And on this long journey through followup,

01:11:09 ◼   ► why don't you tell me about the LG Ultrafine 5k and how it may or may not be

01:11:14 ◼   ► good for everyone.

01:11:15 ◼   ► Might not be fine. It was their, their, uh, their slogan in the ads. Fine period.

01:11:20 ◼   ► Um, this is from Mark, from Mark Granbow.

01:11:23 ◼   ► And he has had some experience with these monitors.

01:11:26 ◼   ► He's using them with the 5k IMAX and they were hooking up the LG 5k displays. Uh,

01:11:30 ◼   ► and he's working, he's a designer and illustrator,

01:11:33 ◼   ► and they're working in an environment where, uh,

01:11:36 ◼   ► it's kind of important that the monitors all kind of agree.

01:11:40 ◼   ► So when they would hook up the, the LG,

01:11:43 ◼   ► they'd noticed that it didn't match the IMAX internal display, even if they,

01:11:47 ◼   ► you know,

01:11:47 ◼   ► accounted for night shift and true tone and all that other stuff,

01:11:50 ◼   ► just like turning that off or even when it wasn't even supported on the models.

01:11:52 ◼   ► So they,

01:11:53 ◼   ► they bought a hardware calibrator and tried to get them to match each other and

01:11:57 ◼   ► can never quite get them to match, which is kind of frustrating, right?

01:12:00 ◼   ► Even though they, in theory, they use the same panel, uh,

01:12:02 ◼   ► and then they bought another LG and the two LGs that they had didn't match each

01:12:06 ◼   ► other. There's, you know, the same monitor, right?

01:12:10 ◼   ► So this is frustrating and this is another one of the advantages that you,

01:12:14 ◼   ► in theory, get with Apple monitors.

01:12:15 ◼   ► They always say they're all carefully calibrated and so on and so forth.

01:12:18 ◼   ► And my experience that's been true,

01:12:20 ◼   ► having purchased Apple monitors since they were CRTs and then LCDs,

01:12:24 ◼   ► they tend to be consistent and also look like each other.

01:12:28 ◼   ► So Mark says,

01:12:30 ◼   ► and his experience with five of these LG displays that they fall short of Apple

01:12:34 ◼   ► standards for factory calibration, consistently and consistency.

01:12:37 ◼   ► So I think you get five, five car max, the displays will match each other.

01:12:42 ◼   ► But apparently if you do that with LG five Ks,

01:12:44 ◼   ► they will not and you might not even be able to calibrate them to match the

01:12:47 ◼   ► Apple display. So you had another reason that if you care about that type of

01:12:51 ◼   ► thing at all,

01:12:52 ◼   ► there is reason a to buy Apple and B for Apple to make its own display.

01:12:56 ◼   ► If you don't care, then fine. You save a lot of money, but, uh, it's,

01:12:59 ◼   ► it's nice to, you know,

01:13:01 ◼   ► it's nice to know that you're paying for something when you buy these Apple

01:13:05 ◼   ► display. Someone was mentioning on Twitter that they thought it was silly,

01:13:08 ◼   ► that that Apple could never Mark up like, uh,

01:13:10 ◼   ► an LG panel and put it in their own case and charge hundreds more.

01:13:14 ◼   ► And it's like, that's all they've ever done.

01:13:15 ◼   ► Like all of their monitors always been somebody else's panel, uh,

01:13:19 ◼   ► that they calibrate,

01:13:20 ◼   ► they put it in an expensive case and charge you tons of money for it.

01:13:23 ◼   ► And we would, we bought them,

01:13:24 ◼   ► we bought them when they were CRTs and they were Sony trinitrons inside an Apple

01:13:28 ◼   ► branded case. And they cost hugely more than competing monitors.

01:13:32 ◼   ► We bought them when they were multi scan, you know,

01:13:35 ◼   ► multi sync CRT things. Even after the trend run error,

01:13:38 ◼   ► we bought them when there are LCD panels and we would keep buying them, uh,

01:13:42 ◼   ► if they would only make another one today.

01:13:44 ◼   ► So I still think there is a place in the market for that,

01:13:48 ◼   ► especially if it's only a hundred or two more.

01:13:50 ◼   ► And I think that a hundred or two, depending on who you are,

01:13:52 ◼   ► may be worth it to you.

01:13:53 ◼   ► If you care about your monitors matching each other or the color is being, uh,

01:13:57 ◼   ► you know, calibrated to, uh, what you want them to be.

01:14:01 ◼   ► And like that's the kind of thing that, you know,

01:14:04 ◼   ► Apple puts a lot of time and attention and money into things like that,

01:14:09 ◼   ► things like proper calibration, even down to, you know,

01:14:12 ◼   ► even like with the iPhone displays, like they,

01:14:14 ◼   ► they go throughout the whole product line and stuff like that.

01:14:16 ◼   ► And it's the kind of thing that the market typically does not reward.

01:14:19 ◼   ► The market does not generally notice or care. Um,

01:14:23 ◼   ► Apple occasionally tries to explain it to us and we mostly gloss over. Um,

01:14:27 ◼   ► because we like the market largely doesn't care.

01:14:30 ◼   ► But when you do care,

01:14:32 ◼   ► they're the only option for a lot of these things.

01:14:35 ◼   ► Or when you do have a need like that,

01:14:37 ◼   ► like you might not realize if you only ever buy one of these monitors,

01:14:40 ◼   ► for instance, you might not realize, Hey, the colors are a little bit weird.

01:14:43 ◼   ► But then when you put it next to something that's that doesn't have that

01:14:45 ◼   ► problem or when you buy two of them and they don't match, like it's,

01:14:48 ◼   ► it's exactly that little kind of detail that Apple really cares a lot more than

01:14:53 ◼   ► almost anyone else in the industry about in almost every case. Uh,

01:14:57 ◼   ► or they do care better more than anyone else in the industry in a lot of these

01:15:00 ◼   ► cases. Um,

01:15:01 ◼   ► and I feel like they're never going to get the credit that they deserve for

01:15:05 ◼   ► that. Uh,

01:15:07 ◼   ► but that's the kind of thing that when we want an Apple monitor,

01:15:11 ◼   ► that's the kind of thing we're looking for is that level of quality,

01:15:14 ◼   ► that level of attention to detail,

01:15:16 ◼   ► that level of caring about things that most of the market will not reward,

01:15:21 ◼   ► but doing it anyway.

01:15:22 ◼   ► Yeah. And as the chat room was pointing out,

01:15:25 ◼   ► it's not as if they have some kind of magic, like if it's the same panel,

01:15:28 ◼   ► it's the same panel. How should, how can apples be any better?

01:15:31 ◼   ► It's about quality standards. They will reject panels that don't meet their

01:15:34 ◼   ► criteria. They have some sort of standard that they measure them to.

