ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► We decided to schedule this week's show directly against game seven, right? Of the baseball series?

00:00:08 ◼   ► That's World Series, but only in the USA?

00:00:10 ◼   ► Uh, Canada 2.

00:00:12 ◼   ► That doesn't really count. That's not the world.

00:00:14 ◼   ► They should call it the North American minus Mexico series.

00:00:17 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:00:19 ◼   ► I guess you could go that way. I am currently, probably to my own peril, attempting to log into my Slingbox from my Mac

00:00:27 ◼   ► and see if I can turn the game on and provide live updates for you, Marco, since I know

00:00:31 ◼   ► you are deeply concerned about the score of game seven.

00:00:34 ◼   ► You should. So, this, just the basics, obviously this means that each of the teams won three

00:00:40 ◼   ► games, so they're tied now that they have a tiebreaker game, is that...

00:00:43 ◼   ► That is correct.

00:00:44 ◼   ► And other than that, is there anything special about how this game works? Are there any rule

00:00:47 ◼   ► changes, like it ends after a certain score, or is it just a regular game?

00:00:51 ◼   ► I don't think there is any difference, no.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Okay.

00:00:53 ◼   ► There's some rule, I forget what's what, but one league can do, what is it, a pinch hitter,

00:01:00 ◼   ► designated hitter, something, oh my god, designated hitter, something like that, and one league

00:01:05 ◼   ► doesn't allow that, I believe.

00:01:08 ◼   ► And I never understand the rules behind when that's permitted and when that isn't.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Now, I've heard people tell me that I should try to understand the infield fly rule.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Is that the difference between the American League and the American League?

00:01:21 ◼   ► National League, and no, it is not.

00:01:23 ◼   ► I don't believe, anyway.

00:01:26 ◼   ► But yeah, so the idea is when the, whatever league allows for this thing is considered

00:01:31 ◼   ► to be at home, this hitter thing, then they do the hitter thing.

00:01:36 ◼   ► I think it's a pinch hitter, is that right?

00:01:37 ◼   ► Why am I explaining this?

00:01:38 ◼   ► I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

00:01:40 ◼   ► So the two USA baseball leagues can't even agree on the rules?

00:01:44 ◼   ► Is this like a Republican-Democrat kind of thing?

00:01:47 ◼   ► Like what?

00:01:48 ◼   ► It's different islands in the Galapagos.

00:01:49 ◼   ► They evolved separately.

00:01:51 ◼   ► We should probably cut all of that because that was painful to talk about, let alone

00:01:55 ◼   ► listen to.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Yeah, that's probably not going in.

00:01:59 ◼   ► The Cleveland Indians and the Chicago Cubs are playing in the final game of the World

00:02:03 ◼   ► Series as we speak.

00:02:05 ◼   ► And as we are recording, it is top of the fourth, it's tied one to one, and I don't

00:02:10 ◼   ► really have a preference who wins.

00:02:12 ◼   ► I guess the Cubs, since they haven't won in forever, but whatever.

00:02:18 ◼   ► Are they really still?

00:02:19 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:02:21 ◼   ► really still called the Indians and they really still have that logo in 2016?

00:02:24 ◼   ► That's correct. That is rough. Wow. So I'm gonna I was gonna give live updates but

00:02:31 ◼   ► given that having SlingPlayer running on my Mac is causing my iMac's fans to go

00:02:36 ◼   ► at full tilt I'm just gonna go ahead and disconnect and turn that off. You know

00:02:39 ◼   ► what would have solved that problem? Oh here we go. Here we go. Tell me Marco what would solve that problem.

00:02:45 ◼   ► You know Apple still barely does make one computer where the difference in fan audible noise levels

00:02:53 ◼   ► between full load and idle is not distinguishable by the human ear most of the time in most rooms.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Oh the MacBook Adorable that doesn't have a fan? That one?

00:03:03 ◼   ► Hmm. Alright, two.

00:03:04 ◼   ► That doesn't count. That doesn't count because that's always at full load.

00:03:08 ◼   ► I'll just use I'll use the computer that's more modern. I'll go get my iPad mini. Hold on.

00:03:13 ◼   ► Oh, goodness, sorry, before Marco and I kill each other, we should probably start with

00:03:19 ◼   ► some follow-up.

00:03:20 ◼   ► And there was an interesting thing posted over the last few days.

00:03:24 ◼   ► As one would expect, the iFixit folks have gotten their hands on a MacBook escape.

00:03:31 ◼   ► And it's funny that I call it a MacBook escape, which I believe I stole from Marco, because

00:03:35 ◼   ► on that page it says, and I'm quoting, "Read on for our teardown of the MacBook Pro late

00:03:42 ◼   ► 2016, parenthesis, "Escape Edition," parenthesis. My question to you two is, is this simultaneous

00:03:49 ◼   ► invention, or did we get an uncredited citation there? Like, is this really our invention that

00:03:54 ◼   ► they're just not citing us as the source? Well, first of all, it's not our invention,

00:03:59 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure. It is the invention of whoever in the chat room suggested that. Just because

00:04:04 ◼   ► we picked out of the chat room the name that we liked and then repeated it on the show does not

00:04:08 ◼   ► mean that we invented that name. Sure it does. It's appropriate. Fair and square. No, no. That's how this works, right?

00:04:13 ◼   ► Whoever suggested it in the chat room actually coined the term, and we were merely adopting it for a

00:04:19 ◼   ► discussion, and I'm assuming it's simultaneous, but I just wanted to clear that. Marco was the one who

00:04:23 ◼   ► pulled it out of the chat room, and I'm assuming Marco pulled it out of the chat room and didn't

00:04:26 ◼   ► invent it himself, because on the show he was reading things out of the chat room. Yeah, it was

00:04:30 ◼   ► before last week's show, the people in the chat were discussing various names, and they were calling

00:04:35 ◼   ► it like escape book pro and f in book pro and a few other variations. I'm not entirely

00:04:41 ◼   ► sure who said, if anyone actually said MacBook escape as the official name, but well I've

00:04:48 ◼   ► been corrected though on Twitter and other places. Apparently the official name for this

00:04:54 ◼   ► computer is MacBook Pro in parentheses 13 inch late 2016 two Thunderbolt 3 ports end

00:05:02 ◼   ► in parentheses.

00:05:03 ◼   ► So from now on, I have to call it that.

00:05:06 ◼   ► MacBook Pro 13, late 2016, two Thunderbolt 3 ports,

00:05:09 ◼   ► not MacBook Escape, because the former

00:05:12 ◼   ► is a way better name, apparently.

00:05:15 ◼   ► - I'm disappointed that the name they hinted at

00:05:16 ◼   ► in the presentation wasn't the actual name,

00:05:18 ◼   ► because they said like, with function keys,

00:05:21 ◼   ► so it was like MacBook Pro, parentheses,

00:05:23 ◼   ► with function keys, but that is not obviously

00:05:25 ◼   ► the official name, apparently the official name

00:05:27 ◼   ► is that giant mouthful.

00:05:28 ◼   ► - Is that even that much better, though?

00:05:30 ◼   ► Like would that have been, like,

00:05:32 ◼   ► this is still not a name that anybody will know.

00:05:35 ◼   ► - The good thing about the parentheses with function keys

00:05:37 ◼   ► is you could apply it to like any Mac model

00:05:38 ◼   ► that comes with a keyboard with function keys on it now.

00:05:40 ◼   ► You could say like, you know,

00:05:41 ◼   ► Apple extended keyboard with function keys.

00:05:44 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:05:45 ◼   ► Well, and like the whole reason,

00:05:46 ◼   ► like the reason we gave this cute name

00:05:47 ◼   ► and everyone said I should stop naming things

00:05:50 ◼   ► because originally I was one of the people,

00:05:52 ◼   ► I don't even know if I was the first,

00:05:53 ◼   ► but I was a popularizer of the name MacBook One

00:05:57 ◼   ► for the one port 12 inch MacBook when that came out.

00:05:59 ◼   ► 'Cause I had a similar problem

00:06:00 ◼   ► where they released this brand new computer

00:06:02 ◼   ► that is radically different from everything else they make,

00:06:04 ◼   ► and they just called it MacBook.

00:06:06 ◼   ► And there was already a computer named MacBook,

00:06:08 ◼   ► not even that long ago, and lots of people still have them.

00:06:11 ◼   ► And so it was a vague name, an ambiguous name,

00:06:16 ◼   ► and everyone was going through all these contortions

00:06:19 ◼   ► in press articles to say the new MacBook,

00:06:22 ◼   ► the 12-inch Retina MacBook,

00:06:24 ◼   ► the MacBook with one USB port, whatever.

00:06:26 ◼   ► Everyone was going through these contortions

00:06:28 ◼   ► trying to unambiguously state which computer

00:06:31 ◼   ► they were talking about because Apple's names

00:06:32 ◼   ► aren't good enough, like they're not precise enough.

00:06:36 ◼   ► And this is one of those cases too.

00:06:37 ◼   ► And by the way, I do regret not calling it the MacBook 2

00:06:41 ◼   ► because in so many ways--

00:06:42 ◼   ► - That's true, I didn't even think about that.

00:06:44 ◼   ► - I had a few people tell me that.

00:06:45 ◼   ► - That's just adding confusion though

00:06:47 ◼   ► because now it sounds like it's the sequel or something

00:06:49 ◼   ► and it is a pro.

00:06:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, it's an Air.

00:06:54 ◼   ► But I mean really, let's be honest,

00:06:56 ◼   ► it's a MacBook Air with a retina screen.

00:06:58 ◼   ► Which again, I wanted that,

00:07:00 ◼   ► and I said it's gonna be amazing,

00:07:01 ◼   ► and they're gonna sell a ton of them,

00:07:03 ◼   ► and I stand by that.

00:07:05 ◼   ► The earlier reviews say it is pretty good.

00:07:07 ◼   ► It's not as good as I would like it to be in some ways,

00:07:09 ◼   ► but overall pretty good.

00:07:11 ◼   ► I think it's probably going to be very successful

00:07:15 ◼   ► if anybody can justify the price hike for it.

00:07:18 ◼   ► That's a big if, but if they can do it, that'll be fine.

00:07:21 ◼   ► But this is another one of those computers

00:07:23 ◼   ► where look at the contortions of how people

00:07:26 ◼   ► trying to unambiguously refer to this computer in their various reviews and press articles

00:07:30 ◼   ► and blog posts and tweets, and there is no good short name for it that unambiguously

00:07:35 ◼   ► says what it refers to. So I stand by my choice to call it the MacBook Escape because it is

00:07:40 ◼   ► short and fairly unique. I don't think anyone could ever think that meant any other computer,

00:07:46 ◼   ► and they might not necessarily know it means this one, but I think enough geeks know, enough

00:07:51 ◼   ► of our audience knows, enough of my audience on Twitter and stuff knows, that I can say

00:07:55 ◼   ► say MacBook One and MacBook Escape,

00:07:58 ◼   ► and the people who are listening,

00:08:01 ◼   ► almost all of them will know what I mean by that,

00:08:03 ◼   ► as opposed to saying 13-inch MacBook Pro,

00:08:06 ◼   ► which now could mean three very different computers,

00:08:09 ◼   ► all of which are still for sale.

00:08:11 ◼   ► - Just wait until next year when they add the Touch Bar

00:08:13 ◼   ► to the MacBook Escape,

00:08:15 ◼   ► but it still has two ports instead of four,

00:08:17 ◼   ► then what the hell you gonna call it?

00:08:17 ◼   ► It's not the MacBook Escape anymore.

00:08:20 ◼   ► MacBook Escape with Touch Bar.

00:08:22 ◼   ► - That's MacBook Two.

00:08:23 ◼   ► So I have an important question for you, Marco.

00:08:25 ◼   ► Are you sticking with the MacBook One name

00:08:28 ◼   ► or are you going to adopt the CGP Grey

00:08:31 ◼   ► MacBook Adorable name?

00:08:33 ◼   ► - If I'm going to call it a name beyond its correct name

00:08:36 ◼   ► of MacBook or 12 inch MacBook,

00:08:39 ◼   ► then I'm going to call it MacBook One.

00:08:42 ◼   ► It's been around longer, it's probably,

00:08:44 ◼   ► I think it's more recognizable and I think it's,

00:08:47 ◼   ► honestly I think it's a better name.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Sorry Grey, but.

00:08:50 ◼   ► - It's less of a value judgment too.

00:08:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:08:53 ◼   ► But, I mean, you know, realistically speaking,

00:08:56 ◼   ► it has now been, you know, that computer came out

00:08:58 ◼   ► about what, a year and a half ago, almost two years ago.

00:09:00 ◼   ► It has now been long enough that I will fairly soon

00:09:04 ◼   ► not need to call it the MacBook One anymore.

00:09:07 ◼   ► That time might even be now.

00:09:08 ◼   ► 'Cause you only need these pet names

00:09:11 ◼   ► when Apple's regular names are still ambiguous

00:09:15 ◼   ► and confusing in people's minds.

00:09:17 ◼   ► When the MacBook One first came out

00:09:19 ◼   ► and they just called it MacBook, again,

00:09:21 ◼   ► Lots of people still had memories of the regular MacBook

00:09:24 ◼   ► and what was called that not that long ago.

00:09:27 ◼   ► And everyone wanted to talk about this new computer

00:09:28 ◼   ► and there was no good way to unambiguously do that.

00:09:31 ◼   ► But now, if you say the MacBook now,

00:09:36 ◼   ► that still honestly does kind of refer to the whole family

00:09:38 ◼   ► to some degree and people might be confused

00:09:40 ◼   ► a little bit by that, but if you just say MacBook

00:09:42 ◼   ► or if you just say 12 inch MacBook,

00:09:44 ◼   ► I think you're okay for the most part now.

00:09:47 ◼   ► So I probably won't need to use the name MacBook One

00:09:50 ◼   ► much anymore. I might use it anyway because I like it, but I don't think I really need

00:09:54 ◼   ► to use it much anymore. Whereas referring to the MacBook Pro 13-inch late 2016 200 volt

00:10:00 ◼   ► 3 ports is still in need of a nice short unambiguous name.

00:10:06 ◼   ► Yeah, that's terrible. Alright, moving on. Mark King writes in to tell us that when John

00:10:11 ◼   ► speaks of millions of millennials typing on a screen, that actually includes Marco and

00:10:16 ◼   ► strictly speaking, and Mark has cited something on Wikipedia, which means it must be true,

00:10:23 ◼   ► and millennials apparently start with those born in 1982, and I speak for Mark Owen saying

00:10:28 ◼   ► both of us were born in 1982, so strictly speaking we are old millennials.

00:10:33 ◼   ► - See, that's BS though.

00:10:34 ◼   ► Like the genera-- - I don't buy this at all.

00:10:37 ◼   ► - I feel like generations don't just flip on a dime on December 31st at New Year's.

00:10:42 ◼   ► No, after you two were born, that was it. They closed the door.

00:10:46 ◼   ► Well, I was going to say, this is like the upstate of time or generations, right?

00:10:51 ◼   ► It's always the people younger than you that are the millennials.

00:10:55 ◼   ► And so, I actually do agree with Marco that I don't feel like I qualify as this entitled, self-obsessed generation.

00:11:01 ◼   ► Says the guy on his podcast. But I don't think it's too far after we were born.

00:11:07 ◼   ► I would probably have put it at like 1990-ish, but whatever.

00:11:11 ◼   ► TV boomers are self-obsessed. The Millennials aren't self-obsessed. The Millennials are coddled and

00:11:17 ◼   ► overconfident and have never had to try for anything. Those are the stereotypes and Gen X are

00:11:22 ◼   ► disaffected and cynical and terrible.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess that's fair. Well anyway, so yeah, apparently Marco and I are strictly speaking Millennials, which is a

00:11:30 ◼   ► interesting and perhaps sad realization for the two of us.

00:11:33 ◼   ► Well, the problem is there has whatever name for the generations that are younger than Millennials, like there's competition for what those names

00:11:39 ◼   ► could be called, please don't send us the 8 million names you've heard, we can look

00:11:43 ◼   ► them up too. But anyway, one of them hasn't won yet. So once a name wins, it'll be more

00:11:48 ◼   ► convenient when we want to make fun of the young'uns to use that name. I use millennials

00:11:52 ◼   ► because to me they are the young'uns, but this person is right, you too are millennials

00:11:56 ◼   ► as well.

00:11:57 ◼   ► - See, I feel like when, you know, generations are kind of like, they're kind of like a bell

00:12:01 ◼   ► curve shape, like as the time goes on, like it defines a certain era, but as you get close

00:12:06 ◼   ► to the edges and the boundaries of the eras, they become a lot less clearly defined. So

00:12:12 ◼   ► if you refer, and honestly I think referring to generations like this is stupid, but if

00:12:16 ◼   ► you're going to refer to them, I feel like if you say millennial, you're referring

00:12:19 ◼   ► to kind of like the hump, the peak of that wave. And so by calling us any of the generations

00:12:26 ◼   ► when we are literally the boundary year between two twenty year long generations, I feel like

00:12:34 ◼   ► it doesn't really say anything.

