Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 326.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by DoorDash, Pingdom, SaneBox and Remote Works.

00:00:20 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Hello, Myke Hurley. Ah, what a week.

00:00:26 ◼   ► We have a monumental, historical, groundbreaking episode of Upgrade today.

00:00:32 ◼   ► Product reviews, interviews, so much more.

00:00:36 ◼   ► We have a ton to get to. It is going to be a fantastic episode ahead.

00:00:41 ◼   ► But we must start, as we will every episode of Upgrade,

00:00:45 ◼   ► of a Snell Talk question sent in by an Upgrading.

00:00:48 ◼   ► And this time we'll choose Marlies, who asks, "Jason, what's your favorite mini?

00:00:52 ◼   ► iPad mini? iPhone mini? Mac mini? HomePod mini?

00:00:55 ◼   ► What's your favorite mini?"

00:00:56 ◼   ► Well, what I want to say to be super cool is to say the iPod mini. Remember that?

00:01:02 ◼   ► Ah, yes, yes. I think that would be mine.

00:01:05 ◼   ► But it's the Mac mini. It's the Mac mini is mine.

00:01:08 ◼   ► Because I've had a Mac mini in my house as a server since the first Mac mini.

00:01:14 ◼   ► I'm on my fourth now, third or fourth.

00:01:19 ◼   ► I mean, and it's been like 15 plus years since, it's been more than that actually.

00:01:23 ◼   ► So it's been like almost 20 years since the Mac mini first came out.

00:01:25 ◼   ► So it's, yeah, that's got to be my answer.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Because I have had a Mac mini chugging away, doing stuff in my house since the very beginning.

00:01:36 ◼   ► And so I think it has to be my favorite because it's been the longest, longest serving.

00:01:42 ◼   ► Mine is iPod mini because my pink iPod mini that I had was my entry into the Apple ecosystem.

00:01:51 ◼   ► That was my first Apple product.

00:01:53 ◼   ► I love those colors. I love the iPod mini. It was great. We had one. Loved it.

00:01:58 ◼   ► So thank you so much to Marleis for that question. That was a good one.

00:02:01 ◼   ► You can send in a question to help us open an episode of Upgrade.

00:02:05 ◼   ► All you have to do is send out a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade

00:02:09 ◼   ► or just use the command ?AskUpgrade in the Relay FM members Discord.

00:02:14 ◼   ► So we do have a lot to cover this week.

00:02:15 ◼   ► One thing we're not going to be covering is macOS Big Sur.

00:02:20 ◼   ► Love you macOS, but we don't have the time for you today.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Plus, the other thing is, Jason, I've not used it.

00:02:26 ◼   ► But I have my MacBook Pro coming this week, my M1 MacBook Pro, which has Big Sur on it.

00:02:31 ◼   ► So that's going to be my first usage of Big Sur.

00:02:35 ◼   ► I mean, I put Big Sur on a 16 inch MacBook Pro review unit I had.

00:02:41 ◼   ► But this was like beta one and I got to use it for about two weeks before I had to send it back again.

00:02:48 ◼   ► And, you know, the quiz I spoke about in a bunch of places,

00:02:52 ◼   ► Big Sur has been shaky for some types of applications.

00:02:55 ◼   ► Audio applications is one of them.

00:02:57 ◼   ► So I wasn't going to put it on any of my recording machines.

00:03:01 ◼   ► But my M1 Mac ships with it.

00:03:03 ◼   ► So we'll talk about Big Sur in a little more detail on next week's episode.

00:03:08 ◼   ► Right.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Now, one thing we do definitely must have to cover today is our iPhone,

00:03:15 ◼   ► the remaining iPhone reviews that we need to get to.

00:03:18 ◼   ► Yes.

00:03:18 ◼   ► So you've had the iPhone mini and the iPhone Max for...

00:03:23 ◼   ► I do.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Nearly two weeks.

00:03:25 ◼   ► But of course, there's been so much going on.

00:03:27 ◼   ► I don't think you've actually...

00:03:29 ◼   ► When we spoke about it, you haven't written a review.

00:03:32 ◼   ► I don't know if you're going to write a review.

00:03:33 ◼   ► When did I get the...

00:03:35 ◼   ► I don't actually...

00:03:36 ◼   ► It would have been last...

00:03:38 ◼   ► No.

00:03:38 ◼   ► Last Monday?

00:03:40 ◼   ► Something like that.

00:03:41 ◼   ► The day before the Apple event.

00:03:43 ◼   ► So, yeah, so a little over a week.

00:03:47 ◼   ► Yep.

00:03:48 ◼   ► I got them right here.

00:03:49 ◼   ► Now, obviously, I've had my Pro Max since last Friday,

00:03:54 ◼   ► and I have a lot of thoughts on it.

00:03:56 ◼   ► And so I think really to cover these,

00:03:59 ◼   ► I think we should probably both take one of them

00:04:01 ◼   ► because the mini is more of the phone for you.

00:04:04 ◼   ► The Max is more of the phone for me.

00:04:06 ◼   ► The Pro Max is not a phone for you, right?

00:04:09 ◼   ► Like, especially this one.

00:04:11 ◼   ► So I want to get your thoughts on the iPhone 12 mini.

00:04:16 ◼   ► Really, the question to ask is, what do you think of the size?

00:04:19 ◼   ► Is this the right size for you,

00:04:21 ◼   ► or has the ship sailed for you at this point?

00:04:24 ◼   ► Well, I love the size of it.

00:04:26 ◼   ► I'm really loving the iPhone 12.

00:04:30 ◼   ► I think...

00:04:33 ◼   ► It's hard to say.

00:04:34 ◼   ► I think I'm right on the edge,

00:04:37 ◼   ► where I see the benefit of both of them,

00:04:41 ◼   ► and I'm not sure which way I would lean at this point.

00:04:48 ◼   ► But, you know, I don't use my iPhone

00:04:52 ◼   ► as much as a lot of people do because I never leave the house,

00:04:56 ◼   ► although a lot of people don't do that now,

00:04:58 ◼   ► but I never did, and I still don't.

00:05:03 ◼   ► The iPhone 12 mini has appeal to me

00:05:06 ◼   ► because, first off, I like the 12.

00:05:08 ◼   ► I don't feel like the 12 Pro would be for me anyway.

00:05:12 ◼   ► It has additional features, but I prefer the feel of the 12,

00:05:16 ◼   ► and the 12 is cheaper. It's a better buy.

00:05:19 ◼   ► The mini is cheaper still, and it's delightful, right?

00:05:23 ◼   ► Like, it feels like an iPhone 5, kind of,

00:05:25 ◼   ► even though it's slightly larger than that.

00:05:27 ◼   ► It actually is so small that I can put my finger up on the top

00:05:32 ◼   ► where the on/off button used to be,

00:05:37 ◼   ► that they had to move to the side because it was too far up.

00:05:40 ◼   ► You can actually reach that part now.

00:05:43 ◼   ► So I guess what I'm saying is anybody who's had pause

00:05:47 ◼   ► about the size of the iPhone and has fought that

00:05:50 ◼   ► and has avoided buying iPhones

00:05:55 ◼   ► and always tried to find the smaller iPhone

00:05:57 ◼   ► and choose that one, this is the phone for you.

00:06:02 ◼   ► Like, if you've ever questioned the size of the iPhone,

00:06:04 ◼   ► this is the phone for you because it's good.

00:06:06 ◼   ► It's fast. It feels great to hold in your hand,

00:06:09 ◼   ► and it is much smaller than any iPhone

00:06:14 ◼   ► Apple is ever going to make.

00:06:16 ◼   ► Like, this is it. If you want it, this is it.

00:06:19 ◼   ► Yeah, so I would seriously consider buying one,

00:06:24 ◼   ► you know, for my own use,

00:06:27 ◼   ► but I would also seriously consider the regular 12

00:06:30 ◼   ► just because it is, you know, I'm kind of used to that size now.

00:06:34 ◼   ► It doesn't feel oppressively big.

00:06:36 ◼   ► I'm not putting it in a case,

00:06:38 ◼   ► which makes it feel a little bit smaller,

00:06:42 ◼   ► but, you know, it's totally usable,

00:06:43 ◼   ► and actually for people who are concerned

00:06:45 ◼   ► because the way the 12 screen works,

00:06:46 ◼   ► the 12 mini screen is a shrunken-down version

00:06:48 ◼   ► of the 12 screen.

00:06:50 ◼   ► It's actually scaled down,

00:06:51 ◼   ► so everything's a little bit smaller,

00:06:53 ◼   ► and if you're somebody who has, like, issues with your vision,

00:06:57 ◼   ► reading small things, that's not great,

00:07:00 ◼   ► although I will say there's a scaling mode in the mini

00:07:04 ◼   ► that makes everything bigger,

00:07:07 ◼   ► and it's still quite usable in that form.

00:07:11 ◼   ► The only limitation I would mention is I think some apps

00:07:15 ◼   ► are not prepared for that size of screen.

00:07:19 ◼   ► Some of them work better than others

00:07:20 ◼   ► at that smaller screen size,

00:07:23 ◼   ► because then it's using, like, the real smaller screen resolution

00:07:29 ◼   ► as opposed to just using the iPhone X resolution,

00:07:32 ◼   ► but in general, like, it's just an iPhone 12 except smaller.

00:07:38 ◼   ► It's really nice, so for now, that's sort of my review of it,

00:07:43 ◼   ► is it's the iPhone 12 for people who look at the 12 or the 10

00:07:48 ◼   ► or even the 6, 7, 8 and think, "It's bigger than I'd like."

00:07:53 ◼   ► Like, literally, if you've ever given, you know, some pause

00:07:57 ◼   ► or changed your buying patterns

00:07:59 ◼   ► because you're concerned about the size,

00:08:02 ◼   ► I think this is the phone for you.

00:08:05 ◼   ► -I feel like maybe if this was always a product,

00:08:09 ◼   ► it would have been likely

00:08:11 ◼   ► where you would have gravitated to naturally.

00:08:16 ◼   ► -I think probably so.

00:08:18 ◼   ► I mean, I wasn't thrilled at the size increase in the 6.

00:08:22 ◼   ► I wasn't thrilled with the size increase in the 10,

00:08:24 ◼   ► although it was subtle, so I got used to it,

00:08:27 ◼   ► but I'm not one of those people like you, for example,

00:08:30 ◼   ► who says, "Bigger screen," and so many people are like,

00:08:33 ◼   ► "Bigger screen. Give me more. I want more,"

00:08:35 ◼   ► and with my phone, I think I want less.

00:08:39 ◼   ► I want to have a phone, and I want to be able to look at it

00:08:41 ◼   ► and see what's going on in the world,

00:08:43 ◼   ► but I also don't feel the need on my phone

00:08:46 ◼   ► to have an expansive -- I just don't use my phone that way.

00:08:50 ◼   ► I'm going to use an iPad or a Mac or a TV for that.

00:08:54 ◼   ► I'm not going to be completely kind of engaged

00:08:57 ◼   ► in the content on my phone.

00:08:59 ◼   ► My phone is more utilitarian than that.

00:09:01 ◼   ► That's just sort of how I treat it.

00:09:03 ◼   ► -It's kind of intriguing to me

00:09:05 ◼   ► that Apple decided to make this phone now.

00:09:08 ◼   ► It's like, why now?

00:09:11 ◼   ► -I don't know. Maybe they always wanted to,

00:09:16 ◼   ► and it was just a matter of sort of their timing.

00:09:18 ◼   ► They were experimenting with lots of things.

00:09:20 ◼   ► They had to do the OLED transition with the iPhone X,

00:09:23 ◼   ► and then they wanted to do that other class of phone

00:09:25 ◼   ► with the XR the next year.

00:09:29 ◼   ► Maybe it just really was that it was always on their list,

00:09:35 ◼   ► and now is the time when they finally were able to do it.

00:09:41 ◼   ► -Yeah, it's just intriguing.

00:09:42 ◼   ► I'm going to be -- I have my eye on this.

00:09:46 ◼   ► There's been outlier phones, right?

00:09:49 ◼   ► So many outlier phones.

00:09:51 ◼   ► You look at something like the 5C into 10R.

00:09:54 ◼   ► These phones that are one and done,

00:09:56 ◼   ► so they're kind of peculiar things.

00:09:59 ◼   ► Even the SE to some degree,

00:10:01 ◼   ► whilst they've done another one of them,

00:10:05 ◼   ► they've both been very different.

00:10:07 ◼   ► The original SE to this SE is a very different product.

00:10:10 ◼   ► -They're recycled old products is what it is, right?

00:10:13 ◼   ► They're recycled old products,

00:10:14 ◼   ► and the 10R became the 11, essentially.

00:10:17 ◼   ► So that was a product transition,

00:10:20 ◼   ► but that product has kind of disappeared now,

00:10:23 ◼   ► and we're left with -- because we don't have an 11 Max

00:10:26 ◼   ► or something that's a little bit bigger.

00:10:28 ◼   ► -No. -But the Mini really does --

00:10:32 ◼   ► Honestly, it feels like the return of the iPhone SE 1

00:10:36 ◼   ► or really the return of the iPhone 5, essentially.

00:10:39 ◼   ► It's an iPhone 5.

00:10:40 ◼   ► I know it's not quite the same size.

00:10:42 ◼   ► I have an iPhone 5. I pulled it out.

00:10:45 ◼   ► It is smaller than this, but not much.

00:10:49 ◼   ► And they look the same because they've got the flat sides.

00:10:52 ◼   ► It's just -- I think it's remarkable

00:10:55 ◼   ► because there were a lot of us who figured Apple

00:10:57 ◼   ► was never gonna go back there, right?

00:10:58 ◼   ► Like, it's over. Just get used to it.

00:11:01 ◼   ► And I wonder to what extent the iPhone Mini exists

00:11:05 ◼   ► because Apple did keep hearing from people

00:11:08 ◼   ► that there was this category,

00:11:11 ◼   ► this subcategory of iPhone users who just didn't want a big phone.

00:11:16 ◼   ► And at some point, they decided, well, we need --

00:11:20 ◼   ► I think the source of this is that as iPhone sales stalled,

00:11:24 ◼   ► Apple realized the way that you continue to grow the iPhone

00:11:28 ◼   ► is by offering more models with more variations

00:11:32 ◼   ► so that you can focus on some new sort of sweet spots

00:11:36 ◼   ► and spread out the different slots that you're using.

00:11:39 ◼   ► And obviously, that's four new phones, right?

00:11:41 ◼   ► -You can try and find the edges and cater to the edges

00:11:46 ◼   ► a little bit more, maybe. -Yeah.

00:11:48 ◼   ► -Also, the SE has done so well for them.

00:11:51 ◼   ► I mean, the thing about the SE --

00:11:53 ◼   ► You know, 'cause Tim, in the earnings schools,

00:11:55 ◼   ► they always talk very highly about the SE,

00:11:57 ◼   ► about, you know, like, I think maybe the original one,

00:11:59 ◼   ► at least I remember them saying,

00:12:01 ◼   ► like, it vastly outperformed their expectation.

00:12:04 ◼   ► But the question on that, which I think it's hard to answer,

00:12:08 ◼   ► I don't think we can answer it,

00:12:09 ◼   ► is, like, what is the appetite for the SE?

00:12:11 ◼   ► Is it I want a small iPhone or I want a cheap iPhone?