01:15:37 ◼   ► They measure the panel and it has to be within these values of these colors and

01:15:41 ◼   ► these ranges. And if it's not, they don't take that one.

01:15:43 ◼   ► And that's why there's things cost more because it's just been,

01:15:45 ◼   ► it's like bidding on chips. So you find the ones that happen to run faster,

01:15:48 ◼   ► they cost more money cause there's fewer of them. Um, Apple,

01:15:52 ◼   ► and they've always done with this, with all of their monitors, even,

01:15:55 ◼   ► they're really crappy monitors.

01:15:57 ◼   ► They are remarkably consistent with each other.

01:16:00 ◼   ► If you buy five of them and line them all up and put them all on a hundred

01:16:03 ◼   ► percent red screen and look at them, they will all look more or less the same.

01:16:07 ◼   ► Right. And that's, and even just Apple pushing like the, you know,

01:16:11 ◼   ► what percent of P3 and now they cover a hundred percent of P3 and like that,

01:16:14 ◼   ► that whole effort, uh,

01:16:16 ◼   ► it's because they want the monitors to display as much, uh,

01:16:20 ◼   ► of the color range as possible.

01:16:22 ◼   ► And they want it to display that stuff consistently. Yeah.

01:16:26 ◼   ► Also even on the phones and I bet they do the same thing by rejecting the, the,

01:16:30 ◼   ► uh,

01:16:31 ◼   ► OLED or LCD panels that don't meet their standards and thus driving up the price.

01:16:35 ◼   ► That's part of what we pay for. And they try to be cooler.

01:16:38 ◼   ► They charge a premium for it. Like they may, they make plenty of money.

01:16:41 ◼   ► Like it's part of the profit margin, but you know, that is,

01:16:44 ◼   ► that is the thing that you're paying for, even though, especially in phones,

01:16:47 ◼   ► nobody notices because most people like the completely overboosted,

01:16:51 ◼   ► super duper vibrant color scheme of Samsung phones.

01:16:54 ◼   ► They've always judged that to be better. But, uh, if,

01:16:57 ◼   ► I guess if they try to watch a movie or TV show,

01:16:59 ◼   ► it might look in a little bit cartoonish,

01:17:00 ◼   ► but then again, people have their TVs calibrated that way.

01:17:02 ◼   ► So I don't even know. But in this area,

01:17:03 ◼   ► I'm glad that Apple's taste still aligns with mine and, uh,

01:17:08 ◼   ► creative professionals who need to see the colors as they actually are. Um,

01:17:12 ◼   ► so they're sort of working off a common understanding of what it is that they're

01:17:16 ◼   ► doing because if everybody's monitor was calibrated to their own personal tastes,

01:17:20 ◼   ► it's very difficult to get work done in a collaborative environment.

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01:19:26 ◼   ► So we have in the show notes, expandable Macs and the history of Mac towers.

01:19:36 ◼   ► So I know that there's been cheese graters for a long time and I know that you

01:19:39 ◼   ► could expand them and now you know the entirety of my knowledge of the history

01:19:43 ◼   ► of Mac towers. So John, educate me if you don't mind,

01:19:47 ◼   ► since apparently there's some sort of shtick you have here.

01:19:49 ◼   ► What's the history of Mac towers and how do you expand them?

01:19:52 ◼   ► I put this in the notes inspired by some back and forth on Twitter between a

01:19:57 ◼   ► bunch of people we know in particular, you know, with the, you know,

01:20:02 ◼   ► shipping of the Mac pro people who are disappointed that if you,

01:20:06 ◼   ► you want a Macintosh computer with expandable insides where you can replace Ram

01:20:11 ◼   ► and hard drives and GPU's and do all the stuff that we've been talking about,

01:20:16 ◼   ► that your only choice is this extremely expensive, super high end thing.

01:20:22 ◼   ► Um, and I've mostly been, uh,

01:20:26 ◼   ► you know, not concerned with this issue because, uh, in,

01:20:30 ◼   ► in the short term because the whole deal was, and you know,

01:20:34 ◼   ► has been my deal since before the trashcan Mac pro,

01:20:37 ◼   ► which is that Apple should make a Mac pro as its halo car type computer.

01:20:42 ◼   ► It should be the best of the best. It should be fast,

01:20:47 ◼   ► because fast computers are cool. It should be everything,

01:20:52 ◼   ► you know, more capable, more expandable, uh,

01:20:56 ◼   ► more powerful than anything else. And yes,

01:20:58 ◼   ► also more expensive scout out that topic. And it was important for,

01:21:03 ◼   ► you know, to me that they do this. I think it's important for the company. Uh,

01:21:07 ◼   ► I think the trashcan was a very interesting take on that.

01:21:11 ◼   ► It turned out to be the wrong solution, but it was,

01:21:14 ◼   ► you can't say that they weren't bold. Uh, you know, can't innovate more of my ass.

01:21:18 ◼   ► We make fun of that, but honestly that was an innovative computer.

01:21:21 ◼   ► It was just innovating in the wrong direction,

01:21:23 ◼   ► unfortunately and had some design flaws,

01:21:25 ◼   ► but it was daring and bold and like a lot of halo cars.

01:21:28 ◼   ► Some of those end up being maybe not as practical as you thought,

01:21:32 ◼   ► but maybe not particularly successful. Um,

01:21:34 ◼   ► and then so they were taking a second shot at it here. Right.

01:21:36 ◼   ► So that's mostly why I've been like, well, yeah,

01:21:39 ◼   ► I'm not going to complain about the Mac pro to say, you know,

01:21:42 ◼   ► it's too expensive or too high end because that's the whole point of this is that

01:21:46 ◼   ► to put this plant, this flag, put a stake in the ground,

01:21:49 ◼   ► whatever your metaphor is like, you know,

01:21:52 ◼   ► put the flag on the top of the mountain. We, this is go big or go home.

01:21:56 ◼   ► All the planet as you can think of, that's the point of this computer.

01:22:01 ◼   ► But the, now that that is there and it's out there and we understand what it's

01:22:05 ◼   ► for and who's going to buy it and everything.

01:22:07 ◼   ► This is the question and the thing that people are complaining about. Now they're,

01:22:10 ◼   ► they're blaming the Mac pro for it. But honestly, I think that's,

01:22:13 ◼   ► that's misdirected anger. The Mac pro has to be the thing that it is.

01:22:17 ◼   ► The question is,

01:22:19 ◼   ► is there something between the highest of the very high end and the other Macs

01:22:24 ◼   ► in Apple's lineup? And most of the people complaining about this,

01:22:30 ◼   ► remember a time when Apple either had a single model that spanned more of a

01:22:35 ◼   ► range or multiple models where you could,

01:22:36 ◼   ► you could pay Apple far less money to get a computer that was expandable.