00:12:35 ◼   ► Like, are we really that different from the people

00:12:37 ◼   ► who are literally six months older than us?

00:12:39 ◼   ► Like, not really, you know?

00:12:40 ◼   ► So it's, when you get towards the edges,

00:12:42 ◼   ► it doesn't really mean much.

00:12:43 ◼   ► But referring to these generations at all is kinda dumb

00:12:45 ◼   ► and is only used for people to like yell about

00:12:48 ◼   ► how weird the kids are these days.

00:12:50 ◼   ► - That's exactly how we're using it though.

00:12:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, that is the point.

00:12:54 ◼   ► All right, William Rainsh wrote in and pointed out to us,

00:12:57 ◼   ► I forget exactly the context,

00:12:59 ◼   ► but I think maybe it was Marco was saying,

00:13:02 ◼   ► "Oh, I don't need a super fast GPU," or somebody was saying something along those lines.

00:13:07 ◼   ► >> That's what it was.

00:13:08 ◼   ► >> And William writes in to say, "Well, you may not think you need a super fast GPU because

00:13:13 ◼   ► you're maybe not playing games or anything like that, but is that the GPU used by, say,

00:13:18 ◼   ► image editing apps to do some of the calculations required in order to mess with your pictures

00:13:24 ◼   ► taken on your camera? That's all GPU-based, is it not?"

00:13:28 ◼   ► some of it is. And that's not to say that it doesn't matter, but much of it is still

00:13:35 ◼   ► very much CPU bound. And the things that are generally where I spend most of my time waiting

00:13:40 ◼   ► for the CPU are not the things that GPUs are usually helping with. You know, I mean I still,

00:13:45 ◼   ► I have my iMac with the fancy GPU, I have my 15 inch MacBook Pro without the fancy GPU,

00:13:52 ◼   ► and they do things at roughly the same speed, like in Lightroom with the same kind of files.

00:13:57 ◼   ► Like it's not, like the iMac should be,

00:13:59 ◼   ► if GPU is really helping the things that I'm waiting on,

00:14:02 ◼   ► the iMac should be way faster than the MacBook Pro,

00:14:04 ◼   ► but it's not, it's similar speeds.

00:14:06 ◼   ► So, and I can look and I can see and I stat menus

00:14:10 ◼   ► that all the CPU cores are being pegged

00:14:12 ◼   ► during these operations I'm waiting for.

00:14:13 ◼   ► So really it's, you know, it might help

00:14:16 ◼   ► many operations and stuff,

00:14:18 ◼   ► but the things I'm complaining about,

00:14:21 ◼   ► it doesn't really help.

00:14:22 ◼   ► And again, it's nice to have, but you know,

00:14:25 ◼   ► not necessarily at certain costs and in certain roles.

00:14:28 ◼   ► So my argument last week was that I wish they had the GPU,

00:14:33 ◼   ► basically the no GPU option in the 15 inch still.

00:14:36 ◼   ► There appear to be good reasons why they don't anymore,

00:14:39 ◼   ► like related to Intel's integrated GPU

00:14:41 ◼   ► being not as good anymore in those quad core configs,

00:14:44 ◼   ► whatever, I don't know, I don't know the details of that,

00:14:46 ◼   ► but something like that.

00:14:47 ◼   ► But anyway, I regret that they don't have the option

00:14:51 ◼   ► of no discrete GPU anymore, but oh well,

00:14:54 ◼   ► what are you gonna do?

00:14:56 ◼   ► That's kind of my attitude about MacBook Pro in general,

00:14:58 ◼   ► is oh well, what are you gonna do?

00:15:00 ◼   ► Because there's so much about it that's a little bit

00:15:03 ◼   ► weird or off or not quite for me.

00:15:06 ◼   ► - We'll get to it.

00:15:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, we will.

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00:17:02 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:17:05 ◼   ► - All right, moving on.

00:17:08 ◼   ► A few people have written in to say

00:17:09 ◼   ► that there are forthcoming external GPU boxes

00:17:14 ◼   ► for new MacBook Pros.

00:17:15 ◼   ► So BizonTech, I apologize if I'm pronouncing that wrong, has a BizonBox 3 external graphics

00:17:23 ◼   ► card for Mac.

00:17:24 ◼   ► Turn your Mac into a powerful workstation, up to 10x boost in games and professional

00:17:27 ◼   ► apps.

00:17:29 ◼   ► And so this looks like almost a mini tower-sized box.

00:17:32 ◼   ► It looks quite large, I'm sure it's actually not, that you can sit adjacent to your MacBook

00:17:37 ◼   ► Pro and connect via presumably Thunderbolt 3 and put any number of different GPUs in

00:17:44 ◼   ► it.

00:17:45 ◼   ► And $2,700 on a box that has a graphics card in it, and that graphics card only apparently

00:17:56 ◼   ► has Windows support, but nonetheless, you could spend basically half a MacBook Pro again

00:18:03 ◼   ► getting an external graphics card.

00:18:04 ◼   ► So Jon, is this your solution to an excellent Mac-based gaming platform?

00:18:09 ◼   ► There have been a bunch of external GPU options ever since the advent of Thunderbolt.

00:18:17 ◼   ► And there are two main problems.

00:18:19 ◼   ► One is probably not a problem anymore, but used to be back in the early days of Thunderbolt.

00:18:23 ◼   ► And that is that although Thunderbolt basically gives you the ability to have sort of, you

00:18:27 ◼   ► know, PCI bus that extends outside your computer, the original Thunderbolt did not have as many

00:18:33 ◼   ► lanes as top-end graphic cards took when you plugged them into like a gaming PC or something.

00:18:39 ◼   ► And that only mattered if you were going to actually use all that bandwidth between the

00:18:42 ◼   ► card and the CPU and everything, and you could argue that it wouldn't make a difference and

00:18:45 ◼   ► you can't measure or whatever, but back in the day, the bandwidth was insufficient.

00:18:48 ◼   ► I'm assuming with Thunderbolt 3, that it's either close enough not to matter anymore

00:18:52 ◼   ► or to surpass it and it's not a problem anymore.

00:18:54 ◼   ► But the real problem with external GPU solutions, for me personally, why I'm not interested

00:18:59 ◼   ► in them, is because I have no faith that Apple supports them in any way, shape, or form.

00:19:06 ◼   ► And it's not as if I need Apple to make the box.

00:19:08 ◼   ► I just need Apple to say, "Oh yeah, this is a thing you can do with your Mac."

00:19:12 ◼   ► I do not doubt that they can get this to work, and I do not doubt that Apple has built support

00:19:17 ◼   ► for external CPUs into the operating system that's letting them do this.

00:19:21 ◼   ► What I doubt is, is this going to be a supported configuration for me?

00:19:25 ◼   ► Is some OS update going to get rid of it?

00:19:27 ◼   ► Is it, like, especially if you're going to spend, you know, $800 for a really fancy GPU,

00:19:32 ◼   ► is it a thing that's going to be useful for its purpose?

00:19:35 ◼   ► I don't want to buy it and then two years later like I can't use it anymore because

00:19:38 ◼   ► The drivers aren't supported or there's some bug or some new kernel change it out

00:19:42 ◼   ► But like I need Apple's blessing essentially for me to feel safe to pursue this because you know

00:19:46 ◼   ► Otherwise why don't I just make a gaming PC like at least then I know that's unsupported by everybody and it's just my own

00:19:51 ◼   ► My own challenge to battle and get to work or you know, I get driver updates from the the video card company

00:19:57 ◼   ► So I'm personally very wary of solutions like this because I say as I sit in front of my eight-year-old computer

00:20:04 ◼   ► because I like to, you know, use things for a long time and I really do want Apple to

00:20:08 ◼   ► bless them in some way. Blessing for Apple doesn't mean it's gonna be supported forever, obviously,

00:20:13 ◼   ► but at least I'll know that I'm not more on the fringes. For other people who have, you know,

00:20:18 ◼   ► less aversion to risk or are just interested in trying something cool,

00:20:21 ◼   ► this definitely looks interesting and I would probably do this if I was more of a hobbyist hardware tinkerer, but

00:20:27 ◼   ► right now I'm not interested in external GPUs until Apple gives me the nod about them.

00:20:32 ◼   ► Honestly, if I was more of a hobbyist hardware tinkerer,

00:20:35 ◼   ► I'd just build a Hackintosh.

00:20:36 ◼   ► Or, as you said, just build a gaming PC.

00:20:39 ◼   ► Like that's, 'cause you do most of your gaming

00:20:41 ◼   ► in Windows anyway, right?

00:20:42 ◼   ► - Well yeah, so this is the, the other angle is like,

00:20:47 ◼   ► the thing that's cool about it is not,

00:20:48 ◼   ► hey, I get to have a cool GPU.

00:20:50 ◼   ► The cool thing is you get to have a laptop

00:20:52 ◼   ► that works pretty well that you can also sit down,

00:20:54 ◼   ► plop it down on your desk and suddenly

00:20:56 ◼   ► becomes way more powerful.

00:20:57 ◼   ► Like, so it's the whole hybrid,

00:20:58 ◼   ► it's kind of like the old Thunderbolt display

00:21:00 ◼   ► with the laptop, like, you could just buy

00:21:02 ◼   ► two separate machines but it's kind of neat to have one machine with all your stuff on

00:21:05 ◼   ► it that suddenly gets amazing new capabilities when you sit down at your desk and connect

00:21:08 ◼   ► one little skinny wire.

00:21:10 ◼   ► That is the, for me, the novel interesting hardware hacker angle.

00:21:13 ◼   ► Not just the fact that you can have a good GPU because you're right, you just get a game

00:21:16 ◼   ► -- if you just want a good GPU, get a gaming PC and there you go.

00:21:20 ◼   ► It's the, you know, the novelty of having external powerful things enhancing the power

00:21:25 ◼   ► of your laptops and tons of PC laptops do this as well.

00:21:27 ◼   ► This is not a unique thing to Apple or anything like that.

00:21:30 ◼   ► is just, you know, Apple as far as I'm aware

00:21:33 ◼   ► has never even acknowledged this is a thing,

00:21:34 ◼   ► which is really weird considering they have to provide

00:21:36 ◼   ► some support for it for it to work at all.

00:21:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, the story that we get from like

00:21:42 ◼   ► people like ATP Tipster and other various sources,

00:21:44 ◼   ► it really does sound like Apple really did do

00:21:48 ◼   ► like all of the work necessary to make their own 5K display.

00:21:52 ◼   ► And at some point, they were probably planning on it

00:21:54 ◼   ► to be a product.

00:21:55 ◼   ► And so they put in all this work to make Sierra support

00:22:00 ◼   ► this kind of display over this kind of cable,

00:22:02 ◼   ► make it support external GPUs over that kind of cable,

00:22:05 ◼   ► and everything else, and then instead now,

00:22:08 ◼   ► they basically give it all to LG,

00:22:10 ◼   ► who was probably making the panel for it to begin with.

00:22:13 ◼   ► LG ships it as their monitor,

00:22:15 ◼   ► and Apple tells Neil A. Patel secondhand on Twitter

00:22:19 ◼   ► that they're out of the display business.

00:22:21 ◼   ► - That's a future follow-up item, and we will discuss it.

00:22:25 ◼   ► - This whole, it's a weird story.

00:22:26 ◼   ► There has to be something more to it than that,

00:22:28 ◼   ► that that is a weird story.

00:22:30 ◼   ► I will just say here, in case we don't get to it again,

00:22:32 ◼   ► that I think the idea of giving,

00:22:35 ◼   ► of handing this over to LG and telling people,

00:22:37 ◼   ► oh, if you want what was basically the Apple 5K display,

00:22:40 ◼   ► you have to now buy it from LG, that's not as good.

00:22:43 ◼   ► That's not a very good solution,

00:22:44 ◼   ► because then that means that we have to order it from LG,

00:22:48 ◼   ► we have to get LG's warranty on it,

00:22:52 ◼   ► we have to get LG's support if anything goes wrong,

00:22:55 ◼   ► And all of the, and of course, you know,

00:22:57 ◼   ► LG's exterior casing, which is kind of hideous,

00:23:00 ◼   ► and all of that is worse than if we would've

00:23:03 ◼   ► just bought it from Apple.

00:23:05 ◼   ► So it's not a great situation.

00:23:08 ◼   ► Like one person on Twitter pointed out,

00:23:09 ◼   ► I'm sorry, I forgot who it was,

00:23:11 ◼   ► like up until now, or up until when Apple stopped selling

00:23:15 ◼   ► the Thunderbolt display a few months ago,

00:23:17 ◼   ► if you bought a Mac and the Thunderbolt display

00:23:20 ◼   ► and AppleCare for the Mac,

00:23:21 ◼   ► the AppleCare also covered the display.

00:23:24 ◼   ► So you had your monitor covered for three years,

00:23:27 ◼   ► just like you had your computer,

00:23:28 ◼   ► which three years warranty on pro monitors

00:23:30 ◼   ► is usually not what they go for.

00:23:31 ◼   ► I think usually you're one year for most things like that.

00:23:34 ◼   ► So again, it's just like,

00:23:35 ◼   ► and if anything ever went wrong with it,

00:23:37 ◼   ► as John, you know, you could bring it to an Apple store

00:23:39 ◼   ► and you could have them deal with it

00:23:41 ◼   ► or you could ship it to Apple.

00:23:42 ◼   ► And now, like when it's sold by somebody else,

00:23:44 ◼   ► especially somebody like LG

00:23:45 ◼   ► who has like pretty miserable service in most things,

00:23:48 ◼   ► then you have to call God knows who,

00:23:52 ◼   ► ship it God knows where, pay God knows what,

00:23:55 ◼   ► and wait God knows how long to get it back.

00:23:57 ◼   ► And it's not nearly as nice as if Apple would

00:24:00 ◼   ► have just sold this themselves.

00:24:01 ◼   ► And so I do kind of,

00:24:04 ◼   ► I am a little scared for Apple's future dedication

00:24:10 ◼   ► to desktops, if only because that seems like

00:24:12 ◼   ► a really weird move if you care about things

00:24:15 ◼   ► like the Mac Pro at all.

00:24:17 ◼   ► - We don't know how long LG's warranty is,

00:24:18 ◼   ► probably know they have a 10 year warranty.

00:24:21 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:24:22 ◼   ► No, but what—I don't entirely get what makes this new display so unique, because

00:24:27 ◼   ► when I was looking at getting potentially a monitor for work before I got that 4K that I'm

00:24:34 ◼   ► using now, I was looking at the Dell 5K, and that works with, like, my existing MacBook Pro—that's

00:24:41 ◼   ► a few months old now—on one cable. So why was it so special that this LG—like, they made a big

00:24:48 ◼   ► deal about it being over one cable. What am I missing here? It seems like this was something

00:24:52 ◼   ► we could already do. All right, if we're foisting this up, we'll move it up and we'll talk about it

00:24:56 ◼   ► now, although you're breaking the flow of what I wanted to talk about in the order I wanted to

00:25:00 ◼   ► talk about, which actually made sense, but that's fine. That's my job, John. That's fine. It's like

00:25:04 ◼   ► top four. What you just alluded to, the 5k display is that Neil Patel tweeted, and then his tweet was

00:25:11 ◼   ► quoted a bunch of places, that Apple confirmed to him that, "Oh, they're out of the standalone

00:25:16 ◼   ► display business. And that night, after I heard that tweet, I had trouble getting to

00:25:23 ◼   ► sleep because I was so upset about the prospect of there being no Apple monitor.

00:25:27 ◼   ► Are you being silly or are you serious?

00:25:29 ◼   ► I'm serious. But I was also upset about what had gone down that day. Because here's the

00:25:34 ◼   ► deal. Everything Marco said about Apple monitors is true and it's the reason I buy them. And

00:25:39 ◼   ► I like how the case looks, I like how it's warrantied as part of it, I like how everything

00:25:42 ◼   ► These are all silly reasons, but it's like it's why that's why I buy Macs and part of the reason I buy Macs

00:25:47 ◼   ► I like how all the stuff looks together

00:25:49 ◼   ► And so I don't like the idea that there's not going to be an Apple monitor

00:25:54 ◼   ► But what really bugs me is

00:25:57 ◼   ► That Apple would

00:26:01 ◼   ► Back channel on background semi off the record, whatever

00:26:05 ◼   ► confirm secretly

00:26:08 ◼   ► Conveyed by a tweet that they're not making monitors anymore that they're out of the standalone display business

00:26:13 ◼   ► If Apple is gonna be out of the standalone display business

00:26:15 ◼   ► They should say so as a company like you don't have to say we're never gonna make one in a million years, but just say

00:26:21 ◼   ► Don't wait for us to release a 5k monitor because we have no plans to do. So this is the one

00:26:28 ◼   ► I don't understand why Apple can't just say that instead they have to do this thing, which is like well

00:26:34 ◼   ► How much do I trust that do it can I find my own back channels into someone who?