00:12:15 ◼   ► Because the Mini is not a cheap iPhone, right?

00:12:18 ◼   ► Like, the Mini is the start of the line.

00:12:21 ◼   ► But it's the cheapest of the modern iPhones.

00:12:26 ◼   ► So it is still a little bit both,

00:12:28 ◼   ► but it's also not, like, dirt cheap or anything like that.

00:12:31 ◼   ► -Yeah, cheapest is something cheap.

00:12:32 ◼   ► -It'll be interesting to see.

00:12:34 ◼   ► I think Apple has underestimated the SE,

00:12:36 ◼   ► and I think maybe Apple learned the lesson

00:12:40 ◼   ► of the success of big Android phones a little too well.

00:12:44 ◼   ► Like, they learned it and they integrated it,

00:12:47 ◼   ► and they had great success with larger phones.

00:12:50 ◼   ► And maybe they just kept driving on the larger phone for a while

00:12:54 ◼   ► because it's like, as long as this is working for us,

00:12:56 ◼   ► let's keep doing it.

00:12:57 ◼   ► And maybe now have realized that although that drive --

00:13:00 ◼   ► because here's the thing, it's not like that drive was wrong.

00:13:03 ◼   ► People do love big phones.

00:13:04 ◼   ► Not everybody.

00:13:06 ◼   ► And those people out there who don't love them

00:13:08 ◼   ► are gonna roll their eyes at this.

00:13:09 ◼   ► But it's like you can't argue with the sales.

00:13:11 ◼   ► People love big phones.

00:13:12 ◼   ► The moment Apple made a bigger iPhone,

00:13:15 ◼   ► iPhone sales shot up, like, dramatically.

00:13:18 ◼   ► People -- and we saw it with Samsung

00:13:20 ◼   ► and other Android phone makers, big phones.

00:13:22 ◼   ► There are a lot of people who just want a big phone.

00:13:24 ◼   ► And so they made the right decision to go in that direction.

00:13:27 ◼   ► But you've got to wonder if maybe at some point

00:13:31 ◼   ► after that started to cool a little bit,

00:13:33 ◼   ► they realized that there is also a section of the market

00:13:36 ◼   ► that doesn't like the big phone.

00:13:38 ◼   ► And so making something that is a little more in tune with them

00:13:41 ◼   ► gives them another piece of the market

00:13:43 ◼   ► that maybe they were ignoring.

00:13:44 ◼   ► And when you're trying to get every last sale

00:13:47 ◼   ► out of the iPhone, which remember,

00:13:49 ◼   ► up until a couple of years ago,

00:13:52 ◼   ► Apple wasn't even trying very hard with the iPhone.

00:13:54 ◼   ► It did so well that Apple didn't really need even --

00:13:57 ◼   ► they didn't try very hard in the stores.

00:13:59 ◼   ► They weren't marketing the iPhone

00:14:01 ◼   ► because it sold itself in huge quantities.

00:14:04 ◼   ► And then their sales fell off a cliff, and they're like,

00:14:06 ◼   ► "Oh, we need to work on sales with the iPhone."

00:14:10 ◼   ► And then maybe in that era, they're like,

00:14:12 ◼   ► "What are we missing here?"

00:14:13 ◼   ► And they looked at the size and said,

00:14:15 ◼   ► "That's a place where we can attack that corner of the market

00:14:19 ◼   ► that seems dissatisfied with what we're doing."

00:14:21 ◼   ► -There's one question I did have,

00:14:23 ◼   ► 'cause I actually had quite a few people

00:14:24 ◼   ► write in to ask this.

00:14:26 ◼   ► How does it feel to type on for you?

00:14:31 ◼   ► -It's more cramped to type on, for sure,

00:14:33 ◼   ► although I never really have felt super comfortable

00:14:37 ◼   ► with typing on the iPhone X either.

00:14:41 ◼   ► I mean, it's still not great.

00:14:43 ◼   ► It's still not a huge expanse to type on,

00:14:45 ◼   ► and you've got to wrestle with autocorrect.

00:14:47 ◼   ► In fact, I can maybe make the argument

00:14:49 ◼   ► that it's small enough that it might be more conducive

00:14:53 ◼   ► to leaning into the autocorrect

00:14:55 ◼   ► 'cause you're just not gonna be precise

00:14:57 ◼   ► on such a small keyboard.

00:14:58 ◼   ► But in the end, all I can say is in my use,

00:15:01 ◼   ► which is it's gonna differ for everybody,

00:15:04 ◼   ► I thought it was fine to type on.

00:15:08 ◼   ► I had my frustrations,

00:15:10 ◼   ► but I had my frustrations typing on an iPhone, period.

00:15:13 ◼   ► So I don't think it was any more frustrating than it would be.

00:15:17 ◼   ► And, of course, for those who haven't used a big iPhone

00:15:21 ◼   ► in a while, the iPhone 5,

00:15:26 ◼   ► there was no swipe typing on the iPhone 5.

00:15:28 ◼   ► It might actually be a better experience now, right,

00:15:30 ◼   ► because you don't have to tap.

00:15:32 ◼   ► You could also swipe if you want to get words out that way.

00:15:35 ◼   ► So there's other options now.

00:15:36 ◼   ► But it was, for me, not a big difference

00:15:40 ◼   ► in that it was sort of equally frustrating

00:15:43 ◼   ► to typing on a regular iPhone.

00:15:45 ◼   ► But everybody's mileage might vary.

00:15:47 ◼   ► It is a smaller keyboard, for sure.

00:15:49 ◼   ► -Okay.

00:15:50 ◼   ► Can I talk about the Pro Max now?

00:15:52 ◼   ► -Yeah, let me -- I have one thing to say about it

00:15:55 ◼   ► before I hand it over to you,

00:15:56 ◼   ► which is I got this thing last Monday.

00:16:00 ◼   ► And the first thing I did -- like, the first thing I did,

00:16:03 ◼   ► I picked it up, I looked at it, I held it in my hand,

00:16:06 ◼   ► and then I went to Slack to a direct message to Myke Hurley,

00:16:10 ◼   ► and I said, "You are going to love this."

00:16:14 ◼   ► And the reason I said that is not only is it --

00:16:16 ◼   ► I've got the gold model, it's pretty, it's shiny.

00:16:21 ◼   ► But I picked it up, and the way it feels, it feels solid.

00:16:25 ◼   ► It is heavy, it is huge, but it is like a gold bar, Myke.

00:16:30 ◼   ► It's just like -- there's something really pleasing

00:16:35 ◼   ► about the density of this thing

00:16:38 ◼   ► and the uniformity of the density of this thing.

00:16:41 ◼   ► It's so big that I feel like I can just --

00:16:43 ◼   ► like, my hand doesn't just hold it,

00:16:45 ◼   ► but it kind of, like, wraps around itself,

00:16:48 ◼   ► and, you know, the fingers are against the back.

00:16:50 ◼   ► Like, it's so large that I feel like I can hold it in two hands.

00:16:54 ◼   ► And I don't know how to put it.

00:16:58 ◼   ► And that's why I sent you that message,

00:16:59 ◼   ► is because I feel like if you're going to make a big phone,

00:17:04 ◼   ► just embrace it. Like, make a big phone.

00:17:07 ◼   ► Don't go halfway and be like, "Well, it's larger,

00:17:10 ◼   ► but we don't want to push it too far."

00:17:11 ◼   ► It's like, push it.

00:17:13 ◼   ► Make it a big slab of a phone with extra cameras,

00:17:17 ◼   ► like, extra zoom.

00:17:18 ◼   ► Do all of those things if you're going to do it.

00:17:21 ◼   ► And that's what -- in my mind, that's what the Pro Max is,

00:17:23 ◼   ► is that, like, more than any large iPhone ever,

00:17:27 ◼   ► Apple has just embraced, it's huge.

00:17:29 ◼   ► Like, you wanted a huge phone, and there is none more huge.

00:17:35 ◼   ► So the phrase that has kept popping into my head --

00:17:40 ◼   ► so I do have the Gold Pro Max.

00:17:44 ◼   ► This is the ultimate iPhone.

00:17:47 ◼   ► I'm not saying that my iPhone is better than yours,

00:17:51 ◼   ► but, like, this iPhone, it is everything an iPhone

00:17:54 ◼   ► has ever had and more of it.

00:17:56 ◼   ► It feels like the most iPhone there has ever been.

00:18:01 ◼   ► So ever since the original iPhone,

00:18:05 ◼   ► I have always been the kind of person to plan and save money

00:18:09 ◼   ► to make sure I buy the new phone every year,

00:18:11 ◼   ► like so many of our listeners, right?

00:18:14 ◼   ► Because I want the new phone.

00:18:15 ◼   ► I always want the new phone.

00:18:17 ◼   ► If I was living a completely different life

00:18:20 ◼   ► where I was not a technology podcaster as a living,

00:18:25 ◼   ► I would still get the new iPhone every year

00:18:27 ◼   ► because it's what I did before, right?

00:18:29 ◼   ► This is just one of the ways that I chose to spend money

00:18:32 ◼   ► in my life to either buy it or be on some kind of phone contract

00:18:36 ◼   ► that would make sure that I get it.

00:18:37 ◼   ► You know, like, I would probably be on the iPhone upgrade program.

00:18:40 ◼   ► That's probably what I would have chosen to do.

00:18:44 ◼   ► So for me, this phone, if it had nothing but the new design,

00:18:51 ◼   ► I would be completely happy.

00:18:53 ◼   ► The new design is, in my opinion,

00:18:57 ◼   ► the very best thing about this phone.

00:19:00 ◼   ► And I think that that might be the same for the whole line.

00:19:03 ◼   ► It's kind of strange because I feel like for the last few weeks,

00:19:08 ◼   ► I have overlooked it, the new design,

00:19:11 ◼   ► because it was an inevitability.

00:19:13 ◼   ► We all knew it was going to be the case,

00:19:15 ◼   ► that it was going to have these flat sides.

00:19:17 ◼   ► And I kind of just didn't really think about it.

00:19:20 ◼   ► I heard a bunch of people say, you know, like, you've said it.

00:19:22 ◼   ► I heard every review that I've listened to said it's like,

00:19:25 ◼   ► it changes the way that it feels to hold.

00:19:27 ◼   ► Some people like it, some people don't.

00:19:30 ◼   ► But for me, I absolutely adore it.

00:19:34 ◼   ► So I think this is definitely enhanced by the fact

00:19:38 ◼   ► that I have the flashiest one, which is the gold one.

00:19:41 ◼   ► So I feel like I am visually more aware of it.

00:19:45 ◼   ► Like, if I look at my phone face on,

00:19:48 ◼   ► I still see a hint of gold around the edge.

00:19:51 ◼   ► And I feel like maybe on some of the other phones,

00:19:54 ◼   ► especially the darker ones,

00:19:55 ◼   ► you maybe wouldn't see that so much,

00:19:57 ◼   ► but I can always see a glimpse of the gold.

00:20:00 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, it's there.

00:20:02 ◼   ► Like, I'm looking at this one and it's that same thing,

00:20:04 ◼   ► which is when you're looking at it from the front,

00:20:06 ◼   ► there is no mistaking.

00:20:07 ◼   ► - No.

00:20:08 ◼   ► - Even when it's just in your hand

00:20:10 ◼   ► and you're looking at the screen,

00:20:11 ◼   ► there's no mistaking that it's gold.

00:20:13 ◼   ► - And I think that it makes it not only feel great,

00:20:17 ◼   ► but it feels luxurious.

00:20:19 ◼   ► Like, honestly, I know this phone is so expensive,

00:20:22 ◼   ► but it feels like it's more,

00:20:24 ◼   ► it should be more expensive than it is.

00:20:26 ◼   ► This feels like a luxury product.

00:20:28 ◼   ► This is the kind of look that you have seen companies

00:20:32 ◼   ► mod phones and sell them for $10,000

00:20:36 ◼   ► for the last few years, right?

00:20:37 ◼   ► Like you'll see it on YouTube, right?

00:20:39 ◼   ► Like some YouTuber will get sent

00:20:40 ◼   ► like a 24 karat plated gold iPhone.

00:20:43 ◼   ► And it's like, there's 10 of them.

00:20:44 ◼   ► And you know, that's what this phone looks like.

00:20:47 ◼   ► It is your call as to whether you want that.

00:20:50 ◼   ► I do, right?

00:20:51 ◼   ► And I think that this phone is stunning,

00:20:54 ◼   ► but irrespective of the look,

00:20:57 ◼   ► this is the best feeling iPhone.

00:21:01 ◼   ► I absolutely love how this phone feels in my hand.

00:21:05 ◼   ► It feels so much more usable than some of,

00:21:09 ◼   ► like from a sense of being able to grip it.

00:21:11 ◼   ► I feel like I can hold it much easier than before.

00:21:15 ◼   ► And even though this phone, I know it's physically bigger,

00:21:19 ◼   ► it feels just as usable to me.

00:21:21 ◼   ► I don't feel like I'm struggling with this phone.

00:21:25 ◼   ► And I picked up my 11 Pro Max yesterday

00:21:27 ◼   ► and it felt small already, which is hilarious.

00:21:30 ◼   ► But I genuinely, like you said, I'm not kidding.

00:21:32 ◼   ► I picked it up and I thought that I picked up

00:21:34 ◼   ► a Dinos old 11.

00:21:35 ◼   ► It like took me a minute.

00:21:37 ◼   ► I was like, oh no, that's mine.

00:21:39 ◼   ► The camera bump is absolutely ginormous on this.

00:21:44 ◼   ► Like it is astronomically large.

00:21:48 ◼   ► You cannot conceive of it until you've seen it.

00:21:51 ◼   ► I look at it in images and it didn't register to me

00:21:55 ◼   ► that it was bigger, but it is so much bigger.

00:21:57 ◼   ► - It's bigger and deeper too, right?

00:21:59 ◼   ► Like it's not just that the square is big

00:22:02 ◼   ► and the square is big, but also the lenses

00:22:05 ◼   ► are protruding more from the square.

00:22:07 ◼   ► This is what I mean by, if you're gonna do a giant phone,

00:22:11 ◼   ► embrace it, just embrace it.

00:22:14 ◼   ► - But this to me though, is like, it's kind of proven

00:22:16 ◼   ► that the camera differences, they're here to stay again.

00:22:20 ◼   ► Because you couldn't put this on another phone.

00:22:24 ◼   ► It's too big.

00:22:25 ◼   ► So I expect they will find ways to trickle the technology

00:22:29 ◼   ► down once they can get it smaller.

00:22:31 ◼   ► But I think all it's going to mean now

00:22:33 ◼   ► for the foreseeable future is that the Max phone

00:22:37 ◼   ► will have some kind of differences

00:22:39 ◼   ► to the regular size phone in the camera now.

00:22:42 ◼   ► Because they've ripped the bandaid off

00:22:44 ◼   ► and it's massive.

00:22:46 ◼   ► And so they've given themselves the space

00:22:49 ◼   ► and the excuse to do new things with that.

00:22:53 ◼   ► So I expect that too to continue.

00:22:56 ◼   ► So the camera itself, this is a difficult one for me to test.

00:23:01 ◼   ► Because the way that I would usually test out

00:23:04 ◼   ► how good a camera is, is to go out into the world

00:23:07 ◼   ► and take lots of pictures, mostly of architecture.