01:22:41 ◼   ► That either you could swap out different kinds of internal storage or swap out

01:22:47 ◼   ► the GPU or maybe put two GPUs in it. Sometimes they had one or two CPU's, right?

01:22:51 ◼   ► And a lot of those people say,

01:22:56 ◼   ► I'm never going to need four GPU's in my thing.

01:23:00 ◼   ► I'm never going to need 28 cores. I don't even care about ECC Ram.

01:23:04 ◼   ► I don't even care if it's a Xeon, but the only choices right now are,

01:23:09 ◼   ► you know,

01:23:10 ◼   ► you have the iMac pro and then a huge Gulf and then the very, very high end.

01:23:15 ◼   ► And you know, the people are angry about that. They say, you know,

01:23:18 ◼   ► Apple is not serving my needs. Apple doesn't make a computer.

01:23:21 ◼   ► That's what I exactly what I want. I don't want the high end.

01:23:25 ◼   ► And I also don't want the iMac wise and Apple makes something for me.

01:23:29 ◼   ► In various times that Mac has been described as the X Mac where it's a

01:23:34 ◼   ► inexpensive Mac made with consumer desktop parts. It's expandable.

01:23:37 ◼   ► Apple has never really made that computer.

01:23:39 ◼   ► But as people who are around for the Power Mac G5 and the early Mac pros can

01:23:45 ◼   ► attest,

01:23:46 ◼   ► Apple used to make its high end line of computers extend pretty far down.

01:23:52 ◼   ► Like, yeah,

01:23:53 ◼   ► you could always spec them up to be this big monster machines,

01:23:55 ◼   ► but the quote unquote same computer,

01:23:57 ◼   ► like it was called a Mac pro or was called a Power Mac, right?

01:24:00 ◼   ► A Power Mac G5.

01:24:01 ◼   ► You could take that same computer and spec it way down and it still had ECC Ram

01:24:06 ◼   ► and it still has Xeons in it,

01:24:07 ◼   ► but you could spec it way down to the point where you could pay like $1,600 for

01:24:12 ◼   ► the base config. And what you would get is a gigantic tower,

01:24:17 ◼   ► a cheese grater tower with ECC Ram and a Xeon in it,

01:24:21 ◼   ► but everything would be small. It would have the wimpy CPU.

01:24:25 ◼   ► It would have fewer Ram slots.

01:24:26 ◼   ► It would just have one CPU instead of two back when that was a thing they were

01:24:29 ◼   ► doing. It would have a crappy video card,

01:24:31 ◼   ► but you'd still be getting the whole big thing and you take out the GPU and put

01:24:36 ◼   ► a different one and you could add more Ram later and you could even,

01:24:38 ◼   ► if you were daring, take out the CPU and upgrade it, right? That is the,

01:24:42 ◼   ► the world that a lot of people are pining for. And like I said,

01:24:46 ◼   ► I think their anger at the Mac pro is misdirected because that's a very

01:24:50 ◼   ► important product for Apple to have. What they're complaining about is,

01:24:52 ◼   ► what about the gap? So my question to the two of you is,

01:24:57 ◼   ► is this a product Apple should ever make again?

01:25:02 ◼   ► Like why did they ever make it before? Why aren't they making it now?

01:25:06 ◼   ► And then the third one is,

01:25:07 ◼   ► can this current computer ever extend downward to,

01:25:12 ◼   ► you know, to that range?

01:25:14 ◼   ► Can you ever sell something that looks and is essentially like the Mac pro as

01:25:19 ◼   ► we know it today that you could sell for $2,000 or less?

01:25:24 ◼   ► I just, I don't know who is buying this. Like, yes,

01:25:28 ◼   ► I understand that there are friends of ours that want that and maybe,

01:25:33 ◼   ► maybe I would want that, but honestly I,

01:25:38 ◼   ► my perception of my computer or at least a desktop computer at the very least

01:25:44 ◼   ► has changed significantly since I started buying Macs.

01:25:48 ◼   ► And maybe that's because Apple told me to believe this and now I'm just,

01:25:51 ◼   ► I'm one of the sheeple that's just marching, you know,

01:25:54 ◼   ► to whatever Apple tells me to do. But I think of these computers,

01:25:59 ◼   ► both the iMac and a laptop as a single unit, much like a phone.

01:26:03 ◼   ► Like I don't view my computers as though I'm going to be upgrading the Ram in

01:26:07 ◼   ► the future and the hard drive later. And, and,

01:26:09 ◼   ► and I don't even know what else I've upgraded in the past and computers.

01:26:12 ◼   ► Like when I had my original poly book,

01:26:15 ◼   ► I had put more Ram in that I believe, and it was reasonably easy to do that.

01:26:20 ◼   ► I think I'd put a bigger hard drive in that. It was reasonably easy to do that.

01:26:23 ◼   ► But nowadays I'm buying computers where like even my adorable has 16 gigs of Ram

01:26:28 ◼   ► if I'm not mistaken. And it has a half terabyte for my needs.

01:26:36 ◼   ► And I'm only talking about me. I'm not saying this is universal to everyone,

01:26:38 ◼   ► but for my needs, it's more, that's fine. I mean, I'd like more,

01:26:40 ◼   ► but I don't need more. And you know,

01:26:43 ◼   ► this iMac pro is specced way better than I need today.

01:26:46 ◼   ► And the reason I did that is because I want it to last for a few years. I,

01:26:50 ◼   ► I don't know what it is. I think I would upgrade in this,

01:26:55 ◼   ► like I guess an SSD maybe, but at that point, presumably I'd want a new CPU,

01:27:00 ◼   ► maybe more Ram maybe. But I have, what do I have in this thing?

01:27:05 ◼   ► 64 gigs of Ram. Like I'm not going to need more Ram anytime soon.

01:27:09 ◼   ► So I view my computers as not expendable.

01:27:14 ◼   ► That's way too aggressive a term,

01:27:17 ◼   ► but I view them as a single unit that I will use for several years and then they

01:27:21 ◼   ► will move on to either someone else or get recycled or what have you.

01:27:25 ◼   ► And I personally don't really see the need for an expandable Mac in the same way

01:27:30 ◼   ► that the Mac pro exists. But I don't know what are the,

01:27:37 ◼   ► what is the meme with like the galaxy brain and universe brain and all that

01:27:40 ◼   ► stuff. Maybe I'm on the smallest one of those. So Marco,

01:27:43 ◼   ► you use your galaxy brain and make me feel dumb for a minute. Why,

01:27:47 ◼   ► why do you need or why do I need an expandable Mac?

01:27:49 ◼   ► I mean,

01:27:51 ◼   ► the reality is there's a lot of really good reasons why this thing doesn't

01:27:56 ◼   ► exist or rather why Apple won't make it. Um,

01:28:00 ◼   ► but I don't think they're not, they're not going to satisfy people.

