ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I've got a problem. Oh, yeah, having uncomfortable thoughts about Jeep Wranglers. Oh

00:00:04 ◼   ► You just need to come up here where it's cold and it'll convince you not to buy

00:00:09 ◼   ► Finally half a car. It's like 30 degrees here and snowing right now

00:00:13 ◼   ► I don't want to hear your lip about how we don't have winter

00:00:15 ◼   ► I just want to be driving around with no roof and no doors. No roof. No doors. No stability. No quality. No safety

00:00:22 ◼   ► Yeah, definitely no safety. It's got a roll cage for Christ's sakes. How are you gonna tell me no safe?

00:00:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, so if you get t-boned in that,

00:00:30 ◼   ► I'm sure the roll cage will save you.

00:00:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:33 ◼   ► - No, the doors will, oh wait.

00:00:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's a reason they had to add a roll cage,

00:00:36 ◼   ► because it rolls over if you like breathe on it funny.

00:00:39 ◼   ► - Oh come on, that's what stability control is for.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Does computers solve us from physics?

00:00:44 ◼   ► Anyway, I think I want a Wrangler,

00:00:46 ◼   ► and that's probably a problem.

00:00:48 ◼   ► It's either that or a Golf R, so save me for myself.

00:00:51 ◼   ► - Of all the vehicles that you have lusted after

00:00:53 ◼   ► for a week here and there,

00:00:56 ◼   ► - I think a Wrangler is actually one of the less offensive ones.

00:01:00 ◼   ► - No, it's pretty offensive.

00:01:01 ◼   ► - It's still not a good vehicle.

00:01:03 ◼   ► - It's either that or a Golf R. So, John, what would you have me have between a Wrangler

00:01:06 ◼   ► and a Golf R?

00:01:07 ◼   ► - Easy, Golf R. No contest.

00:01:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, if those are your choices, I'd go with John on that.

00:01:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, those are the only two choices, it's not a choice at all.

00:01:15 ◼   ► - I mean, a Wrangler, I think, is a better choice than your weird Cadillac rectangle

00:01:18 ◼   ► thing and your SUV dreams, but I don't...I think...

00:01:21 ◼   ► - I think the Cadillac is better than the Wrangler, too. Like, I'm trying to think of

00:01:24 ◼   ► a worse car and all I'm coming up with is one of those giant four-door luxury pickup

00:01:28 ◼   ► trucks.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Yeah, those are, well, but at least those have a little more function than a Wrangler.

00:01:35 ◼   ► No, it's about the same. They're both ridiculous things.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Also if, so that reminds me, DeMuro did a review of, what was it, the G65, an AMG G65?

00:01:49 ◼   ► I think that's right, I might have that wrong. So it's a twin-turbo V12 G-Wagon.

00:01:54 ◼   ► I believe it's pronounced "gwagon."

00:01:55 ◼   ► "Gwagon," yeah.

00:01:56 ◼   ► I was not prepared for that.

00:02:01 ◼   ► So he did a video on the "gwagon," and he—God, it gets better every time I say

00:02:04 ◼   ► it.

00:02:05 ◼   ► He did a video on the "gwagon," and he hated it.

00:02:07 ◼   ► Okay, so fine.

00:02:08 ◼   ► All right, so how about this?

00:02:09 ◼   ► I don't have the money for a Quadrifoglio, but how about that or Gulfar or Wrangler?

00:02:16 ◼   ► What would you have, Jon?

00:02:17 ◼   ► Quadrifoglio over the Gulfar, even though it's uglier.

00:02:19 ◼   ► God, you're so wrong.

00:02:20 ◼   ► I've seen him in real life now.

00:02:21 ◼   ► I saw a white one the other day.

00:02:23 ◼   ► I thought of you.

00:02:24 ◼   ► I say it does not look good in white.

00:02:26 ◼   ► Holy shit.

00:02:27 ◼   ► It doesn't look good in any color, but like, I've seen enough of them now that I know it's

00:02:31 ◼   ► not just like, "Oh, maybe it looks weird in pictures, but it looks good in person."

00:02:33 ◼   ► I don't like it anywhere.

00:02:34 ◼   ► I don't like it in pictures.

00:02:35 ◼   ► I don't like it in a box.

00:02:36 ◼   ► I don't like it with a fox.

00:02:38 ◼   ► Jon, I love you, but you are so wrong about this.

00:02:41 ◼   ► No, I just don't like how that car looks.

00:02:43 ◼   ► But it's a good car, for while it's working.

00:02:45 ◼   ► Yeah, for the ten minutes it's working.

00:02:47 ◼   ► Yeah, and we don't even know.

00:02:48 ◼   ► Maybe, like, the reliability could be fine.

00:02:49 ◼   ► It's too new.

00:02:50 ◼   ► Like, this is the new Alfa, but we'll see.

00:02:52 ◼   ► - No, it's not.

00:02:52 ◼   ► Look, here's your new rule, Casey.

00:02:55 ◼   ► New rule, if you're going to get something fun and fast,

00:02:58 ◼   ► unless it is made by a Japanese company, lease it.

00:03:01 ◼   ► - But what is fun and fast that's made by a Japanese company

00:03:05 ◼   ► that's also at least mildly affordable?

00:03:06 ◼   ► So like--

00:03:07 ◼   ► - The Toyota Baro would be fun.

00:03:09 ◼   ► - It's not fast.

00:03:10 ◼   ► - Not fast.

00:03:11 ◼   ► - It's fun, it's not fast.

00:03:11 ◼   ► You know, you got a GTR, which is too much money,

00:03:14 ◼   ► and that's it, that's all you got.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Maybe--

00:03:16 ◼   ► - No, the NSX is fun and fast.

00:03:18 ◼   ► - It's unaffordable.

00:03:19 ◼   ► - That wasn't one of your criteria.

00:03:21 ◼   ► You're gonna lease it. You're gonna lease the NSX. It'll be fun.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Oh, come on. Alright, let's say, even though this is over my budget, let's say for the sake of discussion, 50 grand.

00:03:29 ◼   ► So, for 50 grand, what do you get that's Japanese fun and fast?

00:03:33 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:03:34 ◼   ► I rest my case.

00:03:35 ◼   ► I'd take a Miata.

00:03:37 ◼   ► Not fast. Fun.

00:03:39 ◼   ► Not fast.

00:03:40 ◼   ► I mean, look, a Wrangler's not fast either, but you find fun for other reasons.

00:03:45 ◼   ► To me, a Miata would be a better version of that.

00:03:49 ◼   ► - Really plenty of fun, yeah,

00:03:50 ◼   ► that's a good mid-life crisis car for you

00:03:52 ◼   ► after your second child is in third grade.

00:03:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's fair.

00:03:56 ◼   ► But no, I'm serious.

00:03:57 ◼   ► So I mean, my options are Civic Type R,

00:04:01 ◼   ► which means I would need to install a paper bag in the car

00:04:04 ◼   ► to wear over my head every time I drove it.

00:04:07 ◼   ► - No, they won't let you buy one.

00:04:08 ◼   ► You're over 25, that's it.

00:04:10 ◼   ► - Fair point.

00:04:11 ◼   ► I've heard the Type R is phenomenal to drive,

00:04:15 ◼   ► but it is so unabashedly truly hideous to look at.

00:04:20 ◼   ► - You can get it in black, maybe try to hide

00:04:21 ◼   ► all the wings and ducks and scoops.

00:04:23 ◼   ► - Maybe that's the answer is just take the wing off,

00:04:25 ◼   ► like do a wing delete, if you will.

00:04:27 ◼   ► - It's all wing, you take the wing off,

00:04:28 ◼   ► they're just left with a chassis, that's it.

00:04:30 ◼   ► The entire body of that car is a wing or a scoop.

00:04:33 ◼   ► - I would imagine there must be some kind of like,

00:04:36 ◼   ► marketing differentiation here at work

00:04:39 ◼   ► where they have to make the Civic R so hideous

00:04:43 ◼   ► it won't detract from sales of the NSX from older people with taste.

00:04:47 ◼   ► Maybe, but the regular Civic is kind of gross too. Like, I think they just had a styling

00:04:52 ◼   ► fart on this whole generation. This is a great generation of Civics. Like, they're getting

00:04:57 ◼   ► great reviews. People say they're great cars. So much so that a lot of the best parts of

00:05:01 ◼   ► them are showing up in the Accord, but the styling is rough. Styling is rough.

00:05:07 ◼   ► I mean, if you think about it, all kidding aside, I mean, you can get a Wrangler spec

00:05:10 ◼   ► to like 40 or 45 grand or something like that,

00:05:12 ◼   ► which is truly absurd.

00:05:12 ◼   ► - No, you can get a Wrangler spectrum.

00:05:14 ◼   ► I would never, I would not go near that.

00:05:16 ◼   ► - See, this is getting into the $80,000 pickup truck

00:05:18 ◼   ► territory, yeah.

00:05:19 ◼   ► $50,000 Jeep Wrangler, great, that makes perfect sense.

00:05:22 ◼   ► Good job, America.

00:05:24 ◼   ► - Hold on, jeep.com.

00:05:25 ◼   ► I wonder how, see, I thought, I was trying to move on now,

00:05:27 ◼   ► brought myself right back.

00:05:28 ◼   ► - Someone in the channel even pointed out like the Wrangler

00:05:30 ◼   ► with like leather straps for door handles,

00:05:32 ◼   ► but television screens on the backs of the seats.

00:05:34 ◼   ► Like that is a car that has lost its way.

00:05:37 ◼   ► - Wait, honest question, are the back seats in a Wrangler,

00:05:39 ◼   ► Like, is there actually enough depth there that--

00:05:42 ◼   ► - That's where you gotta keep your 17 friends

00:05:44 ◼   ► when you go surfing.

00:05:46 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:05:47 ◼   ► - They go in the back seats, quote unquote.

00:05:48 ◼   ► - Right.

00:05:49 ◼   ► - No, they're seats.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Even in the coop, they're seats.

00:05:51 ◼   ► - Well.

00:05:52 ◼   ► - The front seats aren't seats.

00:05:53 ◼   ► It's like, you know, a bunch of boards

00:05:54 ◼   ► with a piece of vinyl stretched across it.

00:05:56 ◼   ► - When was the last time you were in a Wrangler, Jon?

00:05:59 ◼   ► I'm so over you right now.

00:06:00 ◼   ► - Is anyone ever really in a Wrangler

00:06:02 ◼   ► or are they just on it?

00:06:03 ◼   ► - Oh my God, I hate you, Jon.

00:06:05 ◼   ► (Jon laughing)

00:06:06 ◼   ► Why do you do this to me?

00:06:07 ◼   ► Why do you do this?

00:06:09 ◼   ► Why are you so mean?

00:06:10 ◼   ► - See, nobody ever wants to hear me talk about

00:06:12 ◼   ► fancy snow tires on my fancy Tesla,

00:06:13 ◼   ► but everybody wants to hear you talk about

00:06:15 ◼   ► your terrible car idea of getting this cheap, crappy car.

00:06:18 ◼   ► - We have like an intervention of Casey.

00:06:19 ◼   ► Casey is like, is too suggestible when it comes to like,

00:06:23 ◼   ► he has like a car-shaped hole in his life,

00:06:25 ◼   ► mostly filled with like BMW repair bills.

00:06:27 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:29 ◼   ► And he's very susceptible to like, maybe this will fill it,

00:06:33 ◼   ► and like, and just anything, like Jeep Wrangler,

00:06:36 ◼   ► like the Trackhawk. - Just something do this

00:06:38 ◼   ► for me. Anything! Yeah, and so I don't know, just like he runs across the wrong ad or the

00:06:44 ◼   ► wrong YouTube video and just he's like, "You know what I should get? A Winnebago." I mean,

00:06:49 ◼   ► that's his next thing. He's going to be like, "Why not?" The whole family could go on vacation.

00:06:56 ◼   ► We could live in it. We'll need to sell our house to afford it. My parents briefly had

00:07:00 ◼   ► like a little tiny, what you call them, RV, and I am still a little upset that they got

00:07:05 ◼   ► rid of it. I was joking but there it is. Yep. See? That's the seed and that seed will grow

00:07:10 ◼   ► in your mind until maybe three years from now. $41,235 for a new Wrangler. Holy schnikes.

00:07:19 ◼   ► Just why? At that point, why? Like there are so many better things in every way. Just tell

00:07:24 ◼   ► me what? Tell me what? Two Honda Civics. I would rather drive two Honda Civics than a

00:07:31 ◼   ► Like one in a different color, like you know, just alternate the excitement of having two

00:07:37 ◼   ► cars that you rotate.

00:07:39 ◼   ► It's like raid one for cars.

00:07:41 ◼   ► If one car has a repair it's so much less annoying.

00:07:44 ◼   ► If only you could drive both of them to the dealership at the same time.

00:07:49 ◼   ► Actually I don't think I would need to go that, quite that bananas.

00:07:51 ◼   ► Yeah that's the problem, you'd never actually need to go that.

00:07:57 ◼   ► Apparently the Magic Keyboard with numeric keypad is bendy, and I guess that's something

00:08:01 ◼   ► we're supposed to be upset by because I tell you what when I get a new keyboard

00:08:05 ◼   ► the first thing I do is a bend test to make sure it's not bendy. No not not bendy

00:08:10 ◼   ► you didn't read the link. Not bendy like if you put it in your pocket and sit on it

00:08:14 ◼   ► it'll bend like an iPhone 6 but there's two kinds of reports. One kind is I open

00:08:21 ◼   ► up the box on my brand new Magic Keyboard with numeric keypad which is a

00:08:25 ◼   ► hell of a product name. I don't know if that's the official name but you know

00:08:28 ◼   ► what I'm talking about. And I took it out of the box and put it down on the desk in

00:08:32 ◼   ► front of me and it's bent, like it's warped, it wobbles, like, you know what I mean? So

00:08:35 ◼   ► that's, that's no good. That's just like, you know, manufacturing defect or, you know,

00:08:39 ◼   ► maybe it got bent in transport or something like that. But the second strain of this kind

00:08:44 ◼   ► of story is I got a new Magic Keyboard, took it out of the box, it was fine, typed on it

00:08:48 ◼   ► for a week, and apparently the force of my typing bent it in the middle. If you're going

00:08:52 ◼   ► to put only little pads or feet on four corners of a very long keyboard and it's so thin that

00:08:57 ◼   ► it bends in the middle from the force of typing, that is a pretty big failure for the functionality

00:09:02 ◼   ► of a keyboard.

00:09:03 ◼   ► Now, your beloved Magic Keyboard that you have without a numeric keyboard maybe has

00:09:07 ◼   ► a short enough wheelbase, so to speak, that having the little feets on the corners doesn't

00:09:12 ◼   ► make it bend in the middle, or maybe you should just not look at your keyboard to see if it's

00:09:15 ◼   ► bent in the middle.

00:09:18 ◼   ► But anyway, we'll link to this MJ size webpage that has a collection of all of this information.

00:09:24 ◼   ► I don't, you know, if it's a manufacturing defect,

00:09:27 ◼   ► it kind of makes me feel better.

00:09:28 ◼   ► It's like, oh, they'll fix the manufacturing defect.

00:09:30 ◼   ► But if it was actually the case

00:09:31 ◼   ► that the mere act of typing on the keyboard bends it,

00:09:34 ◼   ► that's pretty bad.

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00:10:26 ◼   ► It's just these wonderful, practical,

00:10:29 ◼   ► and very nice looking glass prints of your photos.

00:10:33 ◼   ► And they make fantastic gifts,

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00:11:16 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:11:19 ◼   ► Let's do a little bit of Ask ATP.

00:11:23 ◼   ► Paige Hilliard writes in, "Is there any way the three of you

00:11:26 ◼   ► could come up with a list of realistic things

00:11:27 ◼   ► that you would like to have as holiday gifts,

00:11:29 ◼   ► even if some of you already have them?

00:11:31 ◼   ► Helpful hints would be greatly appreciated,

00:11:33 ◼   ► and potentially opening up your website

00:11:35 ◼   ► to sell t-shirts or gear year round

00:11:37 ◼   ► would be even more appreciated."