00:26:38 ◼   ► Spoke to someone who knows something in Apple to tell us. Oh, you know we're not making them anymore

00:26:41 ◼   ► I know the Apple's presentation is that here's a great LG monitor. Just do it right I feel like there should be

00:26:47 ◼   ► Doesn't have to be in the keynote, but it should be on the record

00:26:51 ◼   ► Statements from Apple like not just one of them are not just a little turd

00:26:56 ◼   ► But like it should be common knowledge

00:26:57 ◼   ► Just like it's common knowledge that they're selling a new line of computers also say and by the way

00:27:01 ◼   ► Apple like like when Apple left the printer business

00:27:04 ◼   ► They didn't like just stop making printers and just tell people to buy other printers

00:27:07 ◼   ► But then that'll say guess what Apple's not making printers anymore. Like that wasn't a secret mystery everybody knew you know

00:27:13 ◼   ► That bothers me immensely. So anyway, mostly because the news is bad and

00:27:17 ◼   ► Part of me still wants to cling to the idea that like maybe they'll change their mind next year

00:27:22 ◼   ► And that's why they're not saying anything blah blah blah as for the specifically the LG thing

00:27:27 ◼   ► I really want someone to tear one of these apart because we don't know what's inside there

00:27:30 ◼   ► Is there a GPU inside there that it's communicating with through these new features in Sierra or is there not?

00:27:35 ◼   ► To get to Casey's question is you know multi stream multiple

00:27:39 ◼   ► Display port 1.2 streams or some other technique to drive a big monitor

00:27:45 ◼   ► Is that what the Dell ones are using because I don't think Apple invented this multi stream thing

00:27:49 ◼   ► Maybe it's just a standard that existed and this is the first time Apple supporting it in their notebooks

00:27:53 ◼   ► Or is it this weird external GPU thing?

00:27:56 ◼   ► we don't know as for random stuff the tipster promised us a hub that has never been delivered said about how about how the

00:28:03 ◼   ► Touch is now just now saying that they'll use two cables and it's very buggy

00:28:07 ◼   ► Anyway about this display with the the GPU or whatever. Well, you know, they Apple Apple didn't ship that

00:28:12 ◼   ► so

00:28:14 ◼   ► like

00:28:15 ◼   ► And I can say we've gotten conflicting reports of what exactly Apple has ever planned to ship or you know

00:28:21 ◼   ► or anything like that like

00:28:23 ◼   ► This is this is all just random here say all we have to go on is what what Apple actually

00:28:27 ◼   ► delivers as products and

00:28:30 ◼   ► And what they say publicly and right now

00:28:33 ◼   ► They're not delivering a monitor and they're sort of semi kind of publicly saying they're not making monitors anymore

00:28:38 ◼   ► which is hugely disappointing because I think that almost as much as not updating the Mac Pro in three years is

00:28:45 ◼   ► Sort of a

00:28:50 ◼   ► Abandonment of one particular market segment the segment that the segment that buys you know the segment that buys the Mac Pro basically

00:28:57 ◼   ► Like it's it's all part of the same thing. It's saying

00:28:59 ◼   ► We're not gonna make a standalone monitor

00:29:02 ◼   ► And if we ever make another Mac Pro just count your lucky stars

00:29:05 ◼   ► And you're gonna have to find another monitor for it because you don't care about it like and the mini the same thing

00:29:10 ◼   ► It's kind of like saying

00:29:12 ◼   ► The desktop Mac experience is the iMac and these other computers if we decide to make them or not that's fine like I don't understand

00:29:18 ◼   ► how Apple can

00:29:20 ◼   ► Be so dedicated to the Mac as it claims to be

00:29:23 ◼   ► Unless their conception of the Mac does not include anything that doesn't come with a monitor

00:29:27 ◼   ► Which is that may be the case but like for me as a fan of max don't come with monitors for a variety of reasons

00:29:33 ◼   ► Canceling the monitor for me made me feel worse than them not updating the Mac Pro for three years

00:29:38 ◼   ► Like it made me for the first time really truly doubt whether they were ever going to make another Mac Pro

00:29:44 ◼   ► I don't care about the mini like canceling the monitor to that to me

00:29:48 ◼   ► So here I am saying there's not gonna be any more displays,

00:29:51 ◼   ► right, and many people point out like,

00:29:53 ◼   ► how can you believe the tipster is obviously

00:29:55 ◼   ► all completely false information, whatever.

00:29:57 ◼   ► Tipster, I don't care, whatever, it's a fun diversion.

00:30:00 ◼   ► But finding out through Neil Hippitel through a tweet

00:30:04 ◼   ► from Apple back channels that Apple itself is telling people

00:30:07 ◼   ► or out of the standalone display business just crushed me.

00:30:10 ◼   ► It crushed me to the point where I was immediately

00:30:13 ◼   ► trying to consider if they come out with another Mac Pro,

00:30:16 ◼   ► I don't think I'm gonna buy one.

00:30:17 ◼   ► I should just get an iMac.

00:30:18 ◼   ► I cannot live in a world where I'm gonna wait until June of next year to get a new Mac Pro

00:30:24 ◼   ► and then connect the third ugly third party five head monitor to it?

00:30:28 ◼   ► I don't know if I can do it."

00:30:29 ◼   ► And I was like, "Well, if you can't do it, then what are you even waiting for?

00:30:31 ◼   ► Why don't you just buy an iMac?

00:30:32 ◼   ► Why are you sitting in front of this ancient computer?

00:30:34 ◼   ► It's lower than your phone now.

00:30:35 ◼   ► It's just ridiculous."

00:30:36 ◼   ► Just, I don't know.

00:30:38 ◼   ► This monitor thing has totally destroyed me.

00:30:40 ◼   ► So you're saying in this hypothetical world where they release a new Mac Pro.

00:30:47 ◼   ► Let's just go completely out of left field.

00:30:50 ◼   ► Let's say they bring back the cheese grater.

00:30:52 ◼   ► But new insides, everything's modern and beautiful, and the fans are silent, and everything is

00:30:59 ◼   ► perfect.

00:31:00 ◼   ► And it's made for John Syracuse.

00:31:02 ◼   ► But because there's no Apple external display, you would not buy that hypothetical computer.

00:31:07 ◼   ► That's what you're saying?

00:31:08 ◼   ► I'd have to think about it.

00:31:10 ◼   ► This is what I was up at night thinking about.

00:31:11 ◼   ► It's like, "Can I do it?"

00:31:12 ◼   ► What?

00:31:13 ◼   ► And I have to say, it's mostly also because I know that there's no prospect of any Mac

00:31:16 ◼   ► Pro until a long time from now. Like that it'll be even more waiting. If it came out

00:31:20 ◼   ► with the Mac Pro tomorrow, like I would be less upset. But I know there's no Mac Pro

00:31:23 ◼   ► coming out tomorrow. There's no Mac Pro coming out next week. There's no Mac Pro coming out

00:31:26 ◼   ► next month. It's going to be another long wait. And I don't, you know, I've been waiting

00:31:31 ◼   ► a really long time, right? I don't know if I can wait that long for the reward at the

00:31:35 ◼   ► end of it to be whatever the hell the Mac Pro is now. And oh, by the way, find some

00:31:40 ◼   ► monitor you can use with it. Good luck. I don't like it.

00:31:44 ◼   ► They're saying that you wouldn't buy this perfect John Syracuse Mac that I've just invented

00:31:49 ◼   ► out of thin air because you don't like the look of the LG monitor.

00:31:53 ◼   ► It's possible.

00:31:54 ◼   ► It's possible.

00:31:55 ◼   ► That does not compute in my mind.

00:31:57 ◼   ► That is such—

00:31:58 ◼   ► Well, put it this way.

00:31:59 ◼   ► I have never had a non-Apple monitor.

00:32:02 ◼   ► I've always had a series of Apple monitors.

00:32:03 ◼   ► John, let me give you a hint.

00:32:05 ◼   ► It's okay.

00:32:07 ◼   ► They aren't as pretty in terms of the bezel or bezel, depending on who you're talking

00:32:10 ◼   ► with.

00:32:11 ◼   ► But they work just fine.

00:32:14 ◼   ► And in fact, in some ways, I prefer my LG monitor at work because it's much more matte

00:32:20 ◼   ► than my iMac is.

00:32:21 ◼   ► In every other measurable way, I prefer the iMac.

00:32:23 ◼   ► But I'm sitting in front of a matte Apple monitor right now, you realize.

00:32:26 ◼   ► It's older than your Mac Pro.

00:32:27 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:32:29 ◼   ► But I mean, to each their own, if this is the way you want to live your life, then power

00:32:34 ◼   ► to the man.

00:32:35 ◼   ► I said I'm considering it.

00:32:37 ◼   ► This is what the display cancellation did to me.

00:32:40 ◼   ► In the end, I think I can probably stick it out, and I wouldn't buy the current iMac.

00:32:45 ◼   ► If I was waiting for an iMac, probably I would wait until they revise it with at least a

00:32:48 ◼   ► new GPU in it.

00:32:49 ◼   ► But what I'm trying to do is get myself to the point where I think you'd be okay with

00:32:53 ◼   ► an iMac.

00:32:54 ◼   ► My wife's got a 5K iMac.

00:32:55 ◼   ► It's like three feet over there.

00:32:56 ◼   ► I use it all the time.

00:32:57 ◼   ► The monitor is really nice.

00:32:59 ◼   ► It's way faster than my computer.

00:33:01 ◼   ► It's got a one terabyte SSD.

00:33:03 ◼   ► The GPU is faster than the one in my computer.

00:33:06 ◼   ► The more I sit there and use that one, the more I say, "What are you waiting around for

00:33:08 ◼   ► a Mac Pro for?

00:33:09 ◼   ► it's not gonna be good for your purposes anyway.

00:33:12 ◼   ► Like the things that get me to come back to it is like,

00:33:15 ◼   ► you know, here are the fan on my wife's iMac

00:33:16 ◼   ► and all this stuff, trying to figure out,

00:33:20 ◼   ► should I, when the next iMac is revised,

00:33:22 ◼   ► assuming it's revised early next year or something,

00:33:24 ◼   ► should I just buy it and not bother waiting

00:33:26 ◼   ► for this Mac Pro?

00:33:27 ◼   ► Should I buy it and then sell it

00:33:28 ◼   ► if I like the Mac Pro better?

00:33:29 ◼   ► I've just been waiting so long for this Mac Pro

00:33:31 ◼   ► and the cancellation of the monitor

00:33:33 ◼   ► has been the strongest signal to me

00:33:35 ◼   ► that Apple is not interested in selling me

00:33:38 ◼   ► the computer that I want to buy anymore.

00:33:40 ◼   ► I mean, as if the three year wait for the Mac Pro

00:33:41 ◼   ► isn't a signal enough, but who knows?

00:33:43 ◼   ► They could come out with a new Mac Pro

00:33:45 ◼   ► with their new conception of what the Mac Pro

00:33:47 ◼   ► is supposed to be, and I seriously doubt

00:33:49 ◼   ► it will be anything like the cheese grater you described.

00:33:51 ◼   ► But either way, if there's no display with it,

00:33:55 ◼   ► it's really disheartening to me.

00:33:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:58 ◼   ► - I teach their own, but I just,

00:34:00 ◼   ► man, that seems bananas to me.

00:34:04 ◼   ► But I mean, you do you.

00:34:07 ◼   ► I can't imagine.

00:34:08 ◼   ► - I mean, like I said, I'm not coming down

00:34:10 ◼   ► that I'm definitely gonna get an iMac.

00:34:12 ◼   ► I'm just like, that's what I was thinking

00:34:13 ◼   ► after this announcement.

00:34:14 ◼   ► I feel like I've come down a little bit from now,

00:34:16 ◼   ► but on the other side of it is like I said,

00:34:18 ◼   ► the 5K iMac is really good.

00:34:21 ◼   ► It's a really good computer.

00:34:23 ◼   ► Like I said, compared to the computer I have now,

00:34:26 ◼   ► it is better in every possible way.

00:34:28 ◼   ► And it's like, oh, but the GPU is not gonna be as big

00:34:31 ◼   ► as the one in the Mac Pro.

00:34:32 ◼   ► How do you know?

00:34:33 ◼   ► Or maybe the new conception of the Mac Pro

00:34:34 ◼   ► to have the same GPU as the MacBook Pro. I don't know what the new Mac Pro is going to

00:34:38 ◼   ► be, nobody does. It just, I don't know. So, at this point I'm still just waiting because

00:34:45 ◼   ► I'm not going to buy the current iMac. But, it's weird to be of two minds, like I wish

00:34:50 ◼   ► Apple had confirmed more strongly and officially that they're out of the standalone display

00:34:54 ◼   ► business, because then they could have line of questioning and all the interviewers are

00:34:57 ◼   ► doing, because like, "Why are you out of the standalone display business? People like to

00:35:00 ◼   ► buy them, and you can add a hundred bucks and get some margin, do you really sell so

00:35:03 ◼   ► few of them that you don't want to do that? Do you not consider that part of the whole system?

00:35:07 ◼   ► Do you think you can't make a good monitor? I mean, on this whole P3 thing and the color

00:35:11 ◼   ► calibration and the retina and all that stuff, you're all about that, except for your computers

00:35:15 ◼   ► that don't come with a monitor in which you say, "Fend for yourself in the land of third-party

00:35:19 ◼   ► monitors. Maybe we'll recommend one. Good luck with warranty and repairs. And by the way, it's ugly."

00:35:24 ◼   ► I agree with you, Jon. The lack of the new monitor has also made me unreasonably upset,

00:35:29 ◼   ► because I agree, I think it does signal

00:35:33 ◼   ► more than anything so far that there probably

00:35:36 ◼   ► won't be another Mac Pro.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Because again, if they were gonna make a new Mac Pro,

00:35:40 ◼   ► why would they not make a new monitor to go with it?

00:35:44 ◼   ► Do they really want the only option for Mac Pro buyers

00:35:47 ◼   ► to be third party, plasticy, crappy monitors?

00:35:50 ◼   ► Is that really what they want to be the only option

00:35:52 ◼   ► for their highest end computer?

00:35:54 ◼   ► I imagine that's not really their style.

00:35:58 ◼   ► That's a very strong indicator that as much as I want

00:36:02 ◼   ► the new Mac Pro to happen, and as much as like,

00:36:06 ◼   ► you know, ATBtipster says that they're working

00:36:07 ◼   ► on Skylake-E in some capacity, like,

00:36:10 ◼   ► I don't know what else that would be for,

00:36:11 ◼   ► except a Mac Pro, but they've worked on previous

00:36:14 ◼   ► Mac Pro updates and not released them.

00:36:16 ◼   ► You know, they've apparently worked on a 5K monitor

00:36:20 ◼   ► and not released it, so if they really don't wanna

00:36:23 ◼   ► make their own displays, I really have to look

00:36:26 ◼   ► at their actions and not what I want to be true

00:36:29 ◼   ► and not what rumors say are true

00:36:32 ◼   ► or not what tipsters say are true.

00:36:33 ◼   ► I have to look at just what they've done publicly

00:36:36 ◼   ► and what they've not, more what they've not done publicly

00:36:39 ◼   ► and I just have to come to the conclusion

00:36:41 ◼   ► that it is very unlikely that we'll ever see a Mac Pro again

00:36:45 ◼   ► because if that was not the case,

00:36:48 ◼   ► we would see something about it.

00:36:49 ◼   ► They would either have updated it all this time

00:36:52 ◼   ► or they would still be in the display business

00:36:54 ◼   ► 'cause that's pretty related

00:36:56 ◼   ► or something else.

00:36:57 ◼   ► Again, this could be wrong.

00:36:59 ◼   ► I would love for it to be wrong.

00:37:00 ◼   ► I want a Mac Pro.

00:37:03 ◼   ► I don't want the best computer that can run the OS I use

00:37:07 ◼   ► to only have four CPU cores,

00:37:09 ◼   ► or to have loud fan noise

00:37:11 ◼   ► when I actually drive all those cores,

00:37:14 ◼   ► or to be limited in the other ways

00:37:16 ◼   ► that I'm actually limited compared to Mac Pros.

00:37:18 ◼   ► I want there to be a higher ceiling,

00:37:21 ◼   ► and it will really crush me morally

00:37:24 ◼   ► and my enthusiasm in this company

00:37:29 ◼   ► and the Mac platform as a whole.

00:37:31 ◼   ► 'Cause you know what?

00:37:32 ◼   ► The Mac platform is really good on pro hardware.

00:37:36 ◼   ► It is designed for pro hardware.

00:37:39 ◼   ► Mac OS scales really well to tons of CPUs,

00:37:42 ◼   ► multiple GPUs, all sorts of cool OpenCL stuff

00:37:47 ◼   ► that never really took off,

00:37:48 ◼   ► but it still has it all in there.

00:37:50 ◼   ► The Mac platform is awesome.

00:37:53 ◼   ► It is such a good professional workstation OS.

00:37:58 ◼   ► And to have there no longer be professional workstation

00:38:01 ◼   ► hardware that can even run it,

00:38:04 ◼   ► that will make me very, very sad.

00:38:06 ◼   ► But again, I have to look at what Apple's actually doing

00:38:10 ◼   ► and it sure looks like there's never gonna be

00:38:14 ◼   ► another Mac Pro.

00:38:15 ◼   ► Now that being said, I am going to keep hope up

00:38:18 ◼   ► that there will be one.

00:38:19 ◼   ► I'm gonna keep hoping for it until next summer.