01:28:04 ◼   ► So one of the biggest reasons is that we're already talking about a very small

01:28:09 ◼   ► portion of the market by not talking about laptops.

01:28:12 ◼   ► We're talking about desktops in the time when expandable desktops were the

01:28:17 ◼   ► default kind of computer that like if you said I bought a computer,

01:28:21 ◼   ► most people would picture a desktop of some kind. That time was, you know,

01:28:26 ◼   ► the nineties or eighties maybe, you know,

01:28:28 ◼   ► up until maybe 2002 2004 at which point the desktop was not going to be a

01:28:33 ◼   ► desktop at which point the default started becoming a laptop for almost

01:28:37 ◼   ► everybody. It never went back the other way. Like, you know,

01:28:40 ◼   ► laptops came in that, you know,

01:28:41 ◼   ► as LCD panels got cheaper and batteries got better, like, and especially,

01:28:45 ◼   ► especially in the,

01:28:46 ◼   ► in the era of SSDs when the performance between laptops and desktops, uh,

01:28:50 ◼   ► really closed the gap big time. Uh,

01:28:52 ◼   ► the reality is most people for most of their computer needs buy laptops.

01:28:57 ◼   ► Now you're already talking about a very small part of the market that even wants

01:29:00 ◼   ► a desktop at all. And then when you look at the people who do want a desktop,

01:29:04 ◼   ► a lot of those sales are kind of like, you know, appliances.

01:29:10 ◼   ► They're like you need like a computer to be at a desk in an office or to be

01:29:15 ◼   ► displaying something as some kind of, you know,

01:29:17 ◼   ► like stationary appliance or something like a lot of those are not high end

01:29:22 ◼   ► desktops and they don't need to be very good.

01:29:24 ◼   ► Like you wonder why apple still sells such incredibly crappy configurations of

01:29:28 ◼   ► the low end IMAX. It's for that market. Right. Uh,

01:29:30 ◼   ► they sell a whole ton of them.

01:29:31 ◼   ► Most office workers are not buying a ton of these anymore. You know,

01:29:36 ◼   ► most office workers are going laptops for their staff and everything.

01:29:38 ◼   ► Like it's just,

01:29:39 ◼   ► there's not a lot of people buying desktops and of the people buying desktops,

01:29:44 ◼   ► many of them just want them to be as cheap as possible for various reasons.

01:29:47 ◼   ► So the market for enthusiasts and high end desktops is really quite small of the

01:29:53 ◼   ► of that market. A huge portion of it are gamers.

01:30:00 ◼   ► And apple doesn't do well with gamers for lots of good reasons that neither side

01:30:05 ◼   ► is likely to ever compromise on. You know,

01:30:08 ◼   ► what gamers want is a very different kind of system than the kind of system.

01:30:13 ◼   ► Apple wants to make and sell.

01:30:14 ◼   ► They usually aren't even interested in or running Mac OS.

01:30:18 ◼   ► So why does apple even need to bother? Uh, you know,

01:30:22 ◼   ► apple's not probably very interested in making everybody's gaming PCs,

01:30:25 ◼   ► but that's not really a market they care to be in or need to be in because quite

01:30:30 ◼   ► frankly the gamers don't like apple very much usually and apple doesn't like

01:30:33 ◼   ► them very much and doesn't want to do what they want. So they kind of,

01:30:35 ◼   ► you know, stay out of each other's way.

01:30:36 ◼   ► And so what people usually want who are asking for the,

01:30:42 ◼   ► you know, quote, X Mac, the cheap Mac tower,

01:30:44 ◼   ► they're usually basically asking for gaming PCs. Like if you,

01:30:48 ◼   ► if you look at like the kind of thing they're looking for, okay,

01:30:50 ◼   ► so you want a tower computer using standard consumer parts that aren't very

01:30:54 ◼   ► expensive, that you can put a gaming GPU in and expand it later.

01:30:58 ◼   ► That's basically a gaming PC.

01:30:59 ◼   ► And part of the reason why I think the likelihood of this is eroded even further

01:31:05 ◼   ► over time is that gaming PC parts got very cheap. It's,

01:31:09 ◼   ► it's such a commodity. Like there's no room for apple to make much profit there.

01:31:12 ◼   ► Like, you know,

01:31:13 ◼   ► if apple wants to try to sell the gaming PC for $3,000 instead of $6,000 they're

01:31:18 ◼   ► still way out of the market. They're still way above it.

01:31:24 ◼   ► Not to mention the fact that many gamers have also gone to laptops these days,

01:31:26 ◼   ► which is a whole other thing.

01:31:27 ◼   ► And apple's not going to make a gaming laptop for all the various things that it

01:31:30 ◼   ► needs. Um,

01:31:31 ◼   ► so we're talking about such a narrow part of the market that still wants a

01:31:36 ◼   ► desktop in this day and age.

01:31:39 ◼   ► Doesn't want it to be just like the bargain basement cheap thing actually wants

01:31:43 ◼   ► it to be like, you know, a powerful tower that can be expanded.

01:31:47 ◼   ► Isn't the pro side of the market that is like, you know,

01:31:50 ◼   ► pro video editors who want to buy a crazy workstation like a Mac pro.

01:31:54 ◼   ► Also probably isn't hardcore gamers because they're probably going to want PC

01:31:58 ◼   ► hardware that they can have even more control over and even get even cheaper and

01:32:02 ◼   ► run windows on. So like what's left?

01:32:05 ◼   ► It's basically me, John and Steve trout and Smith.

01:32:09 ◼   ► It's a pretty small market and me and John will eventually just buy the Mac pro.

01:32:13 ◼   ► So, so it's, and I'm not saying that there aren't,

01:32:18 ◼   ► you know, things that we wish we had here. I'm not saying that there aren't ways

01:32:21 ◼   ► that like, like for instance, you know,

01:32:22 ◼   ► I have an iMac I've been using an iMac since 2015 2014 rather.

01:32:26 ◼   ► I would love so much to be able to expand it somehow.

01:32:32 ◼   ► To what end though? What would you be expanding? Like,

01:32:35 ◼   ► and I'm not trying to be a jerk.

01:32:37 ◼   ► I just genuinely don't know what I would do to my computer.

01:32:40 ◼   ► What is it your iMac pro either doesn't do today or you think won't do tomorrow

01:32:44 ◼   ► that you would like to rectify?

01:32:46 ◼   ► Well, I have bought my way out of this problem.

01:32:49 ◼   ► The reason why the IMAX that I've had in 2014 and forward,

01:32:54 ◼   ► why I haven't really outgrown their basic specs during their useful lifetime is

01:32:59 ◼   ► because I had the money to buy a really good configuration upfront,

01:33:03 ◼   ► but that wasn't always the case with the max I've bought.