00:23:09 ◼   ► That's how I like to test the camera.

00:23:12 ◼   ► This is not really something that I'm doing.

00:23:14 ◼   ► I've been taking some photos inside of boring things.

00:23:18 ◼   ► And I can see differences in sharpness, detail and color

00:23:22 ◼   ► with indoor photos.

00:23:24 ◼   ► I can see it, it's there.

00:23:27 ◼   ► The sharpness especially.

00:23:28 ◼   ► Like I take a picture of my office

00:23:31 ◼   ► and I can zoom in and more clearly see text, for example,

00:23:34 ◼   ► on certain images.

00:23:35 ◼   ► And that's great.

00:23:37 ◼   ► But there are, I think, more tangible benefits than those.

00:23:40 ◼   ► So the two biggest benefits that I've felt

00:23:43 ◼   ► with the camera system on the Pro Max,

00:23:45 ◼   ► one is the telephoto.

00:23:48 ◼   ► It's a noticeable difference, the 2.5 over the two.

00:23:51 ◼   ► And I like to have more zoom.

00:23:55 ◼   ► I hope to see Apple do something more aggressive

00:23:57 ◼   ► with this in the future,

00:23:59 ◼   ► but I'm happy to have an increased zoom.

00:24:02 ◼   ► But honestly, my favorite thing is the fact that,

00:24:06 ◼   ► and this is on both Profones, I believe,

00:24:09 ◼   ► it might be on all of them, I don't remember,

00:24:10 ◼   ► maybe you can correct me,

00:24:12 ◼   ► night mode on the front facing camera.

00:24:15 ◼   ► - Night mode on the front facing camera.

00:24:17 ◼   ► - I think it's on all of them.

00:24:18 ◼   ► I think that was part of the A14,

00:24:20 ◼   ► like all the phones got this.

00:24:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's the night mode portrait that's different

00:24:25 ◼   ► and you've got to have the LIDAR scanner for that.

00:24:27 ◼   ► And so it's only the pros.

00:24:28 ◼   ► - But night mode is on all the cameras now.

00:24:32 ◼   ► And night mode, just a one second night mode exposure

00:24:37 ◼   ► on a selfie is night and day different,

00:24:41 ◼   ► like unbelievably different.

00:24:43 ◼   ► Like I will take pictures on my old phone

00:24:46 ◼   ► and select the texture of my skin is just this blurred mush.

00:24:51 ◼   ► Right?

00:24:52 ◼   ► But with a one second night mode exposure,

00:24:55 ◼   ► there's so much more detail in selfies.

00:24:58 ◼   ► And so that is like, I've been testing that out a bunch.

00:25:01 ◼   ► It's like, that is a big difference.

00:25:03 ◼   ► And that kind of thing is something

00:25:05 ◼   ► that you won't see a lot of like,

00:25:09 ◼   ► hi, I'm doing my camera review for you kind of thing,

00:25:12 ◼   ► because it's not really exciting.

00:25:15 ◼   ► But those are the types of differences like that one,

00:25:18 ◼   ► this is a front facing camera.

00:25:19 ◼   ► That's gonna make a bigger difference on people

00:25:21 ◼   ► because people take lots of selfies.

00:25:23 ◼   ► And better selfies indoors is a good thing all the time.

00:25:27 ◼   ► And so that I saw that as like a real cool thing

00:25:31 ◼   ► and a big difference.

00:25:34 ◼   ► But look, the biggest change in the camera system

00:25:38 ◼   ► is the HDR video.

00:25:39 ◼   ► It is fantastic.

00:25:41 ◼   ► It looks so good.

00:25:43 ◼   ► And it's a combination of what the camera can do

00:25:45 ◼   ► and what screens can show.

00:25:46 ◼   ► But video on these phones just looks so gorgeous

00:25:51 ◼   ► because the screen is lit up so well.

00:25:54 ◼   ► And I think it's absolutely fantastic.

00:25:57 ◼   ► So the camera is an interesting one.

00:25:59 ◼   ► And I'm kind of keen to see how it goes.

00:26:04 ◼   ► I mean, everything else, you know,

00:26:06 ◼   ► I don't have a 5G plan,

00:26:07 ◼   ► I have no desire to upgrade to 5G.

00:26:10 ◼   ► A14 and LiDAR, I'm sure will be helpful when I need them.

00:26:14 ◼   ► MagSafe is not a thing that I'm using

00:26:17 ◼   ► because I like to use pop sockets

00:26:18 ◼   ► and there isn't an option there.

00:26:19 ◼   ► So I just have my pop socket on

00:26:21 ◼   ► and I can kind of get it to work,

00:26:24 ◼   ► but like I'm not interested.

00:26:26 ◼   ► I'm excited to try out the Apple Pro Raw

00:26:28 ◼   ► when I was 14.3 ships

00:26:30 ◼   ► and just see like, what can I make this camera system do?

00:26:33 ◼   ► But overall for me, like it is the physical attributes

00:26:37 ◼   ► of this phone that make it what I want.

00:26:41 ◼   ► It is bigger.

00:26:42 ◼   ► I get a little bit more detail,

00:26:43 ◼   ► a little bit more information on the screen, but not a lot.

00:26:45 ◼   ► But it is the overall design

00:26:47 ◼   ► and the way it feels in my hand

00:26:49 ◼   ► and the way it looks when I look at it.

00:26:52 ◼   ► This is without a doubt my favorite iPhone design

00:26:55 ◼   ► of all time.

00:26:57 ◼   ► Like hands down, it is in my opinion,

00:27:00 ◼   ► the best iPhone that they have made.

00:27:02 ◼   ► And I am talking personally,

00:27:04 ◼   ► specifically about this gold Pro Max.

00:27:07 ◼   ► I think the Pro Max is great overall,

00:27:09 ◼   ► but this gold one is amazing.

00:27:12 ◼   ► - So what you're saying is, I was right.

00:27:15 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:27:16 ◼   ► Yep, your instinct was bang on.

00:27:20 ◼   ► And I was worried because when you said that,

00:27:23 ◼   ► my expectations got set really high.

00:27:25 ◼   ► And so I was concerned, right?

00:27:29 ◼   ► That it's like, oh no, am I gonna,

00:27:31 ◼   ► as Jason kind of put that in my brain now,

00:27:34 ◼   ► but no, you were completely right.

00:27:37 ◼   ► I frigging love this phone.

00:27:38 ◼   ► It's fantastic.

00:27:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is.

00:27:41 ◼   ► Like, it's not for me,

00:27:43 ◼   ► but what it is is so,

00:27:47 ◼   ► you know, I've been doing this in the 20 Max for 2020 series.

00:27:53 ◼   ► I've been revisiting a lot of the kind of classic Max

00:27:56 ◼   ► from the early days of Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive.

00:27:59 ◼   ► And there is this thing that they say,

00:28:03 ◼   ► which is a product should be true to itself

00:28:07 ◼   ► and the elements of it should be true to itself.

00:28:08 ◼   ► So in the, what, the G4 iMac with a floating screen,

00:28:13 ◼   ► that was the example they used.

00:28:15 ◼   ► It's like, you want the elements to be true to themselves

00:28:17 ◼   ► and the product needs to live its best life, basically.

00:28:19 ◼   ► It needs to be what it should be, what it needs to be.

00:28:25 ◼   ► And looking at this phone, the 12 Pro Max,

00:28:30 ◼   ► makes me think that as successful as Apple was

00:28:35 ◼   ► with its large phones, with the Plus and then Max models,

00:28:40 ◼   ► that Apple was always a little embarrassed

00:28:44 ◼   ► about having a big phone.

00:28:46 ◼   ► Like, they were always like, well, it's a compromise,

00:28:49 ◼   ► but we'll do it because people want it.

00:28:53 ◼   ► And I'm not saying that those phones were bad.

00:28:55 ◼   ► They weren't, but I felt like Apple,

00:28:58 ◼   ► Apple wants everything to be smaller

00:28:59 ◼   ► and thinner and lighter, and they're like,

00:29:00 ◼   ► okay, bigger phone, like almost apologetic,

00:29:04 ◼   ► or like, how do we mitigate the fact

00:29:06 ◼   ► that this is such a big phone?

00:29:08 ◼   ► And when I started using this Pro Max, the 12 Pro Max,

00:29:11 ◼   ► I thought they have any remaining embarrassment

00:29:16 ◼   ► or limitation has been dropped.

00:29:22 ◼   ► Like, they have fully embraced that it's an enormous phone.

00:29:27 ◼   ► And I know that that sounds, it's almost intangible.

00:29:29 ◼   ► It's like, well, what makes you say that?

00:29:30 ◼   ► And it's like, I don't know, you kinda gotta feel it

00:29:32 ◼   ► and look at it.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Like, they leaned all the way in to making a gigantic,

00:29:37 ◼   ► full-featured, heavy slab of technology,

00:29:41 ◼   ► like as much as they could possibly.

00:29:45 ◼   ► And so I see where you're coming from,

00:29:48 ◼   ► which is if you like a large phone,

00:29:51 ◼   ► this is Apple giving you everything you like about it

00:29:55 ◼   ► to their fullest extent.

00:29:57 ◼   ► So it's not for everybody,

00:29:58 ◼   ► it doesn't have to be for everybody.

00:29:59 ◼   ► But if you like that kind of phone, and I know you do,

00:30:02 ◼   ► they really did a great job with this one.

00:30:04 ◼   ► It is unabashedly an enormous slab of technology,

00:30:09 ◼   ► and that's what it should be.

00:30:13 ◼   ► - This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by SaneBox.

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00:31:10 ◼   ► It really helps to filter out a lot of the email

00:31:13 ◼   ► that I don't need to be in my inbox.

00:31:15 ◼   ► This can be good and bad stuff.

00:31:16 ◼   ► So, you know, there's the SaneLater folder,

00:31:20 ◼   ► which collects up stuff that SaneBox believes

00:31:22 ◼   ► that I don't want to see.

00:31:23 ◼   ► Maybe it's from first-time people

00:31:25 ◼   ► who are contacting me out of the blue, that kind of stuff,

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00:31:29 ◼   ► keeping my inbox focused on the conversations

00:31:32 ◼   ► and the emails that I'm exchanging with people frequently.

00:31:35 ◼   ► But also, SaneNews is where all my newsletters get collected.

00:31:39 ◼   ► You know, I want to read the email newsletters.

00:31:41 ◼   ► That's why I subscribe to them.

00:31:42 ◼   ► But if they're in my inbox,

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00:32:13 ◼   ► Our thanks to SaneBox for their support

00:32:15 ◼   ► of this show and Relay FM.

00:32:17 ◼   ► All right, so now we would like to welcome back to Upgrade,

00:32:20 ◼   ► Tim Millet, Vice President of Platform Architecture,

00:32:23 ◼   ► and Tom Boger, Apple's Senior Director

00:32:25 ◼   ► of Mac and iPad Product Marketing, to Upgrade.

00:32:29 ◼   ► To help you tell their voices apart,

00:32:30 ◼   ► the first question is going to be answered by Tim.

00:32:33 ◼   ► We had the pleasure of being able to sit down

00:32:36 ◼   ► with Tim and Tom a few days ago

00:32:38 ◼   ► to have a great conversation about the new M1 Macs.

00:32:42 ◼   ► Here it is.

00:32:43 ◼   ► Gentlemen, welcome back to Upgrade again.

00:32:46 ◼   ► We're so happy to have you back.

00:32:47 ◼   ► It is great to be back.

00:32:49 ◼   ► So yeah, we got to speak not too long ago about the A14,

00:32:52 ◼   ► but now we have the first Apple Silicon for the Mac,

00:32:55 ◼   ► which is the M1.

00:32:56 ◼   ► The performance gains that we saw in the event

00:32:58 ◼   ► a few days ago, they feel like a real generational shift,

00:33:02 ◼   ► like a huge leap.

00:33:04 ◼   ► And I kind of wanted to know from your perspective

00:33:07 ◼   ► what it's been like to see the M1 chip come together

00:33:10 ◼   ► and how it felt when you first started to see the results

00:33:14 ◼   ► that you were looking for.

00:33:15 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, as you can imagine,

00:33:17 ◼   ► such a great feeling for me, but for my team

00:33:20 ◼   ► and for the broader Silicon development team at Apple,

00:33:22 ◼   ► this was a huge, huge step forward for us.

00:33:25 ◼   ► And we've obviously been seeing the results

00:33:29 ◼   ► in the lab a lot longer.

00:33:30 ◼   ► And so, you know, our excitement has been building

00:33:33 ◼   ► for yesterday for a long time.

00:33:36 ◼   ► And I think we couldn't be happier with how it's executed.

00:33:39 ◼   ► Now, that said, I think really what I have to give credit to

00:33:43 ◼   ► is the full broader engineering teams at Apple,

00:33:46 ◼   ► because we don't build chips to sell chips.

00:33:50 ◼   ► We build systems and we always do it

00:33:52 ◼   ► in an integrated collaborative way across hardware,

00:33:55 ◼   ► software, the industrial design teams,

00:33:57 ◼   ► the product design teams.

00:33:58 ◼   ► And so really it's a celebration from every perspective,

00:34:02 ◼   ► because, you know, in the end, if it comes out and works,

00:34:05 ◼   ► it's because every corner of Apple has participated in it.

00:34:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, and if I could add some color to that,

00:34:12 ◼   ► Tim sees this stuff a lot earlier than we do,

00:34:16 ◼   ► but as we got, you know, prototype systems in our hands

00:34:19 ◼   ► and we started working with him on the product marketing

00:34:23 ◼   ► side, when you first turn one of these systems on

00:34:27 ◼   ► and start using it, you are just blown away.

00:34:31 ◼   ► And you realize that, oh my gosh,

00:34:34 ◼   ► this is gonna be an amazing experience, you know,

00:34:38 ◼   ► from the how snappy and how performant the system is

00:34:43 ◼   ► and how fast apps launch and just everything about it

00:34:47 ◼   ► is incredible.

00:34:49 ◼   ► And then as you're using the system, you start realizing,

00:34:53 ◼   ► my gosh, my battery is not going down.

00:34:56 ◼   ► I mean, the battery life on these systems are insane.

00:34:59 ◼   ► And so we've been using these systems for a while now

00:35:03 ◼   ► and on a daily basis, we're blown away by what they can do.

00:35:07 ◼   ► And you start to get very excited about,

00:35:12 ◼   ► I can't wait to introduce this to the world.

00:35:16 ◼   ► And I can't wait for our customers to get these

00:35:19 ◼   ► in their hands because they're gonna love it.

00:35:21 ◼   ► - You know what happens at the end of the book

00:35:23 ◼   ► and everybody else has to wait.

00:35:24 ◼   ► - Exactly, it's a very good analogy, but we have to,

00:35:27 ◼   ► you know, we have to bite our tongue and wait for our moment

00:35:30 ◼   ► and tell the world all about it.

00:35:33 ◼   ► And then it's really interesting because you,

00:35:37 ◼   ► you know, you keep things under wraps

00:35:39 ◼   ► and you keep things a secret.

00:35:40 ◼   ► And then in an instant, the whole world knows

00:35:43 ◼   ► what you've known and you just feel the excitement

00:35:46 ◼   ► and you get, you know, the text messages

00:35:48 ◼   ► and you see the posting on Twitter and everything.