00:11:39 ◼   ► So the bad news is that Paige's spouse or what have you

00:11:44 ◼   ► is probably going to be listening to the show.

00:11:47 ◼   ► And so, Paige, now you can't use any of these ideas because we're now giving them away.

00:11:52 ◼   ► However—

00:11:53 ◼   ► You assume we have useful ideas.

00:11:54 ◼   ► That's also fair.

00:11:56 ◼   ► I was thinking about this on and off most of today.

00:11:59 ◼   ► I try to every year—and I did not do it this year—I try to every year do a holiday

00:12:05 ◼   ► roundup of, "Here's a bunch of different GIFs that I recommend at all sorts of different

00:12:11 ◼   ► price points."

00:12:12 ◼   ► And so I'll put in the show notes the last couple of years of these posts.

00:12:16 ◼   ► And they're just stuff I like.

00:12:17 ◼   ► Sometimes it's board games, sometimes it's stupid, like cables or something dumb like

00:12:21 ◼   ► that.

00:12:23 ◼   ► But this year I didn't do it, mostly because I didn't feel like I had that many new and

00:12:27 ◼   ► interesting ideas.

00:12:29 ◼   ► So I'm missing out on that sweet, sweet affiliate money, but my priority is to do a post that

00:12:34 ◼   ► I think is useful before it is make a few bucks on affiliate money, so that's why I

00:12:37 ◼   ► didn't write it.

00:12:38 ◼   ► The only thing I can come up with that I think is useful is for those of us with new phones,

00:12:43 ◼   ► a Qi charger seems like a pretty good answer.

00:12:46 ◼   ► Now, you would have to figure out,

00:12:49 ◼   ► would your partner want a stand-up Qi charger,

00:12:52 ◼   ► say for at a desk, or would they want a lay-down

00:12:55 ◼   ► Qi charger, say for like at a nightstand?

00:12:59 ◼   ► But that seems to me to be a pretty good option

00:13:01 ◼   ► and a pretty safe option for anyone

00:13:04 ◼   ► that has an iPhone 8 or newer.

00:13:06 ◼   ► - I have a hard time with this

00:13:08 ◼   ► because I am very hard to shop for,

00:13:11 ◼   ► as everyone in my family always complains about

00:13:14 ◼   ► right around this time of year.

00:13:16 ◼   ► And when I do think of something that I actually want,

00:13:18 ◼   ► I just buy it immediately and don't give anyone else

00:13:20 ◼   ► a chance to buy it for me.

00:13:21 ◼   ► Or sometimes the things that I want are too expensive

00:13:24 ◼   ► that I would feel comfortable asking for as a gift.

00:13:27 ◼   ► So it's kind of a hard topic,

00:13:31 ◼   ► especially because we don't know anything

00:13:33 ◼   ► about this person really.

00:13:35 ◼   ► So if they like coffee, I can tell you lots of coffee gear

00:13:40 ◼   ► that could be useful.

00:13:42 ◼   ► I've written it up on my side a few times,

00:13:44 ◼   ► so like Casey, I didn't do anything

00:13:46 ◼   ► with any kind of gift guide this year,

00:13:48 ◼   ► but you know, coffee equipment, kitchen equipment in general

00:13:52 ◼   ► for whatever they like to do,

00:13:55 ◼   ► that's always interesting gift ideas,

00:13:58 ◼   ► but it's really hard without knowing anything else.

00:14:01 ◼   ► I can think of kind of like a greatest hits kind of thing,

00:14:03 ◼   ► like just stuff that everyone seems to enjoy,

00:14:06 ◼   ► and certain kitchen gadgets fit this requirement,

00:14:08 ◼   ► I think, pretty well.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Certain ones are things like having a really nice

00:14:13 ◼   ► pair of gloves for the winter is always good for Christmas.

00:14:17 ◼   ► I enjoy having a really nice flashlight.

00:14:20 ◼   ► There's a lot of flashlights by the brand Phoenix

00:14:23 ◼   ► with an F-E-N-I-X that I really enjoy

00:14:26 ◼   ► that just use two AA batteries.

00:14:28 ◼   ► You can get smaller or bigger ones.

00:14:30 ◼   ► The two AA ones I think are the best size to weight balance.

00:14:34 ◼   ► They've got super nice LED flashlights.

00:14:36 ◼   ► That's just kind of a pleasant thing to have around.

00:14:40 ◼   ► of the Qi charging mats is really good.

00:14:42 ◼   ► The Mophie one that the Apple Store sells is excellent.

00:14:47 ◼   ► I've tried a few other ones now.

00:14:48 ◼   ► I actually just got in the Grovemade one.

00:14:50 ◼   ► Those just came today.

00:14:52 ◼   ► I have not yet actually used it beyond just five seconds

00:14:55 ◼   ► to test it out because it's gonna be my nightstand charger

00:14:59 ◼   ► and I haven't gone to bed yet.

00:15:01 ◼   ► But it looks really nice and it's very well built.

00:15:04 ◼   ► It's pretty big but pretty well built, pretty nice.

00:15:07 ◼   ► And yeah, just, you know, I mean, there's all sorts of stuff

00:15:09 ◼   ► I like having a really nice backpack.

00:15:12 ◼   ► I have a backpack from Briggs & Riley,

00:15:15 ◼   ► which is a fancy luggage company.

00:15:17 ◼   ► They make fantastic luggage,

00:15:18 ◼   ► which is why I got their backpack.

00:15:20 ◼   ► And I just love that.

00:15:21 ◼   ► It's so delightful to have that.

00:15:22 ◼   ► Any kind of, like certain people, myself included,

00:15:26 ◼   ► like having nice leather goods.

00:15:28 ◼   ► So like a leather laptop case maybe, something like that.

00:15:33 ◼   ► That kind of stuff.

00:15:35 ◼   ► But I mean this stuff, this is so like kind of general purpose.

00:15:39 ◼   ► I like having really good travel mugs.

00:15:42 ◼   ► Zojirushi makes a really nice travel mug that I really, really like.

00:15:46 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't really know.

00:15:51 ◼   ► It's really hard to know like how to be more specific than this.

00:15:55 ◼   ► But those are all nice things.

00:15:57 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, hearing you talk gave me a couple of other ideas.

00:16:01 ◼   ► One of the best investments I've ever, ever, ever made was what I call my Go Pack, which

00:16:06 ◼   ► is really just a collection of cables and whatnot that are basically duplicates of anything

00:16:11 ◼   ► I would need to charge any of my devices and a couple other miscellaneous bits.

00:16:16 ◼   ► So if I ever go overnight anywhere, I just grab this bag that has all of my chargers

00:16:23 ◼   ► in it always.

00:16:24 ◼   ► They never ever leave that bag unless they're in a hotel being used or whatever.

00:16:28 ◼   ► And I don't have to remove my entire installation from my bedside table or anything like that,

00:16:34 ◼   ► pack it up, and then reassemble it when I get back home.

00:16:36 ◼   ► It is just everything in duplicate.

00:16:38 ◼   ► And I've written a couple of blog posts about that, and so I'll put a link to that in the

00:16:42 ◼   ► show notes.

00:16:43 ◼   ► It can get pretty spendy, depending on what you want.

00:16:44 ◼   ► I think I spent like $200 on mine, and I'm not talking about the bag itself, I'm talking

00:16:47 ◼   ► about all the bits inside.

00:16:49 ◼   ► But I have a couple of fairly expensive things that I find very useful that most normal humans

00:16:53 ◼   ► probably wouldn't.

00:16:55 ◼   ► And then additionally, hearing you talk about your, did you say Briggs & Reilly, backpack,

00:17:00 ◼   ► I happen to adore anything that Tom Bihn makes.

00:17:04 ◼   ► That's T-O-M-B-I-H-N.

00:17:07 ◼   ► It's maybe a little late to order it for this holiday season, unless you are on the West

00:17:11 ◼   ► Coast because they're Seattle based, but pretty much anything Tom Bihn makes, I adore.

00:17:16 ◼   ► And I highly recommend that as much as Marco seems to highly recommend Briggs & Reilly

00:17:21 ◼   ► as well.

00:17:23 ◼   ► So just a couple other quick thoughts

00:17:24 ◼   ► that Marco made me think of.

00:17:25 ◼   ► - Oh wait, before, one more thing also.

00:17:27 ◼   ► I came up with something more specific

00:17:29 ◼   ► in the kitchen category.

00:17:31 ◼   ► I have gotten as gifts for other people in the past

00:17:34 ◼   ► my favorite kitchen thermometer,

00:17:36 ◼   ► which is the ThermoWorks Thermapen Mark IV.

00:17:39 ◼   ► If you have any need for a kitchen thermometer,

00:17:42 ◼   ► and if you ever do anything in the kitchen ever, you do.

00:17:45 ◼   ► Even if you don't think you need one, you need one.

00:17:47 ◼   ► And once you have one, you will use it for lots of things.

00:17:50 ◼   ► Every kitchen should have a thermometer and a scale.

00:17:53 ◼   ► And the scale you can get pretty much any cheap garbage,

00:17:55 ◼   ► it doesn't really matter.

00:17:55 ◼   ► The thermometer, they actually matter quite a bit,

00:17:57 ◼   ► there's pretty big variations in quality and accuracy

00:17:59 ◼   ► and speed and everything else.

00:18:01 ◼   ► What you want is the Thermapen Mark 4 from Thermoworks.

00:18:05 ◼   ► It runs about 70 bucks usually if you find a good sale.

00:18:10 ◼   ► I think it's about 90 if it's not on sale.

00:18:14 ◼   ► This is the one that like if you see like on Top Chef,

00:18:16 ◼   ► if you ever see anybody using a kitchen thermometer,

00:18:18 ◼   ► it is probably this one.

00:18:20 ◼   ► There's a reason for that, it's awesome.

00:18:22 ◼   ► This is like the, I was gonna say the Cadillac of

00:18:25 ◼   ► thermometers, but Cadillacs aren't that great anymore,

00:18:26 ◼   ► are they?

00:18:27 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:18:28 ◼   ► This is the Tesla of thermometers.

00:18:29 ◼   ► Like this is, it's really, really nice.

00:18:33 ◼   ► Yeah, it's great.

00:18:34 ◼   ► Generally, and like, you know, I mentioned Phoenix earlier

00:18:36 ◼   ► with the LED flashlight thing, and those are like 50 bucks.

00:18:40 ◼   ► You know, so these aren't cheap, but it's really nice when,

00:18:43 ◼   ► if you're the kind of person who values quality

00:18:46 ◼   ► and nice things, which almost everyone is, about something.

00:18:48 ◼   ► It might not be about the same things that you or I are,

00:18:50 ◼   ► but almost everyone can appreciate quality in something.

00:18:54 ◼   ► And it's really nice when you can find something like this

00:18:56 ◼   ► in a category where pretty much everything else

00:18:59 ◼   ► in the category is kind of mediocre garbage,

00:19:02 ◼   ► and if you can figure out what's the one really awesome

00:19:05 ◼   ► thing in that category, even if it's a little bit

00:19:07 ◼   ► ridiculously priced, that kind of thing makes a good gift.

00:19:10 ◼   ► Because it's the kind of thing where people who receive it

00:19:13 ◼   ► can probably appreciate something really awesome like that,

00:19:17 ◼   ► but because it's expensive and/or obscure,

00:19:20 ◼   ► they might not ever know about it

00:19:21 ◼   ► or they might not feel justified spending the price for it.

00:19:24 ◼   ► So that's the perfect kind of thing

00:19:25 ◼   ► that makes a great gift is like,

00:19:27 ◼   ► I wouldn't have bought this for myself,

00:19:29 ◼   ► but I really appreciate having it.

00:19:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, I do agree that that is one of the best gifts.

00:19:33 ◼   ► The, oh man, this is great,

00:19:35 ◼   ► but I'm so glad I didn't spend the money on it.

00:19:38 ◼   ► That is the sweet spot.

00:19:39 ◼   ► Jon, we've delayed you far too long.

00:19:41 ◼   ► What are your thoughts?

00:19:42 ◼   ► - I reject the premise of this question,

00:19:44 ◼   ► which is that we should, this thing is,

00:19:46 ◼   ► We should list things that we like because people who listen to the show will like the

00:19:50 ◼   ► same things that we like.

00:19:51 ◼   ► I mean, we can try to list things that we like even if we already have them.

00:19:54 ◼   ► Like, that is one task.

00:19:56 ◼   ► But the second part of this is for those of us who are partnered with ATV fans, the idea

00:20:01 ◼   ► being that if we list things that we like, that people who like the show will also like

00:20:05 ◼   ► those same things.

00:20:06 ◼   ► And I don't think that's true.

00:20:07 ◼   ► Like, just because we like – that means we like them.

00:20:09 ◼   ► Everyone who listens to the show is not like us, hopefully.

00:20:12 ◼   ► So yeah.

00:20:14 ◼   ► And also I'm terrible at giving gifts, so even if I had good ideas for gifts, you know,

00:20:17 ◼   ► you shouldn't listen to me.

00:20:18 ◼   ► So…

00:20:19 ◼   ► That's very helpful.

00:20:20 ◼   ► Thank you, Jon.

00:20:21 ◼   ► And I put this question in there, and I basically put it in just to say, "Can you come up

00:20:24 ◼   ► with a list of—?"

00:20:25 ◼   ► And the answer for me is no, I can't.

00:20:26 ◼   ► I cannot do that because I don't think I should, I don't think it makes sense, and

00:20:30 ◼   ► even if it was phrased so it does make sense, I'm bad at that.

00:20:33 ◼   ► So I'm glad you two filled in.

00:20:34 ◼   ► Paige, just let you and your partner know that Marco and I are your favorites, and Jon

00:20:40 ◼   ► is useless.

00:20:41 ◼   ► - To ask, what do you ask for?

00:20:43 ◼   ► I'm not as bad as Marco in that I don't immediately

00:20:46 ◼   ► buy everything that I want, but when people ask me

00:20:49 ◼   ► what they should get me, my answer is always nothing,

00:20:51 ◼   ► which is probably the worst thing you can say

00:20:52 ◼   ► to someone who wants to get you a gift.

00:20:53 ◼   ► So I'm just terrible all around when it comes to gift stuff.

00:20:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, honestly, I would love to get to the point

00:20:59 ◼   ► with the family where maybe we just get gifts for the kids.

00:21:03 ◼   ► That seems like a better way to do it.

00:21:05 ◼   ► But I think this is the kind of thing

00:21:07 ◼   ► like many adults want this outcome,

00:21:10 ◼   ► but it's very hard to get families to agree to that.

00:21:13 ◼   ► - We're getting close.

00:21:14 ◼   ► We should have a big family map of how far

00:21:16 ◼   ► we've successfully spread the only gifts for kids thing.

00:21:20 ◼   ► We've gotten pretty far.

00:21:21 ◼   ► There's only a few holdouts left.

00:21:23 ◼   ► - Oh my word.

00:21:24 ◼   ► All right, moving on.

00:21:25 ◼   ► Rob Fiorendino writes, "How do you feel about your code

00:21:29 ◼   ► "or your apps after you've written them?

00:21:31 ◼   ► "Are they more like your children

00:21:32 ◼   ► "or your tools out in the shed?"

00:21:34 ◼   ► I will speak for myself and say any code

00:21:36 ◼   ► that I've written more than three days ago

00:21:38 ◼   ► is always garbage and any code I've written

00:21:40 ◼   ► in the last three days is often garbage.

00:21:42 ◼   ► John.

00:21:44 ◼   ► - I'm not sure, like with the children or tools thing,

00:21:46 ◼   ► I'm not sure like what Rob is getting at there.

00:21:51 ◼   ► You can take it lots of different ways.

00:21:52 ◼   ► Like, you know, tools in your shed or children,

00:21:56 ◼   ► like, I don't know.

00:21:57 ◼   ► Anyway, I'll just tell you how I feel about my code

00:21:59 ◼   ► 'cause I don't understand that part of it.

00:22:00 ◼   ► - I think he's just saying, you know,

00:22:02 ◼   ► is it disposable and you're like, yeah, whatever,

00:22:04 ◼   ► or is it, oh, this is my creation that I've labored for

00:22:08 ◼   ► and it is perfect in every possible way.