01:33:07 ◼   ► Like when I bought my first Mac pro in 2008,

01:33:10 ◼   ► which was the first time I could ever afford a Mac tower,

01:33:13 ◼   ► I bought a pretty modest configuration,

01:33:16 ◼   ► very similar to what John bought his with actually.

01:33:18 ◼   ► And I upgraded over time. I didn't go as far as John did.

01:33:22 ◼   ► I didn't own it for 10 years. But I, over time I upgraded the Ram.

01:33:26 ◼   ► I upgraded the hard drives on day one.

01:33:29 ◼   ► There's a huge market of people who can afford the entry price of something like

01:33:34 ◼   ► this, but don't want to, or can't pay Apple's upgrade prices.

01:33:39 ◼   ► So Casey, you did, you know,

01:33:41 ◼   ► you didn't want to pay the upgrade price for the Ram.

01:33:42 ◼   ► So you bought it with base Ram and use third party Ram to upgrade your Mac.

01:33:45 ◼   ► Right? That's a huge market.

01:33:47 ◼   ► I used to do that to every Mac I owned.

01:33:49 ◼   ► Usually I'd get the base specs from Apple. I would then go to, you know,

01:33:53 ◼   ► OWC and get their Ram and I'd go get whatever hard drive that I had researched

01:33:56 ◼   ► was like the fastest hard drive and get that.

01:33:59 ◼   ► And I put them in myself cause they were way cheaper than Apple's or sometimes

01:34:02 ◼   ► they would be like larger configurations that would Apple would offer or with

01:34:05 ◼   ► something like that.

01:34:06 ◼   ► And so it allowed me to get a better computer than I could otherwise afford.

01:34:10 ◼   ► Or it allowed me to get a computer that I could afford first that was lower end.

01:34:15 ◼   ► And then over time as I got more money, make it higher end with upgrades.

01:34:19 ◼   ► And that side of the market is huge and totally underserved by all of Apple's

01:34:25 ◼   ► product lines now because you can't really upgrade anything on any of them

01:34:31 ◼   ► anymore. Basically like there's almost nothing upgradeable about almost any

01:34:34 ◼   ► computer or device Apple sells anymore.

01:34:36 ◼   ► And so there is a huge market there to be had for people who don't want to or

01:34:43 ◼   ► can't pay Apple's high spec fees to get like a, you know,

01:34:47 ◼   ► the full resources that they might want upfront.

01:34:50 ◼   ► But that maybe two years in they would. And that has bitten me. Like I,

01:34:55 ◼   ► I have occasionally, like I, a couple of laptops ago,

01:34:58 ◼   ► I replaced the laptop mostly because I just kept running out of space.

01:35:02 ◼   ► You can kind of look cynically then like, well,

01:35:04 ◼   ► Apple's selling more computers and upgrades because people can't upgrade the

01:35:08 ◼   ► ones they have. And that's, that's kind of crappy. You know,

01:35:11 ◼   ► the same thing applies to the phone, the iPad. But anyway,

01:35:14 ◼   ► so there is a big market there,

01:35:17 ◼   ► but the main part of that market is not creating computers that can't exist

01:35:22 ◼   ► otherwise. Now that we have the Mac pro at least the main part of that market is

01:35:27 ◼   ► people who need to save some money or who want to save some money.

01:35:30 ◼   ► And I don't think Apple gives two craps about that market whatsoever.

01:35:34 ◼   ► And that's, I'm not saying that's right,

01:35:36 ◼   ► but they are a really rich company and they got there somehow. You know,

01:35:40 ◼   ► they're, they're doing what, what works for them.

01:35:42 ◼   ► And what works for them is typically giving you most of what you want and making

01:35:47 ◼   ► you pay two to three times what you,

01:35:49 ◼   ► what you feel comfortable paying for it if that's what you want.

01:35:52 ◼   ► So the new Mac pro continues that.

01:35:53 ◼   ► And I think it's partially excused by, this is a very,

01:35:58 ◼   ► very narrow market that the people who,

01:36:01 ◼   ► who still want expandable desktops is a very narrow market.

01:36:06 ◼   ► Among that market, a lot of that market is pros or enthusiasts like us who are

01:36:11 ◼   ► much more willing on average to pay high Apple prices.

01:36:17 ◼   ► So they are serving a good chunk of that market by what they're doing.

01:36:21 ◼   ► And they're really making us like, Ooh, really cringe and, and really,

01:36:27 ◼   ► you know, sacrifice some of the stuff we want or, or, you know,

01:36:30 ◼   ► have to save up for a couple more years to get this thing. You know,

01:36:33 ◼   ► that they're really making it hurt, but they are, but it is probably going to work

01:36:37 ◼   ► in the sense that we are probably going to buy it or,

01:36:40 ◼   ► or buy something else they make and be happy enough with that.

01:36:42 ◼   ► Like the Mac pro. So it is like it works for them. I don't see,

01:36:47 ◼   ► I don't see the strategy costing them a lot of sales that a,

01:36:52 ◼   ► they would actually want and B would actually happen.

01:36:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I think the, I mean the, the X Mac desire,

01:36:59 ◼   ► they've never made anything that really fits this bill. Like I use it as in,

01:37:02 ◼   ► not using the, you know, Zions and ECC Ram. I keep using as a standard.

01:37:07 ◼   ► So basically a consumer desktop parts, but in an expandable case.

01:37:11 ◼   ► So I'm putting that aside as,

01:37:13 ◼   ► as sort of the market they don't want to serve because it's price conscious or

01:37:16 ◼   ► it's gamers, like you said, and you know, the desktop market is small.

01:37:20 ◼   ► And they just, if they didn't address that in the past,

01:37:22 ◼   ► the chances of them addressing it now was, you know, even smaller. Right.

01:37:26 ◼   ► So let's just set that aside.

01:37:27 ◼   ► But I think the main thing that people are pining for is a thing they had for a

01:37:31 ◼   ► fairly long period of time, which is that the, the top end, the, the Xeon ECC,

01:37:35 ◼   ► you know, dual CPU, whatever,

01:37:39 ◼   ► a multi-core big giant tower thing that that product line extended downward into

01:37:44 ◼   ► way cheaper prices. And so Apple could justify it by saying,

01:37:48 ◼   ► well we're still just basically making one high end thing.

01:37:51 ◼   ► Like this is our top end computer.

01:37:53 ◼   ► You can spec it out like crazy and make it cost huge amounts of money,

01:37:57 ◼   ► but essentially that very same computer you can spec down to the point where it,

01:38:01 ◼   ► you know, sort of the peak of the strategy,

01:38:04 ◼   ► they had models that had entirely different motherboards like inside the same

01:38:08 ◼   ► case, but you'd like the cheap one was basically a different computer.

