Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspectives. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing

00:00:04 ◼   ► news of note in iOS development, Apple, and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm

00:00:08 ◼   ► an independent iOS developer based in Herndon, Virginia. Developing Perspective is never

00:00:12 ◼   ► longer than 15 minutes. This is show number 52, and today is Wednesday, June 6th.

00:00:17 ◼   ► All right, the topic for today's show is the Mac Pro, and hopefully we'll have more to

00:00:22 ◼   ► say about that next week. Before the rumored new Mac Pros come out and so on, I was going

00:00:28 ◼   ► I think it would be interesting to talk about a developer's environment and why I'm so excited

00:00:34 ◼   ► about the Mac Pro, what I've tried in the past, and why it just hasn't worked out.

00:00:38 ◼   ► So currently I run a 27-inch iMac from late 2009.

00:00:43 ◼   ► It's a 2.8 gigahertz Intel Core i7, fully specced out.

00:00:47 ◼   ► At the time, I believe it was the top of the line iMac.

00:00:50 ◼   ► It was the most expensive thing you could buy other than a Mac Pro.

00:00:54 ◼   ► And you know, it's done pretty well.

00:00:55 ◼   ► I've had it now for, I guess that's two and a half years.

00:00:59 ◼   ► It'll be three years this fall.

00:01:01 ◼   ► And it's a great computer.

00:01:03 ◼   ► It's worked pretty well for me over those years,

00:01:05 ◼   ► but there's no way I'd buy another iMac.

00:01:08 ◼   ► And for a while I was kind of surprised by it.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Because it's been a good computer, I've enjoyed it.

00:01:14 ◼   ► But there's a couple of things about iMacs or laptops,

00:01:19 ◼   ► or even probably the Mac Mini, that just

00:01:21 ◼   ► work as a sort of a workhorse developers machine.

00:01:24 ◼   ► As we're going to walk through all those different areas, that kind of frustrates me with it

00:01:28 ◼   ► and why I'm so looking forward to the Mac Pro, which, you know, can't wait to get my

00:01:31 ◼   ► hands on.

00:01:32 ◼   ► So first is speed.

00:01:34 ◼   ► And it probably goes without saying that the Mac Pro is the fastest Mac you can buy.

00:01:39 ◼   ► And that's still true.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Even though the Mac Pro hasn't been updated for I think it's about 670 days now, which

00:01:45 ◼   ► which is one of the longest droughts in history for a Mac product being not updated.

00:01:52 ◼   ► The Mac Pro currently, if you look at say the Geekbench scores for Macs, the top of

00:01:57 ◼   ► the line Mac Pro that was released in mid 2010, so 670 days ago, still has a score better

00:02:05 ◼   ► than any other non-Mac Pro.

00:02:10 ◼   ► The next best is about half as fast, which is the current top of the line iMac that was

00:02:15 ◼   ► was released in mid 2011.

00:02:17 ◼   ► So that's quite something, that a computer that

00:02:20 ◼   ► hasn't been updated in years and years and years is still the king of the hill.

00:02:24 ◼   ► And that's something that you just can't get in any other computer.

00:02:27 ◼   ► They allow you to access technology and platforms that

00:02:31 ◼   ► are geared and tuned for performance.

00:02:35 ◼   ► Say you get your laptop computer.

00:02:37 ◼   ► It is designed and geared and focused on power consumption, heat management,

00:02:43 ◼   ► those types of things.

00:02:44 ◼   ► Performance is part of that, but often if you get a totally specced out laptop, you're

00:02:49 ◼   ► going to have all kinds of problems.

00:02:50 ◼   ► You're going to have problems with heat, you'll have problems with battery life.

00:02:53 ◼   ► Often if you have a laptop, really what you want is a fairly low powered thing if you

00:02:57 ◼   ► actually want to move around with it.

00:02:59 ◼   ► And so that's one thing where the Mac Pro is just sort of the opposite.

00:03:02 ◼   ► It's like we're going to take the fastest technologies we can find, the best, the apex

00:03:06 ◼   ► of modern computing, and we're going to put them in one big, honking, scary looking machine.