00:35:52 ◼   ► And it's just incredibly exciting for us.

00:35:54 ◼   ► And, you know, it was such a big moment on Tuesday

00:35:58 ◼   ► for what we announced and it was a huge day for the Mac

00:36:03 ◼   ► and a huge day for Apple.

00:36:05 ◼   ► - So now on the Mac, we are all going to have to change

00:36:09 ◼   ► the way we think of describing Macs and what's in a Mac.

00:36:13 ◼   ► And I'm thinking in particular of how we're so used

00:36:16 ◼   ► to seeing specs when we're looking at Macs about, you know,

00:36:20 ◼   ► it's got the i3 or the i5 or the i7,

00:36:23 ◼   ► or it's got a particular gigahertz clock speed

00:36:27 ◼   ► that's attached to it and all of that.

00:36:28 ◼   ► And one of the things that I think is notable

00:36:31 ◼   ► about the announcement is we got the M1

00:36:35 ◼   ► and that's the story is it's the M1 with a slight variation

00:36:39 ◼   ► on the low end MacBook Air having seven GPU cores

00:36:41 ◼   ► instead of eight, otherwise this is the M1.

00:36:44 ◼   ► So I wanted to ask you directly,

00:36:46 ◼   ► is there truly just one M1?

00:36:49 ◼   ► And if we see speed differences across these systems,

00:36:53 ◼   ► is that mostly due to the thermal envelope,

00:36:56 ◼   ► just as we saw some speed differences between the iPad Air

00:36:59 ◼   ► and the iPhone with the A14?

00:37:02 ◼   ► Yes, there is one M1, that chip.

00:37:06 ◼   ► As you mentioned, there is a variant to it on the MacBook Air

00:37:09 ◼   ► where the 999 config of MacBook Air starts

00:37:12 ◼   ► with a seven core GPU and the 1249 configuration

00:37:16 ◼   ► has an eight core GPU for even more performance.

00:37:19 ◼   ► But it's the same chip from the Air to the Mini to the Pro,

00:37:24 ◼   ► and you will see differences in performance

00:37:26 ◼   ► based on the thermal characteristics of the system.

00:37:29 ◼   ► Now in the MacBook Air, as we talked about in the keynote,

00:37:33 ◼   ► it is incredible the performance that the Air now has

00:37:37 ◼   ► with the M1 chip.

00:37:39 ◼   ► It's the largest generational leap in performance

00:37:42 ◼   ► the Air has ever gotten, three and a half times faster CPU,

00:37:47 ◼   ► five times faster GPU, nine times faster ML performance.

00:37:51 ◼   ► It is crazy how much the performance of the Air

00:37:55 ◼   ► has gotten with M1.

00:37:57 ◼   ► And it literally means that you can do things

00:37:59 ◼   ► you would never think of doing with a MacBook Air.

00:38:03 ◼   ► One of the stories I tell is,

00:38:05 ◼   ► I think your listeners all know

00:38:07 ◼   ► that we have a pro workflow team.

00:38:09 ◼   ► And one of the guys on our pro workflow team,

00:38:11 ◼   ► he's a professional photographer.

00:38:14 ◼   ► And he got one of the MacBook Airs with M1 in it.

00:38:18 ◼   ► And he said, you know what?

00:38:19 ◼   ► I'm gonna just try to move my entire pro workflow onto this,

00:38:23 ◼   ► my photography workflow.

00:38:24 ◼   ► And using things like Lightroom, et cetera.

00:38:28 ◼   ► And he was blown away.

00:38:30 ◼   ► He could take his whole workload, put it on an Air.

00:38:33 ◼   ► And he's one of those photographers that goes out

00:38:36 ◼   ► and shoots on location all the time.

00:38:38 ◼   ► And so now he's gonna bring an Air with him

00:38:41 ◼   ► wherever he goes.

00:38:42 ◼   ► And he is incredibly excited about it.

00:38:44 ◼   ► But when you get to the other part of the product lines,

00:38:48 ◼   ► like Mac mini and the 13 inch MacBook Pro,

00:38:52 ◼   ► they have an active cooling system.

00:38:53 ◼   ► So what you're gonna see is for those demanding workloads

00:38:56 ◼   ► that are more sustained workloads,

00:38:58 ◼   ► workloads that operate over time,

00:39:01 ◼   ► that active cooling system is gonna allow that M1

00:39:04 ◼   ► to just maintain that great performance indefinitely.

00:39:07 ◼   ► And so customers will see the difference there.

00:39:11 ◼   ► But it is profound how much performance

00:39:15 ◼   ► the M1 is bringing to these systems.

00:39:18 ◼   ► And I'm sure we're about to talk about it,

00:39:19 ◼   ► but what's even more profound

00:39:21 ◼   ► is the incredible power efficiency that these systems have

00:39:25 ◼   ► because of M1 at the same time,

00:39:27 ◼   ► they're getting a gigantic increase in performance.

00:39:30 ◼   ► - Right, one of the things that we've been talking about

00:39:33 ◼   ► and speculating about Apple Silicon since WWDC

00:39:36 ◼   ► and before that when we called it our Macs

00:39:39 ◼   ► is this idea of what will Apple choose?

00:39:41 ◼   ► Will Apple choose more performance

00:39:44 ◼   ► and to blow us away with the performance

00:39:46 ◼   ► in the first Apple Silicon Macs?

00:39:47 ◼   ► 'Cause we knew you could do that if you wanted to.

00:39:50 ◼   ► And then there was this tantalizing idea that these,

00:39:54 ◼   ► the chips that you use in the iPhone and the iPad

00:39:56 ◼   ► are so well optimized for power consumption

00:40:00 ◼   ► because those are battery devices

00:40:03 ◼   ► and you wanna have good battery life.

00:40:04 ◼   ► And so there were a lot of conversations that were which,

00:40:07 ◼   ► where will Apple choose to land

00:40:10 ◼   ► in terms of performance and battery life?

00:40:13 ◼   ► And in looking at what you've rolled out here,

00:40:16 ◼   ► it's kind of funny.

00:40:17 ◼   ► It feels like the answer was both.

00:40:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's interesting to hear this question

00:40:24 ◼   ► because the idea of optimizing performance

00:40:27 ◼   ► without considering power is sort of,

00:40:29 ◼   ► it almost doesn't make sense to us

00:40:32 ◼   ► because we have been so focused

00:40:34 ◼   ► over so many generations of iOS products

00:40:37 ◼   ► where you don't get to deliver more performance

00:40:41 ◼   ► unless you've managed the power.

00:40:42 ◼   ► We think about them together.

00:40:45 ◼   ► You kind of heard that in some of the keynotes

00:40:47 ◼   ► from www.dc and in the keynote on Tuesday

00:40:51 ◼   ► where efficiency equals performance.

00:40:54 ◼   ► That's the way we think about it.

00:40:55 ◼   ► If you're not introducing performance in an efficient way

00:40:59 ◼   ► in an Apple product,

00:41:00 ◼   ► you're not gonna get to recognize the performance

00:41:03 ◼   ► because in an iPhone,

00:41:04 ◼   ► my team doesn't get to go talk

00:41:06 ◼   ► to the industrial design team to say,

00:41:07 ◼   ► "Hey, could you make it a little bit thicker

00:41:08 ◼   ► "and maybe add a fan?"

00:41:10 ◼   ► Because we really wanna boost the performance of the machine.

00:41:12 ◼   ► So instead, what we do is we focus obsessively

00:41:15 ◼   ► on moving the performance up

00:41:17 ◼   ► and locking in on that power target.

00:41:19 ◼   ► And for M1, the beautiful thing

00:41:23 ◼   ► about an active cooling system

00:41:25 ◼   ► is not that we built a bigger power burning chip,

00:41:28 ◼   ► it's that we always build some margin into the chips

00:41:33 ◼   ► to make sure that we can get the burst performance

00:41:35 ◼   ► on something like an iPad Pro, for example.

00:41:38 ◼   ► And that burst performance is huge

00:41:39 ◼   ► because you can do a really interesting scroll

00:41:42 ◼   ► or a very complex game transition.

00:41:44 ◼   ► And if you're doing it in a brief period of time,

00:41:46 ◼   ► you can sustain that, you can absorb that power.

00:41:49 ◼   ► But what's beautiful about the active cooling system,

00:41:51 ◼   ► that extra boost, that margin on top of the CPU and GPU,

00:41:54 ◼   ► we can sustain it now.

00:41:56 ◼   ► We can actually, for pro-like workloads,

00:41:58 ◼   ► you can run at that performance level for a lot longer.

00:42:01 ◼   ► And so that's super exciting.

00:42:02 ◼   ► - Would it be fair to say that the discipline

00:42:04 ◼   ► that you had to exercise in building chips for a phone

00:42:09 ◼   ► is sort of what has led to this philosophy?

00:42:11 ◼   ► That you were in a limited space with limited battery,

00:42:15 ◼   ► you needed to be as efficient as possible in that context.

00:42:17 ◼   ► - Absolutely.

00:42:19 ◼   ► Like I said, we didn't have an option.

00:42:21 ◼   ► And so our focus on delivering increased performance

00:42:24 ◼   ► for user experience,

00:42:25 ◼   ► 'cause that's what it's all about at Apple.

00:42:26 ◼   ► It's not about selling chips,

00:42:27 ◼   ► it's about participating in the delivery

00:42:30 ◼   ► of this amazing product and the amazing experience.

00:42:32 ◼   ► Well, our part, we deliver the performance

00:42:34 ◼   ► that software needs to deliver the experience

00:42:36 ◼   ► that our HI team wants to deliver.

00:42:39 ◼   ► And so for us, the only way,

00:42:41 ◼   ► it's really in the end, it's those constraints.

00:42:44 ◼   ► It's the thermal constraints and the power constraints

00:42:46 ◼   ► that led to the invention,

00:42:49 ◼   ► the methodologies that have led us to this point,

00:42:52 ◼   ► because it wasn't that we didn't want

00:42:54 ◼   ► to increase performance every generation.

00:42:56 ◼   ► It's just that we had to do it

00:42:57 ◼   ► with that one hand tied behind our back.

00:42:59 ◼   ► And so, okay, that's fine.

00:43:00 ◼   ► We're gonna get really good at designing these chips

00:43:03 ◼   ► within those constraints.

00:43:05 ◼   ► And frankly, I think great designs

00:43:08 ◼   ► come from those kinds of constraints.

00:43:10 ◼   ► And I think that's really, really what led us to,

00:43:13 ◼   ► the culmination where we were able

00:43:14 ◼   ► to deliver our first SoC into the Mac.

00:43:17 ◼   ► - And as we said in the keynote,

00:43:19 ◼   ► M1 was specifically designed for our most popular

00:43:24 ◼   ► and affordable systems where power efficiency

00:43:27 ◼   ► is incredibly important, right?

00:43:29 ◼   ► And so M1 going into the MacBook Air,

00:43:34 ◼   ► 13 inch MacBook Pro and Mac Mini,

00:43:35 ◼   ► those were conceived from the beginning.

00:43:38 ◼   ► And so to Tim's point, they're perfectly matched

00:43:42 ◼   ► in terms of providing this tremendous increase

00:43:45 ◼   ► in performance while at the same time,

00:43:47 ◼   ► giving our customers ridiculously good battery life.

00:43:51 ◼   ► - While we're talking about performance and efficiency,

00:43:54 ◼   ► you have four cores of each of those things in this.

00:43:57 ◼   ► This is a new thing for Mac users to experience.

00:43:59 ◼   ► We've had multi-core computers for a long time,

00:44:02 ◼   ► but what we haven't had is the balance

00:44:04 ◼   ► that's been in existence on the iOS side for a while now

00:44:08 ◼   ► of cores that are focused on performance

00:44:10 ◼   ► and cores that are focused on efficiency.

00:44:12 ◼   ► Just as the system has to arbitrate what goes on what core,

00:44:16 ◼   ► and that's been true for a long time,

00:44:18 ◼   ► these systems have to arbitrate sort of what goes where

00:44:21 ◼   ► in terms of performance and efficiency.

00:44:24 ◼   ► How does that work?

00:44:26 ◼   ► And is there a way for individual apps

00:44:30 ◼   ► or individual user preferences or anything to influence

00:44:34 ◼   ► what gets prioritized?

00:44:35 ◼   ► Or is it more that the system handles it

00:44:37 ◼   ► and it's a black box?

00:44:38 ◼   ► - Yes and yes.

00:44:40 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:44:43 ◼   ► - The efficiency cores have been a part of the story

00:44:45 ◼   ► for iOS, like you said, for many years.

00:44:47 ◼   ► And part of my group and the architecture team

00:44:51 ◼   ► is to build part of that power controller.

00:44:54 ◼   ► You hear about the power management controller

00:44:56 ◼   ► that works very tightly with the operating system scheduler

00:45:01 ◼   ► to try to figure out what to place where

00:45:03 ◼   ► and how to make decisions about that.

00:45:05 ◼   ► It is a new domain for the Mac

00:45:06 ◼   ► and it's gonna be an interesting experience

00:45:09 ◼   ► to see developers get their heads around what it means.

00:45:12 ◼   ► We think for multi-threaded workloads,

00:45:14 ◼   ► it's gonna look like an extension of the high performance

00:45:19 ◼   ► that we're getting from our performance cores,

00:45:21 ◼   ► just like it does, for example, on our iPad Pros.

00:45:24 ◼   ► I think in other cases, we have more control

00:45:28 ◼   ► over background tasks that the operating system can schedule

00:45:31 ◼   ► and we can constrain them and say,

00:45:32 ◼   ► "Hey, we can make choices about where we place these things

00:45:36 ◼   ► because we think this would be a more appropriate thread

00:45:38 ◼   ► to run on an E-core if we're in control of it."

00:45:41 ◼   ► Ultimately though, I think we do try to figure out

00:45:44 ◼   ► how to just treat those cores

00:45:45 ◼   ► as just part of the scheduling targets.

00:45:48 ◼   ► It's giving us that additional performance and efficiency

00:45:52 ◼   ► in the background when it's necessary.

00:45:54 ◼   ► And we find that we try to drive as much as possible

00:45:57 ◼   ► down into the E-cores.

00:45:59 ◼   ► I mean, that's sort of the philosophy.

00:46:00 ◼   ► If you can run something on the E-core, why not?

00:46:01 ◼   ► Because it's gonna end up, on average,

00:46:04 ◼   ► giving you a better, efficient story.

00:46:06 ◼   ► And frankly, these are not to be trifled with.

00:46:08 ◼   ► These E-cores are, I think there was a comment,

00:46:11 ◼   ► if you turned off the P-cores and just ran the E-cores,

00:46:13 ◼   ► you'd still have an amazing experience.

00:46:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, but what we said in the keynote was, on their own,

00:46:18 ◼   ► the four efficiency cores is providing the performance

00:46:22 ◼   ► equivalent to the dual-core,

00:46:25 ◼   ► previous generation dual-core Mac with GARE.

00:46:27 ◼   ► - That was easily my favorite stat.

00:46:28 ◼   ► Like, I felt like I was having to bring myself

00:46:33 ◼   ► back to Composure again, 'cause it was like, wait a second.

00:46:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:46:36 ◼   ► Is that what they said?