01:38:11 ◼   ► They didn't even do that in the G4 era where like there was the Sawtooth and the

01:38:15 ◼   ► God, I'm not too old. What does chat room help me out with the other one was

01:38:18 ◼   ► Sawtooth G4 and the, I can't remember.

01:38:24 ◼   ► They would sell computers that look like they were in the same case,

01:38:28 ◼   ► but there was like the good one and the bad one. One of them had the,

01:38:31 ◼   ► the AGP and one of them didn't. Yeah,

01:38:33 ◼   ► the chat room will get it from you eventually. Anyway, same thing with the,

01:38:36 ◼   ► with the PowerMax with the different motherboards and the,

01:38:39 ◼   ► the single CPU versus dual CPU.

01:38:41 ◼   ► And that was an interesting strategy because they were all, you know,

01:38:45 ◼   ► especially in the Mac Pro era as in the Intel era, they were all Xeons.

01:38:48 ◼   ► Like there was none of them that had the cheaper consumer CPUs with higher

01:38:52 ◼   ► single core speed. They were all Xeons, but they, they went way down market.

01:38:56 ◼   ► Like you could,

01:38:57 ◼   ► you could get the stripper model that had almost all the expandability,

01:39:02 ◼   ► sometimes not all the expanded, but almost all the expandability.

01:39:05 ◼   ► And then on the outside looked like the same as the other ones, you know,

01:39:10 ◼   ► it was in the same case, right? So you felt like you were getting, you know,

01:39:13 ◼   ► you didn't feel like you were getting the lesser thing,

01:39:15 ◼   ► but it was considerably less expensive. And I think, uh,

01:39:20 ◼   ► given their current design,

01:39:22 ◼   ► it is actually possible for Apple to offer

01:39:26 ◼   ► a Mac Pro like computer for far less

01:39:32 ◼   ► money. Once they get rid of Intel,

01:39:34 ◼   ► cause the, by far the, the most expensive component,

01:39:40 ◼   ► uh, that Apple has to pay somebody else for in the Mac Pro is the CPU.

01:39:45 ◼   ► Like, especially when you get them to the big core counts,

01:39:47 ◼   ► Intel charges a huge amount of money for those, everything else,

01:39:50 ◼   ► like take out the CPU and just say, okay, what's left, what's left in the Mac Pro.

01:39:54 ◼   ► The case obviously expensive with all the machine and everything,

01:39:57 ◼   ► but honestly Apple is really good at machining aluminum and as expensive as it

01:40:00 ◼   ► is, it's not as much as you might think,

01:40:03 ◼   ► especially given Apple's expertise in this area, right?

01:40:05 ◼   ► That is probably the most complicated to manufacture thing. Everything else.

01:40:09 ◼   ► It's a fairly straightforward motherboard with nothing particularly exotic on

01:40:14 ◼   ► it. It's got a bunch of slots. There's some nice fans,

01:40:16 ◼   ► obviously they're custom Apple fans.

01:40:18 ◼   ► We just talked about in the popular mechanics of our articles,

01:40:20 ◼   ► they're not off the shelf fans, but in the end they're plastic fans, right?

01:40:24 ◼   ► There's a power supply. It's probably a good power supply, but you know,

01:40:27 ◼   ► like add up the parts that are in there. It's,

01:40:30 ◼   ► there's nothing particularly expensive. There's no reason you couldn't get like,

01:40:34 ◼   ► take, take out the Xeon, right? Every day, take the Mac for the base Mac Pro,

01:40:39 ◼   ► with no Xeon in it,

01:40:40 ◼   ► they could sell that computer with no CPU for like 1500 bucks. Right.

01:40:45 ◼   ► And then you add, you know, a $1,500 CPU and it's $3,000.

01:40:48 ◼   ► Then you add profit margins, you know, but like,

01:40:50 ◼   ► imagine now that you have that same thing, but now, now Apple switched to ARM,

01:40:54 ◼   ► right?

01:40:54 ◼   ► And they make their own ARM system on a chip type thing in there that is faster

01:40:59 ◼   ► than the Xeon ever was.

01:41:00 ◼   ► And you know it's not going to cost Apple and nor will they charge like thousands

01:41:05 ◼   ► and thousands of dollars to that because they'll be making the chip themselves.

01:41:08 ◼   ► Like how much does the system on a chip in, in, in the iPhone cost, right?

01:41:11 ◼   ► The one that's the one that's faster than the one that's currently in the Mac

01:41:14 ◼   ► Pro and single core, right? It is.

01:41:17 ◼   ► There's nothing about that tower that says Apple cannot offer this product for

01:41:21 ◼   ► anything less than four or 5,000.

01:41:23 ◼   ► They can absolutely offer that tower for $2,000.

01:41:25 ◼   ► They could probably offer that tower for $2,000 with the lowest end Xeon in it

01:41:29 ◼   ► and just barely scrape by.

01:41:31 ◼   ► But Xeons have gotten much more expensive over the years as the core counts have

01:41:35 ◼   ► increased, like getting the cheapest CPU,

01:41:39 ◼   ► like how much did it cost Apple for the cheapest CPU? It used to be a lot less.

01:41:43 ◼   ► Right.

01:41:43 ◼   ► And so I think when they transitioned to ARM, it will open up the possibility,

01:41:47 ◼   ► not of them making an X Mac or a smaller mini tower or a thing full of consumer

01:41:51 ◼   ► parts. It's upgradable because I think that market is not big enough,

01:41:54 ◼   ► but they should be able to take their quote unquote top end

01:41:59 ◼   ► line of tower computers, which will probably honestly,

01:42:02 ◼   ► if they keep making them be in the same looking case,

01:42:04 ◼   ► even though the insides will be entirely different and sell that sell a cheaper

01:42:08 ◼   ► model for far less money. Will they want to do that? Is that like,

01:42:12 ◼   ► what is the advantage of doing that?

01:42:13 ◼   ► The advantage I suppose is it makes your consumers happy.

01:42:16 ◼   ► The disadvantages,

01:42:18 ◼   ► Margot's pointed out people would buy computers less often. Maybe you would,

01:42:23 ◼   ► it would eat into your iMac pro sales and depending if your margins are better on

01:42:27 ◼   ► the iMac pro versus the other one, like I see it going either way.

01:42:30 ◼   ► Like there is definitely consumer demand for that type of computer,

01:42:34 ◼   ► but the total demand of this entire,

01:42:38 ◼   ► like the desktop Mac demand thing may be so small that it's like,

01:42:41 ◼   ► why are we trying to slice and dice this thing? Like, you know, the,

01:42:45 ◼   ► the total addressable Mac desktop market is X amount.

01:42:48 ◼   ► And we can say you're only getting half of that market with you just go high end

01:42:52 ◼   ► only the half that's left and that, you know,

01:42:57 ◼   ► how much of that is taken up by the Mac mini.