00:38:22 ◼   ► And if we don't get one by next summer,

00:38:24 ◼   ► when other Skylake-E workstation platforms

00:38:27 ◼   ► start shipping from Dell and HP and stuff,

00:38:30 ◼   ► if we don't get one then, I will consider it over.

00:38:34 ◼   ► But I am gonna hold up hope until then,

00:38:35 ◼   ► even though my hopes right now are pretty low.

00:38:38 ◼   ► - And by the way, for the tipster,

00:38:39 ◼   ► like the supposed 5K monitor with GPU,

00:38:42 ◼   ► that's why I wanna see the tear down of the LG one,

00:38:44 ◼   ► because assuming he's not just entirely fabricating this,

00:38:47 ◼   ► one explanation is what you were actually seeing

00:38:49 ◼   ► is the internals of the LG display inside a Thunderbolt

00:38:53 ◼   ► case inside Apple, because that's

00:38:54 ◼   ► how Apple was working on their OS side of working

00:38:57 ◼   ► on this thing.

00:38:58 ◼   ► It doesn't mean that it was ever a product that Apple was ever

00:39:01 ◼   ► going to ship.

00:39:02 ◼   ► So anyway, we have to see what's inside this LG display

00:39:04 ◼   ► before we know what the problems of those rumors are.

00:39:08 ◼   ► I would find it--

00:39:09 ◼   ► also, Marco would find it even more depressing

00:39:11 ◼   ► if they actually developed this thing internally

00:39:13 ◼   ► and then it never went anywhere.

00:39:14 ◼   ► It would be much more explicable if that was just

00:39:17 ◼   ► development mule for the internals that actually went into the LG display and it was there so

00:39:21 ◼   ► Apple could do it software side of it which again is perverse it's like if you're going to do this

00:39:25 ◼   ► cooperation with LG and let them sell the monitor why let them get the margin on the monitor like

00:39:30 ◼   ► they're already making the panels for all your stuff like just why don't you get take the margin

00:39:33 ◼   ► you can make a nice case for that monitor hike up the price 50 100 bucks you think we won't pay an

00:39:39 ◼   ► extra 50 100 bucks over the price of LG of course we will like you're not going to sell a lot of

00:39:43 ◼   ► them but why you know we'll get to this when we talk about the the macbook pro later but it it

00:39:49 ◼   ► smells like nickel and diming it's like well we don't sell enough of these to care totally i

00:39:53 ◼   ► acknowledge they don't sell enough of these for it to be a blip um so we can save a little money

00:39:57 ◼   ► by having lg do it because we don't care about the money it's it's meaningless to us it might as

00:40:01 ◼   ► well be zero dollars and it's a lot of hassle for qualifying it and supporting it and doing warranty

00:40:06 ◼   ► repairs and shipping the box it's like i totally see how this is a money loser for apple when you

00:40:10 ◼   ► you know, when you look at everything that's involved in it.

00:40:13 ◼   ► But sometimes you have to do things like that

00:40:15 ◼   ► to support the, you know, the use case

00:40:18 ◼   ► of your top end users who again,

00:40:19 ◼   ► maybe are not profitable anymore,

00:40:21 ◼   ► but I feel like they're an important part of keeping,

00:40:25 ◼   ► you know, like, I don't wanna go through

00:40:26 ◼   ► the whole Hello Car thing again,

00:40:27 ◼   ► but that whole angle, the monitor is part of it,

00:40:30 ◼   ► and selling your own monitors is part of that.

00:40:33 ◼   ► - Well, and like, and Apple is still in lots of businesses

00:40:36 ◼   ► that are also low margin or not very necessary

00:40:41 ◼   ► for most of their customers anymore.

00:40:42 ◼   ► Things like they still sell their Wi-Fi routers

00:40:44 ◼   ► and their time capsules.

00:40:45 ◼   ► Like why?

00:40:46 ◼   ► Why does Apple sell an outdated wireless router?

00:40:50 ◼   ► - Don't tell them they'll hear you.

00:40:51 ◼   ► - Right, like?

00:40:52 ◼   ► - They're gonna cancel those products too.

00:40:54 ◼   ► - I'd rather they kill those than the monitors.

00:40:55 ◼   ► Like look, Apple, all these people who try to justify

00:41:00 ◼   ► what Apple's doing, they try to make excuses for Apple,

00:41:02 ◼   ► which you don't need to do,

00:41:04 ◼   ► you can almost always look at other parts

00:41:07 ◼   ► of the Apple product line or very recent history

00:41:10 ◼   ► and you can get contradictions to that

00:41:11 ◼   ► or counter arguments to that.

00:41:12 ◼   ► Like in the case of the monitor thing,

00:41:14 ◼   ► like yeah, Apple doesn't need to be in the monitor business.

00:41:17 ◼   ► You know, they don't need to be in any business.

00:41:19 ◼   ► Like they just need to be in the iPhone business.

00:41:21 ◼   ► That's it.

00:41:22 ◼   ► But you know, Apple can do just fine cutting out monitors

00:41:25 ◼   ► but then why are they not cutting out everything?

00:41:27 ◼   ► Why are they not cutting out iPods?

00:41:29 ◼   ► Apple still makes an entire line of iPods.

00:41:32 ◼   ► And iPods are actually holding back progress

00:41:35 ◼   ► in things like iTunes.

00:41:37 ◼   ► Like imagine if Apple could totally cut iTunes iPod support.

00:41:42 ◼   ► That could free up iTunes.

00:41:44 ◼   ► It could free up so much engineering resources

00:41:47 ◼   ► and legacy support and old stuff.

00:41:49 ◼   ► It could accelerate a possible future

00:41:51 ◼   ► in which iTunes has its functions broken up

00:41:53 ◼   ► into different apps that are actually good.

00:41:55 ◼   ► They have tons of reasons to not sell iPods anymore,

00:42:00 ◼   ► but they still sell them

00:42:01 ◼   ► because of a handful of reasons

00:42:04 ◼   ► that are good enough to keep them going.

00:42:05 ◼   ► I'm not really sure what those are,

00:42:07 ◼   ► but I'm sure people are buying them to some degree, right?

00:42:09 ◼   ► Wi-Fi routers and stuff,

00:42:11 ◼   ► I don't expect them to get frequent updates.

00:42:14 ◼   ► I mean, they're already very outdated,

00:42:15 ◼   ► and who knows, and they're not really a great deal anymore,

00:42:18 ◼   ► but they still sell them for some reason.

00:42:20 ◼   ► They still sell time capsules for some reason.

00:42:22 ◼   ► I mean, talk about an ancient technology.

00:42:25 ◼   ► The time capsule is an outdated wireless router

00:42:29 ◼   ► with a giant spinning hard drive in it.

00:42:32 ◼   ► They still sell that, but they decided

00:42:34 ◼   ► that monitors aren't worth selling anymore?

00:42:37 ◼   ► That makes no sense to me unless they're killing off

00:42:41 ◼   ► their entire desktop line except the iMac.

00:42:43 ◼   ► You know, and one more thing too,

00:42:44 ◼   ► it isn't even just about desktops.

00:42:46 ◼   ► Lots of people connect external monitors

00:42:49 ◼   ► to their MacBook Air and MacBook Pros.

00:42:52 ◼   ► So even if they kill the desktops,

00:42:55 ◼   ► they should still have displays

00:42:58 ◼   ► that are sold for laptop customers.

00:43:00 ◼   ► Like the last one, the Thunderbolt and LED display

00:43:03 ◼   ► before that, they were designed for laptops.

00:43:06 ◼   ► They had the little MagSafe charger and everything

00:43:08 ◼   ► that would charge their laptops up.

00:43:08 ◼   ► - So is this LG one.

00:43:10 ◼   ► - Right, these are obviously designed,

00:43:11 ◼   ► so obviously this is still a business that exists,

00:43:15 ◼   ► even if you kill a desktop.

00:43:17 ◼   ► So I don't know, it makes no sense.

00:43:19 ◼   ► - So we're saying that because Apple got out

00:43:23 ◼   ► of the display business, that is the canary

00:43:27 ◼   ► the coal mine for non-iMac desktops.

00:43:30 ◼   ► And that could be, I don't think I agree,

00:43:35 ◼   ► but that could be.

00:43:36 ◼   ► - Well, it's one of many.

00:43:37 ◼   ► It's in the context of they haven't,

00:43:41 ◼   ► not only have they not even updated the Mac Pro

00:43:43 ◼   ► in three years and the Mac Mini in I think as long

00:43:46 ◼   ► or roughly as long, but the last update

00:43:48 ◼   ► to both of those products made them worse

00:43:51 ◼   ► in certain key ways and that they have not,

00:43:54 ◼   ► not only have they not updated them,

00:43:55 ◼   ► They haven't even mentioned them.

00:43:57 ◼   ► Like they weren't even on the,

00:43:58 ◼   ► like when Apple showed the slide of the Mac family,

00:44:01 ◼   ► they weren't even on the slide.

00:44:02 ◼   ► Like they're basically,

00:44:04 ◼   ► they're still selling them totally unchanged for three years

00:44:09 ◼   ► not a single update to like GPUs or anything like that.

00:44:13 ◼   ► Like nothing has changed.

00:44:15 ◼   ► So that is, you know, in the context of that,

00:44:20 ◼   ► where you have this very high end machine

00:44:22 ◼   ► that they do a major redesign of

00:44:23 ◼   ► that's kind of more restrictive and more expensive.

00:44:25 ◼   ► They talk about innovation a lot

00:44:27 ◼   ► and then they never talk about it again.

00:44:29 ◼   ► That's not good.

00:44:32 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:44:32 ◼   ► - So in the context of that, them also saying,

00:44:35 ◼   ► you know what, we're not gonna make our own version

00:44:37 ◼   ► of this 5K display, which technically would be perfect

00:44:41 ◼   ► for the next model of Mac Pro.

00:44:44 ◼   ► If they made the Apple version of this display

00:44:47 ◼   ► and launched at the same time as a Mac Pro

00:44:49 ◼   ► next year sometime, that'd be amazing.

00:44:52 ◼   ► And so many people would buy that combo,

00:44:55 ◼   ► which would probably cost like $7,000,

00:44:57 ◼   ► but you'd buy it because we waited so long

00:45:00 ◼   ► and it'd be so good.

00:45:02 ◼   ► But again, I just, I don't,

00:45:04 ◼   ► if I'm honest with myself,

00:45:06 ◼   ► I really don't think it's going to happen.

00:45:08 ◼   ► - I don't think the lack of a monitor

00:45:09 ◼   ► is any particular indicator for the desktop.

00:45:14 ◼   ► I still think there's a chance they'll update the Mac Pro,

00:45:16 ◼   ► but like Marco pointed out,

00:45:18 ◼   ► it's more of an indicator that Apple cares less

00:45:22 ◼   ► about configurations that involve an external display,

00:45:24 ◼   ► because all the monitors having a little MagSafe connector,

00:45:28 ◼   ► it was clear, it's like,

00:45:29 ◼   ► most people who are gonna buy this monitor are buying it

00:45:31 ◼   ► because they have a laptop,

00:45:32 ◼   ► but when they sit down at their desk,

00:45:34 ◼   ► they want a bigger screen than is available on a laptop.

00:45:36 ◼   ► That's what these screens are for.

00:45:38 ◼   ► Oh, and by the way, they also connect to desktop Macs,

00:45:39 ◼   ► but nobody cares, right?

00:45:41 ◼   ► And that aesthetic, and this is just me personally,

00:45:44 ◼   ► that aesthetic of,

00:45:45 ◼   ► 'cause it's the main thing you're looking at

00:45:47 ◼   ► when you're using a computer

00:45:47 ◼   ► is you're looking at the screen.

00:45:49 ◼   ► Like, what does a Mac look like?

00:45:50 ◼   ► back in the original Mac, the whole thing was one thing.

00:45:53 ◼   ► The screen, the floppy drive, the power supply,

00:45:56 ◼   ► you know, eventually the hard drive,

00:45:58 ◼   ► everything was all in one.

00:46:00 ◼   ► Eventually, you're not looking at the computer part anymore,

00:46:03 ◼   ► except in the case of the iMac where it's all in one, right?

00:46:06 ◼   ► What you're looking at is a screen,

00:46:07 ◼   ► and then you've got these tower computers,

00:46:09 ◼   ► your Mac mini for, you know, for the desktop use cases.

00:46:11 ◼   ► Giving up on the monitor,

00:46:14 ◼   ► I'm surprised even Johnny Ive would allow this,

00:46:15 ◼   ► means that anybody who wants a bigger screen

00:46:17 ◼   ► than is available on a laptop

00:46:18 ◼   ► is not going to be looking at an Apple thing.

00:46:20 ◼   ► And I feel like it's not like,

00:46:22 ◼   ► oh, I don't have a Mac anymore

00:46:23 ◼   ► just because the screen is in an Apple screen or whatever.

00:46:25 ◼   ► It's just like that whole vibe of having an entire system

00:46:30 ◼   ► that all matches and all works together.

00:46:33 ◼   ► And that has the highest guarantee of compatibility

00:46:37 ◼   ► and supportedness over the years

00:46:39 ◼   ► and is the most integrated with, you know,

00:46:42 ◼   ► whatever weird buttons Apple puts on,

00:46:44 ◼   ► whatever weird keyboard control they have

00:46:46 ◼   ► are always gonna work with them on and all that stuff.

00:46:47 ◼   ► LG is totally integrated like that now, which they emphasize in the keynote, and maybe Apple

00:46:52 ◼   ► will keep them up to date, but maybe Apple will lose interest and be like, "Oh, if you

00:46:55 ◼   ► bought that old LG one, it's up to LG to update us with the drivers."

00:46:59 ◼   ► Or like, who knows?

00:47:00 ◼   ► It seems like it'll be less supported, but it's just giving up on that whole vibe of

00:47:04 ◼   ► having all Apple stuff.

00:47:06 ◼   ► It's part of the reason that I personally like buying Macs, and taking that reason away

00:47:09 ◼   ► makes me less enthusiastic about getting a shiny new Mac if then I also have to wade

00:47:15 ◼   ► into the world of third-party monitors or be forced to pick just one third-party monitor

00:47:19 ◼   ► because it's literally the only one that works with their stuff in the integrated way that

00:47:22 ◼   ► I want it to work.

00:47:26 ◼   ► It makes me less enthusiastic to buy a new Mac.

00:47:28 ◼   ► I guess you spend a lot more time looking at the bezel of your monitors than I do because

00:47:34 ◼   ► that thing just, I mean, I'm looking at a 4K LG monitor for now 40 to 45 hours a week.

00:47:42 ◼   ► And I mean, in a perfect world, I'd like two of them side by side, or even in a more perfect

00:47:47 ◼   ► world, I guess I should say, a couple of Apple monitors.

00:47:49 ◼   ► I don't disagree with you that Apple monitors would be better in principle.

00:47:53 ◼   ► But I can't say that I look at the bezel of this thing particularly often and that I think

00:48:00 ◼   ► to myself, "Well, you know, life sucks because this isn't a shiny piece of aluminum," to

00:48:04 ◼   ► each their own.

00:48:05 ◼   ► This is why we're different people.

00:48:06 ◼   ► But that just seems bananas to me that it makes sense.

00:48:09 ◼   ► It used to be a PC user, so you're still looking at a lot of black plasticy crap.

00:48:13 ◼   ► But I guess I don't view this as so egregious.

00:48:18 ◼   ► And I mean, and again, to be clear, I don't think that this LG monitor that I'm looking

00:48:22 ◼   ► at for 45 hours a week is pretty.

00:48:23 ◼   ► I don't.

00:48:24 ◼   ► I think it's relatively ugly.

00:48:26 ◼   ► And there's problems with it.

00:48:27 ◼   ► It doesn't have wide color, which to be honest, I still don't see the difference that I can

00:48:31 ◼   ► tell even in my iPhone for wide color, but whatever.

00:48:35 ◼   ► It doesn't have wide color.

00:48:37 ◼   ► mount on it that comes with it that doesn't adjust height adjust it's it's stationary

00:48:42 ◼   ► it's static which is annoying it doesn't pitch 90 degrees which I never ever do but it'd

00:48:46 ◼   ► be nice to have the option for some reason so there's plenty of things I don't like about

00:48:49 ◼   ► it but the end of the day all I'm looking at is the things on the screen and and not

00:48:55 ◼   ► Apple not doing a monitor to me doesn't necessarily mean they don't care I mean look at the iPhone

00:49:01 ◼   ► 7 that a lot of people, a ton of people, think that they charge and listen to music at the

00:49:08 ◼   ► same time.

00:49:09 ◼   ► I don't know if that's true or not, but a lot of people seem to think it.

00:49:12 ◼   ► And if you go to the Apple accessories, Apple iPhone accessories page, sure enough there

00:49:18 ◼   ► is a lightning audio and charge cable.

00:49:21 ◼   ► So it's one lightning to two lightning.

00:49:23 ◼   ► You know who makes that?

00:49:24 ◼   ► Belkin.

00:49:25 ◼   ► And if Apple really gave a crap about the iPhone, I guess they should make that too,

00:49:28 ◼   ► right?