00:03:14 ◼   ► And that speed isn't just sort of for fun.

00:03:19 ◼   ► You know, say you're a developer, you're like me.

00:03:21 ◼   ► I mean, probably the thing you do more than anything else in a given day is compile code.

00:03:26 ◼   ► And compilation is very CPU bound.

00:03:28 ◼   ► And if you watch your CPU monitor when you compile a big project in Xcode, you'll almost

00:03:33 ◼   ► certainly peek out at all your CPUs.

00:03:36 ◼   ► Xcode is very efficient at parallelizing it, at working on it, but it's very CPU bound.

00:03:40 ◼   ► There's a little bit of IO bound stuff, but almost always if you have an SSD of any kind,

00:03:47 ◼   ► you're probably not even going to be touching IO problems.

00:03:49 ◼   ► You're going to be bottlenecks by your CPU.

00:03:52 ◼   ► If you can take 10%, 20%, 40%, 50% out of your compilation time, it's just one of these

00:03:58 ◼   ► things that will make you a more productive programmer, I believe.

00:04:01 ◼   ► At least it is for me.

00:04:03 ◼   ► And especially, it's not necessarily because it's saving me that time, but because it removes

00:04:07 ◼   ► an excuse for me to get distracted, which maybe I could overcome with better self-control

00:04:13 ◼   ► or something. But it is one of those things that often I'll be going in and I'll be making

00:04:17 ◼   ► a bunch of coding changes. I hit build, hit build and run, and all of a sudden I have

00:04:22 ◼   ► ten seconds or whatever it is to wait while it goes and does its whole big dance. And

00:04:27 ◼   ► in those ten seconds I have nothing more I can do in that kind of flow that I was in,

00:04:31 ◼   ► and so I'll find something else to do. Oh, let's check Twitter, let's check my email,

00:04:34 ◼   ► check reader, let's see what's going on. And that's just not good for my productivity.

00:04:40 ◼   ► And so it's great to have as fast a computer as possible to do that because I want to be

00:04:43 ◼   ► able to just minimize those times. And you know, there's obviously the other part of

00:04:47 ◼   ► it of if I can save five seconds to compile, I compile hundreds of times a day, if not

00:04:53 ◼   ► thousands, but maybe if I'm really in the zone. I mean, there's a lot of compilation

00:04:57 ◼   ► going on in my office and I can make that go faster. Same thing with almost anything

00:05:01 ◼   ► out other operation. I have a friend who's talking about his Mac Pro and he said it almost,

00:05:06 ◼   ► sometimes his Mac Pro almost feels like it's clairvoyant, like it knows what he wants before

00:05:10 ◼   ► he gets it, because he'll be going in and it's like, "Oh, I want to open up this file," and

00:05:15 ◼   ► he'll just sort of, as the moment he touches it, it's open. And it kind of has this like,

00:05:18 ◼   ► it was, you know, it was ready and waiting to just hand it to you right that moment.

00:05:22 ◼   ► And that's just something you can't get anywhere else. Related to that is just how long of a

00:05:27 ◼   ► lifetime Mac Pro has where it still is useful, where it still is functional, where it still

00:05:33 ◼   ► is the top of the line in terms of performance.

00:05:37 ◼   ► Like I just said, looking at those Geekbench scores, the interesting thing is even if you

00:05:41 ◼   ► go back beyond the previous generation Mac Pro, so the one from 670 days ago, if you

00:05:47 ◼   ► go back to the generation before, which was released in early 2009, that is the third

00:05:53 ◼   ► fastest Mac you can buy if you bought the top of the line back then.

00:05:56 ◼   ► quite something. For a computer to be that old, to be years and years and years old,

00:06:03 ◼   ► like a three-year-old computer still being the third fastest Mac that you can buy, if

00:06:08 ◼   ► money's no object, that's quite something. It's one of those things that you're not going

00:06:13 ◼   ► to get in any other computer, especially with laptops, where they're almost disposable in

00:06:18 ◼   ► some ways because you're not making that investment into something that's going to have a long

00:06:22 ◼   ► lifetime. Fair enough. If once a year you buy a MacBook Air, every year you go out and

00:06:26 ◼   ► and buy a MacBook Pro, you're sort of keeping up with that.