00:22:10 ◼   ► - Like you said Casey, it really depends on the timeline.

00:22:14 ◼   ► Sometimes you write code

00:22:16 ◼   ► and as soon as you're done writing it, you just hate it.

00:22:18 ◼   ► But it's like, you just gotta do what you gotta do

00:22:20 ◼   ► 'cause it's work, right?

00:22:21 ◼   ► Other times you can be mildly satisfied with it

00:22:26 ◼   ► but there's really no such thing as far as I'm concerned

00:22:30 ◼   ► as code that I write that I can look back on

00:22:33 ◼   ► in the long term and not see all the terrible problems with.

00:22:38 ◼   ► Like a couple of years down the line,

00:22:40 ◼   ► no matter how incredibly happy you are with something,

00:22:43 ◼   ► you, I will, I always do see what's really wrong with it.

00:22:49 ◼   ► If only because if that code lives on,

00:22:54 ◼   ► like if you're aware of its existence,

00:22:57 ◼   ► it probably means that it's still in use,

00:22:58 ◼   ► which means that it has to be modified to account for,

00:23:02 ◼   ► you know, the changes of reality, like, you know,

00:23:05 ◼   ► things change and you have to modify

00:23:06 ◼   ► and augment your code to do new things.

00:23:08 ◼   ► And inevitably you get to the point where you are modifying

00:23:11 ◼   ► your code in ways that you did not anticipate

00:23:13 ◼   ► when you wrote it and nothing makes code uglier

00:23:17 ◼   ► and makes you more annoyed with it

00:23:19 ◼   ► than more than trying to change it in ways

00:23:21 ◼   ► that it wasn't meant to be changed.

00:23:22 ◼   ► Like you never thought things would change along this axis.

00:23:24 ◼   ► So you always thought this bedrock assumption would be true

00:23:27 ◼   ► when the entire system was built around it.

00:23:28 ◼   ► Then that bedrock assumption is not true.

00:23:30 ◼   ► and you're just like, oh, God, do I rewrite the whole thing?

00:23:34 ◼   ► How can I change it, is it too much?

00:23:35 ◼   ► And then so you just feel bad about it.

00:23:37 ◼   ► So it's mostly the more time goes on

00:23:40 ◼   ► and the more it has to change,

00:23:41 ◼   ► the more bad I feel about it.

00:23:43 ◼   ► - Marco?

00:23:44 ◼   ► - Pretty much all my old code, I look at it as,

00:23:47 ◼   ► yeah, this is just garbage and it's a burden.

00:23:52 ◼   ► Like I love deleting code,

00:23:54 ◼   ► I love when a library comes around

00:23:57 ◼   ► that removes the need for some code I've written

00:24:00 ◼   ► that I can just delete my code and use the library,

00:24:02 ◼   ► or new APIs from Apple and those kind of stuff like that.

00:24:05 ◼   ► I code to accomplish something else.

00:24:11 ◼   ► Like I code to build a product.

00:24:14 ◼   ► The actual code, I take very little joy in like,

00:24:18 ◼   ► is it beautiful or elegant or interesting or clever?

00:24:23 ◼   ► Like I don't, I take no joy in any of that.

00:24:27 ◼   ► So I write code and immediately, even as I'm writing it,

00:24:30 ◼   ► I'm like, oh God, I don't wanna have to maintain this,

00:24:32 ◼   ► I don't wanna have to do this crazy thing,

00:24:36 ◼   ► but it's all to accomplish the end.

00:24:38 ◼   ► So basically, immediately after my code is written,

00:24:43 ◼   ► I don't like it, and I just try to move on if I can.

00:24:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I gave a slightly snarky answer

00:24:49 ◼   ► in saying everything I've written I hate,

00:24:51 ◼   ► and that is only slightly snarky.

00:24:53 ◼   ► I mean, I really do feel that most of the time,

00:24:55 ◼   ► But all kidding aside, in my entire career, and I've been doing this for, oh geez, like

00:25:01 ◼   ► 13 years now, I think there have been maybe, probably five or less blocks of code.

00:25:10 ◼   ► I don't mean that as like five lines.

00:25:12 ◼   ► I mean like projects, maybe is a better way of phrasing it.

00:25:15 ◼   ► There have been like five or less projects wherein I've written some code and thought

00:25:19 ◼   ► to myself, "You know what?

00:25:21 ◼   ► That was really solid, and I did something really good and/or clever there.

00:25:26 ◼   ► And usually clever is bad when it comes to code, but occasionally it can be good.

00:25:32 ◼   ► And so I think, all kidding aside, probably five times or less in my career I've looked

00:25:37 ◼   ► back and said that was good work.

00:25:39 ◼   ► Everything else is either, "Well, it didn't immediately turn into a fireball, so I consider

00:25:45 ◼   ► that job well done."

00:25:47 ◼   ► Marco has the advantage that no one else is telling him to change his product in ways

00:25:55 ◼   ► that he didn't anticipate it changing because he's the one who decides how it's going to

00:26:00 ◼   ► change and if anyone has any kind of idea how it might change in the future, it's him

00:26:03 ◼   ► because he's going to be – and it's not like he's saying he predicts everything,

00:26:06 ◼   ► but he never has someone coming and saying, "You should add this feature that flies in

00:26:13 ◼   ► the face of your entire internal design of your application. Even if he has the notion

00:26:18 ◼   ► to do that, he's not forced to do it on an abbreviated timeline or like all sorts of

00:26:23 ◼   ► like the pressures of a real job that forces you to do things.

00:26:26 ◼   ► Except when the iPhone 10's coming out and you got to make the release date.

00:26:29 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. But that's like, that's more like just, that's what your entire

00:26:35 ◼   ► job is, is using someone else's API. You know, you don't write UI kit, you roll them with

00:26:39 ◼   ► the punches of Apple's platform. You're writing on top of a platform. Everyone has that same

00:26:43 ◼   ► If you're writing, you know, whatever you're writing on top of a framework and that framework changes and you got to, you know, roll with those punches too.

00:26:50 ◼   ► But like, but I'm saying for like the things that your actual product does.

00:26:52 ◼   ► So I think it makes you feel worse when you have to change your thing in a way that it was never meant to be changed and you have to do it ASAP.

00:27:03 ◼   ► And you know, whether you think it's a good idea or not, it has to happen.

00:27:06 ◼   ► that does like the worst damage to even even code that you that you feel like

00:27:10 ◼   ► you know was was arranged in a reasonable way and designed in a reasonable way you

00:27:15 ◼   ► have to go in there and basically like injure it and and scar it and make it

00:27:19 ◼   ► uglier and just makes you want to just never look at it again and tear it all

00:27:22 ◼   ► down and start over and you know I know those feels all too well now one of my

00:27:27 ◼   ► favorite pastimes on the show is to bag on Marco for not having a job however in

00:27:31 ◼   ► In Marco's defense, I have to stand up for Marco on this one.

00:27:35 ◼   ► I feel like just in the last few days, Marco, and I don't know how much of this you want

00:27:39 ◼   ► to talk about on the show, so I'm going to be a little cagey about it, but just in the

00:27:41 ◼   ► last few days you had maybe not an emergency, but a "oh crap" moment where some external

00:27:47 ◼   ► force forced you to do a whole bunch of things and write a whole bunch of code that it seemed

00:27:52 ◼   ► like you—if you were planning on doing it at all, it was going to be long in the future.

00:27:56 ◼   ► And so I do think, Jon, you're usually right,

00:28:00 ◼   ► but it just so happens that it seems like, Marco,

00:28:02 ◼   ► you've just gone through this recently,

00:28:04 ◼   ► so how do you feel about that code,

00:28:05 ◼   ► whether or not you wanna discuss the motivations behind it?

00:28:08 ◼   ► - I'm happy to talk about it.

00:28:10 ◼   ► So the code you're referring to is overcast

00:28:13 ◼   ► handling permanent feed redirects,

00:28:15 ◼   ► or feed changes for podcasts.

00:28:18 ◼   ► Basically, the way I built the overcast

00:28:21 ◼   ► crawling infrastructure and database

00:28:24 ◼   ► is that feeds are keyed uniquely on URLs

00:28:29 ◼   ► so that every, feeds map one to one to URLs.

00:28:32 ◼   ► And those URLs really can't or shouldn't change

00:28:35 ◼   ► in the feed.

00:28:36 ◼   ► If you have a new URL, it gets a new feed entry.

00:28:39 ◼   ► And then episodes are represented as feed items,

00:28:43 ◼   ► and feed items are keyed based on their feed ID

00:28:47 ◼   ► plus then a bunch of random numbers

00:28:50 ◼   ► based on hashing their contents

00:28:52 ◼   ► and then their GUID and stuff.

00:28:54 ◼   ► And so once you have feeds and feed items

00:28:59 ◼   ► matched to a certain feed URL,

00:29:01 ◼   ► it's not trivial to then move those subscribers

00:29:05 ◼   ► to a different feed URL because all the item IDs

00:29:08 ◼   ► for everything they have subscribed to will be different.

00:29:11 ◼   ► And I can't easily change,

00:29:12 ◼   ► I can't just like modify the ones that are on the old feed

00:29:15 ◼   ► to point to the new feed

00:29:17 ◼   ► without having lots of other problems and everything else.

00:29:20 ◼   ► And also worth noting is that the feed items table

00:29:24 ◼   ► is 170 gigs now.

00:29:27 ◼   ► The table that maps users to feed items

00:29:31 ◼   ► is also about 170 gigs.

00:29:33 ◼   ► These are the two biggest and highest

00:29:35 ◼   ► traffic tables in Overcast.

00:29:37 ◼   ► It is very hard to modify these tables at all,

00:29:40 ◼   ► to modify the schema, to add indexes,

00:29:43 ◼   ► or to change the schema, to run ultra tables on it.

00:29:47 ◼   ► It pretty much can't be completed

00:29:49 ◼   ► in any kind of real-time fashion.

00:29:50 ◼   ► The only way to really change that would be to

00:29:52 ◼   ► set up a whole new database as a replica,

00:29:55 ◼   ► modify it, and then make it the new master.

00:29:58 ◼   ► And that's just a lot of administration work,

00:30:00 ◼   ► and it's risky, it involves downtime,

00:30:03 ◼   ► and I hate doing it, and so all this is to say that

00:30:06 ◼   ► for Overcast to modify what URL a feed entry points to

00:30:10 ◼   ► is a big deal, and so, since the beginning of Overcast,

00:30:19 ◼   ► The way it handled redirects was in HTTP terms,

00:30:23 ◼   ► it treated them all as 302s, temporary redirects.

00:30:27 ◼   ► So if it encountered a redirect,

00:30:29 ◼   ► it would follow it when crawling the feed,

00:30:31 ◼   ► but it would never update the source URL

00:30:34 ◼   ► to point to a new one if it encountered a 301 code,

00:30:37 ◼   ► which is the permanent redirect code.

00:30:39 ◼   ► This works on the web, because on the web,

00:30:43 ◼   ► it's pretty common practice that if you host a website

00:30:47 ◼   ► to add a certain domain name or a certain path,

00:30:51 ◼   ► and you change your URL scheme or you move hosts,

00:30:53 ◼   ► it's kind of known on the web that you're supposed

00:30:56 ◼   ► to set up a redirect pretty much indefinitely,

00:30:58 ◼   ► that it is a bad idea to ever change URL

00:31:02 ◼   ► without having a redirect in place,

00:31:03 ◼   ► 'cause then you're losing all your search engine ranking

00:31:05 ◼   ► and your inbound links from other places

00:31:06 ◼   ► and everything else.

00:31:07 ◼   ► It's kind of understood as a best practice on the web

00:31:10 ◼   ► that you don't break redirects ever.

00:31:12 ◼   ► So on the web, a permanent redirect is much less important

00:31:15 ◼   ► to be treated as such because you can just always crawl

00:31:19 ◼   ► one of the URLs that something used to be at

00:31:21 ◼   ► and if it's been properly maintained,

00:31:23 ◼   ► it will get you to where the feed is,

00:31:25 ◼   ► like where the new one is.

00:31:28 ◼   ► Podcasting doesn't work that way in practice.

00:31:32 ◼   ► So all this time when I've been doing,

00:31:35 ◼   ► basically treating this like the web,

00:31:37 ◼   ► where I just kind of assume that if I follow a redirect,

00:31:40 ◼   ► it'll always be there, in podcasts,

00:31:43 ◼   ► A lot of podcasters, first of all, aren't web programmers.

00:31:46 ◼   ► A lot of podcast producers,

00:31:48 ◼   ► and they come from the media world.

00:31:51 ◼   ► There's also all sorts of podcast hosting

00:31:55 ◼   ► and analytics and advertising platforms out there

00:31:58 ◼   ► that all want to host your feed for you at their domain

00:32:03 ◼   ► and are all selling their services

00:32:05 ◼   ► quite successfully to big podcasters.

00:32:08 ◼   ► And the big podcasters, to them,

00:32:10 ◼   ► Their entire world is iTunes.

00:32:13 ◼   ► And with iTunes, you don't have to maintain

00:32:15 ◼   ► permanent redirects forever if you change your feed.

00:32:18 ◼   ► You can just tell iTunes what your new URL is,

00:32:22 ◼   ► and it will move for you, for itself,

00:32:25 ◼   ► and for Apple podcast subscribers,

00:32:28 ◼   ► and then you don't have to think about it anymore.

00:32:30 ◼   ► So the concept of having permanent redirect setup

00:32:34 ◼   ► is in practice, not known, or not practiced

00:32:37 ◼   ► by most podcasters.

00:32:38 ◼   ► They are happy to move their feeds to anyone else's service,

00:32:42 ◼   ► anyone else's domain, whatever new ad tracking

00:32:45 ◼   ► insertion platform they're using this six month period,

00:32:49 ◼   ► they'll move it all the time.

00:32:51 ◼   ► And they don't consider what web programmers

00:32:53 ◼   ► would consider is necessary for that.

00:32:56 ◼   ► So I could sit here as much as I want

00:32:59 ◼   ► and try to blame them and say,

00:33:00 ◼   ► "Well, you know, this is your problem, not mine."

00:33:03 ◼   ► But the reality is, it becomes my problem.

00:33:06 ◼   ► It is definitely my problem and I'm the one who needs to fix it and find a solution because

00:33:12 ◼   ► what happens is when a big podcast moves, like about a year ago, This American Life

00:33:16 ◼   ► moved their feed and they broke the old redirect.

00:33:20 ◼   ► I suddenly had like 80,000 people telling me that their number one podcast was broken

00:33:25 ◼   ► and overcast.

00:33:28 ◼   ► This was bad.

00:33:29 ◼   ► It became my problem, very much so.

00:33:32 ◼   ► At the time, I didn't have any kind of infrastructure in place to move subscribers between feeds

00:33:39 ◼   ► in a way that wouldn't just break everything.

00:33:42 ◼   ► And This American Life has another problem where they don't keep their back feed going.

00:33:48 ◼   ► They only keep the most recent handful of episodes in the feed.

00:33:51 ◼   ► Once something is older than a few weeks old, you can't download it anymore.

00:33:54 ◼   ► I think they sell them or you can get them in their app or something, but you can't download

00:33:58 ◼   ► them out of the regular feed anymore.

00:34:00 ◼   ► So if I move people over to a new entry

00:34:03 ◼   ► that doesn't have all those back catalog episodes

00:34:05 ◼   ► for This American Life, that's a pretty big problem,

00:34:08 ◼   ► especially for that show, 'cause it's so popular.

00:34:11 ◼   ► And a lot of times people will save episodes

00:34:13 ◼   ► for like months at a time,

00:34:14 ◼   ► like they'll save up a big back catalog

00:34:17 ◼   ► so they can either go back and re-listen

00:34:18 ◼   ► or they'll save it up for like long car trips,

00:34:19 ◼   ► whatever else.

00:34:20 ◼   ► So there's all these like very, very fragile conditions

00:34:23 ◼   ► in which I have to be very careful what I do

00:34:25 ◼   ► to handle redirects, if anything.

00:34:27 ◼   ► and my original plan up until now of just not handling them

00:34:31 ◼   ► was breaking down pretty badly.