00:49:29 ◼   ► I mean, it's...

00:49:30 ◼   ► I'm not making a leap to give a crap about the Mac.

00:49:35 ◼   ► It's just that my particular use case, what I'm thinking that they're giving up on that

00:49:39 ◼   ► they don't care as much about is the holistic aesthetic.

00:49:41 ◼   ► Like I said, forget about desktop.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Pretend there are no desktop computers and it's only laptops.

00:49:46 ◼   ► The old Apple cared enough about the overall aesthetic of the system that they can put

00:49:50 ◼   ► in their product shots and that their ideal customer would buy to make giant expensive

00:49:55 ◼   ► monitors that, as people in the chat room point out, are always way more expensive than

00:49:59 ◼   ► equivalent monitors for the same panels, like again, granted, right?

00:50:03 ◼   ► With little magsafe things to charge your monitor dangling off the end of them.

00:50:07 ◼   ► Like, it was a laptop accessory.

00:50:10 ◼   ► And why, who in the world would buy a laptop accessory from Apple at a ridiculous price?

00:50:14 ◼   ► Because it looks really nice.

00:50:15 ◼   ► Like, that's it, because it matches and it looks nice.

00:50:18 ◼   ► Right?

00:50:19 ◼   ► And yeah, they happened to be usually good monitors when they came out and they were

00:50:21 ◼   ► convenient and all those stuff, but like, it's Apple saying, yeah, it did look nice,

00:50:28 ◼   ► And it was cool, but the coolness was not worth being in this business just anymore.

00:50:34 ◼   ► And the coolness to me is totally worth it, and I would like to give them money and they

00:50:37 ◼   ► won't take my money.

00:50:38 ◼   ► And it makes me sad.

00:50:40 ◼   ► Is it a good business idea?

00:50:42 ◼   ► Is it better to get out of that business because it was a money loser and most people don't

00:50:45 ◼   ► care?

00:50:46 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:50:47 ◼   ► It doesn't really say anything about whether they care about the Mac or whatever.

00:50:50 ◼   ► It just means that their priorities don't align with mine and this particular issue

00:50:54 ◼   ► and I'm sad about it.

00:50:55 ◼   ► All right.

00:50:56 ◼   ► We'd spent a lot longer talking about that than I expected.

00:50:58 ◼   ► My goodness.

00:50:59 ◼   ► - I spent a lot longer thinking about that than I expected.

00:51:02 ◼   ► I couldn't believe it.

00:51:03 ◼   ► Seriously, I was up and my wife was already asleep next to me

00:51:06 ◼   ► and I'm like, what am I gonna do?

00:51:09 ◼   ► Am I even getting a Mac Pro?

00:51:10 ◼   ► Should I give up?

00:51:11 ◼   ► Like, it was terrible.

00:51:12 ◼   ► It was a literal dark night of the soul

00:51:15 ◼   ► when I found out that monitor was canceled.

00:51:16 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:51:17 ◼   ► - Not one that didn't update the Mac Pro for three years.

00:51:19 ◼   ► Here I am just happily hoping like,

00:51:22 ◼   ► I'm sure they'll update it eventually.

00:51:23 ◼   ► I'm just waiting patiently.

00:51:24 ◼   ► Look at me, be patient.

00:51:25 ◼   ► No more monitors.

00:51:26 ◼   ► "No, no!"

00:51:28 ◼   ► - Well, my thoughts and prayers are with you

00:51:29 ◼   ► in this difficult time.

00:51:30 ◼   ► Dan Frakes writes that Apple has told him

00:51:33 ◼   ► that the MacBook Pro maxes out at 16 gigs of RAM

00:51:37 ◼   ► because LPDDR3's limit is 16 gigs of chip,

00:51:41 ◼   ► and Apple uses it because of a performance to energy ratio.

00:51:45 ◼   ► And then building on that, there was a,

00:51:49 ◼   ► I guess an interview or somebody asked Schiller,

00:51:51 ◼   ► I think it was. - It was an email.

00:51:52 ◼   ► They emailed him and he replied.

00:51:54 ◼   ► - Schiller said, and I'm quoting,

00:51:55 ◼   ► to put more than 16 gigs of fast RAM into a notebook designed at this time would require

00:52:01 ◼   ► a memory system that consumes much more power and wouldn't be efficient enough for a notebook.

00:52:05 ◼   ► I hope you check out this new generation of MacBook Pro.

00:52:07 ◼   ► It really is an incredible system."

00:52:09 ◼   ► So that is supposedly—and other people have come to this conclusion as well—that is

00:52:14 ◼   ► supposedly why Apple is not shipping more than 16 gigs of RAM in the MacBook Pros.

00:52:19 ◼   ► Which, full stop, I mean, that's a bummer.

00:52:21 ◼   ► If I were to buy one today, I would absolutely want more than 16.

00:52:26 ◼   ► Would I need more than 16?

00:52:28 ◼   ► Probably not, but I'd want it.

00:52:30 ◼   ► And that's today, and sometimes people want these computers to last four or five years.

00:52:34 ◼   ► That's not unusual.

00:52:35 ◼   ► So this is a bummer, but I don't really see how this is Apple's fault.

00:52:41 ◼   ► And I'm assuming one of you is going to tell me, "Well, I would definitely pay money for

00:52:44 ◼   ► the thing that lasts two hours that has 11 gigs or 80 million gigs of RAM."

00:52:48 ◼   ► Not two hours, but yeah.

00:52:50 ◼   ► Well, before we even get to that angle, there has been much support for the idea that this

00:52:57 ◼   ► is not Apple's fault out there.

00:53:00 ◼   ► This is the basics of just like the specific CPU they're using with the good GPU or whatever,

00:53:07 ◼   ► the good GPU, the Iris Pro graphics or whatever.

00:53:10 ◼   ► Doesn't have a chipset that supports more memory capacity and blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:53:14 ◼   ► This is a thing.

00:53:17 ◼   ► One other thing that people have brought up, surprisingly, showing the lengths people will

00:53:21 ◼   ► go to to make excuses for Apple, is that there is a – FAA has a restriction of like 100

00:53:29 ◼   ► watt hours for batteries, right?

00:53:32 ◼   ► And that Apple can't make a battery bigger than that, you know, which I don't even

00:53:37 ◼   ► know if that's true, first of all.

00:53:38 ◼   ► But second of all, let's just assume it is true.

00:53:40 ◼   ► And then they follow that up by saying, "And that's why the new MacBook Pros have a 76

00:53:44 ◼   ► watt hour battery."

00:53:45 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, wait a second."

00:53:48 ◼   ► What they're saying is, yeah, they could add that extra 20-something watt-hours, but that

00:53:52 ◼   ► wouldn't be enough to power the memory subsystem required to support 32 gigs of RAM.

00:53:57 ◼   ► I think the actual issue, as with a lot of this Intel stuff, is not that you can't have

00:54:02 ◼   ► a laptop that is also pretty small and light that supports 32 gigs of RAM, because I'm

00:54:07 ◼   ► pretty sure Dell sells one that's not that much bigger than the, you know, it is thicker,

00:54:11 ◼   ► Granted, but it's not that much thicker and it supports 32 gigs of RAM and he uses the sixth generation Intel chip

00:54:19 ◼   ► You know the you know, it's not it's not a Kaby Lake or whatever

00:54:22 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure it's it's skylake ones but but but but I'm also pretty sure it's not the particular

00:54:29 ◼   ► Skylake chips that Apple always uses with the big honkin

00:54:32 ◼   ► Embedded GPU with the easy RAM and all that other crap. So I still put this

00:54:38 ◼   ► mostly on Apple because

00:54:41 ◼   ► They insist on using

00:54:43 ◼   ► Only a particular strain the best strain to be fair

00:54:46 ◼   ► They always want the best of the best the ones with the best embedded GPU because a lot of the stuff in

00:54:51 ◼   ► Mac OS uses the GPU for things right so they want the best of the best and

00:54:54 ◼   ► If the best of the best isn't available

00:54:57 ◼   ► They won't ship the other kind and what I was thinking about is the way

00:55:01 ◼   ► To potentially solve this with the with the smallest number of sacrifices in the short term until that you know another chip comes out

00:55:08 ◼   ► They does it is ship

00:55:11 ◼   ► the Intel CPU

00:55:13 ◼   ► With either the crappy here the crappy one the not the one that doesn't have the fancy embedded GPU in it

00:55:20 ◼   ► Because you're putting a discrete GPU and everything anyway and do it the old-fashioned way where you just always use the discrete GPU

00:55:26 ◼   ► And yes, that would slaughter battery life and now you can support through gigs of RAM

00:55:29 ◼   ► Which is a slaughter battery life even more and yes

00:55:32 ◼   ► Then you'd have to make the thing three millimeters thicker and then you'd probably have to make it a separate model

00:55:36 ◼   ► and then why are we having a separate model that's just this weird transitional thing like the fat MacBook Pro for people who need all this crap

00:55:42 ◼   ► And that just gets it right back to the original argument, which is that's not what Apple wants to do or whatever

00:55:46 ◼   ► So in the end

00:55:48 ◼   ► I don't think this is that big a deal because I think actually in this case given the constraints put on them by Intel

00:55:54 ◼   ► They probably made the right choice because what they're designing this MacBook Pro case

00:55:59 ◼   ► I assume the 15-inch MacBook Pro case will be with us for a pretty long time

00:56:03 ◼   ► I don't expect them to shave another two millimeters off of next year

00:56:06 ◼   ► I expect this case to be the guts to be swapped out of it and new guts to be put into it, right?

00:56:10 ◼   ► and

00:56:11 ◼   ► If it just so happens that Intel doesn't give them anything that can fit in this case with this much battery with reasonable battery life

00:56:17 ◼   ► It is a better choice to limit to 16 to keep the battery life at what it is

00:56:22 ◼   ► Like it's a better choice economically speaking and for uniformity

00:56:27 ◼   ► It would be a better choice for customers who are very demanding to all to make that other model just for them

00:56:33 ◼   ► But boy that's asking a lot of a company

00:56:36 ◼   ► That is trying to narrow things down and that hasn't updated the Mac Pro in three years to make a special one-off model just for this

00:56:42 ◼   ► generation of Intel CPU

00:56:43 ◼   ► Because it can't support 32 gigs of RAM

00:56:45 ◼   ► That is thicker and has more battery and uses a different arrangement of CPU and GPU and also still gets worse battery life

00:56:53 ◼   ► That's just not a thing that Apple is interested in doing so if they're not interested in doing that like

00:56:58 ◼   ► 16 gigs of RAM is an embarrassing for the people who don't buy it

00:57:02 ◼   ► because it can't support 32 I

00:57:04 ◼   ► Feel for them in the same way I feel for people who want Mac pros and who want external monitors

00:57:11 ◼   ► But it is in keeping with what Apple has been doing to its product line

00:57:15 ◼   ► And I think they are there they're hitting the fat part of the curve there most people don't need more than that

00:57:21 ◼   ► It is better to have a lighter thinner thing and have lower power requirements. So

00:57:24 ◼   ► This is exactly in the same vein as everything else. We talked about

00:57:28 ◼   ► Apple not making

00:57:31 ◼   ► hardware for this very narrow set of people who are very demanding and in this case it is partially explicable by

00:57:38 ◼   ► The availability of the kinds of CPUs they can put in it, but it still makes all of us sad

00:57:43 ◼   ► That's what we're talking about this show

00:57:44 ◼   ► We're not talking about how Apple is doomed and how this is a bad computer and people shouldn't buy it

00:57:48 ◼   ► We're totally talking about how a bunch of nerds who want the best of the best are sad about the choices Apple is making.

00:57:54 ◼   ► Yeah, well because like here's here's why like

00:57:56 ◼   ► Some people have expressed, you know bewilderment, you know

00:57:59 ◼   ► why are so many people so upset about the new MacBook Pros and the thing is like

00:58:03 ◼   ► Apple makes

00:58:06 ◼   ► one type of laptop now really, you know

00:58:09 ◼   ► They make the the the ultra thin and light the ultra portable all of their laptops now are in this category

00:58:15 ◼   ► like it used to be not that long ago

00:58:17 ◼   ► that most computer manufacturers

00:58:19 ◼   ► had different laptop lines,

00:58:21 ◼   ► basically with different size, weight,

00:58:24 ◼   ► and performance classes.

00:58:25 ◼   ► So you'd have like the thin and light,

00:58:27 ◼   ► which by today's standards would be considered

00:58:29 ◼   ► comically heavy, but basically you have the old thin

00:58:31 ◼   ► and lights that were like exactly what it sounds like,

00:58:34 ◼   ► but as a result they would be usually slower,

00:58:36 ◼   ► more limited and everything.

00:58:38 ◼   ► And then you kind of have like the mainstream line,

00:58:40 ◼   ► kind of in the middle,

00:58:41 ◼   ► and then you have the desktop replacement,

00:58:42 ◼   ► which is like the big, heavy ones that have

00:58:46 ◼   ► the very highest end CPUs, GPUs and stuff

00:58:50 ◼   ► that you could fit in any reasonably sized laptop.

00:58:53 ◼   ► And basically, Apple only makes one of those now.

00:58:57 ◼   ► Basically everything Apple makes is a thin and light.

00:58:59 ◼   ► And the reason why so many people get upset

00:59:02 ◼   ► every time they change or don't change anything,

00:59:04 ◼   ► mostly when the changes happen,

00:59:06 ◼   ► is that making a thin and light requires you

00:59:10 ◼   ► you to cut lots of things and to limit lots of things and to not address lots of what

00:59:15 ◼   ► everyone thinks are edge cases or as you just said John, like little narrow slices of the

00:59:20 ◼   ► market. The problem is this is kind of like the 80/20 myth. The main problem here is like

00:59:25 ◼   ► you look at the list of things that got worse between the last MacBook Pro and this one.

00:59:30 ◼   ► Obviously things got better, you know, weight, performance, batteries. Certain things got

00:59:33 ◼   ► better, right? But certain things were either cut or got worse. Certain, you know, ports

00:59:39 ◼   ► are no longer there, the SD card reader's no longer there,

00:59:42 ◼   ► the RAM ceiling did not get raised

00:59:45 ◼   ► to what people want and everything.

00:59:47 ◼   ► Any individual one of these excuses,

00:59:49 ◼   ► or any individual one of these problems

00:59:51 ◼   ► can be justified or excused in some way.

00:59:54 ◼   ► Usually it goes with either like,

00:59:57 ◼   ► well, we couldn't fit more in this super thin,

01:00:00 ◼   ► light, low power computer,

01:00:03 ◼   ► which is kind of a self-imposed problem,

01:00:05 ◼   ► because they don't make one that isn't super thin,

01:00:07 ◼   ► light, and low power.

01:00:08 ◼   ► Or you can justify these things by saying,

01:00:10 ◼   ► well, we cut the SD card reader, whatever it is,

01:00:14 ◼   ► or we cut the HDMI port because only some little percentage

01:00:18 ◼   ► of the user base used it.

01:00:21 ◼   ► The problem is that the little percentage of the user base

01:00:24 ◼   ► that used the HDMI port does not completely overlap

01:00:28 ◼   ► with the little percentage of the user base

01:00:29 ◼   ► that used the SD card slot, and so on and so on.

01:00:32 ◼   ► So if you look at the sum of all of the little limitations

01:00:36 ◼   ► and things that have been added to this.

01:00:39 ◼   ► And additionally, by the way, the price hikes don't help,

01:00:41 ◼   ► so then you have the not small percentage of the user base

01:00:44 ◼   ► who is very unhappy or actually has to make

01:00:48 ◼   ► a different decision now because of the price hike.

01:00:50 ◼   ► So basically, you add all these percentages up,

01:00:53 ◼   ► and while it may seem that any one of the downsides

01:00:57 ◼   ► might only affect a small percentage of the user base,

01:01:01 ◼   ► a large percentage of the user base

01:01:03 ◼   ► is affected by one of them.

01:01:05 ◼   ► Like just, you can't name, you know, the simple stats.

01:01:07 ◼   ► Like, you can't say like everyone is affected

01:01:10 ◼   ► by the removal of the HDMI port,

01:01:12 ◼   ► but lots of people are affected by one of the removals

01:01:16 ◼   ► on this computer, it's just different for everybody.

01:01:18 ◼   ► And a pro line, like it, you know, historically,

01:01:23 ◼   ► the highest end laptops would have the fewest limits,

01:01:26 ◼   ► because they could.

01:01:27 ◼   ► They had, they had, they had larger cases,

01:01:29 ◼   ► they usually had larger screens,

01:01:30 ◼   ► so they were bigger, they were higher priced,

01:01:34 ◼   ► They sold in smaller quantities to more demanding markets.

01:01:37 ◼   ► And so there was room, both physically

01:01:39 ◼   ► and in profit margin and everything else,

01:01:42 ◼   ► there was room for more ports, higher end things,

01:01:45 ◼   ► higher wattage things and everything.

01:01:47 ◼   ► And so to have even the pro machine

01:01:51 ◼   ► be this limited in so many ways,

01:01:56 ◼   ► and to have so many of the potential

01:01:58 ◼   ► or actual buyers of this machine

01:02:00 ◼   ► being disappointed by one thing that got worse about it,

01:02:04 ◼   ► compared to the previous ones.