00:06:29 ◼   ► But that's not practical, and it's not probably

00:06:31 ◼   ► very economical either.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Not that Mac Pros are cheap, but you're investing into one thing

00:06:36 ◼   ► and having it continue to hold its value for much longer.

00:06:41 ◼   ► And what I've heard from a lot of people too is you can usually

00:06:44 ◼   ► sell a Mac Pro for quite a large percent, maybe even half

00:06:48 ◼   ► of what you paid for it, even though it's a couple of years

00:06:53 ◼   ► old, because they just retain their value

00:06:55 ◼   ► and their performance so quickly.

00:06:57 ◼   ► It's actually even the one I'm hoping to buy next week,

00:07:00 ◼   ► or soon thereafter.

00:07:02 ◼   ► I may even investigate leasing it or something like that,

00:07:04 ◼   ► because if you have the same thing,

00:07:06 ◼   ► if it's like, that's a great option

00:07:07 ◼   ► to get a three year lease on a Mac Pro,

00:07:09 ◼   ► it'll probably still be just as fast,

00:07:10 ◼   ► and then at the end, you just sort of trade it back in

00:07:14 ◼   ► and get a new one.

00:07:15 ◼   ► You know, I'm not totally sure on that,

00:07:17 ◼   ► and as I investigate, I'm sure I'll mention it on the show.

00:07:20 ◼   ► But it's kind of an interesting dynamic with a Mac Pro,

00:07:22 ◼   ► that it becomes a tool that you use forever.

00:07:25 ◼   ► It's kind of like buying a really good drill or a really good hammer.

00:07:29 ◼   ► It's something that's going to last a long time that you can kind of develop

00:07:32 ◼   ► and hone to exactly how you like it and not feel like, oh, gosh,

00:07:36 ◼   ► I'm going to have to get a new computer soon.

00:07:38 ◼   ► This one is just so slow.

00:07:39 ◼   ► I just can't keep up.

00:07:40 ◼   ► As technology and software demands increase,

00:07:43 ◼   ► your computer has such a latent amount of capacity

00:07:46 ◼   ► that it's just not even nearly tapping into.

00:07:49 ◼   ► The next thing that I love about the Mac Pro-- and this is sort

00:07:52 ◼   ► of the complete opposite of almost every other Mac--

00:07:55 ◼   ► is that you can actually upgrade it, fix it, and tweak things

00:07:59 ◼   ► inside of it yourself.

00:08:01 ◼   ► I have a 27-inch iMac.

00:08:04 ◼   ► There is almost nothing I can do to that

00:08:06 ◼   ► except upgrade the memory myself.

00:08:09 ◼   ► Because everything else, the first step

00:08:11 ◼   ► is take two suction cups and remove the glass screen

00:08:15 ◼   ► from the display.

00:08:16 ◼   ► And I don't know about you, but my nerves couldn't--

00:08:18 ◼   ► there's no way my nerves could take something like that.

00:08:21 ◼   ► Pulling this giant 27-inch glass display off

00:08:24 ◼   ► of a computer that if I drop damage, get dirt into whatever,

00:08:28 ◼   ► it's going to drive me nuts forever.

00:08:31 ◼   ► That's just never going to happen.

00:08:33 ◼   ► As Mac Pro, it's designed for this.

00:08:35 ◼   ► I mean, at least the current generation,

00:08:36 ◼   ► there's a little thing that you flip over and side pops off.

00:08:40 ◼   ► You want to take this out.

00:08:41 ◼   ► You pull this over here.

00:08:42 ◼   ► It is designed for upgradeability,

00:08:46 ◼   ► for maintainability, all these things.