00:46:37 ◼   ► Yeah, that was the thing, I think, that really,

00:46:40 ◼   ► like 2x, 3x, 5x, they sound great, right?

00:46:43 ◼   ► But that was really something where it was a great statistic

00:46:47 ◼   ► for contextualizing, just the sheer power of these chips.

00:46:51 ◼   ► I thought that was super cool.

00:46:53 ◼   ► So we asked for some questions from our audience,

00:46:55 ◼   ► and we got lots of questions

00:46:58 ◼   ► about the new unified memory architecture.

00:47:01 ◼   ► So I wanted to dig into that a little bit.

00:47:03 ◼   ► We're all used to RAM and, more recently, video RAM,

00:47:08 ◼   ► and that becoming a thing that people think about

00:47:10 ◼   ► in the products that they may or may not purchase.

00:47:13 ◼   ► Does the new system, the M1,

00:47:15 ◼   ► does it change how we should think about RAM,

00:47:18 ◼   ► RAM amounts, and what they're capable of?

00:47:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I love this question.

00:47:22 ◼   ► As you can imagine, we've been, for the iOS computers,

00:47:25 ◼   ► we've been living in this unified memory world

00:47:26 ◼   ► from the beginning.

00:47:28 ◼   ► And the challenge and opportunity of a unified memory system

00:47:32 ◼   ► is we need to make sure the graphics system, the GPU,

00:47:36 ◼   ► has the bandwidth it needs to really demonstrate its strength.

00:47:40 ◼   ► In a lot of ways, the bandwidth from the main memory system

00:47:43 ◼   ► is the fuel that allows the GPU to do its work,

00:47:46 ◼   ► and we build them in balance.

00:47:47 ◼   ► We make sure that the great eight-core GPU inside M1

00:47:52 ◼   ► is balanced with the bandwidth it needs to be great.

00:47:55 ◼   ► Those go hand in hand.

00:47:57 ◼   ► We also appreciate CPUs.

00:47:59 ◼   ► We need to make sure the memory system has the capacity

00:48:02 ◼   ► to make a reasonable platform.

00:48:04 ◼   ► And I think the 16-gigabyte capacity that we get out of M1

00:48:08 ◼   ► is a really great solution for the broad set

00:48:12 ◼   ► of the MacBook Airs, the MacBook Pro 13,

00:48:15 ◼   ► and the Mac Mini that we released.

00:48:16 ◼   ► But what unified memory does, and the opportunity really,

00:48:20 ◼   ► is that if you were a developer who was ever frustrated

00:48:23 ◼   ► by the fact that the memory system the CPU had access to

00:48:26 ◼   ► was relatively low bandwidth and was limiting

00:48:28 ◼   ► your multi-threaded performance,

00:48:30 ◼   ► well, a unified memory system gives you the bandwidth

00:48:33 ◼   ► of a GPU, but it's available to the CPU.

00:48:36 ◼   ► And if you were ever a GPU developer

00:48:38 ◼   ► and you were always frustrated by the capacity

00:48:40 ◼   ► that you ever got out of a video RAM,

00:48:42 ◼   ► because they tended to be high bandwidth

00:48:45 ◼   ► but relatively low capacity

00:48:46 ◼   ► compared to the main memory system,

00:48:48 ◼   ► well, all of a sudden, you got the capacity

00:48:49 ◼   ► of the main memory system at the bandwidth that the GPU needs.

00:48:53 ◼   ► That by itself is super interesting,

00:48:55 ◼   ► because now developers don't have to choose.

00:48:57 ◼   ► But the third dividend is, from a performance perspective,

00:49:00 ◼   ► if you're a developer that's using both engines

00:49:03 ◼   ► and you have a mixed workload,

00:49:04 ◼   ► then you're trying to move frame buffers back and forth

00:49:06 ◼   ► between CPU and GPU, you're kind of constrained,

00:49:09 ◼   ► both in performance and copying the data back and forth,

00:49:12 ◼   ► and in the extra energy it takes

00:49:14 ◼   ► to copy the data back and forth.

00:49:15 ◼   ► So it's a double whammy in a constrained platform.

00:49:19 ◼   ► So unified memory is, in a lot of ways, a developer's dream.

00:49:23 ◼   ► - This is super interesting.

00:49:25 ◼   ► It's also, it's complicated because it is challenging

00:49:30 ◼   ► something that I feel like I've known about

00:49:32 ◼   ► for as long as I've known about computers, right?

00:49:34 ◼   ► Which is like what memory is and how we think about it.

00:49:38 ◼   ► But it does seem, I mean, like with the way

00:49:40 ◼   ► that you explain it, it seems incredibly interesting.

00:49:44 ◼   ► And I guess, you know, like something that,

00:49:46 ◼   ► you mentioned iOS devices, you know,

00:49:48 ◼   ► like iOS devices have long outperformed,

00:49:52 ◼   ► like Android devices that claim huge amounts of RAM in them.

00:49:55 ◼   ► I imagine it's a similar idea, right?

00:49:58 ◼   ► Which is, I think it was Craig in the presentation

00:50:00 ◼   ► who mentioned the line about like the software

00:50:02 ◼   ► and hardware working together

00:50:04 ◼   ► and how that's Apple's greatest strength.

00:50:06 ◼   ► And it seems like that the M1 is really allowing that

00:50:09 ◼   ► better than ever for the Mac.

00:50:10 ◼   ► And I guess this is one of those things, right,

00:50:12 ◼   ► that comes out of that.

00:50:13 ◼   ► - Absolutely. I think the Metal,

00:50:15 ◼   ► the software team that does the Metal API frameworks

00:50:19 ◼   ► and the drivers for the GPU,

00:50:21 ◼   ► this is, again, we've been working in concert

00:50:24 ◼   ► with those same, that team really from the beginning

00:50:27 ◼   ► in the iOS chips and the transition into M1

00:50:31 ◼   ► has really just been a long dream come true

00:50:34 ◼   ► for both our teams.

00:50:36 ◼   ► And we think developers are gonna love it.

00:50:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, one of the very important points

00:50:41 ◼   ► that was made in the keynote is,

00:50:43 ◼   ► and Craig made this point,

00:50:45 ◼   ► is this is the first time where we've been able

00:50:48 ◼   ► to optimize macOS for our own silicon, right?

00:50:53 ◼   ► And we also talked about the fact that

00:50:55 ◼   ► as we've been designing M1,

00:50:58 ◼   ► we've been analyzing and running workloads from macOS

00:51:02 ◼   ► so it can inform the design.

00:51:04 ◼   ► And so this unified memory architecture

00:51:07 ◼   ► is a perfect example of the synergy of that.

00:51:10 ◼   ► So Craig mentioned the fact that,

00:51:12 ◼   ► first of all, we use similar data types in Big Sur

00:51:16 ◼   ► to make sure that we're not doing expensive copying

00:51:20 ◼   ► and translation of the data.

00:51:22 ◼   ► And also we can make more memory available to apps

00:51:27 ◼   ► for graphics so that they can run at incredible speeds.

00:51:32 ◼   ► So this ability, the strategic advantage we have

00:51:37 ◼   ► of designing and building our own hardware

00:51:40 ◼   ► and integrating it with our software

00:51:43 ◼   ► really, really shines now that we have brought

00:51:46 ◼   ► our own silicon architecture to the Mac.

00:51:49 ◼   ► - Follow up for that, listener Zach asked,

00:51:52 ◼   ► Craig Federighi mentioned that some apps

00:51:54 ◼   ► will perform better on the M1,

00:51:57 ◼   ► even though they're Intel apps running under Rosetta 2,

00:52:01 ◼   ► which is the translation engine,

00:52:03 ◼   ► better than they do natively on Intel machines.

00:52:07 ◼   ► Now you've mentioned the metal team.

00:52:10 ◼   ► I think that that's what's going on here,

00:52:11 ◼   ► but could you talk a little bit about how it's possible

00:52:14 ◼   ► that you're gonna have scenarios where software

00:52:17 ◼   ► not written for this platform,

00:52:21 ◼   ► at least the chip architecture,

00:52:22 ◼   ► is actually gonna outperform on it?

00:52:25 ◼   ► - Absolutely, so one of the great stories of the Mac

00:52:28 ◼   ► and Apple software in general is that we develop

00:52:30 ◼   ► these rich set of frameworks

00:52:32 ◼   ► for application developers to leverage.

00:52:34 ◼   ► So if you're thinking about a typical application

00:52:37 ◼   ► that, especially something that's using metal,

00:52:40 ◼   ► well, metal is actually,

00:52:42 ◼   ► if they're calling into the metal framework,

00:52:44 ◼   ► that is native code.

00:52:46 ◼   ► Though their application might be an Intel native code base,

00:52:49 ◼   ► when they make that framework call,

00:52:51 ◼   ► it calls into the operating system

00:52:53 ◼   ► and it's taken over by the native metal code.

00:52:56 ◼   ► Now, if it's a metal app, it's probably using the GPU.

00:52:59 ◼   ► It doesn't take much time spent on a 5X faster GPU

00:53:03 ◼   ► for you to accelerate an application

00:53:05 ◼   ► that's depending on GPU performance.

00:53:07 ◼   ► So there's another explanation for why.

00:53:10 ◼   ► Though on the surface, it might seem surprising.

00:53:12 ◼   ► You can kind of get your head around,

00:53:14 ◼   ► ah, I see how this is happening.

00:53:16 ◼   ► And the third, just to be clear,

00:53:19 ◼   ► Rosetta 2 is really something special.

00:53:22 ◼   ► This is a tool that we developed starting in my group,

00:53:27 ◼   ► just at the same time we started thinking

00:53:29 ◼   ► about this transition, just to make sure.

00:53:31 ◼   ► And we developed really, really something special

00:53:34 ◼   ► from a translation perspective.

00:53:35 ◼   ► It shares the name with Rosetta 1.

00:53:37 ◼   ► It's a complete rewrite from scratch,

00:53:40 ◼   ► focused on this transition,

00:53:42 ◼   ► and we couldn't be happier with how well it's performing.

00:53:44 ◼   ► So it's quite good,

00:53:46 ◼   ► even for code that isn't running through the frameworks.

00:53:50 ◼   ► - When it comes to apps on M1, along with Big Sur,

00:53:54 ◼   ► one of the things that I'm really excited about

00:53:57 ◼   ► is iOS apps running on the Mac.

00:54:00 ◼   ► Kind of wanted to get a little bit of discussion about that.

00:54:03 ◼   ► Like, how are these apps running?

00:54:06 ◼   ► What kind of experience can people see?

00:54:09 ◼   ► I just wanted to kind of get your feelings

00:54:10 ◼   ► on that a little bit,

00:54:11 ◼   ► 'cause I know it's something that I, many of our listeners,

00:54:14 ◼   ► are really excited to try out.

00:54:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is one of the great features

00:54:18 ◼   ► that every Mac with M1 will get,

00:54:21 ◼   ► and that's the ability to run unmodified iPhone

00:54:25 ◼   ► and iPad apps, right?

00:54:27 ◼   ► So this is the great benefit

00:54:29 ◼   ► of having this scalable architecture

00:54:32 ◼   ► that we bring over from our iOS devices to the Mac.

00:54:35 ◼   ► And so customers will be able to simply

00:54:38 ◼   ► go to the Mac App Store and search for their favorite app.

00:54:43 ◼   ► And if the developer has agreed

00:54:47 ◼   ► to let it be available on the Mac App Store,

00:54:49 ◼   ► they just download it and it runs, and away they go.

00:54:52 ◼   ► And so it is gonna open up hundreds of thousands of apps

00:54:57 ◼   ► to our Mac users on day one.

00:55:01 ◼   ► And it means that a Mac with M1

00:55:05 ◼   ► is gonna be able to run a wider variety of software

00:55:09 ◼   ► than any Mac ever.

00:55:11 ◼   ► - I think the translation of some of these apps

00:55:13 ◼   ► into the Mac, if you needed the gyro,

00:55:16 ◼   ► obviously there's gonna be certain applications

00:55:17 ◼   ► that we didn't add a bunch of stuff to the Mac,

00:55:20 ◼   ► as far as I know, to make it something

00:55:23 ◼   ► you could pick up and turn.

00:55:25 ◼   ► They've really done a nice job

00:55:26 ◼   ► in doing the translation of the touch UI,

00:55:27 ◼   ► and I think a lot of the great work we've done on iPad

00:55:30 ◼   ► in the last few years has really helped make that

00:55:33 ◼   ► even better.

00:55:34 ◼   ► - Got a couple of questions from listeners

00:55:36 ◼   ► who are concerned about changes to the platform

00:55:39 ◼   ► going into the new Apple Silicon era.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Listener Ben wanted to know about if there is any support

00:55:46 ◼   ► or plan for it for virtualizing Windows

00:55:49 ◼   ► on Apple Silicon Macs.

00:55:51 ◼   ► And Leighton wanted to know about support for eGPUs,

00:55:56 ◼   ► external GPUs, because that doesn't seem to be supported

00:55:58 ◼   ► in this first round at least.

00:56:00 ◼   ► Things that Mac users are maybe used to

00:56:02 ◼   ► from previous generations, what's the status of these?

00:56:06 ◼   ► - Virtualization technology is built in M1,

00:56:09 ◼   ► and we've been working closely with Parallels

00:56:13 ◼   ► so that they could bring the ability to Mac users

00:56:17 ◼   ► to run other environments like Linux and Docker.

00:56:20 ◼   ► And so that's one of the foundational features of M1

00:56:24 ◼   ► is virtualization.

00:56:26 ◼   ► In terms of Windows, nothing's been announced

00:56:29 ◼   ► at this point.

00:56:30 ◼   ► And in terms of eGPUs, eGPUs are not supported

00:56:35 ◼   ► on systems with M1.

00:56:37 ◼   ► Keep in mind that the systems with M1

00:56:40 ◼   ► are getting a massive, massive increase in performance

00:56:45 ◼   ► from the incredible GPU that we have in M1.

00:56:49 ◼   ► 5x faster on Air, 5x faster on the 13-inch Pro,

00:56:54 ◼   ► and 6x faster on Mac Mini.

00:56:56 ◼   ► And so we think our customers who are using those products

00:57:01 ◼   ► are gonna see phenomenal graphics performance

00:57:05 ◼   ► on those systems.

00:57:05 ◼   ► - We're all using video conferencing more and more and more.

00:57:10 ◼   ► So one of the things that everybody cares about

00:57:12 ◼   ► maybe more now than they ever have is their webcam.

00:57:16 ◼   ► It doesn't appear that there was any change

00:57:18 ◼   ► to the webcam itself, but there was talk in the presentation

00:57:22 ◼   ► about some additional work that's been done.

00:57:25 ◼   ► What kind of improvements do the laptops see?

00:57:28 ◼   ► And is there kind of any reason for the time being

00:57:31 ◼   ► why there's been no change to the actual camera hardware?

00:57:34 ◼   ► - So the 13-inch MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air

00:57:38 ◼   ► do have 720p cameras.

00:57:39 ◼   ► However, the ISP in the M1 chip

00:57:44 ◼   ► does a phenomenal job increasing the quality

00:57:49 ◼   ► of the video experience from those cameras.

00:57:52 ◼   ► Our users are gonna see a noticeable difference.

00:57:55 ◼   ► It brings auto white balance and greater dynamic range

00:57:58 ◼   ► and face detection and other things that you're gonna see.