00:34:34 ◼   ► The driving factor this past week was that,

00:34:37 ◼   ► which is what Casey was alluding to,

00:34:39 ◼   ► the New York Times podcast The Daily is very, very popular.

00:34:44 ◼   ► The Daily moved their feed.

00:34:45 ◼   ► Overcast didn't handle, didn't take the redirect.

00:34:48 ◼   ► And the old feed wasn't redirecting the new one.

00:34:50 ◼   ► I was hearing about it from a lot of people.

00:34:53 ◼   ► And eventually it worked it out,

00:34:54 ◼   ► and they arranged to put that redirect in place.

00:34:58 ◼   ► So that was a temporary patch,

00:35:00 ◼   ► but ultimately this was kind of like

00:35:02 ◼   ► one of the many wake up calls.

00:35:04 ◼   ► If I finally had it, it's like, okay,

00:35:06 ◼   ► I need to handle redirects.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Also, like SoundCloud is falling apart,

00:35:11 ◼   ► and it seems like they're probably not long for this world.

00:35:14 ◼   ► So like, and a lot of podcasts are hosted there,

00:35:16 ◼   ► so there's gonna be a lot of feed moves there,

00:35:18 ◼   ► and there's so many popular shows

00:35:19 ◼   ► that are moving to different ad insertion platforms now

00:35:21 ◼   ► and changing their feed address again.

00:35:23 ◼   ► It's a big enough problem now that any podcast

00:35:27 ◼   ► crawling setup like this, it has to have a way

00:35:30 ◼   ► to have permanent redirects.

00:35:32 ◼   ► That's just the environment now.

00:35:34 ◼   ► Too many popular shows move too often.

00:35:37 ◼   ► You have to do it.

00:35:38 ◼   ► So what I've been working on for the last,

00:35:41 ◼   ► I don't know, week or so, is that,

00:35:44 ◼   ► is permanent redirects and making it work.

00:35:47 ◼   ► It's really not good.

00:35:50 ◼   ► The way I do it is really not good,

00:35:51 ◼   ► but the only way I can do it without totally modifying

00:35:55 ◼   ► my database schema and going through like SysAdmin hell

00:35:58 ◼   ► for weeks as I do that.

00:36:00 ◼   ► Not to mention lots of costs associated with that

00:36:04 ◼   ► and possible bug potential,

00:36:05 ◼   ► so I really don't wanna do that.

00:36:07 ◼   ► So what I do now basically is

00:36:10 ◼   ► I have a separate process from the crawlers,

00:36:12 ◼   ► 'cause speaking of your old code,

00:36:15 ◼   ► my crawlers are the only thing I have written in Go,

00:36:19 ◼   ► and I haven't written really any Go since,

00:36:20 ◼   ► my Go skills are very rusty.

00:36:22 ◼   ► And I look at the crawler code now,

00:36:25 ◼   ► and it's so complex, 'cause it was,

00:36:27 ◼   ► not only is it written in this language

00:36:29 ◼   ► that I've used for nothing else,

00:36:30 ◼   ► so my skills are dull, but also,

00:36:34 ◼   ► it's like the first Go program I ever wrote,

00:36:36 ◼   ► so it's not particularly great Go code.

00:36:38 ◼   ► It's like me learning the language,

00:36:40 ◼   ► and so everything's in one big file,

00:36:41 ◼   ► and it's kind of all over the place,

00:36:43 ◼   ► and for me to track redirects there,

00:36:46 ◼   ► I would have to modify the Go code.

00:36:47 ◼   ► And I was trying to do that at first

00:36:49 ◼   ► to solve a few other problems.

00:36:50 ◼   ► I'm just like, looking at this like,

00:36:53 ◼   ► I just want to set this on fire.

00:36:54 ◼   ► Like, I have no idea what any of this does.

00:36:56 ◼   ► I'm so scared, so I should go like,

00:36:57 ◼   ► it mostly has worked for a long time,

00:37:00 ◼   ► and I don't wanna touch it.

00:37:01 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:37:02 ◼   ► But, so instead I made a separate process,

00:37:05 ◼   ► a separate process in PHP, my comfort language.

00:37:08 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:37:10 ◼   ► I know it's bad.

00:37:11 ◼   ► It's like comfort food, like it's not good for you,

00:37:14 ◼   ► but you know, anyway.

00:37:15 ◼   ► So I made a PHP separate queue that just once a day

00:37:20 ◼   ► checks feeds for redirects.

00:37:22 ◼   ► And if a feed is redirecting to the same place

00:37:25 ◼   ► that is also an iTunes registered feed

00:37:27 ◼   ► for more than I think two days, I set the threshold at,

00:37:31 ◼   ► then it will take all the subscribers

00:37:35 ◼   ► and basically create new entries for them

00:37:39 ◼   ► in the new feed that match their entries in the old feed

00:37:43 ◼   ► and then delete the old feed description.

00:37:45 ◼   ► So to the user, the only thing that appears to happen is

00:37:49 ◼   ► all of a sudden the episodes for one of those shows

00:37:53 ◼   ► that got moved, they all just re-download for some reason.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Everything else is preserved, played, unplayed states,

00:38:00 ◼   ► whether it's starred or not, progress if you're partial,

00:38:03 ◼   ► and that's all preserved, 'cause that just gets reinserted

00:38:06 ◼   ► with the new IDs.

00:38:07 ◼   ► But you do have to re-download, 'cause the client

00:38:09 ◼   ► sees them as new entries.

00:38:12 ◼   ► Basically, that's now in place, there's now this queue

00:38:14 ◼   ► that runs those things, it's going through the backlog.

00:38:16 ◼   ► It took way too long for me to do this.

00:38:18 ◼   ► I'm glad I finally did it.

00:38:20 ◼   ► I wish I had a slightly more elegant solution

00:38:22 ◼   ► that wouldn't require redownloading,

00:38:24 ◼   ► but that would just be a lot more overhead.

00:38:28 ◼   ► So I'm not gonna do that yet, maybe down the road

00:38:29 ◼   ► if it becomes a big problem.

00:38:31 ◼   ► And man, once I found, once I had something

00:38:34 ◼   ► actually checking for 301 redirects

00:38:36 ◼   ► and for the iTunes new feed URL tag, which is inserted,

00:38:40 ◼   ► it's like, people who aren't familiar with podcasts

00:38:43 ◼   ► who just know web programming, this would make you cry.

00:38:46 ◼   ► That like, the way that you can redirect a feed

00:38:49 ◼   ► for podcasts is you leave the old feed still there

00:38:53 ◼   ► returning a 200 response code, but you put an XML tag

00:38:57 ◼   ► in the RSS feed that's iTunes colon new feed URL

00:39:02 ◼   ► and just leave that there for a few days

00:39:04 ◼   ► and iTunes picks it up and moves your feed for you.

00:39:07 ◼   ► - Oh.

00:39:08 ◼   ► - And then the old feed just can sit there

00:39:10 ◼   ► not getting the episode added to it

00:39:11 ◼   ► and just get deleted and stop working.

00:39:14 ◼   ► Like, that's how, like, I'm telling you,

00:39:17 ◼   ► this is what I have to deal with.

00:39:19 ◼   ► So it's like, again, like, the web programmer,

00:39:21 ◼   ► I mean, when I started this whole thing,

00:39:22 ◼   ► I was like, I don't need to do that.

00:39:23 ◼   ► That's terrible, no one's gonna really do that,

00:39:25 ◼   ► but no people really do it, at increasing frequency.

00:39:28 ◼   ► And yeah, and so anyway,

00:39:29 ◼   ► once I had this redirect checking working,

00:39:31 ◼   ► I was able to see quite how many very popular shows

00:39:36 ◼   ► have had redirects since 2014 when I started crawling them.

00:39:40 ◼   ► And it's a lot.

00:39:41 ◼   ► Some of them were simple like moving from HTTP to HTTPS.

00:39:47 ◼   ► That's a very common one,

00:39:48 ◼   ► like all the relay shows did that.

00:39:50 ◼   ► Lots of popular shows have done that.

00:39:52 ◼   ► But a lot of them are just moving

00:39:53 ◼   ► to different ad platforms and tracking platforms

00:39:55 ◼   ► and insertion platforms and publishing platforms.

00:39:58 ◼   ► No one hosts their own feed in podcasting.

00:40:02 ◼   ► So it's a mess out there and so I had to deal with it.

00:40:05 ◼   ► Even though I really didn't want to

00:40:07 ◼   ► and I was so opinionated about,

00:40:09 ◼   ► like, I don't need to do this,

00:40:10 ◼   ► like, they should have redirects in place forever,

00:40:13 ◼   ► but that's not the reality,

00:40:15 ◼   ► and I had to, you know, adopt to that,

00:40:17 ◼   ► because that's the industry I'm in.

00:40:20 ◼   ► - So yeah, so occasionally you have to do things

00:40:22 ◼   ► and do 'em on the double,

00:40:23 ◼   ► because other people weren't thinking about you.

00:40:26 ◼   ► - But it's not his boss telling him to do it, though.

00:40:27 ◼   ► He's his boss, he's the one,

00:40:29 ◼   ► he got to, the point is,

00:40:30 ◼   ► he got to delay doing it for a really long time,

00:40:32 ◼   ► because he didn't want to.

00:40:33 ◼   ► - Eh. (laughs)

00:40:35 ◼   ► - Not with the daily, though, right?

00:40:36 ◼   ► - And not with the American life.

00:40:38 ◼   ► - Not when very popular feeds redirect there.

00:40:40 ◼   ► - But I was saying, no one is forcing you

00:40:43 ◼   ► to add an about screen that includes a car racing game

00:40:46 ◼   ► to your thing, and you really don't have your display system.

00:40:49 ◼   ► No one's making you support video podcasts

00:40:51 ◼   ► if you don't want to, no one's deciding

00:40:53 ◼   ► you have to have a recipe manager

00:40:54 ◼   ► and a to-do list inside it, that's the type of thing.

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00:41:24 ◼   ► And when I bought marker.org in 2000,

00:41:27 ◼   ► that was the last time I had to change my email address

00:41:29 ◼   ► and tell anybody, oh please update your address book,

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00:41:34 ◼   ► since that time because web hosts change,

00:41:37 ◼   ► platforms change, social networks change,

00:41:39 ◼   ► and it's always nice to have a domain for your home base,

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00:42:40 ◼   ► - So, back to Ask ATP.

00:42:44 ◼   ► Thankfully, thankfully we have a quick one to round us out.

00:42:49 ◼   ► Stefan Kozlowski writes,

00:42:51 ◼   ► "Do you guys pronounce the command S-U-D-O

00:42:56 ◼   ► as "Soo-doo" or "Soo-dow."

00:42:59 ◼   ► And I will start by saying I have always pronounced it "Soo-dow."

00:43:04 ◼   ► And I understand that it stands for "Super User Do,"

00:43:08 ◼   ► so "Soo-dow" is probably the more academically correct answer,

00:43:13 ◼   ► but I've always pronounced it "Soo-dow."

00:43:15 ◼   ► - I have to think about this question

00:43:17 ◼   ► because I think I do both, both out loud

00:43:21 ◼   ► and both in my head, depending on context.

00:43:24 ◼   ► That's the conclusion I came to by tracing through

00:43:27 ◼   ► the times that I've said it or thinking about it.

00:43:30 ◼   ► I think I do both.

00:43:31 ◼   ► I don't know, that's not a satisfying answer,

00:43:33 ◼   ► but I think that's the reality.

00:43:35 ◼   ► - I pronounce it wrong, and I don't care.

00:43:37 ◼   ► I'm proud of it.

00:43:38 ◼   ► I say pseudo, and I know it's super user do.

00:43:41 ◼   ► I'm very aware of this.

00:43:43 ◼   ► However, I don't care.

00:43:44 ◼   ► To me, pseudo is its own word,

00:43:46 ◼   ► and so it gets its own pronunciation.

00:43:48 ◼   ► - Yeah. - I don't think that's wrong.

00:43:49 ◼   ► That's just one of two very common pronunciations.

00:43:52 ◼   ► Like who's to say which is wrong?

00:43:53 ◼   ► I don't even know if that is the less common one.

00:43:55 ◼   ► It may be for all I know it's the more common one.

00:43:57 ◼   ► - It's a Linux thing.

00:43:58 ◼   ► It's definitely wrong.

00:43:59 ◼   ► There's always, whatever everyone does with Linux,

00:44:04 ◼   ► a lot of people will say it's wrong.

00:44:06 ◼   ► - Well, I don't know.

00:44:08 ◼   ► I think that it's in the running

00:44:10 ◼   ► to being the more popular one.

00:44:12 ◼   ► Because like you said, it is a word, P-S-E-U-D-O,

00:44:14 ◼   ► like the fact that people just substitute a word there.

00:44:18 ◼   ► - Oh, that was what I was talking about.

00:44:19 ◼   ► I was just saying like, basically,

00:44:22 ◼   ► Conceptually in my head, I read that as pseudo.

00:44:25 ◼   ► Like I read it as a word, and I know what it means.

00:44:28 ◼   ► It's like being fluent in a language.

00:44:29 ◼   ► Like I'm not thinking about like its component parts.

00:44:32 ◼   ► I'm thinking like, oh, I need to pseudo to do this command.

00:44:34 ◼   ► Like that is its own word in my head.

00:44:37 ◼   ► I don't think like, oh, I need to super use or do.

00:44:40 ◼   ► Like when I make a directory, I think, oh,

00:44:45 ◼   ► mkdir, or mkdir, like I think that in my head

00:44:48 ◼   ► like as like its component parts.

00:44:49 ◼   ► So I don't like think about that as in,

00:44:52 ◼   ► I don't say like, you know, make dire.

00:44:54 ◼   ► It's dir for directories.

00:44:56 ◼   ► But pseudo to me, like that has become its own word

00:44:59 ◼   ► in my head, so that's why I pronounce it the way I do.

00:45:01 ◼   ► I don't care about the component parts of it

00:45:04 ◼   ► and how they're pronounced.

00:45:06 ◼   ► - All right, Jon, tell me about your black screen of death.

00:45:10 ◼   ► - This could have been follow up,

00:45:12 ◼   ► but I'm trying to, you know,

00:45:14 ◼   ► I think it has wandered out of follow up

00:45:16 ◼   ► and now it's just like practically a weekly segment

00:45:18 ◼   ► where I complain about my laptop in some way.

00:45:20 ◼   ► You know, people gave me so much crap when I was complaining about my laptops.

00:45:25 ◼   ► These are not systemic complaints.

00:45:28 ◼   ► These are specific complaints for the most part.

00:45:32 ◼   ► Sometimes they're just updates on my life with the Mac.

00:45:33 ◼   ► The Touch Bar thing was not really a complaint about Touch Bar, just telling you I tried

00:45:37 ◼   ► to use it and it wasn't for me.

00:45:38 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:45:39 ◼   ► So that's different.

00:45:40 ◼   ► But anyway, this is -- and this might not be a laptop bug, but it's a situation I find

00:45:44 ◼   ► myself in frequently, and one of those things where I don't know where to blame it, but

00:45:50 ◼   ► but it just makes my overall experience with this thing worse.

00:45:52 ◼   ► I think I mentioned it before that, so I've got this docking station, and it's great when

00:45:57 ◼   ► everything works well, but sometimes it gets cranky when I undock it.

00:46:02 ◼   ► So I'll undock and I'll go, you know, I'll undock with it in clamshell mode and I'll

00:46:06 ◼   ► go off to a meeting or something and then I'll arrive at the meeting, open up my laptop,

00:46:09 ◼   ► and everything about it will work perfectly except for the screen is 100% black.

00:46:13 ◼   ► And I used to know that everything was working perfectly back when the touch bar was not

00:46:17 ◼   ► in the, you know, the mode that I changed it to where it just shows the function keys all the time,

00:46:21 ◼   ► because I would unlock with touch ID or unlock by typing my password into the totally black screen.