00:08:48 ◼   ► If I lose a hard drive dies in my iMac, all right,

00:08:52 ◼   ► well i'm off to the map i'm off to the apple store i'm gonna have to like this

00:08:56 ◼   ► twenty seven inches play in the middle of this whole big

00:08:58 ◼   ► so song and dance

00:09:00 ◼   ► mac pro pop aside over in

00:09:02 ◼   ► you know popping you went in

00:09:03 ◼   ► you're good to go

00:09:04 ◼   ► which is even just great for me personally the perspective of

00:09:08 ◼   ► productivity that is very unlikely that my mac pro would die in a way

00:09:11 ◼   ► that i'd be unable to use as opposed to hard drive if that hard drive goes no

00:09:15 ◼   ► problem video cargo is probably no problem

00:09:17 ◼   ► if this is the c_p_u_ install that goes in the office to get to apple store but

00:09:21 ◼   ► generally most of the upgrades that you can, or the fixes that you can do, you could just

00:09:25 ◼   ► do yourself. And that's awesome. And that's something that you just can't get on another

00:09:29 ◼   ► computer. I mean, it's kind of crazy when you look at, um, Macbook Pro is probably the

00:09:34 ◼   ► only one that you can do close to that, where you can kind of take the bottom off and change

00:09:38 ◼   ► the hard drive and a few other components. Macbook Airs, I mean, they're just basically

00:09:42 ◼   ► a sealed box. There's nothing really you can do to fix it. You take it to the Apple Store,

00:09:47 ◼   ► they're going to have to be dealing with it. Which isn't necessarily, you know, a killer

00:09:50 ◼   ► if you get AppleCare and it's fine, but still, I love that I can fix something if it goes

00:09:56 ◼   ► wrong and also, you know, I want to add a new hard drive, boom, just put it in. Want

00:10:00 ◼   ► a new video card, boom, just put it in. You know, it's not this crazy thing that is going

00:10:04 ◼   ► to be avoiding my warranty and doing all kinds of horrific things. The other thing I like

00:10:09 ◼   ► about the Mac Pro, which is related to that, is I don't have to cover my computer with,

00:10:14 ◼   ► or my desk with cables. I don't need all these crazy things that I need plugged into my current

00:10:20 ◼   ► iMac because I can put a lot of stuff in the computer, so external hard drives and stuff

00:10:28 ◼   ► that I need currently because of the internal capacity isn't enough, I can just put those

00:10:32 ◼   ► inside.

00:10:33 ◼   ► And two, even if I have external hard drives and stuff, they're going to be under my desk.

00:10:37 ◼   ► They're going to be in a place that I don't really care as much of the appearance, so

00:10:41 ◼   ► it's just kind of nice from the aesthetics of that that you can never get with any other

00:10:46 ◼   ► computer than probably the Mac Mini.

00:10:49 ◼   ► Mac Mini is a good option.

00:10:50 ◼   ► And in many ways, I've thought about it for a while, if that would be an interesting computer

00:10:55 ◼   ► to get, if, for example, they discontinued the Mac Pro line, which for a while was kind

00:10:59 ◼   ► of the fear.

00:11:00 ◼   ► And I think my next computer, if I had done that, may have actually been a Mac Mini.

00:11:04 ◼   ► It may have just because you have all these other benefits that are similar, but not quite

00:11:07 ◼   ► the same as we've been talking about, especially in terms of the value per cost of a Mac Mini

00:11:14 ◼   ► is pretty good, because they're incredibly inexpensive

00:11:18 ◼   ► for the performance that you get.

00:11:20 ◼   ► The current top of the line has a GeekBand score of about 10,000,

00:11:25 ◼   ► which is comparable to a lot of the other high-end iMacs and MacBook Pros,

00:11:30 ◼   ► but at a cost of sort of an 11-inch MacBook Air.

00:11:35 ◼   ► And then the last thing that I like about the Mac Pro is that it's the best.

00:11:39 ◼   ► And the pursuit of having the best of something is,

00:11:43 ◼   ► you know, it's a good, I think it's a good ideal

00:11:46 ◼   ► in many ways to say that, you know, it's like,

00:11:49 ◼   ► I don't necessarily, I would rather,

00:11:50 ◼   ► I would rather have the best of something

00:11:54 ◼   ► than a lot of mediocre or those types of things.

00:11:57 ◼   ► It is nice and encouraging to me to know that, you know,

00:12:01 ◼   ► I'm not gonna have virus remorse

00:12:03 ◼   ► that I didn't get a good enough computer.