01:02:06 ◼   ► That is why so many people are mad,

01:02:07 ◼   ► because that's usually, you don't usually do that

01:02:09 ◼   ► in high-end pro machines.

01:02:10 ◼   ► Usually things don't get extremely more restrictive

01:02:14 ◼   ► at the high end.

01:02:15 ◼   ► Usually the high end is where you go,

01:02:17 ◼   ► because what everyone considers like designing

01:02:19 ◼   ► for the future and being forward-looking and everything,

01:02:21 ◼   ► that's all done at the low end.

01:02:23 ◼   ► Like when the MacBook One came out,

01:02:25 ◼   ► we all said, you know, well, that's a really

01:02:28 ◼   ► very compromised machine in a lot of ways,

01:02:30 ◼   ► but we can just say, well, you know what?

01:02:32 ◼   ► it's not for you, so you don't have to buy it.

01:02:35 ◼   ► And that worked for like a year and a half, until now,

01:02:39 ◼   ► the compromises for the MacBook One have now

01:02:42 ◼   ► mostly been spread to the entire line of MacBooks.

01:02:44 ◼   ► So now, you can't just say that's not for you anymore.

01:02:47 ◼   ► Now it's like, well, if you still wanna use macOS,

01:02:51 ◼   ► whenever your current laptop dies, you need another one,

01:02:54 ◼   ► you're gonna have these restrictions on you, that's it.

01:02:57 ◼   ► It's the combination of all those stats adding up

01:03:01 ◼   ► to be like, you know, almost everyone's affected by one of these things, compared to also now

01:03:06 ◼   ► the new lack of choice that we really have about a lot of these factors. Like, if Apple

01:03:10 ◼   ► were to make, and look, one of the ways they could address this, they still sell the old

01:03:16 ◼   ► one. Now, they did this also when they introduced the Retina MacBook Pro in 2012, the very first

01:03:22 ◼   ► Retina MacBook Pro in 2012. They launched for, I believe, also $2,200 or $2,400, something

01:03:28 ◼   ► like that, which was higher than the previous one, so they kept selling the old one to hit

01:03:32 ◼   ► a price point. But they did something else. They updated the internals of the old one

01:03:37 ◼   ► as well to match the new one. So whatever, I think, I forget what CPU generation that

01:03:42 ◼   ► was, whatever was before Haswell, it was the one right before that, right? When the 2012

01:03:47 ◼   ► redesign happened, the last redesign in this lineup, they kept selling the old one, but

01:03:50 ◼   ► they updated the guts so that it was, if you didn't care about the retina screen and the

01:03:56 ◼   ► the thinner and lighterness of it,

01:03:58 ◼   ► you could still get all your old stuff

01:04:00 ◼   ► in the old one with new guts.

01:04:02 ◼   ► This time, they're doing the same thing

01:04:04 ◼   ► where you can still get the old one

01:04:06 ◼   ► if you don't care about the new advances and everything,

01:04:08 ◼   ► but they didn't update the guts.

01:04:10 ◼   ► And you gotta think about, you know,

01:04:12 ◼   ► the first of all is kind of a bummer.

01:04:13 ◼   ► Second of all, why?

01:04:15 ◼   ► The honest reason is probably because they just don't care.

01:04:17 ◼   ► They're gonna phase these things out,

01:04:19 ◼   ► and obviously Apple does not care

01:04:20 ◼   ► about keeping their Macs up to date.

01:04:21 ◼   ► You know, that's modern Apple.

01:04:23 ◼   ► Thanks, whoever.

01:04:24 ◼   ► But imagine if you saw the new 15 inch MacBook Pro,

01:04:29 ◼   ► and next to it in the store page, as it is now,

01:04:33 ◼   ► is the old one, but imagine if the old one

01:04:35 ◼   ► also got Skylake and a couple of USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports.

01:04:39 ◼   ► Which one of those would look more like the Pro machine,

01:04:42 ◼   ► and which one of those do you think would sell more?

01:04:44 ◼   ► - Okay, so let's suppose you wanted a machine

01:04:54 ◼   ► with infinite flexibility in that,

01:04:58 ◼   ► or infinite is a strong word.

01:04:59 ◼   ► Let's suppose you wanted a machine

01:05:01 ◼   ► where you had several ports,

01:05:04 ◼   ► any of which could do fricking anything.

01:05:08 ◼   ► It could drive a display.

01:05:10 ◼   ► It could accept power.

01:05:11 ◼   ► It could drive old USB.

01:05:13 ◼   ► It could drive new USB.

01:05:14 ◼   ► It can do anything.

01:05:17 ◼   ► You could plug in a little docking port or not.

01:05:20 ◼   ► You could plug an SD card reader or not,

01:05:22 ◼   ► or a compact flashcard reader.

01:05:24 ◼   ► I just don't see this the same way that you guys seem to.

01:05:31 ◼   ► And the reality of the situation is

01:05:33 ◼   ► there's no right or wrong.

01:05:34 ◼   ► I'm right and I'm wrong.

01:05:36 ◼   ► Marco is right, Andy's wrong, John is right, Andy's wrong.

01:05:39 ◼   ► Well, except John is never wrong.

01:05:41 ◼   ► I have no USB-C peripherals.

01:05:48 ◼   ► And there are times that I plug things in to my USB ports on my MacBook Pro.

01:05:55 ◼   ► There are times I plug in an HDMI cable to my MacBook Pro.

01:06:01 ◼   ► I certainly would need a dongle or two in order to hypothetically get one of these new

01:06:09 ◼   ► MacBook Pros.

01:06:11 ◼   ► And in the near term, that might be a little annoying.

01:06:16 ◼   ► I don't see it as anything more than that.

01:06:19 ◼   ► And I see this, I personally do see this as the Pro Machine.

01:06:24 ◼   ► In fact, the thing that I'm grumpy about is what we already talked about, which is 16

01:06:28 ◼   ► gigs RAM.

01:06:29 ◼   ► But in every other way to me, this is very much the Pro Machine.

01:06:33 ◼   ► It has four ports that you can use for fricking anything.

01:06:38 ◼   ► And I don't understand why the world is so friggin' worked up about dongles.

01:06:44 ◼   ► A, they're annoying.

01:06:46 ◼   ► Okay, they're annoying, fine.

01:06:47 ◼   ► Whatever.

01:06:48 ◼   ► I have a dongle today for Ethernet.

01:06:51 ◼   ► I use it from time to time, and you know what?

01:06:53 ◼   ► Life goes on.

01:06:54 ◼   ► I have a dongle sometimes for displays.

01:06:58 ◼   ► Right now I actually have a cable that goes Thunderbolt to, I think it's DisplayPort,

01:07:03 ◼   ► but for years I used a dongle for my display.

01:07:06 ◼   ► And you know what?

01:07:07 ◼   ► Life went on.

01:07:08 ◼   ► And have I lost any of these dongles?

01:07:10 ◼   ► No, I don't think so, because I'm an adult.

01:07:13 ◼   ► I don't lose things. That's not something that I do. I just, ah, it drives me bananas because to me,

01:07:20 ◼   ► it's so... - Wait until you get your AirPods, we'll see. - Maybe, maybe. But on the one side,

01:07:26 ◼   ► I do agree with you, Marco. And I'm not placating. I really honestly do. Like,

01:07:30 ◼   ► I understand where you're coming from and there's certainly something to be said for,

01:07:37 ◼   ► maybe this is too early. Maybe this is leaving the true utter professionals out to dry. But

01:07:42 ◼   ► Let's—the only thing I can do is use me as an example.

01:07:45 ◼   ► I write code for a living.

01:07:47 ◼   ► That's what I do.

01:07:48 ◼   ► By most definitions, that is a pro-level profession.

01:07:53 ◼   ► Whatever definition of pro you so choose.

01:07:56 ◼   ► It's the sort of thing that, even if I wanted to, today I could not do on an iPad.

01:08:02 ◼   ► Yes, there's Swift Playgrounds, but you can't release an app to the App Store with Swift

01:08:06 ◼   ► Playgrounds.

01:08:07 ◼   ► I have to have a Mac.

01:08:09 ◼   ► I can't have a PC unless I hack and touch, whatever.

01:08:11 ◼   ► I have to have a Mac.

01:08:13 ◼   ► And so I--

01:08:14 ◼   ► - I like your Hackintosh voice.

01:08:17 ◼   ► - So I am by at least some definition a professional.

01:08:21 ◼   ► I'm not a photographer,

01:08:23 ◼   ► that's a different kind of professional.

01:08:24 ◼   ► I'm not an artist, that's a different kind of professional.

01:08:27 ◼   ► But I am a professional.

01:08:29 ◼   ► - No question.

01:08:30 ◼   ► - And for me, I think this machine would be friggin' awesome.

01:08:35 ◼   ► And there will be times that I'm gonna have to plug in

01:08:37 ◼   ► my iPhone 7 to this computer and oh my God,

01:08:39 ◼   ► I need a dongle.

01:08:40 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:08:41 ◼   ► "Oh well, or I'll just get one of the USB-C to lightning frickin' cables."

01:08:45 ◼   ► Like, this is not a big deal. This is a problem that can be solved.

01:08:50 ◼   ► I don't understand why there's so much...

01:08:53 ◼   ► Oh, God, there's so much angst about this.

01:08:55 ◼   ► And yes, Marco, and I'm picking on you because, you know,

01:08:58 ◼   ► I feel like you and I are most vocally on opposite sides of this conversation.

01:09:02 ◼   ► I do agree with you.

01:09:03 ◼   ► And again, I hope I don't sound like I'm placating you,

01:09:05 ◼   ► because I mean it. I agree with you.

01:09:06 ◼   ► It is less convenient to plug in something to a dongle to the computer

01:09:11 ◼   ► and plugging it in directly to the computer.

01:09:13 ◼   ► Totally agree with you.

01:09:14 ◼   ► But at the same time, the only way to get the world forward,

01:09:19 ◼   ► the only way to march forward and to get people using USB-C

01:09:23 ◼   ► is to friggin' force them to.

01:09:24 ◼   ► Because gosh knows, even as a super nerd who

01:09:27 ◼   ► wants to live on the cutting edge,

01:09:29 ◼   ► if I have the choice between using old-ass USB or modern USB,

01:09:33 ◼   ► I'm going to choose the old one because that's

01:09:35 ◼   ► what all my stuff already is.

01:09:36 ◼   ► I'm never going to bother buying a USB-C to Lightning cable.

01:09:39 ◼   ► What does that do for me?

01:09:40 ◼   ► a damn thing other than cost me 20 bucks, whatever it is. So at some point you have to rip the band-aid

01:09:46 ◼   ► off. Now maybe, maybe it's too soon. Maybe, maybe this is not the right time. I don't have a good

01:09:52 ◼   ► answer for that. That very well could be true. But at some point, Apple has to say this new future

01:10:00 ◼   ► where any port can be anything to anyone is worth fighting for. And I personally am okay with that.

01:10:09 ◼   ► I think I might be standing alone on this one, and that's okay.

01:10:12 ◼   ► And it's kind of funny because I'm actually not in the market for a laptop,

01:10:15 ◼   ► and I probably won't be for another couple of years at the earliest,

01:10:18 ◼   ► but I'm looking forward to getting one of these.

01:10:22 ◼   ► I would like a lighter laptop. Do I need one? No, I don't.

01:10:26 ◼   ► But I'd like it. I'd like a laptop where I can plug in the power port.

01:10:31 ◼   ► Damn it, RIP MagSafe, but be that as it may, I can plug in power to either side as I see fit.

01:10:36 ◼   ► Why not? Weee! I can do whatever I want.

01:10:38 ◼   ► I'd like a laptop where I could plug in a cheap docking station.

01:10:42 ◼   ► The only reason I haven't bought a Thunderbolt docking station, which would be amazing, is

01:10:47 ◼   ► well actually I only plug a couple things into my computer anyway, but beyond that,

01:10:51 ◼   ► they're friggin' expensive.

01:10:52 ◼   ► They're like $300 for a crappy docking station.

01:10:54 ◼   ► And I've seen reasonable USB-C docking stations for like half that money.

01:10:59 ◼   ► Well that's because of the protocol, not the connector.

01:11:03 ◼   ► Fair, fair.

01:11:04 ◼   ► And I'm frustrated not with any one particular person.

01:11:08 ◼   ► I'm frustrated in general because I understand

01:11:11 ◼   ► where you're coming from, Marco, and you're not wrong.

01:11:14 ◼   ► Despite everything I've just said, you're not wrong.

01:11:17 ◼   ► But at the same time, I just, I don't feel like

01:11:20 ◼   ► this is such an affront to the professional

01:11:23 ◼   ► as everyone else in the world seems to.

01:11:25 ◼   ► So, and since I'm the only one that's making this speech,

01:11:28 ◼   ► it seems, I guess I'm the one that's wrong.

01:11:31 ◼   ► But you know what I'm saying.

01:11:33 ◼   ► You didn't, you just lumped me in with Marco before and didn't even ask me what I thought

01:11:37 ◼   ► of this. Marco already knows because I think we discussed it in Slack at one point.

01:11:41 ◼   ► Well, Jon, what do you think? I'll give you the floor, sir.

01:11:45 ◼   ► Again, I understand everything that Marco was saying about this. I think that going

01:11:52 ◼   ► all Thunderbolt 3 is the right thing to do on these computers. In fact, I wish they had

01:11:58 ◼   ► even more ports because I'm a port maniac and I'm mostly on that side. I think if they had the two

01:12:04 ◼   ► laptops that Marco described, the bigger one than the skinny one, I think the skinny one would sell

01:12:08 ◼   ► more. Way more. Kind of the same reason that the laptop that had a CF card slot, or not CF card

01:12:15 ◼   ► slot, the PC card, formerly known as PCMCIA. The Express Card 34? Yeah, whatever. And the side of

01:12:21 ◼   ► the 17-inch laptop, that was sitting there too. It had tons of ports. It had ports no other laptop

01:12:26 ◼   ► had because it could because it was big enough to have them right and they discontinued it because

01:12:30 ◼   ► not enough people bought it right i totally see the trade-offs i hate dongles too i want the future

01:12:35 ◼   ► where everything is uniform i think making a machine like this brings the future here sooner

01:12:42 ◼   ► by forcing people to do uncomfortable things the problem i have as with almost every other

01:12:46 ◼   ► criticism surrounding this event is not so much with the machines that were introduced

01:12:51 ◼   ► But with the fact that, "Hey Apple, if you really want to hasten the USB-C future, put

01:12:56 ◼   ► it on all your Macs and stop selling the ones that don't have it."

01:13:00 ◼   ► I am even more enthusiastic for, "Please get rid of all of this.

01:13:03 ◼   ► We're never going to get rid of this legacy USB stuff if Apple keeps selling year after

01:13:07 ◼   ► year after year computers with this connector on it."

01:13:10 ◼   ► The current iMac has this connector.

01:13:11 ◼   ► The current Mac Pro, let's not even talk about, right?

01:13:14 ◼   ► It does not have Thunderbolt 3 connectors in the back of it.

01:13:17 ◼   ► In fact, nothing has Thunderbolt 3 things on the back.

01:13:20 ◼   ► It's just, yeah, so this particular Mac, if I had to pick what the complement of ports

01:13:26 ◼   ► should be on this particular Mac, the only difference I would do is I would put the SD

01:13:30 ◼   ► card slot on it, as Marco ranted about on Twitter today, not because it's that big a

01:13:35 ◼   ► deal and most people don't use it, but because I think it's small, there's room for it, and

01:13:39 ◼   ► it is the one thing that there is not, there's nothing you can do to the outside, that Apple

01:13:44 ◼   ► can do to the outside world to force the outside world to come up with a solution that obviates

01:13:48 ◼   ► the need to stick an SD card into something because Apple doesn't make standalone cameras

01:13:53 ◼   ► so they can't force standalone camera companies to suddenly make really fast reliable wireless

01:13:58 ◼   ► or really improved USB or anything like that that is going to make it so that you have

01:14:03 ◼   ► a solution that is better than taking the SD card out, right?

01:14:06 ◼   ► So given that they can't do that and there's no replacement for the SD card, just put the

01:14:10 ◼   ► slot in there.

01:14:11 ◼   ► It's a little bit easier.

01:14:12 ◼   ► It's not a big deal.

01:14:13 ◼   ► Put it only on the big one.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Like that is the only change I would have made.

01:14:15 ◼   ► not put USB Type-A connectors on this thing anywhere. I would not put an HDMI port. I

01:14:20 ◼   ► would not do any of that stuff. And I live in an office where every conference room has

01:14:24 ◼   ► this hydra of wires poking out of it, including dongle adapters for mini-display port, mini-DVI,

01:14:31 ◼   ► VGA, all of which are metal-wired, you know, like those anti-theft wires things. Not because

01:14:37 ◼   ► they think we're going to steal them, but because, like, when they were loose, people would take

01:14:41 ◼   ► them from one conference room to the other, and they would migrate around, and people would

01:14:44 ◼   ► would bring them back to their desks and write their names on them and Sharpie or whatever.