00:46:26 ◼   ► And then I could command tab and I could see the touch bar changing as I command tabbed among the

00:46:30 ◼   ► applications that, you know, everything's working. I come command tabbing. I'm presuming the track

00:46:34 ◼   ► pad is working. If I could see the mouse cursor, it would be moving. I could, you know, type

00:46:38 ◼   ► keyboard commands that I know worked in the front most application, you know, and like I could, if

00:46:43 ◼   ► you could use it without seeing the screen, it was all working, but the screen was a hundred percent

00:46:46 ◼   ► black and nothing I would do to that computer sitting there would make that screen not be

00:46:51 ◼   ► black. Put it to sleep, wake it up again, close the lid, open it. The only way I found

00:46:55 ◼   ► to bring it back is a hardware way where I would use my little, they have some little

00:47:01 ◼   ► dongle thingy that goes in the side that gives you like a USB port, an HDMI and a bunch of

00:47:06 ◼   ► other crap. Plug that in the side and then plug the room's monitor into the HDMI port.

00:47:15 ◼   ► That would wake up, first of all, my machine would start projecting on the external screen,

00:47:20 ◼   ► but also it would wake up the internal display.

00:47:23 ◼   ► So I've had this book a really long time, and it's annoying.

00:47:26 ◼   ► Sometimes I've had to leave the meeting room, go back to my desk, get my dongle, come back

00:47:30 ◼   ► to the room, plug it in, plug in the HDMI monitor, and then my thing was awake.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Anyway, I ran into this problem, and I'm calling this the black screen of death, even though

00:47:36 ◼   ► it's not death, it's like in limbo.

00:47:38 ◼   ► It's alive but blind.

00:47:41 ◼   ► This happened to me where I unplugged my thing because I was in a hurry to get home, unplugged

00:47:45 ◼   ► it and I needed to use my laptop at home.

00:47:48 ◼   ► And I got home and opened it up and sure enough, black screen.

00:47:52 ◼   ► And I didn't have my little dongle because it was back at work.

00:47:54 ◼   ► So I couldn't do the one magic hardware thing that makes my screen burn back to life.

00:47:58 ◼   ► And I tried so many other things.

00:47:59 ◼   ► I tried SSHing into it from another machine.

00:48:02 ◼   ► I tried plugging in other things.

00:48:03 ◼   ► I tried getting out my very own Apple branded HDMI dongle and plugging it into my gaming

00:48:08 ◼   ► monitor which is HDMI and turning everything on.

00:48:10 ◼   ► didn't wake up the screen. In the end, I had to hard reset the thing, which really

00:48:16 ◼   ► annoyed me. That's why I spent like 20 minutes trying to bring this thing back, because I

00:48:19 ◼   ► was in the middle of a lot of stuff. You might be surprised to hear that I had a lot of windows

00:48:24 ◼   ► open. I had a lot of things going on. I had a lot of terminals, a lot of shelves, and

00:48:32 ◼   ► no, I don't use any one of the million things that can let me resume my shelf. I'm exactly

00:48:36 ◼   ► where I left off. Yes, I'm sorry. I'm disappointing all the people who love Tmux and screen.

00:48:40 ◼   ► and all the other things that do that.

00:48:42 ◼   ► - That's right, I also use none of those things.

00:48:44 ◼   ► I always have tons of terminal tabs and windows open

00:48:46 ◼   ► and it's fine.

00:48:47 ◼   ► - Right, anyway, I was annoyed that I lost everything

00:48:49 ◼   ► that I was working on and had to hard reset my computer.

00:48:52 ◼   ► Who wants to reset it?

00:48:53 ◼   ► And the worst part is I'm not hard resetting it

00:48:55 ◼   ► 'cause it crashed.

00:48:56 ◼   ► I'm not hard resetting it because it's frozen.

00:48:58 ◼   ► It's not like everything was fine

00:49:00 ◼   ► except the screen was 100% black.

00:49:01 ◼   ► So this is really putting a damper.

00:49:04 ◼   ► This bug and the possibility that this bug can be there

00:49:06 ◼   ► in my annoyance when it happens.

00:49:08 ◼   ► It's kind of like the month 13 is out of bounds thing

00:49:10 ◼   ► where it's like everything is mostly working,

00:49:12 ◼   ► but there's some part of it that's not working

00:49:14 ◼   ► that you feel like someone should notice.

00:49:15 ◼   ► So I would like, I think something in the operating system

00:49:20 ◼   ► should be aware after a certain period of time

00:49:23 ◼   ► that there is A, no monitor attached,

00:49:25 ◼   ► and B, the screen is entirely black.

00:49:27 ◼   ► And I don't think that's a sustainable state

00:49:29 ◼   ► and the lid is open.

00:49:30 ◼   ► I think that set of things,

00:49:32 ◼   ► there should be some assertion in the operating system

00:49:35 ◼   ► that says if no monitor is attached

00:49:37 ◼   ► and the lid is open and you're awake,

00:49:40 ◼   ► but the screen is 100% black, fix that.

00:49:44 ◼   ► Like, make it not be like that.

00:49:45 ◼   ► I'm hoping that's a thing that it can detect,

00:49:47 ◼   ► and I don't know who to blame.

00:49:48 ◼   ► Maybe I blame the docking station.

00:49:50 ◼   ► Maybe it's an OS bug, who knows?

00:49:52 ◼   ► But anyway, I don't like laptops.

00:49:55 ◼   ► - Are you on High Sierra on this?

00:49:57 ◼   ► - Yes, no, no, I'm not, I'm on regular Sierra, sorry.

00:49:59 ◼   ► - Okay, so it probably isn't like a,

00:50:02 ◼   ► well, I guess it isn't a new OS bug, at least,

00:50:04 ◼   ► but not like Sierra was bug-free either.

00:50:07 ◼   ► - I don't know what it is.

00:50:08 ◼   ► It's just my latest in a long line of infuriating

00:50:12 ◼   ► sort of bugs on my laptop.

00:50:14 ◼   ► - So I can assure you that this is not only

00:50:19 ◼   ► not a bug that has been fixed in High Sierra,

00:50:23 ◼   ► but it is not unique to your laptop

00:50:25 ◼   ► because my MarkoBook Pro that I use at work,

00:50:28 ◼   ► that exhibits this same behavior.

00:50:30 ◼   ► Now I wouldn't say that it happens all the time.

00:50:33 ◼   ► I wouldn't even say that it happens terribly often,

00:50:36 ◼   ► But the only solution I had come up with for it

00:50:38 ◼   ► was occasionally I can sleep it and then reopen it,

00:50:43 ◼   ► you know, close the lid and reopen it,

00:50:44 ◼   ► and then sometimes it'll come back.

00:50:47 ◼   ► Or like you said, you know,

00:50:48 ◼   ► disconnect external monitors, reconnect external monitors.

00:50:51 ◼   ► But just like you said, additionally,

00:50:53 ◼   ► there are times that I just have to just kill the machine

00:50:55 ◼   ► and bring it back.

00:50:56 ◼   ► So this is a clamshell problem.

00:50:58 ◼   ► This is a software problem.

00:51:00 ◼   ► This is not a new MacBook Pro problem.

00:51:03 ◼   ► And that is very sad.

00:51:04 ◼   ► - I mean, it seems like there must be

00:51:05 ◼   ► some hardware aspect to it because I don't think merely closing the lid and opening it.

00:51:09 ◼   ► I think it's the fact that you're attaching an external monitor and something about the

00:51:12 ◼   ► "I've attached a monitor, please detect that it's there" and start sending your video signal

00:51:16 ◼   ► to it, "Oh, you just yanked it out, I have to handle that."

00:51:18 ◼   ► It's related to the fact that the hardware configuration of the machine is changing.

00:51:23 ◼   ► I've never seen it...

00:51:25 ◼   ► Once the computer is working in isolation and I'm not plugging anything into it, I've

00:51:28 ◼   ► never seen it happen there where I close the lid and open and the screen doesn't turn on.

00:51:32 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:51:34 ◼   ► Yeah, like these type of problems are very often waking from sleep problems and stuff

00:51:38 ◼   ► like that, but I feel like waking from sleep is almost more explicable.

00:51:41 ◼   ► It's like, well, the computer's not even awake.

00:51:44 ◼   ► And so like obviously it's not working.

00:51:45 ◼   ► This is the worst because it's so clear, especially with the touch bar, that everything

00:51:49 ◼   ► is working just fine.

00:51:51 ◼   ► That the computer is running, it just refuses to display anything on the screen.

00:51:54 ◼   ► And I find that infuriating.

00:51:56 ◼   ► I should also add, since this is apparently the airing of grievances, it is the holiday

00:52:00 ◼   ► season after all.

00:52:01 ◼   ► I should add that my MarkerBook Pro is now going to have to go in for service when I'm

00:52:08 ◼   ► out over the holidays because it turns out if you plug in and remove – what is the

00:52:13 ◼   ► port on the side?

00:52:14 ◼   ► What is the Thunderbolt?

00:52:15 ◼   ► But it's also known as –

00:52:16 ◼   ► Mini DisplayPort.

00:52:17 ◼   ► Mini DisplayPort, yeah, thank you.

00:52:20 ◼   ► If you plug and unplug Mini DisplayPort cables every single day, all day, every day, it turns

00:52:26 ◼   ► out they start to fail over time.

00:52:27 ◼   ► So Monday, when I got to the office, I tried to plug in my two LG 4K monitors, and one

00:52:34 ◼   ► of them in particular wouldn't plug in for the longest time.

00:52:37 ◼   ► I would switch around cables, I switched around where I was plugging them in, it was nothing

00:52:44 ◼   ► I could do to get it to work.

00:52:46 ◼   ► And then finally, I had a, actually my head IT guy come over and look at it, and he plugged

00:52:54 ◼   ► in his MarkoBook Pro and it worked no problem, immediately. Unplugged it, plugged it back

00:52:59 ◼   ► in, worked no problem. So it appears that either the graphics card is dying or the connectors

00:53:04 ◼   ► are getting screwed up in some way, shape, or form. So I hope, Marco, that in your beloved

00:53:11 ◼   ► MarkoBook Pro that you are not often using the Thunderbolt ports because over time after

00:53:16 ◼   ► a year or two, after a couple of years, you might find them failing. So good luck.

00:53:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is one of the things that the move to USB-C

00:53:23 ◼   ► made a lot better, that USB-C, as far as I can tell so far,

00:53:27 ◼   ► the connection does wear out over time,

00:53:31 ◼   ► just like many of them do.

00:53:32 ◼   ► However, it seems like the parts that wear out

00:53:35 ◼   ► are mostly in the cable end and not in the port end.

00:53:38 ◼   ► So it is kind of annoying that your cable loosens up

00:53:40 ◼   ► over time, especially when it's your power cable

00:53:42 ◼   ► to your new MacBook Pro, but it does seem like

00:53:46 ◼   ► that's probably an easier fix long term

00:53:50 ◼   ► that you can probably just replace the cable

00:53:51 ◼   ► in those conditions for USB-C,

00:53:53 ◼   ► but the Mini DisplayPort connector

00:53:56 ◼   ► that then became the Thunderbolt connector,

00:53:58 ◼   ► that's never been a good connector.

00:53:59 ◼   ► One of the big problems with it is that

00:54:01 ◼   ► the cables are kind of loose in there.

00:54:02 ◼   ► There's nothing holding them in, really.

00:54:05 ◼   ► So they can just very easily slide out

00:54:06 ◼   ► or get a little bit dislodged or a little bit jostled.

00:54:11 ◼   ► I will defend a lot of great things

00:54:14 ◼   ► about the 2015 era Retina MacBook Pro.

00:54:17 ◼   ► However, the design of the Thunderbolt port is not one.

00:54:21 ◼   ► - So I kinda wish I had a Thunderbolt one.

00:54:25 ◼   ► Or a Thunderbolt one, I'm sorry, a Touch Bar one,

00:54:27 ◼   ► but that ain't never gonna happen.

00:54:29 ◼   ► My IT guy refuses to buy any Touch Bar MacBook Pros,

00:54:33 ◼   ► and maybe it's because he's smarter than me.

00:54:36 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:54:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I mean, think about it from the point of view

00:54:39 ◼   ► of an IT manager at a company.

00:54:41 ◼   ► Like, a computer that seems to have a pretty high

00:54:46 ◼   ► keyboard failure rate compared to most computers.

00:54:49 ◼   ► And again, people who defend this keyboard,

00:54:52 ◼   ► even if that rate is 20%, that's still really high

00:54:56 ◼   ► for a computer that has only existed for a year.

00:54:59 ◼   ► If that's the kind of failure rate you see

00:55:01 ◼   ► on a pool of these new computers,

00:55:03 ◼   ► and if buying them would make you have to like

00:55:07 ◼   ► rebuy a whole bunch of dongles or display things

00:55:10 ◼   ► or projecting things or things like that

00:55:12 ◼   ► for like the whole office,

00:55:13 ◼   ► you can totally understand why,

00:55:16 ◼   ► an IT manager would be like, yeah, that's not worth it.

00:55:19 ◼   ► We can't afford the downtime for the keyboards.

00:55:22 ◼   ► That's a lot of work for the IT people to have to

00:55:26 ◼   ► pull those out of service from the company

00:55:28 ◼   ► when the keyboards break, get them repaired,

00:55:30 ◼   ► put them back into service,

00:55:32 ◼   ► figure out things in the meantime.

00:55:34 ◼   ► That's a huge burden on an IT staff,

00:55:37 ◼   ► even before you consider all the dongle stuff.

00:55:40 ◼   ► That makes total sense.

00:55:42 ◼   ► I totally get it.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Honestly, that's probably why Apple still sells the 2015 model new in the Apple store

00:55:48 ◼   ► today.

00:55:49 ◼   ► They probably sell a ton of them to big corporate purchasers who just want what they've been

00:55:54 ◼   ► buying for years because they know it's fine, they're already equipped for it, and it's

00:55:57 ◼   ► pretty reliable.

00:55:59 ◼   ► Except when you have to replace your Thunderbolt port.

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00:57:45 ◼   ► - We have somehow accidentally procrastinated

00:57:52 ◼   ► for an hour and 20 minutes by my clock.

00:57:55 ◼   ► But we should probably talk about the iMac Pro.

00:57:58 ◼   ► And unfortunately for me, I started to have a holiday party

00:58:03 ◼   ► and made it through about a half a drink because I was very busy tonight.

00:58:07 ◼   ► So I'm sad to report, ladies and gentlemen, that this is not a holiday party for me, and

00:58:11 ◼   ► I'm going to have to endure this sober, and I'm doing it for you, the listener.

00:58:15 ◼   ► So all right, guys, tell me about what's going on.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Wait, why do you have to endure this?

00:58:21 ◼   ► Aren't you sitting in front of a 5K iMac right now?

00:58:23 ◼   ► I'm mostly giving you a hard time.

00:58:24 ◼   ► I am sitting in front of a 5K iMac.

00:58:26 ◼   ► So you're an iMac buyer.

00:58:28 ◼   ► This is a computer that could potentially be for you.

00:58:30 ◼   ► You like this kind of computer.

00:58:32 ◼   ► I do, I do. I'm mostly giving you two a hard time.

00:58:34 ◼   ► Yeah, don't you do a lot of video transcoding and buy all of Apple's stuff in space gray?

00:58:37 ◼   ► You know, the sick thing about the iMac Pro is the thing that I think appeals most to me about it

00:58:44 ◼   ► is the fact that it's space gray, because I think that is so hot and it's so ridiculous.

00:58:48 ◼   ► And I'll be the first to tell you that is utterly, truly ridiculous,

00:58:52 ◼   ► that the thing I'm most excited about is the color, but oh my god, it looks so good.

00:58:56 ◼   ► And those accessories look so good.

00:58:58 ◼   ► No, I snark, and if you're not a long time ATP listener, I don't remember which episode

00:59:05 ◼   ► it was, and I probably won't remember to put in the show notes, but it was early on in

00:59:08 ◼   ► our run.

00:59:09 ◼   ► Yeah, well, it was all of them.

00:59:10 ◼   ► But no, early on in our run, it just so happened that I knew we were going to be talking about

00:59:16 ◼   ► the Mac Pro, and I don't remember why, because there was no news about it, but we were going

00:59:19 ◼   ► to be talking about the Mac Pro.