01:42:59 ◼   ► Now you've got an even smaller sliver. I don't know.

01:43:01 ◼   ► Like I think it's a computer they probably should make just as sort of an

01:43:05 ◼   ► economies of scale and that like you're already making,

01:43:07 ◼   ► you already got the tooling for the tower and the motherboard and the chips.

01:43:10 ◼   ► And when you add up the materials list without having to pay Intel for the Xeon

01:43:15 ◼   ► and all the other stuff, and with Thunderbolt being royalty free and you know,

01:43:19 ◼   ► all the other stuff,

01:43:20 ◼   ► it ends up that you can actually sell this computer for less money.

01:43:24 ◼   ► I think Apple will sell it for less money.

01:43:27 ◼   ► I just don't know if they'll cross the 2000 barrier, right?

01:43:29 ◼   ► Once they don't have to pay Intel,

01:43:31 ◼   ► the base price for the Mac pro should not be $6,000. It'll be $4,000.

01:43:36 ◼   ► Right? And that's, that's good. That's, that's,

01:43:38 ◼   ► that's a trend in the right direction.

01:43:39 ◼   ► Will they ever get it down to three or 2000? They absolutely could,

01:43:43 ◼   ► but I don't know if their motivation is sufficient for that. So I feel,

01:43:46 ◼   ► I feel people's pain. Believe me, I feel your pain. I just, I feel,

01:43:49 ◼   ► I feel it perhaps more purely than you might imagine because you didn't just

01:43:52 ◼   ► order one of these things and don't fully understand exactly how,

01:43:56 ◼   ► how poorly it fares against contemporary Macs and phones and iPads and how,

01:44:01 ◼   ► you know,

01:44:03 ◼   ► how short it's rain might be as a computer that makes any sense whatsoever.

01:44:09 ◼   ► That's all on me. But I don't, you know, a,

01:44:13 ◼   ► I don't blame the computer cause you wanted high end and you got high end,

01:44:16 ◼   ► right? I just feel like there is, there is a donut hole. There is,

01:44:19 ◼   ► there is a gap there to be filled and there is sort of a, uh,

01:44:21 ◼   ► as opposite of the price umbrella.

01:44:23 ◼   ► Obviously there's no competitors coming in to fill that role of than hack

01:44:26 ◼   ► and touches or whatever. Uh, but I mean,

01:44:28 ◼   ► I've seen a couple of stories to this effect and I'm not sure how much I,

01:44:31 ◼   ► how much steak I put in them, but like people who are keeping cheese graders,

01:44:36 ◼   ► like mega upgraded cheese graders,

01:44:37 ◼   ► we've seen all these stories where it's like I'm not getting that stinking Mac

01:44:40 ◼   ► pro. I've got my 2012, uh, you know,

01:44:43 ◼   ► cheese grader Mac pro and I've stuffed into the gills with third party video

01:44:48 ◼   ► cards from Nvidia that happens to still have drivers and all these fast SSDs and

01:44:53 ◼   ► you know, look how cheap it is and I've been using it for all these years.

01:44:56 ◼   ► Those are people who would buy a $2,000 Mac pro and you know,

01:45:00 ◼   ► soup it up themselves or buy a third party stuff and they're keeping that other

01:45:04 ◼   ► stuff. So I, you know, I think that market still is there. I just don't,

01:45:06 ◼   ► not sure how big it is. Um, so yeah, I, I feel,

01:45:11 ◼   ► I feel those people's pain. I'm not entirely willing to close the door on it though.

01:45:14 ◼   ► I think once we get rid of these eons, uh,

01:45:19 ◼   ► we may see cheaper Mac pro towers.

01:45:22 ◼   ► See, I think you might be overvaluing the cost of the Xeon itself. I mean,

01:45:26 ◼   ► at least certainly in the higher configurations that becomes more, more, uh,

01:45:29 ◼   ► more apparent. But like if you look at the iMac pro,

01:45:34 ◼   ► which doesn't have exactly the same series of Zeons in them,

01:45:37 ◼   ► but it's at least in the ballpark. Um, you know,

01:45:40 ◼   ► look at what the iMac pro gives you for a thousand dollars less,

01:45:44 ◼   ► but also, you know, if you,

01:45:47 ◼   ► if you spec match the one terabyte SSD between the two of them, which,

01:45:51 ◼   ► because the iMac pro comes with it,

01:45:52 ◼   ► then it's $1,400 less and it comes with the monitor built in and a webcam.

01:45:58 ◼   ► So you figure if you, if you value the monitor, you know,

01:46:02 ◼   ► based on the LG cost him $1,200 and you know, maybe,

01:46:05 ◼   ► maybe value the monitor at like 800 bucks at what it actually might cost. Apple.

01:46:08 ◼   ► You're at, you know,

01:46:10 ◼   ► over $2,000 of price difference here compared to the iMac pro with very similar

01:46:15 ◼   ► parts. It's also a Xeon. It's also, you know, same amount of Ram, you know,

01:46:19 ◼   ► spec match to the SSD. Um, you know, if you look at that,

01:46:23 ◼   ► you have a pretty wide gap here and I think,

01:46:25 ◼   ► I think the lowest the Mac pro could ever go price wise of Apple really cared,

01:46:30 ◼   ► but while keeping most of the essentials,

01:46:32 ◼   ► the current design is nowhere near $2,000 because just the case and the,

01:46:37 ◼   ► the big steel frame, all the precise machine that goes into that,

01:46:41 ◼   ► all the metal and you know, like that,

01:46:43 ◼   ► that case alone is probably at least $500 to make.

01:46:48 ◼   ► Yeah. So that's when you see the third party cases,

01:46:51 ◼   ► how much the third party ones costs and how much worse are they than apples?

01:46:54 ◼   ► That's a good judge because the third party cases, their retail price,

01:46:57 ◼   ► like so this profit margin build into them,

01:46:59 ◼   ► you assume they're not as good at quality as apples,

01:47:01 ◼   ► but they're not too terrible. And also Apple, like I said,

01:47:04 ◼   ► is really good at machining aluminum and there are economies of scale involved

01:47:07 ◼   ► here. I think that case costs a lot less than we think it does.

01:47:10 ◼   ► A couple hundred bucks.

01:47:11 ◼   ► Maybe. Okay. But so, so suppose the case is like three or 400 bucks,

01:47:14 ◼   ► which I think is probably low.

01:47:15 ◼   ► You also have this tremendous 1400 watt power supply.

01:47:19 ◼   ► Yeah. Well that, that's why the iMac, uh, to your point about the iMac pricing,

01:47:22 ◼   ► that's why it's cheaper because when you make something like the iMac,

01:47:25 ◼   ► you know exactly what you have to power. You know,

01:47:27 ◼   ► you don't need anything unnecessary. You don't need to account for anything,

01:47:31 ◼   ► both in terms of space, size, slots, traces, plugs, like every,

01:47:35 ◼   ► you know exactly what it's going to be. You know, all the ports, you know,

01:47:37 ◼   ► all the stuff that's ever going to be inside the thing. Right.