01:14:47 ◼   ► Dongles are terrible. Dongles are the devil, right? I want to get to the world where we

01:14:52 ◼   ► can stop with that and you're not going to get to the world where you can stop with that

01:14:56 ◼   ► unless you just get rid of the old port. So I agree with Apple's decision not to put legacy

01:15:01 ◼   ► ports on this. My only quibble is I would have thrown an SD card on this slot in there.

01:15:05 ◼   ► Everyone probably has their own quibble. They would say HDMI, but for all the other ones

01:15:08 ◼   ► like, "Oh, I wish I had an HDMI port. Dongles are annoying." Eventually, eventually someday,

01:15:12 ◼   ► Maybe, possibly, I don't know, maybe I'm foolish to think this, eventually all of the high-end

01:15:17 ◼   ► peripherals should have a little tiny connector on them.

01:15:21 ◼   ► Like I mean, we've been fighting against VGA for how many decades now?

01:15:24 ◼   ► And it's still out there, but I feel like now if you buy like a projector for business,

01:15:29 ◼   ► maybe they all still come with VGA, but I feel like now the tide is turning a little

01:15:33 ◼   ► bit to say, "All right, let's not have a VGA connector.

01:15:36 ◼   ► Let's let the default connector be at least DVI or something, or maybe DisplayPort, or

01:15:41 ◼   ► Maybe mini DisplayPort.

01:15:42 ◼   ► I want to herd us towards better standards.

01:15:45 ◼   ► I'm using hand motions here and knocking things on my desk.

01:15:47 ◼   ► I want to herd us towards better standards.

01:15:50 ◼   ► And I want Apple to help that along

01:15:53 ◼   ► by purging legacy ports.

01:15:55 ◼   ► So I'm actually mostly on Casey's side of this.

01:15:57 ◼   ► And by the way, for this specific computer,

01:15:58 ◼   ► for the 16 gig things, I just want to say,

01:16:00 ◼   ► I think if Apple could have put 32 gigs in there

01:16:03 ◼   ► with the particular Intel chipset, they would have.

01:16:05 ◼   ► I don't think they're withholding it out of Spyder

01:16:07 ◼   ► because they don't think people need it.

01:16:09 ◼   ► It's just that, as Marco said,

01:16:11 ◼   ► totally dedicated to this thin and light thing and 16 is all they could fit. If they could

01:16:15 ◼   ► have fit 32 they would have offered it and charged us eight bajillion dollars for it

01:16:18 ◼   ► like they usually do. So I have some faith that in 2018 when whatever the follow-up is

01:16:26 ◼   ► Coffee Lake, which is apparently going to be the next available Intel CPU with the good embedded

01:16:33 ◼   ► GPU that can support 32 gigs of RAM with the good chipset. So 2018 or 2019 Coffee Lake, then we will

01:16:40 ◼   ► get our 32 gig laptop and not before then.

01:16:43 ◼   ► And that may be a long, frustrating wait,

01:16:45 ◼   ► but for this specific machine at this point in time,

01:16:48 ◼   ► 16 gigs RAM, disappointing, but I can choke it down.

01:16:52 ◼   ► And USB-C along the side, I'm pretty much okay with.

01:16:57 ◼   ► Would have liked an SD card slot,

01:16:58 ◼   ► but I am, I gotta say, I'm mostly on Casey's side with this.

01:17:01 ◼   ► And in fact, you mentioned the Band-Aid thing.

01:17:03 ◼   ► I think it's exactly what I mentioned

01:17:04 ◼   ► when I was talking about this in Slack,

01:17:05 ◼   ► like, you know, earlier in the week,

01:17:08 ◼   ► that, you know, rip the Band-Aid off.

01:17:09 ◼   ► And of course, again, my complaint is,

01:17:12 ◼   ► if you're gonna rip the band-aid off,

01:17:13 ◼   ► you can't do it by changing just one thing

01:17:14 ◼   ► and keep selling the freaking MacBook Air forever.

01:17:16 ◼   ► So I'm still angry at Apple, but not about this machine,

01:17:19 ◼   ► about all the other machines.

01:17:21 ◼   ► - Well, and I think that's the thing is,

01:17:24 ◼   ► I'm not the first person who have said this,

01:17:25 ◼   ► but I wonder if some of the whining and moaning

01:17:29 ◼   ► about these computers is less about these computers

01:17:33 ◼   ► and more about feeling boxed.

01:17:36 ◼   ► So let's suppose I'm a professional photographer

01:17:39 ◼   ► and I want to have this machine in the field that can do, I don't know, whatever professional

01:17:47 ◼   ► phototographer people do, like plug in SD cards and do computationally difficult things,

01:17:53 ◼   ► or have a bazillion pictures open at once, which somehow necessitates 32 gigs of RAM.

01:18:00 ◼   ► If this isn't for you, well, there's no real Mac Pro option.

01:18:03 ◼   ► The iMac is below me because I'm a professional.

01:18:06 ◼   ► So what options are left?

01:18:08 ◼   ► And I think if Apple had simultaneously released or even made some amount of mention of, "Hey,

01:18:18 ◼   ► here's some other device, be it a desktop or a super-crazy laptop that's really terrible,

01:18:24 ◼   ► the professionals would like it," or some other thing, then maybe we wouldn't be so

01:18:29 ◼   ► desperate.

01:18:30 ◼   ► But because we're all in the middle of the ocean and paddling and trying to stay above

01:18:36 ◼   ► but our arms are getting tired and we're wondering if Apple really cares about us anymore, if that life vest will ever appear,

01:18:43 ◼   ► we're getting really, really antsy and really concerned over a computer that really isn't meant for us.

01:18:49 ◼   ► Like, Marco, you don't even use a laptop on a regular basis, yet here you are

01:18:53 ◼   ► fairly perturbed about this particular laptop.

01:18:57 ◼   ► And I think it's--

01:18:58 ◼   ► Well, I think because of what you're about to say, though, because like--

01:19:01 ◼   ► Because you have no options.

01:19:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I as a pro am worried that

01:19:05 ◼   ► that the things I use are going to move towards laptops.

01:19:09 ◼   ► And also, sometimes I do use a laptop.

01:19:12 ◼   ► Like when I go away for like a week at a time,

01:19:15 ◼   ► a few times a year, where I really do use that

01:19:18 ◼   ► heavily during that time.

01:19:21 ◼   ► So I don't use a laptop frequently,

01:19:24 ◼   ► but when I do use it, I use it heavily.

01:19:26 ◼   ► So I am a pro user when I use my laptops, no question.

01:19:29 ◼   ► - So I think Andrew Cunningham at Ars Technica

01:19:32 ◼   ► had a good take on this, his intro to the review

01:19:34 ◼   ► the only review hardware that people have, which is the MacBook escape, started by saying

01:19:38 ◼   ► that Mac users have been frustrated with Apple lately, and the whole thing of the Mac not

01:19:43 ◼   ► getting updated as much and so on and so forth.

01:19:45 ◼   ► And so the second paragraph is, "The new MacBook Pros released for the record a year

01:19:49 ◼   ► and a half after the 2015 models, which were in some cases changed very little from the

01:19:52 ◼   ► 2014 and 2013 models, have been birthed into this era of frustration."

01:19:57 ◼   ► That is the key thing.

01:19:58 ◼   ► That's why you were just getting it, Casey.

01:20:00 ◼   ► It's not so much that I think people are particularly mad at these models, or everyone

01:20:03 ◼   ► quibbles about what ports they have and the pricing and the 16 gigs and stuff like that,

01:20:08 ◼   ► but because they enter—the world that they're entering is the world in which all of the

01:20:12 ◼   ► most ardent Mac fans are frustrated with the Mac line.

01:20:16 ◼   ► And as good as these may be, though the rest of the line is still just sitting there, especially

01:20:21 ◼   ► in salt and leaks continuing to be sold, including the Air, even after this supposed possible

01:20:26 ◼   ► Air replacement, that's the world these are coming into.

01:20:28 ◼   ► So I think you're right that a lot of the anger related to this event is not about the

01:20:33 ◼   ► computers that were released into it is that it's like if you're already angry and someone does

01:20:37 ◼   ► something kind of nice you can pick the nice thing that they did and say but I'm still angry about

01:20:42 ◼   ► that other crap and we are we're all still angry about other crap and the more logical thing is

01:20:46 ◼   ► like you said in any sort of situation you say well you know maybe you shouldn't get this or

01:20:51 ◼   ► say well what should I get like my options you know I feel it for the people who want

01:20:56 ◼   ► an inexpensive laptop computer it's like well Apple reduced these pro models but what if you

01:21:02 ◼   ► want to get a decent Mac for a low price. Welcome to USB-A land. Welcome to non-retina

01:21:08 ◼   ► screen. Like you're going back in time to buy a computer that is really super old and

01:21:13 ◼   ► is way crappier. So it's really easy to be frustrated with the Mac line and Apple's treatment

01:21:20 ◼   ► of it, even if you like the particular machines that they released. And if you're a super

01:21:25 ◼   ► picky pro and then you look at the machines they did release and you say, "Well, I have

01:21:28 ◼   ► quibbles with those as well, it just adds up to a very negative reaction.

01:21:31 ◼   ► I think I put something in the show notes of someone tweeting about this.

01:21:35 ◼   ► This is Steve Frank, but it's echoing what you said.

01:21:39 ◼   ► "The level of pushback for macro pro event is staggering.

01:21:41 ◼   ► I sure hope someone at Apple who can make a difference is paying attention."

01:21:44 ◼   ► I agree that right or wrong, you can say all these people are whining or complaining or

01:21:48 ◼   ► they don't have a reason or whatever.

01:21:50 ◼   ► It is a really weird vibe, a pretty unprecedented vibe in the modern Apple era.

01:21:56 ◼   ► for Apple to have a major announcement of products

01:21:59 ◼   ► and for the reaction from the most ardent fans,

01:22:01 ◼   ► the people who are watching the live stream,

01:22:03 ◼   ► the people who knew there would be an event at all,

01:22:05 ◼   ► the people who read tech sites about the event,

01:22:08 ◼   ► to have a vocal portion of that.

01:22:10 ◼   ► You don't have to say it's all of them,

01:22:11 ◼   ► not even gonna say it's the majority,

01:22:12 ◼   ► but definitely a vocal portion of that,

01:22:14 ◼   ► their reaction to the event to be like anger,

01:22:16 ◼   ► like Apple did something wrong,

01:22:18 ◼   ► like maybe we shouldn't have released anything.

01:22:19 ◼   ► People are super angry at us now.

01:22:21 ◼   ► Like before at least they were just anticipating,

01:22:23 ◼   ► like, well, wait and see, wait and see,

01:22:24 ◼   ► but now they're like angry at us.

01:22:26 ◼   ► This used to happen by the way, all the time,

01:22:28 ◼   ► before the Jobs 2 era.

01:22:29 ◼   ► Anytime Apple announced anything, pretty much in the 90s,

01:22:33 ◼   ► everyone, all the Mac fans would get angry at Apple.

01:22:35 ◼   ► Like this was the vibe for pretty much the, you know,

01:22:39 ◼   ► most of my childhood and young adulthood with Apple was,

01:22:44 ◼   ► we were all angry at Apple for not winning the Mac PC wars.

01:22:48 ◼   ► We're all angry at Apple for allowing Microsoft to dominate

01:22:52 ◼   ► and all the dumb things that they did

01:22:53 ◼   ► that we think they should have done differently,

01:22:54 ◼   ► which would have solved this problem, whatever.

01:22:56 ◼   ► And anytime they announced anything,

01:22:58 ◼   ► we were angry about it,

01:22:59 ◼   ► because we knew they needed a new operating system,

01:23:01 ◼   ► and they'd announce the new operating system strategy,

01:23:03 ◼   ► and we'd say, "This sucks, this operating system sucks.

01:23:05 ◼   ► "What are you doing?"

01:23:06 ◼   ► When they announced Mac OS X, everyone was super angry.

01:23:08 ◼   ► "I don't want a terminal, I don't want a command line."

01:23:09 ◼   ► Being angry at Apple used to be the vibe.

01:23:11 ◼   ► But then after Jobs turned it around,

01:23:14 ◼   ► every time there was an Apple event,

01:23:16 ◼   ► we would wait like it's Christmas morning,

01:23:17 ◼   ► and be like, "Oh, goody Apple things!"

01:23:19 ◼   ► And we'd talk about them and pick them or whatever,

01:23:20 ◼   ► but we were all excited by it.

01:23:21 ◼   ► And now this is like the first turn back towards the dark side of Apple announces a bunch of

01:23:26 ◼   ► stuff and we're all just angry about the Mac stuff.

01:23:30 ◼   ► Even the iPhone stuff is a little bit backlash.

01:23:31 ◼   ► I think the iPhone stuff, people are kind of angry about that.

01:23:34 ◼   ► That's more like when you're really super successful, people want to tear you down,

01:23:37 ◼   ► right?

01:23:38 ◼   ► But the Mac stuff is like neglect and frustration and then you release a bunch of products that

01:23:45 ◼   ► leave a bunch of the...

01:23:47 ◼   ► Don't address a whole bunch of the frustration.

01:23:49 ◼   ► And the part of the frustration they do address, address it in a way that is not satisfactory

01:23:54 ◼   ► to your most cranky users.

01:23:56 ◼   ► And so that I think explains this whole big vibe.

01:24:00 ◼   ► And should Apple do something about it?

01:24:02 ◼   ► Yeah, they should update the rest of their freaking Macs.

01:24:03 ◼   ► Like that would go a long way to calming people down.

01:24:08 ◼   ► But if I was Apple, I would mostly stay the course on the USB thing.

01:24:13 ◼   ► If I had to design the next version of this, and by the way, there are already rumors like,

01:24:16 ◼   ► "Hey, guess what?

01:24:17 ◼   ► super secret totally made up rumor. Next year Apple's gonna have MacBook Pros that are cheaper

01:24:23 ◼   ► and with faster CPU's and 32 gigs of RAM. Whatever. And you know again as Andrew Kernighan

01:24:28 ◼   ► pointed out to the person who pointed it like what are they gonna put in it that's gonna

01:24:31 ◼   ► let them do 32 gigs of RAM. They have to wait for a coffee lake or they have to do something

01:24:34 ◼   ► radically different. Anyway the next revision of this thing if they put an SD card slot

01:24:39 ◼   ► on it just that one change even for the people who don't use SD card slots ever I think they'd

01:24:44 ◼   ► be like, "alright, now Apple, I see that you have seen my concern. You have not actually

01:24:49 ◼   ► addressed it because I want an HDMI port, but at least now I see that you are taking

01:24:54 ◼   ► our feedback into consideration and are correcting your course by making the iPhone 6s less bendy

01:25:00 ◼   ► and slightly more grippy. By making the iPhone 7 grippier still and waterproof. By not making

01:25:10 ◼   ► it glass front and back after the 4 series because that broke a lot.

01:25:15 ◼   ► Like that's all we want to see at this point for the pros specifically is maybe some slight

01:25:18 ◼   ► reconsideration of the next iteration of this, but again their hands are tied because of

01:25:22 ◼   ► Intel's things, so I don't think we're going to see a lot of corrections there.

01:25:27 ◼   ► Just need to update the rest of the line.

01:25:29 ◼   ► Force the rest of the world into the USB-C utopia that we were all promised.

01:25:34 ◼   ► Get us away from those giant USB-A connectors.

01:25:36 ◼   ► I hope we start looking at them like I look at SCSI ports now.

01:25:40 ◼   ► "Do you believe we actually have these things and plug stuff into it? They're huge. What

01:25:43 ◼   ► is it, an air intake? I don't get it."

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01:27:47 ◼   ► - Why don't we have a touch bar external keyboard?

01:27:52 ◼   ► Yes, we briefly talked about this last episode.

01:27:55 ◼   ► - Not so briefly, perhaps.

01:27:57 ◼   ► - Well, either way.

01:27:58 ◼   ► I want one, something fierce, but we don't have one yet.

01:28:03 ◼   ► Is it coming, John?

01:28:04 ◼   ► I had one additional thought about that

01:28:06 ◼   ► that I wanted to throw in here.

01:28:09 ◼   ► Wait, you're still in follow-up?

01:28:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:28:11 ◼   ► Well, I think we've long since left follow-up, to be honest.

01:28:14 ◼   ► No, we are still-- these are all follow-ups.

01:28:16 ◼   ► These are all follow-ups from the things

01:28:17 ◼   ► we were talking about last show with new--

01:28:19 ◼   ► because it's not like they announced any new MacBook Pros.

01:28:21 ◼   ► We're still just talking about those last ones.

01:28:23 ◼   ► Anyway.

01:28:23 ◼   ► Oh, my god.

01:28:24 ◼   ► For the keyboard with the touch bar,

01:28:26 ◼   ► I thought of a reason that, once again, I'm

01:28:28 ◼   ► disappointed that no listeners tweeted at me or emailed us,

01:28:32 ◼   ► that the touch bar on the keyboard,

01:28:35 ◼   ► not that this changes the odds of Apple doing it,

01:28:38 ◼   ► but it makes me think that it may not be as great

01:28:41 ◼   ► an idea as we think.