00:59:21 ◼   ► And I made the mistake of bringing my drink upstairs with me into the office while I recorded,

00:59:27 ◼   ► and no, I didn't spill it on anything, but that part wasn't the mistake. The mistake was that I

00:59:32 ◼   ► also brought the bottle with me, and by the end of that episode, I had had quite the holiday party

00:59:37 ◼   ► all by myself. And so anyway, it's very embarrassing, and I won't actually, I probably won't

00:59:43 ◼   ► link it because I am embarrassed by it, and I shouldn't have done it, but you know, it is what

00:59:46 ◼   ► it is, and you only live once. Anyway, the iMac Pro does appeal to me. We should do a kind of an

00:59:51 ◼   ► an overview in just a moment. It does appeal to me. I don't think I find it worth all of

00:59:56 ◼   ► that money. I'm not saying that it's an unreasonable price. I'm not saying that it should be lower.

01:00:01 ◼   ► I'm just saying I have a really nice iMac in front of me, and yes, I do transcode things

01:00:06 ◼   ► a lot. Yes, I am getting into video now, but sitting here now, I don't feel like I need

01:00:13 ◼   ► a new computer, which is usually stage one in case you're buying a new computer. So anyway,

01:00:18 ◼   ► Marco, tell me about what this iMac Pro is all about.

01:00:21 ◼   ► - We actually, there's still a lot of big unknowns about it

01:00:24 ◼   ► because as we record this, it is, well actually,

01:00:27 ◼   ► are they gonna launch it at three in the morning tonight?

01:00:29 ◼   ► - Oh, I think you're right.

01:00:30 ◼   ► Are we just gonna, maybe I should start

01:00:32 ◼   ► my holiday party after all.

01:00:32 ◼   ► - Just keep podcasting until the configurator goes live

01:00:35 ◼   ► and then we can answer more questions.

01:00:36 ◼   ► - I really don't wanna do that,

01:00:38 ◼   ► but there's something to be said for how funny that would be

01:00:42 ◼   ► and I will go downstairs and get myself more water

01:00:44 ◼   ► and my bottle and we can do a holiday party

01:00:47 ◼   ► if that's what it takes.

01:00:49 ◼   ► - No, I'm not staying up till three in the morning.

01:00:52 ◼   ► - It'll be just me and the listeners.

01:00:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm gonna make it, 'cause the thing is, for me,

01:00:56 ◼   ► the Christmas season is way too busy

01:00:58 ◼   ► for me to buy a new desktop and set it up

01:01:01 ◼   ► and move my stuff over and everything.

01:01:03 ◼   ► I'm way, way too busy for a while.

01:01:06 ◼   ► So if I just wait until the morning to order mine,

01:01:10 ◼   ► if I order one, I mean, I'm still telling myself if.

01:01:13 ◼   ► - You said that and I took pause,

01:01:17 ◼   ► but I didn't wanna ruin your flow,

01:01:18 ◼   ► so I just bit my tongue, but you're gonna order one.

01:01:21 ◼   ► Now, it may not be tomorrow.

01:01:22 ◼   ► I believe that it may not be tomorrow,

01:01:24 ◼   ► but you're gonna order one.

01:01:25 ◼   ► - I mean, it's probably gonna be at least eight

01:01:27 ◼   ► in the morning, like I'm not gonna wake up at three.

01:01:30 ◼   ► I might wait until eight.

01:01:32 ◼   ► So anyway, all this is to say,

01:01:33 ◼   ► at the moment that we're recording,

01:01:34 ◼   ► we don't know any of the pricing

01:01:37 ◼   ► and the configuration options really.

01:01:39 ◼   ► Like, we know what options will be available roughly,

01:01:43 ◼   ► but we don't know if there are certain combinations

01:01:45 ◼   ► that they will require.

01:01:47 ◼   ► We don't know some of the finer details

01:01:49 ◼   ► of some of the options.

01:01:51 ◼   ► So the core counts are gonna be eight, 10, 14, and 18,

01:01:56 ◼   ► but the 14 and 18 aren't available until, quote,

01:01:59 ◼   ► early next year.

01:02:00 ◼   ► We don't know what that means, really.

01:02:01 ◼   ► That could mean in two weeks,

01:02:02 ◼   ► or that could mean in three months.

01:02:05 ◼   ► So there's a whole lot of unknowns.

01:02:07 ◼   ► And yeah, the biggest thing is that

01:02:09 ◼   ► we only know the base price at this moment.

01:02:11 ◼   ► We only know that it starts at $5,000,

01:02:13 ◼   ► and that is eight core, one terabyte,

01:02:16 ◼   ► and I think 32 gigs of RAM, which is a great,

01:02:19 ◼   ► like that's an awesome, like that is my iMac,

01:02:21 ◼   ► but with twice the cores.

01:02:22 ◼   ► Like my iMac is 32 gigs of RAM, you know,

01:02:26 ◼   ► it was the top CPU at the time I bought it,

01:02:28 ◼   ► which was in 2014, and that was $4,300

01:02:32 ◼   ► or something like that at the time.

01:02:36 ◼   ► I think the top iMac is slightly cheaper now,

01:02:38 ◼   ► but it's like when you spec up an iMac

01:02:41 ◼   ► to be one terabyte of SSD and 32 gigs of RAM,

01:02:45 ◼   ► you're already getting about $4,000.

01:02:48 ◼   ► Like, you're near that point.

01:02:50 ◼   ► And so, for this to be eight cores starting at $5,000

01:02:55 ◼   ► and for it to be the Xeon line with ECC RAM,

01:02:58 ◼   ► workstation GPU. - And a way better GPU.

01:02:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, like way better GPU, faster SSD,

01:03:02 ◼   ► and a whole lot of extra stuff.

01:03:05 ◼   ► Am I reading correctly from the reviews

01:03:06 ◼   ► that it comes with all three peripherals?

01:03:09 ◼   ► It comes with a trackpad, keyboard, and mouse?

01:03:11 ◼   ► It's so hard to tell from these early reviews because, like you said about the pricing,

01:03:14 ◼   ► you also, like, Apple just, you know, gives you a bunch of stuff and say, "Here you go."

01:03:19 ◼   ► They don't say, you know, "Would it even be possible to order it this way?"

01:03:23 ◼   ► Or would you have to, like, say, "Yeah, you can buy all these input devices, but you only

01:03:27 ◼   ► get to pick one, you know, to come for free with your iMac Pro."

01:03:32 ◼   ► This is why you're going to win the bet.

01:03:34 ◼   ► You're going to make me buy a whole second iMac Pro just so I can get a black trackpad

01:03:38 ◼   ► and a black mouse.

01:03:40 ◼   ► - That's the real black tax.

01:03:43 ◼   ► - Wow, that's true.

01:03:46 ◼   ► - You have to buy a whole second machine

01:03:47 ◼   ► to get the new enterprise.

01:03:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, no more like $300 extra.

01:03:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I lamented the 150 bucks or whatever it was

01:03:52 ◼   ► for the black book and this is a whole new world.

01:03:56 ◼   ► - Anyway, so all this is to say,

01:03:59 ◼   ► pricing is still a big unknown for us

01:04:01 ◼   ► for like all the details.

01:04:02 ◼   ► Like the configuration that the reviewers all had

01:04:05 ◼   ► was 10 core, so it's one step up in the processor line

01:04:08 ◼   ► from eight to 10 core, and I believe it was,

01:04:11 ◼   ► was it 64 gigs of RAM?

01:04:12 ◼   ► - 128 gigs of RAM.

01:04:14 ◼   ► - Okay, yeah, so that's probably going to be

01:04:16 ◼   ► a $7,000 configuration.

01:04:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the big sort of non-linear price increases

01:04:22 ◼   ► are always gonna be 128 gigs of RAM and four terabyte SSD.

01:04:25 ◼   ► Those are gonna cost as much as a car.

01:04:26 ◼   ► Like, I don't know why, it's never like,

01:04:29 ◼   ► it's double the price of the size that's half as much.

01:04:31 ◼   ► Nope, it is not, it is more.

01:04:33 ◼   ► - No, it's not, yeah, it's gonna be like,

01:04:34 ◼   ► one terabyte comes with it, two terabytes might be like

01:04:37 ◼   ► plus 400 and then four terabytes might be like plus 1200.

01:04:41 ◼   ► It's gonna be like that kind of jump.

01:04:42 ◼   ► Like, you know, it might even be more than that

01:04:45 ◼   ► 'cause these are pretty--

01:04:45 ◼   ► - And the interesting thing about these computers,

01:04:47 ◼   ► and we knew this already,

01:04:48 ◼   ► but I think people are relearning it for the second time

01:04:50 ◼   ► because again, we saw these machines at W3C,

01:04:52 ◼   ► actually physically saw them.

01:04:54 ◼   ► And in my case, touched them

01:04:56 ◼   ► even though you weren't supposed to.

01:04:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:04:58 ◼   ► You got yelled at by the Apple person.

01:05:00 ◼   ► But there's no upgradability in this.

01:05:05 ◼   ► This is a question we asked the person who was there,

01:05:07 ◼   ► Like, you know, is the RAM soldered to the board or is it in slots?

01:05:09 ◼   ► He said, it's in slots, but you can't get it.

01:05:12 ◼   ► Like, there's no little door for you to upgrade the RAM.

01:05:15 ◼   ► There's like, you configure this machine from Apple and you buy it and that's it.

01:05:20 ◼   ► Now in theory, you could, like iFixit could probably find a way to open this thing up

01:05:23 ◼   ► and take out the RAM and upgrade it.

01:05:25 ◼   ► Like, there's nothing really stopping you from doing it.

01:05:27 ◼   ► It's not like it's locked with the key or whatever, except for perhaps a secure boot

01:05:31 ◼   ► thing, which we'll get to in a minute, but who knows how they're integrating that with

01:05:34 ◼   ► their RAM.

01:05:35 ◼   ► Essentially, there are no upgradable parts inside this thing that you are allowed to

01:05:43 ◼   ► change or that you can bring to an Apple store and say, "I'd like to buy more RAM.

01:05:46 ◼   ► Can you put more RAM in this for me?"

01:05:47 ◼   ► Apple's going to say, "No, the RAM that you got is what you got."

01:05:50 ◼   ► Same thing with upgrading the CPU or any sort of stuff like that, which if you're going

01:05:53 ◼   ► to have a machine that's totally sealed up, this is the one to do it on because the iMac,

01:05:57 ◼   ► the whole point of it is it's all in one, right?

01:06:00 ◼   ► And you know the Mac Pro is coming and that really highlights what we think will be a

01:06:05 ◼   ► very important difference between the iMac Pro and the Mac Pro. The iMac Pro

01:06:09 ◼   ► has the freedom now to say 100% sealed box, configure it the way you want it, and

01:06:14 ◼   ► that's it. You know, no doors, no flaps, no upgrading after the fact, it's just the

01:06:18 ◼   ► machine you get is the machine you get, leaving the, paving the way for the Mac

01:06:23 ◼   ► Pro to take the opposite choice. So some people are kind of annoyed at that, but I

01:06:27 ◼   ► feel like it is a reasonably smart differentiation, differentiation between

01:06:32 ◼   ► between these two machines.

01:06:33 ◼   ► So it's clear to you,

01:06:34 ◼   ► why would I buy this one machine over the other?

01:06:36 ◼   ► It's like, well, you want,

01:06:37 ◼   ► if you want everything in one,

01:06:38 ◼   ► and beautiful and elegant and simple and clean,

01:06:41 ◼   ► and sealed up and done and done,

01:06:43 ◼   ► it's the iMac.

01:06:44 ◼   ► And if you want the other thing, it's the Mac Pro.

01:06:46 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, to be fair,

01:06:48 ◼   ► we don't actually know yet

01:06:49 ◼   ► whether the Mac Pro will be upgradeable.

01:06:52 ◼   ► - We don't, but we're hoping.

01:06:53 ◼   ► - I mean, the tube was slightly upgradeable.

01:06:58 ◼   ► Like, you could-- - You could change the RAM.

01:06:59 ◼   ► - You could add RAM, that's it.

01:07:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, you could swap out the SSD too.

01:07:04 ◼   ► - I don't think anybody ever sold the SSDs separately.

01:07:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, it wasn't like, I think it was like

01:07:09 ◼   ► the M.2 whatever thing, it wasn't entirely,

01:07:11 ◼   ► you know, you could buy stuff.

01:07:12 ◼   ► The whole point is, you could open the case

01:07:14 ◼   ► and pull things out of it.

01:07:15 ◼   ► Whereas this, for all we know, it's glued together.

01:07:18 ◼   ► Like, I don't even know how easy it is

01:07:19 ◼   ► to even get inside this thing.

01:07:21 ◼   ► - I mean, it's probably like every other iMac.

01:07:22 ◼   ► Like, all the components appear to face the back,

01:07:26 ◼   ► but you can't open it from the back probably,

01:07:28 ◼   ► so you probably have to like remove the screen

01:07:31 ◼   ► and basically go in-- - Which you may be glued on.

01:07:33 ◼   ► - Right, right.

01:07:34 ◼   ► And so it's probably like magnets like the other one.

01:07:37 ◼   ► But anyway, it's probably very similar

01:07:39 ◼   ► to the construction of the 27-inch iMac today.

01:07:42 ◼   ► So you probably can get into it, but you don't want to

01:07:46 ◼   ► because it involves so much surgery on the screen

01:07:49 ◼   ► that laypeople really shouldn't do it

01:07:52 ◼   ► because you will risk damaging things

01:07:54 ◼   ► or getting dust in there or whatever else.

01:07:55 ◼   ► So it's something that like, yeah, Apple can do it.

01:07:59 ◼   ► their technicians can do it, but you shouldn't.

01:08:02 ◼   ► - It looks pretty clean inside from the pictures

01:08:03 ◼   ► they have on Apple's website.

01:08:04 ◼   ► If you look inside there, if the back came off

01:08:07 ◼   ► in a reasonable way, it's pretty nicely laid out.

01:08:09 ◼   ► The RAM is really easy to get to.

01:08:10 ◼   ► It's sitting right there in little dim slots.

01:08:12 ◼   ► You could pull it right out.

01:08:13 ◼   ► Like it's got a nice little heat pipe arrangement

01:08:15 ◼   ► with the central heat sink and the two fans.

01:08:17 ◼   ► And like, it looks nice in there.

01:08:19 ◼   ► It looks like they, you know, sweated the details

01:08:21 ◼   ► and made it look nice on the inside,

01:08:22 ◼   ► even though nobody's ever gonna see that

01:08:24 ◼   ► except for an Apple technician when, you know,

01:08:26 ◼   ► some part of it breaks or something.

01:08:28 ◼   ► Yeah, but ultimately, I am very excited about this machine.

01:08:32 ◼   ► I was a little excited about it when it was announced

01:08:35 ◼   ► this past summer.

01:08:37 ◼   ► But I'm even more excited now that we're getting

01:08:40 ◼   ► performance numbers and that we're getting

01:08:41 ◼   ► the first reviews that have been out.

01:08:43 ◼   ► The best review that I've seen so far is the MKBHD review.

01:08:46 ◼   ► He's had it for, he said about a week,

01:08:49 ◼   ► and he's a hard user.

01:08:50 ◼   ► He creates and produces very high-end video content.

01:08:53 ◼   ► So he's editing high bandwidth, high resolution video

01:08:57 ◼   ► on this thing, and that really pushes it.

01:09:01 ◼   ► One of the major concerns I had with the iMac Pro

01:09:03 ◼   ► when we first heard about it was,

01:09:05 ◼   ► I believe we talked about it in our live show

01:09:07 ◼   ► at WBC this past summer, which my main concern was like,

01:09:11 ◼   ► how does it handle being under load?

01:09:13 ◼   ► Because my regular 5K iMac, it's a very graceful machine

01:09:18 ◼   ► until you really ask it to do something hard,

01:09:22 ◼   ► and then you hear annoying fan noise,

01:09:24 ◼   ► and the fan really spins up, and it's loud,

01:09:27 ◼   ► and it's just kind of ungraceful.

01:09:29 ◼   ► And a Mac Pro, historically, has not done that.