01:47:40 ◼   ► And so that's how you can save a lot of money. And even like the monitor,

01:47:43 ◼   ► you're not buying a monitor, you're buying just the panel.

01:47:44 ◼   ► I think the panel costs less than $800 in that thing, right? That's,

01:47:48 ◼   ► you get a lot of savings and a lot of extra margin by making an all in one that

01:47:51 ◼   ► can only do those things. Right.

01:47:53 ◼   ► But the reason I'm willing to believe that maybe 2000 is optimistic cause I'm

01:47:56 ◼   ► using like, you know, $2,005. Right. But like, remember, Apple got those,

01:48:00 ◼   ► Apple got those towers down to, to 1600 bucks in,

01:48:04 ◼   ► so I got to do the calculator, $1,600 in like the early two thousands,

01:48:07 ◼   ► whatever the equivalent of that is now. I think it's still, I think that's,

01:48:10 ◼   ► that's still possible.

01:48:12 ◼   ► But I mean, even, you know, you look at like,

01:48:14 ◼   ► you got like four or 500 bucks for the case, at least,

01:48:17 ◼   ► you probably got another few hundred bucks for the power supply plus all the

01:48:20 ◼   ► fans. It's probably at least,

01:48:21 ◼   ► at least a hundred bucks for the fans in there. Cause you know,

01:48:23 ◼   ► our supply is 80 bucks for that large of one with those great, I mean,

01:48:26 ◼   ► come on like that's, yeah, that's not retail price. That's the price that Apple

01:48:30 ◼   ► pays. No, I know. All right. And then,

01:48:32 ◼   ► and then you have the motherboard, which for,

01:48:35 ◼   ► that's probably a thousand dollar motherboard. No, no.

01:48:38 ◼   ► Look at what server boards cost. Look,

01:48:40 ◼   ► look up the price of serve of like Xeon server boards that have all that,

01:48:44 ◼   ► that have that many Ram slots, that many card slots.

01:48:47 ◼   ► Maybe with the number of slots, but that's what I'm getting at. Like, remember,

01:48:50 ◼   ► they made different boards that went inside their towers. Like,

01:48:53 ◼   ► they didn't all have the 12 slots or whatever.

01:48:55 ◼   ► So you make one of those that has half the number of slots in the cheap

01:48:57 ◼   ► machine. Like that's the thing that they used to do is it would be in the same

01:49:01 ◼   ► case, but there was, you know, dual socket versus single socket.

01:49:04 ◼   ► And then how many Ram slots and then how many expansion slots.

01:49:07 ◼   ► And those are the things, those are the levers you can turn to, uh,

01:49:10 ◼   ► to get a cheaper, um, you know, I, I always forget about inflation.

01:49:14 ◼   ► A lot of people like in the Twitter,

01:49:15 ◼   ► if they're known was even taking inflation into account,

01:49:17 ◼   ► but then it really is how old these old computers were. But like,

01:49:20 ◼   ► $1600 in 2002 is not $1600 in 2020. Yeah.

01:49:24 ◼   ► It just, you want, it feels, you want it to feel like $1600, but it's not.

01:49:27 ◼   ► But anyway, I, let's put it this way,

01:49:29 ◼   ► that the there is plenty of room for the price,

01:49:32 ◼   ► the base price to go down from $6,000.

01:49:34 ◼   ► And I think there's even more room once the CPU costs Apple 80 bucks instead of

01:49:39 ◼   ► 800.

01:49:40 ◼   ► Yeah. But I, I would,

01:49:41 ◼   ► I would ballpark that at more like a $4,000 target, not a $2,000 target.

01:49:46 ◼   ► We'll compromise and say three, we figured out for you, Tim, $3,000,

01:49:51 ◼   ► $3,499 for the base Mac pro with an arm CPU in

01:49:56 ◼   ► 2024.

01:49:57 ◼   ► And I think, and quickly, um, you own a Tron in the chat brings up a good point.

01:50:02 ◼   ► They say like, you know, I mean they can make a lower end case too. Yeah.

01:50:06 ◼   ► And that's true. Like a lot,

01:50:07 ◼   ► a lot of these expenses that Apple has taken on are optional and some of it is

01:50:12 ◼   ► stuff that we were talking about earlier, like, you know,

01:50:14 ◼   ► display calibration where some of the stuff that really matters to us,

01:50:17 ◼   ► some of it is stuff that they just are kind of indulging themselves in nice

01:50:21 ◼   ► design for the sake of nice design. You know,

01:50:24 ◼   ► a lot of the case design is that for sure. A lot of that is like, you know,

01:50:28 ◼   ► we know that we can charge a lot of money for this and so we are going to

01:50:34 ◼   ► design it with a much larger budget for industrial design and physical aspects.

01:50:39 ◼   ► Then some of the other models may be like, you know,

01:50:40 ◼   ► when they're designing the case for the Mac book air,

01:50:44 ◼   ► they have to actually be concerned about like about all the little details of

01:50:48 ◼   ► the costs of that case because that's a low end product that has to sell for a

01:50:53 ◼   ► value price. The margins are much slimmer, you know, in general and, and,

01:50:56 ◼   ► and it's really a value conscious audience and everything and they sell way more

01:50:59 ◼   ► of them. The Mac pro, they can be like, you know, effort,

01:51:04 ◼   ► put whatever you want in the case, make the case out of gold.

01:51:05 ◼   ► Like they probably give the industrial designers of that product a much larger

01:51:10 ◼   ► amount of free reign to do whatever they want to make something really nice

01:51:15 ◼   ► because they aren't even trying to bother hitting a price point with this

01:51:19 ◼   ► product.

01:51:20 ◼   ► I do wonder about those because I feel like the quality of the Mac mini's case,

01:51:23 ◼   ► maybe that's not a great example cause the Mac mini is so expensive now,

01:51:25 ◼   ► but I don't see any particular difference in the quality of the Mac mini's case

01:51:29 ◼   ► and the quality of the air's case and the quality of the cheese grater or the

01:51:33 ◼   ► current Mac pro.

01:51:34 ◼   ► There is the materials cost and the exact number of machine holes.

01:51:37 ◼   ► Like there is a sort of the labor costs where it's obviously more labor

01:51:41 ◼   ► intensive and therefore expensive and time consuming to drill all those holes.

01:51:44 ◼   ► But the tolerances I bet on the Mac mini are the same as the tolerances on the

01:51:48 ◼   ► Mac pro.

01:51:48 ◼   ► Like that's just the Apple thing that they do with these particular materials.