01:28:42 ◼   ► And again, I'm saying this,

01:28:43 ◼   ► having never actually touched one of these

01:28:45 ◼   ► because they're not out yet, right?

01:28:46 ◼   ► Although I did try to order mine at work

01:28:48 ◼   ► and they told me, sorry,

01:28:49 ◼   ► we're not getting a new Mac until February.

01:28:50 ◼   ► So yep, corporate IT, yay.

01:28:53 ◼   ► All right, anyway, but yeah, the touch bar on the laptops,

01:28:59 ◼   ► The whole idea about this is a touch surface that's not the screen, so you're not reaching

01:29:04 ◼   ► up touch screen, it's down by the keyboard, it's on the level of the keyboard, so it's

01:29:06 ◼   ► the rest of your stuff.

01:29:07 ◼   ► But the touch bar is also a screen, and because the things on it change, you will have to

01:29:12 ◼   ► look at it to know, like, in this app, how is the context changed, or to find the control

01:29:18 ◼   ► that you want, because you can't feel for anything on it, and especially if there is

01:29:22 ◼   ► something visual like a display there of a timeline or a scrubber or whatever, you will

01:29:26 ◼   ► have to actually look at it. And on a laptop that mostly works out because your line of

01:29:33 ◼   ► sight and focal distance on the laptop screen, which is when you're using the touch bar,

01:29:38 ◼   ► is not that far off from the touch bar itself. Screen, touch bar, screen, touch bar, not

01:29:44 ◼   ► a big change in focal distance. If you're using a desktop and your keyboard is in the

01:29:50 ◼   ► right position ergonomically and so is your screen, pretty big difference in focal distance

01:29:55 ◼   ► and most people who are touch typists don't look at the keyboard ever on a desktop because

01:30:00 ◼   ► why would you?

01:30:01 ◼   ► You can feel where everything is, there's no reason to look down there, and there's

01:30:04 ◼   ► a totally different focal distance.

01:30:06 ◼   ► So experience-wise, using the touch bar not on a laptop may not be as nice an experience

01:30:12 ◼   ► as using it on a thing where the screen is kind of like a heads-up display where you

01:30:18 ◼   ► don't have to look away from the road as much to look at your thing.

01:30:21 ◼   ► So I don't know if Apple would ever trot that out as a reason that they don't produce a

01:30:24 ◼   ► a keyboard with this thing on it,

01:30:26 ◼   ► but I think it may actually be a semi-legit reason

01:30:29 ◼   ► why the touch bar is purely an animal of the laptop

01:30:33 ◼   ► and is not ever a thing that is destined

01:30:34 ◼   ► to be on desktop computers.

01:30:36 ◼   ► - I mean, one thing we don't know yet is like,

01:30:39 ◼   ► is it really meant to be like a continuous input device

01:30:43 ◼   ► the way a trackpad or a keyboard is,

01:30:45 ◼   ► or is it really meant to be what the function row was before

01:30:49 ◼   ► which is basically occasional utility functions, right?

01:30:52 ◼   ► We don't really know, like,

01:30:53 ◼   ► Obviously Apple has a lot of different demos and stuff

01:30:55 ◼   ► that they have in their apps,

01:30:56 ◼   ► but we don't really know yet how it will be used in practice.

01:30:58 ◼   ► Like will it actually become a really primary

01:31:02 ◼   ► pointing device or input device,

01:31:04 ◼   ► or whether it will just become like a little utility thing.

01:31:06 ◼   ► If it is the latter,

01:31:07 ◼   ► if it is just like a little occasional utility thing,

01:31:10 ◼   ► it's a lot less important to have it on the desktop.

01:31:13 ◼   ► It might never come and there won't be strong demand for it,

01:31:17 ◼   ► and so it might not be worth anything like that.

01:31:19 ◼   ► But if it does come to the desktop somehow,

01:31:22 ◼   ► Again, if it is one of those occasional reference things,

01:31:26 ◼   ► then it's okay to change your eye focal distance

01:31:29 ◼   ► to go to it because you're not using it constantly.

01:31:32 ◼   ► Whereas if it's actually meant to be like

01:31:35 ◼   ► some of the ways it was demoed with being things

01:31:37 ◼   ► like a jog wheel in Final Cut Pro and stuff like that,

01:31:40 ◼   ► that's like a constant frequent type of input device there.

01:31:44 ◼   ► If that's the kind of things that ends up being

01:31:46 ◼   ► very useful for, and we don't really know,

01:31:48 ◼   ► I mean, whatever Apple says does not matter,

01:31:51 ◼   ► what matters is what ends up being useful in practice,

01:31:53 ◼   ► right, and we don't know that yet.

01:31:54 ◼   ► Nobody even has these to review yet,

01:31:56 ◼   ► so we don't even know yet, but if that happens,

01:31:59 ◼   ► then I think you have a bigger problem

01:32:00 ◼   ► with frequently changing your focal distance

01:32:03 ◼   ► and everything up and down from the screen

01:32:04 ◼   ► to the keyboard and everything.

01:32:06 ◼   ► Although, honestly, I was using my laptop yesterday

01:32:10 ◼   ► or the day before, using it for a while,

01:32:12 ◼   ► and I kinda was playing, I was kinda like pretending

01:32:15 ◼   ► that I had a touch bar, trying to figure out

01:32:16 ◼   ► how does it feel to reach up here for scrolling

01:32:20 ◼   ► or jogging or editing operations and everything,

01:32:23 ◼   ► it's kinda too high up for me.

01:32:25 ◼   ► Like for ergonomics, I'm a little concerned

01:32:29 ◼   ► that it might not feel very good

01:32:31 ◼   ► to reach all the way up there frequently

01:32:34 ◼   ► for lots of interaction with my hands.

01:32:36 ◼   ► Like I feel like it might be a little uncomfortable

01:32:39 ◼   ► and a little ergonomically weird.

01:32:40 ◼   ► Like if it's gonna be one of those

01:32:42 ◼   ► like continuous input devices,

01:32:44 ◼   ► I feel like that's kind of the wrong spot for it.

01:32:47 ◼   ► And I recognize that the right spot for that kind of thing

01:32:50 ◼   ► would probably be between the space bar and the track pad,

01:32:53 ◼   ► but I also recognize, practically speaking,

01:32:55 ◼   ► that's really hard to design around

01:32:58 ◼   ► and probably bad for accidental input and everything.

01:33:01 ◼   ► So that's probably why it's not there.

01:33:03 ◼   ► But the way it is up top there,

01:33:06 ◼   ► I do wonder a little bit about the ergonomics

01:33:08 ◼   ► of using it very often.

01:33:09 ◼   ► - Well, like I said last week on the show,

01:33:11 ◼   ► and as I tweeted in, as I tried to jam into a series

01:33:14 ◼   ► of three tweets that I initially screwed up

01:33:16 ◼   ► and how to delete and re-chain together.

01:33:18 ◼   ► Boy, we're really waiting for that edit this tweet function

01:33:20 ◼   ► on Twitter any day now.

01:33:21 ◼   ► Anyway.

01:33:22 ◼   ► - Don't hold your breath.

01:33:23 ◼   ► - The time lapse, the like, imagining what has happened

01:33:27 ◼   ► to Apple keyboards over the years,

01:33:29 ◼   ► of starting on the Mac portable,

01:33:30 ◼   ► you just watch the thing squish into the thing.

01:33:33 ◼   ► It just gets flatter and flatter and flatter,

01:33:35 ◼   ► and the keys get so flat, and soon they're not even keys,

01:33:37 ◼   ► and soon they're like flush with the surface of the thing,

01:33:39 ◼   ► and they're just going down, down, down,

01:33:40 ◼   ► and all of a sudden a screen appears on the top of it,

01:33:42 ◼   ► and then you just keep extrapolating that out.

01:33:44 ◼   ► Why is the screen at the top?

01:33:45 ◼   ► Why isn't the screen at the bottom?

01:33:47 ◼   ► Why isn't the whole thing screen?

01:33:48 ◼   ► Why isn't it a big force touch surface?

01:33:50 ◼   ► Why, you know, and that gets into all the millennials

01:33:51 ◼   ► typing on the screens and the whole big thing.

01:33:53 ◼   ► But seriously, if you time-lapse that,

01:33:55 ◼   ► it's comical to like, to just look at it,

01:33:59 ◼   ► it's like, you don't really realize how comical it is

01:34:02 ◼   ► until, I mean, you don't need the Mac portable to do it,

01:34:03 ◼   ► right, but just look at an old laptop keyboard,

01:34:06 ◼   ► and you're like, this is what the keys used to be like?

01:34:08 ◼   ► And in some respects, you're like, wow, look at this travel,

01:34:11 ◼   ► it's so luxurious.

01:34:12 ◼   ► But in other respects, you're like,

01:34:13 ◼   ► look at all this wasted space and air to try to ape like the keyboard which is aping the

01:34:18 ◼   ► typewriter which is just like this whole big chain of things and then do things do look

01:34:22 ◼   ► more around but then like you start shrinking them so much and once you start adding screens

01:34:24 ◼   ► like what are we even doing here again i talked about in the last show it just seems like

01:34:28 ◼   ► a straightforward extrapolation to say that that surface doesn't need to be keyboard at

01:34:34 ◼   ► a certain point it's better to have a bunch of reconfigurable images on a on a taptic

01:34:38 ◼   ► screen with force and blah blah blah and that's where everyone says well you can't extrapolate

01:34:42 ◼   ► that's ridiculous, it's like a slippery slope thing, you have to leave the keys there,

01:34:45 ◼   ► but at a certain point, do you? How unkey-like do they have to make the keys before you don't

01:34:51 ◼   ► notice any difference? Like, oh they have to move, it's really important for touch typing

01:34:55 ◼   ► and this and that and the other thing, like, we're all die and the kids that replace us

01:34:58 ◼   ► might not have these same ties to typing because they never learned to type or anything, like

01:35:02 ◼   ► it might take a long time to happen, but that seems to be where it's going. And the reason

01:35:05 ◼   ► that would work, and gets into what Marco was saying about what part is the most comfortable

01:35:10 ◼   ► to use, the reason that would work on a laptop form factor specifically where you have to

01:35:14 ◼   ► have the screen and the keyboard connected together because they fold and it's all part

01:35:18 ◼   ► of the whole portability thing, is because the focal distance is not that different.

01:35:23 ◼   ► Because looking down at the keyboard, any part of the keyboard on a laptop, is not that

01:35:27 ◼   ► far from looking down at the screen because they're attached to each other.

01:35:31 ◼   ► And so if you did have some kind of UI on the flat part, it is still more comfortable.

01:35:35 ◼   ► It still gets back to what everyone at Apple has always said and we all believe, you know,

01:35:40 ◼   ► You don't want to touch the big vertical screen, but there is a horizontal surface that you can touch,

01:35:44 ◼   ► and you can type on it and use a trackpad on it, and now you can use a touch screen on it.

01:35:48 ◼   ► It's not making a "touch screen Mac" quote-unquote, and it's not like, you know,

01:35:51 ◼   ► people keep thinking of the thing, you're just saying it's going to turn into a bigger iPad,

01:35:54 ◼   ► which maybe it will, and again we will talk about the Microsoft Surface Studio eventually,

01:35:57 ◼   ► I promise I won't let it go off the list. But having a horizontal surface that you use your

01:36:03 ◼   ► fingers on that is ergonomically viable, we do it all the time, we call it a keyboard and a trackpad

01:36:08 ◼   ► and now a touch bar, it is not ridiculous to think that the parts of that horizontal

01:36:15 ◼   ► surface that we touch that are now fixed in hardware could one day be reconfigurable in

01:36:19 ◼   ► the same way as a touch bar. If the touch bar is in any way successful as an experiment,

01:36:24 ◼   ► as a feature that we put out into the world and people try and they can see how it works,

01:36:27 ◼   ► if it is in any way successful, even if people say, just like Marco, it's fine, but they don't

01:36:31 ◼   ► like reaching up there, that doesn't mean the concept is bad, that just means they didn't do it

01:36:35 ◼   ► enough, right? So I think that that time lapse and that extrapolation clearly leads in one direction,

01:36:41 ◼   ► one direction only, and that direction is not a move from Apple's insistence on that people

01:36:45 ◼   ► that don't want to touch vertical screens. Again, buy a touchscreen Windows laptop and be poking at

01:36:49 ◼   ► the screen. Some people like it, and some people have reported like, you get one of those, you

01:36:52 ◼   ► instinctively start touching laptop screens, which by the way is terrible, you should never touch

01:36:55 ◼   ► your laptop screen. That's a separate issue. That's a personal issue. Appreed. Right. Apple's

01:37:02 ◼   ► thing is horizontal surface with touch. So I think this is a place where we could go,

01:37:07 ◼   ► where I would be excited to see them go, because at least then you start to reap the advantages

01:37:12 ◼   ► that come along with having horrible keyboards, right? Like right now we're like, we're going

01:37:17 ◼   ► to keep making your keyboards smaller and smaller and flatter and flatter and less and

01:37:20 ◼   ► less like a keyboard that you like, but you're not going to get over the big win that you

01:37:25 ◼   ► get by saying, "Guess what? It's all screen and you can do amazing things for this." Because

01:37:28 ◼   ► imagine the interface that you could do, Margo, with like your podcast editing suite where

01:37:33 ◼   ► you weren't limited to just a reconfigurable touch bar and weren't limited to a totally

01:37:36 ◼   ► screenless trackpad but could actually draw controls down there for editing on a laptop.

01:37:43 ◼   ► That could be amazing, right? That could be pretty amazing, but you definitely wouldn't

01:37:46 ◼   ► like to have your kind of like keyboard so you may just have to wait until you die and

01:37:50 ◼   ► Adam grows up and he can make that podcast up.

01:37:53 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:37:54 ◼   ► Our final sponsor tonight is Backblaze,

01:37:56 ◼   ► unlimited native online backup for Mac and PC.

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01:38:01 ◼   ► with no credit card required at backblaze.com/atp.

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01:38:09 ◼   ► since long before they were a sponsor.

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01:38:13 ◼   ► even my mom's computer.

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01:38:17 ◼   ► And if you're gonna have online backup,

01:38:19 ◼   ► Backblaze is the one to get.

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01:38:31 ◼   ► So if you left a file at home and you're on vacation,

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01:38:39 ◼   ► It's so useful, I've done that all the time.

01:38:41 ◼   ► I've done that so often.

01:38:42 ◼   ► It's kinda like a, it kinda makes your entire computer

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01:38:48 ◼   ► In addition to regular restore methods like that,

01:38:50 ◼   ► They also have restore by mail, which means you can purchase a hard drive with all your

01:38:55 ◼   ► data on it and they will over-run it to you with FedEx.

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01:39:05 ◼   ► It might take a long time to download that on your internet connection.

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01:39:12 ◼   ► as long as you send it back.

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01:39:25 ◼   ► This is such a great addition to local backups.

01:39:28 ◼   ► You know, Backblaze and I both agree,

01:39:29 ◼   ► you should still do local backups.

01:39:31 ◼   ► You should still do Time Machine if you can.

01:39:33 ◼   ► You should still do a disk clone like Super Duper if you can

01:39:36 ◼   ► but you should also have online backup

01:39:38 ◼   ► 'cause it saves you from a whole class of other problems

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01:40:18 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Backblaze for sponsoring our show.

01:40:21 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:40:24 ◼   ► - So we forgot to talk about earlier

01:40:26 ◼   ► when you were talking about the new MacBook Pro.

01:40:31 ◼   ► How excited are you for yours to arrive?

01:40:33 ◼   ► Because you ordered the MacBook Escape.

01:40:35 ◼   ► - I did order the MacBook Escape,

01:40:37 ◼   ► and I canceled it before it shipped because--

01:40:39 ◼   ► - Insert the Marcos Waffling jingle right here.

01:40:41 ◼   ► - Yep, yay, Mark goes waffling.

01:40:44 ◼   ► Maybe that's the jingle.

01:40:46 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:40:48 ◼   ► Yeah, basically, I still might get one.

01:40:50 ◼   ► I haven't decided for sure I'm not getting one,

01:40:53 ◼   ► but as I looked at more of the specs

01:40:55 ◼   ► and as I thought about it more

01:40:57 ◼   ► and as some of the early reviews started coming in,

01:40:59 ◼   ► I figured, you know what?

01:41:00 ◼   ► I think I wanna wait until I can actually

01:41:03 ◼   ► try the keyboard in a store.

01:41:04 ◼   ► I can actually see it next to the 15 inch

01:41:08 ◼   ► and really decide, and hopefully try

01:41:10 ◼   ► a touch bar in his door too, and really decide then.

01:41:12 ◼   ► Because my laptop is fine, I'm not in a huge rush.

01:41:15 ◼   ► The only thing that really drives me nuts about it

01:41:17 ◼   ► is that I'm always out of space.

01:41:19 ◼   ► Because I got the base model, which is awesome

01:41:21 ◼   ► in every single way, except the hard drive space

01:41:23 ◼   ► is not nearly enough, so I'm always out of space on it,

01:41:25 ◼   ► and it's a huge pain, and it is a big problem