01:09:33 ◼   ► Mac Pros usually are able to take pretty much any workload

01:09:37 ◼   ► and still be dead silent or close enough to silent

01:09:41 ◼   ► that you won't hear it in an average room.

01:09:43 ◼   ► And so I really miss that.

01:09:45 ◼   ► Like going back to a consumer level product,

01:09:48 ◼   ► like the regular iMac or a laptop,

01:09:51 ◼   ► like when you put it under load

01:09:53 ◼   ► and you hear the fan spinning,

01:09:54 ◼   ► I always kind of feel like,

01:09:55 ◼   ► this really isn't made to do this very much.

01:09:58 ◼   ► And, you know, so anyway, I, heat and how it deals with heat

01:10:03 ◼   ► is a big question mark for me.

01:10:06 ◼   ► Upgradability is kind of a known thing at this point,

01:10:09 ◼   ► like the laptops haven't been meaningfully upgradeable

01:10:12 ◼   ► since 2012, the desktops, you know,

01:10:15 ◼   ► the only thing that's been upgradeable about the desktops

01:10:17 ◼   ► any time recently has been RAM,

01:10:19 ◼   ► and even that is slowly fading away

01:10:21 ◼   ► in the rest of the lineup, so. (laughs)

01:10:24 ◼   ► Really, to me, the upgradability thing is,

01:10:28 ◼   ► it's certainly something, it's significant.

01:10:32 ◼   ► It matters, I think, more for long-term servicing costs

01:10:36 ◼   ► than necessarily getting a good deal up front.

01:10:39 ◼   ► Like, in the olden days, you'd be able to buy a MacBook

01:10:44 ◼   ► or whatever, or a PowerBook, and go get third-party RAM

01:10:47 ◼   ► from Crucial or OWC or something like that,

01:10:50 ◼   ► and save a bunch of money on a high-end configuration

01:10:51 ◼   ► by buying the parts yourself

01:10:53 ◼   ► and putting them in from third parties.

01:10:54 ◼   ► Those days are long gone for the entire lineup,

01:10:57 ◼   ► desktop to laptop.

01:10:59 ◼   ► The only thing you can still do that for is Casey's iMac.

01:11:03 ◼   ► And you shouldn't because look what happened

01:11:05 ◼   ► to Casey's iMac.

01:11:06 ◼   ► - I was waiting for somebody to make that joke

01:11:08 ◼   ► and prepared to make it myself.

01:11:09 ◼   ► - That's not the reason you shouldn't,

01:11:10 ◼   ► but I think the second use case is just longevity.

01:11:13 ◼   ► 'Cause if you buy it, then you're happy.

01:11:14 ◼   ► You buy a 32 gig arrangement and you're happy.

01:11:16 ◼   ► And it turns out that this thing is so reliable

01:11:18 ◼   ► and the screen just looks gorgeous year after year

01:11:20 ◼   ► that the thing is five years old and you're like,

01:11:22 ◼   ► know what this thing still does everything I need it to do but I could

01:11:26 ◼   ► use a little bit more RAM because I thought 32 would be enough for me to do

01:11:29 ◼   ► what I need to do forever but the latest version of Adobe's whatever suite is

01:11:32 ◼   ► just a RAM monster and I would really like to have 64 and that's where you

01:11:36 ◼   ► want the ability to say yeah I used it for five years for 32 and it was great

01:11:40 ◼   ► to extend the life of this machine let me upgrade it to 64 and you totally

01:11:44 ◼   ► could on this machine if you can get inside it in a reasonable way but you

01:11:48 ◼   ► can't so if there was a little RAM door you would yank out the RAM five years

01:11:51 ◼   ► later and put in some new RAM. And same caveat about third party RAM, yada yada, there's

01:11:55 ◼   ► a whole reason Apple doesn't want you doing that, it makes sense, but it really does extend

01:11:58 ◼   ► the life of the machines if you can add an SSD to a thing that had a spinning disk, or

01:12:02 ◼   ► add a faster SSD, or expand the RAM. And that's basically all you've been able to do with

01:12:06 ◼   ► any Mac for the longest time, if you've been able to do anything at all, but it does extend

01:12:10 ◼   ► the life of your machines. I mean, my Mac Pro is the obvious example where so much of

01:12:14 ◼   ► the insides have been swapped and rotated and just gotten better and better over time,

01:12:17 ◼   ► that it's extended the life of the machine. If it was still the way I bought it when it

01:12:20 ◼   ► was new, it would be completely unusable right now.

01:12:23 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, but that was also in many ways

01:12:27 ◼   ► a product of the times that it went through.

01:12:29 ◼   ► The SSD transition, that's not gonna happen again, right?

01:12:33 ◼   ► Or maybe we move to those RAM computers.

01:12:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, but even just the video card.

01:12:37 ◼   ► I've gone to like three or four video cards in this thing,

01:12:39 ◼   ► each one faster than the next.

01:12:40 ◼   ► That's really extended the gaming life of the machine.

01:12:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true.

01:12:45 ◼   ► But anyway, I feel like most of those days are over.

01:12:48 ◼   ► There was a good section on connected this week

01:12:50 ◼   ► where Steven talked about the video card upgradeability

01:12:53 ◼   ► of previous Mac Pros.

01:12:54 ◼   ► And usually, people who want upgradeable Mac Pros,

01:12:58 ◼   ► they usually think of it, if they haven't done it before,

01:13:02 ◼   ► they think of it from a PC builder perspective,

01:13:05 ◼   ► where if you're in the PC world, building Windows PCs,

01:13:08 ◼   ► you can swap out video cards with all sorts

01:13:10 ◼   ► of different great options all the time,

01:13:12 ◼   ► everything costs very little money, relatively speaking,

01:13:14 ◼   ► and you have tons of great options.

01:13:16 ◼   ► When the Mac world, you've only ever been limited

01:13:19 ◼   ► to the handful of cards that actually supported the Mac.

01:13:24 ◼   ► And this has been true of many peripherals,

01:13:26 ◼   ► even when the Mac Pros were the tower style,

01:13:29 ◼   ► like what you have and what I used to have.

01:13:31 ◼   ► You couldn't just put in any PCI Express card in there

01:13:34 ◼   ► and have it work.

01:13:35 ◼   ► Many of them would, but most of them wouldn't.

01:13:38 ◼   ► Or they would work partially.

01:13:40 ◼   ► - It was more than you'd think.

01:13:41 ◼   ► You'd more than you'd think if you had to flash them,

01:13:43 ◼   ► because it's basically just based on the architecture.

01:13:45 ◼   ► Apple makes drivers usually for the architecture,

01:13:48 ◼   ► not just for a very specific card.

01:13:50 ◼   ► So a lot more cards than would work in anything.

01:13:52 ◼   ► But even if it was just a handful of cards,

01:13:54 ◼   ► it's not, yeah, you don't have the selection

01:13:55 ◼   ► of a PC builder.

01:13:56 ◼   ► But to have the option to put a faster card in there,

01:13:59 ◼   ► even if you only have literally one choice,

01:14:02 ◼   ► there's only one choice that you can buy

01:14:03 ◼   ► that is faster than your current one,

01:14:04 ◼   ► it's way better than zero choices.

01:14:06 ◼   ► And one of the things I put in the notes here,

01:14:09 ◼   ► this is a tweet from BareFeets,

01:14:10 ◼   ► the website that does lots of this kind of testing,

01:14:13 ◼   ► emphasizes this fact that they were,

01:14:15 ◼   ► you know, they have benchmarks,

01:14:16 ◼   ► like these are OpenCL benchmarks,

01:14:18 ◼   ► so they're things that run on the GPU of the iMac Pro.

01:14:23 ◼   ► And then they pitted it against a 2010 Mac Pro.

01:14:27 ◼   ► And the 2010 Mac Pro was faster, why?

01:14:29 ◼   ► Because the 2010 Mac Pro has a replaceable video card.

01:14:33 ◼   ► And like Margo said, there's not a lot of choices

01:14:35 ◼   ► for what you can put in the 2010 Mac Pro,

01:14:38 ◼   ► but there are a couple of them.

01:14:40 ◼   ► And one of them they were able to put in there

01:14:42 ◼   ► was one that uses the same architecture

01:14:45 ◼   ► the GPU and the iMacs Pro so it's an AMD Vega or however you pronounce it 64 so

01:14:51 ◼   ► they put that card in and because it's the same architecture and because Mac OS

01:14:56 ◼   ► has drivers for it because of the iMac Pro it's able to use that card and just

01:15:01 ◼   ► so happens to the card they could fit in that gigantic 2010 Mac Pro tower that

01:15:05 ◼   ► has tons of room for cooling and everything that card is just faster than

01:15:08 ◼   ► the one that's in the iMac because the iMac is a slower card it's probably

01:15:10 ◼   ► a clock slower because it's a more thermally compromised environment.

01:15:15 ◼   ► And so if what you care about is GPU performance in your 3D program or in your OpenCL whatever

01:15:20 ◼   ► program, 2010 Mac Pro is faster than an iMac Pro.

01:15:25 ◼   ► And I think this also highlights the role that the Mac Pro might play.

01:15:29 ◼   ► Will the Mac Pro have an upgradeable GPU?

01:15:31 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe not.

01:15:32 ◼   ► But I think the most important thing for these type of computers, for the Mac Pro or even

01:15:37 ◼   ► for the iMac Pro is to be super fast when you release, which I think this qualifies.

01:15:42 ◼   ► It's got lots of cores in the CPUs, and if you have an application that can use them,

01:15:45 ◼   ► it will really make a difference in your life. The storage on this Mac Pro is really, really

01:15:50 ◼   ► fast, and the iMac Pro is really fast. It's faster than the laptops, right? And so that

01:15:54 ◼   ► makes it the fastest Mac Apple has, because the old Mac Pro is so old. And it's got, you

01:16:01 ◼   ► the GPU is plenty fast, right? But to fulfill its role as the iMac Pro, I feel like next year,

01:16:09 ◼   ► there needs to be a much faster GPU in the iMac Pro. Or, you know, like they need to update the

01:16:14 ◼   ► internals of this iMac Pro on a reasonable basis. Fine, they're not upgradeable, fine. But Apple

01:16:20 ◼   ► itself has to upgrade them and revise them. Because otherwise, it will just get more and

01:16:25 ◼   ► more embarrassing that your 2010 Mac Pro, every year you can buy a new GPU to get you, you know,

01:16:29 ◼   ► know, a 2x speed boost and whatever it is that you're doing. And the iMac Pro year

01:16:33 ◼   ► after year, like the internals don't get upgraded. And if the Mac Pro is or isn't

01:16:38 ◼   ► upgradable, same story. Technology marches on and at the very very top end, Apple

01:16:44 ◼   ► has to be committed to releasing computers that are competitive with the

01:16:48 ◼   ► top end and then revising their computers to continue to be competitive.

01:16:51 ◼   ► And if they don't want to revise them, then merely make the certain components

01:16:54 ◼   ► upgradeable and people will buy a PC Vega card that is faster than the one that they

01:17:00 ◼   ► had before and flash it and throw it in there and it will work because the drivers work

01:17:05 ◼   ► with every card in that architecture and everyone will be happy.

01:17:09 ◼   ► My biggest concern here is the thermals. And I believe them when they say they've gotten

01:17:16 ◼   ► this to, they've gotten the iMac enclosure to cool the up to 500 watt load that they

01:17:22 ◼   ► they are putting in here or that it's designed for.

01:17:25 ◼   ► But it seems like there's not a lot of headroom.

01:17:27 ◼   ► Like, and this was exactly the problem they had

01:17:30 ◼   ► with the 2013 cylinder Mac Pro.

01:17:33 ◼   ► You know, Craig Federighi famously said

01:17:34 ◼   ► that they designed themselves into a thermal corner.

01:17:36 ◼   ► It seems like the 2013 Mac Pro was designed

01:17:38 ◼   ► with just barely enough cooling power,

01:17:42 ◼   ► and even then it wasn't really quite enough

01:17:44 ◼   ► because of the way the dual GPUs got so hot.

01:17:46 ◼   ► With this, it seems like they went into it,

01:17:50 ◼   ► like you know, John, you mentioned last time

01:17:51 ◼   ► talked about this, that they went into the design brief

01:17:54 ◼   ► of this seemingly with like fit pro workstation grade

01:17:58 ◼   ► components into the iMac enclosure.

01:18:01 ◼   ► Well why?

01:18:02 ◼   ► Like why couldn't it be a little bit differently shaped?

01:18:05 ◼   ► - Why couldn't it be designed in an enclosure

01:18:06 ◼   ► that supports pro-grading components, like the reverse?

01:18:08 ◼   ► - Exactly, and so because of that,

01:18:11 ◼   ► because they went in with the apparent goal

01:18:15 ◼   ► or requirement of fit this into the iMac case,

01:18:18 ◼   ► that was never designed for this amount of thermal load.

01:18:21 ◼   ► I mean, this case was designed in 2012,

01:18:25 ◼   ► or was launched in 2012,

01:18:26 ◼   ► and it was launched with the first,

01:18:28 ◼   ► well, with the second generation 27-inch iMac.

01:18:31 ◼   ► Even the Retina one was not designed for this.

01:18:34 ◼   ► This was before the 5K.

01:18:36 ◼   ► We have shoved so much stuff

01:18:38 ◼   ► into the exact same size enclosure

01:18:40 ◼   ► that in 2012 they probably were not thinking of

01:18:43 ◼   ► when they designed the shape and ventilation

01:18:47 ◼   ► and size and everything else.

01:18:49 ◼   ► With that in mind, with the thermals as a severely

01:18:53 ◼   ► limiting factor probably here, I worry that,

01:18:57 ◼   ► on two fronts, number one, I worry like,

01:18:59 ◼   ► how much did they have to clock down the GPU

01:19:02 ◼   ► and the CPUs to fit here?

01:19:06 ◼   ► - And that gets to what you were saying of like,

01:19:08 ◼   ► if they're on the ragged edge of their thing,

01:19:10 ◼   ► if they've had to downclock things,

01:19:12 ◼   ► basically they couldn't support the cooling,

01:19:15 ◼   ► and the only way they could get things to fit

01:19:17 ◼   ► is they had to say, well, let's just slightly

01:19:18 ◼   ► downclock everything. And I don't know if that's true, that's just been a rumor for

01:19:21 ◼   ► a while that like basically all the components are running at, you know, slower speeds from

01:19:26 ◼   ► the GPUs and the CPUs and the RAM and every part of the system. Not a lot downclock, but

01:19:30 ◼   ► just a little bit. And the only reason you do that is because you couldn't, you couldn't

01:19:35 ◼   ► cool them running at their full speed. And that, I mean, maybe that's a compromise for

01:19:40 ◼   ► like, hey, this is a slim computer. It's all in one. You don't have a big box, you don't

01:19:43 ◼   ► have a big thing or whatever, I don't think it's unreasonable, but it does, you know,

01:19:48 ◼   ► optimistically say, this now further emphasizes why you might want the upcoming Mac Pro because

01:19:54 ◼   ► presumably that one will not have to downclock its components.

01:19:59 ◼   ► And so it will therefore be faster and have more headroom and everything.

01:20:02 ◼   ► And that gets to your point, Marco, about if they had to downclock things that you're

01:20:06 ◼   ► concerned about all the same things about the 2012, about reliability and about noise.

01:20:11 ◼   ► So it could be argued that the 2013 Mac Pro, the trashcan,

01:20:15 ◼   ► the privileged noise above reliability,

01:20:18 ◼   ► like it was very quiet all the time,

01:20:20 ◼   ► but maybe it should have been a little bit more noisy

01:20:21 ◼   ► because there was lots of overheating problems

01:20:23 ◼   ► with the GPUs, right?

01:20:24 ◼   ► So maybe they made a different choice here.

01:20:26 ◼   ► That's one thing that I found lacking in all the reviews

01:20:28 ◼   ► is a rigorous testing of the noise.

01:20:32 ◼   ► I mean, people gave their subjective reviews or whatever,

01:20:35 ◼   ► but I'm looking for someone who's like a fanatic on it

01:20:38 ◼   ► than like I am about fan noise.

01:20:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I wonder too, like the reliability of that,

01:20:43 ◼   ► that's not a small point.