00:58:03 ◼   ► The camera's quality on these systems really look great.

00:58:07 ◼   ► And on the MacBook Air, we even made some changes

00:58:12 ◼   ► to the display itself to allow more light

00:58:17 ◼   ► to get to the sensor in the camera.

00:58:20 ◼   ► So we think our customers are gonna be really delighted

00:58:24 ◼   ► with the camera quality in these new systems.

00:58:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that Tom strikes that point.

00:58:30 ◼   ► I think the ability for us to leverage all the work

00:58:34 ◼   ► we're doing on the camera software for the ISP

00:58:38 ◼   ► and our iOS products is now finally coming to the Mac

00:58:40 ◼   ► in full force.

00:58:42 ◼   ► This is just gonna create the foundation

00:58:45 ◼   ► on which we're gonna make it even better.

00:58:46 ◼   ► But I think the M1 systems are already gonna see

00:58:49 ◼   ► a huge uplift from that.

00:58:50 ◼   ► - So this is obviously step one was said in the event.

00:58:54 ◼   ► Step one of a, Apple has a two year process.

00:58:58 ◼   ► This is the first set of products, the first processor.

00:59:01 ◼   ► There's a lot of runway here.

00:59:03 ◼   ► What are you most excited about when you think about

00:59:06 ◼   ► what Apple Silicon and the M1 and future,

00:59:10 ◼   ► the future path this is setting us on

00:59:13 ◼   ► is gonna bring to the Mac?

00:59:14 ◼   ► What makes you excited when you're thinking about

00:59:16 ◼   ► the world we're just entering right now,

00:59:18 ◼   ► which is the Apple Silicon Mac world?

00:59:21 ◼   ► What excites you about that?

00:59:23 ◼   ► - So from the beginning, and we've talked about this

00:59:27 ◼   ► relentlessly over the number of years.

00:59:29 ◼   ► At Apple, we're all about the user experience, right?

00:59:33 ◼   ► And that's what's most important to us.

00:59:36 ◼   ► And with the advent of Apple Silicon,

00:59:39 ◼   ► and in this case, M1 in the Mac,

00:59:42 ◼   ► the user experience that our customers are gonna have

00:59:45 ◼   ► is what we're incredibly excited about.

00:59:48 ◼   ► As I mentioned earlier, you're gonna,

00:59:51 ◼   ► first of all, you're gonna open,

00:59:52 ◼   ► if you have one of the notebooks,

00:59:53 ◼   ► you're gonna open it and you're gonna get instant wake.

00:59:56 ◼   ► It's like, wow, just like my iPhone, just like my iPad,

00:59:59 ◼   ► boom, it's ready.

01:00:00 ◼   ► And then you're gonna start noticing how incredibly snappy

01:00:05 ◼   ► and fast and fluid it is.

01:00:07 ◼   ► You're gonna launch an app and bam, it's there.

01:00:10 ◼   ► And bam, it's there.

01:00:11 ◼   ► You're gonna open large apps like Final Cut Pro,

01:00:15 ◼   ► and it's gonna open like instantaneously,

01:00:17 ◼   ► and you're gonna be blown away.

01:00:18 ◼   ► You're gonna say to yourself, did that really just happen?

01:00:20 ◼   ► I'm gonna quit it again and I'm gonna launch it again.

01:00:24 ◼   ► And you're gonna be able to do things on these Macs

01:00:26 ◼   ► that you've never even thought you could do before

01:00:29 ◼   ► on an Air, on a Mini, on a 13-inch MacBook Pro.

01:00:32 ◼   ► So you're gonna be blown away with the performance.

01:00:34 ◼   ► And then you may use a feature in an app like Pixelmator

01:00:39 ◼   ► where you can sharpen the resolution of a photo

01:00:43 ◼   ► and the neural engine's gonna kick in and bam,

01:00:46 ◼   ► it's gonna happen so fast

01:00:47 ◼   ► and you're gonna be blown away about how fast that is.

01:00:51 ◼   ► And this whole time as you're using your Mac,

01:00:55 ◼   ► it's the Mac that you know and love,

01:00:56 ◼   ► but there's so much better in every way.

01:00:59 ◼   ► And the whole time you're using it and experiencing it,

01:01:02 ◼   ► you're gonna be just so delighted by that.

01:01:05 ◼   ► And then at some point you're gonna look up

01:01:06 ◼   ► to the upper right and you're gonna look

01:01:07 ◼   ► at your battery indicator.

01:01:09 ◼   ► And you're gonna go, is something wrong?

01:01:12 ◼   ► I've been using this system for a couple hours now

01:01:14 ◼   ► and my battery hasn't really even ticked down.

01:01:18 ◼   ► And then each day you're gonna be blown away with,

01:01:21 ◼   ► I can't believe I just did that.

01:01:23 ◼   ► And I can't believe how much battery life

01:01:25 ◼   ► I have this system has.

01:01:27 ◼   ► And it's almost like discovering your Mac all over again.

01:01:31 ◼   ► It really is.

01:01:33 ◼   ► And that's what I can't wait for customers

01:01:36 ◼   ► to get these products in their hands

01:01:38 ◼   ► because they're just gonna be blown away.

01:01:40 ◼   ► - I couldn't agree more.

01:01:42 ◼   ► And the other shout out I would make,

01:01:45 ◼   ► and we talked a little bit about this in the last time

01:01:47 ◼   ► where my brother sort of sent in that trick question.

01:01:49 ◼   ► My brother and I were hackers on the Apple II early.

01:01:53 ◼   ► There was that TRS-82 weeks, but we put that behind us.

01:01:57 ◼   ► But the exciting part for me as a person

01:01:59 ◼   ► who's been building into this iOS

01:02:01 ◼   ► and just the surprise and delight

01:02:02 ◼   ► we've been able to deliver is,

01:02:04 ◼   ► well, now we're able to expose some of the cool stuff

01:02:06 ◼   ► we're doing to the tinkerers, the hackers,

01:02:08 ◼   ► the Mac is this great platform for people

01:02:12 ◼   ► who are scientists and students and developers

01:02:15 ◼   ► who really just wanna understand

01:02:16 ◼   ► what's going on underneath the hood.

01:02:18 ◼   ► And now they're gonna get access to our neural engine

01:02:20 ◼   ► and they're gonna be able to do really, really cool,

01:02:23 ◼   ► interesting things on that platform

01:02:25 ◼   ► in ways that are beyond the amazing things

01:02:28 ◼   ► they're doing on the iOS products.

01:02:30 ◼   ► They're gonna be able to learn and explore.

01:02:33 ◼   ► And that's one of the other big differences

01:02:35 ◼   ► that the Mac has always played for Apple and for the world

01:02:40 ◼   ► is this really great hobbyist spirit is there.

01:02:43 ◼   ► And now we're gonna be able to expose

01:02:44 ◼   ► some of this cool stuff to them as well.

01:02:46 ◼   ► - I'll give you another example of what this means,

01:02:51 ◼   ► kind of a more personal example.

01:02:53 ◼   ► I can still remember to this day,

01:02:55 ◼   ► and it was a long, long time ago when I got my first Mac.

01:02:59 ◼   ► And I took it up to my room.

01:03:02 ◼   ► I was much, much younger than I am today.

01:03:04 ◼   ► And I opened it up and I was so blown away by it,

01:03:08 ◼   ► I literally pulled an all-nighter

01:03:10 ◼   ► and used it till the next morning.

01:03:12 ◼   ► And that feeling that you get

01:03:14 ◼   ► when you first experienced in that.

01:03:16 ◼   ► And with these Macs with M1, it's the same feeling, right?

01:03:21 ◼   ► It's like, oh my gosh, this is incredible.

01:03:24 ◼   ► I love this thing.

01:03:25 ◼   ► And I'm just so looking forward to people

01:03:29 ◼   ► to get it in their hands

01:03:31 ◼   ► because they're gonna have the same feeling.

01:03:33 ◼   ► And that's what's so exciting.

01:03:35 ◼   ► - I know that I speak for so many people,

01:03:39 ◼   ► our entire audience to say,

01:03:40 ◼   ► this is a very exciting thing.

01:03:42 ◼   ► And we have an audience of people

01:03:45 ◼   ► that are diehard Mac users.

01:03:47 ◼   ► And this really feels like something super exciting and new.

01:03:52 ◼   ► So we're really excited to see it.

01:03:55 ◼   ► Can't wait until we can start using them.

01:03:57 ◼   ► And I wanna thank you both for the work that you've done

01:04:01 ◼   ► in making this happen and also for coming on the show today

01:04:03 ◼   ► to share some of these stories of our audience.

01:04:06 ◼   ► Thank you so much guys.

01:04:07 ◼   ► - Well, this is why we do what we do.

01:04:10 ◼   ► It is just making our users' lives better

01:04:15 ◼   ► and just giving them that delight

01:04:18 ◼   ► when they use our products.

01:04:19 ◼   ► And that's why we do what we do and we work so hard.

01:04:21 ◼   ► And we just hope that they love these systems

01:04:26 ◼   ► as much as we do and we're very confident they will.

01:04:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, and thank you for the opportunity

01:04:31 ◼   ► to come in and talk about it.

01:04:33 ◼   ► - My favorite subject.

01:04:34 ◼   ► - Anytime.

01:04:35 ◼   ► - To paraphrase Apple, we can't wait to see

01:04:37 ◼   ► what you will do next so that you can come back here

01:04:40 ◼   ► and talk about that too.

01:04:41 ◼   ► - Okay, we'll make this a regular thing.

01:04:43 ◼   ► All right.

01:04:44 ◼   ► Yep, great talking to you guys again.

01:04:46 ◼   ► - This episode is brought to you by Pingdom from SolarWinds.

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01:06:23 ◼   ► Jason Snell, you have all the Macs.

01:06:25 ◼   ► - I have all the Macs.

01:06:28 ◼   ► I've had them for a while.

01:06:30 ◼   ► I just, not to lord it over everybody,

01:06:31 ◼   ► but for the last kind of week,

01:06:34 ◼   ► I've had a MacBook Air, a MacBook Pro,

01:06:36 ◼   ► and a Mac Mini surrounding me running M1 chips.

01:06:39 ◼   ► I got all the M1 chips everywhere.

01:06:42 ◼   ► - You did send me an iMessage

01:06:45 ◼   ► with just a picture of a huge box.

01:06:48 ◼   ► - Oh God. - I was like, oh man.

01:06:50 ◼   ► So jealous.

01:06:51 ◼   ► So let's review these things.

01:06:53 ◼   ► Let's talk about them.

01:06:54 ◼   ► I wanna get probably the most boring part out of the way

01:06:57 ◼   ► first, which is just to talk about the hardware real quick,

01:07:00 ◼   ► and then we'll dig into what's inside of these machines.

01:07:03 ◼   ► Do you have any real thoughts on the hardware?

01:07:06 ◼   ► I mean, I know they haven't really changed anything,

01:07:10 ◼   ► but what are your kind of thoughts

01:07:12 ◼   ► about the way these things look,

01:07:13 ◼   ► the ports that they have, that kind of stuff?

01:07:17 ◼   ► - Well, I feel like it is, you could call them boring

01:07:20 ◼   ► or you could call it reassuring and familiar.

01:07:23 ◼   ► And I think that's what Apple is going for, right?

01:07:27 ◼   ► They want to reassure everyone that these are just Macs.

01:07:31 ◼   ► And so the MacBook Air looks like a MacBook Air,

01:07:36 ◼   ► couldn't tell it apart.

01:07:37 ◼   ► The MacBook Pro looks like a MacBook Pro,

01:07:38 ◼   ► couldn't tell it apart.

01:07:39 ◼   ► The only way you can tell the Mac Mini apart is

01:07:41 ◼   ► it's silver and not space gray,

01:07:43 ◼   ► and it only has two instead of four Thunderbolt ports on it.

01:07:46 ◼   ► But the laptops are just, they're the same,

01:07:50 ◼   ► and that's on purpose, right?

01:07:52 ◼   ► Apple has decided with this round

01:07:54 ◼   ► not to try and reinvent the personal computer

01:07:58 ◼   ► on the outside anyway.

01:08:00 ◼   ► And I think Apple's goal is that if somebody were

01:08:04 ◼   ► to make an Apple Store order or in parts of the world

01:08:09 ◼   ► where they could do this, go into an Apple Store

01:08:12 ◼   ► and buy a MacBook Air before Christmas,

01:08:15 ◼   ► bring it home, that they would basically not notice

01:08:20 ◼   ► that it was using a new chip architecture,

01:08:22 ◼   ► that most people don't care.

01:08:24 ◼   ► All they should really care about is the speed

01:08:26 ◼   ► and the battery life, really.

01:08:29 ◼   ► And even then they probably don't care about speed as much,

01:08:32 ◼   ► which means they'll just notice

01:08:33 ◼   ► that the battery lasts longer.

01:08:35 ◼   ► And I think that's the goal, is like, it's just a Mac,

01:08:37 ◼   ► but it is better, and otherwise it's exactly the same.

01:08:40 ◼   ► So in that way, it's not much of a story.

01:08:45 ◼   ► Writing a review about these products is fascinating

01:08:47 ◼   ► because they mean a lot, and yet a lot of the things

01:08:49 ◼   ► that normally are interesting and different

01:08:51 ◼   ► about new computers are not interesting

01:08:54 ◼   ► or different about these.

01:08:56 ◼   ► It's clear that the M1 is constrained.

01:09:01 ◼   ► It is, you know, we'll get into the details

01:09:04 ◼   ► of how fast they are, but they are low-end chips.

01:09:09 ◼   ► These are low-end models with a low-end chip in them.

01:09:13 ◼   ► And the first Apple Silicon chip we're seeing is the M1.

01:09:17 ◼   ► It is the slowest M1, the slowest Apple Silicon chip ever.

01:09:21 ◼   ► To ever be made in a Mac, right?

01:09:24 ◼   ► Ever.

01:09:25 ◼   ► It will very rapidly be outpaced by other chips.

01:09:28 ◼   ► There's no doubt about it, right?

01:09:31 ◼   ► And this is how they've chosen to go out.

01:09:33 ◼   ► What gets confusing is, in some ways,

01:09:36 ◼   ► these are the fastest Macs ever, with a few exceptions.

01:09:40 ◼   ► And so it gets really confusing.

01:09:43 ◼   ► It's like, well, they're so limited, but they're so fast.

01:09:46 ◼   ► And the answer is, well, yes,

01:09:47 ◼   ► the next ones will be even faster.

01:09:50 ◼   ► But this is the new floor.

01:09:53 ◼   ► And so they are constrained.

01:09:54 ◼   ► It's eight or 16 gigs of RAM.

01:09:56 ◼   ► Like, clearly, this chip can't do more than that.

01:09:59 ◼   ► It can't do more than two Thunderbolt ports.

01:10:02 ◼   ► It's got two full-channel, full-speed Thunderbolt ports

01:10:05 ◼   ► that it can do, and that's it.

01:10:07 ◼   ► And then the Mac Mini, they're using another means

01:10:11 ◼   ► to do HDMI out and two USB-A on top of it.

01:10:15 ◼   ► But it's limited in that way.

01:10:18 ◼   ► It'll only support two displays.

01:10:19 ◼   ► So on the Mac Mini, you can do two external displays,

01:10:22 ◼   ► and on the laptops, you can do one external display,

01:10:24 ◼   ► and then the laptop display.