00:12:04 ◼   ► Like, oh man, this project would be so much better

00:12:07 ◼   ► if I had a better computer.

00:12:08 ◼   ► It's nice to know this is the best computer.

00:12:10 ◼   ► If you're running into problems, you're running into problems

00:12:12 ◼   ► because that couldn't be solved with something else.

00:12:15 ◼   ► And so that's kind of reassuring in some ways.

00:12:19 ◼   ► Now, the exact specs and exactly which one I get,

00:12:21 ◼   ► I'll probably talk about on the show later.

00:12:24 ◼   ► But currently, all the rumors and all the speculation

00:12:26 ◼   ► is indicating that a new Mac Pro is going

00:12:28 ◼   ► to be announced on Monday, which I couldn't be happier about.

00:12:31 ◼   ► If you're at Dub-Dub when they announce Mac Pros,

00:12:34 ◼   ► I'll be the one screaming and yelling and jumping up and down.

00:12:36 ◼   ► So that's me.

00:12:38 ◼   ► But otherwise, it's just an exciting thing as a developer

00:12:41 ◼   ► to be thinking about, hey, I'm going to get a new machine.

00:12:43 ◼   ► How am I going to spec it out?

00:12:44 ◼   ► What am I going to do?

00:12:44 ◼   ► Am I going to get-- what kind of solid state drive?

00:12:47 ◼   ► Should I get these crazy PCI Express memory stick storage

00:12:52 ◼   ► units or all kinds of other things?

00:12:54 ◼   ► That's a fun project.

00:12:55 ◼   ► And it's something that I look forward to.

00:12:57 ◼   ► And I think that you just don't get when you're just like, OK,

00:12:58 ◼   ► I'm going to get a Mac Pro.

00:13:00 ◼   ► Or I'm going to get a MacBook Pro.

00:13:01 ◼   ► Or I'm going to get a MacBook Air, especially.

00:13:03 ◼   ► It's like you have three boxes to check

00:13:06 ◼   ► to decide what CPU, what memory, what hard drive size. That's it.

00:13:09 ◼   ► That's not fun. I mean, I'm remembering back in the day when I used to build my own computers.

00:13:12 ◼   ► And I'm really glad I don't have to do that anymore. That was a bit of a pain.

00:13:16 ◼   ► But I do look forward to kind of having a lot more options for how I configure it,

00:13:19 ◼   ► for how I play with it, and that allows me to tune it

00:13:22 ◼   ► to exactly what I want. You know, I don't necessarily need

00:13:26 ◼   ► massive fast... I need, like, slow,

00:13:29 ◼   ► huge storage and fast, small storage, because

00:13:33 ◼   ► I have a small working set of stuff that I use, and then I have a lot of archives, and a lot of backups, and all these other things that I need,

00:13:39 ◼   ► that I can kind of tune and configure my computer towards in a way that you just can't really do otherwise.

00:13:43 ◼   ► You know, most other Macs have a single hard drive, for example.

00:13:46 ◼   ► It's like, okay, well, you're just going to want that to be pretty fast then, because that's all you got.

00:13:51 ◼   ► But anyway, so those are my thoughts.

00:13:53 ◼   ► Like I said, I hope the Mac Pros come out.

00:13:55 ◼   ► Definitely recommend it, or at least looking at it if you're a developer, and even if you can't afford, like, a top-of-the-line one,

00:14:00 ◼   ► affording any of them. I mean, they are even getting an old one. Like I was saying, the

00:14:04 ◼   ► current fastest computers that you can buy are old Mac Pros. So pick up a Mac Pro from

00:14:10 ◼   ► a developer who's upgrading and you probably won't be disappointed.

00:14:14 ◼   ► Alright, that's it for today's show. As always, if you have questions, comments, concerns,

00:14:18 ◼   ► hit me up on Twitter. I'm @_DavidSmith. The Twitter feed for this podcast is @devperspective.

00:14:25 ◼   ► And otherwise, I hope you have a good week. Happy coding, and I will talk to you soon.