01:20:44 ◼   ► Because nothing in here is really serviceable,

01:20:47 ◼   ► because even Apple getting to it is challenging,

01:20:52 ◼   ► taking off the screen probably and everything,

01:20:54 ◼   ► and because these are all expensive custom components,

01:20:58 ◼   ► this is not a machine that I would want to own

01:21:01 ◼   ► out of warranty very long.

01:21:03 ◼   ► And I certainly would never buy one out of warranty,

01:21:06 ◼   ► and I would probably try to not sell it out of warranty

01:21:09 ◼   ► because I worry that if it's operating

01:21:12 ◼   ► at so close to the thermal limits of this enclosure,

01:21:17 ◼   ► because this enclosure was never designed for this,

01:21:20 ◼   ► it's similar to a laptop,

01:21:21 ◼   ► where laptops often run pretty warm

01:21:24 ◼   ► if you push them all the time,

01:21:27 ◼   ► and laptops tend not to last as long.

01:21:28 ◼   ► They tend to have reliability problems

01:21:30 ◼   ► where components break or you have heat fatigue

01:21:32 ◼   ► and your GPU falls off or things like that.

01:21:34 ◼   ► There's all sorts of problems with laptops

01:21:36 ◼   ► with just things that run too hot

01:21:38 ◼   ► because they have such constrained enclosures.

01:21:41 ◼   ► This is basically a giant workstation laptop

01:21:43 ◼   ► in a big screen, in the way that it is clearly

01:21:47 ◼   ► very thermally constrained.

01:21:50 ◼   ► The old Mac Pro towers, and even the Trashcan Mac Pro,

01:21:54 ◼   ► those had a lot of headroom for most configurations.

01:21:57 ◼   ► The main problem the Trashcan had was

01:21:59 ◼   ► if you actually stress the GPUs, that would cause a problem.

01:22:04 ◼   ► If you just stress the CPU, it's fine,

01:22:06 ◼   ► 'cause that was, it was designed with the kind of

01:22:09 ◼   ► asymmetric triangle of heat sink in the middle there,

01:22:12 ◼   ► it was designed to have one very hot side,

01:22:14 ◼   ► which was the CPU, and two kinda hot sides,

01:22:16 ◼   ► which were the GPUs.

01:22:17 ◼   ► And as long as the kinda hot sides didn't get super hot,

01:22:20 ◼   ► it was fine.

01:22:22 ◼   ► But unfortunately, that's not how people work anymore.

01:22:24 ◼   ► And they sold it as a GPU workstation,

01:22:26 ◼   ► which was kind of a problem.

01:22:28 ◼   ► So, but I think it could have been done as it was,

01:22:33 ◼   ► as quietly as it was,

01:22:35 ◼   ► if they just made it a little bit bigger.

01:22:37 ◼   ► The main problem with the TrashCam Mac Pro,

01:22:38 ◼   ► I think, is probably just they wanted to make it small.

01:22:42 ◼   ► And they succeeded.

01:22:43 ◼   ► It was very impressively small.

01:22:45 ◼   ► But that's something that nobody was really asking for.

01:22:47 ◼   ► And instead they made it unreliable,

01:22:49 ◼   ► if you stress the GPUs.

01:22:50 ◼   ► Anyway, with this, I feel like they've done the same thing.

01:22:53 ◼   ► They've kept it super thin on the edges,

01:22:57 ◼   ► just like the current one,

01:22:58 ◼   ► and the back of it's pretty small too.

01:23:00 ◼   ► And they've kept the same enclosure, but why?

01:23:03 ◼   ► Nobody was asking for that.

01:23:04 ◼   ► and it has severely constrained them.

01:23:06 ◼   ► - They didn't even put that many more vents.

01:23:08 ◼   ► Like the vents are bigger, but like the back of this

01:23:10 ◼   ► is not covered with vents in places

01:23:11 ◼   ► where the regular ones aren't.

01:23:12 ◼   ► They hid the vents behind the leg,

01:23:14 ◼   ► just like they always do, so it looks clean from the back.

01:23:16 ◼   ► And that is, like not only are they keeping the case

01:23:18 ◼   ► the same, which presumably has big advantages

01:23:21 ◼   ► in terms of tooling.

01:23:22 ◼   ► You don't have to come up with a whole new case design.

01:23:24 ◼   ► You don't have to come up with a whole new set of machines

01:23:26 ◼   ► to carve out your case.

01:23:27 ◼   ► Like it's just some different slotting in the thing

01:23:29 ◼   ► and you know, whatever.

01:23:30 ◼   ► I don't know if that's actually as big a savings

01:23:33 ◼   ► as it might seem to be, but there's something to be said for keeping something the same.

01:23:38 ◼   ► But they could have made the entire back of this thing like a giant cheese grater, and

01:23:43 ◼   ► that would certainly allow more airflow into and out of this thing, and would have allowed

01:23:46 ◼   ► you to have bigger, lazier, slower spinning fans instead of two relatively fast ones pushing

01:23:52 ◼   ► all the air out of the central thing and pulling all the air in through these little slits,

01:23:56 ◼   ► right?

01:23:57 ◼   ► So it's all very elegant looking and everything.

01:23:59 ◼   ► And we don't know.

01:24:02 ◼   ► worrying more than anything else. We're not saying there's going to be thermal problems.

01:24:06 ◼   ► Even the downclocking thing is just something I've read as a rumor and I haven't actually

01:24:09 ◼   ► seen anyone pull out the speeds for all the components and say, "Here are the speeds for

01:24:14 ◼   ► the components and if you put these things in a PC, you would never clock them down like

01:24:17 ◼   ► this if you had adequate cooling." So we don't know. But that gets to the heart of what you're

01:24:22 ◼   ► talking about before. The reason you pay for all these expensive components, Xeons and

01:24:26 ◼   ► ECC RAM and all that other stuff, is for the reliability factor. And if the reliability

01:24:30 ◼   ► factor is undercut by the thermals in the form factor, then that makes this a less compelling

01:24:36 ◼   ► purchase.

01:24:37 ◼   ► Right, like I don't want my professional workstation, you know, $5,000 end up dollar computer to

01:24:44 ◼   ► be operating very close to its thermal limits from day one. Because, especially since I

01:24:50 ◼   ► can't service anything, because what that tells me is I don't think this is going to

01:24:54 ◼   ► last as long as a tower. And my current iMac I think has similar issues. I think that just

01:25:00 ◼   ► inherent in the iMac design that like,

01:25:03 ◼   ► when you constrain things with thermals,

01:25:05 ◼   ► things don't last reliably as long.

01:25:07 ◼   ► Simple as that.

01:25:08 ◼   ► That's been the case for all computer hardware forever.

01:25:10 ◼   ► When you can give them more thermal headroom,

01:25:13 ◼   ► they last longer and they run more reliably

01:25:16 ◼   ► and they run more gracefully under load.

01:25:18 ◼   ► And it's important to say what you just said

01:25:19 ◼   ► because like we still don't know.

01:25:20 ◼   ► We haven't used this yet.

01:25:22 ◼   ► None of us have one.

01:25:23 ◼   ► We haven't used it and the reviews have not been very clear

01:25:25 ◼   ► about load and thermals and noise and everything else.

01:25:29 ◼   ► But that is a major concern for me at least,

01:25:32 ◼   ► that they crammed all this stuff into a case

01:25:34 ◼   ► that was never designed to handle it,

01:25:36 ◼   ► and even though they did a lot of work

01:25:37 ◼   ► on the cooling system and redesigning the internals

01:25:40 ◼   ► and everything, it was still a case that was not designed

01:25:44 ◼   ► for 500 watt workstation grade components inside.

01:25:46 ◼   ► So that's my main concern is like,

01:25:48 ◼   ► is this really going to last?

01:25:49 ◼   ► And as I mentioned a few months ago I think,

01:25:51 ◼   ► I'm not sure I want to spend $6,000 on a great computer

01:25:57 ◼   ► that is gonna be really flaky in three years.

01:25:59 ◼   ► - You'll just sell it before then anyway, so.

01:26:02 ◼   ► - Maybe, but I don't sell desktops that often.

01:26:05 ◼   ► I mean, look, I'm still using my 2014 iMac now.

01:26:08 ◼   ► And so I really, like seeing the reviews of this,

01:26:11 ◼   ► I really want one, I really, really do,

01:26:13 ◼   ► because I really want a speed upgrade.

01:26:17 ◼   ► I do so much parallel work that would benefit

01:26:20 ◼   ► from those new cores, so, so much.

01:26:23 ◼   ► I really want the Black Trackpad.

01:26:25 ◼   ► Your compiling would probably benefit from both the faster disks and the, well I don't

01:26:30 ◼   ► know if the disks are faster in random seeks because I haven't seen that, but like I like

01:26:34 ◼   ► the disk subsystem I think is getting short shrift here because first of all the disk

01:26:37 ◼   ► subsystem in the, I think the 2016 and 2017s was much faster than it was before.

01:26:43 ◼   ► People don't, you know, for large data transfers like if you know, if you're doing like video

01:26:47 ◼   ► or something like that, and again I don't know how it is for random access with a bunch

01:26:50 ◼   ► of small files and stuff, but I love seeing stuff like that because people don't think

01:26:53 ◼   ► it's got an SSD and they think SSD equals SSD equals SSD but as these get

01:26:58 ◼   ► faster and part of the advantages of buying expensive for hardware is it

01:27:01 ◼   ► should have the fastest SSD on the fastest interface and so the numbers

01:27:05 ◼   ► coming out of us is like three gigs per second read and write sustained through

01:27:10 ◼   ► the internal storage and that's great that is better than that's better than

01:27:14 ◼   ► Casey's a little MacBook adorable right a lot better and that's exactly they

01:27:18 ◼   ► both have SSDs aren't they the same speed they are not right that's what I

01:27:21 ◼   ► I want out of a pro machine and that's you know this machine for like

01:27:24 ◼   ► Processing 8k video and stuff like that that's a lot of data to move on and off the disk and into and out of RAM and

01:27:30 ◼   ► So you know all thumbs up on that

01:27:33 ◼   ► That that's one of the things that's attracting me to the machine the reason

01:27:37 ◼   ► I think that for so many applications like the very fastest Mac that Apple sells

01:27:41 ◼   ► Maybe you won't make everything that you do faster, especially if you don't take advantage of the multiple cores

01:27:46 ◼   ► But you know if you do stuff that that it uses lots of disk bandwidth

01:27:51 ◼   ► even if you don't care about the CPU cores or the GPU,

01:27:55 ◼   ► this is the best disk machine.

01:27:56 ◼   ► If you just do stuff with GPUs,

01:27:58 ◼   ► this is far and away gonna be the fastest GPU.

01:28:00 ◼   ► Even if you don't care about the cores

01:28:01 ◼   ► and you don't care about the disk.

01:28:02 ◼   ► Like there's a lot to like,

01:28:04 ◼   ► even if you're not gonna use every aspect of this computer.

01:28:06 ◼   ► And yeah, you have to pay for the other aspects too,

01:28:09 ◼   ► which is the reason people get cranky.

01:28:10 ◼   ► Like I just want the good GPU.

01:28:12 ◼   ► I don't need Xeons.

01:28:13 ◼   ► I don't need all this other stuff.

01:28:14 ◼   ► Well, you get it all, right?

01:28:15 ◼   ► It's expensive.

01:28:17 ◼   ► It's just the way it is.

01:28:18 ◼   ► But having to pay for it all to get a good GPU

01:28:22 ◼   ► is way better than literally having no option

01:28:24 ◼   ► except to buy a 2010 Mac Pro and a third party GPU

01:28:27 ◼   ► and shove it in there.

01:28:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the final thing that I worry about here

01:28:31 ◼   ► before anybody has one is having this much heat

01:28:35 ◼   ► going to be a problem for the screen.

01:28:41 ◼   ► You know, this iMac was designed in 2012

01:28:45 ◼   ► and the components behind it were 85 watt

01:28:48 ◼   ► to 100 watt load probably.

01:28:50 ◼   ► Now it can be up to 500 watt load.

01:28:52 ◼   ► Is having that amount of heat right up against

01:28:55 ◼   ► the back of the LCD panel going to be a problem

01:28:59 ◼   ► for the longevity and quality of the LCD panel?

01:29:02 ◼   ► Are you gonna develop a splotch in the right quadrant

01:29:07 ◼   ► near the middle where the processor is on the back?

01:29:11 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:29:12 ◼   ► How do LCDs handle very high heat

01:29:16 ◼   ► being generated on a component

01:29:19 ◼   ► that is stuck to the back of them for three years?

01:29:22 ◼   ► These are the kinds of things I'm worried about.

01:29:24 ◼   ► As this is like, I'm so excited about this machine,

01:29:25 ◼   ► and I'm probably gonna buy at least one,

01:29:28 ◼   ► but I don't know.

01:29:30 ◼   ► These are problems that I wouldn't worry about

01:29:31 ◼   ► if it was a tower,

01:29:33 ◼   ► and I intend to buy the tower when that comes out too.

01:29:36 ◼   ► The only reason I'm even talking about this now

01:29:39 ◼   ► is because Tiff wants me to buy this,

01:29:41 ◼   ► so that way I can give it to her when I get the tower.

01:29:45 ◼   ► So that's probably what I'm going to do,

01:29:47 ◼   ► but it's hard not to think about those concerns

01:29:51 ◼   ► when I've been a little bit burned by IMAX in the past,

01:29:55 ◼   ► and I've had such great experiences with the towers.

01:29:59 ◼   ► - You know, I'm surprised that you're harping

01:30:01 ◼   ► on the thermal stuff so much,

01:30:04 ◼   ► because it seems to me like Apple's gotta know

01:30:08 ◼   ► what the thermal requirements for this thing are,

01:30:10 ◼   ► And with the trash can, yes, they designed themselves

01:30:14 ◼   ► into a corner in that they didn't have a lot of headroom,

01:30:16 ◼   ► which is what you said before,

01:30:18 ◼   ► but it's not like it was broken the moment it shipped.

01:30:22 ◼   ► And so I don't think this is gonna be any different.

01:30:25 ◼   ► I really don't.

01:30:25 ◼   ► And having seen it very briefly,

01:30:29 ◼   ► I saw it when we were at WWDC, as did Jon,

01:30:33 ◼   ► and my recollection of that brief window of time

01:30:36 ◼   ► I spent with it was that I could hear the fans,

01:30:39 ◼   ► even despite the fact that it was in a very loud demo room.

01:30:42 ◼   ► And they said that the fans were screaming deliberately because it was a very early pre-release

01:30:46 ◼   ► model and they just wanted to crank the fans up to 11 to make sure that whatever they were

01:30:52 ◼   ► demoing on screen, which I don't even remember anymore, didn't cause any problems.

01:30:56 ◼   ► And those fans, I'm sorry to report gentlemen, my recollection were they were loud.

01:31:01 ◼   ► Now, that doesn't mean they were going to be loud always, it doesn't mean they were

01:31:03 ◼   ► going to be loud every time you hit Command-R and Xcode.

01:31:07 ◼   ► But it certainly seemed like it was capable of moving a whole lot of air.

01:31:13 ◼   ► And you very well could be right.

01:31:14 ◼   ► I mean, obviously, all three of us are just pontificating at the moment.

01:31:17 ◼   ► But I would be really surprised if we see widespread thermal issues with this thing.

01:31:21 ◼   ► I mean, it has been extensively redesigned on the inside specifically to avoid that very

01:31:26 ◼   ► problem.

01:31:27 ◼   ► But so is the trashcan.

01:31:28 ◼   ► Like, and that's exactly what it had.

01:31:29 ◼   ► But it was maybe not from day one, but it had GPU failures due to heat, right?

01:31:33 ◼   ► And so that was the major and I think the only sort of systemic hardware problem with

01:31:42 ◼   ► the trash cans.

01:31:43 ◼   ► And Marco is sitting there right now in front of a computer that he says runs the GPU too

01:31:47 ◼   ► hot and his isn't even a pro.

01:31:49 ◼   ► So there's some reason to believe that Apple doesn't have the cooling stuff licked for

01:31:55 ◼   ► stuff stuck to the back of a monitor even if it is not really hot stuff like this.