01:10:25 ◼   ► Like, that's just, it's how they're built.

01:10:28 ◼   ► So in all those ways, it's funny, 'cause they're familiar,

01:10:33 ◼   ► they're low-end, but they feel high-end

01:10:36 ◼   ► when you put them in the context of Intel Macs.

01:10:39 ◼   ► They're limited because these are the first models out,

01:10:41 ◼   ► and presumably, they can handle these limitations

01:10:45 ◼   ► and the future computers and future Apple Silicon processors

01:10:48 ◼   ► won't have those limitations.

01:10:50 ◼   ► And then the other funny thing about them just in general

01:10:52 ◼   ► is that they are all the same.

01:10:53 ◼   ► They're not only the same compared to the look and feel

01:10:57 ◼   ► of the previous models, but they're the same

01:10:58 ◼   ► with each other.

01:10:59 ◼   ► Like, performance-wise, they really don't differ that much.

01:11:02 ◼   ► These are kind of the same computer

01:11:04 ◼   ► in a few different wrappers.

01:11:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's kind of funny, really, right,

01:11:10 ◼   ► that this high-end, low-end in the same product

01:11:14 ◼   ► is such a strange thing.

01:11:16 ◼   ► It's like, these are all the most basic Macs that Apple make,

01:11:20 ◼   ► but they are absolutely unbelievably powerful.

01:11:26 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right, and that mixture

01:11:28 ◼   ► is so strange, and that's kind of like the,

01:11:32 ◼   ► I guess, the story behind these Macs, right?

01:11:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, it is, Apple had to do it one way or another,

01:11:40 ◼   ► and this is the way that they chose to do it.

01:11:41 ◼   ► I think it makes sense.

01:11:42 ◼   ► The first Apple Silicon Mac chip out the door, the M1,

01:11:47 ◼   ► is, you know, it's kind of a baby step in a way.

01:11:50 ◼   ► It really is, I think, based on everything we know,

01:11:54 ◼   ► the equivalent of the A14X, right?

01:11:59 ◼   ► It's the A12X and Z are the chip used in the iPad Pros.

01:12:05 ◼   ► And as far as we can tell, this is sort of the descendant

01:12:10 ◼   ► of that two chip generations forward.

01:12:13 ◼   ► Obviously, Apple has done some additional work

01:12:15 ◼   ► knowing that this was gonna be used in Macs.

01:12:16 ◼   ► There are features that the Mac needs

01:12:18 ◼   ► that maybe an iPad doesn't need that they've rolled in here.

01:12:20 ◼   ► That's why they've chosen to call it the M1.

01:12:23 ◼   ► But if you look at it that way, look at it as kind of

01:12:27 ◼   ► the next generation iPad chip,

01:12:28 ◼   ► but with some added Mac compatibility.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Like, we've been saying for a couple of years now,

01:12:33 ◼   ► well, obviously you could use an iPad chip in a low-end Mac,

01:12:36 ◼   ► but what about the higher-end Macs?

01:12:37 ◼   ► And we can still say that,

01:12:38 ◼   ► 'cause that's essentially where we are.

01:12:39 ◼   ► These are the low-end Macs.

01:12:41 ◼   ► And if you look at the benchmark scores

01:12:44 ◼   ► and all the different tests and see how fast they are,

01:12:47 ◼   ► it's very easy to get caught up in them and say,

01:12:51 ◼   ► well, these are high-end, obviously,

01:12:54 ◼   ► because they're so much faster than the other,

01:12:56 ◼   ► like that MacBook Air is faster than all the MacBook Pros

01:12:59 ◼   ► that run Intel chips.

01:13:00 ◼   ► But it's still a low-end, still MacBook Air, right?

01:13:03 ◼   ► It's still a 999 MacBook Air.

01:13:05 ◼   ► That doesn't change.

01:13:06 ◼   ► It's just that we're in a chip transition for two years

01:13:08 ◼   ► and they've started at the low end.

01:13:11 ◼   ► And that's exciting,

01:13:13 ◼   ► 'cause imagine where they go from here, they go up.

01:13:16 ◼   ► But also it's frustrating, I get it,

01:13:20 ◼   ► because we're looking at this new generation

01:13:24 ◼   ► and being like, oh, it's only two Thunderbolt ports,

01:13:27 ◼   ► oh, it's only 16 gigs of RAM and all those things,

01:13:30 ◼   ► or memory, if you wanna call it memory,

01:13:31 ◼   ► since the memory is all shared now.

01:13:32 ◼   ► - Unified memory.

01:13:34 ◼   ► - Unified memory, although we'll see how they approach that

01:13:36 ◼   ► going forward, if it's all unified memory

01:13:38 ◼   ► or if there are some configurations

01:13:39 ◼   ► that aren't in the future.

01:13:40 ◼   ► But in these systems, they kept it simple,

01:13:42 ◼   ► because they're the first ones

01:13:44 ◼   ► and they got them out the door shortly after announcing

01:13:47 ◼   ► that they were doing this transition.

01:13:49 ◼   ► I think that makes sense.

01:13:49 ◼   ► And any more radical changes and future steps forward

01:13:54 ◼   ► will have to wait for '21.

01:13:57 ◼   ► - Let's talk about performance

01:13:59 ◼   ► and let's talk about benchmarks.

01:14:01 ◼   ► This is not a thing that we typically

01:14:03 ◼   ► would pay any attention to,

01:14:06 ◼   ► except when there's some kind of outlier.

01:14:09 ◼   ► I cannot remember ever talking about a new Mac with you

01:14:13 ◼   ► and we've spoken about Geekbench numbers.

01:14:15 ◼   ► - I'm sure it's come up, I'm sure it's come up.

01:14:17 ◼   ► - But not with the focus that we're gonna put on it now.

01:14:21 ◼   ► And the reason for that is because

01:14:23 ◼   ► these scores are particularly outstanding.

01:14:30 ◼   ► So do you wanna tell me kind of what is going on?

01:14:33 ◼   ► We don't need numbers, but just to stack them up

01:14:36 ◼   ► against where they're sitting

01:14:38 ◼   ► with other Macs and general competition.

01:14:40 ◼   ► - There are a couple charts that are in my review

01:14:43 ◼   ► that are not, so I did the usual charts

01:14:45 ◼   ► with the little green bars for people who see my charts

01:14:48 ◼   ► on six colors, green means Mac, orange means iPad.

01:14:52 ◼   ► Like I have a, there's a system,

01:14:53 ◼   ► there's a method to my madness.

01:14:55 ◼   ► So there are the green bars that are like,

01:14:57 ◼   ► here are these three M1 computers,

01:14:59 ◼   ► which are almost identical.

01:15:01 ◼   ► The variance has to do with the variance on the computer.

01:15:04 ◼   ► Like if we tested them a thousand times,

01:15:06 ◼   ► I think that they would have exactly the same scores

01:15:09 ◼   ► with the exception of the GPU test on the seven core GPU

01:15:12 ◼   ► on the MacBook Air, which is,

01:15:14 ◼   ► you'll be shocked to discover one eighth slower.

01:15:18 ◼   ► It's like seven eighths the speed of the others.

01:15:21 ◼   ► Funny that the seven core is literally that much slower.

01:15:26 ◼   ► Like it's just, that's just what it is,

01:15:29 ◼   ► which means it's still way faster

01:15:32 ◼   ► than the other integrated Intel graphics computers

01:15:36 ◼   ► that Apple makes or has made.

01:15:38 ◼   ► But the other set of charts that I made

01:15:41 ◼   ► are these charts about where the M1 fits

01:15:43 ◼   ► in the existing sort of Mac product line.

01:15:46 ◼   ► And I did two of those,

01:15:48 ◼   ► single core and multi-core for Geekbench,

01:15:50 ◼   ► where I went through the Geekbench browser

01:15:52 ◼   ► and I found like historic scores

01:15:54 ◼   ► for mostly sort of shipping products

01:15:57 ◼   ► and then compared them to the M1 Macs.

01:15:59 ◼   ► And this is where it gets kind of wild,

01:16:02 ◼   ► but I think this also puts them in the best context,

01:16:05 ◼   ► which is the single core.

01:16:07 ◼   ► Apple, when they announced this product last week said,

01:16:11 ◼   ► it's the fastest core in the world, basically,

01:16:15 ◼   ► in a computer.

01:16:16 ◼   ► And the tests bear that out.

01:16:18 ◼   ► The single core score,

01:16:20 ◼   ► where you're only running one processor core,

01:16:22 ◼   ► is faster on the M1 than any Mac

01:16:25 ◼   ► that is made with an Intel chip in it.

01:16:29 ◼   ► Now, performance is generally,

01:16:31 ◼   ► on an eight core system, right?

01:16:33 ◼   ► Performance is not on one core,

01:16:35 ◼   ► it's on all the cores.

01:16:36 ◼   ► So this is academic in a way,

01:16:38 ◼   ► although there are inefficient processes

01:16:41 ◼   ► that only run on one core,

01:16:42 ◼   ► and those will run really fast on these,

01:16:44 ◼   ► but you wanna look at the multi-core, right?

01:16:45 ◼   ► Because that's where you've got a 28 core Mac Pro, right?

01:16:49 ◼   ► Or an 18 core iMac Pro.

01:16:50 ◼   ► And they're so fast

01:16:52 ◼   ► because they have so many processor cores to do the work.

01:16:55 ◼   ► And these M1 Macs have eight cores.

01:16:58 ◼   ► They've got the four efficiency cores

01:17:00 ◼   ► and the four performance cores,

01:17:01 ◼   ► and they can use all eight at a time if they want to.

01:17:03 ◼   ► And if you look at the Geekbench scores there,

01:17:06 ◼   ► this is, I think,

01:17:07 ◼   ► the most interesting thing about these computers,

01:17:09 ◼   ► which is they are what we thought they would be, by the way.

01:17:13 ◼   ► They are faster than any Mac ever made

01:17:18 ◼   ► in multi-core performance,

01:17:19 ◼   ► with the exception of the Mac Pro,

01:17:24 ◼   ► the current Mac Pro,

01:17:27 ◼   ► the iMac Pro,

01:17:29 ◼   ► so the Xeon processor-based multi-core Pro

01:17:32 ◼   ► workstation monsters, the Mac Pro and the iMac Pro.

01:17:35 ◼   ► And this year's i9 iMacs,

01:17:40 ◼   ► the high-end build-to-order configurations

01:17:43 ◼   ► of i9 at eight and 10 cores,

01:17:45 ◼   ► and last year's i9 iMac

01:17:50 ◼   ► with, I think, eight cores.

01:17:53 ◼   ► So basically, those are the only Macs that I could find

01:17:56 ◼   ► that actually beat the M1 Macs.

01:17:58 ◼   ► It's the highest end.

01:17:59 ◼   ► - It's basically all desktop professional Macs.

01:18:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, right, 'cause those high-end iMacs

01:18:04 ◼   ► are essentially the ones

01:18:06 ◼   ► that touch the iMac Pro in performance,

01:18:08 ◼   ► and that's literally the highest configuration,

01:18:10 ◼   ► and then you need to spec up the processor even higher

01:18:13 ◼   ► to get there, and that's it.

01:18:15 ◼   ► Like, everything else, every MacBook Pro,

01:18:18 ◼   ► every other iMac,

01:18:19 ◼   ► every other Mac Mini is slower at multi-core performance

01:18:25 ◼   ► than the M1 Macs.

01:18:26 ◼   ► And keep in mind, these are the low-end Macs.

01:18:30 ◼   ► - It's unbelievable.

01:18:32 ◼   ► I knew they were gonna be good.

01:18:33 ◼   ► - Like, if you draw the chart,

01:18:34 ◼   ► like I've done on "Six Colors" a couple of times,

01:18:37 ◼   ► sort of like plotting out A series performance

01:18:41 ◼   ► and A series X performance,

01:18:44 ◼   ► it was gonna be kinda in this ballpark,

01:18:47 ◼   ► but it's one thing to see that and be like,

01:18:49 ◼   ► "Oh, theoretically, they could do this,"

01:18:50 ◼   ► and it's another thing to see them land it

01:18:53 ◼   ► and land it where they did,

01:18:55 ◼   ► where a 999 MacBook Air is, for most tasks,

01:19:00 ◼   ► faster than any Mac ever made

01:19:02 ◼   ► that isn't a Mac Pro or an iMac Pro.

01:19:05 ◼   ► - Well, let's talk about that, though, 'cause you say,

01:19:08 ◼   ► it's one thing to think it,

01:19:10 ◼   ► it's one thing to see the benchmark scores,

01:19:15 ◼   ► but it's a whole other thing to see the performance

01:19:19 ◼   ► doing tasks that you do on a computer, right?

01:19:23 ◼   ► Because scores don't mean anything, right?

01:19:26 ◼   ► - Yes, I have no context.

01:19:28 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:19:29 ◼   ► So what have you been able to do?

01:19:32 ◼   ► How has it performed, and how has it performed

01:19:35 ◼   ► against not only just old Macs, but the three Macs,

01:19:39 ◼   ► the three M1 Macs, how have they performed

01:19:41 ◼   ► against each other?

01:19:42 ◼   ► - Well, against each other, they're almost identical.

01:19:44 ◼   ► I mean, that's the bottom line,

01:19:46 ◼   ► other than the graphics part,

01:19:47 ◼   ► and the battery is less in the MacBook Air

01:19:51 ◼   ► than in the MacBook Pro, and that does show up.

01:19:53 ◼   ► And I did a battery test,

01:19:56 ◼   ► and definitely the MacBook Pro has a better battery.

01:19:59 ◼   ► It's pretty simple.

01:20:00 ◼   ► But what I tried to do is some tasks

01:20:04 ◼   ► that would show off this power

01:20:08 ◼   ► in kind of conditions you would actually do, right?

01:20:12 ◼   ► Because a benchmark chart isn't doing work.

01:20:15 ◼   ► It's trying to simulate doing work.

01:20:16 ◼   ► So for the 20 Macs for 2020 series,

01:20:20 ◼   ► I've been editing all of those in Final Cut Pro,

01:20:24 ◼   ► and there was a new Final Cut Pro update

01:20:27 ◼   ► for Apple Silicon last week that I downloaded

01:20:30 ◼   ► and I used to edit this week's 20 Macs for 2020 video,

01:20:34 ◼   ► which is from a new batch that Steven and I shot.

01:20:37 ◼   ► We shot our last batch of those for the top six.

01:20:40 ◼   ► We shot them in 4K.

01:20:42 ◼   ► He shot his in 4K HDR,

01:20:45 ◼   ► which we talked about earlier.

01:20:47 ◼   ► You said how great the HDR video was,

01:20:49 ◼   ► and I'll just say matching HDR video

01:20:52 ◼   ► to non-HDR video is not fun.

01:20:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a pain.

01:20:57 ◼   ► I understand that the idea of the new,

01:21:00 ◼   ► it can be difficult to take the HDR video from iPhones

01:21:04 ◼   ► and edit them into non-HDR purposes,

01:21:08 ◼   ► but most people are not doing that.

01:21:11 ◼   ► - No, exactly right.

01:21:12 ◼   ► It's a lesson that I learned.

01:21:13 ◼   ► Anyway, it's 4K video that we've got,

01:21:17 ◼   ► and I've been editing these videos on my iMac Pro,

01:21:21 ◼   ► and some of them not even 4K, some of them just 1080,

01:21:24 ◼   ► but I think the last one I shot in 1080

01:21:27 ◼   ► and Steven shot in 4K, so his file was 4K,

01:21:30 ◼   ► and I had to make a proxy workflow

01:21:32 ◼   ► where I re-encoded those videos at a lower resolution

01:21:36 ◼   ► and edited using the lower resolution

01:21:39 ◼   ► because otherwise I got way too many hiccups

01:21:42 ◼   ► when I was editing on my iMac Pro.

01:21:44 ◼   ► - It just couldn't handle the file size, right?

01:21:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, exactly.

01:21:48 ◼   ► It's just like, it's a lot of data,

01:21:50 ◼   ► and it has to decode the video, and it was too much,

01:21:53 ◼   ► so I stepped down the quality, essentially.

01:21:55 ◼   ► So on the Mac Mini, I brought my project over,

01:22:00 ◼   ► and I set it to use the non-optimized,

01:22:06 ◼   ► full resolution files, and even the setting

01:22:09 ◼   ► that was a better quality instead of better performance,

01:22:12 ◼   ► to have the video look crystal clear while I was editing it.

01:22:16 ◼   ► And I never had a hiccup, not one, the whole time.

01:22:22 ◼   ► And that was that moment where I thought,

01:22:24 ◼   ► oh, this little Mac Mini that costs whatever, 699,

01:22:28 ◼   ► I'm not sure which configuration I have,

01:22:29 ◼   ► I'll have to look that up, but--

01:22:30 ◼   ► - Let's just say it was $750, right?

01:22:32 ◼   ► I just pluck a number out, yeah.

01:22:34 ◼   ► - Sure, it did all these things

01:22:36 ◼   ► that the $5,000 iMac Pro from three years ago

01:22:39 ◼   ► behind me couldn't handle.

01:22:41 ◼   ► - It's unbelievable, unbelievable, because, right,

01:22:45 ◼   ► what you are doing there is exactly

01:22:48 ◼   ► what the iMac Pro is made for, right?

01:22:51 ◼   ► - I know, yeah, that was two streams of 4K video,

01:22:53 ◼   ► and it didn't flinch, it was not a problem.

01:22:55 ◼   ► - Oh, God.

01:22:56 ◼   ► - And so I did that, I also did a video in code

01:23:00 ◼   ► where I took an Apple ProRes file of actually that episode

01:23:06 ◼   ► of 20 Macs for 2020 video, and I encoded that,

01:23:10 ◼   ► I just used QuickTime to encode an H.264 1080 version of it.

01:23:15 ◼   ► And again, it's an eight-core iMac Pro, it's good at this,

01:23:20 ◼   ► and it was about 10 seconds slower at it

01:23:25 ◼   ► than the other systems.

01:23:26 ◼   ► And again, it's not a lot, but the fact that they're,

01:23:31 ◼   ► even in the ballpark of my eight-core, now deprecated,

01:23:34 ◼   ► but eight-core iMac Pro is ridiculous,

01:23:37 ◼   ► because these are low-end systems.

01:23:39 ◼   ► Another test that I hear,

01:23:42 ◼   ► 'cause we know a lot of developers, is Xcode compile.

01:23:45 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:23:46 ◼   ► - And I did an Xcode compile, our friend James Thompson

01:23:50 ◼   ► sent me the source code to dice by PCALC.

01:23:52 ◼   ► It's very nice of him to trust me not to sell that

01:23:57 ◼   ► on the black market, but I ran an Xcode archive

01:24:03 ◼   ► where it's basically building everything

01:24:05 ◼   ► that it needs to build for a project.

01:24:07 ◼   ► And people complain a lot about how slow Xcode is

01:24:10 ◼   ► at compiling software.

01:24:12 ◼   ► And it's another one of those cases where compared to,

01:24:17 ◼   ► so they did that job in a little less than 30 seconds.

01:24:20 ◼   ► My iMac Pro did it in 42 seconds, which is really fitting,

01:24:24 ◼   ► given that it's James Thompson.

01:24:27 ◼   ► The 2020 high-end 13-inch MacBook Pro,

01:24:30 ◼   ► the 13-inch that they released earlier this year

01:24:34 ◼   ► with four ports, 51 seconds.

01:24:37 ◼   ► And I think that that says it all right.

01:24:38 ◼   ► This year's top-of-the-line 13-inch MacBook Pro Intel system

01:24:43 ◼   ► was almost twice as long to do it.

01:24:48 ◼   ► Not quite, but in that ballpark.

01:24:51 ◼   ► And I can't tell you how impressive that is.

01:24:54 ◼   ► That's huge.

01:24:57 ◼   ► Like if you bought a 13-inch high-end MacBook Pro

01:25:00 ◼   ► earlier this year thinking, this is really great.

01:25:05 ◼   ► I mean, it's fine, but that MacBook Air,

01:25:09 ◼   ► I did it by a lot.

01:25:11 ◼   ► And that's the story, right?

01:25:14 ◼   ► Like across anything that you need that kind of performance.

01:25:17 ◼   ► Obviously, if you're just editing text

01:25:19 ◼   ► or doing Microsoft Word or something like that,

01:25:21 ◼   ► or working with graphics,

01:25:22 ◼   ► you're not necessarily gonna notice it.

01:25:23 ◼   ► You're gonna notice the places

01:25:24 ◼   ► where it used to stutter a little that it doesn't,

01:25:27 ◼   ► or that there used to be a pause that there now isn't.

01:25:30 ◼   ► But when you're using it for like these higher-end things,

01:25:34 ◼   ► it's just a lot faster than computers

01:25:39 ◼   ► that by all accounts in the past

01:25:42 ◼   ► should have beaten the pants off

01:25:44 ◼   ► of these little low-end Macs.

01:25:46 ◼   ► And they just, they don't.

01:25:47 ◼   ► This is the new...

01:25:49 ◼   ► In fact, I'm starting to wonder

01:25:50 ◼   ► if we need to redefine what a low-end task is,

01:25:52 ◼   ► because obviously a MacBook Air can handle,

01:25:55 ◼   ► and a 699 Mac Mini can handle editing

01:26:00 ◼   ► multiple 4K video streams.

01:26:01 ◼   ► So is that a low-end task now?

01:26:02 ◼   ► Probably not, but that's the kind of thing you need to do

01:26:06 ◼   ► to stress these things out.

01:26:07 ◼   ► - So it makes the Mac Mini a kind of a weird outlier to me,

01:26:12 ◼   ► because, all right, so the MacBook Pro,

01:26:15 ◼   ► it's the clues in the name,

01:26:16 ◼   ► it's a machine for professionals.

01:26:18 ◼   ► Do your professional work here.

01:26:19 ◼   ► And now that professional machine can do these tasks

01:26:24 ◼   ► so much more efficiently than ever before.

01:26:26 ◼   ► And the MacBook Air is typically a machine

01:26:29 ◼   ► for the majority of people.

01:26:31 ◼   ► I mean, I'm sure lots of MacBook Airs

01:26:33 ◼   ► use Photoshop, for example,

01:26:34 ◼   ► which I'm sure will run much nicer

01:26:36 ◼   ► when Adobe put the version of Photoshop out there

01:26:40 ◼   ► that is native for the M1.

01:26:42 ◼   ► But the MacBook Air benefits from much greater battery life,

01:26:46 ◼   ► which is something that people, all MacBook Air users

01:26:50 ◼   ► will benefit from.

01:26:50 ◼   ► But the Mac Mini is in this weird spot, right?

01:26:53 ◼   ► Where it's not really a professional machine,

01:26:56 ◼   ► neither does it have to worry about battery life.

01:26:59 ◼   ► It's like it is in this peculiar, in the middle spot here

01:27:03 ◼   ► with kind of what we expect of it,

01:27:06 ◼   ► where these other two machines, the two laptops,

01:27:09 ◼   ► maybe are more catered to this particular benefits

01:27:13 ◼   ► when you think about where it lives in the overall lineup,

01:27:16 ◼   ► which is kind of like a funny little anomaly.

01:27:18 ◼   ► - It's gonna work its way out, right?

01:27:20 ◼   ► Like, eventually Apple will, once the transition is over,

01:27:25 ◼   ► I think you'll look at the product line

01:27:26 ◼   ► and it'll make more sense than it does now.

01:27:27 ◼   ► But yes, this is another one of those leaps

01:27:30 ◼   ► where it used to be, you said,

01:27:32 ◼   ► "Oh, well, you need a pro laptop to do that work."

01:27:35 ◼   ► And there'll be new work.

01:27:36 ◼   ► You know, Apple was talking about like 8K video and so like,

01:27:39 ◼   ► there will always be new high-end work

01:27:41 ◼   ► that the low-end systems aren't gonna be able to accomplish.

01:27:45 ◼   ► But the story of computing over the last couple of decades,

01:27:48 ◼   ► you know, even longer, three or four decades,

01:27:51 ◼   ► is always there's this task that is impossible to perform

01:27:54 ◼   ► and then it's only possible to perform it

01:27:55 ◼   ► on a high-end system.

01:27:57 ◼   ► And then you just wait long enough

01:27:58 ◼   ► and it's possible to do it on a low-end system.

01:28:00 ◼   ► - Right, but isn't it wild that Apple is the company

01:28:06 ◼   ► that's first to being able to produce the machines

01:28:10 ◼   ► that can run this future work, whatever it is?

01:28:13 ◼   ► That doesn't seem like the normal way

01:28:14 ◼   ► that things have been done.

01:28:15 ◼   ► - Well, the overarching story of the M1

01:28:18 ◼   ► and of the Intel to Apple Silicon transition in general

01:28:22 ◼   ► is going to be that Apple came up from the streets.

01:28:27 ◼   ► And by that, I mean the mean streets

01:28:30 ◼   ► of smartphone development,

01:28:33 ◼   ► where every bit of processing power

01:28:36 ◼   ► and every bit of energy savings was vitally important.

01:28:39 ◼   ► And they're trying to make the iPhone and the iPad

01:28:42 ◼   ► as successful as possible through their own chips.

01:28:44 ◼   ► And like, that's tough.

01:28:47 ◼   ► And you get to the end of that story

01:28:48 ◼   ► and you've got something really remarkable

01:28:52 ◼   ► that you could apply to the Mac and see huge benefits.

01:28:55 ◼   ► So if you've been following Apple story,

01:28:57 ◼   ► it actually does kind of make sense,

01:28:59 ◼   ► but from the, you know, it's an advantage

01:29:03 ◼   ► that came from the other side of the street,

01:29:06 ◼   ► basically from the mobile side

01:29:09 ◼   ► and now is being applied to the Mac

01:29:10 ◼   ► because Apple has done such a good job

01:29:12 ◼   ► with their chips on the other side

01:29:15 ◼   ► that they've rocketed past where Intel was on this side.

01:29:19 ◼   ► And I feel like I mentioned this in my review,

01:29:22 ◼   ► I feel like that moment at that Brooklyn event in 2018,

01:29:26 ◼   ► where they started boasting about how the iPad Pro

01:29:29 ◼   ► was faster than most PC laptops,

01:29:31 ◼   ► that was the clear moment where we all went,

01:29:33 ◼   ► oh, they're doing this.

01:29:35 ◼   ► 'Cause like if they've reached the point

01:29:36 ◼   ► where they can compare themselves to Intel's processors

01:29:41 ◼   ► favorably, then it's only a matter of time

01:29:45 ◼   ► before they just replace Intel's processors.

01:29:47 ◼   ► And that's where we are.

01:29:48 ◼   ► - Unified memory, I think is something that,

01:29:50 ◼   ► I mean, you know, we got so many questions about it

01:29:52 ◼   ► and we asked Tim and Tom a little bit about it too,

01:29:55 ◼   ► but I think this is something that a lot of our audience

01:29:57 ◼   ► is really getting hung up on.

01:30:00 ◼   ► I know that it might be too difficult to tell right now

01:30:02 ◼   ► with just a week's worth of usage,

01:30:04 ◼   ► but did you come across any scenario

01:30:07 ◼   ► where you felt the machine struggling in a way

01:30:11 ◼   ► that you could attribute it to differences in RAM?

01:30:15 ◼   ► - I haven't.

01:30:17 ◼   ► I think this is one of those things that's very hard

01:30:19 ◼   ► to detect.

01:30:20 ◼   ► I haven't noticed anything like that.

01:30:22 ◼   ► I'm sure that there are people who load enormous files

01:30:27 ◼   ► into memory who are going to be curious about it.

01:30:30 ◼   ► I would say that the combination of having

01:30:33 ◼   ► this memory, which is very fast

01:30:35 ◼   ► and doesn't have to do some of the tricks that you do

01:30:39 ◼   ► when the memory is off the die, off of the package.

01:30:44 ◼   ► Also, the SSD speed,

01:30:50 ◼   ► a lot of times I hear people complain about

01:30:54 ◼   ► running out of RAM who are using like

01:30:57 ◼   ► traditional hard drives instead of SSD.

01:30:59 ◼   ► Like it's easier to page out to SSD.

01:31:01 ◼   ► It's not the same, but it's better.

01:31:04 ◼   ► I am sure there are workflows and people who use

01:31:06 ◼   ► huge amounts of RAM who will look at these systems at 16

01:31:10 ◼   ► and will run into some walls and say,

01:31:14 ◼   ► "Oh, this is frustrating."

01:31:15 ◼   ► And to them, I would say,

01:31:17 ◼   ► "Yeah, there will be pro systems later,

01:31:22 ◼   ► "clearly that will support more memory than this."

01:31:25 ◼   ► But I never ran into any of those things.

01:31:28 ◼   ► I did not open gigantic image files

01:31:32 ◼   ► that I don't quite frankly, I don't have.

01:31:34 ◼   ► I did not run 15 different apps

01:31:38 ◼   ► and have a bunch of tabs open.

01:31:39 ◼   ► I haven't done any of that.

01:31:40 ◼   ► So I can't say on that side.

01:31:43 ◼   ► All I'll say is that I think for most regular use,

01:31:46 ◼   ► especially given that these are essentially low end systems,

01:31:49 ◼   ► 16, did I detect a difference between eight and 16?

01:31:53 ◼   ► I didn't, but I still bought a MacBook Air with 16

01:31:56 ◼   ► because I felt like that was something I wanted to do

01:31:59 ◼   ► just because I do use my Mac for some more serious stuff,

01:32:03 ◼   ► but I didn't run into anything.

01:32:05 ◼   ► It's very hard to do that.

01:32:06 ◼   ► And honestly, I'm probably not the best person.

01:32:10 ◼   ► I'm not somebody who leaves a million tabs open.

01:32:12 ◼   ► I'm not somebody who works with enormous image files.

01:32:15 ◼   ► It's very rare that I run into a moment.

01:32:18 ◼   ► It does happen occasionally,

01:32:19 ◼   ► but it's very rare that I run into a moment

01:32:21 ◼   ► where I think, "Oh no, I've run out of RAM

01:32:23 ◼   ► "and now everything is slow."

01:32:25 ◼   ► It doesn't happen very often.

01:32:27 ◼   ► And I haven't been able to coax these systems into doing that.

01:32:31 ◼   ► - I think that that specific thing